In whatever light this play is viewed, it will fhew beautiful in all. The emperor 18 Marcus Antoninus speaks in commendation of tragedy, as not only exhibiting the various events of life, but teaching us wife and moral obfervations. What tragedian equals Shakespeare? When news was brought to Macbeth that the queen was dead, he wishes she had not then died; to morrow, or any other time would have pleased him better. This is the concatenation of ideas, and hence is introduced the obfervation that follows.

To morrow, and to morrow, and to morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last fyllable of recorded time:
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to 1 study death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That ftruts and frets his hour upon the ftage
And then is beard no more! It is a tale,
Told by an idiot, full of found and fury,
Signifying nothing!

18. Marc. Ant. XI, 6.

And

19. The first folio edition reads duffy death: i. e. death which reduces us to duft and afhes; as Mr. Theobald explains it, an efpoufer of this reading. It might be further ftrengthened from a fimilar expreffion in the pfalms, xxii. 15. thou haft brought me to the duft of death: the duft of death, i. e. dufty death. I don't doubt but dufty death was E 4 Shake

And somewhat before, when the doctor gives Macbeth an account of the troubled ftate of the queen, he afks,

Canft thou not minister to a mind difeas'd,
Pluck from the memory a rooted forrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain;
And, with fome fweet 20 oblivious antidote,
Cleanfe the ftuff'd bofcm of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?

It might be likewife deferving notice, how finely Shakespeare obferves that rule of tragedy, to

paint

Shakespeare's own reading; but 'twas his firft reading; and he afterwards altered it himself into ftudy death, which the players finding in fome other copy, gave it us in their fecond edition. Study then feems the authentic word. To die is a leffon fo eafily learnt, that even fools can study it even the motley fool, in As you like it, could reason on the time.

'Tis but an hour ago fince it was nine,
And after one hour more 'twill be eleven;
And fo from hour to hour we ripe and ripe,
And then from hour to hour we rot and rot,
And thereby hangs a tale.

20. Alluding to the Nepenthe: a certain mixture, of which perhaps opium was one of the ingredients. Homer, Od. . 221.

Νηπενθές τ' αχολόν τε, κακῶν ἐπίληθον ἀπάνων.

paint the miseries of the "great: almost all the perfons in the play, more or lefs, are involved in calamity. The leffon to be learnt by the lower people is, acquiefcence in the ease of a private station, not obnoxious to those disorders, which attend greatness in the ftage of the world.

i. e. the oblivious antidote, caufing the forgetfulness of all the evils of life. What is remarkable, had Shakespeare understood Greek as well as Johnson, he could not more clofely have expreffed the meaning of the old bard.

21. Ἐν τοῖς πλεσίοις καὶ βασιλεῦσι καὶ τυράννοις αἱ τραγῳδίας τόπον ἔχεσιν, εδεὶς δὲ πένης τραγῳδίαν συμπληροῖ, εἰ μὴ ὡς χορευτής· οἱ δὲ βασιλεῖς ἄρχονται μὲν ἀπ ̓ ἀγαθῶν,

Στέψαλε δώματα.

分

εἶτα περὶ τρίτον ἢ τέταριον μέρα,

Ἰω Κιθαιρών, τί μ' ἐδέχε ;

Arian. L. 1. c. 25. p. 124. Marc. Anton. XI, 16.

AGAIN,

GAIN, let us fuppofe the poet had a mind
to inculcate this moral, that villany, tho

for a time fuccessful, will meet it's certain ruin.

ΕΙΠΕΡ ΓΑΡ ΤΕ ΚΑΙ ΑΥΤΙΚ' ΟΛΥΜΠΙΟΣ ΟΥΚ
ΕΤΕΛΕΣΣΕΝ

ΕΚ ΤΕ ΚΑΙ ΟΨΕ ΤΕΛΕΙ.

1. Họm. Il. . 160. &c. Agamemnon foon after suggests he shall return back to Argos with ignominy; to his muchinjur'd Argos, so he calls it; this expreffion carries paffion with it, ΠΟΛΥΕΙΠΣΙΟΝ ΑΡΓΟΣ. Which the tranfcriber has alter'd into woλudition "Age, miftaking the Aeolic digamma for a A.

What,

X

X

Book I. What, tho the band of heav'n withholds its stroke? At length, tho' late, more dreadful 'twill defcend Down, on the author's head, his wife and off spring. For well I ween the fatal day draws near, When Troy's curft walls, and Priam with his people Shall perish all. High o'er their impious beads Fove shakes his gloomy Aegis, fully fraught With vengeance 'gainst their frauds and perjuries. Thus Fate ordains irrevocably fixt.

Thus is Hamlet made an inftrument by providence to work the downfall of his uncle; and the punishment being compleated, the play ends. Were one to enter into a detail of the fable, to what advantage would the poet's art appear? The former king of Denmark being fecretly murdered by the poffeffor of the crown, the fact could not be brought to light, but by the 2 intervention of a fupernatural power. The ghost

او

او

ท

of

2. Ariftotle having obferved that the unravelling of the plot, or the folution of the fable, should proceed from the fable itself, and not from any machine, adds, 'Anna unxarņ χρησέον ἐπὶ τὰ ἔξω τῇ δράμαῖς, ἢ ὅσα πρὸ τῶ γέγονεν, (ἃ ἐχ οἷόν τε ἄνθρωπον εἰδέναι,) ἢ ὅσα ὕτερον, ἃ δεῖται προαγορεύσεως καὶ ἀγγελίας, περὶ ποιητ. κεφ. ιε. But a machine may be used out of the action of the drama, either to explain fome things that have already happened, (which 'tis impoffible otherwife for a man to be acquainted with) or that may happen hereafter, cancerning which we want to be informed. The murder of

the

of the murdered king was usually seen to walk on a platform before the palace, where the centinels kept guard. There was a foldier, who doubting this tale, came on the platform out of

curiofity,

the king is a fact of this fort, which could not be known but by a machine. Machines thus introduced add furprise and majesty to the incidents nor are they improbable, if according to the received and vulgarly-believed opinions; as the ghost in Hamlet, the witches in Macbeth, &c. The epic poet has greater latitude : his fpeciofa miracula are received more cafily; he tells you ftories; the tragedian reprefents them, and brings them before your eyes.

Segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem,

Quam quae funt oculis fubjecta fidelibus.

Hor. art. poet. 180.

Now what is marvellous, and out of the vulgar road, is highly pleafing. What Ariftotle fays to this purpose is worth our notice. I will give his words as they feem to me they fhould be printed and correâted. Δεῖ μὲν ἐν ἐν ταῖς τραγῳδίαις ποιεῖν τὸ θαυμαςόν. Μᾶλλον δ ̓ ἐνδέχεται ἐν τῇ ἐποποιΐα τὸ ἄλογον, (δι' ὃ συμβαίνει μάλισα τὸ θαυμαςόν,) διὰ τὸ μὴ ὁρᾶν εἰς τὸν πράτονα. Ἔπειτα [lege Επεί τοι] τὰ περὶ τὴν ΕκλοςΘ δίωξιν ἐπὶ σκηνῆς ὂνα, γελοῖα ἂν φανείη, οἱ μὲν ἐτῶτες καὶ ἐ διώκοντες, ὁ δὲ ἀνανεύων. Ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἔπεσι λανθάνει. Τὸ δὲ θαυματὸν, ἡδύ· σημεῖον δέ· πάντες γὰρ προσιθέντες ἀπαγ[έλλεσιν ὡς χαριζόμενοι. The marvellous ought to be in tragedy; but rather in the Epopea is admitted what even tranfgreffes the bounds of reason, (by which the marvellous is chiefly raised) because the actors are not feen. So that which Homer writes of Hector, perfued by Achilles, would be ridiculous on the ftage; for here the foldiers must be ftanding

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