WILLIAM ROWLEY.

A New Wonder; a Woman never Vext.—­The old play-writers are distinguished by an honest boldness of exhibition,—­they show everything without being ashamed.  If a reverse in fortune is to be exhibited, they fairly bring us to the prison-grate and the alms-basket.  A poor man on our stage is always a gentleman; he may be known by a peculiar neatness of apparel, and by wearing black.  Our delicacy, in fact, forbids the dramatizing of distress at all.  It is never shown in its essential properties; it appears but as the adjunct of some virtue, as something which is to be relieved, from the approbation of which relief the spectators are to derive a certain soothing of self-referred satisfaction.  We turn away from the real essences of things to hunt after their relative shadows, moral duties; whereas, if the truth of things were fairly represented, the relative duties might be safely trusted to themselves, and moral philosophy lose the name of a science.

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THOMAS MIDDLETON.

The Witch.—­Though some resemblance may be traced between the charms in Macbeth and the incantations in this play, which is supposed to have preceded it, this coincidence will not detract much from the originality of Shakspeare.  His witches are distinguished from the witches of Middleton by essential differences.  These are creatures to whom man or woman, plotting some dire mischief, might resort for occasional consultation.  Those originate deeds of blood, and begin bad impulses to men.  From the moment that their eyes first meet with Macbeth’s, he is spellbound.  That meeting sways his destiny.  He can never break the fascination.  These witches can hurt the body; those have power over the soul.  Hecate in Middleton has a son, a low buffoon:  the hags of Shakspeare have neither child of their own, nor seem to be descended from any parent.  They are foul anomalies, of whom we know not whence they are sprung, nor whether they have beginning or ending.  As they are without human passions, so they seem to be without human relations.  They come with thunder and lightning, and vanish to airy music.  This is all we know of them.  Except Hecate, they have no names; which heightens their mysteriousness.  The names, and some of the properties which the other author has given to his hags, excite smiles.  The Weird Sisters are serious things.  Their presence cannot coexist with mirth.  But in a lesser degree, the witches of Middleton are fine creations.  Their power, too, is, in some measure, over the mind.  They raise jars, jealousies, strifes, “like a thick scurf” over life.

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WILLIAM ROWLEY,—­THOMAS DECKER,—­JOHN FORD, ETC.

The Witch of Edmonton.—­Mother Sawyer, in this wild play, differs from the hags of both Middleton and Shakspeare.  She is the plain, traditional old woman witch of our ancestors; poor, deformed, and ignorant; the terror of villages, herself amenable to a justice.  That should he a hardy sheriff, with the power of the county at his heels, that would lay hands on the Weird Sisters.  They are of another jurisdiction.  But upon the common and received opinion, the author (or authors) have engrafted strong fancy.  There is something frightfully earnest in her invocations to the Familiar.