صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

lesse his Supplication, &c. 1592), seems to authorize the former opinion.

From a speech of the Nurse in this play, which contains these words-" It is now since the earthquake eleven years, &c." Mr. Tyrwhitt conjectures, that Romeo and Juliet, or at least part of it, was written in 1591; the novels from which Shakspere may be supposed to have drawn his story, not mentioning any such circumstance; while, on the other hand, there actually was an earthquake in England on the 6th of April 1580, which he might here have had in view *. -It is not without great distrust of my own opinion that I express my dissent from a gentleman, to whose judgment the highest respect is due; but, I own, this argument does not appear to me conclusive. It seems extremely improbable that Shakspere, when he was writing this tragedy, should have adverted, with such precision, to the date of an earthquake that had been felt in his youth; unless we suppose him to have entertained so strange and incongruous a thought, as to wish to persuade his audience, that the events which are the subject of his play happened at Verona in 1591, at the very moment that a dramatick representation of them was exhibiting in London: for if Romeo and Juliet was written in 1591, it probably was then also represented. The passage quoted strikes me, as only displaying one of those characteristical traits, which distinguish old people of the lower class; who delight

*See Romeo and Juliet, A& I, Sc. iii.
Eeiij

ia

in enumerating a multitude of minute circumstances that have no relation to the business immediately under their consideration*, and are particularly fond of computing time from extraordinary events, such as battles, comets, plagues, and earthquakes. This feature of their character our author has, in various places, strongly marked. Thus (to mention one of many instances) the Grave-digger in Hamlet says, that he came to his employment, "of all the days i' th' year, that day that the last king o'ercame Fortinbras— that very day that young Hamlet was born."-Shakspere probably remembered the earthquake in 1580, and thought he might introduce one, for the nonce, at Mantua. Why he has placed this earthquake at the distance of eleven years, it is not very easy to determine. However, it may be observed, that having supposed it to have happened on the day on which Juliet was weaned, he could not well have made it more distant than thirteen years; which, indeed, from the context, should seem to be the true reading. Supposing the author to have used figures, the mistake might easily have happened.-At present there is a manifest contradiction in the Nurse's account; for she expressly

*Thus Mrs. Quickly in K. Henry IV. reminds Falstaff, that, he swore, on a parcel-gilt goblet, to marry her, sitting in her Dolphin chamber, at a round table, by a seacoal fire, on Wednesday in Whitsun-week, when the prince broke his head for likening his father to a singing man of Windsor."

saysa

says, that Juliet was within a fortnight and odd days of completing her fourteenth year; and yet, according to the computation here made, she could not well be much more than twelve years old. Perhaps Shakspere was more careful to mark the garrulity, than the precision of the old woman ;- —or perhaps, he meant this very incorrectness as a trait of her character :— or, without having recourse to either of these suppositions, shall we say, that our author was here, as in some other places, hasty and inattentive? It is certain that there is nothing in which he is less accurate, than the computation of time. Of his negligence in this respect, As you Like It, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Measure for Measure, and Othello, furnish remarkable instances *.

10. COMEDY OF ERRORS, 1596.

In a tract, written by Thomas Decker, entitled, Newes from Hell brought by the Devil's Carrier, 1606, there seems to be an allusion to this comedy:

[ocr errors]

-his ignorance (arising from his blindness) is the only cause of this Comedie of Errors."

This play was neither entered on the Stationers' books, nor printed, till 1623, but is mentioned by

* See Merry Wives of Windsor, A& II. Sc. last.-Measure for Measure, A& I. Sc. iii. and iv.-As you Like It, A& IV. Sc. i. and iii.-Othello, A& III, Sc. iii. "I slept the next night well," &c.

Meres

Meres in 1598; and exhibits internal proofs of having been an early production. It could not, however, have been written before 1596; for the translation of the Menæchmi of Plautus, from which the plot was taken, was not published till 1595.

The alternate rhimes that are found in this play, as well as in Love's Labour Lost, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Romeo and Juliet, are a farther proof that these pieces were among our author's earliest dramatick productions. We are told by himself, that Venus and Adonis was his first composition. The Rape of Lucrece was probably the next. When he turned his thoughts to the stage, the measure that he had used in these poems naturally presented itself to him in his first dramatick essays.

11. HAMLET, 1596.

The tragedy of Hamlet was not registered in the books of the Stationers-Company till the 26th of July 1602, nor printed till 1604. The circumstance, and indeed the general air of the play itself, which has not, it must be owned, the appearance of an early composition, might induce us to class it five or six years later than 1596, were we not over-powered by the proof adduced by Dr. Farmer, and by other circumstances, from which it appears to have been acted in,

or

or before, that year *. The piece, however, which was then exhibited, was probably but a rude sketch of that which we now possess; for, from the title-page of the first edition, in 1604, we learn, that (like Romeo and Juliet, and the Merry Wives of Windsor) it had been enlarged to almost twice its original size.

The Case is altered, a comedy, attributed to Ben Jonson, and written before the end of the year 1599 †, contains a passage, which seems to me to have a reference to this play:

Angelo. "But first I'll play the ghost; I'll call him out §."

In the second act of Hamlet, a contest between the

"Dr. Lodge published, in the year 1596, a pamphlet called Wit's Miserie, or the World's Madness, discovering the incarnate Devils of the age, quarto. One of these devils is Hate-Virtue, or sorrow for another man's successe, who, says the doctor, is a foule lubber, and looks as pale as the vizard of the ghost, who cried so miserably at the theatre, Hamlet, revenge.” Farmer's Essay on the Learning of Shaksperė.

+ This comedy was not printed till 1609, but it had appeared many years before. The time when it was written is ascertained with great precision by the following cir cumstances, It contains an allusion to Mere's Wit's Treasury, first printed in the latter-end of the year 1598 (ante, p. 276.) and is itself mentioned by Nashe in his Lenten Stuff, 4to. 1599.-" It is right of the merry cobler's stuff, in that witty play of The Case is Altered."

§ Jonson's Works, vol. vii. p. 362. Whalley's edition.

children

« السابقةمتابعة »