Hazlitt confounds Whately with George Mason, author of An Essay on Design in Gardening, 1768. Whately's book was published as “by the author of Observations on Modern Gardening.” His name was given in the second edition, 1808.
J. P. Kemble replied to Whately's Remarks in Macbeth re-considered (1786; republished in 1817 with the title Macbeth and King Richard the Third).
I am indebted to Dr. Aldis Wright for procuring for me the details of Warburton's claims. As a few of the passages were omitted by Theobald in the second edition, the following page references are to the edition of 1733:
(1) P. xix, This Similitude, to Nature and Science, p. xx.
(2) P. xxi, Servetur ad imum, to the more wonder'd at, p. xxii.
(3) P. xxv, That nice Critick, to Truth and Nature, p. xxvii.
(4) P. xxx, For I shall find, to this long agitated Question, p. xxxii. (p. 76).
(5) P. xxxiii, They are confessedly, to Force and Splendor, p. xxxiv. (p. 77).
(6) P. xxxiv, And how great that Merit, to ill Appearance (p. 77).
(7) P. xxxv, It seems a moot Point, to from the spurious, p. xxxvi. (p. 78).
(8) P. xxxix, For the late Edition, to have wrote so, p. xl. (p. 81).
(9) P. xl, The Science of Criticism, to Editor's Labour, p. xli. (pp. 81, 82).
(10) P. xlv, There are Obscurities, to antiquated and disused (p. 84).
(11) P. xlvi, Wit lying mostly, to Variety of his Ideas, p. xlvii. (pp. 84-86).
(12) P. xlviii, as to Rymer, to his best Reflexions (p. 86).
(13) P. lxii, If the Latin, to Complaints of its Barbarity (pp. 89, 90).
The passages which were retained are printed in the present text at the pages indicated above within brackets. Cf. Notes, p. [89].
Such as,
—My Queen is murder'd! Ring the little Bell—
—His nose grew as sharp as a pen, and a table of Greenfield's, &c.
It would be no difficult matter, I think, to prove that all those Plays taken from the English chronicle, which are ascribed to Shakespeare, were on the stage before his time, and that he was employed by the Players only to refit and repair; taking due care to retain the names of the characters and to preserve all those incidents which were the most popular. Some of these Plays, particularly the two parts of Hen. IV., have certainly received what may be called a thorough repair; that is, Shakespeare new-wrote them to the old names. In the latter part of Hen. V. some of the old materials remain; and in the Play which I have here censured (Hen. VI.) we see very little of the new. I should conceive it would not be very difficult to feel one's way thro' these Plays, and distinguish every where the metal from the clay. Of the two Plays of Hen. IV. there has been, I have admitted, a complete transmutation, preserving the old forms; but in the others, there is often no union or coalescence of parts, nor are any of them equal in merit to those Plays more peculiarly and emphatically Shakespeare's own. The reader will be pleased to think that I do not reckon into the works of Shakespeare certain absurd productions which his editors have been so good as to compliment him with. I object, and strenuously too, even to The Taming of the Shrew; not that it wants merit, but that it does not bear the peculiar features and stamp of Shakespeare.
The rhyming parts of the Historic plays are all, I think, of an older date than the times of Shakespeare.—There was a Play, I believe, of the Acts of King John, of which the bastard Falconbridge seems to have been the hero and the fool: He appears to have spoken altogether in rhyme. Shakespeare shews him to us in the latter part of the second scene in the first act of King John in this condition; tho' he afterwards, in the course of the Play, thought fit to adopt him, to give him language and manners, and to make him his own.
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.