INTRODUCTION TO TITUS ANDRONICUS.

HIS tragedy, like Pericles, is one of the doubtful dramas.

THIS

Yet

Its inferiority as a work of art or genius, and the revolting nature of the plot, make most readers wish that it could be decisively proved not to be Shakespeare's. Coleridge considered that the metre was against the supposition that it was by the poet; Hallam thought that few passages-scarcely one-resembles Shakespeare's manner; Johnson saw none of the poet's 'touches' in the play; and Steevens pointed out the absence of that vein of humour, and that quibbling or sporting with words, which Shakespeare constantly introduced into all his dramas. that the great poet had some connection with the play, may be inferred from two facts-first, that his contemporary Meres, so early as 1593, enumerates Titus Andronicus among the plays of Shakespeare, and mentions no other but what is genuine; secondly, that it was included by the original editors in the folio of 1623. From the registers of the Stationers' Company it appears that a play bearing the title of Titus Andronicus was produced before 1594. No copy of this performance has reached us, but it was, in all probability, the play attributed to Shakespeare, or the original piece before he revised it. Ben Jonson seems to give it a somewhat earlier date. In his Induction to Bartholomew Fair, first performed in 1614, Jonson sarcastically says: 'He that will swear Jeronimo or Andronicus are the best plays yet, shall pass unexcepted here, as a man whose judgment shews it is constant and hath stood still these five-and-twenty or thirty years.' The play, however,

was highly popular as a sensational drama, adapted to the rude taste of the times, when blood and slaughter were attractive on the stage. Mr Collier argues: 'We are not to suppose that at the time Shakespeare first joined a theatrical company in London, when he might not be more than twentytwo or twenty-three years old, his style was as formed and as matured as it afterwards became: all are aware that there is a most marked distinction between his mode of composition early and late in life; as exhibited, for instance, in Love's Labour's Lost and in The Winter's Tale; and we apprehend that Titus Andronicus belongs to a period even anterior to the former. Supposing Titus Andronicus to have been written about 1588, we are to recollect that our dramatic poets were then only beginning to throw off the shackles of rhyme, and their versification partook of the weight and monotony which were the usual accompaniments of couplets.' The earliest edition of this play known to be extant is a quarto of 1600, without the name of Shakespeare as author, but said to have been 'sundry times played by the Right Honourable the Earl of Pembroke, the Earl of Derby, the Earl of Sussex, and the Lord Chamberlain, their servants.' A second edition (also anonymous) appeared in 1611, and no other seems to have been called for before 1623.

'The work of criticism on the plays of our author, is, I believe, generally found to extend or contract itself in proportion to the value of the piece under consideration: and we shall always do little where we desire but little should be done. I know not that this piece stands in need of much emendation, though it might be treated as condemned criminals are in some countries -any experiments might be justifiably made on it. The author, whoever he was, might have borrowed the story, the names, the characters, &c., from an old ballad, which is entered in the books of the Stationers' Company immediately after the play on the same subject. "John Danter, Feb. 6, 1593. A book entitled A

Noble Roman Historie of Titus Andronicus." Entered again April 19, 1602, by Tho. Pavyer. The reader will find it in Dr Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. Dr Percy adds, that "there is reason to conclude that this play was rather improved by Shakespeare, with a few fine touches of his pen, than originally writ by him; for not to mention that the style is less figurative than his others generally are, this tragedy is mentioned with discredit in the Induction to Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair in 1614, as one that had then been exhibited 'five-and-twenty or thirty years' which, if we take the lowest number, throws it back to the year 1589, at which time Shakespeare was but twenty-five-an earlier date than can be found for any other of his pieces, and if it does not clear him entirely of it, shews at least it was a first attempt."

'Though we are obliged to Dr Percy for his attempt to clear our great dramatic writer from the imputation of having produced this sanguinary performance, yet I cannot admit that the circumstance of its being discreditably mentioned by Ben Jonson ought to have any weight, for Ben has not very sparingly censured The Tempest, and other pieces which are undoubtedly among the most finished works of Shakespeare. The whole of Ben's Prologue to Every Man in his Humour is a malicious sneer on him.

'Painter, in his Palace of Pleasure, speaks of the story of Titus as well known, and particularly mentions the cruelty of Tamora; and in A Knack to Know a Knave, 1594, is the following allusion to it:

"As welcome shall you be

To me, my daughters, and my son-in-law,
As Titus was unto the Roman senators,

When he had made a conquest on the Goths."

'Whatever were the motives of Heminge and Condell for admitting this tragedy among those of Shakespeare, all it has gained by their favour is, to be delivered down to posterity with repeated remarks of contempt-a Thersites babbling among heroes, and introduced only to be derided.'-STEEVENS.

'Compared with the versification of Greene, Peele, or Lodge, the lines in Titus Andronicus will be found to run with ease and variety, and they are scarcely inferior to the later and better productions of Marlowe. Neither is internal evidence wholly wanting, for words and phrases employed by Shakespeare in his other works may be pointed out; and in Act III. sc. I, we meet a remarkable expression, which is also contained in Venus and Adonis.'-COLLIER.