GARRICK.
The genius of Garrick seems to have been particularly calculated to introduce Shakespeare on the stage. He knew how to alter him so as to fit him for the audience of the present day, without divesting him of any of his excellencies, and the few additions he has ventured are in the spirit of the original. These Plays, so altered, are likely to keep possession of the theatre, while every other attempt at change or improvement are forgotten, except Cibber’s Richard the Third, and Tate’s Lear, which, with some correction of Garrick’s, are still acted, though the alteration of the last is directly in opposition to the precepts of Aristotle and Mr. Addison.
Cibber, though versed in the province of the drama, which is perhaps essential to make a good dramatic writer, since the knowledge of stage effect is of great consequence, possessed a genius not above mediocrity; and Tate was a very indifferent poet. Yet there is a line in Cibber’s Richard, written by himself, so characteristic of the manner of his archetype, that it has often been cited as one of Shakespeare’s beauties. I mean the exclamation of Richard, on Buckingham’s being taken,
And I heard, says Mr. Pye, (Comment. on Aristotle,) Mr. Pitt, afterwards Lord Chatham, quote the following verse of Tate’s, in the House of Commons, undoubtedly taking it for Shakespeare’s,
The tragedy of Hamlet was, by order of Mrs. Garrick, thrown into Garrick’s grave. Though he was undoubtedly great in that character, he was equally so in many of Shakespeare’s characters, and superior in Lear. The comic characters it is presumed were thought too light for so solemn an occasion. If by burying that tragedy with Garrick it was meant to infer that it was lost to the stage with him, a complete edition of Shakespeare might, with the utmost propriety have been interred with that inimitable actor.