Luciana. She never reprehended him but mildly,
When he demeaned himself rough, rude, and wildly.--
Why bear you these rebukes, and answer not?
Adriana. She did betray me to my own reproof.
Pinch the conjurer is also an excrescence not to be found in
Plautus. He is indeed a very formidable anachronism.
They brought one Pinch, a hungry lean-fac'd villain,
A meer anatomy, a mountebank,
A thread-bare juggler and a fortune-teller,
A needy, hollow-ey'd, sharp-looking wretch,
A living dead man.
This is exactly like some of the Puritanical portraits to be met
with in Hogarth.
DOUBTFUL PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE
We shall give for the satisfaction of the reader what the celebrated
German critic, Schlegel, says on this subject, and then add a very
few remarks of our own.
'All the editors, with the exception of Capell, are unanimous in
rejecting TITUS ANDRONICUS as unworthy of Shakespeare, though they
always allow it to be printed with the other pieces, as the
scapegoat, as it were, of their abusive criticism. The correct
method in such an investigation is first to examine into the
external grounds, evidences, &c., and to weigh their worth; and then
to adduce the internal reasons derived from the quality of the work.
The critics of Shakespeare follow a course directly the reverse of
this; they set out with a preconceived opinion against a piece, and
seek, in justification of this opinion, to render the historical
grounds suspicious, and to set them aside.
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