1 A hopeful omen; I each minute expecting Lew. Monsieur Brisac, You offer fair and nobly, and I'll meet you Though with my utmost vigilance and study, Let others speak her form, and future fortune Bri. You may, my lord, securely, Since Fame aloud proclaimeth her perfections, I quote not this as an instance of the sublime, but of our authors genteel dialogue enlivened by a few poetic figures, as in the last lines Fame is personised and commands the tongues of men. Now let us see this dialogue modernized: The names of the old gentlemen being changed to Antonio and Charino, they thus confer. Ant. Without compliment, my old friend, I shall think myself much honour'd in your alliance; our families are both ancient, our children young, and able to support 'em; and I think the sooner we set 'em to work the better. Cha. Sir, you offer fair and nobly, and shall find I dare meet you in the same line of honour; and I hope, since I have but one girl in the world, you won't think me a troublesome old fool, if I endeavour to bestow her to her worth; therefore, if you please, before we shake hans, a word or two by the bye, for I have some considerable questions to ask you. Ant. Ask 'em. Cha. Well, in the first place, you say you have two sons. Ant. Exactly. Cha. And you are willing that one of 'em shall marry my daughter? Ant. Willing. Cha. My daughter Angelina? Ant. Angelina. Cha. And you are likewise content that the said Angelina shall survey 'em both, and (with my allowance) take to her lawful husband, which of 'em she pleases? Ant. Content. Cha. And you farther promise, that the person by her (and me) so chosen (be it elder or younger) shall be your sole heir; that is to say, shall be in a conditional possession, of at least three parts of your estate. You know the conditions, and this you positively promise? Ant. To perform. Cha. Why then, as the last token of my full consent and approbation, I give you my Cha. Is't a match? Ant. A match. Cha. Done. hand. Ant. Done. Cha. And done!—that's enough Strike out an expression or two of Fletcher's, and a couple of grasiers would have put more sense into an ox-bargain. I blame not the Author, if if a man's customers resolve to pay the price of Champaign, and yet insis upon mild and stale, who would refuse it them? This is only a specime of the taste of the late wonderfully enlightened age. But as Shakespear and Milton have already in a good measure dispersed the clouds of pre judice which had long obscured their excellencies; it is to be hoped tha our eyes are now inured to bear the lustre of such poets, who most resemble these suns of Britain. To such readers therefore who are desirous of be coming acquainted with the excellencies of Beaumont and Fletcher, 1 shall beg leave to recommend their plays to be read in the following order beginning with which species they like best.* [* Whimsical as this classing of our Authors' plays must appear, it is surely more whimsical that Mr. Seward could not find a place in either class for those excellent comedies, The Mad Lover, and The Humorous Lieutenant.] The The reader will find many excellent things in this last class, for the plays of our authors do not differ from each other near so much as those of Shakespeare. The three last tragedies are detruded so low on account of their magic and machinery, in which our authors fall shorter of Shakespeare than in any other of their attempts to imitate him. What is the reason of this? Is it that their genius improved by literature and polite conversation, could well describe men and manners, but had not that poetic that creative power to form new beings and new worlds, "and give to airy nothings A local habitation and a name". as Shakespeare excellently describes his own genius? I believe not. The enthusiasm of passions which Beaumont and Fletcher are so frequently rapt into, and the vast variety of distinguished characters which they have so admirably drawn, shew as strong powers of invention as the creation of witches and raising of ghosts. Their deficiency therefore in magic is accountable from a cause far different from a poverty of imagination; it was the accidental disadvantage of a liberal and learned education: Sorcery, witchcraft, astrology, ghosts, and apparitions, were then the universal belief of both the great vulgar and the small, nay they were even the parliamentary, the national creed; only some early-enlightened minds saw and contemned the whole superstitious trumpery: among these our authors were probably initiated from their school-days into a deep-grounded contempt of it, which breaks out in many parts of their works, and particularly in The Bloody Brother and The Fair Maid of the Inn, where they began that admirable banter which the excellent Butler carried on exactly in the same strain, and which, with such a second, has at last drove the bugbears from the minds of almost all men of common understanding. But here was our authors disadvantage; the taste of their age called aloud for the assistance of ghosts and sorcery to heighten the horror of tragedy; this horror they had never felt, never heard of but with contempt, and consequently they had no arche-types in their own breasts of what they were called on to describe. Whereas Shakespeare from his low education 12 had believed 12 Shakespeare from his low education, &c.] The gentleman who is most obliged to Shakespeare, and to whom Shakespeare is most obliged of any man living, happening to see the sheet of the Preface where Shakespeare's peculiar superiority over our authors in his magic, is ascribed to the accidental advantage of a low education, he could not well brook a passage which seemed to derogate from his favourite. As Shakespeare had as good sense as our authors, he thought, he would be as free from real superstition. This does not always follow. Education will tincture even the brightest parts. There is proof that our authors held all sorcery, witchcraft, &c. as mere juggler's tricks, but not the least room to doubt of Shakespeare's having believed them in his youth, whatever he did afterwards; and this is all that is asserted. Is this therefore a derogation? No, it only shews the amazing power of his genius; a genius which could turn the bugbears of his former credulity into the noblest poetic machines. Just as Homer built his machinery on the superstitions which he had been bred up to. Both indeed give great distinction of characters, and great poetic dignity to the dæmons they introduce; nay, they form some new ones; but the system they build on is the vulgar creed. And here (after giving due praise to the gentleman above, for restoring Shakespeare's magic to its genuine horror, out of that low buffoonery which former actors and managers of theatres had Aung it into) I shall shew in what light Shakespeare's low education always appeared to me by the following epitaph wrote many years since, and published in Mr. Dodsley's Miscellany. VOL. I. Upon believed and felt all the horrors he painted; for thoug and inns of court were in some degree freed from thos stition, the banks of the Avon were then haunted on eve "There tript with printless foot the elves of hills, So that Shakespeare can scarcely be said to create a magic; he went but back to his native country, and goblins in poetic weeds; hence even Theseus is not at deities,* Minerva, Venus, the fauns, satyrs, &c. but b fairies: Whereas our authors, however aukwardly they sorcerers, yet when they get back to Greece (which wa native soil) they introduce the classic deities with eas Fletcher in particular does in his Faithful Shepherdess, in their Masques; the last of which is put in the third deficiency in the composition, but from the nature Masque, which, when no real characters are intermixed to rank below Tragedy and Comedy. Our authors, wh cause they were in fashion, have themselves shewed h them. "They must commend their king, and speak in prai MAID'S TRAGEI This was probably wrote by Beaumont with an eye Gray's Inn, as well as masques in general. The reader account of our Authors' Plays, and what share Mr. S to have had in the completion of some that were left Upon Shakespeare's Monument at Stratford up "Great Homer's birth sev'n rival cities claim, Yet not to birth alone did Homer owe His wondrous worth; what Ægypt could bestow, [* Mr. Seward does not seem to have recollected, that in the Two I un equal mixture of Gothic and Grecian manners. It was the common lish writers, from Chaucer to Milton, who has introduced chivalry even * Milton. Sympson's Lives of the Authors. But before I finish my account of them, it is necessary to apologise for a fault which must shock every modest reader: it is their frequent use of gross and indecent expressions. They have this fault in common with Shakespeare, who is sometimes more gross than they ever are; but I think grossness does not occur quite so often in him. In the second class of parallel passages where the hands of Shakespeare and our authors were not distinguishable, I omitted one instance for decency sake, but I will insert it here as proper to the subject we are now upon. Philaster being violently agitated by jealousy, and firmly believing his mistress to have been loose, thus speaks of a letter which he has just received from her, Strength and delicacy are here in perfect union. In like manner Posthumus in Cymbeline, act ii, agitated by as violent a jealousy of his wife, thus describes her seeming modesty: "Oh, vengeance! vengeance! Me of my lawful pleasure she restrain'd, Might well have warm'd old Saturn; that I thought her As chaste as unsunn'd snow." This is a most amiable picture of conjugal delicacy, but it may be justly objected that it draws the curtains of the marriage-bed, and exposes it to the view of the world; and if the reader turns to the speech of which it is a part, he will find much grosser expressions in the sequel. But these were so far from offending the ears of our ancestors, that Beaumont and Fletcher, though so often guilty of them, are perpetually celebrated by the writers of their own and of the following age, as the great reformers of the drama from bawdry and ribaldry. Thus when Fletcher's charming Pastoral, The Faithful Shepherdess, had been damned by its first night's audience, Jonson says that they damned it for want of the vicious and bawdy scenes which they had been accustomed to, and then breaks out in a rapture worthy of Jonson, worthy of Fletcher: Yet even this pattern of chastity is not free from expressions which would now be justly deemed too gross for the stage. Sir John Berkenhead, speaking of Fletcher's Works in general, says, "And as thy thoughts were clear, so innocent, Slander'st |