and by some means or other supplied it. He could anticipate Milton's own Greek and Latin; Tortive and errant from his course of growth The multitudinous seas incarnardine A pudency so rosy, &c. In fact, if Shakspeare's poetry has any fault, it is that of being too learned; too over-informed with thought and allusion. His wood-notes wild surpass Haydn and Bach. His wild roses were all twenty times double. He thinks twenty times to another man's once, and makes all his serious characters talk as well as he could himself,-with a superabundance of wit and intelligence. He knew, however, that fairies must have a language of their own; and hence, perhaps, his poetry never runs in a more purely poetical vein than when he is speaking in their persons ;-I mean it is less mixed up with those heaps of comments and reflections which, however the wilful or metaphysical critic may think them suitable on all occasions, or succeed in persuading us not to wish them absent, by reason of their stimulancy to one's mental activity, are assuredly neither always proper to dramatic, still less to narrative poetry; nor yet so opposed to all idiosyncrasy on the writer's part as Mr. Coleridge would have us believe. It is pretty manifest, on the contrary, that the over-informing intellect which Shakspeare thus carried into all his writings, must have been a personal as well as literary peculiarity; and as the events he speaks of are sometimes more interesting in their nature than even a superabundance of his comments can make them, readers may be pardoned in sometimes wishing that he had let them speak a little more briefly for themselves. Most people would prefer Ariosto's and Chaucer's narrative poetry to his; the Griselda, for instance, and the story of Isabel,—to the Rape of Lucrece. The intense passion is enough. The misery is enough. We do not want even the divinest talk about what Nature herself tends to petrify into silence. Cura ingentes stupent. Our divine poet had not quite outlived the times when it was thought proper for a writer to say everything that came into his head. He was a student of Chaucer: he beheld the living fame of Spenser; and his fellow-dramatists did not help to restrain him. The players told Ben Jonson that Shakspeare never blotted a line; and Ben says he was thought invidious for observing, that he wished he had blotted a thousand. He sometimes, he says, required stopping. (Aliquando sufflaminandus erat.) Was this meant to apply to his conversation as well as writing? Did he manifest a like exuberance in company? Perhaps he would have done so, but for modesty and self-knowledge. To keep his eloquence altogether within bounds was hardly possible; and who could have wished it had been? Would that he had had a Boswell a hundred times as voluminous as Dr. Johnson's, to take all down! Bacon's Essays would have seemed like a drop out of his ocean. He would have swallowed dozens of Hobbeses by anticipation, like larks for his supper. If Shakspeare, instead of proving himself the greatest poet in the world, had written nothing but the fanciful scenes in this volume, he would still have obtained a high and singular reputation, that of Poet of the Fairies. For he may be said to have invented the Fairies; that is to say, he was the first that turned them to poetical account; that bore them from clownish neighborhoods to the richest soils of fancy and imagination. WHOLE STORY OF THE TEMPEST. ENCHANTMENT, MONSTROSITY, AND LOVE. The whole story of the Tempest is really contained in this A most auspicious star: whose influence, Come away, servants, come; I am ready now; (Miranda sleeps.) Enter ARIEL. Ari. All hail, great master! grave sir, hail! I come To answer thy best pleasure: be 't to fly, To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride On the curl'd clouds; to thy strong bidding, task Perform'd to point the tempest that I bade thee? I boarded the king's ship; now on the beak, Pro. Would not infect his reason? But felt a fever of the mind, and play'd Some tricks of desperation; all, but mariners, Is the king's ship; in the nook, where once Whom, with a charm join'd to their suffer'd labor, I have left asleep; and for the rest o' the fleet, Bound sadly home for Naples; Supposing that they saw the king's ship wreck'd, Pro. At least two glasses: the time 'twixt six and now, Must by us both be spent most preciously. Ari. Is there more toil? Since thou dost give me pains, Let me remember thee what thou hast promis'd, Which is not yet performed me. Remember, I have done thee worthy service; Told thee no lies, made no mistakings, serv'd Without or grudge or grumblings: thou didst promise Pro. Dost thou forget Pro. Thou liest, malignant thing! Hast thou forgot The foul witch Sycorax, who, with age and envy, Was grown into a hoop? Hast thou forgot her? Ari. No, sir. Pro. Thou hast where was she born? speak; tell me. Ari. Sir, in Argier. Pro. O, was she so? I must, Once in a month, recount what thou hast been, Which thou forget'st. This damn'd witch, Sycorax, To enter human hearing, from Argier Thou know'st was banish'd, for one thing she did; Ari. Aye, sir. Pro. This blue-ey'd hag was hither brought with child, And here was left by the sailors: Thou, my slave, As thou report'st thyself, was then her servant : And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate To act her earthy and abhorr'd commands, A dozen years; within which space she died, A freckled whelp, hag-born) not honor'd with Pro. Dull thing, I say so,-he, that Caliban, Pro. If thou more murmur'st, I will rend an oak, And peg thee in his knotty entrails, till Thou hast howl'd away twelve winters. |