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Page 9
The English nation, in the time of Shakespeare, was yet struggling
to emerge from barbarity. The philology of Italy had been transplanted
hither in the reign of Henry the Eighth; and the learned languages
had been successfully cultivated by Lilly and More; by Pole, Cheke,
and Gardiner; and afterwards by Smith, Clerk, Haddon, and Ascham.
Greek was now taught to boys in the principal schools; and those
who united elegance with learning, read, with great diligence,
the Italian and Spanish poets. But literature was yet confined to
professed scholars, or to men and women of high rank. The publick
was gross and dark; and to be able to read and write, was an
accomplishment still valued for its rarity.
Nations, like individuals, have their infancy. A people newly awakened
to literary curiosity, being yet unacquainted with the true state
of things, knows not how to judge of that which is proposed as its
resemblance. Whatever is remote from common appearances is always
welcome to vulgar, as to childish credulity; and of a country
unenlightened by learning, the whole people is the vulgar. The
study of those who then aspired to plebeian learning was laid out
upon adventures, giants, dragons, and enchantments. The Death of
Arthur was the favourite volume.
The mind, which has feasted on the luxurious wonders of fiction,
has no taste of the insipidity of truth. A play which imitated only
the common occurrences of the world, would, upon the admirers of
Palmerin and Guy of Warwick, have made little impression; he that
wrote for such an audience was under the necessity of looking round
for strange events and fabulous transactions, and that incredibility,
by which maturer knowledge is offended, was the chief recommendation
of writings, to unskilful curiosity.
Our authour's plots are generally borrowed from novels, and it is
reasonable to suppose, that he chose the most popular, such as were
read by many, and related by more; for his audience could not have
followed him through the intricacies of the drama, had they not
held the thread of the story in their hands.
The stories, which we now find only in remoter authours, were in
his time accessible and familliar. The fable of "As You Like It",
which is supposed to be copied from Chaucer's Gamelyn, was a little
pamphlet of those times; and old Mr. Cibber remembered the tale of
Hamlet in plain English prose, which the criticks have now to seek
in Saxo Grammaticus.
His English histories he took from English chronicles and English
ballads; and as the ancient writers were made known to his countrymen
by versions, they supplied him with new subjects; he dilated some
of Plutarch's lives into plays, when they had been translated by
North.
His plots, whether historical or fabulous, are always crouded with
incidents, by which the attention of a rude people was more easily
caught than by sentiment or argumentation; and such is the power
of the marvellous even over those who despise it, that every man
finds his mind more strongly seized by the tragedies of Shakespeare
than of any other writer; others please us by particular speeches,
but he always makes us anxious for the event, and has perhaps
excelled all but Homer in securing the first purpose of a writer,
by exciting restless and unquenchable curiosity, and compelling
him that reads his work to read it through.
The shows and bustle with which his plays abound have the same
original. As knowledge advances, pleasure passes from the eye to the
ear, but returns, as it declines, from the ear to the eye. Those
to whom our authour's labours were exhibited had more skill in pomps
or processions than in poetical language, and perhaps wanted some
visible and discriminated events, as comments on the dialogue. He
knew how he should most please; and whether his practice is more
agreeable to nature, or whether his example has prejudiced the
nation, we still find that on our stage something must be done as
well as said, and inactive declamation is very coldly heard, however
musical or elegant, passionate or sublime.
Voltaire expresses his wonder, that our authour's extravagancies
are endured by a nation, which has seen the tragedy of Cato. Let
him be answered, that Addison speaks the language of poets, and
Shakespeare, of men. We find in Cato innumerable beauties which
enamour us of its authour, but we see nothing that acquaints us
with human sentiments or human actions; we place it with the fairest
and the noblest progeny which judgment propagates by conjunction
with learning, but "Othello" is the vigorous and vivacious offspring
of observation impregnated by genius. Cato affords a splendid
exhibition of artificial and fictitious manners, and delivers just
and noble sentiments, in diction easy, elevated and harmonious,
but its hopes and fears communicate no vibration to the heart; the
composition refers us only to the writer; we pronounce the name of
Cato, but we think on Addison.
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