under the impression that it is desirable any notices of the writings of this great poet from the pens of persons who were his contemporaries should be gathered together. In Speculum Mundi, or a Glass representing the Face of the World, 4to, 1635, the author, John Swan, writes thus:— "Amiantus is a stone like unto alum: this being put into the fire, is not hurt nor slurried, but rather more bright and clear. Unto which, one patient in troubles and adversities, may be likened for his afflictions harm him not, but better him; making him look in the midst of a fiery trial, not like one slurried with repining, but clear and beautiful in the sight of heaven by refining. : "But I conclude: and with him who writeth thus, cannot but say "Oh! mickle is the powerful good that lies Therefore, who thus doth make their secrets known, Doth profit others, and not hurt his own!" P. 299. James Ferrand, doctor of physic, printed at Oxford, in 1640, A Treatise, discoursing of the Essence, Causes, Symptoms, Prognosticks, and Cure of Love or Erotique Melancholy. There are commendatory verses by Richard Goodridge, of Christ Church, who thus alludes to this play- Were thy story of as much direful woe As that of Juliet and Hieronymo, Here is that would cure you. Gilbert Swynhoe, a northern poet, has an allusion to the sweet couplet with which this play concludes, in his Irene, printed in 1658— This is a spectacle of like woe To that of Juliet and her Romeo. In Sir William Davenant's Gondibert, we have scenes laid at Verona, and a character called Tybalt; and one of Ford's plays has several scenes and expressions which remind of Romeo and Juliet. How deeply inwrought in the English mind are the affecting incidents of this story is apparent from the feeling with which English travellers appear to regard Verona. They visit Vallambrosa that they may gaze upon the "autumnal leaves that strew the brooks;" and their first inquiry at Verona is for the tomb of Juliet. Many would exchange for an authentic monument of the Capulets the glories of the amphitheatre itself. Even Mr. Rogers, when he is about to visit Verona, thinks of Shakespeare rather than of native bard of that ancient land of song :any Am I in ITALY? Is this the MINCIUS! Are those the distant turrets of Verona? And shall I sup where JULIET at the Masque Little or nothing will here be added to what the commentators have already told us of the origin of this tragical story, or towards determining the question whether the story has a veritable basis of fact. But the question may be asked, Why has no Shakespeare enthusiast determined this question? Or rather perhaps, since what Shakespeare has done for this story has made their city more famous, has no Veronese antiquary arisen to prove the actual existence of the principal characters of this play, or, on the contrary, to shew that they are the pure invention of romance? In England, this would certainly have been done long ago, and if we are to fix the era of the events at the close of the thirteenth century, which answers to the reign of our King Edward the First, such is the affluence of our records for that æra, that there can be no doubt that the inquiry would have been brought to a satisfactory issue. Is Italy poor in this respect when compared with this island of the Northern seas? as in the art of sculpture she appears to have had no artist superior to the Englishman who cast the statue of that sovereign's queen. But surely, if the archives of Verona contain nothing that would establish that in the Montague or the Montecchi family there was a youth who bore the name of Romeo, or one near resembling it, and in the Capulets or Capiletti family a lady whose name was Juliet, they would shew us that there were families of those names then existing at Verona, and who they were who in the time of Bartholomew de Scala, the Escalus of the play, were the heads of illustrious families so named. Or, if they failed to prove even this, they might shew us, at least, whether at that time there was a person called Paris, nearly allied to the duke. It is desirable that if possible the question should be set at rest once for all. Is the whole story a fiction-an ingenious and beautiful invention of an Italian romance-writer-or, is it all true; or, is there a mixture of truth and fable, as we find in The Tempest and in Love Labours Lost? There is something ridiculous in the thought of poring over ancient records to find traces of the existence of persons who were called into being only by some poetical imagination. But the question is, Were the characters and incidents mere invention? Of this we are at present ignorant, and the true way to knowledge is by the search of the Veronese records, if there are any so ancient. And here I will take leave to say, it is in resolving questions such as these that foreign nations can best evince their admiration of the works of this great poet. It is in vain for them to attempt to settle questions in respect of the peculiar words or peculiar phraseology of the plays. Where in this respect there is a difficulty, it can hardly be that any mind but one native to the language, and which has had the opportunities of observing nice peculiarities of expression in the spoken as well as the written language, can successfully remove it. Attempts in this department of Shakespeare criticism, by even the most eminent of those not of our own tongue, have most signally failed, and will ever fail; but in the sources of the plots, and in questions respecting the amount of real history in the stories which Shakespeare has dramatized, a foreigner may have resources richer than those which are open to ourselves, and hitherto unused for Shakespeare illustration. It is to be desired, that the present question should be settled; and, as the evidence must be in the documents, whatever they may be, which lie in the archives of Verona, or of any place to which in the revolutions of Italy they may have been removed, it is manifest that we tramontanes can do little in respect of it, and must ask for aid from the learned archivists of Italy. It is a question worth determining. True it may be, that the mind may abandon itself to the fascinations of this charming drama, and become wholly abstracted from the thought whether it is a tale of real or imaginary woe. Yet, if real, who would not be glad to know that it was so? I am prosaic enough to think that I should enjoy the drama more if I knew that those deeply affecting incidents, or something very like them, had formed a part of the actual experience of beings like myself: that such things had really been thought, and done, and suffered in the ages past. Or, if it had no effect in this way on the pleasure of perusing this drama, such an inquiry is one of great curiosity. Here is a tale told in different forms by numerous authors, and at length embodied in a play, which will last long as the world endures, which is known to half the world, and which mixes with the thoughts of Englishmen especially, so that its events are as it were trivial, and we would know whether it be reality or fiction. Surely this is as worthy a subject of inquiry as whether we are to receive the Tale of Troy as a poetic invention only, or a poetic invention in which the leading facts are found in history, and the principal characters the veritable chiefs of the early Grecian states. Was there ever a Priam with his six-gated Troy? Were there a Hector and a Helen, an Achilles, an Agamemnon, a Menelaus? Or, owe they their existence to the "blind man eloquent?" Was there ever a Paris? The subject is surely one well worth investigating, and we should not read Homer with less pleasure did we know that such persons had a veritable existence. Let us seek also whether the Paris of Shakespeare existed. It What hitherto has been done by the commentators on this branch of Shakespeare inquiry is futile in the extreme. would seem, from all we at present know, that the story of these two unfortunate lovers is come down on the stream of Italian tradition, without any concurrence of worthy historic testimony. The story appears in a history of Verona, comparatively modern, and certainly not written till after the story had appeared in the Romance writers. There is a large volume of Latin poetry by Julius Cæsar Scaliger. The subjects are infinitely various. It contains one poem allusive to the Scaliger monument at Verona, and there are two poems on Bandello, who is one of the authors who tell the story; yet there is not the slightest allusion by the Veronese poet to this affecting tale. They now shew at Verona a cistus, which they call the tomb of Juliet. How long it has been so regarded seems unknown. Coryat, whom some call the "tomb-stone traveller," describes other remains of the kind |
