«Oh, came o'er the ear like the sweet south That breathes upon a bank of violets, What we so much admire here is not the image of Patience on a monument, which has been generally quoted, but the lines before and after it. "They give a very echo to the seat where love is throned." How long ago it is since we first learnt to repeat them; and still, still they vibrate on the heart, like the sounds which the passing wind draws from the trembling strings of a harp left on some desert shore! There are other passages of not less impassioned sweetness. Such is Olivia's address to Sebastian, whom she supposes to have already deceived her in a promise of marriage. "Blame not this haste of mine: if you mean well, We have already said something of Shakspeare's songs. One of the most beautiful of them occurs in this play, with a preface of his own to it. "DUKE. O fellow, come; the song we had last night. Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain; The spinsters and the knitters in the sun, And the free maids that weave their thread with bones, And dallies with the innocence of love, Like the old age. SONG. Come away, come away, death, I am slain by a fair cruel maid. My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, My part of death no one so true Not a flower, not a flower sweet, Not a friend, not a friend greet My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown: Lay me, O! where Sad true love never find my grave, Who after this will say that Shakspeare's genius was only fitted for comedy? Yet after reading other parts of this play, and particularly the garden-scene where Malvolio picks up the letter, if we were to say that his genius for comedy was less than his genius for tragedy, it would perhaps only prove that our own taste in such matters is more saturnine than mercurial. "Enter MARIA. SIR TOBY. Here comes the little villain:-How now, my nettle of India? MARIA. Get ye all three into the box-tree: Malvolio's coming down this walk: he has been yonder i' the sun, practising behaviour to his own shadow this half hour: observe him, for the love of mockery; for I know this letter will make R a contemplative idiot of him. Close, in the name of jesting! Lie thou there; for here comes the trout that must be caught with tickling. [They hide themselves. MARIA throws down a letter, and Enter MALVOLIO. [Exit. MALVOLIO. "Tis but fortune; all is fortune. Maria once told me she did affect me; and I have heard herself come thus near, that, should she fancy, it should be one of my complexion. Besides, she uses me with a more exalted respect than any one else that follows her. What should I think on 't? SIR TOBY. Here's an over-weening rogue! FABIAN. O, peace! Contemplation makes a rare turkeycock of him; how he jets under his advanced plumes! SIR ANDREW. 'Slight, I could so beat the rogue :SIR TOBY. Peace, I say. MALVOLIO. To be Count Malvolio ; SIR TOBY. Ah, rogue! SIR ANDREW. Pistol him, pistol him. MALVOLIO. There is example for 't; the lady of the Strachy married the yeoman of the wardrobe. SIR ANDREW. Fie on him, Jezebel! FABIAN. O, peace! now he's deeply in; look, how imagination blows him. MALVOLIO. Having been three months married to her, sitting in my chair of state, SIR TOBY. O for a stone bow, to hit him in the eye! MALVOLIO. Calling my officers about me, in my branch'd velvet gown; having come from a day-bed, where I have left Olivia sleeping. SIR TOBY. Fire and brimstone! FABIAN. O peace, peace! MALVOLIO. And then to have the humour of state: and after a demure travel of regard,-telling them, I know my place, as I would they should do theirs,-to ask for my kinsman Toby. SIR TOBY. Bolts and shackles ! FABIAN. O, peace, peace, peace! now, now. MALVOLIO. Seven of my people, with an obedient start, make out for him. I frown the while; and, perchance, wind up my watch, or play with some rich jewel. Toby approaches; curtsies there to me: SIR TOBY. Shall this fellow live? FABIAN. Though our silence be drawn from us with cares, yet peace. MALVOLIO. I extend my hand to him thus, quenching my familiar smile with an austere regard of control: SIR TOBY. And does not Toby take you a blow of the lips then? MALVOLIO. Saying-Cousin Toby, my fortunes having cast me on your niece, give me this prerogative of speech ;SIR TOBY. What, what? MALVOLIO. You must amend your drunkenness. FABIAN. Nay, patience, or we break the sinews of our plot. MALVOLIO. Besides, you waste the treasure of your time with a foolish knight SIR ANDREW. That's me, I warrant you. MALVOLIO. One Sir Andrew SIR ANDREW. I knew, 'twas I; for many do call me fool. MALVOLIO. What employment have we here? [Taking up the letter." The letter and his comments on it are equally good. If poor Malvolio's treatment afterwards is a little hard, poetical justice is done in the uneasiness which Olivia suffers on account of her mistaken attachment to Cesario, as her insensibility to the violence of the Duke's passion is atoned for by the discovery of Viola's concealed love of him. THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA. THIS is little more than the first outlines of a comedy loosely sketched in. It is the story of a novel dramatised with very little labour or pretension; yet there are passages of high poetical spirit, and of inimitable quaintness of humour, which are undoubtedly Shakspeare's, and there is throughout the conduct of the fable, a careless grace and felicity which marks it for his. One of the editors (we believe Mr Pope) remarks in a marginal note to the Two GENTLEMEN OF VERONA-" It is observable (I know not for what cause) that the style of this comedy is less figurative, and more natural and unaffected than the greater part of this author's, though supposed to be one of the first he wrote." Yet so little does the editor appear to have made up his mind upon this subject, that we find the following note to the very next (the second) This whole scene, like many others in these plays (some of which I believe were written by Shakspeare, and others interpolated scene. |