ports, where the baily and his fishermen are knocking their heads together on account of some whale; or some terrible broil on the coast. But to show them true Venetians, the maritime affairs stick not on their hand; the public may sink or swim. They will sit up all night to hear a Doctors' Commons matrimonial cause; and have the merits of the cause laid open to 'em, that they may decide it before they stir. What can be pleaded to keep awake their attention so wonderfully?" Here the critic enters into a fitting abuse of Othello's defence to the senate; expresses his disgust at the "eloquence which kept them up all night," and his amaze at their apathy, notwithstanding the strangeness of the marriage. He complains, that "Instead of starting at the prodigy, every one is familiar with Desdemona, as if he were her own natural father; they rejoice in her good fortune, and wish their own daughters as hopefully married. Should the poet (he continues) have provided such a husband for an only daughter of any peer in England, the Blackamoor must have changed his skin to look our House of Lords in the face." Our critic next complains, that, in the second act, the poet shows the action (he "knows not how many leagues off") in the island of Cyprus, without "our Bayes" (as he pleasantly denominates Shakspeare) having made any provision of transport ships for the audience. The first scene in Cyprus is then "cut up" in a way which might make the most skilful of modern reviewers turn pale with envy. After noticing the preliminary dialogue, Mr. Rymer observes, "now follows a long rabble of Jack Pudden farce between Iago and Desdemona, that runs on with all the little plays, jingle, and trash, below the patience of any country kitchen maid with her sweetheart. The Venetian Donna is hard put to it for pastime; and this is all when they are newly got on shore from a dismal tempest, and when every moment she might expect to hear her Lord, (as she calls him,) that she runs so mad after, is arrived or lost." Our author, therefore, accuses Shakspeare of "unhallowing the theatre, profaning the name of tragedy, and instead of representing men and manners, turning all morality, good-sense, and humanity, into mockery and derision." Mr. Rymer contends, that Desdemona's solicitations for Cassio were in themselves more than enough to rouse Othello's jealousy. "Iago can now (he observes) only actum agere, and vex the audience with a nauseous" repetition." This remark introduces the following criticism on the celebrated scene in the third act, between Othello and Iago, which is curious, not only as an instance of perverted reasoning, but as it shows that, in the performance, some great histrionic power must have been formerly exerted, not unlike the energy of which we, in witnessing this tragedy, have been spectators. "Whence comes it, then, that this is the top scene; the scene that raises Othello above all other tragedies at our theatres? it is purely from the action; from the mops and the mows, the grimace, the grins, and gesticulation. Such scenes as this have made all the world run after Harlequin and Scaramoucio. "The several degrees of action were amongst the ancients distinguished by the cothurnus, the soccus, and the planipes. Had this scene been represented at Old Rome, Othello and Iago must have quitted their buskins; they must have played barefoot; for the spectators would not have been content without seeing their podometry, and the jealousy work out at the very toes of them. Words, be they Spanish or Polish, or any inarticulate sound, have the same effect: they can only serve to distinguish, and, as it were, beat time to the action. But here we see a known language does wofully encumber and clog the operation; as either forced, or heavy, or trifling, or incoherent, or improper, or most improbable. When no words interpose to spoil the conceit, every one interprets, as he likes best; so in that memorable dispute between Panurge and our English philosopher in Rabelais, performed without a word speaking, the theologians, physicians, and surgeons, made one inference; the lawyers, civilians, and canonists, drew another conclusion more to their mind." Mr. Rymer thus objects to the superlative villany of Iago, on his advising Desdemona's murder. "Iago had some pretence to be discontent with Othello and Cassio, and what passed hitherto was the operation of revenge. Desdemona had never done him any harm; always kind to him, and to his wife; was his countrywoman, a dame of quality. For him to abet her murder, shows nothing of a soldier, nothing of a man, nothing of nature in it. The ordinary of Newgate never had the like monster to pass under his examination. Can it be any diversion to see a rogue beyond what the devil ever finished? or would it be any instruction to an audience? Iago could desire no better than to set Cassio and Othello, his two enemies, by the ears together, so that he might have been revenged on them both at once; and choosing for his own share the murder of Desdemona, he had the opportunity to play booty, and save the poor harmless wretch. But the poet must do every thing by contraries; to surprise the audience still with something horrible and prodigious, beyond any human imagination. At this rate, he must outdo the devil, to be a poet in the rank with Shakspeare." Mr. Rymer is decorously enraged, to think that the tragedy should turn on a handkerchief. Why," he asks in virtuous indignation, "was not this called the tragedy of the handkerchief? what can be more absurd than (as Quintilian expresses it) in parvibus (sic) litibus has tragedias movere? We have heard of Fortunatus, his purse, and of the invisible cloak long ago worn thread-bare, and stowed up in the wardrobe of obsolete romances; one might think that were a fitter place for this handkerchief than that it, at this time of day, be worn on the stage, to raise everywhere all this clutter and turmoil." And again, "the handkerchief is so remote a trifle, no booby on this side Mauritania could make any consequence from it." Our author suggests a felicitous alteration of the catastrophe of Othello. He proposes, that the handkerchief, when lost, should have been folded in the bridal couch; and when Othello was stifling Desdemona, "The fairy napkin might have started up to disarm his fury, and stop his ungracious mouth. Then might she (in a trance for fear) have lain as dead. Then might be, (believing her dead,) touched with remorse, have honestly cut his own throat, by the good leave, and with the applause, of all the spectators; who might thereupon have gone home with a quiet mind, admiring the beauty of providence, fairly and truly represented on the theatre." The following is the summing up and catastrophe of this narvellous criticism: and swaggering like two drunken Hectors of a two-penny reckoning." And finally, alluding to the epilogue of Laberius, forced by the emperor to become an actor, he thus sums up his charges: "This may show with what indignity our poet treats the noblest Romans. But there is no other cloth in his wardrobe. Every one must wear a fool's coat that comes to be dressed by him; nor is he more civil to the ladies-Portia, in good manners, might have challenged more respect; she that shines a glory of the first magnitude in the gallery of heroic dames, is with our poet scarce one remove from a natural; she is the own cousingerman of one piece, the very same impertinent silly flesh and blood with Desdemona. Shakspeare's genius lay for comedy and humour. In tragedy he appears quite out of his element; his brains are turned-he raves and rambles without any coherence, any spark of reason, or any rule to control him, to set bounds to his phrensy." "What can remain with the audience to carry home with them from this sort of poetry, for their use and edification? How can it work, unless (instead of settling the mind and purging our passions) to delude our senses, disorder our thoughts, addle our brain, pervert our affections, hair our imaginations, corrupt our appetite-and fill our head with vanity, One truth, though the author did not underconfusion, tintamarra, and jingle-jangle, be- stand it, is told in this critic on Julius Cæsar ; yond what all the parish clerks of London, that Shakspeare's "senators and his orators with their Old Testament farces and interludes, had their learning and education at the same in Richard the Second's time, could ever pre-school, be they Venetians, Ottamites, or noble tend to? Our only hopes, for the good of their Romans." They drew, in their golden urns, souls, can be that these people go to the play-from the deep fountain of humanity, those livhouse as they do to church-to sit still, looking waters which lose not their sweetness in on one another, make no reflection, nor mind the changes of man's external condition. the play more than they would a sermon. These attacks on Shakspeare are very curious, as evincing how gradual has been the increase of his fame. Their whole tone shows "There is in this play some burlesque, some humour, and ramble of comical wit, some show, and some mimicry to divert the specta-that the author was not advancing what he tors; but the tragical part is clearly none other than a bloody farce, without salt or savor." thought the world would regard as paradoxical or strange. He speaks as one with authority to decide. We look now on his work amazedly; and were it put forth by a writer of our times, should regard it as "the very ecstasy of mad Our author's criticism on Julius Cæsar is very scanty, compared with that of Othello, but it is not less decisive. Indeed, his classical zealness." Such is the lot of genius. However here sharpens his critical rage; and he is in- small the circle of cotemporary admirers, it censed against Shakspeare, not only as offend- must "gather fame" as time rolls on. It aping the dignity of the tragic muse, but the peals to feelings which cannot alter. The minds memory of the noblest Romans. "He might," who once have deeply felt it, can never lose exclaims the indignant critic, “be familiar with the impression at first made upon them-they Othello and Iago, as his own natural acquaint- transmit it to others, by whom it is extended ance, but Cæsar and Brutus were above his to those who are worthy to treasure it. Its conversation; to put them in fools' coats, and stability and duration at length awaken the atmake them Jack Puddens in the Shakspeare tention of the world, which thus acknowledges dress, is a sacrilege beyond any thing in Spel- the sanction of time, and professes an admiraman. The truth is, this author's head was tion for the author, which it only feels for his full of villanous, unnatural images-and his- name. We should not, however, have thus tory has furnished him with great names, dwelt on the attacks of Rymer, had we rethereby to recommend them to the world, by garded them merely as objects of wonder, or writing over them—This is Erutus, this is Cicero, as proofs of the partial influence of Shaksthis is Cæsar." He affirms, "that the language peare's genius. They are far from deserving Shakspeare puts into the mouth of Brutus unmingled scorn. They display, at least, an would not suit or be convenient, unless from honest, unsophisticated hatred, which is better some son of the shambles, or some natural than the maudlin admiration of Shakspeare, offspring of the butchery." He abuses the expressed by those who were deluded by Irepoet for making the conspirators dispute about land's forgeries. Their author has a heartiday-break-seriously chides him for not allow-ness, an earnestness almost romantic, which ing the noble Brutus a watch-candle in his chamber on this important night, rather than puzzling his man, Lucius, to grope in the dark for a flint and tinder-box to get the taper lighted-speaks of the quarrel scene between Brutus and Cassius, as that in which "they are to play a prize, a trial of skill in huffing we cannot despise, though directed against our idol. With a singular obtuseness to poetry, he has a chivalric devotion to all that he regards as excellent and grand. He looks on the supposed errors of the poet as moral crimes. He confounds fiction with fact-grows warm in defence of shadows-feels a violation of poetical justice, as a wrong conviction by a | jury-moves a habeas corpus for all damsels imprisoned in romance-and, if the bard kills those of his characters who deserve to live, pronounces judgment on him as in case of felony, without benefit of clergy. He is the Don Quixote of criticism. Like the hero of Cervantes, he is roused to avenge fictitious injuries, and would demolish the scenic exhibition in his disinterested rage. In one sense he does more honour to the poet than any other writer, for he seems to regard him as an arbiter of life and death-responsible only to the critic for the administration of his powers. Mr. Rymer has his own stately notions of what is proper for tragedy. He is zealous for poetical justice; and as he thinks that vice cannot be punished too severely, and yet that the poet ought to leave his victims objects of pity, he protests against the introduction of very wicked characters. "Therefore," says he, "among the ancients we find no malefactors of this kind; a wilful murderer is, with them, as strange and unknown as a parricide to the old Romans. Yet need we not fancy that they were squeamish, or unacquainted with many of those great lumping crimes in that age; when we remember their Edipus, Orestes, or Medea. But they took care to wash the viper, to cleanse away the venom, and with such art to prepare the morsel; they made it all junket to the taste, and all physic in the operation." Our author understands exactly the balance of power in the affections. He would dispose of all the poet's characters to a hair, according to his own rules of fitness. He would marshal them in array as in a procession, and mark out exactly what each ought to do or suffer. According to him, so much of presage and no more should be given-such a degree of sorrow, and no more ought a character endure; vengeance should rise precisely to a given height, and be executed by a certain appointed hand. He would regulate the conduct of fictitious heroes as accurately as of real beings, and often reasons well on his own poetic decalogue. "Amintor," says he, (speaking of a character in the Maid's Tragedy)" should have begged the king's pardon; should have suffered all the racks and tortures a tyrant could inflict; and from Perillus's bull should have still bellowed out that eternal truth, that his promise was to be kept that he is true to Aspatia, that he dies for his mistress! Then would his memory have been precious and sweet to after ages; and the midsummer maidens would have of fered their garlands all at his grave." Mr. Rymer is an enthusiastic champion for the poetical prerogatives of kings. No cour tier ever contended more strenuously for their divine right in real life, than he for their preeminence in tragedy. "We are to presume," observes he gravely, "the greatest virtues, where we find the highest rewards; and though it is not necessary that all heroes should be kings, yet undoubtedly all crowned heads, by poetical right, are heroes. This character is a flower, a prerogative, so certain, so indispensably annexed to the crown, as by no poet, or parliament of poets, ever to be invaded." Thus does he lay down the rules of life and death for his regal domain of tragedy: "If I mistake not, in poetry no woman is to kill a man, except her quality gives her the advantage above him; nor is a servant to kill the master, nor a private man, much less a subject to kill a king, nor on the contrary. Poetical decency will not suffer death to be dealt to each other, by such persons whom the laws of duel allow not to enter the lists together." He admits, however, that "there may be cir cumstances that alter the case: as where there is sufficient ground of partiality in an audience, either upon the account of religion (as Rinaldo or Riccardo, in Tasso, might kill Soli man, or any other Turkish king or great Sultan) or else in favour of our country, for then a private English hero might overcome a king of some rival nation." How pleasant a master of the ceremonies is he in the regions of fiction-regulating the niceties of murder like the decorums of a dance-with an amiable preference for his own religion and country! These notions, however absurd, result from an indistinct sense of a peculiar dignity and grandeur essential to tragedy-and surely this feeling was not altogether deceptive. Some there are, indeed, who trace the emotions of strange delight which tragedy awakens, entirely to the love of strong excitement, which is gratified by spectacles of anguish. According to their doctrine, the more nearly the representation of sorrow approaches reality, the more intense will be the gratification of the spectator. Thus Burke has gravely asserted, that if the audience at a tragedy were informed of an execution about to take place in the neighbourhood, they would leave the theatre to witness it. We believe that experience does not warrant a speculation so dishonourable to our nature. How few, except those of the grossest minds, are ever attracted by the punishment of capital offenders! Even of those whom the dreadful infliction draws together, how many are excited merely by curiosity, and a desire to view the last mortal agony, which in a form more or less terrible all must endure! We think that if, during the representation of a tragedy, the audience were compelled to feel vividly that a fellow-creature was struggling in the agonies of a violent death, many of them would retire but not to the scene of horror. The reality of human suffering would come too closely home to their hearts, to permit their enjoyment of the fiction. How often, during the scenic exhibition of intolerable agony-uncon. secrated and unredeemed-have we been compelled to relieve our hearts from a weight too heavy for endurance, by calling to mind that the woes are fictitious! It cannot be the highest triumph of an author, whose aim is to heighten the enjoyments of life, that he forces us, in our own defence, to escape from his power. If the pleasure derived from tragedy were merely occasioned by the love of excitement, the pleasure would be in proportion to the depth and the reality of the sorrow. Then would The Gamester be more pathetic than Othello, and Isabellu call forth deeper admiration than Macbeth or Lear. Then would George Barnwell be the loftiest tragedy, and the New- which power has achieved over its earthly gate Calendar the sweetest collection of pathetic frame. In short, it is the high duty of the tales. To name those instances, is sufficiently tragic poet to exhibit humanity sublimest to refute the position on which they are founded. in its distresses-to dignify or to sweeten sorrow-to exhibit eternal energies wrestling with Equally false is the opinion, that the plea- each other, or with the accidents of the worldsure derived from tragedy arises from a source and to disclose the depth and the immortality of individual security, while others are suffer- of the affections. He must represent humanity ing. There are no feelings more distantly as a rock, beaten, and sometimes overspread, removed from the selfish, than those which with the mighty waters of anguish, but still genuine tragedy awakens. We are carried at unshaken. We look to him for hopes, princiits representation out of ourselves, and "the ples, resting places of the soul-for emotions ignorant present time,"-by earnest sympathy which dignify our passions, and consecrate with the passions and the sorrows, not of our-our sorrows. A brief retrospect of tragedy selves, but of our nature. We feel our com- will show, that in every age when it has trimunity with the general heart of man. The umphed, it has appealed not to the mere love encrustments of selfishness and low passion of excitement, but to the perceptions of beauty are rent asunder, and the warm tide of human in the soul-to the yearnings of the deepest sympathies gushes triumphantly from its affections to the aspirations after grandeur secret and divine sources. and permanence, which never leave man even in his errors and afflictions. It is not, then, in bringing sorrow home in its dreadful realities to our bosoms, nor in Nothing could be more dignified than the painting it so as to make us cling to our selfish old tragedy of the Greeks. Its characters were gratifications with more earnest joy, that the demi-gods, or heroes; its subjects were often tragic poet moves and enchants us. Grief is the destinies of those lines of the mighty, but the means the necessary means indeed- which had their beginning among the eldest by which he accomplishes his lofty purposes. deities. So far, in the development of their The grander qualities of the soul cannot be plots, were the poets from appealing to mere developed the deepest resources of comfort sensibility, that they scarcely deigned to within it cannot be unveiled-the solemnities awaken an anxious throb, or draw forth a of its destiny cannot be shadowed forth-ex-human tear. In their works, we see the catascept in peril and in suffering. Hence peril and trophe from the beginning, and feel its influence suffering become instruments of the Tragic at every step, as we advance majestically along Muse. But these are not, in themselves, those the solemn avenue which it closes. There is things which we delight to contemplate. Va- little struggle; the doom of the heroes is fixed rious, indeed, yet most distinct from these, are on high, and they pass, in sublime composure, the sources of that deep joy that tragedy pro- to fulfil their destiny. Their sorrows are awful, duces. Sometimes we are filled with a delight their deaths religious sacrifices to the power of not dissimilar to that which the Laocoon ex- Heaven. The glory that plays about their cites-an admiration of the more than mortal heads is the prognostic of their fate. A conbeauty of the attitudes and of the finishing-secration is shed over their brief and sad and even of the terrific sublimity of the folds career, which takes away all the ordinary in which the links of fate involve the charac- feelings of suffering. Their afflictions are ters. When we look at that inimitable group, sacred, their passions inspired by the gods, we do not merely rejoice in a sympathy with their fates prophesied in elder time, their deaths extreme suffering-but are enchanted with ten-almost festal. All things are tinged with sancder loveliness, and feel that the sense of dis-tity or with beauty in the Greek tragedies. tress is softened by the exquisite touches of genius. Often, in tragedy, our hearts are elevated by thoughts "informed with nobleness" -by the view of heroic greatness of soul-by the contemplation of affections which death cannot conquer. It is not the depth of anguish which calls forth delicious tears-it is some sweet piece of self-denial-some touch of human gentleness, in the midst of sorrow-stances attendant on the death of Edipus! some "glorious triumph of exceeding love," which suffuses our "subdued eyes," and mellows our hearts. Death itself often becomes the source of sublime consolations: seen through the poetical medium, it often seems to fall on the wretched "softly and lightly, as a passing cloud." It is felt as the blessed means of re-uniting faithful and ill-fated lovers-it is the pillow on whic, the long struggling patriot rests. Often it exhibits the noblest triumph of the spiritual over the material part of man. The intense ardour of a spirit that "o'er-inform'd its tenement of clay"-yet more quenchless in the last conflict, is felt to survive the struggle, and to triumph even in the victory Bodily pain is made sublime; destitution and wretchedness are rendered sacred; and the very grove of the Furies is represented as ever fresh and green. How grand is the suffering of Prometheus, how sweet the resolution of Antigone, how appalling, yet how magnificent the last vision of Cassandra, how reconciling and tender, yet how awful, the circum And how rich a poetic atmosphere do the The Romans failed in tragedy, because their love of mere excitement was too keen to permit them to enjoy it. They had "supped full of horrors." Familiar with the thoughts of real slaughter, they could not endure the philosophic and poetic view of distress in which it is softened and made sacred. Their imaginations were too practical for a genuine poet to affect. Hence, in the plays which bear the name of Seneca, horrors are heaped on horrors-the most unpleasing of the Greek fictions (as that of Medea) are re-written and made ghastly-and every touch that might redeem is carefully effaced by the poet. Still, the grandeur of old tragedy is there-still "the gorgeous pall comes sweeping by❞—still the dignity survives, though the beauty has faded. In the productions of Shakspeare, doubtless, tragedy was divested of something of its external grandeur. The mythology of the ancient world had lost its living charm. Its heroic forms remained, indeed, unimpaired in beauty or grace, in the distant regions of the imagination, but they could no longer occupy the foreground of poetry. Men required forms of flesh and blood, animated by human passion, and awakening human sympathy. Shakspeare, therefore, sought for his materials nearer to common humanity than the elder bards. He took also, in each play, a far wider range than they had dared to occupy. He does not, therefore, convey so completely as they did one grand harmonious feeling, by each of his works. But who shall affirm, that the tragedy of Shakspeare has not an elevation of its own, or that it produces pleasure only by exhibiting spectacles of varied anguish? The reconciling power of his imagination, and the genial influences of his philosophy are ever softening and consecrating sorrow. He scatters the rainbow hues of fancy over objects in themselves repulsive. He nicely developes the "soul of goodness in things evil," to console and delight us. He blends all the most glorious imagery of nature with the passionate expressions of affliction. He sometimes, in a single image, expresses an intense sentiment in all its depth, yet identifies it with the widest and the grandest objects of creation. Thus he makes Timon, in the bitterness of his soul, set up his tomb on the beached shore, that the wave of the ocean may once a day cover him with its embossed foam-expanding an individual feeling into the extent of the vast and eternal sea; yet making us feel it as more intense, from the very sublimity of the image. The mind can always rest without anguish on his catastrophies, however mournful. Sad as the story of Romeo and Juliet is, it does not lacerate or tear the heart, but relieves it of its weight by awakening sweet tears. We shrink not at their tomb, which we feel has set a seal on their loves and virtues, but almost long with them there "to set up our everlasting rest.” We do not feel unmingled agony at the death of Lear; when his aged heart, which has been beaten so fearfully, is at rest-and his withered frame, late o'er-informed with terrific energy, reposes with his pious child.. We are not shocked and harrowed even when Hamlet falls; for we feel that he is unfit for the bustle of this world, and his own gentle contemplations on death have deprived it of its terrors. In Shakspeare, the passionate is always steeped in the beautiful. Sometimes he diverts sorrow with tender conceits, which, like little fantastic rocks, break its streams into sparkling cascades and circling eddies. And when it must flow on, deep and still, he bends over it branching foliage and graceful flowers-whose leaves are seen in its dark bosom, all of one sober and harmonious hue-but in their clearest form and most delicate proportions. The other dramatists of Shakspeare's age, deprived, like him, of classical resources, and far inferior to him in imagination and wisdom, strove to excite a deep interest by the wildness of their plots, and the strangeness of the incidents with which their scenes were crowded. Their bloody tragedies are, however, often relieved by passages of exquisite sweetness. Their terrors, not humanized like those of Shakspeare, are yet far removed from the vulgar or disgusting. Sometimes, amidst the gloom of continued crimes, which often follow each other in stern and awful succession, are fair pictures of more than earthly virtue, tinted with the dews of heaven, and encircled with celestial glories. The scene in The Broken Heart, where Calantha, amidst the festal crowd, receives the news of the successive deaths of those dearest to her in the world, yet dances on-and that in which she composedly settles all the affairs of her empire, and then dies smiling by the body of her contracted lordare in the loftiest spirit of tragedy. They combine the dignity and majestic suffering of the ancient drama, with the intenseness of the modern. The last scene unites beauty, tenderness, and grandeur, in one harmonious and stately picture-as sublime as any single scene in the tragedies of Eschylus or Shakspeare. Of the succeeding tragedians of England, the frigid imitators of the French Drama, it is necessary to say but little. The elevation of their plays is only on the stilts of declamatory language. The proportions and symmetry of their plots are but an accordance with arbitrary rules. Yet was there no reason to fear that the sensibilities of their audience should be too strongly excited, without the alleviations of fancy or of grandeur, because their sorrows are unreal, turgid, and fantastic. Cato is a classical petrifaction. Its tenderest expression is, "Be sure you place his urn near mine," which comes over us like a sentiment frozen in the utterance. Congreve's Mourning Bride has a greater air of magnificence than most tragedies of his or of the succeeding time; but its declamations fatigue, and its labyrinthine plot perplexes. Venice Preserved is cast in the mould of dignity and of grandeur; but the characters want nobleness, the poetry coherence, and the sentiments truth. The plays of Hill, Hughes, Philips, Murphy, and Rowe, are dialogues, sometimes ill and sometimes well written-occasionally stately in numbers, but never touching the soul. It would be unjust to mention Young and Thomson as the writers of tragedies. The old English feeling of tender beauty has at last begun to revive. Lamb's John Woodvil, despised by the critics, and for a while neg |