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XXXV. ROMEO AND JULIET.

who died in 1529. His novel did not appear till some years after his death; being first printed at Venice in 1535, under the title of La Giulietta. A second edition was published in 1539, and it was again reprinted at the same place in 1553, (without the author's name,) with the following title: Historia nuovamente ritrovata di due nobili Amanti, con la loro pietosa morte; intervenuta gia nella cita di l'erona, nell tempo del Signor Bartolomeo della Scala. Nuovamente stampa'a. In 1554 Bandello published, at Lucca, a novel ou the same subject [Tom. 11. Nov. ix.]; and shortly afterwards Boisteau exhibited one in French, founded on the Italian narratives, but varying from them in many particulars. From Boisteau's novel the same story was, in 1562, formed into an English poem, with considerable alterations and large additions, by Mr. Arthur Brooke. This piece was priated by Richard Tottle with the following title, written probably, accord

And, perhaps, if we turn our thoughts upon the barbarity || the loss of royalty affects him only as a secondary and and ignorance of the age to which this story is referred, || subordinate evil. He observes, with great justness, that it will appear not so unlikely as while we estimate Lear's Lear would move our compassion but little, did we not manners by our own. Such preference of one daughter rather consider the injured father than the degraded king. to another, or resignation of dominion on such conditions, - The story of this play, except the episode of Edmund, would be yet credible, if told of a petty prince of Gui- which is derived, I think, from Sidney, is taken originally nea or Madagascar. Shakspeare, indeed, by the mention from Geoffry of Monmouth, whom Holinshed generally of his earls and dukes, has given us the idea of times copied; but perhaps immediately from an old historical more civilized, and of life regulated by softer manners; ballad. My reason for believing that the play was posand the truth is, that though he so nicely discriminates,|| terior to the ballad, rather than the ballad to the play, and so minutely describes the characters of men, he com- is, that the ballad has nothing of Shakspeare's nocturnal monly neglects and coufounds the characters of ages, by tempest, which is too striking to have been omitted, and mingling customs ancient and modern, English and foreigu. || that it follows the chronicle; it has the rudiments of the My learned friend, Mr. Warton, [afterwards Dr. Joseph play, but none of its amplifications; it first hinted Lear's Warton,] who has in The Adventurer very minutely cri- madness, but did not array it in circumstances. The ticised this play, remarks, that the instances of cruelty writer of the ballad added something to the history, which are too savage and shocking, and that the intervention || is a proof that he would have added more, if more had of Edmund destroys the simplicity of the story. These occurred to his mind, and more must have occurred if he objections may, I think, be answered, by repeating, that had seen Shakspeare. JouNsoN. — the cruelty of the daughters is an historical fact, to which the poet has added little, having only drawn it into a series of dialogue and action. But I am not able to apologize with equal plausibility for the extrusion of Gloster's eyes, which seems an act too horrid to be endured in dramatic exhibition, and such as must always THE original relater of the story on which this play is compel the mind to relieve its distresses by incredulity. || formed, was Luigi da Porto, a gentleman of Vicenza, Yet let it be remembered that our author well knew what would please the audience for which he wrote. The injury done by Edmund to the simplicity of the action is abundantly recompensed by the addition of variety, by the art with which he is made to co-operate with the chief design, and the opportunity which he gives the poet of combining perfidy with perfidy, and connecting the wicked son with the wicked daughters, to impress this important moral, that villainy is never at a stop, that crimes lead to crimes, and at last terminate in ruin. - But though this moral be incidentally enforced, Shakspeare has suffered the virtue of Cordelia to perish in a just cause, contrary to the natural ideas of justice, to the hope of the reader, and what is yet more strange, to the faith of chronicles. Yet this conduct is justified by The Spectator, who blames Tate for giving Cordelia success and happiness in his alteration, and declares, that in his opinion, the tragedy has lost half its beauty. Dennis has remarked, whethering to the fashion of that time, by the bookseller: The justly or not, that, to secure the favourable reception of Cato, the town was poisoned with much false and abominable criticism, and that endeavours had been used to discredit and decry poetical justice. A play in which the wicked prosper, and the virtuous miscarry, may doubtless be good, because it is a just representation of the common events of human life; but since all reasonable beings naturally love justice, 1 cannot easily be persuaded, that the observation of justice makes a play worse; or, that if other excellencies are equal, the audience will not always rise better pleased from the final triumph of persecuted virtue. - In the present case the public has decided.) Cordelia, from the time of Tate, has always retired with victory and felicity. And, if my sensations could add any thing to the general suffrage, I might relate, I was many years ago so shocked by Cordelia's death, that I know not whether I ever endured to read again the last scenes of the play till I undertook to revise them as an editor. There is another controversy among the critics concerning this play. It is disputed whether the predominant image in Lear's disordered mind be the loss of his kingdom or the cruelty of his daughMr. Murphy, a very judicious critic, has evinced by induction of particular passages, that the cruelty of his daughters is the primary source of distress, and that

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Tragicall Hystory of Romeus and Juliet, containing a
rare Example of true Constancie: with the subtill Coun-
sels, and Practices of an old Fryer, and their ill event.
It was again published by the same bookseller in 1562.
Painter, in the second volume of his Palace of Pleasure,
1567, published a prose translation from the French of
Boisteau, which he entitled Rhomeo and Julietta. Shak-
speare had probably read Painter's novel, having taken
one circumstance from it or some other prose translation
of Boisteau; but his p'ay was undoubtedly formed on the
poem of Arthur Brooke. This is proved decisively by
the following circumstance. 1. In the poem the prince of
Verona is called Escalus; so also in the play. — In Pain-
ter's translation from Boisteau he is named Signor Escala;
and sometimes Lord Bartholomew of Escala. 2. In Pain-
ter's novel the family of Romeo are called the Mon-
tesches; in the poem and in the play, the Montagues.
3. The messenger employed by friar Lawrence to carry
a letter to Romeo to inform him when Juliet would awake
from her trance, is in Painter's translation called An-
selme: in the poem, and in the play, friar John is em-
ployed in this business. 4. The circumstance of Capulet's
writing down the names of the guests whom he invites
to supper, is found in the poem and in the play, but is
not mentioned by Painter, nor is it found in the original
Italian novel. 5. The residence of the Capulets, in the
original, and in Painter, is called Villa Franca; in the
poem and in the play, Freetown. 6. Several passages of
Romeo and Juliet appear to have been formed on hints

XXXVI. HAMLET.

furnished by the poem, of which no traces are found either in Painter's novel, or in Boisteau, or the original; and several expressions are borrowed from thence, which THE original story on which this play is built, may be will be found in their proper places. As what has been now stated has been controverted, (for what may not be controverted?) I should enter more largely into the subject, but various passages of the poem furnish such a decisive proof of the play's having been constructed upon it, as not to leave, in my apprehension, a shadow of doubt upon the subject. The question is not, whether Shakspeare had read other novels, or other poetical pieces, founded on this story, but whether the poem written by Arthur Brooke was the basis on which this play was built. — With respect to the name of Romeo, this also Shakspeare might have found in the poem; for in one place that name is given to him: or he might have had it from Painter's novel, from which or from some other prose translation of the same story he has, as I have already said, taken one circumstance not mentioned in the poem. In 1570 was entered on the Stationers' books by Henry Bynneman, The Pitifull Hystory of ij lovying Italians, which I suspect was a prose narrative of the story on which our author's play is constructed. — Breval says in his travels, that on a strict inquiry into the histories of Verona, he found that Shakspeare had varied very little from the truth, either in the names, characters, or other circumstances of his play. MALONE. It is plain, from more than one circumstance, that Shakspeare had read this novel, both in its prosaic and metrical form. He might likewise have met with other poetical pieces on the same subject. We are not yet at the end of our discoveries relative to the originals of our

found in Saxo Grammaticus, the Danish historian. From
thence Belleforest adopted it in his collection of novels,
in seven volumes, which he began in 1564, and continued
to publish through succeeding years. From this work,
The Hystorie of Hamblett, quarto, bl. 1. was translated.
I have hitherto met with no earlier edition of the play
than one in the year 1604, though it must have been per-
formed before that time, as I have seen a copy of Speght's
edition of Chaucer, which formerly belonged to Dr. Ga-
briel Harvey, (the antagonist of Nash,) who, in his own
hand-writing, has set down Hamlet, as a performance
with which he was well acquainted, in the year 1598.
His words are these: "The younger sort take much de-
light in Shakspeare's Venus and Adonis; but his Lucrece,
and his tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke, have it
in them to please the wiser sort, 1598." In the books
of the Stationers' Company, this play was entered by
James Roberts, July 26, 1602, under the title of "A booke
called The Revenge of Hamlett, Prince of Denmarke,
as it was lately acted by the Lord Chamberlain his ser-
vantes."
In Eastward Hoe, by George Chapman, Ben
Jonson, and John Marston, 1605, is a fling at the hero
of this tragedy. A footman named Hamlet enters, and a
tankard-bearer asks him "Sfoote, Hamlet, are you
The frequent allusions of contemporary authors
to this play sufficiently show its popularity. Thus, in
Decker's Bel man's Nightwalkes, 4to. 1612, we have
"But if any mad Hamlet, hearing this, smell villainie,
and rush in by violence to see what the tawny diuels

mad?"

1

author's dramatic pieces. STEEVENS. This play, Mr. [gypsies] are dooing, then they excuse the fact," &c.

Malone conjectures, was written in 1596. CHALMERA. =
This play is one of the most pleasing of our author's
performances. The scenes are busy and various, the in-
cidents numerous and important, the catastrophe irresis-
tibly affecting, and the process of the action carried on
with such probability, at least with such congruity to po-
Here is one of the
pular opinions, as tragedy requires.
few attempts of Shakspeare to exhibit the conversation of
gentlemen, to represent the airy sprightliness of juvenile
elegance. Mr. Dryden mentions a tradition, which might
easily reach his time, of a declaration made by Shakspeare,
that he was obliged to kill Mercutio in the third Act, lest
Yet he thinks him
he should have been killed by him.
no such formidable person, but that he might have lived
through the play, and died in his bed, without danger to
the poet. Dryden well knew, had he been in quest of ||
truth, in a pointed sentence, that more regard is com-
monly had to the words than the thought, and that it is
very seldom to be rigorously understood. Mercutio's wit,
gaiety, and courage, will always procure him friends that
wish him a longer life; but his death is not precipitated, ||
he has lived out the time allotted him in the construction
of the play; nor do I doubt the ability of Shakspeare to
have continued his existence, though some of his sallies
are perhaps out of the reach of Dryden; whose genius
was not very fertile of merriment, nor ductile to humour,
but acute, argumentative, comprehensive, and sublime. ·
The Nurse is one of the characters in which the author
delighted: he has, with great subtlety of distinction, drawn
her at once loquacious and secret, obsequious and insolent,
trusty and dishonest. His comic scenes are happily
wrought, but his pathetic strains are always polluted with
Fome unexpected depravations. His persons, however
distressed, have a conceit left them in their misery, a
miserable conceit. 7) JOHNSON. =

7) This quotation is also found in the Preface to Dryden's Fables: "Just John Littlewit in Bartholomew Fair, who had a conceit (as he tells you) left him in his misery; a miserable conceit." Steevens.

Again, in an old collection of satirical poems, called The
Night-Raven, is this couplet:

"I will not cry Hamlet Revenge my greeves,
"But I will call Hangman, Revenge on thieves."
STEEVENS.

Surely no satire was intended in Eastward Hoe, which
was acted at Shakspeare's own playhouse, (Blackfriars,)
by the children of the revels, in 1605. MALONE. The
following particulars relative to the date of this piece,
are borrowed from Dr. Farmer's Essay on the Learning
"Greene, in
of Shakspeare, pp. 85, 86. second edition:
the Epistle prefixed to his Arcadia, bath a lash at some
'vaine glorious tragedians,' and very plainly at Shakspeare
in particular. 'I leave all these to the mercy of their
mother-tongue, that feed on nought but the crums that
fall from the translators trencher. That could scarcely
latinize their neck verse if they should have neede,
yet English Seneca, read by candlelight, yields many
hee will afford you whole Hamlets, I
good sentences
should say, handfuls of tragicall speeches.' I cannot
determine exactly when this Epistle was first published;
but, I fancy, it will carry the original Hamlet somewhat
further back than we have hitherto done: and it may be
observed, that the oldest copy now extant is said to be
Gabriel
'enlarged to almost as much againe as it was.'
Harvey printed at the end of the year 1592, 'Foure Let-
ters and certaine Sonnetts, especially touching Robert
Greene' in one of which his Arcadia is mentioned. Now
Nash's Epistle must have been previous to these, as Ga-
briel is quoted in it with applause; and the Foure Let-
ters were the beginning of a quarrel. Nash replied in
'Strange News of the intercepting certaine Letters, and
a Convoy of Verses, as they were going privilie to victual
the Low Countries, 1593.' Harvey rejoined the same year
in 'Pierce's Supererogation, or a new Praise of the old
Asse.' And Nash again, in 'Have with you to Saffron
Walden, or Gabriell Harvey's Hunt is up;' containing a
full answer to the eldest sonne of the haltermaker, 1596."
Nash died before 1606, as appears from an old comedy

called The Return from Parnassus. STEEVENS. = A play || Adventures of IAGO Prince of Saxonie; bl. 1. 4to. London, on the subject of Hamlet had been exhibited on the stage 1605." It may indeed be urged that these names were before the year 1589, of which Thomas Kyd was, I be- adopted from the tragedy before us: but I trust that every lieve, the author. On that play, and on the bl. 1. His- reader who is conversant with the peculiar style and metorie of Hamblet, our poet, I conjecture, constructed the thod in which the work of honest John Reynolds is comtragedy before us. The earliest edition of the prose- posed, will acquit him of the slightest familiarity with the narrative which I have seen was printed in 1608. but it scenes of Shakspeare. This play was first entered at undoubtedly was a republication. Shakspeare's Hamlet Stationers' Hall, Oct. 6, 1621, by Thomas Walkely. STEEwas written, if my conjecture be well founded, in 1600. VENS. I have seen a French translation of Cynthio, by MALONE. If the dramas of Shakspeare were to be Gabriel Chappuys, Par. 1584. This is not a faithful one; characterised, each by the particular excellence which and I suspect, through this medium the work came into distinguishes it from the rest, we must allow to the tragedy English. FARMER.This tragedy I have ascribed to the of Hamlet the praise of variety. The incidents are so year 1604. MALONE. = The time of this play may be numerous, that the argument of the play would make ascertained from the following circumstances; Selymus the a long tale. The scenes are interchangeably diversified Second formed his design against Cyprus in 1569, and with merriment and solemnity: with merriment that in- took it in 1571. This was the only attempt the Turks cludes judicious and instructive observations; and solemnity ever made upon that island after it came into the hands not strained by poetical violence above the natural senti- of the Venetians, (which was in the year 1473,) wherefore ments of man. New characters appear from time to time the time must fall in with some part of that interval. We in continual succession, exhibiting various forms of life learn from the play that there was a junction of the and particular modes of conversation. The pretended Turkish fleet at Rhodes, in order for the invasion of madness of Hamlet causes much mirth, the mournful dis- Cyprus, that it first came sailing towards Cyprus, then traction of Ophelia fills the heart with tenderness, and went to Rhodes, there met another squadron, and then every personage produces the effect intended, from the resumed its way to Cyprus. These are real historical facts apparition that in the first Act chills the blood with hor- which happened when Mustapha, Selymus's general, atror, to the fop in the last, that exposes affectation to tacked Cyprus in May, 1570, which therefore is the true just contempt. The conduct is perhaps not wholly se- period of this performance. See Knolles's History of the cure against objections. The action is indeed for the most Turks, pp.838, 846, 867. Reed. The beauties of this play part in continual progression, but there are some scenes impress themselves so strongly upon the attention of the which neither forward nor retard it. Of the feigned mad- || reader, that they can draw no aid from critical illustration. news of Hamlet there appears no adequate cause, for he The fiery openness of Othello, magnanimous, artless, and does nothing which he might not have done with the re- credulous, boundless in his confidence, ardent in his affecputation of sanity. He plays the madman most, when he tion, inflexible in his resolution, and obdurate in his retreats Ophelia with so much rudeness, which seems to be venge; the cool malignity of Iago, silent in his resentuseless and wanton cruelty. Hamlet is, through the ment, subtle in his designs, and studious at once of his whole piece, rather an instrument than an agent. After interest and his vengeance; the soft simplicity of Desdehe has, by the stratagem of the play, convicted the King, mona, confident of merit, and conscious of innocence, her he makes no attempt to punish him; and his death is at artless perseverance in her suit, and her slowness to suslast effected by an incident which Hamlet had no part pect that she can be suspected, are such proofs of Shakin producing. The catastrophe is not very happily pro- speare's skill in human nature, as, I suppose, it is vain duced; the exchange of weapons is rather an expedient to seek in any modern writer. The gradual progress which of necessity, than a stroke of art. A scheme might easily || be formed to kill Hamlet with the dagger, and Laertes with the bowl. The poet is accused of having shown little regard to poetical justice, and may be charged with || equal neglect of poetical probability. The apparition left || the regions of the dead to little purpose; the revenge which he demands is not obtained, but by the death of him that was required to take it; and the gratification, which would arise from the destruction of an usurper and a murderer, is abated by the untimely death of Ophelia, the young,|| the beautiful, the harmless, and the pious. JOHNSON, =

THE

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XXXVII.

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OTHELLO.

HE story of Othello is taken from Cynthio's Novels. POPE. =I have not hitherto met with any translation of this novel (the seventh in the third decad) of so early a date as the age of Shakspeare; but undoubtedly many of those little pamphlets have perished between his time and ours.

It is highly probable that our author met with the name of Othello in some tale that has escaped our researches; as I likewise find it in Reynolds's God's Revenge against Adultery, standing in one of his Arguments as follows: "She marries Othello, an old German soldier." This History (the eighth) is professed to be an Italian one. Here also occurs the name of Iago. It is likewise found, as Dr. Farmer observes, in "The History of the famous Euordanus Prince of Denmark, with the strange

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Iago makes in the Moor's conviction, and the circumstances which he employs to inflame him, are so artfully natural, that, though it will perhaps not be said of him as he says of himself, that he is a man not easily jealous, yet we cannot but pity him, when at last we find him perplexed in the extreme. — There is always danger, lest wickedness, conjoined with abilities, should steal upon esteem, though it misses of approbation; but the character of lago is so conducted, that he is from the first scene to the last hated and despised. — Even the inferior characters of this play would be very conspicuous in any other piece, not only for their justness, but their strength. Cassio is brave, benevolent, and honest; ruined only by his want of stubbornness to resist an insidious invitation. Roderigo's suspicious credulity, and impatient submission to the cheats which he sees practised upon him, and which by persuasion he suffers to be repeated, exhibit a strong picture of a weak mind betrayed by unlawful desires to a false friend; and the virtue of Emilia is such as we often find, worn loosely, but not cast off, easy to commit small crimes, but quickened and alarmed at atrocious villainies. The scenes from the beginning to the end are busy, varied by happy interchanges, and regularly promoting the progression of the story; and the narrative in the end, though it tells but what is known already, yet is necessary to produce the death of Othello. Had the scene opened in Cyprus, and the preceding incidents been occasionally related, there had been little wanting to a drama of the most exact and scrupulous regularity. JOHNSON. =

PLAY S.

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