I SCENE II.-"O, these eclipses do portend these divisions! fa, sol, la, mi.”"

DR. BURNEY, the historian of music, has a note upon this passage, which is certainly ingenious: "The commentators, not being musicians, have regarded this passage perhaps as unintelligible nonsense, and therefore left it as they found it, without bestowing a single conjecture on its meaning and import. Shakspeare, however, shows by the context that he was well acquainted with the property of these syllables in solmisation, which imply a series of sounds so unnatural, that ancient musicians prohibited The monkish writers on music say, mi contra fa est diabolus: the interval fa mi, including a tritonus, or sharp 4th, consisting of three tones without the intervention of a semitone, expressed in the modern scale by the letters, F, G, A, B, would form a musical phrase extremely disagreeable to the ear. Edmund, speaking of eclipses as portents and prodigies, compares the dislocation of events, the times being out of joint, to the unnatural and offensive sounds, fa, sol, la, mi.”

their use.

We cannot avoid expressing an opinion that Dr. Burney has somewhat overstated this matter. It is not, we think, that Edmund compares the dislocation of events to the unnatural and offensive sounds, fa, sol, la, mi, but that in his affectation of humming the gamut as Edgar enters, he employs unnatural and offensive sounds. The poet, we readily believe, had a purpose in this; but we do not quite see that the discordant arrangement of the gamut has

The Fool of Lear, with reference to the purposes of the drama, has been thus described by Coleridge:-"The Fool is no comic buffoon to make the groundlings laugh,-no forced condescension of Shakspere's genius to the taste of his audience. Accordingly, the poet prepares for his introduction, which he never does with any of his common clowns and fools, by bringing him into living connexion with the pathos of the play. He is as wonderful a creation as Caliban." But the prominent part which the Fool takes in the most passionate scenes of Lear "his wild babblings and inspired idiocy" -were not in the slightest degree opposed to the knowledge of Shakspere's audience. The domestic fools with which they were familiar, were, for the most part, like the fool which Sir Thomas More describes in his 'Utopia: "He so studied with words and sayings, brought forth so out of time and place, to make sport and more laughter, that he himself was oftener laughed at than his jests were. Yet the foolish fellow brought out now and then such indifferent and reasonable stuff, that he made the proverb true which saith, 'He that shooteth oft at the last shall hit the mark.'" But it must not be imagined that such fools as those who

were admitted to familiarity with the irascible Henry VIII., the haughty Wolsey, and the philosophic and learned More, were vulgar and licentious jesters, or incapable of affection and dislike. They were grateful, no doubt, to those who treated them with kindness,-they were bitter and revengeful, "all licensed" as they were, to those who repulsed and teased them. Antony Stafford, in his 'Guide of Honour,' says, he "had known a great and competently wise man, who would much respect any man who was good to his fool." When Sir Thomas More resigned the Chancellorship, he gave his fool, Pattison, to the Lord Mayor of London, "upon this condition, that he should every year wait upon him that should have that office." It is difficult to believe that poor Pattison, transferred year after year to a new master, was as happy with the Lord Mayor of London as with the heavenly-tempered Chancellor, who, speaking of fools in general, says, "It is a great reproach to do any of them hurt or injury." a Who knows but Pattison would have clung to his master in his misfortunes, like the Fool of Lear,

"who labours to outjest

His heart-struck injuries."

When Wolsey was disgraced, he cherished his fool, Patch, as one of the few comforts that were left to him; and at last sent him to his capricious master as the most valuable present he could bestow. We can easily imagine that, Utopia,' Book ii. ch. viii.

in the separation, Wolsey's fool "much pin'd away," as Lear's did "since my young lady's going into France." Will Sommers, Henry VIII.'s jester, on the other hand, according to tradition, hated Cardinal Wolsey. He was the "sweet and bitter fool."

3 SCENE IV.-"If I had a monopoly out, they would have part on 't."

This satire upon "lords and great men" was a bold thing in the beginning of the seventeenth century. In the reign of Elizabeth almost every article of necessity-iron, skins, leather, wool, yarn, coal, beer, glass, paper, saltpetre, potash-was consigned by the prerogative of the crown to the monopoly of some patentee. Mr. Hackwell, a member of the House of Commons, expressed his surprise that bread was not of the number. By the 21st of James the First this most injurious prerogative of the crown was got rid of, and all commissions and letters patent for the sole buying, selling, making, working, or using of anything, are declared contrary to the laws of the realm. Patents for new inventions to be granted for a limited time were excepted by this statute. It is curious that this passage of the text is not found in the folio edition of 1623, at which time the struggle for the abolition of monopolies, and the resistance on the part of the monopolists, were no doubt carried to extremes that would have rendered such a direct allusion offensive to the court, which had an interest in supporting the corruption.

"Like Camelot, what place was ever yet renown'd? Where, as at Caerleon oft, he kept the table round, Most famous for the sports at Pentecost so long, From whence all knightly deeds and brave achievements sprung."

Capell has a mistaken theory that Camelot is a name for Winchester, one of the places where Arthur held his Round Table. But the context of Drayton's poem shows us that Camelot is in Somersetshire; and the original illustrator of Drayton thus describes it:-"By South-Cadbury is that Camelot; a hill of a mile compass at the top, four trenches circling it, and betwixt every of them an earthen wall, the contents of it, within, about twenty acres, full of ruins and relics of old buildings. Antique report makes this one of Arthur's places of his Round Table, as the muse here sings." Hanmer tells us that in the moors near Camelot large quantities of geese are bred; but it may

be doubted whether the line "I'd drive ye cackling home to Camelot," has reference to this fact. Warburton supposes that some proverbial speech in the old romances of Arthur has supplied the allusion, of which, we think, there is little doubt.

5 SCENE III.

"The country gives me proof and precedent Of Bedlam beggars," &c.

Harrison, in his description of England, published with 'Holinshed's Chronicle,' gives, upon the whole, the most minute and satisfactory account of the state of society in England in Shakspere's early years. Shakspere probably wrote from his own observation when he de

scribed the

"beggars, who, with roaring voices, Strike in their numb'd and mortified bare arms Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary." But there are some very remarkable similarities in Harrison's description; and the whole passage shows us, as the author of "The Pictorial History of England' has truly said, that "the merry England of the days of Elizabeth was,