Page images
PDF
EPUB

situation. He has spited his wife; he has dined with the But he is not satisfied:

courtesan.

"Go thou

And buy a rope's end; that will I bestow
Among my wife and her confederates."

66

[ocr errors]

We pity him not when he is arrested, nor when he receives the rope's end" instead of his ducats." His furious passion with his wife, and the foul names he bestows on her, are quite in character; and when he has

"Beaten the maids a-row, and bound the doctor,"

we cannot have a suspicion that the doctor was practising on the right patient. In a word, we cannot doubt that, although the Antipholus of Ephesus may be a brave soldier, who took" deep scars" to save his prince's life, and that he really has a right to consider himself much injured, he is strikingly opposed to the Antipholus of Syracuse; that he is neither sedate, nor gentle, nor truly loving; that he has no habits of self-command; that his temperament is sensual; and that, although the riddle of his perplexity is solved, he will still find causes of unhappiness, and entertain

[blocks in formation]

The characters of the two Dromios are not so distinctly marked in their points of difference, at the first aspect. They each have their "merry jests"; they each bear a beating with wonderful good temper; they each cling faithfully to their master's interests. But there is certainly a marked difference in the quality of their mirth.

The Dromio of Ephesus is precise and antithetical, striving to utter his jests with infinite gravity and discretion, and approaching a pun with a sly solemnity that is prodigiously diverting:—

"The capon burns, the pig falls from the spit;
The clock hath strucken twelve upon the bell;
My mistress made it one upon my cheek:
She is so hot, because the meat is cold."

Again :

"I have some marks of yours upon my pate,
Some of my mistress' marks upon my shoulders,
But not a thousand marks between you both."

He is a formal humourist, and, we have no doubt, spoke with a drawling and monotonous accent, fit for his part in such a dialogue as this:—

Antipholus of E. Were not my doors lock'd up, and I shut out? Dromio of E. Perdy, your doors were lock'd, and you shut out. Antipholus of E. And did not she herself revile me there? Dromio of E. Sans fable, she herself revil'd you there. Antipholus of E. Did not her kitchen-maid rail, taunt, and scorn me?

Dromio of E. Certes, she did; the kitchen-vestal scorn'd you. On the contrary, the "merry jests" of Dromio of Syracuse all come from the outpouring of his gladsome heart. He is a creature of prodigious animal spirits, running over with fun and queer similitudes. He makes not the slightest attempt at arranging a joke, but utters what comes uppermost with irrepressible volubility. He is an untutored wit; and, we have no doubt, gave his tongue as active exercise by hurried pronunciation and variable emphasis as could alone make his long descriptions endurable by his sensitive master. Look at the dialogue in the second scene of Act II., where Antipholus, after having repressed his jests, is drawn into a tilting-match of words with him, in which the merry slave has clearly the victory. Look, again, at his description of the "kitchen-wench "-coarse, indeed, in parts, but altogether

irresistibly droll. The twin brother was quite incapable of such a flood of fun. Again, what a prodigality of wit is displayed in his description of the bailiff! His epithets are inexhaustible. Each of the Dromios is admirable in his way; but we think that he of Syracuse is as superior to the twin-slave of Ephesus as our old friend Launce is to Speed, in the Two Gentlemen of Verona. These distinctions between the Antipholuses and Dromios have not, as far as we know, been before pointed out; but they certainly do exist, and appear to us to be defined by the great master of character with singular force as well as delicacy. Of course the characters of the twins could not be violently contrasted, for that would have destroyed the illusion. They must still

"Go hand in hand, not one before another."

KNIGHT: Pictorial Shakspere.

IV.

Adriana.

Adriana, like the wife of Menæchmus, brought a wealthy dowry to her husband, and with it the complementary temper of excessive requirements

"My wife is shrewish when I keep not hours."

At her first appearance she is fretful and peevish at his want of punctuality, and suspicious of the cause, which, in truth, as presently appears, was nothing more than a service and attention intended for herself" to see the making of a carcanet," designed as a present for her. Her husband, on the other hand, enraged at being so inexplicably shut out of his own house, disregards the sober counsel of Balthazar, and is as little practised as his wife to assume a reason and wait for an explanation, and hastily revenges himself by making a bachelor's party at the house of the courtesan; and though the extrava

gance is evidently as harmless as such an imprudence might be; for,—

"I know a wench of excellent discourse,

Pretty and witty, wild, and yet too, gentle,"

are not the words of a sensualist, and there is no trace whatever of want of affection on his part, and we give full belief to his protestation, he still puts himself by the imprudence, no less in the wrong than his wife by her fretfulness, and we are left at liberty to enjoy the fun that arises out of their troubles and disasters. Still Adriana, with all her shrewishness, is very affectionate-nay, very amiable, and she gives an earnest of her future improvement in considerateness, by abstaining from public outbreak against her husband's hostess. Her coolness in this respect requires perhaps more explanation than it receives, but that it is accepted by us as at once proof and admission that she had no serious ground for complaint, and was conscious how far she had herself to blame.

LLOYD: Critical Essays on the Plays of Shakespeare.

The wife herself and her sister are studied with a care and minuteness which the action certainly did not require. In the change from Plautus' 'Mulier,' who rails at her husband with only too good reason, to Shakespeare's Adriana, who torments him with doubts at bed and board, and is ready to die in despair at the loss of his love because he refuses to come home to dinner, we see the change from pragmatical to psychological drama, from the comedy of intrigue to the comedy of character, of which otherwise there is not in this play very much.

HERFORD: The Eversley Shakespeare.

V.

Aegeon.

This drama of Shakespeare's is much more varied, rich, and interesting in its incidents than the Menachmi

of Plautus; and while, in rigid adherence to the unities of action, time, and place, our Poet rivals the Roman play, he has contrived to insinuate the necessary previous information for the spectator, in a manner infinitely more pleasing and artful than that adopted by the Latin bard; for whilst Plautus has chosen to convey it through the medium of a prologue, Shakespeare has rendered it at once natural and pathetic by placing it in the mouth of Ægeon, the father of the twin-brothers.

In a play, of which the plot is so intricate, occupied in a great measure by mere personal mistakes and their whimsical results, no elaborate development of character can be expected; yet is the portrait of Ægeon touched with a discriminative hand, and the pressure of age and misfortune is so painted as to throw a solemn, dignified, and impressive tone of colouring over this part of the fable, contrasting well with the lighter scenes which immediately follow-a mode of relief which is again resorted to at the close of the drama, where the reunion of Ægeon and Æmilia, and the recognition of their children, produce an interest in the dénouement of a nature more affecting than the tone of the preceding scenes had taught us to expect.

DRAKE: Shakespeare and his Times.

The story of Ægeon envelops the whole comic plot. It is probably Shakespeare's invention, and betrays the same instinct for accumulated effects and drastic contrasts. He had quadrupled the intricacies of the imbroglio by doubling the two lost Antipholuses with a second pair of twins; he quadruples the excitement of the final recovery by doubling them with a pair of lost parents, who at the same time recover their children and each other. And the foreboding of tragic harms which habitually overhangs for a while the early comedies, is here graver and more protracted than either in A Midsummer-Night's Dream or The Two Gentlemen. Valentine's banishment and Hermia's destination to a nunnery

« PreviousContinue »