Why have the dramatists of the times of Elizabeth, James I. and the first Charles become almost obsolete, with the exception of Shakspeare? Why do they no longer belong to the English, being once so popular? And why is Shakspeare an exception?--One thing, among fifty, necessary to the full solution is, that they all employed poetry and poetic diction on unpoetic subjects, both characters and situations, especially in their comedy. Now Shakspeare is all, all ideal,--of no time, and therefore for all times. Read, for instance, Marine's panegyric in the first scene of this play:-- Know The eminent court, to them that can be wise, And fasten on her blessings, is a sun, &c. What can be more unnatural and inappropriate--(not only is, but must be felt as such)--than such poetry in the mouth of a silly dupe? In short, the scenes are mock dialogues, in which the poet _solus_ plays the ventriloquist, but cannot keep down his own way of expressing himself. Heavy complaints have been made respecting the transprosing of the old plays by Cibber; but it never occurred to these critics to ask, how it came that no one ever attempted to transprose a comedy of Shakspeare's. THE CORONATION. Act I. Speech of Seleucus:-- Altho' he be my enemy, should any Of the gay flies that buz about the court, _Sit_ to catch trouts i' the summer, tell me so, I durst, &c. Colman's note. Pshaw! 'Sit' is either a misprint for 'set,' or the old and still provincial word for 'set,' as the participle passive of 'seat' or 'set.' I have heard an old Somersetshire gardener say:--"Look, Sir! I set these plants here; those yonder I 'sit' yesterday." Act ii. Speech of Arcadius:-- Nay, some will swear they love their mistress, Would hazard lives and fortunes, &c. Read thus:-- Nay, some will swear they love their mistress so, They would hazard lives and fortunes to preserve One of her hairs brighter than Berenice's, Or young Apollo's; and yet, after this, &c. '/They would HAzard/' [1]--furnishes an anapæst for an 'iambus'. 'And yet,' which must be read, /'ANyet'/, is an instance of the enclitic force in an accented monosyllable. /'And YET'/ is a complete 'iambus'; but 'anyet' is, like 'spirit', a dibrach u u, trocheized, however, by the 'arsis' or first accent damping, though not extinguishing, the second. [Footnote 1: As noted earlier in this text, the words between / marks are pronounced with stress on the upper-case syllables, and none on the lower-case syllables. In the original text, stress is indicated by a horizontal line over the syllable, and lack of stress by a u-shape, as the u u later in this paragraph. text Ed.] WIT AT SEVERAL WEAPONS. Act I. Oldcraft's speech: I'm arm'd at all points, &c. It would be very easy to restore all this passage to metre, by supplying a sentence of four syllables, which the reasoning almost demands, and by correcting the grammar. Read thus:--