rapidly does the chivalrous duke resolve to but at the same time so original that they avenge their wrongs : suredly, the reader who opens that scene for the first time will feel that he has lighted upon a work of no ordinary power. The mere interruption of the bridal procession by the widowed queens the contrast of their black garments and their stained veils with the white robes and wheaten chaplets and hymeneal songs with which the play opens is a noble dramatic conception; but the poet, whoever he be, possesses that command of appropriate language which realizes all that the imagination can paint of a dramatic situation and movement; there is nothing shadowy or indistinct, no vague explanations, no trivial epithets. When the First Queen says "Oh, pity, duke ! Thou purger of the earth, draw thy fear'd sword That does good turns to the world; give us the bones Of our dead kings, that we may chapel them!" we know that the thoughts which belong to her condition are embodied in words of no common significancy. When the Second Queen, addressing Hippolyta," the soldieress," says,— " 'Speak 't in a woman's key, like such a woman As any of us three; weep ere you fail; Lend us a knee; But touch the ground for us no longer time Than a dove's motion, when the head's pluck'd off!" we feel that the poet not only wields his harmonious language with the decision of a practised artist, but exhibits the nicer touches which attest his knowledge of natural feelings, and employs images which, however strange and unfamiliar, are so true that we wonder they never occurred to us before, appear to defy copying or imitation. The whole scene is full of the same remarkable word-painting. There is another quality which it exhibits, which is also peculiar to the highest order of minds—the ability to set us thinking-to excite that just and appropriate reflection which might arise of itself out of the exhibition of deep passions and painful struggles and resolute selfdenials, but which the true poet breathes into us without an effort, so as to give the key to our thoughts, but utterly avoiding those sententious moralizings which are sometimes deemed to be the province of tragedy. When the Queens commend the surrender which Theseus makes of his affections to a sense of duty, the poet gives us the philosophy of such heroism in a dozen words spoken by Theseus :— "As we are men, Thus should we do; being sensually subdued, We lose our humane title." The first appearance, in Chaucer, of Palamon and Arcite is when they lie wounded on the battle-field of Thebes. In 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' the necessary conduct of the story, as a drama, requires that the principal personages should be exhibited to us before they become absorbed in the main action. It is on such occasions as these that a dramatist of the highest order makes his characters reveal themselves, naturally and without an effort; and yet so distinctly that their individual identity is impressed upon the mind, so as to combine with the subsequent movement of the plot. The second scene of The Two Noble Kinsmen' appears to us somewhat deficient in this power. It is written with great energy; but the two friends are energetic alike: we do not precisely see which is the more excitable, the more daring, the more resolved, the more generous. We could change the names of the speakers without any material injury to the propriety of what they speak. Take, as an opposite example, Hermia and Helena, in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' where the differences of character scarcely required to he so nicely defined. And yet in description Will dwell upon his object; melancholy Stick misbecomingly on others, on him This is noble writing; and it is quite suffi- More than in sex dividual." This, in some sort, modifies the subsequent position of Emilia, “bride-habited, but maiden-hearted." Her description of her early friendship has been compared to the celebrated passage in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream :' "Is all the counsel that we two have shared,"&c. You talk of Perithous' and Theseus' love; Theirs has more ground, is more maturely season'd, More buckled with strong judgment, and their needs The one of th' other may be said to water Loved for we did, and like the elements No more arraignment; the flower that I would pluck And put between my breasts (oh, then but beginning To swell about the blossom), she would long They died in perfume: on my head no toy one From musical coinage, why, it was a note Whereon her spirits would sojourn (rather And sing it in her slumbers: this rehearsal, More than in sex dividual. Hip. Emi. I am sure I shall not." In Chaucer, Theseus makes swift work with Creon and with Thebes : "With Creon, which that was of Thebés king, And to the ladies he restored again The bodies of their husbands that were slain, "Not fully quick ne fully dead they were, "Nor in a state of life: had they been taken "The very lees of such, millions of rates cern us Much more than Thebes is worth." The fifth scene of The Two Noble Kinsmen' is a scenic expansion of a short passage in Chaucer : "But it were all too long for to devise The epigrammatic ending of the scene is "The world's a city full of straying streets; And death's the market-place, where each one meets." Pursuing the plan with which we set out, of following the course of Chaucer's story, we pass over all those scenes and parts of scenes which may be called the underplot. Such in the second act is the beginning of Scene I. In Chaucer we learn that— "In a tow'r, in anguish and in woe, Dwellen this Palamon and eke Arcite For evermore, there may no gold them quite." The old romantic poet reserves his dialogue for the real business of the story, when the two friends, each seeing Emilia from the prison-window, become upon the instant defying rivals for her love. This incident is not managed with more preparation by the dramatist; but the prelude to it exhibits the two young men consoling each other They might have been recover'd; yet they under their adverse fortune, and making breathe, And have the name of men." In Chaucer, Theseus is to the heroic friends a merciless conqueror : "He full soon them sent To Athenes, for to dwellen in prison Perpetual, he n'oldé no ranson." But in 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' he would appear to exhibit himself as a generous foe, who, having accomplished the purposes of his expedition, has no enmity with the honest defenders of their country: resolutions of eternal friendship. It is in an attentive perusal of this dialogue that we begin to discover that portions even of the great incidents of the drama have been written by different persons; or that, if written by one and the same person, they have been composed upon different principles of art. In 1833 appeared a little work of great ability, entitled, 'A Letter on Shakspeare's Authorship of The Two Noble Kinsmen.' The writer of that letter is understood to be the accomplished professor of logic and rhetoric in the University of St. Andrews, William Spalding, Esq.; and, although we have reason to believe that his opinions on this particular question have undergone some change or modification, it would be unjust, not only to the author, but to our readers, not to notice with more than common respect the opinions of a writer who, although then a very young man, displayed a power of analysis and discrimination which marked him as belonging to a high school of criticism. Mr. Spalding assumes that a considerable portion of this drama was unquestionably the production of Shakspere; that the under-plot was entirely by a different hand; but that the same hand, which was that of Fletcher, was also engaged in producing some of the higher scenes of the main action. The whole of the first act, according to the traditional opinion, he holds to have been written by Shakspere. The dialogue before us in the first scene of the second act, and the subsequent contest for the love of Emilia, he assigns to Fletcher. Our readers will not regret the length of The fair-eyed maids shall weep our banishments, And in their songs curse ever blinded Fortune, Till she for shame see what a wrong she has done To youth and nature: this is all our world; We shall know nothing here, but one another; Hear nothing, but the clock that tells our woes; The vine shall grow, but we shall never see it; Summer shall come, and with her all delights, But dead cold winter must inhabit here still! Pal. 'Tis too true, Arcite! To our Theban hounds, That shook the aged forest with their echoes, No more now must we halloo; no more shake Our pointed javelins, whilst the angry swine Flies like a Parthian quiver from our rages, Struck with our well-steel'd darts All va liant uses (The food and nourishment of noble minds) In us two here shall perish; we shall die, (Which is the curse of honour !) lastly, Children of grief and ignorance. Fr "Tis a main goodness, cousin, that our fortunes Put in two noble bodies, let them suffer A willing man dies sleeping, and all's done. Pal. To keep us from corruption of worse men! honour; That liberty and common conversation, The poison of pure spirits, might, like women, May make it ours? and here being thus We are an endless mine to one another; We are, in one another, families; I am your heir, and you are mine; this place We shall live long, and loving; no surfeits seek us; The hand of war hurts none here, nor the seas (I thank you, cousin Arcite !) almost wanton I'm sure a more content; and all those That woo the wills of men to vanity, I see through now; and am sufficient Arc. The following is Mr. Spalding's criticism with reference to this scene:-"The dialogue is in many respects admirable. It possesses much eloquence of description, and the character of the language is smooth and flowing; the versification is good and accurate, frequent in double endings, and usually finishing the sense with the line; and one or two allusions occur, which, being favourites of Fletcher's, may be in themselves a strong presumption of his authorship; the images too have in some instances a want of distinctness in application, or a vagueness of outline, which could be easily paralleled from Fletcher's ac Crave our acquaintance; I might sicken, knowledged writings. The style is fuller of cousin, Where you should never know it, and so Without your noble hand to close mine eyes, allusions than his usually is, but the images are more correct and better kept from confusion than Shakspere's; some of them indeed are exquisite, but rather in the romantic and exclusively poetical tone of Fletcher than in the natural and universal |