instance, from the inexhaustibly joyful- | the whole of that action vividly, with referminded As You Like It.' Such a contest followed by such a victory!" It is scarcely necessary to point out that this argument of the German critic is founded upon the simple and intelligible belief that Shakspere is, in every sense of the word, the author of Titus Andronicus.' | Here is no attempt to compromise the question, by the common English babble that "Shakspere may have written a few lines in this play, or given some assistance to the author in revising it." This is Malone's opinion, founded upon an idle tradition, mentioned by Ravenscroft in the time of James II.,—a tradition contradicted by Ravenscroft himself, who, in a prologue to his alteration of Titus Andronicus,' says "To-day the poet does not fear your rage; Shakespear, by him revived, now treads the stage." In Malone's posthumous edition, by Boswell, "those passages in which he supposed the hand of Shakspere may be traced are marked with inverted commas." This was the system which Malone pursued with‘Henry VI.;' and, as we fully believe, it was founded upon a most egregious fallacy. The drama belongs to the province of the very highest poetical art; because a play which fully realizes the objects of a scenic exhibition requires a nicer combination of excellences, and involves higher difficulties, than belong to any other species of poetry. Taking the qualities of invention, power of language, versification, to be equal in two men, one devoting himself to dramatic poetry, and the other to narrative poetry, the dramatic poet has chances of failure which the narrative poet may entirely avoid. The dialogue, and especially the imagery, of the dramatic poet are secondary to the invention of the plot, the management of the action, and the conception of the characters. Language is but the drapery of the beings that the dramatic poet's imagination has created. They must be placed by the poet's power of combination in the various relations which they must maintain through a long and sometimes complicated action: he must see ence to its capacity of manifesting itself distinctly to an audience, so that even the deaf should partially comprehend: the pantomime must be acted over and over again in his mind, before the wand of the magician gives the agents voice. When all this is done, all contradictions reconciled, all obscurities made clear, the interest prolonged and heightened, and the catastrophe naturally evolved and matured, the poet, to use the terms of a sister-art, has completed that design which colour and expression are to make manifest to others with something like the distinctness with which he himself has seen it. We have no hesitation in believing that one of the main causes of Shakspere's immeasurable superiority to other dramatists is that all-penetrating power of combination by which the action of his dramas is constantly sustained; whilst in the best pieces of his contemporaries, with rare exceptions, it flags or breaks down into description,—or is carried off by imagery,— or the force of conception in one character overpowers the management of the other instruments-cases equally evidencing that the poet has not attained the most difficult art of controlling his own conceptions. And thus it is that we so often hear Christopher Marlowe, or Philip Massinger,-to name the very best of them,-speaking themselves out of the mouths of their puppets, whilst the characterization is lost, and the action is forgotten. But when do we ever hear the individual voice of the man William Shakspere? When does he come forward to bow to the audience, as it were, between the scenes? Never is there any pause with him, that we may see the complacent author whispering to his auditory-"This is not exactly what I meant; my inspiration carried me away; but is it not fine?" The great dramatic poet sits out of mortal ken. He rolls away the clouds and exhibits his world. There is calm and storm, and light and darkness; and the material scene becomes alive; and we see a higher life than that of our ordinary nature and the whole soul is elevated; and man and his actions are presented under aspects more real than reality, and our control over tears or laughter is | tor, who exhibited the same Gothic view of But we must guard ourselves from being understood to deny that many of the earliest plays of Shakspere were founded upon some rude production of the primitive stage. Andronicus had, no doubt, its dramatic ances He had no models to work upon; and in the very days in which he lived the English drama began to be created. It was not "Learning's triumph o'er her barbarous foes" which "first rear'd the stage," but a singular combination of circumstances which for the most part grew out of the reformation of religion. He took the thing as he found it. The dramatic power was in him so supreme that, compared with the feeble personifications of other men, it looks like instinct. He seized upon the vague abstractions which he found in the histories and comedies of the Blackfriars and the Bel Savage, and the scene was henceforth filled with living beings. But not as yet were these individualities surrounded with the glowing atmosphere of burning poetry. The philosophy which invests their sayings with an universal wisdom that enters the mind and becomes its loadstar was scarcely yet evoked out of that profound contemplation of human actions and of the higher things dimly revealed in human nature, which belonged to the maturity of his wondrous mind. The wit was there in some degree from the first, for it was irrepressible; but it was then as the polished metal, which dazzlingly gives back the brightness of the sunbeams; in after times it was as the diamond, which reflects everything, and yet appears to be self-irradiated in its lustrous depths. If these qualities, and if the humour which seems more especially the ripened growth of the mental faculty, could have been produced in the onset of Shakspere's career, it is probable that the career would not have been a successful one. He had to make his audience. He himself has told us of a play of his earliest period, that "I remember pleased not the million; 'twas caviarie to the general: but it was (as I received it, and others, whose judgments in such matters cried in the top of mine) an excellent play; well digested in the scenes; set down with as much modesty as cunning. I remember, one said there were no sallets in the lines to make the matter savoury; nor no matter in the phrase that might indite the author of affectation; but called it an honest method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine." * Was this play an attempt of Shakspere himself to depart from the popular track? If it were, we probably owe much to the million. We hold, then, that Malone's principle of marking with inverted commas those passages in which he supposed the hand of Shakspere might be traced in this play of "Titus Andronicus' is based upon a vital error. It is not with us a question whether the passages which Malone has marked exhibit, or not, the critic's poetical taste: we say that the passages could not have been written except by the man, whoever he be, who conceived the action and the characterization. Take the single example of the character of Tamora. She is the presiding genius of the piece; and in her we see, as we believe, the outbreak of that wonderful conception of the union of powerful intellect and moral depravity which Shakspere was afterwards to make manifest with such consummate wisdom. Strong passions, ready wit, perfect self-possession, and a sort of oriental imagination, take Tamora out of the class of ordinary women. It is in her mouth that we find, for the most part, what readers of Malone's school would call the poetical *Hamlet,' Act II., Sc. 11. | language of the play. We will select a few specimens (Act II., Scene 3) :— "The birds chant melody on every bush; Replying shrilly to the well-tuned horns, Again, in the same scene: "A barren detested vale, you see, it is: The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean, O'ercome with moss and baleful misseltoe. Here never shines the sun; here nothing breeds, Unless the nightly owl, or fatal raven. Should straight fall mad, or else die suddenly." In Act IV., Scene 4: "King, be thy thoughts imperious, like thy name. Is the sun dimm'd, that gnats do fly in it? And is not careful what they mean thereby; Knowing that, with the shadow of his wing, He can at pleasure stint their melody." And, lastly, where the lines are associated with the high imaginative conception of the speaker, that she was to personate Re venge : "Know thou, sad man, I am not Tamora; She is thy enemy, and I thy friend: I am Revenge; sent from the infernal kingdom, To ease the gnawing vulture of thy mind, light." The first two of these passages are marked by Malone as the additions of Shakspere to the work of an inferior poet. If we had adopted Malone's theory, we should have marked the two other passages; and have gone even further in our selection of the poetical lines spoken by Tamora. But we hold that the lines could not have been produced, according to Malone's theory, even by Shakspere. Poetry, and especially dramatic poetry, is not to be regarded as a bit of joiner's work—or, if you please, as an affair of jewelling and enamelling. The lines which we have quoted may not be amongst Shakspere's highest things; but they could not have been produced except under the excitement of the full swing of his dramatic power-bright touches dashed in at the very hour when the whole design was growing into shape upon the canvass, and the form of Tamora was becoming alive with colour and expression. To imagine that the great passages of a drama are produced like "a copy of verses," under any other influence than the large and general inspiration which creates the whole drama, is, we believe, utterly to mistake the essential nature of dramatic poetry. It would be equally just to say that the nice but well-defined traits of character, which stand out from the physical horrors of this play, when it is carefully studied, were superadded by Shakspere to the coarser delineations of some other man. Aaron, the Moor, in his general conception is an unmitigated villain-something alien from humanity—a fiend, and therefore only to be detested. But Shakspere, by that insight which, however imperfectly developed, must have distinguished his earliest efforts, brings Aaron into the circle of humanity; and then he is a thing which moves us, and his punishment is poetical justice. One touch does this-his affection for his child: of a second man's work? The system may Many a time he danced thee on his knee, Because kind nature doth require it so." Malone has not marked these; they are too simple to be included in his poetical gems. But are they not full to overflowing of those deep thoughts of human love which the great poet of the affections has sent into so many welcoming hearts? Malone marks with his commas the address to the tribunes at the beginning of the third act. The lines are lofty and rhetorical; and a poet who had undertaken to make set speeches to another man's characters might perhaps have added these. Dryden and Tate did this service for Shakspere himself. But Malone does not mark one line which has no rhetoric in it, and does not look like poetry. The old man has given his hand to the treacherous Aaron, that he may save the lives of his sons; but the messenger brings him the heads of those sons. It is for Marcus and Lucius to burst into passion. The father, for some space, speaks not; and then he speaks but one line:: "When will this fearful slumber have an end?” Did Shakspere make this line to order? The poet who wrote the line conceived the whole situation, and he could not have conceived the situation unless the whole dramatic movement had equally been his conception. Such things must be wrought out of the redheat of the whole material-not filled up out of cold fragments. Accepting Titus' as a play produced somewhere about the middle of the ninth decade of the sixteenth century, it possesses other peculiarities than such as we have noticed, which, upon the system of Malone's inverted commas, would take away a very considerable number from the supposed original fabricator of the drama, and bestow them upon the reviser. We must extract a passage from Malone before we proceed to point out these other peculiarities:-"To enter into a long disquisition to prove this piece not to have been written by Shakspere would be an idle waste of time. To those who are not conversant with his writings, if particular passages were examined, more words would be necessary than the subject is worth; those who are well acquainted with his works cannot entertain a doubt on the question. I will, however, mention one mode by which it may be easily ascertained. Let the reader only peruse a few lines of 'Appius and Virginia,' 'Tancred and Gismund,' 'The Battle of Alcazar,' 'Jeronimo,' Selimus, Emperor of the Turks,' 'The Wounds of Civil War,' 'The Wars of Cyrus,' ' Locrine,'' Arden of Feversham,' 'King Edward I.,' 'The Spanish Tragedy,' 'Solyman and Perseda,' 'King Leir,' the old 'King John,' or any other of the pieces that were exhibited before the time of Shakspeare, and he will at once perceive that Titus Andronicus' was coined in the same mint." What Malone requests to be perused is limited to a few lines" of these old plays; if he could have bestowed many words upon the subject, he would have examined "particular passages." Such an examination has of course reference only to the versification. It is scarcely necessary to say that we do not agree with the assumption that the pieces Malone has mentioned were exhibited "before the time of Shakspeare." It is difficult, if not impossible, to settle the exact time of many of these; but we do know that one of the plays here mentioned belongs to the same epoch as Titus Andronicus.' "He that will swear 66 'Jeronimo,' or 'Andronicus,' are the best plays yet, shall pass unexcepted at here, as a man whose judgment shows it is constant, and hath stood still these five-and-twenty or thirty years." We shall confine, therefore, any comparison of the versification of 'Titus Andronicus' entirely to that of Jeronimo.' 'Titus Andronicus' contains very few couplets, a remarkable thing in so early a play. Of 'Jeronimo' one-half is rhyme. Of the blank verse of 'Jeronimo' we will quote a passage which is, perhaps, the least monotonous of that tragedy, and which Mr. Collier has quoted in his 'History of Dramatic Poetry,' pointing out that "Here we see trochees used at the ends of the lines, and the pauses are even artfully managed; while redundant syllables are inserted, and lines left defective, still farther to add to the variety :”— "Come, valiant spirits; you peers of Portugal, Within your bosoms: O for honour, Your country's reputation, your lives' freedom, Let theirs be equal to quit yours again. Speak, Portugales: are you resolved as I, To live like captives, or as free-born die?" We have no hesitation in saying (in opposition to Malone's opinion) that the freedom of versification which is discovered in 'Titus Andronicus' is carried a great deal further than even this specimen of 'Jeronimo;' and we cannot have a better proof of our assertion than this-that Steevens anxiously desired, and indeed succeeded, in reducing several of the lines to the exact dimensions of his ten-syllable measuring-tape. The Shaksperian versification is sufficiently marked in Titus,' even to the point of offending the critic who did not understand it. But the truth of the matter is, that the comparison of the versification of 'Titus' with * Ordinarily pronounced in early dramatic poetry as a monosyllable. |