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INTRODUCTORY

REMARKS

CHRONOLOGY, CHARACTERISTICS OF STYLE, ETC.

HE WINTER'S TALE is unquestionably one of Shakespeare's later works, and it may have been his very last drama. This play was never printed during the author's life, and is preserved only in the folio edition of 1623. As it has not the evidence of the date of its composition afforded to many other plays by their early publication in pamphlets, and as there is not to be found any entry of the title upon the registers of the Stationers' Company, nor any mention of it in contemporary authors, there was formerly much doubt and critical discussion as to the epoch of the author's literary life to which it should be assigned. This is, however, now very satisfactorily ascertained by the general agreement of its style of language and thought, with the more precise evidence resulting from the collation of several insulated pieces of testimony successively discovered, within the last few years, by the industry of Mr. Collier and his associates, in the investigation of Shakespearian and other Old-English lore. The internal evidence of style and manner alone would not fix any very definite period for the composition of this play, nor indeed do more than indicate that it was written at some time after he entered upon the middle stage of his career, when he had passed from the purely poetical cast of thought and language still predominant (though not exclusively so) in the MERCHANT OF VENICE, to the peculiar dramatic character, at once passionate and philosophical, of his maturer mind. The free and dramatic cast of versification, the elliptical sentences, the compressed diction, the bold use of words in the graver passages, and the easier and more natural tone of humour, as compared with the brilliant and gay but more artificial cast of his earlier comedy, sufficiently demonstrate that the WINTER'S TALE was not written until the author's mind had acquired those habits of thought which characterize his portraits of Hamlet, of Othello, and of Falstaff.

But beyond this general limit, mere internal evidence cannot guide us, and it is therefore not to be wondered at that the critics of the last century, from Pope to Chalmers, differed widely in their conjectures, and that even those who, like Warburton and Walpole, did justice to the poetry and genius of the piece, were not much nearer in their conjectures than the feebler critics, who, following the dicta of Dryden and Pope, were shocked at the daring contempt of the unity of time, and disposed to excuse the author by supposing it to be an old play of some inferior author, merely remodelled by Shakespeare, "with the addition of some characters or single scenes."

But the date of the first representation, and probably of its composition not long before, has at length been ascertained, by the discovery and collation of four or five separate points of evidence, with which the indications of style just noticed very well correspond.

Malone, who had at first maintained that the WINTER'S TALE was written in 1604, discovered in his old age a memorandum in the office-book of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels under James II., dated August, 1623, and mentioning "an old play called WINTER'S TALE, formerly allowed by Sir George Buc, and likewise by me." Now this George Buc, or Bucke, held the office of Master of the Revels, from October, 1610, until 1622, and in virtue of it the sole authority of licensing plays for performance or printing. The piece must therefore have been produced at some time after October, 1610. Several years after this the manuscript diary was discovered of the astrological and theatrical Dr. Simon Forman, to whose acquaintance the readers of this edition have been more formally introduced in the Introductory Remarks on CYMBELINE. In the "book of plays, and notes thereof, for common policy," under the date of 15th May, 1611, he gives an account of the piece as he had just seen it at the Globe Theatre; and he is as minute in his narrative of the plot as a modern theatrical reporter is of that of a new piece, as this must in all probability then have been. Again, it appears from the "Extracts from the accounts of the Revels at Court," printed in 1842, for the Shakespeare Society, that there was represented at the palace of Whitehall, on the 5th November, 1611, "a play called the Winter's Nightes Tayle.'"

While the date of the first representation is thus nearly ascertained by the curious collation of accidental testimony, that of the composition is again indicated by another equally accidental chronological evidence, slight in itself, yet quite conclusive in its connection with the rest.

The drama, as our readers will find, was founded wholly upon Greene's little novel of "Pandosto, or the History of Dorastus and Fawnia," from which Shakespeare has not only drawn his main plot and incidents, but has occasionally used its very language, with the same freedom with which he employed old Hollingshed in his historical plays. This is done, in both cases, in such a manner that it is evident that he wrote with the book before him. Greene's novel was first printed in 1588, and then not again until 1607 and 1609, in which editions it appeared with many alterations by the author himself. Now it happens that in act iii. scene 2 (as Mr. Collier has shown) that

in copying the oracle from the novel, the Poet did not use the earier edition, but one of these, (1607 or 1609,) in which the language had been changed.

It thus becomes manifest that the WINTER'S TALE was written at some time about 1610, in the reign of James II., some years after OTHELLO, and not very long before or after the production of CYMBELINE in its present form— the two of our author's dramas, which the exhibition of the same terrible passion in all three, most frequently brings to the reader's mind in the perusal of this play.

I have been the more minute in stating and comparing this curious concatenation of independent testimony, thus brought to the elucidation of a single question, not only because every thing that thus throws light on the varying progress of the great Poet's mind is full of interest, but because it is in itself a very instructive inquiry, as showing how little weight the most plausible conjectural probabilities are entitled to, on much weightier matters, when opposed to the evidence furnished by the investigation of documentary or other positive external testimony. Indeed, it may well be doubted whether much of the philosophical history of the present day stands on any more solid foundation than the very ingenious theory of Horace Walpole on this very play, which, taken alone, seemed to be perfectly satisfactory and conclusive, until overthrown by the irreconcilable facts and dates since disinterred. This conjecture of this acute and ingenious writer is too curious a portion of Shakespearian criticism to be omitted here:

"The WINTER'S TALE (says he) may be ranked among the historic plays of Shakespeare, though not one of his numerous critics and commentators have discovered the drift of it. It was certainly intended (in compliment to Queen Elizabeth) as an indirect apology for her mother, Anne Boleyn. The address of the Poet appears nowhere to more advantage. The subject was too delicate to be exhibited on the stage without a veil; and it was too recent, and touched the queen too nearly, for the bard to have ventured so home an allusion on any other ground than compliment. The unreasonable jealousy of Leontes, and his violent conduct in consequence, form a true portrait of Henry VIII., who generally made the law the engine of his boisterous passions. Not only the general plan of the story is most applicable, but several passages are so marked that they touch the real history nearer than the fable. Hermione, on her trial, says:—

-For honour,

'Tis a derivative from me to mine,
And only that I stand for.

This seems to be taken from the very letter of Anne Boleyn to the king before her execution, where she pleads for the infant princess, his daughter. Mamillius, the young prince, an unnecessary character, dies in his infancy; but it confirms the allusion, as Queen Anne, before Elizabeth, bore a still-born son. But the most striking passage, and which had nothing to do in the tragedy but as it pictured Elizabeth, is where Paulina, describing the new-born princess, and her likeness to her father, says, 'She has the very trick of his frown.' There is one sentence, indeed, so applicable, both to Elizabeth and her father, that I should suspect the Poet inserted it after her death. Paulina, speaking of the child, tells the king:

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The WINTER'S TALE was therefore in reality a second part of HENRY VIII."

Elizabeth died in March, 1603, and it is certain that five or six years after the accession of her successor, James II., who had little sympathy with the personal feelings of Elizabeth, there could have been no possible motive for flattery, or even more justifiable compliment or palliation of the memory of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn.

Nor can the intent to shadow forth Henry VIII.'s capricious jealousies be transferred from the Poet to the author of the novel from which he drew his plot; for there the story is much less susceptible of courtly application: among other circumstances which would negative such a conjecture, is the prominent one of the catastrophe. In the novel, after some other revolting incidents, which the Poet rejected with the rest of the catastrophe, Pandosto, the jealous sovereign, the Leontes of Shakespeare, “moved with desperate thoughts, fell into a melancholy fit, and to close up the comedy with a tragical stratagem, slewe himself."

It is, indeed, not impossible that in drawing the portrait of an unreasonable and capricious royal jealousy, Anne Boleyn and her tyrant husband might have been transiently in the mind of the author of HENRY VIII.; but if so, they served only as affording models of character or hints for dialogue, like any other personages of real life, or of history, who have furnished hints to his dramatic invention, without the most remote idea of making it evident to the reader or spectator, that the Poet was relating or alluding to any story of his own age and nation.

Although the play is confessedly not to be classed among its author's greatest works, yet it is in no wise unworthy of the Poet who had written OTHELLO and LEAR. Dryden,—whose delightful and instructive critical discussions are generally very strongly biassed by the particular controversial object he had in view,-in defence, direct or indirect, of his own poetical and dramatic works, had, in a sweeping censure of the plays of Shakespeare and Fletcher, classed the WINTER'S TALE among the plays the author “wrote first," together with PERICLES, the historical plays, LOVE'S LABOUR LOST, and MEASURE FOR MEASURE; all which (he adds) "are either grounded on impossibilities, or at least so meanly written that the comedy neither caused your mirth, nor the serious parts your concernment." All this is coolly said, by a man of genius, of dramas of which Falstaff and his inimitable companions formed part of "the comedy;" and the noble moralities of Measure for MEASURE, the pastoral sweetness

of Perdita, and the high heroic thoughts and living portraitures of Hotspur, Harry of Monmouth, and a throng of great English historical names, constitute the "serious part."

This flippant dictum of the great teacher of English criticism was faintly echoed by many a minor critic, esBut universal public opinion has pecially as to the WINTER'S TALE, they being shocked by the contempt of the ordinary rules of dramatic time, and confounded by apparent anachronisms and confusions of place and manners. long ago reversed the decision of the critics of the last age, and their illustrious lawgiver. The WINTER'S TALE, with all its imperfections, has long been a general favourite in the closet and on the stage. Hazlitt, the highest authority as to the acted drama, pronounces it to be "one of the best acting of our author's plays;" and it appears, from Mrs. Inchbald and others, to have been eminently successful on the stage, wherever it has been revived. Warburton was the first commentator of name who boldly dissented from the judgment of his predecessors; but since his time critic after critic, such as Coleridge, Hazlitt, and Campbell, have joined in expressing their admiration of the spirit and beauty of the drama, while its popularity with the mass of readers may well be inferred from the fact of the great frequency of quotations and allusions drawn from it, to be found in popular writings of all sorts.

The name of the piece gives deliberate notice from the author to his audience and his readers, that he did not design a regular drama, even of that license of construction customary on the old English stage; but that they were the play is exquisitely respondent to to expect merely a dramatized romantic tale; and, as Coleridge observes,

its title."

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The unusual period of time compressed within the five acts' representation is explained and excused by the chorus of Father Time, as mainly elapsing between the third and fourth acts; so that in truth the author has here constructed a dramatic narrative in two parts, differing only in dramatic time from the First and Second Part of HENRY IV., and dramas of similar construction, by allotting three acts to the first plot and two to the continuation, instead of arranging them into two longer pieces of five acts each.

The passion of jealousy was one that the Poet had studied under all its aspects, whether ludicrous or terrible— as it shows itself in Ford or in the Moor; and he paints it with such power and truth as to indicate that he had acquired his intimate knowledge of its workings in some closer and more practical experience than the general observation of human nature, or the workings of his own sympathetic imagination. In Othello and in Posthumus he had painted men of strong affections and noble and constant natures, both driven into frenzied revenge by the vile arts of others: in the one he had shown a generous love gradually poisoned by a succession of artful insinuations— in the other the same confiding affection at once overthrown by apparently irresistible evidence; he had varied the fortunes of the heroes as well as their characters, and those of their wronged wives; and ended the story of one with the repentance of despair and death, and that of the other with the penitence of sorrow and forgiveness. Still he had not exhausted his subject, and he returns again to depict yet another form of "self-harming jealousy," which, if less powerfully pourtrayed than Othello's dark passions and dire revenge, yet results from a still nearer and deeper acquaintance with the human heart. It is the restless, self-tormenting, causeless jealousy of a suspicious, wayward mind, which, instead of becoming excited from without, by the arts of false friendship or of base rivals, makes to itself" the meat it feeds on," and repels indignantly every friendly counsellor who would medicine its "diseased opinion." The struggle of warring thoughts, of gloomy, self-created suspicion,—against truth, and -are all expressed with wonderful force in the involved and broken style, the compressed and reason, and affection,suggestive diction, so admirably adapted to the character and object, in which we recognize the peculiar cast of the language of LEAR and MACBETH, applied to a new purpose.

The pastoral beauty and romantic sweetness of the poetry of the second part are in exquisite contrast with the preceding acts, in versification and in thought. There are many passages and thoughts there which are probably more often quoted and read than any other on the same or similar subjects, in the language. The inventive, witty, versatile scoundrel, Autolycus, is a character introduced by Shakespeare into the story, and for the first time on the stage. In his external man he belonged especially to the Poet's age, as the delight and pest of wakes, fairs, But his essential character belongs to the corruptions of civilized society, and may still be and rural amusements. met in various costumes, from the hero of the "swell-mob" up to the pleasant and brilliant blower of bubbles for the exchanges and stock-markets of London or New York.

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If such, then, be the varied and admitted beauties and merits of this delightful drama, it may naturally be asked 'Why is it not then, of course, classed among its author's greatest works?" The reason, in my judgment, is this. It is, that as compared with any one of his mightier efforts, there is a deficiency of that sustained intensity of pur. pose and feeling which, in all poetry or eloquence, not only gives unity of effect to the work, but communicates to the reader a glow of excitement and interest corresponding with that which the author felt. There is abundant evidence of power, but it is, as it were, indolent, and often latent. It would seem as though, instead of having filled his mind and memory with his materials of plot and incident, as he did in other instances, (whether those materials were romantic, legendary, or historical,) and then pouring forth their rough ore refined and new stamped, hot from the mint of his own intellect,-that, finding in Greene's novel a fit canvass to receive some passages of his own thoughts or observations of life,-the idea of wayward, self-willed, self-tormenting, causeless jealousy might be the main object,-he sat down with the book before him, following that as it led his thoughts or suggested new ones; sometimes filling his page with deeper and truer passion; sometimes rejecting its revolting incidents; and, towards the close, wandering off to luxuriate in the delicate graces of Perdita, or the drollery of his merry scoundrel, Autolycus; but still as continually returning to his author's narrative and characters, and never resolutely or deliberately winging a sustained and loftier flight.

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