EPITOME OF THE INQUIRY.

This is a poor epitome of yours,

Which by the interpretation of full time
May shew like all yourself.

CORIOLANUS.

SHAKSPERE taken piecemeal will ever share the common fate of versatile delineators of character-be quoted by the most opposite parties in favour of the most opposite views. The diversity of opinion among modern critics, respecting his philosophy and religious sentiments, is only to be harmonised by studying him as a whole. That this may be readily done, this epitome of the facts and arguments adduced in the essays upon the plays, has been drawn up. It is only under the influence of a broad induction that Shakspere can be read in a spirit free from conventional prepossession, and sectarian narrowness.

TITUS ANDRONICUS.

The earliest and most recent critics, Meres, and now Collier and Ulrici, allow this play to be one of Shakspere's juvenile efforts. Our Inquiry,' also, reveals so many points of similarity between this and Shakspere's other dramas, that Titus Andronicus must take its place among his undoubted performances.

The revolting cruelties of this play originate in a point of religion. This point is attacked by outraged human affections. The appeal of the affections is disregarded-hence ensues the retribution of the drama. Humanity is opposed to piety, and humanity is vindicated. This is Shaksperian. Aaron is a man of ambition, of talent, and courage, and seems goaded to desperation by the contumely which his being a black subjected him to. Yet fiendish as he is, our poet has adorned him with strong fatherly affections. The inference intended seems to be, that in better company he

C

would have been a better man.

There is a strong resem

blance to Shylock in his character and language.

Tamora is a painful character, yet she once was amiable. Like Portia and Isabella, our dramatist makes her plead for mercy. It is not till her affections sustain a deadly blight, that she becomes a wretch.

The madness of Titus has often been compared to Lear's. Aaron speaks of Tamora in the language of Romeo and Othello. She is his substitute for heaven. Titus and Marcus are quite Shaksperian upon death; they both regard it as an 'eternal sleep.' Titus utters the sentiments of scepticism in distress, to be found on so many occasions in Shakspere. Aaron speaks as Richard III. The speech of Saturnine, before the palace, parallels with a scene in Cymbeline. Aaron on the gallows adjures vengeance like Iago. Indeed, numerous are the points of identity between Titus Andronicus and the general dramas of Shakspere.

The atheism of this play is admitted on all hands. Aaron avows it openly. All the characters, especially the Andronici, rival him. But Lucius, the religious, is as brutal as the He is the earliest and the latest, brutal. Another tragedy is wanting to avenge his atrocities. All being criminal alike, evidently no preponderance is assumed for the moralising influence of religion.

rest.

In a French work, entitled 'Observations on a Comedy of Molière, Le Festin de Pierre, Paris, 1665,' are sentiments equally applicable to Shakspere's Andronicus. It will be seen that the French critic did not think that the characters exempted the writer from responsibility. Molière is made to answer for it.

'Molière has made atheism mount upon the theatre. Molière cannot parry the just reproach that one can make against him of having given to the whole of his audience ideas of atheism, without having taken the care to efface the impressions of it. Molière renders the majesty of God the mock of a master and valet of a theatre; of an atheist, who laughs at it, and of a valet more impious than his master, who makes others laugh at it. In this piece, which has made so much noise, an atheist destroyed in appearance, destroys in effect and overturns all the foundations of religion.' Is

not this the character of Aaron, in Titus Andronicus,' with the difference that instead of raillery, the atheist of Shakspere speaks with the bitterest invective against God? Instead of a valet to support him, he makes the more just and pious join in the impiety of Aaron, and represents religion in an odious light, as the cause of all the evil. Nearly all the comic characters of Shakspere are Don Juans in levity, and all the clowns play the same part as the valet of Molière.

To assist in the correct understanding of the probable views of our poet, we have quoted the opinions of Posidonius on Epicurus-have given an extract from the Festin de Pierre of Molière-the cases of Eschylus, Euripides, Haguet, and the criticism of Voet on the author of 'Cymbalum mundi.'

THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.

The peculiar moral economy which characterises this performance identifies it as Shakspere's. A limitless charity, which nothing disturbs, eschews the idea of punishment, and includes in a general amnesty all offenders, great and small. The writer proceeds as though oblivious of any divine dispensation, in which the work of judgment is so differently regulated.

PERICLES.

This performance is not without touches of piety, but while the declamation is given to heaven the argument is given against it, which will be found a general rule with Shakspere.

In this play we have Cleon supposing heaven' at least capable of slumbering while human creatures want. This doubt of heaven's aid in distress is negatively confirmed in practice, as no petition is put up to heaven to avert it. Indeed, when Pericles appears with help, the Gods are invoked on his behalf; but why were they not asked to assist the Tharsians? It would be natural to a religious author to ascribe the arrival of Pericles to the act of the Gods, but this is not even thought of. Negative evidence is often conclusive, and an author's sentiments may sometimes be as well determined by what he omits, as by what he mentions.

Pericles thanks fortune' for the recovery of his armour, but he rides to court without saying a word to heaven for his delivery from shipwreck. This thoughtless impiety more than counterbalances the ejaculatory religion.

The Prince's invocation to God to still the storm, in the third Act, would pass for piety did he not jumble God and Lucina together. But we have cited a sufficient sample of the play. To the end of it ludicrous junctions are presented. Pericles blesses pure Diana' for the restoration of Thaisa, although better piety has been found in his mouth. When Thaisa informs him her father is dead, he prays- Heavens, make a star of him!'

THE FIRST PART OF KING HENRY VI.

This play opens with a base admixture of astrology and divinity. We have one of the highest ministers of religion drawn as an infidel would draw him. He has no redeeming quality, and is continually engaged in the most unseemly quarrels the representations of which cannot fail to beget a contempt for his profession. In his character, disbelief is furnished with an armoury of reproaches. This spectacle is indeed attempted to be reproved, but it is done so feebly that instead of serving as a moral, it is a foil to set off the deformity. Probably the scene of Talbot over the dying Salisbury is an example of comedy in piety without a parallel. This play presents more than one instance of materialism in death. The characters are occasionally religious. -even Talbot thinks of his God at court (Act 3, Scene 4), but they are religious to little purpose; it neither mitigates their ferocity, nor counterbalances their profanity. Strange freedoms in this play are taken with Scripture story.

THE SECOND PART OF KING HENRY VI.

In the last play we found Henry a child by nature; in this, he is kept a child by religion. On his first introduction to Margaret, a high-spirited woman, he plays the part of a Methodist parson. The contrast between the sainted king and his lofty-minded queen is unmistakable. The absence, on the part of Henry, of all those qualities by which advancement in this world is to be secured, or even dignity

preserved; the obliteration of all manliness, is ascribed by the Queen, in indignant language, to his habits of pietytelling against religion with a force that no art can conceal, no ingenuity evade, no rhetoric explain away. Her bitter description of Henry's religious studies and pursuits, forms one of the most finished disparagements of piety of life to be found among infidel authors.

It may appear that Margaret's own intrigues and dark proceedings render her no advantageous contrast to Henry. But it must not be overlooked that her confessions to Suffolk teach us, that she was goaded to extreme measures by the pusillanimity of the king. Her behaviour at the battle of St. Alban's exhibits a natural nobility of soul, that warrants the fine portrait Sir Walter Scott has drawn of her in his Anne of Geierstein.' As Shakspere himself puts her in this relief, he must have intended to disparage the character of Henry, whom he represents as the example of a really pious king, from whose mouth perpetually drops the language of Scripture.

This play exhibits the former coarse impiety, the same levity in taking God's name in vain, the same execrable oaths. Few speak in this play who do not contrive to point their wit with sacred allusions.

We have also a ludicrous episode' on miracles, which, in the most lenient point of view, must tend to undermine the popular credence in the evidence on which those in sacred writ rest. Two perversions of history occur in this play, both on the side of scepticism.

It is worthy of remark, that Shakspere is confessed to have anticipated the phrenologists respecting the phenomena of dreams-they basing their theory of 'spectral illusions' on the materialism of their science.

THE THIRD PART OF KING HENRY VI.

Coarse profanity, the characteristics of the two former plays, is also the garniture of this.

In these performances our author manifests little more than his intention. The inconsistent jumble of materialism and religion denotes the novice in unbelief-rather the wish than the power to be effective in it.