Another tradition, preserved by Mr. Oldys, and communicated to him, as Mr. Malone thinks[424:B], by Mr. Thomas Jones of Tarbick, in Worcestershire, whom we have formerly mentioned, imports, as corrected by the commentator just mentioned, that a relation of the poet's, then in advanced age, but who in his youth had been in the habit of visiting London for the purpose of seeing him act in some of his own plays, told Mr. Jones[424:C], that he had a faint recollection "of having once seen him act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping and unable to walk, that he was forced to be supported and carried by another person to a table, at which he was seated among some company, who were eating, and one of them sung a song."[424:D] That this part was the character of Adam, in As You Like It, there can be no doubt, and if we add, that, from the arrangement of the names of the actors and of the persons of the drama, prefixed to Ben Jonson's play of Every Man in his Humour, first acted in 1598, there is reason to imagine that he performed the part of Old Knowell in that comedy, we may be warranted probably in drawing the conclusion, that the representation of aged characters was peculiarly his forte.
It appears also, from the first four lines of a small poem, written by John Davies, about the year 1611, and inscribed, To our English Terence, Mr. William Shakespeare, that our bard had been accustomed to perform kingly parts;
"Some say, good Will, which I in sport do sing,
Hadst thou not play'd some kingly parts in sport,
Thou hadst been a companion for a king,
And been a king among the meaner sort;"[425:A]
a passage which leads us to infer, that several of the regal characters in his own plays, perhaps the parts of King Henry the Eighth, King Henry the Sixth, and King Henry the Fourth, may have been appropriated to him, as adapted to the general estimate of his powers in acting.
From the notices thus collected, it will be perceived, that Shakspeare attempted not the performance of characters of the first rank; but that in the representation of those of a second-rate order, to which he modestly confined his exertions, he was deemed excellent. We have just grounds also for concluding that of the theory of acting in its very highest departments, he was a complete master; and though not competent to carry his own precepts into perfect execution, he was a consummate judge of the attainments and deficiencies of his fellow-comedians, and was accordingly employed to instruct them in his own conception of the parts which they were destined to perform.
It may be considered, indeed, as a most fortunate circumstance for the lovers of dramatic poetry, that our author, in point of execution, did not attain to the loftiest summit of his profession. He would, in that case, it is very probable, have either sate down content with the high reputation accruing to him from this source, or would have found little time for the labours of composition, and consequently we should have been in a great degree, if not altogether, deprived of what now constitute the noblest efforts of human genius.