Shore].1
______
Except in one particular Rowe has been
perfectly historical in this play.
Jane Shore was, as he has represented,
accused of witchcraft; and proof of her guilt, in that instance, having failed, she
was next charged with the crime of adultery; an accusation it was in vain to deny;
and by sentence of the ecclesiastical court, she was made to perform penance in St.
Paul's church, and then to walk barefooted through some of the adjoining
streets.2
But Jane Shore, perishing for hunger, is
the fiction of an old ballad, and no intelligence from history; or, if she did expire
for want of food, it was not in consequence of any judgment passed upon her, as she
lived to an advanced age before the event took place:3 for Sir Thomas More
assures his readers, that, in the reign of Henry VIII. forty years after
her humiliating punishment was inflicted, he has frequently seen her gathering herbs,
in a field near the city, for her nightly repast.—She was now, he adds,
"extremely old and shrivelled; without one trace of her former beauty."4
Rowe has produced, from the incidents of
her singular life this favourite play.—The wife of a goldsmith of Lombard
Street,5 has drawn tears from the
b
2[Page 4] rich and the poor, for these hundred years past; and
will never cease having power over the hearts of an audience, whilst an actress can
be found to represent her, and her sorrows, with apparent truth.
Of the other characters of this tragedy, little can be said in praise, except of
Alicia6 —and
it is curious to observe, how widely two learned critics have differed in their
opinion respecting the merit of this part.— Dr. Johnson says, "Alicia is a character
of empty noise, with no resemblance to real sorrow, or natural madness."7
Whilst Dr. Warton has said, "The
interview between Jane Shore and Alicia, in
the fifth act, is very affecting, where the madness of Alicia is well
painted."8
To reconcile these two opposite criticisms, it may be supposed—that those great
critics spoke as spectators, not as readers: and the one had seen a good, and the
other a bad actress, perform the part.
Alicia can surely be rendered as pathetic as Jane
Shore, provided the character is acted with equal skill: for, though Jane has the advantage of her friend, in
being the personage whom the auditors have come purposely to see, and of whom they
have heard speak from their childhood, yet Alicia's calamities are far more heavy
than those of the famished Shore.—The
former is tortured by the most poignant remorse that human nature can
sustain—her conscience is loaded with a fellow-creature's death—nor has
she the enjoyment of malice, to diminish her[Page 5] sense of guilt; as she became
a murderer through the wild extravagance of love, not hate.
The parting scene between her and the condemned Hastings, where he forgives her as the
cause of his immediate execution, has something more
affecting, than the last scene of the drama, where Shore forgives his dying
wife.
The husband's pardon comes, after time has softened, and penitence mitigated, his
wrongs—the lover forgives a more fatal injury, and its consequences that moment
impending.9
b 3