manners, in the middle ranks of society, during one of the most interesting periods of our annals.

Shakspeare has here achieved, perhaps, the most difficult task which can fall to the lot of any writer; that of resuscitating a favourite and highly-wrought child of the imagination, and, with a success equal to that which attended the original production, re-involving him in a series of fresh adventures. Falstaff has not lost, in this comedy, any portion of his former power of pleasing; he returns to us in the fulness of his strength, and we immediately enter, with unabated avidity and relish, into a further developement of his inexhaustible stores of humour, wit, and drollery.

The self-delusion of Sir John, who conceives himself to be an object of love, and the incongruities, absurdities, and intrigues, into which this monstrous piece of vanity plunges him, form, together with the secondary plot of Fenton and Anne Page, the richest tissue of incident and stratagem that ever graced a stage. The mode, also, in which the two intrigues are interwoven, the happy termination of the second, arising out of the contrivance which brings about the issue of the first, has a just claim to praise both for its invention and execution.

To the comic characters which had formerly been associated with the exploits of the Knight, and which, as accessories or retainers, accompany him in this play, some very laughable and grotesque additions are to be found in the persons of Slender, Sir Hugh Evans, and Dr. Caius, who are deeply implicated in the fable, and who, by the most ludicrous exhibitions of rustic simplicity, provincial accent, and broken English, contribute in a high degree to the variety and hilarity of the scene.

TROILUS AND CRESSIDA: 1601. That this play was written and acted before the decease of Queen Elizabeth, is evident from the manner in which it is entered on the Stationers' Books, being registered on February 7. 1602-3, "as acted by my Lord Chamberlen's men*," who, in the year of the accession of King James, obtained a

*Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 127.

licence for their theatre, and were denominated «his majesty's servants."

It also appears, from some entries in Mr. Henslowe's Manuscript, that a drama on this subject, at first called Troyelles and Cresseda, but, before its production, altered in its title to "The Tragedy of Agamemnon,” was in existence anterior to Shakspeare's play, and was licensed by the Master of the Revels, on the 3rd of June, 1599. *

From these premises we have a right to infer that our poet's Troilus and Cressida was written between June, 1599, and February, 1603, and, accordingly, our two chronologers have thus placed it; Mr. Malone in 1602, and Mr. Chalmers in 1600. But it appears to us, for reasons which we shall immediately assign, that its more probable era is that of 1601.

It has been correctly observed by the Commentators, that an incident in our author's Troilus and Cressida, is ridiculed in an anonymous comedy, entitled Histriomastix, “which, though not printed till 1610, must have been written before the death of Queen Elizabeth, who, in the last act of the piece, is shadowed, under the character of Astræa, and is spoken of as then living.” †

We cannot avoid thinking it somewhat extraordinary that when Mr. Malone recorded this circumstance, it did not occur to him, that, by placing the composition of Shakspeare's play in 1602, he allowed scarcely any time to the author of Histriomastix for the composition of his work. In order that a parody or burlesque may be successful, it is necessary that the production ridiculed, should have acquired a certain degree of celebrity, and however well received by the court, before which it was at first chiefly performed, this drama of our author may have been, some time must have elapsed ere it could have acquired a sufficient degree of notoriety for the purpose of successful satire. But if Shakspeare wrote his Troilus and Cressida in 1602, and had even completed it by the middle of the year, scarcely nine months

* Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iii. p. 391.

+ Ibid. vol. ii. p. 319.

could intervene between this completion and the death of the Queen in March, 1603; and during this short interval, the play of our poet must have been acted, and celebrated so repeatedly and so highly, as to have excited the pen of envy and burlesque, and the comedy of Histriomastix must have been written and performed; a space certainly much too inadequate for these effects and results, more particularly if we are allowed to conclude, what most probably was the case, that the anonymous comedy was finished some months anterior to the decease of Elizabeth.

On the other hand, it would seem that Mr. Chalmers, by approximating the date of Shakspeare's play too closely to that of the elder drama, may be taxed with a similar error. That our poet was in the habit of adopting subjects which had been previously rendered popular on the stage, has been acknowledged by all his commentators, and that his attention was first attracted to the fable under consideration, by the play exhibited on Mr. Henslowe's theatre, there can be little doubt. But this production, we find, was not licensed by the Master of the Revels until June, 1599, and as popularity attached to the performance would be necessary to stimulate Shakspeare to remodel the subject, we can scarcely conceive him, both on this account, and from a motive of delicacy to a rival theatre, to have commenced the composition of his Troilus and Cressida before the beginning of

1601.

It was at this period then, that our bard, excited by the success of the prior attempt in 1599, turned his attention to the subject; and, referring to his Chaucer, to Caxton's Translation of the Recuyles or Destruction of Troy, from Raoul le Fevre, and to the first seven books of Chapman's Homer, for the materials of his story, presented us with the most singular, and, in some respects, the most striking, of his productions.

This play is, indeed, a most perfect unique both in its construction and effect, appearing to be a continued sarcasm on the tale of Troy divine, an ironical copy, as it were, of the great Homeric picture. Whether this was in the contemplation of Shakspeare, or whether it

It also appears, from some entries in that a drama on this subject, at first ca" before its production, altered in it. memnon," was in existence ante licensed by the Master of the l From these premises we and Cressida was written accordingly, our two el 1602, and Mr. Cha'r which we shall i

of 1601.

It has

cident in

mous

1610, 00

1

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the Gothic

As

sme doubt. cellent version of

s design to expose he despicable nature rotracted its issue. In haracters of all their epic heart, but he has, at the cil so keen, powerful, and intimately acquainted with this play, than from all the

distinctness of characterisation, as has been admirably painted by gue," he observes," of the Draus and Cressida, so far as they depend of humour in the author, are drawn surpassed. The genius of Homer has

Also to almost every generation of men since wrote. But his characters will not bear the ith the delineation of the same characters as

hay This is a species of honour which ought

Orgotten when we are making the eulogium of our se of illustration of his greatness which cannot very conspicuous light. The dispositions of men

dave been sufficiently unfolded in the very early period of

mement when Homer wrote; the

rays

of humour had

dissected by the glass, or rendered perdurable by the pencil, Homer's characters are drawn with a laudable portion co, and consistency; but his Achilles, his Ajax, and his Nestor - of them, rather a species than an individual, and can boast or the propriety of abstraction, than of the vivacity of a moving

we of absolute life.

The Achilles, the Ajax, and the various

cian heroes of Shakspeare, on the other hand, are absolute men,

deficient in nothing which can tend to individualise them, and already touched with the Promethean fire that might infuse a soul intọ what, without it, were lifeless form. From the rest perhaps the character of Thersites deserves to be selected, (how cold and schoolboy a sketch in Homer,) as exhibiting an appropriate vein of sarcastic humour amidst his cowardice, and a profoundness and truth in his mode of laying open the foibles of those about him, impossible to be excelled.

66

Shakspeare possessed, no man in higher perfection, the true dignity and loftiness of the poetical afflatus, which he has displayed in many of the finest passages of his works with miraculous success. But he knew that no man ever was, or ever can be, always dignified. He knew that those subtler traits of character which identify a man, are familiar and relaxed, pervaded with passion, and not played off with an external eye to decorum. In this respect the peculiarities of Shakspeare's genius are no where more forcibly illustrated than in the play we are here considering. The champions of Greece and Troy, from the hour in which their names were first recorded, had always worn a certain formality of attire, and marched with a slow and measured step. No poet, till this time, had ever ventured to force them out of the manner which their epic creator had given them. Shakspeare first supplied their limbs, took from them the classic stiffness of their gait, and enriched them with an entire set of those attributes, which might render them completely beings of the same species with ourselves.” *

The great defect of this play, which, in other respects, is highly entertaining and instructive, and abounding in didactic morality, expressed with the utmost beauty, vigour, and boldness of diction, is a want of attachment for its characters. If we set aside Hector, who seems to have been the favourite hero with Shakspeare, and his Gothic authorities, there is not a person in the drama, for whom we

VOL. II.

* Life of Chaucer, vol. i. pp. 509-512. 8vo. edit.

3 L