We will not part from hence.-Cesario, come ; SONG. Clo. When that I was and a little tiny boy, A foolish thing was but a toy, For the rain it raineth every day. But when I came to man's estate, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, But when I came, alas! to wive, But when I came unto my bed, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, A great while ago the world begun, And we'll strive to please non esses dau. [Exeunt. OBSERVATIONS. WINTER'S TALE.]-This play, throughout, is written in the very spirit of its author. And in telling this homely and simple, though agreeable, country tale, Our sweetest Shakespeare, faney's child, This was necessary to observe, in mere justice to the play; as the meanness of the fable, and the extravagant conduct of it, had misled some of great name into a wrong judgment of its merit; which, as far as it regards sentiment and character, is scarce inferior to any in the whole collection. WARBURTON. At Stationers' Hall, May 22, 1504, Edward White entered "A booke entitled A Winter Night's Destin.c." STLEVENS. The story of this play is taken from The Fleasant filetory of Dorastus and Fawnic, written by Robert Greene. JOHNSON. In this novel, the King of Sicilia, whom Shakespeare The parts of Antigenus, Paolino, and Aut-diens, woro ef the poet's own invention; lot many ciccum novel are omitted in the phy. of the Dr. Warburton, by "some of great name," means Dryden and Pope. See the Essay at the end of the Second Part of The Conquest of Granada; "Witness the lameness of their plots; [the plots of Shakespeare and Fletcher ;] many of which, especially those which they wrote first, (for even that age refined itself in some measure,) were made up of some ridiculous incoherent story, which in one play many times took up the business of an age. I suppose I need not name, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, [and here, by-the-by, Dryden expressly names Pericles as our author's production,] nor the historical plays of Shakespeare; besides many of the rest, as The Winter's Tale, Love's Labour's Lost, Measure for Measure, which were either grounded on impossibilities, or at least so meanly written, that the comedy neither caused your mirth, nor the serious part your concernment." Mr. Pope, in the Preface to his edition of our author's plays, pronounced the same ill-considered judgment on the play before us: "I should conjecture (says he,) of some of the others, particularly Love's Labour's Lost, THE WINTER'S TALE, Comedy of Errors, and Titus Andronicus, that only some characters, single scenes, or perhaps a few particular passages, were of his hand." None of our author's plays has been more censured for the breach of dramatic rules than The Winter's Tale. In confirmation of what Mr. Steevens has remarked in another place" that Shakespeare was not ignorant of these rules, but disregarded them,"-it may be observed, that the laws of the drama are clearly laid down by a writer once universally read and admired, Sir Philip Sidney, who, in his Defence of Poesy, 1595, has pointed out the very improprieties into which our author has fallen in this play. After mentioning the defects of the tragedy of Gorboduc, he adds: "But if it be so in Gorboducke, how much more in all the rest, where you shall have Asia of the one side, and Affricke of the other, and so manie other under kingdomes, that the player when he comes in, must ever begin with telling where he is, or else the tale will not be conceived.-Now of time they are much more liberal. For ordinarie it is, that two young princes fall in love, after many traverses she is got with childe, delivered of a faire boy he is lost, groweth a man, falleth in love, and is readie to get another childe, and : |