• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 19861 0

by foreigners, but by many of our own critics, as a gloomy and heavy writer, who painted nothing but 'gorgons and hydras, and chimeras dire'. His subtlety exceeds that of all other dramatic writers, insomuch that a celebrated person of the present day said that he regarded him rather as a metaphysician than a poet. His delicacy and sportive gaiety are infinite. In the MIDSUMMER'S NIGHT DREAM alone, we should imagine, there is more sweetness and beauty of description than in the whole range of French poetry put together. What we mean is this, that we will produce out of that single play ten passages, to which we do not think any ten passages in the works of the French poets can be opposed, displaying equal fancy and imagery. Shall we mention the remonstrance of Helena to Hermia, or Titania's description of her fairy train, or her disputes with Oberon about the Indian boy, or Puck's account of himself and his employments, or the Fairy Queen's exhortation to the elves to pay due attendance upon her favourite, Bottom; or Hippolita's description of a chace, or Theseus's answer? The two last are as heroical and spirited as the others are full of luscious tenderness. The reading of this play is like wandering in a grove by moonlight: the descriptions breathe a sweetness like odours thrown from beds of flowers.

Titania's exhortation to the fairies to wait upon Bottom, which is remarkable for a certain cloying sweetness in the repetition of the rhymes, is as follows:

Be kind and courteous to this gentleman.

Hop in his walks, and gambol in his eyes,

Feed him with apricocks and dewberries,

With purple grapes, green figs and mulberries;

The honey-bags steal from the humble bees,

And for night tapers crop their waxen thighs,

And light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes,

To have my love to bed, and to arise:

And pluck the wings from painted butterflies,

To fan the moon-beams from his sleeping eyes;

Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies.

The sounds of the lute and of the trumpet are not more distinct than the poetry of the foregoing passage, and of the conversation between Theseus and Hippolita:

Theseus. Go, one of you, find out the forester,

For now our observation is perform'd;

And since we have the vaward of the day,

My love shall hear the music of my hounds.

Uncouple in the western valley, go,

Dispatch, I say, and find the forester.

We will, fair Queen, up to the mountain's top,

And mark the musical confusion

Of hounds and echo in conjunction.

Hippolita. I was with Hercules and Cadmus once,

When in a wood of Crete they bay'd the bear

With hounds of Sparta; never did I hear

Such gallant chiding. For besides the groves,

The skies, the fountains, every region near

Seena'd all one mutual cry. I never heard

So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.

Theseus. My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,

So flew'd, so sanded, and their heads are hung

With ears that sweep away the morning dew;

Crook-knee'd and dew-lap'd, like Thessalian bulls,

Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells,

Each under each. A cry more tuneable

Was never halloo'd to, nor cheer'd with hom,

In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly: Judge when you hear.

Even Titian never made a hunting-piece of a gusto so fresh and lusty, and so near the first ages of the world as this.

It had been suggested to us, that the MIDSUMMER'S NIGHT DREAM would do admirably to get up as a Christmas after-piece; and our prompter proposed that Mr. Kean should play the part of Bottom, as worthy of his great talents. He might, in the discharge of his duty, offer to play the lady like any of our actresses that he pleased, the lover or the tyrant like any of our actors that he pleased, and the lion like 'the most fearful wild-fowl living'. The carpenter, the tailor, and joiner, it was thought, would hit the galleries. The young ladies in love would interest the side-boxes; and Robin Goodfellow and his companions excite a lively fellow-feeling in the children from school. There would be two courts, an empire within an empire, the Athenian and the Fairy King