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Theseus. I will hear that play:

For never any thing can be amiss,
When fimpleness and duty tender it.

Hippolita also makes the fame objection, but

from a motive of humanity, only.

I love not to fee wretchedness d'ercharged,
And duty in bis feruice peribing.

Theseus. Why, gentle sweet, you shall fee no such thing.
Hippolita, He says, they can do nothing in this kind.
Theseus. The kinder we, to give them thanks for nothing.
Our sport foull be, to take what they mistake,
And what poor duty cannot do,
Noble respect takes not in might, but merit.
Where I have come, great clerks have purposed
To greet me with premeditated welcomes;
Where I have feen them thiver, and look pale,
Make periods in the midst of sentences,
Throttle their practised accent in their fears,
And, in conclufion, dumbly have broke off,
Not paying me a welcome. Trust me, Sweet,
Out of their filence yet I picked a welcome;
And in the modefty of fearful duty,
I read as much, as from the rattling tongue
Of faucy and audacious eloquence.
Love, therefore, and tongue-tied fimplicity,
In leaft speaks mast, to my capacity.

I must here conclude my observations on this Play, with the above beautiful passage, as there does not appear to me to be any thing else, in the remainder of it, worthy to fupply a reflection relative to the purposed scope or design of this Work.

POSTSCRIPT.

This Play is perfectly picturesque, and resembles fome rich landscape, where palaces and cottages, huntfmen and husbandmen, princes and peafants, appear in the fame scene together.

THE

TWO GENTLEMEN

OF

VERONA.

C4

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SILVIA, the Duke of Milan's Daughter, beloved of

Valentine.

JULIA, a Lady of Verona, beloved of Protheus.

[25]

THE

Two Gentlemen of Verona,

THE

HE Fable of this Play has no more moral in it, than the former, nor does it make us much amends, either by the number, or variety of its documents. I would, therefore, have passed it by, as some of the editors have done, on the suppofition of its not being one of Shakespeare's; but that I thought any thing which had ever been imputed to that author, had a right to claim a place in this Work; unless the rejection of it were established upon better grounds, than the diversity of opinions about its authenticity, among the Commentators,

And, indeed, were I to offer any doubt upon this point, myself, it should not be so much from the objections adduced by the editors, as on account of the unnatural inconsistency of character, in the person of Protheus; who, in the first Act, and during above half the second, appears to stand in the most amiable and virtuous lights, both of morals and manhood, as a fond lover, and a faithful friend; and yet suddenly belies his fair seemings, by an infidelity toward the first object, and a treachery with regard to the second. 'Tis true, indeed, that in the latter end he expresses a fort of contrition for his crimes; but yet this still feems to remain equivocal; as it does not appear to have arisen from any remorse of confcience, or abhorrence of his baseness, but rather from a disappointment in his pursuit, and an open detection of his villainy.

There are but few instances of this kind, that I remember to have met with, throughout the drama of Shakespeare; for however he may sport, as he often does, with the three unities of Aristotle, time, place,

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