to this our author, in both paffages, feems plainly to allude.

FALCON BRIDGE.

Here's a ftay;

"That shakes the rotten carcafs of old death

Out of his rags.

I must own, I fee no great difficulty in the word ftay; which means no more, notwithstanding all the attributes given to it by the fpeaker, than a very great and almoft infurmountable obstacle. Perhaps the power of the word ftay may be best known from a very old author; from Gawin Dowglas's Tranflation of Virgil take the four following lines:

Ane port there is whom the est fludis has
In manere of ane boule or bay,

With rochis set forgane the ftreme full flay,
To brek the falt fame of the feyis ftoure.

The very learned and modeft author of the Gloffary to this book, for no man knows to whom he is obliged for that excellent and learned commentary of old and difficult words, Scottish and Saxon, explains

Stay

Stay by fleep, "as we fay in Scotland, a flay brae, a high bank of difficult ascent, from the verb stay, to stop or hinder, because the fteepness retards those who climb it, as the Latins fay, iter impeditum, loca impedita; or, from the Belgic, ftegigh, præruptus.

Mr. Steevens and Mr. Malone have brought many paffages from old writers to prove the use of the word stay in the sense wherein it is applied by Shakspeare.

BASTARD.

But

'Mad world! Mad kings! Mad compofition! Theobald, with great propriety, finishes the fecond act with this foliloquy of Falconbridge, which is a very humourous and fatirical application to the felfish feelings of the far greatest part of mankind. why mad world! mad kings! and mad compofition? The treaty was a counterpart to almost all the treaties which have been made between princes for many ages past. Honour, faith, juftice, and common honefty, on these occafions, are little regarded; and interest, or commodity, as Shak

fpeare

fpeare terms it, folely kept in view by the contractors. It is true, that treaties are entered into in the most folemn manner, and in the name of the holy and undivided Trinity; but this is matter of mere form, and, by many princes, as little remembered as a coronation-oath, which is always taken with great folemnity, and but feldom called to mind, except with a view to make free with it.

Had Shakspeare faid bad world, &c. it would have been nearer the mark. But, in our author's language, which is equally copious and licentious, the word mad fometimes fignifies, as it does here, ftrange! odd! prepofterous! abfurd!

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CHAPTER III.

AdmiraMrs. Butler

Character of Lady Conftance. bly acted by Mrs. Cibber. fet up as her rival. Quin's opinion of Mrs. Cibber-High tides in the calendar.-Mrs. Cibber and Winstone.-Reasons why Mr. Macklin fhould not have acted Pandulph. Quin's farcafm. Pope's Legate, to Macklin, and why. Mrs. Pritchard refufes Colley Cibber's advice. Stephen Langton's character. Shakspeare not a Roman Catholic.-Anecdote of Walker and Boman.

Cibber inferior, in the

HITHERTO the character of Con

ftance has been feen to little ad

vantage. Her speeches were rather more conformable to the fcold or virago than the injured princess and afflicted mother. In the first scene of the third act the appears with the dignity of just refentment and majesty of maternal grief. To suppose that the art of acting was not amply, if

not perfectly, understood and practifed, in the days of our author, would be an injury to the feelings of every intelligent reader. How many variations of action and paffion are in the first speech of this fcene, confisting only of twenty fix lines, all naturally refulting from the agitations of a mind anxioufly inquiring into the truth of that which it dreads to know! Even the under character, Salisbury, is called upon, by the words of Conftance, to express the different paffions of his mind by variety as well as juftness of action; as in the following

lines :

What doft thou mean by fhaking of thy head?
Why doft thou look fo fadly on my son?

What means that hand upon that breast of thine? Why holds thine eye that lamentable rheum ? Be thefe fad fighs confirmers of thy words? Lady Conftance's paffionate effufion of rage, grief, and indignation, from which fcarce a line or thought can be expunged, to his eternal difgrace, Cibber has either entirely fuppreffed, or wretchedly spoiled, by vilę

and