The Shakespeare-Expositor. Thomas Keightley

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Only in the folio, 1623.

      Date. The following memorandum is in the Stationers' Registers:—"12 Feb. 1604[-5]. Nath. Butter. Yf he get good allowance for the Interlude of K. Henry the 8th, before he begin to print it, &c." This has been supposed to be the present play; but the style militates against this supposition. I offer the following proof, which has never, that I am aware of, been observed. In his early plays Shakespeare very rarely puts the preposition or conjunction at the end of one line and the noun or verb at the beginning of the next; in his succeeding ones he does so more frequently, and in his latest he is rather profuse of the practice. Now this construction is as frequent in Henry VIII. as in Coriolanus, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and his other later ones, whence it might seem that it should be referred to the same epoch. We are told, indeed, that in 1613 the Globe Theatre was set on fire and burned down by the discharge of chambers in a new play called "Henry VIII.;" but it is hardly possible that it could be this play, as Shakespeare had retired before that year.

      Origin. Hollinshed's Chronicle.

TRAGEDIES.

       Table of Contents

      Romeo and Juliet.

      Editions. 4to, 1597; 4to, 1599; 4to, 1609; in the folio, 1623. There is also an undated 4to issued by Smethwick, the publisher of that of 1609, in which many typographical errors are corrected.

      Date. In Act I. Sc. 2, the Nurse says, "'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years;" and, as Tyrwhitt justly observed, this could only have been the earthquake which was felt in England on the 6th of April 1580. It was quite in Shakespeare's way to make the allusion; and this would give 1591 as the year in which this play was first performed. This, then, may be the true date, though I greatly doubt of it; I should rather say, entirely reject it; for it surely can hardly be anterior to the first two comedies. The play, as appears from the 4to, 1597, was little more than a sketch of that which appeared, "corrected, augmented, and amended," in 1599.

      Origin. The remote original is the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe in Ovid's Metamorphoses, from which an Italian writer named Luigi da Porto made a tale, printed in 1535. A tale formed from this was given by Bandello in 1554; and in 1562 a poem of Romeus and Juliet, by Arthur Brookes, taken from Bandello's, or rather from the version of it in Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques, was published in London; in 1567 the same tale, also from Bandello, appeared in Painter's Palace of Pleasure. Shakespeare chiefly followed Brooke; but he had also read the Palace of Pleasure, and probably Bandello's tale in the original.

      Hamlet.

      Editions. 4to, 1603; 4to, 1604; 4to, 1611; 4to undated (probably in 1607); in the folio, 1623.

      Date. On the 26th of July 1602, an entry was made in the Stationers' Registers of "A Booke, The Revenge of Hamlett, prince of Denmarke, as yt was latelie acted, by the Lord Chambelayn his servantes." There can be little doubt that this was the present play. The text of the 4to, 1603, is in such a mangled, wretched condition, that it has not unreasonably been conjectured that it was formed from notes made during the representation. As in this the Polonius and Reynaldo of the present play are called Corambis and Montano, it is probable that the play received much addition and alteration; for the 4to, 1604, gives it "enlarged to almost as much again as it was, according to the true and perfect coppie." This play being so popular, it is not unlikely that the author may have frequently retouched it. It is very remarkable that it is by many degrees the most faulty of his plays, abounding, we may say, in incongruities, contradictions, and improbabilities.

      Origin. Apparently a novel called The Hystorie of Hamblet, translated from Belleforest. There seems also to have been an older play on the subject.

      Othello.

      Editions. 4to, 1622; in the folio, 1623. There is also a 4to, 1630; but it is of little value, as it was evidently made not from a MS., but from the two preceding editions with some conjectural emendations. To the 4to, 1622, is prefixed—as to Troilus and Cressida—an Epistle "from the Stationer [Thos. Walkley] to the Reader."

      Date. From the Accounts of the Revels, we learn that this play was performed at Court, November 1st, 1604; and if the Egerton Papers, published by Mr. Collier, can be relied on, it had been performed before Queen Elizabeth. In them we meet as follows:—"6 August, 1602. Rewards to the vaulters, players, and dancers—of this x^li to Burbidge's players for Othello—lxiiii^li xviii^s x^d." "The part of the memorandum which relates to Othello," says Mr. Collier, "is interlined as if added afterwards." Mr. Halliwell asserts that Othello must have been written even before 1600; for in a MS. of that date, entitled The Newe Metamorphosis, &c., is a passage evidently, he thinks, imitated from "who steals my purse steals trash" in Othello. But, though Mr. Halliwell thinks otherwise, this passage may have been a later insertion; or it may be a mere coincidence, a thing much more common than is usually supposed. At all events Othello was written, at latest, in 1604. I know not if it has been observed that Voltaire evidently had Othello in his mind when writing his Zaïre.

      Origin. The only known source of this play is a tale in the Hecatommithi of Cinthio; and as no English translation of it is known to have existed, the obvious and natural inference is that Shakespeare had read it in the original. There was, however, it seems, a French translation: Paris, 1584.

      Julius Cæsar.

      Edition. Only in the folio, 1623.

      Date. The real date of this play is very uncertain, and I am very dubious whether I am right or not in giving it this position. Mr. Collier—with whom Mr. Dyce agrees—is positive that it appeared before 1603, for in that year Drayton published his Barons' Wars, in which is a passage so like the character of Brutus given in this play (v. 5), that one poet must have borrowed from the other; and it is inferred of course that Drayton was the borrower. But this is not by any means so certain, as the eagle did not always disdain to take a plume from the smaller birds (see above, The Two Gentlemen of Verona). It is very strange, however, that neither of these critics seems to have been aware that the very same ideas, and even expressions, are to be found in the character given of Crites in Ben Jonson's Cynthia's Revels (ii. 1), which was performed in 1600, and which may therefore I think justly be regarded as the real immediate original of the passages in both poets; the germ, however, is to be found in Chaucer's Tale of the Doctor of Physik. All, then, that we can venture to affirm is, that Julius Cæsar is posterior to 1600. I incline to place it in point of time before Shakespeare's other plays on Roman subjects. It may be observed that his Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus are as much Histories as those that are so entitled, the history being Roman instead of English.

      Origin. North's Plutarch, from the French of Amyot.

      Antony and Cleopatra.

      Edition. Only in the folio 1623.

      Date. From the language of this play I feel inclined to place its date near that of Julius Cæsar. It is true that "A Booke called Anthony and Cleopatra," which may have been this play, was entered in the Stationers' Registers, May 20th, 1608; but it seems never to have appeared, and that entry is no proof that the play may not have been acted some years before that date.

      Origin. Life of Antonius in North's Plutarch.

      King СКАЧАТЬ