be living in an age when vows bound mankind to objects of pursuit that now present but the ludicrous side, to have had his dreams converted into very silly realities. The resistance of Biron to the vow of his fellows is singularly able,—his reasoning is deep and true, and ought to have turned them aside from their folly: "Study is like the heaven's glorious sun, That will not be deep-search'd with saucy looks; Small have continual plodders ever won, Save base authority from others' books." But the vow is ratified, and its abjuration will only be the result of its practical inconvenience. The "French king's daughter." the "admired princess," is coming to confer with the King and his court, who have resolved to talk with no woman for three years: "So study evermore is overshot." But the "child of fancy" appears the "fantastic”—the "magnificent”—the "man of great spirit who grows melancholy"-he who is "ill at a reckoning, because it fitteth the spirit of a tapster"-he who confesses to be a “gentleman and a gamester,” because "both are the varnish of a complete man.' How capitally does Moth, his page, hit him off, when he intimates that only "the base vulgar" call deuce-ace three! And yet this indolent piece of refinement is "A man in all the world's new fashions planted, which they are clouded. We scarcely re- "A merrier man, But, with all this disposition to think highly to use their "civil wits" on "Navarre and Why, this is he That kiss'd away his hand in courtesy: This is the ape of form, monsieur the nice, That, when he plays at tables, chides the dice In honourable terms; nay, he can sing A mean most meanly; and, in ushering, Mend him who can: the ladies call him, sweet; The stairs, as he treads on them, kiss his feet." We are very much tempted to think that, in his character of Boyet, Shakspere had in view that most amusing coxcomb Master Robert Laneham, whose letter from Kenilworth, in which he gives the following account of himself, was printed in 1575 :-" Always among the gentlewomen with my good will, and when I see company according, then I can The Princess and her train arrive at Na- be as lively too. Sometimes I foot it with varre. We have already learnt to like the dancing; now with my gittern and else with King and his lords, and have seen their fine my cittern; then at the virginals; ye know natures shining through the affectations by | nothing comes amiss to me; then carol I up That hath a mint of phrases in his brain;" and he himself has no mean idea of his abilities-he is "for whole volumes in folio." Moth, who continually draws him out to laugh at him, is an embryo wag, whose common sense is constantly opposed to his master's affectations; and Costard is another cunning bit of nature, though cast in a coarser mould, whose heart runs over with joy at the tricks of his little friend, this "nit of mischief." Before the end of Navarre's first interview with the Princess, Boyet has discovered that he is "infected." At the end of the next act, we learn from Biron himself that he is in the same condition. Away then goes the vow with the King and Biron. In the fourth act we find that the infection has spread to all the lords; but the love of the King and his courtiers is thoroughly characteristic. It may be sincere enough, but it is still love fantastical. It hath taught Biron "to rhyme and to be melancholy." The King drops his paper of poesy; Longaville reads his sonnet, which makes flesh "a deity;" and Dumain, in his most beautiful anacreontic, -as sweet a piece of music as Shakspere ever penned-shows "how love can vary wit." The scene in which each lover is detected by the other, and all laughed at by Biron, till he is detected himself, is thoroughly dramatic; and there is perhaps nothing finer in the whole range of the Shaksperean comedy than the passage where Biron casts aside his disguises, and rises to the height of poetry and eloquence. The burst when the "rent lines" discover "some love" of Biron is incomparably fine : "Who sees the heavenly Rosaline, That like a rude and savage man of Inde, At the first opening of the gorgeous east, Bows not his vassal head; and, strucken blind, Kisses the base ground with obedient breast?" The famous speech of Biron, which follows, is perhaps unmatched as a display of poetical rhetoric, except by the speeches of Ulysses to Achilles in the third act of 'Troilus and Cressida.' Coleridge has admirably described this speech of Biron. "It is logic clothed in rhetoric ;-but observe how Shakspere, in his twofold being of poet and philosopher, avails himself of it to convey profound truths in the most lively images the whole remaining faithful to the character supposed to utter the lines, and the expressions themselves constituting a further de King and Princess, lords and ladies, must make way for the great pedants. The form of affectation is now entirely changed. It is not the cleverness of rising superior to all other men by despising the "affects' to which every man is born-it is not the cleverness of labouring at the most magnificent phrases to express the most common ideas; but it is the cleverness of two persons using conventional terms, which they have picked up from a common source, and which they believe sealed to the mass of mankind, instead of employing the ordinary colloquial phrases by which ideas are rendered intelligible. This is pedantry-and Shakspere shows his excellent judgment in bringing a brace of pedants upon the scene. In O'Keefe's 'Agreeable Surprise,' and in Colman's ' Heir at Law,' we have a single pedant—the one talking Latin to a milk-maid, and the other to a tallow-chandler. This is farce. But the pedantry of Holofernes and the curate is comedy. They each address the other in their freemasonry of learning. They each flatter the other. But for the rest of the world, they look down upon them. "Sir,” saith the curate, excusing the "twice-sod simplicity" of Goodman Dull, he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink: his intellect is not replenished." But Goodman Dull has his intellect stimulated by this abuse. He has heard the riddles of the "ink-horn" men, and he sports a riddle of his own : *Literary Remains,' vol. ii. p. 105. The answer of Holofernes is the very quintessence of pedantry. He gives Goodman Dull the hardest name for the moon in the mythology. Goodman Dull is with difficulty quieted. Holofernes then exhibits his poetry; and he "will something affect the letter, for it argues facility." He produces, as all pedants attempt to produce, not what is good when executed, but what is difficult of execution. Satisfied with his own performances "the gift is good in those in whom it is acute, and I am thankful for it"-he is profuse in his contempt for other men's productions. He undertakes to prove Biron's canzonet 66 The The ladies have received verses and jewels from their lovers; but they trust not to the verses they think them "bootless rhymes," -the effusions of " prodigal wits :”— "Folly in fools bears not so strong a note As foolery in the wise." When Boyet discloses to the Princess the scheme of the mask of Muscovites, she is more confirmed in her determination to laugh at the laughers : 66 They do it but in mocking merriment ; And mock for mock is only my intent." The affectation of "speeches penn'd" is overthrown in a moment by the shrewdness of the women, who encounter the fustian harangue with prosaic action. Moth comes in crammed with others' affectations : "All hail, the richest beauties on the earth! A holy parcel of the fairest dames"- to be very unlearned, neither savouring of poetry, wit, nor invention." portrait is two hundred years old, and yet The ladies turn their backs on him— how many of the present day might sit for it! Holofernes, however, is not meant by Shakspere for a blockhead. He is made of better stuff than the ordinary run of those who "educate youth at the charge-house." Shakspere has taken care that we should see flashes of good sense amidst his folly. To say nothing of the curate's commendations of his reasons at dinner," we have his own description of Armado, to show how clearly he could discover the ludicrous side of others. The pedant can see the ridiculous in pedantry of another stamp. But the poet also takes care that the ridiculous side of "the two learned men" shall still be prominent. Moth and Costard are again brought upon the scene to laugh at those who "have been at a great feast of languages, and have stolen the scraps." Costard himself is growing affected. He has picked up the fashion of being clever, and he has himself stolen honorificabilitudinitatibus out of "the alms-basket of words." But business proceeds :-Holofernes will present before the Princess the nine worthies, and he will play three himself. The soul of the schoolmaster is in this magnificent device; and he looks down with most selfsatisfied pity on honest Dull, who has spoken no word, and understood none. "That ever turn'd their-backs-to mortal Biron in vain gives him the cue-" their eyes, "Well, better wits have worn plain statute- The sharp medicine has had its effect. The King and his lords return without their disguises; and, being doomed to hear the echo of the laugh at their folly, they come down from their stilts to the level ground of comsense:—from "taffeta phrases' and "figures pedantical" to mon "Russet yeas, and honest kersey noes." But the Worthies are coming; we have not yet done with the affectations and the mocking merriment. Biron maliciously desires "to have one show worse than the King's and his company." Those who have been laughed at now take to laughing at others. Costard, who is the most natural of the Worthies, comes off with the fewest hurts. He has performed Pompey marvellously well, and he is not a little vain of his performance "I hope I was perfect." When the learned curate breaks down as Alexander, the apology of Costard for his overthrow is inimitable: "There, an 't shall please you ; a foolish mild man; an honest man, look you, and soon dashed! He is a marvellous good neighbour, in sooth; and a very good bowler; but, for Alisander, alas! you see how 't is ; a little o'erparted." Holofernes comes off worse than the curate—“ Alas, poor Machabæus, how hath he been baited!" We feel, in spite of our inclination to laugh at the pedant, that his remonstrance is just "This is not generous, not gentle, not humble." We know that to be generous, to be gentle, to be humble, are the especial virtues of the great; and Shakspere makes us see that the schoolmaster is right. Lastly, comes Armado. His discomfiture is still more signal. The malicious trick that Biron suggests to Costard shows that Rosaline's original praise of him was not altogether deserved that his merriment was not always "Within the limit of becoming mirth." The affectations of Biron are cast aside, but he has a natural fault to correct, worse than any affectation; and beautifully does Rosaline hold up to him the glass which shows him how "To choke a gibing spirit, Whose influence is begot of that loose grace Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools." The affectations are blown into thin air. The King and his courtiers have to turn from speculation to action-from fruitless vows to deeds of charity and piety. Armado is about to apply to what is useful: "I have 15 vowed to Jaquenetta to hold the plough for her sweet love three years." The voices of the pedants are heard no more in scraps of Latin. They are no longer “singled from the barbarous." But, on the contrary, "the dialogue that the two learned men have compiled, in praise of the owl and the cuckoo," is full of the most familiar images, expressed in the most homely language. Shakspere, unquestionably, to our minds, brought in this most characteristic song-(a song that he might have written and sung in the chimney-corner of his father's own kitchen, long before he dreamt of having a play acted before Queen Elizabeth)—to mark, by an emphatic close, the triumph of simplicity over false refinement. CHAPTER IV. ALL 'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. IN Dr. Farmer's 'Essay on the Learning of Shakspeare,' we find this passage:-"The story of All's Well that Ends Well' or, as I suppose it to have been sometimes called, 'Love's Labour Wonne"" (and here Farmer inserts a reference to Meres' 'Wits' Treasury,' where 'Love's Labour Wonne' is mentioned amongst plays by Shakspere,) "is originally indeed the property of Boccace, but it came immediately to Shakspeare from Painter's Giletta of Narbon."" Mr. Hun | ter, in his 'Disquisition on the Tempest,' repudiates the notion that 'Love's Labour Won' and 'All's Well that Ends Well' are identical. Mr. Hunter states that a passing remark of Dr. Farmer, in the 'Essay on the Learning of Shakspeare,' first pointed out this supposed identity; and he adds, "the remark has since been caught up and repeated by a thousand voices. Yet it was made in the most casual, random, and hasty manner imaginable. It was supported by K no kind of argument or evidence; and I cannot find that any persons who have repeated it after him have shown any probable grounds for the opinion." Malone, in the first edition of his 'Chronological Order of Shakspeare's Plays,' assigns the date of this comedy to 1598, upon the authority of the passage in Meres. He says, "No other of our author's plays could have borne that title ('Love's Labour Won') with so much propriety as that before us; yet it must be acknowledged that the present title is inserted in the body of the play : 'All's well that ends well still the fine 's the crown.' This line, however, might certainly have suggested the alteration of what has been thought the first title, and affords no decisive proof that this piece was originally called 'All's Well that Ends Well." When Coleridge describes this play as "originally intended as the counterpart of 'Love's Labour's Lost,'"-when Mrs. Jameson, with reference to the nature of the plot and the suitableness of the title found in Meres, states, complainingly, "Why the title was altered, or by whom, I cannot discover,”and when Tieck says, "The poet probably first called this play 'Love's Labour Won,' -we may add the opinions of these eminent writers on Shakspere to the original opinion of Malone, in opposition to the opinion of Mr. Hunter, that "the leading features of the story in 'All's Well' cannot be said to be aptly represented by the title in Meres' list." Coleridge described this play as the counterpart of 'Love's Labour's Lost.' Shakspere's titles, in the judgment of our philosophical critic, always exhibit "great significancy." The Labour of Love which is Lost is not a very earnest labour. The King and his courtiers are fantastical lovers. They would win their mistresses by "bootless rhymes" and "speeches penn'd," and their most sincere declarations are thus only received as "mocking merriment." The concluding speeches of the ladies to their lovers show clearly that Shakspere meant to mark the cause why their labour was lost-it was labour hastily taken up, pursued in a light temper, assuming the character of "pleasant jest and courtesy." The Princess and her ladies would not accept it as "labour" without a year's probation. It was offered, they thought, "in heat of blood;"—theirs was a love which only bore "gaudy blossoms." What would naturally be the counterpart of such a story? One of passionate, enduring, all-pervading love-of a love that shrinks from no difficulty, resents no unkindness, fears no disgrace, but perseveres, under the most adverse circumstances, to vindicate its own claims by its own energy, and to achieve success by the strength of its own will. This is the Labour of Love which is Won. Is not this the story of All's Well that Ends Well?' When Helena, in the first scene, so beautifully describes the hopelessness of her love "It were all one That I should love a bright particular star, And think to wed it, he is so above me". could she propose to come within "his sphere" without some extraordinary effort? "Hic labor, hoc opus est." She does resolve to make the effort; it is within the bounds of possibility that her labour may be successful, and therefore her "intents are fix'd:”— "The mightiest space in fortune nature brings To join like likes, and kiss like native things. Impossible be strange attempts to those That weigh their pains in sense, and do suppose What hath been cannot be." Inferior natures, that estimate their labours by a common standard-"that weigh their pains in sense❞—that are not supported in their labours by a spirit which rejects all fear and embraces all hope,-confound the difficult with the impossible: they know that courage has triumphed over difficulty, but they still think "what hath been cannot be" again. Helena is not of their mind :— "My project may deceive me, But my intents are fix'd, and will not leave me." |
