CHAP. IX. Mr. Kemble in Vortigern.--Shakspeare papers.-Some naturally expected.-At length stated to be discovered.-Terms as to Vortigern.—Mr. Kemble's opinion.-Sheridan's.— Ireland's hand-bill.-Vortigern, how cast.-Speech in it.Consequences.--Candid remark as to the author.-Lord Southampton's Autograph. WHILE Mr. Kemble thus suffered in the opinion of an able man from his indisposition, during the first night's performance of the Iron Chest, he was shortly after to bear from an impudent one, the imputation of having played the critic, when he should have acted Vortigern, and by downright treachery producing the damnation of Shakspeare himself. For many reasons the reader will require an account of this affair from ME; and the transaction is of too much moment to be slightly handled in any work that embraces the business of the stage. I shall, therefore, preserve all that is material in an attempt to palm a series of forgeries for the genuine writings of Shakspeare; and show how much probability aided the contrivers of the papers in the sacrilegious imposition, which would have placed the tragedy of Vortigern among the works of our greatest poet. It was a subject of infinite surprise to the admirers of Shakspeare's genus, to observe from age to age, that while discoveries, very material to our knowledge of the period in which he lived, occasionally occupied the press, yet that with respect to himself little could be known; and all the effusions that friendship or business must have poured from · his pen during a town life, and the reasonable produce of his retirement from a mind so essentially active, ALL, as if collected together in one mass destroyed BY AUTHORITY, had vanished away, and were entirely lost to posterity. This wonder was increased by our knowledge, that he had neither lived in obscurity nor died in want, but that the general love and admiration had constantly surrounded him; and that individual importance might best indulge its vanity by showing the communications of his esteem, or the private treasures that might remain with his family, of which there was a natural and even learned guardian in his son-in-law, Dr. Hall. Family papers have become a very interesting and valuable feature in our literary stores. In none such is there any fragment of Shakspeare. He had been patronised by Elizabeth and James, by Essex, and Southampton, and the two Pembrokes; had lived in the closest intimacy with Jonson and his friends; and yet not a single letter can be found subscribed with his name, nor one tributary effusion of his muse to show that he ever yielded to the NOT idle habit of congratulating success, and soothing the disappointment sometimes of cotemporary genius. Every probability, therefore, drew the conclusion, that the task of collection had by some affectionate hand been duly made; and that, perhaps, in our time a rich assemblage of Shakspeare papers would start forth from some ancient repository, to solve all our doubts, and add to our reverence and our enjoyment. In this state of very reasonable expectation, the public is at length gratified to learn, that this precious repository has at last been found; that it contains a miscellany as rich and various as his genius-now sublime, now sportive; now dramatic, now critical-relics even of his person and his dress— his hair, his rings, his portrait, and his books, and plays of which the number was not at once ascertained; BUT a tragedy, called Vortigern, was certainly there, perfect and excellent, as the great national theatre would shortly feel by the immense audiences it would be sure to collect, when acted by so accomplished a company as was now under the management of Mr. Kemble. The terms agreed upon between Sheridan and Richardson on the one part, and the father, Ireland, for the son, then a minor, on the other, were that £300 should be paid down; or, in the Drury Lane mode, notes given at short periods, payable at Hammersley's; and this sum was, at all events, got by the forgery. The other part of the agreement was a division of the receipts (after deducting charges) for sixty nights! None of the parties seemed to entertain the slightest suspicion, that the piece might fail. Mr. Ireland, in his Confessions, has reported that Sheridan was by no means an enthusiast as to Shakspeare; yet that, upon reading a few pages of the manuscript he was going to buy, he was struck with some unstrung lines, and crude passages, as below the general character of the poet; but, as the inferiority might proceed from his youth, he still relied in the fullest confidence upon the external evidences of paper and ink, and the character of the penmanship. As to Mr. Kemble all this time, his opinion, as one of the most correct of our Shakspearians, was little regarded. He had by no means a mind easy to satisfy on such a question; and very frequently expressed to me his wonder, that Sheridan should have troubled himself so little about Shakspeare, when he really was a greater master of Spenser, than any other reader of the present day. I have myself heard him recite passages of great length and beauty; and his fondness for that poet, which began in his youth, originated, I think, in some such accident as that recorded of Cowley. He had whole cantos of the Faery Queene by heart. From the beginning of the invasion upon Shakspeare, Mr. Kemble had born "a wary eye" upon the combatants; and he was duly informed by me of the successive arrivals from IRELAND, and of the reported conviction of certain venerable critics of the greatest name and authority. But his friend Malone had some strong suspicions, I believe, beyond poetical character; and neither he nor Steevens would go to Norfolk street, for the purpose of inspecting the papers. Mr. Ireland could not be expected to concede to the two commentators the royal prerogative of being waited upon in their palaces of Hampstead and Queen Ann street with the manuscript; and so converted the implied contempt of their refusal into a conspiracy against Shakspeare himself, unless he made his appearance under their own guardianship. But to Mr. Malone I am confident Mr. Kemble owed that present of Hæmony, which kept him from the slightest danger, in the midst of the enchantment. The controversy as to the miscellaneous papers, it was said, had been on both sides overlaid. Whether Shakspeare, when in love and seventeen, had knotted his own hair and written soft nonsense to his intended bride--whether he wrote conundrums for Maister Cowley, and scrawled his own arms without knowing the dexter side of the shield; whether FOR, the proposition, was ever spelt FORRE, or the conjunction, AND, had ever been written with a final E, were points on which people might differ long, and contract animosities as violent, as trifles of a different kind, but not greater importance, have inspired, since men began to love themselves.' But the whole concern was now to be submitted to another kind of test--the sovereign genius of our dramatic lord was about to display itself on a public stage, in an historical drama never seen before, and his countrymen were to ask their heads and their hearts the obvious questions-"Are these the sentiments, is this the language, of Shakspeare?" Ireland's fancy or his fears had converted that mild gentleman, Mr. Malone, into a furious Saracen, fighting with poisoned weapons against Vortigern; and he accordingly issued a hand-bill on the night of performance, bespeaking the candour of the audience. This his son could not procure, when writing on the subject; but it lies before me, and shall be preserved as the last instance of his paternal care of Vortigern. " VORTIGERN. "A malevolent and impotent attack on the Shakspeare MSS. having appeared on the eve of representation of the play of VORTIGERN, evidently intended to injure the interest of the proprietor of the MSS., Mr. Ireland feels it impossible, within the short space of time that intervenes between the publishing and the representation, to produce an answer to the most illiberal and unfounded assertions in Mr. Malone's Inquiry. He is therefore induced to request that the play of Vortigern may be heard with that candour, that has ever distinguished a British audience." On the 2d of April the play was acted. In order to be quite right, the number of lines in it had been regulated by one of Shakspeare's acknowledged dramas; and there were some other points of imitation, which a fair critic will also offer to the reader's attention. The Seven Ages, from As You Like It, produced a division into lustres, not the most luminous; but the laughter was too excessive to allow the close of this brief history of man. The rash hand of our youth could not abstain from plundering the sublime eulogy on our composition in the play of Hamlet. It is astonishing that even young Ireland did not see, or that his friend Talbot did not admonish him, that a GREAT GENIUS does not repeat HIMSELF in this way. With the representative truth of nature, he shares in her abundance, and is known by his endless diversity. To resemble the mighty father of our drama, therefore, the forger must not think of the same things, but feel in the same manner. If this be just as to mere descriptive or moral beauties, it applies with even greater force to the treatment of any PASSION. Let us consider, for a moment, that of jealousy, as it exhibits itself from the mind of Shakspeare. See how it is diversified by the natures on which it operates; view it in all its varieties of temperament, in Leontes and Ford, in Poşthumus and Othello. But neither these nor any considerations of prudence or criticism seem to have crossed our forger in his progress; confident that the world would be deceived, he appears, at times, to have revelled in the grossness of his impositions. The principal members of the cast were, Mr. Bensley (shortly to close his theatric life) in the character of Constantius; Mr. C. Kemble Pascentius; Mr. KEMBLE himself Vortigern. Mrs. Siddons (prescient of some storm) had begged to be excused, and Edmunda was sustained by Mrs. PowELL; Mrs. JORDAN (I used to think a true believer!) Flavia; and Rowena, the beautiful Miss Miller. The eternal attendant, Tidswell, with two aides-de-camp, Misses Leake and Heard, were in waiting on Edmunda. Great importance was naturally attached to the mode in which this sublime work of the author of King Lear should be ushered to the public audience. The laureate was flattered with this complimentary task. That true scholar and upright man, Mr, Pye, in the company of one of our most accomplished antiquaries, visited the mass of papers in Norfolk Street. For a short period, I remember, he believed, and resisted the positive judgment of his friend. But let it in candour or courtesy be remembered, that Mr. Pye's studies had lain chiefly among the Greek and Roman writers, and their earliest imitators, the Italians. Of our ancient language he had made no particular study. But when he came to look at the consequences of a positive affirmation by himself of the TRUTH of at all events a doubtful matter, he drew himself back with the aid of Touchstone, and placed his prologue under the convenient panoply of the virtuous conjunc tion. "IF in our scenes your eyes delighted find Marks that denote the mighty master's mind ; IF, at his words the tears of pity flow, Your breasts with horror thrill, with rapture glow -- But if these proofs should fail ;-IF in the strain Ye seek the Drama's awful sire in vain, Should critics, heralds, antiquaries join It may readily be imagined, that this cautious introduc tion, however approved by the manager, would seem frigid to the flaming faith of old Ireland; but he softened his re |