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R. SEWARD'S PREFACE. xK The reader will find many excellent things in this last class, for theplays of our authors do not differ from each other near so much as thoseof Shakespeare. The three last tragedies are detruded so low on accountof their magic and machinery^ in which our i.uthors fall shorter of Shake-speare than in any other of their attempts to imitate him. What is thereason of this ? Is it that their genius improved by literature and politeconversationy could well describe men and manners^ but had not that poetiathat creative power to form new beings and new worlds, " and give to airy nothings A local habitation and a name" jas Shakespeare excellently describes his own genius? I believe not. Theenthusiasm of passions which Beaumont and Fletcher are so frequently raptinto, and the vast variety of distinguished characters which they have soadmirably drawn, shew as strong powers of invention as the creation ofwitches and raising of ghosts. Their deficiency therefore in magic isaccountable from a cause far different from a poverty/ of imagination; itwas the accidental disadvantage of a liberal and learned education : Sorcery,witchcraft, astrology, ghosts, and apparitions, were then the universal beliefof both xhe great vulgar and the small, nay they were even the parliamentiary, the national creed; only some early-enlightened minds saw and con-temned the whole superstitious trumpery : among these our authors wereprobably initiated from their school-days into a deep-grounded contemptof it, which breaks out in many parts of their works, and particularly inThe Bloody Brother and The Fair Maid of the Inn, where they beganthat admirable banter which the excellent Butler carried on exactly in thejsame strain, and which, with such a second, has at last drove the bugbearsfrom the minds of almost all mpn of common understanding. But herewas our authors disivl vantage; the taste of their age called aloud for theassistance of ghosts sand sorcery to heighten the horror of tragedy; thishorror they had never felt, never heard of but with contempt, and conse^ijuently they had no arche-types in their own breasts of what they werecalled on to describe. Whereas Shakespeare from his low education" had believed ^^ Shakespeare from kis low education, &c.] The gentleman wlio is most obliged toShakespeare, and to whom Shakespeare is most obliged of any man living, happening to seethe sheet of the Preface where Shakespeare's peculiar superiority over our authors m his magic,is ascribed to the'accidenta'l advantage of a low education, he could not well brook a passagefwhich seemed to derogate from his favourite. As Shakespeare had as good sense as ourauthors, he thought, he would be as free from real superstition. This does not alwa3rs follow.jEducation will tincture even the brightest parts. There is proof that our authors held allsorcery, witchcraft, &c. as mere juggler's tricks, but not the least room to doubt of Shake-speare's having believed them in his youth, whatever he did afterwards 5 and this is all that isasserted. Is this therefore a derogation ? No, it only shews the amazing power of his genius ; aflenius which could turn the bugbears of his former credulity into the noolest poetic machines.Jost as Homer built his machinery on the superstitions which he had been bred up to. Bothindeed give great distinction of characters, and great poetic dignity to the daemons thcry intro-duce ; nay', tney form some new ones ; but the system they buud on is the vulgar creed. Andhere (after giving due praise to the sentleman above, for restoring Shakespeare's magic to itsfcenuine horror, out of that low buffoonery which former actors and managers of theatres hadBung it into) I shall shew in what light Shakespeare's low education always appeared toxiie by the following epitaph wrote many years since", and published in M.r. Dodsley'sJMiscellany. VOL. f. e '^P<^ xlii MR. SEWARD'S PREFACE. believed and felt all the horrors he painted ; for though the umTeraitiesand inns of court were in some degree freed from those dreams of super*stition, the banks of the Avon were then haunted on every side. ** There tript with prindess foot the elves of hilb.Brooks, lakes, and groves ; there Sorcery bedimn*dThe noon-tide sun, callM forth the mutinous winds.And 'twixt the green sea and the azur*d vaultSet roaring war, ®*c." Tempest. So that Shakespeare can scarcely be said to create a new world in his masic; he went but back to his native country, and only dressed their goblins in poetic weeds ; hence even Theseus is not attended by his own deities,* Minerva, Venus, the fauns, satyrs, 8cc. but by Oberon and hia fairies: Whereas our authors, however aukwardly they treat of ghosts and sarcerers, yet when they get back to Greece (which was as it were then native soil) they introauce the classic deities with ease and dignity, as Fletcher in particular does in his Faithful Shepherdess, and both of them } in their Masques; the last of which is put in the third class, not from anj I deficiency in the composition, but from the nature of the allegorica '' Masque, which, when no real characters are intermixed, ought in genera to rank below Tragedy and Comedy. Our authors, who wrote them be cause they were in fashion, have themselves shewed how light they hdc them. ' *' They must commend their kins, and speak in praise Of the assembly; bless the bride and bridegroom/ In person of some god; Uiey're tied to rules Of flattery." Maid*8 Traoedt, acti. scene 1. / This was probably wrote by Beaumont with an eye to the Masque a Gray's Inn, as well as masques in general. The reader will find a rarthe;account of our Authors' Plays, and what share Mr. Shirley is supposesto have had in the completion of some that were left imperfect m Mi 4 < Upon Shakespear^s Monument at Stratford upon Avon. ** Great Homer's birth sev'n rival cities claim.Too mightv such monopoly of Fame :Yet not to oirth alone didllomer oweHis wondrous worth ; what iEgypt could bestow.With all the schools of Greece and Asia join*d,£nlarg*d th' immense expansion of his mind.Nor yet unrival'd the Maeonian strain.The British ea^le ♦ and the Mantuan swan^Tow'r equal heights. But happier Stratford, thoa^With incontestcS laurels deck thy brow ;Thy hard was thine unschooVd, and from thee broughtMore than all iEgypt, Greece, or Asia, taught jNot Homer*8 self such matchless laurels' won.The Greek has rivais, but div Shakespeare none."[The above Note was inserted as a Postscript to Seward s Pre/ace.'] [• Mr, Seward does not seem to have recollected, that in the Two Noble Kinsmen there ian equal mixture of Gothic and Grecian manners. It was the common error of all our old Engksh writers, from Chaucer to Milton, who has introduced chivalry even into Paradise Lost,} • MUton. ^ Sympson MR. SEWARiyS PREFACE. xliii Sympson's Lives of the Authors. But before I finish my account of them,it 18 necessary to apologise for a fault which must shock every modestle^er : it is their frequent use of gross and indecent expressions. Theyhave this fault in common with Shakespeare, who is sometimes more grossthan they ever are; but I think grossness does not occur quite so often inhim. In the second class of parallel passages where the hands of Shake- rare and our authors were not distinguishable, I omitted one instancedecency sake, but I will insert it here as proper to the subject we arenow upon. Philaster being violently agitated by jealousy, ancl firmly be-lieving his mistress to have been 'loose, thus speaks of a letter which hehas just received from her. •' Oh, let all women That love black deeds learn to dissemble here!Here, by this paper, she doth write to me.As if her heart were mines of adamantTo all the world beside; but unto me,A maiden snow that melted with my looks.*'
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