Mr. Gottoest describes the condition of' the labourers. They WHILST

MACREADY is rendering the fine and mechanical arts, get spry high wages; but some expected. not merely a " land and the histrionic abilities within his reach, subservient to the Slowing with milk and honey." but to live like lords and ladies. exhibition of SHAKSPERE in that sphere for which the author A pleasant story is told of a disappointment of these grand aspi- designed his dramas, Mr. CHARLES KNIGHT is engaged in pro- notions of her newly-acquired dignity. On the emigrants from her ship land that countless critics and editors have bestowed upon him. ing, a gentleman walked down to Glenelg to hire a servant ; and seeing this This undertaking. grateful to the admirers and needful to the person stseding on the beach by her lame., be walked up to tier. and after talk. mg a little about the voyage, asked ' if she was engaged?" Engaged !' said she, students of the author, is to embrace the whole of his Works, Ncith a simpering yet modest smile, ' I am married, Sir.' ' Oh ! my good girl, w. ith a Life, and genealogical and other matter connected with rejoined the inquirer, ' I beg your pardon ; I too am married, and certainly did It. The text followed will be that of the first folio, published in not mean the kind of engagement you supposed. I want a servant, and wish to 1623 (seven years after the author's death) by SHAESPERE'S know if you are hired.' ' Hired, indeed !' said 'he, in a very altered tone; and, " friends and fellows" HEMINGE and CONDELL ; all corrections, bridling up to her frill height, 'do you think /mean to work. then? No. in. emendations, and various readinws being reserved, as we under- deed ; my husband will never allow that, he will keep me.' The event, how- ever. has not justified the prophecy ; and having recovered her senses, she now stand, for the foot of the page. And whoever has been convinced works hard." by experience of the great advantage, in all cases, of going to the The mischief of a scarcity of labour is too visible in the eon- fountainhead, will approve of this decision. To each play will be duct of some of the emigrants. By a little work they earn sum- prefixed an introductory notice, pointing out, eient to maintain themselves and get a large quantity of rum. "1. The historical facts, the real or imaginary incidents, and the complete Hence there is much idleness and intemperance. The only stories or detached passages in works of imagination, from either of which the effectual cure for this evil is one which will soon be applied, by plot of the drama, or any portion of it, is supposed to be derived. '2. The

evidence which existe to establish the date when the play was written. 3 The

the arrival of a large number of artisans and labourers. As much period and the locality of the drama, with an account of the materials from is said about the price of provisions at Adelaide, we give Mr. which the loral illustrations have been derived. 4. The costume of the drama; Gottoett's table— in which notice will be introduced wood-cuts, copied from ancient MSS. or " Excellent beef and mutton are always to be obtained for le. a lb., salt beef books that may exhibit the authentic costume of the place and of the period and pork for about 9d., kangaroo 9d.. wild ducks Is. each, quail 611., snapper which the poet had in his mind. 5. The music of the drama ; in which the about 6d. a lb., and other fish in proportion. Fresh butter is 2s. 6d., and salt original airs of Shakspere's exquisite songs will, as far us possible, be given, butter Is. 6d. ; milk 101. a quart, flour Ws. the barrel of 196Ibs., auger 6d., with an account of the later musical compositions that have been adapted to the

The soil has been proved of excellent quality ; and hence a con- The explanatory annotations, and other analogous matter, will

siderable rise in the value, not only of town allotments, but of be printed at the end of each act. A supplementary notice, rural land. Small rivers and streams of fresh water abound ; at the close of each play, will contain an analytical examination and of the salubrity of the climate, though the weather is some- of the various judgments which different critics have passed times a great deal warmer than we should like, there is but one upon that particular drama, with the incidental opinion of the opinion. Peaches, nectarines, pines, melons, and all the fruits of editor himself; one great object in view being " to do just- a tropical climate, flourish admirably. Tempted by the prospects ice not only to the surpassing beauty of detached passages of of the new colony, capitalists and labourers from Van Diemen's our great dramatist, but to point out the consum.nate judg- Land have gone to reside there. With the other Australian ment which he displays in the conduct of his story, his wonder- Colonies, with the Cape of Good Hope and the Mauritius, eons- ful method, his exquisite art, the imperishable freshness of his triunication more or less frequent has been established. There scenes, the unerring truth of his characters:.

are already two regular lines of packets from England. The graphic illustrations, we conceive, will be historical, or For an account of the means of religious and moral instruction, real, where the subject admits of portraiture, costume, proces- we must refer to the book itself. There is an English Episcopas sions, landscape, and so forth ; the fanciful being only resorted to lian clergyman, an Independent, and a Methodist preacher, at where no existing types would furnish a model for the artist,—as Adelaide. The first is chaplain to the Governor and Council, in " The Tempest.''

with a salary of 2501. a year. It is proposed to form in London a As each play will form a complete part, the purchaser can fel- " South Australian School Society," for the purpose of establish- low any order of arrangement he pleases: the order suggested by ing in the colony Infant, British, and Labour Schools. Two news- the editor is a chronological one as regards the histories, whilst papers are now published at Adelaide; the excesses of the first, the tragedies and comedies should be bound in the order in which or Government Gazette, already alluded to, having, by the usual they were produced. Upon this subject the editor puts forward a reaction, produced a second, which promises to be much better new view, or rather revives one adopted formerly, which would fix conducted. All this, be it remembered, relates to a colony not SHAKsPERE'S appearance as a dramatic writer some five or six

two years old! years earlier than his twenty-eighth year. The subject partly

A fact and a comparison not stated by Mr. GOUGER, and not turns upon probability, partly upon internal evidence deduced from strictly within the scope of his little work, deserves nevertheless contemporaries, and partly upon tradition, (for DRYDEN was born to be kept in view by the public. From a Parliamentary Paper near enough to SHXKSPERZS time to know many who had known now lying before us,* it appears that the estimated population of Sttsxseeste); and as it involves a very important psychological South Australia, in July 1838, was 3,000 souls ; and the entire point, we will give part of the writer's argument in his own words. outlay of the British Government on account of the colony "Robert Greene, in his ' Groat's-worth of Wit,' written, while upon his 4,801/. 7s. 2d., for the fitting up of the Buffalo, which carried out deathbed, in 1592, speaks thus of a dramatic writer who had given him and the first Governor. Of this sum, 1,843/. has been repaid, and the others mortal offence by his success : ' There is an upstart crow beautified with balance will our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapt in a player's hide, supposes he is

as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you ; and, being an al).

document, that the Swan River Colony, now ten years old and

solute Johannes Factotum, is, in his own conceit, the only shaker-sccne in a the pet of the Colonial Office, has an estimated population of only country.' There is little doubt that this bitter effusion of envy applies to Shak- 1,830 souls ; and that it costs the Mother Country, on an average, spare' but, surely, if he had begun to write for the stage in 1591, having pro- about 15,000/. a year--the total for two years and a half, ending duced, according to Malone, only his two parts of Henry the Sixth and the Two Gentlemen of Verona, when this pamphlet appeared, there was little lea.

30th September 1837, being 36,R73/. 18s. 2d. "Look on this

picture and on that." son for Greene to call him a t Factotum ' and the only ' sliake-seene.' He had probably amended, or written, Pericles and Titus Andronicus at the same period, There never was a time when room for labour was more wanted which would make Greene's envy have a larger store to feed upon. But let us in England than at present ; and there has seldom been a period imagine that he had, before 1592, produced the Comedy of Errors, Love's La- viten, throughout a large portion of the country, the remunera- hour's Lost, and the Midsummer Night's Dream, as well as the plays we have tion of labour has borne so small a proportion to the cost of living, mentioned, and Greene might then well call him 3./0/rapines Factotum. Now,

in the internal evidence furnished by these four comedies, and in the collateral

Plenty of room and liberal pay are to be obtained, byi the indus- circumstances which we know regarding them, there is literally nothing to show trious, in South Australia. When the condition of th that e bulk of the they might not as well have been written before Shalcepere was twenty- labouring population in this country is considered, it appears little eight, that is, before 1392, as that they were written after that year. We less than a crime to prevent by misrepresentation the emigration know, absolutely, that thew, as well as many more of Shakspere's plays, were of the suffering poor. It is gratifying to know, that in spite of written before 1598. Francis Mares, in his • Wit's Treasury,' printed in 1599,

after describing Shakspere as the most excellent for comedy and tragedy 'among

the evil forebodings and interested calumnies of its opponents, difficulties to be anticipated on first starting the colony, the English,' says, 'for comedy, witness his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, and the his Love's Labour's Lost, his Love's Labour Won,t his Midsummer /Sight's its triumphant success may now be deemed certain. In a few Dream, and his Merchant of Venice ; fur tragedy, his Richard the Second, years the trade to South Australia will form a respectable item Richard the Third, Henry the Fourth, King John, Titus Andronicus, and his in the commercial accounts of England ; and it is to be hoped Romeo and Juliet.' If we add Henry the Sixth and Pericles, we have seven- teen plays produced (according to Malone and all the other authorities who

that the example of supporting itself and flourishing without

h make him begin to write in Mt) in seven years. But let us place the doubt- drawing a penny from the Britis Treasury, will have its influ- ful plays of Titus Androoicus and Pericles, and the unquestionably early come- enee in reforming the British Colonial system. • This is the orthography of the bard himself, whenever he wrote his name. • Parliamentary Paper, No. 685, Session 1839. f Conjectured to be another name for All's Well that Ends Well.

dies of the Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labour's Lost, the Comedy of Errors, and the Midsummer Night's Dream. in the six years before hie bio- graphers and critics have made him a writer for the stage—that is, between Lis twenty-first and twenty-sixth years ; and we have eight of the hiatories, two of the comedies, and Romeo and Joliet, to occupy the remaining eight years between 1590 and the publication of Meres's list. This, we apprehend, is a more probable division of the poet's labours than that ordinarily received. With all hie fertility, the power of writing seventeen plays in seven years is a much more extraordinary circumstance than that he abould have written six of those plays before he was twenty. $x. " If it is asked what principle is overthrown by making Shakspere a great dramatic writer before he was twentyoix, we reply, no principle whatever ; no. thing but the monstrous absurdity that, having ran away from Stratford for deer-stealing, be gained a living by holding horses at the door of the theatre, during the period when we think he was earning the reputation of • the only shake-scene in the country."Ihere is, indeed, a theory of Malone's developed in more than a hundred pages of his Life of Shakspere, that sonic laudatory roses of Spenser, in his "rears of the Muses,' could not apply to Shakspere, ' as by some ha been supposed,' because ' they would ascertain that he bad ac- quired a considerable share of celebrity as a wliter, some years before the end of 1590, when that piece wee first published.' The ' some' who applied these verses to Shakspere were Dryden and Rowe. In our Life of Strakapere, we shall have to examine this question minutely. In the mean time, we give the three atanzas which Dryden ' supposed' to apply only to Sbakspere; and we ask if Thalia, the Muse of Comedy, (who is speaking,) might not pay this compliment to the author of the Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labour's Lost, the Comedy of Errors, and the Midsummer Night's Dream, rather than to Lylly, the fantastic author of Euphues, whom Malone would make Spenser call • The man uhom Nature selfe had made

To mock her selle.'" After quoting SPENaitteS stanzas, and continuing his argument further, the writer thus sums up.

"The evidence of Meres appears to us of the highest importance, in fixing a perioa at which we may make a large division of the great poet's labours. In 1.59d, we find that Shakspere had produced seventeen dramas, including the disputed plays of Pericles and Titus Andronicus, and the three parts cif llemy the Sixth. This period is a middle division in Shakspere's literary life. Our opinion, contrary to that of Malone, is, that he be had acquired a considerable share of celebrity as a writer when Spenser published his ' Tears of the Muses,' in 1590; that he had then produced, in addition to the writing or the revision of Pericles and Titus Andronieus, four or perhaps five comedies ; if five, we shall include the Merchant of Venice. In the period between 1590 and 1598, all hie English historical plays were written, with the exception of Henry the Fifth and Henry the Eighth. If Spenser described his ' pleasaunt Willy ' us sitting in 'idle cell,' the great dramatist might be preparing hie ' Histories,' in the desire to bring forward, systematically, a species of enter. ta7nment that should stem the popular attraction of • the ugly barbarism and brutish ignorance' of those bombastic tragedies which the Thalia of Spenser describes, and which we know held possession of the staae of that period. During the interval from 1590 to 1598, we assume, upon Meres's authority, that he produced only one comedy, and one tragedy (Romeo and Juliet) in ad. dition to those already assigned to the first half of his career as a dramatic poet. To the second great division of this career, from 1599 to 1613 or 1614, we have to assign the remaining two of las histories—Henry the Fifth and Henry the Eighth ; eight comedies—the Merry Wives, Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, the Winter's Tale, Measure fir Measure, the Tempest, and Twelfth Night ; and ten tragedies—Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, Timon of Athens, Lear, Cymbeline, Macbeth, Julius Cesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, and Othello. Mere said, in 1598, that 'as Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy among the Latins, SO Shakepere, among the English, is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage.' Let us, in addition to what Shaksperc had written when he received firm' Francis Mores this contemporary praise, regard the glorious works which he produced in the second period of his dramatic life, and we cannot hesitate to assign him a place, ' A hove all Greek, above all Roman fame.'" The value of an edition with views so extensive and ambitious as we have described, can only be judged of on its completion ; when, if the performance bear out the promise, it will excel all that have yet been produced, in use, variety, and informa- tion. The First Part, now before ti, contains the Two Gen- tlemen of Verona ; and is distinguished by great pains and in- dustry in all that relates to the illustrative mutter; much judg- ment in emendation, and in the minor parts of criticism; with a general soundness of view upon the endless miscellaneous topics that such an undertaking brings before its conductors. In the higher branches of criticism, though there is little positively heretical in decision, there is a something, not exactly described without examples, which taints a proper admiration of SHAKSPERE with a servile feel ng.„ akin to that with which a true Papist re- gards the Pope. There is also, we think, a deficiency in compre- hension and depth, which heightens this failing in appearance ; for in defending SHAKSPERE against his impugners, the editor seems to us, if right, to assign wrong reasons for his decisions. One point, however, he has started, which we shall be glad to see developed—that SHAKSPERE was a consummate artist, not merely as a playwright thinking only of the effect upon his audience, but as a poet speaking to the mind of an auditor so attentive as to be analogous to a reader. That his details have a wonderful pro- priety- and truth, only discoverable in their full extent after years of study, is true ; but whether this is the result of art or instinct, is a question difficult to determine.

The pictorial illustrations of this Part exhibit the costumes and furniture, the coins, the sports and punishments, of the time; and views of the buildings and country of the scene; to which dra- matic character is given by the introduction of the dramatis per. son. Thus the reader is furnished with a clue to the locality, similar to what the scene-painter at the theatre gives or ought to