Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare Part 26

Shakespear) taught Mr. Betterton in every particle of it, gained him esteem and reputation superlative to all other plays" (1789, p. 29). But cf. the _Rise and Progress of the English Theatre_, appended to Colley Cibber's _Apology_, 1750, p. 516.

The epilogue for Betterton's "benefit" in 1709 was written by Rowe.

Betterton died in 1710.

_Since I had at first resolv'd ... said of him made good._ This second criticism of Rymer is also omitted by Pope.

21. _Ten in the hundred_, etc. Reed, Steevens, and Malone have proved conclusively, if somewhat laboriously, that these wretched verses are not by Shakespeare. See also Halliwell-Phillips's _Outlines_, i., p. 326. It may be noted that ten per cent. was the regular rate of interest at this time.

21. _as engrav'd in the plate._ A poor full-page engraving of the Stratford monument faces this statement in Rowe's edition.

_He had three daughters._ Rowe is in error. Shakespeare had two daughters, and a son named Hamnet. Susannah was the _elder_ daughter.

22. Pope omits _tho' as I ... friends.h.i.+p_ and _venture to_ (lines 10-12).

_Caesar did never wrong_, etc. Cf. _Julius Caesar_, iii. 1. 47, 48, when the lines read:

Know, Caesar doth not wrong, nor without cause Will he be satisfied.

23. Gerard Langbaine in his _Account of the English Dramatick Poets_ (1691) ascribes to Shakespeare "about forty-six plays, all which except three are bound in one volume in Fol., printed London, 1685" (p. 454). The three plays not printed in the fourth folio are the _Birth of Merlin, or the Child has lost his Father_, a tragi-comedy, said by Langbaine to be by Shakespeare and Rowley; _John King of England his troublesome Reign_; and the _Death of King John at Swinstead Abbey_. Langbaine thinks that the last two "were first writ by our Author, and afterwards revised and reduced into one Play by him: that in the Folio being far the better." He mentions also the _Arraignment of Paris_, but does not ascribe it to Shakespeare, as he has not seen it.

_a late collection of poems_,-_Poems on Affairs of State, from the year 1620 to the year 1707_, vol. iv.

_Natura sublimis_, etc. Horace, _Epistles_, ii. 1. 165.

The concluding paragraph is omitted by Pope.

John Dennis.

24. _Shakespear ... Tragick Stage._ Contrast Rymer's _Short View_, p. 156: "Shakespear's genius lay for Comedy and Humour. In Tragedy he appears quite out of his element." Cf. Dennis's later statement, p. 40.

25. _the very Original of our English Tragical Harmony._ Cf. Dryden, Epistle Dedicatory of the _Rival Ladies_, ed. W. P. Ker, i., p. 6, and Bysshe, _Art of English Poetry_, 1702, p. 36. See Johnson's criticism of this pa.s.sage, Preface, p. 140.

_Such verse we make_, etc. Dennis makes these two lines ill.u.s.trate themselves.

26. _Jack-Pudding._ See the _Spectator_, No. 47. The term was very common at this time for a "merry wag." It had also the more special sense of "one attending on a mountebank," as in Etherege's _Comical Revenge_, iii. 4.

_Coriola.n.u.s._ Contrast Dennis's opinion of _Coriola.n.u.s_ in his letter to Steele of 26th March, 1719: "Mr. Dryden has more than once declared to me that there was something in this very tragedy of _Coriola.n.u.s_, as it was writ by Shakespear, that is truly great and truly Roman; and I more than once answered him that it had always been my own opinion."

29. _Poetical Justice._ Dennis defended the doctrine of poetical justice in the first of the two additional letters published with the letters on Shakespeare. Addison had examined this "ridiculous doctrine in modern criticism" in the _Spectator_, No. 40 (April 16, 1711). Cf. Pope's account of Dennis's "deplorable frenzy" in the _Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris_ (Pope's _Works_, ed. Elwin and Courthope, x. 459).

30. _Natura fieret._ Horace, _Ars poetica_, 408.

_a circular poet_, _i.e._ a cyclic poet. This is the only example of this sense of _circular_ in the _New English Dictionary_.

32. _Hector speaking of Aristotle_,-_Troilis and Cressida_, ii. 2. 166; _Milo_, _id._ ii. 3. 258; _Alexander_, _Coriola.n.u.s_ v. 4. 23.

_Plutarch._ Though Dennis is right in his conjecture that Shakespeare used a translation, the absence of any allusion to North's Plutarch would show that he did not know of it. He is in error about Livy. Philemon Holland's translation had appeared in 1600.

33. _Offenduntur enim_, etc. _Ars poetica_, 248.

34. _Caesar._ Cf. the criticism of _Julius Caesar_ in Sewell's preface to the seventh volume of Pope's Shakespeare, 1725.

36. _Haec igitur_, etc. Cicero, _Pro M. Marcello_, ix.

38. _Julius Caesar._ Dennis alludes to the version of _Julius Caesar_ by John Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghams.h.i.+re, published in 1722. In the altered form a chorus is introduced between the acts, and the "play begins the day before Caesar's death, and ends within an hour after it." Buckinghams.h.i.+re wrote also the _Tragedy of Marcus Brutus_.

39. _Dryden_, Preface to the Translation of Ovid's _Epistles_ (1680) _ad fin._: "That of _none to Paris_ is in Mr. Cowley's way of imitation only.

I was desired to say that the author, who is of the fair s.e.x, understood not Latin. But if she does not, I am afraid she has given us occasion to be ashamed who do" (Ed. W. P. Ker, i., p. 243). The author was Mrs. Behn.

_Hudibras_, i. 1, 661. But _Hudibras_ has it slightly differently,-"Though out of languages in which," etc.

39. _a Version of two Epistles of Ovid._ The poems in the seventh volume of Rowe's edition of Shakespeare include Thomas Heywood's _Amorous Epistle of Paris to Helen_ and _Helen to Paris_. They were attributed to Shakespeare, till Farmer proved their authors.h.i.+p (p. 203). Cf. Gildon, _Essay on the Stage_, 1710, p. vi.

40. _Scriptor_, etc. _Ars poetica_, 120.

41. _The Menechmi._ Dennis's "vehement suspicion" is justified. See above, note on p. 9.

_Ben Johnson_, "small Latin and less Greek" (_Verses to the Memory of Shakespeare_).

_Milton_, _L'Allegro_, 133: "Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child." The same misquotation occurs in Sewell's preface, 1725.

_Dryden_, _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_: "Those who accuse him to have wanted learning give him the greater commendation" (ed. W. P. Ker, i., p. 80).

42. _Colchus_, etc. _Ars poetica_, 118.

_Siquid tamen_, etc. _Id._ 386. The form _Maeci_ was restored about this time by Bentley.

43. _Companies of Players._ See Mr. Sidney Lee's _Life of Shakespeare_, p.

34.

_we are told by Ben Johnson._ See p. 22. But Heminge and Condell tell us so themselves in the preface to the Folio: "His mind and hand went together: and what he thought he uttered with that easinesse, that wee have scarce received from him a blot in his papers."

_Vos, O._ _Ars poetica_, 291.

_Poets lose half the Praise_, etc. These lines are not by the Earl of Roscommon, but by Edmund Waller. They occur in Waller's prefatory verses to Roscommon's translation of Horace's _Ars poetica_.

Dennis's criticism of Jonson is apparently inspired by Rymer's remarks on _Catiline_ (_Short View_, pp. 159-163). "In short," says Rymer, "it is strange that Ben, who understood the turn of Comedy so well, and had found the success, should thus grope in the dark and jumble things together without head or tail, without rule or proportion, without any reason or design."

44. _Vir bonus_, etc. Horace, _Ars poetica_, 445.

45. _ad Populum Phalerae._ Persius, iii. 30.

_Milton._ See Milton's prefatory note to _Samson Agonistes_.