theatre with their thoughts. This is an apology for the ordinary and physical defects of any stage-especially an ill-furnished one; and it requires no great straining of our imaginary forces to submit to them. Even Ducrow himself,* with appliances and means to boot a hundredfold more magnificent and copious than any that were at the command of Shakespeare, does not deceive us into the belief that his fifty horses, trained and managed with surpassing skill, and mounted by agile and practised riders, dressed in splendid and carefully-considered costumes, are actually fighting the battle of Waterloo, but we willingly lend ourselves to the delusion. In like manner, we may be sure that in the days of Queen Elizabeth the audience of the Globe complied with the advice of Chorus, and,

"Minding true things by what their mockeries be,"

were contented that

"Four or five most vile and ragged foils
Right ill-disposed, in brawl ridiculous,"

should serve to represent to their imagination the name of Agincourt.

We consent to this just as we do to Greeks and Romans speaking English on the stage of London, or French on that of Paris; or to men of any country speaking in verse at all; or

*The late Andrew Ducrow, for several years manager of Astley's Amphitheatre, in London, was literally the greatest equestrian performer of his time in England. He had no education, but great natural quickness of intellect. His performances were at once picturesque and classical-particularly his representations of ancient statues. In the Noctes Ambrosianæ he is repeatedly referred to. North describes him as "indeed a prodigy," while the Shepherd asked, “Wha the deevil was Castor, that the ancients made a god o' for his horsemanship -a god o' and a star-in comparison wi' your Ducraw?" Tickler declared that, "the glory of Ducrow was in his poetical inspirations." North pronounced his Living Statues to be "perfect — the very Prometheus of Eschylus." Ducrow amassed a very large fortune, and is interred in a particularly grand mausoleum (ultra-Egyptian as to architectural style), in Kensal-Green Cemetery, near London.-M.

to all the other demands made upon our belief in playing.

We can dispense with the assistance of such downright matter-offact interpreters as those who volunteer their services to assure us that the lion in Pyramus and Thisbe is not a lion in good earnest, but merely Snug, the Joiner. But there are difficulties of a more subtle and metaphysical kind to be got over, and to these, too, Shakespeare not unfrequently alludes. In the play before us Midsummer Night's Dream-for example, when Hippolita speaks scornfully of the tragedy in which Bottom holds so conspicuous a part, Theseus answers, that the best of this kind (scenic performances) are but shadows, and the worst no worse if imagination amend them. She answers that it must be your imagination then, not theirs. He retorts with a joke on the vanity of actors, and the conversation is immediately changed. The meaning of the Duke is, that however we may laugh at the silliness of Bottom and his companions in their ridiculous play, the author labors under no more than the common calamity of dramatists. They are all but dealers in shadowy representations of life; and if the worst among them can set the mind of the spectator at work, he is equal to the best. The answer to Theseus is, that none but the best, or, at all events, those who approach to excellence, can call with success upon imagination to invest their shadows with substance. Such playwrights as Quince, the Carpenter-and they abound in every literature and every theatre-draw our attention so much to the absurdity of the performance actually going on before us, that we have no inclination to trouble ourselves with considering what substance in the background their shadows should have represented. Shakespeare intended the remark as a compliment or a consolation to less successful wooers of the comic or the tragic Muse, and touches briefly on the matter; but it was also intended as an excuse for the want of effect upon the stage of some of the finer touches of such dramatists as himself,

and an appeal to all true judges of poetry to bring it before the tribunal of their own imagination; making but a matter of secondary inquiry how it appears in a theatre, as delivered by those who, whatever others may think of them, would, if taken at their own estimation, "pass for excellent men." His own magnificent creation of fairy land in the Athenian wood must have been in his mind, and he asks an indulgent play of fancy not more for Oberon and Titania, the glittering rulers of the elements, who meet

on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,

By paved fountain, or by rushy brook,

Or on the beached margent of the sea,

To dance their ringlets to the whistling wind,"

than for the shrewd and knavish Robin Goodfellow, the lord of practical jokes, or the dull and conceited Bottom, "the shallowest thickskin of the barren sort," rapt so wondrously from his loom and shuttle, his threads and thrums, to be the favored lover of the Queen of Faëry, fresh from the spiced Indian air, and lulled with dances and delight amid the fragrance of the sweetest flowers, filling with their luscious perfume a moonlighted forest.

One part of Bottom's character is easily understood, and is often well acted. Amid his own companions he is the cock of the walk. His genius is admitted without hesitation. When he is lost in the wood, Quince gives up the play as marred. There is no man in Athens able to take the first part in tragedy but himself. Flute declares that he has the best wit of any handicraftman in the city. This does not satisfy the still warmer admirer,* who insists on the goodliness of his person,

* Act IV. Scene 2. Athens.- Quince's House.- Enter Quince, Flute, Snout, and Starveling.

Qui. Have you sent to Bottom's house yet, &c. ?

Flu. He hath simply the best wit of any man in Athens.

Qui. Yea, and the best person too; and he is a very paramour for a sweet voice.

and the fineness of his voice. When it seems hopeless that he should appear, the cause of the stage is given up as utterly lost. When he returns, it is hailed as the "courageous day," and the "happy hour," which is to restore the legitimate drama. It is no wonder that this perpetual flattery fills him with a most inordinate opinion of his own powers. There is not a part in the play which he can not perform. As a lover, he promises to make the audience weep; but his talent is still more shining in the Herculean vein of a tyrant. The manliness of his countenance, he admits, incapacitates him from acting the part of a heroine; but, give him a mask, and he is sure to captivate by the soft melody of his voice. But, lest it should be thought this melodious softness was alone his characteristic, he claims the part of the lion, which he is to discharge with so terrific a roar as to call forth the marked approbation of the warlike Duke; and yet, when the danger is suggested of frightening the ladies, who all, Amazons as they were, must be daunted by sounds so fear-inspiring, he professes himself gifted with a power of compass capable of imitating, even in the character of a roaring lion, the gentleness of the sucking dove, or the sweetness of the

Flu. You must say paragon; a paramour is, God bless us! a thing of naught."

I propose that the second admirer's speech be given to Snout, who else has not anything to say, and is introduced on the stage to no purpose. The few words he says elsewhere in the play are all ridiculous; and the mistake of "paramour" for "paragon" is more appropriate to him than to Quince, who corrects the cacology of Bottom himself. [Act III., Scene 1.

'Pyr. Thisby, the flower of odious savors sweet.
Qui. Odors-odors."]

And, besides, Quince, the playwright, manager, and ballad-monger,

["I'll get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream," says Bottom,] is of too much importance in the company to be rebuked by so inferior a personage as Flute. In the original draft of their play Snout was to perform Pyramus's father, and Quince, Thisbe's father, but those parts are omitted; Snout is the representative of Wall, and Quince has no part assigned him. Perhaps this was intentional, as another proof of bungling.-W. M.

nightingale. He is equally fit for all parts, and in all parts calculated to outshine the rest. This is allowed; but, as it is impossible that he can perform them all, he is restricted to the principal. It is with the softest compliments that he is induced to abandon the parts of Thisbe and the lion for that of Pyramus. Quince assures him that he can play none other, because "Pyramus is a sweet-faced man; a proper man as one shall see in a summer's day; a most lovely, gentlemanlike man; therefore You must undertake it." What man of woman born, could resist flattery so unsparingly administered? the well-puffed performer consents, and though he knows nothing of the play, and is unable to tell whether the part for which he is cast is that of a lover or a tyrant, undertakes to discharge it with a calm and heroic indifference as to the color of the beard he is to wear, being confident, under any circumstances, of success, whether that most important part of the costume be straw-colored or orange-tawny, French crown or purple in grain. With equal confidence he gets through his performance. The wit of the courtiers, or the presence of the Duke, has no effect upon his nerves. He alone speaks to the audience in his own character, not for a moment sinking the personal consequence of Bottom in the assumed port of Pyramus. He sets Theseus right on a point of the play with cool importance; and replies to the jest of Demetrius (which he does not understand) with the selfcommand of ignorant indifference.* We may be sure that he was abundantly contented with his appearance, and retired to drink in, with ear well deserving of the promotion it had attained under the patronage of Robin Goodfellow, the applause of his companions. It is true that Oberon designates him as a "hateful fool;" that Puck stigmatizes him as the greatest blockhead of the set; that the audience of wits and courtiers before whom he has performed vote him to be an ass: but what

* Act V. Scene 1.