Exceed the wine of others’—
——‘Let the event,
That never-erring arbitrator, tell us’—
‘Like old importment’s bastard’—
There are also words that are never used by Shakespear in a similar sense:
——‘All our surgeons
Convent in their behoof’—
‘We convent nought else but woes’—
In short, it appears to me that the first part of this play was written in imitation of Shakespear’s manner; but I see no reason to suppose that it was his, but the common tradition, which is however by no means well established. The subsequent acts are confessedly Fletcher’s, and the imitations of Shakespear which occur there (not of Shakespear’s manner as differing from his, but as it was congenial to his own spirit and feeling of nature) are glorious in themselves, and exalt our idea of the great original which could give birth to such magnificent conceptions in another. The conversation of Palamon and Arcite in prison is of this description—the outline is evidently taken from that of Guiderius, Arviragus, and Bellarius in Cymbeline, but filled up with a rich profusion of graces that make it his own again.
‘Pal. How do you, noble cousin?