"ASSUREDLY that criticism of Shakspere will alone be genial which is reverential. The Englishman who, without reverence, a proud and affectionate reverence, can utter the name of William Shakspere, stands disqualified for the office of critic. He wants one at least of the very senses, the language of which he is to employ; and will discourse at best but as a blind man, while the whole harmonious creation of light and shade, with all its subtle interchange of deepening and dissolving colours, rises in silence to the silent fiat of the uprising Apollo."* Thus a "reverential" criticism will not only be most genial,-it will be most intelligible. Heminge and Condell, in their Preface to the first collected edition of Shakspere, truly say,-"Read him again and again; and if then you do not like him, surely you are in some manifest danger not to understand him." To love Shakspere best is best to understand him. And yet, from the days of Rymer, who described Othello as a "bloody farce, without salt or savour," we have had a "wilderness" of critics, each one endeavouring, "merely by his ipse dixit, to treat as contemptible what he has not intellect enough to comprehend, or soul to feel, without assigning any reason, or referring his opinion to any demonstrative principle."+ In offering an analysis of the various critical opinions upon each play, we must, of necessity, present our readers with many remarks which are not "reverential." But we trust, also, to be able to shew, in most cases by authorities which do refer to some "demonstrative principle," that those who have uttered the name of Shakspere "without reverence," as too many of the commentators have done, are "but stammering interpreters of the general and almost idolatrous admiration of his countrymen.”‡ 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 Shakspere'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 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 * Coleridge, Literary Remains, vol. ii. p. 63. + Id. p. 11. 1 Schlegel's Lectures on Dramatic Literature, Black's Translation, vol. ii. p. 104. COMEDIES.-VOL I. F of character, nor striking delineations of life. But it abounds in yvwual (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 careless grace and felicity which marks it for 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 inclined to consider possible. Friendship has its romance as well as love. In the other parts of the comedy there is certainly extremely little that can be called sketchy. They appear to us to be very carefully finished. There may be a deficiency of power, but not of elaboration. A French writer who has analysed all Shakspere's plays (M. Paul Duport), considers that this play possesses a powerful charm, which he attributes to the brilliant and poetical colouring of its style. He thinks, and justly, that a number of graceful comparisons, and of vivid and picturesque images, here take the place of the bold and natural conceptions (the “ vital and organic” style, as Coleridge expresses it) which are the general characteristic of his genius. In these elegant generalizations, M. Duport properly recognises the vagueness and indecision of the youthful poet.* The remarks of A. W. Schlegel on this comedy are, as usual, acute and philosophical :-"The Two Gentlemen of Verona paints the irresolution of love, and its infidelity towards friendship, in a pleasant, but, in some degree, superficial manner; we might almost say with the levity of mind which a passion suddenly entertained, and as suddenly given up, pre-supposes. The faithless lover is at last forgiven without much difficulty by his first mistress, on account of his ambiguous repentance. For the more serious part, the premeditated flight of the daughter of a prince, the 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." +† An English 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 imagines that it might have been written at Stratford, and have formed his chief recommendation to the Blackfriars company. He adds,-"This play appears to me enriched with all the freshness of youth; with strong indications of his future matured poetical power and dramatic effect. It is the day-spring of genius, full of promise, beauty, and quietude, before the sun has arisen to its splendour. I can likewise discern in it his peculiar gradual development of character, his minute touches, each tending to complete a portrait; and if these are not executed by the master hand, as shewn in his later plays, they are by the same apprenticehand, each touch of strength sufficient to harmonize with the whole." Johnson says of this play, "I am inclined to believe that it was not very successful." It is difficult to judge of the accuracy of this belief. The "quietude," the "minute touches," may not have been exactly suited to an audience who had as yet been unaccustomed to the delicate lights and shadows of the Elizabethan drama. Shakspere, in some degree, stood in the same relation to his predecessors, as Raphael did to the earlier painters. The gentle gradations, the accurate distances, the harmony and repose, had to be superadded to the hard outlines, the strong colouring, and the disproportionate parts of the elder artists, in the one case as in the other. But our 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 Essais Littéraires sur Shakspere, tome ii. p. 357. Paris, 1828. ↑ Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, Black's translation, vol. ii. p. 156. Shakspere's Autobiographical Poems, &c. By Charles Armitage Brown. 1838. 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 in 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 works-the germ of some other 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 involuntary turn not only to Viola, but to Rosalind, and to Imogen, three of the most exquisite of Shakspere's exquisite creations of female characters-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 : When Valentine exclaims, "Now my co-mates, and brothers in exile, Hath not old custum made this life more sweet "And why not death, rather than living torment?" we recollect the grand terrible, by the peculiar : passage in Macbeth, where the same thought is exalted, and rendered or some lit I with the same in Than on the torture of the mind to lie There are, generally speaking, resemblances throughout the works of Shakspere, which none but his genius 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 poet aiming to be correct, instead of the splendour of the perfect artist, subjecting every crude and apparently unmanageable thought to the wonderful alchemy 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 Is eaten by the canker ere it blow; * Malone's Shakspere, by Boswell, vol. ii. p. 32. F 2 67 Even so by love the young and tender wit Losing his verdure even in the prime." Here the image is feeble, because it is generalized. But compare it with the same image in Romeo and Juliet: "But he, his own affection's counsellor, Is to himself-I will not say how true, Johnson, as we have already seen, considered this comedy to be wanting in “ diversity of character." The action, it must be observed, is mainly sustained by Proteus and Valentine, and by Julia and Silvia; and the conduct of the plot is relieved by the familiar scenes in which Speed and Launce appear. The other actors are very subordinate, and we scarcely demand any great diversity of character amongst them; but it seems to us, with regard to Proteus and Valentine, Julia and Silvia, Speed and Launce, that the characters are exhibited, as it were, in pairs, upon a principle of very defined though delicate contrast. We will endeavour to point out these somewhat nice distinctions. Coleridge says, in 'The Friend,' "It is Shakspere's peculiar excellence, that throughout the whole of his splendid picture gallery (the reader will excuse the acknowledged inadequacy of this metaphor), we find individuality everywhere,-mere portrait nowhere. In all his various characters we still feel ourselves communing with the same nature, which is everywhere present as the vegetable sap in the branches, sprays, leaves, buds, blossoms, and fruits, their shapes, tastes, and odours. Speaking of the effect, that is, his works themselves, we may define the excellence of their method as consisting in that just proportion, that union and interpenetration of the universal and the particular, which must ever pervade all works of decided genius and true science." Nothing can be more just and more happy than this definition of the distinctive quality of Shakspere's works, a quality which puts them so immeasurably above all other works,-"the union and interpenetration of the universal and the particular." It constitutes the peculiar charm of his matured style,-it furnishes the key to the surpassing excellence of his representations, whether of facts which are cognizable by the understanding or by the senses, in which a single word individualizes the "particular" object described or alluded to, and, without separating it from the "universal," to which it belongs, gives it all the value of a vivid colour in a picture, perfectly distinct, but also completely harmonious. The skill which he attained in this wonderful mastery over the whole world of materials for poetical construction, was the result of continued experiment. In his characters, especially, we see the gradual growth of this extraordinary power, as clearly as we perceive the differences between his early and his matured forms of expression. But it is evident to us, that, in his very earliest delineations of character, he had conceived the principle which was to be developed in "his splendid picture gallery." In the comedy before us, Valentine and Proteus are the "two gentlemen,"-Julia and Silvia the two ladies "beloved,"Speed and Launce the two "clownish" servants. And yet how different is the one from the other of the same class. The German critic, Gervinus, has honoured us by treating "the two gentlemen," the "two ladies beloved," and the two "clownish servants," on the same principle of contrast. Proteus, who is first represented to us as a lover, is evidently a very cold and calculating one. He is "a votary to fond desire;" but he complains of his mistress that she has metamorphosed him :"Made me neglect my studies,-lose my time." He ventures, however, to write to Julia; and when he has her answer, "her oath for love, her honour's pawn," he immediately takes the most prudent view of their position : "O that our fathers would applaud our loves." But he has not decision enough to demand this approbation : "I fear'd to shew my father Julia's letter, Lest he should take exceptions to my love." He parts with his mistress in a very formal and well-behaved style;-they exchange rings, but Julia has first offered "this remembrance" for her sake;-he makes a common-place vow of con stancy, whilst Julia rushes away in tears; he quits Verona for Milan, and has a new love at first sight the instant he sees Silvia. The mode in which he sets about betraying his friend, and wooing his new mistress, is eminently characteristic of the calculating selfishness of his nature :— "If I can check my erring love, I will; If not, to compass her I'll use my skill." He is of that very numerous class of men who would always be virtuous, if virtue would accomplish their object as well as vice;-who prefer truth to lying, when lying is unnecessary ;-and who have a law of justice in their own minds, which if they can observe they "will;" but "if not,"-if they find themselves poor erring mortals, which they infallibly do,—they think "Their stars are more in fault than they." This Proteus is a very contemptible fellow, who finally exhibits himself as a ruffian and a coward, and is punished by the heaviest infliction that the generous Valentine could bestow-his forgiveness. Generous, indeed, and most confiding, is our Valentine-a perfect contrast to Proteus. In the first scene he laughs at the passion of Proteus, as if he knew that it was alien to his nature; but when he has become enamoured himself, with what enthusiasm he proclaims his devotion : "Why, man, she is mine own; And I as rich in having such a jewel As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl." In this passionate admiration we have the germ of Romeo, and so also in the scene where Valentine is banished: "And why not death, rather than living torment?" But here is only a sketch of the strength of a deep and all-absorbing passion. The whole speech of Valentine upon his banishment is forcible and elegant; but compare him with Romeo in the same condition :- "Heaven is here Where Juliet lives; and every cat, and dog, We are not wandering from our purpose of contrasting Proteus and Valentine, by shewing that the character of Valentine is compounded of some of the elements that we find in Romeo; for the strong impulses of both these lovers are as much opposed as it is possible to the subtle devices of Proteus. The confiding Valentine goes to his banishment with the cold comfort that Proteus gives him : "Hope is a lover's staff; walk hence with that." He is compelled to join the outlaws, but he makes conditions with them that exhibit the goodness of his nature; and we hear no more of him till the catastrophe, when his traitorous friend is forgiven with the same confiding generosity that has governed all his intercourse with him. We have little doubt of the corruption, or, at any rate, of the unfinished nature, of the passage in which he is made to give up Silvia to his false friend,—for that would be entirely inconsistent with the ardent character of his love, and an act of injustice towards Julia, which he could not commit. But it is perfectly natural and probable that he should receive Proteus again into his confidence, upon his declaration of "hearty sorrow," and that he should do so upon principle : "Who by repentance is not satisfied, Is nor of heaven, nor earth." It is, to our minds, quite delightful to find in this, which we consider amongst the earliest of Shakspere's plays, that exhibition of the real Christian spirit of charity which, more or less, pervades all his writings; but which, more than any other quality, has made some persons, who deem their own morality as of a higher and purer order, cry out against them, as giving encouragement to evil doers. We shall have occasion hereafter to speak of the noble lessons which Shakspere teaches dramatically (and not according to the childish devices of those who would make the dramatist write a "moral" at the end of five acts, upon the approved plan of a Fable in a spelling-book), and we therefore pass over, for the present, those profound critics who say "he has no moral purpose in view."* But there are some who are not quite so pedantically wise as to affirm "he paid no attention to that retributive justice which, when human affairs are righty understood, pervades them Lardner's Cyclopædia, Literary and Scientific Men, vol. ii. p. 128. |