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truth, however, is, that love is wilfully blind; and now that my eyes are opened, I shut them against the fault. Away with your best-proved improbabilities, when the heart has been touched and the fancy fascinated! When I think of the lovely Mrs. Jordan in this part, I have no more desire for proofs of probability on this subject, (though proofs pellucid as the morning dews,') than for the cogent logic of a bailiff's writ.'

"In fact, though there is no rule without exceptions, and no general truth without limitation, it may be pronounced, that if you delight us in fiction, you may make our sense of probability slumber as deeply as you please.

"But it may be asked whether nature and truth are to be sacrificed at the altar of fiction? No! in the main effect of fiction on the fancy, they never are nor can be sacrificed. The improbabilities of fiction are only its exceptions, while the truth of nature is its general law; and unless the truth of nature were in the main observed, the fictionist could not lull our vigilance as to particular improbabilities.

"Apply this maxim to Shakespeare's As You LIKE IT, and our Poet will be found to make us forget what is eccentric from nature in a limited view, by showing it more beautifully probable in a larger contemplation. In this drama he snatches us out of the busy world into a woodland solitude; he makes us breathe its fresh air, partake its pastoral peace, feast on its venison, admire its bounding wild-deer, and sympathize with its banished men and simple rustics. But he contrives to break its monotony by the intrusion of courtly manners and characters. He has a fool and a philosopher, who might have hated each other at court, but who like each other in the forest. He has a shepherdess and her wooing shepherd, as natural as Arcadians; yet when the banished court come to the country and beats it in wit, the courtiers seem as much naturalized to the forest as its natives, and the general truth of nature is equally preserved.

"The events of the play are not numerous, and its in

terest is preserved by characters more than incidents. But what a tablet of characters! the witty and impassioned Rosalind, the love-devoted Orlando, the friendship-devoted Celia, the duty-devoted old Adam, the humourous Clown, and the melancholy Jaques: all these, together with the dignified and banished Duke, make the forest of Arden an Elysium to our imagination; and our hearts are so stricken by those benevolent beings, that we easily forgive the other once culpable but at last repentant characters."-CAMPBELL.

"For pure comedy, rich in variety, interest, poetry, and a happy view of human life, AS YOU LIKE IT is the world's master-piece. It has been termed a pastoral comedy, but that implies an unreal description of shepherds and shepherdesses; here we have persons of every degree, true to nature as the trees under which they walk and talk. There is a frankness and freedom in the dialogue, belonging equally to the various characters, that seem to partake of the open air in which they breathe. Never is the scene within doors, except when something discordant is introduced to heighten, as it were, the harmony-when the usurper banishes Rosalind, and twice more, for a short while, just to give him time to threaten. These changes serve, without disturbing our calmer feelings, to increase our happiness among the pleasant exiles in the forest.

"At one time I thought a lioness was out of her sphere in the forest of Arden, notwithstanding the authority of the original novel for her appearance there. But the forest of Arden is a privileged place, once famous for Merlin's magic fountains, Angelica, and the knights of Charlemagne, surrounded by enchantments, according to Boiardo and Ariosto. Shakespeare avoids following the novel in specifying a certain king of France; he mentions no country; and therefore he has a right to bring a lioness into this poetical forest, placed we know not where."-CH. A. BROWN.

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