Text: H. C. Watson (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), November 15, 1845, vol. 2, no. 19, p. ??

[page 287, column 2, continued:]

Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, who lived about the time of Shakspeare. With Notes: By Charles Lamb. In two Volumes. Wiley & Putnam's Library of Choice Reading, Nos. XXIX — XXX.

If the Cheap Era in Literature had began with the first settlement of America, the improved Power Press been set in motion, throwing off its thousand sheets per hour, and steamboats and railroads been ready to blaze its issues through the country, — and it had happened that these Specimens had been the first work to engage their services, the whole face of its Literature would, according to all ordinary modes of calculation, have been changed, and would now present the aspect of a Jupiter rather than an Adonis. As it is, we set out in our career at the period of the predominance of the French school, and the school of Pope; and it is only within a very recent period, that we have given any indications of a desire to escape from it.

We have tinkled in the minor key, jingling our ten feet and keeping close to our regular measures, with the painful pertinacity of the droning minstrel of the streets. So deeply has the infection struck that, although England (our model and guide in these matters heretofore) has more than once in that time been swept by manlier lyres and braver singers, we have gone on in the old tune, assuaging and mollifying, even in our copies of these better spirits, strength and manhood and manly earnestness down to a poor, piping treble. The restoration and triumph of the Old Masters of English verse, in their own country, has been no triumph nor restoration to us. We have gone on in the old way in spite of new editions of Ben Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher, Webster, Decker, Massinger, and all the others of that hardy brood. Once in a long while a voice has been raised in a comer, in behalf of this noble peerage of elder poets — but without any obvious change in the popular sentiment. Now however the change has fairly come! The country after undergoing the weariness of droning poetasters for half a century and more, has at length discovered that there is a kind of Literature more in harmony with its circumstances, and much truer to the breadth and grandeur of its national developements. The publication of these Specimens, is but the effervessence, of a spirit, long, quietly and patiently at work, under the surface. And their reception will be full of good omens to the future literary history of the country.

We have conveyed our general opinion of this work in what we have already said: a word or two as to its peculiar merits. No where in the whole compass of its Literature, are the resources of the English tongue in power, in sweetness, terror, pathos, in description and dialogue, so well displayed. These two volumes are by the best hearts of England of their day and generation. — They speak the sorrow and the belief, the joy and the agitation of their times, like men. They dip their pens in the very life-blood of humanity, and write so as to stir the life-blood. Their fear is real fear, their joy is real joy, their grief, grief indeed, and no make believe. They therefore speak to all men of all times. These genuine words of theirs cutting their way through all of war, and darkness and discordant history that stands between, reach the present day, and with a vital fire come home to our hearts, as they did to the hearts of their contemporaries. See with what fire, and eagerness and inspired annimation [[animation]] they address themselves to the loves and griefs and passions of men and women! [page 288:]

The forest deer being struck,

Runs to an herb that closeth up the wounds;

But when the imperial lion's flesh is gor’d,

He rends and tears it with his wrathful paw,

And highly scorning that the lowly earth

Should drink his blood, mounts up to th’ air.

—

Sometimes like Women or unwedded Maids,

Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows

Than have the white breasts of the Queen of Love

Now comes my Lover tripping like the Roe,

And brings my longings tangled in her hair.

To joy her love I’ll build a kingly bower,

Seated in hearing of a hundred streams.

—

Then, as in Arden I have seen an oak

Long shook With tempests, and his lolly top

Bent to his root, which being at length made loose

(Even groaning with his weight) he ‘gan to nod

This way and that, as loth his curled brows

(Which he had oft wrapt in the sky with storm)

Should stoop; and yet, his radical fibres burst,

Storm-like he fell, and hid the fear-cold earth;

So fell stout Barrisor, that had stood the shocks

Of ten set battles in your highness’ war

Gainst the sole soldier of the world Navarre.

Ferd. Is she dead?

Bos. She is what you would have her. Fix your eye here.

Ferd. Constantly.

Bos. Do you not weep? Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out. The element of water moistens the earth, But blood flies upward and bedews the heavens.

Ferd. Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died so young.

Bos. I think not so: her infelicity Seem’d to have years too many.

Ferd. She and I were twins; And should I die this instant, I had lived Her time to a minute.

—

The whole brood of modern bards bend before them, like the slender woodland before the majestic breath of God. To Charles Lamb, who by wise and delicious painstaking makes us masters and friends of these noble spirits, thanks indeed. What he says, descriptively, of his plan in introducing them is well put.

The kind of extracts which I have sought after have been, not so much passages of wit, though the old plays are rich in such, as scenes of passion, sometimes of the deepest quality, interesting situations, serious descriptions, that which is more nearly allied to poetry than to wit, and to tragic rather than comic poetry

And what be says, here and throughout these choice volnmes [[volumes]] in explanation or praise of his authors, is in admirable harmony with their own noble verse. One or two of these masterly notes will satisfy the reader into whose hands he entrusts himself.

*To move a horror skilfully, to touch a soul to the quick, to lay upon fear as much as it can bear, to wean and weary a life till it is ready to drop, and then step in with mortal instruments to take its last forfeit: this only a Webster can do. Writers of an interior genius may “upon horror's head horrors accumulate,” but they cannot do this. They mistake quantity for quality; they “terrify babes with painted devils,” but they know not how a soul is capable of being moved; their terrors want dignity, their affrightments are without decorum.

This tragedy, Marlowe's Edward II, is in a very different style from “mighty Tamburlaine.” The reluctant pangs of abdicating Royalty in Edward furnished hints which Shakespeare scarce improved in his Richard the Second; and the death-scene of Marlowe's [column 2:] king moves pity and terror beyond any scene, ancient, or modern, with which I am acquainted.

——

Marlowe is said to have been tainted with atheistical positions, to have denied God and the Trinity. To such a genius the history of Faustus mast have been delectable food: to wander in fields where curiosity is forbidden to go, to approach the dark gulf near enough to look in, to be busied in speculations which are the rottenest part of the core of the fruit that fell from the tree of knowledge. Barabas the Jew, and Faustus the conjuror, are offsprings of a mind which at least delighted to dally with interdicted subjects. They both talk a language which a believer would have been tender of putting into the month of a character though but in fiction. But the holiest minds have sometimes not thought it blameable to counterfeit impiety in the person of another, to bring Vice in upon the stage speaking her own dialect, and, themselves being armed with an Unction of self-confident impunity, have not scrupled to handle and touch that familiarly which would be death to others. Milton, in the presence of Satan, has started speculations hardier than any which the feeble armory of the atheist ever furnished: anil the precise, strait-laced Richardson has strengthened Vice, from the mouth of Lovelace, with entangling sophistries and abstruse pleas against her adversary Virtue; which Sedley, Villiers, and Rochester wanted depth of libertinism sufficient to have invented.

——

This scene in the Merry Devil of Edmonton has much of Shakspeare's manner in the sweetness and goodnaturedness of it. It seems written to make the reader happy. Few of our dramatists or novelists have attended enough to this. They torture and wound us abundantly. They are economists only in delight. Nothing can be finer, more gentlemanlike, and noble, than the conversation and compliments of these young men. How delicious is Raymond Mounchensey's forgetting, in his tears, that Jerningham has a “Saint in Essex;” and how sweetly his friend reminds him! — I wish it could be ascertained that Michael Drayton was the author of this piece; it would add a worthy appendage to the renowm of that Panegyrist of my native Earth; who has gone over tier soil (in his Polyolbion) with the fidelity of a herald, and the painful love ot a son; who has not left a rivulet (so narrow that it may be slept over) without honorable mention; and has animated Hills and Streams with life and passion above the dreams of old mythology.

——

After all, Love's Sectaries are a “reason unto themselves.” We have gone retrograde in the noble Heresy since the days when Sidney proselyted our nation to this mixed health and disease; the kindliest symptom yet the most alarming crisis in the ticklish state of youth; the nourisher and the destroyed of hopeful wits; the mother of twin-birds, wisdom and folly, valor and weakness; the servitude above freedom; the gentle mind's religion; the liberal superstition.

——

No one will doubt, who reads Marston's Satires, that the author in some part of liis life must have been something mote than a theorist in vice. Have we never heard an old preacher in the pulpit display such ati insight into the mystery of ungodliness, as made us wonder with reason how a good man came by it? When Cervantes with such proficiency of loudness dwells upon the Don's library, who sees not that he has been a great leader of books of Knight-Errantry? perhaps was at some lime of his life in danger of tailing into those very extravagances which he ridicules so happily in his Hero?

——

The blank uniformity to which all professional distinctions in apparel have been long hastening, is one instance of the Decay of Symbols among us, which, whether it has contributed or not to make us a more intellectual, has certainly made us a less imaginative people. Shakapeare knew the force of signs; — “a malignant and turban’d Turk.” “This meal-cap Miller,” says the Author of God's Revenge against Murder, to express his indignation at an attrocious outrage committed by the miller Pierot upon the person of the fair Marieta. [page 289:]

The insipid levelling morality to which the modern stage is tied down would not admit of such terrible passions as these scenes are tilled with. A puritanical obtuseness of sentiment, a stupid infantile goodness, is creeping among us, instead of the vigorous passions, and virtues clad in flesh and blood, with which the old dramatists present us. These noble and liberal casuists could discern in the differences, the quarrels, the animosities of man, a beauty and truth of moral feeling, no less than in the iterately inculcated duties of forgiveness and atonement. With us all is hypocritical meekness. A reconciliation scene (let the occasion be never so absurd or unnatural) is always sure of applause. Our audiences come to the theatre to be complimented on their goodness. They compare notes with the amiable characters in the play, and find a wonderful similarity of disposition between them.

—

Of all the English Play-writers, Chapman perhaps approaches nearest to Shakspeare in the descriptive and didactic, in passages which are less purely dramatic. Dramatic imitation was not his talent. He could not go out of himself, as Shakspeare could shift at pleasure, to inform and animate other existences, but in himself he had an eye to perceive and a soul to embrace all other forms. He would have made a great epic poet, if, indeed, he has not abundantly shown himself to be one; for his Homer is not so properly a Translation as the Stories of Achilles and Ulysses re-written. The earnestness and passion which he has put into every part of these poems would be incredible to a reader of mere modern translations. His almost Greek zeal for the honor of his heroes is only paralleled by that fierce spirit of Hebrew bigotry, with which Milton, as if personating one of the Zealots of the old law, clothed himself when he sat down to paint the acts of Sampson against the uncircumcised.

——

We repine, we confess, at the taking down of this book from our shelf, (it has been the dear companion of many joyful years,) and leading it out into the market place. But as we hope for many sharers, through it, in our old and long-time enthusiasm for the Elders — we submit that our fell-grief be made common, and that all mankind be let in to ‘joy in our joy, and sadden in our sadness.’ Farewell, old Friends! — The million spread their hands to take you.