norance, could introduce, with great effect, her astonishment at his breaking out, a page or two afterwards. And here may be noted the difference of the masterly pen of Shakspeare; who, so far from weakening his characters by injudicious anticipations, often prefaces them, as it were, to their own greatness. In the fifth act, Leon, after the repeated experience of Margarita's treachery, is perhaps too easily credulous of her reformation, the moment she promises it. Mr. Garrick has, with great judgment, in his alteration added a short argument between them, which strengthens the probability of Leon's conviction, as a ground of his faith.

Cacafogo very far surpasses the other buffo-character of these authors, Bessus, and approaches much nearer to the humour of Falstaff, without being so manifestly a copy of him. Cacafogo's avarice gives great variety to the character, whilst in him Falstaff's gluttony, lechery, and cowardice, are well preserved. His language is excellent; and the trick put upon him by Estifania, with the chain and trumpery of Perez, highly comic. Mr. Garrick altered the catastrophe of this comedy; with which alteration it now appears upon the stage. It is not easy to judge of stage effect, but upon the spot; yet there seems nothing reprehensible in the original form of it, but the unnecessarily sending of Leon abroad with his company, after the scheme, for which alone his commission was obtained, is at an end; which circumstance is also preserved by Mr. Garrick.

Bonduca is a tragedy, in which the character of Caratach is excellently drawn. Nor is it surprising that the authors should so well succeed in writing after the fine model Tacitus has left of him. Hengo is a very worthy eléve of the manly Caratach. The Druidsacrifice is an exhibition of solemn and striking effect. The daughters of Bonduca, in their threatened revenge against the Romans they have ensnared, shew a stern and masculine spirit, well suited to themselves, their cause, and their situation.

1

The Knight of the burning Pestle is a comedy of peculiar character; formed on Thomas Heywood's Four Prentices; which was intended to ridicule the prevailing fashion of romance-reading; and of which ridicule this play is meant as a continuation. Cervantes had published his Don Quixote in 1605; Thomas Heywood his play in 1612; and in 1613 was published this comedy, which is not without much humour; particularly in the relief of the prisoners from the barber-surgeon's, and the march of the knight's company through Whitechapel.

The Prophetess, a tragical history, seems a composition pecu liarly happy in itself, and was well adapted to an age in which the

intervention of spirits in all the common occurrences of life was fully believed, from the king to the peasant. Delphia is, like Medex, the sublime of magic. Her power, as it were, produces the story; and the poet has managed his machinery with such excellent art, that it is no where forgotten, and no where fails to forward the plot. The images are equal to any thing to be found on the subject.— The conclusion of the second act sets at work all the powers that sustain the fable, without giving room to guess at the effects of any of their operations. Delphia's magic law, that "the same affection Diocles shews to Drusilla, shall be shewn to him by Aurelia," is productive of great variety, in the progress of that part of the story; which is conducted very regularly to the end of the third act. But, like all things of great ostentation upon a false basis, which must fail somewhere, here the piece falls off, and the two last acts can scarcely be thought to have proceeded from the same pen which produced the former.

These four pieces seem as different as any that can be selected from the volumes of these authors; to the advantage of whom many others might be pointed out, if a reader could be supposed to be interested in partial sketches of plays, not thoroughly good. Among the beauties of Beaumont and Fletcher, however, must not be omitted the scenes with Ordella, in the fourth act of the tragedy of Thierry and Theodoret. One passage also, in the Humo rous Lieutenant, claims every attention. The chief characters of the play are Antigonus, Seleucus, Lysimachus, and Ptolemy, the successors of Alexander. The three last, in arms, and in opposition to Antigonus, are surrounded by his troops, and in imminent danger. Upon some night-alarm, that the enemy are advancing upon them, Seleucus, sword in hand, disdaining to yield, breaks forth to his associates :

Let no man fear to die: we love to sleep all ;
And death is but the sounder sleep. All ages,
And all hours call us ; 'tis so common, easy,
That little children tread those paths before us.
We are not sick, nor our souls press'd with sorrow;
Nor go we out, like tedious tales, forgotten :
High, high we go, and hearty to our funerals ;

And, as the sun that sets, in blood we'll fall.

Had Alexander, before he joined his last battle at Gaugamela, `spoken these words, the dignity of the personage and the occasion, suiting to the grandeur of the image in the last line, had perhaps rendered it one of the most sublime passages poetry can furnish.

THE PRESENT STATE OF

THE PORTUGUEZE STAGE.

FROM LINK'S TRAVELS.*

ONE of the principal amusements of the rich is the Italian opera, which is not supported by the court, but by private individuals. It was at that time in all respêts excellent, and the singers have rendered every other opera to me insipid. The best of these performers was added to it at the time, when the French occupied Rome, and turned out the Castrati from the great opera. Crescentini eclipsed all the rest; but I should only name him to those who knew Italy, which is the mother of music, before the late troubles. In Lisbon unmarried women are not allowed to perform at any theatre; and here, where their places are supplied by Castrati, little more is lost than an illusion of the imagination, which perhaps misleads the judgment. The opera was my principal amusement at Lisbon. The house is large and handsome, the disposition of its parts excellent, and the attention of the manager, that every one should be in his proper places, very exemplary. Sometimes also Portugueze operettas are performed, generally farces, as afterpieces, in which the Portugueze language has a pleasing effect in the Italian mouth of Zamparini.

Besides the opera-house called teatro de Carlos, there is a portugueze play-house called teatro do solitre, situated in a narrow little street behind the public promenade it is much less than the opera house, very narrow, and is but little visited by persons of condition. Under such circumstances little can be expected. Here also no women perform, their parts being filled by men who can scarcely conceal their beards. The players are frequently artisans. A shoemaker who had been at work all day performed among other comical old characters, and was not the worst of the actors. The pieces represented are generally translations from the Italian, less frequently from other languages, and still more rarely original. But I have never myself seen or heard announced, even on this stage, the Portugueze merry-andrew who is called gracioso. All the tragedies and serious plays are bad, or ill-performed, nor can any thing be more wretched than the principal lovers. The afterpieces are miserable farces, almost more so than the Spanish saynetes; but the tonadilla is not at all known. Among their greater pieces, however, some are not without merit; the nation in general have a strong inclination to wit and satire, and the language is particularly calculated for the expression of humour.

Translated from the German by J. Hinckley, Esq.

9-VOL. XV.

CURSORY REMARKS ON SHAKSPERE.

No. X.

THE following coincidences between Shakspere and Massinger are so striking as to be worthy of notice.

Oph. 'Tis in my memory lock'd,

And you yourself shall keep the key of it.

Hamlet.

Massinger has precisely the same figure in his Great Duke of

Florence.

Giovanni. Pray you believe, Sir,

What you deliver to me, shall be lock'd up

In a strong cabinet, of which you yourself
Shall keep the key.

SHAKSPERE.

Ros. Take you me for a spunge, my lord.

Hamlet. Ay, Sir; that soaks up the king's countenance, his re

wards, his authorities

it is but squeezing you, and,

spunge, you shall be dry again. Hamlet.

MASSINGER.

These spunges that suck up a kingdom's fat,
To be squeez'd out by the rough hand of war.

SHAKSPERE.

Duke of Milan.

I have a speech of fire, that fain would blaze,

But that this folly drowns it.

Massinger reverses the image:

my eyes

Would keep you company, as a forlorn lover,

But that the burning fire of my revenge

Dries up those drops of sorrow.

Bashful Lover.

In Macbeth there is a thought not much unlike this, though the metaphor is different.

Let's make us med'cines of our great revenge,

To cure this deadly grief.

I beg to retract my assertion that Johnson had not noticed the word "grizzled" in his dictionary. I find I was in error.

J. L.

ORIGINAL POETRY.

MR. EDITOR,

In wandering along the romantic Wye, one pleasant evening, enjoying those beautiful scenes which decorate the banks of that delightful river, I was awakened from my reverie by the sounds of an instrument most delicately modified by the voice of a lovely girl, who sang the following song, which, having finished, she rose from the trunk of an old tree,

GAY Summer now returns with gaudy vest,
With roseate hues, and sunny smiles array'd,
And the thick foliage, by the breeze imprest,
Crowds into masses, and embrowns the shade.