That my report is just, and full of truth. For when no friends are by, men praise themselves. The issue of an irreligious Moor, Chief architect and plotter of these woes; Damn'd as he is, to witness this is true. Now judge, what cause had Titus to revenge Or more than any living man could bear. Now you have heard the truth, what say you, Romans? Will, hand in hand, all headlong cast us down, Speak, Romans, speak; and, if you say, we shall, Emil. Come, come, thou reverend man of Rome, Lucius our emperor; for, well I know, The common voice do cry, it shall be so. Rom. [Several speak.] Lucius, all hail; Rome's royal emperor ! LUCIUS, &c. descend. Mar. Go, go into old Titus' sorrowful house And hither hale that misbelieving Moor, [To an Attendant. To be adjudg'd some direful slaughtering death, As punishment for his most wicked life. Rom. [Several speak.] Lucius, all hail; Rome's gracious governor! Luc. Thanks, gentle Romans; May I govern so, , take this warm kiss on thy pale cold lips, [Kisses TITUS. These sorrowful drops upon thy blood-stain'd face, Mar. Tear for tear, and loving kiss for kiss, Luc. Come hither, boy; come, come, and learn of us Meet, and agreeing with thine infancy; Friends should associate friends in grief and woe: Boy. O grandsire, grandsire! even with all my heart 1 Rom. You sad Andronici, have done with woes; Give sentence on this execrable wretch, That hath been breeder of these dire events. Luc. Set him breast-deep in earth, and famish him; There let him stand, and rave and cry for food: If any one relieves or pities him, For the offence he dies. This is our doom: Some stay, to see him fasten'd in the earth. Aar. O, why should wrath be mute, and fury dumb? I am no baby, I, that, with base prayers, I should repent the evils I have done; I do repent it from my very soul. Luc. Some loving friends convey the emperor hence, And give him burial in his father's grave: My father, and Lavinia, shall forthwith Be closed in our household's monument. As for that heinous tiger, Tamora, No funeral rite, nor man in mounful weeds, But throw her forth to beasts, and birds of prey: [Exeunt. 8 This is one of those plays which I have always thought with the better judges. ought not to be acknowledged in the list of Shakespeare's genuine pieces. And perhaps, I may give a proof to strengthen this opinion, that may put the matter out of question. Ben Jonson, in the Introduction to his Bartholomew-Fair, which made its first appearance in the year 1614, couples Jeronymo and Andronicus together in reputation, and speaks of them as plays then twenty-five or thirty years starling. Consequently Andronicus must have been on the stage before Shakespeare left Warwickshire to come and reside in London; and I never heard it so much as intimated, that he had turned his genius to stage-writing before he associated with the players, and became one of their body. However, that he afterwards introduced it anew on the stage, with the addition of his own masterly touches, is incontestible, and thence, I presume, grew his title to it. The diction in general, where he has not taken the pains to raise it, is even beneath that of the Three Parts of Henry VI. The story we are to suppose merely fictitious. Andronicus is a sur-name of pure Greek derivation. Tamora is neither mentioned by Ammianus Marcellinus, nor any body else that I can find. Nor had Rome, in the time of her emperors, any war with the Goths that I know of: not till after the translation of the empire, I mean to Byzantium. And yet the scene of our play is laid at Rome, and Saturninus is elected to the em pire at the Capitol. THEOBALD. All the editors and critics agree with Mr. Theobald in supposing this play spurious. I see no reason for differing from them; for the colour of the stile is wholly different from that of the other plays, and there is an attempt at regular versification, and artificial closes, not always inelegant, yet seldom pleasing. The barbarity of the spectacles, and the general massacre, which are here exhibited, can scarcely be conceived tolerable to any audience; yet we are told by Jonson, that they were not only borne but praised. That Shakespeare wrote any part, though Theobald declares, it incontestible, I see no reason for believing. The testimony, by which it is ascribed to Shakespeare, is by no means equal to the argument against its authenticity, arising from the total difference of conduct, language, and sentiments, by which it stands apart from all the rest. Meres had proba bly no other evidence than that of a title-page, which, though in our time it be sufficient, was then of no great authority; for all the plays which were rejected by the first collectors of Shakespeare's works, and admitted in later editions, and again rejected by the critical editors, had Shakespeare's name on the title, as we must sup pose, by the fraudulence of the printers, who, while there were yet no gazettes, not advertisements, nor any means of circulating literary intelligence, could usurp at pleasure any celebrated name. Nor had Shakespeare any interest in detecting the imposture, as none of his fame or profit was produced by the press. Ravenscroft, who in the reign of James II. revised this play, and restored it to the stage, tells us, in his preface, from a theatrical tradition, I suppose, which in his time might be of sufficient authority, that this play was touched in different parts by Shakespeare, but written by some other poet. I do not find Shakespeare's touches very discernible. JOHNSON. I agree with such of the commentators as think that Shakespeare had no hand in this abominable tragedy; and consider the correctness with which it is printed, as a kind of collateral proof that he had not. The genuine works of Shakespeare have been handed down to us in a more depraved state than those of any other contemporary writer; which was partly owing to the obscurity of his hand writing, which appears to have been scarcely legible, and partly to his total neglect of them when committed to the press. And it is not to be supposed, that he should have taken more pains about the publication of this horrid performance, than he did in that of his noblest productions. M. MASON. TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. OBSERVATIONS. TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.] BEFORE this play of Troilus and Cressida, printed in 1609, is a bookseller's preface, shewing that first impression to have been before the play had been acted, and that it was published without Shakespeare's knowledge, from a copy that had fallen into the bookseller's hands. Mr. Dryden thinks this one of the first of our author's plays: but, on the contrary, it is to be judged, from the forementioned preface, that it was one of his last; and the great number of observations, both moral and politic (with which this piece is crowded more than any other of his) seems to confirm my opinion. POPE. Shakespeare received the greatest part of his materials for the structure of this play from the Troye Boke of Lydgate. Lydgate was not much more than a translator of Guido of Columpna, who was of Messina in Sicily, and wrote his History of Troy in Latin, after Dic. tys Cretensis, and Dares Phrygius, in 1287. On these, as Mr. Warton observes, he engrafted many new romantic inventions, which the taste of his age dictated, and which the connexion between Grecian and Gothic fiction easily admitted; at the same time comprehending in his plan the Theban and Argonautic stories from Ovid, Statius, and Valerius Flaccus. It appears to have been translated by Raoul le Feure, at Cologne, into French, from whom Caxton rendered it into English in 1471. Chaucer had made the loves of Troilus and Cressida famous, which very probably might have been Shakespeare's inducement to try their fortune on the stage. STEEVENS. The Troye Boke was somewhat modernized, and reduced into regular stanzas, about the beginning of the last century, under the name of The Life and Death of Hector-who fought a Hundred mayne Battailes in open Field against the Grecians; wherein there were slain on both sides Fourteene Hundred and Sixe Thousand, Fourscore and Sixe Men. FARMER. This play is more correctly written than most of Shakespeare's compositions, but it is not one of those in which either the extent of his views or elevation of his fancy is fully displayed. As the story abounded with materials, he has exerted little invention; but he has diversified his characters with great variety, and preserved them with great exactness. His vicious characters sometimes disgust, but cannot corrupt, for both Cressida and Pandarus are detested and contemned. The comic characters seem to have been the favourites of the writer; they are of the superficial kind, and exhibit more of man. ners than nature; but they are copiously filled, and powerfully impressed. Shakespeare has in his story followed, for the greater part, the old book of Caxton, which was then very popular; but the character of Thersites, of which it makes no mention, is a proof that this play was written after Chapman had published his version of Homer JOHNSON. IN Troy, there lies the scene. From isles of Greece With wanton Paris sleeps; And that's the quarrel. And the deep-drawing barks do there disgorge Now expectation, tickling skittish spirits, Leaps o'er the vaunt and firstlings of those broils,* Like, or find fault; do as your pleasures are ; [1] I conceive this Prologue to have been written, and the dialogue, in more than one place, interpolated by some Kyd or Marlowe of the time; who may have been paid for altering and amending one of Shakespeare's plays; a very extraordinary instance of our author's negligence, and the managers' taste! RITSON. Orgulous, that is, proud, disdainful. Orgueilleux, Fr. STEEVENS. To fulfil, in this place, means to fill till there be no room for more. To be " fulfilled with grace and benediction" is still the language of our liturgy STEEVENS. BLACKSTONĚ. [4] To sperre, or spar, from the old Teutonic word speren, signifies to shut up, defend by bars, &c. THEOBALD. [5] I come here to speak the prologue, and come in armour; not defying the audi ence, in confidence of either the author's or actor's abilities, but merely in a charac ter suited to the subject, in a dress of war, before a warlike play. JOHNSON. [6] The vanguard. called, in our author's time, vaunt-guard. PERCY |