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I. 1. TROILUS.

Pour'st in the open ulcer of my heart,

A friend who is a very critical reader of Shakespeare, Mr. Barry of Draycote, proposes to transfer this line from the place in which it now stands to another; a suggestion well deserving attention. The passage will then stand thus:

I tell thee, I am mad

In Cressid's love: thou answerest, "She is fair; "
Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice,
Handlest in thy discourse :- -"O, that her hand,

"In whose comparison all whites are ink

"Writing their own reproach; to whose soft seizure
"The cygnet's down is harsh, and spirit of sense

"Hard as the palm of ploughman !"-This, thou tell'st me,
(As true thou tell'st me) when I say—“ I love her.”

But, saying thus, instead of oil and balm

Pour'd in the open ulcer of my heart,

Thou lay'st in every gash that love hath giv'n me

The knife that made it.

I. 3. ULYSSES.

Degree being vizarded,

The unworthiest shews as fairly in the masque, &c.

This long and celebrated speech of Ulysses contains nearly the same view of the subject with that taken by Sir Thomas Elyot, in the two first chapters of his Governor. Sir Thomas Elyot was a sensible, judicious, and learned man; yet how much inferior is his argument to that of Shakespeare, in the arrangement and number of the topics, and in the force with which they are made to bear.

III. 3. ULYSSES.

There is a mystery (with whom Relation
Durst never meddle) in the soul of state;

Which hath an operation more divine

Than breath or pen can give expression to:

All the commerce which you have had with Troy,

As perfectly is ours, as yours, my lord.

Of the perfect intelligence obtained by the counsellors of

Queen Elizabeth, the public had some extraordinary proofs in the arrest of traitors at a time when they thought themselves most secure. Such men as Walsingham delighted to throw over their proceedings an air of mystery, to amaze men's minds by an appearance of almost divine intuition. Shakespeare wrote with the impression of this on his mind. There are few passages in his writings of higher power than this scene. We have the Grecian chiefs individualized before us, and we hear from them sentiments such as it might befit them to have uttered, especially from the Toλúμnris Ulysses.

CORIOLANUS.

As some arrangement must be adopted, I have followed that of the folios. Yet, it would seem as if Coriolanus should be placed next after Julius Cæsar and Anthony and Cleopatra, as having probably been written after them, but about the same time; or next before them, as belonging like them to Roman story, but to a period of time antecedent to the æra of the Cæsars. The Roman Plays are remarkably destitute of notes of time, internal or external. They were probably produced in 1607, 1608, or 1609. See introductory remarks on Julius Cæsar.

I. 1. MENENIUS.

I shall tell you

A pretty tale; it may be you have heard it;

But since it serves my purpose, I will venture
TO SCALE 't a little more.

There is no doubt that "scale" has been used to denote the spreading abroad, dispersing; but then the sense does not suit the passage, while the sense of stale suits it admirably. Stale is also a word of which Shakespeare is fond, while no other instance can be produced of his having used the rare word scale. All persons conversant with the written character of any age, know that there are letters which are easily confounded, the forms of the literal elements having been as little the subject of reflection and science as the sounds of which they are the representatives. This correction of the text has not escaped other commentators; indeed it is more than sufficiently obvious.

II. 3. CORIOLANUS.

What custom wills, in all things should we do it
The dust on antique time would lie unswept,

And mountainous error be too highly heap'd

For truth to over-peer.

We can never sufficiently appreciate the depth of the wisdom in this wonderful man. He seems to be acquainted with every political or moral maxim, and to know what is to be said in favour of it or against it. His views are also often presented, as in this instance, with inimitable felicity, so simply, so easily, so gracefully, the metaphor so beautifully kept up to the end, and the meaning so clearly and vividly brought out. There is more of his political wisdom in this play, in Timon, and in Troilus and Cressida, than in any other of the plays. They are, indeed, studies for the politicians of every age. It is beside the purpose of this work to enter into any particular exhibition of the sentiments, not even as they illustrate the mind and opinions of the Poet, or to examine the justness of them; but on the passage here quoted I would observe, that beside the custom of which he speaks, there is another custom antagonist to it and perpetually at war with it, the custom of each current generation,

Which thinks its fathers fools,

so that there is little danger of any injurious accumulation of error from a too obstinate adherence to the customs of our ancestors. In all the arguments on this, which is, in fact, the great question of the present age, a sufficient distinction is not made between improvements which are demonstrably such, and changes which are only specious and presumed to be improvements.

ROMEO AND JULIET.

VERY little consideration can have been bestowed on the order in which it was most proper that the dramatic writings of Shakespeare should be arranged in any collected edition of them when his fellows Heminge and Condell prepared their edition. Having distributed them as Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies, there they appear to have thought that their duty ended; and even that distribution can hardly be called logical, since there is no more reason for placing Julius Caesar, or Coriolanus, or Anthony and Cleopatra under tragedies rather than histories, than there would be for so placing King John or King Henry the Eighth. But, if there had been any well-considered principle on which they proceeded in the minuter points of the arrangement, we should not, after reading Coriolanus, which is indisputably one of the later works, be carried back to Titus Andronicus and Romeo and Juliet, which are as indisputably early works; and then farther on in the volume have met with other plays on Roman story which were evidently written at nearly the same time with Coriolanus.

Titus Andronicus I have left out as a doubtful play, and as having nothing to add to what has been already said respecting it, either as a whole or on particular passages in it. It has all the usual external evidence of being his. Meres names it as one of his tragedies in 1598.

Meres also names Romeo and Juliet, and, as there is an edition with the date 1597 in the title page, we cannot err in placing the preparation of this play several years before the death of Queen Elizabeth, though in what particular year

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