444 wing of the Scots, was constreined to retire and flee backe, the middle warde stoutly yet "Here Haie with his sonnes, supposing they might best staie the fight, placed themselves overthwart the lane, beat them backe whom they met fleeing, and spared neither friend nor fo: but downe they went all such as came within their reach, wherewith diverse hardie personages cried unto their fellowes to returne back unto the battell.”Historie of Scotland, fo. 155. CRITICAL OPINIONS. "CYMBELINE is one of Shakspeare's most wonderful compositions. He has here combined a novel of Boccaccio's with traditionary tales of the ancient Britons reaching back to the times of the first Roman emperors, and he has contrived, by the most gentle transitions, to blend together into one harmonious whole the social manners of the newest times with olden heroic deeds, and even with appearances of the gods. In the character of Imogen no one feature of female excellence is omitted: her chaste tenderness, her softness, and her virgin pride, her boundless resignation, and her magnanimity towards her mistaken husband, by whom she is unjustly persecuted, her adventures in disguise, her apparent death, and her recovery, form altogether a picture equally tender and affecting. The two Princes, Guiderius and Arviragus, both educated in the wilds, form a noble contrast to Miranda and Perdita. Shakspeare is fond of showing the superiority of the natural over the artificial. Over the art which enriches nature, he somewhere says, there is a higher art created by nature herself.* As Miranda's unconscious and unstudied sweetness is more The passage in Shakspeare here quoted, taken with the context, will not bear the construction of the critic. The whole runs thus: "Yet nature is made better by no mean, But nature makes that mean: so, o'er that art Which you say adds to nature, is an art That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry A gentler scion to the wildest stock; And make conceive a bark of baser kind By bud of nobler race: this is an art Which does mend nature, change it rather; but The art itself is nature."-Winter's Tale, Act IV. Sc. 3. Shakspeare does not here mean to institute a comparison between the relative excellency of that which is innate and that which we owe to instruction; but merely says, that the instruction or art is itself a part of nature. The speech is addressed by Polyxenes to Perdita, to persuade her that the changes effected in the appearance of flowers by the art of the gardener are not to be accounted unnatural; and the expression of making conceive a bark of baser kind by bud of nobler race (i.e. engrafting), would rather lead to the inference, that the mind derived its chief value from the influence of culture.-TRANS. pleasing than those charms which endeavour to captivate us by the brilliant embellishments of a refined cultivation, so in these two youths, to whom the chase has given vigour and hardihood, but who are ignorant of their high destination, and have been brought up apart from human society, we are equally enchanted by a naïve heroism which leads them to anticipate and to dream of deeds of valour, till an occasion is offered which they are irresistibly compelled to embrace. When Imogen comes in disguise to their cave; when, with all the innocence of childhood, Guiderius and Arviragus form an impassioned friendship for the tender boy, in whom they neither suspect a female nor their own sister; when, on their return from the chase, they find her dead, then 'sing her to the ground,' and cover the grave with flowers :-these scenes might give to the most deadened imagination a new life for poetry. If a tragical event is only apparent, in such case, whether the spectators are already aware of it or ought merely to suspect it, Shakspeare always knows how to mitigate the impression without weakening it: he makes the mourning musical, that it may gain in solemnity what it loses in seriousness. With respect to the other parts, the wise and vigorous Belarius, who, after long living as a hermit, again becomes a hero, is a venerable figure; the Italian Iachimo's ready dissimulation and quick presence of mind is quite suitable to the bold treachery which he plays; Cymbeline, the father of Imogen, and even her husband Posthumus, during the first half of the piece, are somewhat sacrificed, but this could not be otherwise: the false and wicked Queen is merely an instrument of the plot; she and her stupid son Cloten (the only comic part in the piece), whose rude arrogance is portrayed with much humour, are, before the conclusion, got rid of by merited punishment. As for the heroical part of the fable,-the war between the Romans and Britons, which brings on the dénouement, the poet in the extent of his plan had so little room to spare, that he merely endeavours to represent it as a mute procession. But to the last scene, where all the numerous threads of the knot are untied, he has again given its full development, that he might collect together into one focus the scattered impressions of the whole. This example and many others are a sufficient refutation of Johnson's assertion, that Shakspeare usually hurries over the conclusion of his pieces. Rather does he, from a desire to satisfy the feelings, introduce a great deal which, so far as the understanding of the dénouement requires, might in a strict sense be justly spared our modern spectators are much more impatient to see the curtain drop, when there is nothing more to be determined, than those of his day could have been."-SCHLEGEL. "This play, if not, in the construction of its fable, one of the most perfect of our author's productions, is, in point of poetic beauty, of variety and truth of character, and in the display of sentiment and emotion, one of the most lovely and interesting. Nor can we avoid expressing our astonishment at the sweeping condemnation which Johnson has passed upon it; charging its fiction with folly, its conduct with absurdity, its events with impossibility; terming its faults too evident for detection and too gross for aggravation. "Of the enormous injustice of this sentence, nearly every page of Cymbeline will, to a reader of any taste or discrimination, bring the most decisive evidence. That it possesses many of the too common inattentions of Shakspeare, that it exhibits a frequent violation of costume, and a singular confusion of nomenclature, cannot be denied; but these are trifles light as air when contrasted with its merits, which are of the very essence of dramatic worth, rich and full in all that breathes of vigour, animation, and intellect, in all that elevates the fancy, and improves the heart, in all that fills the eye with tears, or agitates the soul with hope and fear. "In possession of excellences vital as these must be deemed, cold and fastidious is the criticism that, on account of irregularities in mere technical detail, would shut its eyes upon their splendour. Nor are there wanting critics of equal learning with, and superior taste to Johnson, who have considered what he has branded with the unqualified charge of confusion of manners,' as forming, in a certain point of view, one of the most pleasing recommendations of the piece. It may be also remarked, that, if the unities of time and place be as little observed in this play, as in many others of the same poet, unity of character and feeling, the test of genius, and without which the utmost effort of art will ever be unavailing, is uniformly and happily supported. 66 'Imogen, the most lovely and perfect of Shakspeare's female characters, the pattern of connubial love and chastity, by the delicacy and propriety of her sentiments, by her sensibility, tenderness, and resignation, by her patient endurance of persecution from the quarter where she had confidently looked for endearment and protection, irresistibly seizes upon our affections; and when, compelled to fly from the paternal roof, from A father cruel, and a step-dame false, she is driven to assume, under the name of Fidele, the disguise of a page, we follow her footsteps with the liveliest interest and admiration. "The scenes which disclose the incidents of her pilgrimage; her reception at the cave of Belarius; her intercourse with her lost brothers, who are ignorant of their birth and rank, her supposed death, funeral rites and resuscitation, are wrought up with a mixture of pathos and romantic wildness peculiarly characteristic of our author's genius, and which has had but few successful imitators. Among these few, stands pre-eminent the poet Collins, who seems to have trodden this consecrated ground with a congenial mind, and who has sung the sorrows of Fidele in strains worthy of their subject, and which will continue to charm the mind and soothe the heart 'till pity's self be dead.' "When compared with this fascinating portrait, the other personages of the drama appear but in a secondary light. Yet are they adequately brought out, and skilfully diversified; the treacherous subtlety of Iachimo, the sage expe rience of Belarius, the native nobleness of heart, and innate heroism of mind, which burst forth in the vigorous sketches of Guiderius and Arviragus, the temerity, credulity, and penitence of Posthumus, the uxorious weakness of Cymbeline, the hypocrisy of his Queen, and the comic arrogance of Cloten, half fool and half knave, produce a striking diversity of action and sentiment. "Of this latter character, the constitution has been thought so extraordinary, and involving elements of a kind so incompatible, as to form an exception to the customary integrity and consistency of our author's draughts from nature. But the following passage from the pen of an elegant female writer, will prove, that this curious assemblage of frequently opposite qualities has existed, and no doubt did exist in the days of Shakspeare:-'It is curious that Shakspeare should, in so singular a character as Cloten, have given the exact prototype of a being whom I once knew. The unmeaning frown of the countenance; the shuffling gait; the burst of voice; the bustling insignificance; the fever and ague fits of valour; the froward tetchiness; the unprincipled malice; and, what is most curious, those occasional gleams of good sense, amidst the floating clouds of folly which generally darkened and confused the man's brain; and which, in the character of Cloten, we are apt to impute to a violation of unity in character; but in the sometime Captain C- -n, I saw that the portrait of Cloten was not out of nature.' "Poetical justice has been strictly observed in this drama; the vicious characters meet the punishment due to their crimes, while virtue, in all its various degrees, is proportionably rewarded. The scene of retribution, which is the closing one of the play, is a masterpiece of skill; the development of the plot, for its fulness, completeness, and ingenuity, surpassing any effort of the kind among our author's contemporaries, and atoning for any partial incongruity which the structure or conduct of the story may have previously displayed."-DRAKE, THE TEMPEST. PRELIMINARY NOTICE. THE earliest copy of "The Tempest" known is that in the folio of 1623. To the precise date of its production we have no clue, but the following memorandum from the "Accounts of the Revels at Court," is almost positive testimony that it was written before 1611: By the King's Hallomas nyght was presented att Whithall before And the speech of Gonzalo, Act II. Sc. 1, "I' the commonwealth I would by contraries," &c. which is obviously taken from a passage in Florio's translation of Montaigne's Essayes, first printed in 1603, is equally decisive as to its having been written after that year. The story upon which "The Tempest" is founded, was most probably derived, according to Shakespeare's usual practice, from an existing play or from some popular chronicle or romance. Collins the poet, indeed, informed T. Warton, that he had met with a novel called Aurelio and Isabella, printed in Italian, Spanish, French, and English, in 1588, which he conceived to have formed the basis of "The Tempest." When he spoke of the circumstance, however, Collins was labouring under mental debility, and so far as the particular novel he mentioned was concerned his memory deceived him, for the fable of Aurelio and Isabella bears no resemblance to that of the play; yet it is remarkable that a friend of James Boswell declared that he had once perused an Italian novel which answered to Collins's description. In an article on the early English and German dramas published in the New Monthly Magazine for January, 1841, Mr. Thoms pointed out a dramatic piece by Jacob Ayrer a notary of Nürnberg, contemporary with Shakespeare, entitled Die schöne Sidea, (The Beautiful Sidea,) which bears some resemblance to "The Tempest," and which Tieck conjectured was a translation of some old English drama from which Shakespeare borrowed his idea. How far this is probable the reader must judge from the following outline of the German play: Ludolph having been vanquished by his rival, and with his daughter Sidea driven into a forest, rebukes her for complaining of their change of fortune, and then sum mons his spirit Runcifal to learn from him his future destiny and prospects of revenge. Runcifal, who is, like Ariel, somewhat "moody," announces to Ludolph that the son of his enemy will shortly become his prisoner. After a comic episode, most probably introduced by the German, we see Prince Leudegast, with his son Engelbrecht and the councillors, hunting in the same forest; when Engelbrecht and his companion Famulus, having separated from the associates, are suddenly encountered by Ludolph and his daughter. On his commanding them to yield themselves prisoners, they refuse; but on attempting to draw their swords, Ludolph renders them powerless by the touch of his magical wand, and gives the prince over to Sidea to carry logs of wood for her, and to obey her commands in all respects. The resemblance between the German and English plays is continued in a later part of the former production, when Sidea, moved by pity for the labours of Engelbrecht in carrying logs, exclaims, she would "feel great joy, if he would prove faithful to me, and take me in wedlock;" an event which, in the end, is happily brought about, and leads to the reconciliation of their parents, the rival princes. The title of "The Tempest" is supposed by some commentators to have been determined by the shipwreck of Sir George Sommers and Sir Thomas Gates on the coast of the Bermudas in 1609; of which an account was published by Silvester Jourdan, one of the crew, in the following year:A Discovery of the Barmudas; otherwise called the Isle of Divels; by Sir Thomas Gates, Sir George Sommers, and Captayne Newport, with divers others. It is highly probable, too, that Jourdan's and other accounts of the Bermudas, by some of which they are said to be enchanted and inhabited by witches and devils, suggested the expression "still-vexed Bermoothes," and induced the poet to possess his hero with necromantic influence and supernatural agency. Mr. Hunter, in his "Disquisition on the Scene, Origin, Date, &c. of Shakspeare's Tempest," has laboured with great ingenuity to prove that the actual scene of the play was Lampedusa, "an island of the Mediterranean lying not far out of a ship's course passing from Tunis to Naples," and which is uninhabited, and supposed by sailors to be enchanted. The same idea was suggested, or occurred to Douce, who thus speaks of it :-"The Island of Lampedusa is near the coast of Tunis; and from its description, in Dapper, and the real tract of the King of Naples' voyage in Shakespeare's Tempest, will turn out to be the veritable island where he was shipwrecked, and to which Prospero had been banished, whenever the Italian novel on which the play founded shall be discovered." We fervently hope not; being contented to believe it rose, like a new Atlantis, at the summons of the poet, and when his magic work on it was done: "From that day forth the Isle has beene By wandering sailors never seene: Some say 't is buried deepe Beneath the sea, which breakes and rores Above its savage rockie shores, Nor ere is known to sleepe." |