And thus Dr. Donne: "Only let me love none; no, not the sport From country grasse to confitures of court, Or ci tie's quelque choses; let report My mind transport." * to the other on shipboard. We confess that both those towns, and the principalities of which they are the capitals, are inland; but it is not so clear to us that Shakspeare himself was ignorant of the fact, as that he assumed either the ignorance or indifference of his audience respecting the literal truth. Pistol. 66 Oui, couper gorge, par | ma foi, | He knew, at least, that the journey between pesant." (paysan.) And thus Shakspeare again: We have not yet done with our poet's ignorance. Suppose him a learned man,' quoth Dr. Farmer, "and what shall excuse his gross violations of geography?" Well, then, what are they? 1. He represents Bohemia as a maritime country. Too true; but the mistake is not his, and therefore does not implicate his knowledge of geography. It is the mistake of a scholar; of a traveler; of Robertus Greene, Utriusque Academiæ in Artibus Magister; of one who, having graduated at Oxford, made the grand tour of Europe, returned to his country, as he says himself, perfectly "Italianated;" and, having finished his education by taking on an ad eundem degree at Cambridge, ruled the dramatic wits of his time with unbounded levity. Shakspeare, in this instance, as in most others, observed the rule of Horace; he followed the well-known, the popular authority he had adopted; and for all the consequences, the original author is responsible, and not the copyist, He found the error in Greene's novel, and he left it as he found it. Nay, were this a fit time and place for the discussion, we could show reasons extremely plausible for his retention of the error, knowing it to be such; but this we must defer to a more convenient season. It is sufficient here to know that the geographical blunder is not the unlearned Shakspeare's, but the learned Robert Greene's. 2. He supposes Verona and Milan to be both seaport towns; and accordingly sends Valentine, and after him Proteus, from one * Donne's works, Love's Usury. Henry V., iv. 4. + Ibid., ii. them could be made by land; and Julia performs it on foot, wearied indeed, but in a few hours. Let the critics beware, therefore, lest their objections should rather prove them ignorant of Shakspeare's methods, rather than Shakspeare ignorant of geography. He is a much greater artificer than he gets credit for, and plays off more legerdemain upon the imagination than either spectator or reader is apt to suspect. More especially with reference to time, as a dramatic element, his resources for deception are profound and various; nor is this the only occasion upon which (to use his own expression) he "palters with us in a double sense," and arrives at his journey's end by several routes. In the "Merchant of Venice" the same expedient is used, for the purpose of mystifying our notion of time; and Portia performs by land, and in her own carriage, in a few hours, double the journey which cost Anthonio three months to perform in his argosy; namely, the distance between Venice and Belmont.* The repetition of "We must measure twenty miles to-day," says Portia to Nerissa, as she is about to step into her carriage, which was waiting for them "at the park gate." She goes to Venice, attends the trial, and is back again at Belmont before daybreak on the following morning. Venice was, therefore, but ten miles distant from Belmont. Bassanio was just as well aware as Portia of the distance and the time necessary for traversing it, for, on leaving her, immediately after his marriage, to attend the trial of till he returns to her :his friend, he pledges himself not to sleep or rest "Till I come again, No bed shall e'er be guilty of my stay; No rest be interposer 'twixt us twain."-Act iii. 2, But, doubtless, he did not care to go in his ship this time. The fact is, a sea voyage is to the imagina tion an indefinite period; one by land, where the distance is known, fixed and certain. In Bassanio's first journey, the poet wanted to lose time, for the bond to run out; in the latter, to gain time, for the service of his friend. It is for a similar reason he gives his personages two routes from Verona to Milan the one by sea, to give an indefinite period for the growth of Valentine's love and the treachery of Proteus; and the other by land, to convince § Ibid., iii. 5. the spectator of the very short time necessarily oc the same expedient, in at least two cases, where the circumstances of the plot require a real or a suppositious lapse of time, seems to be the result of system, not mistake; and until Shakspeare's treatment of the unities be more fully understood than it is at present, we would caution the critics not to calculate much on his imputed ignorance either of geography or of that point which we are now naturally brought to consider, viz., his barbarism with respect to the unities. his knowledge of them, and his knowledge imply his learning, we are in a position for showing-as far as it can be proved by existing documents-that Shakspeare was, with one exception amongst his predecessors, the very first who produced a perfectly regular play, according to the Greek and Roman laws, upon the English stage; and that, with very few exceptions-of which Ben Johnson was the first-he was the only dramatic poet amongst his immediate contemporaries who made any approach to the strictness of those ancient models. If the changeable, he is the only dramatic poet of his time that ever rigidly fulfilled it; for we have no instance of an English play, assignable to that period, in which the unities of time and place are strictly observed, but some of his. The "Gammar Gurton's Needle," which preceded his earliest efforts by some years, is in this, as in all other respects, inferior as a work of art to his "Comedy of Errors," his "Love's Labor Lost," and his "Tempest," in which the scene is unchangeable throughout; and in this respect he is even more perfect than his classical rival and successor, Ben Johnson, in whose plays the exact unity of place is never observed.* Witness the most perfect Shakspeare, say the critics, was ignorant of the unities; and they account for his ignorance by his presumed want of acquaint-law of unity requires the scene to be unance with the Latin and Greek dramatists and critics. But the inference is both unconsequential and unjust, unless they will also admit that his numerous dramatic cotemporaries, who have violated the laws of Aristotle as grossly at least as he, were as ignorant of those laws as they suppose him to have been. Now, the great majority of his early dramatic contemporaries were men who had received a university education. They numbered amongst them such men as Marlow, Lylie, Greene, Peele, Kid, Decker, Nash, Marston, Lodge, Chapman, &c.; and we deny that any of them ever thoroughly observed the Greek unities; nay, we boldly assert them, one and all, to have been far more licentious in their abuse of them than Shakspeare. They were all, however, the alumni of one or more of the universities; and we therefore never hear their learning impugned by the critics, nor is their flagrant and perpetual non-observance of the unities brought forward against them as a proof of their ignorance. But if their defects in this kind do not prove them to have been ignorant of the learned languages, what weight has the argument against Shakspeare? Surely, if they may have been learned, notwithstanding their dramatic license, Shakspeare may have been so too; and if they did, as we know they did, graduate of one or more of the universities, Shakspeare, for any thing which this state of facts exhibits, did, or at least was, in point of learning, competent to have done, the same thing. But we can carry the argument upon this head in favor of our poet much farther. If the observance of the unities would prove cupied by the whole transaction. The fuller development of these hints would require more time and place than we can here afford it. *Two of those plays of Shakspeare are constructed on the most rigid model. The time of the "Tempest" is about six hours; that of "Comedy of Errors" about twelve. In neither is there any change of place; the whole business of both is transacted in the open air; and, although the editors have needlessly interposed changes of scenery, all that is necessary in the "Comedy of Errors" is an open space in a city-the public forum or market-square, in which may be seen the forum or open the house of Antipholis, and the convent. In the "Tempest," (if we agree with Mr. Meagar, author of the celebrated essay on "Falstaff," whose MS. notes upon the play we have seen, that the opening scene at sea is but an introduction, and that the first scene is that which is now numbered the second, an opinion in which we entirely concur,) all that is required with respect to place is a single scene of an extensive view, within the island of which the cell of Prospero may form a more or less court at which the Duke condemns the merchant, prominent part. In "Love's Labor Lost," the time practice, (see the Heautontimorumenos,) which implies the length of four-and-twenty consecutive hours, with the intervention of the night. The action may be imagined to commence at the hour of noon upon one day, and to terminate at the same hour on the next. The business is all transacted sub dio, and within the park of the King of Navarre, comes within the Aristotelian rule and Terentian in their construction, "The Silent Woman," just as if such a mind as his had gained and the "Alchemist and the Fox." It may be urged still, that the regular structure of those three plays is a casualty depending on the dramatic cast of the original story, and that, for all the skill they evince, the poet might have been ignorant of the laws of unity. But what if we find the poet himself confessing his breach of the unities, and apologizing for it? What, then, is the inference? Why, that he knew them, indeed, but was either so unskilful as not to be able to carry them into effect, or that he wilfully forsook them. Of his ability to observe those laws as accurately as the ancients, and more accurately than any of his contemporaries, we have given indisputable proofs; and it is specially remarkable that, of those instances, two are undoubtedly amongst his earliest productions; and, if we agree with a modern critic, the third must also be thrown back to a much earlier date than has been assigned it by either Malone or Chalmers.* It would seem, then, as if our poet, fresh from the study of the ancients, had begun his dramatic career as a rigid observer of the laws by which they were governed, and that, in his progress, finding them to be arbitrary, and obstructive of a full and natural development of plot, passion, and character, he gradually departed from the practice of them, and, discovering a truer system, became a law unto himself. In corroboration of this conjecture, it may be observed that, so far as the critics have been able to trace the chronological order of his performances, the earlier are the more correct; and the later they appear in succession, the farther do they diverge from the ancient models, so that a single scene, representing an extensive park, in which the palace of the king, the tent of the princess, and the lodge in which Armado resides, gives all that is requisite with reference to space. On the other hand, though the business of "Gammar Gurton's Needle" comes within the Terentian practice of intervening the night between the twenty-four consecutive hours, the construction of the plot is less regular than those of Shakspeare, inasmuch as it requires also the Tensilian license (as used in the Heautontimorunos) of an absolute change of place; the business being transacted now within the Gammar's house, now in the open air, and again in the house of her neighbor. *The Rev. J. Hunter assigns the "Tempest" to 1596. See his "Prolusions on Shakspeare," Part ii. p. 142. Thus, "Anthony and Cleopatra" is more irregular than "Macbeth," and Macbeth" than "Hamlet." nothing by experience, or that practice had not facilitated the execution of his task. There is, therefore, something more in the matter than has hitherto been dreamed of in our criticism; and it would be well to inquire into it before we again dogmatize on Shakspeare's supposed ignorance of the elements of an art to which he had methodically devoted his life, and in which he was successful beyond compeer or rival. Meanwhile, we must not forget the positive proofs which he gives of his technical knowledge. They are to be found in many passages of his writings, but especially in his choruses to the several acts (or parts) of Henry the Fifth. There were several chorus plays (if we may so call them) written in the time of Shakspeare: Heywood and Chapman have several; Ben Jonson has one; and he himself has four; viz., Henry V., Pericles, Romeo and Juliet, and the Winter's Tale. This chorus, however, has no affinity whatever with that of the Greek drama; and he that would give us the result of his inquiries into its character and uses in our early plays generally, would do a good service to letters. We cannot, however, pause now upon the subject, further than to explain its apparent use and application in those plays of Shakspeare where it is to be found. Of The chorus, then, in Shakspeare's hands, serves to intimate such lapses of time or changes of place as really divide the piece into several parts; and to reseat, or place again in situ, the spectator who has witnessed the preceding part, in order that he may, with a due allowance for the interval, pursue the thread of the story in the ensuing part, and under its altered circumstances. this, the best illustration we can give is the construction of "The Winter's Tale," in which, the story of Hermione's misfortunes being concluded with the third act, the tale is carried on, in the two succeeding acts, to But her ultimate vindication and reward. between the first and second periods of her history—that is, between the birth and the marriage of her daughter-there is an interval of seventeen years; and this is not slurred over by the poet, as was the practice of his contemporaries,* but is distinctly marked by the interposition of TIME, as a chorus, *See Sir Philip Sidney's Defense of Poetry. This use of the chorus as a substitute for the more regular method, may convince us that, if Shakspeare erred from the law, he erred consciously, and sought to repair his irregularity by a well-known expedient. But he is still more explicit on the subject. He openly avows his neglect of the unities, and, without defending, explains his own practice. who, in an address to the auditory, which | stances will fully justify this exquisitely subtle may be considered as the epilogue of the device, and greatly elevate our opinion of the first, and the prologue of the second part, poet's artificial resources. informs them of the fact, and once more places them in situ. In this mode of construction we find a striking analogy to the Greek system of trilogies, in which three pieces, in continuation of the same story, were performed at successive intervals on the same day; and of which the Greek tragedians have left us several examples. This drama might, therefore, be not improperly considered as a dilogy, of which the first part might be called "Hermione in Distress," and the second," Hermione Triumphant."* In a similar way, the chorus between each act of Henry V. intimates the detachment in time or place (or both) of the several parts of which the whole dramatic transaction consists, and is a clumsy substitute, we must confess, for the admirable contrivances in others of his plays by which the dramatist maintains an apparent continuity of action. It is much the same in Pericles. Not so, however, in Romeo and Juliet, where (its use being to intimate a pause of time) its intervention suggests the occurrence of an interval sufficient to ripen the passion of the two lovers, which, in reality, does not take place. A little reflection on the circum *A modern writer, discussing the merits of Miss Helen Faucet's performance of the heroine, speaks of the structure of the play in the following terms: "That it is two plays on the same legend, each consisting of a beginning, a middle, and an end, each having its own appropriate catastrophe, is evidenced by Shakspeare himself having interposed between the first and second parts a prologue to the second, in which Time raises the curtain that had been drawn over an interval of sixteen years, and the spectators are placed in situ, as it were, for the second time, to behold the sequence. The play was, doubtless, originally performed in both its parts on the same day, as were the Greek trilogies. But we may suppose that the fall of the green curtain at the end of the third act, and the entrance of Time at the beginning of the fourth, were sufficient indications to the auditory that the first part was over, and the second was about to be begun. And thus the "Winter's Tale" should now be performed, whenever it is again acted as a single piece. Indeed, so fully convinced of the distinctness of the diloquy does Mr. Garrick appear to have been, that he reconstructed the play, omitting altogether the first part, and digesting the second into a short three-act pastoral, which he called Florimel and Perdita." The first, or prolocutory chorus, confesses the breach of unity with respect to PLACE: Oh, pardon! since a crooked figure may The second chorus pleads guilty to "the abuse of distance" between two places; and, with no indistinct allusion to the dramatic "Magus" of Horace, beseeches the specta tors to «Is now transported, gentles, to Southampton; And to show by what means this transition "Charming the narrow seas To give them gentle pass." So much for his knowledge of the law of place; now for that of time. The third chorus addresses the audience, and tells them: "Thus with imagined wing our swift scene flics, The fourth chorus intimates the treatment of a lapse of time more imaginary than real, and shows how the painful suspense for the issue of a doubtful event of great importance affects the mind. Now, quoth | order; no order without law. Art implies he: "Now entertain conjecture of a time When creeping murmur and the poring dark Fills the wide vessel of the universe." law; and the production of chef d'œuvres in any art intimates the complete mastery which the artist had attained to in the laws which govern that art. Shakspeare's art was the dramatic; and to suppose that the nute but striking circumstances, the occur- the result of an inartificial, chance-medley, rence of which generates the idea of tedious and undesigned process of thought and protraction where no lengthened delay has composition, would be to sanction the theory really taken place; and having thus given that this universe in which we live, and time of preparation, as it were, for the crown- wherein we find all things ordered and goving event, he goes on to intimate his own erned by intelligence and design, is the reconsciousness that, according to the defini-sult of a fortuitous concurrence of atoms. He then goes on to describe classes of mi-perfection to which he brought it could be tion of Aristotle, dramatic action is but an imitation (for so must the word "mockery" be understood) of real action; saying, "And so our scene must to the battle fly; Where (oh for pity!) we shall much disgraceWith four or five most vile and ragged foils, Right ill-disposed, in brawl ridiculousThe name of Agincourt: yet, sit and see; Minding true things by what their mockeries be." In the fifth and last chorus, the poet finally apologizes for his transgressions of the law in both respects, and "Humbly prays them to admit the excuse Of time, of numbers, and due course of things, And having narrated the intervening events till "Harry's back-return again to France, the chorus informs the auditory of his own use and functions, as a substitute for the dramatic laws of time and place, the interims or intervals of which he has supplied, cheating the auditory with the semblance of continuity, and not undeceiving them until the event had taken place, after which the disturbance of any illusion would naturally be of no consequence: "Myself have PLAYED THE INTERIM, by remembering you 'tis past." Who shall now tell that Shakspeare either knew nothing of the unities, or that his genius disdained the constraint of law? "Not know the unities!" we have shown that he knew, and (on occasions) practised them. "Disdained the restrictions of law!" The first characteristic of high intellect is its love of beauty; but there can be no beauty without symmetry; no symmetry without Shame to the critics whose slovenly examination of the works which they professed to explain and illustrate has betrayed them into statements and admissions even more discreditable to their own sagacity than to the skill of their incomparable author! He I might well be pardoned for defects comlarly to the dramatists) of his period; but mon to all the men of letters (particuhow are they to be excused for either leading or falling into the vulgar mistakes and prejudices which have too long detracted from his matchless reputation? That he wrote not without art is admitted by the most envious of his competitors. Ben Jonson, an adherent of the ancients, thus writes of him: "Yet must I not give Nature all; thy Art, My gentle Shakspeare, must enjoy a part; For though the poet's matter nature be, His art doth give the fashion; and that He, Who casts to write a living line, must sweat, (Such as are thine,) and strike the second heat Upon the muses' anvil; turn the same, (And himself with it,) that he thinks to frame; Or for a laurel he may gain a scorn; For a good poet's made, as well as born: And such thou wert."* And Dryden, a disciple of the straitest school of the French dramatists, thus undersigns the opinion: "Shakspeare, who (taught by none) did first impart To Fletcher wit, to laboring Jonson art; It thus stands acknowledged by two most competent judges of dramatic poetry (and |