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King.

Re-enter Widow, with HELENA.

Is there no exorcist

Beguiles the truer office of mine eyes?

Is't real that I see?

Hel. No, my good lord ; 'Tis but the shadow of a wife you see,

The name, and not the thing.

Ber.

Both, both. O, pardon!

Hel. O my good lord, when I was like this maid, I found you wondrous kind. There is your ring, And, look here's letter. This it says,

you,

your

When from my finger you can get this ring,
And are by me with child, &c.-This is done :
Will you be mine, now you are doubly won?

Ber. If she, my liege, can make me know this clearly,

I'll love her dearly; ever, ever dearly.

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Hel. If it appear not plain, and prove untrue, Deadly divorce step between me and you!

O my dear mother, do I see you living?

Laf. Mine eyes smell onions; I shall weep anon. -Good Tom Drum, [TO PAROLLES.] lend me a handkerchief. So, I thank thee; wait on me home. I'll make sport with thee. Let thy courtesies alone; they are scurvy ones.

King. Let us from point to point this story know, To make the even truth in pleasure flow.―

If thou be'st yet a fresh, uncropped flower,

[TO DIANA. Choose thou thy husband, and I'll pay thy dower : For I can guess, that, by thy honest aid, Thou kept'st a wife herself, thyself a maid.— Of that, and all the progress, more and less, Resolvedly more leisure shall express; All yet seems well; and if it end so meet, The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet.

[Flourish.

Advancing.

The King's a beggar, now the play is done:
All is well ended, if this suit be won,
That you express content; which we will
pay,
With strife to please you, day exceeding day.
Ours be your patience then, and yours our parts;1
Your gentle hands lend us, and take our hearts.

[Exeunt.

1 i. e. hear us without interruption, and take our parts, 1. e. support and defend us

THIS play has many delightful scenes, though not sufficiently probable, and some happy characters, though not new, nor produced by any deep knowledge of human nature. Parolles is a boaster and a coward, such as has always been the sport of the stage, but perhaps never raised more laughter or contempt than in the hands of Shakspeare.

I cannot reconcile my heart to Bertram-a man noble without generosity, and young without truth; who marries Helen as a coward, and leaves her as a profligate; when she is dead by his unkindness, sneaks home to a second marriage, is accused by a woman he has wronged, defends himself by falsehood, and is dismissed to happiness.

The story of Bertram and Diana had been told before of Mariana and Angelo, and, to confess the truth, scarcely merited to be heard a second time.

JOHNSON.

TAMING OF THE SHREW.

PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

THERE is an old anonymous play extant, with the same title, first printed in 1596, which (as in the case of King John and Henry V.) Shakspeare rewrote, “adopting the order of the scenes, and inserting little more than a few lines which he thought worth preserving, or was in too much haste to alter." Malone, with great probability, suspects the old play to have been the production of George Peele or Robert Greene.* Pope ascribed it to Shakspeare, and his opinion was current for many years, until a more exact examination of the original piece (which is of extreme rarity) undeceived those who were better versed in the literature of the time of Elizabeth than the poet. It is remarkable that the Induc'tion, as it is called, has not been continued by Shakspeare so as to complete the story of Sly, or at least it has not come down to us; and Pope, therefore, supplied the deficiencies in this play from the elder performance: they have been degraded from their station in the text, as in some places incompatible with the fable and Dramatis Persona of Shakspeare; the reader will, however, be pleased to find them subjoined to the notes. The origin of this amusing fiction may probably be traced to the sleeper awakened of the Arabian Nights: but similar stories are told of Philip the good Duke of Burgundy, and of the Emperor Charles the Fifth. Marco Polo relates something similar of the Ismaelian Prince Alo-eddin, or chief of the mountainous region, whom he calls, in common

There was a second edition of the anonymous play in 1607; and the curious reader may consult it, in "Six Old Plays upon which Shakspeare founded," &c., published by Steevens.

with other writers of his time, "the old man of the mountain." Warton refers to a collection of short comic stories in prose, "set forth by maister Richard Edwards, master of her majesties revels," in 1570 (which he had seen in the collection of Collins the poet), for the immediate source of the fable of the old drama. The incident related by Heuterus in his Rerum Burgund., lib. iv., is also to be found in Goulart's Admirable and Memorable Histories, translated by E. Grimeston, 4to. 1607. The story of Charles V. is related by Sir Richard Barckley, in a Discourse on the Felicitie of Man, printed in 1598; but the frolic, as Mr. Holt White observes, seems better suited to the gayety of the gallant Francis, or the revelry of our own boisterous Henry.

Of the story of the Taming of the Shrew no immediate English source has been pointed out. Mr. Douce has referred to a novel in the Piacevoli Notti of Straparola, notte 8, fav. 2, and to El Conde Lucanor, by Don Juan Manuel, Prince of Castile, who died in 1362, as containing similar stories. He observes that the character of Petruchio bears some resemblance to that of Pisardo in Straparola's novel, notte 8, fav. 7.

Schlegel remarks that this play "has the air of an Italian comedy;" and, indeed, the love intrigue of Lucentio is derived from the Suppositi of Ariosto, through the translation of George Gascoigne. Johnson has observed the skilful combination of the two plots, by which such a variety and succession of comic incident is insured without running into perplexity. Petruchio is a bold and happy sketch of a humorist, in which Schlegel thinks the character and peculiarities of an Englishman are visible. It affords another example of Shakspeare's deep insight into human character, that in the last scene the meek and mild Bianca shows she is not without a spice of self-will. The play inculcates a fine moral lesson, which is not always taken as it should be.

Every one, who has a true relish for genuine humor, must regret that we are deprived of Shakspeare's continuation of this Interlude of Sly,*

* Dr. Drake suggests that some of the passages in which Sly is introduced should be adopted from the old drama, and connected with the text, so as to complete his story; making very slight alteration, and distinguishing the borrowed parts by some mark.

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