Page:Shakspeare and His Times (1852).djvu/75

 never be attained by a machinery which thus coarsely displayed its wheel-works to public view. Among Shakspeare’s subsequent dramas, "Henry V.” and the "Winter’s Tale” are the only ones in which the chorus intervenes to relieve the poet in the difficult task of conveying his audience through time and space. The chorus of “Romeo and Juliet,” which was retained perhaps as a relic of ancient usage, is only a poetic ornament, quite unconnected with the action of the play. After the production of “Pericles,” dumb pageants completely disappeared; and if the three parts of "Henry VI.” do not attest, by their power of composition, a close relationship to Shakspeare’s system, nothing, at least in their material forms, is out of harmony with it.

Of these three pieces, the first has been absolutely denied to Shakspeare; and it is, in my opinion, equally difficult to believe that it is entirely his composition, and that the admirable scene between Talbot and his son does not bear the impress of his hand. Two old dramas, printed in 1600, contain the plan, and even numerous details of the second and third parts of “Henry VI.” These two original works were long attributed to our poet, as a first essay which he afterward perfected. But this opinion will not bear an attentive examination; and all the probabilities, both literary and historical, unite in granting to Shakspeare, in the last two parts of "Henry VI.,” no other share than that of a more important and extensive remodeling than he was able to bestow upon other works submitted to his correction. Brilliant developments, imagery conceived with taste and followed with skill, and a lofty, animated, and picturesque style, are the characteristics which distinguish the great poet’s work from the primitive production which he had merely beautified with his