A third fund of Shakspeare's peculiar power lies in his teeming fertility of fine thoughts and sentiments. From his works alone might be gathered a golden bead-roll of thoughts the deepest, subtilest, most pathetic, and yet most catholic and universally intelligible; the most characteristic, also, and appropriate to the particular person, the situation, and the case, yet, at the same time, applicable to the circumstances of every human being, under all the accidents of life, and all vicissitudes of fortune. But this subject offers so vast a field of observation, it being so eminently the prerogative of Shakspeare to have thought more finely and more extensively than all other poets combined, that we cannot wrong the dignity of such a theme by doing more, in our narrow limits, than simply noticing it as one of the emblazonries upon Shakspeare's shield.
Fourthly, we shall indicate (and, as in the last case, barely indicate, without attempting in so vast a field to offer any inadequate illustrations) one mode of Shakspeare's dramatic excellence, which hitherto has not attracted any special or separate notice. We allude to the forms of life, and natural human passion, as apparent in the structure of his dialogue. Among the many defects and infirmities of the French and of the Italian drama, indeed, we may say of the Greek, the dialogue proceeds always by independent speeches, replying indeed to each other, but never modified in its several openings by the momentary effect of its several terminal forms immediately preceding. Now, in Shakspeare, who first set an example of that most important innovation, in all his impassioned dialogues, each reply or rejoinder seems the mere rebound of the previous speech. Every form of natural interruption, breaking through the restraints of ceremony under the impulses of tempestuous passion; every form of hasty interrogative, ardent reiteration when a question has been evaded; every form of scornful repetition of the hostile words; every impatient continuation of the hostile statement; in short, all modes and formulae by which anger, hurry, fretfulness, scorn, impatience, or excitement under any movement whatever, can disturb or modify or dislocate the formal bookish style of commencement, —these are as rife in Shakspeare's dialogue as in life itself; and how much vivacity, how profound a verisimilitude, they add to the scenic effect as an imitation of human passion and real life, we need not say. A volume might be written illustrating the vast varieties of Shakspeare's art and power in this one field of improvement; another volume might be dedicated to the exposure of the lifeless and unnatural result from the opposite practice in the foreign stages of France and Italy. And we may truly say, that were Shakspeare distinguished from them by this single feature of nature and propriety, he would on that account alone have merited a great immortality.
The dramatic works of Shakspeare generally acknowledged to be genuine consist of thirty-five pieces. The following is the chronological order in which they are supposed to have been written, according to Mr. Malone, as given in his second edition of Shakspeare, and by Mr. George Chalmers in his Supplemental Apology for the Believers in the Shakspeare Papers:
Chalmers. Malone.
1. The Comedy of Errors, 1591 1592 2. Love's Labors Lost, 1592 1594 3. Romeo and Juliet, 1592 1596 4. Henry VI., the First Part, 1593 1589 5. Henry VI., the Second Part, 1595 1591 6. Henry VL, the Third Part, 1595 1591 7. The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 1595 1591 8. Richard III., 1596 1593 9. Richard II, 1596 1593 10. The Merry Wives of Windsor, 1596 1601 11. Henry IV., the First Part, 1597 1597 12. Henry IV., the Second Part, 1597 1599 13. Henry V., 1597 1599 14. The Merchant of Venice, 1597 1594 15. Hamlet, 1598 1600 16. King John, 1598 1596 17. A Midsummer-Night's Dream, 1598 1594 18. The Taming of the Shrew, 1599 1596 19. All's Well that Ends Well, 1599 1606 20. Much Ado about Nothing, 1599 1600 21. As you Like It, 1602 1599 22. Troilus and Cressida, 1610 1602 23. Timon of Athens, 1611 1610 24. The Winter's Tale, 1601 1611 25. Measure for Measure, 1604 1603 26. King Lear, 1605 1605 27. Cymbeline, 1606 1609 28. Macbeth, 1606 1606 29. Julius Caesar, 1607 1607 30. Antony and Cleopatra, 1608 1608 31. Coriolanus, 1619 1610 32. The Tempest, 1613 1611 33. The Twelfth Night, 1613 1607 34. Henry VIII., 1613 1603 35. Othello, 1614 1604
Pericles and Titus Andronicus, although inserted in all the late editions of Shakspeare's Plays, are omitted in the above list, both by Malone and Chalmers, as not being Shakspeare's.
The first edition of the Works was published in 1623, in a folio volume, entitled Mr. William Shakspeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. The second edition was published in 1632, the third in 1664, and the fourth in 1685, all in folio; but the edition of 1623 is considered the most authentic. Rowe published an edition in seven vols. 8vo, in 1709. Editions were published by Pope, in six vols. 4to, in 1725; by Warburton, in eight vols. 8vo, in 1747; by Dr. Johnson, in eight vols. 8vo, in 1765; by Stevens, in four vols. 8vo, in 1766; by Malone, in ten vols. 8vo, in 1789; by Alexander Chalmers, in nine vols. 8vo, in 1811; by Johnson and Stevens, revised by Isaac Reed, in twenty-one vols. 8vo, in 1813; and the Plays and Poems, with notes by Malone, were edited by James Boswell, and published in twenty-one vols. 8vo, in 1821. Besides these, numerous editions have been published from time to time.
NOTES.
NOTE 1.
Mr. Campbell, the latest editor of Shakspeare's dramatic works, observes that "the poet's name has been variously written Shax-peare, Shackspeare, Shakspeare, and Shakspere;" to which varieties might be added Shagspere, from the Worcester Marriage License, published in 1836. But the fact is, that by combining with all the differences in spelling the first syllable, all those in spelling the second, more than twenty-five distinct varieties of the name may be expanded, (like an algebraic series,) for the choice of the curious in mis-spelling. Above all things, those varieties which arise from the intercalation of the middle e, (that is, the e immediately before the final syllable spear,) can never be overlooked by those who remember, at the opening of the Dunciad, the note upon this very question about the orthography of Shakspeare's name, as also upon the other great question about the title of the immortal Satire, Whether it ought not to have been the Dunceiade, seeing that Dunce, its great author and progenitor, cannot possibly dispense with the letter e. Meantime we must remark, that the first three of Mr. Campbell's variations are mere caprices of the press; as is Shagspere; or, more probably, this last euphonious variety arose out of the gross clownish pronunciation of the two hiccuping "marksmen" who rode over to Worcester for the license; and one cannot forbear laughing at the bishop's secretary for having been so misled by two varlets, professedly incapable of signing their own names. The same drunken villains had cut down the bride's name Hathaway into Hathwey. Finally, to treat the matter with seriousness,