author was a favourite, either of a king or of a cobbler. We know that Shakspere was the favourite of a king, in these times of his oblivion. A distinguished writer says, "The Prince of Wales had learned to appreciate Shakspere, not originally from reading him, but from witnessing the court representations of his plays at Whitehall. Afterwards we know that he made Shakspere his closet companion, for he was reproached with doing so by Milton."* The concluding words are founded upon a mistake of the passage in Milton. Charles is not reproached with reading Shakspere. The great republican does not condemn the king for having made the dramatic poet the closet companion of his solitudes; but, speaking of the dramatic poet as a well-known author with whom the king was familiar, he cites out of him a passage to show that pious words might be found in the mouth of a tyrant. The passage not only proves the familiarity of Charles with Shakspere, but evidences also Milton's familiarity; and, what is of more importance, the familiarity even of those

stern and ascetic men to whom Milton was

peculiarly addressing his opinions. The passage of the 'Iconoclastes' is as follows: "Andronicus Comnenus, the Byzantine emperor, though a most cruel tyrant, is reported by Nicetas to have been a constant reader of Saint Paul's epistles; and by continual study had so incorporated the phrase and style of that transcendant apostle into all his familiar letters, that the imitation seemed to vie with the original. Yet this availed not to deceive the people of that empire, who, notwithstanding his saint's vizard, tore him to pieces for his tyranny. From stories of this nature, both ancient and modern, which abound, the poets also, and some English, have been in this point so mindful of decorum as to put never more pious words in the mouth of any person than of a tyrant. I shall not instance an abstruse author, wherein the king might be less conversant, but one whom we well know was the closet companion of these his solitudes, William Shakespeare, who introduces the person of

* Mr. De Quincey's Life of Shakespeare' in the 'Encyclopædia Britannica.'

'I do not know that Englishman alive With whom my soul is any jot at odds, More than the infant that is born to-night; I thank my God for my humility.' Other stuff of this sort may be read throughout the whole tragedy, wherein the poet used not much licence in departing from the truth of history, which delivers him a deep dissembler, not of his affections only but of religion." It was a traditionary blunder, which Warton received and transmitted to his successors, that Milton reproached Charles with reading Shakspere, and thus inferred that Shakspere was no proper closet companion. The passage has wholly the contrary tendency; and he who thinks otherwise may just as well think that the phrase 66 stuff of this sort" is also used disparagingly.

other

A few years before-that is in 1645Milton had offered another testimony to Shakspere in his "L'Allegro,” then pub

lished::

"Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild."

Milton was not afraid to publish these lines, even after the suppression of the theatres by his own political party. That he went along with them in their extreme polemical opinions it is impossible to believe; but he would nevertheless be careful not to mention, in connexion with the stage, names of any doubtful eminence. He was not ashamed to say that the learning of Jonson, the nature of Shakspere, had for him attractions, though the stage was proscribed. This contrast of the distinguishing qualities of the two men is held to be one amongst the many proofs of Shakspere's want of learning; as if it was

* Milton here refers to the first section of the Eikon Basilike.'

was not extraordinary, he pleaseth with a certain wild and native elegance; and in all his writings hath an unvulgar style, as well in his 'Venus and Adonis,' his 'Rape of Lucrece,' and other various poems, as in his dramatics."

66

Half a century had elapsed, when these critical opinions were published, from the time when Ben Jonson had apostrophized Shakspere as soul of the age." Whatever qualification we may here find in the praise of Shakspere, it is unquestionable that the critic sets him above all his contemporaries. Benjamin Jonson was "learned, judicious, and correct," but "he was no Shakspear." Marlowe was 66 a kind of a second Shakspear;" and his greatest praise is, that "he seems to have a resemblance of that clean and unsophisticated wit which is natural to that incomparable poet." Chapman is "not the meanest" of his time. Fletcher is "one of the happy triumvirate, the other two being Jonson and Shakespear;" but the peculiar excellence of each is discriminated in a way which leaves no doubt as to which the critic meant to hold superior. But there are no measured words applied to the character of Shakspere. He is "the glory of the English stage"-"never any expressed a more lofty and tragic height, never any represented nature more purely to the life." | We can understand what a pupil of Milton, bred up in his school of severe study and imitation of the ancients, meant, when he says, "Where the polishments of art are most wanting, as probably his learning was not extraordinary, he pleases with a certain wild and native elegance." Here is no accusation that the learning was wholly absent: and that this absence produced the common effects of want of cultivation. Shakspere, "in all his writings, hath an unvulgar style." In the preface to this valuable little book-which preface is a composition eloquent enough to have been written by Milton himself there is a passage which is worthy of special observation in connection with what we have already quoted: "If it were once brought to a strict scrutiny, who are the right, genuine, and true-born poets, I fear me our number would fall short, and

there are many that have a fame deservedly for what they have writ, even in poetry itself, who, if they came to the test, I question how well they would endure to hold open their eagle eyes against the sun: wit, ingenuity, and learning in verse, even elegancy itself, though that comes nearest, are one thing, true native poetry is another; in which there is a certain air and spirit, which perhaps the most learned and judicious in other arts do not perfectly apprehend, much less is it attainable by any study or industry; nay, though all the laws of heroic poem, all the laws of tragedy were exactly observed, yet still this tour entregent, this poetic energy, if I may so call it, would be required to give life to all the rest, which shines through the roughest, most unpolished and antiquated language, and may haply be wanting in the most polite and reformed. Let us observe Spenser, with all his rusty obsolete words, with all his rough-hewn clouterly verses; yet take him throughout, and we shall find in him a graceful and poetic majesty: in like manner, Shakespear, in spite of all his unfiled expressions, his rambling and indigested fancies, the laughter of the critical, yet must be confessed a poet above many that go beyond him in literature some degrees." Taking the whole passage in connection, and looking also at the school of art in which the critic was bred, it is impossible to receive this opinion as regards Shakspere in any other light than as one of enthusiastic admiration. It is important to note the period in which this admiration was publicly expressed. It was fifteen years after the Restoration of Charles II., when we had a new school of poetry and criticism in England; when the theatres were in a palmy state as far as regarded courtly and public encouragement. The natural association of these opinions with those of Milton's youth, has led us to leap over the interval which elapsed between the close of the Shaksperean drama and the rise of the French school. We desired to show the continuity of opinion in Milton, and in Milton's disciples, that had prevailed for forty years; during a large portion of which civil war and polemical strife had well nigh

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In 1633 was published the celebrated 'Histrio-Mastix, the Player's Scourge,' of William Prynne. In the epistle dedicatory to the benchers of Lincoln's Inn, he says, that about seven years before he had set down all the play-condemning passages which he recollected in the Fathers and other authors, and that he had since enlarged the intended bulk of this discourse, "because I saw the numbers of players, play-books, play-haunters, and play-houses still increasing, there being above forty thousand play- | books printed within these two years, as stationers inform me." In his address to the Christian reader he has a distinct allusion to the popularity of Shakspere's collected works: 66 Some play-books since I first undertook this subject are grown from quarto into folio, which yet bear so good a price and sale, that I cannot but with grief relate it, they are now new printed in far better paper than most octavo or quarto bibles, which hardly find such vent as they." The two folio editions of Shakspere are the only play-books grown from quarto to folio to which the zealous puritan can allude, with the exception of Jonson's own edition of his plays, completed in 1631; those of Beaumont and Fletcher were not collected till 1647. The very fact of the publication of the first two folios of Shakspere is a proof of his popularity with general readers. They were not exclusively the studies of the scholar, such as Milton, or of the playhaunters whom Prynne denounces. A letter in the Bodleian Library, written by a Dr. James, about this period, testifies how generally they were read: "A young gentle lady of your acquaintance, having read the

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works of Shakspere, made me this question," &c. * When the London theatres were provided with novelties in such abundance that, according to Prynne, "one study was scarce able to hold the new play-books," the plays of Shakspere were still in such demand for the purposes of the stage, that his successors in the theatrical property of the Globe and Blackfriars found it their interest to preserve the monopoly of their performance (which they had so long enjoyed), by a handsome gratuity to the Master of the Revels. There is this entry in the officebook of Sir Henry Herbert, in 1627: “Received from Mr. Heming, in their company's name, to forbid the playing of Shakespeare's plays to the Red Bull Company, five pounds." The people clearly had not yet forgotten the "delight and wonder of the stage." Fletcher, Massinger, Shirley, were newer favourites ; but the people could not forget Shakspere. Neither was he forgotten by the great. In the very year of the publication of Prynne's book—when St. James's and Whitehall were brilliant with the splendid revelries of an elegant court, and the queen herself took part in the masques and pageantries,—the indecent allusion to which cost Prynne his

ears

-the name of Shakspere was as familiar to the royal circle as in the days of James. From the seventeenth of November to the sixth of January, there were eight performances at St. James's and Whitehall, three of which were plays of Shakspere: namely, Richard III., Taming of the Shrew, and Cymbeline; and Sir Henry Herbert records of the last, "well liked by the king."+ These office accounts have great lacuna; but, wherever we find them during the reign of Charles, there we find a record of the admiration of Shakspere.

Dryden lived near enough to the times of Charles I. to be good evidence as to the judgment which the higher circles formed of Shakspere; after the Restoration he was intimate with men who had moved in those circles. His Essay on Dramatic Poesy,' which was first printed in 1668, contains the

* See Mr. Halliwell's Character of Falstaff," p. 19. † See Malone's Historical Account of the English Stage.

following passage, which has been often cited. Dryden is speaking in his own person, in an imaginary conversation in which | the Earl of Dorset bears a part: "To begin, then, with Shakspeare. He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily when he describes anything, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is everywhere alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat, insipid, his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great when some great occasion is presented to him; no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of the poets,

'Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi.' The consideration of this made Mr. Hales of Eton say, that there was 'no subject of which any poet ever writ, but he would produce it much better done in Shakspeare;' and, however others are now generally preferred before him, yet the age wherein he lived, which had contemporaries with him, Fletcher and Jonson, never equalled them to him in their esteem: and in the last king's court, when Ben's reputation was at highest, Sir John Suckling, and with him the greater part of the courtiers, set our Shakspeare far above him." No testimony can be more positive than this, that the two greatest contemporaries of Shakspere never equalled him in the public estimation during his own time; and that in the succeeding period of Charles I., when the reputation of Jonson was at the highest, Suckling, one of the wittiest and sprightliest of men, and the greater part of the courtiers, set Shakspere far above him. But it was not the gay alone, according to Dryden, who thus re

verenced Shakspere. He tells us what was the opinion of "Mr. Hales of Eton." John Hales, a Fellow of Eton, is known as the "learned" Hales, and the "ever-memorable” Hales; and of him, Aubrey says, "When the court was at Windsor the learned courtiers much delighted in his company." His opinion of Shakspere is given with more particularity by Gildon, in an Essay addressed to Dryden in 1694, in which he appeals to Dryden himself as the relator of the anecdote. It is not because Gildon is satirized in 'The Dunciad' that his veracity is to be questioned *:-"But to give the world some satisfaction that Shakspeare has had as great veneration paid his excellence by men of unquestioned parts as this I now express for him, I shall give some account of what I have heard from your mouth, Sir, about the noble triumph he gained over all the ancients, by the judgment of the ablest critics of that time. The matter of fact, if my memory fail me not, was this. Mr. Hales of Eton affirmed, that he would show all the poets of antiquity outdone by Shakspeare, in all the topics and common places made use of in poetry. The enemies of Shakspeare would by no means yield him so much excellence; so that it came to a resolution of a trial of skill upon that subject. The place agreed on for the dispute was Mr. Hales's chamber at Eton. A great many books were sent down by the enemies of this poet; and on the appointed day my Lord Falkland, Sir John Suckling, and all the persons of quality that had wit and learning, and interested themselves in the quarrel, met there; and upon a thorough disquisition of the point, the judges chosen by agreement out of this learned and ingenious assembly, unanimously gave the preference to Shakspeare, and the Greek and Roman poets were adjudged to veil at least their glory in that to the English hero.”

From the death of Shakspere to the shutting up of the theatres in 1642, a period is embraced of twenty-six years. We have seen the prodigious activity in the production of novelties which existed ten years before the suppression of the theatres. There is

*See Gifford's Memoirs of Jonson,' p. cclx.