along which it
moves, may be worded safely enough from the scheme of persons exhibited
above. The comedy of Shakspeare removes itself, by two great strides, from
the meaner sort of its auditory; for light-footed, or more
seriously-pacing, it loves to tread on floors of state; it associates
familiarly with the highly-born and the highly-natured. His Thalia is of a
very aristocratic humour. But, more than this, she further distances the
vulgar associations and experience of her spectators, by putting between
herself and them the Romance of Manners. We have seen the names--Naples,
Milan, Verona. Let us pursue the roll-call. In "Twelfth Night," the
"scene" is a city in Illyria, and the sea-coast near it;--in "Measure for
Measure," VIENNA;--in "Much Ado about Nothing," MESSINA;--in the
"Midsummer Night's dream," ATHENS, AND A WOOD NOT FAR FROM IT;--in "Love's
Labour's Lost," NAVARRE;--in the "Merchant of Venice," PARTLY AT VENICE,
AND PARTLY AT BELMONT, THE SEAT OF PORTIA, ON THE CONTINENT (understand,
OF ITALY;)--in "As You Like It," THE SCENE LIES, FIRST, NEAR OLIVER'S
HOUSE; AFTERWARDS, PARTLY IN THE USURPER'S COURT, AND PARTLY IN THE
FOREST OF ARDEN;--in "All's Well that End's Well," PARTLY IN FRANCE, AND
PARTLY IN TUSCANY;--in the "Taming of the Shrew," SOMETIMES IN PADUA, AND
SOMETIMES IN PETRUCHIO'S HOUSE IN THE COUNTRY;--in "The Winter's Tale," (a
comedy, wherein only two of the personages die--one eaten,) THE SCENE IS
SOMETIMES IN SICILIA, SOMETIMES IN BOHEMIA;--in the "Comedy of Errors," at
EPHESUS;--Last of all, in the "Merry Wives of Windsor," in WINDSOR and the
parts adjacent. THIRTEEN comedies lying in Italy, Illyria, Germany,
Greece, France, Asia Minor, Sicily, Bohemia, and in that uninhabited
island, inhabited by a day-dream, and which lies nowhere. _One_ in
_England_.

We throw every thing together. To Shakspeare the boarded stage is the
field of imagination. He comes from the hand of Nature an essential poet.
That he is a dramatic poet, should have two reasons. The first, given in
his poetical constitution; that the piercing and various inquisition of
humanity for which he was gifted; the intimate mastery of passion; and the
extraordinary activity of ratiocination which distinguish him, are
satisfied only by the Drama. Then, in the accident of the times--that as
the stage rose for AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and they for the
stage--so, with Shakspeare, in England. At a certain point of the social
progr