NEW EDITION OF MASSINGER AND rORD.
Ax edition of the whole works of two of the great dramatists of the Elizabethan age, comprised in a single volume, easily accessible from its moderate price to the generality of readers, and printed with so much clearness and beauty as to be readable not only with case but with ph acme, is an acceptable and valuable publication. Hitherto the plays of' Massif:mat and Font), like those of all their contemporaries Sum:set:1LE excepted, have been presented to the public only ht the shape of voluminous editions, loaded with a profusion of note, commentary, and dissertation, much of which is of no value to time general reader, and serves but to swell the price of the book. We have now, for the first time, what may be called a people's edition of these plays, such as we have long had of SHAKSPEME's ; consisting of the text, as correct as it can now be given, with nothi!:g more than a very brief explanation of obsolete worths and phrases. It may, however, be observed in passing, that this explanation is given iu the form of a glos,4ary at the end of' the plays of each author,—not so satisfactory a mode as that of foot- notes; as the reader, when engrossed N‘ith the interest of the scene, will rather remain in ignorance of a word or an allusion, than go in search of it to the glossary, though he would almost uncon- sciously glance at tile hot tom of the page Who expected to find the explanation there. Nloreever, we have frequently, on referring to the glossary for the explanation of an obscurity, found it Nvanting. The method adopted in HODSLEY'S excellent collection of Old Plays appears to us the best : the very concise foot-notes satisfy the reader without lilt iguing hint or distracting his attention. The .glossary, to be sure, applitr, to the thing explained, whenever it occurs in the text ; but this small advantage is more than counter- balanced by its inconveniences. We say that a popular edition or:\ TA$siNGER and FORD is a valu- able publication ; and so would such editions of BEN JONSON, of BeAusiiixT and FLETCHER, Of :HARLOW, of ‘VEBSTER, and of each " bright particular star" of the grandest literary constellation that ever shone upon the world. The blaze of &tam:min dimmed the radiance of the lesser orbs around him ; and yet their light, though
neither so strong, so steady, nor so pure as his, was, like his, the light of heaven. Though to hint they were inferior spirits, yet they were kindred spirits. They were endowed, in various degrees aud proportions, with those qualities which were united in hint
alone. " It is not so much," says HAZLITT, " MI one faculty that SHAKSPERE excelled his fellows, as in that wondrous combination of talent which made him beyond controversy eminent above all." The fruits of their genius are neither so fair, so rich, nor so abun- dant as those of his; but yet they are good fruits—sound, pleasant, and wholesome. If a masculine and vigorous tone of thought is to be inspired—if profound lessons of human nature are to be learned —if the best and noblest sympathies and feelings are to be roused, by the scenes of SIIAKSPERE, so are they also by those of his gifted contemporaries. It is a squeamish fastidiousness which objects to their general perusal on the score of the coarseness and indelicacy which prevails too much in their language. This is a fault of taste, incidental to the comparative rudeness of the age, and neither flowing front depravity of thought nor tending to engender it. Grossness of expression is revolting, not seducing, to the modern reader; and those who seek to inflame the imagination by licentious scenes and descrip- tions, carefully avoid infusing in their poison any thing offensive to the taste. There is more mischief in a page of flALZAC, or GEORGE SAND, or VICTOR HUGO, than in all the volumes of the Elizabethan dramatists. In their works the moral tone is stern and lofty. Vice is painted in all its varieties, and in all its blackness. It is never hid under a mask of sentimental delicacy and refinement. Its fea- tures are always hideous, its acts revolting, and its consequences terrible ; nor is there to be found a scene of vicious indulgence unattended with circumstances so dismal as to excite any emotion but fear and horror. Virtue on the other hand, appears m all her sublimity and beauty. In ;he volume now before us, there are pictures of unbending integrity, faithfulness even unto death, gene- rosity, courage, and mercy, which SHAKSPERE himself has not sur- passed. That such pictures should be stained with deformities— and those of' SHAKSPERE himself are not free from them—is no sufficient reason against their fullest exhibition to the eye of any description of' readers.
The same immaturity of taste which led to coarseness of lan- guage in the old dramatists, led also to many of the other faults which lie open to the censure of modern criticism, and render most of their works unfit for the modem stage. But there was little criticism in England in those days. The English drama did not grow by slow degrees, but sprang at once into the greatest strength and vigour which it has ever reached. Sir WALTER SCOTT observes, that between Gorbodue, the oldest English tra- gedy, and the plays of SHAKSPERE, the interval did not exceed twenty years : and SHAKSPERE appeared in the midst of a host of others, almost any one of whom would have conferred lustre on a less illustrious age. " We may perhaps," says SCOTT, "fonn the best guess of the feelings of Shakspere s contemporaries, by recol- lecting the emotions of any rural friend, of rough but sound sense, and ardent feelings, whom we have had the good fortune to con- duct to a theatre Tor the first time in his lit'. It may well be imagined that such a spectator thinks Effie of the three dramatic unities, of which Aristotle says so little and his commentators talk so much ; and that the poet and the performets have that en- viable influence over his imagination, which transports him from place to place at pleasure, crowds years into the course of hours, and interests him in the business of' each scene, however discon- nected front the others. His eyes are riveted to the stage, his ears drink in the accents of the speakers: and he experiences in his mature age what Nye have all felt in childhood, a sort of doubt whether the beings and business of tile stage arc real or fictitious. In this state of delightful fascination Shakspere and the gigantic dramatic clwmpions of his age firund the British public at large : and bow they availed themselves of the advantages which so throur- able a temper afforded them, their works will show as long as the language of Britain shall continue to be reitil."
Of this illustrious baud of Suviisnmiii's contemporaries, MAS- SINGER and nolo were among the greatest ; inferior oaly to JON.. SON and to BEAUMONT and FLerenen, and not greatly inferior to them. ln regard to MAssusn en, Mr. COLERIDGE, the editor ofthe present volume, observes with (Apo' truth and conciseness, that " 31assiner's excellence—a great and bc.:utit'ul exrellence it is—was in the expression of virtue, in its probation, its strii1,, it, victory. lie could not, like Shakspere, invest the perverted will with tii t.2rrors of it magnificent in- tellect, or liestow the cestus of poetry on simple unconscious loveliness."
FORD is characterized thus- " ltasringer wrote rapidly and incessantly. No wonder. It was his vocation. A week's holyday might have thrown him out of employment for a year. Operative ant hors should keep the Sabbath. but they should make no Saint
Mondays. They should observe the painter's rule. ssib; liuea. Like
poor hacks on the road, while warm in the harness mm e on, unit very happy perhaps. hut still w ith a certain senso of lint r, conscious of each se- parate effort, and precipitated by accumulated v,1,:ity. 13nt let us once get cold and our joints Stiff; the whole arrear of lm L'arinv,s comes upon us with compound interest, tine toil which is hardly telt in the act becomes terrible in the retrospect, and nothing short of the act mil cautery 111. :11111,pte Irish posting can set us in motion again. Ford mm m a professional b mm t/ woo. Perhaps in his younger days he did look to the shy,: hir a supple:in lit to a scanty allow- ance. Ilia share in the price of a play Might pay tin- an extra supper, (not a ten-pound supper, how ever,) an eXelitS1011 mhnms um the river, or a little extrava- gant charity. At least his quality as a dramatist gave him a free admission to the theatres, and entitled him to speak of Shakspere, and Fletcher, and Burbage and Lowin, as if he belonged to the sot. Young Templars to this day are pron:1 of knowing actors and dramatic authors. Ford could not pique him- self on the smiles of actresses for in his day there were none. lint o hen he had outgrown the vanities otitis youth, and esntblished lihnsell in buMiess, he ostentatiously disdained all view to profit in his writings. and appeared on the stage or in print old v ot irregular intervals. Ile lord. ;Ind took time, to write up to his own ideal,. qe disowned all courtship of the Tul,;:ir taste : we mik,ht therefore suppose that the horrible storks which he has caibraec.1 in "Tis Pity She's it Whore,' "The Broken Heart,' and Love's Sacrifice, were his own choice and his own taste. But it would be uotitir from hence to cows elude that he delighted in the contemplation of vice and misery as vice and misery. Ile delighted in the sensation of intellectual power; he found himself strong in the imagination of crime and of agony ; his moral sense was gratified by indignation at the dark possibilities of sin, by compassion for rare extremes of suffering. He abhorred vice—he admired virtue ; but ordinary vice or modern virtue were, to him, as light wine to a dram-drinker. His hmnius was a telescope, ill-adapted for neighbouring objects, but powerful to bring within the sphere of vision what nature has wisely placed at an unsociable distance. Passion must be incestuous or adulterous, grief must be something more than martyrdom, before he could make them big enough to be seen. Unquestionably he displayed great power in these horrors, which was all be desired; but had he been of the first order of poets,' he would have found and displayed su- perior power in familiar matter of to-day,' in failings to which all are liable, virtues which all may praCtise, and sorrows for Which all may be the
better."
Neither of these great poets are as yet much known to the public ; and the knowledge which exists is comparatively recent. Dr. JOHNSON betrays much ignorance of the writings of Masszar- GER ; and, in his time, the very name of FORD seems to have fallen into oblivion. GIFFORD, by his edition of MASSINGER, was the first to bring the poet into any thing like public notice. The labours of that most able though splenetic critic, in purifying and illus- trating the text, have been of the utmost value ; and his readings seem to have been adopted by the present editor. The first edition of the works of FORD is that of HENRY WEBER, whose name is now well known in connexion with that of SCOTT. WEBER was a poor German scholar, a sort of literary servant of all work to CON.. STABLE : SCOTT patronized him, and, entertaining an exaggerated notion of his talents and acquirements, employed him in some of those ill-judged literary undertakings which swamped the publish- ing-house of JOHN BALLANTYNE and Company. This poor man attempted SCOTT'S life, in a sudden fit of insanity ; and died some years afterwards, in the York Lunatic Asylum, supported to the last by the benevolence of his kind-hearted patron. His edition is worthless; and his innumerable blunders were exposed with all the gall and bitterness of GIFFORD'S pen. That eminent critic's editions of both poets are to be considered as the standards ; but they are very far from superseding the use of such an edition as the present.
Mr. COLERIDGE'S biographical introduction is written with great spirit, considerable originality of thought, and occasional eloquence : and yet, taken as a whole, it is one of the most clumsy and ill- constructed pieces of composition we have met with. Its text is little more than an outline, running along the tops of the pages, which are filled with a chaos of notes upon every sort of subject to which the sentences of the text can be made to serve as pegs. When a writer loads his own text with notes, unless they are references to authorities, it is a sure sign of unskilfulness or inconsiderateness ; for, with proper art and care, all these riders, which only teaze and torment the reader,, ought, in so far as they are necessary at all, to have been worked into the tissue of the dis- course. There is, moreover, too much disquisition about trifling matters connected with the lives of the poets, most of which, too, is conjectural and borrowed from GIFFORD. But the volume is an excellent and a valuable one; and we shall be very glad to see more of a similar kind.
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