The Plays and Poems of William Shakspeare With the Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators: Comprehending, Vol. 15 (Classic Reprint)

Tempest and The Midsummer-N ight sD ream are the noblest efforts of that sublime and amazing imagination peculiar to Shakspeare, which soars above the bounds of nature, without forsaking sense ;or, more properly, carries nature along with him beyond her established limits. Fletcher seems particularly to have admired these two plays, and hath wrote two in imitation of them, The Sea Voyage and The Faithful Shepherdess. But when he presumes to break a lance withS hakspeare, and write in emulation of him, as he does inT he False One, which is the rival of Antony and Cleopatra, he is not so successful. After him, Sir John Suckling and Milton catched the brightest fire of their imagination from these two plays ;which shines fantastically indeed inT he Goblins, but much more nobly and serenely inT heM ask at Ludlow Castle. Warburton. No one has hitherto been lucky enough to discover the romance on whichS hakspeare may be supposed to have founded this play, the beauties of which could not secure it from the criticism of Ben Jonson, whose malignity appears to have been more than equal to his wit. In the introduction to Bartholomew Fair, he says :I fthere be never a servant monster in the fair, who can help it, he says, nora nest of antiques? He is loth to make nature afraid in his plays, like those that beget Tales, Tempests, and such like drolleries. Steevens. I was informed by the late Mr. Collins of Chichester, thatS hakspeare sT empest, for which no origin is yet assigned, was formed on a romance called Aurelio and I sabella, printed in I talian, Spanish, French, andE nglish, in 1588. But though this information has not proved true on examination, an useful conclusion may be drawn from it, thatS hakspeare sstory is somewhere to be found in an Italian novel, at least that the story preceded Shakspeare. Mr. Collins had searched this subject with no less fidelity th
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)