[Footnote A: "A Shefeld thwitel bare he in his hose."--CHAUCER. _The Reve's Tale._]
We desire the reader to close his eyes for a moment and endeavor to fancy himself in the position of William Shakspeare about to write a piece,--the play abovenamed. This may be attempted without presumption. We wish to recall and make real the fact that our idol was a man, subject to the usual circumstances of men living in his time, and to those which affect all men at all times,--that he had the same round of day and night to pass through, the same common household accidents which render "no man a hero to his valet." The world was as real to him as it is to us. The dreamy past, of two hundred and fifty years since, was to him the present of one of the most stirring periods in history, when wonders were born quite as frequently as they are now.
And having persuaded the reader to place himself in Shakspeare's position, we will make one more very slight request, which is, that he will occupy another chair in the same chamber and fancy that he sees the immortal dramatist begin a work,--still keeping himself so far in his position that he can observe the workings of his mind as he writes.
Shakspeare has fixed upon a name for his piece, and he writes it,--he that the players told Ben Jonson "never blotted a line." It is the tragedy,--
He will have it in five acts, as the best form; and he has fixed upon his _dramatis personae_, at least the principal of them, for he names them on the margin as he writes. He uses twelve in the first scene, some of whom he has no occasion for but to bring forward the character of his hero; but they are all individualized while he employs them. The scene he has fixed upon; this is present to his mind's eye; and as he cannot afterwards alter it without making his characters talk incongruously and being compelled to rewrite the whole, he writes it down thus:--
Now he has reflected that his first object is to interest his audience in the action and passion of the piece,--at the very outset, if possible, to catch their fancies and draw them into the mimic life of the play,--to beguile and attract them without their knowing it. He has reflected upon this, we say,--for see how artfully he opens the scene, and how soon the empty stage is peopled with life! He chooses to begin by having two persons enter from opposite wings, whose qualities are known at once to the reader of the play, but not to an audience. The stage-direction informs us:--