NOTES ON SHAKSPEARE. FROM STOCKDALE'S EDITION OF THE PLAYS. ON THE LANGUAGE AND MANNERS OF "While the partiality of the nation shall wish to secure the language in purity, and while the inhabitants shall continue to admire the manners of their ancestors," &c.-Preface to the Second Edition of Stockdale's Shakspeare. ONE might have thought it difficult to find false topics of panegyric for Shakspeare; yet Mr. Stockdale (the publisher), twice out of thrice, has contrived to be as near wrong as possible. The partiality of the nation to the purity of the language has not been proved by any sufficient instances. The innovators are to the conservators ten to one. But, be that as it may, not the purity, but the power, of the language is to be found in Shakspeare. He used our kindly vernacular more like his wife than his mother ;-not with the despotism of a usurper, but with the authority of a sovereign;-not with the license of a seducer, but with the familiarity of a husband. He does not, indeed, innovate for the mere sake of VOL. II. K novelty, but so long as his phrase expressed his meaning to himself, he cared little whether or not it were authorised by usage, or amenable to grammar. He is not an author to be construed and parsed. In his hands words become like things inspired, possessed with a new, an overmastering soul, which they had not before him, and cannot retain when his magic is not working. In plain fact, the language was not fixed in Shakspeare's day, and he did not fix it. far as it ever has been fixed, the work was done by the translators of the Bible. Our English Bible is the only well of English undefiled. Shakspeare, though a popular, was not in his day, nor for many many days after, a standard writer. His fame, indeed, was planted in his lifetime, and has continued ever since, growing and spreading its leafy branches, till they overshadow the land; but his reputation as a classic English author is altogether new, and not yet undisputed. Then, as to the manners of our ancestors, it is little that we learn about our ancestors or their manners from Shakspeare,-less than from most of his contemporaries. He has, indeed, ghosts, witches, and fairies; but they are ghosts, witches, fairies of his own invention. He has a tavern, very like a tavern of the present day—except where his wit, humour, philosophy make it to differ. He has many allusions to popular customs and superstitions, but seldom directly dramatises any. His scenes are not laid in the halls or oratories of baronial state: he has little of chivalry-the most in Troilus and Cressida, where it is utterly out of time. His music is neither the minstrel harp, nor the convent bell. He has left costumes to the property-man, and all that belongs to one age more than another, to his commentators. Incidentally, no doubt, Shakspeare does throw light on the manners of his own time, but it is neither his characteristic merit, nor his peculiar value. Ben Jonson, Dekkar, and Heywood have far more historical information. TEMPEST. SHAKSPEARE'S SUPREMACY ON THE STAGE. The supremacy of Shakspeare over his contemporaries has been even greater on the stage than in the closet. Only one play of Massinger, two of Beaumont and Fletcher, and two at most of Ben Jonson, have been stock pieces for many years. Samuel Pepys, in his Diary, that odd mixture of statesman, churchman, gossip, old woman, and knave, where simplicity of heart blends with simplicity of head, unaccountably mixed up with politic wisdom, mentions seeing the Tempest, and remarks that it was the most innocent play he ever beheld!!! It must have been Shakspeare's Tempest that he saw, not Dryden's and Davenant's. Whether Shakspeare were afraid of making even a white wizard too amiable for orthodoxy, I know not; but certainly Prospero is a most tyrannical master, not only to Caliban, the legitimate sovereign |