FROM DOGBERRY TO HAMLET.

M.

CHAPTER I.

Dogberry.

§ I.

PHILARÉTE CHASLES tells us, in one of the numerous references to Shakspeare scattered throughout his voluminous Etudes de Littérature Comparée, that among the many comic personages with whom "that Molière-Æschylus" has peopled his world, he, the French critic, chiefly admires "ce magistrat subalterne, bon petit juge de paix, excellent homme, qui se nomme Dogberry." Coleridge regards the same dignitary as no creature of the day, to disappear with the day, but the representative and abstract of truth which must ever be true, and of humour which must ever be humorous. Elsewhere he remarks that as in Homer all the deities are in armour, even Venus, so in Shakspeare all the characters are strong, -real folly and dulness being made the vehicles of wisdom. There is no difficulty for one being a fool to imitate a fool; but to be, remain, and speak like a wise man and a great wit, and yet so as to give a vivid representation of a veritable fool,-hic labor, hoc opus est. "A drunken constable is not uncommon, nor hard to draw; but see and examine what goes to make up a Dogberry."

Elbow, in Measure for Measure, is tarred, or painted, with

the same brush; but the master constable of Vienna comes not near him of Messina, in specific gravity and matter for mirth. He emulates him, however, in the use and abuse of big words; as where he brings in before Angelo and Escalus, to have summary justice done upon them, "two notorious benefactors," "void of all profanation in the world that good Christians ought to have;" and where he cites the testimony of his wife, "whom I detest before heaven. and your honour," etc.; and where he denounces the looseliving tapster, Pompey, and his belongings: "First, an it like you, the house is a respected house; next, this is a respected fellow; and his mistress is a respected woman." Also, when this poor duke's constable is a man to warrant the ironical note of exclamation of Escalus, "Here's a wise officer!" and his subsequent note of interrogation, "How long have you been in this place of constable? . . . You say seven years together? . . . They do you wrong to put you so oft upon't. Are there not men in your ward sufficient to serve it?" Faith, sir," replies Elbow, "few of any wit

in such matters." Master constable knows his worth. The Dogberry dynasty are generally proficient in self-appreciation. They are like Mr. Pepys's "my Lord Mayor" (in 1663), that "bragging, buffle-headed fellow, who would be thought to have led all the City," etc., "while I am confident there is no man almost in the City cares for him, nor hath he brains to outwit any ordinary tradesman." But then was not Dogberry himself openly called, if not formally (and to his wish) written down, an ass?

Let us glance here and there at some of the stolid officials, justicers, constables, and the like, in miscellaneous literature, who, in some one point or more, remind us of Dogberry. Such as that justice in The Coxcomb of Beaumont and Fletcher, who "has surfeited of geese, and they have put him into a fit of justice," and who opens the proceedings thoroughly in Dogberry's style: "Accuse them, sir; I command you to lay down accusations against these persons, in behalf of the state, and first look upon the parties to be accused, and deliver your name." Having

listened to the accuser's brief statement, the worshipful magistrate exclaims,

"No more! we need no more: sirrah, be drawing
Their mittimus before we hear their answer.

What say you, sir? are you guilty of this murther?
Mes. No, sir.

Just. Whether you are or no, confess; it will be the better for you."

strain of strained

And so he goes on, in the same justice. The "warden" of Maidenhead, before whom Thomas Elwood, Milton's reader, was taken for Sunday, or rather for Sabbath day, travelling, figures in Elwood's narrative as a British Dogberry, dogged and dogmatical: the accused pleaded that the Sabbath was the seventh day, and that Sunday, not Saturday, was at present in question. "Here the younger constable, whose name was Cherry, interposing, said, 'Mr. Warden, the gentleman is right as to that, for this is the first day of the week, not the seventh.' This the old warden took in dudgeon, and looking severely on the constable, said, 'What do you take upon you to teach me ? I'll have you know I'll not be taught by you.'' Master constable junior mildly and deprecatingly rejoins that Saturday is the seventh day, and that yesterday was Saturday. "This made the warden hot and testy," but the result was a diversion in favour of Elwood, who got off, after being heavily lectured by the mouthing magnate on the Fourth Commandment, and menaced with the stocks for his alleged breach of it. This dignitary seems to have been near of kin to the "individual" Dr. Boyd tells us of, who dispensed justice from a seedy little bench with most imposing airs and awful state -sitting upon that bench, all alone, and with never a case of the smallest importance coming before him; yet when expressing his opinion, he never failed to state that "the Court" thought so and so. Farquhar's Justice Scale and The fussy

Balance are both tarred with the same brush.

Not forgetting Justice Scruple and the Constable. The latter is asked by Sergeant Kite, Pray, who are those honourable gentlemen upon

ΙΑ

importance of Foote's Heeltap resembles that of Messina's head watchman, diction included; as for instance, "Silence! and let us proceed, neighbours, with all the decency and confusion usual upon these occasions." "Silence there, and keep the peace: what, is there no respect paid to authority? Am not I the returning officer?" "Let us now open the præmunire of the thing, which I shall do briefly, with all the loquacity possible." "D'ye consider, neighbours, the weight of this office? Why, it is a burden for the back of a porter." Hood's country constable, Master Goff, is worthy to have fraternized with Verges, Hugh Oatcake, and George Seacoal: his physique and phiz would do no dishonour to neighbour Dogberry's distinguished self: it was certainly no superabundance of brain that made his two heavy eyes with their lids protrude from their sockets like two wellpoached eggs, except that in the place of the yolks there were two globes of the dull greenish brown of a fowl's gizzard; his nose was absolutely devoid of character or meaning, a mere mushroom-button; while his mouth, round and open, reminded one irresistibly of a silly fish making itself up to take a minnow. "Ponder intensely as he liked, with such face he could only appear to be going to sleep with his eyes open." That justice should be provided with such a doltish auxiliary is but consonant with history from the days of mythology downwards, so notorious has justice been for "playing at blindman'sbuff, at which game, with a fillet before her eyes, she must take the first she can lay her hands on. . . . . . Thus the sagacious Peter Goff had been thrown in her way when she was groping about in the dark for a constable,-an injudicious mode of selection, by the way, almost equal to pricking for sheriffs with the eyes wide open." This straggler behind the march of intellect was in his own

the bench? and answers: "He in the middle is Justice Balance, he on the right is Justice Scale, and he on the left is Justice Scruple; and I am Mr. Constable: four very honest gentlemen "-to the last of whom, whatever Dogberry may have said, reading and writing come not by nature, nor by attainment of any kind.