related in The Gentleman's Magazine, vol. vi. p. 293, and vol. vii. N.S. p. 450. V. 1. FLAVIUS. O you gods! Is yon despis'd and ruinous man, my lord! Desperate want made! What viler thing upon the earth than friends Grant I may ever love, and rather woo Those that would mischief me than those that do. The beginning of this striking and effective passage should not be marked as interrogative, as is usually the case, but should have the mark of exclamation. "Ruinous" was suggested to the poet's mind by "monument." "Rarely" is used in its sense of admirably, not of unfrequently. It is vernacular, and not now in good usage. Perhaps the Poet may have written suit where we have meet. The meaning is evident, that the ancient precept to love our enemies suits admirably the guise of the time when our friends treat us worse than our enemies. The whole of this part is in the spirit of the Spanish proverb, "Save a man from his friends, and leave him to struggle with his enemies ;" a sentiment of a dark and misanthropic hue, but which would not have become proverbial were there not a few instances now and then presenting themselves to justify it or at least to keep it in countenance. JULIUS CÆSAR. THE three plays founded on Roman history remained unprinted till after the author's death. They first appear in a collection of his dramas in 1623. We are destitute of external evidence respecting the date, except that Anthony and Cleopatra was entered on the books of the Stationers' Company on May 20, 1608. It therefore existed at that time, and, as there is reason to think that the three were produced at nearly the same period, we may assign on grounds sufficiently probable the production of them to the years 1607, 1608, or 1609, in the absence of any evidence that they were of earlier date. The ingenuity of Mr. Malone or Mr. Chalmers has not succeeded in detecting in the plays themselves any notes of time in which much confidence can be placed. The order in which they were produced seems to have been, 1. Julius Caesar, 2. Anthony and Cleopatra, 3. Coriolanus. For the facts he resorted to North's Translation of Plutarch, as for the facts in his English historical plays he resorted principally to Hollinshead. The original text has is, which is manifestly corrupt, but the passage has been restored unskilfully. It ought to have been the word; it favours, a common English phrase, now degraded into the rank of vulgarisms, denoting the same thing as it resembles. In some parts of the country they still say of a child that it favours of some uncle or other relation, meaning that it resembles him in person. Thus the complexion of the elements resembled the complexion of the business in hand. II. 1. BRUtus. Is not to morrow, boy, the IDES of March? This is a modern correction of the old copies which every one must approve. "The first of March" can have been only the careless error of some transcriber. Whatever opinion may be formed of Shakespeare's scholarship it cannot be placed so low as that he was not so far acquainted with the Roman calendar; but he had the information before his eyes in the very book which he used, in which this passage Occurs:- "Furthermore there was a certain soothsayer that had given Cæsar warning long time afore, to take heed of the Ides of March (which is the fifteenth of the month) for on that day he should be in great danger;" and it is manifest that the passage had attracted his attention by his having given the same explanation which Sir Thomas North had thought it necessary to give in his parenthesis, for he makes Brutus ask the day of the month, and Lucius replies that "March is wasted fifteen days." The modern copies read fourteen, but the old reading might be justified. II. 1. DECius. Here lies the East. Doth not the day break here? The dialogue that ensues is a beautiful instance of the intervention of repose; as beautiful as that pointed out by Sir Joshua Reynolds in Macbeth, "The temple-haunting martlet," or as the remarks on the crowing of the cock in Hamlet. V. 3. BRUTUS. I know not whether it has been observed that this passage shews that the practice of the stage to represent death by lying with the face upward is as old as the time of Shake His life was gentle: and the elements So mixed in him, that nature might stand up, And say to all the world "This was a man!" Shakespeare here again uses one of our forcible vernacular phrases, which when actually used on ordinary occasions is pronounced with the emphasis on the word was. MACBETH. WE are now arrived at another of the plays which are esteemed the master-pieces of this great poet, and we shall find that the editors and commentators have left more to be done by those who venture thus late into the Shakespearian field than in respect of the tragedies which have hitherto come before us, both in the regulation of the text and in ascertaining the true sense of obscure passages. There appear to be also allusions to events of the Poet's own time which have escaped the observation of preceding commen tators. In reference to the state of the text of this play, it must be kept in mind that we have two authorities for it, and no more the folio of 1623 and the folio of 1632. Further, that the numerous corrections (decidedly and unquestionably so) made by the editors of the second folio, and the numerous other deviations from the text of the first folio, shew that the original editors performed their duty in a very imperfect manner, and that therefore there is just room for a bolder conjectural criticism on this play than perhaps on any other; neither can the variations of the second from the first edition be always accepted as improvements or authoritative determinations of the true text. Having no quarto, nor any certainty of the existence of this play before 1610 when Forman was present at the representation of it, we have not the usual means of arriving at the exact time of its composition. reign of James the First might be subject, a wild and romantic tale chronicles of the Scottish nation. That it belongs to the inferred from its very found in the fabulous The reverence also here |