have a portrait of this gate-keeper. It represents that Harrowing of Hell which is dramatized in the Coventry Mysteries. Christ is in the act of releasing various souls from the mouth of " the pit," to the severe annoyance of the appointed Custodian, who appears to be blowing a horn as a signal of alarm. Above his head is the legend, "Out out aroynt." In Heywood's Four P's the Pardoner tells how he was anxious to find out in what estate stood the soul of a female friend who had died suddenly. His knowledge of her, as it would seem, not leading him to look for her in Paradise, he proceeded to Purgatory, and not finding her there he went to Hell.

1

"And first to the devil that kept the gate

I

came, and spake after this rate :

'All hail, Sir Devil,' and made low courtesy;
'Welcome,' quoth he thus smilingly.

He knew me well, and I at last

Remembered him since long time past:
For as good hap would have it chance,
This devil and I were of old acquaintance;
For oft in the play of Corpus Christi
He hath played the devil at Coventry.
By his acquaintance and my behaviour
He showed to me a right friendly favour;
And to make my return the shorter,
I said to the devil, Good Master Porter
For all old love, if it be in your power
Help me to speak with my lord and your.'
'Be sure,' quoth he, 'no tongue can tell
What time thou couldst have come so well;
For as on this day Lucifer fell,

Which is our festival in hell.

Nothing unreasonable craved this day

That shall in hell have any nay.

A reprint of this grotesque picture may be seen in Hone's Ancient Mysteries described.

But yet beware thou come not in

Till time thou may thy passport win,"1 &c.

(v.) Are the style and language of the Porter's speech Shakespearian?

Surely the fancy, which is the main part of the Porter's speech, must be allowed to be eminently after the manner of Shakespeare. He was well acquainted with the older stage, as his direct references to it show, as those to the Vice in Twelfth Night, IV. ii.; 1 Henry IV., II. iv.; 2 Henry IV., III. ii.; Richard III., III. i.; Hamlet, III. iv.; and this conception of an infernal janitor is just such a piece of antique realism as he would delight in. He has it elsewhere; see Othello, IV. ii. 90, where Othello cries out to Emilia :

"You, mistress,

That have the office opposite to St. Peter,

And keep the gate of hell."

The manner in which Macduff" draws out "the Porter is exactly like that of Shakespeare in similar circumstances elsewhere. "What three things does drink especially provoke?" says Macduff; and then the Porter delivers himself of his foolery, which is coarse enough, and to our taste highly offensive, it must be allowed. Compare the way in which Orlando is made to elicit the wit of Rosalind in As You Like It, III. ii. 323, et seq., &c. If this likeness of manner has no great positive, yet it has some negative value. We see that the manner is not un-Shakespearian, if it cannot 1 See Hazlitt's Dodsley's Old Plays, i. 373-4; see also, ib. ii. 171, The Nice Wanton :

"I would not pass

So that I might bear a rule in hell by the mass,
To toss firebrands at these pennyfathers' pates

I would be porter, and receive them at the gates;

In boiling lead and brimstone I would seeth them each one."

be pronounced definitely Shakespearian; and we need not go to Middleton's plays for an illustration of it.

66

The passage is written in the rhythmic, or numerous," prose, that is so favourite a form with Shakespeare. Compare it in this respect, for instance, with Mrs. Quickly's account of Falstaff's end. See Hen. V., II. iii. 9-28. And so for the language, there is certainly nothing in it un-Shakespearian. The use of "old" in "old turning of the key" occurs in 2 Henry IV., II. iv. 21, "old Vtis;" The Merry Wives of Windsor, I. iv. 5, " an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English;" Much Ado about Nothing, V. ii. 98, "yonder's old coil at home;" equivocation in Hamlet, V. i. 149; French Hose in Henry V., III. vii. 56; comp. Merchant of Venice, I. ii. 8o. Devil-porter it is according to a very frequent Shakespearian construction, as "prince it," in Cymbeline, III. iii. 85; "dukes it," in Measure for Measure, III. ii. 100. Compare, especially, 'I cannot daub it farther," in King Lear, IV. i. 54; and "I'll queen it no inch farther," in Winter's Tale, IV. iv. 460.

The most striking phrase in the passage is certainly "the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire;" and in Hamlet (I. iii. 50) Ophelia speaks of "the primrose path of daliance." See also All's Well that End's Well, IV. v.: “I. am for the house with the narrow gate, which I take to be too little for pomp to enter: some that humble themselves may; but the many will be too chill and tender, and they'll be for the flowery way that leads to the broad gate and the great fire."

I have not been careful to allude in this Paper to what is commonly said as to the disputed passage by those who allow it to be by Shakespeare, that it was inserted for the sake of the groundlings, or the gods, as we should say,

because I am not inclined to think that Shakespeare would have made any undue sacrifice to that part of his audience. They were certainly to be considered by a theatrical writer, and certainly Shakespeare did not forget them. But to suppose that he would have glaringly disfigured-if the passage is to be regarded a disfigurement-one of the greatest passages of his art from any such consideration, is surely audacious and extravagant. Moreover, is it so certain that such an interruption of the terror would have gratified the "groundling?" Would not the genuine animal-and individuals of his species were and are to be found in other parts of the theatre besides that from which he derives his name-have rather had

"On horror's head horror accumulate?"

the darkness deepened, his blood yet more severely chilled his every hair made to stand on end? The thorough-bred sensationalist would surely vote the Porter to be an obnoxious intrusion. He would long for a draught of raw terror, and it is from such a potation that the Porter debars him.

The argument on which the rejectors of the passage take their stand is the intrinsic inferiority of it. An unsatisfactory argument. It involves two questions: First, is the inferiority of it so signal and admitted? and, secondly, if it is so, yet is the passage therefore not by Shakespeare? As to the former question, without contending that the soliloquy is a masterpiece of comedy, and the following dialogue a supreme flight of wit, yet surely the Porter holds his own well enough as compared with corresponding persons in other plays. Is the wit of the grave-digger in Hamlet, for example, so very superior? Again, have those who thus condemn him taken well into account that co

U

herence of his speech with the main action of the drama, which has been dwelt upon above? With regard to the second question, suppose the inferiority of the Porter be conceded, are we to believe that Shakespeare is always equal to himself—that he is always at his best, and never slumbers nor sleeps? "Interdum dormitat Homerus." Homer is sometimes caught napping. But Shakespeare never? No one would deliberately say so; and yet perpetually critics argue on this presumption. If anything distinctly un-Shakespearian, or thought to be un-Shakespearian, can be pointed out either in the language or the style or the thought or the connection, then of the authenticity of the passage containing it our suspicions may be justly encouraged. But we cannot be too cautious in condemning a passage simply because it seems to us comparatively weak and forceless. Our eyes may not be good. And, if they are ever so good, yet it must be remembered that in Shakespeare's life, no less than in the lives of lesser men, there must have been times when all the wheels of his being were slow, when the "nimble spirits" seemed prisoned' up in the arteries, and the divine energy of his genius fainted and languished.

The general conclusion justified by what has been advanced in the course of this paper seems to me to be this: that the Porter is undoubtedly a part of the original play, and that the general conception of his speech is certainly Shakespeare's with regard to the expression, that part of it is most certainly Shakespeare's, and, for the rest, no sufficient reason has yet been urged to countenance any doubt that it too is by Shakespeare.

"Poysons up," in the 1623 Fol.