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Every one knows that the passage is disputed: I believe that if this be not the restoration of the original reading, Shakspere himself would justify it, and wish that he had so written it. Romeo and Juliet talk poetry as a matter of course. In "King John," act v. scenes 4 and 5, see how differently the dying Melun and the living and victorious Lewis regard the same sunset: Melun.
Again, in the records of the British theater of the eighteenth century, we find mention of a countryman of John Home, who attended the first performance of the reverend author's 'Douglas. The play so worked upon the feelings of this perfervid Scot that he was forced to cry out triumphantly: "Whaur's your Wully Shakspere noo?"
But if we write thus about Shakspere, influenced only by the fashion of the day, we shall be much in the condition of those fashionable architects who with their vain praises built the tombs of the prophets, while they had no regard to the lessons they taught.
The eye of the living cockatrice was believed to be so deadly as to kill by a look, to which Shakspere alludes in Twelfth Night, and again in Romeo and Juliet: “Say thou but I, And that base vowel I shall poison more Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice.”
Of the twenty devils mentioned by Shakspere, four only belong to the class of greater devils. Hecate, the principal patroness of witchcraft, is referred to frequently, and appears once upon the scene. The two others are Amaimon and Barbazon, both of whom are mentioned twice. Amaimon was a very important personage, being no other than one of the four kings.
Shakspere has been more and more in contact with the disputes and doubts of the educated men of his time, and seeds have been silently sowing themselves in his heart, which are soon to bring forth a plenteous harvest in the great tragedies of which these semi-comedies, such as "All's Well that Ends Well" and "Measure for Measure," are but the first-fruits.
Putting aside the historical plays, in which Shakspere was much more bound down by his subject-matter than in any other species of drama, we find the comedies, in which his room for expression of individual feeling was practically unlimited, gradually losing their unalloyed hilarity, and deepening down into a sadness of thought and expression that sometimes leaves a doubt whether the plays should be classed as comedies at all.
That Shakspere read it, is sufficiently evident from the fact that from it he has taken the secondary but still important plots in two of his plays. Although we are anticipating, it is better to mention here another book, published in the same year, namely, 1590, when Shakspere was six-and-twenty: the first three books of Spenser's "Faery Queen."
Even were he free to go as he pleased, he knew not where to turn; for the Lord Chamberlain's company would not be at the Blackfriars play-house until Martinmas; and before that time to look for even Master Will Shakspere at random in London town would be worse than hunting for a needle in a haystack.
Shakspere broke with all antiquated doctrines. He was one of the foremost Humanists in the fullest and noblest meaning of the word. 1: Essay II. 12. 2: Essay I. 26. 3: The whole contents of this chapter may be said to be condensed into two lines of Shakspere: 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. 4: Essay III. 13.
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