Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/189



The vulgarity of the Porter's language, in the third scene of the second act, repelled Coleridge, who pronounced it to be an after-thought of some baser hand. "I dare pledge myself to demonstrate," said he, that it was an interpolation of the actors. Other critics have followed with the same feeling of condemnation. But only Shakspeare could have risen above such a conventional estimate, and have put this piece of solid consistency into that part of the tragedy which it strengthens: there it stays in the only place where Nature could have lent to it her justification. We can readily admit that the undisguised lechery of Pandarus in "Troilus and Cressida," and the brothel scenes in "Pericles," were subsequent additions to those plays by a pen that was accustomed to deal in broad effects without regard to the organic exaction of the other characters. Perhaps they were fragments of older plays left over by carelessness, or, what is much more likely, introduced as gags by the play-actors. But we can spare them out of the legacy of Shakspeare because they are not in the manner which he used when broadness served his purpose. When the gross details are hung over and fondled lewdly, recurred to morbidly, laid open with ingenious particularity till we detect the sickening odor of the dissecting-room which rises from slashed