observer. The pursuits of the gallant spirits of the court of Elizabeth are reflected in several expressions of this comedy. The incidental notices of the general condition of the people are less decided; but a few passages that have reference to popular manners may be pointed out. due them to the dominion of imagination. | a reflection in the allusions of this accurate What cared they, then, if a ship set sail from Verona to Milan, when Valentine and his man ought to have departed in a carriage?—or what mattered it if Hamlet went "to school at Wittemberg," when the real Hamlet was in being five centuries before the university of Wittemberg was founded? If Shakspere had lived in this age, he might have looked more carefully into his maps and his encyclopædias. We might have gained something, but what should we not have lost? The boyhood of Shakspere was passed in a country town where the practices of the Roman church had not been wholly eradicated either by severity or reason. We have one or two passing notices of these. Proteus, in the first scene, says, "I will be thy beadsman, Valentine." Shakspere had, doubtless, seen the rosary still worn, and the "beads bidden," perhaps even in his own house. Julia compares the strength of her affection to the unwearied steps of "the true-devoted pilgrim." Shakspere had, perhaps, heard the tale of some ancient denizen of a ruined abbey, who had made the pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady at Loretto, or had even visited the sacred tomb at Jerusalem. Thurio and Proteus are to meet at "St. Gregory's well." This is the only instance in Shakspere in which a holy well is mentioned; but how often must he have seen the country people, in the early summer morning, or after their daily labour, resorting to the fountain which had been hallowed from the Saxon times as under the guardian influence of some venerated saint! These wells were closed and neglected in London when Stow wrote; but at the beginning of the last century the cus "Shakspere," says Malone, "is fond of alluding to events occurring at the time when he wrote ;"* and Johnson observes that many passages in his works evidently show that "he often took advantage of the facts then recent, and the passions then in motion." + This was a part of the method of Shakspere, by which he fixed the attention of his audience. The Nurse, in Romeo and Juliet,' says, "It is now since the earthquake eleven years." Dame Quickly, in 'The Merry Wives of Windsor,' talks of her "knights, and lords, and gentlemen, with their coaches, I warrant you, coach after coach." Coaches came into general use about 1605. "Banks's horse," which was exhibited in London in 1589, is mentioned in 'Love's Labour's Lost.' These, amongst other instances which we shall have occasion to notice, are not to be regarded as determining the period of the dramatic action; and, indeed, they are, in many cases, decided anachronisms. In 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona' there are several very curious and interesting passages which have distinct reference to the times of Elizabeth, and which, if Milan had then been under a separate du-tom of making journeys to them, according cal government, would have warranted us in placing the action of this play about half a century later than we have done. As it is, the passages are remarkable examples of Shakspere's close attention to "facts then recent;" and they show us that the spirit of enterprise, and the intellectual activity, which distinguished the period when Shakspere first began to write for the stage, found * Life, vol. ii. p. 331, edit. 1821. to Bourne, still existed amongst the people of the North; and he considers it to be "the remains of that superstitious practice of the Papists of paying adoration to wells and fountains." This play contains several indications of the prevailing taste for music, and exhibits an audience proficient in its technical terms; for Shakspere never addressed words to his hearers which they could not understand. This taste was a distinguishing characteristic of the age of Elizabeth; it was not extinct in that of the first Charles; but it was lost amidst the puritanism of the Commonwealth and the profligacy of the Restoration. There is one allusion in this play to the games of the people -"bid the base," which shows us that the social sport which the school-boy and schoolgirl still enjoy,--that of prison-base, or prisonbars, and which still makes the village green vocal with their mirth on some fine evening of spring, was a game of Shakspere's days. In the long winter nights the farmer's hearth was made cheerful by the well-known ballads of Robin Hood; and to "Robin Hood's fat friar" Shakspere makes his Italian outlaws allude. But with music, and sports, and ales, and old wives' stories, there was still much misery in the land. "The beggar" not only spake "puling" "at Hallowmas," but his importunities or his threats were heard at all seasons. The disease of the country was vagrancy; and to this deep-rooted evil there were only applied the surface remedies to which Launce alludes, "the stocks" and "the pillory." The whole nation was still in a state of transition from semi-barbarism to civilization; but the foundations of modern society had been laid. The labourers had ceased to be vassals; the middle class had been created; the power of the aristocracy had been humbled, and the nobles had clustered round the sovereign, having cast aside the low tastes which had belonged to their fierce condition of independent chieftains. This was a state in which literature might, without degradation, be adapted to the wants of the general people; and "the best public instructor then was the drama. Shakspere found the taste created; but it was for him, most especially, to purify and exalt it. Without any reference to the period of the poet's life in which 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona' was written, Theobald tells us, "This is one of Shakspeare's worst plays." Hanmer thinks Shakspere "only enlivened it with some speeches and lines, thrown in here and there." Upton determines "that, if any proof can be drawn from manner and style, this play must be sent packing, and seek for its parent elsewhere." Johnson, though singularly favourable in his opinion 66 of this play, says of it, "There is a strange mixture of knowledge and ignorance, of care and negligence." Mrs. Lenox (who, in the best slip-slop manner, does not hesitate to pass judgment upon many of the greatest works of Shakspere) says, ""T is generally allowed that the plot, conduct, manners, and incidents of this play are extremely deficient." On the other hand, Pope gives the style of this comedy the high praise of being "natural and unaffected;" although he complains that the familiar parts are "composed of the lowest and most trifling conceits, to be accounted for only by the gross taste of the age he lived in." Johnson says, When I read this play, I cannot but think that I find, both in the serious and ludicrous scenes, the language and sentiments of Shakspere. It is not, indeed, one of his most powerful effusions; it has neither many diversities of character, nor striking delineations of life. But it abounds in yvwpaí (sententious observations) beyond most of his plays; and few have more lines or passages which, singly considered, are eminently beautiful." Coleridge, the best of critics on Shakspere, has no remark on this play beyond calling it "a sketch." Hazlitt, in a more elaborate criticism, follows out the same idea: "This is little more than the first outlines of a comedy loosely sketched in. It is the story of a novel dramatised with very little labour or pretension; yet there are passages of high poetical spirit, and of inimitable quaintness of humour, which are undoubtedly Shakspere's; and there is throughout the conduct of the fable a careless grace and felicity which marks it for his." We scarcely think that Coleridge and Hazlitt are correct in considering this play "a sketch," if it be taken as a whole. In the fifth act, unquestionably, the outlines are "loosely sketched in." The unusual shortness of that act would indicate that it is, in some degree, hurried and unfinished. If the text be correct which makes Valentine offer to give up Silvia to Proteus, there cannot be a doubt that the poet intended to have worked out this idea, and to have exhibited a struggle of self-denial, and a sacrifice to friendship, which very young persons are in clined to consider possible. Friendship has | imagines that it might have been written Essais Littéraires sur Shakspeare,' tome 11. p. 357. Paris, 1828. Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature,' Black's translation, vol. ii. p. 156. 'Shakspeare's Autobiographical Poems,' &c. By Charles Armitage Brown. 1838. strong indications of his future matured poetical power and dramatic effect. It is the day-spring of genius, full of promise, beauty, and quietude, before the sun has arisen to its splendour. I can likewise discern in it his peculiar gradual development of character, his minute touches, each tending to complete a portrait; and if these are not executed by the master-hand, as shown in his later plays, they are by the same apprentice-hand, each touch of strength sufficient to harmonise with the whole." Johnson says of this play, "I am inclined to believe that it was not very successful." It is difficult to judge of the accuracy of this belief. The "quietude," the "minute touches," may not have been exactly suited to an audience who had as yet been unaccustomed to the delicate lights and shadows of the Elizabethan drama. Shakspere, in some degree, stood in the same relation to his predecessors as Raffaelle did to the earlier painters. The gentle gradations, the accurate distances, the harmony and repose, had to be superadded to the hard outlines, the strong colouring, and the disproportionate parts of the elder artists, in the one case as in the other. But our dramatist, who unquestionably always looked to what the stage demanded from him, however he may have looked beyond the mere wants of his present audience, put enough of attractive matter into 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona' to command its popularity. No "clown" that had appeared on the stage before his time could at all approach to Launce in real humour. But the clowns that the celebrated Tarleton represented had mere words of buffoonery put into their mouths; and it is not to be wondered at that Shakspere retained some of their ribaldry. It would be some time before he would be strong enough to assert the rights of his own genius, as he unquestionably did in his later plays. He must, as a young writer, have been sometimes forced into a sacrifice to the popular requirements. Mr. Boaden, as it is stated by Malone, is of opinion that The Two Gentlemen of Verona' contains the germ of other plays which Shakspere afterwards wrote. The expression, "germ of other plays," is somewhat undefined. There are in this play the germ of several incidents and situations which occur in the poet's maturer worksthe germ of some others of his most admired characters the germ of one or two of his most beautiful descriptions. When Julia is deputed by Proteus to bear a letter to Silvia, urging the love which he ought to have kept sacred for herself, we are reminded of Viola, in 'Twelfth Night,' being sent to plead the Duke's passion for Olivia, although the other circumstances are widely different; -when we see Julia wearing her boy's disguise, with a modest archness and spirit, our thoughts involuntarily turn not only to Viola, but to Rosalind, and to Imogen, three of the most exquisite of Shakspere's exquisite creations of female character;-when Valentine, in the forest of Mantua, exclaims, "How use doth breed a habit in a man! This shadowy desert, unfrequented woods, I better brook than flourishing peopled towns," we hear the first faint notes of the same delicious train of thought, though greatly modified by the different circumstances of the speaker, that we find in the banished Duke of the forest of Ardennes : "Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile, Hath not old custom made this life more sweet Than that of painted pomp?" When Valentine exclaims, "And why not death, rather than living torment?" we recollect the grand passage in 'Macbeth,' where the same thought is exalted, and rendered terrible, by the peculiar circumstances of the speaker's guilt :— "Better be with the dead, Whom we, to gain our place, have sent to peace, * Malone's Shakspeare, by Boswell, vol. ii. p. 32. Than on the torture of the mind to lie In restless ecstacy." There are, generally speaking, resemblances throughout the works of Shakspere, which his genius alone could have preserved from being imitations. But, taking the particular instance before us, when with matured powers he came to deal with somewhat similar incidents and characters in other plays, and to repeat the leading idea of a particular sentiment, we can, without difficulty, perceive how vast a difference had been produced by a few years of reflection and experience ;-how he had made to himself an entirely new school of art, whose practice was as superior to his own conceptions as embodied in his first works, as it was beyond the mastery of his contemporaries, or of any who have succeeded him. It was for this reason that Pope called the style of 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona' "simple and unaffected." It was opposed to Shakspere's later style, which is teeming with allusion upon allusion, dropped out of the exceeding riches of his glorious imagination. With the exception of the few obsolete words still in use, this comedy has, to our words, and the unfamiliar application of minds, a very modern air. The thoughts are natural and obvious, the images familiar and general. The most celebrated passages have a character of grace rather than of beauty; the elegance of a youthful poet aiming to be correct, instead of the splendour of the perfect artist, subjecting every crude and apparently unmanageable thought to the wonderful alchymy of his all-penetrating genius. Look, in this comedy, at the images, for example, which are derived from external nature, and compare them with the same class of images in the later plays. We might select several illustrations, but one will suffice: "As the most favour'd bud Is eaten by the canker ere it blow; Even so by love the young and tender wit Is turn'd to folly; blasted in the bud, Losing his verdure even in the prime." Here the image is feeble, because it is ge neralized. But compare it with the same particular." It constitutes the peculiar image in 'Romeo and Juliet :' "But he, his own affection's counsellor, Is to himself-I will not say how true, Johnson, as we have already seen, considered this comedy to be wanting in "diversity of character." The action, it must be observed, is mainly sustained by Proteus and Valentine, and by Julia and Silvia; and the conduct of the plot is relieved by the familiar scenes in which Speed and Launce appear. The other actors are very subordinate, and we scarcely demand any great diversity of character amongst them; but it seems to us, with regard to Proteus and Valentine, Julia and Silvia, Speed and Launce, that the characters are exhibited, as it were, in pairs, upon a principle of very defined though delicate contrast. We will endeavour to point out these somewhat nice distinctions. Coleridge says, "It is Shakspere's peculiar excellence, that, throughout the whole of his splendid picture-gallery (the reader will excuse the acknowledged inadequacy of this metaphor), we find individuality everywhere, -mere portrait nowhere. In all his various characters we still feel ourselves communing with the same nature, which is everywhere present as the vegetable sap in the branches, sprays, leaves, buds, blossoms, and fruits, their shapes, tastes, and odours. Speaking of the effect, that is, his works themselves, we may define the excellence of their method as consisting in that just proportion, that union and interpenetration of the universal and the particular, which must ever pervade all works of decided genius and true science." Nothing can be more just and more happy than this definition of the distinctive quality of Shakspere's works,-a quality which puts them so immeasurably above all other works,--"the union and interpenetration of the universal and the *The Friend.' 3rd edit. 1837, vol. in. p. 121. charm of his matured style,-it furnishes the key to the surpassing excellence of his representations, whether of facts which are cognizable by the understanding or by the senses, in which a single word individualizes the "particular" object described or alluded to, and, without separating it from the "universal," to which it belongs, gives it all the value of a vivid colour in a picture, permonious. The skill which he attained in fectly distinct, but also completely harthis wonderful mastery over the whole world the result of continued experiment. In his of materials for poetical construction was characters, especially, we see the gradual growth of this extraordinary power, as clearly as we perceive the differences between his early and his matured forms of expression. But it is evident to us, that, in his very earliest delineations of character, he had conceived the principle which was to be developed in "his splendid picturegallery." In the comedy before us, Valentine and Proteus are the "two gentlemen" Julia and Silvia the two ladies "beloved" --Speed and Launce the two "clownish" servants. And yet how different is the one from the other of the same class! Proteus, who is first presented to us as a lover, is He is "a votary to fond desire;" but he evidently a very cold and calculating one. complains of his mistress that she has metamorphosed him— "Made me neglect my studies-lose my time." He ventures, however, to write to Julia; and when he has her answer, "her oath for love, her honour's pawn," he immediately takes the most prudent view of their position: "Oh that our fathers would applaud our loves!" But he has not decision enough to demand this approbation : "I fear'd to show my father Julia's letter, Lest he should take exceptions to my love." He parts with his mistress in a very formal and well-behaved style ;-they exchange rings, but Julia has first offered "this remembrance" for her sake;-he makes a |