At the opening of the third act we are thrown among a
wholly new set of characters and events, all utterly out of all harmony
and keeping with all that has gone before. Edward alone survives as
nominal protagonist; but this survival--assuredly not of the fittest--is
merely the survival of the shadow of a name. Anything more pitifully
crude and feeble, more helplessly inartistic and incomposite, than this
process or pretence of juncture where there is no juncture, this
infantine shifting and shuffling of the scenes and figures, it is
impossible to find among the rudest and weakest attempts of the dawning
or declining drama in its first or second childhood.
It is the less necessary to analyse at any length the three remaining
acts of this play, that the work has already been done to my hand, and
well done, by Charles Knight; who, though no professed critic or esoteric
expert in Shakespearean letters, approved himself by dint of sheer
honesty and conscience not unworthy of a considerate hearing. To his
edition of Shakespeare I therefore refer all readers desirous of further
excerpts than I care to give.
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