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Si vis me flere, dolendum eft

Primùm ipfi tibi, tunc tua me infortunia lædent,
Telephe, vel Peleu.

LOQUERIS,

MALE SI MANDATA

Aut dorm tabo aut ridebo.

And it may be worth obferving, that Horace gives this precept particularly to fhew, that bombaft and unnatural. fentiments are incapable of moving the tender paffions, which he is directing the poet how to raife. For, in the lines juft before, he gives this rule,

Telephus & Peleus, cùm pauper & exul uterque
Projicit Ampullus, & ffquipedalia verba.

Not that I would deny, that very bad lines in bad tragedies have had this effect. But then it always proceeds from one or other of these causes.

1. Either when the subject is domeftic, and the scene lies at home; the fpectators, in this cafe, become interested in the fortunes of the diftreffed; and their thoughts are fo much taken up with the fubject, that they are not at liberty to attend to the poet; who, otherwife, by his faulty fentiments and diction, would have ftifled the emotions fpringing up from a fenfe of the diftrefs. But this is nothing to the cafe in hand. For, as Hamlet fays,

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?

2. When bad lines raife this affection, they are bad in the other extreme; low, abject, and groveling, inftead of being highly figurative and fwelling; yet, when attended with a natural fimplicity, they have force enough to strike illiterate and fimple minds. gedies of Banks will justify both thefe obfervations.

The tra

But if any one will still fay, that Shakespear intended to reprefent a player unnaturally and fantastically affected,. we must appeal to Hamlet, that is, to Shakespear himfelf in this matter; who, on the reflection he makes

upon

upon the player's emotion, in order to excite his own revenge, gives not the leaft hint that the player was unnaturally or injudicioufly moved. On the contrary, his fine defcription of the actor's emotion fhews, he thought just otherwise :

this player here,

But in a fiction, in a dream of paffion,
Could force his foul fo to his own conceit,
That from her working all his vifage wann'de
Tears in his eyes, diftraction in his afpect,

A broken voice, &c.

And indeed had Hamlet esteemed this emotion any thing unnatural, it had been a very improper circumftance to fpur him to his purpose.

As Shakespear has here fhewn the effects which a fine defcription of nature, heightened with all the ornaments of art, had upon an intelligent player, whose business habituates him to enter intimately and deeply into the characters of men and manners, and to give nature its free workings on all occafions; fo he has artfully fhewn what effects the very fame fcene would have upon a quite different man. Polonius; by nature, very weak and very artificial [two qualities, though commonly enough joined in life, yet generally fo much difguifed as not to be seen by common eyes to be together; and which an ordinary poet durft not have brought fo near one another]; by difci pline, practifed in a fpecies of wit and eloquence,which was fiff, forced, and pedantic; and by trade a politician, and therefore, of confequence, without any of the affecting notices of humanity. Such is the man whom Shakespear has judicioufly chofen to reprefent the false taste of that audience which had condemned the play here reciting. When the actor comes to the fineft and most pathetic part of the fpecch, Polonius cries out, This is too long; on which Hamlet, in contempt of his ill judgment, replies, It hall to the barber's with thy beard; [intimating that, by this judgment, it appeared

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that all his wisdom lay in his length of beard,] Pr'ythee fay on. He's for a jig or a tale of bawdry; [the common entertainment of that time, as well as this, of the people] or be flecps, fay on. And yet this man of modern tafte, who stood all this time perfectly unmoved with the forcible imagery of the relater, no fooner hears, amongst many good things, one quaint and fantastical word, put in, I suppose, purposely for this end, than he profeffes his approbation of the propriety and dignity of it. That's good. Mobled queen is good. On the the whole then, I think, it plainly appears, that the long quotation is not given to be ridiculed and laughed at, but to be admired. The character given of the play, by Hamlet, cannot be ironical. The paffage itfelf is extremely beautiful. It has the effect that all pathetic relations, naturally written, fhould have; and it is condemned, or regarded with indifference, by one of a wrong, unnatural taste. From hence (to obferve it by the way) the actors, in their reprefentation of this play, may learn how this fpeech ought to be fpoken, and what appearance Hamlet ought to affume during the recital.

That which fupports the common opinion, concerning this paflage, is the turgid expreffion in fome parts of it; which they think, could never be given by the poet to be cominended. We fhall therefore, in the next place, examine the lines moft obnoxious to cenfure, and fee how much, allowing the charge, this will make for the induction of their conclufion.

Pyrrhus at Priam drives, inrage frikes wide,
But with the whiff and wind of his fell fword
The unnerved father falls.

And again,

1

Out, out, thou ftrumpet Fortune! All you gods,
In general fynod, take away her power:
Break all the fpokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven, a
As low as to the fiends.

Now

Now whether thefe be bombaft or not, is not the queftion; but whether Shakespear efteemed them fo. That he did not fo efteem them appears from his having ufed the very fame thoughts in the fame expreffions, in his best plays, and given them to his principal charac-. ters, where he aims at the fublime. As in the following paffages.

Troilus, in Troilus and Creffida, far outftrains the execution of Pyrrhus's fword, in the character he gives of

Hector's:

When many times the caitive Grecians fall
Even in the fan and wind of your fair fword,
You bid them rife and live.

Cleopatra, in Antony and Cleopatra, rails at fortune in

the fame manner:

No, let me fpeak, and let me rail fo high,

That the falfe hufwife Fortune break her wheel,
Provek'd at my offence.

But another ufe may be made of these quotations; a discovery of this recited play: which, letting us into a circumftance of our author's life (as a writer) hitherto unknown, was the reafon I have been fo large upon this question. I think then it appears, from what has been faid, that the play in difpute was Shakespear's own; and that this was the occafion of writing it. He was defirous, as foon as he had found his ftrength, of reftoring the chaftenefs and regularity of the ancient ftage: and therefore compofed this tragedy on the model of the Greek drama, as may be feen by throwing fo much action into relation. But his attempt proved fruitless; and the raw, unnatural tafte, then prevalent, forced him back again into his old Gothic manner. For which he took this revenge upon his audience. WARBURTON.

THE praife which Hamlet beftows on this piece is certainly diffembled, and agrees very well with the

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eharacter of madnefs, which, before witneffes, he thought it neceffary to fupport. The fpeeches before us have fo little merit, that nothing but an affectation of fingu larity, could have influenced Dr. Warburton to under take their defence. The poet, perhaps, meant to exhibit a juft refemblance of fome of the plays of his own age, in which the faults were too general and too glaring to permit a few fplendid paffiges to atone for them. The player knew his trade, and spoke the lines in an affecting manner, because Hamlet had declared them to be pathetic, or might be in reality a little moved by them for, "There are lefs degrees of nature (fays "Dryden) by which fome faint emotions of pity and terror are raised in us, as a lefs engine will raife a "lefs proportion of weight, though not fo much as one "of Archimedes' making." The mind of the prince, it must be confeffed, was fitted for the reception of gloomy ideas, and his tears were ready at a flight folicitation. It is by no means proved, that Shakespear has employed the fame thoughts cloathed in the fame expreffians, in his best plays. If he bids the false bufavife Fortune break her wheel, he does not defire her to break all its Spokes; nay, even its periphery, and make use of the nave afterwards for fuch an immeafurable caft. Though if what Dr. Warburton has faid fhould be found in any inftance to be exactly true, what can we infer from thence, but that Shakespear was fometimes wrong in fpite of conviction, and in the hurry of writing committed those Every faults which his judgment could detect in others? Dr. Warburton is inconfiftent in his affertions concerning the literature of Shakespear. In a note on Troilus and Creffida, he affirms, that his want of learning kept him from being acquainted with the writings of Homer; and, in this inftance, would fuppofe him capable of producing a complete tragedy written on the ancient rules: and that the fpeech before us had fufficient merit to entitle it to a place in the fecond book of Virgil's Eneid, even though the work had been carried to that perfection which the Roman poet had conceived.

Had

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