the Merchant to have escaped from the power of the obdurate man, so strong in the letter of the law, and so resolute to carry it out by the example of his judges in other matters, had not the law been found here, as in most other cases, capable of being bent to the will of its administrators. Had it been the inflexible thing which Shylock required it to be, a greater injustice would have been committed than the Jew had finally himself to suffer. Mrs. Jameson has very justly and ingeniously described the struggle which Portia had to sustain in abandoning the high ground which she took in her great address to the Jew ;-" She maintains at first a calm self-command, as one sure of carrying her point in the end: yet the painful heartthrilling uncertainty in which she keeps the whole court, until suspense verges upon agony, is not contrived for effect merely; it is necessary and inevitable. She has two objects in view to deliver her husband's friend, and to maintain her husband's honour by the discharge of his just debt, though paid out of her own wealth ten times over. It is evident that she would rather owe the safety of Antonio to anything rather than the legal quibble with which her cousin Bellario has armed her, and which she reserves as a last resource. Thus all the speeches addressed to Shylock, in the first instance, are either direct or indirect experiments on his temper and feelings. She must be understood, from the beginning to the end, as examining with intense anxiety the effect of her own words on his mind and countenance; as watching for that relenting spirit which she hopes to awaken either by reason or persuasion.”* Had Shylock relented after that most beautiful appeal to his mercy, which Shakspere has here placed as the exponent of the higher principle upon which all law and right are essentially dependent, the real moral of the drama would have been destroyed. The weight of injuries transmitted to Shylock from his forefathers, and still heaped upon him even by the best of those by whom he was surrounded, was not so easily to become light, and to cease to exasperate his nature. Nor would it have * 'Characteristics of Women, vol. i. p. 75. been a true picture of society in the sixteenth century had the poet shown the judges of the Jew wholly magnanimous in granting him the mercy which he denied to the Christian. We certainly do not agree with the Duke, in his address to Shylock, that the conditions upon which his life is spared are imposed— "That thou shalt see the difference of our spirit." Nor do we think that Shakspere meant to hold up these conditions as anything better than examples of the mode in which the strong are accustomed to deal with the weak. There is still something discordant in this, the real catastrophe of the drama. It could not be otherwise, and yet be true to nature. But how artistically has the poet restored the balance of pleasureable sensations! Throughout the whole conduct of the play, what may be called its tragic portion has been relieved by the romance which belongs to the personal fate of Portia. But, after the great business of the drama is wound up, we fall back upon a repose which is truly refreshing and harmonious. From the lips of Lorenzo and Jessica, as they sit in the "paler day" of an Italian moon, are breathed the lighter strains of the most playful poetry, mingled with the highest flights of the most elevated. Music and the odours of sweet flowers are around them. Happiness is in their hearts. Their thoughts are lifted by the beauties of the earth above the earth. This delicious scene belongs to what is universal and eternal, and takes us far away from those bitter strifes of our social state which are essentially narrow and temporary. And then come the affectionate welcomes, the pretty, pouting contests, and the happy explanations of Portia and Nerissa with Bassanio and Gratiano. Here again we are removed into a sphere where the calamities of fortune, and the injustice of man warring against man, may be forgotten. The poor Merchant is once more happy. The “gentle spirit" of Portia is perhaps the happiest, for she has triumphantly concluded a work as religious as her pretended pilgrimage “by holy crosses." To use the words of Dr. Ulrici, "the sharp contrarieties of right and unright are played out." CHAPTER V. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 'MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING' was first printed in 1600. It had been entered at Stationers' Hall on the 23rd of August of the same year. The first edition is not divided into acts; but in the folio of 1623 we find this division. There was no other separate edition. The variations between the text of the quarto and that of the folio are very few. There is a remarkable peculiarity, however, in the text of the folio, which indicates very clearly that it was printed from the playhouse copy. In the second act (Scene 3) we find this stagedirection :-"Enter Prince, Leonato, Claudio, and Jack Wilson." In the third act, when the two inimitable guardians of the night first descend upon the solid earth in Messina, to move mortals for ever after with unextinguishable laughter, they speak to us in their well-known names of Dogberry and Verges; but in the fourth act we find the names of mere human actors prefixed to what they say: Dogberry becomes Kempe, and Verges Cowley. Here, then, we have a piece of the prompter's book before us. Balthazar, with his "Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more," is identified with Jack Wilson; and Kempe and Cowley have come down to posterity in honourable association with the two illustrious "compartners of the watch." We could almost believe that the play-editors of the folio in 1623 purposely left these anomalous entries as an historical tribute to the memory of their fellows. Kempe, we know, had been dead some years before the publication of the folio; and probably Cowley and Jack Wilson had also gone where the voice of their merriment and their minstrelsy was heard no more. The chronology of this comedy is sufficiently fixed by the circumstance of its publication in 1600, coupled with the fact that it is not mentioned by Meres in 1598. "The story is taken from Ariosto," says Pope. To Ariosto then we turn; and we are repaid for our labour by the pleasure of reading that long but by no means tedious story of Genevra, which occupies the whole of the fifth book, and part of the sixth, of the Orlando Furioso.' "The tale is a pretty comical matter," as Harrington quaintly pronounces it. The famous town of St. Andrew's forms its scene; and here was enacted something like that piece of villainy by which the Claudio of Shakspere was deceived, and his Hero "done to death by slanderous tongues." In Harrington's good old translation of the Orlando' there are six-and-forty pictures, as there are sixand-forty books; and, says the translator, "they are all cut in brass, and most of them by the best workmen in that kind that have been in this land this many years: yet I will not praise them too much because I gave direction for their making." The witty godson of Queen Elizabeth—“that merry poet, my godson"-adds, "the use of the picture is evident, which is, that having read over the book you may read it as it were again in the very picture." He might have said, you may read it as it were before; and if we had copied this picture,—in which the whole action of the book is exhibited at once in a bird's eye view, and where yet, as he who gave "direction for its making' truly says, "the personages of men, the shapes of horses, and such like, are made large at the bottom and lesser upward,”— our readers would have seen at a glance how far "the story is taken from Ariosto." For here we have, "large at the bottom," a fair one at a window, looking lovingly upon a man who is ascending a ladder of ropes, whilst at the foot of the said ladder an unhappy wight is about to fall upon his sword, from which fate he is with difficulty › arrested by one who is struggling with him. Ariosto made this story a tale of chivalry; Spenser a lesson of high and solemn morality; Bandello an interesting love-romance. It was for Shakspere to surround the main incident with those accessories which he could nowhere borrow, and to make of it such a comedy as no other man has made—a comedy not of manners or of sentiment, but of life viewed under its profoundest aspects, whether of the grave or the ludicrous. We request thee, O gentle reader, to imagine-for, as a lover of Shakspere, thou canst imagine-that thou wert extant in the year of grace 1600; and that on a fine summer's morning of that year, as thou wert We here see at once the resemblance between | in Ariosto; nor is slain by her furious lover, the story in Ariosto and the incident in as in Spenser; but she is rejected, believed 'Much Ado about Nothing' upon which both to be dead, and finally married in disguise, the tragic and comic interest of the play as in 'Much Ado about Nothing.' hinges. But here the resemblance ceases. As we ascend the picture, we see the King of Scotland seated upon a royal throne,— but no Dogberry; his disconsolate daughter is placed by his side, but there is no veiled Hero; King, and Princess, and courtiers, and people, are looking upon a tilting-ground, where there is a fierce and deadly encounter of two mailed knights,-but there is no Beatrice and no Benedick. The truth is, that Ariosto found the incident of a lady betrayed to suspicion and danger, by the personation of her own waiting-woman, amongst the popular traditions of the south of Europe this story has been traced to Spain; and he interwove it with the adventures of his Rinaldo as an integral part of his chivalrous romance. The lady Genevra, so falsely accused, was doomed to die unless a true knight came within a month to do battle for her honour. Her lover, Ariodant, had fled, and was reported to have perished. The wicked duke, Polinesso, who had betrayed Genevra, appears secure in his treachery. But the misguided woman, Dalinda, who had been the instrument of his crime, flying from her paramour, meets with Rinaldo, and declares the truth; and then comes the combat, in which the guilty duke is slain by the champion of innocence, and the lover re-appears to be made happy with his spotless princess. The motive which influences the Polinesso of Ariosto is the hope that by vilifying the character of Genevra he may get rid of his rival in her love. Spenser has told a similar story in the 'Faerie Queene' (Book II., Canto IV.), in which Phedon describes the like treachery of his false friend Philemon. The motive here was not very unlike that of Don John in 'Much Ado about Nothing.' The European story, which Ariosto and Spenser have thus adopted, has formed also the groundwork of one of Bandello's Italian novels. And here the wronged lady has neither her honour vindicated in battle, as painfully guiding thy palfrey amongst the BY THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE LORD AT THE GLOBE THEATRE AT BANKSIDE, This day, being Tuesday, July 11, 1600, will be acted, MUCH ADOE ABOUT NOTHING, WRITTEN BY WILLIAM SHAKSPERE. This, thou seest-for thou art cognizant of the present time as well as imaginative of the past—is not a bill as big as a house, the smallest letters of which are afflicted with elephantiasis; nor is it a bill which talks of "prodigious hit" and "thunders of applause," nor in which you see Mr. William Kempe's name towering in red letters above all his fellows: but a modest, quiet, little bill-an innocent bill-which ought not to have provoked the abuse of the Puritans, that "players, by sticking of their bills in London, defile the streets with their infectious filthiness."* In reading this bill thou receivest especially into thy mind three ideas which set thee thinking-the company *Mirror of Monsters,' 1587. R of actors who perform the play, the name of | Ado;' the "objective reality" the 'about the play to be performed, the name of the Nothing.' The reviewer has given us clearly writer. Thou knowest that it is the best and concisely the resuits to which the incompany, and the best writer, of the day; quiry, pursued upon this principle, has conbut the play-is the play a tragedy, or a ducted the German critic. The contradichistory, or a comedy? Thou opinest that it tion between life and its aspects "is set is a comedy. If the title were 'Much Ado forth in an acted commentary on the title of thou wouldst be puzzled; but 'Much Ado the drama;-a series of incidents which, in about Nothing' lets thee into a secret. Thou themselves neither real, nor strange, nor knowest, assuredly, that the author of the important, are regarded by the actors as play will take the spectators into his con- being all these things. The war at the fidence; that he will show them the pre- opening, it is said, begins without reason paration, and the bustle, and the turmoil, and ends without result; Don Pedro and it may be the distress, of some domestic seems to woo Hero for himself, while he event, or chain of events,-the 'Much Ado' gains her for his friend; Benedick and to the actors of the events, who have not Beatrice, after carrying on a merry camthe thread of the labyrinth; but, to the paign of words without real enmity, are spectators, who sit with the book of fate entrapped into a marriage without real love: open before them,—who know how all this the leading story rests in a seeming faithbegins and expect how it will all end,—it is lessness, and its results are a seeming death 'Much Ado about Nothing.' It is a comedy, and funeral, a challenge which produces no then ; in which surprise is for the actors, fighting, and a marriage in which the bride expectation is for the audience. Thou wilt is a pretender; and the weakness and shacross London Bridge and see this comedy; dowiness of human wishes and plans are for," as the feeling with which we startle at exposed with yet more cutting irony in the a shooting star, compared with that of means that bring about the fortunate catawatching the sunrise at the pre-established strophe, an incident in which the unwitting moment, such and so low is surprise com- agents-headed by Dogberry, the very repared with expectation." presentative of the idea of the piece-are the lowest and most stupid characters of the whole group." The reviewer adds-"The poet's readers may hesitate in following his speculative critic the whole way in this journey to the temple of abstract truth." There are many of the poet's readers who will altogether reject this abstract mode of examining his works. To them the “abstract truth" appears but as a devious and uncertain glimmering-a taper in the sunshine. Have we not in Shakspere, say they, high poetry, sparkling wit, the deepest pathos ? are not the characters well defined, adroitly grouped; his plots interesting, his incidents skilfully evolved? True. And so, in nature, we have sky and water, and the forms and colours of leafy trees, and quiet dells, and fertile fields, and dewy lawns, and brilliant flowers; and we can understand the loveliness of separate objects, and we partly see how they form what the eye calls a picture. But there comes an artist, and " We have no wish to tutoyer the gentle reader any farther. We have desired only to show the significancy of the title of this play, by exhibiting it in slight connection with the circumstances under which it was published. For the title of this comedy, rightly considered, is the best expositor of the idea of this comedy. Dr. Ulrici, employing a dialect with which the English ear is not quite familiar, tells us that the fundamental idea lies in the antithesis which the play exhibits of the objective reality of human life to its subjective aspect. An able anonymous writer translates this for us into more intelligible language :-" He considers the play as a representation of the contrast and contradiction between life in its real essence and the aspect which it presents to those who are engaged in its struggle."+ The "subjective aspect," then, is the 'Much * Coleridge, Literary Remains,' vol. ii. p. 78. ↑ Edinburgh Review,' July, 1840. he sets us to look at the same objects from another point of view; and he watches a moment when there is a sunny gleam upon this part of the landscape, and a softened shade upon the other part; and he tells us to look again with the eye of his technical knowledge, and the scene has become altogether picturesque; and, when we have habituated ourselves to this mode of viewing the works of nature, we have acquired almost a new sense. So it is with the works of the poet he looks upon nature, and copies nature, not with a camera-lucida fidelity, but with the higher truth of his own art; and, till we have arrived at something like a comprehension of the principle of harmony in which he works, we are not qualified to judge of his work as a whole, however we may be pleased with many of its details. With regard to Shakspere, a great deal of the false judgment upon his powers, which has long passed current, is to be traced to the utter blindness of the critics to the presence of any pervading idea running through a particular work, which should illuminate all its parts. Had the Zoili of the last generation conceived that Shakspere worked upon some principle which, like the agencies of nature, was to be seen more in its effects than in its manifestation of itself, could such a sentence as this have been written of the comedy before us?" This fable, absurd and ridiculous as it is, was drawn from the foregoing story of Genevra, in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso,' a fiction which, as it is managed by the epic poet, is neither improbable nor unnatural; but by Shakespear mangled and defaced, full of inconsistencies, contradictions, and blunders."* We have done with this style of criticism, of course, now; but it has only been banished by the disposition of the world to look at Shakspere's art, and at all art, a little more from the abstract point of view. But Mrs. Lenox, who, in default of a sense of the poetical picturesque, has thus told us of "inconsistencies, contradictions, and blunders," and who is farther pleased to say that Shakspere, in this play, "borrowed just enough to show his poverty of invention, **Shakespear Illustrated,' vol. iii. p. 261. and added enough to prove his want of judgment"-this lady even is not insensible to the merits of parts of the composition: "There is a great deal of true wit and humour in the comic scenes of this play; the characters of Benedick and Beatrice are properly marked." But there are critics, and those of a higher order, who do not quite agree with Mrs. Lenox in giving to Shakspere this comparatively small merit. Mr. Campbell tells us,-" during one half of the play we have a disagreeable female character in that of Beatrice. Her portrait, I may be told, is deeply drawn and minutely finished. It is; and so is that of Benedick, who is entirely her counterpart, except that he is less disagreeable. But the best drawn portraits, by the finest masters, may be admirable in execution, though unpleasant to contemplate; and Beatrice's portrait is in this category ... She is an odious woman." With every respect for a poet's opinion of a poet's work, we presume to think that Mr. Campbell has fallen into a mistake; and that his mistake arises from his contemplation of Beatrice as a single portrait cut out of a large picture, and not viewed in reference to its relative position with, and its dependence upon, the other parts of that picture. For, in truth, whether Beatrice be disagreeable and odious, or "cette charmante et redoutable femme," as a French critic has it, she could be no other than the identical Beatrice, in the place in which she is. For is she not one that at first presents to us the prosaic side of human nature-the jesting, gibing, sarcastic side; one who has no faith in valour, and is not to be subdued by courtesy; who prefers a "skirmish of wit" to making "account of her life to a clod of wayward marl?" But is not the real Beatrice at bottom a true woman, -a high-spirited, imaginative woman,-one who, with all her wit, has no slight portion of woman's sensibility about her; and is by no means very gay when she says "I may sit in a corner, and cry, heigh ho! for a husband?" Truly she is a woman that falls into the trap of affection with wonderful alacrity; who, while hidden in * Moxon's Edition of Shakspeare. Life. |