Pardon me, my dear Smith, in the escapade in the last page or two – it is a figurative mode of speech, and you will at once dissect the alligator through all its scales, and see every thing it is intended to convey. It was a mad world, my masters; and, as you generally find an inferior dauber magnify the peculiarities of a great man's style, so as to give a better idea of his manner than you gather from his own performances, let us see the prodigious insanity developed in the imitators of Shakspeare. Never, till I saw the brass knocker on the door of the Vizier's palace in Timor the Tartar, painted, you told me, by Wilkins of the Yorkshire Stingo, did I know how you produced your marvellous effects on the door of Billy Button, the tailor of Brentford. The Vizier's knocker was a caricature; but it showed your style. So, read the love-scenes of any dramatist during Shakspeare's period – or the heroic passages of any poetaster copying his manner; – isn't that Bedlam, my dear Smith? isn't that Hanwell? Read the rhapsodies of Nat Lee – (by a stretch of truth-speaking which it would be wise to make more common) – called mad Nat Lee. What do you see in him more indicative of insanity than in any play of Shakspeare you like to name? Not, understand me, that Shakspeare was mad according to the standard of sanity in his own day. Far from it; he was infinitely wise compared to any man in his century, except, perhaps, Bacon and Burleigh, and retired to Stratford-on-Avon with a realized fortune equal to twelve or fifteen hundred a-year. But all mankind run the risk of having a different standard applied to them from that according to which they were measured during life. Diocletian was thought an excellent emperor for persecuting the Christians – we think him a considerable beast for doing so, now. Cortez was thought the perfect image of a hero for slaughtering the Mexicans, and the noblest of Christian missionaries for putting the heretical Montezuma to death – we think Cortez not quite so respectable a character as Greenacre or Burke. And it is most just that each century should pass its predecessors in review, and apply its own lights to bring every feature forward. What progress would there be open to the human mind if we were for ever to go on viewing incidents exactly as they were viewed when they occurred? Are we to go on believing Galileo an infidel, because his discoveries were condemned by his contemporaries? Are we to think all the butchers, conquerors, and destroyers of mankind, great men, because their own age was terrified at their power, and proclaimed them heroes? The time may come when the great Bunn's efforts to make Drury-Lane into a squeaking, dancing, and dirty imitation of the Italian Opera, will not be considered conducive to the triumph of the legitimate English drama. Many things of this sort, my dear friend, may take place, and most justly; for each present generation is as the highest court of legislation – it can repeal all old acts, but it cannot bind its successors. Now, do me the favour to finish the pot of porter which, in my mind's eye, I see you dandling on your crossed knee, while your left hand, with easy elegance, is supporting the bowl of your pipe – and see how these observations apply to Shakspeare. He has ruined the stage; he has fixed its taste for ever, by establishing one unvarying standard for plot, language, and character – and that is his own. There can be no progress – not merely meaning, by progress, improvement, but, positively, no change. He blocks up every access to the dramatic Parnassus – he has acquired an entire monopoly of the heroines in Collins' Ode – and woe to the intruder into the sacred precincts of his zenana. Well, he was a tremendous Turk, that old swan of Avon – there is no denying the fact; but what I complain of is, that no other Leda should be looked at for a moment but only his. No man can look at the Swan for an instant, and doubt that the king of gods and men has disguised himself in that avatar of web-feet and feathers. Jupiter is only enveloped, not concealed; but, at the same time, is it possible to be blind to the fact, that he has degraded himself to the habits of the flat-billed bird – that he waddles most unmercifully when by chance he leaves the lake? – that he hisses and croaks most unmusical, most melancholy? – and that he gathers all unclean garbage for his food – newts, and frogs, and crawling worms? In short, that though, in his pride, and grandeur, and passionate energy, he is the Tyrant of Olympus, he is, in many other respects, an animal not greatly to be admired – by no means comparable as a dish at Christmas to a well-fed goose, or even a couple of ducks. For reading aloud to ladies after tea, I prefer Ion to Othello. And now, my excellent friend, I will tell you the reason – not why I prefer Ion, which, though I have introduced it in this flippant manner, I consider a very beautiful and poetical drama – but why no play of Shakspeare is fit to be read to a party of ladies after tea. It is this – that ladies, in one sense of the word, were as unknown in Shakspeare's days as tea. There were certain human beings that wore petticoats, and, in due course of time, fulfilled the original command, and died; but, shades of Hannah More and Anne Seward! to call them ladies would be as absurd as to call Dulcinea del Tobosa a princess of the blood. A friend of mine – a well-known non-commissioned officer in the Devil's Own – told me this story, which I mention to you, my dear Smith, in strict confidence, in case the heroine of the anecdote should find that her confession is made known. An old lady – properly so called, both as respects the adjective and the noun, for she was past eighty, and was refined and pure – astonished my friend, by asking him one day to try and get a volume or two for her of the works of Assa Behn. He did so – no little wondering at such a choice of books – and in a day the novel was returned, "I send you back these volumes," she said, "as I am unable to get through the first. Is it not strange that I, an old woman, sitting in my own room, am positively ashamed and disgusted at the scenes and conversations which were read aloud to me in mixed companies, without a blush or shudder, when I was eighteen?"
Now, in Shakspeare's time, there was no female in the land that would have stumbled at the grossest passages in Assa Behn. The tenderness, delicacy, and beauty of the feminine character were still in the future tense; and, therefore, it is not a matter of surprise that the female characters in Shakspeare were original creations, and not transcripts from human life. For the time and the state of society when the plays were written, they are instances of the most marvellous imagination. But they were as purely fictitious as Caliban or Ariel. They borrowed from the infinite riches of the poet their noble or tender thoughts; but whenever he tried to make them more than abstractions – to unite them to the sympathies of his audience – or to clothe them in real flesh and blood – look at the means he takes – listen to the conversations of Miss Juliet and the songs of Ophelia – and you will perceive what were the lessons his experience in actual men and women had taught him.
It is impossible, my dear Smith, for a Frenchman to write an English comedy – and why? Because the turn of his mind, and unacquaintance with the peculiarities of our dispositions, unfit him for it. But not more separated from us is the Parisian Feuilletonist by his language and manners, not to mention the Channel, than the author of Elizabeth's and James's days by the lapse of two hundred years, and the total alteration of our modes of thought; and yet how frightfully you would be laughed at for applying the remark to Shakspeare, though, between ourselves, my dear fellow, he is the very man to call it forth! Oh, how vividly I can fancy the exclamations of Jiggles of the Victoria, or Pumpkins of the Stepney Temple of Thespis! "He is the poet of all time!" says Jiggles, with a thump on the table that sets all the pewter pots dancing. "Do you mean, Mr Bobson," cries Pumpkins, with a triumphant curl of his lip, "to say, that the laws of nature are transitory as the fashion of a coat, and that what was nature at one period will not be nature at another?" If he should ask you this question, my dear sir, tell him at once that that is decidedly your opinion, or, if it is not, tell him that it is most unquestionably mine; for most assuredly the same train of thought that would be natural among the chiefs of the Druids, would be most absurdly out of character if attributed to the bench of Bishops. "Oho!" exclaims Pumpkins, "what has the bench of Bishops