Puslapio vaizdai
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If aught possess thee from me, it is dross,
Usurping ivy, briar, or idle moss."

The classical image of the elm and the vine I would have been sufficient to express the feelings of a fond and confiding woman; the exquisite addition of the

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Usurping ivy, briar, or idle moss," conveys the prevailing uneasiness of a loving and doubting wife. Antipholus of Ephesus has somewhat hard measure dealt to him throughout the progress of the Errors;-but he deserves it. His doors are shut against him, it is true;-in his impatience he would force his way into his house, against the remonstrances of the good Balthazar :

"Your long experience of her wisdom, Her sober virtue, years, and modesty, Plead on her part some cause to you unknown."

He departs, but not "in patience; "he is content to dine from home, but not at "the Tiger." His resolve

"That chain will I bestow

(Be it for nothing but to spite my wife) Upon mine hostess"

would not have been made by his brother in a similar situation. He has spited his wife; he has dined with the courtezan. But he is not satisfied :

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gentle, nor truly-loving ;-that he has no habits of self-command ;-that his temperament is sensual;-and that, although the riddle of his perplexity is solved, he will still find causes of unhappiness, and enter

tain

"a huge infectious troop

Of pale distemperatures."

The characters of the two Dromios are not so distinctly marked in their points of difference, at the first aspect. They each have their "merry jests;" they each bear a beating with wonderful good temper; they each cling faithfully to their master's interests. But there is certainly a marked difference in the quality of their mirth. The Dromio of Ephesus is precise and antithetical, striving to utter his jests with infinite gravity and discretion, and approaching a pun with a sly solemnity that is prodigiously diverting :— "The capon burns, the pig falls from the spit; The clock hath strucken twelve upon the bell; My mistress made it one upon my cheek: She is so hot, because the meat is cold." Again :

"I have some marks of yours upon my pate, Some of my mistress' marks upon my shoulders,

But not a thousand marks between you both." He is a formal humorist, and, we have no doubt, spoke with a drawling and monotonous accent, fit for his part in such a dialogue as this:

"Ant. E. Were not my doors lock'd up, and I shut out?

Dro. E. Perdy, your doors were lock'd, and you shut out.

Ant. E. And did not she herself revile me there?

Dro. E. Sans fable, she herself reviled you there.

Ant. E. Did not her kitchen-maid rail, taunt, and scorn me?

Dro. E. Certes, she did; the kitchen-vestal scorn'd you."

On the contrary, the " merry jests" of Dromio of Syracuse all come from the outpouring of his gladsome heart. He is a creature of prodigious animal spirits, running over

with fun and queer similitudes. He makes | Again, what a prodigality of wit is displayed not the slightest attempt at arranging a in his description of the bailiff! His epijoke, but utters what comes uppermost with thets are inexhaustible. Each of the Dromios irrepressible volubility. He is an untutored is admirable in his way: but we think that wit, and, we have no doubt, gave his tongue he of Syracuse is as superior to the twinsuch active exercise, by hurried pronuncia- slave of Ephesus as our old friend Launce is tion and variable emphasis, as could alone to Speed, in 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona.' make his long descriptions endurable by his These distinctions between the Antipholuses sensitive master. Look at the dialogue in and Dromios have not, as far as we know, the second scene of Act II., where Antipholus, been before pointed out ;-but they certainly after having repressed his jests, is drawn do exist, and appear to us to be defined by into a tilting-match of words with him, in the great master of character with singular which the merry slave has clearly the victory. force as well as delicacy. Of course the Look, again, at his description of the "kitchen- characters of the twins could not be violently wench,"-coarse, indeed, in parts, but alto- contrasted, for that would have destroyed gether irresistibly droll. The twin-brother the illusion. They must still was quite incapable of such a flood of fun.

"Go hand in hand, not one before another."

CHAPTER III.

LOVE'S LABOUR 'S LOST*.

THIS play was one of those published in Shakspere's lifetime. The first edition appeared in 1598, under the following title: 'A pleasant conceited Comedie, called Loues Labors Lost. As it was presented before her Highnes this last Christmas. Newly corrected and augmented by W. Shakespere.' We have seen, from the title of the first edition of 'Love's Labour's Lost,' that, when it was presented before Queen Elizabeth, at the Christmas of 1597, it had been "newly corrected and augmented." As no edition of the comedy, before it was corrected and augmented, is known to exist (though, as in the case of the unique 'Hamlet' of 1603,

*Love's Labour's Lost. The title of this play stands as follows in the folio of 1623: Loues Labour's Lost.' The modes in which the genitive case and the contraction of is after a substantive are printed in the titles of other plays believe that the author intended to call his play Love's

in this edition, and in some of the earlier copies, lead us to

Labour is Lost.' The apostrophe is not given as the mark of the genitive case in these instances- The Winters Tale,' - A Midsummer Nights Dream'-(so printed). But, when the verb is forms a part of the title, the apostrophe is introduced, as in All's Well that Ends Well. We do not think ourselves justified, therefore, in printing either 'Love's Labour Lost,' or Love's Labours Lost,'-as some have recommended.

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one may some day be discovered), we have
no proof that the few allusions to temporary
circumstances, which are supposed in some
degree to fix the date of the play, may not
apply to the augmented copy only. Thus,
when Moth refers to "the dancing horse
who was to teach Armado how to reckon
what "deuce-ace amounts to," the fact that
Banks's horse first appeared in London in
1589 does not prove that the original play
might not have been written before 1589. |
This date gives it an earlier appearance than
Malone would assign to it, who first settled
it as 1591, and afterwards as 1594. A sup-
posed allusion to The Metamorphosis of
Ajax,' by Sir John Harrington, printed in
1596, is equally unimportant with reference
to the original composition of the play. The
"finished representation of colloquial excel-
lence," in the beginning of the fifth act,
is supposed to be an imitation of a passage
in Sidney's 'Arcadia,' first printed in 1590.
The passage might have been introduced in
the augmented copy; to say nothing of the
fact that the 'Arcadia' was known in manu-

* Johnson.

script before it was printed. Lastly, the mask in the fifth act, where the King and his lords appear in Russian habits, and the allusions to Muscovites, which this mask produces, are supposed by Warburton to have been suggested by the public concern for the settlement of a treaty of commerce with Russia in 1591. But the learned commentator overlooks a passage in Hall's 'Chronicle,' which shows that a mask of Muscovites was a court recreation in the time of Henry VIII.

In the extrinsic evidence, therefore, which this comedy supplies, there is nothing whatever to disprove the belief which we entertain that, before it had been "corrected and augmented," 'Love's Labour's Lost' was one of the plays produced by Shakspere about 1589, when, being only twenty-five years of age, he was a joint-proprietor of the Blacktriars theatre. The intrinsic evidence appears to us entirely to support this opinion; and, as this evidence involves several curious particulars of literary history, we have to request the reader's indulgence whilst we examine it somewhat in detail.

Coleridge, who always speaks of this comedy as a "juvenile drama "-" a young author's first work," says, "The characters in this play are either impersonated out of Shakspere's own multiformity by imaginative self-position, or out of such as a country town and a schoolboy's observation might supply.' For this production, Shakspere, it is presumed, found neither characters nor plot in any previous romance or drama. "I have not hitherto discovered," says Steevens, "any novel on which this comedy appears to have been founded: and yet the story of it has most of the features of an ancient romance." Steevens might have more correctly said, that the story has most of the features which would be derived from an acquaintance with the ancient romances. The action of the comedy, and the higher actors, are the creations of one who was imbued with the romantic spirit of the middle ages—who was conversant with their Courts of Love, and all that lighter drapery of chivalry, which engaged even mighty kings with a sort of

66

* Literary Remains,' vol. ii. p. 102.

serio-comic interest, and may well be supposed to have occupied more completely the smaller princes."+ Our poet himself, in this play, alludes to the Spanish romances of chivalry :

"This child of fancy, that Armado hight,

For interim to our studies, shall relate, In high-born words, the worth of many a knight

From tawny Spain, lost in the world's debate."

With these materials, and out of his own "imaginative self-position," might Shakspere have readily produced the King and Princess, the lords and ladies, of this comedy; and he might have caught the tone of the court of Elizabeth,-the wit, the play upon words, the forced attempts to say and do clever things,-without any actual contact with the society which was accessible to him after his fame conferred distinction even upon the highest and most accomplished patron. The more ludicrous characters of the drama were unquestionably within the range of "a schoolboy's observation."

And first, of Don Armado, whom Scott calls "the Euphuist." The historical events which are interwoven with the plot of Scott's 'Monastery' must have happened about 1562 or 1563, before the authority of the unhappy Queen of Scots was openly trodden under foot by Murray and her rebellious lords; and she had at least the personal liberty, if not the free will, of a supreme ruler. Our great novelist is, as is well known, not very exact in the matter of dates; and in the present instance his licence is somewhat extravagant. Explaining the source of the affectations of his Euphuist, Sir Piercie Shafton, he says"it was about this period that 'the only rare poet of his time, the witty, comical, facetiously-quick, and quickly-facetious John Lyly-he that sate at Apollo's table, and to whom Phoebus gave a wreath of his own bays without snatching'§-he, in short, who wrote that singularly coxcombical work

t Literary Remains,' vol. ii. p. 104. Introduction to The Monastery.'

§ Extract from Blount, the editor of six of Lyly's plays, in 1632.

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called 'Euphues and his England-was in 'Euphues and his England' began first that the very zenith of his absurdity and reputa- language." It is somewhat difficult pretion. The quaint, forced, and unnatural cisely to define what "that language" is; style which he introduced by his 'Anatomy but the language of Armado is not very difof Wit' had a fashion as rapid as it was ferent from that of Andrew Borde, the phymomentary;-all the court ladies were his | sician, who, according to Hearne, "gave rise scholars, and to parler Euphuisme was as to the name of Merry Andrew, the fool of necessary a qualification to a courtly gallant the mountebank stage." His 'Breviary of as those of understanding how to use his Health,' first printed in 1547, begins thus: rapier, or to dance a measure.' "This state- "Egregious doctours and maysters of the ment is somewhat calculated to mislead the eximious and archane science of physicke, of student of our literary history as to the your urbanitie exasperate not your selve.”§ period of the commencement, and of the Nor is Armado's language far removed from duration, of Lyly's influence upon the struc- the example of "dark words and ink-horn ture of "polite conversation." Euphues,- terms" exhibited by Wilson, in his 'Arte of the Anatomy of Wit,' was first published in Rhetorike,' first printed in 1553, where he 1580; and 'Euphues and his England' in gives a letter thus devised by a Lincolnshire 1581-some eighteen or twenty years after man for a void benefice :-" Ponderyng, exthe time when Sir Piercie Shafton (the Eng- pendyng, and revolutyng with myself, your glish Catholic who surrendered himself to ingent affabilitie, and ingenious capacitie for the champions of John Knox and the Re- mundane affaires, I cannot but celebrate and formation) explained to Mary of Avenel the extoll your magnificall dexteritie above all merits of The Anatomy of Wit" that other. For how could you have adapted all-to-be-unparalleled volume-that quintes- suche illustrate prerogative, and dominicall sence of human wit-that treasury of quaint superioritie, if the fecunditie of your ingenie invention that exquisitely-pleasant-to-read had not been so fertile and wonderfull pregand inevitably-necessary-to-be-remembered naunt?" || In truth, Armado the braggart, manual of all that is worthy to be known."+ and Holofernes the pedant, both talk in this Nor was the fashion of Euphuism as mo- vein; though the schoolmaster may lean mentary as Scott represents it to have been. more to the hard words of Lexiphanism, and The prevalence of this "spurious and un- the fantastic traveller to the quips and natural mode of conversation" is alluded cranks of Euphuism. Our belief is, that, to in Jonson's 'Every man out of his Hu- although Shakspere might have been familiar mour,' first acted in 1599;—and it forms one with Lyly's Euphues' when he wrote 'Love's of the chief objects of the satire of rare Ben's Labour 's Lost,' he did not, in Armado, point 'Cynthia's Revels,' first acted in 1600. But at the fashion of the court "to parley Euthe most important question with reference phuism." The courtiers in this comedy, be to Shakspere's employment of the affected it observed, speak, when they are wearing an phraseology which he puts into the mouth of artificial character, something approaching Armado is, whether this "quaint, forced, and to this language, but not the identical lanunnatural style was an imitation of that guage. They, indeed, "trust to speeches said to be introduced by Ly1y; if, indeed, penn'd "-they "woo in rhyme "—they emLyly did more than reduce to a system those ploy innovations of language which had obtained a currency amongst us for some time previous to the appearance of his books. Blount,

it is true, says

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"Our nation are in his

debt for a new English which he taught them.

* Monastery,' chap. xiv.

+ Ibid.

Gifford's Works of Ben Jonson,' vol. ii. p. 250.

"Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise, Three-pil'd hyperboles ;"

they exhibit a "constant striving after logical precision, and subtle opposition of thoughts,

§ Quoted in Warton's History of English Poetry,' vol. iii. p. 355: 1824.

Ibid., vol. iv. p. 160.
Blount.

together with the making the most of every conception or image, by expressing it under the least expected property belonging to it." But of no one of them can it be said, "He speaks not like a man of God's making." Ben Jonson, on the contrary, when, in 'Cynthia's Revels,' he satirized “the special fountain of manners, the court," expressly makes the courtiers talk the very jargon of Euphuism; as for example: "You know I call madam Philautia my Honour; and she calls me her Ambition. Now, when I meet her in the presence anon, I will come to her, and say, Sweet Honour, I have hitherto contented my sense with the lilies of your hand, but now I will taste the roses of your lips; and withal kiss her: to which she cannot but blushing answer, Nay, now you are too ambitious. And then do I reply, I cannot be too ambitious of Honour, sweet lady." But Armado,

"A refined traveller of Spain;

A man in all the world's new fashion planted, That hath a mint of phrases in his brain," is the only man of "fire-new words." The pedant even laughs at him as a "fanatical phantasm." But such a man Shakspere might have seen in his own country-town: where, unquestionably, the schoolmaster and the curate might also have flourished. If he had found them in books, Wilson's 'Rhetorike' might as well have supplied the notion of Armado and Holofernes, as Lyly's 'Euphues' of the one, or Florio's 'First Fruits' of the other.

Warburton, in his usual "discourse peremptory," tells us, "by Holofernes is designed a particular character, a pedant and schoolmaster of our author's time, one John Florio, a teacher of the Italian tongue in London, who has given us a small Dictionary of that language under the title of 'A World of Words."" What Warburton asserted Farmer upheld. Florio, says Farmer, had given the first affront, by saying, "the plays that they play in England are neither right comedies nor right tragedies, but representations of histories without any decorum." Florio says this in his 'Second Fruites,' pub

*Coleridge's Literary Remains,' vol. ii. p. 104.

lished in 1591. Now, if Shakspere felt himself aggrieved at this statement, which was true enough of the English drama before his time, he was betrayed by his desire for revenge into very unusual inconsistencies. For, in truth, the making of a teacher of Italian the prototype of a country schoolmaster, who, whilst he lards his phrases with words of Latin, as if he were construing with his class, holds to the good old English pronunciation, and abhors "such rackers of orthography as to speak dout, fine, when he should say doubt," &c., is such an absurdity as Shakspere, who understood his art, would never have yielded to through any instigation of caprice or passion. The probability is, that, when Shakspere drew Holofernes, whose name he found in Rabelais*, he felt himself under considerable obligations to John Florio for having given the world "his First Fruites; which yeelde familiar speech, merie proverbes, wittie sentences, and golden sayings." This book was printed in 1578. But, according to Warburton, Florio, in 1598, in the preface to a new edition of his World of Words,' is furious upon Shakspere in the following passage: "There is another sort of leering curs, that rather snarl than bite, whereof I could instance in one, who, lighting on a good sonnet of a gentleman's, a friend of mine, that loved better to be a poet than to be counted so, called the author a rhymer. Let Aristophanes and his comedians make plays, and scour their mouths on Socrates, those very mouths they make to vilify shall be the means to amplify his virtue." Warburton maintains that the sonnet was Florio's own, and that it was parodied in the "extemporal epitaph on the death of the deer," beginning "The praiseful princess pierced and prick'd a pretty pleasing pricket."

This is very ingenious argument, but somewhat bold; and it appears to us that Thomas Wilson was just as likely to have suggested the alliteration as John Florio. In 'The Arte of Rhetorike,' which we have already quoted, we find this sentence: Some use over-muche repetition of one letter, as *"De faict, l'on luy ensegna ung grand docteur sophiste, nommé maistre Thubal Holoferne." Gargantua, livre i. chap. xiv.

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