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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/16412-h.zip b/16412-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..eaa8a6b --- /dev/null +++ b/16412-h.zip diff --git a/16412-h/16412-h.htm b/16412-h/16412-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..37c0316 --- /dev/null +++ b/16412-h/16412-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,7024 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>A Study of Shakespeare</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + color: gray;} + + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">A Study of Shakespeare, by Algernon Charles Swinburne</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Study of Shakespeare, by Algernon Charles +Swinburne, Edited by Edmund Gosse + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: A Study of Shakespeare + + +Author: Algernon Charles Swinburne + +Editor: Edmund Gosse + +Release Date: August 1, 2005 [eBook #16412] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>This ebook was prepared by Les Bowler.</p> +<h1>A STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE<br /> +BY ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.</h1> +<h2>PREFACE TO THIS EDITION</h2> +<p>Begun in the winter of 1874, a first instalment of “A Study +of Shakespeare” appeared in the <i>Fortnightly Review</i> for +May 1875, and a second in the number for June 1876, but the completed +work was not issued in book form until June 1880. In a letter +to me (January 31, 1875), Swinburne said:</p> +<blockquote><p>“I am now at work on my long-designed essay or +study on the metrical progress or development of Shakespeare, as traceable +by ear and <i>not</i> by finger, and the general changes of tone and +stages of mind expressed or involved in this change or progress of style.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The book was produced at the moment when controversy with regard +to the internal evidence of composition in the writings attributed to +Shakespeare was raging high, and the amusing appendices were added at +the last moment that they might infuriate the pedants of the New Shakespeare +Society. They amply fulfilled that amiable purpose.</p> +<p> EDMUND +GOSSE</p> +<p>September 1918</p> +<pre> CONTENTS + A STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE +I. FIRST PERIOD: LYRIC AND FANTASTIC +II. SECOND PERIOD: COMIC AND HISTORIC +III. THIRD PERIOD: TRAGIC AND ROMANTIC + APPENDIX +I. NOTE ON THE HISTORICAL PLAY OF KING EDWARD III. +II. REPORT OF THE PROCEEDINGS ON THIS FIRST ANNIVERSARY SESSION OF THE NEWEST SHAKESPEARE SOCIETY +III. ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS</pre> +<h2>A STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE.</h2> +<h3>I.</h3> +<p>The greatest poet of our age has drawn a parallel of elaborate eloquence +between Shakespeare and the sea; and the likeness holds good in many +points of less significance than those which have been set down by the +master-hand. For two hundred years at least have students of every +kind put forth in every sort of boat on a longer or a shorter voyage +of research across the waters of that unsounded sea. From the +paltriest fishing-craft to such majestic galleys as were steered by +Coleridge and by Goethe, each division of the fleet has done or has +essayed its turn of work; some busied in dredging alongshore, some taking +surveys of this or that gulf or headland, some putting forth through +shine and shadow into the darkness of the great deep. Nor does +it seem as if there would sooner be an end to men’s labour on +this than on the other sea. But here a difference is perceptible. +The material ocean has been so far mastered by the wisdom and the heroism +of man that we may look for a time to come when the mystery shall be +manifest of its furthest north and south, and men resolve the secret +of the uttermost parts of the sea: the poles also may find their Columbus. +But the limits of that other ocean, the laws of its tides, the motive +of its forces, the mystery of its unity and the secret of its change, +no seafarer of us all may ever think thoroughly to know. No wind-gauge +will help us to the science of its storms, no lead-line sound for us +the depth of its divine and terrible serenity.</p> +<p>As, however, each generation for some two centuries now or more has +witnessed fresh attempts at pilotage and fresh expeditions of discovery +undertaken in the seas of Shakespeare, it may be well to study a little +the laws of navigation in such waters as these, and look well to compass +and rudder before we accept the guidance of a strange helmsman or make +proffer for trial of our own. There are shoals and quicksands +on which many a seafarer has run his craft aground in time past, and +others of more special peril to adventurers of the present day. +The chances of shipwreck vary in a certain degree with each new change +of vessel and each fresh muster of hands. At one time a main rock +of offence on which the stoutest ships of discovery were wont to split +was the narrow and slippery reef of verbal emendation; and upon this +our native pilots were too many of them prone to steer. Others +fell becalmed offshore in a German fog of philosophic theories, and +would not be persuaded that the house of words they had built in honour +of Shakespeare was “dark as hell,” seeing “it had +bay-windows transparent as barricadoes, and the clear-stories towards +the south-north were as lustrous as ebony.” These are not +the most besetting dangers of more modern steersmen: what we have to +guard against now is neither a repetition of the pedantries of Steevens +nor a recrudescence of the moralities of Ulrici. Fresh follies +spring up in new paths of criticism, and fresh labourers in a fruitless +field are at hand to gather them and to garner. A discovery of +some importance has recently been proclaimed as with blare of vociferous +trumpets and flutter of triumphal flags; no less a discovery than this—that +a singer must be tested by his song. Well, it is something that +criticism should at length be awake to that wholly indisputable fact; +that learned and laborious men who can hear only with their fingers +should open their eyes to admit such a novelty, their minds to accept +such a paradox, as that a painter should be studied in his pictures +and a poet in his verse. To the common herd of students and lovers +of either art this may perhaps appear no great discovery; but that it +should at length have dawned even upon the race of commentators is a +sign which in itself might be taken as a presage of new light to come +in an epoch of miracle yet to be. Unhappily it is as yet but a +partial revelation that has been vouchsafed to them. To the recognition +of the apocalyptic fact that a workman can only be known by his work, +and that without examination of his method and material that work can +hardly be studied to much purpose, they have yet to add the knowledge +of a further truth no less recondite and abstruse than this; that as +the technical work of a painter appeals to the eye, so the technical +work of a poet appeals to the ear. It follows that men who have +none are as likely to arrive at any profitable end by the application +of metrical tests to the work of Shakespeare as a blind man by the application +of his theory of colours to the work of Titian.</p> +<p>It is certainly no news to other than professional critics that no +means of study can be more precious or more necessary to a student of +Shakespeare than this of tracing the course of his work by the growth +and development, through various modes and changes, of his metre. +But the faculty of using such means of study is not to be had for the +asking; it is not to be earned by the most assiduous toil, it is not +to be secured by the learning of years, it is not to be attained by +the devotion of a life. No proficiency in grammar and arithmetic, +no science of numeration and no scheme of prosody, will be here of the +least avail. Though the pedagogue were Briareus himself who would +thus bring Shakespeare under the rule of his rod or Shelley within the +limit of his line, he would lack fingers on which to count the syllables +that make up their music, the infinite varieties of measure that complete +the changes and the chimes of perfect verse. It is but lost labour +that they rise up so early, and so late take rest; not a Scaliger or +Salmasius of them all will sooner solve the riddle of the simplest than +of the subtlest melody. Least of all will the method of a scholiast +be likely to serve him as a clue to the hidden things of Shakespeare. +For all the counting up of numbers and casting up of figures that a +whole university—nay, a whole universe of pedants could accomplish, +no teacher and no learner will ever be a whit the nearer to the haven +where they would be. In spite of all tabulated statements and +regulated summaries of research, the music which will not be dissected +or defined, the “spirit of sense” which is one and indivisible +from the body or the raiment of speech that clothes it, keeps safe the +secret of its sound. Yet it is no less a task than this that the +scholiasts have girt themselves to achieve: they will pluck out the +heart not of Hamlet’s but of Shakespeare’s mystery by the +means of a metrical test; and this test is to be applied by a purely +arithmetical process. It is useless to pretend or to protest that +they work by any rule but the rule of thumb and finger: that they have +no ear to work by, whatever outward show they may make of unmistakable +ears, the very nature of their project gives full and damning proof. +Properly understood, this that they call the metrical test is doubtless, +as they say, the surest or the sole sure key to one side of the secret +of Shakespeare; but they will never understand it properly who propose +to secure it by the ingenious device of numbering the syllables and +tabulating the results of a computation which shall attest in exact +sequence the quantity, order, and proportion of single and double endings, +of rhyme and blank verse, of regular lines and irregular, to be traced +in each play by the horny eye and the callous finger of a pedant. +“I am ill at these numbers”; those in which I have sought +to become an expert are numbers of another sort; but having, from wellnigh +the first years I can remember, made of the study of Shakespeare the +chief intellectual business and found in it the chief spiritual delight +of my whole life, I can hardly think myself less qualified than another +to offer an opinion on the metrical points at issue.</p> +<p>The progress and expansion of style and harmony in the successive +works of Shakespeare must in some indefinite degree be perceptible to +the youngest as to the oldest, to the dullest as to the keenest of Shakespearean +students. But to trace and verify the various shades and gradations +of this progress, the ebb and flow of alternate influences, the delicate +and infinite subtleties of change and growth discernible in the spirit +and the speech of the greatest among poets, is a task not less beyond +the reach of a scholiast than beyond the faculties of a child. +He who would attempt it with any chance of profit must above all things +remember at starting that the inner and the outer qualities of a poet’s +work are of their very nature indivisible; that any criticism is of +necessity worthless which looks to one side only, whether it be to the +outer or to the inner quality of the work; that the fatuity of pedantic +ignorance never devised a grosser absurdity than the attempt to separate +æsthetic from scientific criticism by a strict line of demarcation, +and to bring all critical work under one or the other head of this exhaustive +division. Criticism without accurate science of the thing criticised +can indeed have no other value than may belong to the genuine record +of a spontaneous impression; but it is not less certain that criticism +which busies itself only with the outer husk or technical shell of a +great artist’s work, taking no account of the spirit or the thought +which informs it, cannot have even so much value as this. Without +study of his forms of metre or his scheme of colours we shall certainly +fail to appreciate or even to apprehend the gist or the worth of a painter’s +or a poet’s design; but to note down the number of special words +and cast up the sum of superfluous syllables used once or twice or twenty +times in the structure of a single poem will help us exactly as much +as a naked catalogue of the colours employed in a particular picture. +A tabulated statement or summary of the precise number of blue or green, +red or white draperies to be found in a precise number of paintings +by the same hand will not of itself afford much enlightenment to any +but the youngest of possible students; nor will a mere list of double +or single, masculine or feminine terminations discoverable in a given +amount of verse from the same quarter prove of much use or benefit to +an adult reader of common intelligence. What such an one requires +is the guidance which can be given by no metremonger or colour-grinder: +the suggestion which may help him to discern at once the cause and the +effect of every choice or change of metre and of colour; which may show +him at one glance the reason and the result of every shade and of every +tone which tends to compose and to complete the gradual scale of their +final harmonies. This method of study is generally accepted as +the only one applicable to the work of a great painter by any criticism +worthy of the name: it should also be recognised as the sole method +by which the work of a great poet can be studied to any serious purpose. +For the student it can be no less useful, for the expert it should be +no less easy, to trace through its several stages of expansion and transfiguration +the genius of Chaucer or of Shakespeare, of Milton or of Shelley, than +the genius of Titian or of Raffaelle, of Turner or of Rossetti. +Some great artists there are of either kind in whom no such process +of growth or transformation is perceptible: of these are Coleridge and +Blake; from the sunrise to the sunset of their working day we can trace +no demonstrable increase and no visible diminution of the divine capacities +or the inborn defects of either man’s genius; but not of such, +as a rule, are the greatest among artists of any sort.</p> +<p>Another rock on which modern steersmen of a more skilful hand than +these are yet liable to run through too much confidence is the love +of their own conjectures as to the actual date or the secret history +of a particular play or passage. To err on this side requires +more thought, more learning, and more ingenuity than we need think to +find in a whole tribe of finger-counters and figure-casters; but the +outcome of these good gifts, if strained or perverted to capricious +use, may prove no less barren of profit than the labours of a pedant +on the letter of the text. It is a tempting exercise of intelligence +for a dexterous and keen-witted scholar to apply his solid learning +and his vivid fancy to the detection or the interpretation of some new +or obscure point in a great man’s life or work; but none the less +is it a perilous pastime to give the reins to a learned fancy, and let +loose conjecture on the trail of any dubious crotchet or the scent of +any supposed allusion that may spring up in the way of its confident +and eager quest. To start a new solution of some crucial problem, +to track some new undercurrent of concealed significance in a passage +hitherto neglected or misconstrued, is to a critic of this higher class +a delight as keen as that of scientific discovery to students of another +sort: the pity is that he can bring no such certain or immediate test +to verify the value of his discovery as lies ready to the hand of the +man of science. Whether he have lit upon a windfall or a mare’s +nest can be decided by no direct proof, but only by time and the general +acceptance of competent judges; and this cannot often be reasonably +expected for theories which can appeal for support or confirmation to +no positive evidence, but at best to a cloudy and shifting probability. +What personal or political allusions may lurk under the text of Shakespeare +we can never know, and should consequently forbear to hang upon a hypothesis +of this floating and nebulous kind any serious opinion which might gravely +affect our estimate of his work or his position in regard to other men, +with whom some public or private interest may possibly have brought +him into contact or collision.</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>The aim of the present study is simply to set down what the writer +believes to be certain demonstrable truths as to the progress and development +of style, the outer and the inner changes of manner as of matter, of +method as of design, which may be discerned in the work of Shakespeare. +The principle here adopted and the views here put forward have not been +suddenly discovered or lightly taken up out of any desire to make a +show of theoretical ingenuity. For years past I have held and +maintained, in private discussion with friends and fellow-students, +the opinions which I now submit to more public judgment. How far +they may coincide with those advanced by others I cannot say, and have +not been careful to inquire. The mere fact of coincidence or of +dissent on such a question is of less importance than the principle +accepted by either student as the groundwork of his theory, the mainstay +of his opinion. It is no part of my project or my hope to establish +the actual date of any among the various plays, or to determine point +by point the lineal order of their succession. I have examined +no table or catalogue of recent or of earlier date, from the time of +Malone onwards, with a view to confute by my reasoning the conclusions +of another, or by the assistance of his theories to corroborate my own. +It is impossible to fix or decide by inner or outer evidence the precise +order of production, much less of composition, which critics of the +present or the past may have set their wits to verify in vain; but it +is quite possible to show that the work of Shakespeare is naturally +divisible into classes which may serve us to distinguish and determine +as by landmarks the several stages or periods of his mind and art.</p> +<p>Of these the three chief periods or stages are so unmistakably indicated +by the mere text itself, and so easily recognisable by the veriest tiro +in the school of Shakespeare, that even were I as certain of being the +first to point them out as I am conscious of having long since discovered +and verified them without assistance or suggestion from any but Shakespeare +himself, I should be disposed to claim but little credit for a discovery +which must in all likelihood have been forestalled by the common insight +of some hundred or more students in time past. The difficulty +begins with the really debatable question of subdivisions. There +are certain plays which may be said to hang on the borderland between +one period and the next, with one foot lingering and one advanced; and +these must be classed according to the dominant note of their style, +the greater or lesser proportion of qualities proper to the earlier +or the later stage of thought and writing. At one time I was inclined +to think the whole catalogue more accurately divisible into four classes; +but the line of demarcation between the third and fourth would have +been so much fainter than those which mark off the first period from +the second, and the second from the third, that it seemed on the whole +a more correct and adequate arrangement to assume that the last period +might be subdivided if necessary into a first and second stage. +This somewhat precise and pedantic scheme of study I have adopted from +no love of rigid or formal system, but simply to make the method of +my critical process as clear as the design. That design is to +examine by internal evidence alone the growth and the expression of +spirit and of speech, the ebb and flow of thought and style, discernible +in the successive periods of Shakespeare’s work; to study the +phases of mind, the changes of tone, the passage or progress from an +old manner to a new, the reversion or relapse from a later to an earlier +habit, which may assuredly be traced in the modulations of his varying +verse, but can only be traced by ear and not by finger. I have +busied myself with no baseless speculations as to the possible or probable +date of the first appearance of this play or of that on the stage; and +it is not unlikely that the order of succession here adopted or suggested +may not always coincide with the chronological order of production; +nor will the principle or theory by which I have undertaken to class +the successive plays of each period be affected or impaired though it +should chance that a play ranked by me as belonging to a later stage +of work should actually have been produced earlier than others which +in my lists are assigned to a subsequent date. It is not, so to +speak, the literal but the spiritual order which I have studied to observe +and to indicate: the periods which I seek to define belong not to chronology +but to art. No student need be reminded how common a thing it +is to recognise in the later work of a great artist some partial reappearance +of his early tone or manner, some passing return to his early lines +of work and to habits of style since modified or abandoned. Such +work, in part at least, may properly be said to belong rather to the +earlier stage whose manner it resumes than to the later stage at which +it was actually produced, and in which it stands out as a marked exception +among the works of the same period. A famous and a most singularly +beautiful example of this reflorescence as in a Saint Martin’s +summer of undecaying genius is the exquisite and crowning love-scene +in the opera or “ballet-tragedy” of <i>Psyche</i>, written +in his sixty-fifth year by the august Roman hand of Pierre Corneille; +a lyric symphony of spirit and of song fulfilled with all the colour +and all the music that autumn could steal from spring if October had +leave to go a Maying in some Olympian masquerade of melody and sunlight. +And it is not easier, easy as it is, to discern and to define the three +main stages of Shakespeare’s work and progress, than to classify +under their several heads the representative plays belonging to each +period by the law of their nature, if not by the accident of their date. +There are certain dominant qualities which do on the whole distinguish +not only the later from the earlier plays, but the second period from +the first, the third period from the second; and it is with these qualities +alone that the higher criticism, be it æsthetic or scientific, +has properly anything to do.</p> +<p>A new method of solution has been applied to various difficulties +which have been discovered or invented in the text by the care or the +perversity of recent commentators, whose principle of explanation is +easier to abuse than to use with any likelihood of profit. It +is at least simple enough for the simplest of critics to apply or misapply: +whenever they see or suspect an inequality or an incongruity which may +be wholly imperceptible to eyes uninured to the use of their spectacles, +they assume at once the presence of another workman, the intrusion of +a stranger’s hand. This supposition of a double authorship +is naturally as impossible to refute as to establish by other than internal +evidence and appeal to the private judgment or perception of the reader. +But it is no better than the last resource of an empiric, the last refuge +of a sciolist; a refuge which the soundest of scholars will be slowest +to seek, a resource which the most competent of critics will be least +ready to adopt. Once admitted as a principle of general application, +there are no lengths to which it may not carry, there are none to which +it has not carried, the audacious fatuity and the arrogant incompetence +of tamperers with the authentic text. Recent editors who have +taken on themselves the high office of guiding English youth in its +first study of Shakespeare have proposed to excise or to obelise whole +passages which the delight and wonder of youth and age alike, of the +rawest as of the ripest among students, have agreed to consecrate as +examples of his genius at its highest. In the last trumpet-notes +of Macbeth’s defiance and despair, in the last rallying cry of +the hero reawakened in the tyrant at his utmost hour of need, there +have been men and scholars, Englishmen and editors, who have detected +the alien voice of a pretender, the false ring of a foreign blast that +was not blown by Shakespeare; words that for centuries past have touched +with fire the hearts of thousands in each age since they were first +inspired—words with the whole sound in them of battle or a breaking +sea, with the whole soul of pity and terror mingled and melted into +each other in the fierce last speech of a spirit grown “aweary +of the sun,” have been calmly transferred from the account of +Shakespeare to the score of Middleton. And this, forsooth, the +student of the future is to accept on the authority of men who bring +to the support of their decision the unanswerable plea of years spent +in the collation and examination of texts never hitherto explored and +compared with such energy of learned labour. If this be the issue +of learning and of industry, the most indolent and ignorant of readers +who retains his natural capacity to be moved and mastered by the natural +delight of contact with heavenly things is better off by far than the +most studious and strenuous of all scholiasts who ever claimed acquiescence +or challenged dissent on the strength of his lifelong labours and hard-earned +knowledge of the letter of the text. Such an one is indeed “in +a parlous state”; and any boy whose heart first begins to burn +within him, who feels his blood kindle and his spirit dilate, his pulse +leap and his eyes lighten, over a first study of Shakespeare, may say +to such a teacher with better reason than Touchstone said to Corin, +“Truly, thou art damned; like an ill-roasted egg, all on one side.” +Nor could charity itself hope much profit for him from the moving appeal +and the pious prayer which temper that severity of sentence—“Wilt +thou rest damned? God help thee, shallow man! God make incision +in thee! Thou art raw.” And raw he is like to remain +for all his learning, and for all incisions that can be made in the +horny hide of a self-conceit to be pierced by the puncture of no man’s +pen. It was bad enough while theorists of this breed confined +themselves to the suggestion of a possible partnership with Fletcher, +a possible interpolation by Jonson; but in the descent from these to +the alleged adulteration of the text by Middleton and Rowley we have +surely sounded the very lowest depth of folly attainable by the utmost +alacrity in sinking which may yet be possible to the bastard brood of +Scriblerus. For my part, I shall not be surprised though the next +discoverer should assure us that half at least of <i>Hamlet</i> is evidently +due to the collaboration of Heywood, while the greater part of <i>Othello</i> +is as clearly assignable to the hand of Shirley.</p> +<p>Akin to this form of folly, but less pernicious though not more profitable, +is the fancy of inventing some share for Shakespeare in the composition +of plays which the veriest insanity of conjecture or caprice could not +venture to lay wholly to his charge. This fancy, comparatively +harmless as it is, requires no ground of proof to go upon, no prop of +likelihood to support it; without so much help as may be borrowed from +the faintest and most fitful of traditions, it spins its own evidence +spider-like out of its own inner conscience or conceit, and proffers +it with confident complacency for men’s acceptance. Here +again I cannot but see a mere waste of fruitless learning and bootless +ingenuity. That Shakespeare began by retouching and recasting +the work of elder and lesser men we all know; that he may afterwards +have set his hand to the task of adding or altering a line or a passage +here and there in some few of the plays brought out under his direction +as manager or proprietor of a theatre is of course possible, but can +neither be affirmed nor denied with any profit in default of the least +fragment of historic or traditional evidence. Any attempt to verify +the imaginary touch of his hand in plays of whose history we know no +more than that they were acted on the boards of his theatre can be but +a diversion for the restless leisure of ingenious and ambitious scholars; +it will give no clue by which the student who simply seeks to know what +can be known with certainty of the poet and his work may hope to be +guided towards any safe issue or trustworthy result. Less pardonable +and more presumptuous than this is the pretension of minor critics to +dissect an authentic play of Shakespeare scene by scene, and assign +different parts of the same poem to different dates by the same pedagogic +rules of numeration and mensuration which they would apply to the general +question of the order and succession of his collective works. +This vivisection of a single poem is not defensible as a freak of scholarship, +an excursion beyond the bounds of bare proof, from which the wanderer +may chance to bring back, if not such treasure as he went out to seek, +yet some stray godsend or rare literary windfall which may serve to +excuse his indulgence in the seemingly profitless pastime of a truant +disposition. It is a pure impertinence to affirm with oracular +assurance what might perhaps be admissible as a suggestion offered with +the due diffidence of modest and genuine scholarship; to assert on the +strength of a private pedant’s personal intuition that such must +be the history or such the composition of a great work whose history +he alone could tell, whose composition he alone could explain, who gave +it to us as his genius had given it to him.</p> +<p>From these several rocks and quicksands I trust at least to keep +my humbler course at a safe distance, and steer clear of all sandy shallows +of theory or sunken shoals of hypothesis on which no pilot can be certain +of safe anchorage; avoiding all assumption, though never so plausible, +for which no ground but that of fancy can be shown, all suggestion though +never so ingenious for which no proof but that of conjecture can be +advanced. For instance, I shall neither assume nor accept the +theory of a double authorship or of a double date by which the supposed +inequalities may be accounted for, the supposed difficulties may be +swept away, which for certain readers disturb the study of certain plays +of Shakespeare. Only where universal tradition and the general +concurrence of all reasonable critics past and present combine to indicate +an unmistakable difference of touch or an unmistakable diversity of +date between this and that portion of the same play, or where the internal +evidence of interpolation perceptible to the most careless and undeniable +by the most perverse of readers is supported by the public judgment +of men qualified to express and competent to defend an opinion, have +I thought it allowable to adopt this facile method of explanation. +No scholar, for example, believes in the single authorship of <i>Pericles</i> +or <i>Andronicus</i>; none, I suppose, would now question the part taken +by some hireling or journeyman in the arrangement or completion for +the stage of <i>Timon of Athens</i>; and few probably would refuse to +admit a doubt of the total authenticity or uniform workmanship of the +<i>Taming of the Shrew</i>. As few, I hope, are prepared to follow +the fantastic and confident suggestions of every unquiet and arrogant +innovator who may seek to append his name to the long scroll of Shakespearean +parasites by the display of a brand-new hypothesis as to the uncertain +date or authorship of some passage or some play which has never before +been subjected to the scientific scrutiny of such a pertinacious analyst. +The more modest design of the present study has in part been already +indicated, and will explain as it proceeds if there be anything in it +worth explanation. It is no part of my ambition to loose the Gordian +knots which others who found them indissoluble have sought in vain to +cut in sunder with blunter swords than the Macedonian; but after so +many adventures and attempts there may perhaps yet be room for an attempt +yet unessayed; for a study by the ear alone of Shakespeare’s metrical +progress, and a study by light of the knowledge thus obtained of the +corresponsive progress within, which found expression and embodiment +in these outward and visible changes. The one study will be then +seen to be the natural complement and the inevitable consequence of +the other; and the patient pursuit of the simpler and more apprehensible +object of research will appear as the only sure method by which a reasonable +and faithful student may think to attain so much as the porch or entrance +to that higher knowledge which no faithful and reasonable study of Shakespeare +can ever for a moment fail to keep in sight as the haven of its final +hope, the goal of its ultimate labour.</p> +<p>When Christopher Marlowe came up to London from Cambridge, a boy +in years, a man in genius, and a god in ambition, he found the stage +which he was born to transfigure and re-create by the might and masterdom +of his genius encumbered with a litter of rude rhyming farces and tragedies +which the first wave of his imperial hand swept so utterly out of sight +and hearing that hardly by piecing together such fragments of that buried +rubbish as it is now possible to unearth can we rebuild in imagination +so much of the rough and crumbling walls that fell before the trumpet-blast +of <i>Tamburlaine</i> as may give us some conception of the rabble dynasty +of rhymers whom he overthrew—of the citadel of dramatic barbarism +which was stormed and sacked at the first charge of the young conqueror +who came to lead English audiences and to deliver English poetry</p> +<blockquote><p>From jigging veins of rhyming mother-wits,<br /> +And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>When we speak of the drama that existed before the coming of Marlowe, +and that vanished at his advent, we think usually of the rhyming plays +written wholly or mainly in ballad verse of fourteen syllables—of +the <i>Kings Darius</i> and <i>Cambyses</i>, the <i>Promos and Cassandra</i> +of Whetstone, or the <i>Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes</i> of George Peele. +If we turn from these abortions of tragedy to the metrical farces which +may fairly be said to contain the germ or embryo of English comedy (a +form of dramatic art which certainly owes nothing to the father of our +tragic stage), we find far more of hope and promise in the broad free +stretches of the flagellant head-master of Eton and the bibulous Bishop +of Bath and Wells; and must admit that hands used to wield the crosier +or the birch proved themselves more skilful at the lighter labours of +the stage, more successful even in the secular and bloodless business +of a field neither clerical nor scholastic, than any tragic rival of +the opposite party to that so jovially headed by Orbilius Udall and +Silenus Still. These twin pillars of church and school and stage +were strong enough to support on the shoulders of their authority the +first crude fabric or formless model of our comic theatre, while the +tragic boards were still creaking and cracking under the jingling canter +of <i>Cambyses</i> or the tuneless tramp of <i>Gorboduc</i>. This +one play which the charity of Sidney excepts from his general anathema +on the nascent stage of England has hitherto been erroneously described +as written in blank verse; an error which I can only attribute to the +prevalence of a groundless assumption that whatever is neither prose +nor rhyme must of necessity be definable as blank verse. But the +measure, I must repeat, which was adopted by the authors of <i>Gorboduc</i> +is by no means so definable. Blank it certainly is; but verse +it assuredly is not. There can be no verse where there is no modulation, +no rhythm where there is no music. Blank verse came into life +in England at the birth of the shoemaker’s son who had but to +open his yet beardless lips, and the high-born poem which had Sackville +to father and Sidney to sponsor was silenced and eclipsed for ever among +the poor plebeian crowd of rhyming shadows that waited in death on the +noble nothingness of its patrician shade.</p> +<p>These, I suppose, are the first or the only plays whose names recur +to the memory of the general reader when he thinks of the English stage +before Marlowe; but there was, I suspect, a whole class of plays then +current, and more or less supported by popular favour, of which hardly +a sample is now extant, and which cannot be classed with such as these. +The poets or rhymesters who supplied them had already seen good to clip +the cumbrous and bedraggled skirts of those dreary verses, run all to +seed and weed, which jingled their thin bells at the tedious end of +fourteen weary syllables; and for this curtailment of the shambling +and sprawling lines which had hitherto done duty as tragic metre some +credit may be due to these obscure purveyors of forgotten ware for the +second epoch of our stage: if indeed, as I presume, we may suppose that +this reform, such as it was, had begun before the time of Marlowe; otherwise, +no doubt, little credit would be due to men who with so high an example +before them were content simply to snip away the tags and fringes, to +patch the seams and tatters, of the ragged coat of rhyme which they +might have exchanged for that royal robe of heroic verse wherewith he +had clothed the ungrown limbs of limping and lisping tragedy. +But if these also may be reckoned among his precursors, the dismissal +from stage service of the dolorous and drudging metre employed by the +earliest school of theatrical rhymesters must be taken to mark a real +step in advance; and in that case we possess at least a single example +of the rhyming tragedies which had their hour between the last plays +written wholly or partially in ballad metre and the first plays written +in blank verse. The tragedy of <i>Selimus, Emperor of the Turks</i>, +published in 1594, <a name="citation30"></a><a href="#footnote30">{30}</a> +may then serve to indicate this brief and obscure period of transition. +Whole scenes of this singular play are written in rhyming iambics, some +in the measure of <i>Don Juan</i>, some in the measure of <i>Venus and +Adonis</i>. The couplets and quatrains so much affected and so +reluctantly abandoned by Shakespeare after the first stage of his dramatic +progress are in no other play that I know of diversified by this alternate +variation of <i>sesta</i> with <i>ottava rima</i>. This may have +been an exceptional experiment due merely to the caprice of one eccentric +rhymester; but in any case we may assume it to mark the extreme limit, +the ultimate development of rhyming tragedy after the ballad metre had +been happily exploded. The play is on other grounds worth attention +as a sign of the times, though on poetical grounds it is assuredly worth +none. Part of it is written in blank verse, or at least in rhymeless +lines; so that after all it probably followed in the wake of <i>Tamburlaine</i>, +half adopting and half rejecting the innovations of that fiery reformer, +who wrought on the old English stage no less a miracle than <i>Hernani</i> +on the French stage in the days of our fathers. That <i>Selimus</i> +was published four years later than <i>Tamburlaine</i>, in the year +following the death of Marlowe, proves of course nothing as to the date +of its production; and even if it was written and acted in the year +of its publication, it undoubtedly in the main represents the work of +a prior era to the reformation of the stage by Marlowe. The level +regularity of its unrhymed scenes is just like that of the weaker portions +of <i>Titus Andronicus</i> and the <i>First Part of King Henry the Sixth</i>—the +opening scene, for example, of either play. With <i>Andronicus</i> +it has also in common the quality of exceptional monstrosity, a delight +in the parade of mutilation as well as of massacre. It seems to +me possible that the same hand may have been at work on all three plays; +for that Marlowe’s is traceable in those parts of the two retouched +by Shakespeare which bear no traces of his touch is a theory to the +full as absurd as that which would impute to Shakespeare the charge +of their entire composition.</p> +<p>The revolution effected by Marlowe naturally raised the same cry +against its author as the revolution effected by Hugo. That Shakespeare +should not at once have enlisted under his banner is less inexplicable +than it may seem. He was naturally addicted to rhyme, though if +we put aside the Sonnets we must admit that in rhyme he never did anything +worth Marlowe’s <i>Hero and Leander</i>: he did not, like Marlowe, +see at once that it must be reserved for less active forms of poetry +than the tragic drama; and he was personally, it seems, in opposition +to Marlowe and his school of academic playwrights—the band of +bards in which Oxford and Cambridge were respectively and so respectably +represented by Peele and Greene. But in his very first plays, +comic or tragic or historic, we can see the collision and conflict of +the two influences; his evil angel, rhyme, yielding step by step and +note by note to the strong advance of that better genius who came to +lead him into the loftier path of Marlowe. There is not a single +passage in <i>Titus Andronicus</i> more Shakespearean than the magnificent +quatrain of Tamora upon the eagle and the little birds; but the rest +of the scene in which we come upon it, and the whole scene preceding, +are in blank verse of more variety and vigour than we find in the baser +parts of the play; and these if any scenes we may surely attribute to +Shakespeare. Again, the last battle of Talbot seems to me as undeniably +the master’s work as the scene in the Temple Gardens or the courtship +of Margaret by Suffolk; this latter indeed, full as it is of natural +and vivid grace, may perhaps not be beyond the highest reach of one +or two among the rivals of his earliest years of work; while as we are +certain that he cannot have written the opening scene, that he was at +any stage of his career incapable of it, so may we believe as well as +hope that he is guiltless of any complicity in that detestable part +of the play which attempts to defile the memory of the virgin saviour +of her country. <a name="citation33"></a><a href="#footnote33">{33}</a> +In style it is not, I think, above the range of George Peele at his +best: and to have written even the last of those scenes can add but +little discredit to the memory of a man already disgraced as the defamer +of Eleanor of Castile; while it would be a relief to feel assured that +there was but one English poet of any genius who could be capable of +either villainy.</p> +<p>In this play, then, more decisively than in <i>Titus Andronicus</i>, +we find Shakespeare at work (so to speak) with both hands—with +his left hand of rhyme, and his right hand of blank verse. The +left is loth to forego the practice of its peculiar music; yet, as the +action of the right grows freer and its touch grows stronger, it becomes +more and more certain that the other must cease playing, under pain +of producing mere discord and disturbance in the scheme of tragic harmony. +We imagine that the writer must himself have felt the scene of the roses +to be pitched in a truer key than the noble scene of parting between +the old hero and his son on the verge of desperate battle and certain +death. This is the last and loftiest farewell note of rhyming +tragedy; still, in <i>King Richard II</i>, and in <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, +it struggles for awhile to keep its footing, but now more visibly in +vain. The rhymed scenes in these plays are too plainly the survivals +of a ruder and feebler stage of work; they cannot hold their own in +the new order with even such discordant effect of incongruous excellence +and inharmonious beauty as belongs to the death-scene of the Talbots +when matched against the quarrelling scene of Somerset and York. +Yet the briefest glance over the plays of the first epoch in the work +of Shakespeare will suffice to show how protracted was the struggle +and how gradual the defeat of rhyme. Setting aside the retouched +plays, we find on the list one tragedy, two histories, and four if not +five comedies, which the least critical reader would attribute to this +first epoch of work. In three of these comedies rhyme can hardly +be said to be beaten; that is, the rhyming scenes are on the whole equal +to the unrhymed in power and beauty. In the single tragedy, and +in one of the two histories, we may say that rhyme fights hard for life, +but is undeniably worsted; that is, they contain as to quantity a large +proportion of rhymed verse, but as to quality the rhymed part bears +no proportion whatever to the unrhymed. In two scenes we may say +that the whole heart or spirit of <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> is summed +up and distilled into perfect and pure expression; and these two are +written in blank verse of equable and blameless melody. Outside +the garden scene in the second act and the balcony scene in the third, +there is much that is fanciful and graceful, much of elegiac pathos +and fervid if fantastic passion; much also of superfluous rhetoric and +(as it were) of wordy melody, which flows and foams hither and thither +into something of extravagance and excess; but in these two there is +no flaw, no outbreak, no superflux, and no failure. Throughout +certain scenes of the third and fourth acts I think it may be reasonably +and reverently allowed that the river of verse has broken its banks, +not as yet through the force and weight of its gathering stream, but +merely through the weakness of the barriers or boundaries found insufficient +to confine it. And here we may with deference venture on a guess +why Shakespeare was so long so loth to forego the restraint of rhyme. +When he wrote, and even when he rewrote or at least retouched, his youngest +tragedy he had not yet strength to walk straight in the steps of the +mighty master, but two months older than himself by birth, whose foot +never from the first faltered in the arduous path of severer tragic +verse. The loveliest of love-plays is after all a child of “his +salad days, when he was green in judgment,” though assuredly not +“cold in blood”—a physical condition as difficult +to conceive of Shakespeare at any age as of Cleopatra. It is in +the scenes of vehement passion, of ardour and of agony, that we feel +the comparative weakness of a yet ungrown hand, the tentative uncertain +grasp of a stripling giant. The two utterly beautiful scenes are +not of this kind; they deal with simple joy and with simple sorrow, +with the gladness of meeting and the sadness of parting love; but between +and behind them come scenes of more fierce emotion, full of surprise, +of violence, of unrest; and with these the poet is not yet (if I dare +say so) quite strong enough to deal. Apollo has not yet put on +the sinews of Hercules. At a later date we may fancy or may find +that when the Herculean muscle is full-grown the voice in him which +was as the voice of Apollo is for a passing moment impaired. In +<i>Measure for Measure</i>, where the adult and gigantic god has grappled +with the greatest and most terrible of energies and of passions, we +miss the music of a younger note that rang through <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>; +but before the end this too revives, as pure, as sweet, as fresh, but +richer now and deeper than its first clear notes of the morning, in +the heavenly harmony of <i>Cymbeline</i> and <i>The Tempest</i>.</p> +<p>The same effusion or effervescence of words is perceptible in <i>King +Richard II</i>. as in the greater (and the less good) part of <i>Romeo +and Juliet</i>; and not less perceptible is the perpetual inclination +of the poet to revert for help to rhyme, to hark back in search of support +towards the half-forsaken habits of his poetic nonage. Feeling +his foothold insecure on the hard and high ascent of the steeps of rhymeless +verse, he stops and slips back ever and anon towards the smooth and +marshy meadow whence he has hardly begun to climb. Any student +who should wish to examine the conditions of the struggle at its height +may be content to analyse the first act of this the first historical +play of Shakespeare. As the tragedy moves onward, and the style +gathers strength while the action gathers speed,—as (to borrow +the phrase so admirably applied by Coleridge to Dryden) the poet’s +chariot-wheels get hot by driving fast,—the temptation of rhyme +grows weaker, and the hand grows firmer which before lacked strength +to wave it off. The one thing wholly or greatly admirable in this +play is the exposition of the somewhat pitiful but not unpitiable character +of King Richard. Among the scenes devoted to this exposition I +of course include the whole of the death-scene of Gaunt, as well the +part which precedes as the part which follows the actual appearance +of his nephew on the stage; and into these scenes the intrusion of rhyme +is rare and brief. They are written almost wholly in pure and +fluent rather than vigorous or various blank verse; though I cannot +discern in any of them an equality in power and passion to the magnificent +scene of abdication in Marlowe’s <i>Edward II</i>. This +play, I think, must undoubtedly be regarded as the immediate model of +Shakespeare’s; and the comparison is one of inexhaustible interest +to all students of dramatic poetry. To the highest height of the +earlier master I do not think that the mightier poet who was as yet +in great measure his pupil has ever risen in this the first (as I take +it) of his historic plays. Of composition and proportion he has +perhaps already a somewhat better idea. But in grasp of character, +always excepting the one central figure of the piece, we find his hand +as yet the unsteadier of the two. Even after a lifelong study +of this as of all other plays of Shakespeare, it is for me at least +impossible to determine what I doubt if the poet could himself have +clearly defined—the main principle, the motive and the meaning +of such characters as York, Norfolk, and Aumerle. The Gaveston +and the Mortimer of Marlowe are far more solid and definite figures +than these; yet none after that of Richard is more important to the +scheme of Shakespeare. They are fitful, shifting, vaporous: their +outlines change, withdraw, dissolve, and “leave not a rack behind.” +They, not Antony, are like the clouds of evening described in the most +glorious of so many glorious passages put long afterwards by Shakespeare +into the mouth of his latest Roman hero. They “cannot hold +this visible shape” in which the poet at first presents them even +long enough to leave a distinct image, a decisive impression for better +or for worse, upon the mind’s eye of the most simple and open-hearted +reader. They are ghosts, not men; <i>simulacra modis pallentia +miris</i>. You cannot descry so much as the original intention +of the artist’s hand which began to draw and relaxed its hold +of the brush before the first lines were fairly traced. And in +the last, the worst and weakest scene of all, in which York pleads with +Bolingbroke for the death of the son whose mother pleads against her +husband for his life, there is a final relapse into rhyme and rhyming +epigram, into the “jigging vein” dried up (we might have +hoped) long since by the very glance of Marlowe’s Apollonian scorn. +It would be easy, agreeable, and irrational to ascribe without further +evidence than its badness this misconceived and misshapen scene to some +other hand than Shakespeare’s. It is below the weakest, +the rudest, the hastiest scene attributable to Marlowe; it is false, +wrong, artificial beyond the worst of his bad and boyish work; but it +has a certain likeness for the worse to the crudest work of Shakespeare. +It is difficult to say to what depths of bad taste the writer of certain +passages in <i>Venus and Adonis</i> could not fall before his genius +or his judgment was full-grown. To invent an earlier play on the +subject and imagine this scene a surviving fragment, a floating waif +of that imaginary wreck, would in my opinion be an uncritical mode of +evading the question at issue. It must be regarded as the last +hysterical struggle of rhyme to maintain its place in tragedy; and the +explanation, I would fain say the excuse, of its reappearance may perhaps +be simply this; that the poet was not yet dramatist enough to feel for +each of his characters an equal or proportionate regard; to divide and +disperse his interest among the various crowd of figures which claim +each in its place, and each after its kind, fair and adequate share +of their creator’s attention and sympathy. His present interest +was here wholly concentrated on the single figure of Richard; and when +that for the time was absent, the subordinate figures became to him +but heavy and vexatious encumbrances, to be shifted on and off the stage +with as much of haste and as little of labour as might be possible to +an impatient and uncertain hand. Now all tragic poets, I presume, +from Æschylus the godlike father of them all to the last aspirant +who may struggle after the traces of his steps, have been poets before +they were tragedians; their lips have had power to sing before their +feet had strength to tread the stage, before their hands had skill to +paint or carve figures from the life. With Shakespeare it was +so as certainly as with Shelley, as evidently as with Hugo. It +is in the great comic poets, in Molière and in Congreve, <a name="citation42"></a><a href="#footnote42">{42}</a> +our own lesser Molière, so far inferior in breadth and depth, +in tenderness and strength, to the greatest writer of the “great +age,” yet so near him in science and in skill, so like him in +brilliance and in force;—it is in these that we find theatrical +instinct twin-born with imaginative impulse, dramatic power with inventive +perception.</p> +<p>In the second historic play which can be wholly ascribed to Shakespeare +we still find the poetic or rhetorical duality for the most part in +excess of the dramatic; but in <i>King Richard III</i>. the bonds of +rhyme at least are fairly broken. This only of all Shakespeare’s +plays belongs absolutely to the school of Marlowe. The influence +of the elder master, and that influence alone, is perceptible from end +to end. Here at last we can see that Shakespeare has decidedly +chosen his side. It is as fiery in passion, as single in purpose, +as rhetorical often though never so inflated in expression, as <i>Tamburlaine</i> +itself. It is doubtless a better piece of work than Marlowe ever +did; I dare not say, than Marlowe ever could have done. It is +not for any man to measure, above all is it not for any workman in the +field of tragic poetry lightly to take on himself the responsibility +or the authority to pronounce, what it is that Christopher Marlowe could +not have done; but, dying as he did and when he did, it is certain that +he has not left us a work so generally and so variously admirable as +<i>King Richard III</i>. As certain is it that but for him this +play could never have been written. At a later date the subject +would have been handled otherwise, had the poet chosen to handle it +at all; and in his youth he could not have treated it as he has without +the guidance and example of Marlowe. Not only are its highest +qualities of energy, of exuberance, of pure and lofty style, of sonorous +and successive harmonies, the very qualities that never fail to distinguish +those first dramatic models which were fashioned by his ardent hand; +the strenuous and single-handed grasp of character, the motion and action +of combining and contending powers, which here for the first time we +find sustained with equal and unfaltering vigour throughout the length +of a whole play, we perceive, though imperfectly, in the work of Marlowe +before we can trace them even as latent or infant forces in the work +of Shakespeare.</p> +<p>In the exquisite and delightful comedies of his earliest period we +can hardly discern any sign, any promise of them at all. One only +of these, the <i>Comedy of Errors</i>, has in it anything of dramatic +composition and movement; and what it has of these, I need hardly remind +the most cursory of students, is due by no means to Shakespeare. +What is due to him, and to him alone, is the honour of having embroidered +on the naked old canvas of comic action those flowers of elegiac beauty +which vivify and diversify the scene of Plautus as reproduced by the +art of Shakespeare. In the next generation so noble a poet as +Rotrou, whom perhaps it might not be inaccurate to call the French Marlowe, +and who had (what Marlowe had not) the gift of comic as well as of tragic +excellence, found nothing of this kind and little of any kind to add +to the old poet’s admirable but arid sketch of farcical incident +or accident. But in this light and lovely work of the youth of +Shakespeare we find for the first time that strange and sweet admixture +of farce with fancy, of lyric charm with comic effect, which recurs +so often in his later work, from the date of <i>As You Like It</i> to +the date of the <i>Winter’s Tale</i>, and which no later poet +had ventured to recombine in the same play till our own time had given +us, in the author of <i>Tragaldabas</i>, one who could alternate without +confusing the woodland courtship of Eliseo and Caprina with the tavern +braggardism of Grif and Minotoro. The sweetness and simplicity +of lyric or elegiac loveliness which fill and inform the scenes where +Adriana, her sister, and the Syracusan Antipholus exchange the expression +of their errors and their loves, belong to Shakespeare alone; and may +help us to understand how the young poet who at the outset of his divine +career had struck into this fresh untrodden path of poetic comedy should +have been, as we have seen that he was, loth to learn from another and +an alien teacher the hard and necessary lesson that this flowery path +would never lead him towards the loftier land of tragic poetry. +For as yet, even in the nominally or intentionally tragic and historic +work of the first period, we descry always and everywhere and still +preponderant the lyric element, the fantastic element, or even the elegiac +element. All these queens and heroines of history and tragedy +have rather an Ovidian than a Sophoclean grace of bearing and of speech.</p> +<p>The example afforded by the <i>Comedy of Errors</i> would suffice +to show that rhyme, however inadequate for tragic use, is by no means +a bad instrument for romantic comedy. In another of Shakespeare’s +earliest works, which might almost be described as a lyrical farce, +rhyme plays also a great part; but the finest passage, the real crown +and flower of <i>Love’s Labour’s Lost</i>, is the praise +or apology of love spoken by Biron in blank verse. This is worthy +of Marlowe for dignity and sweetness, but has also the grace of a light +and radiant fancy enamoured of itself, begotten between thought and +mirth, a child-god with grave lips and laughing eyes, whose inspiration +is nothing akin to Marlowe’s. In this as in the overture +of the play and in its closing scene, but especially in the noble passage +which winds up for a year the courtship of Biron and Rosaline, the spirit +which informs the speech of the poet is finer of touch and deeper of +tone than in the sweetest of the serious interludes of the <i>Comedy +of Errors</i>. The play is in the main a yet lighter thing, and +more wayward and capricious in build, more formless and fantastic in +plot, more incomposite altogether than that first heir of Shakespeare’s +comic invention, which on its own ground is perfect in its consistency, +blameless in composition and coherence; while in <i>Love’s Labour’s +Lost</i> the fancy for the most part runs wild as the wind, and the +structure of the story is as that of a house of clouds which the wind +builds and unbuilds at pleasure. Here we find a very riot of rhymes, +wild and wanton in their half-grown grace as a troop of “young +satyrs, tender-hoofed and ruddy-horned”; during certain scenes +we seem almost to stand again by the cradle of new-born comedy, and +hear the first lisping and laughing accents run over from her baby lips +in bubbling rhyme; but when the note changes we recognise the speech +of gods. For the first time in our literature the higher key of +poetic or romantic comedy is finely touched to a fine issue. The +divine instrument fashioned by Marlowe for tragic purposes alone has +found at once its new sweet use in the hands of Shakespeare. The +way is prepared for <i>As You Like It</i> and the <i>Tempest</i>; the +language is discovered which will befit the lips of Rosalind and Miranda.</p> +<p>What was highest as poetry in the <i>Comedy of Errors</i> was mainly +in rhyme; all indeed, we might say, between the prelude spoken by Ægeon +and the appearance in the last scene of his wife: in <i>Love’s +Labour’s Lost</i> what was highest was couched wholly in blank +verse; in the <i>Two Gentlemen of Verona</i> rhyme has fallen seemingly +into abeyance, and there are no passages of such elegiac beauty as in +the former, of such exalted eloquence as in the latter of these plays; +there is an even sweetness, a simple equality of grace in thought and +language which keeps the whole poem in tune, written as it is in a subdued +key of unambitious harmony. In perfect unity and keeping the composition +of this beautiful sketch may perhaps be said to mark a stage of advance, +a new point of work attained, a faint but sensible change of manner, +signalised by increased firmness of hand and clearness of outline. +Slight and swift in execution as it is, few and simple as are the chords +here struck of character and emotion, every shade of drawing and every +note of sound is at one with the whole scheme of form and music. +Here too is the first dawn of that higher and more tender humour which +was never given in such perfection to any man as ultimately to Shakespeare; +one touch of the by-play of Launce and his immortal dog is worth all +the bright fantastic interludes of Boyet and Adriano, Costard and Holofernes; +worth even half the sallies of Mercutio, and half the dancing doggrel +or broad-witted prose of either Dromio. But in the final poem +which concludes and crowns the first epoch of Shakespeare’s work, +the special graces and peculiar glories of each that went before are +gathered together as in one garland “of every hue and every scent.” +The young genius of the master of all our poets finds its consummation +in the <i>Midsummer Night’s Dream</i>. The blank verse is +as full, sweet, and strong as the best of Biron’s or Romeo’s; +the rhymed verse as clear, pure, and true as the simplest and truest +melody of <i>Venus and Adonis</i> or the <i>Comedy of Errors</i>. +But here each kind of excellence is equal throughout; there are here +no purple patches on a gown of serge, but one seamless and imperial +robe of a single dye. Of the lyric or the prosaic part, the counterchange +of loves and laughters, of fancy fine as air and imagination high as +heaven, what need can there be for any one to shame himself by the helpless +attempt to say some word not utterly unworthy? Let it suffice +us to accept this poem as the landmark of our first stage, and pause +to look back from it on what lies behind us of partial or of perfect +work.</p> +<p>The highest point attained in this first period lies in the domain +of comedy or romance, and belongs as much to lyric as to dramatic poetry; +its sovereign quality is that of sweetness and springtide of fairy fancy +crossed with light laughter and light trouble that end in perfect music. +In history as in tragedy the master’s hand has not yet come to +its full strength and skill; its touch is not yet wholly assured, its +work not yet wholly blameless. Besides the plays undoubtedly and +entirely due to the still growing genius of Shakespeare, we have taken +note but of two among those which bear the partial imprint of his hand. +The long-vexed question as to the authorship of the latter parts of +<i>King Henry VI</i>., in their earlier or later form, has not been +touched upon; nor do I design to reopen that perpetual source of debate +unstanchable and inexhaustible dispute by any length of scrutiny or +inquisition of detail. Two points must of course be taken for +granted: that Marlowe was more or less concerned in the production, +and Shakespeare in the revision of these plays; whether before or after +his additions to the original <i>First Part of King Henry VI</i>. we +cannot determine, though the absence of rhyme might seem to indicate +a later date for the recast of the <i>Contention</i>. But it is +noticeable that the style of Marlowe appears more vividly and distinctly +in passages of the reformed than of the unreformed plays. Those +famous lines, for example, which open the fourth act of the <i>Second +Part of King Henry VI</i>. are not to be found in the corresponding +scene of the first part of the <i>Contention</i>; yet, whether they +belong to the original sketch of the play, or were inserted as an afterthought +into the revised and expanded copy, the authorship of these verses is +surely unmistakable:—</p> +<blockquote><p>The gaudy, blabbing, and remorseful day<br /> +Is crept into the bosom of the sea;<br /> +And now loud howling wolves arouse the jades<br /> +That drag the tragic melancholy night—</p> +</blockquote> +<p><i>Aut Christophorus Marlowe, aut diabolus</i>; it is inconceivable +that any imitator but one should have had the power so to catch the +very trick of his hand, the very note of his voice, and incredible that +the one who might would have set himself to do so: for if this be not +indeed the voice and this the hand of Marlowe, then what we find in +these verses is not the fidelity of a follower, but the servility of +a copyist. No parasitic rhymester of past or present days who +feeds his starveling talent on the shreds and orts, “the fragments, +scraps, the bits and greasy relics” of another man’s board, +ever uttered a more parrot-like note of plagiary. The very exactitude +of the repetition is a strong argument against the theory which attributes +it to Shakespeare. That he had much at starting to learn of Marlowe, +and that he did learn much—that in his earliest plays, and above +all in his earliest historic plays, the influence of the elder poet, +the echo of his style, the iteration of his manner, may perpetually +be traced—I have already shown that I should be the last to question; +but so exact an echo, so servile an iteration as this, I believe we +shall nowhere find in them. The sonorous accumulation of emphatic +epithets—as in the magnificent first verse of this passage—is +indeed at least as much a note of the young Shakespeare’s style +as of his master’s; but even were this one verse less in the manner +of the elder than the younger poet—and this we can hardly say +that it is—no single verse detached from its context can weigh +a feather against the full and flawless evidence of the whole speech. +And of all this there is nothing in the <i>Contention</i>; the scene +there opens in bald and flat nakedness of prose, striking at once into +the immediate matter of stage business without the decoration of a passing +epithet or a single trope.</p> +<p>From this sample it might seem that the main difficulty must be to +detect anywhere the sign-manual of Shakespeare, even in the best passages +of the revised play. On the other hand, it has not unreasonably +been maintained that even in the next scene of this same act in its +original form, and in all those following which treat of Cade’s +insurrection, there is evidence of such qualities as can hardly be ascribed +to any hand then known but Shakespeare’s. The forcible realism, +the simple vigour and lifelike humour of these scenes, cannot, it is +urged, be due to any other so early at work in the field of comedy. +A critic desirous to press this point might further insist on the likeness +or identity of tone between these and all later scenes in which Shakespeare +has taken on him to paint the action and passion of an insurgent populace. +With him, it might too plausibly be argued, the people once risen in +revolt for any just or unjust cause is always the mob, the unwashed +rabble, the swinish multitude; full as he is of wise and gracious tenderness +for individual character, of swift and ardent pity for personal suffering, +he has no deeper or finer feeling than scorn for “the beast with +many heads” that fawn and butt at bidding as they are swayed by +the vain and violent breath of any worthless herdsman. For the +drovers who guide and misguide at will the turbulent flocks of their +mutinous cattle his store of bitter words is inexhaustible; it is a +treasure-house of obloquy which can never be drained dry. All +this, or nearly all this, we must admit; but it brings us no nearer +to any but a floating and conjectural kind of solution. In the +earliest form known to us of this play it should seem that we have traces +of Shakespeare’s handiwork, in the latest that we find evidence +of Marlowe’s. But it would be something too extravagant +for the veriest wind-sucker among commentators to start a theory that +a revision was made of his original work by Marlowe after additions +had been made to it by Shakespeare; yet we have seen that the most unmistakable +signs of Marlowe’s handiwork, the passages which show most plainly +the personal and present seal of his genius, belong to the play only +in its revised form; while there is no part of the whole composition +which can so confidently be assigned to Shakespeare as to the one man +then capable of such work, as can an entire and important episode of +the play in its unrevised state. Now the proposition that Shakespeare +was the sole author of both plays in their earliest extant shape is +refuted at once and equally from without and from within, by evidence +of tradition and by evidence of style. There is therefore proof +irresistible and unmistakable of at least a double authorship; and the +one reasonable conclusion left to us would seem to be this; that the +first edition we possess of these plays is a partial transcript of the +text as it stood after the first additions had been made by Shakespeare +to the original work of Marlowe and others; for that this original was +the work of more hands than one, and hands of notably unequal power, +we have again the united witness of traditional and internal evidence +to warrant our belief: and that among the omissions of this imperfect +text were certain passages of the original work, which were ultimately +restored in the final revision of the entire poem as it now stands among +the collected works of Shakespeare.</p> +<p>No competent critic who has given due study to the genius of Marlowe +will admit that there is a single passage of tragic or poetic interest +in either form of the text, which is beyond the reach of the father +of English tragedy: or, if there be one seeming exception in the expanded +and transfigured version of Clifford’s monologue over his father’s +corpse, which is certainly more in Shakespeare’s tragic manner +than in Marlowe’s, and in the style of a later period than that +in which he was on the whole apparently content to reproduce or to emulate +the tragic manner of Marlowe, there is at least but this one exception +to the general and absolute truth of the rule; and even this great tragic +passage is rather out of the range of Marlowe’s style than beyond +the scope of his genius. In the later as in the earlier version +of these plays, the one manifest excellence of which we have no reason +to suppose him capable is manifest in the comic or prosaic scenes alone. +The first great rapid sketch of the dying cardinal, afterwards so nobly +enlarged and perfected on revision by the same or by a second artist, +is as clearly within the capacity of Marlowe as of Shakespeare; and +in either edition of the latter play, successively known as <i>The True +Tragedy of Richard Duke of York</i>, as the <i>Second Part of the Contention</i>, +and as the <i>Third Part of King Henry VI</i>., the dominant figure +which darkens all the close of the poem with presage of a direr day +is drawn by the same strong hand in the same tragic outline. From +the first to the last stage of the work there is no mark of change or +progress here; the whole play indeed has undergone less revision, as +it certainly needed less, than the preceding part of the <i>Contention</i>. +Those great verses which resume the whole spirit of Shakespeare’s +Richard—finer perhaps in themselves than any passage of the play +which bears his name—are wellnigh identical in either form of +the poem; but the reviser, with admirable judgment, has struck out, +whether from his own text or that of another, the line which precedes +them in the original sketch, where the passage runs thus:—</p> +<blockquote><p>I had no father, I am like no father;<br /> +I have no brothers, I am like no brother;</p> +</blockquote> +<p>(this reiteration is exactly in the first manner of our tragic drama;)</p> +<blockquote><p>And this word love, which greybeards term divine, etc.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It would be an impertinence to transcribe the rest of a passage which +rings in the ear of every reader’s memory; but it may be noted +that the erasure by which its effect is so singularly heightened with +the inborn skill of so divine an instinct is just such an alteration +as would be equally likely to occur to the original writer on glancing +over his printed text or to a poet of kindred power, who, while busied +in retouching and filling out the sketch of his predecessor, might be +struck by the opening for so great an improvement at so small a cost +of suppression. My own conjecture would incline to the belief +that we have here a perfect example of the manner in which Shakespeare +may be presumed, when such a task was set before him, to have dealt +with the text of Marlowe. That at the outset of his career he +was so employed, as well as on the texts of lesser poets, we have on +all hands as good evidence of every kind as can be desired; proof on +one side from the text of the revised plays, which are as certainly +in part the work of his hand as they are in part the work of another; +and proof on the opposite side from the open and clamorous charge of +his rivals, whose imputations can be made to bear no reasonable meaning +but this by the most violent ingenuity of perversion, and who presumably +were not persons of such frank imbecility, such innocent and infantine +malevolence, as to forge against their most dangerous enemy the pointless +and edgeless weapon of a charge which, if ungrounded, must have been +easier to refute than to devise. Assuming then that in common +with other young poets of his day he was thus engaged during the first +years of his connection with the stage, we should naturally have expected +to find him handling the text of Marlowe with more of reverence and +less of freedom than that of meaner men: ready, as in the <i>Contention</i>, +to clear away with no timid hand their weaker and more inefficient work, +to cancel and supplant it by worthier matter of his own; but when occupied +in recasting the verse of Marlowe, not less ready to confine his labour +to such slight and skilful strokes of art as that which has led us into +this byway of speculation; to the correction of a false note, the addition +of a finer touch, the perfection of a meaning half expressed or a tone +of half-uttered music; to the invigoration of sense and metre by substitution +of the right word for the wrong, of a fuller phrase for one feebler; +to the excision of such archaic and superfluous repetitions as are signs +of a cruder stage of workmanship, relics of a ruder period of style, +survivals of the earliest form or habit of dramatic poetry. Such +work as this, however humble in our present eyes, which look before +and after, would assuredly have been worthy of the workman and his task; +an office no less fruitful of profit, and no more unbeseeming the pupil +hand of the future master, than the subordinate handiwork of the young +Raffaelle or Leonardo on the canvas of Verrocchio or Perugino.</p> +<p>Of the doubtful or spurious plays which have been with more or less +show of reason ascribed to this first period of Shakespeare’s +art, I have here no more to say than that I purpose in the proper place +to take account of the only two among them which bear the slightest +trace of any possible touch of his hand. For these two there is +not, as it happens, the least witness of tradition or outward likelihood +which might warrant us in assigning them a place apart from the rest, +and nearer the chance of reception into the rank that has been claimed +for them; while those plays in whose favour there is some apparent evidence +from without, such as the fact of early or even original attribution +to the master’s hand, are, with one possible exception, utterly +beyond the pale of human consideration as at any stage whatever the +conceivable work of Shakespeare.</p> +<p>Considering that his two attempts at narrative or rather semi-narrative +and semi-reflective poetry belong obviously to an early stage of his +earliest period, we may rather here than elsewhere take notice that +there are some curious points of coincidence for evil as for good between +the fortunes of Shakespeare’s plays and the fortunes of his poems. +In either case we find that some part at least of his earlier and inferior +work has fared better at the blind hands of chance and the brutish hands +of printers than some part at least of his riper and more precious products. +His two early poems would seem to have had the good hap of his personal +supervision in their passage through the press. Upon them, at +least since the time of Coleridge, who as usual has said on this subject +the first and the last word that need be said, it seems to me that fully +sufficient notice and fully adequate examination have been expended; +and that nothing at once new and true can now be profitably said in +praise or in dispraise of them. Of <i>A Lover’s Complaint</i>, +marked as it is throughout with every possible sign suggestive of a +far later date and a far different inspiration, I have only space or +need to remark that it contains two of the most exquisitely Shakespearean +verses ever vouchsafed to us by Shakespeare, and two of the most execrably +euphuistic or dysphuistic lines ever inflicted on us by man. Upon +the Sonnets such a preposterous pyramid of presumptuous commentary has +long since been reared by the Cimmerian speculation and Bœotian +“brain-sweat” of sciolists and scholiasts, that no modest +man will hope and no wise man will desire to add to the structure or +subtract from it one single brick of proof or disproof, theorem or theory. +As yet the one contemporary book which has ever been supposed to throw +any direct or indirect light on the mystic matter remains as inaccessible +and unhelpful to students as though it had never been published fifteen +years earlier than the date of their publication and four years before +the book in which Meres notices the circulation of Shakespeare’s +“sugared sonnets among his private friends.” It would +be a most noble and thankworthy addition to a list of labours beyond +praise and benefits beyond price, if my honoured friend Dr. Grosart +could find the means to put a crown upon the achievements of his learning +and a seal upon the obligations of our gratitude by the one inestimable +boon long hoped for against hoping, and as yet but “a vision in +a dream” to the most learned and most loving of true Shakespearean +students; by the issue or reissue in its full and perfect likeness, +collated at last and complete, of <i>Willobie his Avisa</i>. <a name="citation63"></a><a href="#footnote63">{63}</a></p> +<p>It was long since more than time that the worthless and impudent +imposture called <i>The Passionate Pilgrim</i> should be exposed and +expelled from its station at the far end of Shakespeare’s poems. +What Coleridge said of Ben Jonson’s epithet for “turtle-footed +peace,” we may say of the label affixed to this rag-picker’s +bag of stolen goods: <i>The Passionate Pilgrim</i> is a pretty title, +a very pretty title; pray what may it mean? In all the larcenous +little bundle of verse there is neither a poem which bears that name +nor a poem by which that name would be bearable. The publisher +of the booklet was like “one Ragozine, a most notorious pirate”; +and the method no less than the motive of his rascality in the present +instance is palpable and simple enough. Fired by the immediate +and instantly proverbial popularity of Shakespeare’s <i>Venus +and Adonis</i>, he hired, we may suppose, some ready hack of unclean +hand to supply him with three doggrel sonnets on the same subject, noticeable +only for their porcine quality of prurience: he procured by some means +a rough copy or an incorrect transcript of two genuine and unpublished +sonnets by Shakespeare, which with the acute instinct of a felonious +tradesman he laid atop of his worthless wares by way of gilding to their +base metal: he stole from the two years published text of <i>Love’s +Labour’s Lost</i>, and reproduced with more or less mutilation +or corruption, the sonnet of Longavile, the “canzonet” of +Biron, and the far lovelier love-song of Dumaine. The rest of +the ragman’s gatherings, with three most notable exceptions, is +little better for the most part than dry rubbish or disgusting refuse; +unless a plea may haply be put in for the pretty commonplaces of the +lines on a “sweet rose, fair flower,” and so forth; for +the couple of thin and pallid if tender and tolerable copies of verse +on “Beauty” and “Good Night,” or the passably +light and lively stray of song on “crabbed age and youth.” +I need not say that those three exceptions are the stolen and garbled +work of Marlowe and of Barnfield, our elder Shelley and our first-born +Keats; the singer of Cynthia in verse well worthy of Endymion, who would +seem to have died as a poet in the same fatal year of his age that Keats +died as a man; the first adequate English laureate of the nightingale, +to be supplanted or equalled by none until the advent of his mightier +brother.</p> +<h3>II.</h3> +<p>The second period is that of perfection in comic and historic style. +The final heights and depths of tragedy, with all its reach of thought +and all its pulse of passion, are yet to be scaled and sounded; but +to this stage belongs the special quality of faultless, joyous, facile +command upon each faculty required of the presiding genius for service +or for sport. It is in the middle period of his work that the +language of Shakespeare is most limpid in its fullness, the style most +pure, the thought most transparent through the close and luminous raiment +of perfect expression. The conceits and crudities of the first +stage are outgrown and cast aside; the harshness and obscurity which +at times may strike us as among the notes of his third manner have as +yet no place in the flawless work of this second stage. That which +has to be said is not yet too great for perfection of utterance; passion +has not yet grappled with thought in so close and fierce an embrace +as to strain and rend the garment of words, though stronger and subtler +than ever was woven of human speech. Neither in his first nor +in his last stage would the style of Shakespeare, even were it possible +by study to reproduce it, be of itself a perfect and blameless model; +but his middle style, that in which the typical plays of his second +period are written, would be, if it were possible to imitate, the most +absolute pattern that could be set before man. I do not speak +of mere copyist’s work, the parasitic knack of retailing cast +phrases, tricks and turns of accent, cadences and catchwords proper +only to the natural manner of the man who first came by instinct upon +them, and by instinct put them to use; I speak of that faithful and +fruitful discipleship of love with which the highest among poets and +the most original among workmen have naturally been always the first +to study and the most earnest to follow the footsteps of their greatest +precursors in that kind. And this only high and profitable form +of study and discipleship can set before itself, even in the work of +Shakespeare, no pattern so perfect, no model so absolute, as is afforded +by the style or manner of his second period.</p> +<p>To this stage belong by spiritual right if not by material, by rule +of poetic order if not by date of actual succession, the greatest of +his English histories and four of his greatest and most perfect comedies; +the four greatest we might properly call them, reserving for another +class the last divine triad of romantic plays which it is alike inaccurate +to number among tragedies or comedies proper: the <i>Winter’s +Tale</i>, <i>Cymbeline</i>, and the <i>Tempest</i>, which belong of +course wholly to his last manner, or, if accuracy must be strained even +to pedantry, to the second manner of his third or final stage. +A single masterpiece which may be classed either among histories or +tragedies belongs to the middle period; and to this also we must refer, +if not the ultimate form, yet assuredly the first sketch at least of +that which is commonly regarded as the typical and supreme work of Shakespeare. +Three lesser comedies, one of them in great part the recast or rather +the transfiguration of an earlier poet’s work, complete the list +of plays assignable to the second epoch of his genius.</p> +<p>The ripest fruit of historic or national drama, the consummation +and the crown of Shakespeare’s labours in that line, must of course +be recognised and saluted by all students in the supreme and sovereign +trilogy of King Henry IV. and King Henry V. On a lower degree +only than this final and imperial work we find the two chronicle histories +which remain to be classed. In style as in structure they bear +witness of a power less perfect, a less impeccable hand. They +have less of perceptible instinct, less of vivid and vigorous utterance; +the breath of their inspiration is less continuous and less direct, +the fashion of their eloquence is more deliberate and more prepense; +there is more of study and structure apparent in their speech, and less +in their general scheme of action. Of all Shakespeare’s +plays they are the most rhetorical; there is more talk than song in +them, less poetry than oratory; more finish than form, less movement +than incident. Scene is laid upon scene, and event succeeds event, +as stone might be laid on stone and story might succeed story in a building +reared by mere might of human handiwork; not as in a city or temple +whose walls had risen of themselves to the lyric breath and stroke of +a greater than Amphion; moulded out of music by no rule or line of mortal +measure, with no sound of axe or anvil, but only of smitten strings: +built by harp and not by hand.</p> +<p>The lordly structure of these poems is the work of a royal workman, +full of masterdom and might, sublime in the state and strength of its +many mansions, but less perfect in proportion and less aërial in +build than the very highest fabrics fashioned after their own great +will by the supreme architects of song. Of these plays, and of +these alone among the maturer works of Shakespeare, it may be said that +the best parts are discernible from the rest, divisible by analysis +and separable by memory from the scenes which precede them or follow +and the characters which surround them or succeed. Constance and +Katherine rise up into remembrance apart from their environment and +above it, stand clear in our minds of the crowded company with which +the poet has begirt their central figures. In all other of his +great tragic works,—even in <i>Hamlet</i>, if we have grace and +sense to read it aright and not awry,—it is not of any single +person or separate passage that we think when we speak of it; it is +to the whole masterpiece that the mind turns at mention of its name. +The one entire and perfect chrysolite of <i>Othello</i> is neither Othello +nor Desdemona nor Iago, but each and all; the play of <i>Hamlet</i> +is more than Hamlet himself, the poem even here is too great to be resumed +in the person. But Constance is the jewel of <i>King John</i>, +and Katherine is the crowning blossom of <i>King Henry VIII</i>.—a +funeral flower as of “marigolds on death-beds blowing,” +an opal of as pure water as “tears of perfect moan,” with +fitful fire at its heart, ominous of evil and sorrow, set in a mourning +band of jet on the forefront of the poem, that the brow so circled may, +“like to a title-leaf, foretell the nature of a tragic volume.” +Not indeed that without these the ground would in either case be barren; +but that in either field our eye rests rather on these and other separate +ears of wheat that overtop the ranks, than on the waving width of the +whole harvest at once. In the one play our memory turns next to +the figures of Arthur and the Bastard, in the other to those of Wolsey +and his king: the residue in either case is made up of outlines more +lightly and slightly drawn. In two scenes the figure of King John +rises indeed to the highest height even of Shakespearean tragedy; for +the rest of the play the lines of his character are cut no deeper, the +features of his personality stand out in no sharper relief, than those +of Eleanor or the French king; but the scene in which he tempts Hubert +to the edge of the pit of hell sounds a deeper note and touches a subtler +string in the tragic nature of man than had been struck by any poet +save Dante alone, since the reign of the Greek tragedians. The +cunning and profound simplicity of the few last weighty words which +drop like flakes of poison that blister where they fall from the deadly +lips of the king is a new quality in our tragic verse; there was no +foretaste of such a thing in the passionate imagination which clothed +itself in the mighty music of Marlowe’s burning song. The +elder master might indeed have written the magnificent speech which +ushers in with gradual rhetoric and splendid reticence the black suggestion +of a deed without a name; his hand might have woven with no less imperial +skill the elaborate raiment of words and images which wraps up in fold +upon fold, as with swaddling-bands of purple and golden embroidery, +the shapeless and miscreated birth of a murderous purpose that labours +into light even while it loathes the light and itself; but only Shakespeare +could give us the first sample of that more secret and terrible knowledge +which reveals itself in the brief heavy whispers that seal the commission +and sign the warrant of the king. Webster alone of all our tragic +poets has had strength to emulate in this darkest line of art the handiwork +of his master. We find nowhere such an echo or reflection of the +spirit of this scene as in the last tremendous dialogue of Bosola with +Ferdinand in the house of murder and madness, while their spotted souls +yet flutter between conscience and distraction, hovering for an hour +as with broken wings on the confines of either province of hell. +One pupil at least could put to this awful profit the study of so great +a model; but with the single and sublime exception of that other design +from the same great hand, which bares before us the mortal anguish of +Bracciano, no copy or imitation of the scene in which John dies by poison +has ever come near enough to evade the sentence it provokes. The +shrill tremulous agony of Fletcher’s Valentinian is to the sullen +and slow death-pangs of Shakespeare’s tyrant as the babble of +a suckling to the accents of a man. As far beyond the reach of +any but his maker’s hand is the pattern of a perfect English warrior, +set once for all before the eyes of all ages in the figure of the noble +Bastard. The national side of Shakespeare’s genius, the +heroic vein of patriotism that runs like a thread of living fire through +the world-wide range of his omnipresent spirit, has never, to my thinking, +found vent or expression to such glorious purpose as here. Not +even in Hotspur or Prince Hal has he mixed with more godlike sleight +of hand all the lighter and graver good qualities of the national character, +or compounded of them all so lovable a nature as this. In those +others we admire and enjoy the same bright fiery temper of soul, the +same buoyant and fearless mastery of fate or fortune, the same gladness +and glory of life made lovely with all the labour and laughter of its +full fresh days; but no quality of theirs binds our hearts to them as +they are bound to Philip—not by his loyal valour, his keen young +wit, his kindliness, constancy, readiness of service as swift and sure +in the day of his master’s bitterest shame and shamefullest trouble +as in the blithest hour of battle and that first good fight which won +back his father’s spoils from his father’s slayer; but more +than all these, for that lightning of divine rage and pity, of tenderness +that speaks in thunder and indignation that makes fire of its tears, +in the horror of great compassion which falls on him, the tempest and +storm of a beautiful and godlike anger which shakes his strength of +spirit and bows his high heart down at sight of Arthur dead. Being +thus, as he is, the English masterwork of Shakespeare’s hand, +we may well accept him as the best man known to us that England ever +made; the hero that Nelson must have been had he never come too near +Naples.</p> +<p>I am not minded to say much of Shakespeare’s Arthur; there +are one or two figures in the world of his work of which there are no +words that would be fit or good to say. Another of these is Cordelia. +The place they have in our lives and thoughts is not one for talk; the +niche set apart for them to inhabit in our secret hearts is not penetrable +by the lights and noises of common day. There are chapels in the +cathedral of man’s highest art as in that of his inmost life, +not made to be set open to the eyes and feet of the world. Love +and death and memory keep charge for us in silence of some beloved names. +It is the crowning glory of genius, the final miracle and transcendent +gift of poetry, that it can add to the number of these, and engrave +on the very heart of our remembrance fresh names and memories of its +own creation.</p> +<p>There is one younger child in this heavenly family of Shakespeare’s +who sits side by side with Arthur in the secret places of our thought; +there are but two or three that I remember among the children of other +poets who may be named in the same year with them: as Fletcher’s +Hengo, Webster’s Giovanni, and Landor’s Cæsarion. +Of this princely trinity of boys the “bud of Britain” is +as yet the most famous flower; yet even in the broken words of childish +heroism that falter on his dying lips there is nothing of more poignant +pathos, more “dearly sweet and bitter,” than Giovanni’s +talk of his dead mother and all her sleepless nights now ended for ever +in a sleep beyond tears or dreams. Perhaps the most nearly faultless +in finish and proportion of perfect nature among all the noble three +is Landor’s portrait of the imperial and right Roman child of +Cæsar and Cleopatra. I know not but this may be found in +the judgment of men to come wellnigh the most pathetic and heroic figure +bequeathed us after more than eighty years of a glorious life by the +indomitable genius of our own last Roman and republican poet.</p> +<p>We have come now to that point at the opening of the second stage +in his work where the supreme genius of all time begins first to meddle +with the mysteries and varieties of human character, to handle its finer +and more subtle qualities, to harmonise its more untuned and jarring +discords; giving here and thus the first proof of a power never shared +in like measure by the mightiest among the sons of men, a sovereign +and serene capacity to fathom the else unfathomable depths of spiritual +nature, to solve its else insoluble riddles, to reconcile its else irreconcilable +discrepancies. In his first stage Shakespeare had dropped his +plummet no deeper into the sea of the spirit of man than Marlowe had +sounded before him; and in the channel of simple emotion no poet could +cast surer line with steadier hand than he. Further down in the +dark and fiery depths of human pain and mortal passion no soul could +search than his who first rendered into speech the aspirations and the +agonies of a ruined and revolted spirit. And until Shakespeare +found in himself the strength of eyesight to read and the cunning of +handiwork to render those wider diversities of emotion and those further +complexities of character which lay outside the range of Marlowe, he +certainly cannot be said to have outrun the winged feet, outstripped +the fiery flight of his forerunner. In the heaven of our tragic +song the first-born star on the forehead of its herald god was not outshone +till the full midsummer meridian of that greater godhead before whom +he was sent to prepare a pathway for the sun. Through all the +forenoon of our triumphant day, till the utter consummation and ultimate +ascension of dramatic poetry incarnate and transfigured in the master-singer +of the world, the quality of his tragedy was as that of Marlowe’s, +broad, single, and intense; large of hand, voluble of tongue, direct +of purpose. With the dawn of its latter epoch a new power comes +upon it, to find clothing and expression in new forms of speech and +after a new style. The language has put off its foreign decorations +of lyric and elegiac ornament; it has found already its infinite gain +in the loss of those sweet superfluous graces which encumbered the march +and enchained the utterance of its childhood. The figures which +it invests are now no more the types of a single passion, the incarnations +of a single thought. They now demand a scrutiny which tests the +power of a mind and tries the value of a judgment; they appeal to something +more than the instant apprehension which sufficed to respond to the +immediate claim of those that went before them. Romeo and Juliet +were simply lovers, and their names bring back to us no further thought +than of their love and the lovely sorrow of its end; Antony and Cleopatra +shall be before all things lovers, but the thought of their love and +its triumphant tragedy shall recall other things beyond number—all +the forces and all the fortunes of mankind, all the chance and all the +consequence that waited on their imperial passion, all the infinite +variety of qualities and powers wrought together and welded into the +frame and composition of that love which shook from end to end all nations +and kingdoms of the earth.</p> +<p>The same truth holds good in lighter matters; Biron and Rosaline +in comedy are as simply lovers and no more as were their counterparts +and coevals in tragedy: there is more in Benedick and Beatrice than +this simple quality of love that clothes itself in the strife of wits; +the injury done her cousin, which by the repercussion of its shock and +refraction of its effect serves to transfigure with such adorable indignation +and ardour of furious love and pity the whole bright light nature of +Beatrice, serves likewise by a fresh reflection and counterchange of +its consequence to exalt and enlarge the stature of her lover’s +spirit after a fashion beyond the reach of Shakespeare in his first +stage. Mercutio again, like Philip, is a good friend and gallant +swordsman, quick-witted and hot-blooded, of a fiery and faithful temper, +loyal and light and swift alike of speech and swordstroke; and this +is all. But the character of the Bastard, clear and simple as +broad sunlight though it be, has in it other features than this single +and beautiful likeness of frank young manhood; his love of country and +loathing of the Church that would bring it into subjection are two sides +of the same national quality that has made and will always make every +Englishman of his type such another as he was in belief and in unbelief, +patriot and priest-hater; and no part of the design bears such witness +to the full-grown perfection of his creator’s power and skill +as the touch that combines and fuses into absolute unity of concord +the high and various elements of faith in England, loyalty to the wretched +lord who has made him knight and acknowledged him kinsman, contempt +for his abjection at the foul feet of the Church, abhorrence of his +crime and constancy to his cause for something better worth the proof +of war than his miserable sake who hardly can be roused, even by such +exhortation as might put life and spirit into the dust of dead men’s +bones, to bid his betters stand and strike in defence of the country +dishonoured by his reign.</p> +<p>It is this new element of variety in unity, this study of the complex +and diverse shades in a single nature, which requires from any criticism +worth attention some inquisition of character as complement to the investigation +of style. Analysis of any sort would be inapplicable to the actors +who bear their parts in the comic, the tragic or historic plays of the +first period. There is nothing in them to analyse; they are, as +we have seen, like all the characters represented by Marlowe, the embodiments +or the exponents of single qualities and simple forces. The question +of style also is therefore so far a simple question; but with the change +and advance in thought and all matter of spiritual study and speculation +this question also becomes complex, and inseparable, if we would pursue +it to any good end, from the analysis of character and subject. +In the debate on which we are now to enter, the question of style and +the question of character, or as we might say the questions of matter +and of spirit, are more than ever indivisible from each other, more +inextricably inwoven than elsewhere into the one most difficult question +of authorship which has ever been disputed in the dense and noisy school +or fought out in the wide and windy field of Shakespearean controversy.</p> +<p>There can be few serious students of Shakespeare who have not sometimes +felt that possibly the hardest problem involved in their study is that +which requires for its solution some reasonable and acceptable theory +as to the play of <i>King Henry VIII</i>. None such has ever yet +been offered; and I certainly cannot pretend to supply one. Perhaps +however it may be possible to do some service by an attempt to disprove +what is untenable, even though it should not be possible to produce +in its stead any positive proof of what we may receive as matter of +absolute faith.</p> +<p>The veriest tiro in criticism who knows anything of the subject in +hand must perceive, what is certainly not beyond a schoolboy’s +range of vision, that the metre and the language of this play are in +great part so like the language and the metre of Fletcher that the first +and easiest inference would be to assume the partnership of that poet +in the work. In former days it was Jonson whom the critics and +commentators of their time saw good to select as the colleague or the +editor of Shakespeare; but a later school of criticism has resigned +the notion that the fifth act was retouched and adjusted by the author +of <i>Volpone</i> to the taste of his patron James. The later +theory is more plausible than this; the primary objection to it is that +it is too facile and superficial. It is waste of time to point +out with any intelligent and imaginative child with a tolerable ear +for metre who had read a little of the one and the other poet could +see for himself—that much of the play is externally as like the +usual style of Fletcher as it is unlike the usual style of Shakespeare. +The question is whether we can find one scene, one speech, one passage, +which in spirit, in scope, in purpose, bears the same or any comparable +resemblance to the work of Fletcher. I doubt if any man more warmly +admires a poet whom few can have studied more thoroughly than I; and +to whom, in spite of all sins of omission and commission,—and +many and grievous they are, beyond the plenary absolution of even the +most indulgent among critical confessors—I constantly return with +a fresh sense of attraction, which is constantly rewarded by a fresh +sense of gratitude and delight. It is assuredly from no wish to +pluck a leaf from his laurel, which has no need of foreign grafts or +stolen garlands from the loftier growth of Shakespeare’s, that +I venture to question his capacity for the work assigned to him by recent +criticism. The speech of Buckingham, for example, on his way to +execution, is of course at first sight very like the finest speeches +of the kind in Fletcher; here is the same smooth and fluent declamation, +the same prolonged and persistent melody, which if not monotonous is +certainly not various; the same pure, lucid, perspicuous flow of simple +rather than strong and elegant rather than exquisite English; and yet, +if we set it against the best examples of the kind which may be selected +from such tragedies as <i>Bonduca</i> or <i>The False One</i>, against +the rebuke addressed by Caratach to his cousin or by Cæsar to +the murderers of Pompey—and no finer instances of tragic declamation +can be chosen from the work of this great master of rhetorical dignity +and pathos—I cannot but think we shall perceive in it a comparative +severity and elevation which will be missed when we turn back from it +to the text of Fletcher. There is an aptness of phrase, an abstinence +from excess, a “plentiful lack” of mere flowery and superfluous +beauties, which we may rather wish than hope to find in the most famous +of Shakespeare’s successors. But if not his work, we may +be sure it was his model; a model which he often approached, which he +often studied, but which he never attained. It is never for absolute +truth and fitness of expression, it is always for eloquence and sweetness, +for fluency and fancy, that we find the tragic scenes of Fletcher most +praiseworthy; and the motive or mainspring of interest is usually anything +but natural or simple. Now the motive here is as simple, the emotion +as natural as possible; the author is content to dispense with all the +violent or far-fetched or fantastic excitement from which Fletcher could +hardly ever bring himself completely to abstain. I am not speaking +here of those tragedies in which the hand of Beaumont is traceable; +to these, I need hardly say, the charge is comparatively inapplicable +which may fairly be brought against the unassisted works of his elder +colleague; but in any of the typical tragedies of Fletcher, in <i>Thierry +and Theodoret</i>, in <i>Valentinian</i>, in <i>The Double Marriage</i>, +the scenes which for power and beauty of style may reasonably be compared +with this of the execution of Buckingham will be found more forced in +situation, more fanciful in language than this. Many will be found +more beautiful, many more exciting; the famous interview of Thierry +with the veiled Ordella, and the scene answering to this in the fifth +act where Brunhalt is confronted with her dying son, will be at once +remembered by all dramatic students; and the parts of Lucina and Juliana +may each be described as a continuous arrangement of passionate and +pathetic effects. But in which of these parts and in which of +these plays shall we find a scene so simple, an effect so modest, a +situation so unforced as here? where may we look for the same temperance +of tone, the same control of excitement, the same steadiness of purpose? +If indeed Fletcher could have written this scene, or the farewell of +Wolsey to his greatness, or his parting scene with Cromwell, he was +perhaps not a greater poet, but he certainly was a tragic writer capable +of loftier self-control and severer self-command, than he has ever shown +himself elsewhere.</p> +<p>And yet, if this were all, we might be content to believe that the +dignity of the subject and the high example of his present associate +had for once lifted the natural genius of Fletcher above itself. +But the fine and subtle criticism of Mr. Spedding has in the main, I +think, successfully and clearly indicated the lines of demarcation undeniably +discernible in this play between the severer style of certain scenes +or speeches and the laxer and more fluid style of others; between the +graver, solider, more condensed parts of the apparently composite work, +and those which are clearer, thinner, more diffused and diluted in expression. +If under the latter head we had to class such passages only as the dying +speech of Buckingham and the christening speech of Cranmer, it might +after all be almost impossible to resist the internal evidence of Fletcher’s +handiwork. Certainly we hear the same soft continuous note of +easy eloquence, level and limpid as a stream of crystalline transparence, +in the plaintive adieu of the condemned statesman and the panegyrical +prophecy of the favoured prelate. If this, I say, were all, we +might admit that there is nothing—I have already admitted it—in +either passage beyond the poetic reach of Fletcher. But on the +hypothesis so ably maintained by the editor of Bacon there hangs no +less a consequence than this: that we must assign to the same hand the +crowning glory of the whole poem, the death-scene of Katherine. +Now if Fletcher could have written that scene—a scene on which +the only criticism ever passed, the only commendation ever bestowed, +by the verdict of successive centuries, has been that of tears and silence—if +Fletcher could have written a scene so far beyond our applause, so far +above our acclamation, then the memory of no great poet has ever been +so grossly wronged, so shamefully defrauded of its highest claim to +honour. But, with all reverence for that memory, I must confess +that I cannot bring myself to believe it. Any explanation appears +to me more probable than this. Considering with what care every +relic of his work was once and again collected by his posthumous editors—even +to the attribution, not merely of plays in which he can have taken only +the slightest part, but of plays in which we know that he had no share +at all—I cannot believe that his friends would have let by far +the brightest jewel in his crown rest unreclaimed in the then less popular +treasure-house of Shakespeare. Belief or disbelief of this kind +is however but a sandy soil for conjecture to build upon. Whether +or not his friends would have reclaimed for him the credit of this scene, +had they known it (as they must have known it) to be his due, I must +repeat that such a miraculous example of a man’s genius for once +transcending itself and for ever eclipsing all its other achievements +appears to me beyond all critical, beyond all theological credulity. +Pathos and concentration are surely not among the dominant notes of +Fletcher’s style or the salient qualities of his intellect. +Except perhaps in the beautiful and famous passage where Hengo dies +in his uncle’s arms, I doubt whether in any of the variously and +highly coloured scenes played out upon the wide and shifting stage of +his fancy the genius of Fletcher has ever unlocked the source of tears. +Bellario and Aspatia were the children of his younger colleague; at +least, after the death of Beaumont we meet no such figures on the stage +of Fletcher. In effect, though Beaumont had a gift of grave sardonic +humour which found especial vent in burlesques of the heroic style and +in the systematic extravagance of such characters as Bessus, <a name="citation89"></a><a href="#footnote89">{89}</a> +yet he was above all things a tragic poet; and though Fletcher had great +power of tragic eloquence and passionate effusion, yet his comic genius +was of a rarer and more precious quality; one <i>Spanish Curate</i> +is worth many a <i>Valentinian</i>; as, on the other hand, one <i>Philaster</i> +is worth many a <i>Scornful Lady</i>. Now there is no question +here of Beaumont; and there is no question that the passage here debated +has been taken to the heart of the whole world and baptized in the tears +of generations as no work of Fletcher’s has ever been. That +Beaumont could have written it I do not believe; but I am wellnigh assured +that Fletcher could not. I can scarcely imagine that the most +fluid sympathy, the “hysteric passion” most easily distilled +from the eyes of reader or spectator, can ever have watered with its +tears the scene or the page which sets forth, however eloquently and +effectively, the sorrows and heroisms of Ordella, Juliana, or Lucina. +Every success but this I can well believe them, as they assuredly deserve, +to have attained.</p> +<p>To this point then we have come, as to the crucial point at issue; +and looking back upon those passages of the play which first suggest +the handiwork of Fletcher, and which certainly do now and then seem +almost identical in style with his, I think we shall hardly find the +difference between these and other parts of the same play so wide and +so distinct as the difference between the undoubted work of Fletcher +and the undoubted work of Shakespeare. What that difference is +we are fortunately able to determine with exceptional certitude, and +with no supplementary help from conjecture of probabilities. In +the play which is undoubtedly a joint work of these poets the points +of contact and the points of disunion are unmistakable by the youngest +eye. In the very last scene of <i>The Two Noble Kinsmen</i>, we +can tell with absolute certainty what speeches were appended or interpolated +by Fletcher; we can pronounce with positive conviction what passages +were completed and what parts were left unfinished by Shakespeare. +Even on Mr. Spedding’s theory it can hardly be possible to do +as much for <i>King Henry VIII</i>. The lines of demarcation, +however visible or plausible, are fainter by far than these. It +is certainly not much less strange to come upon such passages in the +work of Shakespeare as the speeches of Buckingham and Cranmer than it +would be to encounter in the work of Sophocles a sample of the later +and laxer style of Euripides; to meet for instance in the <i>Antigone</i> +with a passage which might pass muster as an extract from the <i>Iphigenia +in Aulis</i>. In metrical effects the style of the lesser English +poet is an exact counterpart of the style of the lesser Greek; there +is the same comparative tenuity and fluidity of verse, the same excess +of short unemphatic syllables, the same solution of the graver iambic +into soft overflow of lighter and longer feet which relaxes and dilutes +the solid harmony of tragic metre with notes of a more facile and feminine +strain. But in <i>King Henry VIII</i>. it should be remarked that +though we not unfrequently find the same preponderance as in Fletcher’s +work of verses with a double ending—which in English verse at +least are not in themselves feminine, and need not be taken to constitute, +as in Fletcher’s case they do, a note of comparative effeminacy +or relaxation in tragic style—we do not find the perpetual predominance +of those triple terminations so peculiarly and notably dear to that +poet; <a name="citation92"></a><a href="#footnote92">{92}</a> so that +even by the test of the metre-mongers who would reduce the whole question +at issue to a point which might at once be solved by the simple process +of numeration the argument in favour of Fletcher can hardly be proved +tenable; for the metre which evidently has one leading quality in common +with his is as evidently wanting in another at least as marked and as +necessary to establish—if established it can be by any such test +taken singly and, apart from all other points of evidence—the +collaboration of Fletcher with Shakespeare in this instance. And +if the proof by mere metrical similitude is thus imperfect, there is +here assuredly no other kind of test which may help to fortify the argument +by any suggestion of weight even comparable to this. In those +passages which would seem most plausibly to indicate the probable partnership +of Fletcher, the unity and sustained force of the style keep it generally +above the average level of his; there is less admixture or intrusion +of lyric or elegiac quality; there is more of temperance and proportion +alike in declamation and in debate. And throughout the whole play, +and under all the diversity of composite subject and conflicting interest +which disturbs the unity of action, there is a singleness of spirit, +a general unity or concord of inner tone, in marked contrast to the +utter discord and discrepancy of the several sections of <i>The Two +Noble Kinsmen</i>. We admit, then, that this play offers us in +some not unimportant passages the single instance of a style not elsewhere +precisely or altogether traceable in Shakespeare; that no exact parallel +to it can be found among his other plays; and that if not the partial +work it may certainly be taken as the general model of Fletcher in his +tragic poetry. On the other hand, we contend that its exceptional +quality might perhaps be explicable as a tentative essay in a new line +by one who tried so many styles before settling into his latest; and +that, without far stronger, clearer, and completer proof than has yet +been or can ever be advanced, the question is not solved but merely +evaded by the assumption of a double authorship.</p> +<p>By far the ablest argument based upon a wider ground of reason or +of likelihood than this of mere metre that has yet been advanced in +support of the theory which would attribute a part of this play to some +weaker hand than Shakespeare’s is due to the study of a critic +whose name—already by right of inheritance the most illustrious +name of his age and ours—is now for ever attached to that of Shakespeare +himself by right of the highest service ever done and the noblest duty +ever paid to his memory. The untimely death which removed beyond +reach of our thanks for all he had done and our hopes for all he might +do, the man who first had given to France the first among foreign poets—son +of the greatest Frenchman and translator of the greatest Englishman—was +only in this not untimely, that it forbore him till the great and wonderful +work was done which has bound two deathless names together by a closer +than the common link that connects the names of all sovereign poets. +Among all classic translations of the classic works of the world, I +know of none that for absolute mastery and perfect triumph over all +accumulation of obstacles, for supreme dominion over supreme difficulty, +can be matched with the translation of Shakespeare by François-Victor +Hugo; unless a claim of companionship may perchance be put in for Urquhart’s +unfinished version of Rabelais. For such success in the impossible +as finally disproves the right of “that fool of a word” +to existence—at least in the world of letters—the two miracles +of study and of sympathy which have given Shakespeare to the French +and Rabelais to the English, and each in his habit as he lived, may +take rank together in glorious rivalry beyond eyeshot of all past or +future competition.</p> +<p>Among the essays appended to the version of Shakespeare which they +complete and illustrate, that which deals with the play now in question +gives as ample proof as any other of the sound and subtle insight brought +to bear by the translator upon the object of his labour and his love. +His keen and studious intuition is here as always not less notable and +admirable than his large and solid knowledge, his full and lucid comprehension +at once of the text and of the history of Shakespeare’s plays; +and if his research into the inner details of that history may seem +ever to have erred from the straight path of firm and simple certainty +into some dubious byway of theory or conjecture, we may be sure at least +that no lack of learning or devotion, of ardour or intelligence, but +more probably some noble thought that was fathered by a noble wish to +do honour to Shakespeare, has led him to attribute to his original some +quality foreign to the text, or to question the authenticity of what +for love of his author he might not wish to find in it. Thus he +would reject the main part of the fifth act as the work of a mere court +laureate, an official hack or hireling employed to anoint the memory +of an archbishop and lubricate the steps of a throne with the common +oil of dramatic adulation; and finding it in either case a task alike +unworthy of Shakespeare to glorify the name of Cranmer or to deify the +names of the queen then dead and the king yet living, it is but natural +that he should be induced by an unconscious bias or prepossession of +the will to depreciate the worth of the verse sent on work fitter for +ushers and embalmers and the general valetry or varletry of Church and +State. That this fifth act is unequal in point of interest to +the better part of the preceding acts with which it is connected by +so light and loose a tie of convenience is as indisputable as that the +style of the last scene savours now and then, and for some space together, +more strongly than ever of Fletcher’s most especial and distinctive +qualities, or that the whole structure of the play if judged by any +strict rule of pure art is incomposite and incongruous, wanting in unity, +consistency, and coherence of interest. The fact is that here +even more than in <i>King John</i> the poet’s hands were hampered +by a difficulty inherent in the subject. To an English and Protestant +audience, fresh from the passions and perils of reformation and reaction, +he had to present an English king at war with the papacy, in whom the +assertion of national independence was incarnate; and to the sympathies +of such an audience it was a matter of mere necessity for him to commend +the representative champion of their cause by all means which he could +compel into the service of his aim. Yet this object was in both +instances all but incompatible with the natural and necessary interest +of the plot. It was inevitable that this interest should in the +main be concentrated upon the victims of the personal or national policy +of either king; upon Constance and Arthur, upon Katherine and Wolsey. +Where these are not, either apparent in person on the stage, or felt +in their influence upon the speech and action of the characters present, +the pulse of the poem beats fainter and its forces begin to flag. +In <i>King John</i> this difficulty was met and mastered, these double +claims of the subject of the poem and the object of the poet were satisfied +and harmonised, by the effacement of John and the substitution of Faulconbridge +as the champion of the national cause and the protagonist of the dramatic +action. Considering this play in its double aspect of tragedy +and history, we might say that the English hero becomes the central +figure of the poem as seen from its historic side, while John remains +the central figure of the poem as seen from its tragic side; the personal +interest that depends on personal crime and retribution is concentrated +on the agony of the king; the national interest which he, though the +eponymous hero of the poem, was alike inadequate as a craven and improper +as a villain to sustain and represent in the eyes of the spectators +was happily and easily transferred to the one person of the play who +could properly express within the compass of its closing act at once +the protest against papal pretension, the defiance of foreign invasion, +and the prophetic assurance of self-dependent life and self-sufficing +strength inherent in the nation then fresh from a fiercer trial of its +quality, which an audience of the days of Queen Elizabeth would justly +expect from the poet who undertook to set before them in action the +history of the days of King John. That history had lately been +brought upon the stage under the hottest and most glaring light that +could be thrown on it by the fire of fanatical partisanship; <i>The +Troublesome Reign of King John</i>, weakest and most wooden of all wearisome +chronicles that ever cumbered the boards, had in it for sole principle +of life its power of congenial appeal to the same blatant and vulgar +spirit of Protestantism which inspired it. In all the flat interminable +morass of its tedious and tuneless verse I can find no blade or leaf +of living poetic growth, no touch but one of nature or of pathos, where +Arthur dying would fain send a last thought in search of his mother. +From this play Shakespeare can have got neither hint nor help towards +the execution of his own; the crude rough sketch of the Bastard as he +brawls and swaggers through the long length of its scenes is hardly +so much as the cast husk or chrysalid of the noble creature which was +to arise and take shape for ever at the transfiguring touch of Shakespeare. +In the case of <i>King Henry VIII</i>. he had not even such a blockish +model as this to work from. The one preceding play known to me +which deals professedly with the same subject treats of quite other +matters than are handled by Shakespeare, and most notably with the scholastic +adventures or misadventures of Edward Prince of Wales and his whipping-boy +Ned Browne. A fresh and wellnigh a plausible argument might be +raised by the critics who deny the unity of authorship in King Henry +VIII., on the ground that if Shakespeare had completed the work himself +he would surely not have let slip the occasion to introduce one of the +most famous and popular of all court fools in the person of Will Summers, +who might have given life and relief to the action of many scenes now +unvaried and unbroken in their gravity of emotion and event. Shakespeare, +one would say, might naturally have been expected to take up and remodel +the well-known figure of which his humble precursor could give but a +rough thin outline, yet sufficient it should seem to attract the tastes +to which it appealed; for this or some other quality of seasonable attraction +served to float the now forgotten play of Samuel Rowley through several +editions. The central figure of the huge hot-headed king, with +his gusts of stormy good humour and peals of burly oaths which might +have suited “Garagantua’s mouth” and satisfied the +requirements of Hotspur, appeals in a ruder fashion to the survival +of the same sympathies on which Shakespeare with a finer instinct as +evidently relied; the popular estimate of the bluff and brawny tyrant +“who broke the bonds of Rome” was not yet that of later +historians, though doubtless neither was it that of the writer or writers +who would champion him to the utterance. Perhaps the opposite +verdicts given by the instinct of the people on “bluff King Hal” +and “Bloody Mary” may be understood by reference to a famous +verse of Juvenal. The wretched queen was sparing of noble blood +and lavish of poor men’s lives—<i>cerdonibus timenda</i>; +and the curses under which her memory was buried were spared by the +people to her father, <i>Lamiarum cæde madenti</i>. In any +case, the humblest not less than the highest of the poets who wrote +under the reign of his daughter found it safe to present him in a popular +light before an audience of whose general prepossession in his favour +William Shakespeare was no slower to take advantage than Samuel Rowley.</p> +<p>The two plays we have just discussed have one quality of style in +common which has already been noted; that in them rhetoric is in excess +of action or passion, and far in excess of poetry. They are not +as yet perfect examples of his second manner, though far ahead of his +first stage in performance as in promise. Compared with the full +and living figure of Katherine or of Constance, the study of Margaret +of Anjou is the mere sketch of a poet still in his pupilage: John and +Henry, Faulconbridge and Wolsey, are designs beyond reach of the hand +which drew the second and third Richard without much background or dramatic +perspective. But the difficulties inherent in either subject are +not surmounted throughout with absolute equality of success; the very +point of appeal to the sympathy and excitement of the time may have +been something of a disturbing force in the composition of the work—a +loadstone rock indeed, of tempting attraction to the patriot as well +as to the playwright, but possibly capable of proving in some measure +a rock of offence to the poet whose ship was piloted towards it. +His perfect triumph in the field of patriotic drama, coincident with +the perfect maturity of his comic genius and his general style, has +now to show itself.</p> +<p>The great national trilogy which is at once the flower of Shakespeare’s +second period and the crown of his achievements in historic drama—unless +indeed we so far depart from the established order and arrangement of +his works as to include his three Roman plays in the same class with +these English histories—offers perhaps the most singular example +known to us of the variety in fortune which befell his works on their +first appearance in print. None of these had better luck in that +line at starting than <i>King Henry IV</i>.; none had worse than <i>King +Henry V</i>. With <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, the <i>Merry Wives +of Windsor</i>, and <i>Hamlet</i>, it shares the remarkable and undesirable +honour of having been seized and boarded by pirates even before it had +left the dockyard. The masterbuilder’s hands had not yet +put the craft into seaworthy condition when she was overhauled by these +Kidds and Blackbeards of the press. Of those four plays, the two +tragedies at least were thoroughly recast, and rewritten from end to +end: the pirated editions giving us a transcript, more or less perfect +or imperfect, accurate or corrupt, of the text as it first came from +the poet’s hand; a text to be afterwards indefinitely modified +and incalculably improved. Not quite so much can be said of the +comedy, which certainly stood in less need of revision, and probably +would not have borne it so well; nevertheless every little passing touch +of the reviser’s hand is here also a noticeable mark of invigoration +and improvement. But <i>King Henry V</i>., we may fairly say, +is hardly less than transformed. Not that it has been recast after +the fashion of <i>Hamlet</i>, or even rewritten after the fashion of +<i>Romeo and Juliet</i>; but the corruptions and imperfections of the +pirated text are here more flagrant than in any other instance; while +the general revision of style by which it is at once purified and fortified +extends to every nook and corner of the restored and renovated building. +Even had we, however, a perfect and trustworthy transcript of Shakespeare’s +original sketch for this play, there can be little doubt that the rough +draught would still prove almost as different from the final masterpiece +as is the soiled and ragged canvas now before us, on which we trace +the outline of figures so strangely disfigured, made subject to such +rude extremities of defacement and defeature. There is indeed +less difference between the two editions in the comic than in the historic +scenes; the pirates were probably more careful to furnish their market +with a fair sample of the lighter than of the graver ware supplied by +their plunder of the poet; Fluellen and Pistol lose less through their +misusage than the king; and the king himself is less maltreated when +he talks plain prose with his soldiers than when he chops blank verse +with his enemies or his lords. His rough and ready courtship of +the French princess is a good deal expanded as to length, but (if I +dare say so) less improved and heightened in tone than we might well +have wished and it might well have borne; in either text the Hero’s +addresses savour rather of a ploughman than a prince, and his finest +courtesies are clownish though not churlish. We may probably see +in this rather a concession to the appetite of the groundlings than +an evasion of the difficulties inherent in the subject-matter of the +scene; too heavy as these might have been for another, we can conceive +of none too hard for the magnetic tact and intuitive delicacy of Shakespeare’s +judgment and instinct. But it must fairly and honestly be admitted +that in this scene we find as little of the charm and humour inseparable +from the prince as of the courtesy and dignity to be expected from the +king.</p> +<p>It should on the other hand be noted that the finest touch in the +comic scenes, if not the finest in the whole portrait of Falstaff, is +apparently an afterthought, a touch added on revision of the original +design. In the first scene of the second act Mrs. Quickly’s +remark that “he’ll yield the crow a pudding one of these +days” is common to both versions of the play; but the six words +following are only to be found in the revised edition; and these six +words the very pirates could hardly have passed over or struck out. +They are not such as can drop from the text of a poet unperceived by +the very dullest and horniest of human eyes. “The king has +killed his heart.” Here is the point in Falstaff’s +nature so strangely overlooked by the man of all men who we should have +said must be the first to seize and to appreciate it. It is as +grievous as it is inexplicable that the Shakespeare of France—the +most infinite in compassion, in “conscience and tender heart,” +of all great poets in all ages and all nations of the world—should +have missed the deep tenderness of this supreme and subtlest touch in +the work of the greatest among his fellows. Again, with anything +but “damnable” iteration, does Shakespeare revert to it +before the close of this very scene. Even Pistol and Nym can see +that what now ails their old master is no such ailment as in his prosperous +days was but too liable to “play the rogue with his great toe.” +“The king hath run bad humours on the knight”: “his +heart is fracted, and corroborate.” And it is not thus merely +through the eclipse of that brief mirage, that fair prospect “of +Africa, and golden joys,” in view of which he was ready to “take +any man’s horses.” This it is that distinguishes Falstaff +from Panurge; that lifts him at least to the moral level of Sancho Panza. +I cannot but be reluctant to set the verdict of my own judgment against +that of Victor Hugo’s; I need none to remind me what and who he +is whose judgment I for once oppose, and what and who am I that I should +oppose it; that he is he, and I am but myself; yet against his classification +of Falstaff, against his definition of Shakespeare’s unapproached +and unapproachable masterpiece in the school of comic art and humouristic +nature, I must and do with all my soul and strength protest. The +admirable phrase of “swine-centaur” (<i>centaure du porc</i>) +is as inapplicable to Falstaff as it is appropriate to Panurge. +Not the third person but the first in date of that divine and human +trinity of humourists whose names make radiant for ever the Century +of their new-born glory—not Shakespeare but Rabelais is responsible +for the creation or the discovery of such a type as this. “<i>Suum +cuique</i> is our Roman justice”; the gradation from Panurge to +Falstaff is not downward but upward; though it be Victor Hugo’s +very self who asserts the contrary. <a name="citation108"></a><a href="#footnote108">{108}</a> +Singular as may seem the collocation of the epithet “moral” +with the name “Falstaff,” I venture to maintain my thesis; +that in point of feeling, and therefore of possible moral elevation, +Falstaff is as undeniably the superior of Sancho as Sancho is unquestionably +the superior of Panurge. The natural affection of Panurge is bounded +by the self-same limits as the natural theology of Polyphemus; the love +of the one, like the faith of the other, begins and ends alike at one +point;</p> +<blockquote><p> Myself,<br /> +And this great belly, first of deities;</p> +</blockquote> +<p>(in which line, by the way, we may hear as it were a first faint +prelude of the great proclamation to come—the hymn of praise and +thanksgiving for the coronation day of King Gaster; whose laureate, +we know, was as lovingly familiar with the Polyphemus of Euripides as +Shakespeare with his own Pantagruel.) In Sancho we come upon a +creature capable of love—but not of such love as kills or helps +to kill, such love as may end or even as may seem to end in anything +like heartbreak. “And now abideth Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare, +these three; but the greatest of these is Shakespeare.”</p> +<p>I would fain score yet another point in the fat knight’s favour; +“I have much to say in the behalf of that Falstaff.” +Rabelais, evangelist and prophet of the Resurrection of the Flesh (so +long entombed, ignored, repudiated, misconstrued, vilified, by so many +generations and ages of Galilean preachers and Pharisaic schoolmen)—Rabelais +was content to paint the flesh merely, in its honest human reality—human +at least, if also bestial; in its frank and rude reaction against the +half brainless and wholly bloodless teachers whose doctrine he himself +on the one hand, and Luther on the other, arose together to smite severally—to +smite them hip and thigh, even till the going down of the sun; the mock +sun or marshy meteor that served only to deepen the darkness encompassing +on every side the doubly dark ages—the ages of monarchy and theocracy, +the ages of death and of faith. To Panurge, therefore, it was +unnecessary and it might have seemed inconsequent to attribute other +gifts or functions than are proper to such intelligence as may accompany +the appetites of an animal. That most irreverend father in God, +Friar John, belongs to a higher class in the moral order of being; and +he much rather than his fellow-voyager and penitent is properly comparable +with Falstaff. It is impossible to connect the notion of rebuke +with the sins of Panurge. The actual lust and gluttony, the imaginary +cowardice of Falstaff, have been gravely and sharply rebuked by critical +morality; we have just noted a too recent and too eminent example of +this; but what mortal ever dreamed of casting these qualities in the +teeth of his supposed counterpart? The difference is as vast between +Falstaff on the field of battle and Panurge on the storm-tossed deck +as between Falstaff and Hotspur, Panurge and Friar John. No man +could show cooler and steadier nerve than is displayed in either case—by +the lay as well as the clerical namesake of the fourth evangelist. +If ever fruitless but endless care was shown to prevent misunderstanding, +it was shown in the pains taken by Shakespeare to obviate the misconstruction +which would impute to Falstaff the quality of a Parolles or a Bobadil, +a Bessus or a Moron. The delightful encounter between the jester +and the bear in the crowning interlude of <i>La Princesse d’Élide</i> +shows once more, I may remark, that Molière had sat at the feet +of Rabelais as delightedly as Shakespeare before him. Such rapturous +inebriety or Olympian incontinence of humour only fires the blood of +the graver and less exuberant humourist when his lips are still warm +and wet from the well-spring of the <i>Dive Bouteille</i>.</p> +<p>It is needless to do over again the work which was done, and well +done, a hundred years since, by the writer whose able essay in vindication +and exposition of the genuine character of Falstaff elicited from Dr. +Johnson as good a jest and as bad a criticism as might have been expected. +His argument is too thoroughly carried out at all points and fortified +on all hands to require or even to admit of corroboration; and the attempt +to appropriate any share of the lasting credit which is his due would +be nothing less than a disingenuous impertinence. I may here however +notice that in the very first scene of this trilogy which introduces +us to the ever dear and honoured presence of Sir John, his creator has +put into the mouth of a witness no friendlier or more candid than Ned +Poins the distinction between two as true-bred cowards as ever turned +back and one who will fight no longer than he sees reason. In +this nutshell lies the whole kernel of the matter; the sweet, sound, +ripe, toothsome, wholesome kernel of Falstaff’s character and +humour. He will fight as well as his princely patron, and, like +the prince, as long as he sees reason; but neither Hal nor Jack has +ever felt any touch of desire to pluck that “mere scutcheon” +honour “from the pale-faced moon.” Harry Percy is +as it were the true Sir Bedivere, the last of all Arthurian knights; +Henry V. is the first as certainly as he is the noblest of those equally +daring and calculating statesmen-warriors whose two most terrible, most +perfect, and most famous types are Louis XI. and Cæsar Borgia. +Gain, “commodity,” the principle of self-interest which +never but in word and in jest could become the principle of action with +Faulconbridge,—himself already far more “a man of this world” +than a Launcelot or a Hotspur,—is as evidently the mainspring +of Henry’s enterprise and life as of the contract between King +Philip and King John. The supple and shameless egotism of the +churchmen on whose political sophistries he relies for external support +is needed rather to varnish his project than to reassure his conscience. +Like Frederic the Great before his first Silesian war, the future conqueror +of Agincourt has practically made up his mind before he seeks to find +as good reason or as plausible excuse as were likewise to suffice the +future conqueror of Rosbach. In a word, Henry is doubtless not +the man, as old Auchindrane expresses it in the noble and strangely +neglected tragedy which bears solitary but sufficient witness to the +actual dramatic faculty of Sir Walter Scott’s genius, to do the +devil’s work without his wages; but neither is he, on the like +unprofitable terms, by any manner of means the man to do God’s. +No completer incarnation could be shown us of the militant Englishman—<i>Anglais +pur sang</i>; but it is not only, as some have seemed to think, with +the highest, the purest, the noblest quality of English character that +his just and far-seeing creator has endowed him. The godlike equity +of Shakespeare’s judgment, his implacable and impeccable righteousness +of instinct and of insight, was too deeply ingrained in the very core +of his genius to be perverted by any provincial or pseudo-patriotic +prepossessions; his patriotism was too national to be provincial. +Assuredly no poet ever had more than he: not even the king of men and +poets who fought at Marathon and sang of Salamis: much less had any +or has any one of our own, from Milton on to Campbell and from Campbell +even to Tennyson. In the mightiest chorus of <i>King Henry V</i>. +we hear the pealing ring of the same great English trumpet that was +yet to sound over the battle of the Baltic, and again in our later day +over a sea-fight of Shakespeare’s own, more splendid and heart-cheering +in its calamity than that other and all others in their triumph; a war-song +and a sea-song divine and deep as death or as the sea, making thrice +more glorious at once the glorious three names of England, of Grenville, +and of Tennyson for ever. From the affectation of cosmopolitan +indifference not Æschylus, not Pindar, not Dante’s very +self was more alien or more free than Shakespeare; but there was nothing +of the dry Tyrtæan twang, the dull mechanic resonance as of wooden +echoes from a platform, in the great historic chord of his lyre. +“He is very English, too English, even,” says the Master +on whom his enemies alone—assuredly not his most loving, most +reverent, and most thankful disciples—might possibly and plausibly +retort that he was “very French, too French, even”; but +he certainly was not “too English” to see and cleave to +the main fact, the radical and central truth, of personal or national +character, of typical history or tradition, without seeking to embellish, +to degrade, in either or in any way to falsify it. From king to +king, from cardinal to cardinal, from the earliest in date of subject +to the latest of his histories, we find the same thread running, the +same link of honourable and righteous judgment, of equitable and careful +equanimity, connecting and combining play with play in an unbroken and +infrangible chain of evidence to the singleness of the poet’s +eye, the identity of the workman’s hand, which could do justice +and would do no more than justice, alike to Henry and to Wolsey, to +Pandulph and to John. His typical English hero or historic protagonist +is a man of their type who founded and built up the empire of England +in India; a hero after the future pattern of Hastings and of Clive; +not less daringly sagacious and not more delicately scrupulous, not +less indomitable or more impeccable than they. A type by no means +immaculate, a creature not at all too bright and good for English nature’s +daily food in times of mercantile or military enterprise; no whit more +if no whit less excellent and radiant than reality. <i>Amica Britannia, +sed magis amica veritas</i>. The master poet of England—all +Englishmen may reasonably and honourably be proud of it—has not +two weights and two measures for friend and foe. This palpable +and patent fact, as his only and worthy French translator has well remarked, +would of itself suffice to exonerate his memory from the imputation +of having perpetrated in its evil entirety <i>The First Part of King +Henry VI</i>.</p> +<p>There is, in my opinion, somewhat more of internal evidence than +I have ever seen adduced in support of the tradition current from an +early date as to the origin of the <i>Merry Wives of Windsor</i>; a +tradition which assigns to Queen Elizabeth the same office of midwife +with regard to this comedy as was discharged by Elwood with reference +to <i>Paradise Regained</i>. Nothing could so naturally or satisfactorily +explain its existence as the expression of a desire to see “Falstaff +in love,” which must have been nothing less than the equivalent +of a command to produce him under the disguise of such a transfiguration +on the boards. The task of presenting him so shorn of his beams, +so much less than archangel (of comedy) ruined, and the excess of (humorous) +glory obscured, would hardly, we cannot but think and feel, have spontaneously +suggested itself to Shakespeare as a natural or eligible aim for the +fresh exercise of his comic genius. To exhibit Falstaff as throughout +the whole course of five acts a credulous and baffled dupe, one “easier +to be played on than a pipe,” was not really to reproduce him +at all. The genuine Falstaff could no more have played such a +part than the genuine Petruchio could have filled such an one as was +assigned him by Fletcher in the luckless hour when that misguided poet +undertook to continue the subject and to correct the moral of the next +comedy in our catalogue of Shakespeare’s. <i>The Tamer Tamed</i> +is hardly less consistent or acceptable as a sequel to the <i>Taming +of the Shrew</i> than the <i>Merry Wives of Windsor</i> as a supplement +to <i>King Henry IV</i>.: and no conceivable comparison could more forcibly +convey, how broad and deep is the gulf of incongruity which divides +them.</p> +<p>The plea for once suggested by the author in the way of excuse or +extenuation for this incompatibility of Falstaff with Falstaff—for +the violation of character goes far beyond mere inconsistency or the +natural ebb and flow of even the brightest wits and most vigorous intellects—will +commend itself more readily to the moralist than to the humanist; in +other words, to the preacher rather than to the thinker, the sophist +rather than the artist. Here only does Shakespeare show that he +feels the necessity of condescending to such evasion or such apology +as is implied in the explanation of Falstaff’s incredible credulity +by a reference to “the guiltiness of his mind” and the admission, +so gratifying to all minds more moral than his own, that “wit +may be made a Jack-a-Lent, when ’tis upon ill employment.” +It is the best excuse that can be made; but can we imagine the genuine, +the pristine Falstaff reduced to the proffer of such an excuse in serious +good earnest?</p> +<p>In the original version of this comedy there was not a note of poetry +from end to end; as it then appeared, it might be said to hold the same +place on the roll of Shakespeare’s plays as is occupied by <i>Bartholomew +Fair</i> on the roll of Ben Jonson’s. From this point of +view it is curious to contrast the purely farcical masterpieces of the +town-bred schoolboy and the country lad. There is a certain faint +air of the fields, the river, and the park, even in the rough sketch +of Shakespeare’s farce—wholly prosaic as it is, and in no +point suggestive of any unlikelihood in the report which represents +it as the composition or rather as the improvisation of a fortnight. +We know at once that he must have stroked the fallow greyhound that +was outrun on “Cotsall”; that he must—and perhaps +once or twice at least too often—have played truant (some readers, +boys past or present, might wish for association’s sake it could +actually have been Datchet-wards) from under the shadow of good Sir +Hugh’s probably not over formidable though “threatening +twigs of birch,” at all risks of being “preeches” +on his return, in fulfilment of the direful menace held out to that +young namesake of his over whose innocence Mrs. Quickly was so creditably +vigilant. On the other hand, no student of Jonson will need to +be reminded how closely and precociously familiar the big stalwart Westminster +boy, Camden’s favoured and grateful pupil, must have made himself +with the rankest haunts and most unsavoury recesses of that ribald waterside +and Smithfield life which he lived to reproduce on the stage with a +sometimes insufferable fidelity to details from which Hogarth might +have shrunk. Even his unrivalled proficiency in classic learning +can hardly have been the fruit of greater or more willing diligence +in school hours than he must have lavished on other than scholastic +studies in the streets. The humour of his huge photographic group +of divers “humours” is undeniably and incomparably richer, +broader, fuller of invention and variety, than any that Shakespeare’s +lighter work can show; all the five acts of the latter comedy can hardly +serve as counterpoise, in weight and wealth of comic effect, to the +single scene in which Zeal-of-the-Land defines the moral and theological +boundaries of action and intention which distinguish the innocent if +not laudable desire to eat pig from the venial though not mortal sin +of longing to eat pig in the thick of the profane Fair, which may rather +be termed a foul than a fair. Taken from that point of view which +looks only to force and freedom and range of humorous effect, Jonson’s +play is to his friend’s as London is to Windsor; but in more senses +than one it is to Shakespeare’s as the Thames at London Bridge +is to the Thames at Eton: the atmosphere of Smithfield is not more different +from the atmosphere of the playing-fields; and some, too delicate of +nose or squeamish of stomach, may prefer Cuckoo Weir to Shoreditch. +But undoubtedly the phantoms of Shallow and Mrs. Quickly which put in +(so to speak) a nominal reappearance in the <i>Merry Wives of Windsor</i> +are comparatively as poor and thin if set over against the full rich +outlines of Rabbi Busy and Dame Purecraft as these again are at all +points alike inferior to the real Shallow and the genuine Quickly of +<i>King Henry IV</i>. It is true that Jonson’s humour has +sometimes less in common with Shakespeare’s than with the humour +of Swift, Smollett, and Carlyle. For all his admiration and even +imitation of Rabelais, Shakespeare has hardly once or twice burnt but +so much as a stray pinch of fugitive incense on the altar of Cloacina; +the only Venus acknowledged and adored by those three latter humourists. +If not always constant with the constancy of Milton to the service of +Urania, he never turns into a dirtier byway or back alley than the beaten +path trodden occasionally by most of his kind which leads them on a +passing errand of no unnatural devotion to the shrine of Venus Pandemos.</p> +<p>When, however, we turn from the raw rough sketch to the enriched +and ennobled version of the present play we find it in this its better +shape more properly comparable with another and a nobler work of Jonson’s—with +that magnificent comedy, the first avowed and included among his collection +by its author, which according to all tradition first owed its appearance +and success to the critical good sense and generous good offices of +Shakespeare. Neither my duly unqualified love for the greater +poet nor my duly qualified regard for the less can alter my sense that +their mutual relations are in this one case inverted; that <i>Every +Man in his Humour</i> is altogether a better comedy and a work of higher +art than the <i>Merry Wives of Windsor</i>. Kitely is to Ford +almost what Arnolphe is to Sganarelle. (As according to the learned +Métaphraste “Filio non potest præferri nisi filius,” +even so can no one but Molière be preferred or likened to Molière.) +Without actually touching like Arnolphe on the hidden springs of tragedy, +the jealous husband in Jonson’s play is only kept from trenching +on the higher and forbidden grounds of passion by the potent will and +the consummate self-command of the great master who called him up in +perfect likeness to the life. Another or a deeper tone, another +or a stronger touch, in the last two admirable scenes with his cashier +and his wife, when his hot smouldering suspicion at length catches fire +and breaks out in agony of anger, would have removed him altogether +beyond the legitimate pale of comedy. As it is, the self-control +of the artist is as thorough as his grasp and mastery of his subject +are triumphant and complete.</p> +<p>It would seem as though on revision of the <i>Merry Wives of Windsor</i> +Shakespeare had found himself unwilling or rather perhaps unable to +leave a single work of his hand without one touch or breath on it of +beauty or of poetry. The sole fitting element of harmonious relief +or variety in such a case could of course be found only in an interlude +of pure fancy; any touch of graver or deeper emotion would simply have +untuned and deranged the whole scheme of composition. A lesser +poet might have been powerless to resist the temptation or suggestion +of sentiment that he should give to the little loves of Anne Page and +Fenton a touch of pathetic or emotional interest; but “opulent +as Shakespeare was, and of his opulence prodigal” (to borrow a +phrase from Coleridge), he knew better than to patch with purple or +embroider with seed-pearl the hem of this homespun little piece of comic +drugget. The match between cloth of gold and cloth of frieze could +hardly have borne any good issue in this instance. Instead therefore +of following the lead of Terence’s or the hint of Jonson’s +example, and exalting the accent of his comedy to the full-mouthed pitch +of a Chremes or a Kitely, he strikes out some forty and odd lines of +rather coarse and commonplace doggrel about brokers, proctors, lousy +fox-eyed serjeants, blue and red noses, and so forth, to make room for +the bright light interlude of fairyland child’s-play which might +not unfittingly have found place even within the moon-charmed circle +of <i>A Midsummer Night’s Dream</i>. Even in that all heavenly +poem there are hardly to be found lines of more sweet and radiant simplicity +than here.</p> +<p>The refined instinct, artistic judgment, and consummate taste of +Shakespeare were perhaps never so wonderfully shown as in his recast +of another man’s work—a man of real if rough genius for +comedy—which we get in the <i>Taming of the Shrew</i>. Only +the collation of scene with scene, then of speech with speech, then +of line with line, will show how much may be borrowed from a stranger’s +material and how much may be added to it by the same stroke of a single +hand. All the force and humour alike of character and situation +belong to Shakespeare’s eclipsed and forlorn precursor; he has +added nothing; he has tempered and enriched everything. That the +luckless author of the first sketch is like to remain a man as nameless +as the deed of the witches in <i>Macbeth</i>, unless some chance or +caprice of accident should suddenly flash favouring light on his now +impersonal and indiscoverable individuality, seems clear enough when +we take into account the double and final disproof of his imaginary +identity with Marlowe, which Mr. Dyce has put forward with such unanswerable +certitude. He is a clumsy and coarse-fingered plagiarist from +that poet, and his stolen jewels of expression look so grossly out of +place in the homely setting of his usual style that they seem transmuted +from real to sham. On the other hand, he is of all the Pre-Shakespeareans +known to us incomparably the truest, the richest, the most powerful +and original humourist; one indeed without a second on that ground, +for “the rest are nowhere.” Now Marlowe, it need scarcely +be once again reiterated, was as certainly one of the least and worst +among jesters as he was one of the best and greatest among poets. +There can therefore be no serious question of his partnership in a play +wherein the comic achievement is excellent and the poetic attempts are +execrable throughout.</p> +<p>The recast of it in which a greater than Berni has deigned to play +the part of that poet towards a lesser than Bojardo shows tact and delicacy +perhaps without a parallel in literature. No chance of improvement +is missed, while nothing of value is dropped or thrown away. <a name="citation125"></a><a href="#footnote125">{125}</a> +There is just now and then a momentary return perceptible to the skipping +metre and fantastic manner of the first period, which may have been +unconsciously suggested by the nature of the task in hand—a task +of itself implying or suggesting some new study of old models; but the +main style of the play in all its weightier parts is as distinctly proper +to the second period, as clear an evidence of inner and spiritual affinity +(with actual tabulation of dates, were such a thing as feasible as it +is impossible, I must repeat that the argument would here be—what +it is now—in no wise concerned), as is the handling of character +throughout; but most especially the subtle force, the impeccable and +careful instinct, the masculine delicacy of touch, by which the somewhat +ruffianly temperament of the original Ferando is at once refined and +invigorated through its transmutation into the hearty and humorous manliness +of Petruchio’s.</p> +<p>It is observable that those few and faint traces which we have noticed +in this play of a faded archaic style trying as it were to resume a +mockery of revirescence are not wholly even if mainly confined to the +underplot which a suggestion or surmise of Mr. Collier’s long +since assigned to Haughton, author of <i>Englishmen for my Money, or +A Woman will have her Will</i>: a spirited, vigorous, and remarkably +regular comedy of intrigue, full of rough and ready incident, bright +boisterous humour, honest lively provinciality and gay high-handed Philistinism. +To take no account of this attribution would be to show myself as shamelessly +as shamefully deficient in that respect and gratitude which all genuine +and thankful students will always be as ready to offer as all thankless +and insolent sciolists can ever be to disclaim, to the venerable scholar +who since I was first engaged on these notes has added yet another obligation +to the many under which he had already laid all younger and lesser labourers +in the same field of study, by the issue in a form fitly ennobled and +enriched of his great historical work on our early stage. It might +seem something of an unintended impertinence to add that such recognition +of his theory no more implies a blind acceptance of it—whatever +such acceptance on my part might be worth—than the expression +of such gratitude and respect could reasonably be supposed to imply +an equally blind confidence in the authority or the value of that version +of Shakespeare’s text which has been the means of exposing a name +so long and so justly honoured, not merely to the natural and rational +inquisition of rival students, but to the rancorous and ribald obloquy +of thankless and frontless pretenders.</p> +<p>Here perhaps as well as anywhere else I may find a proper place to +intercalate the little word I have to say in partial redemption of my +pledge to take in due time some notice at more or less length, of the +only two among the plays doubtfully ascribed to Shakespeare which in +my eyes seem to bear any credible or conceivable traces of his touch. +Of these two I must give the lesser amount of space and attention to +that one which in itself is incomparably the more worthy of discussion, +admiration, and regard. The reason of this lies in the very excellence +which has attracted to it the notice of such competent judges and the +suffrage of such eminent names as would make the task of elaborate commentary +and analytic examination something more than superfluous on my part; +whereas the other has never been and will never be assigned to Shakespeare +by any critical student whose verdict is worth a minute’s consideration +or the marketable value of a straw. Nevertheless it is on other +grounds worth notice; and such notice, to be itself of any value, must +of necessity be elaborate and minute. The critical analysis of +<i>King Edward III</i>. I have therefore relegated to its proper place +in an appendix; while I reserve a corner of my text, at once out of +admiration for the play itself and out of reverence for the names and +authority of some who have given their verdict in its behalf, for a +rough and rapid word or two on <i>Arden of Feversham</i>.</p> +<p>It is with equally inexpressible surprise that I find Mr. Collier +accepting as Shakespeare’s any part of <i>A Warning for Fair Women</i>, +and rejecting without compromise or hesitation the belief or theory +which would assign to the youth of Shakespeare the incomparably nobler +tragic poem in question. <a name="citation129"></a><a href="#footnote129">{129}</a> +His first ascription to Shakespeare of <i>A Warning for Fair Women</i> +is couched in terms far more dubious and diffident than such as he afterwards +adopts. It “might,” he says, “be given to Shakespeare +on grounds far more plausible” (on what, except possibly those +of date, I cannot imagine) “than those applicable to <i>Arden +of Feversham</i>.” He then proceeds to cite some detached +lines and passages of undeniable beauty and vigour, containing equally +undeniable coincidences of language, illustration, and expression with +“passages in Shakespeare’s undisputed plays.” +From these he passes on to indicate a “resemblance” which +“is not merely verbal,” and to extract whole speeches which +“are Shakespearean in a much better sense”; adding in a +surely too trenchant fashion, “Here we say, <i>aut Shakespeare +aut diabolus</i>.” I must confess, with all esteem for the +critic and all admiration for the brief scene cited, that I cannot say, +Shakespeare.</p> +<p>There are spirits of another sort from whom we naturally expect such +assumptions and inferences as start from the vantage ground of a few +separate or separable passages, and clear at a flying leap the empty +space intervening which divides them from the goal of evidence as to +authorship. Such a spirit was that of the late Mr. Simpson, to +whose wealth of misused learning and fertility of misapplied conjecture +I have already paid all due tribute; but who must have had beyond all +other sane men—most assuredly, beyond all other fairly competent +critics—the gift bestowed on him by a malignant fairy of mistaking +assumption for argument and possibility for proof. He was the +very Columbus of mare’s nests; to the discovery of them, though +they lay far beyond the pillars of Hercules, he would apply all shifts +and all resources possible to an ultra-Baconian process of unphilosophical +induction. On the devoted head of Shakespeare—who is also +called Shakspere and Chaxpur—he would have piled a load of rubbish, +among which the crude and vigorous old tragedy under discussion shines +out like a veritable diamond of the desert. His “School +of Shakspere,” though not an academy to be often of necessity +perambulated by the most peripatetic student of Shakespeare, will remain +as a monument of critical or uncritical industry, a storehouse of curious +if not of precious relics, and a warning for other than fair women—or +fair scholars—to remember where “it is written that the +shoemaker should meddle with his yard and the tailor with his last, +the fisher with his pencil and the painter with his nets.”</p> +<p>To me the difference appears immeasurable between the reasons for +admitting the possibility of Shakespeare’s authorship in the case +of <i>Arden of Feversham</i>, and the pretexts for imagining the probability +of his partnership in <i>A Warning for Fair Women</i>. There is +a practically infinite distinction between the evidence suggested by +verbal or even more than verbal resemblance of detached line to line +or selected passage to passage, and the proof supplied by the general +harmony and spiritual similarity of a whole poem, on comparison of it +as a whole with the known works of the hypothetical author. This +proof, at all events, we surely do not get from consideration in this +light of the plea put forward in behalf of <i>A Warning for Fair Women</i>. +This proof, I cannot but think, we are very much nearer getting from +contemplation under the same light of the claim producible for <i>Arden +of Feversham</i>.</p> +<p><i>A Warning for Fair Women</i> is unquestionably in its way a noticeable +and valuable “piece of work,” as Sly might have defined +it. It is perhaps the best example anywhere extant of a merely +realistic tragedy—of realism pure and simple applied to the service +of the highest of the arts. Very rarely does it rise for a very +brief interval to the height of tragic or poetic style, however simple +and homely. The epilogue affixed to <i>Arden of Feversham</i> +asks pardon of the “gentlemen” composing its audience for +“this naked tragedy,” on the plea that “simple truth +is gracious enough” without needless ornament or bedizenment of +“glozing stuff.” Far more appropriate would such an +apology have been as in this case was at least superfluous, if appended +by way of epilogue to <i>A Warning for Fair Women</i>. That is +indeed a naked tragedy; nine-tenths of it are in no wise beyond the +reach of an able, industrious, and practised reporter, commissioned +by the proprietors of the journal on whose staff he might be engaged +to throw into the force of scenic dialogue his transcript of the evidence +in a popular and exciting case of adultery and murder. The one +figure on the stage of this author which stands out sharply defined +in our recollection against a background of undistinguished shadows +is the figure of the adulterer and murderer. This most discreditable +of Browns has a distinct and brawny outline of his own, a gait and accent +as of a genuine and recognisable man, who might have put to some better +profit his shifty spirit of enterprise, his genuine capacity of affection, +his burly ingenuity and hardihood. His minor confidants and accomplices, +Mrs. Drury and her Trusty Roger, are mere commonplace profiles of malefactors: +but it is in the contrast between the portraits of their two criminal +heroines that the vast gulf of difference between the capacities of +the two poets yawns patent to the sense of all readers. Anne Sanders +and Alice Arden stand as far beyond comparison apart as might a portrait +by any average academician and a portrait by Watts or Millais. +Once only, in the simple and noble scene cited by the over-generous +partiality of Mr. Collier, does the widow and murderess of Sanders rise +to the tragic height of the situation and the dramatic level of the +part so unfalteringly sustained from first to last by the wife and the +murderess of Arden.</p> +<p>There is the self-same relative difference between the two subordinate +groups of innocent or guilty characters. That is an excellent +and effective touch of realism, where Brown comes across his victim’s +little boy playing truant in the street with a small schoolfellow; but +in <i>Arden of Feversham</i> the number of touches as telling and as +striking as this one is practically numberless. They also show +a far stronger and keener faculty of poetic if not of dramatic imagination. +The casual encounter of little Sanders with the yet red-handed murderer +of his father is not comparable for depth and subtlety of effect with +the scene in which Arden’s friend Franklin, riding with him to +Raynham Down, breaks off his “pretty tale” of a perjured +wife, overpowered by a “fighting at his heart,” at the moment +when they come close upon the ambushed assassins in Alice Arden’s +pay. But the internal evidence in this case, as I have already +intimated, does not hinge upon the proof or the suggestion offered by +any single passage or by any number of single passages. The first +and last evidence of real and demonstrable weight is the evidence of +character. A good deal might be said on the score of style in +favour of its attribution to a poet of the first order, writing at a +time when there were but two such poets writing for the stage; but even +this is here a point of merely secondary importance. It need only +be noted in passing that if the problem be reduced to a question between +the authorship of Shakespeare and the authorship of Marlowe there is +no need and no room for further argument. The whole style of treatment +from end to end is about as like the method of Marlowe as the method +of Balzac is like the method of Dumas. There could be no alternative +in that case; so that the actual alternative before us is simple enough: +Either this play is the young Shakespeare’s first tragic masterpiece, +or there was a writer unknown to us then alive and at work for the stage +who excelled him as a tragic dramatist not less—to say the very +least—than he was excelled by Marlowe as a narrative and tragic +poet.</p> +<p>If we accept, as I have been told that Goethe accepted (a point which +I regret my inability to verify), the former of these alternatives—or +if at least we assume it for argument’s sake in passing—we +may easily strengthen our position by adducing as further evidence in +its favour the author’s thoroughly Shakespearean fidelity to the +details of the prose narrative on which his tragedy is founded. +But, it may be objected, we find the same fidelity to a similar text +in the case of <i>A Warning for Fair Women</i>. And here again +starts up the primal and radical difference between the two works: it +starts up and will not be overlooked. Equal fidelity to the narrative +text we do undoubtedly find in either case; the same fidelity we assuredly +do not find. The one is a typical example of prosaic realism, +the other of poetic reality. Light from darkness or truth from +falsehood is not more infallibly discernible. The fidelity in +the one case is exactly, as I have already indicated, the fidelity of +a reporter to his notes. The fidelity in the other case is exactly +the fidelity of Shakespeare in his Roman plays to the text of Plutarch. +It is a fidelity which admits—I had almost written, which requires—the +fullest play of the highest imagination. No more than the most +realistic of reporters will it omit or falsify any necessary or even +admissible detail; but the indefinable quality which it adds to the +lowest as to the highest of these is (as Lamb says of passion) “the +all in all in poetry.” Turning again for illustration to +one of the highest names in imaginative literature—a name sometimes +most improperly and absurdly inscribed on the register of the realistic +school, <a name="citation137"></a><a href="#footnote137">{137}</a> we +may say that the difference on this point is not the difference between +Balzac and Dumas, but the distinction between Balzac and M. Zola. +Let us take by way of example the character next in importance to that +of the heroine—the character of her paramour. A viler figure +was never sketched by Balzac; a viler figure was seldom drawn by Thackeray. +But as with Balzac, so with the author of this play, the masterful will +combining with the masterly art of the creator who fashions out of the +worst kind of human clay the breathing likeness of a creature so hatefully +pitiful and so pitifully hateful overcomes, absorbs, annihilates all +sense of such abhorrence and repulsion as would prove the work which +excited them no high or even true work of art. Even the wonderful +touch of dastardly brutality and pitiful self-pity with which Mosbie +at once receives and repels the condolence of his mistress on his wound—</p> +<blockquote><p><i>Alice</i>.—Sweet Mosbie, hide thine arm, it +kills my heart.</p> +<p><i>Mosbie</i>.—<i>Ay, Mistress Arden, this is your favour</i>.—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>even this does not make unendurable the scenic representation of +what in actual life would be unendurable for any man to witness. +Such an exhibition of currish cowardice and sullen bullying spite increases +rather our wondering pity for its victim than our wondering sense of +her degradation. And this is a kind of triumph which only such +an artist as Shakespeare in poetry or as Balzac in prose can achieve.</p> +<p>Alice Arden, if she be indeed a daughter of Shakespeare’s, +is the eldest born of that group to which Lady Macbeth and Dionyza belong +by right of weird sisterhood. The wives of the thane of Glamis +and the governor of Tharsus, it need hardly be said, are both of them +creations of a much later date—if not of the very latest discernible +or definable stage in the art of Shakespeare. Deeply dyed as she +is in bloodguiltiness, the wife of Arden is much less of a born criminal +than these. To her, at once the agent and the patient of her crime, +the victim and the instrument of sacrifice and blood-offering to Venus +Libitina, goddess of love and death,—to her, even in the deepest +pit of her deliberate wickedness, remorse is natural and redemption +conceivable. Like the Phædra of Racine, and herein so nobly +unlike the Phædra of Euripides, she is capable of the deepest +and bitterest penitence,—incapable of dying with a hideous and +homicidal falsehood on her long polluted lips. Her latest breath +is not a lie but a prayer.</p> +<p>Considering, then, in conclusion, the various and marvellous gifts +displayed for the first time on our stage by the great poet, the great +dramatist, the strong and subtle searcher of hearts, the just and merciful +judge and painter of human passions, who gave this tragedy to the new-born +literature of our drama; taking into account the really wonderful skill, +the absoluteness of intuition and inspiration, with which every stroke +is put in that touches off character or tones down effect, even in the +sketching and grouping of such minor figures as the ruffianly hireling +Black Will, the passionate artist without pity or conscience, <a name="citation141"></a><a href="#footnote141">{141}</a> +and above all the “unimitated, inimitable” study of Michael, +in whom even physical fear becomes tragic, and cowardice itself no ludicrous +infirmity but rather a terrible passion; I cannot but finally take heart +to say, even in the absence of all external or traditional testimony, +that it seems to me not pardonable merely nor permissible, but simply +logical and reasonable, to set down this poem, a young man’s work +on the face of it, as the possible work of no man’s youthful hand +but Shakespeare’s.</p> +<p>No similar question is raised, no parallel problem stated, in the +case of any one other among the plays now or ever ascribed on grounds +more or less dubious to that same indubitable hand. This hand +I do not recognise even in the <i>Yorkshire Tragedy</i>, full as it +is to overflowing of fierce animal power, and hot as with the furious +breath of some caged wild beast. Heywood, who as the most realistic +and in some sense prosaic dramatist of his time has been credited (though +but in a modestly tentative and suggestive fashion) with its authorship, +was as incapable of writing it as Chapman of writing the Shakespearean +parts of <i>The Two Noble Kinsmen</i> or Fletcher of writing the scenes +of Wolsey’s fall and Katherine’s death in <i>King Henry +VIII</i>. To the only editor of Shakespeare responsible for the +two earlier of the three suggestions here set aside, they may be forgiven +on the score of insufficient scholarship and want of critical training; +but on what ground the third suggestion can be excused in the case of +men who should have a better right than most others to speak with some +show of authority on a point of higher criticism, I must confess myself +utterly at a loss to imagine. In the <i>Yorkshire Tragedy</i> +the submissive devotion of its miserable heroine to her maddened husband +is merely doglike,—though not even, in the exquisitely true and +tender phrase of our sovereign poetess, “most passionately patient.” +There is no likeness in this poor trampled figure to “one of Shakespeare’s +women”: Griselda was no ideal of his. To find its parallel +in the dramatic literature of the great age, we must look to lesser +great men than Shakespeare. Ben Jonson, a too exclusively masculine +poet, will give us a couple of companion figures for her—or one +such figure at least; for the wife of Fitzdottrel, submissive as she +is even to the verge of undignified if not indecorous absurdity, is +less of a human spaniel than the wife of Corvino. Another such +is Robert Davenport’s Abstemia, so warmly admired by Washington +Irving; another is the heroine of that singularly powerful and humorous +tragi-comedy, labelled to <i>How to Choose a Good Wife from a Bad</i>, +which in its central situation anticipates that of Leigh Hunt’s +beautiful <i>Legend of Florence</i>; while Decker has revived, in one +of our sweetest and most graceful examples of dramatic romance, the +original incarnation of that somewhat pitiful ideal which even in a +ruder and more Russian century of painful European progress out of night +and winter could only be made credible, acceptable, or endurable, by +the yet unequalled genius of Chaucer and Boccaccio.</p> +<p>For concentrated might and overwhelming weight of realism, this lurid +little play beats <i>A Warning for Fair Women</i> fairly out of the +field. It is and must always be (I had nearly said, thank heaven) +unsurpassable for pure potency of horror; and the breathless heat of +the action, its raging rate of speed, leaves actually no breathing-time +for disgust; it consumes our very sense of repulsion as with fire. +But such power as this, though a rare and a great gift, is not the right +quality for a dramatist; it is not the fit property of a poet. +Ford and Webster, even Tourneur and Marston, who have all been more +or less wrongfully though more or less plausibly attacked on the score +of excess in horror, have none of them left us anything so nakedly terrible, +so terribly naked as this. Passion is here not merely stripped +to the skin but stripped to the bones. I cannot tell who could +and I cannot guess who would have written it. “’Tis +a very excellent piece of work”; may we never exactly look upon +its like again!</p> +<p>I thought it at one time far from impossible, if not very nearly +probable, that the author of <i>Arden of Feversham</i> might be one +with the author of the famous additional scenes to <i>The Spanish Tragedy</i>, +and that either both of these “pieces of work” or neither +must be Shakespeare’s. I still adhere to Coleridge’s +verdict, which indeed must be that of all judges capable of passing +any sentence worthier of record than are</p> +<blockquote><p>Fancies too weak for boys, too green and idle<br /> +For girls of nine:</p> +</blockquote> +<p>to the effect that those magnificent passages, wellnigh overcharged +at every point with passion and subtlety, sincerity and instinct of +pathetic truth, are no less like Shakespeare’s work than unlike +Jonson’s: though hardly perhaps more unlike the typical manner +of his adult and matured style than is the general tone of <i>The Case +is Altered</i>, his one surviving comedy of that earlier period in which +we know from Henslowe that the stout-hearted and long struggling young +playwright went through so much theatrical hackwork and piecework in +the same rough harness with other now more or less notable workmen then +drudging under the manager’s dull narrow sidelong eye for bare +bread and bare shelter. But this unlikeness, great as it is and +serious and singular, between his former and his latter style in high +comedy, gives no warrant for us to believe him capable of so immeasurable +a transformation in tragic style and so indescribable a decadence in +tragic power as would be implied in a descent from the “fine madness” +of “old Jeronymo” to the flat sanity and smoke-dried sobriety +of <i>Catiline</i> and <i>Sejanus</i>.—I cannot but think, too, +that Lamb’s first hypothetical ascription of these wonderful scenes +to Webster, so much the most Shakespearean in gait and port and accent +of all Shakespeare’s liege men-at-arms, was due to a far happier +and more trustworthy instinct than led him in later years to liken them +rather to “the overflowing griefs and talking distraction of Titus +Andronicus.”</p> +<p>We have wandered it may be somewhat out of the right time into a +far other province of poetry than the golden land of Shakespeare’s +ripest harvest-fields of humour. And now, before we may enter +the “flowery square” made by the summer growth of his four +greatest works in pure and perfect comedy “beneath a broad and +equal-blowing wind” of all happiest and most fragrant imagination, +we have but one field to cross, one brook to ford, that hardly can be +thought to keep us out of Paradise. In the garden-plot on whose +wicket is inscribed <i>All’s Well that Ends Well</i>, we are hardly +distant from Eden itself</p> +<blockquote><p>About a young dove’s flutter from a wood.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The ninth story of the third day of the Decameron is one of the few +subjects chosen by Shakespeare—as so many were taken by Fletcher—which +are less fit, we may venture to think, for dramatic than for narrative +treatment. He has here again shown all possible delicacy of instinct +in handling a matter which unluckily it was not possible to handle on +the stage with absolute and positive delicacy of feeling or expression. +Dr. Johnson—in my humble opinion, with some justice; though his +verdict has been disputed on the score of undeserved austerity—“could +not reconcile his heart to Bertram”; and I, unworthy as I may +be to second or support on the score of morality the finding of so great +a moralist, cannot reconcile my instincts to Helena. Parolles +is even better than Bobadil, as Bobadil is even better than Bessus; +and Lafeu is one of the very best old men in all the range of comic +art. But the whole charm and beauty of the play, the quality which +raises it to the rank of its fellows by making it loveable as well as +admirable, we find only in the “sweet, serene, skylike” +sanctity and attraction of adorable old age, made more than ever near +and dear to us in the incomparable figure of the old Countess of Roussillon. +At the close of the play, Fletcher would inevitably have married her +to Lafeu—or rather possibly, to the King.</p> +<p>At the entrance of the heavenly quadrilateral, or under the rising +dawn of the four fixed stars which compose our Northern Cross among +the constellations of dramatic romance hung high in the highest air +of poetry, we may well pause for very dread of our own delight, lest +unawares we break into mere babble of childish rapture and infantile +thanksgiving for such light vouchsafed even to our “settentrional +vedovo sito” that even at their first dawn out of the depths</p> +<blockquote><p>Goder pareva il ciel di lor fiammelle.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Beyond these again we see a second group arising, the supreme starry +trinity of the <i>Winter’s Tale</i>, the <i>Tempest</i>, and <i>Cymbeline</i>: +and beyond these the divine darkness of everlasting and all-maternal +night. These seven lamps of the romantic drama have in them—if +I may strain the similitude a little further yet—more of lyric +light than could fitly be lent to feed the fire or the sunshine of the +worlds of pure tragedy or comedy. There is more play, more vibration +as it were, in the splendours of their spheres. Only in the heaven +of Shakespeare’s making can we pass and repass at pleasure from +the sunny to the stormy lights, from the glory of <i>Cymbeline</i> to +the glory of <i>Othello</i>.</p> +<p>In this first group of four—wholly differing on that point +from the later constellation of three—there is but very seldom, +not more than once or twice at most, a shooting or passing gleam of +anything more lurid or less lovely than “a light of laughing flowers.” +There is but just enough of evil or even of passion admitted into their +sweet spheres of life to proclaim them living: and all that does find +entrance is so tempered by the radiance of the rest that we retain but +softened and lightened recollections even of Shylock and Don John when +we think of the <i>Merchant of Venice</i> and <i>Much Ado about Nothing</i>; +we hardly feel in <i>As You Like It</i> the presence or the existence +of Oliver and Duke Frederick; and in <i>Twelfth Night</i>, for all its +name of the midwinter, we find nothing to remember that might jar with +the loveliness of love and the summer light of life.</p> +<p>No astronomer can ever tell which if any one among these four may +be to the others as a sun; for in this special tract of heaven “one +star differeth” not “from another star in glory.” +From each and all of them, even “while this muddy vesture of decay +doth grossly close [us] in,” we cannot <i>but</i> hear the harmony +of a single immortal soul</p> +<blockquote><p>Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The coincidence of the divine passage in which I have for once permitted +myself the freedom of altering for quotation’s sake one little +word, with a noble excerpt given by Hallam from the Latin prose writings +of Campanella, may recall to us with a doubly appropriate sense of harmonious +fitness the subtly beautiful image of Lord Tennyson;—</p> +<blockquote><p>Star to star vibrates light: may soul to soul<br /> +Strike thro’ a finer element of her own?</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Surely, if ever she may, such a clash might we fancy to have passed +from the spirit of the most glorious martyr and poet to the spirit of +the most glorious poet and artist upon the face of the earth together. +Even to Shakespeare any association of his name with Campanella’s, +as even to Campanella any association of his name with Shakespeare’s, +cannot but be an additional ray of honour: and how high is the claim +of the divine philosopher to share with the godlike dramatist their +common and crowning name of poet, all Englishmen at least may now perceive +by study of Campanella’s sonnets in the noble and exquisite version +of Mr. Symonds; to whom among other kindred debts we owe no higher obligation +than is due to him as the giver of these poems to the inmost heart of +all among his countrymen whose hearts are worthy to hold and to hoard +up such treasure.</p> +<p>Where nothing at once new and true can be said, it is always best +to say nothing; as it is in this case to refrain from all reiteration +of rhapsody which must have been somewhat “mouldy ere” any +living man’s “grandsires had nails on their toes,” +if not at that yet remoter date “when King Pepin of France was +a little boy” and “Queen Guinever of Britain was a little +wench.” In the <i>Merchant of Venice</i>, at all events, +there is hardly a single character from Portia to old Gobbo, a single +incident from the exaction of Shylock’s bond to the computation +of hairs in Launcelot’s beard and Dobbin’s tail, which has +not been more plentifully beprosed than ever Rosalind was berhymed. +Much wordy wind has also been wasted on comparison of Shakespeare’s +Jew with Marlowe’s; that is, of a living subject for terror and +pity with a mere mouthpiece for the utterance of poetry as magnificent +as any but the best of Shakespeare’s.</p> +<p>Nor can it well be worth any man’s while to say or to hear +for the thousandth time that <i>As You Like It</i> would be one of those +works which prove, as Landor said long since, the falsehood of the stale +axiom that no work of man’s can be perfect, were it not for that +one unlucky slip of the brush which has left so ugly a little smear +in one corner of the canvas as the betrothal of Oliver to Celia; though, +with all reverence for a great name and a noble memory, I can hardly +think that matters were much mended in George Sand’s adaptation +of the play by the transference of her hand to Jaques. Once elsewhere, +or twice only at the most, is any such other sacrifice of moral beauty +or spiritual harmony to the necessities and traditions of the stage +discernible in all the world-wide work of Shakespeare. In the +one case it is unhappily undeniable; no mans conscience, no conceivable +sense of right and wrong, but must more or less feel as did Coleridge’s +the double violence done it in the upshot of <i>Measure for Measure</i>. +Even in the much more nearly spotless work which we have next to glance +at, some readers have perhaps not unreasonably found a similar objection +to the final good fortune of such a pitiful fellow as Count Claudio. +It will be observed that in each case the sacrifice is made to comedy. +The actual or hypothetical necessity of pairing off all the couples +after such a fashion as to secure a nominally happy and undeniably matrimonial +ending is the theatrical idol whose tyranny exacts this holocaust of +higher and better feelings than the mere liquorish desire to leave the +board of fancy with a palatable morsel of cheap sugar on the tongue.</p> +<p>If it is proverbially impossible to determine by selection the greatest +work of Shakespeare, it is easy enough to decide on the date and the +name of his most perfect comic masterpiece. For absolute power +of composition, for faultless balance and blameless rectitude of design, +there is unquestionably no creation of his hand that will bear comparison +with <i>Much Ado About Nothing</i>. The ultimate marriage of Hero +and Claudio, on which I have already remarked as in itself a doubtfully +desirable consummation, makes no flaw in the dramatic perfection of +a piece which could not otherwise have been wound up at all. This +was its one inevitable conclusion, if the action were not to come to +a tragic end; and a tragic end would here have been as painfully and +as grossly out of place as is any but a tragic end to the action of +<i>Measure for Measure</i>. As for Beatrice, she is as perfect +a lady, though of a far different age and breeding, as Célimène +or Millamant; and a decidedly more perfect woman than could properly +or permissibly have trod the stage of Congreve or Molière. +She would have disarranged all the dramatic proprieties and harmonies +of the one great school of pure comedy. The good fierce outbreak +of her high true heart in two swift words—“Kill Claudio” +<a name="citation154"></a><a href="#footnote154">{154}</a>—would +have fluttered the dovecotes of fashionable drama to some purpose. +But Alceste would have taken her to his own.</p> +<p>No quainter and apter example was ever given of many men’s +absolute inability to see the plainest aims, to learn the simplest rudiments, +to appreciate the most practical requisites of art, whether applied +to theatrical action or to any other as evident as exalted aim, than +the instance afforded by that criticism of time past which sagaciously +remarked that “any less amusingly absurd” constables than +Dogberry and Verges would have filled their parts in the action of the +play equally well. Our own day has doubtless brought forth critics +and students of else unparalleled capacity for the task of laying wind-eggs +in mare’s nests, and wasting all the warmth of their brains and +tongues in the hopeful endeavour to hatch them: but so fine a specimen +was never dropped yet as this of the plumed or plumeless biped who discovered +that if Dogberry had not been Dogberry and Verges had not been Verges +they would have been equally unsuccessful in their honest attempt to +warn Leonato betimes of the plot against his daughter’s honour. +The only explanation of the mistake is this; and it is one of which +the force will be intelligible only to those who are acquainted with +the very singular physiology of that remarkably prolific animal known +to critical science as the Shakespearean scholiast: that if Dogberry +had been other than Dogberry, or if Verges had been other than Verges, +the action and catastrophe of the whole play could never have taken +place at all.</p> +<p>All true Pantagruelians will always, or at least as long as may be +permitted by the Society for the Suppression of Vice, cherish with an +especial regard the comedy in which Shakespeare also has shown himself +as surely the loving as he would surely have been the beloved disciple +of that insuppressible divine, the immortal and most reverend vicar +of Meudon. Two only among the mighty men who lived and wrote and +died within the century which gave birth to Shakespeare were found worthy +of so great an honour at his hands as the double homage of citation +and imitation: and these two, naturally and properly enough, were François +Rabelais and Christopher Marlowe. We cannot but recognise on what +far travels in what good company “Feste the jester” had +but lately been, on that night of “very gracious fooling” +when he was pleased to enlighten the unforgetful mind of Sir Andrew +as to the history of Pigrogromitus, and of the Vapians passing the equinoctial +of Queubus. At what precise degree of latitude and longitude between +the blessed islands of Medamothy and Papimania this equinoctial may +intersect the Sporades of the outer ocean, is a problem on the solution +of which the energy of those many modern sons of Aguecheek who have +undertaken the task of writing about and about the text and the history +of Shakespeare might be expended with an unusually reasonable hope and +expectation of arriving at an exceptionally profitable end.</p> +<p>Even apart from their sunny identity of spirit and bright sweet brotherhood +of style, the two comedies of <i>Twelfth Night</i> and <i>As You Like +It</i> would stand forth confessed as the common offspring of the same +spiritual period by force and by right of the trace or badge they proudly +and professedly bear in common, as of a recent touch from the ripe and +rich and radiant influence of Rabelais. No better and no fuller +vindication of his happy memory could be afforded than by the evident +fact that the two comedies which bear the imprint of his sign-manual +are among all Shakespeare’s works as signally remarkable for the +cleanliness as for the richness of their humour. Here is the right +royal seal of Pantagruel, clean-cut and clearly stamped, and unincrusted +with any flake of dirt from the dubious finger of Panurge. In +the comic parts of those plays in which the humour is rank and flagrant +that exhales from the lips of Lucio, of Boult, or of Thersites, there +is no trace or glimpse of Rabelais. From him Shakespeare has learnt +nothing and borrowed nothing that was not wise and good and sweet and +clean and pure. All the more honour, undoubtedly, to Shakespeare, +that he would borrow nothing else: but assuredly, also, all the more +honour to Rabelais, that he had enough of this to lend.</p> +<p>It is less creditable to England than honourable to France that a +Frenchman should have been the first of Shakespearean students to discover +and to prove that the great triad of his Roman plays is not a consecutive +work of the same epoch. Until the appearance of François-Victor +Hugo’s incomparable translation, with its elaborate and admirable +commentary, it seems to have been the universal and certainly a most +natural habit of English criticism to take the three as they usually +appear together, in the order of historical chronology, and by tacit +implication to assume that they were composed in such order. I +should take some shame to myself but that I feel more of grateful pride +than of natural shame in the avowal that I at all events owe the first +revelation of the truth now so clear and apparent in this matter, to +the son of the common lord and master of all poets born in his age—be +they liege subjects as loyal as myself or as contumacious as I grieve +to find one at least of my elders and betters, whenever I perceive—as +too often I cannot choose but perceive—that the voice is the voice +of Arnold, but the hand is the hand of Sainte-Beuve.</p> +<p>To the honoured and lamented son of our beloved and glorious Master, +whom neither I nor any better man can ever praise and thank and glorify +enough, belongs all the credit of discerning for himself and discovering +for us all the truth that <i>Julius Cæsar</i> is at all points +equally like the greatest works of Shakespeare’s middle period +and unlike the works of his last. It is in the main a play belonging +to the same order as <i>King Henry IV</i>.; but it differs from our +English Henriade—as remarkably unlike Voltaire’s as <i>Zaïre</i> +is unlike <i>Othello</i>—not more by the absence of Falstaff than +by the presence of Brutus. Here at least Shakespeare has made +full amends, if not to all modern democrats, yet assuredly to all historical +republicans, for any possible or apparent preference of royal to popular +traditions. Whatever manner of man may have been the actual Roman, +our Shakespearean Brutus is undoubtedly the very noblest figure of a +typical and ideal republican in all the literature of the world. +“A democracy such as yours in America is my abhorrence,” +wrote Landor once to an impudent and foul-mouthed Yankee pseudosopher, +who had intruded himself on that great man’s privacy in order +to have the privilege of afterwards informing the readers of a pitiful +pamphlet on England that Landor had “pestered him with Southey”; +an impertinence, I may add, which Mr. Landor at once rebuked with the +sharpest contempt and chastised with the haughtiest courtesy. +But, the old friend and lifelong champion of Kossuth went on to say, +his feelings were far different towards a republic; and if on the one +point, then not less certainly on the other, we may be assured that +his convictions and his prepossessions would have been shared by the +author of <i>Coriolanus</i> and <i>Julius Cæsar</i>.</p> +<p>Having now come perforce to the inevitable verge of <i>Hamlet</i>, +I hasten to declare that I can advance no pretension to compete with +the claim of that “literary man” who became immortal by +dint of one dinner with a bishop, and in right of that last glass poured +out for him in sign of amity by “Sylvester Blougram, styled <i>in +partibus Episcopus</i>, <i>necnon</i> the deuce knows what.” +I do not propose to prove my perception of any point in the character +of Hamlet “unseized by the Germans yet.” I can only +determine, as the Church Catechism was long since wont to bid me, “to +keep my hands from picking and stealing, and my tongue” not only +“from evil-speaking, lying, and slandering”—though +this itself is a form of abstinence not universally or even commonly +practised among the rampant rout of rival commentators—but also, +now as ever throughout this study, from all conscious repetition of +what others have said before me.</p> +<p>In <i>Hamlet</i>, as it seems to me, we set foot as it were on the +bridge between the middle and the final period of Shakespeare. +That priceless waif of piratical salvage which we owe to the happy rapacity +of a hungry publisher is of course more accurately definable as the +first play of <i>Hamlet</i> than as the first edition of the play. +And this first <i>Hamlet</i>, on the whole, belongs altogether to the +middle period. The deeper complexities of the subject are merely +indicated. Simple and trenchant outlines of character are yet +to be supplanted by features of subtler suggestion and infinite interfusion. +Hamlet himself is almost more of a satirist than a philosopher: Asper +and Macilente, Felice and Malevole, the grim studies after Hamlet unconsciously +or consciously taken by Jonson and Marston, may pass as wellnigh passable +imitations, with an inevitable streak of caricature in them, of the +first Hamlet; they would have been at once puerile and ghastly travesties +of the second. The Queen, whose finished figure is now something +of a riddle, stands out simply enough in the first sketch as confidant +of Horatio if not as accomplice of Hamlet. There is not more difference +between the sweet quiet flow of those plain verses which open the original +play within the play and the stiff sonorous tramp of their substitutes, +full-charged with heavy classic artillery of Phœbus and Neptune +and Tellus and Hymen, than there is between the straightforward agents +of their own destiny whom we meet in the first <i>Hamlet</i> and the +obliquely moving patients who veer sideways to their doom in the second.</p> +<p>This minor transformation of style in the inner play, made solely +with the evident view of marking the distinction between its duly artificial +forms of speech and the duly natural forms of speech passing between +the spectators, is but one among innumerable indications which only +a purblind perversity of prepossession can overlook of the especial +store set by Shakespeare himself on this favourite work, and the exceptional +pains taken by him to preserve it for aftertime in such fullness of +finished form as might make it worthiest of profound and perpetual study +by the light of far other lamps than illuminate the stage. Of +all vulgar errors the most wanton, the most wilful, and the most resolutely +tenacious of life, is that belief bequeathed from the days of Pope, +in which it was pardonable, to the days of Mr. Carlyle, in which it +is not excusable, to the effect that Shakespeare threw off <i>Hamlet</i> +as an eagle may moult a feather or a fool may break a jest; that he +dropped his work as a bird may drop an egg or a sophist a fallacy; that +he wrote “for gain, not glory,” or that having written <i>Hamlet</i> +he thought it nothing very wonderful to have written. For himself +to have written, he possibly, nay probably, did not think it anything +miraculous; but that he was in the fullest degree conscious of its wonderful +positive worth to all men for all time, we have the best evidence possible—his +own; and that not by mere word of mouth but by actual stroke of hand. +Ben Jonson might shout aloud over his own work on a public stage, “By +God ’tis good,” and so for all its real goodness and his +real greatness make sure that both the workman and his work should be +less unnaturally than unreasonably laughed at; Shakespeare knew a better +way of showing confidence in himself, but he showed not a whit less +confidence. Scene by scene, line for line, stroke upon stroke +and touch after touch, he went over all the old laboured ground again; +and not to ensure success in his own day and fill his pockets with contemporary +pence, but merely and wholly with a purpose to make it worthy of himself +and his future students. Pence and praise enough it had evidently +brought him in from the first. No more palpable proof of this +can be desired than the instantaneous attacks on it, the jeers, howls, +hoots and hisses of which a careful ear may catch some far faint echo +even yet; the fearful and furtive yelp from beneath of the masked and +writhing poeticule, the shrill reverberation all around it of plagiarism +and parody. Not one single alteration in the whole play can possibly +have been made with a view to stage effect or to present popularity +and profit; or we must suppose that Shakespeare, however great as a +man, was naturally even greater as a fool. There is a class of +mortals to whom this inference is always grateful—to whom the +fond belief that every great man must needs be a great fool would seem +always to afford real comfort and support: happy, in Prior’s phrase, +could their inverted rule prove every great fool to be a great man. +Every change in the text of <i>Hamlet</i> has impaired its fitness for +the stage and increased its value for the closet in exact and perfect +proportion. Now, this is not a matter of opinion—of Mr. +Pope’s opinion or Mr. Carlyle’s; it is a matter of fact +and evidence. Even in Shakespeare’s time the actors threw +out his additions; they throw out these very same additions in our own. +The one especial speech, if any one such especial speech there be, in +which the personal genius of Shakespeare soars up to the very highest +of its height and strikes down to the very deepest of its depth, is +passed over by modern actors; it was cut away by Hemings and Condell. +We may almost assume it as certain that no boards have ever echoed—at +least, more than once or twice—to the supreme soliloquy of Hamlet. +Those words which combine the noblest pleading ever proffered for the +rights of human reason with the loftiest vindication ever uttered of +those rights, no mortal ear within our knowledge has ever heard spoken +on the stage. A convocation even of all priests could not have +been more unhesitatingly unanimous in its rejection than seems to have +been the hereditary verdict of all actors. It could hardly have +been found worthier of theological than it has been found of theatrical +condemnation. Yet, beyond all question, magnificent as is that +monologue on suicide and doubt which has passed from a proverb into +a byword, it is actually eclipsed and distanced at once on philosophic +and on poetical grounds by the later soliloquy on reason and resolution.</p> +<p>That Shakespeare was in the genuine sense—that is, in the best +and highest and widest meaning of the term—a free thinker, this +otherwise practically and avowedly superfluous effusion of all inmost +thought appears to me to supply full and sufficient evidence for the +conviction of every candid and rational man. To that loftiest +and most righteous title which any just and reasoning soul can ever +deserve to claim, the greatest save one of all poetic thinkers has thus +made good his right for ever.</p> +<p>I trust it will be taken as no breach of my past pledge to abstain +from all intrusion on the sacred ground of Gigadibs and the Germans, +if I venture to indicate a touch inserted by Shakespeare for no other +perceptible or conceivable purpose than to obviate by anticipation the +indomitable and ineradicable fallacy of criticism which would find the +keynote of Hamlet’s character in the quality of irresolution. +I may observe at once that the misconception involved in such a reading +of the riddle ought to have been evident even without this episodical +stroke of illustration. In any case it should be plain to any +reader that the signal characteristic of Hamlet’s inmost nature +is by no means irresolution or hesitation or any form of weakness, but +rather the strong conflux of contending forces. That during four +whole acts Hamlet cannot or does not make up his mind to any direct +and deliberate action against his uncle is true enough; true, also, +we may say, that Hamlet had somewhat more of mind than another man to +make up, and might properly want somewhat more time than might another +man to do it in; but not, I venture to say in spite of Goethe, through +innate inadequacy to his task and unconquerable weakness of the will; +not, I venture to think in spite of Hugo, through immedicable scepticism +of the spirit and irremediable propensity to nebulous intellectual refinement. +One practical point in the action of the play precludes us from accepting +so ready a solution of the riddle as is suggested either by the simple +theory of half-heartedness or by the simple hypothesis of doubt. +There is absolutely no other reason, we might say there was no other +excuse, for the introduction or intrusion of an else superfluous episode +into a play which was already, and which remains even after all possible +excisions, one of the longest plays on record. The compulsory +expedition of Hamlet to England, his discovery by the way of the plot +laid against his life, his interception of the King’s letter and +his forgery of a substitute for it against the lives of the King’s +agents, the ensuing adventure of the sea-fight, with Hamlet’s +daring act of hot-headed personal intrepidity, his capture and subsequent +release on terms giving no less patent proof of his cool-headed and +ready-witted courage and resource than the attack had afforded of his +physically impulsive and even impetuous hardihood—all this serves +no purpose whatever but that of exhibiting the instant and almost unscrupulous +resolution of Hamlet’s character in time of practical need. +But for all that he or Hamlet has got by it, Shakespeare might too evidently +have spared his pains; and for all this voice as of one crying in a +wilderness, Hamlet will too surely remain to the majority of students, +not less than to all actors and all editors and all critics, the standing +type and embodied emblem of irresolution, half-heartedness, and doubt.</p> +<p>That Hamlet should seem at times to accept for himself, and even +to enforce by reiteration of argument upon his conscience and his reason, +some such conviction or suspicion as to his own character, tells much +rather in disfavour than in favour of its truth. A man whose natural +temptation was to swerve, whose inborn inclination was to shrink and +skulk aside from duty and from action, would hardly be the first and +last person to suspect his own weakness, the one only unbiassed judge +and witness of sufficiently sharp-sighted candour and accuracy to estimate +aright his poverty of nature and the malformation of his mind. +But the high-hearted and tender-conscienced Hamlet, with his native +bias towards introspection intensified and inflamed and directed and +dilated at once by one imperative pressure and oppression of unavoidable +and unalterable circumstance, was assuredly and exactly the one only +man to be troubled by any momentary fear that such might indeed be the +solution of his riddle, and to feel or to fancy for the moment some +kind of ease and relief in the sense of that very trouble. A born +doubter would have doubted even of Horatio; hardly can all positive +and almost palpable evidence of underhand instigation and inspired good +intentions induce Hamlet for some time to doubt even of Ophelia.</p> +<h3>III.</h3> +<p>The entrance to the third period of Shakespeare is like the entrance +to that lost and lesser Paradise of old,</p> +<blockquote><p>With dreadful faces thronged, and fiery arms.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Lear, Othello, Macbeth, Coriolanus, Antony, Timon, these are names +indeed of something more than tragic purport. Only in the sunnier +distance beyond, where the sunset of Shakespeare’s imagination +seems to melt or flow back into the sunrise, do we discern Prospero +beside Miranda, Florizel by Perdita, Palamon with Arcite, the same knightly +and kindly Duke Theseus as of old; and above them all, and all others +of his divine and human children, the crowning and final and ineffable +figure of Imogen.</p> +<p>Of all Shakespeare’s plays, <i>King Lear</i> is unquestionably +that in which he has come nearest to the height and to the likeness +of the one tragic poet on any side greater than himself whom the world +in all its ages has ever seen born of time. It is by far the most +Æschylean of his works; the most elemental and primæval, +the most oceanic and Titanic in conception. He deals here with +no subtleties as in <i>Hamlet</i>, with no conventions as in <i>Othello</i>: +there is no question of “a divided duty” or a problem half +insoluble, a matter of country and connection, of family or of race; +we look upward and downward, and in vain, into the deepest things of +nature, into the highest things of providence; to the roots of life, +and to the stars; from the roots that no God waters to the stars which +give no man light; over a world full of death and life without resting-place +or guidance.</p> +<p>But in one main point it differs radically from the work and the +spirit of Æschylus. Its fatalism is of a darker and harder +nature. To Prometheus the fetters of the lord and enemy of mankind +were bitter; upon Orestes the hand of heaven was laid too heavily to +bear; yet in the not utterly infinite or everlasting distance we see +beyond them the promise of the morning on which mystery and justice +shall be made one; when righteousness and omnipotence at last shall +kiss each other. But on the horizon of Shakespeare’s tragic +fatalism we see no such twilight of atonement, such pledge of reconciliation +as this. Requital, redemption, amends, equity, explanation, pity +and mercy, are words without a meaning here.</p> +<blockquote><p>As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;<br /> +They kill us for their sport.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Here is no need of the Eumenides, children of Night everlasting; +for here is very Night herself.</p> +<p>The words just cited are not casual or episodical; they strike the +keynote of the whole poem, lay the keystone of the whole arch of thought. +There is no contest of conflicting forces, no judgment so much as by +casting of lots: far less is there any light of heavenly harmony or +of heavenly wisdom, of Apollo or Athene from above. We have heard +much and often from theologians of the light of revelation: and some +such thing indeed we find in Æschylus: but the darkness of revelation +is here.</p> +<p>For in this the most terrible work of human genius it is with the +very springs and sources of nature that her student has set himself +to deal. The veil of the temple of our humanity is rent in twain. +Nature herself, we might say, is revealed—and revealed as unnatural. +In face of such a world as this a man might be forgiven who should pray +that chaos might come again. Nowhere else in Shakespeare’s +work or in the universe of jarring lives are the lines of character +and event so broadly drawn or so sharply cut. Only the supreme +self-command of this one poet could so mould and handle such types as +to restrain and prevent their passing from the abnormal into the monstrous: +yet even as much as this, at least in all cases but one, it surely has +accomplished. In Regan alone would it be, I think, impossible +to find a touch or trace of anything less vile than it was devilish. +Even Goneril has her one splendid hour, her fire-flaught of hellish +glory; when she treads under foot the half-hearted goodness, the wordy +and windy though sincere abhorrence, which is all that the mild and +impotent revolt of Albany can bring to bear against her imperious and +dauntless devilhood; when she flaunts before the eyes of her “milk-livered” +and “moral fool” the coming banners of France about the +“plumed helm” of his slayer.</p> +<p>On the other side, Kent is the exception which answers to Regan on +this. Cordelia, the brotherless Antigone of our stage, has one +passing touch of intolerance for what her sister was afterwards to brand +as indiscretion and dotage in their father, which redeems her from the +charge of perfection. Like Imogen, she is not too inhumanly divine +for the sense of divine irritation. Godlike though they be, their +very godhead is human and feminine; and only therefore credible, and +only therefore adorable. Cloten and Regan, Goneril and Iachimo, +have power to stir and embitter the sweetness of their blood. +But for the contrast and even the contact of antagonists as abominable +as these, the gold of their spirit would be too refined, the lily of +their holiness too radiant, the violet of their virtue too sweet. +As it is, Shakespeare has gone down perforce among the blackest and +the basest things of nature to find anything so equally exceptional +in evil as properly to counterbalance and make bearable the excellence +and extremity of their goodness. No otherwise could either angel +have escaped the blame implied in the very attribute and epithet of +blameless. But where the possible depth of human hell is so foul +and unfathomable as it appears in the spirits which serve as foils to +these, we may endure that in them the inner height of heaven should +be no less immaculate and immeasurable.</p> +<p>It should be a truism wellnigh as musty as Hamlet’s half cited +proverb, to enlarge upon the evidence given in <i>King Lear</i> of a +sympathy with the mass of social misery more wide and deep and direct +and bitter and tender than Shakespeare has shown elsewhere. But +as even to this day and even in respectable quarters the murmur is not +quite duly extinct which would charge on Shakespeare a certain share +of divine indifference to suffering, of godlike satisfaction and a less +than compassionate content, it is not yet perhaps utterly superfluous +to insist on the utter fallacy and falsity of their creed who whether +in praise or in blame would rank him to his credit or discredit among +such poets as on this side at least may be classed rather with Goethe +than with Shelley and with Gautier than with Hugo. A poet of revolution +he is not, as none of his country in that generation could have been: +but as surely as the author of <i>Julius Cæsar</i> has approved +himself in the best and highest sense of the word at least potentially +a republican, so surely has the author of <i>King Lear</i> avowed himself +in the only good and rational sense of the words a spiritual if not +a political democrat and socialist.</p> +<p>It is only, I think, in this most tragic of tragedies that the sovereign +lord and incarnate god of pity and terror can be said to have struck +with all his strength a chord of which the resonance could excite such +angry agony and heartbreak of wrath as that of the brother kings when +they smote their staffs against the ground in fierce imperious anguish +of agonised and rebellious compassion, at the oracular cry of Calchas +for the innocent blood of Iphigenia. The doom even of Desdemona +seems as much less morally intolerable as it is more logically inevitable +than the doom of Cordelia. But doubtless the fatalism of <i>Othello</i> +is as much darker and harder than that of any third among the plays +of Shakespeare, as it is less dark and hard than the fatalism of <i>King +Lear</i>. For upon the head of the very noblest man whom even +omnipotence or Shakespeare could ever call to life he has laid a burden +in one sense yet heavier than the burden of Lear, insomuch as the sufferer +can with somewhat less confidence of universal appeal proclaim himself +a man more sinned against than sinning.</p> +<p>And yet, if ever man after Lear might lift up his voice in that protest, +it would assuredly be none other than Othello. He is in all the +prosperous days of his labour and his triumph so utterly and wholly +nobler than the self-centred and wayward king, that the capture of his +soul and body in the unimaginable snare of Iago seems a yet blinder +and more unrighteous blow</p> +<blockquote><p>Struck by the envious wrath of man or God</p> +</blockquote> +<p>than ever fell on the old white head of that child-changed father. +But at least he is destroyed by the stroke of a mightier hand than theirs +who struck down Lear. As surely as Othello is the noblest man +of man’s making, Iago is the most perfect evildoer, the most potent +demi-devil. It is of course the merest commonplace to say as much, +and would be no less a waste of speech to add the half comfortable reflection +that it is in any case no shame to fall by such a hand. But this +subtlest and strangest work of Shakespeare’s admits and requires +some closer than common scrutiny. Coleridge has admirably described +the first great soliloquy which opens to us the pit of hell within as +“the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity.” But +subtle and profound and just as is this definitive appreciation, there +is more in the matter yet than even this. It is not only that +Iago, so to speak, half tries to make himself half believe that Othello +has wronged him, and that the thought of it gnaws him inly like a poisonous +mineral: though this also be true, it is not half the truth—nor +half that half again. Malignant as he is, the very subtlest and +strongest component of his complex nature is not even malignity. +It is the instinct of what Mr. Carlyle would call an inarticulate poet. +In his immortal study on the affair of the diamond necklace, the most +profound and potent humourist of his country in his century has unwittingly +touched on the mainspring of Iago’s character—“the +very pulse of the machine.” He describes his Circe de la +Mothe-Valois as a practical dramatic poet or playwright at least in +lieu of play-writer: while indicating how and wherefore, with all her +constructive skill and rhythmic art in action, such genius as hers so +differs from the genius of Shakespeare that she undeniably could not +have written a <i>Hamlet</i>. Neither could Iago have written +an <i>Othello</i>. (From this theorem, by the way, a reasoner +or a casuist benighted enough to prefer articulate poets to inarticulate, +Shakespeare to Cromwell, a fair Vittoria Colonna to a “foul Circe-Megæra,” +and even such a strategist as Homer to such a strategist as Frederic-William, +would not illogically draw such conclusions or infer such corollaries +as might result in opinions hardly consonant with the Teutonic-Titanic +evangel of the preacher who supplied him with his thesis.) “But +what he can do, that he will”: and if it be better to make a tragedy +than to write one, to act a poem than to sing it, we must allow to Iago +a station in the hierarchy of poets very far in advance of his creator’s. +None of the great inarticulate may more justly claim place and precedence. +With all his poetic gift, he has no poetic weakness. Almost any +creator but his would have given him some grain of spite or some spark +of lust after Desdemona. To Shakespeare’s Iago she is no +more than is a rhyme to another and articulate poet. <a name="citation179"></a><a href="#footnote179">{179}</a> +His stanza must at any rate and at all costs be polished: to borrow +the metaphor used by Mr. Carlyle in apologetic illustration of a royal +hero’s peculiar system of levying recruits for his colossal brigade. +He has within him a sense or conscience of power incomparable: and this +power shall not be left, in Hamlet’s phrase, “to fust in +him unused.” A genuine and thorough capacity for human lust +or hate would diminish and degrade the supremacy of his evil. +He is almost as far above or beyond vice as he is beneath or beyond +virtue. And this it is that makes him impregnable and invulnerable. +When once he has said it, we know as well as he that thenceforth he +never will speak word. We could smile almost as we can see him +to have smiled at Gratiano’s most ignorant and empty threat, being +well assured that torments will in no wise ope his lips: that as surely +and as truthfully as ever did the tortured philosopher before him, he +might have told his tormentors that they did but bruise the coating, +batter the crust, or break the shell of Iago. Could we imagine +a far other lost spirit than Farinata degli Uberti’s endowed with +Farinata’s might of will, and transferred from the sepulchres +of fire to the dykes of Malebolge, we might conceive something of Iago’s +attitude in hell—of his unalterable and indomitable posture for +all eternity. As though it were possible and necessary that in +some one point the extremities of all conceivable good and of all imaginable +evil should meet and mix together in a new “marriage of heaven +and hell,” the action in passion of the most devilish among all +the human damned could hardly be other than that of the most godlike +among all divine saviours—the figure of Iago than a reflection +by hell-fire of the figure of Prometheus.</p> +<p>Between Iago and Othello the position of Desdemona is precisely that +defined with such quaint sublimity of fancy in the old English byword—“between +the devil and the deep sea.” Deep and pure and strong and +adorable always and terrible and pitiless on occasion as the sea is +the great soul of the glorious hero to whom she has given herself; and +what likeness of man’s enemy from Satan down to Mephistopheles +could be matched for danger and for dread against the good bluff soldierly +trustworthy figure of honest Iago? The rough license of his tongue +at once takes warrant from his good soldiership and again gives warrant +for his honesty: so that in a double sense it does him yeoman’s +service, and that twice told. It is pitifully ludicrous to see +him staged to the show like a member—and a very inefficient member—of +the secret police. But it would seem impossible for actors to +understand that he is not a would-be detective, an aspirant for the +honours of a Vidocq, a candidate for the laurels of a Vautrin: that +he is no less than Lepidus, or than Antony’s horse, “a tried +and valiant soldier.” It is perhaps natural that the two +deepest and subtlest of all Shakespeare’s intellectual studies +in good and evil should be the two most painfully misused and misunderstood +alike by his commentators and his fellows of the stage: it is certainly +undeniable that no third figure of his creation has ever been on both +sides as persistently misconceived and misrepresented with such desperate +pertinacity as Hamlet and Iago.</p> +<p>And it is only when Iago is justly appreciated that we can justly +appreciate either Othello or Desdemona. This again should surely +be no more than the truism that it sounds; but practically it would +seem to be no less than an adventurous and audacious paradox. +Remove or deform or diminish or modify the dominant features of the +destroyer, and we have but the eternal and vulgar figures of jealousy +and innocence, newly vamped and veneered and padded and patched up for +the stalest purposes of puppetry. As it is, when Coleridge asks +“which do we pity the most” at the fall of the curtain, +we can surely answer, Othello. Noble as are the “most blessed +conditions” of “the gentle Desdemona,” he is yet the +nobler of the two; and has suffered more in one single pang than she +could suffer in life or in death.</p> +<p>But if <i>Othello</i> be the most pathetic, <i>King Lear</i> the +most terrible, <i>Hamlet</i> the subtlest and deepest work of Shakespeare, +the highest in abrupt and steep simplicity of epic tragedy is <i>Macbeth</i>. +There needs no ghost come from the grave, any reader may too probably +remark, to tell us this. But in the present generation such novelties +have been unearthed regarding Shakespeare that the reassertion of an +old truth may seem to have upon it some glittering reflection from the +brazen brightness of a brand-new lie. Have not certain wise men +of the east of England—Cantabrigian Magi, led by the star of their +goddess Mathesis (“mad Mathesis,” as a daring poet was once +ill-advised enough to dub her doubtful deity in defiance of scansion +rather than of truth)—have they not detected in the very heart +of this tragedy the “paddling palms and pinching fingers” +of Thomas Middleton?</p> +<p>To the simpler eyes of less learned Thebans than these—Thebes, +by the way, was Dryden’s irreverent name for Cambridge, the nursing +mother of “his green unknowing youth,” when that “renegade” +was recreant enough to compliment Oxford at her expense as the chosen +Athens of “his riper age”—the likelihood is only too +evident that the sole text we possess of <i>Macbeth</i> has not been +interpolated but mutilated. In their version of <i>Othello</i>, +remarkably enough, the “player-editors,” contrary to their +wont, have added to the treasure-house of their text one of the most +precious jewels that ever the prodigal afterthought of a great poet +bestowed upon the rapture of his readers. Some of these, by way +of thanksgiving, have complained with a touch of petulance that it was +out of place and superfluous in the setting: nay, that it was incongruous +with all the circumstances—out of tone and out of harmony and +out of keeping with character and tune and time. In other lips +indeed than Othello’s, at the crowning minute of culminant agony, +the rush of imaginative reminiscence which brings back upon his eyes +and ears the lightning foam and tideless thunder of the Pontic sea might +seem a thing less natural than sublime. But Othello has the passion +of a poet closed in as it were and shut up behind the passion of a hero. +For all his practical readiness of martial eye and ruling hand in action, +he is also in his season “of imagination all compact.” +Therefore it is that in the face and teeth of all devils akin to Iago +that hell could send forth to hiss at her election, we feel and recognise +the spotless exaltation, the sublime and sun-bright purity, of Desdemona’s +inevitable and invulnerable love. When once we likewise have seen +Othello’s visage in his mind, we see too how much more of greatness +is in this mind than in another hero’s. For such an one, +even a boy may well think how thankfully and joyfully he would lay down +his life. Other friends we have of Shakespeare’s giving +whom we love deeply and well, if hardly with such love as could weep +for him all the tears of the body and all the blood of the heart: but +there is none we love like Othello.</p> +<p>I must part from his presence again for a season, and return to my +topic in the text of <i>Macbeth</i>. That it is piteously rent +and ragged and clipped and garbled in some of its earlier scenes, the +rough construction and the poltfoot metre, lame sense and limping verse, +each maimed and mangled subject of players’ and printers’ +most treasonable tyranny, contending as it were to seem harsher than +the other, combine in this contention to bear indisputable and intolerable +witness. Only where the witches are, and one more potent and more +terrible than all witches and all devils at their beck, can we be sure +that such traitors have not robbed us of one touch from Shakespeare’s +hand. The second scene of the play at least bears marks of such +handling as the brutal Shakespearean Hector’s of the “mangled +Myrmidons”; it is too visibly “noseless, handless, hacked +and chipped” as it comes to us, crying on Hemings and Condell. +And it is in this unlucky scene that unkindly criticism has not unsuccessfully +sought for the gravest faults of language and manner to be found in +Shakespeare. For certainly it cannot be cleared from the charge +of a style stiffened and swollen with clumsy braid and crabbed bombast. +But against the weird sisters, and her who sits above them and apart, +more awful than Hecate’s very self, no mangling hand has been +stretched forth; no blight of mistranslation by perversion has fallen +upon the words which interpret and expound the hidden things of their +evil will.</p> +<p>To one tragedy as to one comedy of Shakespeare’s, the casual +or the natural union of especial popularity with especial simplicity +in selection and in treatment of character makes it as superfluous as +it would be difficult to attempt any application of analytical criticism. +There is nothing in them of a nature so compound or so complex as to +call for solution or resolution into its primal elements. Here +there is some genuine ground for the generally baseless and delusive +opinion of self-complacent sciolism that he who runs may read Shakespeare. +These two plays it is hardly worth while to point out by name: all probable +readers will know them at once for <i>Macbeth</i> and <i>As You Like +It</i>. There can hardly be a single point of incident or of character +on which the youngest reader will not find himself at one with the oldest, +the dullest with the brightest among the scholars of Shakespeare. +It would be an equal waste of working hours or of playtime if any of +these should devote any part of either a whole-schoolday or a holiday +to remark or to rhapsody on the character of Macbeth or of Orlando, +of Rosalind or of Lady Macbeth. He that runs, let him read: and +he that has ears, let him hear.</p> +<p>I cannot but think that enough at least of time has been spent if +not wasted by able and even by eminent men on examination of <i>Coriolanus</i> +with regard to its political aspect or bearing upon social questions. +It is from first to last, for all its turmoil of battle and clamour +of contentious factions, rather a private and domestic than a public +or historical tragedy. As in <i>Julius Cæsar</i> the family +had been so wholly subordinated to the state, and all personal interests +so utterly dominated by the preponderance of national duties, that even +the sweet and sublime figure of Portia passing in her “awful loveliness” +was but as a profile half caught in the background of an episode, so +here on the contrary the whole force of the final impression is not +that of a conflict between patrician and plebeian, but solely that of +a match of passions played out for life and death between a mother and +a son. The partisans of oligarchic or democratic systems may wrangle +at their will over the supposed evidences of Shakespeare’s prejudice +against this creed and prepossession in favour of that: a third bystander +may rejoice in the proof thus established of his impartial indifference +towards either: it is all nothing to the real point in hand. The +subject of the whole play is not the exile’s revolt, the rebel’s +repentance, or the traitor’s reward, but above all it is the son’s +tragedy. The inscription on the plinth of this tragic statue is +simply to Volumnia Victrix.</p> +<p>A loftier or a more perfect piece of man’s work was never done +in all the world than this tragedy of <i>Coriolanus</i>: the one fit +and crowning epithet for its companion or successor is that bestowed +by Coleridge—“the most wonderful.” It would +seem a sign or birthmark of only the greatest among poets that they +should be sure to rise instantly for awhile above the very highest of +their native height at the touch of a thought of Cleopatra. So +was it, as we all know, with William Shakespeare: so is it, as we all +see, with Victor Hugo. As we feel in the marvellous and matchless +verses of <i>Zim-Zizimi</i> all the splendour and fragrance and miracle +of her mere bodily presence, so from her first imperial dawn on the +stage of Shakespeare to the setting of that eastern star behind a pall +of undissolving cloud we feel the charm and the terror and the mystery +of her absolute and royal soul. Byron wrote once to Moore, with +how much truth or sincerity those may guess who would care to know, +that his friend’s first “confounded book” of thin +prurient jingle (“we call it a mellisonant tingle-tangle,” +as Randolph’s mock Oberon says of a stolen sheep-bell) had been +the first cause of all his erratic or erotic frailties: it is not impossible +that spirits of another sort may remember that to their own innocent +infantine perceptions the first obscure electric revelation of what +Blake calls “the Eternal Female” was given through a blind +wondering thrill of childish rapture by a lightning on the baby dawn +of their senses and their soul from the sunrise of Shakespeare’s +Cleopatra.</p> +<p>Never has he given such proof of his incomparable instinct for abstinence +from the wrong thing as well as achievement of the right. He has +utterly rejected and disdained all occasion of setting her off by means +of any lesser foil than all the glory of the world with all its empires. +And we need not Antony’s example to show us that these are less +than straws in the balance.</p> +<blockquote><p>Entre elle et l’univers qui s’offraient à +la fois<br /> +Il hésita, lâchant le monde dans son choix.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Even as that Roman grasp relaxed and let fall the world, so has Shakespeare’s +self let go for awhile his greater world of imagination, with all its +all but infinite variety of life and thought and action, for love of +that more infinite variety which custom could not stale. Himself +a second and a yet more fortunate Antony, he has once more laid a world, +and a world more wonderful than ever, at her feet. He has put +aside for her sake all other forms and figures of womanhood; he, father +or creator of Rosalind, of Cordelia, of Desdemona, and of Imogen, he +too, like the sun-god and sender of all song, has anchored his eyes +on her whom “Phœbus’ amorous pinches” could +not leave “black,” nor “wrinkled deep in time”; +on that incarnate and imperishable “spirit of sense,” to +whom at the very last</p> +<blockquote><p>The stroke of death is as a lover’s pinch,<br /> +That hurts, and is desired.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>To him, as to the dying husband of Octavia, this creature of his +own hand might have boasted herself that the loveliest and purest among +all her sisters of his begetting,</p> +<blockquote><p> with +her modest eyes<br /> +And still conclusion, shall acquire no honour,<br /> +Demurring upon me.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>To sum up, Shakespeare has elsewhere given us in ideal incarnation +the perfect mother, the perfect wife, the perfect daughter, the perfect +mistress, or the perfect maiden: here only once for all he has given +us the perfect and the everlasting woman.</p> +<p>And what a world of great men and great things, “high actions +and high passions,” is this that he has spread under her for a +footcloth or hung behind her for a curtain! The descendant of +that other his ancestral Alcides, late offshoot of the god whom he loved +and who so long was loth to leave him, is here as in history the visible +one man revealed who could grapple for a second with very Rome and seem +to throw it, more lightly than he could cope with Cleopatra. And +not the Roman Landor himself could see or make us see more clearly than +has his fellow provincial of Warwickshire that first imperial nephew +of her great first paramour, who was to his actual uncle even such a +foil and counterfeit and perverse and prosperous parody as the son of +Hortense Beauharnais of Saint-Leu to the son of Letizia Buonaparte of +Ajaccio. For Shakespeare too, like Landor, had watched his “sweet +Octavius” smilingly and frowningly “draw under nose the +knuckle of forefinger” as he looked out upon the trail of innocent +blood after the bright receding figure of his brave young kinsman. +The fair-faced false “present God” of his poetic parasites, +the smooth triumphant patron and preserver with the heart of ice and +iron, smiles before us to the very life. It is of no account now +to remember that</p> +<blockquote><p> he at Philippi kept<br /> +His sword even like a dancer:</p> +</blockquote> +<p>for the sword of Antony that struck for him is in the renegade hand +of Dercetas.</p> +<p>I have said nothing of Enobarbus or of Eros, the fugitive once ruined +by his flight and again redeemed by the death-agony of his dark and +doomed repentance, or the freedman transfigured by a death more fair +than freedom through the glory of the greatness of his faith: for who +can speak of all things or of half that are in Shakespeare? And +who can speak worthily of any?</p> +<p>I am come now to that strange part of a task too high for me, where +I must needs speak not only (as may indeed well be) unworthily, but +also (as may well seem) unlovingly, of some certain portions in the +mature and authentic work of Shakespeare. “Though it be +honest, it is never good” to do so: yet here I cannot choose but +speak plainly after my own poor conscience, and risk all chances of +chastisement as fearful as any once threatened for her too faithful +messenger by the heart-stricken wrath of Cleopatra.</p> +<p>In the greater part of this third period, taking a swift and general +view of it for contrast or comparison of qualities with the second, +we constantly find beauty and melody, transfigured into harmony and +sublimity; an exchange unquestionably for the better: but in certain +stages, or only perhaps in a single stage of it, we frequently find +humour and reality supplanted by realism and obscenity; an exchange +undeniably for the worse. The note of his earliest comic style +was often a boyish or a birdlike wantonness, very capable of such liberties +and levities as those of Lesbia’s sparrow with the lip or bosom +of his mistress; as notably in the parts of Boyet and Mercutio: and +indeed there is a bright vein of mere wordy wilfulness running throughout +the golden youth of the two plays which connects <i>Love’s Labour’s +Lost</i> with <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> as by a thread of floss silk not +always “most excellently ravelled,” nor often unspotted +or unentangled. In the second period this gaiety was replaced +by the utmost frankness and fullness of humour, as a boy’s merry +madness by the witty wisdom of a man: but now for a time it would seem +as if the good comic qualities of either period were displaced and ousted +by mere coarseness and crudity like that of a hard harsh photograph. +This ultra-Circean transformation of spirit and brutification of speech +we do not find in the lighter interludes of great and perfect tragedy: +for the porter in <i>Macbeth</i> makes hardly an exception worth naming. +It is when we come upon the singular little group of two or three plays +not accurately definable at all but roughly describable as tragi-comedies, +or more properly in two cases at least as tragedies docked of their +natural end, curtailed of the due catastrophe—it is then that +we find for the swift sad bright lightnings of laughter from the lips +of the sweet and bitter fool whose timeless disappearance from the stage +of <i>King Lear</i> seems for once a sure sign of inexplicable weariness +or forgetfulness on Shakespeare’s part, so nauseous and so sorry +a substitute as the fetid fun and rancid ribaldry of Pandarus and Thersites. +I must have leave to say that the coincidence of these two in the scheme +of a single play is a thing hardly bearable by men who object to too +strong a savour of those too truly “Eternal Cesspools” over +which the first of living humourists holds as it were for ever an everlasting +nose—or rather, in one sense, does not hold but expand it for +the fuller inhalation of their too congenial fumes with an apparent +relish which will always seem the most deplorable to those who the most +gratefully and reasonably admire that high heroic genius, for love of +which the wiser sort of men must finally forgive all the noisy aberrations +of his misanthropy and philobulgary, anti-Gallican and Russolatrous +insanities of perverse and morbid eloquence.</p> +<p>The three detached or misclassified plays of Shakespeare in which +alone a reverent and reasonable critic might perhaps find something +rationally and really exceptionable have also this far other quality +in common, that in them as in his topmost tragedies of the same period +either the exaltation of his eloquence touches the very highest point +of expressible poetry, or his power of speculation alternately sounds +the gulfs and scales the summits of all imaginable thought. In +all three of them the power of passionate and imaginative eloquence +is not only equal in spirit or essence but identical in figure or in +form: in those two of them which deal almost as much with speculative +intelligence as with poetic action and passion, the tones and methods, +types and objects of thought, are also not equal only but identical. +An all but absolute brotherhood in thought and style and tone and feeling +unites the quasi-tragedy of <i>Troilus and Cressida</i> with what in +the lamentable default of as apt a phrase in English I must call by +its proper designation in French the <i>tragédie manquée</i> +of <i>Measure for Measure</i>. In the simply romantic fragment +of the Shakespearean <i>Pericles</i>, where there was no call and no +place for the poetry of speculative or philosophic intelligence, there +is the same positive and unmistakable identity of imaginative and passionate +style.</p> +<p>I cannot but conjecture that the habitual students of Shakespeare’s +printed plays must have felt startled as by something of a shock when +the same year exposed for the expenditure of their sixpences two reasonably +correct editions of a play unknown to the boards in the likeness of +<i>Troilus and Cressida</i>, side by side or cheek by jowl with a most +unreasonably and unconscionably incorrect issue of a much older stage +favourite, now newly beautified and fortified, in <i>Pericles Prince +of Tyre</i>. Hitherto, ever since the appearance of his first +poem, and its instant acceptance by all classes from courtiers to courtesans +under a somewhat dubious and two-headed form of popular success,—‘vrai +succès de scandale s’il en fut’—even the potent +influence and unequivocal example of Rabelais had never once even in +passing or in seeming affected or infected the progressive and triumphal +genius of Shakespeare with a taint or touch of anything offensive to +healthier and cleanlier organs of perception than such as may belong +to a genuine or a pretending Puritan. But on taking in his hand +that one of these two new dramatic pamphlets which might first attract +him either by its double novelty as a never acted play or by a title +of yet more poetic and romantic associations than its fellow’s, +such a purchaser as I have supposed, with his mind full of the sweet +rich fresh humour which he would feel a right to expect from Shakespeare, +could hardly have undergone less than a qualm or a pang of strong disrelish +and distaste on finding one of the two leading comic figures of the +play break in upon it at his entrance not even with “a fool-born +jest,” but with full-mouthed and foul-mouthed effusion of such +rank and rancorous personalities as might properly pollute the lips +even of some emulous descendant or antiquarian reincarnation of Thersites, +on application or even apprehension of a whip cracked in passing over +the assembled heads of a pseudocritical and mock-historic society. +In either case we moderns at least might haply desire the intervention +of a beadle’s hand as heavy and a sceptral cudgel as knotty as +ever the son of Laertes applied to the shoulders of the first of the +type or the tribe of Thersites. For this brutal and brutish buffoon—I +am speaking of Shakespeare’s Thersites—has no touch of humour +in all his currish composition: Shakespeare had none as nature has none +to spare for such dirty dogs as those of his kind or generation. +There is not even what Coleridge with such exquisite happiness defined +as being the quintessential property of Swift—“<i>anima +Rabelæsii habitans in sicco</i>—the soul of Rabelais dwelling +in a dry place.” It is the fallen soul of Swift himself +at its lowest, dwelling in a place yet drier: the familiar spirit or +less than Socratic dæmon of the Dean informing the genius of Shakespeare. +And thus for awhile infected and possessed, the divine genius had not +power to re-inform and re-create the dæmonic spirit by virtue +of its own clear essence. This wonderful play, one of the most +admirable among all the works of Shakespeare’s immeasurable and +unfathomable intelligence, as it must always hold its natural high place +among the most admired, will always in all probability be also, and +as naturally, the least beloved of all. It would be as easy and +as profitable a problem to solve the Rabelaisian riddle of the bombinating +chimæra with its potential or hypothetical faculty of deriving +sustenance from a course of diet on second intentions, as to read the +riddle of Shakespeare’s design in the procreation of this yet +more mysterious and magnificent monster of a play. That on its +production in print it was formally announced as “a new play never +staled with the stage, never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vulgar,” +we know; must we infer or may we suppose that therefore it was not originally +written for the stage? Not all plays were which even at that date +appeared in print: yet it would seem something more than strange that +one such play, written simply for the study, should have been the extra-professional +work of Shakespeare: and yet again it would seem stranger that he should +have designed this prodigious nondescript or portent of supreme genius +for the public stage: and strangest of all, if so, that he should have +so designed it in vain. Perhaps after all a better than any German +or Germanising commentary on the subject would be the simple and summary +ejaculation of Celia—“O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful +wonderful, and yet again wonderful, and after that out of all whooping!” +The perplexities of the whole matter seem literally to crowd and thicken +upon us at every step. What ailed the man or any man to write +such a manner of dramatic poem at all? and having written, to keep it +beside him or let it out of his hands into stranger and more slippery +keeping, unacted and unprinted? A German will rush in with an +answer where an Englishman (<i>non angelus sed Anglus</i>) will naturally +fear to tread.</p> +<p>Alike in its most palpable perplexities and in its most patent splendours, +this political and philosophic and poetic problem, this hybrid and hundred-faced +and hydra-headed prodigy, at once defies and derides all definitive +comment. This however we may surely and confidently say of it, +that of all Shakespeare’s offspring it is the one whose best things +lose least by extraction and separation from their context. That +some cynic had lately bitten him by the brain—and possibly a cynic +himself in a nearly rabid stage of anthropophobia—we might conclude +as reasonably from consideration of the whole as from examination of +the parts more especially and virulently affected: yet how much is here +also of hyper-Platonic subtlety and sublimity, of golden and Hyblæan +eloquence above the reach and beyond the snap of any cynic’s tooth! +Shakespeare, as under the guidance at once for good and for evil of +his alternately Socratic and Swiftian familiar, has set himself as if +prepensely and on purpose to brutalise the type of Achilles and spiritualise +the type of Ulysses. The former is an enterprise never to be utterly +forgiven by any one who ever loved from the very birth of his boyhood +the very name of the son of the sea-goddess in the glorious words of +Mr. Browning’s young first-born poem,</p> +<blockquote><p>Who stood beside the naked Swift-footed,<br /> +And bound [his] forehead with Proserpine’s hair.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It is true, if that be any little compensation, that Hector and Andromache +fare here hardly better than he: while of the momentary presentation +of Helen on the dirtier boards of a stage more miry than the tub of +Diogenes I would not if I could and I must not though I would say so +much as one single proper word. The hysterics of the eponymous +hero and the harlotries of the eponymous heroine remove both alike beyond +the outer pale of all rational and manly sympathy; though Shakespeare’s +self may never have exceeded or equalled for subtle and accurate and +bitter fidelity the study here given of an utterly light woman, shallow +and loose and dissolute in the most literal sense, rather than perverse +or unkindly or unclean; and though Keats alone in his most perfect mood +of lyric passion and burning vision as full of fragrance as of flame +could have matched and all but overmatched those passages in which the +rapture of Troilus makes pale and humble by comparison the keenest raptures +of Romeo.</p> +<p>The relative disfavour in which the play of <i>Measure for Measure</i> +has doubtless been at all times generally held is not in my opinion +simply explicable on the theory which of late years has been so powerfully +and plausibly advanced and advocated on the highest poetic or judicial +authority in France or in the world, that in the land of many-coloured +cant and many-coated hypocrisy the type of Angelo is something too much +a prototype or an autotype of the huge national vice of England. +This comment is in itself as surely just and true as it is incisive +and direct: but it will not cover by any manner of means the whole question. +The strong and radical objection distinctly brought forward against +this play, and strenuously supported by the wisest and the warmest devotee +among all the worshippers of Shakespeare, is not exactly this, that +the Puritan Angelo is exposed: it is that the Puritan Angelo is unpunished. +In the very words of Coleridge, it is that by his pardon and his marriage +“the strong indignant claim of justice” is “baffled.” +The expression is absolutely correct and apt: justice is not merely +evaded or ignored or even defied: she is both in the older and the newer +sense of the word directly and deliberately baffled; buffeted, outraged, +insulted, struck in the face. We are left hungry and thirsty after +having been made to thirst and hunger for some wholesome single grain +at least of righteous and too long retarded retribution: we are tricked +out of our dole, defeated of our due, lured and led on to look for some +equitable and satisfying upshot, defrauded and derided and sent empty +away.</p> +<p>That this play is in its very inmost essence a tragedy, and that +no sleight of hand or force of hand could give it even a tolerable show +of coherence or consistency when clipped and docked of its proper and +rightful end, the mere tone of style prevalent throughout all its better +parts to the absolute exclusion of any other would of itself most amply +suffice to show. Almost all that is here worthy of Shakespeare +at any time is worthy of Shakespeare at his highest: and of this every +touch, every line, every incident, every syllable, belongs to pure and +simple tragedy. The evasion of a tragic end by the invention and +intromission of Mariana has deserved and received high praise for its +ingenuity but ingenious evasion of a natural and proper end is usually +the distinctive quality which denotes a workman of a very much lower +school than the school of Shakespeare. In short and in fact, the +whole elaborate machinery by which the complete and completely unsatisfactory +result of the whole plot is attained is so thoroughly worthy of such +a contriver as “the old fantastical duke of dark corners” +as to be in a moral sense, if I dare say what I think, very far from +thoroughly worthy of the wisest and mightiest mind that ever was informed +with the spirit or genius of creative poetry.</p> +<p>I have one more note to add in passing which touches simply on a +musical point in lyric verse; and from which I would therefore give +any biped who believes that ears “should be long to measure Shakespeare” +all timely warning to avert the length of his own. A very singular +question, and one to me unaccountable except by a supposition which +on charitable grounds I should be loth to entertain for a moment—namely, +that such ears are commoner than I would fain believe on heads externally +or ostensibly human,—has been raised with regard to the first +immortal song of Mariana in the moated grange. This question is +whether the second verse appended by Fletcher to that divine Shakespearean +fragment may not haply have been written by the author of the first. +The visible and audible evidence that it cannot is of a kind which must +at once leap into sight of all human eyes and conviction of all human +ears. The metre of Shakespeare’s verse, as written by Shakespeare, +is not the metre of Fletcher’s. It can only seem the same +to those who hear by finger and not by ear: a class now at all events +but too evidently numerous enough to refute Sir Hugh’s antiquated +objection to the once apparently tautologous phrase of Pistol. <a name="citation205"></a><a href="#footnote205">{205}</a></p> +<p>It is of course inexplicable, but it is equally of course undeniable, +that the mention of Shakespeare’s <i>Pericles</i> would seem immediately +and invariably to recall to a virtuous critical public of nice and nasty +mind the prose portions of the fourth act, the whole of the prose portions +of the fourth act, and nothing but the prose portions of the fourth +act. To readers and writers of books who readily admit their ineligibility +as members of a Society for the Suppression of Shakespeare or Rabelais, +of Homer or the Bible, it will seem that the third and fifth acts of +this ill-fated and ill-famed play, and with them the poetical parts +of the fourth act, are composed of metal incomparably more attractive. +But the virtuous critic, after the alleged nature of the vulturine kind, +would appear to have eyes and ears and nose for nothing else. +It is true that somewhat more of humour, touched once and again with +subtler hints of deeper truth, is woven into the too realistic weft +of these too lifelike scenes than into any of the corresponding parts +in <i>Measure for Measure</i> or in <i>Troilus and Cressida</i>; true +also that in the hands of imitators, in hands so much weaker than Shakespeare’s +as were Heywood’s or Davenport’s (who transplanted this +unlovely episode from <i>Pericles</i> into a play of his own), these +very scenes or such as they reappear unredeemed by any such relief in +all the rank and rampant ugliness of their raw repulsive realism: true, +again, that Fletcher has once equalled them in audacity, while stripping +off the nakedness of his subject the last ragged and rude pretence at +a moral purpose, and investing it instead with his very brightest robe +of gay parti-coloured humour: but after all it remains equally true +that to senses less susceptible of attraction by carrion than belong +to the vultures of critical and professional virtue they must always +remain as they have always been, something very considerably more than +unattractive. I at least for one must confess myself insufficiently +virtuous to have ever at any time for any moment felt towards them the +very slightest touch of any feeling more attractive than repulsion. +And herewith I hasten to wash my hands of the only unattractive matter +in the only three of Shakespeare’s plays which offer any such +matter to the perceptions of any healthy-minded and reasonable human +creature.</p> +<p>But what now shall I say that may not be too pitifully unworthy of +the glories and the beauties, the unsurpassable pathos and sublimity +inwoven with the imperial texture of this very play? the blood-red Tyrian +purple of tragic maternal jealousy which might seem to array it in a +worthy attire of its Tyrian name; the flower-soft loveliness of maiden +lamentation over the flower-strewn seaside grave of Marina’s old +sea-tossed nurse, where I am unvirtuous enough (as virtue goes among +moralists) to feel more at home and better at ease than in the atmosphere +of her later lodging in Mitylene? What, above all, shall be said +of that storm above all storms ever raised in poetry, which ushered +into a world of such wonders and strange chances the daughter of the +wave-worn and world-wandering prince of Tyre? Nothing but this +perhaps, that it stands—or rather let me say that it blows and +sounds and shines and rings and thunders and lightens as far ahead of +all others as the burlesque sea-storm of Rabelais beyond all possible +storms of comedy. The recent compiler of a most admirably skilful +and most delicately invaluable compendium of Pantagruel or manual by +way of guidebook to Rabelais has but too justly taken note of the irrefragable +evidence there given that the one prose humourist who is to Aristophanes +as the human twin-star Castor to Pollux the divine can never have practically +weathered an actual gale; but if I may speak from a single experience +of one which a witness long inured to Indian storm as well as Indian +battle had never seen matched out of the tropics if ever overmatched +within them, I should venture to say, were the poet in question any +other mortal man than Shakespeare, to whom all things were better known +by instinct than ever they can be to others by experience, that the +painter of the storm in <i>Pericles</i> must have shared the adventure +and relished the rapture of such an hour. None other most assuredly +than himself alone could have mingled with the material passion of the +elements such human passion of pathos as thrills in such tenderly sublime +undertone of an agony so nobly subdued through the lament of Pericles +over Thaisa. As in his opening speech of this scene we heard all +the clangour and resonance of warring wind and sea, so now we hear a +sound of sacred and spiritual music as solemn as the central monochord +of the inner main itself.</p> +<p>That the three last acts of <i>Pericles</i>, with the possible if +not over probable exception of the so-called Chorus, <a name="citation210"></a><a href="#footnote210">{210}</a> +are wholly the work of Shakespeare in the ripest fullness of his latter +genius, is a position which needs exactly as much proof as does his +single-handed authorship of <i>Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth</i>, and <i>Othello</i>. +In the fifth act is a remarkable instance of a thing remarkably rare +with him; the recast or repetition in an improved and reinvigorated +form of a beautiful image or passage occurring in a previous play. +The now only too famous metaphor of “patience on a monument smiling +at grief”—too famous we might call it for its own fame—is +transfigured as from human beauty to divine, in its transformation to +the comparison of Marina’s look with that of “Patience gazing +on kings’ graves, and smiling Extremity out of act.” +A precisely similar parallel is one to which I have referred elsewhere; +that between the two passages respectively setting forth the reciprocal +love of Helena and Hermia, of Emilia and Flavina. The change of +style and spirit in either case of reiteration is the change from a +simpler to a sublimer form of beauty.</p> +<p>In the two first acts of <i>Pericles</i> there are faint and rare +but evident and positive traces of a passing touch from the hasty hand +of Shakespeare: even here too we may say after Dido:—</p> +<blockquote><p>Nec tam aversus equos Tyriâ sol jungit ab urbe.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It has been said that those most unmistakable verses on “the +blind mole” are not such as any man could insert into another +man’s work, or slip in between the lines of an inferior poet: +and that they occur naturally enough in a speech of no particular excellence. +I take leave decisively to question the former assertion, and flatly +to contradict the latter. The pathetic and magnificent lines in +dispute do not occur naturally enough, or at all naturally, among the +very poor, flat, creeping verses between which they have been thrust +with such over freehanded recklessness. No purple patch was ever +more pitifully out of place. There is indeed no second example +of such wanton and wayward liberality; but the generally lean and barren +style of these opening acts does not crawl throughout on exactly the +same low level.</p> +<p>The last of the only three plays with which I venture to find any +fault on the score of moral taste is the first on my list of the only +three plays belonging to this last period on which, as they now stand, +I trace the indisputable track of another touch than Shakespeare’s. +But in the two cases remaining our general task of distinction should +on the whole be simple and easy enough for the veriest babes and sucklings +in the lower school of Shakespeare.</p> +<p>That the two great posthumous fragments we possess of Shakespeare’s +uncompleted work are incomplete simply because the labour spent on either +was cut short by his timeless death is the first natural assumption +of any student with an eye quick enough to catch the point where the +traces of his hand break off; but I should now be inclined to guess +rather that on reconsideration of the subjects chosen he had rejected +or dismissed them for a time at least as unfit for dramatic handling. +It could have needed no great expenditure of reasoning or reflection +to convince a man of lesser mind and less experience than Shakespeare’s +that no subject could possibly be more unmanageable, more indomitably +improper for such a purpose, than he had selected in <i>Timon of Athens</i>. +How he came ever to fall across such a subject, to hit upon such a choice, +we can spend no profitable time or pains in trying to conjecture. +It is clear, however, that at all events there was a season when the +inexplicable attraction of it was too strong for him to resist the singular +temptation to embody in palpable form, to array in dramatic raiment, +to invest with imaginative magnificence, the godless ascetic passion +of misanthropy, the martyrdom of an atheistic Stylites. Timon +is doubtless a man of far nobler type than any monomaniac of the tribe +of Macarius: but his immeasurable superiority in spiritual rank to the +hermit fathers of the desert serves merely to make him a thought madder +and a grain more miserable than the whole Thebaid of Christomaniacs +rolled into one. Foolish and fruitless as it has ever been to +hunt through Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets on the false scent +of a fantastic trail, to put thaumaturgic trust in a dark dream of tracking +his untraceable personality through labyrinthine byways of life and +visionary crossroads of character, it is yet surely no blind assumption +to accept the plain evidence in both so patent before us, that he too +like other men had his dark seasons of outer or of inner life, and like +other poets found them or made them fruitful as well as bitter, though +it might be but of bitter fruit. And of such there is here enough +to glut the gorge of all the monks in monkery, or strengthen for a forty +days’ fast any brutallest unwashed theomaniac of the Thebaid. +The most unconscionably unclean of all foul-minded fanatics might have +been satisfied with the application to all women from his mother upwards +of the monstrous and magnificent obloquy found by Timon as insufficient +to overwhelm as his gold was inadequate to satisfy one insatiable and +indomitable “brace of harlots.” In <i>Troilus and +Cressida</i> we found too much that Swift might have written when half +inspired by the genius of Shakespeare; in the great and terrible fourth +act of <i>Timon</i> we find such tragedy as Juvenal might have written +when half deified by the spirit of Æschylus.</p> +<p>There is a noticeable difference between the case of <i>Timon</i> +and the two other cases (diverse enough between themselves) of late +or mature work but partially assignable to the hand of Shakespeare. +In <i>Pericles</i> we may know exactly how much was added by Shakespeare +to the work of we know not whom; in <i>The Two Noble Kinsmen</i> we +can tell sometimes to a hair’s breadth in a hemistich by whom +how much was added to the posthumous text of Shakespeare; in <i>Timon</i> +we cannot assert with the same confidence in the same accuracy that +just so many scenes and no more, just so many speeches and none other, +were the work of Shakespeare’s or of some other hand. Throughout +the first act his presence lightens on us by flashes, as his voice peals +out by fits, from behind or above the too meanly decorated altar of +tragic or satiric song: in the second it is more sensibly continuous; +in the third it is all but utterly eclipsed; in the fourth it is but +very rarely intercepted for a very brief interval in the dark divine +service of a darker Commination Day: in the fifth it predominates generally +over the sullen and brooding atmosphere with the fierce imperious glare +of a “bloody sun” like that which the wasting shipmen watched +at noon “in a hot and copper sky.” There is here no +more to say of a poem inspired at once by the triune Furies of Ezekiel, +of Juvenal, and of Dante.</p> +<p>I can imagine no reason but that already suggested why Shakespeare +should in a double sense have taken Chaucer for his model or example +in leaving half told a story which he had borrowed from the father and +master of our narrative poetry. Among all competent scholars and +all rational students of Shakespeare there can have been, except possibly +with regard to three of the shorter scenes, no room for doubt or perplexity +on any detail of the subject since the perfect summary and the masterly +decision of Mr. Dyce. These three scenes, as no such reader will +need to be told or reminded, are the two first soliloquies of the Gaoler’s +Daughter after the release of Palamon, and the scene of the portraits, +as we may in a double sense call it, in which Emilia, after weighing +against each other in solitude the likenesses of the cousins, receives +from her own kinsfolk a full and laboured description of their leading +champions on either side. Even setting apart for once and for +a moment the sovereign evidence of mere style, we must recognise in +this last instance a beautiful and significant example of that loyal +and loving fidelity to the minor passing suggestions of Chaucer’s +text which on all possible occasions of such comparison so markedly +and vividly distinguishes the work of Shakespeare’s from the work +of Fletcher’s hand. Of the pestilent abuse and perversion +to which Fletcher has put the perhaps already superfluous hints or sketches +by Shakespeare for an episodical underplot, in his transmutation of +Palamon’s love-stricken and luckless deliverer into the disgusting +burlesque of a mock Ophelia, I have happily no need as I should certainly +have no patience to speak. <a name="citation217"></a><a href="#footnote217">{217}</a></p> +<p>After the always immitigable gloom of <i>Timon</i> and the sometimes +malodorous exhalations of the three preceding plays, it is nothing less +than “very heaven” to find and feel ourselves again in the +midmost Paradise, the central Eden, of Shakespeare’s divine discovery—of +his last sweet living invention. Here again is air as pure blowing +over fields as fragrant as where Dante saw Matilda or Milton saw Proserpine +gathering each as deathless flowers. We still have here to disentwine +or disentangle his own from the weeds of glorious and of other than +glorious feature with which Fletcher has thought fit to interweave them; +even in the close of the last scene of all we can say to a line, to +a letter, where Shakespeare ends and Fletcher begins. That scene +is opened by Shakespeare in his most majestic vein of meditative or +moral verse, pointed and coloured as usual with him alone by direct +and absolute aptitude to the immediate sentiment and situation of the +speaker and of no man else: then either Fletcher strikes in for a moment +with a touch of somewhat more Shakespearean tone than usual, or possibly +we have a survival of some lines’ length, not unretouched by Fletcher, +from Shakespeare’s first sketch for a conclusion of the somewhat +calamitous and cumbrous underplot, which in any case was ultimately +left for Fletcher to expand into such a shape and bring by such means +to such an end as we may safely swear that Shakespeare would never have +admitted: then with the entrance and ensuing narrative of Pirithous +we have none but Shakespeare before us again, though it be Shakespeare +undoubtedly in the rough, and not as he might have chosen to present +himself after due revision, with rejection (we may well suppose) of +this point and readjustment of that: then upon the arrival of the dying +Arcite with his escort there follows a grievous little gap, a flaw but +pitifully patched by Fletcher, whom we recognise at wellnigh his worst +and weakest in Palamon’s appeal to his kinsman for a last word, +“if his heart, <i>his worthy, manly heart</i>” (an exact +and typical example of Fletcher’s tragically prosaic and prosaically +tragic dash of incurable commonplace), “be yet unbroken,” +and in the flaccid and futile answer which fails so signally to supply +the place of the most famous and pathetic passage in all the masterpiece +of Chaucer; a passage to which even Shakespeare could have added but +some depth and grandeur of his own giving, since neither he nor Dante’s +very self nor any other among the divinest of men could have done more +or better than match it for tender and pure simplicity of words more +“dearly sweet and bitter” than the bitterest or the sweetest +of men’s tears. Then, after the duly and properly conventional +engagement on the parts of Palamon and Emilia respectively to devote +the anniversary “to tears” and “to honour,” +the deeper note returns for one grand last time, grave at once and sudden +and sweet as the full choral opening of an anthem: the note which none +could ever catch of Shakespeare’s very voice gives out the peculiar +cadence that it alone can give in the modulated instinct of a solemn +change or shifting of the metrical emphasis or <i>ictus</i> from one +to the other of two repeated words:—</p> +<blockquote><p> That nought could buy<br /> +Dear love; but loss of dear love!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>That is a touch beyond the ear or the hand of Fletcher: a chord sounded +from Apollo’s own harp after a somewhat hoarse and reedy wheeze +from the scrannel-pipe of a lesser player than Pan. Last of all, +in words worthy to be the latest left of Shakespeare’s, his great +and gentle Theseus winds up the heavenly harmonies of his last beloved +great poem.</p> +<p>And now, coming at length within the very circle of Shakespeare’s +culminant and crowning constellation, bathing my whole soul and spirit +for the last and (if I live long enough) as surely for the first of +many thousand times in the splendours of the planet whose glory is the +light of his very love itself, standing even as Dante</p> +<blockquote><p> in +the clear<br /> +Amorous silence of the Swooning-sphere,</p> +</blockquote> +<p>what shall I say of thanksgiving before the final feast of Shakespeare?</p> +<p>The grace must surely be short enough if it would at all be gracious. +Even were Shakespeare’s self alive again, or he now but fifteen +years since gone home to Shakespeare, <a name="citation220"></a><a href="#footnote220">{220}</a> +of whom Charles Lamb said well that none could have written his book +about Shakespeare but either himself alone or else he of whom the book +was written, yet could we not hope that either would have any new thing +to tell us of the <i>Tempest</i>, the <i>Winter’s Tale</i>, and +<i>Cymbeline</i>. And for ourselves, what else could we do but +only ring changes on the word beautiful as Celia on the word wonderful +in her laughing litany of love? or what better or what more can we do +than in the deepest and most heartfelt sense of an old conventional +phrase, thank God and Shakespeare? for how to praise either for such +a gift of gifts we know not, knowing only and surely that none will +know for ever.</p> +<p>True or false, and it would now seem something less than likely to +be true, the fancy which assumed the last lines spoken by Prospero to +be likewise the last words of the last completed work of Shakespeare +was equally in either case at once natural and graceful. There +is but one figure sweeter than Miranda’s and sublimer than Prospero’s +in all the range of heaven on which the passion of our eyes could rest +at parting. And from one point of view there is even a more heavenly +quality perceptible in the light of this than of its two twin stars. +In no nook or corner of the island as we leave it is any savour left +or any memory lingering of any inexpiable evil. Alonzo is absolved; +even Antonio and Sebastian have made no such ineffaceable mark on it +by the presence of their pardoned crimes as is made by those which cost +the life of Mamillius and the labours of Imogen. Poor Caliban +is left in such comfort as may be allowed him by divine grace in the +favourable aspect of Setebos; and his comrades go by us “reeling +ripe” and “gilded” not by “grand liquor” +only but also by the summer lightning of men’s laughter: blown +softly out of our sight, with a sound and a gust of music, by the breath +of the song of Ariel.</p> +<p>The wild wind of the <i>Winter’s Tale</i> at its opening would +seem to blow us back into a wintrier world indeed. And to the +very end I must confess that I have in me so much of the spirit of Rachel +weeping in Ramah as will not be comforted because Mamillius is not. +It is well for those whose hearts are light enough, to take perfect +comfort even in the substitution of his sister Perdita for the boy who +died of “thoughts high for one so tender.” Even the +beautiful suggestion that Shakespeare as he wrote had in mind his own +dead little son still fresh and living at his heart can hardly add more +than a touch of additional tenderness to our perfect and piteous delight +in him. And even in her daughter’s embrace it seems hard +if his mother should have utterly forgotten the little voice that had +only time to tell her just eight words of that ghost story which neither +she nor we were ever to hear ended. Any one but Shakespeare would +have sought to make pathetic profit out of the child by the easy means +of showing him if but once again as changed and stricken to the death +for want of his mother and fear for her and hunger and thirst at his +little high heart for the sight and touch of her: Shakespeare only could +find a better way, a subtler and a deeper chord to strike, by giving +us our last glimpse of him as he laughed and chattered with her “past +enduring,” to the shameful neglect of those ladies in the natural +blueness of whose eyebrows as well as their noses he so stoutly declined +to believe. And at the very end (as aforesaid) it may be that +we remember him all the better because the father whose jealousy killed +him and the mother for love of whom he died would seem to have forgotten +the little brave sweet spirit with all its truth of love and tender +sense of shame as perfectly and unpardonably as Shakespeare himself +at the close of <i>King Lear</i> would seem to have forgotten one who +never had forgotten Cordelia.</p> +<p>But yet—and here for once the phrase abhorred by Cleopatra +does not “allay the good” but only the bad “precedence”—if +ever amends could be made for such unnatural show of seeming forgetfulness +(“out on the seeming! I will write against it”—or +would, had I not written enough already), the poet most assuredly has +made such amends here. At the sunrise of Perdita beside Florizel +it seems as if the snows of sixteen winters had melted all together +into the splendour of one unutterable spring. They “smell +April and May” in a sweeter sense than it could be said of “young +Master Fenton”: “nay, which is more,” as his friend +and champion Mistress Quickly might have added to mine host’s +commendatory remark, they speak all April and May; because April is +in him as naturally as May in her, by just so many years’ difference +before the Mayday of her birth as went to make up her dead brother’s +little lot of living breath, which in Beaumont’s most lovely and +Shakespeare-worthy phrase “was not a life; was but a piece of +childhood thrown away.” Nor can I be content to find no +word of old affection for Autolycus, who lived, as we may not doubt, +though but a hint or promise be vouchsafed us for all assurance that +he lived by favour of his “good masters” once more to serve +Prince Florizel and wear three-pile for as much of his time as it might +please him to put on “robes” like theirs that were “gentlemen +born,” and had “been so any time these four hours.” +And yet another and a graver word must be given with all reverence to +the “grave and good Paulina,” whose glorious fire of godlike +indignation was as warmth and cordial to the innermost heart while yet +bruised and wrung for the yet fresh loss of Mamillius.</p> +<p>The time is wellnigh come now for me to consecrate in this book my +good will if not good work to the threefold and thrice happy memory +of the three who have written of Shakespeare as never man wrote, nor +ever man may write again; to the everlasting praise and honour and glory +of Charles Lamb, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Walter Savage Landor; +“wishing,” I hardly dare to say, “what I write may +be read by their light.” The play of plays, which is <i>Cymbeline</i>, +remains alone to receive the last salute of all my love.</p> +<p>I think, as far as I can tell, I may say I have always loved this +one beyond all other children of Shakespeare. The too literal +egoism of this profession will not be attributed by any candid or even +commonly honest reader to the violence of vanity so much more than comical +as to make me suppose that such a record or assurance could in itself +be matter of interest to any man: but simply to the real and simple +reason, that I wish to show cause for my choice of this work to wind +up with, beyond the mere chance of its position at the close of the +chaotically inconsequent catalogue of contents affixed to the first +edition. In this casualty—for no good thing can reasonably +be ascribed to design on the part of the first editors—there would +seem to be something more than usual of what we may call, if it so please +us, a happy providence. It is certain that no studious arrangement +could possibly have brought the book to a happier end. Here is +depth enough with height enough of tragic beauty and passion, terror +and love and pity, to approve the presence of the most tragic Master’s +hand; subtlety enough of sweet and bitter truth to attest the passage +of the mightiest and wisest scholar or teacher in the school of the +human spirit; beauty with delight enough and glory of life and grace +of nature to proclaim the advent of the one omnipotent Maker among all +who bear that name. Here above all is the most heavenly triad +of human figures that ever even Shakespeare brought together; a diviner +three, as it were a living god-garland of the noblest earth-born brothers +and loveworthiest heaven-born sister, than the very givers of all grace +and happiness to their Grecian worshippers of old time over long before. +The passion of Posthumus is noble, and potent the poison of Iachimo; +Cymbeline has enough for Shakespeare’s present purpose of “the +king-becoming graces”; but we think first and last of her who +was “truest speaker” and those who “called her brother, +when she was but their sister; she them brothers, when they were so +indeed.” The very crown and flower of all her father’s +daughters,—I do not speak here of her human father, but her divine—the +woman above all Shakespeare’s women is Imogen. As in Cleopatra +we found the incarnate sex, the woman everlasting, so in Imogen we find +half glorified already the immortal godhead of womanhood. I would +fain have some honey in my words at parting—with Shakespeare never, +but for ever with these notes on Shakespeare; and I am therefore something +more than fain to close my book upon the name of the woman best beloved +in all the world of song and all the tide of time; upon the name of +Shakespeare’s Imogen.</p> +<h2>APPENDIX.</h2> +<h3>NOTE ON THE HISTORICAL PLAY OF KING EDWARD III.<br /> +1879.</h3> +<p>The epitaph of German criticism on Shakespeare was long since written +by the unconscious hand which penned the following sentence; an inscription +worthy of perpetual record on the registers of Gotham or in the daybook +of the yet unstranded Ship of Fools.</p> +<p>“<i>Thomas Lord Cromwell:—Sir John Oldcastle:—A +Yorkshire Tragedy</i>.—The three last pieces are not only unquestionably +Shakespeare’s, but in my opinion they deserve to be classed among +his best and maturest works.”</p> +<p>This memorable opinion is the verdict of the modest and judicious +Herr von Schlegel: who had likewise in his day the condescension to +inform our ignorance of the melancholy fact so strangely overlooked +by the contemporaries of Christopher Marlowe, that “his verses +are flowing, but without energy.” Strange, but true; too +strange, we may reasonably infer, not to be true. Only to German +eyes has the treasure-house of English poetry ever disclosed a secret +of this kind: to German ears alone has such discord or default been +ever perceptible in its harmonies.</p> +<p>Now the facts with regard to this triad of plays are briefly these. +<i>Thomas Lord Cromwell</i> is a piece of such utterly shapeless, spiritless, +bodiless, soulless, senseless, helpless, worthless rubbish, that there +is no known writer of Shakespeare’s age to whom it could be ascribed +without the infliction of an unwarrantable insult on that writer’s +memory. <i>Sir John Oldcastle</i> is the compound piecework of +four minor playwrights, one of them afterwards and otherwise eminent +as a poet—Munday, Drayton, Wilson, and Hathaway: a thin sample +of poetic patchery cobbled up and stitched together so as to serve its +hour for a season without falling to pieces at the first touch. +The <i>Yorkshire Tragedy</i> is a coarse, crude, and vigorous impromptu, +in which we possibly might almost think it possible that Shakespeare +had a hand (or at least a finger), if we had any reason to suppose that +during the last ten or twelve years of his life <a name="citation232"></a><a href="#footnote232">{232}</a> +he was likely to have taken part in any such dramatic improvisation.</p> +<p>The example and the exposure of Schlegel’s misadventures in +this line have not sufficed to warn off minor blunderers from treading +with emulous confidence “through forthrights and meanders” +in the very muddiest of their precursor’s traces. We may +notice, for one example, the revival—or at least the discussion +as of something worth serious notice—of a wellnigh still-born +theory, first dropped in a modest corner of the critical world exactly +a hundred and seventeen years ago. Its parent, notwithstanding +this perhaps venial indiscretion, was apparently an honest and modest +gentleman; and the play itself, which this ingenuous theorist was fain, +with all diffidence, to try whether haply he might be permitted to foist +on the apocryphal fatherhood of Shakespeare, is not without such minor +merits as may excuse us for wasting a few minutes on examination of +the theory which seeks to confer on it the factitious and artificial +attraction of a spurious and adventitious interest.</p> +<p>“The Raigne of King Edward the third: As it hath bin sundrie +times plaied about the Citie of London,” was published in 1596, +and ran through two or three anonymous editions before the date of the +generation was out which first produced it. Having thus run to +the end of its natural tether, it fell as naturally into the oblivion +which has devoured, and has not again disgorged, so many a more precious +production of its period. In 1760 it was reprinted in the “Prolusions” +of Edward Capell, whose text is now before me. This editor was +the first mortal to suggest that his newly unearthed treasure might +possibly be a windfall from the topless tree of Shakespeare. Being, +as I have said, a duly modest and an evidently honest man, he admits +“with candour” that there is no jot or tittle of “external +evidence” whatsoever to be alleged in support of this gratuitous +attribution: but he submits, with some fair show of reason, that there +is a certain “resemblance between the style of” Shakespeare’s +“earlier performances and of the work in question”; and +without the slightest show of any reason whatever he appends to this +humble and plausible plea the unspeakably unhappy assertion that at +the time of its appearance “there was no known writer equal to +such a play”; whereas at a moderate computation there were, I +should say, on the authority of Henslowe’s Diary, at least a dozen—and +not improbably a score. In any case there was one then newly dead, +too long before his time, whose memory stands even higher above the +possible ascription of such a work than that of the adolescent Shakespeare’s +very self.</p> +<p>Of one point we may be sure, even where so much is unsure as we find +it here: in the curt atheological phrase of the Persian Lucretius, “one +thing is certain, and the rest is lies.” The author of <i>King +Edward III</i>. was a devout student and a humble follower of Christopher +Marlowe, not yet wholly disengaged by that august and beneficent influence +from all attraction towards the “jigging veins of rhyming mother-wits”; +and fitter on the whole to follow this easier and earlier vein of writing, +half lyrical in manner and half elegiac, than to brace upon his punier +limbs the young giant’s newly fashioned buskin of blank verse. +The signs of this growing struggle, the traces of this incomplete emancipation, +are perceptible throughout in the alternate prevalence of two conflicting +and irreconcilable styles; which yet affords no evidence or suggestion +of a double authorship. For the intelligence which moulds and +informs the whole work, the spirit which pervades and imbues the general +design, is of a piece, so to speak, throughout; a point imperceptible +to the eye, a touchstone intangible by the finger, alike of a scholiast +and a dunce.</p> +<p>Another test, no less unmistakable by the student and no less indiscernible +to the sciolist, is this: that whatever may be the demerits of this +play, they are due to no voluntary or involuntary carelessness or haste. +Here is not the swift impatient journeywork of a rough and ready hand; +here is no sign of such compulsory hurry in the discharge of a task +something less than welcome, if not of an imposition something less +than tolerable, as we may rationally believe ourselves able to trace +in great part of Marlowe’s work: in the latter half of <i>The +Jew of Malta</i>, in the burlesque interludes of <i>Doctor Faustus</i>, +and wellnigh throughout the whole scheme and course of <i>The Massacre +at Paris</i>. Whatever in <i>King Edward III</i>. is mediocre +or worse is evidently such as it is through no passionate or slovenly +precipitation of handiwork, but through pure incompetence to do better. +The blame of the failure, the shame of the shortcoming, cannot be laid +to the account of any momentary excess or default in emotion, of passing +exhaustion or excitement, of intermittent impulse and reaction; it is +an indication of lifelong and irremediable impotence. And it is +further to be noted that by far the least unsuccessful parts of the +play are also by far the most unimportant. The capacity of the +author seems to shrink and swell alternately, to erect its plumes and +deject them, to contract and to dilate the range and orbit of its flight +in a steadily inverse degree to the proportionate interest of the subject +or worth of the topic in hand. There could be no surer proof that +it is neither the early nor the hasty work of a great or even a remarkable +poet. It is the best that could be done at any time by a conscientious +and studious workman of technically insufficient culture and of naturally +limited means.</p> +<p>I would not, however, be supposed to undervalue the genuine and graceful +ability of execution displayed by the author at his best. He could +write at times very much after the earliest fashion of the adolescent +Shakespeare; in other words, after the fashion of the day or hour, to +which in some degree the greatest writer of that hour or that day cannot +choose but conform at starting, and the smallest writer must needs conform +for ever. By the rule which would attribute to Shakespeare every +line written in his first manner which appeared during the first years +of his poetic progress, it is hard to say what amount of bad verse or +better, current during the rise and the reign of their several influences,—for +this kind of echo or of copywork, consciously or unconsciously repercussive +and reflective, begins with the very first audible sound of a man’s +voice in song, with the very first noticeable stroke of his hand in +painting—it is hard to say what amount of tolerable or intolerable +work might not or may not be assignable by scholiasts of the future +to Byron or to Shelley, to Mr. Tennyson or to Mr. Browning. A +time by this rule might come—but I am fain to think better of +the Fates—when by comparison of detached words and collation of +dismembered phrases the memory of Mr. Tennyson would be weighted and +degraded by the ascription of whole volumes of pilfered and diluted +verse now current—if not yet submerged—under the name or +the pseudonym of the present <a name="citation237"></a><a href="#footnote237">{237}</a> +Viceroy—or Vice-empress is it?—of India. But the obvious +truth is this: the voice of Shakespeare’s adolescence had as usual +an echo in it of other men’s notes: I can remember the name of +but one poet whose voice from the beginning had none; who started with +a style of his own, though he may have chosen to annex—“annex +the wise it call”; <i>convey</i> is obsolete—to annex whole +phrases or whole verses at need, for the use or the ease of an idle +minute; and this name of course is Marlowe’s. So starting, +Shakespeare had yet (like all other and lesser poets born) some perceptible +notes in his yet half boyish voice that were not borrowed; and these +were at once caught up and re-echoed by such fellow-pupils with Shakespeare +of the young Master of them all—such humbler and feebler disciples, +or simpler sheep (shall we call them?) of the great “dead shepherd”—as +the now indistinguishable author of <i>King Edward III</i>.</p> +<p>In the first scene of the first act the impotent imitation of Marlowe +is pitifully patent. Possibly there may also be an imitation of +the still imitative style of Shakespeare, and the style may be more +accurately definable as a copy of a copy—a study after the manner +of Marlowe, not at second hand, but at third. In any case, being +obviously too flat and feeble to show a touch of either godlike hand, +this scene may be set aside at once to make way for the second.</p> +<p>The second scene is more animated, but low in style till we come +to the outbreak of rhyme. In other words, the energetic or active +part is at best passable—fluent and decent commonplace: but where +the style turns undramatic and runs into mere elegiacs, a likeness becomes +perceptible to the first elegiac style of Shakespeare. Witness +these lines spoken by the King in contemplation of the Countess of Salisbury’s +beauty, while yet struggling against the nascent motions of a base love:—</p> +<blockquote><p>Now in the sun alone it doth not lie<br /> +With light to take light from a mortal eye:<br /> +For here two day-stars that mine eyes would see<br /> +More than the sun steal mine own light from me.<br /> +Contemplative desire! desire to be<br /> +In contemplation that may master thee!</p> +</blockquote> +<p><i>Decipit exemplar vitiis imitabile</i>: if Shakespeare ever saw +or heard these pretty lines, he should have felt the unconscious rebuke +implied in such close and facile imitation of his own early elegiacs. +As a serious mimicry of his first manner, a critical parody summing +up in little space the sweet faults of his poetic nonage, with its barren +overgrowth of unprofitable flowers,—bright point, soft metaphor, +and sweet elaborate antithesis—this is as good of its kind as +anything between Aristophanes and Horace Smith. Indeed, it may +remind us of that parody on the soft, superfluous, flowery and frothy +style of Agathon, which at the opening of the <i>Thesmophoriazusæ</i> +cannot but make the youngest and most ignorant reader laugh, though +the oldest and most learned has never set eyes on a line of the original +verses which supplied the incarnate god of comic song with matter for +such exquisite burlesque.</p> +<p>To the speech above cited the reply of the Countess is even gracefuller, +and closer to the same general model of fanciful elegiac dialogue:—</p> +<blockquote><p>Let not thy presence, like the April sun,<br /> +Flatter our earth, and suddenly be done:<br /> +More happy do not make our outward wall<br /> +Than thou wilt grace our inward house withal.<br /> +Our house, my liege, is like a country swain,<br /> +Whose habit rude, and manners blunt and plain.<br /> +Presageth naught; yet inly beautified<br /> +With bounty’s riches, and fair hidden pride;<br /> +For where the golden ore doth buried lie,<br /> +The ground, undecked with nature’s tapestry,<br /> +Seems barren, sere, unfertile, fruitless, dry;<br /> +And where the upper turf of earth doth boast<br /> +His pride, perfumes, <a name="citation239"></a><a href="#footnote239">{239}</a> +and particoloured cost,<br /> +Delve there, and find this issue and their pride<br /> +To spring from ordure and corruption’s side.<br /> +But, to make up my all too long compare,<br /> +These ragged walls no testimony are<br /> +What is within; but, like a cloak, doth hide<br /> +From weather’s waste the under garnished pride.<br /> +More gracious than my terms can let thee be,<br /> +Entreat thyself to stay awhile with me.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Not only the exquisite grace of this charming last couplet, but the +smooth sound strength, the fluency and clarity of the whole passage, +may serve to show that the original suggestion of Capell, if (as I think) +untenable, was not (we must admit) unpardonable. The very oversight +perceptible to any eye and painful to any ear not sealed up by stepdame +nature from all perception of pleasure or of pain derivable from good +verse or bad—the reckless reiteration of the same rhyme with but +one poor couplet intervening—suggests rather the oversight of +an unfledged poet than the obtuseness of a full-grown poeticule or poetaster.</p> +<p>But of how many among the servile or semi-servile throng of imitators +in every generation may not as much as this be said by tolerant or kindly +judges! Among the herd of such diminutives as swarm after the +heel or fawn upon the hand of Mr. Tennyson, more than one, more than +two or three, have come as close as his poor little viceregal or vice-imperial +parasite to the very touch and action of the master’s hand which +feeds them unawares from his platter as they fawn; as close as this +nameless and short-winded satellite to the gesture and the stroke of +Shakespeare’s. For this also must be noted; that the resemblance +here is but of stray words, of single lines, of separable passages. +The whole tone of the text, the whole build of the play, the whole scheme +of the poem, is far enough from any such resemblance. The structure, +the composition, is feeble, incongruous, inadequate, effete. Any +student will remark at a first glance what a short-breathed runner, +what a broken-winded athlete in the lists of tragic verse, is the indiscoverable +author of this play.</p> +<p>There is another point which the Neo-Shakespearean synagogue will +by no man be expected to appreciate; for to apprehend it requires some +knowledge and some understanding of the poetry of the Shakespearean +age—so surely we now should call it, rather than Elizabethan or +Jacobean, for the sake of verbal convenience, if not for the sake of +literary decency; and such knowledge or understanding no sane man will +expect to find in any such quarter. Even in the broad coarse comedy +of the period we find here and there the same sweet and simple echoes +of the very cradle-song (so to call it) of our drama: so like Shakespeare, +they might say who knew nothing of Shakespeare’s fellows, that +we cannot choose but recognise his hand. Here as always first +in the field—the genuine and golden harvest-field of Shakespearean +criticism, Charles Lamb has cited a passage from <i>Green’s Tu +Quoque</i>—a comedy miserably misreprinted in Dodsley’s +Old Plays—on which he observes that “this is so like Shakespeare, +that we seem to remember it,” being as it is a girl’s gentle +lamentation over the selfish, exacting, suspicious and trustless love +of man, as contrasted with the swift simple surrender of a woman’s +love at the first heartfelt appeal to her pity—“we seem +to remember it,” says Lamb, as a speech of Desdemona uttered on +a first perception or suspicion of jealousy or alienation in Othello. +This lovely passage, if I dare say so in contravention to the authority +of Lamb, is indeed as like the manner of Shakespeare as it can be—to +eyes ignorant of what his fellows can do; but it is not like the manner +of the Shakespeare who wrote <i>Othello</i>. This, however, is +beside the question. It is very like the Shakespeare who wrote +the <i>Comedy of Errors—Love’s Labour’s Lost—Romeo +and Juliet</i>. It is so like that had we fallen upon it in any +of these plays it would long since have been a household word in all +men’s mouths for sweetness, truth, simplicity, perfect and instinctive +accuracy of touch. It is very much liker the first manner of Shakespeare +than any passage in <i>King Edward III</i>. And no Sham Shakespearean +critic that I know of has yet assigned to the hapless object of his +howling homage the authorship of <i>Green’s Tu Quoque</i>.</p> +<p>Returning to our text, we find in the short speech of the King with +which the first act is wound up yet another couplet which has the very +ring in it of Shakespeare’s early notes—the catch at words +rather than play on words which his tripping tongue in youth could never +resist:</p> +<blockquote><p>Countess, albeit my business urgeth me,<br /> +It shall attend while I attend on thee.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And with this pretty little instance of courtly and courteous euphuism +we pass from the first to the second and most important act in the play.</p> +<p>Any reader well versed in the text of Shakespeare, and ill versed +in the work of his early rivals and his later pupils, might surely be +forgiven if on a first reading of the speech with which this act opens +he should cry out with Capell that here at least was the unformed hand +of the Master perceptible and verifiable indeed. The writer, he +might say, has the very glance of his eye, the very trick of his gait, +the very note of his accent. But on getting a little more knowledge, +such a reader will find the use of it in the perception to which he +will have attained that in his early plays, as in his two early poems, +the style of Shakespeare was not for the most part distinctively his +own. It was that of a crew, a knot of young writers, among whom +he found at once both leaders and followers to be guided and to guide. +A mere glance into the rich lyric literature of the period will suffice +to show the dullest eye and teach the densest ear how nearly innumerable +were the Englishmen of Elizabeth’s time who could sing in the +courtly or pastoral key of the season, each man of them a few notes +of his own, simple or fantastic, but all sweet, clear, genuine of their +kind:—</p> +<blockquote><p> Facies non omnibus +una,<br /> +Nec diversa tamen:</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and yet so close is the generic likeness between flower and flower +of the same lyrical garden that the first half of the quotation seems +but half applicable here. In Bird’s, Morley’s, Dowland’s +collections of music with the words appended—in such jewelled +volumes as <i>England’s Helicon</i> and <i>Davison’s Poetical +Rhapsody</i>—their name is Legion, their numbers are numberless. +You cannot call them imitators, this man of that, or all of any; they +were all of one school, but it was a school without a master or a head. +And even so it was with the earliest sect or gathering of dramatic writers +in England. Marlowe alone stood apart and above them all—the +young Shakespeare among the rest; but among these we cannot count, we +cannot guess, how many were wellnigh as competent as he to continue +the fluent rhyme, to prolong the facile echo, of Greene and Peele, their +first and most famous leaders.</p> +<p>No more docile or capable pupil could have been desired by any master +in any art than the author of <i>David and Bethsabe</i> has found in +the writer of this second act. He has indeed surpassed his model, +if not in grace and sweetness, yet in taste or tact of expression, in +continuity and equality of style. Vigour is not the principal +note of his manner, but compared with the soft effusive ebullience of +his master’s we may fairly call it vigorous and condensed. +But all this merit or demerit is matter of mere language only. +The poet—a very pretty poet in his way, and doubtless capable +of gracious work enough in the idyllic or elegiac line of business—shows +about as much capacity to grasp and handle the fine intimacies of character +and the large issues of circumstance to any tragic or dramatic purpose, +as might be expected from an idyllic or elegiac poet who should suddenly +assume the buskin of tragedy. Let us suppose that Moschus, for +example, on the strength of having written a sweeter elegy than ever +before was chanted over the untimely grave of a friend and fellow-singer, +had said within himself, “Go to, I will be Sophocles”; can +we imagine that the tragic result would have been other than tragical +indeed for the credit of his gentle name, and comical indeed for all +who might have envied the mild and modest excellence which fashion or +hypocrisy might for years have induced them to besprinkle with the froth +and slaver of their promiscuous and pointless adulation?</p> +<p>As the play is not more generally known than it deserves to be,—or +perhaps we may say it is somewhat less known, though its claim to general +notice is faint indeed compared with that of many a poem of its age +familiar only to special students in our own—I will transcribe +a few passages to show how far the writer could reach at his best; leaving +for others to indicate how far short of that not inaccessible point +he is too generally content to fall and to remain.</p> +<p>The opening speech is spoken by one Lodowick, a parasite of the King’s; +who would appear, like François Villon under the roof of his +Fat Madge, to have succeeded in reconciling the professional duties—may +I not say, the generally discordant and discrepant offices?—of +a poet and a pimp.</p> +<blockquote><p>I might perceive his eye in her eye lost,<br /> +His ear to drink her sweet tongue’s utterance;<br /> +And changing passion, like inconstant clouds,<br /> +That, rackt upon the carriage of the winds,<br /> +Increase, and die, in his disturbèd cheeks.<br /> +Lo, when she blushed, even then did he look pale;<br /> +As if her cheeks by some enchanted power<br /> +Attracted had the cherry blood from his: <a name="citation245a"></a><a href="#footnote245a">{245a}</a><br /> +Anon, with reverent fear when she grew pale,<br /> +His cheeks put on their scarlet ornaments;<br /> +But no more like her oriental red<br /> +Than brick to coral, or live things to dead. <a name="citation245b"></a><a href="#footnote245b">{245b}</a><br /> +Why did he then thus counterfeit her looks?<br /> +If she did blush, ’twas tender modest shame,<br /> +Being in the sacred presence of a king;<br /> +If he did blush, ’twas red immodest shame<br /> +To vail his eyes amiss, being a king;<br /> +If she looked pale, ’twas silly woman’s fear<br /> +To bear herself in presence of a king;<br /> +If he looked pale, it was with guilty fear<br /> +To dote amiss, being a mighty king.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This is better than the insufferable style of <i>Locrine</i>, which +is in great part made up of such rhymeless couplets, each tagged with +an empty verbal antithesis; but taken as a sample of dramatic writing, +it is but just better than what is utterly intolerable. Dogberry +has defined it exactly; it is most tolerable—and not to be endured.</p> +<p>The following speech of King Edward is in that better style of which +the author’s two chief models were not at their best incapable +for awhile under the influence and guidance (we may suppose) of their +friend Marlowe.</p> +<blockquote><p>She is grown more fairer far since I came hither;<br /> +Her voice more silver every word than other,<br /> +Her wit more fluent. What a strange discourse<br /> +Unfolded she of David and his Scots!<br /> +<i>Even thus</i>, quoth she, <i>he spake</i>—and then spake broad,<br /> +With epithets and accents of the Scot;<br /> +But somewhat better than the Scot could speak:<br /> +<i>And thus</i>, quoth she—and answered then herself;<br /> +For who could speak like her? but she herself<br /> +Breathes from the wall an angel’s note from heaven<br /> +Of sweet defiance to her barbarous foes.<br /> +When she would talk of peace, methinks her tongue<br /> +Commanded war to prison; <a name="citation246"></a><a href="#footnote246">{246}</a> +when of war,<br /> +It wakened Cæsar from his Roman grave<br /> +To hear war beautified by her discourse.<br /> +Wisdom is foolishness, but in her tongue;<br /> +Beauty a slander, but in her fair face;<br /> +There is no summer but in her cheerful looks,<br /> +Nor frosty winter but in her disdain.<br /> +I cannot blame the Scots that did besiege her,<br /> +For she is all the treasure of our land;<br /> +But call them cowards that they ran away,<br /> +Having so rich and fair a cause to stay.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But if for a moment we may fancy that here and there we have caught +such an echo of Marlowe as may have fallen from the lips of Shakespeare +in his salad days, in his period of poetic pupilage, we have but a very +little way to go forward before we come upon indisputable proof that +the pupil was one of feebler hand and fainter voice than Shakespeare. +Let us take the passage on poetry, beginning—</p> +<blockquote><p>Now, Lodowick, invocate <a name="citation247"></a><a href="#footnote247">{247}</a> +some golden Muse<br /> +To bring thee hither an enchanted pen;</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and so forth. No scholar in English poetry but will recognise +at once the flat and futile imitation of Marlowe; not of his great general +style alone, but of one special and transcendant passage which can never +be too often quoted.</p> +<blockquote><p>If all the pens that ever poets held<br /> +Had fed the feeling of their masters’ thoughts,<br /> +And every sweetness that inspired their hearts,<br /> +Their minds, and muses on admirèd themes;<br /> +If all the heavenly quintessence they still<br /> +From their immortal flowers of poesy,<br /> +Wherein, as in a mirror, we perceive<br /> +The highest reaches of a human wit;<br /> +If these had made one poem’s period,<br /> +And all combined in beauty’s worthiness,<br /> +Yet should there hover in their restless heads<br /> +One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least,<br /> +Which into words no virtue can digest. <a name="citation248"></a><a href="#footnote248">{248}</a></p> +</blockquote> +<p>Infinite as is the distance between the long roll of these mighty +lines and the thin tinkle of their feeble imitator’s, yet we cannot +choose but catch the ineffectual note of a would-be echo in the speech +of the King to his parasite—</p> +<blockquote><p>For so much moving hath a poet’s pen, etc., etc.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It is really not worth while to transcribe the poor meagre versicles +at length: but a glance at the text will show how much fitter was their +author to continue the tradition of Peele than to emulate the innovations +of Marlowe. In the speeches that follow there is much pretty verbiage +after the general manner of Elizabethan sonnetteers, touched here and +there with something of a higher tone; but the whole scene drags, flags, +halts onward at such a languid rate, that to pick out all the prettiest +lines by way of sample would give a favourable impression but too likely +to be reversed on further and fuller acquaintance.</p> +<blockquote><p>Forget not to set down, how passionate,<br /> +How heart-sick, and how full of languishment,<br /> +Her beauty makes me. . . . . .<br /> +Write on, while I peruse her in my thoughts.<br /> +Her voice to music, or the nightingale:<br /> +To music every summer-leaping swain<br /> +Compares his sunburnt lover when she speaks;<br /> +And why should I speak of the nightingale?<br /> +The nightingale sings of adulterate wrong;<br /> +And that, compared, is too satirical:<br /> +For sin, though sin, would not be so esteemed;<br /> +But rather virtue sin, sin virtue deemed.<br /> +Her hair, far softer than the silkworm’s twist,<br /> +Like as a flattering glass, doth make more fair<br /> +The yellow amber:—<i>Like a flattering glass</i><br /> +Comes in too soon; for, writing of her eyes,<br /> +I’ll say that like a glass they catch the sun,<br /> +And thence the hot reflection doth rebound<br /> +Against my breast, and burns the heart within.<br /> +Ah, what a world of descant makes my soul<br /> +Upon this voluntary ground of love!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>“Pretty enough, very pretty! but” exactly as like and +as near the style of Shakespeare’s early plays as is the style +of Constable’s sonnets to that of Shakespeare’s. Unless +we are to assign to the Master every unaccredited song, sonnet, elegy, +tragedy, comedy, and farce of his period, which bears the same marks +of the same date—a date, like our own, of too prolific and imitative +production—as we find inscribed on the greater part of his own +early work; unless we are to carry even as far as this the audacity +and arrogance of our sciolism, we must somewhere make a halt—and +it must be on the near side of such an attribution as that of <i>King +Edward III</i>. to the hand of Shakespeare.</p> +<p>With the disappearance of the poetic pimp and the entrance of the +unsuspecting Countess, the style rises yet again—and really, this +time, much to the author’s credit. It would need a very +fine touch from a very powerful hand to improve on the delicacy and +dexterity of the prelude or overture to the King’s avowal of adulterous +love. But when all is said, though very delicate and very dexterous, +it is not forcible work: I do not mean by forcible the same as violent, +spasmodic, emphatic beyond the modesty of nature; a poet is of course +only to be commended, and that heartily, for keeping within this bound; +but he is not to be commended for coming short of it. This whole +scene is full of mild and temperate beauty, of fanciful yet earnest +simplicity; but the note of it, the expression, the dominant key of +the style, is less appropriate to the utterance of a deep and deadly +passion than—at the utmost—of what modern tongues might +call a strong and rather dangerous flirtation. Passion, so to +speak, is quite out of this writer’s call; the depths and heights +of manly as of womanly emotion are alike beyond his reach.</p> +<blockquote><p>Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself,<br /> +He turns to favour and to prettiness.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>“To favour and to prettiness”; the definition of his +utmost merit and demerit, his final achievement and shortcoming, is +here complete and exact. Witness the sweet quiet example of idyllic +work which I extract from a scene beginning in the regular amœbæan +style of ancient pastoral.</p> +<blockquote><p><i>Edward</i>. Thou hear’st me say that I +do dote on thee.</p> +<p><i>Countess</i>. If on my beauty, take it if thou canst;<br /> +Though little, I do prize it ten times less:<br /> +If on my virtue, take it if thou canst;<br /> +For virtue’s store by giving doth augment:<br /> +Be it on what it will that I can give<br /> +And thou canst take away, inherit it.</p> +<p><i>Edward</i>. It is thy beauty that I would enjoy.</p> +<p><i>Countess</i>. O, were it painted, I would wipe it off,<br /> +And dispossess myself to give it thee:<br /> +But, sovereign, it is soldered to my life;<br /> +Take one and both; for like an humble shadow<br /> +It haunts the sunshine of my summer’s life.</p> +<p><i>Edward</i>. But thou mayst lend it me to sport withal.</p> +<p><i>Countess</i>. As easy may my intellectual soul<br /> +Be lent away, and yet my body live,<br /> +As lend my body, palace to my soul,<br /> +Away from her, and yet retain my soul.<br /> +My body is her bower, her court, her abbey,<br /> +And she an angel, pure, divine, unspotted;<br /> +If I should lend her house, my lord, to thee,<br /> +I kill my poor soul, and my poor soul me.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Once more, this last couplet is very much in the style of Shakespeare’s +sonnets; nor is it wholly unlike even the dramatic style of Shakespeare +in his youth—and some dozen other poets or poeticules of the time. +But throughout this part of the play the recurrence of a faint and intermittent +resemblance to Shakespeare is more frequently noticeable than elsewhere. +<a name="citation252"></a><a href="#footnote252">{252}</a> A student +of imperfect memory but not of defective intuition might pardonably +assign such couplets, on hearing them cited, to the master-hand itself; +but such a student would be likelier to refer them to the sonnetteer +than to the dramatist. And a casual likeness to the style of Shakespeare’s +sonnets is not exactly sufficient evidence to warrant such an otherwise +unwarrantable addition of appendage to the list of Shakespeare’s +plays.</p> +<p>A little further on we come upon the first and last passage which +does actually recall by its wording a famous instance of the full and +ripened style of Shakespeare.</p> +<blockquote><p>He that doth clip or counterfeit your stamp<br /> +Shall die, my lord: and will your sacred self<br /> +Commit high treason ’gainst the King of heaven,<br /> +To stamp his image in forbidden metal,<br /> +Forgetting your allegiance and your oath?<br /> +In violating marriage’ sacred law<br /> +You break a greater honour than yourself;<br /> +To be a king is of a younger house<br /> +Than to be married: your progenitor,<br /> +Sole reigning Adam on the universe,<br /> +By God was honoured for a married man,<br /> +But not by him anointed for a king.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Every possible reader, I suppose, will at once bethink himself of +the famous passage in <i>Measure for Measure</i> which here may seem +to be faintly prefigured:</p> +<blockquote><p> It +were as good<br /> +To pardon him that hath from nature stolen<br /> +A man already made, as to remit<br /> +Their saucy sweetness, that do coin heaven’s image<br /> +In stamps that are forbid:</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and the very difference of style is not wider than the gulf which +gapes between the first style of Shakespeare and the last. But +men of Shakespeare’s stamp, I venture to think, do not thus repeat +themselves. The echo of the passage in <i>A Midsummer Night’s +Dream</i>, describing the girlish friendship of Hermia and Helena, which +we find in the first act of <i>The Two Noble Kinsmen</i>, describing +the like girlish friendship of Emilia and Flavina, is an echo of another +sort. Both, I need hardly say, are unquestionably Shakespeare’s; +but the fashion in which the matured poet retouches and completes the +sketch of his earlier years—composes an oil painting, as it were, +from the hints and suggestions of a water-colour sketch long since designed +and long since half forgotten—is essentially different from the +mere verbal and literal trick of repetition which sciolists might think +to detect in the present instance. Again we must needs fall back +on the inevitable and indefinable test of style; a test which could +be of no avail if we were foolish enough to appeal to scholiasts and +their attendant dunces, but which should be of some avail if we appeal +to experts and their attentive scholars; and by this test we can but +remark that neither the passage in <i>A Midsummer Night’s Dream</i> +nor the corresponsive passage in <i>The Two Noble Kinsmen</i> could +have been written by any hand known to us but Shakespeare’s; whereas +the passage in <i>King Edward III</i>. might as certainly have been +written by any one out of a dozen poets then living as the answering +passage in <i>Measure for Measure</i> could assuredly have been written +by Shakespeare alone.</p> +<p>As on a first reading of the <i>Hippolytus</i> of Euripides we feel +that, for all the grace and freshness and lyric charm of its opening +scenes, the claim of the poem to our ultimate approval or disapproval +must needs depend on the success or failure of the first interview between +Theseus and his calumniated son; and as on finding that scene to be +feeble and futile and prosaic and verbose we feel that the poet who +had a woman’s spite against women has here effectually and finally +shown himself powerless to handle the simplest elements of masculine +passion, of manly character and instinct; so in this less important +case we feel that the writer, having ventured on such a subject as the +compulsory temptation of a daughter by a father, who has been entrapped +into so shameful an undertaking through the treacherous exaction of +an equivocal promise unwarily confirmed by an inconsiderate oath, must +be judged by the result of his own enterprise; must fail or stand as +a poet by its failure or success. And his failure is only not +complete; he is but just redeemed from utter discomfiture by the fluency +and simplicity of his equable but inadequate style. Here as before +we find plentiful examples of the gracefully conventional tone current +among the lesser writers of the hour.</p> +<blockquote><p><i>Warwick</i>. How shall I enter on this graceless +errand?<br /> +I must not call her child; for where’s the father<br /> +That will in such a suit seduce his child?<br /> +Then, <i>Wife of Salisbury</i>;—shall I so begin?<br /> +No, he’s my friend; and where is found the friend<br /> +That will do friendship such endamagement?—<a name="citation255"></a><a href="#footnote255">{255}</a><br /> +Neither my daughter, nor my dear friend’s wife,<br /> +I am not Warwick, as thou think’st I am,<br /> +But an attorney from the court of hell;<br /> +That thus have housed my spirit in his form<br /> +To do a message to thee from the king.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This beginning is fair enough, if not specially fruitful in promise; +but the verses following are of the flattest order of commonplace. +Hay and grass and the spear of Achilles—of which tradition</p> +<blockquote><p> the +moral is,<br /> +What mighty men misdo, they can amend—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>these are the fresh and original types on which our little poet is +compelled to fall back for support and illustration to a scene so full +of terrible suggestion and pathetic possibility.</p> +<blockquote><p>The king will in his glory hide thy shame;<br /> +And those that gaze on him to find out thee<br /> +Will lose their eyesight, looking on the sun.<br /> +What can one drop of poison harm the sea,<br /> +Whose hugy vastures can digest the ill<br /> +And make it lose its operation?</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And so forth, and so forth; <i>ad libitum</i> if not <i>ad nauseam</i>. +Let us take but one or two more instances of the better sort.</p> +<blockquote><p><i>Countess</i>. Unnatural besiege! Woe me +unhappy,<br /> +To have escaped the danger of my foes,<br /> +And to be ten times worse invir’d by friends!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>(Here we come upon two more words unknown to Shakespeare; <a name="citation256"></a><a href="#footnote256">{256}</a> +<i>besiege</i>, as a noun substantive, and <i>invired</i> for <i>environed</i>.)</p> +<blockquote><p>Hath he no means to stain my honest blood<br /> +But to corrupt the author of my blood<br /> +To be his scandalous and vile soliciter?<br /> +No marvel though the branches be infected,<br /> +When poison hath encompassèd the roots;<br /> +No marvel though the leprous infant die,<br /> +When the stern dam envenometh the dug.<br /> +Why then, give sin a passport to offend,<br /> +And youth the dangerous rein of liberty;<br /> +Blot out the strict forbidding of the law;<br /> +And cancel every canon that prescribes<br /> +A shame for shame or penance for offence.<br /> +No, let me die, if his too boisterous will<br /> +Will have it so, before I will consent<br /> +To be an actor in his graceless lust.</p> +<p><i>Warwick</i>. Why, now thou speak’st as I would have +thee speak;<br /> +And mark how I unsay my words again.<br /> +An honourable grave is more esteemed<br /> +Than the polluted closet of a king;<br /> +The greater man, the greater is the thing,<br /> +Be it good or bad, that he shall undertake;<br /> +An unreputed mote, flying in the sun,<br /> +Presents a greater substance than it is;<br /> +The freshest summer’s day doth soonest taint<br /> +The loathèd carrion that it seems to kiss;<br /> +Deep are the blows made with a mighty axe;<br /> +That sin doth ten times aggravate itself<br /> +That is committed in a holy place;<br /> +An evil deed, done by authority,<br /> +Is sin, and subornation: Deck an ape<br /> +In tissue, and the beauty of the robe<br /> +Adds but the greater scorn unto the beast.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>(Here are four passably good lines, which vaguely remind the reader +of something better read elsewhere; a common case enough with the more +tolerable work of small imitative poets.)</p> +<blockquote><p>A spacious field of reasons could I urge<br /> +Between his glory, daughter, and thy shame:<br /> +That poison shows worst in a golden cup;<br /> +Dark night seems darker by the lightning flash;<br /> +<i>Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds</i>;<br /> +And every glory that inclines to sin,<br /> +The shame is treble by the opposite.<br /> +So leave I, with my blessing in thy bosom;<br /> +Which then convert to a most heavy curse,<br /> +When thou convert’st from honour’s golden name<br /> +To the black faction of bed-blotting shame! +[<i>Exit</i>.</p> +<p><i>Countess</i>. I’ll follow thee:—And when my +mind turns so,<br /> +My body sink my soul in endless woe! +[<i>Exit</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>So much for the central and crowning scene, the test, the climax, +the hinge on which the first part of this play turns; and seems to me, +in turning, to emit but a feeble and rusty squeak. No probable +reader will need to be reminded that the line which I have perhaps unnecessarily +italicised appears also as the last verse in the ninety-fourth of those +“sugared sonnets” which we know were in circulation about +the time of this play’s first appearance among Shakespeare’s +“private friends”; in other words, which enjoyed such a +kind of public privacy or private publicity as one or two among the +most eminent English poets of our own day have occasionally chosen for +some part of their work, to screen it for awhile as under the shelter +and the shade of crepuscular laurels, till ripe for the sunshine or +the storm of public judgment. In the present case, this debatable +verse looks to me more like a loan or maybe a theft from Shakespeare’s +private store of undramatic poetry than a misapplication by its own +author to dramatic purposes of a line too apt and exquisite to endure +without injury the transference from its original setting.</p> +<p>The scene ensuing winds up the first part of this composite (or rather, +in one sense of the word, incomposite) poem. It may, on the whole, +be classed as something more than passably good: it is elegant, lively, +even spirited in style; showing at all events a marked advance upon +the scene which I have already stigmatised as a failure—that which +attempts to render the interview between Warwick and the King. +It is hardly, however, I should say, above the highest reach of Greene +or Peele at the smoothest and straightest of his flight. At its +opening, indeed, we come upon a line which inevitably recalls one of +the finest touches in a much later and deservedly more popular historical +drama. On being informed by Derby that</p> +<blockquote><p>The king is in his closet, malcontent,<br /> +For what I know not, but he gave in charge,<br /> +Till after dinner, none should interrupt him;<br /> +The Countess Salisbury, and her father Warwick.<br /> +Artois, and all, look underneath the brows;</p> +</blockquote> +<p>on receiving, I say, this ominous intimation, the prompt and statesmanlike +sagacity of Audley leads him at once as by intuition to the inference +thus eloquently expressed in a strain of thrilling and exalted poetry;</p> +<blockquote><p>Undoubtedly, then something is amiss.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Who can read this without a reminiscence of Sir Christopher Hatton’s +characteristically cautious conclusion at sight of the military preparations +arrayed against the immediate advent of the Armada?</p> +<blockquote><p>I cannot but surmise—forgive, my friend,<br /> +If the conjecture’s rash—I cannot but<br /> +Surmise the state some danger apprehends!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>With the entrance of the King the tone of this scene naturally rises—“in +good time,” as most readers will say. His brief interview +with the two nobles has at least the merit of ease and animation.</p> +<blockquote><p><i>Derby</i>. Befall my sovereign all my sovereign’s +wish!</p> +<p><i>Edward</i>. Ah, that thou wert a witch, to make it so!</p> +<p><i>Derby</i>. The emperor greeteth you.</p> +<p><i>Edward</i>. +Would it were the countess!</p> +<p><i>Derby</i>. And hath accorded to your highness’ suit.</p> +<p><i>Edward</i>. Thou liest, she hath not: But I would she had!</p> +<p><i>Audley</i>. All love and duty to my lord the king!</p> +<p>Edward. <i>Well, all but one is none</i>:—What news with +you?</p> +<p><i>Audley</i>. I have, my liege, levied those horse and foot,<br /> +According to your charge, and brought them hither.</p> +<p><i>Edward</i>. Then let those foot trudge hence upon those +horse<br /> +According to their discharge, and begone.—</p> +<p><i>Derby</i>. I’ll look upon the countess’ mind<br /> +Anon.</p> +<p><i>Derby</i>. The countess’ mind, my liege?</p> +<p><i>Edward</i>. I mean, the emperor:—Leave me alone.</p> +<p><i>Audley</i>. What’s in his mind?</p> +<p><i>Derby</i>. Let’s leave him to his humour.</p> +<p>[<i>Exeunt</i> DERBY and AUDLEY</p> +<p><i>Edward</i>. Thus from the heart’s abundance speaks +the tongue<br /> +Countess for emperor: And indeed, why not?<br /> +She is as <i>imperator</i> over me;<br /> +And I to her<br /> +Am as a kneeling vassal, that observes<br /> +The pleasure or displeasure of her eye.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In this little scene there is perhaps on the whole more general likeness +to Shakespeare’s earliest manner than we can trace in any other +passage of the play. But how much of Shakespeare’s earliest +manner may be accounted the special and exclusive property of Shakespeare?</p> +<p>After this dismissal of the two nobles, the pimping poeticule, Villon +manqué or (whom shall we call him?) réussi, reappears +with a message to Cæsar (as the King is pleased to style himself) +from “the more than Cleopatra’s match” (as he designates +the Countess), to intimate that “ere night she will resolve his +majesty.” Hereupon an unseasonable “drum within” +provokes Edward to the following remonstrance:</p> +<blockquote><p>What drum is this, that thunders forth this march,<br /> +To start the tender Cupid in my bosom?<br /> +Poor sheepskin, how it brawls with him that beateth it!<br /> +Go, break the thundering parchment bottom out,<br /> +And I will teach it to conduct sweet lines</p> +</blockquote> +<p>(“That’s bad; <i>conduct sweet lines</i> is bad.”)</p> +<blockquote><p>Unto the bosom of a heavenly nymph:<br /> +For I will use it as my writing paper;<br /> +And so reduce him, from a scolding drum,<br /> +To be the herald, and dear counsel-bearer,<br /> +Betwixt a goddess and a mighty king.<br /> +Go, bid the drummer learn to touch the lute,<br /> +Or hang him in the braces of his drum;<br /> +For now we think it an uncivil thing<br /> +To trouble heaven with such harsh resounds.<br /> +Away! +[<i>Exit</i> Lodowick.<br /> +The quarrel that I have requires no arms<br /> +But these of mine; and these shall meet my foe<br /> +In a deep march of penetrable groans;<br /> +My eyes shall be my arrows; and my sighs<br /> +Shall serve me as the vantage of the wind<br /> +To whirl away my sweet’st <a name="citation261"></a><a href="#footnote261">{261}</a> +artillery:<br /> +Ah, but, alas, she wins the sun of me,<br /> +For that is she herself; and thence it comes<br /> +That poets term the wanton warrior blind;<br /> +But love hath eyes as judgment to his steps,<br /> +Till too much lovèd glory dazzles them.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Hereupon Lodowick introduces the Black Prince (that is to be), and +“retires to the door.” The following scene opens well, +with a tone of frank and direct simplicity.</p> +<blockquote><p><i>Edward</i>. I see the boy. O, how his +mother’s face,<br /> +Moulded in his, corrects my strayed desire,<br /> +And rates my heart, and chides my thievish eye;<br /> +Who, being rich enough in seeing her,<br /> +Yet seeks elsewhere: and basest theft is that<br /> +Which cannot check itself on poverty.—<br /> +Now, boy, what news?</p> +<p><i>Prince</i>. I have assembled, my dear lord and father,<br /> +The choicest buds of all our English blood,<br /> +For our affairs in France; and here we come<br /> +To take direction from your majesty.</p> +<p><i>Edward</i>. Still do I see in him delineate<br /> +His mother’s visage; those his eyes are hers,<br /> +Who, looking wistly <a name="citation262a"></a><a href="#footnote262a">{262a}</a> +on me, made me blush;<br /> +For faults against themselves give evidence:<br /> +Lust is a fire; and men, like lanterns, show<br /> +Light lust within themselves even through themselves.<br /> +Away, loose silks of wavering vanity!<br /> +Shall the large limit of fair Brittany <a name="citation262b"></a><a href="#footnote262b">{262b}</a><br /> +By me be overthrown? and shall I not<br /> +Master this little mansion of myself?<br /> +Give me an armour of eternal steel;<br /> +I go to conquer kings. And shall I then<br /> +Subdue myself, and be my enemy’s friend?<br /> +It must not be.—Come, boy, forward, advance!<br /> +Let’s with our colours sweep the air of France.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Here Lodowick announces the approach of the Countess “with +a smiling cheer.”</p> +<blockquote><p><i>Edward</i>. Why, there it goes! that very smile +of hers<br /> +Hath ransomed captive France; and set the king,<br /> +The dauphin, and the peers, at liberty.—<br /> +Go, leave me, Ned, and revel with thy friends. [<i>Exit</i> PRINCE.<br /> +Thy mother is but black; and thou, like her,<br /> +Dost put into my mind how foul she is.<br /> +Go, fetch the countess hither in thy hand,<br /> +And let her chase away these winter clouds;<br /> +For she gives beauty both to heaven and earth. [<i>Exit</i> LODOWICK.<br /> +The sin is more, to hack and hew poor men,<br /> +Than to embrace in an unlawful bed<br /> +The register of all rarieties <a name="citation263a"></a><a href="#footnote263a">{263a}</a><br /> +Since leathern Adam till this youngest hour.</p> +<p><i>Re-enter</i> LODOWICK <i>with the</i> COUNTESS.</p> +<p>Go, Lodowick, put thy hand into my purse,<br /> +Play, spend, give, riot, waste; do what thou wilt,<br /> +So thou wilt hence awhile, and leave me here. [<i>Exit</i> LODOWICK.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Having already, out of a desire and determination to do no possible +injustice to the actual merits of this play in the eyes of any reader +who might never have gone over the text on which I had to comment, exceeded +in no small degree the limits I had intended to impose upon my task +in the way of citation, I shall not give so full a transcript from the +next and last scene between the Countess and the King.</p> +<blockquote><p><i>Edward</i>. Now, my soul’s playfellow! +art thou come<br /> +To speak the more than heavenly word of yea<br /> +To my objection in thy beauteous love?</p> +</blockquote> +<p>(Again, this singular use of the word <i>objection</i> in the sense +of offer or proposal has no parallel in the plays of Shakespeare.)</p> +<blockquote><p><i>Countess</i>. My father on his blessing hath +commanded—</p> +<p><i>Edward</i>. That thou shalt yield to me.</p> +<p><i>Countess</i>. Ay, dear my liege, your due.</p> +<p><i>Edward</i>. And that, my dearest love, can be no less<br /> +Than right for right, and render <a name="citation263b"></a><a href="#footnote263b">{263b}</a> +love for love.</p> +<p><i>Countess</i>. Than wrong for wrong, and endless hate for +hate.<br /> +But, sith I see your majesty so bent,<br /> +That my unwillingness, my husband’s love,<br /> +Your high estate, nor no respect respected,<br /> +Can be my help, but that your mightiness<br /> +Will overbear and awe these dear regards,<br /> +I bind my discontent to my content,<br /> +And what I would not I’ll compel I will;<br /> +Provided that yourself remove those lets<br /> +That stand between your highness’ love and mine.</p> +<p><i>Edward</i>. Name them, fair countess, and by heaven I will.</p> +<p><i>Countess</i>. It is their lives that stand between our love<br /> +That I would have choked up, my sovereign.</p> +<p><i>Edward</i>. Whose lives, my lady?</p> +<p><i>Countess</i>. +My thrice loving liege,<br /> +Your queen, and Salisbury my wedded husband;<br /> +Who living have that title in our love<br /> +That we can not bestow but by their death.</p> +<p><i>Edward</i>. Thy opposition <a name="citation264a"></a><a href="#footnote264a">{264a}</a> +is beyond our law.</p> +<p><i>Countess</i>. So is your desire: If the law <a name="citation264b"></a><a href="#footnote264b">{264b}</a><br /> +Can hinder you to execute the one,<br /> +Let it forbid you to attempt the other:<br /> +I cannot think you love me as you say<br /> +Unless you do make good what you have sworn.</p> +<p><i>Edward</i>. No more: thy husband and the queen shall die.<br /> +Fairer thou art by far than Hero was;<br /> +Beardless Leander not so strong as I:<br /> +He swom an easy current for his love;<br /> +But I will, through a helly spout of blood, <a name="citation264c"></a><a href="#footnote264c">{264c}</a><br /> +Arrive that Sestos where my Hero lies.</p> +<p><i>Countess</i>. Nay, you’ll do more; you’ll make +the river too<br /> +With their heartbloods that keep our love asunder;<br /> +Of which my husband and your wife are twain.</p> +<p><i>Edward</i>. Thy beauty makes them guilty of their death<br /> +And gives in evidence that they shall die;<br /> +Upon which verdict I their judge condemn them.</p> +<p><i>Countess</i>. O perjured beauty! more corrupted judge!<br /> +When, to the great star-chamber o’er our heads,<br /> +The universal sessions calls to count<br /> +This packing evil, we both shall tremble for it.</p> +<p><i>Edward</i>. What says my fair love? is she resolute?</p> +<p><i>Countess</i>. Resolute to be dissolved: <a name="citation266"></a><a href="#footnote266">{266}</a> +and, therefore, this:<br /> +Keep but thy word, great king, and I am thine.<br /> +Stand where thou dost; I’ll part a little from thee;<br /> +And see how I will yield me to thy hands.<br /> +Here by my side do hang my wedding knives;<br /> +Take thou the one, and with it kill thy queen,<br /> +And learn by me to find her where she lies;<br /> +And with the other I’ll despatch my love,<br /> +Which now lies fast asleep within my heart:<br /> +When they are gone, then I’ll consent to love.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Such genuinely good wine as this needs no bush. But from this +point onwards I can find nothing especially commendable in the remainder +of the scene except its brevity. The King of course abjures his +purpose, and of course compares the Countess with Lucretia to the disadvantage +of the Roman matron; summons his son, Warwick, and the attendant lords; +appoints each man his post by sea or land; and starts for Flanders in +a duly moral and military state of mind.</p> +<p>Here ends the first part of the play; and with it all possible indication, +though never so shadowy, of the possible shadowy presence of Shakespeare. +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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>The first scene of the third act is a storehouse of contemporary +commonplace. Nothing fresher than such stale pot-pourri as the +following is to be gathered up in thin sprinklings from off the dry +flat soil. A messenger informs the French king that he has descried +off shore</p> +<blockquote><p>The proud armado (<i>sic</i>) of King Edward’s +ships;<br /> +Which at the first, far off when I did ken,<br /> +Seemed as it were a grove of withered pines;<br /> +But, drawing on, their glorious bright aspect,<br /> +Their streaming ensigns wrought of coloured silk,<br /> +Like to a meadow full of sundry flowers,<br /> +Adorns the naked bosom of the earth;</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and so on after the exactest and therefore feeblest fashion of the +Pre-Marlowites; with equal regard, as may be seen, for grammar and for +sense in the construction of his periods. The narrative of a sea-fight +ensuing on this is pitiable beyond pity and contemptibly beneath contempt.</p> +<p>In the next scene we have a flying view of peasants in flight, with +a description of five cities on fire not undeserving of its place in +the play, immediately after the preceding sea-piece: but relieved by +such wealth of pleasantry as marks the following jest, in which the +most purblind eye will be the quickest to discover a touch of the genuine +Shakespearean humour.</p> +<blockquote><p><i>1st Frenchman</i>. What, is it quarter-day, +that you remove,<br /> +And carry bag and baggage too?</p> +<p><i>2nd Frenchman</i>. Quarter-day? ay, and quartering-day, +I fear.<br /> +<i>Euge</i>!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The scene of debate before Cressy is equally flat and futile, vulgar +and verbose; yet in this Sham Shakespearean scene of our present poeticule’s +I have noted one genuine Shakespearean word, “solely singular +for its singleness.”</p> +<blockquote><p>So may thy temples with Bellona’s hand<br /> +Be still adorned with laurel victory!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In this notably inelegant expression of goodwill we find the same +use of the word “laurel” as an adjective and epithet of +victory which thus confronts us in the penultimate speech of the third +scene in the first act of <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>.</p> +<blockquote><p> Upon +your sword<br /> +Sit laurel victory, and smooth success<br /> +Be strewed before your feet!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>There is something more (as less there could not be) of spirit and +movement in the battle-scene where Edward refuses to send relief to +his son, wishing the prince to win his spurs unaided, and earn the first-fruits +of his fame single-handed against the heaviest odds; but the forcible +feebleness of a minor poet’s fancy shows itself amusingly in the +mock stoicism and braggart philosophy of the King’s reassuring +reflection, “We have more sons than one.”</p> +<p>In the first and third scenes of the fourth act we may concede some +slight merit to the picture of a chivalrous emulation in magnanimity +between the Duke of Burgundy and his former fellow-student, whose refusal +to break his parole as a prisoner extorts from his friend the concession +refused to his importunity as an envoy: but the execution is by no means +worthy of the subject.</p> +<p>The limp loquacity of long-winded rhetoric, so natural to men and +soldiers in an hour of emergency, which distinguishes the dialogue between +the Black Prince and Audley on the verge of battle, is relieved by this +one last touch of quasi-Shakespearean thought or style discoverable +in the play of which I must presently take a short—and a long—farewell.</p> +<blockquote><p>Death’s name is much more mighty than his deeds:<br /> +Thy parcelling this power hath made it more.<br /> +As many sands as these my hands can hold<br /> +Are but my handful of so many sands;<br /> +Then all the world—and call it but a power—<br /> +Easily ta’en up, and <a name="citation269"></a><a href="#footnote269">{269}</a> +quickly thrown away;<br /> +But if I stand to count them sand by sand<br /> +The number would confound my memory<br /> +And make a thousand millions of a task<br /> +Which briefly is no more indeed than one.<br /> +These quartered squadrons and these regiments<br /> +Before, behind us, and on either hand,<br /> +Are but a power: When we name a man,<br /> +His hand, his foot, his head, have several strengths;<br /> +And being all but one self instant strength,<br /> +Why, all this many, Audley, is but one,<br /> +And we can call it all but one man’s strength.<br /> +He that hath far to go tells it by miles;<br /> +If he should tell the steps, it kills his heart:<br /> +The drops are infinite that make a flood,<br /> +And yet, thou know’st, we call it but a rain.<br /> +There is but one France, one king of France, <a name="citation270"></a><a href="#footnote270">{270}</a><br /> +That France hath no more kings; and that same king<br /> +Hath but the puissant legion of one king;<br /> +And we have one: Then apprehend no odds;<br /> +For one to one is fair equality.</p> +</blockquote> +<p><i>Bien coupé, mal cousu</i>; such is the most favourable +verdict I can pass on this voluminous effusion of a spirit smacking +rather of the schools than of the field. The first six lines or +so might pass muster as the early handiwork of Shakespeare; the rest +has as little of his manner as his matter, his metre as his style.</p> +<p>The poet can hardly be said to rise again after this calamitous collapse. +We find in the rest of this scene nothing better worth remark than such +poor catches at a word as this;</p> +<blockquote><p>And let those milkwhite messengers of time<br /> +Show thy time’s learning in this dangerous time;</p> +</blockquote> +<p>a villainous trick of verbiage which went nigh now and then to affect +the adolescent style of Shakespeare, and which happens to find itself +as admirably as unconsciously burlesqued in two lines of this very scene:</p> +<blockquote><p>I will not give a penny for a life,<br /> +Nor half a halfpenny to shun grim death.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The verses intervening are smooth, simple, and passably well worded; +indeed the force of elegant commonplace cannot well go further than +in such lines as these.</p> +<blockquote><p>Thyself art bruised and bent with many broils,<br /> +And stratagems forepast with iron pens<br /> +Are texèd <a name="citation271"></a><a href="#footnote271">{271}</a> +in thine honourable face;<br /> +Thou art a married man in this distress,<br /> +But danger woos me as a blushing maid;<br /> +Teach me an answer to this perilous time.</p> +<p><i>Audley</i>. To die is all as common as to live;<br /> +The one in choice, the other holds in chase;<br /> +For from the instant we begin to live<br /> +We do pursue and hunt the time to die:<br /> +First bud we, then we blow, and after seed;<br /> +Then presently we fall; and as a shade<br /> +Follows the body, so we follow death.<br /> +If then we hunt for death, why do we fear it?<br /> +If we fear it, why do we follow it?</p> +</blockquote> +<p>(Let me intimate a doubt in passing, whether Shakespeare would ever +have put by the mouth of any but a farcical mask a query so provocative +of response from an Irish echo—“Because we can’t help.”)</p> +<blockquote><p>If we do fear, with fear we do but aid<br /> +The thing we fear to seize on us the sooner;<br /> +If we fear not, then no resolvèd proffer<br /> +Can overthrow the limit of our fate:</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and so forth. Again the hastiest reader will have been reminded +of a passage in the transcendant central scenes of <i>Measure for Measure</i>:</p> +<blockquote><p> Merely, +thou art death’s fool;<br /> +For him thou labour’st by thy flight to shun,<br /> +And yet runn’st toward him still;</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and hence also some may infer that this pitiful penny-whistle was +blown by the same breath which in time gained power to fill that archangelic +trumpet. Credat Zoilus Shakespearomastix, non ego.</p> +<p>The next scene is something better than passable, but demands no +special analysis and affords no necessary extract. We may just +observe as examples of style the play on words between the flight of +hovering ravens and the flight of routed soldiers, and the description +of the sudden fog</p> +<blockquote><p>Which now hath hid the airy floor of heaven,<br /> +And made at noon a night unnatural<br /> +Upon the quaking and dismayèd world.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The interest rises again with the reappearance and release of Salisbury, +and lifts the style for a moment to its own level. <i>À +tout seigneur tout honneur</i>; the author deserves some dole of moderate +approbation for his tribute to the national chivalry of a Frenchman +as here exemplified in the person of Prince Charles.</p> +<p>Of the two next scenes, in which the battle of Poitiers is so inadequately +“staged to the show,” I can only say that if any reader +believes them to be the possible work of the same hand which set before +all men’s eyes for all time the field of Agincourt, he will doubtless +die in that belief, and go to his own place in the limbo of commentators.</p> +<p>But a yet more flagrant effect of contrast is thrust upon our notice +at the opening of the fifth act. If in all the historical groundwork +of this play there is one point of attraction which we might have thought +certain to stimulate the utmost enterprise and evoke the utmost capacities +of an aspiring dramatist, it must surely be sought in the crowning scene +of the story; in the scene of Queen Philippa’s intercession for +the burgesses of Calais. We know how Shakespeare on the like occasion +was wont to transmute into golden verse the silver speech supplied to +him by North’s version of Amyot’s Plutarch. <a name="citation273"></a><a href="#footnote273">{273}</a> +With the text of Lord Berners before him, the author of <i>King Edward +III</i>. has given us for the gold of Froissart not even adulterated +copper, but unadulterated lead. Incredible as it may seem to readers +of the historian, the poeticule has actually contrived so far to transfigure +by dint of disfiguring him that this most noble and pathetic scene in +all the annals of chivalry, when passed through the alembic of his incompetence, +appears in a garb of transforming verse under a guise at once weak and +wordy, coarse and unchivalrous. The whole scene is at all points +alike in its unlikeness to the workmanship of Shakespeare.</p> +<p>Here then I think we may finally draw bridle: for the rest of the +course is not worth running; there is nothing in the residue of this +last act which deserves analysis or calls for commentary. We have +now examined the whole main body of the work with somewhat more than +necessary care; and our conclusion is simply this: that if any man of +common reading, common modesty, common judgment, and common sense, can +be found to maintain the theory of Shakespeare’s possible partnership +in the composition of this play, such a man will assuredly admit that +the only discernible or imaginable touches of his hand are very slight, +very few, and very early. For myself, I am and have always been +perfectly satisfied with one single and simple piece of evidence that +Shakespeare had not a finger in the concoction of <i>King Edward III</i>. +He was the author of <i>King Henry V</i>.</p> +<h4>NOTE.</h4> +<p>I was not surprised to hear that my essay on the historical play +of King Edward III. had on its first appearance met in various quarters +with assailants of various kinds. There are some forms of attack +to which no answer is possible for a man of any human self-respect but +the lifelong silence of contemptuous disgust. To such as these +I will never condescend to advert or to allude further than by the remark +now as it were forced from me, that never once in my life have I had +or will I have recourse in self-defence either to the blackguard’s +loaded bludgeon of personalities or to the dastard’s sheathed +dagger of disguise. I have reviled no man’s person: I have +outraged no man’s privacy. When I have found myself misled +either by imperfection of knowledge or of memory, or by too much confidence +in a generally trustworthy guide, I have silently corrected the misquotation +or readily repaired the error. To the successive and representative +heroes of the undying Dunciad I have left and will always leave the +foul use of their own foul weapons. I have spoken freely and fearlessly, +and so shall on all occasions continue to speak, of what I find to be +worthy of praise or dispraise, contempt or honour, in the public works +and actions of men. Here ends and here has always ended in literary +matters the proper province of a gentleman; beyond it, though sometimes +intruded on in time past by trespassers of a nobler race, begins the +proper province of a blackguard.</p> +<h3>REPORT ON THE PROCEEDINGS ON THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY SESSION OF THE +NEWEST SHAKESPEARE SOCIETY.</h3> +<p>A paper was read by Mr. A. on the disputed authorship of <i>A Midsummer +Night’s Dream</i>. He was decidedly of opinion that this +play was to be ascribed to George Chapman. He based this opinion +principally on the ground of style. From its similarity of subject +he had at first been disposed to assign it to Cyril Tourneur, author +of <i>The Revenger’s Tragedy</i>; and he had drawn up in support +of this theory a series of parallel passages extracted from the speeches +of Vindice in that drama and of Oberon in the present play. He +pointed out however that the character of Puck could hardly have been +the work of any English poet but the author of <i>Bussy d’Ambois</i>. +There was here likewise that gravity and condensation of thought conveyed +through the medium of the “full and heightened style” commended +by Webster, and that preponderance of philosophic or political discourse +over poetic interest and dramatic action for which the author in question +had been justly censured.</p> +<p>Some of the audience appearing slightly startled by this remark (indeed +it afterwards appeared that the Chairman had been on the point of asking +the learned member whether he was not thinking rather of <i>Love’s +Labour’s Lost</i>?), Mr. A. cited the well-known scene in which +Oberon discourses with Puck on matters concerning Mary Stuart and Queen +Elizabeth, instead of despatching him at once on his immediate errand. +This was universally accepted as proof positive, and the reading concluded +amid signs of unanimous assent, when</p> +<p>Mr. B. had nothing to urge against the argument they had just heard, +but he must remind them that there was a more weighty kind of evidence +than that adduced by Mr. A.; and to this he doubted not they would all +defer. He could prove by a tabulated statement that the words +“to” and “from” occurred on an average from +seven to nine times in every play of Chapman; whereas in the play under +consideration the word “to” occurred exactly twelve times +and the word “from” precisely ten. He was therefore +of opinion that the authorship should in all probability be assigned +to Anthony Munday.</p> +<p>As nobody present could dispute this conclusion, Mr. C. proceeded +to read the argument by which he proposed to establish the fact, hitherto +unaccountably overlooked by all preceding commentators, that the character +of Romeo was obviously designed as a satire on Lord Burghley. +The first and perhaps the strongest evidence in favour of this proposition +was the extreme difficulty, he might almost say the utter impossibility, +of discovering a single point of likeness between the two characters. +This would naturally be the first precaution taken by a poor player +who designed to attack an all-powerful Minister. But more direct +light was thrown upon the subject by a passage in which “that +kind of fruit that maids call medlars when they laugh alone” is +mentioned in connection with a wish of Romeo’s regarding his mistress. +This must evidently be taken to refer to some recent occasion on which +the policy of Lord Burghley (possibly in the matter of the Anjou marriage) +had been rebuked in private by the Maiden Queen, “his mistress,” +as meddling, laughable, and fruitless.</p> +<p>This discovery seemed to produce a great impression till the Chairman +reminded the Society that the play in question was now generally ascribed +to George Peele, <a name="citation278"></a><a href="#footnote278">{278}</a> +who was notoriously the solicitor of Lord Burghley’s patronage +and the recipient of his bounty. That this poet was the author +of <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> could no longer be a matter of doubt, as +he was confident they would all agree with him on hearing that a living +poet of note had positively assured him of the fact; adding that he +had always thought so when at school. The plaudits excited by +this announcement had scarcely subsided, when the Chairman clenched +the matter by observing that he rather thought the same opinion had +ultimately been entertained by his own grandmother.</p> +<p>Mr. D. then read a paper on the authorship and the hidden meaning +of two contemporary plays which, he must regretfully remark, were too +obviously calculated to cast a most unfavourable and even sinister light +on the moral character of the new Shakespeare; whose possibly suspicious +readiness to attack the vices of others with a view to diverting attention +from his own was signally exemplified in the well-known fact that, even +while putting on a feint of respect and tenderness for his memory, he +had exposed the profligate haunts and habits of Christopher Marlowe +under the transparent pseudonym of Christopher Sly. To the first +of these plays attention had long since been drawn by a person of whom +it was only necessary to say that he had devoted a long life to the +study and illustration of Shakespeare and his age, and had actually +presumed to publish a well-known edition of the poet at a date previous +to the establishment of the present Society. He (Mr. D.) was confident +that not another syllable could be necessary to expose that person to +the contempt of all present. He proceeded, however, with the kind +encouragement of the Chairman, to indulge at that editor’s expense +in sundry personalities both “loose and humorous,” which +being totally unfit for publication here are reserved for a private +issue of “Loose and Humorous Papers” to be edited, with +a running marginal commentary or illustrative and explanatory version +of the utmost possible fullness, <a name="citation279"></a><a href="#footnote279">{279}</a> +by the Founder and another member of the Society. To these it +might possibly be undesirable for them to attract the notice of the +outside world. Reverting therefore to his first subject from various +references to the presumed private character, habits, gait, appearance, +and bearing of the gentleman in question, Mr. D. observed that the ascription +of a share in the <i>Taming of the Shrew</i> to William Haughton (hitherto +supposed the author of a comedy called <i>Englishmen for my Money</i>) +implied a doubly discreditable blunder. The real fact, as he would +immediately prove, was not that Haughton was joint author with Shakespeare +of the <i>Taming of the Shrew</i>, but that Shakespeare was joint author +with Haughton of <i>Englishmen for my Money</i>. He would not +enlarge on the obvious fact that Shakespeare, so notorious a plunderer +of others, had actually been reduced to steal from his own poor store +an image transplanted from the last scene of the third act of <i>Romeo +and Juliet</i> into the last scene of the third act of <i>Englishmen +for my Money</i>; where the well-known and pitiful phrase—“Night’s +candles are burnt out”—reappears in all its paltry vulgarity +as follows;—“Night’s candles burn obscure.” +Ample as was the proof here supplied, he would prefer to rely exclusively +upon such further evidence as might be said to lie at once on the surface +and in a nutshell.</p> +<p>The second title of this play, by which the first title was in a +few years totally superseded, ran thus: <i>A Woman will have her Will</i>. +Now even in an age of punning titles such as that of a well-known and +delightful treatise by Sir John Harrington, the peculiar fondness of +Shakespeare for puns was notorious; but especially for puns on names, +as in the proverbial case of Sir Thomas Lucy; and above all for puns +on his own Christian name, as in his 135th, 136th, and 143rd sonnets. +It must now be but too evident to the meanest intelligence—to +the meanest intelligence, he repeated; for to such only did he or would +he then and there or ever or anywhere address himself—(loud applause) +that the graceless author, more utterly lost to all sense of shame than +any Don Juan or other typical libertine of fiction, had come forward +to placard by way of self-advertisement on his own stage, and before +the very eyes of a Maiden Queen, the scandalous confidence in his own +powers of fascination and seduction so cynically expressed in the too +easily intelligible vaunt—A Woman will have her Will [Shakespeare]. +In the penultimate line of the hundred and forty-third sonnet the very +phrase might be said to occur:</p> +<blockquote><p>So will I pray that thou mayst have thy Will.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Having thus established his case in the first instance to the satisfaction, +as he trusted, not only of the present Society, but of any asylum for +incurables in any part of the country, the learned member now passed +on to the consideration of the allusions at once to Shakespeare and +to a celebrated fellow-countryman, fellow-poet, and personal friend +of his—Michael Drayton—contained in a play which had been +doubtfully attributed to Shakespeare himself by such absurd idiots as +looked rather to the poetical and dramatic quality of a poem or a play +than to such tests as those to which alone any member of that Society +would ever dream of appealing. What these were he need not specify; +it was enough to say in recommendation of them that they had rather +less to do with any question of dramatic or other poetry than with the +differential calculus or the squaring of the circle. It followed +that only the most perversely ignorant and æsthetically presumptuous +of readers could imagine the possibility of Shakespeare’s concern +or partnership in a play which had no more Shakespearean quality about +it than mere poetry, mere passion, mere pathos, mere beauty and vigour +of thought and language, mere command of dramatic effect, mere depth +and subtlety of power to read, interpret, and reproduce the secrets +of the heart and spirit. Could any further evidence be required +of the unfitness and unworthiness to hold or to utter any opinion on +the matter in hand which had consistently been displayed by the poor +creatures to whom he had just referred, it would be found, as he felt +sure the Founder and all worthy members of their Society would be the +first to admit, in the despicable diffidence, the pitiful modesty, the +contemptible deficiency in common assurance, with which the suggestion +of Shakespeare’s partnership in this play had generally been put +forward and backed up. The tragedy of <i>Arden of Feversham</i> +was indeed connected with Shakespeare—and that, as he should proceed +to show, only too intimately; but Shakespeare was not connected with +it—that is, in the capacity of its author. In what capacity +would be but too evident when he mentioned the names of the two leading +ruffians concerned in the murder of the principal character—Black +Will and Shakebag. The single original of these two characters +he need scarcely pause to point out. It would be observed that +a double precaution had been taken against any charge of libel or personal +attack which might be brought against the author and supported by the +all-powerful court influence of Shakespeare’s two principal patrons, +the Earls of Essex and Southampton. Two figures were substituted +for one, and the unmistakable name of Will Shakebag was cut in half +and divided between them. Care had moreover been taken to disguise +the person by altering the complexion of the individual aimed at. +That the actual Shakespeare was a fair man they had the evidence of +the coloured bust at Stratford. Could any capable and fair-minded +man—he would appeal to their justly honoured Founder—require +further evidence as to the original of Black Will Shakebag? Another +important character in the play was Black Will’s accomplice and +Arden’s servant—Michael, after whom the play had also at +one time been called <i>Murderous Michael</i>. The single fact +that Shakespeare and Drayton were both of them Warwickshire men would +suffice, he could not doubt, to carry conviction with it to the mind +of every member present, with regard to the original of this personage. +It now only remained for him to produce the name of the real author +of this play. He would do so at once—Ben Jonson. About +the time of its production Jonson was notoriously engaged in writing +those additions to the <i>Spanish Tragedy</i> of which a preposterous +attempt had been made to deprive him on the paltry ground that the style +(forsooth) of these additional scenes was very like the style of Shakespeare +and utterly unlike the style of Jonson. To dispose for ever of +this pitiful argument it would be sufficient to mention the names of +its two first and principal supporters—Charles Lamb and Samuel +Taylor Coleridge (hisses and laughter). Now, in these “adycions +to Jeronymo” a painter was introduced complaining of the murder +of his son. In the play before them a painter was introduced as +an accomplice in the murder of Arden. It was unnecessary to dwell +upon so trivial a point of difference as that between the stage employment +or the moral character of the one artist and the other. In either +case they were as closely as possible connected with a murder. +There was a painter in the <i>Spanish Tragedy</i>, and there was also +a painter in <i>Arden of Feversham</i>. He need not—he would +not add another word in confirmation of the now established fact, that +Ben Jonson had in this play held up to perpetual infamy—whether +deserved or undeserved he would not pretend to say—the names of +two poets who afterwards became his friends, but whom he had previously +gibbeted or at least pilloried in public as Black Will Shakespeare and +Murderous Michael Drayton.</p> +<p>Mr. E. then brought forward a subject of singular interest and importance—“The +lameness of Shakespeare—was it moral or physical?” +He would not insult their intelligence by dwelling on the absurd and +exploded hypothesis that this expression was allegorical, but would +at once assume that the infirmity in question was physical. Then +arose the question—In which leg? He was prepared, on the +evidence of an early play, to prove to demonstration that the injured +and interesting limb was the left. “This shoe is my father,” +says Launce in the <i>Two Gentlemen of Verona</i>; “no, this left +shoe is my father; no, no, this left shoe is my mother; nay, that cannot +be so neither; yes, it is so, it is so; <i>it hath the worser sole</i>.” +This passage was not necessary either to the progress of the play or +to the development of the character; he believed he was justified in +asserting that it was not borrowed from the original novel on which +the play was founded; the inference was obvious, that without some personal +allusion it must have been as unintelligib1e to the audience as it had +hitherto been to the commentators. His conjecture was confirmed, +and the whole subject illustrated with a new light, by the well-known +line in one of the Sonnets, in which the poet describes himself as “made +lame by Fortune’s dearest spite”: a line of which the inner +meaning and personal application had also by a remarkable chance been +reserved for him (Mr. E.) to discover. There could be no doubt +that we had here a clue to the origin of the physical infirmity referred +to; an accident which must have befallen Shakespeare in early life while +acting at the Fortune theatre, and consequently before his connection +with a rival company; a fact of grave importance till now unverified. +The epithet “dearest,” like so much else in the Sonnets, +was evidently susceptible of a double interpretation. The first +and most natural explanation of the term would at once suggest itself; +the playhouse would of necessity be dearest to the actor dependent on +it for subsistence, as the means of getting his bread; but he thought +it not unreasonable to infer from this unmistakable allusion that the +entrance fee charged at the Fortune may probably have been higher than +the price of seats in any other house. Whether or not this fact, +taken in conjunction with the accident already mentioned, should be +assumed as the immediate cause of Shakespeare’s subsequent change +of service, he was not prepared to pronounce with such positive confidence +as they might naturally expect from a member of the Society; but he +would take upon himself to affirm that his main thesis was now and for +ever established on the most irrefragable evidence, and that no assailant +could by any possibility dislodge by so much as a hair’s breadth +the least fragment of a single brick in the impregnable structure of +proof raised by the argument to which they had just listened.</p> +<p>This demonstration being thus satisfactorily concluded, Mr. F. proceeded +to read his paper on the date of <i>Othello</i>, and on the various +parts of that play respectively assignable to Samuel Rowley, to George +Wilkins, and to Robert Daborne. It was evident that the story +of Othello and Desdemona was originally quite distinct from that part +of the play in which Iago was a leading figure. This he was prepared +to show at some length by means of the weak-ending test, the light-ending +test, the double-ending test, the triple-ending test, the heavy-monosyllabic-eleventh-syllable-of-the-double-ending +test, the run-on-line test, and the central-pause test. Of the +partnership of other poets in the play he was able to adduce a simpler +but not less cogent proof. A member of their Committee said to +an objector lately: “To me, there are the handwritings of four +different men, the thoughts and powers of four different men, in the +play. If you can’t see them now, you must wait till, by +study, you can. I can’t give you eyes.” To this +argument he (Mr. F.) felt that it would be an insult to their understandings +if he should attempt to add another word. Still, for those who +were willing to try and learn, and educate their ears and eyes, he had +prepared six tabulated statements—</p> +<p>(At this important point of a most interesting paper, our reporter +unhappily became unconscious, and remained for some considerable period +in a state of deathlike stupor. On recovering from this total +and unaccountable suspension of all his faculties, he found the speaker +drawing gradually near the end of his figures, and so far succeeded +in shaking off the sense of coma as to be able to resume his notes.)</p> +<p>That the first and fourth scenes of the third act were not by the +same hand as the third scene he should have no difficulty in proving +to the satisfaction of all capable and fair-minded men. In the +first and fourth scenes the word “virtuous” was used as +a dissyllable; in the third it was used as a trisyllable.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Is, that she will to virtuous Desdemona.” +iii. 1.</p> +<p>“Where virtue is, these are more virtuous.” iii. 3.</p> +<p>“That by your virtuous means I may again.” iii. 4.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In the third scene he would also point out the great number of triple +endings which had originally led the able editor of Euclid’s Elements +of Geometry to attribute the authorship of this scene to Shirley: <i>Cassio</i> +(twice), <i>patience</i>, <i>Cassio</i> (again), <i>discretion</i>, +<i>Cassio</i> (again), honesty, <i>Cassio</i> (again), <i>jealousy, +jealous</i> (used as a trisyllable in the verse of Shakespeare’s +time), company (two consecutive lines with the triple ending), <i>Cassio</i> +(again), <i>conscience, petition, ability, importunity, conversation, +marriage, dungeon, mandragora, passion, monstrous, conclusion, bounteous</i>. +He could not imagine any man in his senses questioning the weight of +this evidence. Now, let them take the rhymed speeches of the Duke +and Brabantio in Act i. Sc. 3, and compare them with the speech of Othello +in Act iv. Sc. 2,</p> +<blockquote><p> Had it pleased heaven<br /> +To try me with affliction.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>He appealed to any expert whether this was not in Shakespeare’s +easy fourth budding manner, with, too, various other points already +touched on. On the other hand, take the opening of Brabantio’s +speech—</p> +<blockquote><p>So let the Turk of Cyprus us beguile;<br /> +We lose it not so long as we can smile.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>That, he said, was in Shakespeare’s difficult second flowering +manner—the style of the later part of the earlier stage of Shakespeare’s +rhetorical first period but one. It was no more possible to move +the one passage up to the date of the other than to invert the order +of the alphabet. Here, then, putting aside for the moment the +part of the play supplied by Shakespeare’s assistants in the last +three acts—miserably weak some of it was—they were able +to disentangle the early love-play from the latter work in which Iago +was principally concerned. There was at least fifteen years’ +growth between them, the steps of which could he traced in the poet’s +intermediate plays by any one who chose to work carefully enough at +them. Set any of the speeches addressed in the Shakespeare part +of the last act by Othello to Desdemona beside the consolatory address +of the Duke to Brabantio, and see the difference of the rhetoric and +style in the two. If they turned to characters, Othello and Desdemona +were even more clearly the companion pair to Biron and Rosaline of <i>Love’s +Labour’s Lost</i> than were Falstaff and Doll Tearsheet the match-pair +(<i>sic</i>) of Romeo and Juliet. In <i>Love’s Labour’s +Lost</i> the question of complexion was identical, though the parts +were reversed. He would cite but a few parallel passages in evidence +of this relationship between the subjects of the two plays.</p> +<pre> <i>Love’s Labour’s Lost</i>, iv. 3. <i>Othello</i>. +1. “By heaven, thy love is black 1. “An old black ram.” i. 1. + as ebony.” +2. “No face is <i>fair</i> that is not 2. “Your son-in-law is far more + full so black.” <i>fair</i> than black.” i. 3. +3. “O paradox! Black is the 3. “How if she be black and + badge of hell.” witty?” ii. 1. +4. “O, <i>if</i> in black my lady’s 4. “<i>If</i> she be black, and thereto + brows be decked.” have a wit.” id. +5. “And therefore is she born 5. “A measure to the health of + to make black fair.” black Othello.” ii. 3. +6. “Paints itself black to 6. “For I am black.” iii, 3. + imitate her brow.” +7. “To look like her are 7. “<i>Begrimed</i> and black.” id. + <i>chimney-sweepers</i> black.”</pre> +<p>Now, with these parallel passages before them, what man, woman, or +child could bring himself or herself to believe that the connection +of these plays was casual or the date of the first Othello removable +from the date of the early contemporary late-first-period-but-one play +<i>Love’s Labour’s Lost</i>, or that anybody’s opinion +that they were so was worth one straw? When therefore by the introduction +of the Iago episode Shakespeare in his later days had with the assistance +of three fellow-poets completed the unfinished work of his youth, the +junction thus effected of the Brabantio part of the play with this Iago +underplot supplied them with an evidence wholly distinct from that of +the metrical test which yet confirmed in every point the conclusion +independently arrived at and supported by the irresistible coincidence +of all the tests. He defied anybody to accept his principle of +study or adopt his method of work, and arrive at a different conclusion +from himself.</p> +<p>The reading of Mr. G.’s paper on the authorship of the soliloquies +in <i>Hamlet</i> was unavoidably postponed till the next meeting, the +learned member having only time on this occasion to give a brief summary +of the points he was prepared to establish and the grounds on which +he was prepared to establish them. A year or two since, when he +first thought of starting the present Society, he had never read a line +of the play in question, having always understood it to be admittedly +spurious: but on being assured of the contrary by one of the two foremost +poets of the English-speaking world, who was good enough to read out +to him in proof of this assertion all that part of the play which could +reasonably be assigned to Shakespeare, he had of course at once surrendered +his own former opinion, well grounded as it had hitherto seemed to be +on the most solid of all possible foundations. At their next meeting +he would show cause for attributing to Ben Jonson not only the soliloquies +usually but inconsiderately quoted as Shakespeare’s, but the entire +original conception of the character of the Prince of Denmark. +The resemblance of this character to that of Volpone in <i>The Fox</i> +and to that of Face in <i>The Alchemist</i> could not possibly escape +the notice of the most cursory reader. The principle of disguise +was the same in each case, whether the end in view were simply personal +profit, or (as in the case of Hamlet) personal profit combined with +revenge; and whether the disguise assumed was that of madness, of sickness, +or of a foreign personality, the assumption of character was in all +three cases identical. As to style, he was only too anxious to +meet (and, he doubted not, to beat) on his own ground any antagonist +whose ear had begotten <a name="citation291"></a><a href="#footnote291">{291}</a> +the crude and untenable theory that the Hamlet soliloquies were not +distinctly within the range of the man who could produce those of Crites +and of Macilente in <i>Cynthia’s Revels</i> and <i>Every Man out +of his Humour</i>. The author of those soliloquies could, and +did, in the parallel passages of <i>Hamlet</i>, rise near the height +of the master he honoured and loved.</p> +<p>The further discussion of this subject was reserved for the next +meeting of the Society, as was also the reading of Mr. H.’s paper +on the subsequent quarrel between the two joint authors of Hamlet, which +led to Jonson’s caricature of Shakespeare (then retired from London +society to a country life of solitude) under the name of Morose, and +to Shakespeare’s retort on Jonson, who was no less evidently attacked +under the designation of Ariel. The allusions to the subject of +Shakespeare’s sonnets in the courtship and marriage of Epicœne +by Morose were as obvious as the allusions in the part of Ariel to the +repeated incarceration of Jonson, first on a criminal and secondly on +a political charge, and to his probable release in the former case (during +the reign of Elizabeth=Sycorax) at the intercession of Shakespeare, +who was allowed on all hands to have represented himself in the character +of Prospero (“it was mine art that let thee out”). +Mr. I. would afterwards read a paper on the evidence for Shakespeare’s +whole or part authorship of a dozen or so of the least known plays of +his time, which, besides having various words and phrases in common +with his acknowledged works, were obviously too bad to be attributed +to any other known writer of the period. Eminent among these was +the tragedy of <i>Andromana, or the Merchant’s Wife</i>, long +since rejected from the list of Shirley’s works as unworthy of +that poet’s hand. Unquestionably it was so; not less unworthy +than <i>A Larum for London</i> of Marlowe’s. The consequent +inference that it must needs be the work of the new Shakespeare’s +was surely no less cogent in this than in the former case. The +allusion occurring in it to a play bearing date just twenty-six years +after the death of Shakespeare, and written by a poet then unborn, was +a strong point in favour of his theory. (This argument was received +with general marks of adhesion.) What, he would ask, could be +more natural than that Shirley when engaged on the revision and arrangement +for the stage of this posthumous work of the new Shakespeare’s +(a fact which could require no further proof than he had already adduced), +should have inserted this reference in order to disguise the name of +its real author, and protect it from the disfavour of an audience with +whom that name was notoriously out of fashion? This reasoning, +conclusive in itself, became even more irresistible—or would become +so, if that were anything less than an absolute impossibility—on +comparison of parallel passages,</p> +<blockquote><p>Though kings still hug suspicion in their bosoms,<br /> +They hate the causer. (<i>Andromana</i>, Act i. Sc. 3.)</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Compare this with the avowal put by Shakespeare into the mouth of +a king.</p> +<blockquote><p> Though +I did wish him dead<br /> +I hate the murderer. (<i>King Richard II</i>., Act v. Sc. +6.)</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Again in the same scene:</p> +<blockquote><p>For then her husband comes home from the Rialto.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Compare this with various passages (too familiar to quote) in the +<i>Merchant of Venice</i>. The transference of the Rialto to Iberia +was of a piece with the discovery of a sea-coast in Bohemia. In +the same scene Andromana says to her lover, finding him reluctant to +take his leave, almost in the very words of Romeo to Juliet,</p> +<blockquote><p> Then let us stand +and outface danger,<br /> +Since you will have it so.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It was obvious that only the author of the one passage could have +thought it necessary to disguise his plagiarism in the other by an inversion +of sexes between the two speakers. In the same scene were three +other indisputable instances of repetition.</p> +<blockquote><p> Mariners might with +far greater ease<br /> +Hear whole shoals of sirens singing.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Compare <i>Comedy of Errors</i>, Act iii. Scene 2.</p> +<blockquote><p>Sing, siren, for thyself.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In this case identity of sex was as palpable an evidence for identity +of authorship as diversity of sex had afforded in the preceding instance.</p> +<p>Again:</p> +<blockquote><p>Have oaths no <i>more validity</i> with princes?</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, Act iii. Scene 3, the very same words +were coupled in the very same order:</p> +<blockquote><p> <i>More +validity</i>,<br /> +More honourable state, more courtship lies<br /> +In carrion flies than Romeo.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Again:</p> +<blockquote><p>It would have killed a salamander.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Compare the <i>First Part of King Henry IV</i>, Act iii. Scene 3.</p> +<blockquote><p>I have maintained that salamander of yours with fire +any time this two and thirty years.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In Act ii. Scene 2 the hero, on being informed how heavy are the +odds against him in the field, answers,</p> +<blockquote><p>I am glad on’t; the honour is the greater.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>To which his confidant rejoins:</p> +<blockquote><p>The danger is the greater.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And in the sixth scene of the same act the messenger observes:</p> +<blockquote><p> I only heard the +prince wish<br /> +. . . +. . . +.<br /> +He had fewer by a thousand men.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Could any member doubt that we had here the same hand which gave +us the like debate between King Henry and Westmoreland on the eve of +Agincourt? or could any member suppose that in the subsequent remark +of the same military confidant, “I smell a rat, sir,” there +was merely a fortuitous coincidence with Hamlet’s reflection as +he “whips out his rapier”—in itself a martial proceeding—under +similar circumstances to the same effect?</p> +<p>In the very next scene a captain observes of his own troops</p> +<blockquote><p>Methinks such tattered rogues should never conquer:</p> +</blockquote> +<p>a touch that could only be due to the pencil which had drawn Falstaff’s +ragged regiment. In both cases, moreover, it was to be noted that +the tattered rogues proved ultimately victorious. But he had—they +might hardly believe it, but so it was—even yet stronger and more +convincing evidence to offer. It would be remembered that a play +called <i>The Double Falsehood</i>, formerly attributed to Shakespeare +on the authority of Theobald, was now generally supposed to have been +in its original form the work of Shirley. What, then, he would +ask, could be more natural or more probable than that a play formerly +ascribed to Shirley should prove to be the genuine work of Shakespeare? +Common sense, common reason, common logic, all alike and all equally +combined to enforce upon every candid judgment this inevitable conclusion. +This, however, was nothing in comparison to the final proof which he +had yet to lay before them. He need not remind them that in the +opinion of their illustrious German teachers, the first men to discover +and reveal to his unworthy countrymen the very existence of the new +Shakespeare, the authenticity of any play ascribed to the possibly too +prolific pen of that poet was invariably to be determined in the last +resort by consideration of its demerits. No English critic, therefore, +who felt himself worthy to have been born a German, would venture to +question the postulate on which all sound principles of criticism with +regard to this subject must infallibly be founded: that, given any play +of unknown or doubtful authorship, the worse it was, the likelier was +it to be Shakespeare’s. (This proposition was received with +every sign of unanimous assent.) Now, on this ground he was prepared +to maintain that the claims of <i>Andromana</i> to their most respectful, +their most cordial, their most unhesitating acceptance were absolutely +beyond all possibility of parallel. Not <i>Mucedorus</i> or <i>Fair +Em</i>, not <i>The Birth of Merlin</i> or <i>Thomas Lord Cromwell</i>, +could reasonably or fairly be regarded as on the same level of worthlessness +with this incomparable production. No mortal man who had survived +its perusal could for a moment hesitate to agree that it was the most +incredibly, ineffably, inconceivably, unmitigatedly, irredeemably, inexpressibly +damnable piece of bad work ever perpetrated by human hand. No +mortal critic of the genuine Anglo-German school could therefore hesitate +for a moment to agree that in common consistency he was bound to accept +it as the possible work of no human hand but the hand of the New Shakespeare.</p> +<p>The Chairman then proceeded to recapitulate the work done and the +benefits conferred by the Society during the twelve months which had +elapsed since its foundation on that day (April 1st) last year. +They had ample reason to congratulate themselves and him on the result. +They had established an entirely new kind of criticism, working by entirely +new means towards an entirely new end, in honour of an entirely new +kind of Shakespeare. They had proved to demonstration and overwhelmed +with obloquy the incompetence, the imbecility, the untrustworthiness, +the blunders, the forgeries, the inaccuracies, the obliquities, the +utter moral and literary worthlessness, of previous students and societies. +They had revealed to the world at large the generally prevalent ignorance +of Shakespeare and his works which so discreditably distinguished his +countrymen. This they had been enabled to do by the simple process +of putting forward various theories, and still more various facts, but +all of equally incontrovertible value and relevance, of which no Englishman—he +might say, no mortal—outside the Society had ever heard or dreamed +till now. They had discovered the one trustworthy and indisputable +method, so easy and so simple that it must now seem wonderful it should +never have been discovered before, by which to pluck out the heart of +the poet’s mystery and detect the secret of his touch; the study +of Shakespeare by rule of thumb. Every man, woman, and child born +with five fingers on each hand was henceforward better qualified as +a critic than any poet or scholar of time past. But it was not, +whatever outsiders might pretend to think, exclusively on the verse-test, +as it had facetiously been called on account of its total incompatibility +with any conceivable scheme of metre or principle of rhythm—it +was not exclusively on this precious and unanswerable test that they +relied. Within the Society as well as without, the pretensions +of those who would acknowledge no other means of deciding on debated +questions had been refuted and repelled. What were the other means +of investigation and verification in which not less than in the metrical +test they were accustomed to put their faith, and by which they doubted +not to attain in the future even more remarkable results than their +researches had as yet achieved, the debate just concluded, in common +with every other for which they ever had met or ever were likely to +meet, would amply suffice to show. By such processes as had been +applied on this as on all occasions to the text of Shakespeare’s +works and the traditions of his life, they trusted in a very few years +to subvert all theories which had hitherto been held and extirpate all +ideas which had hitherto been cherished on the subject: and having thus +cleared the ground for his advent, to discover for the admiration of +the world, as the name of their Society implied, a New Shakespeare. +The first step towards this end must of course be the demolition of +the old one; and he would venture to say they had already made a good +beginning in that direction. They had disproved or they would +disprove the claim of Shakespeare to the sole authorship of <i>Macbeth, +Julius Cæsar, King Lear, Hamlet</i>, and <i>Othello</i>; they +had established or they would establish the fact of his partnership +in <i>Locrine, Mucedorus, The Birth of Merlin, Dr. Dodipoll</i>, and +<i>Sir Giles Goosecap</i>. They had with them the incomparable +critics of Germany; men whose knowledge and judgment on all questions +of English literature were as far beyond the reach of their English +followers as the freedom and enlightenment enjoyed by the subjects of +a military empire were beyond the reach of the citizens of a democratic +republic. They had established and affiliated to their own primitive +body or church various branch societies or sects, in England and elsewhere, +devoted to the pursuit of the same end by the same means and method +of study as had just been exemplified in the transactions of the present +meeting. Still there remained much to be done; in witness of which +he proposed to lay before them at their next meeting, by way of inauguration +under a happy omen of their new year’s work, the complete body +of evidence by means of which he was prepared to demonstrate that some +considerable portion, if not the greater part, of the remaining plays +hitherto assigned to Shakespeare was due to the collaboration of a contemporary +actor and playwright, well known by name, but hitherto insufficiently +appreciated; Robert Armin, the author of <i>A Nest of Ninnies</i>.</p> +<h3>ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS.</h3> +<p>The humble but hard-working journeyman of letters who was charged +with the honourable duty of reporting the transactions at the last meeting +of the Newest Shakespeare Society on the auspicious occasion of its +first anniversary, April 1st, has received sundry more or less voluminous +communications from various gentlemen whose papers were then read or +announced, pointing out with more or less acrimonious commentary the +matters on which it seems to them severally that they have cause to +complain of imperfection or inaccuracy in his conscientious and painstaking +report. Anxious above all things to secure for himself such credit +as may be due to the modest merit of scrupulous fidelity, he desires +to lay before the public so much of the corrections conveyed in their +respective letters of reclamation as may be necessary to complete or +to rectify the first draught of their propositions as conveyed in his +former summary. On the present occasion, however, he must confine +himself to forwarding the rectifications supplied by two of the members +who took a leading part in the debate of April 1st.</p> +<p>The necessarily condensed report of Mr. A.’s paper on <i>A +Midsummer Night’s Dream</i> may make the reasoning put forward +by that gentleman liable to the misconception of a hasty reader. +The omission of various qualifying phrases has left his argument without +such explanation, his statements without such reservation, as he had +been careful to supply. He did not say in so many words that he +had been disposed to assign this drama to the author of <i>The Revenger’s +Tragedy</i> simply on the score of the affinity discernible between +the subjects of the two plays. He is not prone to self-confidence +or to indulgence in paradox. What he did say was undeniable by +any but those who trusted only to their ear, and refused to correct +the conclusions thus arrived at by the help of other organs which God +had given them—their fingers, for example, and their toes; by +means of which a critic of trained and competent scholarship might with +the utmost confidence count up as far as twenty, to the great profit +of all students who were willing to accept his guidance and be bound +by his decision on matters of art and poetry. Only the most purblind +could fail to observe, what only the most perverse could hesitate to +admit, that there was at first sight an obvious connection between the +poison-flower—“purple from love’s wound”—squeezed +by Oberon into the eyes of the sleeping Titania and the poison rubbed +by Vindice upon the skull of the murdered Gloriana. No student +of Ulrici’s invaluable work would think this a far-fetched reference. +That eminent critic had verified the meaning and detected the allusion +underlying many a passage of Shakespeare in which the connection of +moral idea was more difficult to establish than this. In the fifth +act of either play there was a masque or dramatic show of a sanguinary +kind; in the one case the bloodshed was turned to merry-making, in the +other the merry-making was turned to bloodshed. Oberon’s +phrase, “till I torment thee for this injury,” might easily +be mistaken for a quotation from the part of Vindice. This explanation, +he trusted, would suffice to exonerate his original view from any charge +of haste or rashness; especially as he had now completely given it up, +and adopted one (if possible) more impregnably based on internal and +external evidence.</p> +<p>Mr. C. was not unnaturally surprised and indignant to find his position +as to Romeo and Lord Burghley barely indicated, and the notice given +of the arguments by which it was supported so docked and curtailed as +to convey a most inadequate conception of their force. Among the +chief points of his argument were these: that the forsaken Rosaline +was evidently intended for the late Queen Mary, during whose reign Cecil +had notoriously conformed to the observances of her creed, though ready +on the accession of Elizabeth to throw it overboard at a day’s +notice; (it was not to be overlooked that the friar on first hearing +the announcement of this change of faith is made earnestly to remonstrate, +prefacing his reproaches with an invocation of two sacred names—an +invocation peculiar to Catholics;) that the resemblance between old +Capulet and Henry VIII. is obvious to the most careless reader; his +oath of “God’s bread!” immediately followed by the +avowal “it makes me mad” is an unmistakable allusion to +the passions excited by the eucharistic controversy; his violence towards +Juliet at the end of the third act at once suggests the alienation of +her father’s heart from the daughter of Anne Boleyn; the self-congratulation +on her own “stainless” condition as a virgin expressed by +Juliet in soliloquy (Act iii. Sc. 2) while in the act of awaiting her +bridegroom conveys a furtive stroke of satire at the similar vaunt of +Elizabeth when likewise meditating marriage and preparing to receive +a suitor from the hostile house of Valois. It must be unnecessary +to point out the resemblance or rather the identity between the character +and fortune of Paris and the character and fortune of Essex, whose fate +had been foreseen and whose end prefigured by the poet with almost prophetic +sagacity. To the far-reaching eye of Shakespeare it must have +seemed natural and inevitable that Paris (Essex) should fall by the +hand of Romeo (Burghley) immediately before the monument of the Capulets +where their common mistress was interred alive—immediately, that +is, before the termination of the Tudor dynasty in the person of Elizabeth, +who towards the close of her reign may fitly have been regarded as one +already buried with her fathers, though yet living in a state of suspended +animation under the influence of a deadly narcotic potion administered +by the friends of Romeo—by the partisans, that is, of the Cecilian +policy. The Nurse was not less evidently designed to represent +the Established Church. Allusions to the marriage of the clergy +are profusely scattered through her speeches. Her deceased husband +was probably meant for Sir Thomas More—“a merry man” +to the last moment of his existence—who might well be supposed +by a slight poetic license to have foreseen in the infancy of Elizabeth +her future backsliding and fall from the straight path “when she +came to age.” The passing expression of tenderness with +which the Nurse refers to his memory—“God be with his soul!”—implies +at once the respect in which the name of the martyr Chancellor was still +generally held, and the lingering remains of Catholic tradition which +still made a prayer for the dead rise naturally to Anglican lips. +On the other hand, the strife between Anglicans and Puritans, the struggle +of episcopalian with Calvinistic reformers, was quite as plainly typified +in the quarrel between the Nurse and Mercutio, in which the Martin Marprelate +controversy was first unmistakably represented on the stage. The +“saucy merchant, that was so full of his ropery,” with his +ridicule of the “stale” practice of Lenten fasting and abstinence, +his contempt for “a Lenten pie,” and his preference for +a flesh diet as “very good meat in Lent,” is clearly a disciple +of Calvin; and the impotence of the Nurse, however scandalised at the +nakedness of his ribald profanity, to protect herself against it by +appeal to reason or tradition, is dwelt upon with an emphasis sufficient +to indicate the secret tendency of the poet’s own sympathies and +convictions. In Romeo’s attempt at conciliation, and his +poor excuse for Mercutio (which yet the Nurse, an emblem of the temporising +and accommodating pliancy of episcopalian Protestantism, shows herself +only too ready to accept as valid) as “one that God hath made, +for himself to mar,”—the allusion here is evidently to the +democratic and revolutionary tendencies of the doctrine of Knox and +Calvin, with its ultimate developments of individualism and private +judgment—we recognise the note of Burghley’s lifelong policy +and its endeavour to fuse the Protestant or Puritan party with the state +Church of the Tudors as by law established. The distaste of Elizabeth’s +bishops for such advances, their flutter of apprehension at the daring +and their burst of indignation at the insolence of the Calvinists, are +significantly expressed in terms which seem to hint at a possible return +for help and protection to the shelter of the older faith and the support +of its partisans. “An ’a speak anything against me, +I’ll take him down an ’a were lustier than he is, and twenty +such Jacks;” (the allusion here is again obvious, to the baptismal +name of John Calvin and John Knox, if not also to the popular byword +of Jack Presbyter;) “and if I cannot,” (here the sense of +insecurity and dependence on foreign help or secular power becomes transparent) +“I’ll find those that shall.” She disclaims +communion with the Protestant Churches of the continent, with Amsterdam +or Geneva: “I am none of his flirt-gills; I am none of his skains-mates.” +Peter, who carries her fan (“to hide her face: for her fan’s +the fairer face”; we may take this to be a symbol of the form +of episcopal consecration still retained in the Anglican Church as a +cover for its separation from Catholicism), is undoubtedly meant for +Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury; the name Peter, as applied to a +menial who will stand by and suffer every knave to use the Church at +his pleasure, but is ready to draw as soon as another man if only he +may be sure of having the secular arm of the law on his side, implies +a bitter sarcasm on the intruding official of state then established +by law as occupant of a see divorced from its connection with that of +the apostle. The sense of instability natural to an institution +which is compelled to rely for support on ministers who are themselves +dependent on the state whose pay they draw for power to strike a blow +in self-defence could hardly be better expressed than by the solemn +and piteous, almost agonised asseveration; “Now, afore God, I +am so vexed, that every part about me quivers.” To Shakespeare, +it cannot be doubted, the impending dissolution or dislocation of the +Anglican system in “every part” by civil war and religious +discord must even then have been but too ominously evident.</p> +<p>If further confirmation could be needed of the underlying significance +of allusion traceable throughout this play, it might amply be supplied +by fresh reference to the first scene in which the Nurse makes her appearance +on the stage, and is checked by Lady Capulet in the full tide of affectionate +regret for her lost husband. We can well imagine Anne Boleyn cutting +short the regrets of some indiscreet courtier for Sir Thomas More in +the very words of the text;</p> +<blockquote><p>Enough of this; I pray thee, hold thy peace.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The “parlous knock” which left so big a lump upon the +brow of the infant Juliet is evidently an allusion to the declaration +of Elizabeth’s illegitimacy while yet in her cradle. The +seal of bastardy set upon the baby brow of</p> +<p>Anne Boleyn’s daughter may well be said to have “broken” +it.</p> +<p>The counsel of the Nurse to Juliet in Act iii. Scene 5 to forsake +Romeo for Paris indicates the bias of the hierarchy in favour of Essex—“a +lovely gentleman”—rather than of the ultra-Protestant policy +of Burghley, who doubtless in the eyes of courtiers and churchmen was +“a dish-clout to him.”</p> +<p>These were a few of the points, set down at random, which he had +been enabled to verify within the limits of a single play. They +would suffice to give an idea of the process by which, when applied +in detail to every one of Shakespeare’s plays, he trusted to establish +the secret history and import of each, not less than the general sequence +and significance of all. Further instalments of this work would +probably be issued in the forthcoming or future Transactions of the +Newest Shakespeare Society; and it was confidently expected that the +final monument of his research when thoroughly completed and illustrated +by copious appendices, would prove as worthy as any work of mere English +scholarship could hope to be of a place beside the inestimable commentaries +of Gervinus, Ulrici, and the Polypseudocriticopantodapomorosophisticometricoglossematographicomaniacal +Company for the Confusion of Shakespeare and Diffusion of Verbiage (Unlimited).</p> +<p>CHIMÆRA BOMBINANS IN VACUO.</p> +<h4>NOTE.</h4> +<p>Mindful of the good old apologue regarding “the squeak of the +real pig,” I think it here worth while to certify the reader of +little faith, that the more incredibly impudent absurdities above cited +are not so much or so often the freaks of parody or the fancies of burlesque +as select excerpts and transcripts of printed and published utterances +from the “pink soft litter” of a living brood—from +the reports of an actual Society, issued in an abridged and doubtless +an emasculated form through the columns of a weekly newspaper. +One final and unapproachable instance, one transcendant and pyramidal +example of classical taste and of critical scholarship, I did not venture +to impair by transference from those columns and transplantation into +these pages among humbler specimens of minor monstrosity. Let +it stand here once more on record as “a good jest for ever”—or +rather as the best and therefore as the worst, as the worst and therefore +as the best, of all possible bad jests ever to be cracked between this +and the crack of doom. Sophocles, said a learned member, was the +proper parallel to Shakespeare among the ancient tragedians: Æschylus—hear, +O heaven, and give ear, O earth!—<i>Æschylus was only a +Marlowe</i>.</p> +<p>The hand which here transcribes this most transcendant utterance +has written before now many lines in verse and in prose to the honour +and glory of Christopher Marlowe: it has never—be the humble avowal +thus blushingly recorded—it has never set down as the writer’s +opinion that he was only an Æschylus. In other words, it +has never registered as my deliberate and judicial verdict the finding +that he was only the equal of the greatest among all tragic and all +prophetic poets; of the man who combined all the light of the Greeks +with all the fire of the Hebrews; who varied at his will the revelation +of the single gift of Isaiah with the display of the mightiest among +the manifold gifts of Shakespeare.</p> +<h2>Footnotes.</h2> +<p><a name="footnote30"></a><a href="#citation30">{30}</a> Reprinted +by Dr. Grosart in his beautiful and valuable edition of Greene’s +works.</p> +<p><a name="footnote33"></a><a href="#citation33">{33}</a> One +thing is certain: that damnable last scene at which the gorge rises +even to remember it is in execution as unlike the crudest phase of Shakespeare’s +style as in conception it is unlike the idlest birth of his spirit. +Let us hope that so foul a thing could not have been done in even tolerably +good verse.</p> +<p><a name="footnote42"></a><a href="#citation42">{42}</a> It +is not the least of Lord Macaulay’s offences against art that +he should have contributed the temporary weight of his influence as +a critic to the support of so ignorant and absurd a tradition of criticism +as that which classes the great writer here mentioned with the brutal +if “brawny” Wycherley—a classification almost to be +paralleled with that which in the days of our fathers saw fit to couple +together the names of Balzac and of Sue. Any competent critic +will always recognise in <i>The Way of the World</i> one of the glories, +in <i>The Country Wife</i> one of the disgraces, of dramatic and of +English literature. The stains discernible on the masterpiece +of Congreve are trivial and conventional; the mere conception of the +other man’s work displays a mind so prurient and leprous, uncovers +such an unfathomable and unimaginable beastliness of imagination, that +in the present age at least he would probably have figured as a virtuous +journalist and professional rebuker of poetic vice or artistic aberration.</p> +<p><a name="footnote63"></a><a href="#citation63">{63}</a> Since +this passage first went to press, I have received from Dr. Grosart the +most happy news that he has procured a perfect copy of this precious +volume, and will shortly add it to his occasional issues of golden waifs +and strays forgotten by the ebb-tide of time. Not even the disinterment +of Robert Chester’s “glorified” poem, with its appended +jewels of verse from Shakespeare’s very hand and from others only +less great than Shakespeare’s, all now at last reset in their +strange original framework, was a gift of greater price than this.</p> +<p><a name="footnote89"></a><a href="#citation89">{89}</a> Compare +with Beaumont’s admirable farce of Bessus the wretched imitation +of it attempted after his death in the <i>Nice Valour</i> of Fletcher; +whose proper genius was neither for pure tragedy nor broad farce, but +for high comedy and heroic romance—a field of his own invention; +witness <i>Monsieur Thomas</i> and <i>The Knight of Malta</i>: while +Beaumont has approved himself in tragedy all but the worthiest disciple +of Shakespeare, in farce beyond all comparison the aptest pupil of Jonson. +He could give us no <i>Fox</i> or <i>Alchemist</i>; but the inventor +of Bessus and Calianax was worthy of the esteem and affection returned +to him by the creator of Morose and Rabbi Busy.</p> +<p><a name="footnote92"></a><a href="#citation92">{92}</a> A desperate +attempt has been made to support the metrical argument in favour of +Fletcher’s authorship by the production of a list in which such +words as <i>slavery, emperor, pitying, difference</i>, and even <i>Christians</i>, +were actually registered as trisyllabic terminations. To such +unimaginable shifts are critics of the finger-counting or syllabic school +inevitably and fatally reduced in the effort to establish by rule of +thumb even so much as may seem verifiable by that rule in the province +of poetical criticism. Prosody is at best no more than the skeleton +of verse, as verse is the body of poetry; while the gain of such painful +labourers in a field they know not how to till is not even a skeleton +of worthless or irrelevant fact, but the shadow of such a skeleton reflected +in water. It would seem that critics who hear only through their +fingers have not even fingers to hear with.</p> +<p><a name="footnote108"></a><a href="#citation108">{108}</a> +“La dynastie du bon sens, inaugurée dans Panurge, continuée +dans Sancho Pança, tourne à mal et avorte dans Falstaff.” +(<i>William Shakespeare</i>, deuxième partie, livre premier, +ch. ii,)</p> +<p><a name="footnote125"></a><a href="#citation125">{125}</a> +Possibly some readers may agree with my second thoughts, in thinking +that one exception may here be made and some surprise be here expressed +at Shakespeare’s rejection of Sly’s memorable query—“When +will the fool come again, Sim?” It is true that he could +well afford to spare it, as what could he not well afford to spare? +but I will confess that it seems to me worthy of a place among his own +Sly’s most admirable and notable sallies of humour.</p> +<p><a name="footnote129"></a><a href="#citation129">{129}</a> +<i>History of English Dramatic Poetry</i>, ed. 1879, vol. ii. pp.437-447. +In a later part of his noble and invaluable work (vol. iii. p.188) the +author quotes a passage from “the induction to <i>A Warning for +Fair Women</i>, 1599 (to which Shakespeare most assuredly contributed).” +It will be seen that I do not shrink from admitting the full weight +of authority which can be thrown into the scale against my own opinion. +To such an assertion from the insolent organs of pretentious ignorance +I should be content with the simple rejoinder that Shakespeare most +assuredly did nothing whatever of the sort; but to return such an answer +in the present case would be to write myself down—and that in +company to which I should most emphatically object—as something +very decidedly more—and worse—than an ass.</p> +<p><a name="footnote137"></a><a href="#citation137">{137}</a> +Not for the first and probably not for the last time I turn, with all +confidence as with all reverence, for illustration and confirmation +of my own words, to the exquisite critical genius of a long honoured +and long lamented fellow-craftsman. The following admirable and +final estimate of the more special element or peculiar quality in the +intellectual force of Honoré de Balzac could only have been taken +by the inevitable intuition and rendered by the subtlest eloquence of +Charles Baudelaire. Nothing could more aptly and perfectly illustrate +the distinction indicated in my text between unimaginative realism and +imaginative reality.</p> +<p>“I have many a time been astonished that to pass for an observer +should be Balzac’s great popular title to fame. To me it +had always seemed that it was his chief merit to be a visionary, and +a passionate visionary. All his characters are gifted with the +ardour of life which animated himself. All his fictions are as +deeply coloured as dreams. From the highest of the aristocracy +to the lowest of the mob, all the actors in his <i>Human Comedy</i> +are keener after living, more active and cunning in their struggles, +more staunch in endurance of misfortune, more ravenous in enjoyment, +more angelic in devotion, than the comedy of the real world shows them +to us. In a word, every one in Balzac, down to the very scullions, +has genius. Every mind is a weapon loaded to the muzzle with will. +It is actually Balzac himself. And as all the beings of the outer +world presented themselves to his mind’s eye in strong relief +and with a telling expression, he has given a convulsive action to his +figures; he has blackened their shadows and intensified their lights. +Besides, his prodigious love of detail, the outcome of an immoderate +ambition to see everything, to bring everything to sight, to guess everything, +to make others guess everything, obliged him to set down more forcibly +the principal lines, so as to preserve the perspective of the whole. +He reminds me sometimes of those etchers who are never satisfied with +the biting-in of their outlines, and transform into very ravines the +main scratches of the plate. From this astonishing natural disposition +of mind wonderful results have been produced. But this disposition +is generally defined as Balzac’s great fault. More properly +speaking, it is exactly his great distinctive duality. But who +can boast of being so happily gifted, and of being able to apply a method +which may permit him to invest—and that with a sure hand—what +is purely trivial with splendour and imperial purple? Who can +do this? Now, he who does not, to speak the truth, does no great +thing.”</p> +<p>Nor was any very great thing done by the author of <i>A Warning for +Fair Women</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote141"></a><a href="#citation141">{141}</a> +I do not know or remember in the whole radiant range of Elizabethan +drama more than one parallel tribute to that paid in this play by an +English poet to the yet foreign art of painting, through the eloquent +mouth of this enthusiastic villain of genius, whom we might regard as +a more genuinely Titianic sort of Wainwright. The parallel passage +is that most lovely and fervid of all imaginative panegyrics on this +art, extracted by Lamb from the comedy of <i>Doctor Dodipoll</i>; which +saw the light or twilight of publication just eight years later than +<i>Arden of Feversham</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote154"></a><a href="#citation154">{154}</a> +I remember to have somewhere at some time fallen in with some remark +by some commentator to some such effect as this: that it would be somewhat +difficult to excuse the unwomanly violence of this demand. Doubtless +it would. And doubtless it would be somewhat more than difficult +to extenuate the unmaidenly indelicacy of Jeanne Darc.</p> +<p><a name="footnote179"></a><a href="#citation179">{179}</a> +What would at least be partly lust in another man is all but purely +hatred in Iago.</p> +<blockquote><p> Now +I do love her too:<br /> +Not out of absolute lust, (though, peradventure,<br /> +I stand accountant for as great a sin)<br /> +But partly led to diet my revenge.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>For “partly” read “wholly,” and for “peradventure” +read “assuredly,” and the incarnate father of lies, made +manifest in the flesh, here speaks all but all the truth for once, to +himself alone.</p> +<p><a name="footnote205"></a><a href="#citation205">{205}</a> +I add the proof in a footnote, so as to take up no more than a small +necessary space of my text with the establishment of a fact which yet +can seem insignificant to no mortal who has a human ear for lyric song. +Shakespeare’s verse, as all the wide world knows, ends thus:</p> +<blockquote><p>But my kisses bring again,<br /> + bring again,<br /> +Seals of love, but sealed in vain,<br /> + sealed in vain.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The echo has been dropped by Fletcher, who has thus achieved the +remarkable musical feat of turning a nightingale’s note into a +sparrow’s. The mutilation of Philomela by the hands of Tereus +was a jest compared to the mutilation of Shakespeare by the hands of +Fletcher: who thereby reduced the close of the first verse into agreement +if not into accordance with the close of his own. This appended +verse, as all the world does not and need not know, ends thus:</p> +<blockquote><p>But first set my poor heart free,<br /> +Bound in those icy chains by thee.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Even an earless owner of fingers enough to count on may by their +help convince himself of the difference in metre here. But not +only does the last line, with unsolicited and literally superfluous +liberality, offer us a syllable over measure; the words are such as +absolutely to defy antiphonal repetition or reverberation of the three +last in either line. Let us therefore, like good scriptural scholars, +according equally to the letter and the spirit of the text, render unto +Fletcher the things which be Fletcher’s, and unto Shakespeare +the things which be Shakespeare’s.</p> +<p><a name="footnote210"></a><a href="#citation210">{210}</a> +It is worth remark that in a still older sample of an older and ruder +form of play than can have been the very earliest mould in which the +pristine or pre-Shakespearean model of <i>Pericles</i> was cast, the +part of Chorus here assigned to Gower was filled by a representative +of his fellow-poet Lydgate.</p> +<p><a name="footnote217"></a><a href="#citation217">{217}</a> +Except perhaps one little word of due praise for the pretty imitation +or recollection of his dead friend Beaumont rather than of Shakespeare, +in the description of the crazed girl whose “careless tresses +a wreath of bullrush rounded” where she sat playing with flowers +for emblems at a game of love and sorrow—but liker in all else +to Bellario by another fountain-side than to Ophelia by the brook of +death.</p> +<p><a name="footnote220"></a><a href="#citation220">{220}</a> +On the 17th of September, 1864.</p> +<p><a name="footnote232"></a><a href="#citation232">{232}</a> +The once too celebrated crime which in this play was exhibited on the +public stage with the forcible fidelity of a wellnigh brutal realism +took actual place on the private stage of fact in the year 1604. +Four years afterwards the play was published as Shakespeare’s. +Eight years more, and Shakespeare was with Æschylus.</p> +<p><a name="footnote237"></a><a href="#citation237">{237}</a> +Written in 1879.</p> +<p><a name="footnote239"></a><a href="#citation239">{239}</a> +Capell has altered this to “proud perfumes”; marking the +change in a note, with the scrupulous honesty which would seem to have +usually distinguished him from more daring and more famous editors.</p> +<p><a name="footnote245a"></a><a href="#citation245a">{245a}</a> +The feeble archaic inversion in this line is one among many small signs +which all together suffice, if not to throw back the date of this play +to the years immediately preceding the advent of Marlowe or the full +influence of his genius and example, yet certainly to mark it as an +instance of survival from that period of incomposite and inadequate +workmanship in verse.</p> +<p><a name="footnote245b"></a><a href="#citation245b">{245b}</a> +Or than this play to a genuine work of Shakespeare’s. “Brick +to coral”—these three words describe exactly the difference +in tone and shade of literary colour.</p> +<p><a name="footnote246"></a><a href="#citation246">{246}</a> +Here for the first time we come upon a verse not unworthy of Marlowe +himself—a verse in spirit as in cadence recalling the deep oceanic +reverberations of his “mighty line,” profound and just and +simple and single as a note of the music of the sea. But it would +be hard if a devout and studious disciple were never to catch one passing +tone of his master’s habitual accent.—It may be worth while +to observe that we find here the same modulation of verse—common +enough since then, but new to the patient auditors of <i>Gorboduc</i> +and <i>Locrine</i>—which we find in the finest passage of Marlowe’s +imperfect play of <i>Dido</i>, completed by Nash after the young Master’s +untimely death.</p> +<blockquote><p>Why star’st thou in my face? If thou wilt +stay,<br /> +Leap in my arms: mine arms are open wide:<br /> +If not—turn from me, and I’ll turn from thee;<br /> +For though thou hast the power to say farewell,<br /> +I have not power to stay thee.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But we may look long in vain for the like of this passage, taken +from the crudest and feeblest work of Marlowe, in the wide and wordy +expanse of <i>King Edward III</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote247"></a><a href="#citation247">{247}</a> +A pre-Shakespearean word of single occurrence in a single play of Shakespeare’s, +and proper to the academic school of playwrights.</p> +<p><a name="footnote248"></a><a href="#citation248">{248}</a> +<i>The First Part of Tamburlaine the Great</i>, Act v. Sc. ii.</p> +<p><a name="footnote252"></a><a href="#citation252">{252}</a> +It may be worth a remark that the word <i>power</i> is constantly used +as a dissyllable; another note of archaic debility or insufficiency +in metre.</p> +<p><a name="footnote255"></a><a href="#citation255">{255}</a> +Yet another essentially non-Shakespearean word, though doubtless once +used by Shakespeare; this time a most ungraceful Gallicism.</p> +<p><a name="footnote256"></a><a href="#citation256">{256}</a> +It may obviate any chance of mistake if I observe that here as elsewhere, +when I mention the name that is above every name in English literature, +I refer to the old Shakespeare, and not to “the new Shakspere”; +a <i>novus homo</i> with whom I have no acquaintance, and with whom +(if we may judge of a great—or a little—unknown after the +appearance and the bearing of those who select him as a social sponsor +for themselves and their literary catechumens) I can most sincerely +assert that I desire to have none.</p> +<p><a name="footnote261"></a><a href="#citation261">{261}</a> +Surely, for <i>sweet’st</i> we should read <i>swift’st</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote262a"></a><a href="#citation262a">{262a}</a> +This word occurs but once in Shakespeare’s plays—</p> +<blockquote><p>And speaking it, he wistly looked on me;</p> +<p>(<i>King Richard II</i>. Act v. Sc. 4.)</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and in such a case, as in the previous instances of the words <i>invocate</i> +and <i>endamagement</i>, a mere απαξ λεyομενον +can carry no weight of evidence with it worth any student’s consideration.</p> +<p><a name="footnote262b"></a><a href="#citation262b">{262b}</a> +This form is used four times by Shakespeare as the equivalent of Bretagne; +once only, in one of his latest plays, as a synonym for Britain.</p> +<p><a name="footnote263a"></a><a href="#citation263a">{263a}</a> +Another word indiscoverable in any genuine verse of Shakespeare’s, +though not (I believe) unused on occasion by some among the poets contemporary +with his earlier years.</p> +<p><a name="footnote263b"></a><a href="#citation263b">{263b}</a> +This word was perhaps unnecessarily altered by our good Capell to “tender.”</p> +<p><a name="footnote264a"></a><a href="#citation264a">{264a}</a> +Yet another and a singular misuse of a word never so used or misused +by Shakespeare.</p> +<p><a name="footnote264b"></a><a href="#citation264b">{264b}</a> +Qu. Why, so is your desire: If that the law, etc.?</p> +<p><a name="footnote264c"></a><a href="#citation264c">{264c}</a> +<i>Sic</i>. I should once have thought it impossible that any +mortal ear could endure the shock of this unspeakable and incomparable +verse, and find in the passage which contains it an echo or a trace +of the “music, wit, and oracle” of Shakespeare. But +in those days I had yet to learn what manner of ears are pricked up +to listen “when rank Thersites opes his mastiff jaws” in +criticism of Homer or of Shakespeare. In a corner of the preface +to an edition of “Shakspere” which bears on its title-page +the name (correctly spelt) of Queen Victoria’s youngest son prefixed +to the name I have just transcribed, a small pellet of dry dirt was +flung upwards at me from behind by the “able editor” thus +irritably impatient to figure in public as the volunteer valet or literary +lackey of Prince Leopold. Hence I gathered the edifying assurance +that this aspirant to the honours of literature in livery had been reminded +of my humbler attempts in literature without a livery by the congenial +music of certain four-footed fellow-critics and fellow-lodgers of his +own in the neighbourhood of Hampstead Heath. Especially and most +naturally had their native woodnotes wild recalled to the listening +biped (whom partial nature had so far distinguished from the herd) the +deep astonishment and the due disgust with which he had discovered the +unintelligible fact that to men so ignorant of music or the laws of +music in verse as my presumptuous and pitiable self the test of metrical +harmony lay not in an appeal to the fingers but only in an appeal to +the ear—“the ear which he” (that is, which the present +writer) “makes so much of—AND WHICH SHOULD BE LONG TO MEASURE +SHAKSPERE.” Here then the great Sham Shakespearean secret +is out at last. Had I but known in time my lifelong error in thinking +that a capacity to estimate the refinements of word-music was not to +be gauged by length of ear, by hairiness of ear, or by thickness of +ear, but by delicacy of ear alone, I should as soon have thought of +measuring my own poor human organs against those of the patriarch or +leader of the herd as of questioning his indisputable right to lay down +the law to all who agree with his great fundamental theorem—that +the longest ear is the most competent to judge of metre. <i>Habemus +confitentem asinum</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote266"></a><a href="#citation266">{266}</a> +A Latin pun, or rather a punning Latinism, not altogether out of Shakespeare’s +earliest line. But see the note preceding this one.</p> +<p><a name="footnote269"></a><a href="#citation269">{269}</a> +The simple substitution of the word “is” for the word “and” +would rectify the grammar here—were that worth while.</p> +<p><a name="footnote270"></a><a href="#citation270">{270}</a> +Qu. So there is but one France, etc.?</p> +<p><a name="footnote271"></a><a href="#citation271">{271}</a> +Non-Shakespearean.</p> +<p><a name="footnote273"></a><a href="#citation273">{273}</a> +I choose for a parallel Shakespeare’s use of Plutarch in the composition +of his Roman plays rather than his use of Hall and Holinshed in the +composition of his English histories, because Froissart is a model more +properly to be set against Plutarch than against Holinshed or Hall.</p> +<p><a name="footnote278"></a><a href="#citation278">{278}</a> +This brilliant idea has since been borrowed from the Chairman—and +that without acknowledgment—by one of those worthies whose mission +it is to make manifest that no burlesque invention of mere man’s +device can improve upon the inexhaustible capacities of Nature as shown +in the production and perfection of the type irreverently described +by Dryden as ‘God Almighty’s fool.’</p> +<p><a name="footnote279"></a><a href="#citation279">{279}</a> +This word was incomprehensibly misprinted in the first issue of the +Society’s Report, where it appeared as “foulness.” +To prevent misapprehension, the whole staff of printers was at once +discharged.</p> +<p><a name="footnote291"></a><a href="#citation291">{291}</a> +When the learned member made use of this remarkable phrase he probably +had in his mind the suggestive query of Agnès, <i>si les enfants +qu’on fait se faisaient pas l’oreille</i>? But the +flower of rhetoric here gathered was beyond the reach of Arnolphe’s +innocent ward. The procreation in such a case is even more difficult +for fancy to realise than the conception.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 16412-h.htm or 16412-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/4/1/16412 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: A Study of Shakespeare + + +Author: Algernon Charles Swinburne + +Editor: Edmund Gosse + +Release Date: August 1, 2005 [eBook #16412] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE*** + + + + +This eBook was prepared by Les Bowler. + + + + + +A STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE +BY ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. + + +PREFACE TO THIS EDITION + + +Begun in the winter of 1874, a first instalment of "A Study of +Shakespeare" appeared in the _Fortnightly Review_ for May 1875, and a +second in the number for June 1876, but the completed work was not issued +in book form until June 1880. In a letter to me (January 31, 1875), +Swinburne said: + + "I am now at work on my long-designed essay or study on the metrical + progress or development of Shakespeare, as traceable by ear and _not_ + by finger, and the general changes of tone and stages of mind + expressed or involved in this change or progress of style." + +The book was produced at the moment when controversy with regard to the +internal evidence of composition in the writings attributed to +Shakespeare was raging high, and the amusing appendices were added at the +last moment that they might infuriate the pedants of the New Shakespeare +Society. They amply fulfilled that amiable purpose. + + EDMUND GOSSE + +September 1918 + + CONTENTS + A STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE +I. FIRST PERIOD: LYRIC AND FANTASTIC +II. SECOND PERIOD: COMIC AND HISTORIC +III. THIRD PERIOD: TRAGIC AND ROMANTIC + APPENDIX +I. NOTE ON THE HISTORICAL PLAY OF KING EDWARD III. +II. REPORT OF THE PROCEEDINGS ON THIS FIRST ANNIVERSARY SESSION OF THE + NEWEST SHAKESPEARE SOCIETY +III. ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS + + + + +A STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE. + + +I. + + +The greatest poet of our age has drawn a parallel of elaborate eloquence +between Shakespeare and the sea; and the likeness holds good in many +points of less significance than those which have been set down by the +master-hand. For two hundred years at least have students of every kind +put forth in every sort of boat on a longer or a shorter voyage of +research across the waters of that unsounded sea. From the paltriest +fishing-craft to such majestic galleys as were steered by Coleridge and +by Goethe, each division of the fleet has done or has essayed its turn of +work; some busied in dredging alongshore, some taking surveys of this or +that gulf or headland, some putting forth through shine and shadow into +the darkness of the great deep. Nor does it seem as if there would +sooner be an end to men's labour on this than on the other sea. But here +a difference is perceptible. The material ocean has been so far mastered +by the wisdom and the heroism of man that we may look for a time to come +when the mystery shall be manifest of its furthest north and south, and +men resolve the secret of the uttermost parts of the sea: the poles also +may find their Columbus. But the limits of that other ocean, the laws of +its tides, the motive of its forces, the mystery of its unity and the +secret of its change, no seafarer of us all may ever think thoroughly to +know. No wind-gauge will help us to the science of its storms, no lead- +line sound for us the depth of its divine and terrible serenity. + +As, however, each generation for some two centuries now or more has +witnessed fresh attempts at pilotage and fresh expeditions of discovery +undertaken in the seas of Shakespeare, it may be well to study a little +the laws of navigation in such waters as these, and look well to compass +and rudder before we accept the guidance of a strange helmsman or make +proffer for trial of our own. There are shoals and quicksands on which +many a seafarer has run his craft aground in time past, and others of +more special peril to adventurers of the present day. The chances of +shipwreck vary in a certain degree with each new change of vessel and +each fresh muster of hands. At one time a main rock of offence on which +the stoutest ships of discovery were wont to split was the narrow and +slippery reef of verbal emendation; and upon this our native pilots were +too many of them prone to steer. Others fell becalmed offshore in a +German fog of philosophic theories, and would not be persuaded that the +house of words they had built in honour of Shakespeare was "dark as +hell," seeing "it had bay-windows transparent as barricadoes, and the +clear-stories towards the south-north were as lustrous as ebony." These +are not the most besetting dangers of more modern steersmen: what we have +to guard against now is neither a repetition of the pedantries of +Steevens nor a recrudescence of the moralities of Ulrici. Fresh follies +spring up in new paths of criticism, and fresh labourers in a fruitless +field are at hand to gather them and to garner. A discovery of some +importance has recently been proclaimed as with blare of vociferous +trumpets and flutter of triumphal flags; no less a discovery than +this--that a singer must be tested by his song. Well, it is something +that criticism should at length be awake to that wholly indisputable +fact; that learned and laborious men who can hear only with their fingers +should open their eyes to admit such a novelty, their minds to accept +such a paradox, as that a painter should be studied in his pictures and a +poet in his verse. To the common herd of students and lovers of either +art this may perhaps appear no great discovery; but that it should at +length have dawned even upon the race of commentators is a sign which in +itself might be taken as a presage of new light to come in an epoch of +miracle yet to be. Unhappily it is as yet but a partial revelation that +has been vouchsafed to them. To the recognition of the apocalyptic fact +that a workman can only be known by his work, and that without +examination of his method and material that work can hardly be studied to +much purpose, they have yet to add the knowledge of a further truth no +less recondite and abstruse than this; that as the technical work of a +painter appeals to the eye, so the technical work of a poet appeals to +the ear. It follows that men who have none are as likely to arrive at +any profitable end by the application of metrical tests to the work of +Shakespeare as a blind man by the application of his theory of colours to +the work of Titian. + +It is certainly no news to other than professional critics that no means +of study can be more precious or more necessary to a student of +Shakespeare than this of tracing the course of his work by the growth and +development, through various modes and changes, of his metre. But the +faculty of using such means of study is not to be had for the asking; it +is not to be earned by the most assiduous toil, it is not to be secured +by the learning of years, it is not to be attained by the devotion of a +life. No proficiency in grammar and arithmetic, no science of numeration +and no scheme of prosody, will be here of the least avail. Though the +pedagogue were Briareus himself who would thus bring Shakespeare under +the rule of his rod or Shelley within the limit of his line, he would +lack fingers on which to count the syllables that make up their music, +the infinite varieties of measure that complete the changes and the +chimes of perfect verse. It is but lost labour that they rise up so +early, and so late take rest; not a Scaliger or Salmasius of them all +will sooner solve the riddle of the simplest than of the subtlest melody. +Least of all will the method of a scholiast be likely to serve him as a +clue to the hidden things of Shakespeare. For all the counting up of +numbers and casting up of figures that a whole university--nay, a whole +universe of pedants could accomplish, no teacher and no learner will ever +be a whit the nearer to the haven where they would be. In spite of all +tabulated statements and regulated summaries of research, the music which +will not be dissected or defined, the "spirit of sense" which is one and +indivisible from the body or the raiment of speech that clothes it, keeps +safe the secret of its sound. Yet it is no less a task than this that +the scholiasts have girt themselves to achieve: they will pluck out the +heart not of Hamlet's but of Shakespeare's mystery by the means of a +metrical test; and this test is to be applied by a purely arithmetical +process. It is useless to pretend or to protest that they work by any +rule but the rule of thumb and finger: that they have no ear to work by, +whatever outward show they may make of unmistakable ears, the very nature +of their project gives full and damning proof. Properly understood, this +that they call the metrical test is doubtless, as they say, the surest or +the sole sure key to one side of the secret of Shakespeare; but they will +never understand it properly who propose to secure it by the ingenious +device of numbering the syllables and tabulating the results of a +computation which shall attest in exact sequence the quantity, order, and +proportion of single and double endings, of rhyme and blank verse, of +regular lines and irregular, to be traced in each play by the horny eye +and the callous finger of a pedant. "I am ill at these numbers"; those +in which I have sought to become an expert are numbers of another sort; +but having, from wellnigh the first years I can remember, made of the +study of Shakespeare the chief intellectual business and found in it the +chief spiritual delight of my whole life, I can hardly think myself less +qualified than another to offer an opinion on the metrical points at +issue. + +The progress and expansion of style and harmony in the successive works +of Shakespeare must in some indefinite degree be perceptible to the +youngest as to the oldest, to the dullest as to the keenest of +Shakespearean students. But to trace and verify the various shades and +gradations of this progress, the ebb and flow of alternate influences, +the delicate and infinite subtleties of change and growth discernible in +the spirit and the speech of the greatest among poets, is a task not less +beyond the reach of a scholiast than beyond the faculties of a child. He +who would attempt it with any chance of profit must above all things +remember at starting that the inner and the outer qualities of a poet's +work are of their very nature indivisible; that any criticism is of +necessity worthless which looks to one side only, whether it be to the +outer or to the inner quality of the work; that the fatuity of pedantic +ignorance never devised a grosser absurdity than the attempt to separate +aesthetic from scientific criticism by a strict line of demarcation, and +to bring all critical work under one or the other head of this exhaustive +division. Criticism without accurate science of the thing criticised can +indeed have no other value than may belong to the genuine record of a +spontaneous impression; but it is not less certain that criticism which +busies itself only with the outer husk or technical shell of a great +artist's work, taking no account of the spirit or the thought which +informs it, cannot have even so much value as this. Without study of his +forms of metre or his scheme of colours we shall certainly fail to +appreciate or even to apprehend the gist or the worth of a painter's or a +poet's design; but to note down the number of special words and cast up +the sum of superfluous syllables used once or twice or twenty times in +the structure of a single poem will help us exactly as much as a naked +catalogue of the colours employed in a particular picture. A tabulated +statement or summary of the precise number of blue or green, red or white +draperies to be found in a precise number of paintings by the same hand +will not of itself afford much enlightenment to any but the youngest of +possible students; nor will a mere list of double or single, masculine or +feminine terminations discoverable in a given amount of verse from the +same quarter prove of much use or benefit to an adult reader of common +intelligence. What such an one requires is the guidance which can be +given by no metremonger or colour-grinder: the suggestion which may help +him to discern at once the cause and the effect of every choice or change +of metre and of colour; which may show him at one glance the reason and +the result of every shade and of every tone which tends to compose and to +complete the gradual scale of their final harmonies. This method of +study is generally accepted as the only one applicable to the work of a +great painter by any criticism worthy of the name: it should also be +recognised as the sole method by which the work of a great poet can be +studied to any serious purpose. For the student it can be no less +useful, for the expert it should be no less easy, to trace through its +several stages of expansion and transfiguration the genius of Chaucer or +of Shakespeare, of Milton or of Shelley, than the genius of Titian or of +Raffaelle, of Turner or of Rossetti. Some great artists there are of +either kind in whom no such process of growth or transformation is +perceptible: of these are Coleridge and Blake; from the sunrise to the +sunset of their working day we can trace no demonstrable increase and no +visible diminution of the divine capacities or the inborn defects of +either man's genius; but not of such, as a rule, are the greatest among +artists of any sort. + +Another rock on which modern steersmen of a more skilful hand than these +are yet liable to run through too much confidence is the love of their +own conjectures as to the actual date or the secret history of a +particular play or passage. To err on this side requires more thought, +more learning, and more ingenuity than we need think to find in a whole +tribe of finger-counters and figure-casters; but the outcome of these +good gifts, if strained or perverted to capricious use, may prove no less +barren of profit than the labours of a pedant on the letter of the text. +It is a tempting exercise of intelligence for a dexterous and keen-witted +scholar to apply his solid learning and his vivid fancy to the detection +or the interpretation of some new or obscure point in a great man's life +or work; but none the less is it a perilous pastime to give the reins to +a learned fancy, and let loose conjecture on the trail of any dubious +crotchet or the scent of any supposed allusion that may spring up in the +way of its confident and eager quest. To start a new solution of some +crucial problem, to track some new undercurrent of concealed significance +in a passage hitherto neglected or misconstrued, is to a critic of this +higher class a delight as keen as that of scientific discovery to +students of another sort: the pity is that he can bring no such certain +or immediate test to verify the value of his discovery as lies ready to +the hand of the man of science. Whether he have lit upon a windfall or a +mare's nest can be decided by no direct proof, but only by time and the +general acceptance of competent judges; and this cannot often be +reasonably expected for theories which can appeal for support or +confirmation to no positive evidence, but at best to a cloudy and +shifting probability. What personal or political allusions may lurk +under the text of Shakespeare we can never know, and should consequently +forbear to hang upon a hypothesis of this floating and nebulous kind any +serious opinion which might gravely affect our estimate of his work or +his position in regard to other men, with whom some public or private +interest may possibly have brought him into contact or collision. + +* * * * * + +The aim of the present study is simply to set down what the writer +believes to be certain demonstrable truths as to the progress and +development of style, the outer and the inner changes of manner as of +matter, of method as of design, which may be discerned in the work of +Shakespeare. The principle here adopted and the views here put forward +have not been suddenly discovered or lightly taken up out of any desire +to make a show of theoretical ingenuity. For years past I have held and +maintained, in private discussion with friends and fellow-students, the +opinions which I now submit to more public judgment. How far they may +coincide with those advanced by others I cannot say, and have not been +careful to inquire. The mere fact of coincidence or of dissent on such a +question is of less importance than the principle accepted by either +student as the groundwork of his theory, the mainstay of his opinion. It +is no part of my project or my hope to establish the actual date of any +among the various plays, or to determine point by point the lineal order +of their succession. I have examined no table or catalogue of recent or +of earlier date, from the time of Malone onwards, with a view to confute +by my reasoning the conclusions of another, or by the assistance of his +theories to corroborate my own. It is impossible to fix or decide by +inner or outer evidence the precise order of production, much less of +composition, which critics of the present or the past may have set their +wits to verify in vain; but it is quite possible to show that the work of +Shakespeare is naturally divisible into classes which may serve us to +distinguish and determine as by landmarks the several stages or periods +of his mind and art. + +Of these the three chief periods or stages are so unmistakably indicated +by the mere text itself, and so easily recognisable by the veriest tiro +in the school of Shakespeare, that even were I as certain of being the +first to point them out as I am conscious of having long since discovered +and verified them without assistance or suggestion from any but +Shakespeare himself, I should be disposed to claim but little credit for +a discovery which must in all likelihood have been forestalled by the +common insight of some hundred or more students in time past. The +difficulty begins with the really debatable question of subdivisions. +There are certain plays which may be said to hang on the borderland +between one period and the next, with one foot lingering and one +advanced; and these must be classed according to the dominant note of +their style, the greater or lesser proportion of qualities proper to the +earlier or the later stage of thought and writing. At one time I was +inclined to think the whole catalogue more accurately divisible into four +classes; but the line of demarcation between the third and fourth would +have been so much fainter than those which mark off the first period from +the second, and the second from the third, that it seemed on the whole a +more correct and adequate arrangement to assume that the last period +might be subdivided if necessary into a first and second stage. This +somewhat precise and pedantic scheme of study I have adopted from no love +of rigid or formal system, but simply to make the method of my critical +process as clear as the design. That design is to examine by internal +evidence alone the growth and the expression of spirit and of speech, the +ebb and flow of thought and style, discernible in the successive periods +of Shakespeare's work; to study the phases of mind, the changes of tone, +the passage or progress from an old manner to a new, the reversion or +relapse from a later to an earlier habit, which may assuredly be traced +in the modulations of his varying verse, but can only be traced by ear +and not by finger. I have busied myself with no baseless speculations as +to the possible or probable date of the first appearance of this play or +of that on the stage; and it is not unlikely that the order of succession +here adopted or suggested may not always coincide with the chronological +order of production; nor will the principle or theory by which I have +undertaken to class the successive plays of each period be affected or +impaired though it should chance that a play ranked by me as belonging to +a later stage of work should actually have been produced earlier than +others which in my lists are assigned to a subsequent date. It is not, +so to speak, the literal but the spiritual order which I have studied to +observe and to indicate: the periods which I seek to define belong not to +chronology but to art. No student need be reminded how common a thing it +is to recognise in the later work of a great artist some partial +reappearance of his early tone or manner, some passing return to his +early lines of work and to habits of style since modified or abandoned. +Such work, in part at least, may properly be said to belong rather to the +earlier stage whose manner it resumes than to the later stage at which it +was actually produced, and in which it stands out as a marked exception +among the works of the same period. A famous and a most singularly +beautiful example of this reflorescence as in a Saint Martin's summer of +undecaying genius is the exquisite and crowning love-scene in the opera +or "ballet-tragedy" of _Psyche_, written in his sixty-fifth year by the +august Roman hand of Pierre Corneille; a lyric symphony of spirit and of +song fulfilled with all the colour and all the music that autumn could +steal from spring if October had leave to go a Maying in some Olympian +masquerade of melody and sunlight. And it is not easier, easy as it is, +to discern and to define the three main stages of Shakespeare's work and +progress, than to classify under their several heads the representative +plays belonging to each period by the law of their nature, if not by the +accident of their date. There are certain dominant qualities which do on +the whole distinguish not only the later from the earlier plays, but the +second period from the first, the third period from the second; and it is +with these qualities alone that the higher criticism, be it aesthetic or +scientific, has properly anything to do. + +A new method of solution has been applied to various difficulties which +have been discovered or invented in the text by the care or the +perversity of recent commentators, whose principle of explanation is +easier to abuse than to use with any likelihood of profit. It is at +least simple enough for the simplest of critics to apply or misapply: +whenever they see or suspect an inequality or an incongruity which may be +wholly imperceptible to eyes uninured to the use of their spectacles, +they assume at once the presence of another workman, the intrusion of a +stranger's hand. This supposition of a double authorship is naturally as +impossible to refute as to establish by other than internal evidence and +appeal to the private judgment or perception of the reader. But it is no +better than the last resource of an empiric, the last refuge of a +sciolist; a refuge which the soundest of scholars will be slowest to +seek, a resource which the most competent of critics will be least ready +to adopt. Once admitted as a principle of general application, there are +no lengths to which it may not carry, there are none to which it has not +carried, the audacious fatuity and the arrogant incompetence of tamperers +with the authentic text. Recent editors who have taken on themselves the +high office of guiding English youth in its first study of Shakespeare +have proposed to excise or to obelise whole passages which the delight +and wonder of youth and age alike, of the rawest as of the ripest among +students, have agreed to consecrate as examples of his genius at its +highest. In the last trumpet-notes of Macbeth's defiance and despair, in +the last rallying cry of the hero reawakened in the tyrant at his utmost +hour of need, there have been men and scholars, Englishmen and editors, +who have detected the alien voice of a pretender, the false ring of a +foreign blast that was not blown by Shakespeare; words that for centuries +past have touched with fire the hearts of thousands in each age since +they were first inspired--words with the whole sound in them of battle or +a breaking sea, with the whole soul of pity and terror mingled and melted +into each other in the fierce last speech of a spirit grown "aweary of +the sun," have been calmly transferred from the account of Shakespeare to +the score of Middleton. And this, forsooth, the student of the future is +to accept on the authority of men who bring to the support of their +decision the unanswerable plea of years spent in the collation and +examination of texts never hitherto explored and compared with such +energy of learned labour. If this be the issue of learning and of +industry, the most indolent and ignorant of readers who retains his +natural capacity to be moved and mastered by the natural delight of +contact with heavenly things is better off by far than the most studious +and strenuous of all scholiasts who ever claimed acquiescence or +challenged dissent on the strength of his lifelong labours and +hard-earned knowledge of the letter of the text. Such an one is indeed +"in a parlous state"; and any boy whose heart first begins to burn within +him, who feels his blood kindle and his spirit dilate, his pulse leap and +his eyes lighten, over a first study of Shakespeare, may say to such a +teacher with better reason than Touchstone said to Corin, "Truly, thou +art damned; like an ill-roasted egg, all on one side." Nor could charity +itself hope much profit for him from the moving appeal and the pious +prayer which temper that severity of sentence--"Wilt thou rest damned? +God help thee, shallow man! God make incision in thee! Thou art raw." +And raw he is like to remain for all his learning, and for all incisions +that can be made in the horny hide of a self-conceit to be pierced by the +puncture of no man's pen. It was bad enough while theorists of this +breed confined themselves to the suggestion of a possible partnership +with Fletcher, a possible interpolation by Jonson; but in the descent +from these to the alleged adulteration of the text by Middleton and +Rowley we have surely sounded the very lowest depth of folly attainable +by the utmost alacrity in sinking which may yet be possible to the +bastard brood of Scriblerus. For my part, I shall not be surprised +though the next discoverer should assure us that half at least of +_Hamlet_ is evidently due to the collaboration of Heywood, while the +greater part of _Othello_ is as clearly assignable to the hand of +Shirley. + +Akin to this form of folly, but less pernicious though not more +profitable, is the fancy of inventing some share for Shakespeare in the +composition of plays which the veriest insanity of conjecture or caprice +could not venture to lay wholly to his charge. This fancy, comparatively +harmless as it is, requires no ground of proof to go upon, no prop of +likelihood to support it; without so much help as may be borrowed from +the faintest and most fitful of traditions, it spins its own evidence +spider-like out of its own inner conscience or conceit, and proffers it +with confident complacency for men's acceptance. Here again I cannot but +see a mere waste of fruitless learning and bootless ingenuity. That +Shakespeare began by retouching and recasting the work of elder and +lesser men we all know; that he may afterwards have set his hand to the +task of adding or altering a line or a passage here and there in some few +of the plays brought out under his direction as manager or proprietor of +a theatre is of course possible, but can neither be affirmed nor denied +with any profit in default of the least fragment of historic or +traditional evidence. Any attempt to verify the imaginary touch of his +hand in plays of whose history we know no more than that they were acted +on the boards of his theatre can be but a diversion for the restless +leisure of ingenious and ambitious scholars; it will give no clue by +which the student who simply seeks to know what can be known with +certainty of the poet and his work may hope to be guided towards any safe +issue or trustworthy result. Less pardonable and more presumptuous than +this is the pretension of minor critics to dissect an authentic play of +Shakespeare scene by scene, and assign different parts of the same poem +to different dates by the same pedagogic rules of numeration and +mensuration which they would apply to the general question of the order +and succession of his collective works. This vivisection of a single +poem is not defensible as a freak of scholarship, an excursion beyond the +bounds of bare proof, from which the wanderer may chance to bring back, +if not such treasure as he went out to seek, yet some stray godsend or +rare literary windfall which may serve to excuse his indulgence in the +seemingly profitless pastime of a truant disposition. It is a pure +impertinence to affirm with oracular assurance what might perhaps be +admissible as a suggestion offered with the due diffidence of modest and +genuine scholarship; to assert on the strength of a private pedant's +personal intuition that such must be the history or such the composition +of a great work whose history he alone could tell, whose composition he +alone could explain, who gave it to us as his genius had given it to him. + +From these several rocks and quicksands I trust at least to keep my +humbler course at a safe distance, and steer clear of all sandy shallows +of theory or sunken shoals of hypothesis on which no pilot can be certain +of safe anchorage; avoiding all assumption, though never so plausible, +for which no ground but that of fancy can be shown, all suggestion though +never so ingenious for which no proof but that of conjecture can be +advanced. For instance, I shall neither assume nor accept the theory of +a double authorship or of a double date by which the supposed +inequalities may be accounted for, the supposed difficulties may be swept +away, which for certain readers disturb the study of certain plays of +Shakespeare. Only where universal tradition and the general concurrence +of all reasonable critics past and present combine to indicate an +unmistakable difference of touch or an unmistakable diversity of date +between this and that portion of the same play, or where the internal +evidence of interpolation perceptible to the most careless and undeniable +by the most perverse of readers is supported by the public judgment of +men qualified to express and competent to defend an opinion, have I +thought it allowable to adopt this facile method of explanation. No +scholar, for example, believes in the single authorship of _Pericles_ or +_Andronicus_; none, I suppose, would now question the part taken by some +hireling or journeyman in the arrangement or completion for the stage of +_Timon of Athens_; and few probably would refuse to admit a doubt of the +total authenticity or uniform workmanship of the _Taming of the Shrew_. +As few, I hope, are prepared to follow the fantastic and confident +suggestions of every unquiet and arrogant innovator who may seek to +append his name to the long scroll of Shakespearean parasites by the +display of a brand-new hypothesis as to the uncertain date or authorship +of some passage or some play which has never before been subjected to the +scientific scrutiny of such a pertinacious analyst. The more modest +design of the present study has in part been already indicated, and will +explain as it proceeds if there be anything in it worth explanation. It +is no part of my ambition to loose the Gordian knots which others who +found them indissoluble have sought in vain to cut in sunder with blunter +swords than the Macedonian; but after so many adventures and attempts +there may perhaps yet be room for an attempt yet unessayed; for a study +by the ear alone of Shakespeare's metrical progress, and a study by light +of the knowledge thus obtained of the corresponsive progress within, +which found expression and embodiment in these outward and visible +changes. The one study will be then seen to be the natural complement +and the inevitable consequence of the other; and the patient pursuit of +the simpler and more apprehensible object of research will appear as the +only sure method by which a reasonable and faithful student may think to +attain so much as the porch or entrance to that higher knowledge which no +faithful and reasonable study of Shakespeare can ever for a moment fail +to keep in sight as the haven of its final hope, the goal of its ultimate +labour. + +When Christopher Marlowe came up to London from Cambridge, a boy in +years, a man in genius, and a god in ambition, he found the stage which +he was born to transfigure and re-create by the might and masterdom of +his genius encumbered with a litter of rude rhyming farces and tragedies +which the first wave of his imperial hand swept so utterly out of sight +and hearing that hardly by piecing together such fragments of that buried +rubbish as it is now possible to unearth can we rebuild in imagination so +much of the rough and crumbling walls that fell before the trumpet-blast +of _Tamburlaine_ as may give us some conception of the rabble dynasty of +rhymers whom he overthrew--of the citadel of dramatic barbarism which was +stormed and sacked at the first charge of the young conqueror who came to +lead English audiences and to deliver English poetry + + From jigging veins of rhyming mother-wits, + And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay. + +When we speak of the drama that existed before the coming of Marlowe, and +that vanished at his advent, we think usually of the rhyming plays +written wholly or mainly in ballad verse of fourteen syllables--of the +_Kings Darius_ and _Cambyses_, the _Promos and Cassandra_ of Whetstone, +or the _Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes_ of George Peele. If we turn from +these abortions of tragedy to the metrical farces which may fairly be +said to contain the germ or embryo of English comedy (a form of dramatic +art which certainly owes nothing to the father of our tragic stage), we +find far more of hope and promise in the broad free stretches of the +flagellant head-master of Eton and the bibulous Bishop of Bath and Wells; +and must admit that hands used to wield the crosier or the birch proved +themselves more skilful at the lighter labours of the stage, more +successful even in the secular and bloodless business of a field neither +clerical nor scholastic, than any tragic rival of the opposite party to +that so jovially headed by Orbilius Udall and Silenus Still. These twin +pillars of church and school and stage were strong enough to support on +the shoulders of their authority the first crude fabric or formless model +of our comic theatre, while the tragic boards were still creaking and +cracking under the jingling canter of _Cambyses_ or the tuneless tramp of +_Gorboduc_. This one play which the charity of Sidney excepts from his +general anathema on the nascent stage of England has hitherto been +erroneously described as written in blank verse; an error which I can +only attribute to the prevalence of a groundless assumption that whatever +is neither prose nor rhyme must of necessity be definable as blank verse. +But the measure, I must repeat, which was adopted by the authors of +_Gorboduc_ is by no means so definable. Blank it certainly is; but verse +it assuredly is not. There can be no verse where there is no modulation, +no rhythm where there is no music. Blank verse came into life in England +at the birth of the shoemaker's son who had but to open his yet beardless +lips, and the high-born poem which had Sackville to father and Sidney to +sponsor was silenced and eclipsed for ever among the poor plebeian crowd +of rhyming shadows that waited in death on the noble nothingness of its +patrician shade. + +These, I suppose, are the first or the only plays whose names recur to +the memory of the general reader when he thinks of the English stage +before Marlowe; but there was, I suspect, a whole class of plays then +current, and more or less supported by popular favour, of which hardly a +sample is now extant, and which cannot be classed with such as these. The +poets or rhymesters who supplied them had already seen good to clip the +cumbrous and bedraggled skirts of those dreary verses, run all to seed +and weed, which jingled their thin bells at the tedious end of fourteen +weary syllables; and for this curtailment of the shambling and sprawling +lines which had hitherto done duty as tragic metre some credit may be due +to these obscure purveyors of forgotten ware for the second epoch of our +stage: if indeed, as I presume, we may suppose that this reform, such as +it was, had begun before the time of Marlowe; otherwise, no doubt, little +credit would be due to men who with so high an example before them were +content simply to snip away the tags and fringes, to patch the seams and +tatters, of the ragged coat of rhyme which they might have exchanged for +that royal robe of heroic verse wherewith he had clothed the ungrown +limbs of limping and lisping tragedy. But if these also may be reckoned +among his precursors, the dismissal from stage service of the dolorous +and drudging metre employed by the earliest school of theatrical +rhymesters must be taken to mark a real step in advance; and in that case +we possess at least a single example of the rhyming tragedies which had +their hour between the last plays written wholly or partially in ballad +metre and the first plays written in blank verse. The tragedy of +_Selimus, Emperor of the Turks_, published in 1594, {30} may then serve +to indicate this brief and obscure period of transition. Whole scenes of +this singular play are written in rhyming iambics, some in the measure of +_Don Juan_, some in the measure of _Venus and Adonis_. The couplets and +quatrains so much affected and so reluctantly abandoned by Shakespeare +after the first stage of his dramatic progress are in no other play that +I know of diversified by this alternate variation of _sesta_ with _ottava +rima_. This may have been an exceptional experiment due merely to the +caprice of one eccentric rhymester; but in any case we may assume it to +mark the extreme limit, the ultimate development of rhyming tragedy after +the ballad metre had been happily exploded. The play is on other grounds +worth attention as a sign of the times, though on poetical grounds it is +assuredly worth none. Part of it is written in blank verse, or at least +in rhymeless lines; so that after all it probably followed in the wake of +_Tamburlaine_, half adopting and half rejecting the innovations of that +fiery reformer, who wrought on the old English stage no less a miracle +than _Hernani_ on the French stage in the days of our fathers. That +_Selimus_ was published four years later than _Tamburlaine_, in the year +following the death of Marlowe, proves of course nothing as to the date +of its production; and even if it was written and acted in the year of +its publication, it undoubtedly in the main represents the work of a +prior era to the reformation of the stage by Marlowe. The level +regularity of its unrhymed scenes is just like that of the weaker +portions of _Titus Andronicus_ and the _First Part of King Henry the +Sixth_--the opening scene, for example, of either play. With +_Andronicus_ it has also in common the quality of exceptional +monstrosity, a delight in the parade of mutilation as well as of +massacre. It seems to me possible that the same hand may have been at +work on all three plays; for that Marlowe's is traceable in those parts +of the two retouched by Shakespeare which bear no traces of his touch is +a theory to the full as absurd as that which would impute to Shakespeare +the charge of their entire composition. + +The revolution effected by Marlowe naturally raised the same cry against +its author as the revolution effected by Hugo. That Shakespeare should +not at once have enlisted under his banner is less inexplicable than it +may seem. He was naturally addicted to rhyme, though if we put aside the +Sonnets we must admit that in rhyme he never did anything worth Marlowe's +_Hero and Leander_: he did not, like Marlowe, see at once that it must be +reserved for less active forms of poetry than the tragic drama; and he +was personally, it seems, in opposition to Marlowe and his school of +academic playwrights--the band of bards in which Oxford and Cambridge +were respectively and so respectably represented by Peele and Greene. But +in his very first plays, comic or tragic or historic, we can see the +collision and conflict of the two influences; his evil angel, rhyme, +yielding step by step and note by note to the strong advance of that +better genius who came to lead him into the loftier path of Marlowe. +There is not a single passage in _Titus Andronicus_ more Shakespearean +than the magnificent quatrain of Tamora upon the eagle and the little +birds; but the rest of the scene in which we come upon it, and the whole +scene preceding, are in blank verse of more variety and vigour than we +find in the baser parts of the play; and these if any scenes we may +surely attribute to Shakespeare. Again, the last battle of Talbot seems +to me as undeniably the master's work as the scene in the Temple Gardens +or the courtship of Margaret by Suffolk; this latter indeed, full as it +is of natural and vivid grace, may perhaps not be beyond the highest +reach of one or two among the rivals of his earliest years of work; while +as we are certain that he cannot have written the opening scene, that he +was at any stage of his career incapable of it, so may we believe as well +as hope that he is guiltless of any complicity in that detestable part of +the play which attempts to defile the memory of the virgin saviour of her +country. {33} In style it is not, I think, above the range of George +Peele at his best: and to have written even the last of those scenes can +add but little discredit to the memory of a man already disgraced as the +defamer of Eleanor of Castile; while it would be a relief to feel assured +that there was but one English poet of any genius who could be capable of +either villainy. + +In this play, then, more decisively than in _Titus Andronicus_, we find +Shakespeare at work (so to speak) with both hands--with his left hand of +rhyme, and his right hand of blank verse. The left is loth to forego the +practice of its peculiar music; yet, as the action of the right grows +freer and its touch grows stronger, it becomes more and more certain that +the other must cease playing, under pain of producing mere discord and +disturbance in the scheme of tragic harmony. We imagine that the writer +must himself have felt the scene of the roses to be pitched in a truer +key than the noble scene of parting between the old hero and his son on +the verge of desperate battle and certain death. This is the last and +loftiest farewell note of rhyming tragedy; still, in _King Richard II_, +and in _Romeo and Juliet_, it struggles for awhile to keep its footing, +but now more visibly in vain. The rhymed scenes in these plays are too +plainly the survivals of a ruder and feebler stage of work; they cannot +hold their own in the new order with even such discordant effect of +incongruous excellence and inharmonious beauty as belongs to the death- +scene of the Talbots when matched against the quarrelling scene of +Somerset and York. Yet the briefest glance over the plays of the first +epoch in the work of Shakespeare will suffice to show how protracted was +the struggle and how gradual the defeat of rhyme. Setting aside the +retouched plays, we find on the list one tragedy, two histories, and four +if not five comedies, which the least critical reader would attribute to +this first epoch of work. In three of these comedies rhyme can hardly be +said to be beaten; that is, the rhyming scenes are on the whole equal to +the unrhymed in power and beauty. In the single tragedy, and in one of +the two histories, we may say that rhyme fights hard for life, but is +undeniably worsted; that is, they contain as to quantity a large +proportion of rhymed verse, but as to quality the rhymed part bears no +proportion whatever to the unrhymed. In two scenes we may say that the +whole heart or spirit of _Romeo and Juliet_ is summed up and distilled +into perfect and pure expression; and these two are written in blank +verse of equable and blameless melody. Outside the garden scene in the +second act and the balcony scene in the third, there is much that is +fanciful and graceful, much of elegiac pathos and fervid if fantastic +passion; much also of superfluous rhetoric and (as it were) of wordy +melody, which flows and foams hither and thither into something of +extravagance and excess; but in these two there is no flaw, no outbreak, +no superflux, and no failure. Throughout certain scenes of the third and +fourth acts I think it may be reasonably and reverently allowed that the +river of verse has broken its banks, not as yet through the force and +weight of its gathering stream, but merely through the weakness of the +barriers or boundaries found insufficient to confine it. And here we may +with deference venture on a guess why Shakespeare was so long so loth to +forego the restraint of rhyme. When he wrote, and even when he rewrote +or at least retouched, his youngest tragedy he had not yet strength to +walk straight in the steps of the mighty master, but two months older +than himself by birth, whose foot never from the first faltered in the +arduous path of severer tragic verse. The loveliest of love-plays is +after all a child of "his salad days, when he was green in judgment," +though assuredly not "cold in blood"--a physical condition as difficult +to conceive of Shakespeare at any age as of Cleopatra. It is in the +scenes of vehement passion, of ardour and of agony, that we feel the +comparative weakness of a yet ungrown hand, the tentative uncertain grasp +of a stripling giant. The two utterly beautiful scenes are not of this +kind; they deal with simple joy and with simple sorrow, with the gladness +of meeting and the sadness of parting love; but between and behind them +come scenes of more fierce emotion, full of surprise, of violence, of +unrest; and with these the poet is not yet (if I dare say so) quite +strong enough to deal. Apollo has not yet put on the sinews of Hercules. +At a later date we may fancy or may find that when the Herculean muscle +is full-grown the voice in him which was as the voice of Apollo is for a +passing moment impaired. In _Measure for Measure_, where the adult and +gigantic god has grappled with the greatest and most terrible of energies +and of passions, we miss the music of a younger note that rang through +_Romeo and Juliet_; but before the end this too revives, as pure, as +sweet, as fresh, but richer now and deeper than its first clear notes of +the morning, in the heavenly harmony of _Cymbeline_ and _The Tempest_. + +The same effusion or effervescence of words is perceptible in _King +Richard II_. as in the greater (and the less good) part of _Romeo and +Juliet_; and not less perceptible is the perpetual inclination of the +poet to revert for help to rhyme, to hark back in search of support +towards the half-forsaken habits of his poetic nonage. Feeling his +foothold insecure on the hard and high ascent of the steeps of rhymeless +verse, he stops and slips back ever and anon towards the smooth and +marshy meadow whence he has hardly begun to climb. Any student who +should wish to examine the conditions of the struggle at its height may +be content to analyse the first act of this the first historical play of +Shakespeare. As the tragedy moves onward, and the style gathers strength +while the action gathers speed,--as (to borrow the phrase so admirably +applied by Coleridge to Dryden) the poet's chariot-wheels get hot by +driving fast,--the temptation of rhyme grows weaker, and the hand grows +firmer which before lacked strength to wave it off. The one thing wholly +or greatly admirable in this play is the exposition of the somewhat +pitiful but not unpitiable character of King Richard. Among the scenes +devoted to this exposition I of course include the whole of the death- +scene of Gaunt, as well the part which precedes as the part which follows +the actual appearance of his nephew on the stage; and into these scenes +the intrusion of rhyme is rare and brief. They are written almost wholly +in pure and fluent rather than vigorous or various blank verse; though I +cannot discern in any of them an equality in power and passion to the +magnificent scene of abdication in Marlowe's _Edward II_. This play, I +think, must undoubtedly be regarded as the immediate model of +Shakespeare's; and the comparison is one of inexhaustible interest to all +students of dramatic poetry. To the highest height of the earlier master +I do not think that the mightier poet who was as yet in great measure his +pupil has ever risen in this the first (as I take it) of his historic +plays. Of composition and proportion he has perhaps already a somewhat +better idea. But in grasp of character, always excepting the one central +figure of the piece, we find his hand as yet the unsteadier of the two. +Even after a lifelong study of this as of all other plays of Shakespeare, +it is for me at least impossible to determine what I doubt if the poet +could himself have clearly defined--the main principle, the motive and +the meaning of such characters as York, Norfolk, and Aumerle. The +Gaveston and the Mortimer of Marlowe are far more solid and definite +figures than these; yet none after that of Richard is more important to +the scheme of Shakespeare. They are fitful, shifting, vaporous: their +outlines change, withdraw, dissolve, and "leave not a rack behind." They, +not Antony, are like the clouds of evening described in the most glorious +of so many glorious passages put long afterwards by Shakespeare into the +mouth of his latest Roman hero. They "cannot hold this visible shape" in +which the poet at first presents them even long enough to leave a +distinct image, a decisive impression for better or for worse, upon the +mind's eye of the most simple and open-hearted reader. They are ghosts, +not men; _simulacra modis pallentia miris_. You cannot descry so much as +the original intention of the artist's hand which began to draw and +relaxed its hold of the brush before the first lines were fairly traced. +And in the last, the worst and weakest scene of all, in which York pleads +with Bolingbroke for the death of the son whose mother pleads against her +husband for his life, there is a final relapse into rhyme and rhyming +epigram, into the "jigging vein" dried up (we might have hoped) long +since by the very glance of Marlowe's Apollonian scorn. It would be +easy, agreeable, and irrational to ascribe without further evidence than +its badness this misconceived and misshapen scene to some other hand than +Shakespeare's. It is below the weakest, the rudest, the hastiest scene +attributable to Marlowe; it is false, wrong, artificial beyond the worst +of his bad and boyish work; but it has a certain likeness for the worse +to the crudest work of Shakespeare. It is difficult to say to what +depths of bad taste the writer of certain passages in _Venus and Adonis_ +could not fall before his genius or his judgment was full-grown. To +invent an earlier play on the subject and imagine this scene a surviving +fragment, a floating waif of that imaginary wreck, would in my opinion be +an uncritical mode of evading the question at issue. It must be regarded +as the last hysterical struggle of rhyme to maintain its place in +tragedy; and the explanation, I would fain say the excuse, of its +reappearance may perhaps be simply this; that the poet was not yet +dramatist enough to feel for each of his characters an equal or +proportionate regard; to divide and disperse his interest among the +various crowd of figures which claim each in its place, and each after +its kind, fair and adequate share of their creator's attention and +sympathy. His present interest was here wholly concentrated on the +single figure of Richard; and when that for the time was absent, the +subordinate figures became to him but heavy and vexatious encumbrances, +to be shifted on and off the stage with as much of haste and as little of +labour as might be possible to an impatient and uncertain hand. Now all +tragic poets, I presume, from AEschylus the godlike father of them all to +the last aspirant who may struggle after the traces of his steps, have +been poets before they were tragedians; their lips have had power to sing +before their feet had strength to tread the stage, before their hands had +skill to paint or carve figures from the life. With Shakespeare it was +so as certainly as with Shelley, as evidently as with Hugo. It is in the +great comic poets, in Moliere and in Congreve, {42} our own lesser +Moliere, so far inferior in breadth and depth, in tenderness and +strength, to the greatest writer of the "great age," yet so near him in +science and in skill, so like him in brilliance and in force;--it is in +these that we find theatrical instinct twin-born with imaginative +impulse, dramatic power with inventive perception. + +In the second historic play which can be wholly ascribed to Shakespeare +we still find the poetic or rhetorical duality for the most part in +excess of the dramatic; but in _King Richard III_. the bonds of rhyme at +least are fairly broken. This only of all Shakespeare's plays belongs +absolutely to the school of Marlowe. The influence of the elder master, +and that influence alone, is perceptible from end to end. Here at last +we can see that Shakespeare has decidedly chosen his side. It is as +fiery in passion, as single in purpose, as rhetorical often though never +so inflated in expression, as _Tamburlaine_ itself. It is doubtless a +better piece of work than Marlowe ever did; I dare not say, than Marlowe +ever could have done. It is not for any man to measure, above all is it +not for any workman in the field of tragic poetry lightly to take on +himself the responsibility or the authority to pronounce, what it is that +Christopher Marlowe could not have done; but, dying as he did and when he +did, it is certain that he has not left us a work so generally and so +variously admirable as _King Richard III_. As certain is it that but for +him this play could never have been written. At a later date the subject +would have been handled otherwise, had the poet chosen to handle it at +all; and in his youth he could not have treated it as he has without the +guidance and example of Marlowe. Not only are its highest qualities of +energy, of exuberance, of pure and lofty style, of sonorous and +successive harmonies, the very qualities that never fail to distinguish +those first dramatic models which were fashioned by his ardent hand; the +strenuous and single-handed grasp of character, the motion and action of +combining and contending powers, which here for the first time we find +sustained with equal and unfaltering vigour throughout the length of a +whole play, we perceive, though imperfectly, in the work of Marlowe +before we can trace them even as latent or infant forces in the work of +Shakespeare. + +In the exquisite and delightful comedies of his earliest period we can +hardly discern any sign, any promise of them at all. One only of these, +the _Comedy of Errors_, has in it anything of dramatic composition and +movement; and what it has of these, I need hardly remind the most cursory +of students, is due by no means to Shakespeare. What is due to him, and +to him alone, is the honour of having embroidered on the naked old canvas +of comic action those flowers of elegiac beauty which vivify and +diversify the scene of Plautus as reproduced by the art of Shakespeare. +In the next generation so noble a poet as Rotrou, whom perhaps it might +not be inaccurate to call the French Marlowe, and who had (what Marlowe +had not) the gift of comic as well as of tragic excellence, found nothing +of this kind and little of any kind to add to the old poet's admirable +but arid sketch of farcical incident or accident. But in this light and +lovely work of the youth of Shakespeare we find for the first time that +strange and sweet admixture of farce with fancy, of lyric charm with +comic effect, which recurs so often in his later work, from the date of +_As You Like It_ to the date of the _Winter's Tale_, and which no later +poet had ventured to recombine in the same play till our own time had +given us, in the author of _Tragaldabas_, one who could alternate without +confusing the woodland courtship of Eliseo and Caprina with the tavern +braggardism of Grif and Minotoro. The sweetness and simplicity of lyric +or elegiac loveliness which fill and inform the scenes where Adriana, her +sister, and the Syracusan Antipholus exchange the expression of their +errors and their loves, belong to Shakespeare alone; and may help us to +understand how the young poet who at the outset of his divine career had +struck into this fresh untrodden path of poetic comedy should have been, +as we have seen that he was, loth to learn from another and an alien +teacher the hard and necessary lesson that this flowery path would never +lead him towards the loftier land of tragic poetry. For as yet, even in +the nominally or intentionally tragic and historic work of the first +period, we descry always and everywhere and still preponderant the lyric +element, the fantastic element, or even the elegiac element. All these +queens and heroines of history and tragedy have rather an Ovidian than a +Sophoclean grace of bearing and of speech. + +The example afforded by the _Comedy of Errors_ would suffice to show that +rhyme, however inadequate for tragic use, is by no means a bad instrument +for romantic comedy. In another of Shakespeare's earliest works, which +might almost be described as a lyrical farce, rhyme plays also a great +part; but the finest passage, the real crown and flower of _Love's +Labour's Lost_, is the praise or apology of love spoken by Biron in blank +verse. This is worthy of Marlowe for dignity and sweetness, but has also +the grace of a light and radiant fancy enamoured of itself, begotten +between thought and mirth, a child-god with grave lips and laughing eyes, +whose inspiration is nothing akin to Marlowe's. In this as in the +overture of the play and in its closing scene, but especially in the +noble passage which winds up for a year the courtship of Biron and +Rosaline, the spirit which informs the speech of the poet is finer of +touch and deeper of tone than in the sweetest of the serious interludes +of the _Comedy of Errors_. The play is in the main a yet lighter thing, +and more wayward and capricious in build, more formless and fantastic in +plot, more incomposite altogether than that first heir of Shakespeare's +comic invention, which on its own ground is perfect in its consistency, +blameless in composition and coherence; while in _Love's Labour's Lost_ +the fancy for the most part runs wild as the wind, and the structure of +the story is as that of a house of clouds which the wind builds and +unbuilds at pleasure. Here we find a very riot of rhymes, wild and +wanton in their half-grown grace as a troop of "young satyrs, +tender-hoofed and ruddy-horned"; during certain scenes we seem almost to +stand again by the cradle of new-born comedy, and hear the first lisping +and laughing accents run over from her baby lips in bubbling rhyme; but +when the note changes we recognise the speech of gods. For the first +time in our literature the higher key of poetic or romantic comedy is +finely touched to a fine issue. The divine instrument fashioned by +Marlowe for tragic purposes alone has found at once its new sweet use in +the hands of Shakespeare. The way is prepared for _As You Like It_ and +the _Tempest_; the language is discovered which will befit the lips of +Rosalind and Miranda. + +What was highest as poetry in the _Comedy of Errors_ was mainly in rhyme; +all indeed, we might say, between the prelude spoken by AEgeon and the +appearance in the last scene of his wife: in _Love's Labour's Lost_ what +was highest was couched wholly in blank verse; in the _Two Gentlemen of +Verona_ rhyme has fallen seemingly into abeyance, and there are no +passages of such elegiac beauty as in the former, of such exalted +eloquence as in the latter of these plays; there is an even sweetness, a +simple equality of grace in thought and language which keeps the whole +poem in tune, written as it is in a subdued key of unambitious harmony. +In perfect unity and keeping the composition of this beautiful sketch may +perhaps be said to mark a stage of advance, a new point of work attained, +a faint but sensible change of manner, signalised by increased firmness +of hand and clearness of outline. Slight and swift in execution as it +is, few and simple as are the chords here struck of character and +emotion, every shade of drawing and every note of sound is at one with +the whole scheme of form and music. Here too is the first dawn of that +higher and more tender humour which was never given in such perfection to +any man as ultimately to Shakespeare; one touch of the by-play of Launce +and his immortal dog is worth all the bright fantastic interludes of +Boyet and Adriano, Costard and Holofernes; worth even half the sallies of +Mercutio, and half the dancing doggrel or broad-witted prose of either +Dromio. But in the final poem which concludes and crowns the first epoch +of Shakespeare's work, the special graces and peculiar glories of each +that went before are gathered together as in one garland "of every hue +and every scent." The young genius of the master of all our poets finds +its consummation in the _Midsummer Night's Dream_. The blank verse is as +full, sweet, and strong as the best of Biron's or Romeo's; the rhymed +verse as clear, pure, and true as the simplest and truest melody of +_Venus and Adonis_ or the _Comedy of Errors_. But here each kind of +excellence is equal throughout; there are here no purple patches on a +gown of serge, but one seamless and imperial robe of a single dye. Of +the lyric or the prosaic part, the counterchange of loves and laughters, +of fancy fine as air and imagination high as heaven, what need can there +be for any one to shame himself by the helpless attempt to say some word +not utterly unworthy? Let it suffice us to accept this poem as the +landmark of our first stage, and pause to look back from it on what lies +behind us of partial or of perfect work. + +The highest point attained in this first period lies in the domain of +comedy or romance, and belongs as much to lyric as to dramatic poetry; +its sovereign quality is that of sweetness and springtide of fairy fancy +crossed with light laughter and light trouble that end in perfect music. +In history as in tragedy the master's hand has not yet come to its full +strength and skill; its touch is not yet wholly assured, its work not yet +wholly blameless. Besides the plays undoubtedly and entirely due to the +still growing genius of Shakespeare, we have taken note but of two among +those which bear the partial imprint of his hand. The long-vexed +question as to the authorship of the latter parts of _King Henry VI_., in +their earlier or later form, has not been touched upon; nor do I design +to reopen that perpetual source of debate unstanchable and inexhaustible +dispute by any length of scrutiny or inquisition of detail. Two points +must of course be taken for granted: that Marlowe was more or less +concerned in the production, and Shakespeare in the revision of these +plays; whether before or after his additions to the original _First Part +of King Henry VI_. we cannot determine, though the absence of rhyme might +seem to indicate a later date for the recast of the _Contention_. But it +is noticeable that the style of Marlowe appears more vividly and +distinctly in passages of the reformed than of the unreformed plays. +Those famous lines, for example, which open the fourth act of the _Second +Part of King Henry VI_. are not to be found in the corresponding scene of +the first part of the _Contention_; yet, whether they belong to the +original sketch of the play, or were inserted as an afterthought into the +revised and expanded copy, the authorship of these verses is surely +unmistakable:-- + + The gaudy, blabbing, and remorseful day + Is crept into the bosom of the sea; + And now loud howling wolves arouse the jades + That drag the tragic melancholy night-- + +_Aut Christophorus Marlowe, aut diabolus_; it is inconceivable that any +imitator but one should have had the power so to catch the very trick of +his hand, the very note of his voice, and incredible that the one who +might would have set himself to do so: for if this be not indeed the +voice and this the hand of Marlowe, then what we find in these verses is +not the fidelity of a follower, but the servility of a copyist. No +parasitic rhymester of past or present days who feeds his starveling +talent on the shreds and orts, "the fragments, scraps, the bits and +greasy relics" of another man's board, ever uttered a more parrot-like +note of plagiary. The very exactitude of the repetition is a strong +argument against the theory which attributes it to Shakespeare. That he +had much at starting to learn of Marlowe, and that he did learn much--that +in his earliest plays, and above all in his earliest historic plays, the +influence of the elder poet, the echo of his style, the iteration of his +manner, may perpetually be traced--I have already shown that I should be +the last to question; but so exact an echo, so servile an iteration as +this, I believe we shall nowhere find in them. The sonorous accumulation +of emphatic epithets--as in the magnificent first verse of this +passage--is indeed at least as much a note of the young Shakespeare's +style as of his master's; but even were this one verse less in the manner +of the elder than the younger poet--and this we can hardly say that it +is--no single verse detached from its context can weigh a feather against +the full and flawless evidence of the whole speech. And of all this +there is nothing in the _Contention_; the scene there opens in bald and +flat nakedness of prose, striking at once into the immediate matter of +stage business without the decoration of a passing epithet or a single +trope. + +From this sample it might seem that the main difficulty must be to detect +anywhere the sign-manual of Shakespeare, even in the best passages of the +revised play. On the other hand, it has not unreasonably been maintained +that even in the next scene of this same act in its original form, and in +all those following which treat of Cade's insurrection, there is evidence +of such qualities as can hardly be ascribed to any hand then known but +Shakespeare's. The forcible realism, the simple vigour and lifelike +humour of these scenes, cannot, it is urged, be due to any other so early +at work in the field of comedy. A critic desirous to press this point +might further insist on the likeness or identity of tone between these +and all later scenes in which Shakespeare has taken on him to paint the +action and passion of an insurgent populace. With him, it might too +plausibly be argued, the people once risen in revolt for any just or +unjust cause is always the mob, the unwashed rabble, the swinish +multitude; full as he is of wise and gracious tenderness for individual +character, of swift and ardent pity for personal suffering, he has no +deeper or finer feeling than scorn for "the beast with many heads" that +fawn and butt at bidding as they are swayed by the vain and violent +breath of any worthless herdsman. For the drovers who guide and misguide +at will the turbulent flocks of their mutinous cattle his store of bitter +words is inexhaustible; it is a treasure-house of obloquy which can never +be drained dry. All this, or nearly all this, we must admit; but it +brings us no nearer to any but a floating and conjectural kind of +solution. In the earliest form known to us of this play it should seem +that we have traces of Shakespeare's handiwork, in the latest that we +find evidence of Marlowe's. But it would be something too extravagant +for the veriest wind-sucker among commentators to start a theory that a +revision was made of his original work by Marlowe after additions had +been made to it by Shakespeare; yet we have seen that the most +unmistakable signs of Marlowe's handiwork, the passages which show most +plainly the personal and present seal of his genius, belong to the play +only in its revised form; while there is no part of the whole composition +which can so confidently be assigned to Shakespeare as to the one man +then capable of such work, as can an entire and important episode of the +play in its unrevised state. Now the proposition that Shakespeare was +the sole author of both plays in their earliest extant shape is refuted +at once and equally from without and from within, by evidence of +tradition and by evidence of style. There is therefore proof +irresistible and unmistakable of at least a double authorship; and the +one reasonable conclusion left to us would seem to be this; that the +first edition we possess of these plays is a partial transcript of the +text as it stood after the first additions had been made by Shakespeare +to the original work of Marlowe and others; for that this original was +the work of more hands than one, and hands of notably unequal power, we +have again the united witness of traditional and internal evidence to +warrant our belief: and that among the omissions of this imperfect text +were certain passages of the original work, which were ultimately +restored in the final revision of the entire poem as it now stands among +the collected works of Shakespeare. + +No competent critic who has given due study to the genius of Marlowe will +admit that there is a single passage of tragic or poetic interest in +either form of the text, which is beyond the reach of the father of +English tragedy: or, if there be one seeming exception in the expanded +and transfigured version of Clifford's monologue over his father's +corpse, which is certainly more in Shakespeare's tragic manner than in +Marlowe's, and in the style of a later period than that in which he was +on the whole apparently content to reproduce or to emulate the tragic +manner of Marlowe, there is at least but this one exception to the +general and absolute truth of the rule; and even this great tragic +passage is rather out of the range of Marlowe's style than beyond the +scope of his genius. In the later as in the earlier version of these +plays, the one manifest excellence of which we have no reason to suppose +him capable is manifest in the comic or prosaic scenes alone. The first +great rapid sketch of the dying cardinal, afterwards so nobly enlarged +and perfected on revision by the same or by a second artist, is as +clearly within the capacity of Marlowe as of Shakespeare; and in either +edition of the latter play, successively known as _The True Tragedy of +Richard Duke of York_, as the _Second Part of the Contention_, and as the +_Third Part of King Henry VI_., the dominant figure which darkens all the +close of the poem with presage of a direr day is drawn by the same strong +hand in the same tragic outline. From the first to the last stage of the +work there is no mark of change or progress here; the whole play indeed +has undergone less revision, as it certainly needed less, than the +preceding part of the _Contention_. Those great verses which resume the +whole spirit of Shakespeare's Richard--finer perhaps in themselves than +any passage of the play which bears his name--are wellnigh identical in +either form of the poem; but the reviser, with admirable judgment, has +struck out, whether from his own text or that of another, the line which +precedes them in the original sketch, where the passage runs thus:-- + + I had no father, I am like no father; + I have no brothers, I am like no brother; + +(this reiteration is exactly in the first manner of our tragic drama;) + + And this word love, which greybeards term divine, etc. + +It would be an impertinence to transcribe the rest of a passage which +rings in the ear of every reader's memory; but it may be noted that the +erasure by which its effect is so singularly heightened with the inborn +skill of so divine an instinct is just such an alteration as would be +equally likely to occur to the original writer on glancing over his +printed text or to a poet of kindred power, who, while busied in +retouching and filling out the sketch of his predecessor, might be struck +by the opening for so great an improvement at so small a cost of +suppression. My own conjecture would incline to the belief that we have +here a perfect example of the manner in which Shakespeare may be +presumed, when such a task was set before him, to have dealt with the +text of Marlowe. That at the outset of his career he was so employed, as +well as on the texts of lesser poets, we have on all hands as good +evidence of every kind as can be desired; proof on one side from the text +of the revised plays, which are as certainly in part the work of his hand +as they are in part the work of another; and proof on the opposite side +from the open and clamorous charge of his rivals, whose imputations can +be made to bear no reasonable meaning but this by the most violent +ingenuity of perversion, and who presumably were not persons of such +frank imbecility, such innocent and infantine malevolence, as to forge +against their most dangerous enemy the pointless and edgeless weapon of a +charge which, if ungrounded, must have been easier to refute than to +devise. Assuming then that in common with other young poets of his day +he was thus engaged during the first years of his connection with the +stage, we should naturally have expected to find him handling the text of +Marlowe with more of reverence and less of freedom than that of meaner +men: ready, as in the _Contention_, to clear away with no timid hand +their weaker and more inefficient work, to cancel and supplant it by +worthier matter of his own; but when occupied in recasting the verse of +Marlowe, not less ready to confine his labour to such slight and skilful +strokes of art as that which has led us into this byway of speculation; +to the correction of a false note, the addition of a finer touch, the +perfection of a meaning half expressed or a tone of half-uttered music; +to the invigoration of sense and metre by substitution of the right word +for the wrong, of a fuller phrase for one feebler; to the excision of +such archaic and superfluous repetitions as are signs of a cruder stage +of workmanship, relics of a ruder period of style, survivals of the +earliest form or habit of dramatic poetry. Such work as this, however +humble in our present eyes, which look before and after, would assuredly +have been worthy of the workman and his task; an office no less fruitful +of profit, and no more unbeseeming the pupil hand of the future master, +than the subordinate handiwork of the young Raffaelle or Leonardo on the +canvas of Verrocchio or Perugino. + +Of the doubtful or spurious plays which have been with more or less show +of reason ascribed to this first period of Shakespeare's art, I have here +no more to say than that I purpose in the proper place to take account of +the only two among them which bear the slightest trace of any possible +touch of his hand. For these two there is not, as it happens, the least +witness of tradition or outward likelihood which might warrant us in +assigning them a place apart from the rest, and nearer the chance of +reception into the rank that has been claimed for them; while those plays +in whose favour there is some apparent evidence from without, such as the +fact of early or even original attribution to the master's hand, are, +with one possible exception, utterly beyond the pale of human +consideration as at any stage whatever the conceivable work of +Shakespeare. + +Considering that his two attempts at narrative or rather semi-narrative +and semi-reflective poetry belong obviously to an early stage of his +earliest period, we may rather here than elsewhere take notice that there +are some curious points of coincidence for evil as for good between the +fortunes of Shakespeare's plays and the fortunes of his poems. In either +case we find that some part at least of his earlier and inferior work has +fared better at the blind hands of chance and the brutish hands of +printers than some part at least of his riper and more precious products. +His two early poems would seem to have had the good hap of his personal +supervision in their passage through the press. Upon them, at least +since the time of Coleridge, who as usual has said on this subject the +first and the last word that need be said, it seems to me that fully +sufficient notice and fully adequate examination have been expended; and +that nothing at once new and true can now be profitably said in praise or +in dispraise of them. Of _A Lover's Complaint_, marked as it is +throughout with every possible sign suggestive of a far later date and a +far different inspiration, I have only space or need to remark that it +contains two of the most exquisitely Shakespearean verses ever vouchsafed +to us by Shakespeare, and two of the most execrably euphuistic or +dysphuistic lines ever inflicted on us by man. Upon the Sonnets such a +preposterous pyramid of presumptuous commentary has long since been +reared by the Cimmerian speculation and Boeotian "brain-sweat" of +sciolists and scholiasts, that no modest man will hope and no wise man +will desire to add to the structure or subtract from it one single brick +of proof or disproof, theorem or theory. As yet the one contemporary +book which has ever been supposed to throw any direct or indirect light +on the mystic matter remains as inaccessible and unhelpful to students as +though it had never been published fifteen years earlier than the date of +their publication and four years before the book in which Meres notices +the circulation of Shakespeare's "sugared sonnets among his private +friends." It would be a most noble and thankworthy addition to a list of +labours beyond praise and benefits beyond price, if my honoured friend +Dr. Grosart could find the means to put a crown upon the achievements of +his learning and a seal upon the obligations of our gratitude by the one +inestimable boon long hoped for against hoping, and as yet but "a vision +in a dream" to the most learned and most loving of true Shakespearean +students; by the issue or reissue in its full and perfect likeness, +collated at last and complete, of _Willobie his Avisa_. {63} + +It was long since more than time that the worthless and impudent +imposture called _The Passionate Pilgrim_ should be exposed and expelled +from its station at the far end of Shakespeare's poems. What Coleridge +said of Ben Jonson's epithet for "turtle-footed peace," we may say of the +label affixed to this rag-picker's bag of stolen goods: _The Passionate +Pilgrim_ is a pretty title, a very pretty title; pray what may it mean? +In all the larcenous little bundle of verse there is neither a poem which +bears that name nor a poem by which that name would be bearable. The +publisher of the booklet was like "one Ragozine, a most notorious +pirate"; and the method no less than the motive of his rascality in the +present instance is palpable and simple enough. Fired by the immediate +and instantly proverbial popularity of Shakespeare's _Venus and Adonis_, +he hired, we may suppose, some ready hack of unclean hand to supply him +with three doggrel sonnets on the same subject, noticeable only for their +porcine quality of prurience: he procured by some means a rough copy or +an incorrect transcript of two genuine and unpublished sonnets by +Shakespeare, which with the acute instinct of a felonious tradesman he +laid atop of his worthless wares by way of gilding to their base metal: +he stole from the two years published text of _Love's Labour's Lost_, and +reproduced with more or less mutilation or corruption, the sonnet of +Longavile, the "canzonet" of Biron, and the far lovelier love-song of +Dumaine. The rest of the ragman's gatherings, with three most notable +exceptions, is little better for the most part than dry rubbish or +disgusting refuse; unless a plea may haply be put in for the pretty +commonplaces of the lines on a "sweet rose, fair flower," and so forth; +for the couple of thin and pallid if tender and tolerable copies of verse +on "Beauty" and "Good Night," or the passably light and lively stray of +song on "crabbed age and youth." I need not say that those three +exceptions are the stolen and garbled work of Marlowe and of Barnfield, +our elder Shelley and our first-born Keats; the singer of Cynthia in +verse well worthy of Endymion, who would seem to have died as a poet in +the same fatal year of his age that Keats died as a man; the first +adequate English laureate of the nightingale, to be supplanted or +equalled by none until the advent of his mightier brother. + + + +II. + + +The second period is that of perfection in comic and historic style. The +final heights and depths of tragedy, with all its reach of thought and +all its pulse of passion, are yet to be scaled and sounded; but to this +stage belongs the special quality of faultless, joyous, facile command +upon each faculty required of the presiding genius for service or for +sport. It is in the middle period of his work that the language of +Shakespeare is most limpid in its fullness, the style most pure, the +thought most transparent through the close and luminous raiment of +perfect expression. The conceits and crudities of the first stage are +outgrown and cast aside; the harshness and obscurity which at times may +strike us as among the notes of his third manner have as yet no place in +the flawless work of this second stage. That which has to be said is not +yet too great for perfection of utterance; passion has not yet grappled +with thought in so close and fierce an embrace as to strain and rend the +garment of words, though stronger and subtler than ever was woven of +human speech. Neither in his first nor in his last stage would the style +of Shakespeare, even were it possible by study to reproduce it, be of +itself a perfect and blameless model; but his middle style, that in which +the typical plays of his second period are written, would be, if it were +possible to imitate, the most absolute pattern that could be set before +man. I do not speak of mere copyist's work, the parasitic knack of +retailing cast phrases, tricks and turns of accent, cadences and +catchwords proper only to the natural manner of the man who first came by +instinct upon them, and by instinct put them to use; I speak of that +faithful and fruitful discipleship of love with which the highest among +poets and the most original among workmen have naturally been always the +first to study and the most earnest to follow the footsteps of their +greatest precursors in that kind. And this only high and profitable form +of study and discipleship can set before itself, even in the work of +Shakespeare, no pattern so perfect, no model so absolute, as is afforded +by the style or manner of his second period. + +To this stage belong by spiritual right if not by material, by rule of +poetic order if not by date of actual succession, the greatest of his +English histories and four of his greatest and most perfect comedies; the +four greatest we might properly call them, reserving for another class +the last divine triad of romantic plays which it is alike inaccurate to +number among tragedies or comedies proper: the _Winter's Tale_, +_Cymbeline_, and the _Tempest_, which belong of course wholly to his last +manner, or, if accuracy must be strained even to pedantry, to the second +manner of his third or final stage. A single masterpiece which may be +classed either among histories or tragedies belongs to the middle period; +and to this also we must refer, if not the ultimate form, yet assuredly +the first sketch at least of that which is commonly regarded as the +typical and supreme work of Shakespeare. Three lesser comedies, one of +them in great part the recast or rather the transfiguration of an earlier +poet's work, complete the list of plays assignable to the second epoch of +his genius. + +The ripest fruit of historic or national drama, the consummation and the +crown of Shakespeare's labours in that line, must of course be recognised +and saluted by all students in the supreme and sovereign trilogy of King +Henry IV. and King Henry V. On a lower degree only than this final and +imperial work we find the two chronicle histories which remain to be +classed. In style as in structure they bear witness of a power less +perfect, a less impeccable hand. They have less of perceptible instinct, +less of vivid and vigorous utterance; the breath of their inspiration is +less continuous and less direct, the fashion of their eloquence is more +deliberate and more prepense; there is more of study and structure +apparent in their speech, and less in their general scheme of action. Of +all Shakespeare's plays they are the most rhetorical; there is more talk +than song in them, less poetry than oratory; more finish than form, less +movement than incident. Scene is laid upon scene, and event succeeds +event, as stone might be laid on stone and story might succeed story in a +building reared by mere might of human handiwork; not as in a city or +temple whose walls had risen of themselves to the lyric breath and stroke +of a greater than Amphion; moulded out of music by no rule or line of +mortal measure, with no sound of axe or anvil, but only of smitten +strings: built by harp and not by hand. + +The lordly structure of these poems is the work of a royal workman, full +of masterdom and might, sublime in the state and strength of its many +mansions, but less perfect in proportion and less aerial in build than +the very highest fabrics fashioned after their own great will by the +supreme architects of song. Of these plays, and of these alone among the +maturer works of Shakespeare, it may be said that the best parts are +discernible from the rest, divisible by analysis and separable by memory +from the scenes which precede them or follow and the characters which +surround them or succeed. Constance and Katherine rise up into +remembrance apart from their environment and above it, stand clear in our +minds of the crowded company with which the poet has begirt their central +figures. In all other of his great tragic works,--even in _Hamlet_, if +we have grace and sense to read it aright and not awry,--it is not of any +single person or separate passage that we think when we speak of it; it +is to the whole masterpiece that the mind turns at mention of its name. +The one entire and perfect chrysolite of _Othello_ is neither Othello nor +Desdemona nor Iago, but each and all; the play of _Hamlet_ is more than +Hamlet himself, the poem even here is too great to be resumed in the +person. But Constance is the jewel of _King John_, and Katherine is the +crowning blossom of _King Henry VIII_.--a funeral flower as of "marigolds +on death-beds blowing," an opal of as pure water as "tears of perfect +moan," with fitful fire at its heart, ominous of evil and sorrow, set in +a mourning band of jet on the forefront of the poem, that the brow so +circled may, "like to a title-leaf, foretell the nature of a tragic +volume." Not indeed that without these the ground would in either case +be barren; but that in either field our eye rests rather on these and +other separate ears of wheat that overtop the ranks, than on the waving +width of the whole harvest at once. In the one play our memory turns +next to the figures of Arthur and the Bastard, in the other to those of +Wolsey and his king: the residue in either case is made up of outlines +more lightly and slightly drawn. In two scenes the figure of King John +rises indeed to the highest height even of Shakespearean tragedy; for the +rest of the play the lines of his character are cut no deeper, the +features of his personality stand out in no sharper relief, than those of +Eleanor or the French king; but the scene in which he tempts Hubert to +the edge of the pit of hell sounds a deeper note and touches a subtler +string in the tragic nature of man than had been struck by any poet save +Dante alone, since the reign of the Greek tragedians. The cunning and +profound simplicity of the few last weighty words which drop like flakes +of poison that blister where they fall from the deadly lips of the king +is a new quality in our tragic verse; there was no foretaste of such a +thing in the passionate imagination which clothed itself in the mighty +music of Marlowe's burning song. The elder master might indeed have +written the magnificent speech which ushers in with gradual rhetoric and +splendid reticence the black suggestion of a deed without a name; his +hand might have woven with no less imperial skill the elaborate raiment +of words and images which wraps up in fold upon fold, as with swaddling- +bands of purple and golden embroidery, the shapeless and miscreated birth +of a murderous purpose that labours into light even while it loathes the +light and itself; but only Shakespeare could give us the first sample of +that more secret and terrible knowledge which reveals itself in the brief +heavy whispers that seal the commission and sign the warrant of the king. +Webster alone of all our tragic poets has had strength to emulate in this +darkest line of art the handiwork of his master. We find nowhere such an +echo or reflection of the spirit of this scene as in the last tremendous +dialogue of Bosola with Ferdinand in the house of murder and madness, +while their spotted souls yet flutter between conscience and distraction, +hovering for an hour as with broken wings on the confines of either +province of hell. One pupil at least could put to this awful profit the +study of so great a model; but with the single and sublime exception of +that other design from the same great hand, which bares before us the +mortal anguish of Bracciano, no copy or imitation of the scene in which +John dies by poison has ever come near enough to evade the sentence it +provokes. The shrill tremulous agony of Fletcher's Valentinian is to the +sullen and slow death-pangs of Shakespeare's tyrant as the babble of a +suckling to the accents of a man. As far beyond the reach of any but his +maker's hand is the pattern of a perfect English warrior, set once for +all before the eyes of all ages in the figure of the noble Bastard. The +national side of Shakespeare's genius, the heroic vein of patriotism that +runs like a thread of living fire through the world-wide range of his +omnipresent spirit, has never, to my thinking, found vent or expression +to such glorious purpose as here. Not even in Hotspur or Prince Hal has +he mixed with more godlike sleight of hand all the lighter and graver +good qualities of the national character, or compounded of them all so +lovable a nature as this. In those others we admire and enjoy the same +bright fiery temper of soul, the same buoyant and fearless mastery of +fate or fortune, the same gladness and glory of life made lovely with all +the labour and laughter of its full fresh days; but no quality of theirs +binds our hearts to them as they are bound to Philip--not by his loyal +valour, his keen young wit, his kindliness, constancy, readiness of +service as swift and sure in the day of his master's bitterest shame and +shamefullest trouble as in the blithest hour of battle and that first +good fight which won back his father's spoils from his father's slayer; +but more than all these, for that lightning of divine rage and pity, of +tenderness that speaks in thunder and indignation that makes fire of its +tears, in the horror of great compassion which falls on him, the tempest +and storm of a beautiful and godlike anger which shakes his strength of +spirit and bows his high heart down at sight of Arthur dead. Being thus, +as he is, the English masterwork of Shakespeare's hand, we may well +accept him as the best man known to us that England ever made; the hero +that Nelson must have been had he never come too near Naples. + +I am not minded to say much of Shakespeare's Arthur; there are one or two +figures in the world of his work of which there are no words that would +be fit or good to say. Another of these is Cordelia. The place they +have in our lives and thoughts is not one for talk; the niche set apart +for them to inhabit in our secret hearts is not penetrable by the lights +and noises of common day. There are chapels in the cathedral of man's +highest art as in that of his inmost life, not made to be set open to the +eyes and feet of the world. Love and death and memory keep charge for us +in silence of some beloved names. It is the crowning glory of genius, +the final miracle and transcendent gift of poetry, that it can add to the +number of these, and engrave on the very heart of our remembrance fresh +names and memories of its own creation. + +There is one younger child in this heavenly family of Shakespeare's who +sits side by side with Arthur in the secret places of our thought; there +are but two or three that I remember among the children of other poets +who may be named in the same year with them: as Fletcher's Hengo, +Webster's Giovanni, and Landor's Caesarion. Of this princely trinity of +boys the "bud of Britain" is as yet the most famous flower; yet even in +the broken words of childish heroism that falter on his dying lips there +is nothing of more poignant pathos, more "dearly sweet and bitter," than +Giovanni's talk of his dead mother and all her sleepless nights now ended +for ever in a sleep beyond tears or dreams. Perhaps the most nearly +faultless in finish and proportion of perfect nature among all the noble +three is Landor's portrait of the imperial and right Roman child of Caesar +and Cleopatra. I know not but this may be found in the judgment of men +to come wellnigh the most pathetic and heroic figure bequeathed us after +more than eighty years of a glorious life by the indomitable genius of +our own last Roman and republican poet. + +We have come now to that point at the opening of the second stage in his +work where the supreme genius of all time begins first to meddle with the +mysteries and varieties of human character, to handle its finer and more +subtle qualities, to harmonise its more untuned and jarring discords; +giving here and thus the first proof of a power never shared in like +measure by the mightiest among the sons of men, a sovereign and serene +capacity to fathom the else unfathomable depths of spiritual nature, to +solve its else insoluble riddles, to reconcile its else irreconcilable +discrepancies. In his first stage Shakespeare had dropped his plummet no +deeper into the sea of the spirit of man than Marlowe had sounded before +him; and in the channel of simple emotion no poet could cast surer line +with steadier hand than he. Further down in the dark and fiery depths of +human pain and mortal passion no soul could search than his who first +rendered into speech the aspirations and the agonies of a ruined and +revolted spirit. And until Shakespeare found in himself the strength of +eyesight to read and the cunning of handiwork to render those wider +diversities of emotion and those further complexities of character which +lay outside the range of Marlowe, he certainly cannot be said to have +outrun the winged feet, outstripped the fiery flight of his forerunner. +In the heaven of our tragic song the first-born star on the forehead of +its herald god was not outshone till the full midsummer meridian of that +greater godhead before whom he was sent to prepare a pathway for the sun. +Through all the forenoon of our triumphant day, till the utter +consummation and ultimate ascension of dramatic poetry incarnate and +transfigured in the master-singer of the world, the quality of his +tragedy was as that of Marlowe's, broad, single, and intense; large of +hand, voluble of tongue, direct of purpose. With the dawn of its latter +epoch a new power comes upon it, to find clothing and expression in new +forms of speech and after a new style. The language has put off its +foreign decorations of lyric and elegiac ornament; it has found already +its infinite gain in the loss of those sweet superfluous graces which +encumbered the march and enchained the utterance of its childhood. The +figures which it invests are now no more the types of a single passion, +the incarnations of a single thought. They now demand a scrutiny which +tests the power of a mind and tries the value of a judgment; they appeal +to something more than the instant apprehension which sufficed to respond +to the immediate claim of those that went before them. Romeo and Juliet +were simply lovers, and their names bring back to us no further thought +than of their love and the lovely sorrow of its end; Antony and Cleopatra +shall be before all things lovers, but the thought of their love and its +triumphant tragedy shall recall other things beyond number--all the +forces and all the fortunes of mankind, all the chance and all the +consequence that waited on their imperial passion, all the infinite +variety of qualities and powers wrought together and welded into the +frame and composition of that love which shook from end to end all +nations and kingdoms of the earth. + +The same truth holds good in lighter matters; Biron and Rosaline in +comedy are as simply lovers and no more as were their counterparts and +coevals in tragedy: there is more in Benedick and Beatrice than this +simple quality of love that clothes itself in the strife of wits; the +injury done her cousin, which by the repercussion of its shock and +refraction of its effect serves to transfigure with such adorable +indignation and ardour of furious love and pity the whole bright light +nature of Beatrice, serves likewise by a fresh reflection and +counterchange of its consequence to exalt and enlarge the stature of her +lover's spirit after a fashion beyond the reach of Shakespeare in his +first stage. Mercutio again, like Philip, is a good friend and gallant +swordsman, quick-witted and hot-blooded, of a fiery and faithful temper, +loyal and light and swift alike of speech and swordstroke; and this is +all. But the character of the Bastard, clear and simple as broad +sunlight though it be, has in it other features than this single and +beautiful likeness of frank young manhood; his love of country and +loathing of the Church that would bring it into subjection are two sides +of the same national quality that has made and will always make every +Englishman of his type such another as he was in belief and in unbelief, +patriot and priest-hater; and no part of the design bears such witness to +the full-grown perfection of his creator's power and skill as the touch +that combines and fuses into absolute unity of concord the high and +various elements of faith in England, loyalty to the wretched lord who +has made him knight and acknowledged him kinsman, contempt for his +abjection at the foul feet of the Church, abhorrence of his crime and +constancy to his cause for something better worth the proof of war than +his miserable sake who hardly can be roused, even by such exhortation as +might put life and spirit into the dust of dead men's bones, to bid his +betters stand and strike in defence of the country dishonoured by his +reign. + +It is this new element of variety in unity, this study of the complex and +diverse shades in a single nature, which requires from any criticism +worth attention some inquisition of character as complement to the +investigation of style. Analysis of any sort would be inapplicable to +the actors who bear their parts in the comic, the tragic or historic +plays of the first period. There is nothing in them to analyse; they +are, as we have seen, like all the characters represented by Marlowe, the +embodiments or the exponents of single qualities and simple forces. The +question of style also is therefore so far a simple question; but with +the change and advance in thought and all matter of spiritual study and +speculation this question also becomes complex, and inseparable, if we +would pursue it to any good end, from the analysis of character and +subject. In the debate on which we are now to enter, the question of +style and the question of character, or as we might say the questions of +matter and of spirit, are more than ever indivisible from each other, +more inextricably inwoven than elsewhere into the one most difficult +question of authorship which has ever been disputed in the dense and +noisy school or fought out in the wide and windy field of Shakespearean +controversy. + +There can be few serious students of Shakespeare who have not sometimes +felt that possibly the hardest problem involved in their study is that +which requires for its solution some reasonable and acceptable theory as +to the play of _King Henry VIII_. None such has ever yet been offered; +and I certainly cannot pretend to supply one. Perhaps however it may be +possible to do some service by an attempt to disprove what is untenable, +even though it should not be possible to produce in its stead any +positive proof of what we may receive as matter of absolute faith. + +The veriest tiro in criticism who knows anything of the subject in hand +must perceive, what is certainly not beyond a schoolboy's range of +vision, that the metre and the language of this play are in great part so +like the language and the metre of Fletcher that the first and easiest +inference would be to assume the partnership of that poet in the work. In +former days it was Jonson whom the critics and commentators of their time +saw good to select as the colleague or the editor of Shakespeare; but a +later school of criticism has resigned the notion that the fifth act was +retouched and adjusted by the author of _Volpone_ to the taste of his +patron James. The later theory is more plausible than this; the primary +objection to it is that it is too facile and superficial. It is waste of +time to point out with any intelligent and imaginative child with a +tolerable ear for metre who had read a little of the one and the other +poet could see for himself--that much of the play is externally as like +the usual style of Fletcher as it is unlike the usual style of +Shakespeare. The question is whether we can find one scene, one speech, +one passage, which in spirit, in scope, in purpose, bears the same or any +comparable resemblance to the work of Fletcher. I doubt if any man more +warmly admires a poet whom few can have studied more thoroughly than I; +and to whom, in spite of all sins of omission and commission,--and many +and grievous they are, beyond the plenary absolution of even the most +indulgent among critical confessors--I constantly return with a fresh +sense of attraction, which is constantly rewarded by a fresh sense of +gratitude and delight. It is assuredly from no wish to pluck a leaf from +his laurel, which has no need of foreign grafts or stolen garlands from +the loftier growth of Shakespeare's, that I venture to question his +capacity for the work assigned to him by recent criticism. The speech of +Buckingham, for example, on his way to execution, is of course at first +sight very like the finest speeches of the kind in Fletcher; here is the +same smooth and fluent declamation, the same prolonged and persistent +melody, which if not monotonous is certainly not various; the same pure, +lucid, perspicuous flow of simple rather than strong and elegant rather +than exquisite English; and yet, if we set it against the best examples +of the kind which may be selected from such tragedies as _Bonduca_ or +_The False One_, against the rebuke addressed by Caratach to his cousin +or by Caesar to the murderers of Pompey--and no finer instances of tragic +declamation can be chosen from the work of this great master of +rhetorical dignity and pathos--I cannot but think we shall perceive in it +a comparative severity and elevation which will be missed when we turn +back from it to the text of Fletcher. There is an aptness of phrase, an +abstinence from excess, a "plentiful lack" of mere flowery and +superfluous beauties, which we may rather wish than hope to find in the +most famous of Shakespeare's successors. But if not his work, we may be +sure it was his model; a model which he often approached, which he often +studied, but which he never attained. It is never for absolute truth and +fitness of expression, it is always for eloquence and sweetness, for +fluency and fancy, that we find the tragic scenes of Fletcher most +praiseworthy; and the motive or mainspring of interest is usually +anything but natural or simple. Now the motive here is as simple, the +emotion as natural as possible; the author is content to dispense with +all the violent or far-fetched or fantastic excitement from which +Fletcher could hardly ever bring himself completely to abstain. I am not +speaking here of those tragedies in which the hand of Beaumont is +traceable; to these, I need hardly say, the charge is comparatively +inapplicable which may fairly be brought against the unassisted works of +his elder colleague; but in any of the typical tragedies of Fletcher, in +_Thierry and Theodoret_, in _Valentinian_, in _The Double Marriage_, the +scenes which for power and beauty of style may reasonably be compared +with this of the execution of Buckingham will be found more forced in +situation, more fanciful in language than this. Many will be found more +beautiful, many more exciting; the famous interview of Thierry with the +veiled Ordella, and the scene answering to this in the fifth act where +Brunhalt is confronted with her dying son, will be at once remembered by +all dramatic students; and the parts of Lucina and Juliana may each be +described as a continuous arrangement of passionate and pathetic effects. +But in which of these parts and in which of these plays shall we find a +scene so simple, an effect so modest, a situation so unforced as here? +where may we look for the same temperance of tone, the same control of +excitement, the same steadiness of purpose? If indeed Fletcher could +have written this scene, or the farewell of Wolsey to his greatness, or +his parting scene with Cromwell, he was perhaps not a greater poet, but +he certainly was a tragic writer capable of loftier self-control and +severer self-command, than he has ever shown himself elsewhere. + +And yet, if this were all, we might be content to believe that the +dignity of the subject and the high example of his present associate had +for once lifted the natural genius of Fletcher above itself. But the +fine and subtle criticism of Mr. Spedding has in the main, I think, +successfully and clearly indicated the lines of demarcation undeniably +discernible in this play between the severer style of certain scenes or +speeches and the laxer and more fluid style of others; between the +graver, solider, more condensed parts of the apparently composite work, +and those which are clearer, thinner, more diffused and diluted in +expression. If under the latter head we had to class such passages only +as the dying speech of Buckingham and the christening speech of Cranmer, +it might after all be almost impossible to resist the internal evidence +of Fletcher's handiwork. Certainly we hear the same soft continuous note +of easy eloquence, level and limpid as a stream of crystalline +transparence, in the plaintive adieu of the condemned statesman and the +panegyrical prophecy of the favoured prelate. If this, I say, were all, +we might admit that there is nothing--I have already admitted it--in +either passage beyond the poetic reach of Fletcher. But on the +hypothesis so ably maintained by the editor of Bacon there hangs no less +a consequence than this: that we must assign to the same hand the +crowning glory of the whole poem, the death-scene of Katherine. Now if +Fletcher could have written that scene--a scene on which the only +criticism ever passed, the only commendation ever bestowed, by the +verdict of successive centuries, has been that of tears and silence--if +Fletcher could have written a scene so far beyond our applause, so far +above our acclamation, then the memory of no great poet has ever been so +grossly wronged, so shamefully defrauded of its highest claim to honour. +But, with all reverence for that memory, I must confess that I cannot +bring myself to believe it. Any explanation appears to me more probable +than this. Considering with what care every relic of his work was once +and again collected by his posthumous editors--even to the attribution, +not merely of plays in which he can have taken only the slightest part, +but of plays in which we know that he had no share at all--I cannot +believe that his friends would have let by far the brightest jewel in his +crown rest unreclaimed in the then less popular treasure-house of +Shakespeare. Belief or disbelief of this kind is however but a sandy +soil for conjecture to build upon. Whether or not his friends would have +reclaimed for him the credit of this scene, had they known it (as they +must have known it) to be his due, I must repeat that such a miraculous +example of a man's genius for once transcending itself and for ever +eclipsing all its other achievements appears to me beyond all critical, +beyond all theological credulity. Pathos and concentration are surely +not among the dominant notes of Fletcher's style or the salient qualities +of his intellect. Except perhaps in the beautiful and famous passage +where Hengo dies in his uncle's arms, I doubt whether in any of the +variously and highly coloured scenes played out upon the wide and +shifting stage of his fancy the genius of Fletcher has ever unlocked the +source of tears. Bellario and Aspatia were the children of his younger +colleague; at least, after the death of Beaumont we meet no such figures +on the stage of Fletcher. In effect, though Beaumont had a gift of grave +sardonic humour which found especial vent in burlesques of the heroic +style and in the systematic extravagance of such characters as Bessus, +{89} yet he was above all things a tragic poet; and though Fletcher had +great power of tragic eloquence and passionate effusion, yet his comic +genius was of a rarer and more precious quality; one _Spanish Curate_ is +worth many a _Valentinian_; as, on the other hand, one _Philaster_ is +worth many a _Scornful Lady_. Now there is no question here of Beaumont; +and there is no question that the passage here debated has been taken to +the heart of the whole world and baptized in the tears of generations as +no work of Fletcher's has ever been. That Beaumont could have written it +I do not believe; but I am wellnigh assured that Fletcher could not. I +can scarcely imagine that the most fluid sympathy, the "hysteric passion" +most easily distilled from the eyes of reader or spectator, can ever have +watered with its tears the scene or the page which sets forth, however +eloquently and effectively, the sorrows and heroisms of Ordella, Juliana, +or Lucina. Every success but this I can well believe them, as they +assuredly deserve, to have attained. + +To this point then we have come, as to the crucial point at issue; and +looking back upon those passages of the play which first suggest the +handiwork of Fletcher, and which certainly do now and then seem almost +identical in style with his, I think we shall hardly find the difference +between these and other parts of the same play so wide and so distinct as +the difference between the undoubted work of Fletcher and the undoubted +work of Shakespeare. What that difference is we are fortunately able to +determine with exceptional certitude, and with no supplementary help from +conjecture of probabilities. In the play which is undoubtedly a joint +work of these poets the points of contact and the points of disunion are +unmistakable by the youngest eye. In the very last scene of _The Two +Noble Kinsmen_, we can tell with absolute certainty what speeches were +appended or interpolated by Fletcher; we can pronounce with positive +conviction what passages were completed and what parts were left +unfinished by Shakespeare. Even on Mr. Spedding's theory it can hardly +be possible to do as much for _King Henry VIII_. The lines of +demarcation, however visible or plausible, are fainter by far than these. +It is certainly not much less strange to come upon such passages in the +work of Shakespeare as the speeches of Buckingham and Cranmer than it +would be to encounter in the work of Sophocles a sample of the later and +laxer style of Euripides; to meet for instance in the _Antigone_ with a +passage which might pass muster as an extract from the _Iphigenia in +Aulis_. In metrical effects the style of the lesser English poet is an +exact counterpart of the style of the lesser Greek; there is the same +comparative tenuity and fluidity of verse, the same excess of short +unemphatic syllables, the same solution of the graver iambic into soft +overflow of lighter and longer feet which relaxes and dilutes the solid +harmony of tragic metre with notes of a more facile and feminine strain. +But in _King Henry VIII_. it should be remarked that though we not +unfrequently find the same preponderance as in Fletcher's work of verses +with a double ending--which in English verse at least are not in +themselves feminine, and need not be taken to constitute, as in +Fletcher's case they do, a note of comparative effeminacy or relaxation +in tragic style--we do not find the perpetual predominance of those +triple terminations so peculiarly and notably dear to that poet; {92} so +that even by the test of the metre-mongers who would reduce the whole +question at issue to a point which might at once be solved by the simple +process of numeration the argument in favour of Fletcher can hardly be +proved tenable; for the metre which evidently has one leading quality in +common with his is as evidently wanting in another at least as marked and +as necessary to establish--if established it can be by any such test +taken singly and, apart from all other points of evidence--the +collaboration of Fletcher with Shakespeare in this instance. And if the +proof by mere metrical similitude is thus imperfect, there is here +assuredly no other kind of test which may help to fortify the argument by +any suggestion of weight even comparable to this. In those passages +which would seem most plausibly to indicate the probable partnership of +Fletcher, the unity and sustained force of the style keep it generally +above the average level of his; there is less admixture or intrusion of +lyric or elegiac quality; there is more of temperance and proportion +alike in declamation and in debate. And throughout the whole play, and +under all the diversity of composite subject and conflicting interest +which disturbs the unity of action, there is a singleness of spirit, a +general unity or concord of inner tone, in marked contrast to the utter +discord and discrepancy of the several sections of _The Two Noble +Kinsmen_. We admit, then, that this play offers us in some not +unimportant passages the single instance of a style not elsewhere +precisely or altogether traceable in Shakespeare; that no exact parallel +to it can be found among his other plays; and that if not the partial +work it may certainly be taken as the general model of Fletcher in his +tragic poetry. On the other hand, we contend that its exceptional +quality might perhaps be explicable as a tentative essay in a new line by +one who tried so many styles before settling into his latest; and that, +without far stronger, clearer, and completer proof than has yet been or +can ever be advanced, the question is not solved but merely evaded by the +assumption of a double authorship. + +By far the ablest argument based upon a wider ground of reason or of +likelihood than this of mere metre that has yet been advanced in support +of the theory which would attribute a part of this play to some weaker +hand than Shakespeare's is due to the study of a critic whose +name--already by right of inheritance the most illustrious name of his +age and ours--is now for ever attached to that of Shakespeare himself by +right of the highest service ever done and the noblest duty ever paid to +his memory. The untimely death which removed beyond reach of our thanks +for all he had done and our hopes for all he might do, the man who first +had given to France the first among foreign poets--son of the greatest +Frenchman and translator of the greatest Englishman--was only in this not +untimely, that it forbore him till the great and wonderful work was done +which has bound two deathless names together by a closer than the common +link that connects the names of all sovereign poets. Among all classic +translations of the classic works of the world, I know of none that for +absolute mastery and perfect triumph over all accumulation of obstacles, +for supreme dominion over supreme difficulty, can be matched with the +translation of Shakespeare by Francois-Victor Hugo; unless a claim of +companionship may perchance be put in for Urquhart's unfinished version +of Rabelais. For such success in the impossible as finally disproves the +right of "that fool of a word" to existence--at least in the world of +letters--the two miracles of study and of sympathy which have given +Shakespeare to the French and Rabelais to the English, and each in his +habit as he lived, may take rank together in glorious rivalry beyond +eyeshot of all past or future competition. + +Among the essays appended to the version of Shakespeare which they +complete and illustrate, that which deals with the play now in question +gives as ample proof as any other of the sound and subtle insight brought +to bear by the translator upon the object of his labour and his love. His +keen and studious intuition is here as always not less notable and +admirable than his large and solid knowledge, his full and lucid +comprehension at once of the text and of the history of Shakespeare's +plays; and if his research into the inner details of that history may +seem ever to have erred from the straight path of firm and simple +certainty into some dubious byway of theory or conjecture, we may be sure +at least that no lack of learning or devotion, of ardour or intelligence, +but more probably some noble thought that was fathered by a noble wish to +do honour to Shakespeare, has led him to attribute to his original some +quality foreign to the text, or to question the authenticity of what for +love of his author he might not wish to find in it. Thus he would reject +the main part of the fifth act as the work of a mere court laureate, an +official hack or hireling employed to anoint the memory of an archbishop +and lubricate the steps of a throne with the common oil of dramatic +adulation; and finding it in either case a task alike unworthy of +Shakespeare to glorify the name of Cranmer or to deify the names of the +queen then dead and the king yet living, it is but natural that he should +be induced by an unconscious bias or prepossession of the will to +depreciate the worth of the verse sent on work fitter for ushers and +embalmers and the general valetry or varletry of Church and State. That +this fifth act is unequal in point of interest to the better part of the +preceding acts with which it is connected by so light and loose a tie of +convenience is as indisputable as that the style of the last scene +savours now and then, and for some space together, more strongly than +ever of Fletcher's most especial and distinctive qualities, or that the +whole structure of the play if judged by any strict rule of pure art is +incomposite and incongruous, wanting in unity, consistency, and coherence +of interest. The fact is that here even more than in _King John_ the +poet's hands were hampered by a difficulty inherent in the subject. To +an English and Protestant audience, fresh from the passions and perils of +reformation and reaction, he had to present an English king at war with +the papacy, in whom the assertion of national independence was incarnate; +and to the sympathies of such an audience it was a matter of mere +necessity for him to commend the representative champion of their cause +by all means which he could compel into the service of his aim. Yet this +object was in both instances all but incompatible with the natural and +necessary interest of the plot. It was inevitable that this interest +should in the main be concentrated upon the victims of the personal or +national policy of either king; upon Constance and Arthur, upon Katherine +and Wolsey. Where these are not, either apparent in person on the stage, +or felt in their influence upon the speech and action of the characters +present, the pulse of the poem beats fainter and its forces begin to +flag. In _King John_ this difficulty was met and mastered, these double +claims of the subject of the poem and the object of the poet were +satisfied and harmonised, by the effacement of John and the substitution +of Faulconbridge as the champion of the national cause and the +protagonist of the dramatic action. Considering this play in its double +aspect of tragedy and history, we might say that the English hero becomes +the central figure of the poem as seen from its historic side, while John +remains the central figure of the poem as seen from its tragic side; the +personal interest that depends on personal crime and retribution is +concentrated on the agony of the king; the national interest which he, +though the eponymous hero of the poem, was alike inadequate as a craven +and improper as a villain to sustain and represent in the eyes of the +spectators was happily and easily transferred to the one person of the +play who could properly express within the compass of its closing act at +once the protest against papal pretension, the defiance of foreign +invasion, and the prophetic assurance of self-dependent life and self- +sufficing strength inherent in the nation then fresh from a fiercer trial +of its quality, which an audience of the days of Queen Elizabeth would +justly expect from the poet who undertook to set before them in action +the history of the days of King John. That history had lately been +brought upon the stage under the hottest and most glaring light that +could be thrown on it by the fire of fanatical partisanship; _The +Troublesome Reign of King John_, weakest and most wooden of all wearisome +chronicles that ever cumbered the boards, had in it for sole principle of +life its power of congenial appeal to the same blatant and vulgar spirit +of Protestantism which inspired it. In all the flat interminable morass +of its tedious and tuneless verse I can find no blade or leaf of living +poetic growth, no touch but one of nature or of pathos, where Arthur +dying would fain send a last thought in search of his mother. From this +play Shakespeare can have got neither hint nor help towards the execution +of his own; the crude rough sketch of the Bastard as he brawls and +swaggers through the long length of its scenes is hardly so much as the +cast husk or chrysalid of the noble creature which was to arise and take +shape for ever at the transfiguring touch of Shakespeare. In the case of +_King Henry VIII_. he had not even such a blockish model as this to work +from. The one preceding play known to me which deals professedly with +the same subject treats of quite other matters than are handled by +Shakespeare, and most notably with the scholastic adventures or +misadventures of Edward Prince of Wales and his whipping-boy Ned Browne. +A fresh and wellnigh a plausible argument might be raised by the critics +who deny the unity of authorship in King Henry VIII., on the ground that +if Shakespeare had completed the work himself he would surely not have +let slip the occasion to introduce one of the most famous and popular of +all court fools in the person of Will Summers, who might have given life +and relief to the action of many scenes now unvaried and unbroken in +their gravity of emotion and event. Shakespeare, one would say, might +naturally have been expected to take up and remodel the well-known figure +of which his humble precursor could give but a rough thin outline, yet +sufficient it should seem to attract the tastes to which it appealed; for +this or some other quality of seasonable attraction served to float the +now forgotten play of Samuel Rowley through several editions. The +central figure of the huge hot-headed king, with his gusts of stormy good +humour and peals of burly oaths which might have suited "Garagantua's +mouth" and satisfied the requirements of Hotspur, appeals in a ruder +fashion to the survival of the same sympathies on which Shakespeare with +a finer instinct as evidently relied; the popular estimate of the bluff +and brawny tyrant "who broke the bonds of Rome" was not yet that of later +historians, though doubtless neither was it that of the writer or writers +who would champion him to the utterance. Perhaps the opposite verdicts +given by the instinct of the people on "bluff King Hal" and "Bloody Mary" +may be understood by reference to a famous verse of Juvenal. The +wretched queen was sparing of noble blood and lavish of poor men's +lives--_cerdonibus timenda_; and the curses under which her memory was +buried were spared by the people to her father, _Lamiarum caede madenti_. +In any case, the humblest not less than the highest of the poets who +wrote under the reign of his daughter found it safe to present him in a +popular light before an audience of whose general prepossession in his +favour William Shakespeare was no slower to take advantage than Samuel +Rowley. + +The two plays we have just discussed have one quality of style in common +which has already been noted; that in them rhetoric is in excess of +action or passion, and far in excess of poetry. They are not as yet +perfect examples of his second manner, though far ahead of his first +stage in performance as in promise. Compared with the full and living +figure of Katherine or of Constance, the study of Margaret of Anjou is +the mere sketch of a poet still in his pupilage: John and Henry, +Faulconbridge and Wolsey, are designs beyond reach of the hand which drew +the second and third Richard without much background or dramatic +perspective. But the difficulties inherent in either subject are not +surmounted throughout with absolute equality of success; the very point +of appeal to the sympathy and excitement of the time may have been +something of a disturbing force in the composition of the work--a +loadstone rock indeed, of tempting attraction to the patriot as well as +to the playwright, but possibly capable of proving in some measure a rock +of offence to the poet whose ship was piloted towards it. His perfect +triumph in the field of patriotic drama, coincident with the perfect +maturity of his comic genius and his general style, has now to show +itself. + +The great national trilogy which is at once the flower of Shakespeare's +second period and the crown of his achievements in historic drama--unless +indeed we so far depart from the established order and arrangement of his +works as to include his three Roman plays in the same class with these +English histories--offers perhaps the most singular example known to us +of the variety in fortune which befell his works on their first +appearance in print. None of these had better luck in that line at +starting than _King Henry IV_.; none had worse than _King Henry V_. With +_Romeo and Juliet_, the _Merry Wives of Windsor_, and _Hamlet_, it shares +the remarkable and undesirable honour of having been seized and boarded +by pirates even before it had left the dockyard. The masterbuilder's +hands had not yet put the craft into seaworthy condition when she was +overhauled by these Kidds and Blackbeards of the press. Of those four +plays, the two tragedies at least were thoroughly recast, and rewritten +from end to end: the pirated editions giving us a transcript, more or +less perfect or imperfect, accurate or corrupt, of the text as it first +came from the poet's hand; a text to be afterwards indefinitely modified +and incalculably improved. Not quite so much can be said of the comedy, +which certainly stood in less need of revision, and probably would not +have borne it so well; nevertheless every little passing touch of the +reviser's hand is here also a noticeable mark of invigoration and +improvement. But _King Henry V_., we may fairly say, is hardly less than +transformed. Not that it has been recast after the fashion of _Hamlet_, +or even rewritten after the fashion of _Romeo and Juliet_; but the +corruptions and imperfections of the pirated text are here more flagrant +than in any other instance; while the general revision of style by which +it is at once purified and fortified extends to every nook and corner of +the restored and renovated building. Even had we, however, a perfect and +trustworthy transcript of Shakespeare's original sketch for this play, +there can be little doubt that the rough draught would still prove almost +as different from the final masterpiece as is the soiled and ragged +canvas now before us, on which we trace the outline of figures so +strangely disfigured, made subject to such rude extremities of defacement +and defeature. There is indeed less difference between the two editions +in the comic than in the historic scenes; the pirates were probably more +careful to furnish their market with a fair sample of the lighter than of +the graver ware supplied by their plunder of the poet; Fluellen and +Pistol lose less through their misusage than the king; and the king +himself is less maltreated when he talks plain prose with his soldiers +than when he chops blank verse with his enemies or his lords. His rough +and ready courtship of the French princess is a good deal expanded as to +length, but (if I dare say so) less improved and heightened in tone than +we might well have wished and it might well have borne; in either text +the Hero's addresses savour rather of a ploughman than a prince, and his +finest courtesies are clownish though not churlish. We may probably see +in this rather a concession to the appetite of the groundlings than an +evasion of the difficulties inherent in the subject-matter of the scene; +too heavy as these might have been for another, we can conceive of none +too hard for the magnetic tact and intuitive delicacy of Shakespeare's +judgment and instinct. But it must fairly and honestly be admitted that +in this scene we find as little of the charm and humour inseparable from +the prince as of the courtesy and dignity to be expected from the king. + +It should on the other hand be noted that the finest touch in the comic +scenes, if not the finest in the whole portrait of Falstaff, is +apparently an afterthought, a touch added on revision of the original +design. In the first scene of the second act Mrs. Quickly's remark that +"he'll yield the crow a pudding one of these days" is common to both +versions of the play; but the six words following are only to be found in +the revised edition; and these six words the very pirates could hardly +have passed over or struck out. They are not such as can drop from the +text of a poet unperceived by the very dullest and horniest of human +eyes. "The king has killed his heart." Here is the point in Falstaff's +nature so strangely overlooked by the man of all men who we should have +said must be the first to seize and to appreciate it. It is as grievous +as it is inexplicable that the Shakespeare of France--the most infinite +in compassion, in "conscience and tender heart," of all great poets in +all ages and all nations of the world--should have missed the deep +tenderness of this supreme and subtlest touch in the work of the greatest +among his fellows. Again, with anything but "damnable" iteration, does +Shakespeare revert to it before the close of this very scene. Even +Pistol and Nym can see that what now ails their old master is no such +ailment as in his prosperous days was but too liable to "play the rogue +with his great toe." "The king hath run bad humours on the knight": "his +heart is fracted, and corroborate." And it is not thus merely through +the eclipse of that brief mirage, that fair prospect "of Africa, and +golden joys," in view of which he was ready to "take any man's horses." +This it is that distinguishes Falstaff from Panurge; that lifts him at +least to the moral level of Sancho Panza. I cannot but be reluctant to +set the verdict of my own judgment against that of Victor Hugo's; I need +none to remind me what and who he is whose judgment I for once oppose, +and what and who am I that I should oppose it; that he is he, and I am +but myself; yet against his classification of Falstaff, against his +definition of Shakespeare's unapproached and unapproachable masterpiece +in the school of comic art and humouristic nature, I must and do with all +my soul and strength protest. The admirable phrase of "swine-centaur" +(_centaure du porc_) is as inapplicable to Falstaff as it is appropriate +to Panurge. Not the third person but the first in date of that divine +and human trinity of humourists whose names make radiant for ever the +Century of their new-born glory--not Shakespeare but Rabelais is +responsible for the creation or the discovery of such a type as this. +"_Suum cuique_ is our Roman justice"; the gradation from Panurge to +Falstaff is not downward but upward; though it be Victor Hugo's very self +who asserts the contrary. {108} Singular as may seem the collocation of +the epithet "moral" with the name "Falstaff," I venture to maintain my +thesis; that in point of feeling, and therefore of possible moral +elevation, Falstaff is as undeniably the superior of Sancho as Sancho is +unquestionably the superior of Panurge. The natural affection of Panurge +is bounded by the self-same limits as the natural theology of Polyphemus; +the love of the one, like the faith of the other, begins and ends alike +at one point; + + Myself, + And this great belly, first of deities; + +(in which line, by the way, we may hear as it were a first faint prelude +of the great proclamation to come--the hymn of praise and thanksgiving +for the coronation day of King Gaster; whose laureate, we know, was as +lovingly familiar with the Polyphemus of Euripides as Shakespeare with +his own Pantagruel.) In Sancho we come upon a creature capable of +love--but not of such love as kills or helps to kill, such love as may +end or even as may seem to end in anything like heartbreak. "And now +abideth Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare, these three; but the greatest +of these is Shakespeare." + +I would fain score yet another point in the fat knight's favour; "I have +much to say in the behalf of that Falstaff." Rabelais, evangelist and +prophet of the Resurrection of the Flesh (so long entombed, ignored, +repudiated, misconstrued, vilified, by so many generations and ages of +Galilean preachers and Pharisaic schoolmen)--Rabelais was content to +paint the flesh merely, in its honest human reality--human at least, if +also bestial; in its frank and rude reaction against the half brainless +and wholly bloodless teachers whose doctrine he himself on the one hand, +and Luther on the other, arose together to smite severally--to smite them +hip and thigh, even till the going down of the sun; the mock sun or +marshy meteor that served only to deepen the darkness encompassing on +every side the doubly dark ages--the ages of monarchy and theocracy, the +ages of death and of faith. To Panurge, therefore, it was unnecessary +and it might have seemed inconsequent to attribute other gifts or +functions than are proper to such intelligence as may accompany the +appetites of an animal. That most irreverend father in God, Friar John, +belongs to a higher class in the moral order of being; and he much rather +than his fellow-voyager and penitent is properly comparable with +Falstaff. It is impossible to connect the notion of rebuke with the sins +of Panurge. The actual lust and gluttony, the imaginary cowardice of +Falstaff, have been gravely and sharply rebuked by critical morality; we +have just noted a too recent and too eminent example of this; but what +mortal ever dreamed of casting these qualities in the teeth of his +supposed counterpart? The difference is as vast between Falstaff on the +field of battle and Panurge on the storm-tossed deck as between Falstaff +and Hotspur, Panurge and Friar John. No man could show cooler and +steadier nerve than is displayed in either case--by the lay as well as +the clerical namesake of the fourth evangelist. If ever fruitless but +endless care was shown to prevent misunderstanding, it was shown in the +pains taken by Shakespeare to obviate the misconstruction which would +impute to Falstaff the quality of a Parolles or a Bobadil, a Bessus or a +Moron. The delightful encounter between the jester and the bear in the +crowning interlude of _La Princesse d'Elide_ shows once more, I may +remark, that Moliere had sat at the feet of Rabelais as delightedly as +Shakespeare before him. Such rapturous inebriety or Olympian +incontinence of humour only fires the blood of the graver and less +exuberant humourist when his lips are still warm and wet from the well- +spring of the _Dive Bouteille_. + +It is needless to do over again the work which was done, and well done, a +hundred years since, by the writer whose able essay in vindication and +exposition of the genuine character of Falstaff elicited from Dr. Johnson +as good a jest and as bad a criticism as might have been expected. His +argument is too thoroughly carried out at all points and fortified on all +hands to require or even to admit of corroboration; and the attempt to +appropriate any share of the lasting credit which is his due would be +nothing less than a disingenuous impertinence. I may here however notice +that in the very first scene of this trilogy which introduces us to the +ever dear and honoured presence of Sir John, his creator has put into the +mouth of a witness no friendlier or more candid than Ned Poins the +distinction between two as true-bred cowards as ever turned back and one +who will fight no longer than he sees reason. In this nutshell lies the +whole kernel of the matter; the sweet, sound, ripe, toothsome, wholesome +kernel of Falstaff's character and humour. He will fight as well as his +princely patron, and, like the prince, as long as he sees reason; but +neither Hal nor Jack has ever felt any touch of desire to pluck that +"mere scutcheon" honour "from the pale-faced moon." Harry Percy is as it +were the true Sir Bedivere, the last of all Arthurian knights; Henry V. +is the first as certainly as he is the noblest of those equally daring +and calculating statesmen-warriors whose two most terrible, most perfect, +and most famous types are Louis XI. and Caesar Borgia. Gain, +"commodity," the principle of self-interest which never but in word and +in jest could become the principle of action with Faulconbridge,--himself +already far more "a man of this world" than a Launcelot or a Hotspur,--is +as evidently the mainspring of Henry's enterprise and life as of the +contract between King Philip and King John. The supple and shameless +egotism of the churchmen on whose political sophistries he relies for +external support is needed rather to varnish his project than to reassure +his conscience. Like Frederic the Great before his first Silesian war, +the future conqueror of Agincourt has practically made up his mind before +he seeks to find as good reason or as plausible excuse as were likewise +to suffice the future conqueror of Rosbach. In a word, Henry is +doubtless not the man, as old Auchindrane expresses it in the noble and +strangely neglected tragedy which bears solitary but sufficient witness +to the actual dramatic faculty of Sir Walter Scott's genius, to do the +devil's work without his wages; but neither is he, on the like +unprofitable terms, by any manner of means the man to do God's. No +completer incarnation could be shown us of the militant +Englishman--_Anglais pur sang_; but it is not only, as some have seemed +to think, with the highest, the purest, the noblest quality of English +character that his just and far-seeing creator has endowed him. The +godlike equity of Shakespeare's judgment, his implacable and impeccable +righteousness of instinct and of insight, was too deeply ingrained in the +very core of his genius to be perverted by any provincial or +pseudo-patriotic prepossessions; his patriotism was too national to be +provincial. Assuredly no poet ever had more than he: not even the king +of men and poets who fought at Marathon and sang of Salamis: much less +had any or has any one of our own, from Milton on to Campbell and from +Campbell even to Tennyson. In the mightiest chorus of _King Henry V_. we +hear the pealing ring of the same great English trumpet that was yet to +sound over the battle of the Baltic, and again in our later day over a +sea-fight of Shakespeare's own, more splendid and heart-cheering in its +calamity than that other and all others in their triumph; a war-song and +a sea-song divine and deep as death or as the sea, making thrice more +glorious at once the glorious three names of England, of Grenville, and +of Tennyson for ever. From the affectation of cosmopolitan indifference +not AEschylus, not Pindar, not Dante's very self was more alien or more +free than Shakespeare; but there was nothing of the dry Tyrtaean twang, +the dull mechanic resonance as of wooden echoes from a platform, in the +great historic chord of his lyre. "He is very English, too English, +even," says the Master on whom his enemies alone--assuredly not his most +loving, most reverent, and most thankful disciples--might possibly and +plausibly retort that he was "very French, too French, even"; but he +certainly was not "too English" to see and cleave to the main fact, the +radical and central truth, of personal or national character, of typical +history or tradition, without seeking to embellish, to degrade, in either +or in any way to falsify it. From king to king, from cardinal to +cardinal, from the earliest in date of subject to the latest of his +histories, we find the same thread running, the same link of honourable +and righteous judgment, of equitable and careful equanimity, connecting +and combining play with play in an unbroken and infrangible chain of +evidence to the singleness of the poet's eye, the identity of the +workman's hand, which could do justice and would do no more than justice, +alike to Henry and to Wolsey, to Pandulph and to John. His typical +English hero or historic protagonist is a man of their type who founded +and built up the empire of England in India; a hero after the future +pattern of Hastings and of Clive; not less daringly sagacious and not +more delicately scrupulous, not less indomitable or more impeccable than +they. A type by no means immaculate, a creature not at all too bright +and good for English nature's daily food in times of mercantile or +military enterprise; no whit more if no whit less excellent and radiant +than reality. _Amica Britannia, sed magis amica veritas_. The master +poet of England--all Englishmen may reasonably and honourably be proud of +it--has not two weights and two measures for friend and foe. This +palpable and patent fact, as his only and worthy French translator has +well remarked, would of itself suffice to exonerate his memory from the +imputation of having perpetrated in its evil entirety _The First Part of +King Henry VI_. + +There is, in my opinion, somewhat more of internal evidence than I have +ever seen adduced in support of the tradition current from an early date +as to the origin of the _Merry Wives of Windsor_; a tradition which +assigns to Queen Elizabeth the same office of midwife with regard to this +comedy as was discharged by Elwood with reference to _Paradise Regained_. +Nothing could so naturally or satisfactorily explain its existence as the +expression of a desire to see "Falstaff in love," which must have been +nothing less than the equivalent of a command to produce him under the +disguise of such a transfiguration on the boards. The task of presenting +him so shorn of his beams, so much less than archangel (of comedy) +ruined, and the excess of (humorous) glory obscured, would hardly, we +cannot but think and feel, have spontaneously suggested itself to +Shakespeare as a natural or eligible aim for the fresh exercise of his +comic genius. To exhibit Falstaff as throughout the whole course of five +acts a credulous and baffled dupe, one "easier to be played on than a +pipe," was not really to reproduce him at all. The genuine Falstaff +could no more have played such a part than the genuine Petruchio could +have filled such an one as was assigned him by Fletcher in the luckless +hour when that misguided poet undertook to continue the subject and to +correct the moral of the next comedy in our catalogue of Shakespeare's. +_The Tamer Tamed_ is hardly less consistent or acceptable as a sequel to +the _Taming of the Shrew_ than the _Merry Wives of Windsor_ as a +supplement to _King Henry IV_.: and no conceivable comparison could more +forcibly convey, how broad and deep is the gulf of incongruity which +divides them. + +The plea for once suggested by the author in the way of excuse or +extenuation for this incompatibility of Falstaff with Falstaff--for the +violation of character goes far beyond mere inconsistency or the natural +ebb and flow of even the brightest wits and most vigorous intellects--will +commend itself more readily to the moralist than to the humanist; in +other words, to the preacher rather than to the thinker, the sophist +rather than the artist. Here only does Shakespeare show that he feels +the necessity of condescending to such evasion or such apology as is +implied in the explanation of Falstaff's incredible credulity by a +reference to "the guiltiness of his mind" and the admission, so +gratifying to all minds more moral than his own, that "wit may be made a +Jack-a-Lent, when 'tis upon ill employment." It is the best excuse that +can be made; but can we imagine the genuine, the pristine Falstaff +reduced to the proffer of such an excuse in serious good earnest? + +In the original version of this comedy there was not a note of poetry +from end to end; as it then appeared, it might be said to hold the same +place on the roll of Shakespeare's plays as is occupied by _Bartholomew +Fair_ on the roll of Ben Jonson's. From this point of view it is curious +to contrast the purely farcical masterpieces of the town-bred schoolboy +and the country lad. There is a certain faint air of the fields, the +river, and the park, even in the rough sketch of Shakespeare's +farce--wholly prosaic as it is, and in no point suggestive of any +unlikelihood in the report which represents it as the composition or +rather as the improvisation of a fortnight. We know at once that he must +have stroked the fallow greyhound that was outrun on "Cotsall"; that he +must--and perhaps once or twice at least too often--have played truant +(some readers, boys past or present, might wish for association's sake it +could actually have been Datchet-wards) from under the shadow of good Sir +Hugh's probably not over formidable though "threatening twigs of birch," +at all risks of being "preeches" on his return, in fulfilment of the +direful menace held out to that young namesake of his over whose +innocence Mrs. Quickly was so creditably vigilant. On the other hand, no +student of Jonson will need to be reminded how closely and precociously +familiar the big stalwart Westminster boy, Camden's favoured and grateful +pupil, must have made himself with the rankest haunts and most unsavoury +recesses of that ribald waterside and Smithfield life which he lived to +reproduce on the stage with a sometimes insufferable fidelity to details +from which Hogarth might have shrunk. Even his unrivalled proficiency in +classic learning can hardly have been the fruit of greater or more +willing diligence in school hours than he must have lavished on other +than scholastic studies in the streets. The humour of his huge +photographic group of divers "humours" is undeniably and incomparably +richer, broader, fuller of invention and variety, than any that +Shakespeare's lighter work can show; all the five acts of the latter +comedy can hardly serve as counterpoise, in weight and wealth of comic +effect, to the single scene in which Zeal-of-the-Land defines the moral +and theological boundaries of action and intention which distinguish the +innocent if not laudable desire to eat pig from the venial though not +mortal sin of longing to eat pig in the thick of the profane Fair, which +may rather be termed a foul than a fair. Taken from that point of view +which looks only to force and freedom and range of humorous effect, +Jonson's play is to his friend's as London is to Windsor; but in more +senses than one it is to Shakespeare's as the Thames at London Bridge is +to the Thames at Eton: the atmosphere of Smithfield is not more different +from the atmosphere of the playing-fields; and some, too delicate of nose +or squeamish of stomach, may prefer Cuckoo Weir to Shoreditch. But +undoubtedly the phantoms of Shallow and Mrs. Quickly which put in (so to +speak) a nominal reappearance in the _Merry Wives of Windsor_ are +comparatively as poor and thin if set over against the full rich outlines +of Rabbi Busy and Dame Purecraft as these again are at all points alike +inferior to the real Shallow and the genuine Quickly of _King Henry IV_. +It is true that Jonson's humour has sometimes less in common with +Shakespeare's than with the humour of Swift, Smollett, and Carlyle. For +all his admiration and even imitation of Rabelais, Shakespeare has hardly +once or twice burnt but so much as a stray pinch of fugitive incense on +the altar of Cloacina; the only Venus acknowledged and adored by those +three latter humourists. If not always constant with the constancy of +Milton to the service of Urania, he never turns into a dirtier byway or +back alley than the beaten path trodden occasionally by most of his kind +which leads them on a passing errand of no unnatural devotion to the +shrine of Venus Pandemos. + +When, however, we turn from the raw rough sketch to the enriched and +ennobled version of the present play we find it in this its better shape +more properly comparable with another and a nobler work of Jonson's--with +that magnificent comedy, the first avowed and included among his +collection by its author, which according to all tradition first owed its +appearance and success to the critical good sense and generous good +offices of Shakespeare. Neither my duly unqualified love for the greater +poet nor my duly qualified regard for the less can alter my sense that +their mutual relations are in this one case inverted; that _Every Man in +his Humour_ is altogether a better comedy and a work of higher art than +the _Merry Wives of Windsor_. Kitely is to Ford almost what Arnolphe is +to Sganarelle. (As according to the learned Metaphraste "Filio non +potest praeferri nisi filius," even so can no one but Moliere be +preferred or likened to Moliere.) Without actually touching like +Arnolphe on the hidden springs of tragedy, the jealous husband in +Jonson's play is only kept from trenching on the higher and forbidden +grounds of passion by the potent will and the consummate self-command of +the great master who called him up in perfect likeness to the life. +Another or a deeper tone, another or a stronger touch, in the last two +admirable scenes with his cashier and his wife, when his hot smouldering +suspicion at length catches fire and breaks out in agony of anger, would +have removed him altogether beyond the legitimate pale of comedy. As it +is, the self-control of the artist is as thorough as his grasp and +mastery of his subject are triumphant and complete. + +It would seem as though on revision of the _Merry Wives of Windsor_ +Shakespeare had found himself unwilling or rather perhaps unable to leave +a single work of his hand without one touch or breath on it of beauty or +of poetry. The sole fitting element of harmonious relief or variety in +such a case could of course be found only in an interlude of pure fancy; +any touch of graver or deeper emotion would simply have untuned and +deranged the whole scheme of composition. A lesser poet might have been +powerless to resist the temptation or suggestion of sentiment that he +should give to the little loves of Anne Page and Fenton a touch of +pathetic or emotional interest; but "opulent as Shakespeare was, and of +his opulence prodigal" (to borrow a phrase from Coleridge), he knew +better than to patch with purple or embroider with seed-pearl the hem of +this homespun little piece of comic drugget. The match between cloth of +gold and cloth of frieze could hardly have borne any good issue in this +instance. Instead therefore of following the lead of Terence's or the +hint of Jonson's example, and exalting the accent of his comedy to the +full-mouthed pitch of a Chremes or a Kitely, he strikes out some forty +and odd lines of rather coarse and commonplace doggrel about brokers, +proctors, lousy fox-eyed serjeants, blue and red noses, and so forth, to +make room for the bright light interlude of fairyland child's-play which +might not unfittingly have found place even within the moon-charmed +circle of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_. Even in that all heavenly poem +there are hardly to be found lines of more sweet and radiant simplicity +than here. + +The refined instinct, artistic judgment, and consummate taste of +Shakespeare were perhaps never so wonderfully shown as in his recast of +another man's work--a man of real if rough genius for comedy--which we +get in the _Taming of the Shrew_. Only the collation of scene with +scene, then of speech with speech, then of line with line, will show how +much may be borrowed from a stranger's material and how much may be added +to it by the same stroke of a single hand. All the force and humour +alike of character and situation belong to Shakespeare's eclipsed and +forlorn precursor; he has added nothing; he has tempered and enriched +everything. That the luckless author of the first sketch is like to +remain a man as nameless as the deed of the witches in _Macbeth_, unless +some chance or caprice of accident should suddenly flash favouring light +on his now impersonal and indiscoverable individuality, seems clear +enough when we take into account the double and final disproof of his +imaginary identity with Marlowe, which Mr. Dyce has put forward with such +unanswerable certitude. He is a clumsy and coarse-fingered plagiarist +from that poet, and his stolen jewels of expression look so grossly out +of place in the homely setting of his usual style that they seem +transmuted from real to sham. On the other hand, he is of all the Pre- +Shakespeareans known to us incomparably the truest, the richest, the most +powerful and original humourist; one indeed without a second on that +ground, for "the rest are nowhere." Now Marlowe, it need scarcely be +once again reiterated, was as certainly one of the least and worst among +jesters as he was one of the best and greatest among poets. There can +therefore be no serious question of his partnership in a play wherein the +comic achievement is excellent and the poetic attempts are execrable +throughout. + +The recast of it in which a greater than Berni has deigned to play the +part of that poet towards a lesser than Bojardo shows tact and delicacy +perhaps without a parallel in literature. No chance of improvement is +missed, while nothing of value is dropped or thrown away. {125} There is +just now and then a momentary return perceptible to the skipping metre +and fantastic manner of the first period, which may have been +unconsciously suggested by the nature of the task in hand--a task of +itself implying or suggesting some new study of old models; but the main +style of the play in all its weightier parts is as distinctly proper to +the second period, as clear an evidence of inner and spiritual affinity +(with actual tabulation of dates, were such a thing as feasible as it is +impossible, I must repeat that the argument would here be--what it is +now--in no wise concerned), as is the handling of character throughout; +but most especially the subtle force, the impeccable and careful +instinct, the masculine delicacy of touch, by which the somewhat +ruffianly temperament of the original Ferando is at once refined and +invigorated through its transmutation into the hearty and humorous +manliness of Petruchio's. + +It is observable that those few and faint traces which we have noticed in +this play of a faded archaic style trying as it were to resume a mockery +of revirescence are not wholly even if mainly confined to the underplot +which a suggestion or surmise of Mr. Collier's long since assigned to +Haughton, author of _Englishmen for my Money, or A Woman will have her +Will_: a spirited, vigorous, and remarkably regular comedy of intrigue, +full of rough and ready incident, bright boisterous humour, honest lively +provinciality and gay high-handed Philistinism. To take no account of +this attribution would be to show myself as shamelessly as shamefully +deficient in that respect and gratitude which all genuine and thankful +students will always be as ready to offer as all thankless and insolent +sciolists can ever be to disclaim, to the venerable scholar who since I +was first engaged on these notes has added yet another obligation to the +many under which he had already laid all younger and lesser labourers in +the same field of study, by the issue in a form fitly ennobled and +enriched of his great historical work on our early stage. It might seem +something of an unintended impertinence to add that such recognition of +his theory no more implies a blind acceptance of it--whatever such +acceptance on my part might be worth--than the expression of such +gratitude and respect could reasonably be supposed to imply an equally +blind confidence in the authority or the value of that version of +Shakespeare's text which has been the means of exposing a name so long +and so justly honoured, not merely to the natural and rational +inquisition of rival students, but to the rancorous and ribald obloquy of +thankless and frontless pretenders. + +Here perhaps as well as anywhere else I may find a proper place to +intercalate the little word I have to say in partial redemption of my +pledge to take in due time some notice at more or less length, of the +only two among the plays doubtfully ascribed to Shakespeare which in my +eyes seem to bear any credible or conceivable traces of his touch. Of +these two I must give the lesser amount of space and attention to that +one which in itself is incomparably the more worthy of discussion, +admiration, and regard. The reason of this lies in the very excellence +which has attracted to it the notice of such competent judges and the +suffrage of such eminent names as would make the task of elaborate +commentary and analytic examination something more than superfluous on my +part; whereas the other has never been and will never be assigned to +Shakespeare by any critical student whose verdict is worth a minute's +consideration or the marketable value of a straw. Nevertheless it is on +other grounds worth notice; and such notice, to be itself of any value, +must of necessity be elaborate and minute. The critical analysis of +_King Edward III_. I have therefore relegated to its proper place in an +appendix; while I reserve a corner of my text, at once out of admiration +for the play itself and out of reverence for the names and authority of +some who have given their verdict in its behalf, for a rough and rapid +word or two on _Arden of Feversham_. + +It is with equally inexpressible surprise that I find Mr. Collier +accepting as Shakespeare's any part of _A Warning for Fair Women_, and +rejecting without compromise or hesitation the belief or theory which +would assign to the youth of Shakespeare the incomparably nobler tragic +poem in question. {129} His first ascription to Shakespeare of _A +Warning for Fair Women_ is couched in terms far more dubious and +diffident than such as he afterwards adopts. It "might," he says, "be +given to Shakespeare on grounds far more plausible" (on what, except +possibly those of date, I cannot imagine) "than those applicable to +_Arden of Feversham_." He then proceeds to cite some detached lines and +passages of undeniable beauty and vigour, containing equally undeniable +coincidences of language, illustration, and expression with "passages in +Shakespeare's undisputed plays." From these he passes on to indicate a +"resemblance" which "is not merely verbal," and to extract whole speeches +which "are Shakespearean in a much better sense"; adding in a surely too +trenchant fashion, "Here we say, _aut Shakespeare aut diabolus_." I must +confess, with all esteem for the critic and all admiration for the brief +scene cited, that I cannot say, Shakespeare. + +There are spirits of another sort from whom we naturally expect such +assumptions and inferences as start from the vantage ground of a few +separate or separable passages, and clear at a flying leap the empty +space intervening which divides them from the goal of evidence as to +authorship. Such a spirit was that of the late Mr. Simpson, to whose +wealth of misused learning and fertility of misapplied conjecture I have +already paid all due tribute; but who must have had beyond all other sane +men--most assuredly, beyond all other fairly competent critics--the gift +bestowed on him by a malignant fairy of mistaking assumption for argument +and possibility for proof. He was the very Columbus of mare's nests; to +the discovery of them, though they lay far beyond the pillars of +Hercules, he would apply all shifts and all resources possible to an +ultra-Baconian process of unphilosophical induction. On the devoted head +of Shakespeare--who is also called Shakspere and Chaxpur--he would have +piled a load of rubbish, among which the crude and vigorous old tragedy +under discussion shines out like a veritable diamond of the desert. His +"School of Shakspere," though not an academy to be often of necessity +perambulated by the most peripatetic student of Shakespeare, will remain +as a monument of critical or uncritical industry, a storehouse of curious +if not of precious relics, and a warning for other than fair women--or +fair scholars--to remember where "it is written that the shoemaker should +meddle with his yard and the tailor with his last, the fisher with his +pencil and the painter with his nets." + +To me the difference appears immeasurable between the reasons for +admitting the possibility of Shakespeare's authorship in the case of +_Arden of Feversham_, and the pretexts for imagining the probability of +his partnership in _A Warning for Fair Women_. There is a practically +infinite distinction between the evidence suggested by verbal or even +more than verbal resemblance of detached line to line or selected passage +to passage, and the proof supplied by the general harmony and spiritual +similarity of a whole poem, on comparison of it as a whole with the known +works of the hypothetical author. This proof, at all events, we surely +do not get from consideration in this light of the plea put forward in +behalf of _A Warning for Fair Women_. This proof, I cannot but think, we +are very much nearer getting from contemplation under the same light of +the claim producible for _Arden of Feversham_. + +_A Warning for Fair Women_ is unquestionably in its way a noticeable and +valuable "piece of work," as Sly might have defined it. It is perhaps +the best example anywhere extant of a merely realistic tragedy--of +realism pure and simple applied to the service of the highest of the +arts. Very rarely does it rise for a very brief interval to the height +of tragic or poetic style, however simple and homely. The epilogue +affixed to _Arden of Feversham_ asks pardon of the "gentlemen" composing +its audience for "this naked tragedy," on the plea that "simple truth is +gracious enough" without needless ornament or bedizenment of "glozing +stuff." Far more appropriate would such an apology have been as in this +case was at least superfluous, if appended by way of epilogue to _A +Warning for Fair Women_. That is indeed a naked tragedy; nine-tenths of +it are in no wise beyond the reach of an able, industrious, and practised +reporter, commissioned by the proprietors of the journal on whose staff +he might be engaged to throw into the force of scenic dialogue his +transcript of the evidence in a popular and exciting case of adultery and +murder. The one figure on the stage of this author which stands out +sharply defined in our recollection against a background of +undistinguished shadows is the figure of the adulterer and murderer. This +most discreditable of Browns has a distinct and brawny outline of his +own, a gait and accent as of a genuine and recognisable man, who might +have put to some better profit his shifty spirit of enterprise, his +genuine capacity of affection, his burly ingenuity and hardihood. His +minor confidants and accomplices, Mrs. Drury and her Trusty Roger, are +mere commonplace profiles of malefactors: but it is in the contrast +between the portraits of their two criminal heroines that the vast gulf +of difference between the capacities of the two poets yawns patent to the +sense of all readers. Anne Sanders and Alice Arden stand as far beyond +comparison apart as might a portrait by any average academician and a +portrait by Watts or Millais. Once only, in the simple and noble scene +cited by the over-generous partiality of Mr. Collier, does the widow and +murderess of Sanders rise to the tragic height of the situation and the +dramatic level of the part so unfalteringly sustained from first to last +by the wife and the murderess of Arden. + +There is the self-same relative difference between the two subordinate +groups of innocent or guilty characters. That is an excellent and +effective touch of realism, where Brown comes across his victim's little +boy playing truant in the street with a small schoolfellow; but in _Arden +of Feversham_ the number of touches as telling and as striking as this +one is practically numberless. They also show a far stronger and keener +faculty of poetic if not of dramatic imagination. The casual encounter +of little Sanders with the yet red-handed murderer of his father is not +comparable for depth and subtlety of effect with the scene in which +Arden's friend Franklin, riding with him to Raynham Down, breaks off his +"pretty tale" of a perjured wife, overpowered by a "fighting at his +heart," at the moment when they come close upon the ambushed assassins in +Alice Arden's pay. But the internal evidence in this case, as I have +already intimated, does not hinge upon the proof or the suggestion +offered by any single passage or by any number of single passages. The +first and last evidence of real and demonstrable weight is the evidence +of character. A good deal might be said on the score of style in favour +of its attribution to a poet of the first order, writing at a time when +there were but two such poets writing for the stage; but even this is +here a point of merely secondary importance. It need only be noted in +passing that if the problem be reduced to a question between the +authorship of Shakespeare and the authorship of Marlowe there is no need +and no room for further argument. The whole style of treatment from end +to end is about as like the method of Marlowe as the method of Balzac is +like the method of Dumas. There could be no alternative in that case; so +that the actual alternative before us is simple enough: Either this play +is the young Shakespeare's first tragic masterpiece, or there was a +writer unknown to us then alive and at work for the stage who excelled +him as a tragic dramatist not less--to say the very least--than he was +excelled by Marlowe as a narrative and tragic poet. + +If we accept, as I have been told that Goethe accepted (a point which I +regret my inability to verify), the former of these alternatives--or if +at least we assume it for argument's sake in passing--we may easily +strengthen our position by adducing as further evidence in its favour the +author's thoroughly Shakespearean fidelity to the details of the prose +narrative on which his tragedy is founded. But, it may be objected, we +find the same fidelity to a similar text in the case of _A Warning for +Fair Women_. And here again starts up the primal and radical difference +between the two works: it starts up and will not be overlooked. Equal +fidelity to the narrative text we do undoubtedly find in either case; the +same fidelity we assuredly do not find. The one is a typical example of +prosaic realism, the other of poetic reality. Light from darkness or +truth from falsehood is not more infallibly discernible. The fidelity in +the one case is exactly, as I have already indicated, the fidelity of a +reporter to his notes. The fidelity in the other case is exactly the +fidelity of Shakespeare in his Roman plays to the text of Plutarch. It +is a fidelity which admits--I had almost written, which requires--the +fullest play of the highest imagination. No more than the most realistic +of reporters will it omit or falsify any necessary or even admissible +detail; but the indefinable quality which it adds to the lowest as to the +highest of these is (as Lamb says of passion) "the all in all in poetry." +Turning again for illustration to one of the highest names in imaginative +literature--a name sometimes most improperly and absurdly inscribed on +the register of the realistic school, {137} we may say that the +difference on this point is not the difference between Balzac and Dumas, +but the distinction between Balzac and M. Zola. Let us take by way of +example the character next in importance to that of the heroine--the +character of her paramour. A viler figure was never sketched by Balzac; +a viler figure was seldom drawn by Thackeray. But as with Balzac, so +with the author of this play, the masterful will combining with the +masterly art of the creator who fashions out of the worst kind of human +clay the breathing likeness of a creature so hatefully pitiful and so +pitifully hateful overcomes, absorbs, annihilates all sense of such +abhorrence and repulsion as would prove the work which excited them no +high or even true work of art. Even the wonderful touch of dastardly +brutality and pitiful self-pity with which Mosbie at once receives and +repels the condolence of his mistress on his wound-- + + _Alice_.--Sweet Mosbie, hide thine arm, it kills my heart. + + _Mosbie_.--_Ay, Mistress Arden, this is your favour_.-- + +even this does not make unendurable the scenic representation of what in +actual life would be unendurable for any man to witness. Such an +exhibition of currish cowardice and sullen bullying spite increases +rather our wondering pity for its victim than our wondering sense of her +degradation. And this is a kind of triumph which only such an artist as +Shakespeare in poetry or as Balzac in prose can achieve. + +Alice Arden, if she be indeed a daughter of Shakespeare's, is the eldest +born of that group to which Lady Macbeth and Dionyza belong by right of +weird sisterhood. The wives of the thane of Glamis and the governor of +Tharsus, it need hardly be said, are both of them creations of a much +later date--if not of the very latest discernible or definable stage in +the art of Shakespeare. Deeply dyed as she is in bloodguiltiness, the +wife of Arden is much less of a born criminal than these. To her, at +once the agent and the patient of her crime, the victim and the +instrument of sacrifice and blood-offering to Venus Libitina, goddess of +love and death,--to her, even in the deepest pit of her deliberate +wickedness, remorse is natural and redemption conceivable. Like the +Phaedra of Racine, and herein so nobly unlike the Phaedra of Euripides, +she is capable of the deepest and bitterest penitence,--incapable of +dying with a hideous and homicidal falsehood on her long polluted lips. +Her latest breath is not a lie but a prayer. + +Considering, then, in conclusion, the various and marvellous gifts +displayed for the first time on our stage by the great poet, the great +dramatist, the strong and subtle searcher of hearts, the just and +merciful judge and painter of human passions, who gave this tragedy to +the new-born literature of our drama; taking into account the really +wonderful skill, the absoluteness of intuition and inspiration, with +which every stroke is put in that touches off character or tones down +effect, even in the sketching and grouping of such minor figures as the +ruffianly hireling Black Will, the passionate artist without pity or +conscience, {141} and above all the "unimitated, inimitable" study of +Michael, in whom even physical fear becomes tragic, and cowardice itself +no ludicrous infirmity but rather a terrible passion; I cannot but +finally take heart to say, even in the absence of all external or +traditional testimony, that it seems to me not pardonable merely nor +permissible, but simply logical and reasonable, to set down this poem, a +young man's work on the face of it, as the possible work of no man's +youthful hand but Shakespeare's. + +No similar question is raised, no parallel problem stated, in the case of +any one other among the plays now or ever ascribed on grounds more or +less dubious to that same indubitable hand. This hand I do not recognise +even in the _Yorkshire Tragedy_, full as it is to overflowing of fierce +animal power, and hot as with the furious breath of some caged wild +beast. Heywood, who as the most realistic and in some sense prosaic +dramatist of his time has been credited (though but in a modestly +tentative and suggestive fashion) with its authorship, was as incapable +of writing it as Chapman of writing the Shakespearean parts of _The Two +Noble Kinsmen_ or Fletcher of writing the scenes of Wolsey's fall and +Katherine's death in _King Henry VIII_. To the only editor of +Shakespeare responsible for the two earlier of the three suggestions here +set aside, they may be forgiven on the score of insufficient scholarship +and want of critical training; but on what ground the third suggestion +can be excused in the case of men who should have a better right than +most others to speak with some show of authority on a point of higher +criticism, I must confess myself utterly at a loss to imagine. In the +_Yorkshire Tragedy_ the submissive devotion of its miserable heroine to +her maddened husband is merely doglike,--though not even, in the +exquisitely true and tender phrase of our sovereign poetess, "most +passionately patient." There is no likeness in this poor trampled figure +to "one of Shakespeare's women": Griselda was no ideal of his. To find +its parallel in the dramatic literature of the great age, we must look to +lesser great men than Shakespeare. Ben Jonson, a too exclusively +masculine poet, will give us a couple of companion figures for her--or +one such figure at least; for the wife of Fitzdottrel, submissive as she +is even to the verge of undignified if not indecorous absurdity, is less +of a human spaniel than the wife of Corvino. Another such is Robert +Davenport's Abstemia, so warmly admired by Washington Irving; another is +the heroine of that singularly powerful and humorous tragi-comedy, +labelled to _How to Choose a Good Wife from a Bad_, which in its central +situation anticipates that of Leigh Hunt's beautiful _Legend of +Florence_; while Decker has revived, in one of our sweetest and most +graceful examples of dramatic romance, the original incarnation of that +somewhat pitiful ideal which even in a ruder and more Russian century of +painful European progress out of night and winter could only be made +credible, acceptable, or endurable, by the yet unequalled genius of +Chaucer and Boccaccio. + +For concentrated might and overwhelming weight of realism, this lurid +little play beats _A Warning for Fair Women_ fairly out of the field. It +is and must always be (I had nearly said, thank heaven) unsurpassable for +pure potency of horror; and the breathless heat of the action, its raging +rate of speed, leaves actually no breathing-time for disgust; it consumes +our very sense of repulsion as with fire. But such power as this, though +a rare and a great gift, is not the right quality for a dramatist; it is +not the fit property of a poet. Ford and Webster, even Tourneur and +Marston, who have all been more or less wrongfully though more or less +plausibly attacked on the score of excess in horror, have none of them +left us anything so nakedly terrible, so terribly naked as this. Passion +is here not merely stripped to the skin but stripped to the bones. I +cannot tell who could and I cannot guess who would have written it. "'Tis +a very excellent piece of work"; may we never exactly look upon its like +again! + +I thought it at one time far from impossible, if not very nearly +probable, that the author of _Arden of Feversham_ might be one with the +author of the famous additional scenes to _The Spanish Tragedy_, and that +either both of these "pieces of work" or neither must be Shakespeare's. I +still adhere to Coleridge's verdict, which indeed must be that of all +judges capable of passing any sentence worthier of record than are + + Fancies too weak for boys, too green and idle + For girls of nine: + +to the effect that those magnificent passages, wellnigh overcharged at +every point with passion and subtlety, sincerity and instinct of pathetic +truth, are no less like Shakespeare's work than unlike Jonson's: though +hardly perhaps more unlike the typical manner of his adult and matured +style than is the general tone of _The Case is Altered_, his one +surviving comedy of that earlier period in which we know from Henslowe +that the stout-hearted and long struggling young playwright went through +so much theatrical hackwork and piecework in the same rough harness with +other now more or less notable workmen then drudging under the manager's +dull narrow sidelong eye for bare bread and bare shelter. But this +unlikeness, great as it is and serious and singular, between his former +and his latter style in high comedy, gives no warrant for us to believe +him capable of so immeasurable a transformation in tragic style and so +indescribable a decadence in tragic power as would be implied in a +descent from the "fine madness" of "old Jeronymo" to the flat sanity and +smoke-dried sobriety of _Catiline_ and _Sejanus_.--I cannot but think, +too, that Lamb's first hypothetical ascription of these wonderful scenes +to Webster, so much the most Shakespearean in gait and port and accent of +all Shakespeare's liege men-at-arms, was due to a far happier and more +trustworthy instinct than led him in later years to liken them rather to +"the overflowing griefs and talking distraction of Titus Andronicus." + +We have wandered it may be somewhat out of the right time into a far +other province of poetry than the golden land of Shakespeare's ripest +harvest-fields of humour. And now, before we may enter the "flowery +square" made by the summer growth of his four greatest works in pure and +perfect comedy "beneath a broad and equal-blowing wind" of all happiest +and most fragrant imagination, we have but one field to cross, one brook +to ford, that hardly can be thought to keep us out of Paradise. In the +garden-plot on whose wicket is inscribed _All's Well that Ends Well_, we +are hardly distant from Eden itself + + About a young dove's flutter from a wood. + +The ninth story of the third day of the Decameron is one of the few +subjects chosen by Shakespeare--as so many were taken by Fletcher--which +are less fit, we may venture to think, for dramatic than for narrative +treatment. He has here again shown all possible delicacy of instinct in +handling a matter which unluckily it was not possible to handle on the +stage with absolute and positive delicacy of feeling or expression. Dr. +Johnson--in my humble opinion, with some justice; though his verdict has +been disputed on the score of undeserved austerity--"could not reconcile +his heart to Bertram"; and I, unworthy as I may be to second or support +on the score of morality the finding of so great a moralist, cannot +reconcile my instincts to Helena. Parolles is even better than Bobadil, +as Bobadil is even better than Bessus; and Lafeu is one of the very best +old men in all the range of comic art. But the whole charm and beauty of +the play, the quality which raises it to the rank of its fellows by +making it loveable as well as admirable, we find only in the "sweet, +serene, skylike" sanctity and attraction of adorable old age, made more +than ever near and dear to us in the incomparable figure of the old +Countess of Roussillon. At the close of the play, Fletcher would +inevitably have married her to Lafeu--or rather possibly, to the King. + +At the entrance of the heavenly quadrilateral, or under the rising dawn +of the four fixed stars which compose our Northern Cross among the +constellations of dramatic romance hung high in the highest air of +poetry, we may well pause for very dread of our own delight, lest +unawares we break into mere babble of childish rapture and infantile +thanksgiving for such light vouchsafed even to our "settentrional vedovo +sito" that even at their first dawn out of the depths + + Goder pareva il ciel di lor fiammelle. + +Beyond these again we see a second group arising, the supreme starry +trinity of the _Winter's Tale_, the _Tempest_, and _Cymbeline_: and +beyond these the divine darkness of everlasting and all-maternal night. +These seven lamps of the romantic drama have in them--if I may strain the +similitude a little further yet--more of lyric light than could fitly be +lent to feed the fire or the sunshine of the worlds of pure tragedy or +comedy. There is more play, more vibration as it were, in the splendours +of their spheres. Only in the heaven of Shakespeare's making can we pass +and repass at pleasure from the sunny to the stormy lights, from the +glory of _Cymbeline_ to the glory of _Othello_. + +In this first group of four--wholly differing on that point from the +later constellation of three--there is but very seldom, not more than +once or twice at most, a shooting or passing gleam of anything more lurid +or less lovely than "a light of laughing flowers." There is but just +enough of evil or even of passion admitted into their sweet spheres of +life to proclaim them living: and all that does find entrance is so +tempered by the radiance of the rest that we retain but softened and +lightened recollections even of Shylock and Don John when we think of the +_Merchant of Venice_ and _Much Ado about Nothing_; we hardly feel in _As +You Like It_ the presence or the existence of Oliver and Duke Frederick; +and in _Twelfth Night_, for all its name of the midwinter, we find +nothing to remember that might jar with the loveliness of love and the +summer light of life. + +No astronomer can ever tell which if any one among these four may be to +the others as a sun; for in this special tract of heaven "one star +differeth" not "from another star in glory." From each and all of them, +even "while this muddy vesture of decay doth grossly close [us] in," we +cannot _but_ hear the harmony of a single immortal soul + + Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins. + +The coincidence of the divine passage in which I have for once permitted +myself the freedom of altering for quotation's sake one little word, with +a noble excerpt given by Hallam from the Latin prose writings of +Campanella, may recall to us with a doubly appropriate sense of +harmonious fitness the subtly beautiful image of Lord Tennyson;-- + + Star to star vibrates light: may soul to soul + Strike thro' a finer element of her own? + +Surely, if ever she may, such a clash might we fancy to have passed from +the spirit of the most glorious martyr and poet to the spirit of the most +glorious poet and artist upon the face of the earth together. Even to +Shakespeare any association of his name with Campanella's, as even to +Campanella any association of his name with Shakespeare's, cannot but be +an additional ray of honour: and how high is the claim of the divine +philosopher to share with the godlike dramatist their common and crowning +name of poet, all Englishmen at least may now perceive by study of +Campanella's sonnets in the noble and exquisite version of Mr. Symonds; +to whom among other kindred debts we owe no higher obligation than is due +to him as the giver of these poems to the inmost heart of all among his +countrymen whose hearts are worthy to hold and to hoard up such treasure. + +Where nothing at once new and true can be said, it is always best to say +nothing; as it is in this case to refrain from all reiteration of +rhapsody which must have been somewhat "mouldy ere" any living man's +"grandsires had nails on their toes," if not at that yet remoter date +"when King Pepin of France was a little boy" and "Queen Guinever of +Britain was a little wench." In the _Merchant of Venice_, at all events, +there is hardly a single character from Portia to old Gobbo, a single +incident from the exaction of Shylock's bond to the computation of hairs +in Launcelot's beard and Dobbin's tail, which has not been more +plentifully beprosed than ever Rosalind was berhymed. Much wordy wind +has also been wasted on comparison of Shakespeare's Jew with Marlowe's; +that is, of a living subject for terror and pity with a mere mouthpiece +for the utterance of poetry as magnificent as any but the best of +Shakespeare's. + +Nor can it well be worth any man's while to say or to hear for the +thousandth time that _As You Like It_ would be one of those works which +prove, as Landor said long since, the falsehood of the stale axiom that +no work of man's can be perfect, were it not for that one unlucky slip of +the brush which has left so ugly a little smear in one corner of the +canvas as the betrothal of Oliver to Celia; though, with all reverence +for a great name and a noble memory, I can hardly think that matters were +much mended in George Sand's adaptation of the play by the transference +of her hand to Jaques. Once elsewhere, or twice only at the most, is any +such other sacrifice of moral beauty or spiritual harmony to the +necessities and traditions of the stage discernible in all the world-wide +work of Shakespeare. In the one case it is unhappily undeniable; no mans +conscience, no conceivable sense of right and wrong, but must more or +less feel as did Coleridge's the double violence done it in the upshot of +_Measure for Measure_. Even in the much more nearly spotless work which +we have next to glance at, some readers have perhaps not unreasonably +found a similar objection to the final good fortune of such a pitiful +fellow as Count Claudio. It will be observed that in each case the +sacrifice is made to comedy. The actual or hypothetical necessity of +pairing off all the couples after such a fashion as to secure a nominally +happy and undeniably matrimonial ending is the theatrical idol whose +tyranny exacts this holocaust of higher and better feelings than the mere +liquorish desire to leave the board of fancy with a palatable morsel of +cheap sugar on the tongue. + +If it is proverbially impossible to determine by selection the greatest +work of Shakespeare, it is easy enough to decide on the date and the name +of his most perfect comic masterpiece. For absolute power of +composition, for faultless balance and blameless rectitude of design, +there is unquestionably no creation of his hand that will bear comparison +with _Much Ado About Nothing_. The ultimate marriage of Hero and +Claudio, on which I have already remarked as in itself a doubtfully +desirable consummation, makes no flaw in the dramatic perfection of a +piece which could not otherwise have been wound up at all. This was its +one inevitable conclusion, if the action were not to come to a tragic +end; and a tragic end would here have been as painfully and as grossly +out of place as is any but a tragic end to the action of _Measure for +Measure_. As for Beatrice, she is as perfect a lady, though of a far +different age and breeding, as Celimene or Millamant; and a decidedly +more perfect woman than could properly or permissibly have trod the stage +of Congreve or Moliere. She would have disarranged all the dramatic +proprieties and harmonies of the one great school of pure comedy. The +good fierce outbreak of her high true heart in two swift words--"Kill +Claudio" {154}--would have fluttered the dovecotes of fashionable drama +to some purpose. But Alceste would have taken her to his own. + +No quainter and apter example was ever given of many men's absolute +inability to see the plainest aims, to learn the simplest rudiments, to +appreciate the most practical requisites of art, whether applied to +theatrical action or to any other as evident as exalted aim, than the +instance afforded by that criticism of time past which sagaciously +remarked that "any less amusingly absurd" constables than Dogberry and +Verges would have filled their parts in the action of the play equally +well. Our own day has doubtless brought forth critics and students of +else unparalleled capacity for the task of laying wind-eggs in mare's +nests, and wasting all the warmth of their brains and tongues in the +hopeful endeavour to hatch them: but so fine a specimen was never dropped +yet as this of the plumed or plumeless biped who discovered that if +Dogberry had not been Dogberry and Verges had not been Verges they would +have been equally unsuccessful in their honest attempt to warn Leonato +betimes of the plot against his daughter's honour. The only explanation +of the mistake is this; and it is one of which the force will be +intelligible only to those who are acquainted with the very singular +physiology of that remarkably prolific animal known to critical science +as the Shakespearean scholiast: that if Dogberry had been other than +Dogberry, or if Verges had been other than Verges, the action and +catastrophe of the whole play could never have taken place at all. + +All true Pantagruelians will always, or at least as long as may be +permitted by the Society for the Suppression of Vice, cherish with an +especial regard the comedy in which Shakespeare also has shown himself as +surely the loving as he would surely have been the beloved disciple of +that insuppressible divine, the immortal and most reverend vicar of +Meudon. Two only among the mighty men who lived and wrote and died +within the century which gave birth to Shakespeare were found worthy of +so great an honour at his hands as the double homage of citation and +imitation: and these two, naturally and properly enough, were Francois +Rabelais and Christopher Marlowe. We cannot but recognise on what far +travels in what good company "Feste the jester" had but lately been, on +that night of "very gracious fooling" when he was pleased to enlighten +the unforgetful mind of Sir Andrew as to the history of Pigrogromitus, +and of the Vapians passing the equinoctial of Queubus. At what precise +degree of latitude and longitude between the blessed islands of Medamothy +and Papimania this equinoctial may intersect the Sporades of the outer +ocean, is a problem on the solution of which the energy of those many +modern sons of Aguecheek who have undertaken the task of writing about +and about the text and the history of Shakespeare might be expended with +an unusually reasonable hope and expectation of arriving at an +exceptionally profitable end. + +Even apart from their sunny identity of spirit and bright sweet +brotherhood of style, the two comedies of _Twelfth Night_ and _As You +Like It_ would stand forth confessed as the common offspring of the same +spiritual period by force and by right of the trace or badge they proudly +and professedly bear in common, as of a recent touch from the ripe and +rich and radiant influence of Rabelais. No better and no fuller +vindication of his happy memory could be afforded than by the evident +fact that the two comedies which bear the imprint of his sign-manual are +among all Shakespeare's works as signally remarkable for the cleanliness +as for the richness of their humour. Here is the right royal seal of +Pantagruel, clean-cut and clearly stamped, and unincrusted with any flake +of dirt from the dubious finger of Panurge. In the comic parts of those +plays in which the humour is rank and flagrant that exhales from the lips +of Lucio, of Boult, or of Thersites, there is no trace or glimpse of +Rabelais. From him Shakespeare has learnt nothing and borrowed nothing +that was not wise and good and sweet and clean and pure. All the more +honour, undoubtedly, to Shakespeare, that he would borrow nothing else: +but assuredly, also, all the more honour to Rabelais, that he had enough +of this to lend. + +It is less creditable to England than honourable to France that a +Frenchman should have been the first of Shakespearean students to +discover and to prove that the great triad of his Roman plays is not a +consecutive work of the same epoch. Until the appearance of Francois- +Victor Hugo's incomparable translation, with its elaborate and admirable +commentary, it seems to have been the universal and certainly a most +natural habit of English criticism to take the three as they usually +appear together, in the order of historical chronology, and by tacit +implication to assume that they were composed in such order. I should +take some shame to myself but that I feel more of grateful pride than of +natural shame in the avowal that I at all events owe the first revelation +of the truth now so clear and apparent in this matter, to the son of the +common lord and master of all poets born in his age--be they liege +subjects as loyal as myself or as contumacious as I grieve to find one at +least of my elders and betters, whenever I perceive--as too often I +cannot choose but perceive--that the voice is the voice of Arnold, but +the hand is the hand of Sainte-Beuve. + +To the honoured and lamented son of our beloved and glorious Master, whom +neither I nor any better man can ever praise and thank and glorify +enough, belongs all the credit of discerning for himself and discovering +for us all the truth that _Julius Caesar_ is at all points equally like +the greatest works of Shakespeare's middle period and unlike the works of +his last. It is in the main a play belonging to the same order as _King +Henry IV_.; but it differs from our English Henriade--as remarkably +unlike Voltaire's as _Zaire_ is unlike _Othello_--not more by the absence +of Falstaff than by the presence of Brutus. Here at least Shakespeare +has made full amends, if not to all modern democrats, yet assuredly to +all historical republicans, for any possible or apparent preference of +royal to popular traditions. Whatever manner of man may have been the +actual Roman, our Shakespearean Brutus is undoubtedly the very noblest +figure of a typical and ideal republican in all the literature of the +world. "A democracy such as yours in America is my abhorrence," wrote +Landor once to an impudent and foul-mouthed Yankee pseudosopher, who had +intruded himself on that great man's privacy in order to have the +privilege of afterwards informing the readers of a pitiful pamphlet on +England that Landor had "pestered him with Southey"; an impertinence, I +may add, which Mr. Landor at once rebuked with the sharpest contempt and +chastised with the haughtiest courtesy. But, the old friend and lifelong +champion of Kossuth went on to say, his feelings were far different +towards a republic; and if on the one point, then not less certainly on +the other, we may be assured that his convictions and his prepossessions +would have been shared by the author of _Coriolanus_ and _Julius Caesar_. + +Having now come perforce to the inevitable verge of _Hamlet_, I hasten to +declare that I can advance no pretension to compete with the claim of +that "literary man" who became immortal by dint of one dinner with a +bishop, and in right of that last glass poured out for him in sign of +amity by "Sylvester Blougram, styled _in partibus Episcopus_, _necnon_ +the deuce knows what." I do not propose to prove my perception of any +point in the character of Hamlet "unseized by the Germans yet." I can +only determine, as the Church Catechism was long since wont to bid me, +"to keep my hands from picking and stealing, and my tongue" not only +"from evil-speaking, lying, and slandering"--though this itself is a form +of abstinence not universally or even commonly practised among the +rampant rout of rival commentators--but also, now as ever throughout this +study, from all conscious repetition of what others have said before me. + +In _Hamlet_, as it seems to me, we set foot as it were on the bridge +between the middle and the final period of Shakespeare. That priceless +waif of piratical salvage which we owe to the happy rapacity of a hungry +publisher is of course more accurately definable as the first play of +_Hamlet_ than as the first edition of the play. And this first _Hamlet_, +on the whole, belongs altogether to the middle period. The deeper +complexities of the subject are merely indicated. Simple and trenchant +outlines of character are yet to be supplanted by features of subtler +suggestion and infinite interfusion. Hamlet himself is almost more of a +satirist than a philosopher: Asper and Macilente, Felice and Malevole, +the grim studies after Hamlet unconsciously or consciously taken by +Jonson and Marston, may pass as wellnigh passable imitations, with an +inevitable streak of caricature in them, of the first Hamlet; they would +have been at once puerile and ghastly travesties of the second. The +Queen, whose finished figure is now something of a riddle, stands out +simply enough in the first sketch as confidant of Horatio if not as +accomplice of Hamlet. There is not more difference between the sweet +quiet flow of those plain verses which open the original play within the +play and the stiff sonorous tramp of their substitutes, full-charged with +heavy classic artillery of Phoebus and Neptune and Tellus and Hymen, than +there is between the straightforward agents of their own destiny whom we +meet in the first _Hamlet_ and the obliquely moving patients who veer +sideways to their doom in the second. + +This minor transformation of style in the inner play, made solely with +the evident view of marking the distinction between its duly artificial +forms of speech and the duly natural forms of speech passing between the +spectators, is but one among innumerable indications which only a +purblind perversity of prepossession can overlook of the especial store +set by Shakespeare himself on this favourite work, and the exceptional +pains taken by him to preserve it for aftertime in such fullness of +finished form as might make it worthiest of profound and perpetual study +by the light of far other lamps than illuminate the stage. Of all vulgar +errors the most wanton, the most wilful, and the most resolutely +tenacious of life, is that belief bequeathed from the days of Pope, in +which it was pardonable, to the days of Mr. Carlyle, in which it is not +excusable, to the effect that Shakespeare threw off _Hamlet_ as an eagle +may moult a feather or a fool may break a jest; that he dropped his work +as a bird may drop an egg or a sophist a fallacy; that he wrote "for +gain, not glory," or that having written _Hamlet_ he thought it nothing +very wonderful to have written. For himself to have written, he +possibly, nay probably, did not think it anything miraculous; but that he +was in the fullest degree conscious of its wonderful positive worth to +all men for all time, we have the best evidence possible--his own; and +that not by mere word of mouth but by actual stroke of hand. Ben Jonson +might shout aloud over his own work on a public stage, "By God 'tis +good," and so for all its real goodness and his real greatness make sure +that both the workman and his work should be less unnaturally than +unreasonably laughed at; Shakespeare knew a better way of showing +confidence in himself, but he showed not a whit less confidence. Scene +by scene, line for line, stroke upon stroke and touch after touch, he +went over all the old laboured ground again; and not to ensure success in +his own day and fill his pockets with contemporary pence, but merely and +wholly with a purpose to make it worthy of himself and his future +students. Pence and praise enough it had evidently brought him in from +the first. No more palpable proof of this can be desired than the +instantaneous attacks on it, the jeers, howls, hoots and hisses of which +a careful ear may catch some far faint echo even yet; the fearful and +furtive yelp from beneath of the masked and writhing poeticule, the +shrill reverberation all around it of plagiarism and parody. Not one +single alteration in the whole play can possibly have been made with a +view to stage effect or to present popularity and profit; or we must +suppose that Shakespeare, however great as a man, was naturally even +greater as a fool. There is a class of mortals to whom this inference is +always grateful--to whom the fond belief that every great man must needs +be a great fool would seem always to afford real comfort and support: +happy, in Prior's phrase, could their inverted rule prove every great +fool to be a great man. Every change in the text of _Hamlet_ has +impaired its fitness for the stage and increased its value for the closet +in exact and perfect proportion. Now, this is not a matter of opinion--of +Mr. Pope's opinion or Mr. Carlyle's; it is a matter of fact and evidence. +Even in Shakespeare's time the actors threw out his additions; they throw +out these very same additions in our own. The one especial speech, if +any one such especial speech there be, in which the personal genius of +Shakespeare soars up to the very highest of its height and strikes down +to the very deepest of its depth, is passed over by modern actors; it was +cut away by Hemings and Condell. We may almost assume it as certain that +no boards have ever echoed--at least, more than once or twice--to the +supreme soliloquy of Hamlet. Those words which combine the noblest +pleading ever proffered for the rights of human reason with the loftiest +vindication ever uttered of those rights, no mortal ear within our +knowledge has ever heard spoken on the stage. A convocation even of all +priests could not have been more unhesitatingly unanimous in its +rejection than seems to have been the hereditary verdict of all actors. +It could hardly have been found worthier of theological than it has been +found of theatrical condemnation. Yet, beyond all question, magnificent +as is that monologue on suicide and doubt which has passed from a proverb +into a byword, it is actually eclipsed and distanced at once on +philosophic and on poetical grounds by the later soliloquy on reason and +resolution. + +That Shakespeare was in the genuine sense--that is, in the best and +highest and widest meaning of the term--a free thinker, this otherwise +practically and avowedly superfluous effusion of all inmost thought +appears to me to supply full and sufficient evidence for the conviction +of every candid and rational man. To that loftiest and most righteous +title which any just and reasoning soul can ever deserve to claim, the +greatest save one of all poetic thinkers has thus made good his right for +ever. + +I trust it will be taken as no breach of my past pledge to abstain from +all intrusion on the sacred ground of Gigadibs and the Germans, if I +venture to indicate a touch inserted by Shakespeare for no other +perceptible or conceivable purpose than to obviate by anticipation the +indomitable and ineradicable fallacy of criticism which would find the +keynote of Hamlet's character in the quality of irresolution. I may +observe at once that the misconception involved in such a reading of the +riddle ought to have been evident even without this episodical stroke of +illustration. In any case it should be plain to any reader that the +signal characteristic of Hamlet's inmost nature is by no means +irresolution or hesitation or any form of weakness, but rather the strong +conflux of contending forces. That during four whole acts Hamlet cannot +or does not make up his mind to any direct and deliberate action against +his uncle is true enough; true, also, we may say, that Hamlet had +somewhat more of mind than another man to make up, and might properly +want somewhat more time than might another man to do it in; but not, I +venture to say in spite of Goethe, through innate inadequacy to his task +and unconquerable weakness of the will; not, I venture to think in spite +of Hugo, through immedicable scepticism of the spirit and irremediable +propensity to nebulous intellectual refinement. One practical point in +the action of the play precludes us from accepting so ready a solution of +the riddle as is suggested either by the simple theory of +half-heartedness or by the simple hypothesis of doubt. There is +absolutely no other reason, we might say there was no other excuse, for +the introduction or intrusion of an else superfluous episode into a play +which was already, and which remains even after all possible excisions, +one of the longest plays on record. The compulsory expedition of Hamlet +to England, his discovery by the way of the plot laid against his life, +his interception of the King's letter and his forgery of a substitute for +it against the lives of the King's agents, the ensuing adventure of the +sea-fight, with Hamlet's daring act of hot-headed personal intrepidity, +his capture and subsequent release on terms giving no less patent proof +of his cool-headed and ready-witted courage and resource than the attack +had afforded of his physically impulsive and even impetuous hardihood--all +this serves no purpose whatever but that of exhibiting the instant and +almost unscrupulous resolution of Hamlet's character in time of practical +need. But for all that he or Hamlet has got by it, Shakespeare might too +evidently have spared his pains; and for all this voice as of one crying +in a wilderness, Hamlet will too surely remain to the majority of +students, not less than to all actors and all editors and all critics, +the standing type and embodied emblem of irresolution, half-heartedness, +and doubt. + +That Hamlet should seem at times to accept for himself, and even to +enforce by reiteration of argument upon his conscience and his reason, +some such conviction or suspicion as to his own character, tells much +rather in disfavour than in favour of its truth. A man whose natural +temptation was to swerve, whose inborn inclination was to shrink and +skulk aside from duty and from action, would hardly be the first and last +person to suspect his own weakness, the one only unbiassed judge and +witness of sufficiently sharp-sighted candour and accuracy to estimate +aright his poverty of nature and the malformation of his mind. But the +high-hearted and tender-conscienced Hamlet, with his native bias towards +introspection intensified and inflamed and directed and dilated at once +by one imperative pressure and oppression of unavoidable and unalterable +circumstance, was assuredly and exactly the one only man to be troubled +by any momentary fear that such might indeed be the solution of his +riddle, and to feel or to fancy for the moment some kind of ease and +relief in the sense of that very trouble. A born doubter would have +doubted even of Horatio; hardly can all positive and almost palpable +evidence of underhand instigation and inspired good intentions induce +Hamlet for some time to doubt even of Ophelia. + + + +III. + + +The entrance to the third period of Shakespeare is like the entrance to +that lost and lesser Paradise of old, + + With dreadful faces thronged, and fiery arms. + +Lear, Othello, Macbeth, Coriolanus, Antony, Timon, these are names indeed +of something more than tragic purport. Only in the sunnier distance +beyond, where the sunset of Shakespeare's imagination seems to melt or +flow back into the sunrise, do we discern Prospero beside Miranda, +Florizel by Perdita, Palamon with Arcite, the same knightly and kindly +Duke Theseus as of old; and above them all, and all others of his divine +and human children, the crowning and final and ineffable figure of +Imogen. + +Of all Shakespeare's plays, _King Lear_ is unquestionably that in which +he has come nearest to the height and to the likeness of the one tragic +poet on any side greater than himself whom the world in all its ages has +ever seen born of time. It is by far the most AEschylean of his works; +the most elemental and primaeval, the most oceanic and Titanic in +conception. He deals here with no subtleties as in _Hamlet_, with no +conventions as in _Othello_: there is no question of "a divided duty" or +a problem half insoluble, a matter of country and connection, of family +or of race; we look upward and downward, and in vain, into the deepest +things of nature, into the highest things of providence; to the roots of +life, and to the stars; from the roots that no God waters to the stars +which give no man light; over a world full of death and life without +resting-place or guidance. + +But in one main point it differs radically from the work and the spirit +of AEschylus. Its fatalism is of a darker and harder nature. To +Prometheus the fetters of the lord and enemy of mankind were bitter; upon +Orestes the hand of heaven was laid too heavily to bear; yet in the not +utterly infinite or everlasting distance we see beyond them the promise +of the morning on which mystery and justice shall be made one; when +righteousness and omnipotence at last shall kiss each other. But on the +horizon of Shakespeare's tragic fatalism we see no such twilight of +atonement, such pledge of reconciliation as this. Requital, redemption, +amends, equity, explanation, pity and mercy, are words without a meaning +here. + + As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; + They kill us for their sport. + +Here is no need of the Eumenides, children of Night everlasting; for here +is very Night herself. + +The words just cited are not casual or episodical; they strike the +keynote of the whole poem, lay the keystone of the whole arch of thought. +There is no contest of conflicting forces, no judgment so much as by +casting of lots: far less is there any light of heavenly harmony or of +heavenly wisdom, of Apollo or Athene from above. We have heard much and +often from theologians of the light of revelation: and some such thing +indeed we find in AEschylus: but the darkness of revelation is here. + +For in this the most terrible work of human genius it is with the very +springs and sources of nature that her student has set himself to deal. +The veil of the temple of our humanity is rent in twain. Nature herself, +we might say, is revealed--and revealed as unnatural. In face of such a +world as this a man might be forgiven who should pray that chaos might +come again. Nowhere else in Shakespeare's work or in the universe of +jarring lives are the lines of character and event so broadly drawn or so +sharply cut. Only the supreme self-command of this one poet could so +mould and handle such types as to restrain and prevent their passing from +the abnormal into the monstrous: yet even as much as this, at least in +all cases but one, it surely has accomplished. In Regan alone would it +be, I think, impossible to find a touch or trace of anything less vile +than it was devilish. Even Goneril has her one splendid hour, her fire- +flaught of hellish glory; when she treads under foot the half-hearted +goodness, the wordy and windy though sincere abhorrence, which is all +that the mild and impotent revolt of Albany can bring to bear against her +imperious and dauntless devilhood; when she flaunts before the eyes of +her "milk-livered" and "moral fool" the coming banners of France about +the "plumed helm" of his slayer. + +On the other side, Kent is the exception which answers to Regan on this. +Cordelia, the brotherless Antigone of our stage, has one passing touch of +intolerance for what her sister was afterwards to brand as indiscretion +and dotage in their father, which redeems her from the charge of +perfection. Like Imogen, she is not too inhumanly divine for the sense +of divine irritation. Godlike though they be, their very godhead is +human and feminine; and only therefore credible, and only therefore +adorable. Cloten and Regan, Goneril and Iachimo, have power to stir and +embitter the sweetness of their blood. But for the contrast and even the +contact of antagonists as abominable as these, the gold of their spirit +would be too refined, the lily of their holiness too radiant, the violet +of their virtue too sweet. As it is, Shakespeare has gone down perforce +among the blackest and the basest things of nature to find anything so +equally exceptional in evil as properly to counterbalance and make +bearable the excellence and extremity of their goodness. No otherwise +could either angel have escaped the blame implied in the very attribute +and epithet of blameless. But where the possible depth of human hell is +so foul and unfathomable as it appears in the spirits which serve as +foils to these, we may endure that in them the inner height of heaven +should be no less immaculate and immeasurable. + +It should be a truism wellnigh as musty as Hamlet's half cited proverb, +to enlarge upon the evidence given in _King Lear_ of a sympathy with the +mass of social misery more wide and deep and direct and bitter and tender +than Shakespeare has shown elsewhere. But as even to this day and even +in respectable quarters the murmur is not quite duly extinct which would +charge on Shakespeare a certain share of divine indifference to +suffering, of godlike satisfaction and a less than compassionate content, +it is not yet perhaps utterly superfluous to insist on the utter fallacy +and falsity of their creed who whether in praise or in blame would rank +him to his credit or discredit among such poets as on this side at least +may be classed rather with Goethe than with Shelley and with Gautier than +with Hugo. A poet of revolution he is not, as none of his country in +that generation could have been: but as surely as the author of _Julius +Caesar_ has approved himself in the best and highest sense of the word at +least potentially a republican, so surely has the author of _King Lear_ +avowed himself in the only good and rational sense of the words a +spiritual if not a political democrat and socialist. + +It is only, I think, in this most tragic of tragedies that the sovereign +lord and incarnate god of pity and terror can be said to have struck with +all his strength a chord of which the resonance could excite such angry +agony and heartbreak of wrath as that of the brother kings when they +smote their staffs against the ground in fierce imperious anguish of +agonised and rebellious compassion, at the oracular cry of Calchas for +the innocent blood of Iphigenia. The doom even of Desdemona seems as +much less morally intolerable as it is more logically inevitable than the +doom of Cordelia. But doubtless the fatalism of _Othello_ is as much +darker and harder than that of any third among the plays of Shakespeare, +as it is less dark and hard than the fatalism of _King Lear_. For upon +the head of the very noblest man whom even omnipotence or Shakespeare +could ever call to life he has laid a burden in one sense yet heavier +than the burden of Lear, insomuch as the sufferer can with somewhat less +confidence of universal appeal proclaim himself a man more sinned against +than sinning. + +And yet, if ever man after Lear might lift up his voice in that protest, +it would assuredly be none other than Othello. He is in all the +prosperous days of his labour and his triumph so utterly and wholly +nobler than the self-centred and wayward king, that the capture of his +soul and body in the unimaginable snare of Iago seems a yet blinder and +more unrighteous blow + + Struck by the envious wrath of man or God + +than ever fell on the old white head of that child-changed father. But +at least he is destroyed by the stroke of a mightier hand than theirs who +struck down Lear. As surely as Othello is the noblest man of man's +making, Iago is the most perfect evildoer, the most potent demi-devil. It +is of course the merest commonplace to say as much, and would be no less +a waste of speech to add the half comfortable reflection that it is in +any case no shame to fall by such a hand. But this subtlest and +strangest work of Shakespeare's admits and requires some closer than +common scrutiny. Coleridge has admirably described the first great +soliloquy which opens to us the pit of hell within as "the motive-hunting +of a motiveless malignity." But subtle and profound and just as is this +definitive appreciation, there is more in the matter yet than even this. +It is not only that Iago, so to speak, half tries to make himself half +believe that Othello has wronged him, and that the thought of it gnaws +him inly like a poisonous mineral: though this also be true, it is not +half the truth--nor half that half again. Malignant as he is, the very +subtlest and strongest component of his complex nature is not even +malignity. It is the instinct of what Mr. Carlyle would call an +inarticulate poet. In his immortal study on the affair of the diamond +necklace, the most profound and potent humourist of his country in his +century has unwittingly touched on the mainspring of Iago's +character--"the very pulse of the machine." He describes his Circe de la +Mothe-Valois as a practical dramatic poet or playwright at least in lieu +of play-writer: while indicating how and wherefore, with all her +constructive skill and rhythmic art in action, such genius as hers so +differs from the genius of Shakespeare that she undeniably could not have +written a _Hamlet_. Neither could Iago have written an _Othello_. (From +this theorem, by the way, a reasoner or a casuist benighted enough to +prefer articulate poets to inarticulate, Shakespeare to Cromwell, a fair +Vittoria Colonna to a "foul Circe-Megaera," and even such a strategist as +Homer to such a strategist as Frederic-William, would not illogically +draw such conclusions or infer such corollaries as might result in +opinions hardly consonant with the Teutonic-Titanic evangel of the +preacher who supplied him with his thesis.) "But what he can do, that he +will": and if it be better to make a tragedy than to write one, to act a +poem than to sing it, we must allow to Iago a station in the hierarchy of +poets very far in advance of his creator's. None of the great +inarticulate may more justly claim place and precedence. With all his +poetic gift, he has no poetic weakness. Almost any creator but his would +have given him some grain of spite or some spark of lust after Desdemona. +To Shakespeare's Iago she is no more than is a rhyme to another and +articulate poet. {179} His stanza must at any rate and at all costs be +polished: to borrow the metaphor used by Mr. Carlyle in apologetic +illustration of a royal hero's peculiar system of levying recruits for +his colossal brigade. He has within him a sense or conscience of power +incomparable: and this power shall not be left, in Hamlet's phrase, "to +fust in him unused." A genuine and thorough capacity for human lust or +hate would diminish and degrade the supremacy of his evil. He is almost +as far above or beyond vice as he is beneath or beyond virtue. And this +it is that makes him impregnable and invulnerable. When once he has said +it, we know as well as he that thenceforth he never will speak word. We +could smile almost as we can see him to have smiled at Gratiano's most +ignorant and empty threat, being well assured that torments will in no +wise ope his lips: that as surely and as truthfully as ever did the +tortured philosopher before him, he might have told his tormentors that +they did but bruise the coating, batter the crust, or break the shell of +Iago. Could we imagine a far other lost spirit than Farinata degli +Uberti's endowed with Farinata's might of will, and transferred from the +sepulchres of fire to the dykes of Malebolge, we might conceive something +of Iago's attitude in hell--of his unalterable and indomitable posture +for all eternity. As though it were possible and necessary that in some +one point the extremities of all conceivable good and of all imaginable +evil should meet and mix together in a new "marriage of heaven and hell," +the action in passion of the most devilish among all the human damned +could hardly be other than that of the most godlike among all divine +saviours--the figure of Iago than a reflection by hell-fire of the figure +of Prometheus. + +Between Iago and Othello the position of Desdemona is precisely that +defined with such quaint sublimity of fancy in the old English +byword--"between the devil and the deep sea." Deep and pure and strong +and adorable always and terrible and pitiless on occasion as the sea is +the great soul of the glorious hero to whom she has given herself; and +what likeness of man's enemy from Satan down to Mephistopheles could be +matched for danger and for dread against the good bluff soldierly +trustworthy figure of honest Iago? The rough license of his tongue at +once takes warrant from his good soldiership and again gives warrant for +his honesty: so that in a double sense it does him yeoman's service, and +that twice told. It is pitifully ludicrous to see him staged to the show +like a member--and a very inefficient member--of the secret police. But +it would seem impossible for actors to understand that he is not a would- +be detective, an aspirant for the honours of a Vidocq, a candidate for +the laurels of a Vautrin: that he is no less than Lepidus, or than +Antony's horse, "a tried and valiant soldier." It is perhaps natural +that the two deepest and subtlest of all Shakespeare's intellectual +studies in good and evil should be the two most painfully misused and +misunderstood alike by his commentators and his fellows of the stage: it +is certainly undeniable that no third figure of his creation has ever +been on both sides as persistently misconceived and misrepresented with +such desperate pertinacity as Hamlet and Iago. + +And it is only when Iago is justly appreciated that we can justly +appreciate either Othello or Desdemona. This again should surely be no +more than the truism that it sounds; but practically it would seem to be +no less than an adventurous and audacious paradox. Remove or deform or +diminish or modify the dominant features of the destroyer, and we have +but the eternal and vulgar figures of jealousy and innocence, newly +vamped and veneered and padded and patched up for the stalest purposes of +puppetry. As it is, when Coleridge asks "which do we pity the most" at +the fall of the curtain, we can surely answer, Othello. Noble as are the +"most blessed conditions" of "the gentle Desdemona," he is yet the nobler +of the two; and has suffered more in one single pang than she could +suffer in life or in death. + +But if _Othello_ be the most pathetic, _King Lear_ the most terrible, +_Hamlet_ the subtlest and deepest work of Shakespeare, the highest in +abrupt and steep simplicity of epic tragedy is _Macbeth_. There needs no +ghost come from the grave, any reader may too probably remark, to tell us +this. But in the present generation such novelties have been unearthed +regarding Shakespeare that the reassertion of an old truth may seem to +have upon it some glittering reflection from the brazen brightness of a +brand-new lie. Have not certain wise men of the east of +England--Cantabrigian Magi, led by the star of their goddess Mathesis +("mad Mathesis," as a daring poet was once ill-advised enough to dub her +doubtful deity in defiance of scansion rather than of truth)--have they +not detected in the very heart of this tragedy the "paddling palms and +pinching fingers" of Thomas Middleton? + +To the simpler eyes of less learned Thebans than these--Thebes, by the +way, was Dryden's irreverent name for Cambridge, the nursing mother of +"his green unknowing youth," when that "renegade" was recreant enough to +compliment Oxford at her expense as the chosen Athens of "his riper +age"--the likelihood is only too evident that the sole text we possess of +_Macbeth_ has not been interpolated but mutilated. In their version of +_Othello_, remarkably enough, the "player-editors," contrary to their +wont, have added to the treasure-house of their text one of the most +precious jewels that ever the prodigal afterthought of a great poet +bestowed upon the rapture of his readers. Some of these, by way of +thanksgiving, have complained with a touch of petulance that it was out +of place and superfluous in the setting: nay, that it was incongruous +with all the circumstances--out of tone and out of harmony and out of +keeping with character and tune and time. In other lips indeed than +Othello's, at the crowning minute of culminant agony, the rush of +imaginative reminiscence which brings back upon his eyes and ears the +lightning foam and tideless thunder of the Pontic sea might seem a thing +less natural than sublime. But Othello has the passion of a poet closed +in as it were and shut up behind the passion of a hero. For all his +practical readiness of martial eye and ruling hand in action, he is also +in his season "of imagination all compact." Therefore it is that in the +face and teeth of all devils akin to Iago that hell could send forth to +hiss at her election, we feel and recognise the spotless exaltation, the +sublime and sun-bright purity, of Desdemona's inevitable and invulnerable +love. When once we likewise have seen Othello's visage in his mind, we +see too how much more of greatness is in this mind than in another +hero's. For such an one, even a boy may well think how thankfully and +joyfully he would lay down his life. Other friends we have of +Shakespeare's giving whom we love deeply and well, if hardly with such +love as could weep for him all the tears of the body and all the blood of +the heart: but there is none we love like Othello. + +I must part from his presence again for a season, and return to my topic +in the text of _Macbeth_. That it is piteously rent and ragged and +clipped and garbled in some of its earlier scenes, the rough construction +and the poltfoot metre, lame sense and limping verse, each maimed and +mangled subject of players' and printers' most treasonable tyranny, +contending as it were to seem harsher than the other, combine in this +contention to bear indisputable and intolerable witness. Only where the +witches are, and one more potent and more terrible than all witches and +all devils at their beck, can we be sure that such traitors have not +robbed us of one touch from Shakespeare's hand. The second scene of the +play at least bears marks of such handling as the brutal Shakespearean +Hector's of the "mangled Myrmidons"; it is too visibly "noseless, +handless, hacked and chipped" as it comes to us, crying on Hemings and +Condell. And it is in this unlucky scene that unkindly criticism has not +unsuccessfully sought for the gravest faults of language and manner to be +found in Shakespeare. For certainly it cannot be cleared from the charge +of a style stiffened and swollen with clumsy braid and crabbed bombast. +But against the weird sisters, and her who sits above them and apart, +more awful than Hecate's very self, no mangling hand has been stretched +forth; no blight of mistranslation by perversion has fallen upon the +words which interpret and expound the hidden things of their evil will. + +To one tragedy as to one comedy of Shakespeare's, the casual or the +natural union of especial popularity with especial simplicity in +selection and in treatment of character makes it as superfluous as it +would be difficult to attempt any application of analytical criticism. +There is nothing in them of a nature so compound or so complex as to call +for solution or resolution into its primal elements. Here there is some +genuine ground for the generally baseless and delusive opinion of self- +complacent sciolism that he who runs may read Shakespeare. These two +plays it is hardly worth while to point out by name: all probable readers +will know them at once for _Macbeth_ and _As You Like It_. There can +hardly be a single point of incident or of character on which the +youngest reader will not find himself at one with the oldest, the dullest +with the brightest among the scholars of Shakespeare. It would be an +equal waste of working hours or of playtime if any of these should devote +any part of either a whole-schoolday or a holiday to remark or to +rhapsody on the character of Macbeth or of Orlando, of Rosalind or of +Lady Macbeth. He that runs, let him read: and he that has ears, let him +hear. + +I cannot but think that enough at least of time has been spent if not +wasted by able and even by eminent men on examination of _Coriolanus_ +with regard to its political aspect or bearing upon social questions. It +is from first to last, for all its turmoil of battle and clamour of +contentious factions, rather a private and domestic than a public or +historical tragedy. As in _Julius Caesar_ the family had been so wholly +subordinated to the state, and all personal interests so utterly +dominated by the preponderance of national duties, that even the sweet +and sublime figure of Portia passing in her "awful loveliness" was but as +a profile half caught in the background of an episode, so here on the +contrary the whole force of the final impression is not that of a +conflict between patrician and plebeian, but solely that of a match of +passions played out for life and death between a mother and a son. The +partisans of oligarchic or democratic systems may wrangle at their will +over the supposed evidences of Shakespeare's prejudice against this creed +and prepossession in favour of that: a third bystander may rejoice in the +proof thus established of his impartial indifference towards either: it +is all nothing to the real point in hand. The subject of the whole play +is not the exile's revolt, the rebel's repentance, or the traitor's +reward, but above all it is the son's tragedy. The inscription on the +plinth of this tragic statue is simply to Volumnia Victrix. + +A loftier or a more perfect piece of man's work was never done in all the +world than this tragedy of _Coriolanus_: the one fit and crowning epithet +for its companion or successor is that bestowed by Coleridge--"the most +wonderful." It would seem a sign or birthmark of only the greatest among +poets that they should be sure to rise instantly for awhile above the +very highest of their native height at the touch of a thought of +Cleopatra. So was it, as we all know, with William Shakespeare: so is +it, as we all see, with Victor Hugo. As we feel in the marvellous and +matchless verses of _Zim-Zizimi_ all the splendour and fragrance and +miracle of her mere bodily presence, so from her first imperial dawn on +the stage of Shakespeare to the setting of that eastern star behind a +pall of undissolving cloud we feel the charm and the terror and the +mystery of her absolute and royal soul. Byron wrote once to Moore, with +how much truth or sincerity those may guess who would care to know, that +his friend's first "confounded book" of thin prurient jingle ("we call it +a mellisonant tingle-tangle," as Randolph's mock Oberon says of a stolen +sheep-bell) had been the first cause of all his erratic or erotic +frailties: it is not impossible that spirits of another sort may remember +that to their own innocent infantine perceptions the first obscure +electric revelation of what Blake calls "the Eternal Female" was given +through a blind wondering thrill of childish rapture by a lightning on +the baby dawn of their senses and their soul from the sunrise of +Shakespeare's Cleopatra. + +Never has he given such proof of his incomparable instinct for abstinence +from the wrong thing as well as achievement of the right. He has utterly +rejected and disdained all occasion of setting her off by means of any +lesser foil than all the glory of the world with all its empires. And we +need not Antony's example to show us that these are less than straws in +the balance. + + Entre elle et l'univers qui s'offraient a la fois + Il hesita, lachant le monde dans son choix. + +Even as that Roman grasp relaxed and let fall the world, so has +Shakespeare's self let go for awhile his greater world of imagination, +with all its all but infinite variety of life and thought and action, for +love of that more infinite variety which custom could not stale. Himself +a second and a yet more fortunate Antony, he has once more laid a world, +and a world more wonderful than ever, at her feet. He has put aside for +her sake all other forms and figures of womanhood; he, father or creator +of Rosalind, of Cordelia, of Desdemona, and of Imogen, he too, like the +sun-god and sender of all song, has anchored his eyes on her whom +"Phoebus' amorous pinches" could not leave "black," nor "wrinkled deep in +time"; on that incarnate and imperishable "spirit of sense," to whom at +the very last + + The stroke of death is as a lover's pinch, + That hurts, and is desired. + +To him, as to the dying husband of Octavia, this creature of his own hand +might have boasted herself that the loveliest and purest among all her +sisters of his begetting, + + with her modest eyes + And still conclusion, shall acquire no honour, + Demurring upon me. + +To sum up, Shakespeare has elsewhere given us in ideal incarnation the +perfect mother, the perfect wife, the perfect daughter, the perfect +mistress, or the perfect maiden: here only once for all he has given us +the perfect and the everlasting woman. + +And what a world of great men and great things, "high actions and high +passions," is this that he has spread under her for a footcloth or hung +behind her for a curtain! The descendant of that other his ancestral +Alcides, late offshoot of the god whom he loved and who so long was loth +to leave him, is here as in history the visible one man revealed who +could grapple for a second with very Rome and seem to throw it, more +lightly than he could cope with Cleopatra. And not the Roman Landor +himself could see or make us see more clearly than has his fellow +provincial of Warwickshire that first imperial nephew of her great first +paramour, who was to his actual uncle even such a foil and counterfeit +and perverse and prosperous parody as the son of Hortense Beauharnais of +Saint-Leu to the son of Letizia Buonaparte of Ajaccio. For Shakespeare +too, like Landor, had watched his "sweet Octavius" smilingly and +frowningly "draw under nose the knuckle of forefinger" as he looked out +upon the trail of innocent blood after the bright receding figure of his +brave young kinsman. The fair-faced false "present God" of his poetic +parasites, the smooth triumphant patron and preserver with the heart of +ice and iron, smiles before us to the very life. It is of no account now +to remember that + + he at Philippi kept + His sword even like a dancer: + +for the sword of Antony that struck for him is in the renegade hand of +Dercetas. + +I have said nothing of Enobarbus or of Eros, the fugitive once ruined by +his flight and again redeemed by the death-agony of his dark and doomed +repentance, or the freedman transfigured by a death more fair than +freedom through the glory of the greatness of his faith: for who can +speak of all things or of half that are in Shakespeare? And who can +speak worthily of any? + +I am come now to that strange part of a task too high for me, where I +must needs speak not only (as may indeed well be) unworthily, but also +(as may well seem) unlovingly, of some certain portions in the mature and +authentic work of Shakespeare. "Though it be honest, it is never good" +to do so: yet here I cannot choose but speak plainly after my own poor +conscience, and risk all chances of chastisement as fearful as any once +threatened for her too faithful messenger by the heart-stricken wrath of +Cleopatra. + +In the greater part of this third period, taking a swift and general view +of it for contrast or comparison of qualities with the second, we +constantly find beauty and melody, transfigured into harmony and +sublimity; an exchange unquestionably for the better: but in certain +stages, or only perhaps in a single stage of it, we frequently find +humour and reality supplanted by realism and obscenity; an exchange +undeniably for the worse. The note of his earliest comic style was often +a boyish or a birdlike wantonness, very capable of such liberties and +levities as those of Lesbia's sparrow with the lip or bosom of his +mistress; as notably in the parts of Boyet and Mercutio: and indeed there +is a bright vein of mere wordy wilfulness running throughout the golden +youth of the two plays which connects _Love's Labour's Lost_ with _Romeo +and Juliet_ as by a thread of floss silk not always "most excellently +ravelled," nor often unspotted or unentangled. In the second period this +gaiety was replaced by the utmost frankness and fullness of humour, as a +boy's merry madness by the witty wisdom of a man: but now for a time it +would seem as if the good comic qualities of either period were displaced +and ousted by mere coarseness and crudity like that of a hard harsh +photograph. This ultra-Circean transformation of spirit and +brutification of speech we do not find in the lighter interludes of great +and perfect tragedy: for the porter in _Macbeth_ makes hardly an +exception worth naming. It is when we come upon the singular little +group of two or three plays not accurately definable at all but roughly +describable as tragi-comedies, or more properly in two cases at least as +tragedies docked of their natural end, curtailed of the due +catastrophe--it is then that we find for the swift sad bright lightnings +of laughter from the lips of the sweet and bitter fool whose timeless +disappearance from the stage of _King Lear_ seems for once a sure sign of +inexplicable weariness or forgetfulness on Shakespeare's part, so +nauseous and so sorry a substitute as the fetid fun and rancid ribaldry +of Pandarus and Thersites. I must have leave to say that the coincidence +of these two in the scheme of a single play is a thing hardly bearable by +men who object to too strong a savour of those too truly "Eternal +Cesspools" over which the first of living humourists holds as it were for +ever an everlasting nose--or rather, in one sense, does not hold but +expand it for the fuller inhalation of their too congenial fumes with an +apparent relish which will always seem the most deplorable to those who +the most gratefully and reasonably admire that high heroic genius, for +love of which the wiser sort of men must finally forgive all the noisy +aberrations of his misanthropy and philobulgary, anti-Gallican and +Russolatrous insanities of perverse and morbid eloquence. + +The three detached or misclassified plays of Shakespeare in which alone a +reverent and reasonable critic might perhaps find something rationally +and really exceptionable have also this far other quality in common, that +in them as in his topmost tragedies of the same period either the +exaltation of his eloquence touches the very highest point of expressible +poetry, or his power of speculation alternately sounds the gulfs and +scales the summits of all imaginable thought. In all three of them the +power of passionate and imaginative eloquence is not only equal in spirit +or essence but identical in figure or in form: in those two of them which +deal almost as much with speculative intelligence as with poetic action +and passion, the tones and methods, types and objects of thought, are +also not equal only but identical. An all but absolute brotherhood in +thought and style and tone and feeling unites the quasi-tragedy of +_Troilus and Cressida_ with what in the lamentable default of as apt a +phrase in English I must call by its proper designation in French the +_tragedie manquee_ of _Measure for Measure_. In the simply romantic +fragment of the Shakespearean _Pericles_, where there was no call and no +place for the poetry of speculative or philosophic intelligence, there is +the same positive and unmistakable identity of imaginative and passionate +style. + +I cannot but conjecture that the habitual students of Shakespeare's +printed plays must have felt startled as by something of a shock when the +same year exposed for the expenditure of their sixpences two reasonably +correct editions of a play unknown to the boards in the likeness of +_Troilus and Cressida_, side by side or cheek by jowl with a most +unreasonably and unconscionably incorrect issue of a much older stage +favourite, now newly beautified and fortified, in _Pericles Prince of +Tyre_. Hitherto, ever since the appearance of his first poem, and its +instant acceptance by all classes from courtiers to courtesans under a +somewhat dubious and two-headed form of popular success,--'vrai succes de +scandale s'il en fut'--even the potent influence and unequivocal example +of Rabelais had never once even in passing or in seeming affected or +infected the progressive and triumphal genius of Shakespeare with a taint +or touch of anything offensive to healthier and cleanlier organs of +perception than such as may belong to a genuine or a pretending Puritan. +But on taking in his hand that one of these two new dramatic pamphlets +which might first attract him either by its double novelty as a never +acted play or by a title of yet more poetic and romantic associations +than its fellow's, such a purchaser as I have supposed, with his mind +full of the sweet rich fresh humour which he would feel a right to expect +from Shakespeare, could hardly have undergone less than a qualm or a pang +of strong disrelish and distaste on finding one of the two leading comic +figures of the play break in upon it at his entrance not even with "a +fool-born jest," but with full-mouthed and foul-mouthed effusion of such +rank and rancorous personalities as might properly pollute the lips even +of some emulous descendant or antiquarian reincarnation of Thersites, on +application or even apprehension of a whip cracked in passing over the +assembled heads of a pseudocritical and mock-historic society. In either +case we moderns at least might haply desire the intervention of a +beadle's hand as heavy and a sceptral cudgel as knotty as ever the son of +Laertes applied to the shoulders of the first of the type or the tribe of +Thersites. For this brutal and brutish buffoon--I am speaking of +Shakespeare's Thersites--has no touch of humour in all his currish +composition: Shakespeare had none as nature has none to spare for such +dirty dogs as those of his kind or generation. There is not even what +Coleridge with such exquisite happiness defined as being the +quintessential property of Swift--"_anima Rabelaesii habitans in +sicco_--the soul of Rabelais dwelling in a dry place." It is the fallen +soul of Swift himself at its lowest, dwelling in a place yet drier: the +familiar spirit or less than Socratic daemon of the Dean informing the +genius of Shakespeare. And thus for awhile infected and possessed, the +divine genius had not power to re-inform and re-create the daemonic +spirit by virtue of its own clear essence. This wonderful play, one of +the most admirable among all the works of Shakespeare's immeasurable and +unfathomable intelligence, as it must always hold its natural high place +among the most admired, will always in all probability be also, and as +naturally, the least beloved of all. It would be as easy and as +profitable a problem to solve the Rabelaisian riddle of the bombinating +chimaera with its potential or hypothetical faculty of deriving +sustenance from a course of diet on second intentions, as to read the +riddle of Shakespeare's design in the procreation of this yet more +mysterious and magnificent monster of a play. That on its production in +print it was formally announced as "a new play never staled with the +stage, never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vulgar," we know; must +we infer or may we suppose that therefore it was not originally written +for the stage? Not all plays were which even at that date appeared in +print: yet it would seem something more than strange that one such play, +written simply for the study, should have been the extra-professional +work of Shakespeare: and yet again it would seem stranger that he should +have designed this prodigious nondescript or portent of supreme genius +for the public stage: and strangest of all, if so, that he should have so +designed it in vain. Perhaps after all a better than any German or +Germanising commentary on the subject would be the simple and summary +ejaculation of Celia--"O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful +wonderful, and yet again wonderful, and after that out of all whooping!" +The perplexities of the whole matter seem literally to crowd and thicken +upon us at every step. What ailed the man or any man to write such a +manner of dramatic poem at all? and having written, to keep it beside him +or let it out of his hands into stranger and more slippery keeping, +unacted and unprinted? A German will rush in with an answer where an +Englishman (_non angelus sed Anglus_) will naturally fear to tread. + +Alike in its most palpable perplexities and in its most patent +splendours, this political and philosophic and poetic problem, this +hybrid and hundred-faced and hydra-headed prodigy, at once defies and +derides all definitive comment. This however we may surely and +confidently say of it, that of all Shakespeare's offspring it is the one +whose best things lose least by extraction and separation from their +context. That some cynic had lately bitten him by the brain--and +possibly a cynic himself in a nearly rabid stage of anthropophobia--we +might conclude as reasonably from consideration of the whole as from +examination of the parts more especially and virulently affected: yet how +much is here also of hyper-Platonic subtlety and sublimity, of golden and +Hyblaean eloquence above the reach and beyond the snap of any cynic's +tooth! Shakespeare, as under the guidance at once for good and for evil +of his alternately Socratic and Swiftian familiar, has set himself as if +prepensely and on purpose to brutalise the type of Achilles and +spiritualise the type of Ulysses. The former is an enterprise never to +be utterly forgiven by any one who ever loved from the very birth of his +boyhood the very name of the son of the sea-goddess in the glorious words +of Mr. Browning's young first-born poem, + + Who stood beside the naked Swift-footed, + And bound [his] forehead with Proserpine's hair. + +It is true, if that be any little compensation, that Hector and +Andromache fare here hardly better than he: while of the momentary +presentation of Helen on the dirtier boards of a stage more miry than the +tub of Diogenes I would not if I could and I must not though I would say +so much as one single proper word. The hysterics of the eponymous hero +and the harlotries of the eponymous heroine remove both alike beyond the +outer pale of all rational and manly sympathy; though Shakespeare's self +may never have exceeded or equalled for subtle and accurate and bitter +fidelity the study here given of an utterly light woman, shallow and +loose and dissolute in the most literal sense, rather than perverse or +unkindly or unclean; and though Keats alone in his most perfect mood of +lyric passion and burning vision as full of fragrance as of flame could +have matched and all but overmatched those passages in which the rapture +of Troilus makes pale and humble by comparison the keenest raptures of +Romeo. + +The relative disfavour in which the play of _Measure for Measure_ has +doubtless been at all times generally held is not in my opinion simply +explicable on the theory which of late years has been so powerfully and +plausibly advanced and advocated on the highest poetic or judicial +authority in France or in the world, that in the land of many-coloured +cant and many-coated hypocrisy the type of Angelo is something too much a +prototype or an autotype of the huge national vice of England. This +comment is in itself as surely just and true as it is incisive and +direct: but it will not cover by any manner of means the whole question. +The strong and radical objection distinctly brought forward against this +play, and strenuously supported by the wisest and the warmest devotee +among all the worshippers of Shakespeare, is not exactly this, that the +Puritan Angelo is exposed: it is that the Puritan Angelo is unpunished. +In the very words of Coleridge, it is that by his pardon and his marriage +"the strong indignant claim of justice" is "baffled." The expression is +absolutely correct and apt: justice is not merely evaded or ignored or +even defied: she is both in the older and the newer sense of the word +directly and deliberately baffled; buffeted, outraged, insulted, struck +in the face. We are left hungry and thirsty after having been made to +thirst and hunger for some wholesome single grain at least of righteous +and too long retarded retribution: we are tricked out of our dole, +defeated of our due, lured and led on to look for some equitable and +satisfying upshot, defrauded and derided and sent empty away. + +That this play is in its very inmost essence a tragedy, and that no +sleight of hand or force of hand could give it even a tolerable show of +coherence or consistency when clipped and docked of its proper and +rightful end, the mere tone of style prevalent throughout all its better +parts to the absolute exclusion of any other would of itself most amply +suffice to show. Almost all that is here worthy of Shakespeare at any +time is worthy of Shakespeare at his highest: and of this every touch, +every line, every incident, every syllable, belongs to pure and simple +tragedy. The evasion of a tragic end by the invention and intromission +of Mariana has deserved and received high praise for its ingenuity but +ingenious evasion of a natural and proper end is usually the distinctive +quality which denotes a workman of a very much lower school than the +school of Shakespeare. In short and in fact, the whole elaborate +machinery by which the complete and completely unsatisfactory result of +the whole plot is attained is so thoroughly worthy of such a contriver as +"the old fantastical duke of dark corners" as to be in a moral sense, if +I dare say what I think, very far from thoroughly worthy of the wisest +and mightiest mind that ever was informed with the spirit or genius of +creative poetry. + +I have one more note to add in passing which touches simply on a musical +point in lyric verse; and from which I would therefore give any biped who +believes that ears "should be long to measure Shakespeare" all timely +warning to avert the length of his own. A very singular question, and +one to me unaccountable except by a supposition which on charitable +grounds I should be loth to entertain for a moment--namely, that such +ears are commoner than I would fain believe on heads externally or +ostensibly human,--has been raised with regard to the first immortal song +of Mariana in the moated grange. This question is whether the second +verse appended by Fletcher to that divine Shakespearean fragment may not +haply have been written by the author of the first. The visible and +audible evidence that it cannot is of a kind which must at once leap into +sight of all human eyes and conviction of all human ears. The metre of +Shakespeare's verse, as written by Shakespeare, is not the metre of +Fletcher's. It can only seem the same to those who hear by finger and +not by ear: a class now at all events but too evidently numerous enough +to refute Sir Hugh's antiquated objection to the once apparently +tautologous phrase of Pistol. {205} + +It is of course inexplicable, but it is equally of course undeniable, +that the mention of Shakespeare's _Pericles_ would seem immediately and +invariably to recall to a virtuous critical public of nice and nasty mind +the prose portions of the fourth act, the whole of the prose portions of +the fourth act, and nothing but the prose portions of the fourth act. To +readers and writers of books who readily admit their ineligibility as +members of a Society for the Suppression of Shakespeare or Rabelais, of +Homer or the Bible, it will seem that the third and fifth acts of this +ill-fated and ill-famed play, and with them the poetical parts of the +fourth act, are composed of metal incomparably more attractive. But the +virtuous critic, after the alleged nature of the vulturine kind, would +appear to have eyes and ears and nose for nothing else. It is true that +somewhat more of humour, touched once and again with subtler hints of +deeper truth, is woven into the too realistic weft of these too lifelike +scenes than into any of the corresponding parts in _Measure for Measure_ +or in _Troilus and Cressida_; true also that in the hands of imitators, +in hands so much weaker than Shakespeare's as were Heywood's or +Davenport's (who transplanted this unlovely episode from _Pericles_ into +a play of his own), these very scenes or such as they reappear unredeemed +by any such relief in all the rank and rampant ugliness of their raw +repulsive realism: true, again, that Fletcher has once equalled them in +audacity, while stripping off the nakedness of his subject the last +ragged and rude pretence at a moral purpose, and investing it instead +with his very brightest robe of gay parti-coloured humour: but after all +it remains equally true that to senses less susceptible of attraction by +carrion than belong to the vultures of critical and professional virtue +they must always remain as they have always been, something very +considerably more than unattractive. I at least for one must confess +myself insufficiently virtuous to have ever at any time for any moment +felt towards them the very slightest touch of any feeling more attractive +than repulsion. And herewith I hasten to wash my hands of the only +unattractive matter in the only three of Shakespeare's plays which offer +any such matter to the perceptions of any healthy-minded and reasonable +human creature. + +But what now shall I say that may not be too pitifully unworthy of the +glories and the beauties, the unsurpassable pathos and sublimity inwoven +with the imperial texture of this very play? the blood-red Tyrian purple +of tragic maternal jealousy which might seem to array it in a worthy +attire of its Tyrian name; the flower-soft loveliness of maiden +lamentation over the flower-strewn seaside grave of Marina's old +sea-tossed nurse, where I am unvirtuous enough (as virtue goes among +moralists) to feel more at home and better at ease than in the atmosphere +of her later lodging in Mitylene? What, above all, shall be said of that +storm above all storms ever raised in poetry, which ushered into a world +of such wonders and strange chances the daughter of the wave-worn and +world-wandering prince of Tyre? Nothing but this perhaps, that it +stands--or rather let me say that it blows and sounds and shines and +rings and thunders and lightens as far ahead of all others as the +burlesque sea-storm of Rabelais beyond all possible storms of comedy. The +recent compiler of a most admirably skilful and most delicately +invaluable compendium of Pantagruel or manual by way of guidebook to +Rabelais has but too justly taken note of the irrefragable evidence there +given that the one prose humourist who is to Aristophanes as the human +twin-star Castor to Pollux the divine can never have practically +weathered an actual gale; but if I may speak from a single experience of +one which a witness long inured to Indian storm as well as Indian battle +had never seen matched out of the tropics if ever overmatched within +them, I should venture to say, were the poet in question any other mortal +man than Shakespeare, to whom all things were better known by instinct +than ever they can be to others by experience, that the painter of the +storm in _Pericles_ must have shared the adventure and relished the +rapture of such an hour. None other most assuredly than himself alone +could have mingled with the material passion of the elements such human +passion of pathos as thrills in such tenderly sublime undertone of an +agony so nobly subdued through the lament of Pericles over Thaisa. As in +his opening speech of this scene we heard all the clangour and resonance +of warring wind and sea, so now we hear a sound of sacred and spiritual +music as solemn as the central monochord of the inner main itself. + +That the three last acts of _Pericles_, with the possible if not over +probable exception of the so-called Chorus, {210} are wholly the work of +Shakespeare in the ripest fullness of his latter genius, is a position +which needs exactly as much proof as does his single-handed authorship of +_Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth_, and _Othello_. In the fifth act is a remarkable +instance of a thing remarkably rare with him; the recast or repetition in +an improved and reinvigorated form of a beautiful image or passage +occurring in a previous play. The now only too famous metaphor of +"patience on a monument smiling at grief"--too famous we might call it +for its own fame--is transfigured as from human beauty to divine, in its +transformation to the comparison of Marina's look with that of "Patience +gazing on kings' graves, and smiling Extremity out of act." A precisely +similar parallel is one to which I have referred elsewhere; that between +the two passages respectively setting forth the reciprocal love of Helena +and Hermia, of Emilia and Flavina. The change of style and spirit in +either case of reiteration is the change from a simpler to a sublimer +form of beauty. + +In the two first acts of _Pericles_ there are faint and rare but evident +and positive traces of a passing touch from the hasty hand of +Shakespeare: even here too we may say after Dido:-- + + Nec tam aversus equos Tyria sol jungit ab urbe. + +It has been said that those most unmistakable verses on "the blind mole" +are not such as any man could insert into another man's work, or slip in +between the lines of an inferior poet: and that they occur naturally +enough in a speech of no particular excellence. I take leave decisively +to question the former assertion, and flatly to contradict the latter. +The pathetic and magnificent lines in dispute do not occur naturally +enough, or at all naturally, among the very poor, flat, creeping verses +between which they have been thrust with such over freehanded +recklessness. No purple patch was ever more pitifully out of place. +There is indeed no second example of such wanton and wayward liberality; +but the generally lean and barren style of these opening acts does not +crawl throughout on exactly the same low level. + +The last of the only three plays with which I venture to find any fault +on the score of moral taste is the first on my list of the only three +plays belonging to this last period on which, as they now stand, I trace +the indisputable track of another touch than Shakespeare's. But in the +two cases remaining our general task of distinction should on the whole +be simple and easy enough for the veriest babes and sucklings in the +lower school of Shakespeare. + +That the two great posthumous fragments we possess of Shakespeare's +uncompleted work are incomplete simply because the labour spent on either +was cut short by his timeless death is the first natural assumption of +any student with an eye quick enough to catch the point where the traces +of his hand break off; but I should now be inclined to guess rather that +on reconsideration of the subjects chosen he had rejected or dismissed +them for a time at least as unfit for dramatic handling. It could have +needed no great expenditure of reasoning or reflection to convince a man +of lesser mind and less experience than Shakespeare's that no subject +could possibly be more unmanageable, more indomitably improper for such a +purpose, than he had selected in _Timon of Athens_. How he came ever to +fall across such a subject, to hit upon such a choice, we can spend no +profitable time or pains in trying to conjecture. It is clear, however, +that at all events there was a season when the inexplicable attraction of +it was too strong for him to resist the singular temptation to embody in +palpable form, to array in dramatic raiment, to invest with imaginative +magnificence, the godless ascetic passion of misanthropy, the martyrdom +of an atheistic Stylites. Timon is doubtless a man of far nobler type +than any monomaniac of the tribe of Macarius: but his immeasurable +superiority in spiritual rank to the hermit fathers of the desert serves +merely to make him a thought madder and a grain more miserable than the +whole Thebaid of Christomaniacs rolled into one. Foolish and fruitless +as it has ever been to hunt through Shakespeare's plays and sonnets on +the false scent of a fantastic trail, to put thaumaturgic trust in a dark +dream of tracking his untraceable personality through labyrinthine byways +of life and visionary crossroads of character, it is yet surely no blind +assumption to accept the plain evidence in both so patent before us, that +he too like other men had his dark seasons of outer or of inner life, and +like other poets found them or made them fruitful as well as bitter, +though it might be but of bitter fruit. And of such there is here enough +to glut the gorge of all the monks in monkery, or strengthen for a forty +days' fast any brutallest unwashed theomaniac of the Thebaid. The most +unconscionably unclean of all foul-minded fanatics might have been +satisfied with the application to all women from his mother upwards of +the monstrous and magnificent obloquy found by Timon as insufficient to +overwhelm as his gold was inadequate to satisfy one insatiable and +indomitable "brace of harlots." In _Troilus and Cressida_ we found too +much that Swift might have written when half inspired by the genius of +Shakespeare; in the great and terrible fourth act of _Timon_ we find such +tragedy as Juvenal might have written when half deified by the spirit of +AEschylus. + +There is a noticeable difference between the case of _Timon_ and the two +other cases (diverse enough between themselves) of late or mature work +but partially assignable to the hand of Shakespeare. In _Pericles_ we +may know exactly how much was added by Shakespeare to the work of we know +not whom; in _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ we can tell sometimes to a hair's +breadth in a hemistich by whom how much was added to the posthumous text +of Shakespeare; in _Timon_ we cannot assert with the same confidence in +the same accuracy that just so many scenes and no more, just so many +speeches and none other, were the work of Shakespeare's or of some other +hand. Throughout the first act his presence lightens on us by flashes, +as his voice peals out by fits, from behind or above the too meanly +decorated altar of tragic or satiric song: in the second it is more +sensibly continuous; in the third it is all but utterly eclipsed; in the +fourth it is but very rarely intercepted for a very brief interval in the +dark divine service of a darker Commination Day: in the fifth it +predominates generally over the sullen and brooding atmosphere with the +fierce imperious glare of a "bloody sun" like that which the wasting +shipmen watched at noon "in a hot and copper sky." There is here no more +to say of a poem inspired at once by the triune Furies of Ezekiel, of +Juvenal, and of Dante. + +I can imagine no reason but that already suggested why Shakespeare should +in a double sense have taken Chaucer for his model or example in leaving +half told a story which he had borrowed from the father and master of our +narrative poetry. Among all competent scholars and all rational students +of Shakespeare there can have been, except possibly with regard to three +of the shorter scenes, no room for doubt or perplexity on any detail of +the subject since the perfect summary and the masterly decision of Mr. +Dyce. These three scenes, as no such reader will need to be told or +reminded, are the two first soliloquies of the Gaoler's Daughter after +the release of Palamon, and the scene of the portraits, as we may in a +double sense call it, in which Emilia, after weighing against each other +in solitude the likenesses of the cousins, receives from her own kinsfolk +a full and laboured description of their leading champions on either +side. Even setting apart for once and for a moment the sovereign +evidence of mere style, we must recognise in this last instance a +beautiful and significant example of that loyal and loving fidelity to +the minor passing suggestions of Chaucer's text which on all possible +occasions of such comparison so markedly and vividly distinguishes the +work of Shakespeare's from the work of Fletcher's hand. Of the pestilent +abuse and perversion to which Fletcher has put the perhaps already +superfluous hints or sketches by Shakespeare for an episodical underplot, +in his transmutation of Palamon's love-stricken and luckless deliverer +into the disgusting burlesque of a mock Ophelia, I have happily no need +as I should certainly have no patience to speak. {217} + +After the always immitigable gloom of _Timon_ and the sometimes +malodorous exhalations of the three preceding plays, it is nothing less +than "very heaven" to find and feel ourselves again in the midmost +Paradise, the central Eden, of Shakespeare's divine discovery--of his +last sweet living invention. Here again is air as pure blowing over +fields as fragrant as where Dante saw Matilda or Milton saw Proserpine +gathering each as deathless flowers. We still have here to disentwine or +disentangle his own from the weeds of glorious and of other than glorious +feature with which Fletcher has thought fit to interweave them; even in +the close of the last scene of all we can say to a line, to a letter, +where Shakespeare ends and Fletcher begins. That scene is opened by +Shakespeare in his most majestic vein of meditative or moral verse, +pointed and coloured as usual with him alone by direct and absolute +aptitude to the immediate sentiment and situation of the speaker and of +no man else: then either Fletcher strikes in for a moment with a touch of +somewhat more Shakespearean tone than usual, or possibly we have a +survival of some lines' length, not unretouched by Fletcher, from +Shakespeare's first sketch for a conclusion of the somewhat calamitous +and cumbrous underplot, which in any case was ultimately left for +Fletcher to expand into such a shape and bring by such means to such an +end as we may safely swear that Shakespeare would never have admitted: +then with the entrance and ensuing narrative of Pirithous we have none +but Shakespeare before us again, though it be Shakespeare undoubtedly in +the rough, and not as he might have chosen to present himself after due +revision, with rejection (we may well suppose) of this point and +readjustment of that: then upon the arrival of the dying Arcite with his +escort there follows a grievous little gap, a flaw but pitifully patched +by Fletcher, whom we recognise at wellnigh his worst and weakest in +Palamon's appeal to his kinsman for a last word, "if his heart, _his +worthy, manly heart_" (an exact and typical example of Fletcher's +tragically prosaic and prosaically tragic dash of incurable commonplace), +"be yet unbroken," and in the flaccid and futile answer which fails so +signally to supply the place of the most famous and pathetic passage in +all the masterpiece of Chaucer; a passage to which even Shakespeare could +have added but some depth and grandeur of his own giving, since neither +he nor Dante's very self nor any other among the divinest of men could +have done more or better than match it for tender and pure simplicity of +words more "dearly sweet and bitter" than the bitterest or the sweetest +of men's tears. Then, after the duly and properly conventional +engagement on the parts of Palamon and Emilia respectively to devote the +anniversary "to tears" and "to honour," the deeper note returns for one +grand last time, grave at once and sudden and sweet as the full choral +opening of an anthem: the note which none could ever catch of +Shakespeare's very voice gives out the peculiar cadence that it alone can +give in the modulated instinct of a solemn change or shifting of the +metrical emphasis or _ictus_ from one to the other of two repeated +words:-- + + That nought could buy + Dear love; but loss of dear love! + +That is a touch beyond the ear or the hand of Fletcher: a chord sounded +from Apollo's own harp after a somewhat hoarse and reedy wheeze from the +scrannel-pipe of a lesser player than Pan. Last of all, in words worthy +to be the latest left of Shakespeare's, his great and gentle Theseus +winds up the heavenly harmonies of his last beloved great poem. + +And now, coming at length within the very circle of Shakespeare's +culminant and crowning constellation, bathing my whole soul and spirit +for the last and (if I live long enough) as surely for the first of many +thousand times in the splendours of the planet whose glory is the light +of his very love itself, standing even as Dante + + in the clear + Amorous silence of the Swooning-sphere, + +what shall I say of thanksgiving before the final feast of Shakespeare? + +The grace must surely be short enough if it would at all be gracious. +Even were Shakespeare's self alive again, or he now but fifteen years +since gone home to Shakespeare, {220} of whom Charles Lamb said well that +none could have written his book about Shakespeare but either himself +alone or else he of whom the book was written, yet could we not hope that +either would have any new thing to tell us of the _Tempest_, the +_Winter's Tale_, and _Cymbeline_. And for ourselves, what else could we +do but only ring changes on the word beautiful as Celia on the word +wonderful in her laughing litany of love? or what better or what more can +we do than in the deepest and most heartfelt sense of an old conventional +phrase, thank God and Shakespeare? for how to praise either for such a +gift of gifts we know not, knowing only and surely that none will know +for ever. + +True or false, and it would now seem something less than likely to be +true, the fancy which assumed the last lines spoken by Prospero to be +likewise the last words of the last completed work of Shakespeare was +equally in either case at once natural and graceful. There is but one +figure sweeter than Miranda's and sublimer than Prospero's in all the +range of heaven on which the passion of our eyes could rest at parting. +And from one point of view there is even a more heavenly quality +perceptible in the light of this than of its two twin stars. In no nook +or corner of the island as we leave it is any savour left or any memory +lingering of any inexpiable evil. Alonzo is absolved; even Antonio and +Sebastian have made no such ineffaceable mark on it by the presence of +their pardoned crimes as is made by those which cost the life of +Mamillius and the labours of Imogen. Poor Caliban is left in such +comfort as may be allowed him by divine grace in the favourable aspect of +Setebos; and his comrades go by us "reeling ripe" and "gilded" not by +"grand liquor" only but also by the summer lightning of men's laughter: +blown softly out of our sight, with a sound and a gust of music, by the +breath of the song of Ariel. + +The wild wind of the _Winter's Tale_ at its opening would seem to blow us +back into a wintrier world indeed. And to the very end I must confess +that I have in me so much of the spirit of Rachel weeping in Ramah as +will not be comforted because Mamillius is not. It is well for those +whose hearts are light enough, to take perfect comfort even in the +substitution of his sister Perdita for the boy who died of "thoughts high +for one so tender." Even the beautiful suggestion that Shakespeare as he +wrote had in mind his own dead little son still fresh and living at his +heart can hardly add more than a touch of additional tenderness to our +perfect and piteous delight in him. And even in her daughter's embrace +it seems hard if his mother should have utterly forgotten the little +voice that had only time to tell her just eight words of that ghost story +which neither she nor we were ever to hear ended. Any one but +Shakespeare would have sought to make pathetic profit out of the child by +the easy means of showing him if but once again as changed and stricken +to the death for want of his mother and fear for her and hunger and +thirst at his little high heart for the sight and touch of her: +Shakespeare only could find a better way, a subtler and a deeper chord to +strike, by giving us our last glimpse of him as he laughed and chattered +with her "past enduring," to the shameful neglect of those ladies in the +natural blueness of whose eyebrows as well as their noses he so stoutly +declined to believe. And at the very end (as aforesaid) it may be that +we remember him all the better because the father whose jealousy killed +him and the mother for love of whom he died would seem to have forgotten +the little brave sweet spirit with all its truth of love and tender sense +of shame as perfectly and unpardonably as Shakespeare himself at the +close of _King Lear_ would seem to have forgotten one who never had +forgotten Cordelia. + +But yet--and here for once the phrase abhorred by Cleopatra does not +"allay the good" but only the bad "precedence"--if ever amends could be +made for such unnatural show of seeming forgetfulness ("out on the +seeming! I will write against it"--or would, had I not written enough +already), the poet most assuredly has made such amends here. At the +sunrise of Perdita beside Florizel it seems as if the snows of sixteen +winters had melted all together into the splendour of one unutterable +spring. They "smell April and May" in a sweeter sense than it could be +said of "young Master Fenton": "nay, which is more," as his friend and +champion Mistress Quickly might have added to mine host's commendatory +remark, they speak all April and May; because April is in him as +naturally as May in her, by just so many years' difference before the +Mayday of her birth as went to make up her dead brother's little lot of +living breath, which in Beaumont's most lovely and Shakespeare-worthy +phrase "was not a life; was but a piece of childhood thrown away." Nor +can I be content to find no word of old affection for Autolycus, who +lived, as we may not doubt, though but a hint or promise be vouchsafed us +for all assurance that he lived by favour of his "good masters" once more +to serve Prince Florizel and wear three-pile for as much of his time as +it might please him to put on "robes" like theirs that were "gentlemen +born," and had "been so any time these four hours." And yet another and +a graver word must be given with all reverence to the "grave and good +Paulina," whose glorious fire of godlike indignation was as warmth and +cordial to the innermost heart while yet bruised and wrung for the yet +fresh loss of Mamillius. + +The time is wellnigh come now for me to consecrate in this book my good +will if not good work to the threefold and thrice happy memory of the +three who have written of Shakespeare as never man wrote, nor ever man +may write again; to the everlasting praise and honour and glory of +Charles Lamb, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Walter Savage Landor; +"wishing," I hardly dare to say, "what I write may be read by their +light." The play of plays, which is _Cymbeline_, remains alone to +receive the last salute of all my love. + +I think, as far as I can tell, I may say I have always loved this one +beyond all other children of Shakespeare. The too literal egoism of this +profession will not be attributed by any candid or even commonly honest +reader to the violence of vanity so much more than comical as to make me +suppose that such a record or assurance could in itself be matter of +interest to any man: but simply to the real and simple reason, that I +wish to show cause for my choice of this work to wind up with, beyond the +mere chance of its position at the close of the chaotically inconsequent +catalogue of contents affixed to the first edition. In this casualty--for +no good thing can reasonably be ascribed to design on the part of the +first editors--there would seem to be something more than usual of what +we may call, if it so please us, a happy providence. It is certain that +no studious arrangement could possibly have brought the book to a happier +end. Here is depth enough with height enough of tragic beauty and +passion, terror and love and pity, to approve the presence of the most +tragic Master's hand; subtlety enough of sweet and bitter truth to attest +the passage of the mightiest and wisest scholar or teacher in the school +of the human spirit; beauty with delight enough and glory of life and +grace of nature to proclaim the advent of the one omnipotent Maker among +all who bear that name. Here above all is the most heavenly triad of +human figures that ever even Shakespeare brought together; a diviner +three, as it were a living god-garland of the noblest earth-born brothers +and loveworthiest heaven-born sister, than the very givers of all grace +and happiness to their Grecian worshippers of old time over long before. +The passion of Posthumus is noble, and potent the poison of Iachimo; +Cymbeline has enough for Shakespeare's present purpose of "the +king-becoming graces"; but we think first and last of her who was "truest +speaker" and those who "called her brother, when she was but their +sister; she them brothers, when they were so indeed." The very crown and +flower of all her father's daughters,--I do not speak here of her human +father, but her divine--the woman above all Shakespeare's women is +Imogen. As in Cleopatra we found the incarnate sex, the woman +everlasting, so in Imogen we find half glorified already the immortal +godhead of womanhood. I would fain have some honey in my words at +parting--with Shakespeare never, but for ever with these notes on +Shakespeare; and I am therefore something more than fain to close my book +upon the name of the woman best beloved in all the world of song and all +the tide of time; upon the name of Shakespeare's Imogen. + + + + +APPENDIX. + + +NOTE ON THE HISTORICAL PLAY OF KING EDWARD III. +1879. + + +The epitaph of German criticism on Shakespeare was long since written by +the unconscious hand which penned the following sentence; an inscription +worthy of perpetual record on the registers of Gotham or in the daybook +of the yet unstranded Ship of Fools. + +"_Thomas Lord Cromwell:--Sir John Oldcastle:--A Yorkshire Tragedy_.--The +three last pieces are not only unquestionably Shakespeare's, but in my +opinion they deserve to be classed among his best and maturest works." + +This memorable opinion is the verdict of the modest and judicious Herr +von Schlegel: who had likewise in his day the condescension to inform our +ignorance of the melancholy fact so strangely overlooked by the +contemporaries of Christopher Marlowe, that "his verses are flowing, but +without energy." Strange, but true; too strange, we may reasonably +infer, not to be true. Only to German eyes has the treasure-house of +English poetry ever disclosed a secret of this kind: to German ears alone +has such discord or default been ever perceptible in its harmonies. + +Now the facts with regard to this triad of plays are briefly these. +_Thomas Lord Cromwell_ is a piece of such utterly shapeless, spiritless, +bodiless, soulless, senseless, helpless, worthless rubbish, that there is +no known writer of Shakespeare's age to whom it could be ascribed without +the infliction of an unwarrantable insult on that writer's memory. _Sir +John Oldcastle_ is the compound piecework of four minor playwrights, one +of them afterwards and otherwise eminent as a poet--Munday, Drayton, +Wilson, and Hathaway: a thin sample of poetic patchery cobbled up and +stitched together so as to serve its hour for a season without falling to +pieces at the first touch. The _Yorkshire Tragedy_ is a coarse, crude, +and vigorous impromptu, in which we possibly might almost think it +possible that Shakespeare had a hand (or at least a finger), if we had +any reason to suppose that during the last ten or twelve years of his +life {232} he was likely to have taken part in any such dramatic +improvisation. + +The example and the exposure of Schlegel's misadventures in this line +have not sufficed to warn off minor blunderers from treading with emulous +confidence "through forthrights and meanders" in the very muddiest of +their precursor's traces. We may notice, for one example, the revival--or +at least the discussion as of something worth serious notice--of a +wellnigh still-born theory, first dropped in a modest corner of the +critical world exactly a hundred and seventeen years ago. Its parent, +notwithstanding this perhaps venial indiscretion, was apparently an +honest and modest gentleman; and the play itself, which this ingenuous +theorist was fain, with all diffidence, to try whether haply he might be +permitted to foist on the apocryphal fatherhood of Shakespeare, is not +without such minor merits as may excuse us for wasting a few minutes on +examination of the theory which seeks to confer on it the factitious and +artificial attraction of a spurious and adventitious interest. + +"The Raigne of King Edward the third: As it hath bin sundrie times plaied +about the Citie of London," was published in 1596, and ran through two or +three anonymous editions before the date of the generation was out which +first produced it. Having thus run to the end of its natural tether, it +fell as naturally into the oblivion which has devoured, and has not again +disgorged, so many a more precious production of its period. In 1760 it +was reprinted in the "Prolusions" of Edward Capell, whose text is now +before me. This editor was the first mortal to suggest that his newly +unearthed treasure might possibly be a windfall from the topless tree of +Shakespeare. Being, as I have said, a duly modest and an evidently +honest man, he admits "with candour" that there is no jot or tittle of +"external evidence" whatsoever to be alleged in support of this +gratuitous attribution: but he submits, with some fair show of reason, +that there is a certain "resemblance between the style of" Shakespeare's +"earlier performances and of the work in question"; and without the +slightest show of any reason whatever he appends to this humble and +plausible plea the unspeakably unhappy assertion that at the time of its +appearance "there was no known writer equal to such a play"; whereas at a +moderate computation there were, I should say, on the authority of +Henslowe's Diary, at least a dozen--and not improbably a score. In any +case there was one then newly dead, too long before his time, whose +memory stands even higher above the possible ascription of such a work +than that of the adolescent Shakespeare's very self. + +Of one point we may be sure, even where so much is unsure as we find it +here: in the curt atheological phrase of the Persian Lucretius, "one +thing is certain, and the rest is lies." The author of _King Edward +III_. was a devout student and a humble follower of Christopher Marlowe, +not yet wholly disengaged by that august and beneficent influence from +all attraction towards the "jigging veins of rhyming mother-wits"; and +fitter on the whole to follow this easier and earlier vein of writing, +half lyrical in manner and half elegiac, than to brace upon his punier +limbs the young giant's newly fashioned buskin of blank verse. The signs +of this growing struggle, the traces of this incomplete emancipation, are +perceptible throughout in the alternate prevalence of two conflicting and +irreconcilable styles; which yet affords no evidence or suggestion of a +double authorship. For the intelligence which moulds and informs the +whole work, the spirit which pervades and imbues the general design, is +of a piece, so to speak, throughout; a point imperceptible to the eye, a +touchstone intangible by the finger, alike of a scholiast and a dunce. + +Another test, no less unmistakable by the student and no less +indiscernible to the sciolist, is this: that whatever may be the demerits +of this play, they are due to no voluntary or involuntary carelessness or +haste. Here is not the swift impatient journeywork of a rough and ready +hand; here is no sign of such compulsory hurry in the discharge of a task +something less than welcome, if not of an imposition something less than +tolerable, as we may rationally believe ourselves able to trace in great +part of Marlowe's work: in the latter half of _The Jew of Malta_, in the +burlesque interludes of _Doctor Faustus_, and wellnigh throughout the +whole scheme and course of _The Massacre at Paris_. Whatever in _King +Edward III_. is mediocre or worse is evidently such as it is through no +passionate or slovenly precipitation of handiwork, but through pure +incompetence to do better. The blame of the failure, the shame of the +shortcoming, cannot be laid to the account of any momentary excess or +default in emotion, of passing exhaustion or excitement, of intermittent +impulse and reaction; it is an indication of lifelong and irremediable +impotence. And it is further to be noted that by far the least +unsuccessful parts of the play are also by far the most unimportant. The +capacity of the author seems to shrink and swell alternately, to erect +its plumes and deject them, to contract and to dilate the range and orbit +of its flight in a steadily inverse degree to the proportionate interest +of the subject or worth of the topic in hand. There could be no surer +proof that it is neither the early nor the hasty work of a great or even +a remarkable poet. It is the best that could be done at any time by a +conscientious and studious workman of technically insufficient culture +and of naturally limited means. + +I would not, however, be supposed to undervalue the genuine and graceful +ability of execution displayed by the author at his best. He could write +at times very much after the earliest fashion of the adolescent +Shakespeare; in other words, after the fashion of the day or hour, to +which in some degree the greatest writer of that hour or that day cannot +choose but conform at starting, and the smallest writer must needs +conform for ever. By the rule which would attribute to Shakespeare every +line written in his first manner which appeared during the first years of +his poetic progress, it is hard to say what amount of bad verse or +better, current during the rise and the reign of their several +influences,--for this kind of echo or of copywork, consciously or +unconsciously repercussive and reflective, begins with the very first +audible sound of a man's voice in song, with the very first noticeable +stroke of his hand in painting--it is hard to say what amount of +tolerable or intolerable work might not or may not be assignable by +scholiasts of the future to Byron or to Shelley, to Mr. Tennyson or to +Mr. Browning. A time by this rule might come--but I am fain to think +better of the Fates--when by comparison of detached words and collation +of dismembered phrases the memory of Mr. Tennyson would be weighted and +degraded by the ascription of whole volumes of pilfered and diluted verse +now current--if not yet submerged--under the name or the pseudonym of the +present {237} Viceroy--or Vice-empress is it?--of India. But the obvious +truth is this: the voice of Shakespeare's adolescence had as usual an +echo in it of other men's notes: I can remember the name of but one poet +whose voice from the beginning had none; who started with a style of his +own, though he may have chosen to annex--"annex the wise it call"; +_convey_ is obsolete--to annex whole phrases or whole verses at need, for +the use or the ease of an idle minute; and this name of course is +Marlowe's. So starting, Shakespeare had yet (like all other and lesser +poets born) some perceptible notes in his yet half boyish voice that were +not borrowed; and these were at once caught up and re-echoed by such +fellow-pupils with Shakespeare of the young Master of them all--such +humbler and feebler disciples, or simpler sheep (shall we call them?) of +the great "dead shepherd"--as the now indistinguishable author of _King +Edward III_. + +In the first scene of the first act the impotent imitation of Marlowe is +pitifully patent. Possibly there may also be an imitation of the still +imitative style of Shakespeare, and the style may be more accurately +definable as a copy of a copy--a study after the manner of Marlowe, not +at second hand, but at third. In any case, being obviously too flat and +feeble to show a touch of either godlike hand, this scene may be set +aside at once to make way for the second. + +The second scene is more animated, but low in style till we come to the +outbreak of rhyme. In other words, the energetic or active part is at +best passable--fluent and decent commonplace: but where the style turns +undramatic and runs into mere elegiacs, a likeness becomes perceptible to +the first elegiac style of Shakespeare. Witness these lines spoken by +the King in contemplation of the Countess of Salisbury's beauty, while +yet struggling against the nascent motions of a base love:-- + + Now in the sun alone it doth not lie + With light to take light from a mortal eye: + For here two day-stars that mine eyes would see + More than the sun steal mine own light from me. + Contemplative desire! desire to be + In contemplation that may master thee! + +_Decipit exemplar vitiis imitabile_: if Shakespeare ever saw or heard +these pretty lines, he should have felt the unconscious rebuke implied in +such close and facile imitation of his own early elegiacs. As a serious +mimicry of his first manner, a critical parody summing up in little space +the sweet faults of his poetic nonage, with its barren overgrowth of +unprofitable flowers,--bright point, soft metaphor, and sweet elaborate +antithesis--this is as good of its kind as anything between Aristophanes +and Horace Smith. Indeed, it may remind us of that parody on the soft, +superfluous, flowery and frothy style of Agathon, which at the opening of +the _Thesmophoriazusae_ cannot but make the youngest and most ignorant +reader laugh, though the oldest and most learned has never set eyes on a +line of the original verses which supplied the incarnate god of comic +song with matter for such exquisite burlesque. + +To the speech above cited the reply of the Countess is even gracefuller, +and closer to the same general model of fanciful elegiac dialogue:-- + + Let not thy presence, like the April sun, + Flatter our earth, and suddenly be done: + More happy do not make our outward wall + Than thou wilt grace our inward house withal. + Our house, my liege, is like a country swain, + Whose habit rude, and manners blunt and plain. + Presageth naught; yet inly beautified + With bounty's riches, and fair hidden pride; + For where the golden ore doth buried lie, + The ground, undecked with nature's tapestry, + Seems barren, sere, unfertile, fruitless, dry; + And where the upper turf of earth doth boast + His pride, perfumes, {239} and particoloured cost, + Delve there, and find this issue and their pride + To spring from ordure and corruption's side. + But, to make up my all too long compare, + These ragged walls no testimony are + What is within; but, like a cloak, doth hide + From weather's waste the under garnished pride. + More gracious than my terms can let thee be, + Entreat thyself to stay awhile with me. + +Not only the exquisite grace of this charming last couplet, but the +smooth sound strength, the fluency and clarity of the whole passage, may +serve to show that the original suggestion of Capell, if (as I think) +untenable, was not (we must admit) unpardonable. The very oversight +perceptible to any eye and painful to any ear not sealed up by stepdame +nature from all perception of pleasure or of pain derivable from good +verse or bad--the reckless reiteration of the same rhyme with but one +poor couplet intervening--suggests rather the oversight of an unfledged +poet than the obtuseness of a full-grown poeticule or poetaster. + +But of how many among the servile or semi-servile throng of imitators in +every generation may not as much as this be said by tolerant or kindly +judges! Among the herd of such diminutives as swarm after the heel or +fawn upon the hand of Mr. Tennyson, more than one, more than two or +three, have come as close as his poor little viceregal or vice-imperial +parasite to the very touch and action of the master's hand which feeds +them unawares from his platter as they fawn; as close as this nameless +and short-winded satellite to the gesture and the stroke of +Shakespeare's. For this also must be noted; that the resemblance here is +but of stray words, of single lines, of separable passages. The whole +tone of the text, the whole build of the play, the whole scheme of the +poem, is far enough from any such resemblance. The structure, the +composition, is feeble, incongruous, inadequate, effete. Any student +will remark at a first glance what a short-breathed runner, what a broken- +winded athlete in the lists of tragic verse, is the indiscoverable author +of this play. + +There is another point which the Neo-Shakespearean synagogue will by no +man be expected to appreciate; for to apprehend it requires some +knowledge and some understanding of the poetry of the Shakespearean +age--so surely we now should call it, rather than Elizabethan or +Jacobean, for the sake of verbal convenience, if not for the sake of +literary decency; and such knowledge or understanding no sane man will +expect to find in any such quarter. Even in the broad coarse comedy of +the period we find here and there the same sweet and simple echoes of the +very cradle-song (so to call it) of our drama: so like Shakespeare, they +might say who knew nothing of Shakespeare's fellows, that we cannot +choose but recognise his hand. Here as always first in the field--the +genuine and golden harvest-field of Shakespearean criticism, Charles Lamb +has cited a passage from _Green's Tu Quoque_--a comedy miserably +misreprinted in Dodsley's Old Plays--on which he observes that "this is +so like Shakespeare, that we seem to remember it," being as it is a +girl's gentle lamentation over the selfish, exacting, suspicious and +trustless love of man, as contrasted with the swift simple surrender of a +woman's love at the first heartfelt appeal to her pity--"we seem to +remember it," says Lamb, as a speech of Desdemona uttered on a first +perception or suspicion of jealousy or alienation in Othello. This +lovely passage, if I dare say so in contravention to the authority of +Lamb, is indeed as like the manner of Shakespeare as it can be--to eyes +ignorant of what his fellows can do; but it is not like the manner of the +Shakespeare who wrote _Othello_. This, however, is beside the question. +It is very like the Shakespeare who wrote the _Comedy of Errors--Love's +Labour's Lost--Romeo and Juliet_. It is so like that had we fallen upon +it in any of these plays it would long since have been a household word +in all men's mouths for sweetness, truth, simplicity, perfect and +instinctive accuracy of touch. It is very much liker the first manner of +Shakespeare than any passage in _King Edward III_. And no Sham +Shakespearean critic that I know of has yet assigned to the hapless +object of his howling homage the authorship of _Green's Tu Quoque_. + +Returning to our text, we find in the short speech of the King with which +the first act is wound up yet another couplet which has the very ring in +it of Shakespeare's early notes--the catch at words rather than play on +words which his tripping tongue in youth could never resist: + + Countess, albeit my business urgeth me, + It shall attend while I attend on thee. + +And with this pretty little instance of courtly and courteous euphuism we +pass from the first to the second and most important act in the play. + +Any reader well versed in the text of Shakespeare, and ill versed in the +work of his early rivals and his later pupils, might surely be forgiven +if on a first reading of the speech with which this act opens he should +cry out with Capell that here at least was the unformed hand of the +Master perceptible and verifiable indeed. The writer, he might say, has +the very glance of his eye, the very trick of his gait, the very note of +his accent. But on getting a little more knowledge, such a reader will +find the use of it in the perception to which he will have attained that +in his early plays, as in his two early poems, the style of Shakespeare +was not for the most part distinctively his own. It was that of a crew, +a knot of young writers, among whom he found at once both leaders and +followers to be guided and to guide. A mere glance into the rich lyric +literature of the period will suffice to show the dullest eye and teach +the densest ear how nearly innumerable were the Englishmen of Elizabeth's +time who could sing in the courtly or pastoral key of the season, each +man of them a few notes of his own, simple or fantastic, but all sweet, +clear, genuine of their kind:-- + + Facies non omnibus una, + Nec diversa tamen: + +and yet so close is the generic likeness between flower and flower of the +same lyrical garden that the first half of the quotation seems but half +applicable here. In Bird's, Morley's, Dowland's collections of music +with the words appended--in such jewelled volumes as _England's Helicon_ +and _Davison's Poetical Rhapsody_--their name is Legion, their numbers +are numberless. You cannot call them imitators, this man of that, or all +of any; they were all of one school, but it was a school without a master +or a head. And even so it was with the earliest sect or gathering of +dramatic writers in England. Marlowe alone stood apart and above them +all--the young Shakespeare among the rest; but among these we cannot +count, we cannot guess, how many were wellnigh as competent as he to +continue the fluent rhyme, to prolong the facile echo, of Greene and +Peele, their first and most famous leaders. + +No more docile or capable pupil could have been desired by any master in +any art than the author of _David and Bethsabe_ has found in the writer +of this second act. He has indeed surpassed his model, if not in grace +and sweetness, yet in taste or tact of expression, in continuity and +equality of style. Vigour is not the principal note of his manner, but +compared with the soft effusive ebullience of his master's we may fairly +call it vigorous and condensed. But all this merit or demerit is matter +of mere language only. The poet--a very pretty poet in his way, and +doubtless capable of gracious work enough in the idyllic or elegiac line +of business--shows about as much capacity to grasp and handle the fine +intimacies of character and the large issues of circumstance to any +tragic or dramatic purpose, as might be expected from an idyllic or +elegiac poet who should suddenly assume the buskin of tragedy. Let us +suppose that Moschus, for example, on the strength of having written a +sweeter elegy than ever before was chanted over the untimely grave of a +friend and fellow-singer, had said within himself, "Go to, I will be +Sophocles"; can we imagine that the tragic result would have been other +than tragical indeed for the credit of his gentle name, and comical +indeed for all who might have envied the mild and modest excellence which +fashion or hypocrisy might for years have induced them to besprinkle with +the froth and slaver of their promiscuous and pointless adulation? + +As the play is not more generally known than it deserves to be,--or +perhaps we may say it is somewhat less known, though its claim to general +notice is faint indeed compared with that of many a poem of its age +familiar only to special students in our own--I will transcribe a few +passages to show how far the writer could reach at his best; leaving for +others to indicate how far short of that not inaccessible point he is too +generally content to fall and to remain. + +The opening speech is spoken by one Lodowick, a parasite of the King's; +who would appear, like Francois Villon under the roof of his Fat Madge, +to have succeeded in reconciling the professional duties--may I not say, +the generally discordant and discrepant offices?--of a poet and a pimp. + + I might perceive his eye in her eye lost, + His ear to drink her sweet tongue's utterance; + And changing passion, like inconstant clouds, + That, rackt upon the carriage of the winds, + Increase, and die, in his disturbed cheeks. + Lo, when she blushed, even then did he look pale; + As if her cheeks by some enchanted power + Attracted had the cherry blood from his: {245a} + Anon, with reverent fear when she grew pale, + His cheeks put on their scarlet ornaments; + But no more like her oriental red + Than brick to coral, or live things to dead. {245b} + Why did he then thus counterfeit her looks? + If she did blush, 'twas tender modest shame, + Being in the sacred presence of a king; + If he did blush, 'twas red immodest shame + To vail his eyes amiss, being a king; + If she looked pale, 'twas silly woman's fear + To bear herself in presence of a king; + If he looked pale, it was with guilty fear + To dote amiss, being a mighty king. + +This is better than the insufferable style of _Locrine_, which is in +great part made up of such rhymeless couplets, each tagged with an empty +verbal antithesis; but taken as a sample of dramatic writing, it is but +just better than what is utterly intolerable. Dogberry has defined it +exactly; it is most tolerable--and not to be endured. + +The following speech of King Edward is in that better style of which the +author's two chief models were not at their best incapable for awhile +under the influence and guidance (we may suppose) of their friend +Marlowe. + + She is grown more fairer far since I came hither; + Her voice more silver every word than other, + Her wit more fluent. What a strange discourse + Unfolded she of David and his Scots! + _Even thus_, quoth she, _he spake_--and then spake broad, + With epithets and accents of the Scot; + But somewhat better than the Scot could speak: + _And thus_, quoth she--and answered then herself; + For who could speak like her? but she herself + Breathes from the wall an angel's note from heaven + Of sweet defiance to her barbarous foes. + When she would talk of peace, methinks her tongue + Commanded war to prison; {246} when of war, + It wakened Caesar from his Roman grave + To hear war beautified by her discourse. + Wisdom is foolishness, but in her tongue; + Beauty a slander, but in her fair face; + There is no summer but in her cheerful looks, + Nor frosty winter but in her disdain. + I cannot blame the Scots that did besiege her, + For she is all the treasure of our land; + But call them cowards that they ran away, + Having so rich and fair a cause to stay. + +But if for a moment we may fancy that here and there we have caught such +an echo of Marlowe as may have fallen from the lips of Shakespeare in his +salad days, in his period of poetic pupilage, we have but a very little +way to go forward before we come upon indisputable proof that the pupil +was one of feebler hand and fainter voice than Shakespeare. Let us take +the passage on poetry, beginning-- + + Now, Lodowick, invocate {247} some golden Muse + To bring thee hither an enchanted pen; + +and so forth. No scholar in English poetry but will recognise at once +the flat and futile imitation of Marlowe; not of his great general style +alone, but of one special and transcendant passage which can never be too +often quoted. + + If all the pens that ever poets held + Had fed the feeling of their masters' thoughts, + And every sweetness that inspired their hearts, + Their minds, and muses on admired themes; + If all the heavenly quintessence they still + From their immortal flowers of poesy, + Wherein, as in a mirror, we perceive + The highest reaches of a human wit; + If these had made one poem's period, + And all combined in beauty's worthiness, + Yet should there hover in their restless heads + One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least, + Which into words no virtue can digest. {248} + +Infinite as is the distance between the long roll of these mighty lines +and the thin tinkle of their feeble imitator's, yet we cannot choose but +catch the ineffectual note of a would-be echo in the speech of the King +to his parasite-- + + For so much moving hath a poet's pen, etc., etc. + +It is really not worth while to transcribe the poor meagre versicles at +length: but a glance at the text will show how much fitter was their +author to continue the tradition of Peele than to emulate the innovations +of Marlowe. In the speeches that follow there is much pretty verbiage +after the general manner of Elizabethan sonnetteers, touched here and +there with something of a higher tone; but the whole scene drags, flags, +halts onward at such a languid rate, that to pick out all the prettiest +lines by way of sample would give a favourable impression but too likely +to be reversed on further and fuller acquaintance. + + Forget not to set down, how passionate, + How heart-sick, and how full of languishment, + Her beauty makes me. . . . . . + Write on, while I peruse her in my thoughts. + Her voice to music, or the nightingale: + To music every summer-leaping swain + Compares his sunburnt lover when she speaks; + And why should I speak of the nightingale? + The nightingale sings of adulterate wrong; + And that, compared, is too satirical: + For sin, though sin, would not be so esteemed; + But rather virtue sin, sin virtue deemed. + Her hair, far softer than the silkworm's twist, + Like as a flattering glass, doth make more fair + The yellow amber:--_Like a flattering glass_ + Comes in too soon; for, writing of her eyes, + I'll say that like a glass they catch the sun, + And thence the hot reflection doth rebound + Against my breast, and burns the heart within. + Ah, what a world of descant makes my soul + Upon this voluntary ground of love! + +"Pretty enough, very pretty! but" exactly as like and as near the style +of Shakespeare's early plays as is the style of Constable's sonnets to +that of Shakespeare's. Unless we are to assign to the Master every +unaccredited song, sonnet, elegy, tragedy, comedy, and farce of his +period, which bears the same marks of the same date--a date, like our +own, of too prolific and imitative production--as we find inscribed on +the greater part of his own early work; unless we are to carry even as +far as this the audacity and arrogance of our sciolism, we must somewhere +make a halt--and it must be on the near side of such an attribution as +that of _King Edward III_. to the hand of Shakespeare. + +With the disappearance of the poetic pimp and the entrance of the +unsuspecting Countess, the style rises yet again--and really, this time, +much to the author's credit. It would need a very fine touch from a very +powerful hand to improve on the delicacy and dexterity of the prelude or +overture to the King's avowal of adulterous love. But when all is said, +though very delicate and very dexterous, it is not forcible work: I do +not mean by forcible the same as violent, spasmodic, emphatic beyond the +modesty of nature; a poet is of course only to be commended, and that +heartily, for keeping within this bound; but he is not to be commended +for coming short of it. This whole scene is full of mild and temperate +beauty, of fanciful yet earnest simplicity; but the note of it, the +expression, the dominant key of the style, is less appropriate to the +utterance of a deep and deadly passion than--at the utmost--of what +modern tongues might call a strong and rather dangerous flirtation. +Passion, so to speak, is quite out of this writer's call; the depths and +heights of manly as of womanly emotion are alike beyond his reach. + + Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself, + He turns to favour and to prettiness. + +"To favour and to prettiness"; the definition of his utmost merit and +demerit, his final achievement and shortcoming, is here complete and +exact. Witness the sweet quiet example of idyllic work which I extract +from a scene beginning in the regular amoebaean style of ancient +pastoral. + + _Edward_. Thou hear'st me say that I do dote on thee. + + _Countess_. If on my beauty, take it if thou canst; + Though little, I do prize it ten times less: + If on my virtue, take it if thou canst; + For virtue's store by giving doth augment: + Be it on what it will that I can give + And thou canst take away, inherit it. + + _Edward_. It is thy beauty that I would enjoy. + + _Countess_. O, were it painted, I would wipe it off, + And dispossess myself to give it thee: + But, sovereign, it is soldered to my life; + Take one and both; for like an humble shadow + It haunts the sunshine of my summer's life. + + _Edward_. But thou mayst lend it me to sport withal. + + _Countess_. As easy may my intellectual soul + Be lent away, and yet my body live, + As lend my body, palace to my soul, + Away from her, and yet retain my soul. + My body is her bower, her court, her abbey, + And she an angel, pure, divine, unspotted; + If I should lend her house, my lord, to thee, + I kill my poor soul, and my poor soul me. + +Once more, this last couplet is very much in the style of Shakespeare's +sonnets; nor is it wholly unlike even the dramatic style of Shakespeare +in his youth--and some dozen other poets or poeticules of the time. But +throughout this part of the play the recurrence of a faint and +intermittent resemblance to Shakespeare is more frequently noticeable +than elsewhere. {252} A student of imperfect memory but not of defective +intuition might pardonably assign such couplets, on hearing them cited, +to the master-hand itself; but such a student would be likelier to refer +them to the sonnetteer than to the dramatist. And a casual likeness to +the style of Shakespeare's sonnets is not exactly sufficient evidence to +warrant such an otherwise unwarrantable addition of appendage to the list +of Shakespeare's plays. + +A little further on we come upon the first and last passage which does +actually recall by its wording a famous instance of the full and ripened +style of Shakespeare. + + He that doth clip or counterfeit your stamp + Shall die, my lord: and will your sacred self + Commit high treason 'gainst the King of heaven, + To stamp his image in forbidden metal, + Forgetting your allegiance and your oath? + In violating marriage' sacred law + You break a greater honour than yourself; + To be a king is of a younger house + Than to be married: your progenitor, + Sole reigning Adam on the universe, + By God was honoured for a married man, + But not by him anointed for a king. + +Every possible reader, I suppose, will at once bethink himself of the +famous passage in _Measure for Measure_ which here may seem to be faintly +prefigured: + + It were as good + To pardon him that hath from nature stolen + A man already made, as to remit + Their saucy sweetness, that do coin heaven's image + In stamps that are forbid: + +and the very difference of style is not wider than the gulf which gapes +between the first style of Shakespeare and the last. But men of +Shakespeare's stamp, I venture to think, do not thus repeat themselves. +The echo of the passage in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, describing the +girlish friendship of Hermia and Helena, which we find in the first act +of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, describing the like girlish friendship of +Emilia and Flavina, is an echo of another sort. Both, I need hardly say, +are unquestionably Shakespeare's; but the fashion in which the matured +poet retouches and completes the sketch of his earlier years--composes an +oil painting, as it were, from the hints and suggestions of a +water-colour sketch long since designed and long since half forgotten--is +essentially different from the mere verbal and literal trick of +repetition which sciolists might think to detect in the present instance. +Again we must needs fall back on the inevitable and indefinable test of +style; a test which could be of no avail if we were foolish enough to +appeal to scholiasts and their attendant dunces, but which should be of +some avail if we appeal to experts and their attentive scholars; and by +this test we can but remark that neither the passage in _A Midsummer +Night's Dream_ nor the corresponsive passage in _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ +could have been written by any hand known to us but Shakespeare's; +whereas the passage in _King Edward III_. might as certainly have been +written by any one out of a dozen poets then living as the answering +passage in _Measure for Measure_ could assuredly have been written by +Shakespeare alone. + +As on a first reading of the _Hippolytus_ of Euripides we feel that, for +all the grace and freshness and lyric charm of its opening scenes, the +claim of the poem to our ultimate approval or disapproval must needs +depend on the success or failure of the first interview between Theseus +and his calumniated son; and as on finding that scene to be feeble and +futile and prosaic and verbose we feel that the poet who had a woman's +spite against women has here effectually and finally shown himself +powerless to handle the simplest elements of masculine passion, of manly +character and instinct; so in this less important case we feel that the +writer, having ventured on such a subject as the compulsory temptation of +a daughter by a father, who has been entrapped into so shameful an +undertaking through the treacherous exaction of an equivocal promise +unwarily confirmed by an inconsiderate oath, must be judged by the result +of his own enterprise; must fail or stand as a poet by its failure or +success. And his failure is only not complete; he is but just redeemed +from utter discomfiture by the fluency and simplicity of his equable but +inadequate style. Here as before we find plentiful examples of the +gracefully conventional tone current among the lesser writers of the +hour. + + _Warwick_. How shall I enter on this graceless errand? + I must not call her child; for where's the father + That will in such a suit seduce his child? + Then, _Wife of Salisbury_;--shall I so begin? + No, he's my friend; and where is found the friend + That will do friendship such endamagement?--{255} + Neither my daughter, nor my dear friend's wife, + I am not Warwick, as thou think'st I am, + But an attorney from the court of hell; + That thus have housed my spirit in his form + To do a message to thee from the king. + +This beginning is fair enough, if not specially fruitful in promise; but +the verses following are of the flattest order of commonplace. Hay and +grass and the spear of Achilles--of which tradition + + the moral is, + What mighty men misdo, they can amend-- + +these are the fresh and original types on which our little poet is +compelled to fall back for support and illustration to a scene so full of +terrible suggestion and pathetic possibility. + + The king will in his glory hide thy shame; + And those that gaze on him to find out thee + Will lose their eyesight, looking on the sun. + What can one drop of poison harm the sea, + Whose hugy vastures can digest the ill + And make it lose its operation? + +And so forth, and so forth; _ad libitum_ if not _ad nauseam_. Let us +take but one or two more instances of the better sort. + + _Countess_. Unnatural besiege! Woe me unhappy, + To have escaped the danger of my foes, + And to be ten times worse invir'd by friends! + +(Here we come upon two more words unknown to Shakespeare; {256} +_besiege_, as a noun substantive, and _invired_ for _environed_.) + + Hath he no means to stain my honest blood + But to corrupt the author of my blood + To be his scandalous and vile soliciter? + No marvel though the branches be infected, + When poison hath encompassed the roots; + No marvel though the leprous infant die, + When the stern dam envenometh the dug. + Why then, give sin a passport to offend, + And youth the dangerous rein of liberty; + Blot out the strict forbidding of the law; + And cancel every canon that prescribes + A shame for shame or penance for offence. + No, let me die, if his too boisterous will + Will have it so, before I will consent + To be an actor in his graceless lust. + + _Warwick_. Why, now thou speak'st as I would have thee speak; + And mark how I unsay my words again. + An honourable grave is more esteemed + Than the polluted closet of a king; + The greater man, the greater is the thing, + Be it good or bad, that he shall undertake; + An unreputed mote, flying in the sun, + Presents a greater substance than it is; + The freshest summer's day doth soonest taint + The loathed carrion that it seems to kiss; + Deep are the blows made with a mighty axe; + That sin doth ten times aggravate itself + That is committed in a holy place; + An evil deed, done by authority, + Is sin, and subornation: Deck an ape + In tissue, and the beauty of the robe + Adds but the greater scorn unto the beast. + +(Here are four passably good lines, which vaguely remind the reader of +something better read elsewhere; a common case enough with the more +tolerable work of small imitative poets.) + + A spacious field of reasons could I urge + Between his glory, daughter, and thy shame: + That poison shows worst in a golden cup; + Dark night seems darker by the lightning flash; + _Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds_; + And every glory that inclines to sin, + The shame is treble by the opposite. + So leave I, with my blessing in thy bosom; + Which then convert to a most heavy curse, + When thou convert'st from honour's golden name + To the black faction of bed-blotting shame! [_Exit_. + + _Countess_. I'll follow thee:--And when my mind turns so, + My body sink my soul in endless woe! [_Exit_. + +So much for the central and crowning scene, the test, the climax, the +hinge on which the first part of this play turns; and seems to me, in +turning, to emit but a feeble and rusty squeak. No probable reader will +need to be reminded that the line which I have perhaps unnecessarily +italicised appears also as the last verse in the ninety-fourth of those +"sugared sonnets" which we know were in circulation about the time of +this play's first appearance among Shakespeare's "private friends"; in +other words, which enjoyed such a kind of public privacy or private +publicity as one or two among the most eminent English poets of our own +day have occasionally chosen for some part of their work, to screen it +for awhile as under the shelter and the shade of crepuscular laurels, +till ripe for the sunshine or the storm of public judgment. In the +present case, this debatable verse looks to me more like a loan or maybe +a theft from Shakespeare's private store of undramatic poetry than a +misapplication by its own author to dramatic purposes of a line too apt +and exquisite to endure without injury the transference from its original +setting. + +The scene ensuing winds up the first part of this composite (or rather, +in one sense of the word, incomposite) poem. It may, on the whole, be +classed as something more than passably good: it is elegant, lively, even +spirited in style; showing at all events a marked advance upon the scene +which I have already stigmatised as a failure--that which attempts to +render the interview between Warwick and the King. It is hardly, +however, I should say, above the highest reach of Greene or Peele at the +smoothest and straightest of his flight. At its opening, indeed, we come +upon a line which inevitably recalls one of the finest touches in a much +later and deservedly more popular historical drama. On being informed by +Derby that + + The king is in his closet, malcontent, + For what I know not, but he gave in charge, + Till after dinner, none should interrupt him; + The Countess Salisbury, and her father Warwick. + Artois, and all, look underneath the brows; + +on receiving, I say, this ominous intimation, the prompt and +statesmanlike sagacity of Audley leads him at once as by intuition to the +inference thus eloquently expressed in a strain of thrilling and exalted +poetry; + + Undoubtedly, then something is amiss. + +Who can read this without a reminiscence of Sir Christopher Hatton's +characteristically cautious conclusion at sight of the military +preparations arrayed against the immediate advent of the Armada? + + I cannot but surmise--forgive, my friend, + If the conjecture's rash--I cannot but + Surmise the state some danger apprehends! + +With the entrance of the King the tone of this scene naturally rises--"in +good time," as most readers will say. His brief interview with the two +nobles has at least the merit of ease and animation. + + _Derby_. Befall my sovereign all my sovereign's wish! + + _Edward_. Ah, that thou wert a witch, to make it so! + + _Derby_. The emperor greeteth you. + + _Edward_. Would it were the countess! + + _Derby_. And hath accorded to your highness' suit. + + _Edward_. Thou liest, she hath not: But I would she had! + + _Audley_. All love and duty to my lord the king! + + Edward. _Well, all but one is none_:--What news with you? + + _Audley_. I have, my liege, levied those horse and foot, + According to your charge, and brought them hither. + + _Edward_. Then let those foot trudge hence upon those horse + According to their discharge, and begone.-- + + _Derby_. I'll look upon the countess' mind + Anon. + + _Derby_. The countess' mind, my liege? + + _Edward_. I mean, the emperor:--Leave me alone. + + _Audley_. What's in his mind? + + _Derby_. Let's leave him to his humour. + + [_Exeunt_ DERBY and AUDLEY + + _Edward_. Thus from the heart's abundance speaks the tongue + Countess for emperor: And indeed, why not? + She is as _imperator_ over me; + And I to her + Am as a kneeling vassal, that observes + The pleasure or displeasure of her eye. + +In this little scene there is perhaps on the whole more general likeness +to Shakespeare's earliest manner than we can trace in any other passage +of the play. But how much of Shakespeare's earliest manner may be +accounted the special and exclusive property of Shakespeare? + +After this dismissal of the two nobles, the pimping poeticule, Villon +manque or (whom shall we call him?) reussi, reappears with a message to +Caesar (as the King is pleased to style himself) from "the more than +Cleopatra's match" (as he designates the Countess), to intimate that "ere +night she will resolve his majesty." Hereupon an unseasonable "drum +within" provokes Edward to the following remonstrance: + + What drum is this, that thunders forth this march, + To start the tender Cupid in my bosom? + Poor sheepskin, how it brawls with him that beateth it! + Go, break the thundering parchment bottom out, + And I will teach it to conduct sweet lines + +("That's bad; _conduct sweet lines_ is bad.") + + Unto the bosom of a heavenly nymph: + For I will use it as my writing paper; + And so reduce him, from a scolding drum, + To be the herald, and dear counsel-bearer, + Betwixt a goddess and a mighty king. + Go, bid the drummer learn to touch the lute, + Or hang him in the braces of his drum; + For now we think it an uncivil thing + To trouble heaven with such harsh resounds. + Away! [_Exit_ Lodowick. + The quarrel that I have requires no arms + But these of mine; and these shall meet my foe + In a deep march of penetrable groans; + My eyes shall be my arrows; and my sighs + Shall serve me as the vantage of the wind + To whirl away my sweet'st {261} artillery: + Ah, but, alas, she wins the sun of me, + For that is she herself; and thence it comes + That poets term the wanton warrior blind; + But love hath eyes as judgment to his steps, + Till too much loved glory dazzles them. + +Hereupon Lodowick introduces the Black Prince (that is to be), and +"retires to the door." The following scene opens well, with a tone of +frank and direct simplicity. + + _Edward_. I see the boy. O, how his mother's face, + Moulded in his, corrects my strayed desire, + And rates my heart, and chides my thievish eye; + Who, being rich enough in seeing her, + Yet seeks elsewhere: and basest theft is that + Which cannot check itself on poverty.-- + Now, boy, what news? + + _Prince_. I have assembled, my dear lord and father, + The choicest buds of all our English blood, + For our affairs in France; and here we come + To take direction from your majesty. + + _Edward_. Still do I see in him delineate + His mother's visage; those his eyes are hers, + Who, looking wistly {262a} on me, made me blush; + For faults against themselves give evidence: + Lust is a fire; and men, like lanterns, show + Light lust within themselves even through themselves. + Away, loose silks of wavering vanity! + Shall the large limit of fair Brittany {262b} + By me be overthrown? and shall I not + Master this little mansion of myself? + Give me an armour of eternal steel; + I go to conquer kings. And shall I then + Subdue myself, and be my enemy's friend? + It must not be.--Come, boy, forward, advance! + Let's with our colours sweep the air of France. + +Here Lodowick announces the approach of the Countess "with a smiling +cheer." + + _Edward_. Why, there it goes! that very smile of hers + Hath ransomed captive France; and set the king, + The dauphin, and the peers, at liberty.-- + Go, leave me, Ned, and revel with thy friends. [_Exit_ PRINCE. + Thy mother is but black; and thou, like her, + Dost put into my mind how foul she is. + Go, fetch the countess hither in thy hand, + And let her chase away these winter clouds; + For she gives beauty both to heaven and earth. [_Exit_ LODOWICK. + The sin is more, to hack and hew poor men, + Than to embrace in an unlawful bed + The register of all rarieties {263a} + Since leathern Adam till this youngest hour. + + _Re-enter_ LODOWICK _with the_ COUNTESS. + + Go, Lodowick, put thy hand into my purse, + Play, spend, give, riot, waste; do what thou wilt, + So thou wilt hence awhile, and leave me here. [_Exit_ LODOWICK. + +Having already, out of a desire and determination to do no possible +injustice to the actual merits of this play in the eyes of any reader who +might never have gone over the text on which I had to comment, exceeded +in no small degree the limits I had intended to impose upon my task in +the way of citation, I shall not give so full a transcript from the next +and last scene between the Countess and the King. + + _Edward_. Now, my soul's playfellow! art thou come + To speak the more than heavenly word of yea + To my objection in thy beauteous love? + +(Again, this singular use of the word _objection_ in the sense of offer +or proposal has no parallel in the plays of Shakespeare.) + + _Countess_. My father on his blessing hath commanded-- + + _Edward_. That thou shalt yield to me. + + _Countess_. Ay, dear my liege, your due. + + _Edward_. And that, my dearest love, can be no less + Than right for right, and render {263b} love for love. + + _Countess_. Than wrong for wrong, and endless hate for hate. + But, sith I see your majesty so bent, + That my unwillingness, my husband's love, + Your high estate, nor no respect respected, + Can be my help, but that your mightiness + Will overbear and awe these dear regards, + I bind my discontent to my content, + And what I would not I'll compel I will; + Provided that yourself remove those lets + That stand between your highness' love and mine. + + _Edward_. Name them, fair countess, and by heaven I will. + + _Countess_. It is their lives that stand between our love + That I would have choked up, my sovereign. + + _Edward_. Whose lives, my lady? + + _Countess_. My thrice loving liege, + Your queen, and Salisbury my wedded husband; + Who living have that title in our love + That we can not bestow but by their death. + + _Edward_. Thy opposition {264a} is beyond our law. + + _Countess_. So is your desire: If the law {264b} + Can hinder you to execute the one, + Let it forbid you to attempt the other: + I cannot think you love me as you say + Unless you do make good what you have sworn. + + _Edward_. No more: thy husband and the queen shall die. + Fairer thou art by far than Hero was; + Beardless Leander not so strong as I: + He swom an easy current for his love; + But I will, through a helly spout of blood, {264c} + Arrive that Sestos where my Hero lies. + + _Countess_. Nay, you'll do more; you'll make the river too + With their heartbloods that keep our love asunder; + Of which my husband and your wife are twain. + + _Edward_. Thy beauty makes them guilty of their death + And gives in evidence that they shall die; + Upon which verdict I their judge condemn them. + + _Countess_. O perjured beauty! more corrupted judge! + When, to the great star-chamber o'er our heads, + The universal sessions calls to count + This packing evil, we both shall tremble for it. + + _Edward_. What says my fair love? is she resolute? + + _Countess_. Resolute to be dissolved: {266} and, therefore, this: + Keep but thy word, great king, and I am thine. + Stand where thou dost; I'll part a little from thee; + And see how I will yield me to thy hands. + Here by my side do hang my wedding knives; + Take thou the one, and with it kill thy queen, + And learn by me to find her where she lies; + And with the other I'll despatch my love, + Which now lies fast asleep within my heart: + When they are gone, then I'll consent to love. + +Such genuinely good wine as this needs no bush. But from this point +onwards I can find nothing especially commendable in the remainder of the +scene except its brevity. The King of course abjures his purpose, and of +course compares the Countess with Lucretia to the disadvantage of the +Roman matron; summons his son, Warwick, and the attendant lords; appoints +each man his post by sea or land; and starts for Flanders in a duly moral +and military state of mind. + +Here ends the first part of the play; and with it all possible +indication, though never so shadowy, of the possible shadowy presence of +Shakespeare. 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. + +The first scene of the third act is a storehouse of contemporary +commonplace. Nothing fresher than such stale pot-pourri as the following +is to be gathered up in thin sprinklings from off the dry flat soil. A +messenger informs the French king that he has descried off shore + + The proud armado (_sic_) of King Edward's ships; + Which at the first, far off when I did ken, + Seemed as it were a grove of withered pines; + But, drawing on, their glorious bright aspect, + Their streaming ensigns wrought of coloured silk, + Like to a meadow full of sundry flowers, + Adorns the naked bosom of the earth; + +and so on after the exactest and therefore feeblest fashion of the Pre- +Marlowites; with equal regard, as may be seen, for grammar and for sense +in the construction of his periods. The narrative of a sea-fight ensuing +on this is pitiable beyond pity and contemptibly beneath contempt. + +In the next scene we have a flying view of peasants in flight, with a +description of five cities on fire not undeserving of its place in the +play, immediately after the preceding sea-piece: but relieved by such +wealth of pleasantry as marks the following jest, in which the most +purblind eye will be the quickest to discover a touch of the genuine +Shakespearean humour. + + _1st Frenchman_. What, is it quarter-day, that you remove, + And carry bag and baggage too? + + _2nd Frenchman_. Quarter-day? ay, and quartering-day, I fear. + _Euge_! + +The scene of debate before Cressy is equally flat and futile, vulgar and +verbose; yet in this Sham Shakespearean scene of our present poeticule's +I have noted one genuine Shakespearean word, "solely singular for its +singleness." + + So may thy temples with Bellona's hand + Be still adorned with laurel victory! + +In this notably inelegant expression of goodwill we find the same use of +the word "laurel" as an adjective and epithet of victory which thus +confronts us in the penultimate speech of the third scene in the first +act of _Antony and Cleopatra_. + + Upon your sword + Sit laurel victory, and smooth success + Be strewed before your feet! + +There is something more (as less there could not be) of spirit and +movement in the battle-scene where Edward refuses to send relief to his +son, wishing the prince to win his spurs unaided, and earn the +first-fruits of his fame single-handed against the heaviest odds; but the +forcible feebleness of a minor poet's fancy shows itself amusingly in the +mock stoicism and braggart philosophy of the King's reassuring +reflection, "We have more sons than one." + +In the first and third scenes of the fourth act we may concede some +slight merit to the picture of a chivalrous emulation in magnanimity +between the Duke of Burgundy and his former fellow-student, whose refusal +to break his parole as a prisoner extorts from his friend the concession +refused to his importunity as an envoy: but the execution is by no means +worthy of the subject. + +The limp loquacity of long-winded rhetoric, so natural to men and +soldiers in an hour of emergency, which distinguishes the dialogue +between the Black Prince and Audley on the verge of battle, is relieved +by this one last touch of quasi-Shakespearean thought or style +discoverable in the play of which I must presently take a short--and a +long--farewell. + + Death's name is much more mighty than his deeds: + Thy parcelling this power hath made it more. + As many sands as these my hands can hold + Are but my handful of so many sands; + Then all the world--and call it but a power-- + Easily ta'en up, and {269} quickly thrown away; + But if I stand to count them sand by sand + The number would confound my memory + And make a thousand millions of a task + Which briefly is no more indeed than one. + These quartered squadrons and these regiments + Before, behind us, and on either hand, + Are but a power: When we name a man, + His hand, his foot, his head, have several strengths; + And being all but one self instant strength, + Why, all this many, Audley, is but one, + And we can call it all but one man's strength. + He that hath far to go tells it by miles; + If he should tell the steps, it kills his heart: + The drops are infinite that make a flood, + And yet, thou know'st, we call it but a rain. + There is but one France, one king of France, {270} + That France hath no more kings; and that same king + Hath but the puissant legion of one king; + And we have one: Then apprehend no odds; + For one to one is fair equality. + +_Bien coupe, mal cousu_; such is the most favourable verdict I can pass +on this voluminous effusion of a spirit smacking rather of the schools +than of the field. The first six lines or so might pass muster as the +early handiwork of Shakespeare; the rest has as little of his manner as +his matter, his metre as his style. + +The poet can hardly be said to rise again after this calamitous collapse. +We find in the rest of this scene nothing better worth remark than such +poor catches at a word as this; + + And let those milkwhite messengers of time + Show thy time's learning in this dangerous time; + +a villainous trick of verbiage which went nigh now and then to affect the +adolescent style of Shakespeare, and which happens to find itself as +admirably as unconsciously burlesqued in two lines of this very scene: + + I will not give a penny for a life, + Nor half a halfpenny to shun grim death. + +The verses intervening are smooth, simple, and passably well worded; +indeed the force of elegant commonplace cannot well go further than in +such lines as these. + + Thyself art bruised and bent with many broils, + And stratagems forepast with iron pens + Are texed {271} in thine honourable face; + Thou art a married man in this distress, + But danger woos me as a blushing maid; + Teach me an answer to this perilous time. + + _Audley_. To die is all as common as to live; + The one in choice, the other holds in chase; + For from the instant we begin to live + We do pursue and hunt the time to die: + First bud we, then we blow, and after seed; + Then presently we fall; and as a shade + Follows the body, so we follow death. + If then we hunt for death, why do we fear it? + If we fear it, why do we follow it? + +(Let me intimate a doubt in passing, whether Shakespeare would ever have +put by the mouth of any but a farcical mask a query so provocative of +response from an Irish echo--"Because we can't help.") + + If we do fear, with fear we do but aid + The thing we fear to seize on us the sooner; + If we fear not, then no resolved proffer + Can overthrow the limit of our fate: + +and so forth. Again the hastiest reader will have been reminded of a +passage in the transcendant central scenes of _Measure for Measure_: + + Merely, thou art death's fool; + For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun, + And yet runn'st toward him still; + +and hence also some may infer that this pitiful penny-whistle was blown +by the same breath which in time gained power to fill that archangelic +trumpet. Credat Zoilus Shakespearomastix, non ego. + +The next scene is something better than passable, but demands no special +analysis and affords no necessary extract. We may just observe as +examples of style the play on words between the flight of hovering ravens +and the flight of routed soldiers, and the description of the sudden fog + + Which now hath hid the airy floor of heaven, + And made at noon a night unnatural + Upon the quaking and dismayed world. + +The interest rises again with the reappearance and release of Salisbury, +and lifts the style for a moment to its own level. _A tout seigneur tout +honneur_; the author deserves some dole of moderate approbation for his +tribute to the national chivalry of a Frenchman as here exemplified in +the person of Prince Charles. + +Of the two next scenes, in which the battle of Poitiers is so +inadequately "staged to the show," I can only say that if any reader +believes them to be the possible work of the same hand which set before +all men's eyes for all time the field of Agincourt, he will doubtless die +in that belief, and go to his own place in the limbo of commentators. + +But a yet more flagrant effect of contrast is thrust upon our notice at +the opening of the fifth act. If in all the historical groundwork of +this play there is one point of attraction which we might have thought +certain to stimulate the utmost enterprise and evoke the utmost +capacities of an aspiring dramatist, it must surely be sought in the +crowning scene of the story; in the scene of Queen Philippa's +intercession for the burgesses of Calais. We know how Shakespeare on the +like occasion was wont to transmute into golden verse the silver speech +supplied to him by North's version of Amyot's Plutarch. {273} With the +text of Lord Berners before him, the author of _King Edward III_. has +given us for the gold of Froissart not even adulterated copper, but +unadulterated lead. Incredible as it may seem to readers of the +historian, the poeticule has actually contrived so far to transfigure by +dint of disfiguring him that this most noble and pathetic scene in all +the annals of chivalry, when passed through the alembic of his +incompetence, appears in a garb of transforming verse under a guise at +once weak and wordy, coarse and unchivalrous. The whole scene is at all +points alike in its unlikeness to the workmanship of Shakespeare. + +Here then I think we may finally draw bridle: for the rest of the course +is not worth running; there is nothing in the residue of this last act +which deserves analysis or calls for commentary. We have now examined +the whole main body of the work with somewhat more than necessary care; +and our conclusion is simply this: that if any man of common reading, +common modesty, common judgment, and common sense, can be found to +maintain the theory of Shakespeare's possible partnership in the +composition of this play, such a man will assuredly admit that the only +discernible or imaginable touches of his hand are very slight, very few, +and very early. For myself, I am and have always been perfectly +satisfied with one single and simple piece of evidence that Shakespeare +had not a finger in the concoction of _King Edward III_. He was the +author of _King Henry V_. + + +NOTE. + + +I was not surprised to hear that my essay on the historical play of King +Edward III. had on its first appearance met in various quarters with +assailants of various kinds. There are some forms of attack to which no +answer is possible for a man of any human self-respect but the lifelong +silence of contemptuous disgust. To such as these I will never +condescend to advert or to allude further than by the remark now as it +were forced from me, that never once in my life have I had or will I have +recourse in self-defence either to the blackguard's loaded bludgeon of +personalities or to the dastard's sheathed dagger of disguise. I have +reviled no man's person: I have outraged no man's privacy. When I have +found myself misled either by imperfection of knowledge or of memory, or +by too much confidence in a generally trustworthy guide, I have silently +corrected the misquotation or readily repaired the error. To the +successive and representative heroes of the undying Dunciad I have left +and will always leave the foul use of their own foul weapons. I have +spoken freely and fearlessly, and so shall on all occasions continue to +speak, of what I find to be worthy of praise or dispraise, contempt or +honour, in the public works and actions of men. Here ends and here has +always ended in literary matters the proper province of a gentleman; +beyond it, though sometimes intruded on in time past by trespassers of a +nobler race, begins the proper province of a blackguard. + + + +REPORT ON THE PROCEEDINGS ON THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY SESSION OF THE NEWEST +SHAKESPEARE SOCIETY. + + +A paper was read by Mr. A. on the disputed authorship of _A Midsummer +Night's Dream_. He was decidedly of opinion that this play was to be +ascribed to George Chapman. He based this opinion principally on the +ground of style. From its similarity of subject he had at first been +disposed to assign it to Cyril Tourneur, author of _The Revenger's +Tragedy_; and he had drawn up in support of this theory a series of +parallel passages extracted from the speeches of Vindice in that drama +and of Oberon in the present play. He pointed out however that the +character of Puck could hardly have been the work of any English poet but +the author of _Bussy d'Ambois_. There was here likewise that gravity and +condensation of thought conveyed through the medium of the "full and +heightened style" commended by Webster, and that preponderance of +philosophic or political discourse over poetic interest and dramatic +action for which the author in question had been justly censured. + +Some of the audience appearing slightly startled by this remark (indeed +it afterwards appeared that the Chairman had been on the point of asking +the learned member whether he was not thinking rather of _Love's Labour's +Lost_?), Mr. A. cited the well-known scene in which Oberon discourses +with Puck on matters concerning Mary Stuart and Queen Elizabeth, instead +of despatching him at once on his immediate errand. This was universally +accepted as proof positive, and the reading concluded amid signs of +unanimous assent, when + +Mr. B. had nothing to urge against the argument they had just heard, but +he must remind them that there was a more weighty kind of evidence than +that adduced by Mr. A.; and to this he doubted not they would all defer. +He could prove by a tabulated statement that the words "to" and "from" +occurred on an average from seven to nine times in every play of Chapman; +whereas in the play under consideration the word "to" occurred exactly +twelve times and the word "from" precisely ten. He was therefore of +opinion that the authorship should in all probability be assigned to +Anthony Munday. + +As nobody present could dispute this conclusion, Mr. C. proceeded to read +the argument by which he proposed to establish the fact, hitherto +unaccountably overlooked by all preceding commentators, that the +character of Romeo was obviously designed as a satire on Lord Burghley. +The first and perhaps the strongest evidence in favour of this +proposition was the extreme difficulty, he might almost say the utter +impossibility, of discovering a single point of likeness between the two +characters. This would naturally be the first precaution taken by a poor +player who designed to attack an all-powerful Minister. But more direct +light was thrown upon the subject by a passage in which "that kind of +fruit that maids call medlars when they laugh alone" is mentioned in +connection with a wish of Romeo's regarding his mistress. This must +evidently be taken to refer to some recent occasion on which the policy +of Lord Burghley (possibly in the matter of the Anjou marriage) had been +rebuked in private by the Maiden Queen, "his mistress," as meddling, +laughable, and fruitless. + +This discovery seemed to produce a great impression till the Chairman +reminded the Society that the play in question was now generally ascribed +to George Peele, {278} who was notoriously the solicitor of Lord +Burghley's patronage and the recipient of his bounty. That this poet was +the author of _Romeo and Juliet_ could no longer be a matter of doubt, as +he was confident they would all agree with him on hearing that a living +poet of note had positively assured him of the fact; adding that he had +always thought so when at school. The plaudits excited by this +announcement had scarcely subsided, when the Chairman clenched the matter +by observing that he rather thought the same opinion had ultimately been +entertained by his own grandmother. + +Mr. D. then read a paper on the authorship and the hidden meaning of two +contemporary plays which, he must regretfully remark, were too obviously +calculated to cast a most unfavourable and even sinister light on the +moral character of the new Shakespeare; whose possibly suspicious +readiness to attack the vices of others with a view to diverting +attention from his own was signally exemplified in the well-known fact +that, even while putting on a feint of respect and tenderness for his +memory, he had exposed the profligate haunts and habits of Christopher +Marlowe under the transparent pseudonym of Christopher Sly. To the first +of these plays attention had long since been drawn by a person of whom it +was only necessary to say that he had devoted a long life to the study +and illustration of Shakespeare and his age, and had actually presumed to +publish a well-known edition of the poet at a date previous to the +establishment of the present Society. He (Mr. D.) was confident that not +another syllable could be necessary to expose that person to the contempt +of all present. He proceeded, however, with the kind encouragement of +the Chairman, to indulge at that editor's expense in sundry personalities +both "loose and humorous," which being totally unfit for publication here +are reserved for a private issue of "Loose and Humorous Papers" to be +edited, with a running marginal commentary or illustrative and +explanatory version of the utmost possible fullness, {279} by the Founder +and another member of the Society. To these it might possibly be +undesirable for them to attract the notice of the outside world. +Reverting therefore to his first subject from various references to the +presumed private character, habits, gait, appearance, and bearing of the +gentleman in question, Mr. D. observed that the ascription of a share in +the _Taming of the Shrew_ to William Haughton (hitherto supposed the +author of a comedy called _Englishmen for my Money_) implied a doubly +discreditable blunder. The real fact, as he would immediately prove, was +not that Haughton was joint author with Shakespeare of the _Taming of the +Shrew_, but that Shakespeare was joint author with Haughton of +_Englishmen for my Money_. He would not enlarge on the obvious fact that +Shakespeare, so notorious a plunderer of others, had actually been +reduced to steal from his own poor store an image transplanted from the +last scene of the third act of _Romeo and Juliet_ into the last scene of +the third act of _Englishmen for my Money_; where the well-known and +pitiful phrase--"Night's candles are burnt out"--reappears in all its +paltry vulgarity as follows;--"Night's candles burn obscure." Ample as +was the proof here supplied, he would prefer to rely exclusively upon +such further evidence as might be said to lie at once on the surface and +in a nutshell. + +The second title of this play, by which the first title was in a few +years totally superseded, ran thus: _A Woman will have her Will_. Now +even in an age of punning titles such as that of a well-known and +delightful treatise by Sir John Harrington, the peculiar fondness of +Shakespeare for puns was notorious; but especially for puns on names, as +in the proverbial case of Sir Thomas Lucy; and above all for puns on his +own Christian name, as in his 135th, 136th, and 143rd sonnets. It must +now be but too evident to the meanest intelligence--to the meanest +intelligence, he repeated; for to such only did he or would he then and +there or ever or anywhere address himself--(loud applause) that the +graceless author, more utterly lost to all sense of shame than any Don +Juan or other typical libertine of fiction, had come forward to placard +by way of self-advertisement on his own stage, and before the very eyes +of a Maiden Queen, the scandalous confidence in his own powers of +fascination and seduction so cynically expressed in the too easily +intelligible vaunt--A Woman will have her Will [Shakespeare]. In the +penultimate line of the hundred and forty-third sonnet the very phrase +might be said to occur: + + So will I pray that thou mayst have thy Will. + +Having thus established his case in the first instance to the +satisfaction, as he trusted, not only of the present Society, but of any +asylum for incurables in any part of the country, the learned member now +passed on to the consideration of the allusions at once to Shakespeare +and to a celebrated fellow-countryman, fellow-poet, and personal friend +of his--Michael Drayton--contained in a play which had been doubtfully +attributed to Shakespeare himself by such absurd idiots as looked rather +to the poetical and dramatic quality of a poem or a play than to such +tests as those to which alone any member of that Society would ever dream +of appealing. What these were he need not specify; it was enough to say +in recommendation of them that they had rather less to do with any +question of dramatic or other poetry than with the differential calculus +or the squaring of the circle. It followed that only the most perversely +ignorant and aesthetically presumptuous of readers could imagine the +possibility of Shakespeare's concern or partnership in a play which had +no more Shakespearean quality about it than mere poetry, mere passion, +mere pathos, mere beauty and vigour of thought and language, mere command +of dramatic effect, mere depth and subtlety of power to read, interpret, +and reproduce the secrets of the heart and spirit. Could any further +evidence be required of the unfitness and unworthiness to hold or to +utter any opinion on the matter in hand which had consistently been +displayed by the poor creatures to whom he had just referred, it would be +found, as he felt sure the Founder and all worthy members of their +Society would be the first to admit, in the despicable diffidence, the +pitiful modesty, the contemptible deficiency in common assurance, with +which the suggestion of Shakespeare's partnership in this play had +generally been put forward and backed up. The tragedy of _Arden of +Feversham_ was indeed connected with Shakespeare--and that, as he should +proceed to show, only too intimately; but Shakespeare was not connected +with it--that is, in the capacity of its author. In what capacity would +be but too evident when he mentioned the names of the two leading +ruffians concerned in the murder of the principal character--Black Will +and Shakebag. The single original of these two characters he need +scarcely pause to point out. It would be observed that a double +precaution had been taken against any charge of libel or personal attack +which might be brought against the author and supported by the +all-powerful court influence of Shakespeare's two principal patrons, the +Earls of Essex and Southampton. Two figures were substituted for one, +and the unmistakable name of Will Shakebag was cut in half and divided +between them. Care had moreover been taken to disguise the person by +altering the complexion of the individual aimed at. That the actual +Shakespeare was a fair man they had the evidence of the coloured bust at +Stratford. Could any capable and fair-minded man--he would appeal to +their justly honoured Founder--require further evidence as to the +original of Black Will Shakebag? Another important character in the play +was Black Will's accomplice and Arden's servant--Michael, after whom the +play had also at one time been called _Murderous Michael_. The single +fact that Shakespeare and Drayton were both of them Warwickshire men +would suffice, he could not doubt, to carry conviction with it to the +mind of every member present, with regard to the original of this +personage. It now only remained for him to produce the name of the real +author of this play. He would do so at once--Ben Jonson. About the time +of its production Jonson was notoriously engaged in writing those +additions to the _Spanish Tragedy_ of which a preposterous attempt had +been made to deprive him on the paltry ground that the style (forsooth) +of these additional scenes was very like the style of Shakespeare and +utterly unlike the style of Jonson. To dispose for ever of this pitiful +argument it would be sufficient to mention the names of its two first and +principal supporters--Charles Lamb and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (hisses +and laughter). Now, in these "adycions to Jeronymo" a painter was +introduced complaining of the murder of his son. In the play before them +a painter was introduced as an accomplice in the murder of Arden. It was +unnecessary to dwell upon so trivial a point of difference as that +between the stage employment or the moral character of the one artist and +the other. In either case they were as closely as possible connected +with a murder. There was a painter in the _Spanish Tragedy_, and there +was also a painter in _Arden of Feversham_. He need not--he would not +add another word in confirmation of the now established fact, that Ben +Jonson had in this play held up to perpetual infamy--whether deserved or +undeserved he would not pretend to say--the names of two poets who +afterwards became his friends, but whom he had previously gibbeted or at +least pilloried in public as Black Will Shakespeare and Murderous Michael +Drayton. + +Mr. E. then brought forward a subject of singular interest and +importance--"The lameness of Shakespeare--was it moral or physical?" He +would not insult their intelligence by dwelling on the absurd and +exploded hypothesis that this expression was allegorical, but would at +once assume that the infirmity in question was physical. Then arose the +question--In which leg? He was prepared, on the evidence of an early +play, to prove to demonstration that the injured and interesting limb was +the left. "This shoe is my father," says Launce in the _Two Gentlemen of +Verona_; "no, this left shoe is my father; no, no, this left shoe is my +mother; nay, that cannot be so neither; yes, it is so, it is so; _it hath +the worser sole_." This passage was not necessary either to the progress +of the play or to the development of the character; he believed he was +justified in asserting that it was not borrowed from the original novel +on which the play was founded; the inference was obvious, that without +some personal allusion it must have been as unintelligib1e to the +audience as it had hitherto been to the commentators. His conjecture was +confirmed, and the whole subject illustrated with a new light, by the +well-known line in one of the Sonnets, in which the poet describes +himself as "made lame by Fortune's dearest spite": a line of which the +inner meaning and personal application had also by a remarkable chance +been reserved for him (Mr. E.) to discover. There could be no doubt that +we had here a clue to the origin of the physical infirmity referred to; +an accident which must have befallen Shakespeare in early life while +acting at the Fortune theatre, and consequently before his connection +with a rival company; a fact of grave importance till now unverified. The +epithet "dearest," like so much else in the Sonnets, was evidently +susceptible of a double interpretation. The first and most natural +explanation of the term would at once suggest itself; the playhouse would +of necessity be dearest to the actor dependent on it for subsistence, as +the means of getting his bread; but he thought it not unreasonable to +infer from this unmistakable allusion that the entrance fee charged at +the Fortune may probably have been higher than the price of seats in any +other house. Whether or not this fact, taken in conjunction with the +accident already mentioned, should be assumed as the immediate cause of +Shakespeare's subsequent change of service, he was not prepared to +pronounce with such positive confidence as they might naturally expect +from a member of the Society; but he would take upon himself to affirm +that his main thesis was now and for ever established on the most +irrefragable evidence, and that no assailant could by any possibility +dislodge by so much as a hair's breadth the least fragment of a single +brick in the impregnable structure of proof raised by the argument to +which they had just listened. + +This demonstration being thus satisfactorily concluded, Mr. F. proceeded +to read his paper on the date of _Othello_, and on the various parts of +that play respectively assignable to Samuel Rowley, to George Wilkins, +and to Robert Daborne. It was evident that the story of Othello and +Desdemona was originally quite distinct from that part of the play in +which Iago was a leading figure. This he was prepared to show at some +length by means of the weak-ending test, the light-ending test, the +double-ending test, the triple-ending test, the heavy-monosyllabic- +eleventh-syllable-of-the-double-ending test, the run-on-line test, and +the central-pause test. Of the partnership of other poets in the play +he was able to adduce a simpler but not less cogent proof. A member +of their Committee said to an objector lately: "To me, there are the +handwritings of four different men, the thoughts and powers of four +different men, in the play. If you can't see them now, you must +wait till, by study, you can. I can't give you eyes." To this argument +he (Mr. F.) felt that it would be an insult to their understandings if he +should attempt to add another word. Still, for those who were willing to +try and learn, and educate their ears and eyes, he had prepared six +tabulated statements-- + +(At this important point of a most interesting paper, our reporter +unhappily became unconscious, and remained for some considerable period +in a state of deathlike stupor. On recovering from this total and +unaccountable suspension of all his faculties, he found the speaker +drawing gradually near the end of his figures, and so far succeeded in +shaking off the sense of coma as to be able to resume his notes.) + +That the first and fourth scenes of the third act were not by the same +hand as the third scene he should have no difficulty in proving to the +satisfaction of all capable and fair-minded men. In the first and fourth +scenes the word "virtuous" was used as a dissyllable; in the third it was +used as a trisyllable. + + "Is, that she will to virtuous Desdemona." iii. 1. + + "Where virtue is, these are more virtuous." iii. 3. + + "That by your virtuous means I may again." iii. 4. + +In the third scene he would also point out the great number of triple +endings which had originally led the able editor of Euclid's Elements of +Geometry to attribute the authorship of this scene to Shirley: _Cassio_ +(twice), _patience_, _Cassio_ (again), _discretion_, _Cassio_ (again), +honesty, _Cassio_ (again), _jealousy, jealous_ (used as a trisyllable in +the verse of Shakespeare's time), company (two consecutive lines with the +triple ending), _Cassio_ (again), _conscience, petition, ability, +importunity, conversation, marriage, dungeon, mandragora, passion, +monstrous, conclusion, bounteous_. He could not imagine any man in his +senses questioning the weight of this evidence. Now, let them take the +rhymed speeches of the Duke and Brabantio in Act i. Sc. 3, and compare +them with the speech of Othello in Act iv. Sc. 2, + + Had it pleased heaven + To try me with affliction. + +He appealed to any expert whether this was not in Shakespeare's easy +fourth budding manner, with, too, various other points already touched +on. On the other hand, take the opening of Brabantio's speech-- + + So let the Turk of Cyprus us beguile; + We lose it not so long as we can smile. + +That, he said, was in Shakespeare's difficult second flowering manner--the +style of the later part of the earlier stage of Shakespeare's rhetorical +first period but one. It was no more possible to move the one passage up +to the date of the other than to invert the order of the alphabet. Here, +then, putting aside for the moment the part of the play supplied by +Shakespeare's assistants in the last three acts--miserably weak some of +it was--they were able to disentangle the early love-play from the latter +work in which Iago was principally concerned. There was at least fifteen +years' growth between them, the steps of which could he traced in the +poet's intermediate plays by any one who chose to work carefully enough +at them. Set any of the speeches addressed in the Shakespeare part of +the last act by Othello to Desdemona beside the consolatory address of +the Duke to Brabantio, and see the difference of the rhetoric and style +in the two. If they turned to characters, Othello and Desdemona were +even more clearly the companion pair to Biron and Rosaline of _Love's +Labour's Lost_ than were Falstaff and Doll Tearsheet the match-pair +(_sic_) of Romeo and Juliet. In _Love's Labour's Lost_ the question of +complexion was identical, though the parts were reversed. He would cite +but a few parallel passages in evidence of this relationship between the +subjects of the two plays. + + _Love's Labour's Lost_, iv. 3. _Othello_. +1. "By heaven, thy love is black 1. "An old black ram." i. 1. + as ebony." +2. "No face is _fair_ that is not 2. "Your son-in-law is far more + full so black." _fair_ than black." i. 3. +3. "O paradox! Black is the 3. "How if she be black and + badge of hell." witty?" ii. 1. +4. "O, _if_ in black my lady's 4. "_If_ she be black, and thereto + brows be decked." have a wit." id. +5. "And therefore is she born 5. "A measure to the health of + to make black fair." black Othello." ii. 3. +6. "Paints itself black to 6. "For I am black." iii, 3. + imitate her brow." +7. "To look like her are 7. "_Begrimed_ and black." id. + _chimney-sweepers_ black." + +Now, with these parallel passages before them, what man, woman, or child +could bring himself or herself to believe that the connection of these +plays was casual or the date of the first Othello removable from the date +of the early contemporary late-first-period-but-one play _Love's Labour's +Lost_, or that anybody's opinion that they were so was worth one straw? +When therefore by the introduction of the Iago episode Shakespeare in his +later days had with the assistance of three fellow-poets completed the +unfinished work of his youth, the junction thus effected of the Brabantio +part of the play with this Iago underplot supplied them with an evidence +wholly distinct from that of the metrical test which yet confirmed in +every point the conclusion independently arrived at and supported by the +irresistible coincidence of all the tests. He defied anybody to accept +his principle of study or adopt his method of work, and arrive at a +different conclusion from himself. + +The reading of Mr. G.'s paper on the authorship of the soliloquies in +_Hamlet_ was unavoidably postponed till the next meeting, the learned +member having only time on this occasion to give a brief summary of the +points he was prepared to establish and the grounds on which he was +prepared to establish them. A year or two since, when he first thought +of starting the present Society, he had never read a line of the play in +question, having always understood it to be admittedly spurious: but on +being assured of the contrary by one of the two foremost poets of the +English-speaking world, who was good enough to read out to him in proof +of this assertion all that part of the play which could reasonably be +assigned to Shakespeare, he had of course at once surrendered his own +former opinion, well grounded as it had hitherto seemed to be on the most +solid of all possible foundations. At their next meeting he would show +cause for attributing to Ben Jonson not only the soliloquies usually but +inconsiderately quoted as Shakespeare's, but the entire original +conception of the character of the Prince of Denmark. The resemblance of +this character to that of Volpone in _The Fox_ and to that of Face in +_The Alchemist_ could not possibly escape the notice of the most cursory +reader. The principle of disguise was the same in each case, whether the +end in view were simply personal profit, or (as in the case of Hamlet) +personal profit combined with revenge; and whether the disguise assumed +was that of madness, of sickness, or of a foreign personality, the +assumption of character was in all three cases identical. As to style, +he was only too anxious to meet (and, he doubted not, to beat) on his own +ground any antagonist whose ear had begotten {291} the crude and +untenable theory that the Hamlet soliloquies were not distinctly within +the range of the man who could produce those of Crites and of Macilente +in _Cynthia's Revels_ and _Every Man out of his Humour_. The author of +those soliloquies could, and did, in the parallel passages of _Hamlet_, +rise near the height of the master he honoured and loved. + +The further discussion of this subject was reserved for the next meeting +of the Society, as was also the reading of Mr. H.'s paper on the +subsequent quarrel between the two joint authors of Hamlet, which led to +Jonson's caricature of Shakespeare (then retired from London society to a +country life of solitude) under the name of Morose, and to Shakespeare's +retort on Jonson, who was no less evidently attacked under the +designation of Ariel. The allusions to the subject of Shakespeare's +sonnets in the courtship and marriage of Epicoene by Morose were as +obvious as the allusions in the part of Ariel to the repeated +incarceration of Jonson, first on a criminal and secondly on a political +charge, and to his probable release in the former case (during the reign +of Elizabeth=Sycorax) at the intercession of Shakespeare, who was allowed +on all hands to have represented himself in the character of Prospero +("it was mine art that let thee out"). Mr. I. would afterwards read a +paper on the evidence for Shakespeare's whole or part authorship of a +dozen or so of the least known plays of his time, which, besides having +various words and phrases in common with his acknowledged works, were +obviously too bad to be attributed to any other known writer of the +period. Eminent among these was the tragedy of _Andromana, or the +Merchant's Wife_, long since rejected from the list of Shirley's works as +unworthy of that poet's hand. Unquestionably it was so; not less +unworthy than _A Larum for London_ of Marlowe's. The consequent +inference that it must needs be the work of the new Shakespeare's was +surely no less cogent in this than in the former case. The allusion +occurring in it to a play bearing date just twenty-six years after the +death of Shakespeare, and written by a poet then unborn, was a strong +point in favour of his theory. (This argument was received with general +marks of adhesion.) What, he would ask, could be more natural than that +Shirley when engaged on the revision and arrangement for the stage of +this posthumous work of the new Shakespeare's (a fact which could require +no further proof than he had already adduced), should have inserted this +reference in order to disguise the name of its real author, and protect +it from the disfavour of an audience with whom that name was notoriously +out of fashion? This reasoning, conclusive in itself, became even more +irresistible--or would become so, if that were anything less than an +absolute impossibility--on comparison of parallel passages, + + Though kings still hug suspicion in their bosoms, + They hate the causer. (_Andromana_, Act i. Sc. 3.) + +Compare this with the avowal put by Shakespeare into the mouth of a king. + + Though I did wish him dead + I hate the murderer. (_King Richard II_., Act v. Sc. 6.) + +Again in the same scene: + + For then her husband comes home from the Rialto. + +Compare this with various passages (too familiar to quote) in the +_Merchant of Venice_. The transference of the Rialto to Iberia was of a +piece with the discovery of a sea-coast in Bohemia. In the same scene +Andromana says to her lover, finding him reluctant to take his leave, +almost in the very words of Romeo to Juliet, + + Then let us stand and outface danger, + Since you will have it so. + +It was obvious that only the author of the one passage could have thought +it necessary to disguise his plagiarism in the other by an inversion of +sexes between the two speakers. In the same scene were three other +indisputable instances of repetition. + + Mariners might with far greater ease + Hear whole shoals of sirens singing. + +Compare _Comedy of Errors_, Act iii. Scene 2. + + Sing, siren, for thyself. + +In this case identity of sex was as palpable an evidence for identity of +authorship as diversity of sex had afforded in the preceding instance. + +Again: + + Have oaths no _more validity_ with princes? + +In _Romeo and Juliet_, Act iii. Scene 3, the very same words were coupled +in the very same order: + + _More validity_, + More honourable state, more courtship lies + In carrion flies than Romeo. + +Again: + + It would have killed a salamander. + +Compare the _First Part of King Henry IV_, Act iii. Scene 3. + + I have maintained that salamander of yours with fire any time this two + and thirty years. + +In Act ii. Scene 2 the hero, on being informed how heavy are the odds +against him in the field, answers, + + I am glad on't; the honour is the greater. + +To which his confidant rejoins: + + The danger is the greater. + +And in the sixth scene of the same act the messenger observes: + + I only heard the prince wish + . . . . . . . + He had fewer by a thousand men. + +Could any member doubt that we had here the same hand which gave us the +like debate between King Henry and Westmoreland on the eve of Agincourt? +or could any member suppose that in the subsequent remark of the same +military confidant, "I smell a rat, sir," there was merely a fortuitous +coincidence with Hamlet's reflection as he "whips out his rapier"--in +itself a martial proceeding--under similar circumstances to the same +effect? + +In the very next scene a captain observes of his own troops + + Methinks such tattered rogues should never conquer: + +a touch that could only be due to the pencil which had drawn Falstaff's +ragged regiment. In both cases, moreover, it was to be noted that the +tattered rogues proved ultimately victorious. But he had--they might +hardly believe it, but so it was--even yet stronger and more convincing +evidence to offer. It would be remembered that a play called _The Double +Falsehood_, formerly attributed to Shakespeare on the authority of +Theobald, was now generally supposed to have been in its original form +the work of Shirley. What, then, he would ask, could be more natural or +more probable than that a play formerly ascribed to Shirley should prove +to be the genuine work of Shakespeare? Common sense, common reason, +common logic, all alike and all equally combined to enforce upon every +candid judgment this inevitable conclusion. This, however, was nothing +in comparison to the final proof which he had yet to lay before them. He +need not remind them that in the opinion of their illustrious German +teachers, the first men to discover and reveal to his unworthy countrymen +the very existence of the new Shakespeare, the authenticity of any play +ascribed to the possibly too prolific pen of that poet was invariably to +be determined in the last resort by consideration of its demerits. No +English critic, therefore, who felt himself worthy to have been born a +German, would venture to question the postulate on which all sound +principles of criticism with regard to this subject must infallibly be +founded: that, given any play of unknown or doubtful authorship, the +worse it was, the likelier was it to be Shakespeare's. (This proposition +was received with every sign of unanimous assent.) Now, on this ground +he was prepared to maintain that the claims of _Andromana_ to their most +respectful, their most cordial, their most unhesitating acceptance were +absolutely beyond all possibility of parallel. Not _Mucedorus_ or _Fair +Em_, not _The Birth of Merlin_ or _Thomas Lord Cromwell_, could +reasonably or fairly be regarded as on the same level of worthlessness +with this incomparable production. No mortal man who had survived its +perusal could for a moment hesitate to agree that it was the most +incredibly, ineffably, inconceivably, unmitigatedly, irredeemably, +inexpressibly damnable piece of bad work ever perpetrated by human hand. +No mortal critic of the genuine Anglo-German school could therefore +hesitate for a moment to agree that in common consistency he was bound to +accept it as the possible work of no human hand but the hand of the New +Shakespeare. + +The Chairman then proceeded to recapitulate the work done and the +benefits conferred by the Society during the twelve months which had +elapsed since its foundation on that day (April 1st) last year. They had +ample reason to congratulate themselves and him on the result. They had +established an entirely new kind of criticism, working by entirely new +means towards an entirely new end, in honour of an entirely new kind of +Shakespeare. They had proved to demonstration and overwhelmed with +obloquy the incompetence, the imbecility, the untrustworthiness, the +blunders, the forgeries, the inaccuracies, the obliquities, the utter +moral and literary worthlessness, of previous students and societies. +They had revealed to the world at large the generally prevalent ignorance +of Shakespeare and his works which so discreditably distinguished his +countrymen. This they had been enabled to do by the simple process of +putting forward various theories, and still more various facts, but all +of equally incontrovertible value and relevance, of which no +Englishman--he might say, no mortal--outside the Society had ever heard +or dreamed till now. They had discovered the one trustworthy and +indisputable method, so easy and so simple that it must now seem +wonderful it should never have been discovered before, by which to pluck +out the heart of the poet's mystery and detect the secret of his touch; +the study of Shakespeare by rule of thumb. Every man, woman, and child +born with five fingers on each hand was henceforward better qualified as +a critic than any poet or scholar of time past. But it was not, whatever +outsiders might pretend to think, exclusively on the verse-test, as it +had facetiously been called on account of its total incompatibility with +any conceivable scheme of metre or principle of rhythm--it was not +exclusively on this precious and unanswerable test that they relied. +Within the Society as well as without, the pretensions of those who would +acknowledge no other means of deciding on debated questions had been +refuted and repelled. What were the other means of investigation and +verification in which not less than in the metrical test they were +accustomed to put their faith, and by which they doubted not to attain in +the future even more remarkable results than their researches had as yet +achieved, the debate just concluded, in common with every other for which +they ever had met or ever were likely to meet, would amply suffice to +show. By such processes as had been applied on this as on all occasions +to the text of Shakespeare's works and the traditions of his life, they +trusted in a very few years to subvert all theories which had hitherto +been held and extirpate all ideas which had hitherto been cherished on +the subject: and having thus cleared the ground for his advent, to +discover for the admiration of the world, as the name of their Society +implied, a New Shakespeare. The first step towards this end must of +course be the demolition of the old one; and he would venture to say they +had already made a good beginning in that direction. They had disproved +or they would disprove the claim of Shakespeare to the sole authorship of +_Macbeth, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Hamlet_, and _Othello_; they had +established or they would establish the fact of his partnership in +_Locrine, Mucedorus, The Birth of Merlin, Dr. Dodipoll_, and _Sir Giles +Goosecap_. They had with them the incomparable critics of Germany; men +whose knowledge and judgment on all questions of English literature were +as far beyond the reach of their English followers as the freedom and +enlightenment enjoyed by the subjects of a military empire were beyond +the reach of the citizens of a democratic republic. They had established +and affiliated to their own primitive body or church various branch +societies or sects, in England and elsewhere, devoted to the pursuit of +the same end by the same means and method of study as had just been +exemplified in the transactions of the present meeting. Still there +remained much to be done; in witness of which he proposed to lay before +them at their next meeting, by way of inauguration under a happy omen of +their new year's work, the complete body of evidence by means of which he +was prepared to demonstrate that some considerable portion, if not the +greater part, of the remaining plays hitherto assigned to Shakespeare was +due to the collaboration of a contemporary actor and playwright, well +known by name, but hitherto insufficiently appreciated; Robert Armin, the +author of _A Nest of Ninnies_. + + + +ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS. + + +The humble but hard-working journeyman of letters who was charged with +the honourable duty of reporting the transactions at the last meeting of +the Newest Shakespeare Society on the auspicious occasion of its first +anniversary, April 1st, has received sundry more or less voluminous +communications from various gentlemen whose papers were then read or +announced, pointing out with more or less acrimonious commentary the +matters on which it seems to them severally that they have cause to +complain of imperfection or inaccuracy in his conscientious and +painstaking report. Anxious above all things to secure for himself such +credit as may be due to the modest merit of scrupulous fidelity, he +desires to lay before the public so much of the corrections conveyed in +their respective letters of reclamation as may be necessary to complete +or to rectify the first draught of their propositions as conveyed in his +former summary. On the present occasion, however, he must confine +himself to forwarding the rectifications supplied by two of the members +who took a leading part in the debate of April 1st. + +The necessarily condensed report of Mr. A.'s paper on _A Midsummer +Night's Dream_ may make the reasoning put forward by that gentleman +liable to the misconception of a hasty reader. The omission of various +qualifying phrases has left his argument without such explanation, his +statements without such reservation, as he had been careful to supply. He +did not say in so many words that he had been disposed to assign this +drama to the author of _The Revenger's Tragedy_ simply on the score of +the affinity discernible between the subjects of the two plays. He is +not prone to self-confidence or to indulgence in paradox. What he did +say was undeniable by any but those who trusted only to their ear, and +refused to correct the conclusions thus arrived at by the help of other +organs which God had given them--their fingers, for example, and their +toes; by means of which a critic of trained and competent scholarship +might with the utmost confidence count up as far as twenty, to the great +profit of all students who were willing to accept his guidance and be +bound by his decision on matters of art and poetry. Only the most +purblind could fail to observe, what only the most perverse could +hesitate to admit, that there was at first sight an obvious connection +between the poison-flower--"purple from love's wound"--squeezed by Oberon +into the eyes of the sleeping Titania and the poison rubbed by Vindice +upon the skull of the murdered Gloriana. No student of Ulrici's +invaluable work would think this a far-fetched reference. That eminent +critic had verified the meaning and detected the allusion underlying many +a passage of Shakespeare in which the connection of moral idea was more +difficult to establish than this. In the fifth act of either play there +was a masque or dramatic show of a sanguinary kind; in the one case the +bloodshed was turned to merry-making, in the other the merry-making was +turned to bloodshed. Oberon's phrase, "till I torment thee for this +injury," might easily be mistaken for a quotation from the part of +Vindice. This explanation, he trusted, would suffice to exonerate his +original view from any charge of haste or rashness; especially as he had +now completely given it up, and adopted one (if possible) more +impregnably based on internal and external evidence. + +Mr. C. was not unnaturally surprised and indignant to find his position +as to Romeo and Lord Burghley barely indicated, and the notice given of +the arguments by which it was supported so docked and curtailed as to +convey a most inadequate conception of their force. Among the chief +points of his argument were these: that the forsaken Rosaline was +evidently intended for the late Queen Mary, during whose reign Cecil had +notoriously conformed to the observances of her creed, though ready on +the accession of Elizabeth to throw it overboard at a day's notice; (it +was not to be overlooked that the friar on first hearing the announcement +of this change of faith is made earnestly to remonstrate, prefacing his +reproaches with an invocation of two sacred names--an invocation peculiar +to Catholics;) that the resemblance between old Capulet and Henry VIII. +is obvious to the most careless reader; his oath of "God's bread!" +immediately followed by the avowal "it makes me mad" is an unmistakable +allusion to the passions excited by the eucharistic controversy; his +violence towards Juliet at the end of the third act at once suggests the +alienation of her father's heart from the daughter of Anne Boleyn; the +self-congratulation on her own "stainless" condition as a virgin +expressed by Juliet in soliloquy (Act iii. Sc. 2) while in the act of +awaiting her bridegroom conveys a furtive stroke of satire at the similar +vaunt of Elizabeth when likewise meditating marriage and preparing to +receive a suitor from the hostile house of Valois. It must be +unnecessary to point out the resemblance or rather the identity between +the character and fortune of Paris and the character and fortune of +Essex, whose fate had been foreseen and whose end prefigured by the poet +with almost prophetic sagacity. To the far-reaching eye of Shakespeare +it must have seemed natural and inevitable that Paris (Essex) should fall +by the hand of Romeo (Burghley) immediately before the monument of the +Capulets where their common mistress was interred alive--immediately, +that is, before the termination of the Tudor dynasty in the person of +Elizabeth, who towards the close of her reign may fitly have been +regarded as one already buried with her fathers, though yet living in a +state of suspended animation under the influence of a deadly narcotic +potion administered by the friends of Romeo--by the partisans, that is, +of the Cecilian policy. The Nurse was not less evidently designed to +represent the Established Church. Allusions to the marriage of the +clergy are profusely scattered through her speeches. Her deceased +husband was probably meant for Sir Thomas More--"a merry man" to the last +moment of his existence--who might well be supposed by a slight poetic +license to have foreseen in the infancy of Elizabeth her future +backsliding and fall from the straight path "when she came to age." The +passing expression of tenderness with which the Nurse refers to his +memory--"God be with his soul!"--implies at once the respect in which the +name of the martyr Chancellor was still generally held, and the lingering +remains of Catholic tradition which still made a prayer for the dead rise +naturally to Anglican lips. On the other hand, the strife between +Anglicans and Puritans, the struggle of episcopalian with Calvinistic +reformers, was quite as plainly typified in the quarrel between the Nurse +and Mercutio, in which the Martin Marprelate controversy was first +unmistakably represented on the stage. The "saucy merchant, that was so +full of his ropery," with his ridicule of the "stale" practice of Lenten +fasting and abstinence, his contempt for "a Lenten pie," and his +preference for a flesh diet as "very good meat in Lent," is clearly a +disciple of Calvin; and the impotence of the Nurse, however scandalised +at the nakedness of his ribald profanity, to protect herself against it +by appeal to reason or tradition, is dwelt upon with an emphasis +sufficient to indicate the secret tendency of the poet's own sympathies +and convictions. In Romeo's attempt at conciliation, and his poor excuse +for Mercutio (which yet the Nurse, an emblem of the temporising and +accommodating pliancy of episcopalian Protestantism, shows herself only +too ready to accept as valid) as "one that God hath made, for himself to +mar,"--the allusion here is evidently to the democratic and revolutionary +tendencies of the doctrine of Knox and Calvin, with its ultimate +developments of individualism and private judgment--we recognise the note +of Burghley's lifelong policy and its endeavour to fuse the Protestant or +Puritan party with the state Church of the Tudors as by law established. +The distaste of Elizabeth's bishops for such advances, their flutter of +apprehension at the daring and their burst of indignation at the +insolence of the Calvinists, are significantly expressed in terms which +seem to hint at a possible return for help and protection to the shelter +of the older faith and the support of its partisans. "An 'a speak +anything against me, I'll take him down an 'a were lustier than he is, +and twenty such Jacks;" (the allusion here is again obvious, to the +baptismal name of John Calvin and John Knox, if not also to the popular +byword of Jack Presbyter;) "and if I cannot," (here the sense of +insecurity and dependence on foreign help or secular power becomes +transparent) "I'll find those that shall." She disclaims communion with +the Protestant Churches of the continent, with Amsterdam or Geneva: "I am +none of his flirt-gills; I am none of his skains-mates." Peter, who +carries her fan ("to hide her face: for her fan's the fairer face"; we +may take this to be a symbol of the form of episcopal consecration still +retained in the Anglican Church as a cover for its separation from +Catholicism), is undoubtedly meant for Whitgift, Archbishop of +Canterbury; the name Peter, as applied to a menial who will stand by and +suffer every knave to use the Church at his pleasure, but is ready to +draw as soon as another man if only he may be sure of having the secular +arm of the law on his side, implies a bitter sarcasm on the intruding +official of state then established by law as occupant of a see divorced +from its connection with that of the apostle. The sense of instability +natural to an institution which is compelled to rely for support on +ministers who are themselves dependent on the state whose pay they draw +for power to strike a blow in self-defence could hardly be better +expressed than by the solemn and piteous, almost agonised asseveration; +"Now, afore God, I am so vexed, that every part about me quivers." To +Shakespeare, it cannot be doubted, the impending dissolution or +dislocation of the Anglican system in "every part" by civil war and +religious discord must even then have been but too ominously evident. + +If further confirmation could be needed of the underlying significance of +allusion traceable throughout this play, it might amply be supplied by +fresh reference to the first scene in which the Nurse makes her +appearance on the stage, and is checked by Lady Capulet in the full tide +of affectionate regret for her lost husband. We can well imagine Anne +Boleyn cutting short the regrets of some indiscreet courtier for Sir +Thomas More in the very words of the text; + + Enough of this; I pray thee, hold thy peace. + +The "parlous knock" which left so big a lump upon the brow of the infant +Juliet is evidently an allusion to the declaration of Elizabeth's +illegitimacy while yet in her cradle. The seal of bastardy set upon the +baby brow of + +Anne Boleyn's daughter may well be said to have "broken" it. + +The counsel of the Nurse to Juliet in Act iii. Scene 5 to forsake Romeo +for Paris indicates the bias of the hierarchy in favour of Essex--"a +lovely gentleman"--rather than of the ultra-Protestant policy of +Burghley, who doubtless in the eyes of courtiers and churchmen was "a +dish-clout to him." + +These were a few of the points, set down at random, which he had been +enabled to verify within the limits of a single play. They would suffice +to give an idea of the process by which, when applied in detail to every +one of Shakespeare's plays, he trusted to establish the secret history +and import of each, not less than the general sequence and significance +of all. Further instalments of this work would probably be issued in the +forthcoming or future Transactions of the Newest Shakespeare Society; and +it was confidently expected that the final monument of his research when +thoroughly completed and illustrated by copious appendices, would prove +as worthy as any work of mere English scholarship could hope to be of a +place beside the inestimable commentaries of Gervinus, Ulrici, and the +Polypseudocriticopantodapomorosophisticometricoglossematographicomaniacal +Company for the Confusion of Shakespeare and Diffusion of Verbiage +(Unlimited). + +CHIMAERA BOMBINANS IN VACUO. + + +NOTE. + + +Mindful of the good old apologue regarding "the squeak of the real pig," +I think it here worth while to certify the reader of little faith, that +the more incredibly impudent absurdities above cited are not so much or +so often the freaks of parody or the fancies of burlesque as select +excerpts and transcripts of printed and published utterances from the +"pink soft litter" of a living brood--from the reports of an actual +Society, issued in an abridged and doubtless an emasculated form through +the columns of a weekly newspaper. One final and unapproachable +instance, one transcendant and pyramidal example of classical taste and +of critical scholarship, I did not venture to impair by transference from +those columns and transplantation into these pages among humbler +specimens of minor monstrosity. Let it stand here once more on record as +"a good jest for ever"--or rather as the best and therefore as the worst, +as the worst and therefore as the best, of all possible bad jests ever to +be cracked between this and the crack of doom. Sophocles, said a learned +member, was the proper parallel to Shakespeare among the ancient +tragedians: AEschylus--hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth!--_AEschylus +was only a Marlowe_. + +The hand which here transcribes this most transcendant utterance has +written before now many lines in verse and in prose to the honour and +glory of Christopher Marlowe: it has never--be the humble avowal thus +blushingly recorded--it has never set down as the writer's opinion that +he was only an AEschylus. In other words, it has never registered as my +deliberate and judicial verdict the finding that he was only the equal of +the greatest among all tragic and all prophetic poets; of the man who +combined all the light of the Greeks with all the fire of the Hebrews; +who varied at his will the revelation of the single gift of Isaiah with +the display of the mightiest among the manifold gifts of Shakespeare. + + + + +Footnotes. + + +{30} Reprinted by Dr. Grosart in his beautiful and valuable edition of +Greene's works. + +{33} One thing is certain: that damnable last scene at which the gorge +rises even to remember it is in execution as unlike the crudest phase of +Shakespeare's style as in conception it is unlike the idlest birth of his +spirit. Let us hope that so foul a thing could not have been done in +even tolerably good verse. + +{42} It is not the least of Lord Macaulay's offences against art that he +should have contributed the temporary weight of his influence as a critic +to the support of so ignorant and absurd a tradition of criticism as that +which classes the great writer here mentioned with the brutal if "brawny" +Wycherley--a classification almost to be paralleled with that which in +the days of our fathers saw fit to couple together the names of Balzac +and of Sue. Any competent critic will always recognise in _The Way of +the World_ one of the glories, in _The Country Wife_ one of the +disgraces, of dramatic and of English literature. The stains discernible +on the masterpiece of Congreve are trivial and conventional; the mere +conception of the other man's work displays a mind so prurient and +leprous, uncovers such an unfathomable and unimaginable beastliness of +imagination, that in the present age at least he would probably have +figured as a virtuous journalist and professional rebuker of poetic vice +or artistic aberration. + +{63} Since this passage first went to press, I have received from Dr. +Grosart the most happy news that he has procured a perfect copy of this +precious volume, and will shortly add it to his occasional issues of +golden waifs and strays forgotten by the ebb-tide of time. Not even the +disinterment of Robert Chester's "glorified" poem, with its appended +jewels of verse from Shakespeare's very hand and from others only less +great than Shakespeare's, all now at last reset in their strange original +framework, was a gift of greater price than this. + +{89} Compare with Beaumont's admirable farce of Bessus the wretched +imitation of it attempted after his death in the _Nice Valour_ of +Fletcher; whose proper genius was neither for pure tragedy nor broad +farce, but for high comedy and heroic romance--a field of his own +invention; witness _Monsieur Thomas_ and _The Knight of Malta_: while +Beaumont has approved himself in tragedy all but the worthiest disciple +of Shakespeare, in farce beyond all comparison the aptest pupil of +Jonson. He could give us no _Fox_ or _Alchemist_; but the inventor of +Bessus and Calianax was worthy of the esteem and affection returned to +him by the creator of Morose and Rabbi Busy. + +{92} A desperate attempt has been made to support the metrical argument +in favour of Fletcher's authorship by the production of a list in which +such words as _slavery, emperor, pitying, difference_, and even +_Christians_, were actually registered as trisyllabic terminations. To +such unimaginable shifts are critics of the finger-counting or syllabic +school inevitably and fatally reduced in the effort to establish by rule +of thumb even so much as may seem verifiable by that rule in the province +of poetical criticism. Prosody is at best no more than the skeleton of +verse, as verse is the body of poetry; while the gain of such painful +labourers in a field they know not how to till is not even a skeleton of +worthless or irrelevant fact, but the shadow of such a skeleton reflected +in water. It would seem that critics who hear only through their fingers +have not even fingers to hear with. + +{108} "La dynastie du bon sens, inauguree dans Panurge, continuee dans +Sancho Panca, tourne a mal et avorte dans Falstaff." (_William +Shakespeare_, deuxieme partie, livre premier, ch. ii,) + +{125} Possibly some readers may agree with my second thoughts, in +thinking that one exception may here be made and some surprise be here +expressed at Shakespeare's rejection of Sly's memorable query--"When will +the fool come again, Sim?" It is true that he could well afford to spare +it, as what could he not well afford to spare? but I will confess that it +seems to me worthy of a place among his own Sly's most admirable and +notable sallies of humour. + +{129} _History of English Dramatic Poetry_, ed. 1879, vol. ii. pp.437- +447. In a later part of his noble and invaluable work (vol. iii. p.188) +the author quotes a passage from "the induction to _A Warning for Fair +Women_, 1599 (to which Shakespeare most assuredly contributed)." It will +be seen that I do not shrink from admitting the full weight of authority +which can be thrown into the scale against my own opinion. To such an +assertion from the insolent organs of pretentious ignorance I should be +content with the simple rejoinder that Shakespeare most assuredly did +nothing whatever of the sort; but to return such an answer in the present +case would be to write myself down--and that in company to which I should +most emphatically object--as something very decidedly more--and +worse--than an ass. + +{137} Not for the first and probably not for the last time I turn, with +all confidence as with all reverence, for illustration and confirmation +of my own words, to the exquisite critical genius of a long honoured and +long lamented fellow-craftsman. The following admirable and final +estimate of the more special element or peculiar quality in the +intellectual force of Honore de Balzac could only have been taken by the +inevitable intuition and rendered by the subtlest eloquence of Charles +Baudelaire. Nothing could more aptly and perfectly illustrate the +distinction indicated in my text between unimaginative realism and +imaginative reality. + +"I have many a time been astonished that to pass for an observer should +be Balzac's great popular title to fame. To me it had always seemed that +it was his chief merit to be a visionary, and a passionate visionary. All +his characters are gifted with the ardour of life which animated himself. +All his fictions are as deeply coloured as dreams. From the highest of +the aristocracy to the lowest of the mob, all the actors in his _Human +Comedy_ are keener after living, more active and cunning in their +struggles, more staunch in endurance of misfortune, more ravenous in +enjoyment, more angelic in devotion, than the comedy of the real world +shows them to us. In a word, every one in Balzac, down to the very +scullions, has genius. Every mind is a weapon loaded to the muzzle with +will. It is actually Balzac himself. And as all the beings of the outer +world presented themselves to his mind's eye in strong relief and with a +telling expression, he has given a convulsive action to his figures; he +has blackened their shadows and intensified their lights. Besides, his +prodigious love of detail, the outcome of an immoderate ambition to see +everything, to bring everything to sight, to guess everything, to make +others guess everything, obliged him to set down more forcibly the +principal lines, so as to preserve the perspective of the whole. He +reminds me sometimes of those etchers who are never satisfied with the +biting-in of their outlines, and transform into very ravines the main +scratches of the plate. From this astonishing natural disposition of +mind wonderful results have been produced. But this disposition is +generally defined as Balzac's great fault. More properly speaking, it is +exactly his great distinctive duality. But who can boast of being so +happily gifted, and of being able to apply a method which may permit him +to invest--and that with a sure hand--what is purely trivial with +splendour and imperial purple? Who can do this? Now, he who does not, +to speak the truth, does no great thing." + +Nor was any very great thing done by the author of _A Warning for Fair +Women_. + +{141} I do not know or remember in the whole radiant range of +Elizabethan drama more than one parallel tribute to that paid in this +play by an English poet to the yet foreign art of painting, through the +eloquent mouth of this enthusiastic villain of genius, whom we might +regard as a more genuinely Titianic sort of Wainwright. The parallel +passage is that most lovely and fervid of all imaginative panegyrics on +this art, extracted by Lamb from the comedy of _Doctor Dodipoll_; which +saw the light or twilight of publication just eight years later than +_Arden of Feversham_. + +{154} I remember to have somewhere at some time fallen in with some +remark by some commentator to some such effect as this: that it would be +somewhat difficult to excuse the unwomanly violence of this demand. +Doubtless it would. And doubtless it would be somewhat more than +difficult to extenuate the unmaidenly indelicacy of Jeanne Darc. + +{179} What would at least be partly lust in another man is all but +purely hatred in Iago. + + Now I do love her too: + Not out of absolute lust, (though, peradventure, + I stand accountant for as great a sin) + But partly led to diet my revenge. + +For "partly" read "wholly," and for "peradventure" read "assuredly," and +the incarnate father of lies, made manifest in the flesh, here speaks all +but all the truth for once, to himself alone. + +{205} I add the proof in a footnote, so as to take up no more than a +small necessary space of my text with the establishment of a fact which +yet can seem insignificant to no mortal who has a human ear for lyric +song. Shakespeare's verse, as all the wide world knows, ends thus: + + But my kisses bring again, + bring again, + Seals of love, but sealed in vain, + sealed in vain. + +The echo has been dropped by Fletcher, who has thus achieved the +remarkable musical feat of turning a nightingale's note into a sparrow's. +The mutilation of Philomela by the hands of Tereus was a jest compared to +the mutilation of Shakespeare by the hands of Fletcher: who thereby +reduced the close of the first verse into agreement if not into +accordance with the close of his own. This appended verse, as all the +world does not and need not know, ends thus: + + But first set my poor heart free, + Bound in those icy chains by thee. + +Even an earless owner of fingers enough to count on may by their help +convince himself of the difference in metre here. But not only does the +last line, with unsolicited and literally superfluous liberality, offer +us a syllable over measure; the words are such as absolutely to defy +antiphonal repetition or reverberation of the three last in either line. +Let us therefore, like good scriptural scholars, according equally to the +letter and the spirit of the text, render unto Fletcher the things which +be Fletcher's, and unto Shakespeare the things which be Shakespeare's. + +{210} It is worth remark that in a still older sample of an older and +ruder form of play than can have been the very earliest mould in which +the pristine or pre-Shakespearean model of _Pericles_ was cast, the part +of Chorus here assigned to Gower was filled by a representative of his +fellow-poet Lydgate. + +{217} Except perhaps one little word of due praise for the pretty +imitation or recollection of his dead friend Beaumont rather than of +Shakespeare, in the description of the crazed girl whose "careless +tresses a wreath of bullrush rounded" where she sat playing with flowers +for emblems at a game of love and sorrow--but liker in all else to +Bellario by another fountain-side than to Ophelia by the brook of death. + +{220} On the 17th of September, 1864. + +{232} The once too celebrated crime which in this play was exhibited on +the public stage with the forcible fidelity of a wellnigh brutal realism +took actual place on the private stage of fact in the year 1604. Four +years afterwards the play was published as Shakespeare's. Eight years +more, and Shakespeare was with AEschylus. + +{237} Written in 1879. + +{239} Capell has altered this to "proud perfumes"; marking the change in +a note, with the scrupulous honesty which would seem to have usually +distinguished him from more daring and more famous editors. + +{245a} The feeble archaic inversion in this line is one among many small +signs which all together suffice, if not to throw back the date of this +play to the years immediately preceding the advent of Marlowe or the full +influence of his genius and example, yet certainly to mark it as an +instance of survival from that period of incomposite and inadequate +workmanship in verse. + +{245b} Or than this play to a genuine work of Shakespeare's. "Brick to +coral"--these three words describe exactly the difference in tone and +shade of literary colour. + +{246} Here for the first time we come upon a verse not unworthy of +Marlowe himself--a verse in spirit as in cadence recalling the deep +oceanic reverberations of his "mighty line," profound and just and simple +and single as a note of the music of the sea. But it would be hard if a +devout and studious disciple were never to catch one passing tone of his +master's habitual accent.--It may be worth while to observe that we find +here the same modulation of verse--common enough since then, but new to +the patient auditors of _Gorboduc_ and _Locrine_--which we find in the +finest passage of Marlowe's imperfect play of _Dido_, completed by Nash +after the young Master's untimely death. + + Why star'st thou in my face? If thou wilt stay, + Leap in my arms: mine arms are open wide: + If not--turn from me, and I'll turn from thee; + For though thou hast the power to say farewell, + I have not power to stay thee. + +But we may look long in vain for the like of this passage, taken from the +crudest and feeblest work of Marlowe, in the wide and wordy expanse of +_King Edward III_. + +{247} A pre-Shakespearean word of single occurrence in a single play of +Shakespeare's, and proper to the academic school of playwrights. + +{248} _The First Part of Tamburlaine the Great_, Act v. Sc. ii. + +{252} It may be worth a remark that the word _power_ is constantly used +as a dissyllable; another note of archaic debility or insufficiency in +metre. + +{255} Yet another essentially non-Shakespearean word, though doubtless +once used by Shakespeare; this time a most ungraceful Gallicism. + +{256} It may obviate any chance of mistake if I observe that here as +elsewhere, when I mention the name that is above every name in English +literature, I refer to the old Shakespeare, and not to "the new +Shakspere"; a _novus homo_ with whom I have no acquaintance, and with +whom (if we may judge of a great--or a little--unknown after the +appearance and the bearing of those who select him as a social sponsor +for themselves and their literary catechumens) I can most sincerely +assert that I desire to have none. + +{261} Surely, for _sweet'st_ we should read _swift'st_. + +{262a} This word occurs but once in Shakespeare's plays-- + + And speaking it, he wistly looked on me; + + (_King Richard II_. Act v. Sc. 4.) + +and in such a case, as in the previous instances of the words _invocate_ +and _endamagement_, a mere [Greek text] can carry no weight of evidence +with it worth any student's consideration. + +{262b} This form is used four times by Shakespeare as the equivalent of +Bretagne; once only, in one of his latest plays, as a synonym for +Britain. + +{263a} Another word indiscoverable in any genuine verse of +Shakespeare's, though not (I believe) unused on occasion by some among +the poets contemporary with his earlier years. + +{263b} This word was perhaps unnecessarily altered by our good Capell to +"tender." + +{264a} Yet another and a singular misuse of a word never so used or +misused by Shakespeare. + +{264b} Qu. Why, so is your desire: If that the law, etc.? + +{264c} _Sic_. I should once have thought it impossible that any mortal +ear could endure the shock of this unspeakable and incomparable verse, +and find in the passage which contains it an echo or a trace of the +"music, wit, and oracle" of Shakespeare. But in those days I had yet to +learn what manner of ears are pricked up to listen "when rank Thersites +opes his mastiff jaws" in criticism of Homer or of Shakespeare. In a +corner of the preface to an edition of "Shakspere" which bears on its +title-page the name (correctly spelt) of Queen Victoria's youngest son +prefixed to the name I have just transcribed, a small pellet of dry dirt +was flung upwards at me from behind by the "able editor" thus irritably +impatient to figure in public as the volunteer valet or literary lackey +of Prince Leopold. Hence I gathered the edifying assurance that this +aspirant to the honours of literature in livery had been reminded of my +humbler attempts in literature without a livery by the congenial music of +certain four-footed fellow-critics and fellow-lodgers of his own in the +neighbourhood of Hampstead Heath. Especially and most naturally had +their native woodnotes wild recalled to the listening biped (whom partial +nature had so far distinguished from the herd) the deep astonishment and +the due disgust with which he had discovered the unintelligible fact that +to men so ignorant of music or the laws of music in verse as my +presumptuous and pitiable self the test of metrical harmony lay not in an +appeal to the fingers but only in an appeal to the ear--"the ear which +he" (that is, which the present writer) "makes so much of--AND WHICH +SHOULD BE LONG TO MEASURE SHAKSPERE." Here then the great Sham +Shakespearean secret is out at last. Had I but known in time my lifelong +error in thinking that a capacity to estimate the refinements of word- +music was not to be gauged by length of ear, by hairiness of ear, or by +thickness of ear, but by delicacy of ear alone, I should as soon have +thought of measuring my own poor human organs against those of the +patriarch or leader of the herd as of questioning his indisputable right +to lay down the law to all who agree with his great fundamental +theorem--that the longest ear is the most competent to judge of metre. +_Habemus confitentem asinum_. + +{266} A Latin pun, or rather a punning Latinism, not altogether out of +Shakespeare's earliest line. But see the note preceding this one. + +{269} The simple substitution of the word "is" for the word "and" would +rectify the grammar here--were that worth while. + +{270} Qu. So there is but one France, etc.? + +{271} Non-Shakespearean. + +{273} I choose for a parallel Shakespeare's use of Plutarch in the +composition of his Roman plays rather than his use of Hall and Holinshed +in the composition of his English histories, because Froissart is a model +more properly to be set against Plutarch than against Holinshed or Hall. + +{278} This brilliant idea has since been borrowed from the Chairman--and +that without acknowledgment--by one of those worthies whose mission it is +to make manifest that no burlesque invention of mere man's device can +improve upon the inexhaustible capacities of Nature as shown in the +production and perfection of the type irreverently described by Dryden as +'God Almighty's fool.' + +{279} This word was incomprehensibly misprinted in the first issue of +the Society's Report, where it appeared as "foulness." To prevent +misapprehension, the whole staff of printers was at once discharged. + +{291} When the learned member made use of this remarkable phrase he +probably had in his mind the suggestive query of Agnes, _si les enfants +qu'on fait se faisaient pas l'oreille_? But the flower of rhetoric here +gathered was beyond the reach of Arnolphe's innocent ward. 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