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As I have not propos’d to my self to enter into a large and compleat criticism upon Shakespear‘s Works, so I suppose it will neither be expected that I should take notice of the severe remarks that have been formerly made upon him by Mr. Rhymer. I must confess, I can’t very well see what could be the reason of his animadverting with so much sharpness, upon the faults of a man excellent on most occasions, and whom all the world ever was and will be inclin’d to have an esteem and veneration for. If it was to shew his own knowledge in the Art of Poetry, besides that there is a vanity in making that only his design, I question if there be not many imperfections as well in those schemes and precepts he has given for the direction of others, as well as in that sample of Tragedy which he has written to shew the excellency of his own Genius. If he had a pique against the man, and wrote on purpose to ruin a reputation so well establish’d, he has had the mortification to fail altogether in his attempt, and to see the world at least as fond of Shakespear as of his Critique. But I won’t believe a gentleman, and a good-natur’d man, capable of the last intention. Whatever may have been his meaning, finding fault is certainly the easiest task of knowledge, and commonly those men of good judgment, who are likewise of good and gentle dispositions, abandon this ungrateful province to the tyranny of pedants. If one would enter into the beauties of Shakespear, there is a much larger, as well as a more delightful field; but as I won’t prescribe to the tastes of other people, so I will only take the liberty, with all due submission to the judgments of others, to observe some of those things I have been pleas’d with in looking him over.

His Plays are properly to be distinguish’d only into Comedies and Tragedies. Those which are called Histories, and even some of his Comedies, are really Tragedies, with a run or mixture of Comedy amongst ’em. That way of Trage-comedy was the common mistake of that age, and is indeed become so agreeable to the English taste, that tho’ the severer Critiques among us cannot bear it, yet the generality of our audiences seem to be better pleas’d with it than with an exact Tragedy. The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Comedy of Errors, and The Taming of the Shrew, are all pure Comedy; the rest, however they are call’d, have something of both kinds. ‘Tis not very easy to determine which way of writing he was most excellent in. There is certainly a great deal of entertainment in his comical humours; and tho’ they did not then strike at all ranks of people, as the Satyr of the present age has taken the liberty to do, yet there is a pleasing and a well-distinguish’d variety in those characters which he thought fit to meddle with. Falstaff is allow’d by every body to be a master-piece; the Character is always well-sustain’d, tho’ drawn out into the length of three Plays; and even the account of his death, given by his old landlady Mrs. Quickly, in the first act of Henry V., tho’ it be extremely natural, is yet as diverting as any part of his life. If there be any fault in the draught he has made of this lewd old fellow, it is, that tho’ he has made him a thief, lying, cowardly, vain-glorious, and in short every way vicious, yet he has given him so much wit as to make him almost too agreeable; and I don’t know whether some people have not, in remembrance of the diversion he had formerly afforded ’em, been sorry to see his friend Hal use him so scurvily, when he comes to the crown in the end of the second part of Henry the Fourth. Amongst other extravagances, in The Merry Wives of Windsor, he has made him a Deer-stealer, that he might at the same time remember his Warwickshire prosecutor, under the name of Justice Shallow ; he has given him very near the same coat of arms which Dugdale, in his Antiquities of that county, describes for a family there, and makes the Welsh parson descant very pleasantly upon ’em. That whole play is admirable; the humours are various and well oppos’d; the main design, which is to cure Ford of his unreasonable jealousie, is extremely well conducted. Falstaff’s Billet-Doux, and Master Slender‘s