• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

And graunt him a place

Endlesse to dwel

With the deuill of hel

For and he were there

We nead neuer feare

Of the feendes blacke

For I undertake

He wold so brag and crake

That he wold than make

The deuils to quake

To shudder and to shake

Lyke a fier drake

And with a cole rake

Bruse them on a brake

And binde them to a stake

And set hel on fyre

At his own desire

He is such a grym syre!—Edit. 1568.

Mr. Upton and some other Criticks have thought it very scholar-like in Hamlet to swear the Centinels on a Sword: but this is for ever met with. For instance, in the Passus primus of Pierce Plowman,

Dauid in his daies dubbed knightes,

And did hem swere on her sword to serue truth euer.

And in Hieronymo, the common Butt of our Author, and the Wits of the time, says Lorenzo to Pedringano,

Swear on this cross, that what thou sayst is true—

But if I prove thee perjured and unjust,

This very sword, whereon thou took'st thine oath,

Shall be the worker of thy Tragedy!

We have therefore no occasion to go with Mr. Garrick as far as the French of Brantôme to illustrate this ceremony: a Gentleman who will be always allowed the first Commentator on Shakespeare, when he does not carry us beyond himself.

Mr. Upton, however, in the next place, produces a passage from Henry the sixth, whence he argues it to be very plain that our Author had not only read Cicero's Offices, but even more critically than many of the Editors:

——This Villain here,

Being Captain of a Pinnace, threatens more

Than Bargulus, the strong Illyrian Pirate.

So the Wight, he observes with great exultation, is named by Cicero in the Editions of Shakespeare's time, “Bargulus Illyrius latro”; tho' the modern Editors have chosen to call him Bardylis:—“and thus I found it in two MSS.”—And thus he might have found it in two Translations, before Shakespeare was born. Robert Whytinton, 1533, calls him, “Bargulus a Pirate upon the see of Illiry”; and Nicholas Grimald, about twenty years afterward, “Bargulus the Illyrian Robber.”

But it had been easy to have checked Mr. Upton's exultation, by observing that Bargulus does not appear in the Quarto.—Which also is the case with some fragments of Latin verses, in the different Parts of this doubtful performance.

It is scarcely worth mentioning that two or three more Latin passages, which are met with in our Author, are immediately transcribed from the Story or Chronicle before him. Thus in Henry the fifth, whose right to the kingdom of France is copiously demonstrated by the Archbishop:

——There is no bar

To make against your Highness' claim to France,

But this which they produce from Pharamond:

In terram Salicam mulieres ne succedant;

No Woman shall succeed in Salike land:

Which Salike land the French unjustly gloze

To be the realm of France, and Pharamond

The founder of this law and female bar.

Yet their own authors faithfully affirm

That the land Salike lies in Germany,

Between the floods of Sala and of Elve, &c.

Archbishop Chichelie, says Holingshed, “did much inueie against the surmised and false fained law Salike, which the Frenchmen alledge euer against the kings of England in barre of their just title to the crowne of France. The very words of that supposed law are these, In terram Salicam mulieres ne succedant, that is to saie, Into the Salike land let not women succeed; which the French glossers expound to be the realm of France, and that this law was made by King Pharamond: whereas yet their owne authors affirme that the land Salike is in Germanie, between the rivers of Elbe and Sala,” &c. p. 545.

It hath lately been repeated from Mr. Guthrie's Essay upon English Tragedy, that the Portrait of Macbeth's Wife is copied from Buchanan, “whose spirit, as well as words, is translated into the Play of Shakespeare: and it had signified nothing to have pored only on Holingshed for Facts.”—“Animus etiam, per se ferox, prope quotidianis conviciis uxoris (quæ omnium consiliorum ei erat conscia) stimulabatur.”—This is the whole that Buchanan says of the Lady; and truly I see no more spirit in the Scotch