For publique wealth, and not for private ioye,
Do waste mannes lyfe, and hasten crooked age,
With furrowed face, and with enfeebled lymmes,
To drawe on creepynge
Death a swifter pace.
They two, yet yonge, shall beare the parted regne
With greater ease, than one, now olde, alone,
Can welde the whole: for whom, muche harder is
With lessened strength the double weight to beare.
Your age, your counsell, and the graue regarde
Of father, yea of suche a fathers name,
Nowe at beginning of their sondred reigne,
When is the hazarde of their whole successe,
Shall bridle so the force of youthfull heates,
And so restraine the rage of insolence

Whiche most assailes the yong and noble minds,
And so shall guide and traine in tempred staie
Their yet greene bending wittes with reuerent awe,
As now inured with vertues at the first.
Custom, O king, shall bringe delightfulnes:
By vse of vertue, vice shall growe in hate.
But if you so dispose it, that the daye

Which endes your life, shal first begin their reigne,
Great is the perill. What will be the ende,
When suche beginning of suche liberties
Voide of suche stayess as in your life do lye,
Shall leaue them free to randomt of their will,
An open prey to traiterous flattery,
The greatest pestilence of noble youthe:
Which perill shal be past, if in your life,
Their tempred youth, with aged fathers awe,
Be brought in vre of skilfull staiedness, &c."

From an obsequious complaisance to the king, who is present, the topic is not agitated with that opposition of opinion and variety of arguments which it naturally suggests, and which would have enlivened the disputation and displayed diversity of character. But Eubulus, the king's secretary, declares his sentiments with some freedom, and seems to be the most animated of all our three political orators.

To parte your realme vnto my lords your sonnes,

I think not good, for you, ne yet for them,

But worst of all for this our native land:
Within w

one lande one single rule is best.

Diuided reignes do make diuided hartes,

X

But peace preserues the countrey and the prince.
Suche is in man the gredie minde to reigne,
So great is his desire to climbe aloft
In worldly stage the stateliest partes to beare,
That faith, and iustice, and all kindly loue,
Do yelde vnto desire of soueraigntie,
Where egall state doth raise an egall hope,
To winne the thing that either wold attaine.
Your grace remembreth, howe in passed yeres
The mightie Brute, first prince of all this lande,
Possessed the same, and ruled it well in one:
He thinking that the compasse did suffice,
For his three sonnes three kingdoms eke to make,
Cut it in three, as you would nowe in twaine :
But how much Brittish blod hath since been spilt,
What princes slaine before their timely houra,
To ioyne againe the sondred vnitie?

What wast of townes and people in the lande ?
What treasons heaped on murders and on spoiles?
Whose iust reuenge euen yet is scarcely ceased,
Ruthfull remembraunce is yet raw in minde, &c.c

The illustration from Brutus is here both apposite and poetical.

Spence, with a reference to the situation of the author lord Buckhurst in the court of queen Elizabeth, has observed in his preface to the modern edition of this tragedy, that "'tis no wonder, if the language of kings and statesmen should be less happily imitated by a poet than a privy counsellor*." This is an insinuation that Shakspeare, who has left many historical tragedies, was less able to conduct some parts of a royal story than the statesman lord Buckhurst. But I will venture to pronounce, that whatever merit there is in this play, and particularly in the speeches we have just been examining, it is more owing to the poet than the privy counsellor. If a first minister was to write a tragedy, I believe the piece will be the better, the less it has of the first

x natural.

y 'brutish,' edit. 1565.

a

'sithence,' edit. 1565.

'honour,' edit. 1565. bhad,' edit. 1565.

c Act i. sc. 2. * [If Norton wrote the first three acts of Gorboduc, as the title-page of 1565 sets forth, and the later edition does not contradict (supra, p. 290.), then the excellence of the speech above cited from act i. cannot have arisen from its being penned by a privy-counsellor. Could Richelieu write so good a tragedy as Corneille or Racine? asks Mr. Ashby, while he relates the following anecdote in reply. Queen

Caroline was fond of talking to learned men. One day she was earnest with bishop Gibson to tell her, which he liked best, tragedy or comedy. The bishop parried the question by alleging he had not read or seen any thing of that kind a long while. The queen still persisting in her inquiry, he said, "Though I cannot answer your majesty's question, yet your majesty can inform me in one particular that nobody else can." She expressed great readiness to do so, and he added, "Pray, do kings and queens, when alone, talk such fine language as on the stage?" This was enough.-PARK.]

minister. When a statesman turns poet, I should not wish him to fetch his ideas or his language from the cabinet. I know not why a king should be better qualified than a private man to make kings talk in blank verse.

The chaste elegance of the following description of a region abounding in every convenience, will gratify the lover of classical purity. Yea, and that half, which ind abounding store

Of things that serue to make a welthie realme,
In statelie cities, and in frutefull soyle*,
In temperate breathing of the milder heauen,
In thinges of nedeful vse, whiche friendlie sea
Transportes by traffike from the forreine partes,
In flowing wealth, in honour and in force, &c.f

The close of Marcella's narration of the murther of Porrex by the queen, which many poets of a more enlightened age would have exhibited to the spectators, is perhaps the most moving and pathetic speech in the play t. The reader will observe, that our author, yet to a good purpose, has transferred the ceremonies of the tournament to the court of an old British king.

O queene

of adamante! O marble breaste;
If not the fauour of his comelie face,

If not his princelie chere and countenaunce,
His valiant active armes, his manlie breaste,
If not his faier and semelie personage,

i

His noble lymmes in suche proporcion caste,
As would have wrapped a sillie womans thought,
If this mought not haue moued thy bloodie harte,
And that most cruell hande, the wretched weapon
Euen to let fall, and kisse him in the face,
With teares for ruthe to reaue suche one by death:
Should nature yet consent to slaye her sonne?

O mother thou, to murder thus thie childe!

Euen Joue, with Justice, must with lightening flames
From heauen send downe some strange reuenge on thee.

Ah! noble prince, how oft have I beheld
Thee mounted on thy fierce and traumpling stede,
Shyning in armour bright before thy tylte,

And with thy mistresse' sleaue tied on thy helme,
And charge thy staffe, to please thy ladies eie,
That bowed the head peece of thy frendly foe?
Howe oft in armes on horse to bende the mace?1
How oft in arms on foote to breake the sworde?
Which neuer now these eyes may see againe!m

Marcella, the only lady in the play except the queen, is one of the maids of honour; and a modern writer of tragedy would have made her in love with the young prince who is murthered.

The queen laments the loss of her eldest and favorite son, whose defeat and death had just been announced, in the following soliloquy. The ideas are too general, although happily expressed: but there is some imagination in her wishing the old massy palace had long ago fallen, and crushed her to death.

Why should I lyue, and lynger forth my time
In longer liefe, to double my distresse?
O me most wofull wight, whome no mishap
Long ere this daie could haue bereued hence!
Mought not these handes, by fortune or by fate,
Haue perst this brest, and life with iron reft?
Or in this pallaice here, where I so longe
Haue spent my daies, could not that happie houre
Ones, ones, haue hapt, in which these hugie frames
With death by fall might haue oppressed me?
Or should not this most hard and cruell soile,
So oft where I haue prest my wretched steps,
Somtyme had ruthe of myne accursed liefe,
To rend in twaine, and swallowe me therin?
So had my bones possessed nowe in peace
Their happie graue within the closed grounde,
And greadie wormes had gnawen this pyned hart
Without my feelynge paine! So should not nowe
This lyvynge brest remayne the ruthefull tombe
Wherein my hart, yelden to dethe, is graued, &c."

There is some animation in these imprecations of prince Ferrex upon his own head, when he protests that he never conceived any malicious design, or intended any injury, against his brother Porrex.°

The wrekefull gods poure on my cursed head

Eternall plagues, and neuer dyinge woes!

1 the shaft of the lance.

m Act iv. sc. 2.

n Activ. sc. 1.

Act ii. sc. 1.

The hellish prince? adiudge my dampned ghoste
To Tantales thirste, or proude Ixions wheele,
Or cruel gripe, to gnaw my growing harte;
To durynge tormentes and vnquenched flames;
If euer I conceiued so foule a thought,

To wishe his ende of life, or yet of reigne.

It must be remembered, that the ancient Britons were supposed to be immediately descended from the Trojan Brutus, and that consequently they were acquainted with the pagan history and mythology. Gorboduc has a long allusion to the miseries of the siege of Troy $.

In this strain of correct versification and language, Porrex explains to his father Gorboduc the treachery of his brother Ferrex.

When thus I sawe the knot of loue unknitte;
All honest league, and faithfull promise broke,
The lawe of kind and trothe thus rent in twaine,
His hart on mischiefe set, and in his brest
Blacke treason hid: then, then did I dispaier
That euer tyme coulde wynne him frende to me;
Then sawe I howe he smyled with slaying knife
Wrapped vnder cloke, then sawe I depe deceite

Lurke in his face, and death prepared for mee, &c."

As the notions of subordination, of the royal authority, and the divine institution of kings, predominated in the reign of queen Elizabeth, it is extraordinary, that eight lines, inculcating in plain terms the doctrine of passive and unresisting obedience to the prince, which appeared in the fifth act of the first edition of this tragedy, should have been expunged in the edition of 1571, published under the immediate inspection of the authors w. It is well known, that the Calvinists carried their ideas of reformation and refinement into government as well as religion; and it seems probable, that these eight verses were suppressed by Thomas Norton, Sackville's supposed assistant in the play, who was not only an active and I believe a sensible puritan, but a licenser of the publication of books under the commission of the bishop of London *.

As to Norton's assistance in this play, it is said on better authority