Слике страница
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors]

his father Joash," &c. With this quotation I was furnished by Mr. Malone.

A quarto volume of plays attributed to Shakspeare, with the cypher of King Charles II. on the back of it, is preserved in Mr. Garrick's collection.

Though we are well convinced that Shakspeare has written slight ballads for the sake of discriminating characters more strongly, or for other necessary purposes, in the course of his mixed dramas, it is scarce credible, that after he had cleared his stage, he should exhibit his Clown afresh, and with so poor a recommendation as this song, which is utterly unconnected with the subject of the preceding comedy. I do not therefore hesitate to call the nonsensical ditty before us, some buffoon actor's composition, which was accidentally tacked to the Prompter's copy of Twelfth-Night, having been casually subjoined to it for the diversion, or at the call, of the lowest order of spectators. In the year 1766, I saw the late Mr. Weston summoned out and obliged to sing Johnny Pringle and his Pig, after the performance of Voltaire's Mahomet, at the Theatre Royal in Drury-Lane. STEEVENS.

The copy of the second folio of Shakspeare, which formerly belonged to King Charles, and mentioned in the preceding notes, is now in the library of his present Majesty, who has corrected a mistake of Dr. Farmer's, relative to Sir Thomas Herbert, inadvertently admitted by Mr. Steevens, but here omitted. REED.

This play is in the graver part elegant and easy, and in some of the lighter scenes exquisitely humorous. Ague-cheek is drawn with great propriety, but his character is, in a great measure, that of natural fatuity, and is therefore not the proper prey of a satirist. The soliloquy of Malvolio is truly comic; he is betrayed to ridicule merely by his pride. The marriage of Olivia, and the succeeding perplexity, though well enough contrived to divert on the stage, wants credibility, and fails to produce the proper instruction required in the drama, as it exhibits no just picture of life. JOHNSON.

T. Davison, Lombard-street,
Whitefriars, London.

END OF VOL. V.

1

« ПретходнаНастави »