brazen lungs, and since both his taste and his natural capabilities refused to accompany these Bombastes Furiosos into all the excess of their vulgar vociferation; the richness of his modulation, the intelligence and refinement of his elocution, seem to have been lost sight of.

It has been also clamorously objected, that his art was too apparent, that his pompous dignity was so incessant ly maintained as to be obtrusive and disgusting; that he too rigorously observed Hamlet's rule of " acquiring and begetting a temperance in the very torrent, tempest, and whirlwind of passion," which, if it gave smoothness to the whole, gave also a pitiful tameness; that every gesture was measured with minute precision; that he never ventured to move a step, or even to wave his hand without the most cautious study; that he was far too anxious about the grouping and disposing of the subordinate stagepuppets, so that you forgot the hero in the drill-serjeant, and had the fine illusion of the august Roman too often broken by the intrusion of the schooled and imperative Mr Kemble; that, in short, he never burst away, like Cooke or Kean, from the trammels of methodical precision in the irregular career of tempestuous passion. All these deficiencies and overdoings were very pointedly put in some lines of a poem called the Thespiad.

Precise in passion, cautious even in rage, Lo! Kemble comes, the Euclid of the

stage;

Who moves in given angles, squares a
start,
And blows his Roman beak by rules of
art,

Writhes with a grace to agony unknown,
And gallops half an octave in a groan.

These vituperations were in some instances just, but they were often urged in ignorance by minute critics who could not expand their minds to a comprehension of the whole, who could only nibble bit by bit, and count the beats of their stop-watches. That very stoical apathy of manner which offended their fustian taste, was a virtue and a mark of magnanimity in the personation of most of his characters, the tone of which (we except Hamlet and a few others) was of that lofty and severe cast, that they aimed at repelling instead of yielding to the agency of human passions, and stood far aloof from the petty jealousies and

agitating moods of meaner minds. Certainly Kemble could not adapt himself to all characters. He had not the tact and versatility of Garrick, and his representation during the course of the same piece was frequently very unequal.

Thus, his Hamlet had too much of the "antique Roman" in it to be perfect. He could not soften himself down into that pensive softness with which the exquisite fancy of the poet has invested the young Dane. He bore his inevitable melancholy with too heroic and unbending a fortitude; nor did he display with sufficient delicacy that superficial sportiveness of behaviour which, in the reserved and hear-stricken Hamlet, conceals deep grief and distraction of mind, and makes them more pathetic and more alarming. He had not tact for the accommodating amiableness of the young prince's manners. Always sustained, he seemed not to acquiesce in the author's humour for ease and familiarity, and to feel it somewhat like a derogation from his dignity to smile with the gay and to laugh with the giddy. Perhaps he had not fathomed the delicate metaphysics of the character. But for princely dignity of mien and air, for exalted thoughtfulness and pensive philosophy, who could surpass Mr Kemble? His sarcastic reception of the hireling spies upon his conduct, the bitter taunts with which he upbraids his uncle-father and aunt-mother, were quite exquisite, fitted to on whom they fell.

blast and wither those

In the earlier scenes of Richard III., where the mind must be distorted and compressed under the mask of dissimulation, he was not happy; but, when Richard throws off entirely the cloak of hypocrisy under which he crept to the throne, and breaks out into all the pride and recklessness of avowed despotism, Kemble could give the direct ect impression impressi of his energetic character better than any man; nor in his earlier years did he yield to any in the bustling bravery of the fight, or in the fearful hideousness of the catastrophe.

The character of Zanga was more suited to his powers, a prince degraded into the state of servitude,born under higher auspices than the petty lord to whom he is condemned to bow in reluctant submission,-tortured by the poignant sense of wrongs present themselves before him, and with tears and melting appeals entreat him to quit the Volscian camp, and be again the saviour of his country. The conflict betwixt affection and vengeance was sustained as Nature would have sustained it. In the two simple words, "Leave me!" there was a world of expression, a terrible picture of the distraction that was tearing his soul in twain. The choked utterance seemed not to come from the lips, but to burst from the quivering cores of the heart.

But the character of Macbeth, in which he took farewell of Scotland, was altogether his own. Before the murder of Duncan, he exquisitely mingled his vaulting ambition with the misgivings and the relentings of Nature; and, after the murder, we can conceive nothing approaching nearer to the fearful truth than the throbs, and throes, and agonies of soul, which lacerate and rend him, than the inquietude which haunts his footsteps wherever he goes,-than the basilisk-terrors which startle him even in the sunshine, glare upon him from the hell-illumined cavern, or sting him on his lonely pillow.

Oh! full of scorpions is my mind.-
-Better be with the dead,

Than on the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ecstacy.

Whoever has seen the rich combination of the brother's and the sister's genius in the representation of this awful tragedy, has no higher dramatic exhibition to look forward to. Would that Shakespeare could have seen it! We have said that Mr Kemble could not adapt himself equally to every character. Some characters there are, and those now very much in vogue, for the faithful representation of which his very excellencies incapacitated him. Thus it was that his occasional attempts at comedy were as unsuccessful as they were injudicious. His forte lay not in the ready and natural exhibition of every-day life. He failed here, as in scorn of such easy

excellence. It was only when he had to embody ideal grandeur, or to breathe forth some high poetical conception or heroic thought, that his whole soul came willingly to the effort. He always aimed at being superhuman; and so, when ordinary life came to be pourtrayed, there was a want of ease, and freshness, and reality. Even in Penruddock, though the general impression conveyed was most striking, -nay, even tremendously powerful, he failed to relieve its elevation, and to enhance the delicacy of the portrait, by those familiar touches which every unsophisticated taste demanded. Neither, for a similar reason, was he at home in Sir Giles Over-reach. It was in Kemble, indeed, to kindle into his courage, and swell with his ambition; but he had no talents for manifesting the griping selfishness of this piece of hoary-headed avarice, or for developing the shuffling duplicity of the consummate villain, or for exhibiting his disgusting vulgarity. For all these, not only his formed manner, but his very soul, seeined to have an instinctive repugnance. Any thing like meanness of aspect, or coarseness of passion, or degradation of taste, were spurned away by the habitual elevation of his thoughts and his deportment.

It was when he ascended the steps of the Capitol to bid a tyrant die, it was when he stood proudly among the relics of the Roman senate, and urged his fellow-patriots to win freedom's battle, or to fall, it was when he daringly presented himself among his enemies as the wronged outcast from his country, the vindictive asserter of his rights, that the full congenial majesty of his character shone gloriously forth. Then, as was fitting, we lost sight of the actor entirely, and beheld-not Mr Kemble, but -Brutus, and Cato, and Coriolanus alternately before us, and it was impossible to resist the impression that possible

_ the Genius of old Rome

Up from the grave had raised his reverend head, Roused by the shout of millions.

We cannot quote the language of the poet throughout the whole evolution of these characters, and, of course, we cannot do justice to Mr Kemble's representation of them; yet we feel pleasure in particularizing a few beau

1

ties that live more prominently in the memory.

We shall pass over all the rest, to come to his Coriolanus, which of all his characters is most closely associated with our idea of him, and most intensely reverts upon our admiration. In his person the conceptions of the poet met with their perfect prototype. The very beau-ideal of Roman majesty moved before the audience. There you beheld the unbending soul, whom the endearment of kindred

scarce

could soften from the utmost stern

ness of its purpose, glowing with all the generous ardour of patriotism, till hurried by injury into sweeping and impetuous revenge. These were elements which found in Mr Kemble the most congenial energies, and which kindled his heroic countenance and

mind into their proudest and most forceful display. When, in the first scene, he comes forth, the haughty patrician among the mutinous plebeian rabble, even before a word is uttered, the spectator is arrested to gaze on the noblest form he had ever seen, rearing itself into the most majestic attitude, and quelling with a look of conscious authority the tumult of the crowd, his right arm erected in fearless command, his chest distended with confidence and courage, his purple robe magnificently depending from his shoulder, as if it shared in the wearer's triumph. Nor is the deep

and settled with which contemplates the multitude assembled before him more in character than that proud exultation in which all the warrior breaks out, when he finds an ene

Brut. Not to them all.

Cor. Have you informed them since ?

The suddenness of the retort conveyed in the last line, with the penetrating look which accompanied it, was well fitted to abash the envious tribune, and make him shrink into himself.

Nor do we recollect of ever having witnessed any thing finer in its way than the disdainful astonishment with which he receives the "absolute shall" of Sicinius. The imperious and in

censed Roman treads the insult under

his foot. His contempt, when it finds vent, first bursts forth in a terrible

emphasis, then gradually checks its own force, lowers, and sinks into a sarcastic playfulness.

Sic. It is a mind

That shall remain a poison where it is,'
Not poison any farther.
Cor. Shall remain!

Hear you this triton of the minnows! mark

you,

His absolute shall, shall!

"There was a laughing devil in his sneer." In like manner, when one of the tribunes comes to drag him before the people, his fearless and resolute dignity sends the daring, officious fool from his presence, like a sparrow scared away by an eagle.

Cor. Hence, or I shall shake thy bones Out of thy garments!

Throughout the scene, which ends in the banishment of Coriolanus, Mr Kemble's genius pervaded the whole theatre with his own feelings of haughty disdain. You beheld a mighty

learns that the Volscians are in arms, with Tullus Aufidius at their head.

I'm glad on't.

ing back confusion upon the pigmy dispensers of his fate.

Who, that has ever seen it, will forget his appearance in the Volscian

and he

solemn grandeur, and with an expression of eye and countenance that would have mocked even the imitative efforts of Apelles, he stands by the statue of Mars, as if his spirit vied with the prowess and the pride of the fabled god? It more than justified the exclamation of the Volscian officer,

Once more, what a deluge of passion breaks out upon Aufidius in the last scene! It was not sport to call him a Boy of tears. The depth of anger, astonishment, and disdain with which he reiterated the word Boy, carried in it something sublime, and sealed upon the audience an ineffaceable impression of the firmest manliness, the proudest magnanimity.

Measureless liar! thou hast made my heart
Too big for what contains it-Boy!
If you have writ your annals true, 'tis

there,

That, like an eagle in a dove-cot, I Fluttered your Volscians in CorioliAlone I did it-Boy!

ON THE ENGLISH DRAMATIC WRITERS WHO PRECEDED SHAKESPEARE.

No. V.

In my last article, which brought the English drama down to the year 1587, I gave several disjointed quotations from the tragedy of the "Misfortunes of Arthur," by Thomas Hughes. I was well convinced at the time, that the striking character of those passages would attract considerable attention to that almost unknown, and I may say without qualification, admirable production, written by a person hitherto a non-entity in our literary history, and partially prepared by unquestionably the greatest man of an age in which great men abounded. Every body knows in how many different shapes Gorboduc has appeared within the last thirty or forty years-how often it has been reprinted, extracted, criticised, and dissected, as forming of itself an era in our drama; and I now learn, that in consequence of what has been so recently said of the " Misfortunes of Arthur," a work infinitely superior in

point of poetic excellence, it is intended to re-publish that tragedy precisely in the form in which it exists, in the only printed copy with which I am acquainted. In the meantime, I am desirous of adding something to the analysis I have already made, in order to enable the reader to form a more correct estimate of the piece as a whole. The extracts I have furnished were unconnected-they could only be judged of in their separate merit, and we all know that a play might be a very bad one as a whole, which contained passages that, taken by themselves, displayed both beauty and porver. It is a point, however, that would not be disputed by such as had read the entire performance, that "The Misfortunes of Arthur" is as excellent and perfect as a whole, (estimating it by certain rules which the writer seems to have laid down for himself, and making a very few allowances for the state of literature of the time,) as the short quotations furnished in my last are vigorous, characteristic, and poetical. But for this fact, which I consider undeniable, İ should not have laid so much stress upon the piece, but hitherto Sackville's heavy prosing tragedy has not only been loaded with more praise than is due to it, but has absorbed much of the applause merited by productions nearly contemporary. Misfortunes of Arthur" being unknown to them, we cannot blame Warton and others for not paying tribute to it.

"The

Good will withdrawes, assent becomes but slow.

Mord. Must I to gaine renowne, incurre my place,

Or hoping prayse sustaine an exile's life? Must I for countries ease disease my selfe, Or for their loue dispise my owne estate ?†

Instead of the words " commons grudge," the words " realme enuies" have been substituted, by sealing a small slip over the original: this has been done in many places throughout the play; sometimes probably to avoid offensive political allusions, and sometimes to gratify the author, who seems to have altered his mind in several substitutions. A few of these slips are only fastened at one end, so as to give the reader an opportunity of deciding for himself.

+ Instead of the foregoing four lines, the following have been annexed on a separate slip.

"The first art in a kingdome is to scorne The enuie of the realme: he cannot rule That feares to be enuide. What can di.

vorce

Enuie from soueraigntie? Must my de

A time they scape, in time they be repaide.

Mord. The hugest crimes bring best

successe to some.

Cona. Those some be rare.
Mord. Why may not I be rare ?
Cona. It was their hap.
Mord. It is my hope.
Cona. But hope

May misse where hap doth hurle.
Mord. So hap may hit
Where hope doth aime.

Cona. But hap is last, and rules

The stearne. Mord. So hope is first, and hoists the saile.

Cona. Yet feare; the first and last dos sielde agree.

Mord. Nay, dare; the first and last haue many meanes.

me much :

But cease at length; your speach molests
My minde is fixt! give Mordred leave to
doe
What Conan neither can allow nor like.

In this scene many minor faults could undoubtedly be pointed out.