This figure that thou here see'st put,
It was for gentle Shakspeare cut,
Wherein the graver had a strife
With nature to outdo the life.
Oh! could he have but drawn his wit
As well in brass, as he hath hit
His face, &c.
Hear now Nathan Drake: 'The wretched engraving thus undeservedly eulogised;' and Mr Steevens calls it 'Shakspeare's countenance deformed by Droeshout'—like the sign of Sir Roger turned into the Saracen's Head.
We might, did space allow, also allude to the celebrated 'wit-combats at the Mermaid,' where Shakspeare's wit, when recorded, becomes truly un-Shakspearian. Let one example suffice, stated by Capell. 'Ben' and 'Bill' propose a joint epitaph. Ben begins:
'Here lies Ben Jonson,
Who was once one—'
Shakspeare concludes:
'That, while he lived, was a slow thing;
And now, being dead, is a no-thing.'
We doubt if Benedict would have gained Beatrice had he wooed her in this style, and yet its tiny sparkle seems a beam of light contrasted with the dull darkness of the rest. In fine, we maintain we have no more direct evidence to shew that Shakspeare wrote Hamlet's soliloquy, than we have that he wrote the epitaph on John a Coombe, the ballad on Sir Thomas Lucy, or the epitaph to spare his 'bones' on his own tombstone—all of which the commentators are now determined to repudiate.
Assuming, then, that we have proved, to our own extreme dissatisfaction, the probability that Shakspeare kept a poet, we are bound to say that the intercourse between them must have been one of almost unexampled cordiality and kindness; for seldom can we discover anything like hostility in the poet to his employer; but there must have been two little miffs—one of which occurred during the writing of the Midsummer Night's Dream, and the other before the publication of the Twelfth Night. Shakspeare, it is well known, in very early youth, married a girl a good deal older than himself, and there is at least no evidence to shew that, as usual, he did not repent his choice. Now, we will admit that it was unhandsome in the poet at the beginning of the Dream to make Hermia and Lysander discourse upon this delicate subject—
Hermia. O cross! too high to be enthralled to low!
Lysander. Or else misgraffèd in respect of years.
Her. (the lady.) O spite! too old to be engaged to young!
But matters were still worse, when the Duke, in the Twelfth Night, exclaims: