Adige, which waters Verona, does not take its course by Milan. Shakspere, therefore, was most ignorant of geography! In Shakspere's days countries were not so exactly mapped out as in our own, and therefore he may, from lack of knowledge, have made a boat sail from Verona, and have given Bohemia a seabord. But let it be borne in mind that, in numberless other instances, Shakspere has displayed the most exact acquaintance with what we call geographyan acquaintance not only with the territorial boundaries and the physical features of particular countries, but with a thousand nice peculiarities connected with their government and customs, which nothing but the most diligent reading and inquiry could furnish. Is there not, therefore, another solution of the ship at Verona, and the seabord of Bohemia, than Shakspere's ignorance? Might not his knowledge have been in subjection to what he required, or fancied he required, for the conduct of his dramatic incidents? Why does Scott make the murder of a Bishop of Liege, by William de la Marck, the great cause of the quarrel between Charles the Bold and Louis XI., to revenge which murder the combined forces of Burgundy and France stormed the city of Liege, when, at the period of the insurrection of the Liegeois described in Quentin Durward,' no William de la Marck was upon the real scene, and the murder of a Bishop of Liege by him took place fourteen years afterwards? No one, we suppose, imputes this inaccuracy to historical ignorance in Scott. He was writing a romance, we say, and he therefore thought fit to sacrifice historical truth. The real question, in all these cases, to be asked, is, Has the writer of imagination gained by the violation of propriety a full equivalent for what he has lost? In the case of Shakspere we are not to determine this question by a reference to the actual state of popular knowledge in our own time. What startles us as a violation of propriety was received by the audience of Shakspere as a fact,-or, what was nearer the poet's mind, the fact was held by the audience to be in subjection to the fable which he sought to present;—the world of reality lived in a larger world of art ;-art divested the real of its formal shapes, and made its hard masses plastic. In our own days we have lost the power of surrendering our understanding, spell-bound, to the witchery of the dramatic poet. We cannot sit for two hours enchained to the one scene which equally represents Verona or Milan, Rome or London, and ask no aid to our senses beyond what the poet supplies us in his dialogue. We must now have changing scenes, which carry us to new localities; and pauses, to enable us to comprehend the time which has elapsed in the progress of the action; and appropriate dresses, that we may at once distinguish a king from a peasant, and a Roman from a Greek. None of these aids had our ancestors :-but they had what we have not-a thorough love of the dramatic art in its highest range, and an appreciation of its legitimate authority. Wherever the wand of the enchanter waved, there were they ready to come within his circle and to be mute. They did not ask, as we were long too accustomed to ask, for happy Lears and unmetaphysical Hamlets. They were content to weep scalding tears with the old king, when his "poor fool was hanged," and to speculate with the unresolving prince even to the extremest depths of his subtlety. They did not require tragedy to become a blustering melodrame, or comedy a pert farce. They could endure poetry and wit-they understood the alternations of movement and repose. We have, in our character of audience, become degraded even by our advance in many appliances of civilization with regard to which the audiences of Shakspere were wholly ignorant. We know many small things exactly which they were content to leave unstudied; but we have lost the perception of many grand and beautiful things which they received instinctively and without effort. They had great artists working for them, who knew that the range of their art would carry them far beyond the hard, dry, literal copying of every-day Nature which we call Art; and they laid down their shreds and patches of accurate knowledge as a tribute to the conquerors who came to sub The pursuits of the gallant spirits of the court of Elizabeth are reflected in several expressions of this comedy. The incidental notices of the general condition of the people are less decided; but a few passages that have reference to popular manners may be pointed out. due them to the dominion of imagination. | a reflection in the allusions of this accurate What cared they, then, if a ship set sail observer. from Verona to Milan, when Valentine and his man ought to have departed in a carriage?or what mattered it if Hamlet went "to school at Wittemberg," when the real Hamlet was in being five centuries before the university of Wittemberg was founded? If Shakspere had lived in this age, he might have looked more carefully into his maps and his encyclopædias. We might have gained something, but what should we not have lost? "Shakspere," says Malone, "is fond of alluding to events occurring at the time when he wrote;" and Johnson observes that many passages in his works evidently show that "he often took advantage of the facts then recent, and the passions then in motion." + This was a part of the method of Shakspere, | by which he fixed the attention of his audience. The Nurse, in 'Romeo and Juliet,' says, "It is now since the earthquake eleven years." Dame Quickly, in 'The Merry Wives of Windsor,' talks of her "knights, and lords, and gentlemen, with their coaches, I warrant you, coach after coach." Coaches came into general use about 1605. "Banks's horse," which was exhibited in London in 1589, is mentioned in 'Love's Labour's Lost.' These, amongst other instances which we shall have occasion to notice, are not to be regarded as determining the period of the dramatic action; and, indeed, they are, in many cases, decided anachronisms. In 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona' there are several very curious and interesting passages which have distinct reference to the times of Elizabeth, and which, if Milan had then been under a separate ducal government, would have warranted us in placing the action of this play about half a century later than we have done. As it is, the passages are remarkable examples of Shakspere's close attention to "facts then recent;" and they show us that the spirit of enterprise, and the intellectual activity, which distinguished the period when Shakspere first began to write for the stage, found *Life, vol. ii. p. 331, edit. 1921. The boyhood of Shakspere was passed in a country town where the practices of the Roman church had not been wholly eradicated either by severity or reason. We have one or two passing notices of these. Proteus, in the first scene, says, "I will be thy beadsman, Valentine." Shakspere had, doubtless, seen the rosary still worn, and the "beads bidden," perhaps even in his own house. Julia compares the strength of her affection to the unwearied steps of “the true-devoted pilgrim." Shakspere had, perhaps, heard the tale of some ancient denizen of a ruined abbey, who had made the pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady at Loretto, or had even visited the sacred tomb at Jerusalem. Thurio and Proteus are to meet at "St. Gregory's well." This is the only instance in Shakspere in which a holy well is mentioned; but how often must he have seen the country people, in the early summer morning, or after their daily labour, resorting to the fountain which had been hallowed from the Saxon times as under the guardian influence of some venerated saint! These wells were closed and neglected in London when Stow wrote; but at the beginning of the last century the custom of making journeys to them, according to Bourne, still existed amongst the people of the North; and he considers it to be "the remains of that superstitious practice of the Papists of paying adoration to wells and fountains." This play contains several indications of the prevailing taste for music, and exhibits an audience proficient in its technical terms; for Shakspere never addressed words to his hearers which they could not understand. This taste was a distinguishing characteristic of the age of Elizabeth; it was not extinct in that of the of this play, says of it, "There is a strange mixture of knowledge and ignorance, of care and negligence." Mrs. Lenox (who, in the best slip-slop manner, does not hesitate to pass judgment upon many of the greatest works of Shakspere) says, ""T is generally allowed that the plot, conduct, manners, and incidents of this play are extremely deficient." On the other hand, Pope gives the style of this comedy the high praise of being "natural and unaffected;" although he complains that the familiar parts are "composed of the lowest and most trifling conceits, to be accounted for only by the gross taste of the age he lived in.” Johnson says, "When I read this play, I cannot but think that I find, both in the serious and ludicrous scenes, the language and sentiments of Shakspere. It is not, indeed, one of his most powerful effusions; it has neither many diversities of character, nor striking delineations of life. But it abounds in yvwpaí (sententious observations) beyond most of his plays; and few have more lines or passages which, singly considered, are eminently beautiful." Coleridge, the best of critics on Shakspere, has no remark on this play beyond calling it "a sketch." Hazlitt, in a more elaborate criticism, follows out the same idea: "This is little more than the first outlines of a comedy loosely sketched in. It is the story of a novel dramatised with very little labour or pretension; yet there are passages of high poetical spirit, and of inimitable quaintness of humour, which are undoubtedly Shakspere's; and there is throughout the conduct of the fable a care first Charles; but it was lost amidst the puritanism of the Commonwealth and the profligacy of the Restoration. There is one allusion in this play to the games of the people "bid the base," which shows us that the social sport which the school-boy and schoolgirl still enjoy, that of prison-base, or prisonbars, and which still makes the village green vocal with their mirth on some fine evening of spring, was a game of Shakspere's days. In the long winter nights the farmer's hearth was made cheerful by the well-known ballads of Robin Hood; and to "Robin Hood's fat friar" Shakspere makes his Italian outlaws allude. But with music, and sports, and ales, and old wives' stories, there was still much misery in the land. "The beggar" not only spake "puling" "at Hallowmas," but his importunities or his threats were heard at all seasons. The disease of the country was vagrancy; and to this deep-rooted evil there were only applied the surface remedies to which Launce alludes, "the stocks and "the pillory." The whole nation was still in a state of transition from semi-barbarism to civilization; but the foundations of modern society had been laid. The labourers | had ceased to be vassals; the middle class had been created; the power of the aristocracy had been humbled, and the nobles had clustered round the sovereign, having cast aside the low tastes which had belonged to their fierce condition of independent chieftains. This was a state in which literature might, without degradation, be adapted to the wants of the general people; and "the best public instructor" then was the drama. Shakspere found the tasteless grace and felicity which marks it for created; but it was for him, most especially, to purify and exalt it. Without any reference to the period of the poet's life in which The Two Gentlemen of Verona' was written, Theobald tells us, "This is one of Shakspeare's worst plays." Hanmer thinks Shakspere "only enlivened it with some speeches and lines, thrown in here and there." Upton determines "that, if any proof can be drawn from manner and style, this play must be sent packing, and seek for its parent elsewhere." Johnson, though singularly favourable in his opinion his." We scarcely think that Coleridge and Hazlitt are correct in considering this play "a sketch," if it be taken as a whole. In the fifth act, unquestionably, the outlines are "loosely sketched in." The unusual shortness of that act would indicate that it is, in some degree, hurried and unfinished. If the text be correct which makes Valentine offer to give up Silvia to Proteus, there cannot be a doubt that the poet intended to have worked out this idea, and to have exhibited a struggle of self-denial, and a sacrifice to friendship, which very young persons are in clined to consider possible. Friendship has | imagines that it might have been written its romance as well as love. In the other at Stratford, and have formed his chief reparts of the comedy there is certainly ex- commendation to the Blackfriars company. tremely little that can be called sketchy. He adds, "This play appears to me enThey appear to us to be very carefully finished. riched with all the freshness of youth; with There may be a deficiency of power, but not strong indications of his future matured of elaboration. A French writer who has ana- poetical power and dramatic effect. It is lysed all Shakspere's plays (M. Paul Duport) the day-spring of genius, full of promise, considers that this play possesses a powerful beauty, and quietude, before the sun has charm, which he attributes to the brilliant arisen to its splendour. I can likewise disand poetical colouring of its style. He thinks, cern in it his peculiar gradual development and justly, that a number of graceful compa- of character, his minute touches, each tendrisons, and of vivid and picturesque images, ing to complete a portrait; and if these are here take the place of the bold and natural not executed by the master-hand, as shown conceptions (the "vital and organic" style, in his later plays, they are by the same as Coleridge expresses it) which are the ge- apprentice-hand, each touch of strength neral characteristic of his genius. In these sufficient to harmonise with the whole." elegant generalizations M. Duport properly Johnson says of this play, "I am inclined recognises the vagueness and indecision of to believe that it was not very successful." the youthful poet*. The remarks of A. W. It is difficult to judge of the accuracy of Schlegel on this comedy are acute, as usual: this belief. The "quietude," the "minute "The Two Gentlemen of Verona' paints touches," may not have been exactly suited the irresolution of love, and its infidelity to- to an audience who had as yet been unaccuswards friendship, in a pleasant, but, in some tomed to the delicate lights and shadows of degree, superficial manner; we might almost the Elizabethan drama. Shakspere, in some say with the levity of mind which a passion degree, stood in the same relation to his predesuddenly entertained, and as suddenly given cessors as Raffaelle did to the earlier painters. up, presupposes. The faithless lover is at last The gentle gradations, the accurate distances, forgiven without much difficulty by his first the harmony and repose, had to be superadded mistress, on account of his ambiguous repent- to the hard outlines, the strong colouring, and ance. For the more serious part, the premethe disproportionate parts of the elder artists, ditated flight of the daughter of a prince, the in the one case as in the other. But our captivity of her father along with herself by a band of robbers, of which one of the two gentlemen, the faithful and banished friend, has been compulsively elected captain,-for all this a peaceful solution is soon found. It is as if the course of the world was obliged to accommodate itself to a transient youthful caprice, called love."+ A writer, who has well studied Shakspere, and has published a volume of very praiseworthy research, distinguished for correct taste and good feeling (although some of its theories may be reasonably doubted), considers this comedy Shakspere's first dramatic production, and Essais Littéraires sur Shakspeare,' tome ii. p. 357. Paris, 1828. 'Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature,' Black's translation, vol. ii. p. 156. 'Shakspeare's Autobiographical Poems,' &c. By Charles Armitage Brown. 1838. dramatist, who unquestionably always looked to what the stage demanded from him, however he may have looked beyond the mere wants of his present audience, put enough of attractive matter into 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona' to command its popularity. No "clown" that had appeared on the stage before his time could at all approach to Launce in real humour. But the clowns that the celebrated Tarleton represented had mere words of buffoonery put into their mouths; and it is not to be wondered at that Shakspere retained some of their ribaldry. It would be some time before he would be strong enough to assert the rights of his own genius, as he unquestionably did in his later plays. He must, as a young writer, have been sometimes forced into a sacrifice to the popular requirements. Mr. Boaden, as it is stated by Malone, is of opinion that The Two Gentlemen of Verona' contains the germ of other plays which Shakspere afterwards wrote*. The expression, "germ of other plays," is somewhat undefined. There are in this play the germ of several incidents and situations which occur in the poet's maturer worksthe germ of some others of his most admired characters-the germ of one or two of his most beautiful descriptions. When Julia is deputed by Proteus to bear a letter to Silvia, urging the love which he ought to have kept sacred for herself, we are reminded of Viola, in 'Twelfth Night,' being sent to plead the Duke's passion for Olivia, although the other circumstances are widely different; —when we see Julia wearing her boy's disguise, with a modest archness and spirit, our thoughts involuntarily turn not only to Viola, but to Rosalind, and to Imogen, three of the most exquisite of Shakspere's exquisite creations of female character;-when Valentine, in the forest of Mantua, exclaims, "How use doth breed a habit in a man! This shadowy desert, unfrequented woods, I better brook than flourishing peopled towns," we hear the first faint notes of the same delicious train of thought, though greatly modified by the different circumstances of the speaker, that we find in the banished Duke of the forest of Ardennes : "Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile, Hath not old custom made this life more sweet Than that of painted pomp?" When Valentine exclaims, "And why not death, rather than living torment?" we recollect the grand passage in 'Macbeth,' where the same thought is exalted, and rendered terrible, by the peculiar circumstances of the speaker's guilt : "Better be with the dead, Whom we, to gain our place, have sent to peace, *Malone's Shakspeare, by Boswell, vol. ii. p. 32. Than on the torture of the mind to lie There are, generally speaking, resemblances throughout the works of Shakspere, which his genius alone could have preserved from being imitations. But, taking the particular instance before us, when with matured powers he came to deal with somewhat similar incidents and characters in other plays, and to repeat the leading idea of a particular sentiment, we can, without difficulty, perceive how vast a difference had been produced by a few years of reflection and experience ;-how he had made to himself an entirely new school of art, whose practice was as superior to his own conceptions as embodied in his first works, as it was beyond the mastery of his contemporaries, or of any who have succeeded him. It was for this reason that Pope called the style of The Two Gentlemen of Verona' "simple and unaffected." It was opposed to Shakspere's later style, which is teeming with allusion upon allusion, dropped out of the exceeding riches of his glorious imagination. With the exception of the few obsolete words, and the unfamiliar application of words still in use, this comedy has, to our minds, a very modern air. The thoughts are natural and obvious, the images familiar and general. The most celebrated passages have a character of grace rather than of beauty; the elegance of a youthful poct aiming to be correct, instead of the splendour of the perfect artist, subjecting every crude and apparently unmanageable thought to the wonderful alchymy of his all-penetrating genius. Look, in this comedy, at the images, for example, which are derived from external nature, and compare them with the same class of images in the later plays. We might select several illustrations, but one will suffice: "As the most favour'd bud Here the image is feeble, because it is ge |