67 THIS play is more correctly written than most of Shakspeare's compositions, but it is not one of those in which either the extent of his views or elevation of his fancy is fully displayed. As the story abounded with materials, he has exerted little invention; but he has diversified his characters with great variety, and preserved them with great exactness. His vicious characters disgust, but cannot corrupt, for both Cressida and Pandarus are detested and contemned. The comick characters seem to have been the favourites of the writer: they are of the superficial kind, and exhibit more of manners than nature; but they are copiously filled and powerfully impressed. Shakspeare has in his story followed, for the greater part, the old book of Caxton, which was then very popular; but the character of Thersites, of which it makes no mention, is a proof that this play was written after Chapman had published his version of Homer*. JOHNSON. * It should, however, be remembered that Thersites had been long in possession of the stage in an Interlude bearing his name. The first seven books of Chapman's Homer were published in 1596, and again in 1598, twelve books not long afterward, and the whole twenty-four books at latest in 1611. The classical reader may be surprised that Shakspeare, having had the means of being acquainted with the great father of poetry through the medium of Chapman's translation, should not have availed himself of such an original instead of the Troy Booke; but it should be recollected that it was his object as a writer for the stage to coincide with the feelings and prejudices of his audience, who, believing themselves to have drawn their descent from Troy, would by no means have been pleased to be told that Achilles was a braver man than Hector. They were ready to think well of the Trojans as their ancestors, but not very anxious about knowing their history with much correctness; and Shakspeare might have applied to worse sources of information than even Lydgate.'-Boswell. |