away the dead body of Sempronius. Well, but let us regard him
listening. Having left his apprehension behind him, he, at first,
applies what Marcia says to Sempronius; but finding at last, with much
ado, that he himself is the happy man, he quits his eaves-dropping, and
discovers himself just time enough to prevent his being cuckolded by
a dead man, of whom the moment before he had appeared so jealous, and
greedily intercepts the bliss which was fondly designed for one who
could not be the better for it. But here I must ask a question: how
comes Juba to listen here, who had not listened before throughout the
play? Or how comes he to be the only person of this tragedy who listens,
when love and treason were so often talked in so public a place as a
hall? I am afraid the author was driven upon all these absurdities only
to introduce this miserable mistake of Marcia, which, after all, is
much below the dignity of tragedy; as anything is which is the effect or
result of trick.
"But let us come to the scenery of the fifth act. Cato appears first
upon the scene, sitting in a thoughtful posture; in his hand Plato's
Treatise on the Immortality of the Soul; a drawn sword on the table by
him. Now let us consider the place in which this sight is presented to
us. The place, forsooth, is a long hall. Let us suppose that any one
should place himself in this posture, in the midst of one of our halls
in London; that he should appear solus, in a sullen posture, a
drawn sword on the table by him; in his hand Plato's Treatise on the
Immortality of the Soul, translated lately by Bernard Lintot: I desire
the reader to consider whether such a person as this would pass with
them who beheld him for a great patriot, a great philosopher, or a
general, or some whimsical person who fancied himself all these? and
whether the people who belonged to the family would think that such a
person had a design upon their midriffs or his own?
"In short, that Cato should sit long enough in the aforesaid posture,
in the midst of this large hall, to read over Plato's Treatise on the
Immortality of the Soul, which is a lecture of two long hours; that he
should propose to himself to be private there upon that occasion; that
he should be angry with his son for intruding there; then that he should
leave this hall upon the pretence of sleep, give himself the mortal
wound in his bedchamber, and then be brought back into that hall to
expire, purely to show his goo
|