his helmet; and Tucca says to Sir Quintilian, in Decker's Satiromastix: '- Thou shalt wear her glove in thy worshipful hat, like to a leather brooch:' and Pandora, in Lyly's Woman in the Moon,' 1597 : - he that first presents me with his head, Shall wear my glove in favour for the deed.' Portia, in her assumed character, asks Bassanio for his gloves, which she says she will wear for his sake: and King Henry V. gives the pretended glove of Alençon to Fluellen, which afterwards occasions his quarrel with the English soldier." There is an interesting illustration of this practice of gallantry in the life of George Clifford, third Earl of Cumberland, which has been commemorated in the fine portrait of him in the Bodleian Picture Gallery. At an audience with Elizabeth on the return of the earl from one of his voyages, she dropped her glove, which he took up and presented to her on his knee. The queen then desired him to keep it for her sake; and he adorned it richly with diamonds, and wore it ever after in the front of his hat at public ceremonies. (3) SCENE IV.— The prince of darkness is a gentleman; If the subjoined extracts from Harsnet's "Declaration " do not prove indisputably that Shakespeare was indebted to that popular book for the titles of Tom o' Bedlam's infernal spirits, we may infer that these fantastic names were quite familiar to an auditory of his time. "Now that I have acquainted you with the names of the Maister, and his twelve disciples, the names of the places wherein, and the names of the persons upon whom these wonders were shewed: it seemes not incongruent that I relate unto you the names of the devils whom in this glorious pageant they did dispossesse. ** "First then, to marshall them in as good order, as such disorderly cattell will be brought into, you are to understand, that there were in our possessed 5 Captaines, or Commaunders above the rest: Captaine Pippin, Marwoods devil, Captaine Philpot, Trayfords devil, Captaine Maho, Saras devil, Captaine Modu, Maynies devill, and Captaine Soforce, Anne Smiths devil. These were not all of equall authoritie, and place, but some had more, some fewer under theyr commaund. * * "The names of the punie spirits cast out of Trayford were these, Hilco, Smolkin, Hillio, Hiaclito, and Lustie huffe-cap: this last seemes some swaggering punie devill, dropt out of a Tinkers budget. * * Modo, Master Maynies devill, was a graund Commaunder, Muster-maister over the Captaines of the seaven deadly sinnes: Cliton, Bernon, Hilo, Motubizanto, and the rest, himselfe a Generall of a kind and curteous disposition: so saith Sara Williams, touching this devils acquaintance with Mistres Plater, and her sister Fid. "Sara Williams had in her at a bare word, all the devils in hell. The Exorcist askes Maho, Saras devil, what company he had with him, and the devil makes no bones, but tels him in flat termes, all the devils in hell. * * "And if I misse not my markes, this Dictator Modu saith, hee had beene in Sara by the space of two yeeres, then so long hell was cleere, and had not a devill to cast at a mad dogge. And sooth I cannot much blame the devils for staying so long abroade, they had taken up an Inne, much sweeter then hell: and an hostesse that wanted neither wit, nor mirth, to give them kind welcome. "Heere, if you please, you may take a survay of the whole regiment of hell: at least the chiefe Leaders, and officers, as we finde them enrolled by theyr names. First Killico, Hob, and a third anonymos, are booked doune for three graund Commaunders, every one having under him 300 attendants. * "Frateretto, Fliberdigibbet, Hoberdidance, Tocobatto were foure devils of the round, or Morrice, whom Sara in her fits, tuned together, in measure and sweet cadence. And least you should conceive, that the devils had no musicke in hell, especially that they would go a maying without their musicke, the Fidler comes in with his Taber and Pipe, and a whole Morice after him, with motly visards for theyr better grace. These foure had forty assistants under them, as themselves doe confesse. ** "Maho was generall Dictator of hell; and yet for good manners sake, hee was contented of his good nature to make shew, that himselfe was under the check of Modu, the graund devil in Master Maynie. These were all in poore Sara at a chop, with these the poor soule travailed up and doune full two yeeres together; so as during these two yeeres, it had beene all one to say, one is gone to hell, or hee is gone to Sara Williams: for shee poore wench had all hell in her belly."-Chap. X. pp. 45-50. (4) SCENE IV.— Fie, foh, and fum, I smell the blood of a British man.] A quotation, as Mr. Jameson has shown, in his "Illustrations of Northern Antiquities," p. 397, from an old romance, familiarly known in Shakespeare's day in this country, and still partly preserved in Scotland. The words are those uttered by Rosman, king of Elfland, when Child Rowland, in search of his sister, "Burd Ellen," had penetrated to the tower in which she was confined by the fairy emissaries of the Elfland monarch.-fi, fi, fo, and fum! 46 I smell the blood of a Christian man! ACT IV. (1) SCENE VI.-That fellow handles his bow like a crowkeeper.] The office of "crow-keeper" was to fright the crows from the corn and fruit; for this purpose a poor rustic, who, though armed with bow and arrows, was not supposed to have much skill in archery, was sometimes employed, and at others his place was supplied by a stuffed figure, resembling a man, and armed in the same way. Ascham, in his Toxophilus," when speaking of a lubberly shooter, has a similar comparison to that in the text:-"Another coureth downe and layeth out his buttockes, as thoughe hee should shoote at crowes." (2) SCENE VI.-Draw me a clothier's yard.] That is, an arrow a clothier's yard in length. The ancient "longbow" was about six feet in length, and the shaft over three. So, in the old ballad of "Chevy-Chace :" "An archar off Northomberlonde An arow, that a cloth yarde was lang, To th' hard stele halyde he; A dynt, that was both sad and soar, He sat on Sir Hewe the Mongon-byrry. The dynt yt was both sad and soar, Again, in Drayton's "Polyolbion," song xxvi. :— "All made of Spanish yew, their bows were wondrous strong; They not an arrow drew, but was a cloth-yard long." CRITICAL OPINIONS ON KING LEAR. "OF all Shakspeare's plays, 'Macbeth' is the most rapid, 'Hamlet' the slowest in movement. 'Lear' combines length with rapidity,-like the hurricane and the whirlpool, absorbing while it advances. It begins as a stormy day in summer, with brightness; but that brightness is lurid, and anticipates the tempest. "It was not without forethought, nor is it without its due significance, that the division of Lear's kingdom is, in the first six lines of the play, stated as a thing already determined in all its particulars, previously to the trial of professions, as the relative rewards of which the daughters were to be made to consider their several portions. The strange, yet by no means unnatural mixture of selfishness, sensibility, and habit of feeling, derived from and fostered by the particular rank and usages of the individual;—the intense desire of being intensely beloved,-selfish, and yet characteristic of the selfishness of a loving and kindly nature alone;-the self-supportless leaning for all pleasure on another's breast ;--the craving after sympathy with a prodigal disinterestedness, frustrated by its own ostentation, and the mode and nature of its claims;-the anxiety, the distrust, the jealousy, which more or less accompany all selfish affections, and are amongst the surest contradistinctions of mere fondness from true love, and which originate Lear's eager wish to enjoy his daughters' violent professions, whilst the inveterate habits of sovereignty convert the wish into claim and positive right, and an incompliance with it into crime and treason;-these facts, these passions, these moral verities, on which the whole tragedy is founded, are all prepared for, and will to the retrospect be found implied, in these first four or five lines of the play. They let us know that the trial is but a trick; and that the grossness of the old king's rage is in part the natural result of a silly trick, suddenly and most unexpectedly baffled and disappointed. "Having thus, in the fewest words, and in a natural reply to as natural a question, which yet answers the secondary purpose of attracting our attention to the difference or diversity between the characters of Cornwall and Albany, provided the premises and data, as it were, for our after-insight into the mind and mood of the person whose character, passions, and sufferings are the main subjectmatter of the play ;-from Lear, the persona patiens of his drama, Shakspeare passes without delay to the second in importance, the chief agent and prime mover, and introduces Edmund to our acquaintance, preparing us with the same felicity of judgment, and in the same easy and natural way, for his character in the seemingly casual communication of its origin and occasion. From the first drawing up of the curtain Edmund has stood before us in the united strength and beauty of earliest manhood. Our eyes have been questioning him. Gifted as he is with high advantages of person, and further endowed by nature with a powerful intellect and a strong energetic will, even without any concurrence of circumstances and accident, pride will necessarily be the sin that most easily besets him. But Edmund is also the known and acknowledged son of the princely Gloster: he, therefore, has both the germ of pride, and the conditions best fitted to evolve and ripen it into a predominant feeling. Yet, hitherto, no reason appears why it should be other than the not unusual pride of person, talent, and birth,—a pride auxiliary, if not akin to many virtues, and the natural ally of honourable impulses. But, alas! in his own presence his own father takes shame to himself for the frank avowal that he is his father he has 'blushed so often to acknowledge him, that he is now brazed to it.' Edmund hears the circumstances of his birth spoken of with a most degrading and licentious levity. * *This, and the con ; sciousness of its notoriety,—the gnawing conviction that every show of respect is an effort of courtesy, which recalls, while it represses, a contrary feeling -this is the ever-trickling flow of wormwood and gall into the wounds of pride,—the corrosive virus which inoculates pride with a venom not its own,—with envy, hatred, and a lust for that power which, in its blaze of radiance, would hide the dark spots on his disc,-with pangs of shame personally undeserved, and therefore felt as wrongs, and with a blind ferment of vindictive working towards the occasions and causes, especially towards a brother, whose stainless birth and lawful honours were the constant remembrancers of his own debasement, and were ever in the way to prevent all chance of its being unknown, or overlooked and forgotten. "Kent is, perhaps, the nearest to perfect goodness in all Shakspeare's characters, and yet the most individualized. There is an extraordinary charm in his bluntness, which is that only of a nobleman arising from a contempt of overstrained courtesy; and combined with easy placability where goodness of heart is apparent. His passionate affection for, and fidelity to Lear, act on our feelings in Lear's own favour virtue itself seems to be in company with him. "The Steward should be placed in exact, antithesis to Kent, as the only character of utter irredeemable baseness in Shakspeare. Even in this the judgment and invention of the poet are very observable; for what else could the willing tool of a Goneril be? Not a vice but this of baseness was left open to him. "The Fool is no comic buffoon to make the groundlings laugh,-no forced condescension of Shakspeare's genius to the taste of his audience. Accordingly the poet prepares for his introduction, which he never does with any of his common clowns and fools, by bringing him into living connection with the pathos of the play. He is as wonderful a creation as Caliban ;-his wild babblings, and inspired idiocy, articulate and guage the horrors of the scene. "The monster Goneril prepares what is necessary, while the character of Albany renders a still more maddening grievance possible, namely, Regan and Cornwall in perfect sympathy of monstrosity. Not a sentiment, not an image, which can give pleasure on its own account, is admitted; whenever these creatures are introduced, and they are brought forward as little as possible, pure horror reigns throughout. "Edgar's assumed madness serves the great purpose of taking off part of the shock which would otherwise be caused by the true madness of Lear, and further displays the profound difference between the two. In every attempt at representing madness throughout the whole range of dramatic literature, with the single exception of Lear, it is mere light-headedness, as especially in Otway. In Edgar's ravings, Shakspeare all the while lets you see a fixed purpose, a practical end in view; in Lear's, there is only the brooding of the one anguish, an eddy without progression."-COLERIDGE. |