1777
   From AN ESSAY ON THE DRAMATIC CHARACTER OF SIR JOHN FALSTAFF

                       by Maurice Morgann









şiElectronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1996, World Library(R)
DAK Upgraded Edition, Copyright 2000, DAK Industries 2000, Inc(R)şI

{PREFACE
                               Preface

  THE following sheets were written in consequence of a friendly
conversation, turning by some chance upon the Character of
FALSTAFF, wherein the Writer, maintaining contrary to the
general Opinion, that, this Character was not intended to be shewn
as a Coward, he was challenged to deliver and support that Opinion
from the Press, with an engagement, now he fears forgotten, for it
was three years ago, that he should be answered thro' the same
channel: Thus stimulated, these papers were almost wholly written
in a very short time, but not without those attentions, whether
successful or not, which seemed necessary to carry them beyond the
Press into the hands of the Public. From the influence of the
foregoing circumstances it is, that the Writer has generally assumed
rather the character and tone of an Advocate than of an Inquirer;
though if he had not first inquired and been convinced, he
should never have attempted to have amused either himself or
others with the subject.- The impulse of the occasion, however,
being passed, the papers were thrown by, and almost forgotten: But
having been looked into of late by some friends, who observing that
the Writer had not enlarged so far for the sake of FALSTAFF
alone, but that the Argument was made subservient to Critical
amusement, persuaded him to revise and convey it to the Press.
This has been accordingly done, though he fears something too
hastily, as he found it proper to add, while the papers were in the
course of printing, some considerations on the Whole Character
of FALSTAFF; which ought to have been accompanied by a slight
reform of a few preceding passages, which may seem, in
consequence of this addition, to contain too favourable a
representation of his Morals.

  The vindication of FALSTAFF's Courage is truly no otherwise the
object than some old fantastic Oak, or grotesque Rock, may be the
object of a morning's ride; yet being proposed as such, may serve to
limit the distance, and shape the course: The real object is Exercise,
and the Delight which a rich, beautiful, picturesque, and perhaps
unknown Country, may excite from every side. Such an Exercise
may admit of some little excursion, keeping however the Road in
view; but seems to exclude every appearance of labour and of toil.
Under the impression of such Feelings the Writer has endeavoured
to preserve to his Text a certain lightness of air, and chearfulness of
tone; but is sensible however that the manner of discussion does not
every where, particularly near the commencement, sufficiently
correspond with his design.- If the Book shall be fortunate enough
to obtain another Impression, a separation may be made; and such
of the heavier parts as cannot be wholly dispensed with, sink to
their more proper station,- a Note.

  He is fearful likewise that he may have erred in the other extreme;
and that having thought himself intitled, even in argument, to a
certain degree of playful discussion, may have pushed it, in a few
places, even to levity. This error might be yet more easily reformed
than the other.- The Book is perhaps, as it stands, too bulky for the
subject; but if the Reader knew how many pressing considerations,
as it grew into size, the Author resisted, which yet seemed intitled
to be heard, he would the more readily excuse him.

  The whole is a mere Experiment, and the Writer considers it as
such: It may have the advantages, but it is likewise attended with all
the difficulties and dangers, of Novelty.


{DRAMATIC_CHARACTER
        ON THE DRAMATIC CHARACTER OF SIR JOHN FALSTAFF


  THE ideas which I have formed concerning the Courage and
Military Character of the Dramatic Sir John Falstaff, are so
different from those which I find generally to prevail in the world,
that I shall take the liberty of stating my sentiments on the subject;
in hope that some person as unengaged as myself, will either
correct and reform my error in this respect; or, joining himself to
my opinion, redeem me from, what I may call, the reproach of
singularity.

  I am to avow then, that I do not clearly discern that Sir John
Falstaff deserves to bear the character so generally given him of an
absolute Coward; or, in other words, that I do not conceive
Shakespeare ever meant to make Cowardice an essential part of
his constitution.

  I know how universally the contrary opinion prevails; and I know
what respect and deference are due to the public voice. But if to the
avowal of this singularity, I add all the reasons that have led me to
it, and acknowledge myself to be wholly in the judgment of the
public, I shall hope to avoid the censure of too much forwardness or
indecorum.

  It must, in the first place, be admitted that the appearances in
this case are singularly strong and striking; and so they had need be,
to become the ground of so general a censure. We see this
extraordinary Character, almost in the first moment of our
acquaintance with him, involved in circumstances of apparent
dishonour; and we hear him familiarly called Coward by his
most intimate companions. We see him, on occasion of the robbery
at Gads-Hill, in the very act of running away from the Prince
and Poins; and we behold him, on another of more honourable
obligation, in open day light, in battle, and acting in his profession
as a Soldier, escaping from Douglas even out of the world as it
were; counterfeiting death, and deserting his very existence; and we
find him on the former occasion, betrayed into those lies and
braggadocioes, which are the usual concomitants of
Cowardicein Military men, and pretenders to valour. These are not
only in themselves strong circumstances, but they are moreover
thrust forward, prest upon our notice as the subject of our mirth, as
the great business of the scene: No wonder, therefore, that the word
should go forth that Falstaff is exhibited as a character of
Cowardice and dishonour.

  What there is to the contrary of this, it is my business to discover.
Much, I think, will presently appear; but it lies so dispersed, is
solatent, and so purposely obscured, that the reader must have some
patience whilst I collect it into one body, and make it the object of a
steady and regular contemplation.

  But what have we to do, may my readers exclaim, with principles
so latent, so obscured? In Dramatic composition the
Impression is the Fact; and the Writer, who, meaning to
impress one thing, has impressed another, is unworthy of
observation.

  It is a very unpleasant thing to have, in the first setting out, so
many and so strong prejudices to contend with. All that one can do
in such case, is, to pray the reader to have a little patience in the
commencement; and to reserve his censure, if it must pass, for the
conclusion. Under his gracious allowance, therefore, I presume to
declare it, as my opinion, that Cowardice is not the
Impression, which the whole character of Falstaff is
calculated to make on the minds of an unprejudiced audience; tho'
there be, I confess, a great deal of something in the composition
likely enough to puzzle, and consequently to mislead the
Understanding.- The reader will perceive that I distinguish between
mental Impressions, and the Understanding.- I wish to avoid
every thing that looks like subtlety and refinement; but this is a
distinction, which we all comprehend.- There are none of us
unconscious of certain feelings or sensations of mind, which do not
seem to have passed thro' the Understanding; the effects, I suppose,
of some secret influences from without, acting upon a certain
mental sense, and producing feelings and passions in just
correspondence to the force and variety of those influences on the
one hand, and to the quickness of our sensibility on the other. Be
the cause, however, what it may, the fact is undoubtedly so; which
is all I am concerned in. And it is equally a fact, which every man's
experience may avouch, that the Understanding and those feelings
are frequently at variance. The latter often arise from the most
minute circumstances, and frequently from such as the
Understanding cannot estimate, or even recognize; whereas the
Understanding delights in abstraction, and in general propositions;
which, however true considered as such, are very seldom, I had like
to have said never, perfectly applicable to any particular case.
And hence, among other causes, it is, that we often condemn or
applaud characters and actions on the credit of some logical
process, while our hearts revolt, and would fain lead us to a very
different conclusion.

  The Understanding seems for the most part to take cognizance of
actions only, and from these to infer motives and
character; but the sense we have been speaking of proceeds in a
contrary course; and determines of actions from certain first
principles of character, which seem wholly out of the reach of the
Understanding. We cannot indeed do otherwise than admit that
there must be distinct principles of character in every distinct
individual: The manifest variety even in the minds of infants will
oblige us to this. But what are these first principles of character?
Not the objects, I am persuaded, of the Understanding; and yet we
take as strong Impressions of them as if we could compare and
assort them in a syllogism. We often love or hate at first sight; and
indeed, in general, dislike or approve by some secret reference to
these principles; and we judge even of conduct, not from any
idea of abstract good or evil in the nature of actions, but by refering
those actions to a supposed original character in the man himself. I
do not mean that we talk thus; we could not indeed, if we
would, explain ourselves in detail on this head; we can neither
account for Impressions and passions, nor communicate them to
others by words: Tones and looks will sometimes convey the
passion strangely, but the Impression is incommunicable.
The same causes may produce it indeed at the same time in many,
but it is the separate possession of each, and not in its nature
transferable: It is an imperfect sort of instinct, and proportionably
dumb.- We might indeed, if we chose it, candidly confess to one
another, that we are greatly swayed by these feelings, and are by no
means so rational in all points as we could wish; but this would
be a betraying of the interests of that high faculty, the
Understanding, which we so value ourselves upon, and which we
more peculiarly call our own. This, we think, must not be; and so
we huddle up the matter, concealing it as much as possible, both
from ourselves and others. In Books indeed, wherein character,
motive, and action, are all alike subjected to the Understanding, it is
generally a very clear case; and we make decisions compounded of
them all: And thus we are willing to approve of Candide, tho' he
kills my Lord the Inquisitor, and runs thro' the body the Baron of
Thunder-ten-tronchk the son of his patron, and the brother of his
beloved Cunegonde: But in real life, I believe, my Lords the
Judges would be apt to inform the Gentlemen of the Jury, that
my Lord the Inquisitor was ill killed; as Candide did not
proceed on the urgency of the moment, but on the speculation only
of future evil. And indeed this clear perception, in Novels and
Plays, of the union of character and action not seen in nature, is the
principal defect of such compositions, and what renders them but ill
pictures of human life, and wretched guides of conduct.

  But if there was one man in the world, who could make a
more perfect draught of real nature, and steal such Impressions on
his audience, without their special notice, as should keep their hold
in spite of any error of their Understanding, and should thereupon
venture to introduce an apparent incongruity of character and
action, for ends which I shall presently endeavour to explain; such
an imitation would be worth our nicest curiosity and attention. But
in such a case as this, the reader might expect that he should find us
all talking the language of the Understanding only; that is, censuring
the action with very little conscientious investigation even of
that; and transferring the censure, in every odious colour, to the
actor himself; how much soever our hearts and affections might
secretly revolt: For as to the Impression, we have already
observed that it has no tongue; nor is its operation and influence
likely to be made the subject of conference and communication.

  It is not to the Courage only of Falstaff that we think these
observations will apply: No part whatever of his character seems to
be fully settled in our minds; at least there is something strangely
incongruous in our discourse and affections concerning him. We all
like Old Jack; yet, by some strange perverse fate, we all abuse
him, and deny him the possession of any one single good or
respectable quality. There is something extraordinary in this: It must
be a strange art in Shakespeare which can draw our liking and
good will towards so offensive an object. He has wit, it will be said;
chearfulness and humour of the most characteristic and captivating
sort. And is this enough? Is the humour and gaiety of vice so very
captivating? Is the wit, characteristic of baseness and every ill
quality capable of attaching the heart and winning the affections? Or
does not the apparency of such humour, and the flashes of such wit,
by more strongly disclosing the deformity of character, but the more
effectually excite our hatred and contempt of the man? And yet this
is not our feeling of Falstaff's character. When he has ceased
to amuse us, we find no emotions of disgust; we can scarcely
forgive the ingratitude of the Prince in the new-born virtue of the
King, and we curse the severity of that poetic justice which
consigns our old good-natured delightful companion to the custody
of the warden, and the dishonours of the Fleet.

  I am willing, however, to admit that if a Dramatic writer will but
preserve to any character the qualities of a strong mind, particularly
Courage and ability, that it will be afterwards no very difficult task
(as I may have occasion to explain) to discharge that disgust
which arises from vicious manners; and even to attach us (if such
character should contain any quality productive of chearfulness and
laughter) to the cause and subject of our mirth with some degree of
affection.

  But the question which I am to consider is of a very differen
nature: It is a question of fact, and concerning a quality which
forms the basis of every respectable character; a quality which is the
very essence of a Military man; and which is held up to us, in
almost every Comic incident of the Play, as the subject of our
observation. It is strange then that it should now be a question,
whether Falstaff is, or is not a man of Courage; and whether we
do in fact contemn him for the want, or respect him for the
possession of that quality: And yet I believe the reader will find that
he has by no means decided this question, even for himself.- If then
it should turn out, that this difficulty has arisen out of the Art of
Shakespeare, who has contrived to make secret Impressions
upon us of Courage, and to preserve those Impressions in favour of
a character which was to be held up for sport and laughter on
account of actions of apparent Cowardice and dishonour, we shall
have less occasion to wonder, as Shakespeare is a Name which
contains All of Dramatic artifice and genius.

  If in this place the reader shall peevishly and prematurely object
that the observations and distinctions I have laboured to establish,
are wholly unapplicable; he being himself unconscious of ever
having received any such Impression; what can be done in so nice a
case, but to refer him to the following pages; by the number of
which he may judge how very much I respect his objection, and by
the variety of those proofs, which I shall employ to induce him to
part with it; and to recognize in its stead certain feelings, concealed
and covered over perhaps, but not erazed, by time, reasoning, and
authority.

  In the mean while, it may not perhaps be easy for him to resolve
how it comes about, that, whilst we look upon Falstaff as a
character of the like nature with that of Parolles or of
Bobadil, we should preserve for him a great degree of respect
and good-will, and yet feel the highest disdain and contempt of the
others, tho' they are all involved in similar situations. The reader, I
believe, would wonder extremely to find either Parolles or
Bobadil possess himself in danger: What then can be the cause
that we are not at all surprized at the gaiety and ease of Falstaff
under the most trying circumstances; and that we never think of
charging Shakespeare with departing, on this account, from the
truth and coherence of character? Perhaps, after all, the real
character of Falstaff may be different from his apparent one;
and possibly this difference between reality and appearance, whilst
it accounts at once for our liking and our censure, may be the true
point of humour in the character, and the source of all our laughter
and delight. We may chance to find, if we will but examine a little
into the nature of those circumstances which have accidentally
involved him, that he was intended to be drawn as a character of
much Natural courage and resolution; and be obliged thereupon to
repeal those decisions, which may have been made upon the credit
of some general tho' unapplicable propositions; the common source
of error in other and higher matters. A little reflection may perhaps
bring us round again to the point of our departure, and unite our
Understandings to our instinct.- Let us then for a moment
suspend at least our decisions, and candidly and coolly inquire
if Sir John Falstaff be, indeed, what he has so often been called
by critic and commentator, male and female,- a Constitutional
Coward.

  It will scarcely be possible to consider the Courage of Falstaff
as wholly detached from his other qualities: But I write not
professedly of any part of his character, but what is included under
the term, Courage; however I may incidentally throw some
lights on the whole.- The reader will not need to be told that this
Inquiry will resolve itself of course into a Critique on the genius,
the arts, and the conduct of Shakespeare: For what is
Falstaff, what Lear, what Hamlet, or Othello, but
different modifications of Shakespeare's thought? It is true that
this Inquiry is narrowed almost to a single point: But general
criticism is as uninstructive as it is easy: Shakespeare deserves
to be considered in detail;- a task hitherto unattempted.

  It may be proper, in the first place, to take a short view of all the
parts of Falstaff's Character, and then proceed to discover, if we
can, what Impressions, as to Courage or Cowardice, he had
made on the persons of the Drama: After which we will examine, in
course, such evidence, either of persons or facts, as are
relative to the matter; and account as we may for those appearances,
which seem to have led to the opinion of his Constitutional
Cowardice.

  The scene of the robbery, and the disgraces attending it, which
stand first in the Play, and introduce us to the knowledge of
Falstaff, I shall beg leave (as I think this scene to have been the
source of much unreasonable prejudice) to reserve till we are
more fully acquainted with the whole character of Falstaff; and I
shall therefore hope that the reader will not for a time advert to it, or
to the jests of the Prince or of Poins in consequence of that
unlucky adventure.

  In drawing out the parts of Falstaff's character, with which I
shall begin this Inquiry, I shall take the liberty of putting
Constitutional bravery into his composition; but the reader will be
pleased to consider what I shall say in that respect as spoken
hypothetically for the present, to be retained, or discharged out of it,
as he shall finally determine.

  To me then it appears that the leading quality in Falstaff's
character, and that from which all the rest take their colour, is a high
degree of wit and humour, accompanied with great natural vigour
and alacrity of mind. This quality so accompanied, led him
probably very early into life, and made him highly acceptable to
society; so acceptable, as to make it seem unnecessary for him to
acquire any other virtue. Hence, perhaps, his continued
debaucheries and dissipations of every kind.- He seems, by nature,
to have had a mind free of malice or any evil principle; but he never
took the trouble of acquiring any good one. He found himself
esteemed and beloved with all his faults; nay for his faults,
which were all connected with humour, and for the most part, grew
out of it. As he had, possibly, no vices but such as he thought might
be openly professed, so he appeared more dissolute thro'
ostentation. To the character of wit and humour, to which all his
other qualities seem to have conformed themselves, he appears to
have added a very necessary support, that of the profession of a
Soldier. He had from nature, as I presume to say, a spirit of
boldness and enterprise; which in a Military age, tho' employment
was only occasional, kept him always above contempt, secured him
an honourable reception among the Great, and suited best both with
his particular mode of humour and of vice. Thus living continually
in society, nay even in Taverns, and indulging himself, and being
indulged by others, in every debauchery; drinking, whoring,
gluttony, and ease; assuming a liberty of fiction, necessary perhaps
to his wit, and often falling into falsity and lies, he seems to have
set, by degrees, all sober reputation at defiance; and finding eternal
resources in his wit, he borrows, shifts, defrauds, and even robs,
without dishonour.- Laughter and approbation attend his greatest
excesses; and being governed visibly by no settled bad principle or
ill design, fun and humour account for and cover all. By degrees,
however, and thro' indulgence, he acquires bad habits, becomes an
humourist, grows enormously corpulent, and falls into the
infirmities of age; yet never quits, all the time, one single levity or
vice of youth, or loses any of that chearfulness of mind, which had
enabled him to pass thro' this course with ease to himself and
delight to others; and thus, at last, mixing youth and age, enterprize
and corpulency, wit and folly, poverty and expence, title and
buffoonery, innocence as to purpose, and wickedness as to practice;
neither incurring hatred by bad principle, or contempt by
Cowardice, yet involved in circumstances productive of imputation
in both; a butt and a wit, a humourist and a man of humour, a
touchstone and a laughing stock, a jester and a jest, has Sir John
Falstaff, taken at that period of his life in which we see him,
become the most perfect Comic character that perhaps ever was
exhibited.

  It may not possibly be wholly amiss to remark in this place, that I
Sir John Falstaff had possessed any of that Cardinal quality,
Prudence, alike the guardian of virtue and the protector of vice; that
quality, from the possession or the absence of which, the character
and fate of men in this life take, I think, their colour, and not from
real vice or virtue; if he had considered his wit not as principal
but accessary only; as the instrument of power, and not as
power itself; if he had had much baseness to hide, if he had had less
of what may be called mellowness or good humour, or less of
health and spirit; if he had spurred and rode the world with his wit,
instead of suffering the world, boys and all, to ride him;- he might,
without any other essential change, have been the admiration and
not the jest of mankind:- Or if he had lived in our day, and instead
of attaching himself to one Prince, had renounced all friendship
and all attachment, and had let himself out as the ready
instrument and Zany of every successive Minister, he might
possibly have acquired the high honour of marking his shroud or
decorating his coffin with the living rays of an Irish at least, if not a
British Coronet: Instead of which, tho' enforcing laughter from
every disposition, he appears, now, as such a character, which
every wise man will pity and avoid, every knave will censure, and
every fool will fear: And accordingly Shakespeare, ever true to
nature, has made Harry desert, and Lancaster censure him:
He dies where he lived, in a Tavern, broken-hearted, without a
friend; and his final exit is given up to the derision of fools. Nor
have his misfortunes ended here; the scandal arising from the
misapplication of his wit and talents seems immortal. He has met
with as little justice or mercy from his final judges the critics, as
from his companions of the Drama. With our cheeks still red with
laughter, we ungratefully as unjustly censure him as a coward by
nature, and a rascal upon principle: Tho', if this were so, it might be
hoped, for our own credit, that we should behold him rather with
disgust and disapprobation than with pleasure and delight.

  But to remember our question- Is Falstaff a constitutional
coward?

  With respect to every infirmity, except that of Cowardice, we
must take him as at the period in which he is represented to us. If
we see him dissipated, fat,- it is enough;- we have nothing to do
with his youth, when he might perhaps have been modest, chaste,
'and not an Eagle's talon in the waist.' But Constitutional
Courage extends to a man's whole life, makes a part of his nature,
and is not to be taken up or deserted like a mere Moral quality. It is
true, there is a Courage founded upon principle, or rather a
principle independent of Courage, which will sometimes operate in
spite of nature; a principle, which prefers death to shame, but which
always refers itself, in conformity to its own nature, to the
prevailing modes of honour, and the fashions of the age.- But
Natural courage is another thing: It is independent of opinion; It
adapts itself to occasions, preserves itself under every shape, and
can avail itself of flight as well as of action.- In the last war, some
Indians of America perceiving a line of Highlanders to keep their
station under every disadvantage, and under a fire which they could
not effectually return, were so miserably mistaken in our points of
honour as to conjecture, from observation on the habit and stability
of those troops, that they were indeed the women of England, who
wanted courage to run away.- That Courage which is founded in
nature and constitution, Falstaff, as I presume to say,
possessed;- but I am ready to allow, that the principle already
mentioned, so far as it refers to reputation only, began with every
other Moral quality to lose its hold on him in his old age; that is, at
the time of life in which he is represented to us; a period, as it
should seem, approaching to seventy.- The truth is that he had
drollery enough to support himself in credit without the point of
honour, and had address enough to make even the preservation of
his life a point of drollery. The reader knows I allude, tho'
something prematurely, to his fictitious death in the battle of
Shrewsbury. This incident is generally construed to the
disadvantage of Falstaff: It is a transaction which bears the
external marks of Cowardice: It is also aggravated to the spectators
by the idle tricks of the Player, who practises on this occasion all
the attitudes and wild apprehensions of fear; more ambitious, as it
should seem, of representing a Caliban than a Falstaff; or indeed
rather a poor unwieldy miserable Tortoise than either.- The painful
Comedian lies spread out on his belly, and not only covers himself
all over with his robe as with a shell, but forms a kind of round
Tortoise-back by I know not what stuffing or contrivance; in addition
to which, he alternately lifts up, and depresses, and dodges
his head, and looks to the one side and to the other, so much with
the piteous aspect of that animal, that one would not be sorry to see
the ambitious imitator calipashed in his robe, and served up for the
entertainment of the gallery.- There is no hint for this mummery in
the Play: Whatever there may be of dishonour in Falstaff's
conduct, he neither does or says any thing on this occasion which
indicates terror or disorder of mind: On the contrary, this very act is
a proof of his having all his wits about him, and is a stratagem, such
as it is, not improper for a buffoon, whose fate would be singularly
hard, if he should not be allowed to avail himself of his Character
when it might serve him in most stead. We must remember, in
extenuation, that the executive, the destroying hand of Douglas
was over him: 'It was time to counterfeit, or that hot termagant
Scot had paid him scot and lot too.' He had but one choice; he was
obliged to pass thro' the ceremony of dying either in jest or in
earnest; and we shall not be surprized at the event, when we
remember his propensities to the former.- Life (and especially the
life of Falstaff) might be a jest; but he could see no joke
whatever in dying: To be chopfallen was, with him, to lose both life
and character together: He saw the point of honour, as well as every
thing else, in ridiculous lights, and began to renounce its tyranny

  But I am too much in advance, and must retreat for more
advantage. I should not forget how much opinion is against me, and
that I am to make my way by the mere force and weight of
evidence; without which I must not hope to possess myself of the
reader: No address, no insinuation will avail. To this evidence, then,
I now resort. The Courage of Falstaff is my Theme: And no
passage will I spare from which any thing can be inferred as relative
to this point. It would be as vain as injudicious to attempt
concealment: How could I escape detection? The Play is in every
one's memory, and a single passage remembered in detection would
tell, in the mind of the partial observer, for fifty times its real
weight. Indeed this argument would be void of all excuse if it
declined any difficulty; if it did not meet, if it did not challenge
opposition. Every passage then shall be produced from which, in
my opinion, any inference, favourable or unfavourable, has or can
be drawn;- but not methodically, not formally, as texts for
comment, but as chance or convenience shall lead the way; but in
what shape soever, they shall be always distinguishingly marked for
notice. And so with that attention to truth and candour which ought
to accompany even our lightest amusements I proceed to offer such
proof as the case will admit, that Courage is a part of
Falstaff's Character, that it belonged to his constitution, and was
manifest in the conduct and practice of his whole life....

  I cannot foresee the temper of the reader, nor whether he be
content to go along with me in these kind of observations. Some of
the incidents which I have drawn out of the Play may appear too
minute, whilst yet they refer to principles, which may seem too
general. Many points require explanation; something should be said
of the nature of Shakespeare's Dramatic characters; *002 by
what arts they were formed, and wherein they differ from those of
other writers; something likewise more professedly of
Shakespeare himself, and of the peculiar character of his genius.
After such a review we may not perhaps think any consideration
arising out of the Play, or out of general nature, either as too minute
or too extensive.

  Shakespeare is in truth, an author whose mimic creation agrees
in general so perfectly with that of nature, that it is not only
wonderful in the great, but opens another scene of amazement to the
discoveries of the microscope. We have been charged indeed by a
Foreign writer with an overmuch admiring of this Barbarian:
Whether we have admired with knowledge, or have blindly
followed those feelings of affection which we could not resist, I
cannot tell; but certain it is, that to the labours of his Editors he has
not been overmuch obliged. They are however for the most part of
the first rank in literary fame; but some of them had possessions of
their own in Parnassus, of an extent too great and important to
allow of a very diligent attention to the interests of others; and
among those Critics more professionally so, the ablest and the best
has unfortunately looked more to the praise of ingenious than of just
conjecture. The character of his emendations are not so much that
of right or wrong, as that, being in the extreme, they are
always Warburtonian. Another has since undertaken the custody
of our author, whom he seems to consider as a sort of wild Proteus
or madman, and accordingly knocks him down with the butt-end of
his critical staff, as often as he exceeds that line of sober discretion,
which this learned Editor appears to have chalked out for him: Yet
is this Editor notwithstanding 'a man take him for all in all,' very
highly respectable for his genius and his learning. What however
may be chiefly complained of in these gentlemen is, that having
erected themselves into the condition, as it were, of guardians and
trustees of Shakespeare, they have never undertaken to
discharge the disgraceful incumbrances of some wretched
productions, which have long hung heavy on his fame. Besides the
evidence of taste, which indeed is not communicable, there are yet
other and more general proofs that these incumbrances were not
incurred by Shakespeare: The Latin sentences dispersed thro'
the imputed trash is, I think, of itself a decisive one. Love's
Labour lost contains a very conclusive one of another kind; tho' the
very last Editor has, I believe, in his critical sagacity, suppressed the
evidence, and withdrawn the record.

  Yet whatever may be the neglect of some, or the censure of others,
there are those, who firmly believe that this wild, this uncultivated
Barbarian, has not yet obtained one half of his fame; and who trust
that some new Stagyrite will arise, who instead of pecking at the
surface of things will enter into the inward soul of his compositions,
and expel by the force of congenial feelings, those foreign
impurities which have stained and disgraced his page. And as to
those spots which will still remain, they may perhaps become
invisible to those who shall seek them thro' the medium of his
beauties, instead of looking for those beauties, as is too frequently
done, thro' the smoke of some real or imputed obscurity. When the
hand of time shall have brushed off his present Editors and
Commentators, and when the very name of Voltaire, and even
the memory of the language in which he has written, shall be no
more, the Apalachian mountains, the banks of the Ohio, and
the plains of Sciota shall resound with the accents of this
Barbarian: In his native tongue he shall roll the genuine passions of
nature; nor shall the griefs of Lear be alleviated, or the charms
and wit of Rosalind be abated by time. There is indeed nothing
perishable about him, except that very learning which he is said so
much to want. He had not, it is true, enough for the demands of the
age in which he lived, but he had perhaps too much for the reach of
his genius, and the interest of his fame. Milton and he will carry
the decayed remnants and fripperies of antient mythology into more
distant ages than they are by their own force intitled to extend; and
the metamorphoses of Ovid, upheld by them, lay in a new claim
to unmerited immortality.

  Shakespeare is a name so interesting, that it is excusable to
stop a moment, nay it would be indecent to pass him without the
tribute of some admiration. He differs essentially from all other
writers: Him we may profess rather to feel than to understand; and
it is safer to say, on many occasions, that we are possessed by him,
than that we possess him. And no wonder;- He scatters the seeds of
things, the principles of character and action, with so cunning a
hand yet with so careless an air, and, master of our feelings,
submits himself so little to our judgment, that every thing seems
superior. We discern not his course, we see no connection of cause
and effect, we are rapt in ignorant admiration, and claim no kindred
with his abilities. All the incidents, all the parts, look like chance,
whilst we feel and are sensible that the whole is design. His
Characters not only act and speak in strict conformity to nature, but
in strict relation to us; just so much is shewn as is requisite, just so
much is impressed; he commands every passage to our heads and to
our hearts, and moulds us as he pleases, and that with so much
ease, that he never betrays his own exertions. We see these
Characters act from the mingled motives of passion, reason,
interest, habit and complection, in all their proportions, when they
are supposed to know it not themselves; and we are made to
acknowledge that their actions and sentiments are, from those
motives, the necessary result. He at once blends and distinguishes
every thing;- every thing is complicated, every thing is plain. I
restrain the further expressions of my admiration lest they should
not seem applicable to man; but it is really astonishing that a mere
human being, a part of humanity only, should so perfectly
comprehend the whole; and that he should possess such exquisite
art, that whilst every woman and every child shall feel the whole
effect, his learned Editors and Commentators should yet so very
frequently mistake or seem ignorant of the cause. A sceptre or a
straw are in his hands of equal efficacy; he needs no selection; he
converts every thing into excellence; nothing is too great, nothing is
too base. Is a character efficient like Richard, it is every thing
we can wish: Is it otherwise, like Hamlet, it is productive of
equal admiration: Action produces one mode of excellence and
inaction another: The Chronicle, the Novel, or the Ballad; the king,
or the beggar, the hero, the madman, the sot or the fool; it is all
one;- nothing is worse, nothing is better: The same genius pervades
and is equally admirable in all. Or, is a character to be shewn in
progressive change, and the events of years comprized within the
hour;- with what a Magic hand does he prepare and scatter his
spells! The Understanding must, in the first place, be subdued; and
lo! how the rooted prejudices of the child spring up to confound the
man! The Weird sisters rise, and order is extinguished. The laws of
nature give way, and leave nothing in our minds but wildness and
horror. No pause is allowed us for reflection: Horrid sentiment,
furious guilt and compunction, air-drawn daggers, murders, ghosts,
and inchantment shake and possess us wholly. In the mean time
the process is completed. Macbeth changes under our eye,
the milk of human kindness is converted to gall; he has supped
full of horrors, and his May of life is fallen into the sear, the
yellow leaf; whilst we, the fools of amazement, are insensible to
the shifting of place and the lapse of time, and till the curtain drops,
never once wake to the truth of things, or recognize the laws of
existence.- On such an occasion, a fellow, like Rymer, waking
from his trance, shall lift up his Constable's staff, and charge this
great Magician, this daring practicer of arts inhibited, in the
name of Aristotle, to surrender; whilst Aristotle himself,
disowning his wretched Officer, would fall prostrate at his feet and
acknowledge his supremacy.- O supreme of Dramatic excellence!
(might he say,) not to me be imputed the insolence of fools. The
bards of Greece were confined within the narrow circle of the
Chorus, and hence they found themselves constrained to practice,
for the most part, the precision, and copy the details of nature. I
followed them, and knew not that a larger circle might be drawn,
and the Drama extended to the whole reach of human genius.
Convinced, I see that a more compendious nature may be
obtained; a nature of effects only, to which neither the relations
of place, or continuity of time, are always essential. Nature,
condescending to the faculties and apprehensions of man, has drawn
through human life a regular chain of visible causes and effects: But
Poetry delights in surprize, conceals her steps, seizes at once upon
the heart, and obtains the Sublime of things without betraying the
rounds of her ascent: True Poesy is magic, not nature; an
effect from causes hidden or unknown. To the Magician I
prescribed no laws; his law and his power are one; his power is his
law. Him, who neither imitates, nor is within the reach of imitation,
no precedent can or ought to bind, no limits to contain. If his end is
obtained, who shall question his course? Means, whether apparent
or hidden, are justified in poesy by success; but then most perfect
and most admirable when most concealed. *003 But whither am I
going! This copious and delightful topic has drawn me far beyond
my design: I hasten back to my subject, and am guarded, for a time
at least, against any further temptation to digress.

  I was considering the dignity of Falstaff so far as it might seem
connected with, or productive of military merit, and I have assigned
him reputation at least, if not fame, noble connection, birth,
attendants, title, and an honourable pension; every one of them
presumptive proofs of Military merit, and motives of action. What
deduction is to be made on these articles, and why they are so much
obscured may, perhaps, hereafter appear.

  I have now gone through the examination of all the persons of the
Drama from whose mouths any thing can be drawn relative to the
Courage of Falstaff, excepting the Prince and Poins,
whose evidence I have begged leave to reserve, and excepting a
very severe censure passed on him by Lord John of
Lancaster, which I shall presently consider: But I must first
observe, that setting aside the jests of the Prince and Poins,
and this censure of Lancaster, there is not one expression uttered
by any character in the Drama that can be construed into any
impeachment of Falstaff's Courage;- an observation made before
as respecting some of the Witnesses;- it is now extended to all: And
though this silence be a negative proof only, it cannot, in my
opinion, under the circumstances of the case, and whilst
uncontradicted by facts, be too much relied on. If Falstaff had
been intended for the character of a Miles Gloriosus, his
behaviour ought, and therefore would have been commented upon
by others. Shakespeare seldom trusts to the apprehensions of his
audience; his characters interpret for one another continually, and
when we least suspect such artful and secret management: The
conduct of Shakespeare in this respect is admirable, and I could
point out a thousand passages which might put to shame the
advocates of a formal Chorus, and prove that there is as little of
necessity as grace in so mechanic a contrivance. *004 But I confine
my censure of the Chorus to its supposed use of comment and
interpretation only....

  Tho' I have considered Falstaff's character as relative only to
one single quality, yet so much has been said, that it cannot escape
the reader's notice that he is a character made up by
Shakespeare wholly of incongruities;- a man at once young and
old, enterprizing and fat, a dupe and a wit, harmless and wicked,
weak in principle and resolute by constitution, cowardly in
appearance and brave in reality; a knave without malice, a lyar
without deceit; and a knight, a gentleman, and a soldier, without
either dignity, decency, or honour: This is a character, which,
though it may be decompounded, could not, I believe, have been
formed, nor the ingredients of it duly mingled upon any receipt
whatever: It required the hand of Shakespeare himself to give to
every particular part a relish of the whole, and of the whole to every
particular part;- alike the same incongruous, identical Falstaff,
whether to the grave Chief Justice he vainly talks of his youth, and
offers to caper for a thousand; or cries to Mrs. Doll, 'I am old,
I am old,' though she is seated on his lap, and he is courting her for
busses. How Shakespeare could furnish out sentiment of so
extraordinary a composition, and supply it with such appropriated
and characteristic language, humour and wit, I cannot tell; but I
may, however, venture to infer, and that confidently, that he who so
well understood the uses of incongruity, and that laughter was to be
raised by the opposition of qualities in the same man, and not by
their agreement or conformity, would never have attempted to raise
mirth by shewing us Cowardice in a Coward unattended by
Pretence, and softened by every excuse of age, corpulence, and
infirmity: And of this we cannot have a more striking proof than his
furnishing this very character, on one instance of real terror,
however excusable, with boast, braggadocio, and pretence,
exceeding that of all other stage Cowards the whole length of his
superior wit, humour, and invention.

  What then upon the whole shall be said but that Shakespeare
has made certain Impressions, or produced certain effects, of which
he has thought fit to conceal or obscure the cause? How he has
done this, and for what special ends, we shall now presume to
guess.- Before the period in which Shakespeare wrote, the fools
and Zanys of the stage were drawn out of the coarsest and cheapest
materials: Some essential folly, with a dash of knave and coxcomb,
did the feat. But Shakespeare, who delighted in difficulties, was
resolved to furnish a richer repast, and to give to one eminent
buffoon the high relish of wit, humour, birth, dignity, and Courage.
But this was a process which required the nicest hand, and the
utmost management and address: These enumerated qualities are, in
their own nature, productive of respect; an Impression the most
opposite to laughter that can be. This Impression then, it was, at all
adventures, necessary to with-hold; which could not perhaps well
be without dressing up these qualities in fantastic forms, and
colours not their own; and thereby cheating the eye with shews of
baseness and of folly, whilst he stole as it were upon the palate a
richer and a fuller gout. To this end, what arts, what
contrivances, has he not practised! How has he steeped this singular
character in bad habits for fifty years together, and brought him
forth saturated with every folly and with every vice not destructive
of his essential character, or incompatible with his own primary
design! For this end, he has deprived Falstaff of every good
principle; and for another, which will be presently mentioned, he
has concealed every bad one. He has given him also every infirmity
of body that is not likely to awaken our compassion, and which is
most proper to render both his better qualities and his vices
ridiculous: He has associated levity and debauch with age,
corpulence and inactivity with courage, and has roguishly
coupled the gout with Military honours, and a pension with
the pox. He has likewise involved this character in situations,
out of which neither wit or Courage can extricate him with honour.
The surprize at Gads-hill might have betrayed a hero into flight,
and the encounter with Douglas left him no choice but death or
stratagem. If he plays an after-game, and endeavours to redeem his
ill fortune by lies and braggadocio, his ground fails him; no wit, no
evasion will avail: Or is he likely to appear respectable in his
person, rank, and demeanor, how is that respect abated or
discharged! Shakespeare has given him a kind of state indeed;
but of what is it composed: Of that fustian cowardly rascal
Pistol, and his yoke-fellow of few words the equally deedless
Nym; of his cup-bearer the fiery Trigon, whose zeal burns in
his nose, Bardolph; and of the boy, who bears the purse with
seven groats and two-pence;- a boy who was given him on
purpose to set him off, and whom he walks before, according to
his own description, 'like a sow that had overwhelmed all her
litter but one.'

  But it was not enough to render Falstaff ridiculous in his
figure, situations, and equipage; still his respectable qualities
would have come forth, at least occasionally, to spoil our mirth; or
they might have burst the intervention of such slight impediments,
and have every where shone through: It was necessary then to go
farther, and throw on him that substantial ridicule, which only the
incongruities of real vice can furnish; of vice, which was to be so
mixed and blended with his frame as to give a durable character and
colour to the whole.

  But it may here be necessary to detain the reader a moment I
order to apprize him of my further intention; without which, I might
hazard that good understanding, which I hope has hitherto been
preserved between us.

  I have 'till now looked only to the Courage of Falstaff, a
quality which having been denied, in terms, to belong to his
constitution, I have endeavoured to vindicate to the Understandings
of my readers; the Impression on their Feelings (in which all
Dramatic truth consists) being already, as I have supposed, in
favour of the character. In the pursuit of this subject I have taken the
general Impression of the whole character pretty much, I suppose,
like other men; and, when occasion has required, have so
transmitted it to the reader; joining in the common Feeling of
Falstaff's pleasantry, his apparent freedom from ill principle,
and his companionable wit and good humour: With a stage
character, in the article of exhibition, we have nothing more to do;
for in fact what is it but an Impression; an appearance, which we
are to consider as a reality; and which we may venture to applaud
or condemn as such, without further inquiry or investigation? But if
we would account for our Impressions, or for certain sentiments or
actions in a character, not derived from its apparent principles, yet
appearing, we know not why, natural, we are then compelled to
look farther, and examine if there be not something more in the
character than is shewn; something inferred, which is not
brought under our special notice: In short, we must look to the art
of the writer, and to the principles of human nature, to discover the
hidden causes of such effects.- Now this is a very different matter
The former considerations respected the Impression only, without
regard to the Understanding; but this question relates to the
Understanding alone. It is true that there are but few Dramatic
characters which will bear this kind of investigation, as not being
drawn in exact conformity to those principles of general nature to
which we must refer. But this is not the case with regard to the
characters of Shakespeare; they are struck out whole, by
some happy art which I cannot clearly comprehend, out of the
general mass of things, from the block as it were of nature: And it
is, I think, an easier thing to give a just draught of man from these
Theatric forms, which I cannot help considering as originals, than
by drawing from real life, amidst so much intricacy, obliquity, and
disguise. If therefore, for further proofs of Falstaff's Courage, or
for the sake of curious speculation, or for both, I change my
position, and look to causes instead of effects, the reader must not
be surprized if he finds the former Falstaff vanish like a dream,
and another, of more disgustful form, presented to his view; one,
whose final punishment we shall be so far from regretting, that we
ourselves shall be ready to consign him to a severer doom.

  The reader will very easily apprehend that a character, which we
might wholly disapprove of, considered as existing in human life,
may yet be thrown on the stage into certain peculiar situations, and
be compressed by external influences into such temporary
appearances, as may render such character for a time highly
acceptable and entertaining, and even more distinguished for
qualities, which on this supposition would be accidents only, than
another character really possessing those qualities, but which, under
the pressure of the same situation and influences, would be
distorted into a different form, or totally lost in timidity and
weakness. If therefore the character before us will admit of this kind
of investigation, our Inquiry will not be without some dignity,
considered as extending to the principles of human nature, and to
the genius and arts of Him, who has best caught every various form
of the human mind, and transmitted them with the greatest
happiness and fidelity....

  Such, I think, is the true character of this extraordinary buffoon;
and from hence we may discern for what special purposes
Shakespeare has given him talents and qualities, which were to
be afterwards obscured, and perverted to ends opposite to their
nature; it was clearly to furnish out a Stage buffoon of a peculiar
sort; a kind of Game-bull which would stand the baiting thro' a
hundred Plays, and produce equal sport, whether he is pinned down
occasionally by Hal or Poins or tosses such mongrils as
Bardolph, or the Justices, sprawling in the air. There is in truth
no such thing as totally demolishing Falstaff; he has so much of
the invulnerable in his frame that no ridicule can destroy him; he is
safe even in defeat, and seems to rise, like another Antaeus,
with recruited vigour from every fall; in this as in every other
respect, unlike Parolles or Bobadil: They fall by the first
shaft of ridicule, but Falstaff is a butt on which we may empty
the whole quiver, whilst the substance of his character remains
unimpaired. His ill habits, and the accidents of age and corpulence,
are no part of his essential constitution; they come forward indeed
on our eye, and solicit our notice, but they are second natures, not
first; mere shadows, we pursue them in vain; Falstaff
himself has a distinct and separate subsistence; he laughs at the
chace, and when the sport is over, gathers them with unruffled
feather under his wing: And hence it is that he is made to undergo
not one detection only, but a series of detections; that he is not
formed for one Play only, but was intended originally at least for
two; and the author we are told, was doubtful if he should not
extend him yet farther, and engage him in the wars with France.
This he might well have done, for there is nothing perishable in the
nature of Falstaff: He might have involved him, by the vicious
part of his character, in new difficulties and unlucky situations, and
have enabled him, by the better part, to have scrambled through,
abiding and retorting the jests and laughter of every beholder.

  But whatever we may be told concerning the intention of
Shakespeare to extend this character farther, there is a manifest
preparation near the end of the second part of Henry IV. for his
disgrace: The disguise is taken off, and he begins openly to pander
to the excesses of the Prince, intitling himself to the character
afterwards given him of being the tutor and the feeder of his riots.
'I will fetch off,' (says he) 'these Justices.- I will devise matter
enough out of this Shallow to keep the Prince in continual
laughter the wearing out of six fashions.- If the young dace be a
bait for the old pike,' (speaking with reference to his own designs
upon Shallow) 'I see no reason in the law of nature but I may
snap at him.'- This is shewing himself abominably dissolute: The
laborious arts of fraud, which he practices on Shallow to induce
the loan of a thousand pound, create disgust; and the more, as
we are sensible this money was never likely to be paid back, as
we are told that was, of which the travellers had been robbed. It
is true we feel no pain for Shallow, he being a very bad
character, as would fully appear, if he were unfolded; but
Falstaff's deliberation in fraud is not on that account more
excusable.- The event of the old King's death draws him out almost
into detestation.- 'Master Robert Shallow, chuse what office
thou wilt in the land,- 'tis thine.- I am fortune's steward.- Let us take
any man's horses.- The laws of England are at my commandment.
Happy are they who have been my friends;- and woe to my Lord
Chief Justice.'- After this we ought not to complain if we see Poetic
justice duly executed upon him, and that he is finally given up to
shame and dishonour.

  But it is remarkable that, during this process, we are not
acquainted with the success of Falstaff's designs upon
Shallow 'till the moment of his disgrace. 'If I had had time,'
(says he to Shallow, as the King is approaching,) 'to have
made new liveries, I would have bestowed the thousand pounds I
borrowed of you;'- and the first word he utters after this period is,
'Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pounds:' We may
from hence very reasonably presume, that Shakespeare meant to
connect this fraud with the punishment of Falstaff, as a more
avowed ground of censure and dishonour: Nor ought the
consideration that this passage contains the most exquisite comic
humour and propriety in another view, to diminish the truth of this
observation.

  But however just it might be to demolish Falstaff in this way,
by opening to us his bad principles it was by no means
convenient. If we had been to have seen a single representation
of him only, it might have been proper enough; but as he was to be
shewn from night to night, and from age to age, the disgust arising
from the close, would by degrees have spread itself over the
whole character; reference would be had throughout to his bad
principles, and he would have become less acceptable as he was
more known: And yet it was necessary to bring him, like all other
stage characters, to some conclusion. Every play must be wound up
by some event, which may shut in the characters and the action. If
some hero obtains a crown, or a mistress, involving therein the
fortune of others, we are satisfied;- we do not desire to be
afterwards admitted of his council, or his bedchamber: Or if through
jealousy, causeless or well founded, another kills a beloved
wife, and himself after,- there is no more to be said;- they are dead,
and there an end; Or if in the scenes of Comedy, parties are
engaged, and plots formed, for the furthering or preventing the
completion of that great article Cuckoldom, we expect to be
satisfied in the point as far as the nature of so nice a case will
permit, or at least to see such a manifest disposition as will
leave us in no doubt of the event. By the bye, I cannot but think that
the Comic writers of the last age treated this matter as of more
importance, and made more bustle about it, than the temper of the
present times will well bear; and it is therefore to be hoped that the
Dramatic authors of the present day, some of whom, to the best of
my judgment, are deserving of great praise, will consider and treat
this business, rather as a common and natural incident arising out of
modern manners, than as worthy to be held forth as the great object
and sole end of the Play.

  But whatever be the question, or whatever the character, the
curtain must not only be dropt before the eyes, but over the minds
of the spectators, and nothing left for further examination and
curiosity.- But how was this to be done in regard to Falstaff? He
was not involved in the fortune of the Play; he was engaged in no
action which, as to him, was to be compleated; he had reference to
no system, he was attracted to no center; he passes thro' the Play as
a lawless meteor, and we wish to know what course he is
afterwards likely to take: He is detected and disgraced, it is true;
but he lives by detection, and thrives on disgrace; and we are
desirous to see him detected and disgraced again. The Fleet
might be no bad scene of further amusement;- he carries all
within him, and what matter where, if he be still the same,
possessing the same force of mind, the same wit, and the same
incongruity. This, Shakespeare was fully sensible of, and knew
that this character could not be compleatly dismissed but by death.
'Our author, (says the Epilogue to the Second Part of Henry IV.)
will continue the story with Sir John in it, and make you merry
with fair Catherine of France; where, for any thing I know,
Falstaff shall dye of a sweat, unless already he be killed with
your hard opinions.' If it had been prudent in Shakespeare to
have killed Falstaff with hard opinion, he had the means in
his hand to effect it;- but dye, it seems, he must, in one form or
another, and a sweat would have been no unsuitable catastrophe.
However we have reason to be satisfied as it is;- his death was
worthy of his birth and of his life: 'He was born,' he says,
'about three o'clock in the afternoon with a white head, and
something a round belly.' But if he came into the world in the
evening with these marks of age, he departs out of it in the morning
in all the follies and vanities of youth;- 'He was shaked' (we are
told) 'of a burning quotidian tertian;- the young King had run bad
humours on the knight;- his heart was fracted and corroborate; and
a' parted just between twelve and one, even at the turning of the
tide, yielding the crow a pudding, and passing directly into
Arthur's bosom, if ever man went into the bosom of Arthur.'- So
ended this singular buffoon; and with him ends an Essay, on which
the reader is left to bestow what character he pleases: An Essay
professing to treat of the Courage of Falstaff, but extending
itself to his Whole character; to the arts and genius of his Poetic
Maker, SHAKESPEARE; and thro' him sometimes, with ambitious
aim, even to the principles of human nature itself


                               THE END


{FOOTNOTES
                              FOOTNOTES


  *001 Only representative passages of this remarkable essay are
given here. Modern reprints of the complete text will be found in
the Oxford Library of Prose and Poetry (ed. W. A. Gill, 1912), and
in the editor's Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare, 1903.
  The essay was written in 1774, though not published till 1777.
Other editions appeared in 1820 and 1825.
  *002 The reader must be sensible of something in the composition
of Shakespeare's characters, which renders them essentially
different from those drawn by other writers. The characters of every
Drama must indeed be grouped; but in the groupes of other poets
the parts which are not seen, do not in fact exist. But there is a
certain roundness and integrity in the forms of Shakespeare,
which give them an independence as well as a relation, insomuch
that we often meet with passages, which tho' perfectly felt, cannot
be sufficiently explained in words, without unfolding the whole
character of the speaker: And this I may be obliged to do in respect
to that of Lancaster, in order to account for some words spoken
by him in censure of Falstaff.... Something which may be
thought too heavy for the text, I shall add here, as a
conjecture concerning the composition of Shakespeare's
characters: Not that they were the effect, I believe, so much of a
minute and laborious attention, as of a certain comprehensive
energy of mind, involving within itself all the effects of system and
of labour.
  Bodies of all kinds, whether of metals, plants, or animals, are
supposed to possess certain first principles of being, and to have
an existence independent of the accidents, which form their
magnitude or growth: Those accidents are supposed to be drawn in
from the surrounding elements, but not indiscriminately; each plant
and each animal, imbibes those things only, which are proper to its
own distinct nature, and which have besides such a secret relation to
each other as to be capable of forming a perfect union and
coalescence: But so variously are the surrounding elements mingled
and disposed, that each particular body, even of those under the
same species, has yet some peculiar of its own. Shakespeare
appears to have considered the being and growth of the human mind
as analogous to this system: There are certain qualities and
capacities, which he seems to have considered as first principles;
the chief of which are certain energies of courage and activity,
according to their degrees; together with different degrees and sorts
of sensibilities, and a capacity, varying likewise in the degree,
of discernment and intelligence. The rest of the composition is
drawn in from an atmosphere of surrounding things; that is, from
the various influences of the different laws, religions and
governments in the world; and from those of the different ranks and
inequalities in society; and from the different professions of men,
encouraging or repressing passions of particular sorts, and inducing
different modes of thinking and habits of life; and he seems to have
known intuitively what those influences in particular were which
this or that original constitution would most freely imbibe, and
which would most easily associate and coalesce. But all these
things being, in different situations, very differently disposed, and
those differences exactly discerned by him, he found no difficulty in
marking every individual, even among characters of the same sort,
with something peculiar and distinct.- Climate and complexion
demand their influence, 'Be thus when thou art dead, and I will
kill thee, and love thee after,' is a sentiment characteristic of, and
fit only to be uttered by a Moor.
  But it was not enough for Shakespeare to have formed his
characters with the most perfect truth and coherence, it was
further necessary that he should possess a wonderful facility of
compressing, as it were, his own spirit into these images, and of
giving alternate animation to the forms. This was not to be done
from without; he must have felt every varied situation, and
have spoken thro' the organ he had formed. Such an intuitive
comprehension of things and such a facility, must unite to produce a
Shakespeare. The reader will not now be surprised if I affirm
that those characters in Shakespeare, which are seen only in
part, are yet capable of being unfolded and understood in the whole;
every part being in fact relative, and inferring all the rest. It is true
that the point of action or sentiment, which we are most concerned
in, is always held out for our special notice. But who does not
perceive that there is a peculiarity about it, which conveys a relish
of the whole? And very frequently, when no particular point
presses, he boldly makes a character act and speak from those parts
of the composition, which are inferred only, and not distinctly
shewn. This produces a wonderful effect: it seems to carry us
beyond the poet to nature itself, and gives an integrity and truth to
facts and character, which they could not otherwise obtain: And this
is in reality that art in Shakespeare, which being withdrawn
from our notice, we more emphatically call nature. A felt
propriety and truth from causes unseen, I take to be the highest
point of Poetic composition. If the characters of Shakespeare
are thus whole, and as it were original, while those of almost all
other writers are mere imitation, it may be fit to consider them
rather as Historic than Dramatic beings; and, when occasion
requires, to account for their conduct from the whole of
character, from general principles, from latent motives, and from
policies not avowed.
  *003 These observations have brought me so near to the regions of
Poetic magic, (using the word here in its strict and proper sense,
and not loosely as in the text) that tho' they lie not directly in my
course, I yet may be allowed in this place to point the reader that
way. A felt propriety, or truth of art, from an unseen, tho' supposed
adequate cause, we call nature. A like feeling of propriety and
truth, supposed without a cause, or as seeming to be derived from
causes inadequate, fantastic, and absurd,- such as wands, circles,
incantations, and so forth,- we call by the general name magic,
including all the train of superstition, witches, ghosts, fairies, and
the rest.- Reason is confined to the line of visible existence; our
passions and our fancy extend far beyond into the
obscure; but however lawless their operations may seem, the
images they so wildly form have yet a relation to truth, and are the
shadows at least, however fantastic, of reality. I am not
investigating but passing this subject, and must therefore leave
behind me much curious speculation. Of Personifications however
we should observe that those which are made out of abstract ideas
are the creatures of the Understanding only: Thus, of the mixed
modes, virtue, beauty, wisdom and others,- what are they but very
obscure ideas of qualities considered as abstracted from any
subject whatever? The mind cannot steadily contemplate such
an abstraction: What then does it do?- Invent or imagine a subject in
order to support these qualities; and hence we get the Nymphs or
Goddesses of virtue, of beauty, or of wisdom; the very obscurity of
the ideas being the cause of their conversion into sensible objects,
with precision both of feature and of form. But as reason has its
personifications, so has passion.- Every passion has its Object,
tho' often distant and obscure;- to be brought nearer then, and
rendered more distinct, it is personified; and Fancy fantastically
decks, or aggravates the form, and adds 'a local habitation and a
name.' But passion is the dupe of its own artifice and
realises the image it had formed. The Grecian theology was
mixed of both these kinds of personification. Of the images
produced by passion it must be observed that they are the images,
for the most part, not of the passions themselves, but of their remote
effects. Guilt looks through the medium, and beholds a devil;
fear, spectres of every sort; hope, a smiling cherub;
malice and envy see hags, and witches, and inchanters dire;
whilst the innocent and the young, behold with fearful delight the
tripping fairy, whose shadowy form the moon gilds with its softest
beams.- Extravagant as all this appears, it has its laws so precise
that we are sensible both of a local and temporary, and of an
universal magic; the first derived from the general nature of the
human mind, influenced by particular habits, institutions, and
climate; and the latter from the same general nature abstracted from
those considerations: Of the first sort the machinery in
Macbeth is a very striking instance; a machinery, which,
however exquisite at the time, has already lost more than half its
force; and the Gallery now laughs in some places where it ought to
shudder:- But the magic of the Tempest is lasting and universal.
  There is besides a species of writing for which we have no term of
art, and which holds a middle place between nature and magic; I
mean where fancy either alone, or mingled with reason, or reason
assuming the appearance of fancy, governs some real existence; but
the whole of this art is pourtrayed in a single Play; in the real
madness of Lear, in the assumed wildness of Edgar, and in
the Professional Fantasque of the Fool, all operating to
contrast and heighten each other. There is yet another feat in this
kind, which Shakespeare has performed;- he has personified
malice in his Caliban; a character kneaded up of three
distinct natures, the diabolical, the human, and the brute. The rest of
his preternatural beings are images of effects only, and cannot
subsist but in a surrounding atmosphere of those passions, from
which they are derived. Caliban is the passion itself, or rather a
compound of malice, servility, and lust, substantiated; and
therefore best shewn in contrast with the lightness of Ariel and
the innocence of Miranda.- Witches are sometimes substantial
existences, supposed to be possessed by, or allyed to the
unsubstantial; but the Witches in Macbeth are a gross sort of
shadows, 'bubbles of the earth,' as they are finely called by
Banquo.- Ghosts differ from other imaginary beings in this, that
they belong to no element, have no specific nature or character, and
are effects, however harsh the expression, supposed without a
cause; the reason of which is that they are not the creation of the
poet, but the servile copies or transcripts of popular imagination,
connected with supposed reality and religion. Should the poet
assign the true cause, and call them the mere painting or coinage
of the brain, he would disappoint his own end, and destroy the
being he had raised. Should he assign fictitious causes, and add a
specific nature, and a local habitation, it would not be endured; or
the effect would be lost by the conversion of one being into another.
The approach to reality in this case defeats all the arts and
managements of fiction.- The whole play of the Tempest is of
so high and superior a nature that Dryden, who had attempted to
imitate in vain, might well exclaim that

    'Shakespeare's magic could not copied be,
    Within that circle none durst walk but He.'
  *004 Aenobarbus, in Anthony and Cleopatra, is in effect the
Chorus of the Play; as Menenius Agrippa is of Coriolanus.