According to this computation the Play comprises eight days represented on the 'stage, with intervals.' I am inclined to think that there are but seven days, and that Mr Daniel has not sufficiently extended the first day. Mr Daniel says in effect : 'DAY I. Act I, sc. i. Camillo and Archidamus meet and converse. 66 Act I, sc. ii. Polixenes yields to Hermione's request to prolong his visit. 'Leontes, smitten with jealousy, engages Camillo to poison Polixenes. Camillo reveals 'the plot to Polixenes, and together they fly from Sicilia that same night. 'DAY 2. Act II, sc. i. Leontes orders Hermione to be imprisoned pending the ' return of Cleomenes and Dion, whom he has dispatched to Delphos. I am not sure that a separate day should be given to this scene; but, on the 'whole, the proposed departure of Polixenes and Camillo on the night of the first day, and the mission since then, of Cleomenes and Dion to Delphos, make this 'division probable.' I believe the sequence of events to be rather as follows: While Leontes is unfolding his jealousy to Camillo, Polixenes and Hermione are walking in the garden; when they have finished their stroll, they separate; Hermione goes to her apartments, and Polixenes goes to his, but on the way meets, first, Leontes coming away from Camillo, and, next, Camillo himself, from whom he learns of the plot against his life. Camillo begs him to leave 'to-night,' supposing that some time would be consumed in getting the ships ready, but when Polixenes says that his ships are even then ready and had been so for two days, Camillo concludes by begging him to take the urgent hour,' that is, the hour that was even then pressing upon them. They accordingly fly at once with the utmost haste; one of the lords says afterward he never saw men scour 'so on their way, he eyed them even to their ships,' which he could not have done had it been in the dark night. In the meanwhile, Leontes, after parting from Camillo, and under the full sway of his fury, determines to have divine sanction for his procedure, and accordingly dispatches Cleomenes and Dion to Delphos; he then goes to Hermione's apartment, possibly to upbraid her and to tell her of his appeal to the God. On the threshold he is told of the flight of Polixenes, and Camillo's treachery is disclosed to him; then follows Hermione's imprisonment as an accomplice in high treason, and the day, on which the play opens, ends. Clearly the whole action thus far has consumed not more than four or five hours. It would be monstrous to suppose that after his maniacal outburst in his interview with Camillo, Leontes could have seen Hermione, or have talked with her in the old familiar way, or that he could have disguised that hatred which he could not refrain from displaying to Polixenes, although he had just promised Camillo that he would seem friendly to him. He afterward says that he could find no rest night or day,--and to suppose that on the first night of the out-break of his madness he could rest without seeking Hermione, and revealing to her his fury at her infidelity is to show little knowledge, I fear, of human nature. And yet this supposition must be made if we are to assume that Polixenes fled that night and that Leontes knew nothing of the flight till the next day, when he was about to visit Hermione's apartments. Mr Daniel himself doubts, as we have seen, his correctness in assigning two days to this much of the action. He was misled, I think, by Camillo's 'to-night,' and did not give sufficient weight to 'the urgent hour.' With the exception, then, of changing 'eight days' to seven, all the rest of his computation appears to be right. MUSIC THERE have been in this Play six Songs set to music : 'When daffodils begin to peer.'-IV, iii, 1. : 'But shall I go mourn for that, my dear.'-IV, iii, 17. Of these, the music of only two is of an earlier date than the middle of the last century. These two are: 'Jog-on, jog-on, the footpath way,' and 'Lawn, as white as 'driven snow.' For the names of the composers of the music for the remaining six, the student is referred to 'A List of All the Songs & Passages in Shakspere which have been set to Music,' published by the New Sh. Soc. London, 1884. Of the two just mentioned, the tune of 'Jog-on, jog-on,' etc. is the earlier; it is found, according to CHAPPELL (p. 211), in The Dancing Master, from 1650 to 1698, called Jog on, ' and also in Queen Elizabeth's Virginal Book under the name of Hanskin.' (Queen Elizabeth's Virginal Book has a misleading title. It is a manuscript in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, and Chappell says (p. xiv), ' can never have been the property of Queen Elizabeth. It is written throughout in one handwriting, and in that writing are dates 1603, 1605, and 1612.') Another name for the tune is Sir Francis Drake, or Eighty-eight. The words of the Song are in The Antidote against Melancholy, 1661; the first stanza is the same as that which Autolycus sings; the last is as follows:-' Cast care away, let sorrow cease, A fig for melancholy; Let's laugh and sing, or, if you please, 'We'll frolic with sweet Dolly.' Both KNIGHT and CHAPPELL give the musical notation, but the simplest arrangement appears to be that in Shakespeare and Music, by Edw. W. NAYLOR, London, 1896, p. 192, as follows: Jog on, jog on, the foot - path way, And mer - rily hent the stile mer - ry heart goes all the day, Your sad tires in The music for this is found The composer is John Wilthe fact that there is ground The second song is 'Lawn, as white as driven snow.' in WILSON'S Cheerfull Ayres or Ballads, Oxford, 1660. son himself, and although the date is somewhat late, yet for believing that John Wilson as a boy was the identical Jack Wilson' who, as Bal thazar, sang,Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,' etc. in Much Ado, brings us very near to Shakespeare. It is here reproduced by Levytype, as was Ariel's song in The Tempest (p. 352 of this ed.), and for the same reason: Gloves as sweet as Damaske Rofes, Maskes for Faces and for Noles, Bugle Braceletts Necklace Amber, Perfumes for a Ladyes Chamber, Golden Coyfer and ftomi [65] -chers for my Ladds, for :ll: To give their Deer's Pinns and Poting flicks 1661 Come buy of mee come, Come buy come buy, buy Ladds or else your 'Poting sticks' is not a misprint for 'poaking-sticks,' but for putting sticks, as these instruments were sometimes called.-ED. JORDAN'S BALLAD IN Collier's Second Edition, a ballad from the Royal Arbor of Loyal Poesie, 1664, is given in full. It was written by THOMAS JORDAN, and the main incidents of The Winter's Tale form the subject. It is as devoid of interest as of rhythm. Collier's feeble excuse for introducing it is: to show how much at that date the incidents of Shakespeare's drama had gone out of popular recollection.' At the conclusion of the Ballad, whereof the scene is laid in Padua and Parma, Collier thinks that it de'serves remark' that 'in Jordan's time the error of making Bohemia a sea-coast country ⚫ had become so apparent, that he [Jordan] felt it necessary, even when addressing him'self to the population of the thoroughfares of London, to make [a change in locality]. 'The close relationship established by James I. between England and Bohemia had 'called general attention to the geographical situation of the latter. In our own day, 'it has been thought necessary to restore what some may consider "dramatic pro""priety," and at the same time to smother the poetry and pathos of Shakespeare ' in the trumpery of tinsel and the daubery of scene-painting. It is the greatest 'literary blessing that could have been conferred on our nation, that Shakespeare wrote at a period when the mechanical deficiencies of his art in a manner com'pelled him to gratify the ears rather than glut the eyes of his contemporaries. It cannot be too often stated, that from the period of the introduction of scenery 'we date the decline of English dramatic poetry.' ACTORS BOADEN (Life of Kemble, ii, 314): It was on the 24th of this month [March, 1802] that Mr Kemble presented his revival of The Winter's Tale, in all the splendor of decoration and power of acting, that he could impress upon it. In Paulina's chapel Mrs Siddons stood as one of the noblest statues that even Grecian taste ever invented. The figure composed something like one of the Muses, in profile. The drapery was ample in its folds, and seemingly stony in its texture. Upon the magical words, pronounced by Paulina: Music; awake her! strike!' the sudden action of the head absolutely startled, as though such a miracle really vivified the marble; and the descent from the pedestal was equally graceful and affecting. In Leontes Mr Kemble was everything that either taste or feeling could require; and the affection of Paulina never had a representative equal to Mrs Powell. The Perdita was a very delicate and pretty young lady of the name of Hickes, thus much I remember of her; but whether she had more or fewer of the requisites than other candidates for this lovely character, I am now unable to decide. I incline to think that this part is one of the few upon the stage that never was adequately performed. It is so difficult, at the proper age of the debutante, to find a simplicity, almost rustic, combining with the princely impulses that urge their way either to brave disaster, or partake the kindling wonders of unexpected restoration. Our stage princesses are so seldom personally at their ease, and are too sensible of an audience, to be much like the royal virgin. Our Perdita seems, in spite of the Fifth Act of the play, condemned never to be found. Perhaps no revival ever drew greater crowds than this did. CAMPBELL (Life of Mrs Siddons, ii, 264): On the 25th of March, 1802, Mrs Siddons for the first time performed Hermione. . . . She must have long foreseen the transcendant charm which her performance would bestow on [this part]; yet there was a policy in reserving it for the years of her professional appearance when her form was becoming too matronly for the personation of juvenile heroines. At the same time, she still had beauty enough left to make her so perfect in the statue-scene, that assuredly there was never such a representative of Hermione. Mrs Yates had a sculpturesque beauty that suited the statue, I have been told, as long as it stood still; but, when she had to speak, the charm was broken, and the spectators wished her back to her pedestal. But Mrs Siddons looked the statue, even to literal illusion; and, whilst the drapery hid her lower limbs, it showed a beauty of head, neck, shoulders, and arms, that Praxiteles might have studied. This statue-scene has hardly its parallel for enchantment even in Shakespeare's theatre. The star of his genius was at its zenith when he composed it; but it was only a Siddons that could do justice to its romantic perfection. The heart of every one who saw her when she burst from the semblance of sculpture into motion, and embraced her daughter, Perdita, must throb and glow at the recollection. It so happened, however, that our great actress, whilst performing a part, in which she will never have her equal, very narrowly escaped from a death more than fancifully tragic. I have heard her say, that she could never think of The Winter's Tale without a palpitation of her heart, from the recollection of the incident to which she alludes in the following letter: The other night had very nearly terminated all my 'exertions; for, whilst I was standing for the statue in The Winter's Tale, my drapery flew over the lamps which were placed behind the pedestal; it caught fire, 'and, had it not been for one of the scene-men, who most humanely crept on his knees ' and extinguished it, without my knowing anything of the matter, I might have been 'burnt to death, or, at all events, I should have been frightened out of my senses. 'Surrounded as I was with muslin, the flame would have run like wildfire. The 'bottom of the train was entirely burned. But for the man's promptitude, it would seem as if my fate would have been inevitable. I have well rewarded the good man, and I regard my deliverance as a most gracious interposition of Providence.' ་ |