CRITICAL OPINIONS

ON

AS YOU LIKE IT.

"lr would be difficult to bring the contents within the compass of an ordinary narrative; nothing takes place, or rather what is done is not so essential as what is said; even what may be called the dénouement is brought about pretty arbitrarily. Whoever can perceive nothing but what can, as it were, be counted on the fingers, will hardly be disposed to allow that it has any plan at all. Banishment and flight have assembled together, in the forest of Arden, a strange band: a Duke dethroned by his brother, who, with the faithful companions of his misfortune, lives in the wilds on the produce of the chase; two disguised Princesses, who love each other with a sisterly affection; a witty court fool; lastly, the native inhabitants of the forest, ideal and natural shepherds and shepherdesses. These lightly-sketched figures form a motley and diversified train; we see always the shady dark-green landscape in the background, and breathe in imagination the fresh air of the forest. The hours are here measured by no clocks, no regulated recurrence of duty or of toil: they flow on unnumbered by voluntary occupation or fanciful idleness, to which, according to his humour or disposition, every one yields himself, and this unrestrained freedom compensates them all for the lost conveniences of life. One throws himself down in solitary meditation under a tree, and indulges in melancholy reflections on the changes of fortune, the falsehood of the world, and the self-inflicted torments of social life; others make the woods resound with social and festive songs, to the accompaniment of their hunting-horns. Selfishness, envy, and ambition, have been left behind in the city; of all the human passions, love alone has found an entrance into this wilderness, where it dictates the same language alike to the simple shepherd and the chivalrous youth, who hangs his love-ditty to a tree. A prudish shepherdess falls at first sight in love with Rosalind, disguised in men's apparel; the latter sharply reproaches her with her severity to her poor lover, and the pain of refusal, which she feels from experience in her own case, disposes her at length to compassion and requital. The fool carries his philosophical contempt of external show, and his raillery of the illusion of love so far, that he purposely seeks out the ugliest and simplest country wench for a mistress. Throughout the whole picture, it seems to be the poet's design to show that to call forth the poetry which has its indwelling in nature and the human mind, nothing is wanted but to throw off all artificial constraint, and restore both to mind and nature their original liberty. In the very progress of the piece, the dreamy carelessness of such an existence is sensibly expressed: it is even alluded to by Shakspeare in the title. Whoever affects to be displeased, if in this romantic forest the ceremonial of dramatic art is not duly observed, ought in justice to be delivered over to the wise fool, to be led gently out of it to some prosaical region."-SCHLEGEL.

"Though this play, with the exception of the disguise and self-discovery of Rosalind, may be said to be destitute of plot, it is yet one of the most delightful of the dramas of Shakspeare. There is something inexpressibly wild and interesting both in the characters and in the scenery; the former disclosing the moral discipline and the sweets of adversity, the purest emotions of love and friendship. of gratitude and fidelity, the melancholy of genius, and the exhilaration of innocent mirth, as opposed to the desolating effects of malice, envy, and ambition; and the latter unfolding, with the richest glow of fancy, landscapes to which, as objects of imitation, the united talents of Ruysdale, Claude, and Salvator Rosa could alone do justice.

"From the forest of Arden, from that wild wood of oaks,

-" whose boughs were moss'd with age,

And high tops bald with dry antiquity,"

from the bosom of sequestered glens and pathless solitudes, has the poet called forth lessons of the most touching and consolatory wisdom. Airs from paradise seem to fan with refreshing gales, with a soothing consonance of sound, the interminable depth of foliage, and to breathe into the hearts of those who have sought its shelter from the world, an oblivion of their sorrows and their cares. The banished Duke, the much-injured Orlando, and the melancholy Jaques, lose in meditation on the scenes which surround them, or in sportive freedom, or in grateful occupation, all corrosive sense of past affliction. Love seems the only passion which has penetrated this romantic seclusion, and the sigh of philosophic pity, or of wounded sensibility, (the legacy of a deserted world,) the only relique of the storm which is passed and gone.

"Nothing, in fact, can blend more harmoniously with the romantic glades and magic windings of Arden, than the society which Shakspeare has placed beneath its shades. The effect of such scenery, on the lover of nature, is to take full possession of the soul, to absorb its very faculties, and, through the charmed imagination, to convert the workings of the mind into the sweetest sensations of the heart, into the joy of grief, into a thankful endurance of adversity, into the interchange of the tenderest affections and find we not here, in the person of the Duke, the noblest philosophy of resignation; in Jaques, the humorous sadness of an amiable misanthropy; in Orlando, the mild dejection of self-accusing humility; in Rosalind and Celia, the purity of sisterly affection; whilst love in all its innocence and gaiety binds in delicious fetters, not only the younger exiles, but the pastoral natives of the forest? A day thus spent, in all the careless freedom of unsophisticated nature, seems worth an eternity of common-place existence !"-DRAKE.

PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE.

THIS play is not found in the folio of 1623. The first edition of it known is the quarto, published in 1609, under the title of "The late and much admired Play, called Pericles, Prince of Tyre. With the true relation of the whole Historie, adventures, and fortunes of the said Prince: As also the no lesse strange and worthy accidents in the Birth and Life, of his Daughter Mariana. As it hath been divers and sundry times acted by his Maiesties Servants, at the Globe on the Banck-side. By William Shakespeare. Imprinted at London for Henry Gosson, and are to be sold at the signe of the Sunne, in Pater-noster row, &c. 1609." This was followed by other quarto editions, respectively dated 1611, 1619, 1630, 1635, 1639, and it was afterwards inserted in the folio of 1664, and in that of 1685. Although there is no evidence that Pericles was printed earlier than 1609, or, beyond the slight memorandum in an inventory of Alleyn's theatrical wardrobe, of "spangled hoes" for Pericles, that it was acted before 1607 or 1608, we believe that, in an imperfect form, this piece was the work of an older play-wright than Shakespeare, and, being founded upon a story which for ages had retained extensive popularity, that it was placed in the latter's hands very early in his dramatic career for adaptation to the Blackfriars' stage. This impression is derived partly from the style, the general structure of the verse, and the want of individualization in the characters, and partly from the nature of the fable: the revolting story of Antiochus and his daughter being one which it is not easy to believe Shakespeare would ever have chosen as a subject for representation. Moreover, we conclude, from the conflicting testimony as to its success, that Pericles, on the first occasion of its re-production, was not prosperous; but that, having been re-modelled, and in part re-written by Shakespeare, especially in the fifth Act, it was again revived in 1607 or 1608, and then met with unusual favour. One proof of its popularity at this period was the publication of a prose-tract, written by George Wilkins, entitled "The Painfull Adventures of Pericles Prince of Tyre. Being The true History of the Play of Pericles as it was lately presented by the worthy and ancient Poet John Gower. 1608,"—a story (lately reprinted with most laudable accuracy

* See Collier's Memoirs of Alleyn, p. 21.