The DEFENCE is kindly; and bears with it, we must acknowledge, a specious air. In the mean time, here lacks surely something to the regular ordering of the trial. Where, we should be glad to know, is the CORPUS DELICTI? Before justifying, let us hear some witnesses to the OFFENCE. Let us call over the Comedies. Here is the roll of them.
THE TEMPEST!--_Dramatis Personæ:_--Alonso, KING of Naples;--Sebastian, HIS BROTHER;--Prospero, the RIGHTFUL DUKE of Milan!--Antonio, HIS BROTHER, the USURPING DUKE of Milan!--Ferdinand, SON TO THE KING OF NAPLES!--Gonzalo, an honest old COUNSELLOR of Naples!--Adrian, Francisco, LORDS!--Really, we are afraid that all the ignobler males left, Caliban, a savage and deformed SLAVE; Trinculo, a JESTER; Stephano, a drunken BUTLER; the MASTER OF A SHIP, the BOATSWAIN, and MARINERS--will not, any more than Miranda, with Ariel and the Spirits who personate in Prospero's masque, and who clear out the playbill, suffice to lay THE SCENE of the "Tempest" AMONG tradesmen and mechanics. Next come, handsomely cloaked and feathered in old Italian garb, "The TWO GENTLEMEN of Verona!"
But we will not spare, any further, the curious reader the labour of turning over the leaves of his own copy, or of his memory. The truth is, as every reader's recollection at once answers, that the rule for the comedy of Shakspeare, respectively to the social degrees along which it moves, may be worded safely enough from the scheme of persons exhibited above. The comedy of Shakspeare removes itself, by two great strides, from the meaner sort of its auditory; for light-footed, or more seriously-pacing, it loves to tread on floors of state; it associates familiarly with the highly-born and the highly-natured. His Thalia is of a very aristocratic humour. But, more than this, she further distances the vulgar associations and experience of her spectators, by putting between herself and them the Romance of Manners. We have seen the names--Naples, Milan, Verona. Let us pursue the roll-call. In "Twelfth Night," the "scene" is a city in Illyria, and the sea-coast near it;--in "Measure for Measure," VIENNA;--in "Much Ado about Nothing," MESSINA;--in the "Midsummer Night's dream," ATHENS, AND A WOOD NOT FAR FROM IT;--in "Love's Labour's Lost," NAVARRE;--in the "Merchant of Venice," PARTLY AT VENICE, AND PARTLY AT BELMONT, THE SEAT OF PORTIA, ON THE CONTINENT (understand, OF ITALY;)--in "As You Like It," THE SCENE LIES, FIRST, NEAR OLIVER'S HOUSE; AFTERWARDS, PARTLY IN THE USURPER'S COURT, AND PARTLY IN THE FOREST OF ARDEN;--in "All's Well that End's Well," PARTLY IN FRANCE, AND PARTLY IN TUSCANY;--in the "Taming of the Shrew," SOMETIMES IN PADUA, AND SOMETIMES IN PETRUCHIO'S HOUSE IN THE COUNTRY;--in "The Winter's Tale," (a comedy, wherein only two of the personages die--one eaten,) THE SCENE IS SOMETIMES IN SICILIA, SOMETIMES IN BOHEMIA;--in the "Comedy of Errors," at EPHESUS;--Last of all, in the "Merry Wives of Windsor," in WINDSOR and the parts adjacent. THIRTEEN comedies lying in Italy, Illyria, Germany, Greece, France, Asia Minor, Sicily, Bohemia, and in that uninhabited island, inhabited by a day-dream, and which lies nowhere. _One_ in _England_.