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To convert this passage, or rather the line printed in italics, into "a clumsy sarcasm" on Shakspeare, Mr. Malone supposes that Ben concealed his hatred for a time, and that "some years afterwards his jealousy broke out, and vented itself in this prologue, which first appeared in the folio edition of Jonson's works, published in 1616."

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If the practice has not greatly varied in the lapse of time, it will, I fancy, be found that the prologue is always written to introduce a play on its first representation; and if the subject of the drama is somewhat novel, to apologize or justify the author's deviation from the general custom. Why recourse should be had to the formality of a conciliatory address after a play had been represented some years with success, leave to Mr. Malone to inform us. Jonson's design in this prologue was clearly to ridicule the tricks and stratagems, the phantasmagoria, and Sadler's-wells' antics, by which his contemporaries engaged the frequenters of the stage in that early age of theatrical representation, and to win them by ridicule from buffoonery, bombast, and empty machinery,

To deeds, and language, such as men do use;
And persons such as comedy would chuse
When she would shew an image of the times;
And sport with human follies, not with crimes:

-the legal and genuine purpose of dramatic representation, and such appears to have been Jonson's general object. For " the chorus," thus acutely converted into "a clumsy sarcasm" on the great bard, one might be tempted to suppose that Mr. Malone would have us conclude, that the introduction of it in Henry the Fifth is the only example of its adoption on the English stage; or why must Jonson's reprobation of the practice be construed into a sneer at Shakspeare? Why, but for the purpose of encouraging an opinion, founded on falsehood, and fostered by misrepresentation? The fact is, that Jonson, with all his fondness for the ancients, thought the chorus, borrowed from the Greek tragedies, an incumbrance, and openly reprobated it; as Shakspeare had before ridiculed the "dombe shewe" of his predecessors. But the chorus on the English stage is coeval with the first tragedy, Gorbodu; was the common appendage of the drama during his life, as may be seen in many instances among the old plays edited by the late Isaac Reed; and, though declining, continued in use long after Shakspeare had made his exit from the scene of life. That it was displeasing, Shakspeare was conscious, by his apologies for its introduction in the case of Henry the Fifth, and his omission of it on all other occasions. Heywood, also, who

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has adopted it, in his "Fair Maid of the West," 1631 quarto, 165, seems to have been sensible of the absurdity, when he introduces a chorus saying, Our stage so lamely can express a sea,

That we are forc'd by chorus to discourse

What should have been in action.

What, then, is there in the line quoted by Mr. Malone, that is not applicable to fifty others as well as Shakspeare? and what is there to justify his charges of "clumsy sarcasm, and malevolent reflection?"

Discite justitiam moniti, et non spernere verum.

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But other passages in the prologue to "Every Man in his Humour" have given offence; indeed the whole of this unfortunate production appears to have put every commentator out of his humour. To give a clear idea of the writer's purpose, it will be better to transcribe a few of the lines.

Though need make many poets, and some such

As art or nature have not mended much,
Yet ours for want hath not so lov'd the stage

As he dare serve th' ill customs of the age,

Or purchase your delight at such a rate
As for it he himself must justly hate.
To make a child now swaddled to proceed
Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed,
Past threescore years; or with three rusty swords,
And help of some few foot and half-foot words,
Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars,
And in the tyring-house bring wounds to scars, &c.

The same eagerness of research for finding attacks on Shakspeare, exhibited in preceding examples, has been employed to discover a sneer at him in this passage of the foregoing-extract:

To make a child now swaddled to proceed

Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed,
Past threescore years.

This is considered "a palpable hit" at the beautiful drama, "The Winter's Tale:" than which inference nothing can be more unneces‐ sary. Certainly in none of Shakspeare's plays are the unities of time and place more disregarded than in the present; but this neglect or contempt was not peculiar to the bard of Avon; similar and even greater licenses are found in Lilly's Endimion, in 1591, and Patient Grissel, performed as early as 1599. Nor was the prac tice confined to these; George Whetstones, in an epistle prefixed to his Promos and Cassandra, 1578, speaking of the absurdities and offences committed against the laws of the drama by various nations, says, "the Englishman in this quallitie is most vain, indiscreet, and out of order. He first grounds his work on impossibilities: then in three hours runnes he over the worlde: marry is, gets children, makes children men, men to conquer kingdomes, murder monsters, and bringeth goddes from heaven,

and fetcheth devills from hell, &c." And Sir Philip Sidney, in his "Defense of Poesie, 1589; when complaining of Gorbodue* as "faulty both in place and time, the two necessary companions of all corporal actions;" adds, "but if it be so in Gorbodue, how much more in all the rest? where you shall have Asia of the one side, and Africa of the other, and so many other under kingdoms, that the player, when he comes in, must ever begin with telling where he is, or else the tale will not be conceived. Now you shall have three ladies walk to gather flowers, and then we must believe the stage to be a garden. By-and-by, we hear news of a shipwreck in the same place; then we are to blame if we accept it not for a rock. Upon the back of that comes out a hideous monster with fire and smoke, and then the miserable beholders are bound to take it for a cave; while, in the meantime, two armies flie in, represented with four swords and bucklers, and then, what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field?

"Now of time they are much more liberal: for ordinary it is, that two young princes fall in love; after many traverses she is got with child; delivered of a faire boy, he is lost, groweth a

* How comes it that Warton, in his "History of English Poetry," invariably writes this Gordobue?

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