"Dr. Johnson has remarked that little or nothing is wanting to render the 'Othello' a regular tragedy, but to have opened the play with the arrival of Othello in Cyprus, and to have thrown the preceding act into the form of narration. Here then is the place to determine whether such a change would or would not be an improvement: nay (to throw down the glove with a full challenge), whether the tragedy would or not by such an arrangement become more regular-that is, more consonant with the rules dictated by universal reason, or the true common-sense of mankind, in its application to the particular case. For in all acts of judgment, it can never be too often recollected, and scarcely too often repeated, that rules are means to ends, and, consequently, that the end must be determined and understood before it can be known what the rules are or ought to be. Now, from a certain species of drama, proposing to itself the accomplishment of certain ends-these partly arising from the idea of the species itself, but in part, likewise, forced upon the dramatist by accidental circumstances beyond his power to remove or control-three rules have been abstracted;-in other words, the means most conducive to the attainment of the proposed ends have been generalized, and prescribed under the names of the three unities—the unity of time, the unity of place, and the unity of action, which last would, perhaps, have been as appropriately, as well as more intelligibly, entitled the unity of interest. With this last the present question has no immediate concern: in fact, its conjunction with the former two is a mere delusion of words. It is not properly a rule, but in itself the great end, not only of the drama, but of the epic poem, the lyric ode, of all poetry, down to the candle-flame cone of an epigram, nay, of poesy in general, as the proper generic term inclusive of all the fine arts as its species. But of the unities of time and place, which alone are entitled to the name of rules, the history of their origin will be their best criterion. You might take the Greek chorus to a place, but you could not bring a place to them without as palpable an equivoque as bringing Birnam Wood to Macbeth at Dunsinane. It was the same, though in a less degree, with regard to the unity of time :the positive fact, not for a moment removed from the senses, the presence, I mean, of the same identical chorus, was a continued measure of time; and although the imagination may supersede perception, yet it must be granted to be an imperfection, however easily tolerated, to place the two in broad contradiction to each other. In truth, it is a mere accident of terms; for the Trilogy of the Greek theatre was a drama in three acts, and notwithstanding this, what strange contrivances as to place there are in the Aristophanic Frogs. Besides, if the law of mere actual perception is once violated, as it is repeatedly even in the Greek tragedies, why is it more difficult to imagine three hours to be three years than to be a whole day and night?

"Observe in how many ways Othello is made, first our acquaintance, then our friend, then the object of our anxiety, before the duper is to be approached! And Cassio's warm-hearted, yet perfectly disengaged, praise of Desdemona 'that paragons description and wild fame,' and sympathy with the 'most fortunately' wived Othello ;-and yet Cassio is an enthusiastic admirer, almost a worshipper, of Desdemona. O, that detestable code, that excellence cannot be loved in any form that is female, but it must needs be selfish! Observe Othello's 'honest' and Cassio's 'bold' Iago, and Cassio's full guilelesshearted wishes for the safety and love-raptures of Othello and the divine Desdemona.' And also note the exquisite circumstance of Cassio's kissing Iago's wife, as if it ought to be impossible that the dullest auditor should not feel Cassio's religious love of Desdemona's purity. Iago's answers are the sueers which a proud bad intellect feels towards women, and expresses to a wife. Surely it ought to be considered a very exalted compliment to women, that all the sarcasms on them in Shakespear are put in the mouths of villains.

"Finally, Othello does not kill Desdemona in jealousy, but in a conviction forced upon him by the almost superhuman art of Iago, such a conviction as any man would and must have entertained who had believed Iago's honesty as Othello did. We, the audience, know that Iago is a villain from the beginning but in considering the essence of the Shakesperian Othello, we must perseveringly place ourselves in his situation, and under his circumstances. Then we shall immediately feel the fundamental difference between the solemn agony of the noble Moor, and the wretched fishing jealousies of Leontes, and the morbid suspiciousness of Leonatus, who is in other respects a fine character. Othello had no life but in Desdemona :-the belief that she, his angel, had fallen from the heaven of her native innocence, wrought a civil war in his heart. She is his counterpari; and like him, is almost sanctified in our eyes by her absolute unsuspiciousness, and holy entireness of love. As the curtain drops, which do we pity the most?"—COLERIDGE.

THE POEMS

OF

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

VENUS AND ADONIS.

66 VILIA MIRETUR VULGUS; MIHI FLAVUS APOLLO
POCULA CASTALIA PLENA MINISTRET Aqua.”—Ovid.

TO THE

RIGHT HONOURABLE HENRY WRIOTHESLY,

EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON, AND BARON OF TICHFIELD.

RIGHT HONOURABLE,

you

I know not how I shall offend in dedicating my unpolished lines to your lordship, nor how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burden: only, if your honour seem but pleased, I account myself highly praised, and vow to take advantage of all idle hours, till I have honoured with some graver labour. But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a god-father, and never after ear so barren a land, for fear it yield me still so bad a harvest. I leave it to your honourable survey, and your honour to your heart's content; which I wish may always answer your own wish, and the world's hopeful expectation.

Your honour's in all duty,

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

a — and never after ear so barren a land,-] To ear is to plough or till: So in "All's Well That Ends Well," Act I. Sc. 3,-"He that ears my land, spares my team," &c. Again

in "King Richard II." Act III. Sc. 2,-
"and let them go

To ear the land that hath some hope to grow."

THIS poem, if we are to accept the expression in the introductory epistle-"the first heir of my invention"-literally, was Shakespeare's earliest composition. Some critics conceive it to have been written, indeed, before he quitted Stratford; but the question when and where it was produced has yet to be decided. It was entered on the Stationers' Registers by Richard Field, as "licensed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Wardens," in 1593, and the first edition was printed in the same year. This edition was speedily exhausted, and a second by the same printer was put forth in 1594. This again was followed by an octavo impression in 1596, and so much was the poem in demand that it had reached a fifth edition by 1602. After this date it was often reprinted, and copies of 1616, 1620, 1624, and 1627 are still extant. Its popularity, as Mr. Collier observes, is established also by the frequent mention of it in early writers.

"In the early part of Shakspeare's life, his poems seem to have gained him more reputation than his plays ;-at least they are oftener mentioned or alluded to. Thus the author of an old comedy, called The Return from Parnassus, written about 1602, in his review of the poets of the time, says not a word of his dramatick compositions, but allots him his portion of fame solely on account of the poems that he had produced."-MALONE.

The text adopted in the present reprint of "Venus and Adonis " is that of the first quarto, 1593, collated with the best of the later editions.