(fays Helen) a certain power in nature to shorten or contract the greatest poffible distance that fortune can make between two perfons. Let those talk of impoffibilities who fcrupulously weigh every difficulty from their own cowardly fensations: they do not confider, that what has once happened may again fall out.

A&. I. Scene III.

Countefs, Steward, and Clown.

The character of the Fool, or Clown, was originally introduced into the world to supply the want of that freedom in converfation which was unknown to the savage manners of our ancestors. When half the kingdom was in a state of slavery, under the elder Plantagenets of the Norman race, and their immediate fucceffors ; when vaffalage univerfally prevailed, and Englishmen were fubject to the will of a defpotic king and his haughty and imperious barons; the trade of war was the principal

VOL. II.

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The

principal commerce of all the nations in Europe, and tilts and tournaments their great, and almoft fole, amufement. focial intercourfe, and elegant diversions, which fo happily employ both fexes in this refined age, were then utterly unknown; inftead of the entertainments of the stage, which we now enjoy in its almost perfect state, the mysteries and moralities, of which fome fpecimens are preferved in old writers, were the only theatrical spectacles exhibited from Richard the Second's days to the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Mystery was the tragedy, and morality the comedy: the latter, perhaps, owed its origin to the clown, or fool, in a motley drefs, which every noble family in the kingdom entertained as a neceffary appendage of state and grandeur. Nature will infift upon her rights in some shape or other; and mirth is fo congenial to man, that it must have a vent. A farcaftic, or perhaps a harmless, jeft, from one equal to another, in the rough days of the feudal fyftem, would, in

all

all likelihood, have brought about serious confequences, and perhaps ended in a fingle combat. But kings could not live in their palaces, nor great barons in their castles, without fome inftrument to excite merriment. They had no wits, indeed, to flatter them; but they had, what men of the most refined understanding love better, a fool to laugh at,

A fellow, dreffed in a patched coat, guarded with yellow, was hired, at a certain falary, to divert the great man and his guests, All now was fafe; for nobody could pretend to be angry with the farcaftic gibes or faucy petulancies of a party-coloured hireling; one too, who was himself the butt of the company. The fool treated all alike; the master and his guests were equally the, objects of his fatirical mirth, and I make no doubt that a keen-witted fellow would fometimes revenge the difgrace of fituation on his betters, by uttering fevere reproach and home truth under the cover of a joke, which

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which no man durft resent without being exposed to the derifion of the company.

Viola, in Twelfth Night, aptly describes the business of a fool by profession :

This fellow is wife enough to play the fool,

And to do that well craves a kind of wit.
He must observe their mood on whom he jests,
The quality of the persons, and the time;
And, like the haggard, check at every feather
That comes before his eye.

Riccoboni, in his history of the Italian theatre, deduces the Harlequin and Scapin from the Roman Sannio: "For the Sannio is nothing elfe, he fays, but our buffoon." To fupport his hypothesis, he alledges the authority of Cicero, in his book De Oratore: Quid enim poteft tam ridiculum quam Sannio effe? Qui ore, vultu, imitandis motibus, voce, denique corpore, ridetur ipfo.'

Barrett, in his Alvearie, feems to be of the fame opinion with refpect to the Sannio, or fool, as Riccoboni, "The vice, or geftor, began the dance.-Sannio faltationem accepit.".

None

None of our old dramatic writers have made fuch frequent and happy use of this character as Shakspeare. The immediate predeceffor of his clown he found in The Moralities, which never were without a fellow dreffed in a long coat, a cap on his head with a pair of affes ears, and a dagger of lath by his fide. The sport between him and his adversary, the devil, was a perpetual fource of mirth and loud laughter.

Ben Jonson, and his friends Beaumont and Fletcher, very seldom employed this merry agent in their plays. Their claffical learning placed them, it is thought, above the use of fo mean an inftrument. It may be fo: but, I believe, their pieces did not fucceed the better for their contempt of the public tafte. The ftage was then in its infancy, nor could the people, all at once, be weaned from their baubles, their caps and bells, and party-coloured liveries.

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Shakspeare,

Johnfon and Steevens's Shakspeare.