Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/311

[ 295 ] that Greene’s Arcadia was publihed:) for uppoing this to have been a neer at Shakpeare, it might have been inerted in ome new edition of this tract after 1596; it being a frequent practice of Nahe and Greene, to make additions to their pamphlets at every re-impreSS undefinedion.

But it is by no means clear, that Shakpeare was the peron whom Nahe had here in contemplation. He eems to point at ome dramatick writer of that time, who had been originally a crivener or attorney:

“ A clerk foredoom’d his father’s oul to cros, Who pen’d a tanza when he hould engros”—

who, intead of trancribing deeds and pleadings, choe to imitate Seneca’s plays, of which a tranlation had been publihed not many years before.—“ The trade of Noverint” is the trade of an attorney or notary. Shakpeare was not bred to the law, at leat we have no uch tradition; nor, however freely he may have borrowed from North’s Plutarch and Holinhed’s Chronicle, does he appear to be at all indebted to the tranlation of Seneca.

Of all the writers of the age of queen Elizabeth, Nahe is the mot licentious in his language; perpetually ditorting words from their primitive ignification, in a manner often puerile and ridiculous, but more frequently incomprehenible and aburd. His proe works, it they were collected together, would perhaps exhibit a greater farrago of unintelligible jargon, than is to be found in the productions of any author ancient or modern. An argument that rets on a term ued by uch a writer, has but a weak foundation.

The phrae—“ whole hamlets of tragical peeches”—is certainly intelligible, without uppoing an alluion to the play; and might have only meant a large quantity.—We meet a imilar expreSS undefinedion in our author’s Cymbeline.

“ I’d let a parih of uch Clotens blood.”—

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