(149) General Observation.  This play is more correctly written than most of Shakespeare’s compositions, but it is not one of those in which either the extent of his views or elevation of his fancy is fully displayed.  As the story abounded with materials, he has exerted little invention; but he has diversified his characters with great variety, and preserved them with great exactness.  His vicious characters sometimes disgust, but cannot corrupt, for both Cressida and Pandarus are detested and contemned.  The comic characters seem to have been the favourites of the writer; they are of the superficial kind, and exhibit more of manners than nature; but they are copiously filled and powerfully impressed.  Shakespeare has in his story followed, for the greater part, the old book of Caxton, which was then very popular; but the character of Thersites, of which it makes no mention, is a proof that this play was written after Chapman had published his version of Homer.

CYMBELINE

I.i.1 (153,2)

  You do not meet a man, but frowns:  our bloods
  No more obey the heavens, than our courtiers’
  Still seen, as does the king’s]

[W:  brows/No more] This passage is so difficult, that commentators may differ concerning it without animosity or shame.  Of the two emendations proposed, Hanmer’s is the more licentious; but he makes the sense clear, and leaves the reader an easy passage.  Dr. Warburton has corrected with more caution, but less improvement:  his reasoning upon his own reading is so obscure and perplexed, that I suspect some injury of the press.—­I am now to tell my opinion, which is, that the lines stand as they were originally written, and that a paraphrase, such as the licentious and abrupt expressions of our author too frequently require, will make emendation unnecessary. We do not meet a man but frowns; our bloods—­our countenances, which, in popular speech, are said to be regulated by the temper of the blood,—­no more obey the laws of heaven,—­which direct us to appear what we really are,—­than our courtiers;—­that is, than the_ bloods of our courtiers_; but our bloods, like theirs,—­still seem, as doth the king’s.

I.i.25 (155,3) I do extend him, Sir, within himself] I extend him within himself:  my praise, however extensive, is within his merit.

I.i.46 (156,4) liv’d in court,/(Which rare it is to do) most prais’d, most lov’d] This encomium is high and artful.  To be at once in any great degree loved and praised is truly rare.

I.i.49 (156,5) A glass that feated them] A glass that featur’d them] Such is the reading in all the modern editions, I know not by whom first substituted, for

  A glass that feared them;—­