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diff --git a/25535.txt b/25535.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0c3a133 --- /dev/null +++ b/25535.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4531 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Montaigne and Shakspere, by John M. Robertson + +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: Montaigne and Shakspere + +Author: John M. Robertson + +Release Date: May 20, 2008 [EBook #25535] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MONTAIGNE AND SHAKSPERE *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Turgut Dincer and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + + + + ++-----------------------------------------+ +| Transcribers note: Old spellings of the | +| words have been retained as well as the | +| doubtful use of colons instead of | +| semicolons in many places for the sake | +| of fidelity to the original text. | ++-----------------------------------------+ + + + + +MONTAIGNE AND SHAKSPERE + +BY + +JOHN M. ROBERTSON + +LONDON +THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, LIMITED +16, JOHN STREET, BEDFORD ROW, W.C. +1897 + + +THE UNIVERSITY PRESS + +MONTAIGNE AND SHAKSPERE + + +For a good many years past the anatomic study of Shakspere, of which a +revival seems now on foot, has been somewhat out of fashion, as compared +with its vogue in the palmy days of the New Shakspere Society in +England, and the years of the battle between the iconoclasts and the +worshippers in Germany. When Mr. Fleay and Mr. Spedding were hard at +work on the metrical tests; when Mr. Spedding was subtly undoing the +chronological psychology of Dr. Furnivall; when the latter student was +on his part undoing in quite another style some of the judgments of Mr. +Swinburne; and when Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps was with natural wrath +calling on Mr. Browning, as President of the Society, to keep Dr. +Furnivall in order, we (then) younger onlookers felt that literary +history was verily being made. Our sensations, it seemed, might be as +those of our elders had been over Mr. Collier's emendated folio, and +the tragical end thereof. Then came a period of lull in things +Shaksperean, partly to be accounted for by the protrusion of the +Browning Society and kindred undertakings. It seemed as if once more men +had come to the attitude of 1850, when Mr. Phillipps had written: "An +opinion has been gaining ground, and has been encouraged by writers +whose judgment is entitled to respectful consideration, that almost if +not all the commentary on the works of Shakspere of a necessary and +desirable kind has already been given to the world."[1] And, indeed, so +much need was there for time to digest the new criticism that it may be +doubted whether among the general cultured public the process is even +now accomplished. + +To this literary phase in particular, and to our occupation with other +studies in general, may be attributed the opportunity which still exists +for the discussion of one of the most interesting of all problems +concerning Shakspere. Mr. Browning, Mr. Meredith, Ibsen, Tolstoi--a host +of peculiarly modern problem-makers have been exorcising our not +inexhaustible taste for the problematic, so that there was no very +violent excitement over even the series of new "Keys" to the sonnets +which came forth in the lull of the analysis of the plays; and yet, even +with all the problems of modernity in view, it seems as if it must be +rather by accident of oversight than for lack of interest in new +developments of Shakspere-study that so little attention has been given +among us to a question which, once raised, has a very peculiar literary +and psychological attraction of its own--the subject, namely, of the +influence which the plays show their author to have undergone from the +Essays of Montaigne. + +As to the bare fact of the influence, there can be little question. That +Shakspere in one scene in the TEMPEST versifies a passage from the prose +of Florio's translation of Montaigne's chapter OF THE CANNIBALS has been +recognised by all the commentators since Capell (1767), who detected the +transcript from a reading of the French only, not having compared the +translation. The first thought of students was to connect the passage +with Ben Johnson's allusion in VOLPONE[2] to frequent "stealings from +Montaigne" by contemporary writers; and though VOLPONE dates from 1605, +and the TEMPEST from 1610-1613, there has been no systematic attempt to +apply the clue chronologically. Still, it has been recognised or +surmised by a series of writers that the influence of the essayist on +the dramatist went further than the passage in question. John Sterling, +writing on Montaigne in 1838 (when Sir Frederick Madden's pamphlet on +the autograph of Shakspere in a copy of Florio had called special +attention to the Essays), remarked that "on the whole, the celebrated +soliloquy in HAMLET presents a more characteristic and expressive +resemblance to much of Montaigne's writings than any other portion of +the plays of the great dramatist which we at present remember"; and +further threw out the germ of a thesis which has since been disastrously +developed, to the effect that "the Prince of Denmark is very nearly a +Montaigne, lifted to a higher eminence, and agitated by more striking +circumstances and a severer destiny, and altogether a somewhat more +passionate structure of man."[3] In 1846, again, Philarete Chasles, an +acute and original critic, citing the passage in the TEMPEST, went on to +declare that "once on the track of the studies and tastes of Shakspere, +we find Montaigne at every corner, in HAMLET, in OTHELLO, in CORIOLANUS. +Even the composite style of Shakspere, so animated, so vivid, so new, so +incisive, so coloured, so hardy, offers a multitude of striking +analogies to the admirable and free manner of Montaigne."[4] The +suggestion as to the "To be or not to be" soliloquy has been taken up by +some critics, but rejected by others; and the propositions of M. +Chasles, so far as I am aware, have never been supported by evidence. +Nevertheless, the general fact of a frequent reproduction or +manipulation of Montaigne's ideas in some of Shakspere's later plays +has, I think, since been established. + +Twelve years ago I incidentally cited, in an essay on the composition of +HAMLET, some dozen of the Essays of Montaigne from which Shakspere had +apparently received suggestions, and instanced one or two cases in which +actual peculiarities of phrase in Florio's translation of the Essays are +adopted by him, in addition to a peculiar coincidence which has been +pointed out by Mr. Jacob Feis in his work entitled SHAKSPERE AND +MONTAIGNE; and since then the late Mr. Henry Morley, in his edition of +the Florio translation, has pointed to a still more remarkable +coincidence of phrase, in a passage of HAMLET which I had traced to +Montaigne without noticing the decisive verbal agreement in question. +Yet so far as I have seen, the matter has passed for little more than a +literary curiosity, arousing no new ideas as to Shakspere's mental +development. The notable suggestion of Chasles on that head has been +ignored more completely than the theory of Mr. Feis, which in comparison +is merely fantastic. Either, then, there is an unwillingness in England +to conceive of Shakspere as owing much to foreign influences, or as a +case of intelligible mental growth, or else the whole critical problem +which Shakspere represents--and he may be regarded as the greatest of +critical problems--comes within the general disregard for serious +criticism, noticeable among us of late years. And the work of Mr. Feis, +unfortunately, is as a whole so extravagant that it could hardly fail to +bring a special suspicion on every form of the theory of an intellectual +tie between Shakspere and Montaigne. Not only does he undertake to show +in dead earnest what Sterling had vaguely suggested as conceivable, that +Shakspere meant Hamlet to represent Montaigne, but he strenuously argues +that the poet framed the play in order to discredit Montaigne's +opinions--a thesis which almost makes the Bacon theory specious by +comparison. Naturally it has made no converts, even in Germany, where, +as it happens, it had been anticipated. + +In France, however, the neglect of the special problem of Montaigne's +influence on Shakspere is less easily to be explained, seeing how much +intelligent study has been given of late by French critics to both +Shakspere and Montaigne. The influence is recognised; but here again it +is only cursorily traced. The latest study of Montaigne is that of M. +Paul Stapfer, a vigilant critic, whose services to Shakspere-study have +been recognised in both countries. But all that M. Stapfer claims for +the influence of the French essayist on the English dramatist is thus +put:-- + + "Montaigne is perhaps too purely French to have exercised + much influence abroad. Nevertheless his influence on England + is not to be disdained. Shakspere appreciated him (_le + goutait_); he has inserted in the TEMPEST a passage of the + chapter DES CANNIBALES; and the strong expressions of the + ESSAYS on man, the inconstant, irresolute being, contrary to + himself, marvellously vain, various and changeful, were + perhaps not unconnected with (_peut etre pas etrangeres a_) + the conception of HAMLET. The author of the scene of the + grave-diggers must have felt the savour and retained the + impression of this thought, humid and cold as the grave: + 'The heart and the life of a great and triumphant emperor + are but the repast of a little worm.' The translation of + Plutarch, or rather of Amyot, by Thomas North, and that of + Montaigne by Florio, had together a great and long vogue in + the English society of the seventeenth century."[5] + +So modest a claim, coming from the French side, can hardly be blamed on +the score of that very modesty. It is the fact, however, that, though +M. Stapfer has in another work[6] compared Shakspere with a French +classic critically enough, he has here understated his case. He was led +to such an attitude in his earlier study of Shakspere by the slightness +of the evidence offered for the claim of M. Chasles, of which he wrote +that it is "a gratuitous supposition, quite unjustified by the few +traces in his writings of his having read the Essays."[7] But that +verdict was passed without due scrutiny. The influence of Montaigne on +Shakspere was both wider and deeper than M. Stapfer has suggested; and +it is perhaps more fitting, after all, that the proof should be +undertaken by some of us who, speaking Shakspere's tongue, cannot well +be suspected of seeking to belittle him when we trace the sources for +his thought, whether in his life or in his culture. There is still, +indeed, a tendency among the more primitively patriotic to look +jealously at such inquiries, as tending to diminish the glory of the +worshipped name; but for anyone who is capable of appreciating +Shakspere's greatness, there can be no question of iconoclasm in the +matter. Shakspere ignorantly adored is a mere dubious mystery; Shakspere +followed up and comprehended, step by step, albeit never wholly +revealed, becomes more remarkable, more profoundly interesting, as he +becomes more intelligible. We are embarked, not on a quest for +plagiarisms, but on a study of the growth of a wonderful mind. And in +the idea that much of the growth is traceable to the fertilising contact +of a foreign intelligence there can be nothing but interest and +attraction for those who have mastered the primary sociological truth +that such contacts of cultures are the very life of civilisation. + + + + +II. + + +The first requirement in the study, obviously, is an exact statement of +the coincidences of phrase and thought in Shakspere and Montaigne. Not +that such coincidences are the main or the only results to be looked +for; rather we may reasonably expect to find Shakspere's thought often +diverging at a tangent from that of the writer he is reading, or even +directly gainsaying it. But there can be no solid argument as to such +indirect influence until we have fully established the direct influence, +and this can only be done by exhibiting a considerable number of +coincidences. M. Chasles, while avowing that "the comparison of texts is +indispensable--we must undergo this fatigue in order to know to what +extent Shakspere, between 1603 and 1615, became familiar with +Montaigne"--strangely enough made no comparison of texts whatever beyond +reproducing the familiar paraphrase in the TEMPEST, from the essay OF +CANNIBALS; and left absolutely unsupported his assertion as to HAMLET, +OTHELLO, and CORIOLANUS. It is necessary to produce proofs, and to look +narrowly to dates. Florio's translation, though licensed in 1601, was +not published till 1603, the year of the piratical publication of the +First Quarto of HAMLET, in which the play lacks much of its present +matter, and shows in many parts so little trace of Shakspere's spirit +and versification that, even if we hold the text to have been +imperfectly taken down in shorthand, as it no doubt was, we cannot +suppose him to have at this stage completed his refashioning of the +older play, which is undoubtedly the substratum of his.[8] We must +therefore keep closely in view the divergencies between this text and +that of the Second Quarto, printed in 1604, in which the transmuting +touch of Shakspere is broadly evident. It is quite possible that +Shakspere may have seen parts of Florio's translation before 1603, or +heard passages from it read; or even that he might have read Montaigne +in the original. But as his possession of the translation is made +certain by the preservation of the copy bearing his autograph, and as it +is from Florio that he is seen to have copied in the passages where his +copying is beyond dispute, it is on Florio's translation that we must +proceed. + + +I. In order to keep all the evidence in view, we may first of all +collate once more the passage in the TEMPEST with that in the Essays +which it unquestionably follows. In Florio's translation, Montaigne's +words run: + + "They [Lycurgus and Plato] could not imagine a genuity so + pure and simple, as we see it by experience, nor ever + believe our society might be maintained with so little art + and human combination. It is a nation (would I answer Plato) + that hath no kind of traffic, no knowledge of letters, no + intelligence of numbers, no name of magistrate, nor of + politic superiority; no use of service, of riches, or of + poverty; no contracts, no successions, no dividences, no + occupations, but idle; no respect of kindred, but common; no + apparel, but natural; no manuring of lands, no use of wine, + corn, or metal. The very words that import lying, falsehood, + treason, dissimulation, covetousness, envy, detraction, and + passion, were never heard of amongst them. How dissonant + would he find his imaginary commonwealth from this + perfection?" + +Compare the speech in which the kind old Gonzalo seeks to divert the +troubled mind of the shipwrecked King Alonso: + + "I' the commonwealth I would by contraries + Execute all things: for no kind of traffic + Would I admit; no name of magistrate; + Letters should not be known; no use of service, + Of riches, or of poverty; no contracts, + Succession; bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none: + No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil: + No occupation, all men idle, all; + And women too: but innocent and pure: + No sovereignty...." + +There can be no dispute as to the direct transcription here, where the +dramatist is but incidentally playing with Montaigne's idea, proceeding +to put some gibes at it in the mouths of Gonzalo's rascally comrades; +and it follows that Gonzalo's further phrase, "to excel the golden age," +proceeds from Montaigne's previous words: "exceed all the pictures +wherewith licentious poesy hath proudly embellished the golden age." The +play was in all probability written in or before 1610. It remains to +show that on his first reading of Florio's Montaigne, in 1603-4, +Shakspere was more deeply and widely influenced, though the specific +proofs are in the nature of the case less palpable. + + +II. Let us take first the more decisive coincidences of phrase. +Correspondences of thought which in themselves do not establish their +direct connection, have a new significance when it is seen that other +coincidences amount to manifest reproduction. And such a coincidence we +have, to begin with, in the familiar lines: + + "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, + Rough-hew them how we will."[9] + +I pointed out in 1885 that this expression, which does not occur in the +First Quarto HAMLET, corresponds very closely with the theme of +Montaigne's essay, THAT FORTUNE IS OFTENTIMES MET WITHALL IN PURSUIT OF +REASON,[10] in which occurs the phrase, "Fortune has more judgment[11] +than we," a translation from Menander. But Professor Morley, having had +his attention called to the subject by the work of Mr. Feis, who had +suggested another passage as the source of Shakspere's, made a more +perfect identification. Reading the proofs of the Florio translation for +his reprint, he found, what I had not observed in my occasional access +to the old folio, not then reprinted, that the very metaphor of +"rough-hewing" occurs in Florio's rendering of a passage in the +Essays:--[12] "My consultation doth somewhat roughly hew the matter, and +by its first shew lightly consider the same: the main and chief point of +the work I am wont to resign to Heaven." This is a much more exact +coincidence than is presented in the passage cited by Mr. Feis from the +essay OF PHYSIOGNOMY:--[13] "Therefore do our designs so often +miscarry.... The heavens are angry, and I may say envious of the +extension and large privilege we ascribe to human wisdom, to the +prejudice of theirs, and abridge them so much more unto us by so much +more we endeavour to amplify them." If there were no closer parallel +than that in Montaigne, we should be bound to take it as an expansion of +a phrase in Seneca's AGAMEMNON,[14] which was likely to have become +proverbial. I may add that the thought is often repeated in the Essays, +and that in several passages it compares notably with Shakspere's lines. +These begin: + + "Rashly, + --And praised be rashness for it--Let us know + Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well + When our deep plots do pall; and that should learn us + There's a divinity" etc. + +Compare the following extracts from Florio's translation:-- + + "The _Daemon_ of Socrates were peradventure a certain + impulsion or will which without the advice of his discourse + presented itself unto him. In a mind so well purified, and + by continual exercise of wisdom and virtue so well prepared + as his was, it is likely his inclinations (though rash and + inconsiderate) were ever of great moment, and worthy to be + followed. Every man feeleth in himself some image of such + agitations, of a prompt, vehement, and casual opinion. It is + in me to give them some authority, that afford so little to + our wisdom. And I have had some (equally weak in reason and + violent in persuasion and dissuasion, which was more + ordinary to Socrates) by which I have so happily and so + profitably suffered myself to be transported, as they might + perhaps be thought to contain some matter of divine + inspiration."[15] + + "Even in our counsels and deliberations, some chance or good + luck must needs be joined to them; for whatsoever our + wisdom can effect is no great matter."[16] + + "When I consider the most glorious exploits of war, methinks + I see that those who have had the conduct of them employ + neither counsel nor deliberation about them, but for fashion + sake, and leave the best part of the enterprise to fortune; + and on the confidence they have in her aid, they still go + beyond the limits of all discourse. Casual rejoicings and + strange furies ensue among their deliberations."[17] etc. + +Compare finally Florio's translation of the lines of Manilius cited by +Montaigne at the end of the 47th Essay of the First Book: + + "'Tis best for ill-advis'd, wisdom may fail,[18] + Fortune proves not the cause that should prevail, + But here and there without respect doth sail: + A higher power forsooth us overdraws, + And mortal states guides with immortal laws." + +It is to be remembered, indeed, that the idea expressed in Hamlet's +words to Horatio is partly anticipated in the rhymed speech of the +Player-King in the play-scene in Act III., which occurs in the First +Quarto: + + "Our wills, our fates do so contrary run + That our devices still are overthrown; + Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own." + +Such a passage, reiterating a familiar commonplace, might seem at first +sight to tell against the view that Hamlet's later speech to Horatio is +an echo of Montaigne. But that view being found justified by the +evidence, and the idea in that passage being exactly coincident with +Montaigne's, while the above lines are only partially parallel in +meaning, we are forced to admit that Shakspere may have been influenced +by Montaigne even where a partial precedent might be found in his own or +other English work. + + +III. The phrase "discourse of reason," which is spoken by Hamlet in his +first soliloquy,[19] and which first appears in the Second Quarto, is +not used by Shakspere in any play before HAMLET; and he uses it again in +TROILUS AND CRESSIDA;[20] while "discourse of thought" appears in +OTHELLO;[21] and "discourse," in the sense of reasoning faculty, is used +in Hamlet's last soliloquy.[22] In English literature this use of the +word seems to be special in Shakspere's period,[23] and it has been +noted by an admirer as a finely Shaksperean expression. But the +expression "discourse of reason" occurs at least four times in +Montaigne's Essays, and in Florio's translation of them: in the +essay[24] THAT TO PHILOSOPHISE IS TO LEARN HOW TO DIE; again at the +close of the essay[25] _A demain les affaires_; again in the first +paragraph of the APOLOGY OF RAIMOND SEBONDE[26]; and yet again in the +chapter on THE HISTORY OF SPURINA;[27] and though it seems to be +scholastic in origin, and occurs once or twice before 1600 in English +books, it is difficult to doubt that, like the other phrase above cited, +it came to Shakspere through Florio's Montaigne. The word _discours_ is +a hundred times used singly by Montaigne, as by Shakspere in the phrase +"of such large discourse," for the process of ratiocination. + + +IV. Then again there is the clue of Shakspere's use of the word +"consummation" in the revised form of the "To be" soliloquy. This, as +Mr. Feis pointed out,[28] is the word used by Florio as a rendering of +_aneantissement_ in the speech of Socrates as given by Montaigne in the +essay[29] OF PHYSIOGNOMY. Shakspere makes Hamlet speak of annihilation +as "a consummation devoutly to be wished." Florio has: "If it (death) be +a consummation of one's being, it is also an amendment and entrance into +a long and quiet night. We find nothing so sweet in life as a quiet and +gentle sleep, and without dreams." Here not only do the words coincide +in a peculiar way, but the idea in the two phrases is the same; the +theme of sleep and dreams being further common to the two writings. + +Beyond these, I have not noted any correspondences of phrase so precise +as to prove reminiscence beyond possibility of dispute; but it is not +difficult to trace striking correspondences which, though falling short +of explicit reproduction, inevitably suggest a relation; and these it +now behoves us to consider. The remarkable thing is, as regards HAMLET, +that they almost all occur in passages not present in the First Quarto. + + +V. When we compare part of the speech of Rosencrantz on sedition[30] +with a passage in Montaigne's essay, OF CUSTOM,[31] we find a somewhat +close coincidence. In the play Rosencrantz says: + + "The cease of Majesty, + Dies not alone; but like a gulf doth draw + What's near with it: it is a massy wheel + Fix'd on the summit of the highest mount, + To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things + Are mortised and adjoined; which, when it falls, + Each small annexment, petty consequence, + Attends the boisterous ruin." + +Florio has: + + "Those who attempt to shake an Estate are commonly the first + overthrown by the fall of it.... The contexture and + combining of this monarchy and great building having been + dismissed and dissolved by it, namely, in her old years, + giveth as much overture and entrance as a man will to like + injuries. Royal _majesty_ doth more hardly fall from the top + to the middle, than it tumbleth down from the middle to the + bottom." + +The verbal correspondence here is only less decisive--as regards the use +of the word "majesty"--than in the passages collated by Mr. Morley; +while the thought corresponds as closely. + + +VI. The speech of Hamlet,[32] "There is nothing either good or bad but +thinking makes it so"; and Iago's "'tis in ourselves that we are thus or +thus,"[33] are expressions of a favourite thesis of Montaigne's, to +which he devotes an entire essay.[34] The Shaksperean phrases echo +closely such sentences as:-- + + "If that which we call evil and torment be neither torment + nor evil, but that our fancy only gives it that quality, it + is in us to change it.... That which we term evil is not so + of itself." ... "Every man is either well or ill according as + he finds himself." + +And in the essay[35] OF DEMOCRITUS AND HERACLITUS there is another close +parallel:-- + + "Therefore let us take no more excuses from external + qualities of things. To us it belongeth to give ourselves + account of it. Our good and our evil hath no dependency but + from ourselves." + + +VII. Hamlet's apostrophe to his mother on +the power of custom--a passage which, like the +others above cited, first appears in the Second +Quarto--is similarly an echo of a favourite +proposition of Montaigne, who devotes to it the +essay[36] OF CUSTOM, AND NOT TO CHANGE READILY A +RECEIVED LAW. In that there occur the typical +passages:-- + + "Custom doth so blear us that we cannot distinguish the + usage of things.... Certes, chastity is an excellent virtue, + the commodity whereof is very well known; but to use it, and + according to nature to prevail with it, is as hard as it is + easy to endear it and to prevail with it according to + custom, to laws and precepts." "The laws of conscience, + which we say are born of nature, are born of custom." + +Again, in the essay OF CONTROLLING ONE'S WILL[37] we have: "Custom is a +second nature, and not less potent." + +Hamlet's words are:-- + + "That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat + Of habits devil, is angel yet in this + That to the use of actions fair and good + He likewise gives a frock or livery + That aptly is put on.... + For use can almost change the stamp of nature." + +No doubt the idea is a classic commonplace; and in the early TWO +GENTLEMEN OF VERONA[38] we actually have the line, "How use doth breed a +habit in a man;" but here again there seems reason to regard Montaigne +as having suggested Shakspere's vivid and many-coloured wording of the +idea in the tragedy. Indeed, even the line cited from the early comedy +may have been one of the poet's many later additions to his text. + + +VIII. A less close but still a noteworthy resemblance is that between +the passage in which Hamlet expresses to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern +the veering of his mood from joy in things to disgust with them, and the +paragraph in the APOLOGY OF RAYMOND SEBONDE in which Montaigne sets +against each other the splendour of the universe and the littleness of +man. Here the thought diverges, Shakspere making it his own as he always +does, and altering its aim; but the language is curiously similar. +Hamlet says: + + "It goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly + frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory: this + most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave + o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof, fretted with + golden fire, why it appears no other thing to me than a foul + and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work + is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in + form and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how + like an angel! in apprehension, how like a God! the beauty + of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet to me what is + this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me." + +Montaigne, as translated by Florio, has: + + "Let us see what hold-fast or free-hold he (man) hath in + this gorgeous and goodly equipage.... Who hath persuaded + him, that this admirable moving of heaven's vaults, that the + eternal light of these lamps so fiercely rolling over his + head ... were established ... for his commodity and service? + Is it possible to imagine anything so ridiculous as this + miserable and wretched creature, which is not so much as + master of himself, exposed and subject to offences of all + things, and yet dareth call himself Master and Emperor of + this universe?... [To consider ... the power and domination + these (celestial) bodies have, not only upon our lives and + conditions of our fortune ... but also over our dispositions + and inclinations, our discourses and wills, which they rule, + provoke, and move at the pleasure of their influences.] ... + Of all creatures man is the most miserable and frail, and + therewithal the proudest and disdainfullest. Who perceiveth + himself placed here, amidst the filth and mire of the world + ... and yet dareth imaginarily place himself above the + circle of the Moon, and reduce heaven under his feet. It is + through the vanity of the same imagination that he dare + equal himself to God." + +The passage in brackets is left here in its place, not as suggesting +anything in Hamlet's speech, but as paralleling a line in MEASURE FOR +MEASURE, to be dealt with immediately. But it will be seen that +the rest of the passage, though turned to quite another purpose than +Hamlet's, brings together in the same way a set of contrasted ideas of +human greatness and smallness, and of the splendour of the midnight +firmament.[39] + + +IX. The nervous protest of Hamlet to Horatio on the point of the +national vice of drunkenness,[40] of which all save the beginning is +added in the Second Quarto just before the entrance of the Ghost, has +several curious points of coincidence with Montaigne's essay[41] on THE +HISTORY OF SPURINA, which discusses at great length a matter of special +interest to Shakspere--the character of Julius Caesar. In the course of +the examination Montaigne takes trouble to show that Cato's use of the +epithet "drunkard" to Caesar could not have been meant literally; that +the same Cato admitted Caesar's sobriety in the matter of drinking. It is +after making light of Caesar's faults in other matters of personal +conduct that the essayist comes to this decision: + + "But all these noble inclinations, rich gifts, worthy + qualities, were altered, smothered, and eclipsed by this + furious passion of ambition.... To conclude, this only vice + (in mine opinion) lost and overthrew in him the fairest + natural and richest ingenuity that ever was, and hath made + his memory abominable to all honest minds." + +Compare the exquisitely high-strung lines, so congruous in their excited +rapidity with Hamlet's intensity of expectation, which follow on his +notable outburst on the subject of drunkenness: + + "So oft it chances in particular men, + That for some vicious mode of nature in them, + As in their birth (wherein they are not guilty, + Since nature cannot choose its origin), + By the o'ergrowth of some complexion, + Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason; + Or by some habit that too much o'er-leavens + The form of plausive manners; that these men,-- + Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect; + Being nature's livery, or fortune's star,-- + Their virtues else (be they as pure as grace, + As infinite as man may undergo) + Shall in the general censure take corruption + From that particular fault...." + +Even the idea that "nature cannot choose its origin" is suggested by the +context in Montaigne.[42] Shakspere's estimate of Caesar, of course, +diverged from that of the essay. + + +X. I find a certain singularity of coincidence between the words of King +Claudius on kingship: + + "There's such divinity doth hedge a king, + That treason can but peep to what it would, + Acts little of his will," + +and a passage in the essay[43] OF THE INCOMMODITY OF GREATNESS: + + "To be a king, is a matter of that consequence, that only by + it he is so. That strange glimmering and eye-dazzling light, + which round about environeth, over-casteth and hideth from + us: our weak sight is thereby bleared and dissipated, as + being filled and obscured by that greater and + further-spreading brightness." + +The working out of the metaphor here gives at once to Shakspere's terms +"divinity" and "can but peep" a point not otherwise easily seen; but the +idea of a dazzling light may be really what was meant in the play; and +one is tempted to pronounce the passage a reminiscence of Montaigne. +Here, however, it has to be noted that in the First Quarto we have the +lines: + + "There's such divinity doth wall a king + That treason dares not look on." + +And if Shakspere had not seen or heard the passage in Montaigne before +the publication of Florio's folio--which, however, he may very well have +done--the theory of reminiscence here cannot stand. + + +XI. In Hamlet's soliloquy on the passage of the army of Fortinbras--one +of the many passages added in the Second Quarto--there is a strong +general resemblance to a passage in the essay OF DIVERSION.[44] Hamlet +first remarks to the Captain: + + "Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats + Will not debate the question of this straw: + This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace;" + +and afterwards soliloquises: + + "Examples gross as earth exhort me: + Witness, this army of such mass and charge, + Led by a delicate and tender prince, + Whose spirit, by divine ambition puff'd, + Makes mouths at the invisible event; + Exposing what is mortal and unsure + To all that fortune, death, and danger dare, + Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great, + Is not to stir without great argument, + But greatly to find quarrel in a straw. + When honour is at stake.... + + ....to my shame I see + The imminent death of twenty thousand men, + That for a fantasy and trick of fame, + Go to their graves like beds; fight for a plot + Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause...." + +Montaigne has the same general idea in the essay OF DIVERSION: + + "If one demand that fellow, what interest he hath in such a + siege: The interest of example (he will say) and common + obedience of the Prince: I nor look nor pretend any benefit + thereby ... I have neither passion nor quarrel in the + matter. Yet the next day you will see him all changed, and + chafing, boiling and blushing with rage, in his rank of + battle, ready for the assault. It is the glaring reflecting + of so much steel, the flashing thundering of the cannon, the + clang of trumpets, and the rattling of drums, that have + infused this new fury and rancour in his swelling veins. A + frivolous cause, will you say? How a cause? There needeth + none to excite our mind. A doting humour without body, + without substance, overswayeth it up and down." + +The thought recurs in the essay, OF CONTROLLING ONE'S WILL.[45] + + "Our greatest agitations have strange springs and ridiculous + causes. What ruin did our last Duke of Burgundy run into, + for the quarrel of a cart-load of sheep-skins?... See why + that man doth hazard both his honour and life on the fortune + of his rapier and dagger; let him tell you whence the cause + of that confusion ariseth, he cannot without blushing; so + vain and frivolous is the occasion." + +And the idea in Hamlet's lines "rightly to be great," etc., is suggested +in the essay OF REPENTING,[46] where we have: + + "The nearest way to come unto glory were to do that for + conscience which we do for glory.... The worth of the mind + consisteth not in going high, but in going orderly. Her + greatness is not exercised in greatness; in mediocrity it + is." + +In the essay OF EXPERIENCE[47] there is a sentence partially expressing +the same thought, which is cited by Mr. Feis as a reproduction: + + "The greatness of the mind is not so much to draw up, and + hale forward, as to know how to range, direct, and + circumscribe itself. It holdeth for great what is + sufficient, and sheweth her height in loving mean things + better than eminent." + +Here, certainly, as in the previous citation, the idea is not identical +with that expressed by Hamlet. But the elements he combines are there; +and again, in the essay OF SOLITARINESS[48] we have the picture of the +soldier fighting furiously for the quarrel of his careless king, with +the question: "Who doth not willingly chop and counter-change his +health, his ease, yea his life, for glory and reputation, the most +unprofitable, vain, and counterfeit coin that is in use with us." + +And yet again the thought crops up in the APOLOGY OF RAYMOND SEBONDE: + + "This horror-causing array of so many thousands of armed + men, so great fury, earnest fervour, and undaunted courage, + it would make one laugh to see on how many vain occasions it + is raised and set on fire.... The hatred of one man, a + spite, a pleasure ... causes which ought not to move two + scolding fishwives to catch one another, is the soul and + motive of all this hurly-burly." + + +XII. Yet one more of Hamlet's sayings peculiar to the revised form of +the play seems to be an echo of a thought of Montaigne's. At the outset +of the soliloquy last quoted from, Hamlet says:-- + + "What is a man + If his chief good and market of his time, + Be but to sleep and feed? A beast; no more. + Sure He that made us with such large discourse, + Looking before and after, gave us not + That capability and godlike reason + To fust in us unused." + +The bearing of the thought in the soliloquy, where Hamlet spasmodically +applies it to the stimulation of his vengeance, is certainly never given +to it by Montaigne, who has left on record[49] his small approbation of +revenge; but the thought itself is there, in the essay[50] ON GOODS AND +EVILS. + + "Shall we employ the intelligence Heaven hath bestowed upon + us for our greatest good, to our ruin, repugning nature's + design and the universal order and vicissitude of things, + which implieth that every man should use his instrument and + means for his own commodity?" + +Again, there is a passage in the essay OF THE AFFECTION OF FATHERS TO +THEIR CHILDREN,[51] where there occurs a specific coincidence of phrase, +the special use of the term "discourse," which we have already traced +from Shakspere to Montaigne; and where at the same time the contrast +between man and beast is drawn, though not to the same purpose as in the +speech of Hamlet:-- + + "Since it hath pleased God to endow us with some capacity of + discourse, that as beasts we should not servilely be + subjected to common laws, but rather with judgment and + voluntary liberty apply ourselves unto them, we ought + somewhat to yield unto the simple authority of Nature, but + not suffer her tyrannically to carry us away; only reason + ought to have the conduct of our inclinations." + +Finally we have a third parallel, with a slight coincidence of terms, in +the essay[52] OF GIVING THE LIE: + + "Nature hath endowed us with a large faculty to entertain + ourselves apart, and often calleth us unto it, to teach us + that partly we owe ourselves unto society, but in the better + part unto ourselves." + +It may be argued that these, like one or two of the other sayings above +cited as echoed by Shakspere from Montaigne, are of the nature of +general religious or ethical maxims, traceable to no one source; and if +we only found one or two such parallels, their resemblance of course +would have no evidential value, save as regards coincidence of terms. +For this very passage, for instance, there is a classic original, or at +least a familiar source, in Cicero,[53] where the commonplace of the +contrast between man and beast is drawn in terms that come in a general +way pretty close to Hamlet's. This treatise of Cicero was available to +Shakspere in several English translations;[54] and only the fact that we +find no general trace of Cicero in the play entitles us to suggest a +connection in this special case with Montaigne, of whom we do find so +many other traces. It is easy besides to push the theory of any +influence too far; and when for instance we find Hamlet saying he fares +"Of the chameleon's dish: I eat the air, promise-crammed," it would be +as idle to assume a reminiscence of a passage of Montaigne on the +chameleon[55] as it would be to derive Hamlet's phrase "A king of shreds +and patches" from Florio's rendering in the essay[56] OF THE INCONSTANCY +OF OUR ACTIONS: + + "We are all framed of flaps and patches, and of so + shapeless and diverse a contexture, that every piece and + every moment playeth his part." + +In the latter case we have a mere coincidence of idiom; in the former a +proverbial allusion.[57] An uncritical pursuit of such mere accidents of +resemblance has led Mr. Feis to such enormities as the assertion that +Shakspere's contemporaries knew Hamlet's use of his tablets to be a +parody of the "much-scribbling Montaigne," who had avowed that he made +much use of his; the assertion that Ophelia's "Come, my coach!" has +reference to Montaigne's remark that he has known ladies who would +rather lend their honour than their coach; and a dozen other +propositions, if possible still more amazing. But when, with no +foregone conclusion as to any polemic purpose on Shakspere's part, we +restrict ourselves to real parallels of thought and expression; when we +find that a certain number of these are actually textual; when we find +further that in a single soliloquy in the play there are several +reproductions of ideas in the essays, some of them frequently recurring +in Montaigne; and when finally it is found that, with only one +exception, all the passages in question have been added to the play in +the Second Quarto, after the publication of Florio's translation, it +seems hardly possible to doubt that the translation influenced the +dramatist in his work. + +Needless to say, the influence is from the very start of that high sort +in which he that takes becomes co-thinker with him that gives, +Shakspere's absorption of Montaigne being as vital as Montaigne's own +assimilation of the thought of his classics. The process is one not of +surface reflection, but of kindling by contact; and we seem to see even +the vibration of the style passing from one intelligence to the other; +the nervous and copious speech of Montaigne awakening Shakspere to a +new sense of power over rhythm and poignant phrase, at the same time +that the stimulus of the thought gives him a new confidence in the +validity of his own reflection. Some cause there must have been for this +marked species of development in the dramatist at that particular time: +and if we find pervading signs of one remarkable new influence, with no +countervailing evidence of another adequate to the effect, the inference +is about as reasonable as many which pass for valid in astronomy. For it +will be found, on the one hand, that there is no sign worth considering +of a Montaigne influence on Shakspere before HAMLET; and, on the other +hand, that the influence to some extent continues beyond that play. +Indeed, there are still further minute signs of it there, which should +be noted before we pass on. + + +XIII. Among parallelisms of thought of a less direct kind, one may be +traced between an utterance of Hamlet's and a number of Montaigne's +sayings on the power of imagination and the possible equivalence of +dream life and waking life. In his first dialogue with Rosencrantz and +Guildenstern, where we have already noted an echo of Montaigne, Hamlet +cries: + + "O God! I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a + king of infinite space; were it not that I have bad dreams;" + +and Guildenstern answers: + + "Which dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance + of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream." + +The first sentence may be compared with a number in Montaigne,[58] of +which the following[59] is a type: + + "Man clean contrary [to the Gods] possesseth goods in + imagination and evils essentially. We have had reason to + make the powers of our imagination to be of force, for all + our felicities are but in conceipt, and as it were in a + dream;" + +while the reply of Guildenstern further recalls several of the passages +already cited. + + +XIV. Another apparent parallel of no great importance, but of more +verbal closeness, is that between Hamlet's jeering phrase:[60] "Your +worm is your only emperor for diet," and a sentence in the APOLOGY: "The +heart and the life of a great and triumphant emperor are the dinner of a +little worm," which M. Stapfer compares further with the talk of Hamlet +in the grave-diggers' scene. Here, doubtless, we are near the level of +proverbial sayings, current in all countries. + + +XV. As regards HAMLET, I can find no further parallelisms so direct as +any of the foregoing, except some to be considered later, in connection +with the "To be" soliloquy. I do not think it can be made out that, as +M. Chasles affirmed, Hamlet's words on his friendship for Horatio can be +traced directly to any of Montaigne's passages on that theme. "It would +be easy," says M. Chasles, "to show in Shakspere the _branloire +perenne_[61] of Montaigne, and the whole magnificent passage on +friendship, which is found reproduced (_se trouve reporte_) in HAMLET." +The idea of the world as a perpetual mutation is certainly prevalent in +Shakspere's work; but I can find no exact correspondence of phrase +between Montaigne's pages on his love for his dead friend Etienne de la +Boetie and the lines in which Hamlet speaks of his love for Horatio. He +rather gives his reasons for his love than describes the nature and +completeness of it in Montaigne's way; and as regards the description +of Horatio, it could have been independently suggested by such a +treatise as Seneca's DE CONSTANTIA SAPIENTIS, which is a monody on the +theme with which it closes: _esse aliquem invictum, esse aliquem in quem +nihil fortuna possit_--"to be something unconquered, something against +which fortune is powerless." In the fifth section the idea is worded in +a fashion that could have suggested Shakspere's utterance of it; and he +might easily have met with some citation of the kind. But, on the other +hand, this note of passionate friendship is not only new in Shakspere +but new in HAMLET, in respect of the First Quarto, in which the main +part of the speech to Horatio does not occur, and in view of the +singular fact that in the first Act of the play as it stands Hamlet +greets Horatio as a mere acquaintance; and it is further to be noted +that the description of Horatio as "one in suffering all that suffers +nothing" is broadly suggested by the quotation from Horace in +Montaigne's nineteenth chapter (which, as we have already seen, +impressed Shakspere), and by various other sayings in the Essays. After +the quotation from Horace (_Non vultus instantis tyranni_), in the +Nineteenth Essay, Florio's translation runs: + + "She (the soul) is made mistress of her passions and + concupiscences, lady of indigence, of shame, of poverty, and + of all fortune's injuries. Let him that can, attain to this + advantage. Herein consists the true and sovereign liberty, + that affords us means wherewith to jest and make a scorn of + force and injustice, and to deride imprisonment, gyves, or + fetters." + +Again, in the essay OF THREE COMMERCES OR SOCIETIES,[62] we have this: + + "We must not cleave so fast unto our humours and + dispositions. Our chiefest sufficiency is to supply + ourselves to diverse fashions. It is a being, but not a + life, to be tied and bound by necessity to one only course. + The goodliest minds are those that have most variety and + pliableness in them.... Life is a motion unequal, irregular, + and multiform.... + + " ... My fortune having inured and allured me, even from my + infancy, to one sole, singular, and perfect amity, hath + verily in some sort distasted me from others.... So that it + is naturally a pain unto me to communicate myself by halves, + and with modification.... + + "I should commend a high-raised mind that could both bend + and discharge itself; that wherever her fortune might + transport her, she might continue constant.... I envy those + which can be familiar with the meanest of their followers, + and vouchsafe to contract friendship and frame discourse + with their own servants." + +Again, la Boetie is panegyrised by Montaigne for his rare poise and +firmness of character;[63] and elsewhere in the essays we find many +allusions to the ideal of the imperturbable man, which Montaigne has in +the above cited passages brought into connection with his ideal of +friendship. It could well be, then--though here we cannot argue the +point with confidence--that in this as in other matters the strong +general impression that Montaigne was so well fitted to make on +Shakspere's mind was the source of such a change in the conception and +exposition of Hamlet's relation to Horatio as is set up by Hamlet's +protestation of his long-standing admiration and love for his friend. +Shakspere's own relations with one or other of his noble patrons would +make him specially alive to such suggestion. + + +XVI. We now come to the suggested resemblance between the "To be or not +to be" soliloquy and the general tone of Montaigne on the subject of +death. On this resemblance I am less disposed to lay stress now than I +was on a first consideration of the subject thirteen years ago. While I +find new coincidences of detail on a more systematic search, I am less +impressed by the alleged general resemblance of tone. In point of fact, +the general drift of Hamlet's soliloquy is rather alien to the general +tone of Montaigne on the same theme. That tone, as we shall see, +harmonises much more nearly with the speech of the Duke to Claudio, on +the same theme, in MEASURE FOR MEASURE. What really seems to subsist in +the "To be" soliloquy, after a careful scrutiny, is a series of echoes +of single thoughts; but there is the difficulty that some of these occur +in the earlier form of the soliloquy in the First Quarto, a circumstance +which tends--though not necessarily[64]--to throw a shade of doubt on +the apparent echoes in the finished form of the speech. We can but weigh +the facts as impartially as may be. + +First, there is the striking coincidence of the word "consummation" +(which appears only in the Second Quarto), with Florio's translation of +_aneantissement_ in the essay OF PHYSIOGNOMY, as above noted. Secondly, +there is a curious resemblance between the phrase "take arms against a +sea of troubles" and a passage in Florio's version of the same essay, +which has somehow been overlooked in the disputes over Shakspere's line. +It runs: + + "I sometimes suffer myself by starts to be surprised with + the pinchings of these unpleasant conceits, which, whilst I + arm myself to expel or wrestle against them, assail and beat + me. Lo here another huddle or tide of mischief, that on the + neck of the former came rushing upon me." + +There arises here the difficulty that Shakspere's line had been +satisfactorily traced to AElian's[65] story of the Celtic practice of +rushing into the sea to resist a high tide with weapons; and the matter +must, I think, be left open until it can he ascertained whether the +statement concerning the Celts was available to Shakspere in any +translation or citation.[66] + +Again, the phrase "Conscience doth make cowards of us all" is very like +the echo of two passages in the essay[67] OF CONSCIENCE: "Of such +marvellous working power is the sting of conscience: which often +induceth us to bewray, to accuse, and to combat ourselves"; "which as it +doth fill us with fear and doubt, so doth it store us with assurance and +trust;" and the lines about "the dread of something after death" might +point to the passage in the Fortieth Essay, in which Montaigne cites the +saying of Augustine that "Nothing but what follows death, makes death to +be evil" (_malam mortem non facit, nisi quod sequitur mortem_) cited by +Montaigne in order to dispute it. The same thought, too, is dealt with +in the essay[68] on A CUSTOM OF THE ISLE OF CEA, which contains a +passage suggestive of Hamlet's earlier soliloquy on self-slaughter. But, +for one thing, Hamlet's soliloquies are contrary in drift to Montaigne's +argument; and, for another, the phrase "Conscience makes cowards of us +all" existed in the soliloquy as it stood in the First Quarto, while the +gist of the idea is actually found twice in a previous play, where it +has a proverbial ring.[69] And "the _hope_ of something after death" +figures in the First Quarto also. + +Finally, there are other sources than Montaigne for parts of the +soliloquy, sources nearer, too, than those which have been pointed to in +the Senecan tragedies. There is, indeed, as Dr. Cunliffe has pointed +out,[70] a broad correspondence between the whole soliloquy and the +chorus of women at the end of the second Act of the TROADES, where the +question of a life beyond is pointedly put: + + "Verum est? an timidos fabula decepit, + Umbras corporibus vivere conditis?" + +It is true that the choristers in Seneca pronounce definitely against +the future life: + + "Post mortem nihil est, ipsaque mors nihil.... + Rumores vacui verbaque inania, + Et par sollicito fabula somnio." + +But wherever in Christendom the pagan's words were discussed, the +Christian hypothesis would be pitted against his unbelief, with the +effect of making one thought overlay the other; and in this fused form +the discussion may easily have reached Shakspere's eye and ear. So it +would be with the echo of two Senecan passages noted by Mr. Munro in the +verses on "the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller +returns." In the HERCULES FURENS[71] we have: + + "Nemo ad id sero venit, unde nunquam + Quum semel venit potuit reverti;" + +and in the HERCULES OETAEUS[72] there is the same thought: + + "regnum canis inquieti + Unde non unquam remeavit ullus." + +But here, as elsewhere, Seneca himself was employing a standing +sentiment, for in the best known poem of Catullus we have: + + "Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum + Illuc, unde negant redire quemquam."[73] + +And though there was in Shakspere's day no English translation of +Catullus, the commentators long ago noted[74] that in Sandford's +translation of Cornelius Agrippa (? 1569), there occurs the phrase, "The +countrie of the dead is irremeable, that they cannot return," a fuller +parallel to the passage in the soliloquy than anything cited from the +classics. + +Finally, in Marlowe's EDWARD II.,[75] written before 1593, we have: + + "Weep not for Mortimer, + That scorns the world, and, as a traveller, + Goes to discover countries yet unknown."[76] + +So that, without going to the Latin, we have obvious English sources for +notable parts of the soliloquy. + +Thus, though Shakspere may (1) have seen part of the Florio translation, +or separate translations of some of the essays, before the issue of the +First Quarto; or may (2) easily have heard that very point discussed by +Florio, who was the friend of his friend Jonson, or by those who had +read the original; or may even (3) himself have read in the original; +and though further it seems quite certain that his "consummation +devoutly to be wished" was an echo of Florio's translation of the +Apology of Socrates; on the other hand we are not entitled to trace the +soliloquy as a whole to Montaigne's stimulation of Shakspere's thought. +That Shakspere read Montaigne in the original once seemed probable to +me, as to others; but, on closer study, I consider it unlikely, were it +only because the Montaigne influence in his work begins, as aforesaid, +in HAMLET. Of all the apparent coincidences I have noticed between +Shakspere's previous plays and the essays, none has any evidential +value. (1) The passage on the music of the spheres in the MERCHANT OF +VENICE[77] recalls the passage on the subject in Montaigne's essay of +CUSTOM;[78] but then the original source is Cicero, IN SOMNIUM +SCIPIONIS, which had been translated into English in 1577. (2) +Falstaff's rhapsody on the virtues of sherris[79] recalls a passage in +the essay OF DRUNKENNESS,[80] but then Montaigne avows that what he says +is the common doctrine of wine-drinkers. (3) Montaigne cites[81] the old +saying of Petronius, that "all the world's a stage," which occurs in AS +YOU LIKE IT; but the phrase itself, being preserved by John of +Salisbury, would be current in England. It is, indeed, said to have been +the motto of the Globe Theatre. Thus, while we are the more strongly +convinced of a Montaigne influence beginning with HAMLET, we are bound +to concede the doubtfulness of any apparent influence before the Second +Quarto. At most we may say that both of Hamlet's soliloquies which touch +on suicide evidently owe something to the discussions set up by +Montaigne's essays.[82] + + +XVII. In the case of the Duke's exhortation to Claudio in MEASURE FOR +MEASURE, on the contrary, the whole speech may be said to be a synthesis +of favourite propositions of Montaigne. The thought in itself, of +course, is not new or out-of-the-way; it is nearly all to be found +suggested in the Latin classics; but in the light of what is certain for +us as to Shakspere's study of Montaigne, and of the whole cast of the +expression, it is difficult to doubt that Montaigne is for Shakspere the +source. Let us take a number of passages from Florio's translation of +the Nineteenth Essay, to begin with: + + "The end of our career is death: it is the necessary object + of our aim; if it affright us, how is it possible we should + step one foot further without an ague?" + + "What hath an aged man left him of his youth's vigour, and + of his fore past life?... When youth fails in us, we feel, + nay we perceive, no shaking or transchange at all in + ourselves: which is essence and verity is a harder death + than that of a languishing and irksome life, or that of age. + Forasmuch as the leap from an ill being into a not being is + not so dangerous or steepy as it is from a delightful and + flourishing being into a painful and sorrowful condition. A + weak bending and faint stopping body hath less strength to + bear and undergo a heavy burden: So hath our soul." + + "Our religion hath no surer human foundation than the + contempt of life. Discourse of reason doth not only call and + summon us unto it. For why should we fear to lose a thing, + which being lost, cannot be moaned? But also, since we are + threatened by so many kinds of death, there is no more + inconvenience to fear them all than to endure one: what + matter it when it cometh, since it is unavoidable?... Death + is a part of yourselves; you fly from yourselves. The being + you enjoy is equally shared between life and death ... The + continual work of your life is to contrive death; you are in + death during the time you continue in life ... during life + you are still dying." + +The same line of expostulation occurs in other essays. In the Fortieth +we have: + + "Now death, which some of all horrible things call the most + horrible, who knows not how others call it the only haven of + this life's torments? the sovereign good of nature? the only + stay of our liberty? and the ready and common receipt of our + evils?... + + " ... Death is but felt by discourse, because it is the + emotion of an instant. A thousand beasts, a thousand men, + are sooner dead than threatened." + +Then take a passage occurring near the end of the APOLOGY OF RAYMOND +SEBONDE: + + "We do foolishly fear a kind of death, whereas we have + already passed and daily pass so many others.... The flower + of age dieth, fadeth, and fleeteth, when age comes upon us, + and youth endeth in the flower of a full-grown man's age, + childhood in youth, and the first age dieth in infancy; and + yesterday endeth in this day, and to-day shall die in + to-morrow." + +Now compare textually the Duke's speech: + + "Be absolute for death: either death or life + Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life:-- + If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing + That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art, + (Servile to all the skiey influences) + That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st, + Hourly afflict: merely, thou are death's fool; + For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun, + And yet run'st towards him still: Thou art not noble; + For all the accommodations that thou bear'st + Are nursed by baseness: Thou art by no means valiant, + For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork + Of a poor worm: Thy best of rest is sleep, + And that thou oft provok'st; yet grossly fear'st + Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself; + For thou exist'st on many thousand grains + Which issue out of dust: Happy thou art not; + For what thou hast not, still thou striv'st to get, + And what thou hast forget'st: Thou art not certain, + For thy complexion shifts to strange effects, + After the moon: If thou art rich, thou art poor; + For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows, + Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey, + And death unloads thee: Friend hast thou none; + For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire, + Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum, + For ending thee no sooner: Thou hast no youth nor age, + But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep, + Dreaming on both: for all thy blessed youth + Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms + Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich, + Thou hast neither heat, affection, limbs, nor beauty, + To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in this, + That bears the name of life? Yet in this life + Lie hid more thousand deaths: yet death we fear, + That makes these odds all even."[83] + +Then collate yet further some more passages from the Essays: + + "They perceived her (the soul) to be capable of diverse + passions, and agitated by many languishing and painful + motions ... subject to her infirmities, diseases, and + offences, even as the stomach or the foot ... dazzled and + troubled by the force of wine; removed from her seat by the + vapours of a burning fever.... She was seen to dismay and + confound all her faculties by the only biting of a sick dog, + and to contain no great constancy of discourse, no virtue, + no philosophical resolution, no contention of her forces, + that might exempt her from the subjection of these + accidents...."[84] + + "It is not without reason we are taught to take notice of + our sleep, for the resemblance it hath with death. How + easily we pass from waking to sleeping; with how little + interest we lose the knowledge of light, and of + ourselves...."[85] + + "Wherefore as we from that instant take a title of being, + which is but a twinkling in the infinite course of an + eternal night, and so short an interruption of our perpetual + and natural condition, death possessing whatever is before + and behind this moment, and also a good part of this moment, + "[86] + + "Every human nature is ever in the middle between being born + and dying, giving nothing of itself but an obscure + appearance and shadow, and an uncertain and weak + opinion."[87] + +Compare finally the line "Thy best of rest is sleep" (where the word +rest seems a printer's error) with the passage "We find nothing so sweet +in life as a quiet and gentle sleep," already cited in connection with +our fourth parallel. + + +XVIII. The theme, in fine, is one of Montaigne's favourites. And the +view that Shakspere had been impressed by it seems to be decisively +corroborated by the fact that the speech of Claudio to Isabella, +expressing those fears of death which the Duke seeks to calm, is +likewise an echo of a whole series of passages in Montaigne. Shakspere's +lines run: + + "Ay, but to die, and go we know not where, + To lie in cold obstruction and to rot: + This sensible warm motion to become + A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit + To bathe in fiery floods or to reside + In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice, + To be imprisoned in the viewless winds, + And blown with restless violence round about + The pendent world; or to be worse than worst + Of those, that lawless and incertain thoughts + Imagine howling!--'tis too horrible!..." + +So far as I know, the only idea in this passage which belongs to the +current English superstition of Shakspere's day, apart from the natural +notion of death as a mere rotting of the body, is that of the +purgatorial fire; unless we assume that the common superstition as to +the souls of unbaptised children being blown about until the day of +judgment was extended in the popular imagination to the case of executed +criminals. He may have heard of the account given by Empedocles, as +cited in Plutarch,[88] of the punishment of the offending daemons, who +were whirled between earth and air and sun and sea; but there is no +suggestion in that passage that human souls were so treated. Dante's +INFERNO, with its pictures of carnal sinners tossed about by the winds +in the dark air of the second circle,[89] and of traitors punished by +freezing in the ninth,[90] was probably not known to the dramatist; nor +does Dante's vision coincide with Claudio's, in which the souls are +blown "about the pendent world." Shakspere may indeed have heard some of +the old tales of a hot and cold purgatory, such as that of Drithelm, +given by Bede,[91] whence (rather than from Dante) Milton drew his idea +of an alternate torture.[92] But there again, the correspondence is only +partial; whereas in Montaigne's APOLOGY OF RAIMOND SEBONDE we find, +poetry apart, nearly every notion that enters into Claudio's speech: + + "The most universal and received fantasy, and which + endureth to this day, hath been that whereof Pythagoras is + made author ... which is that souls at their departure from + us did but pass and roll from one to another body, from a + lion to a horse, from a horse to a king, incessantly + wandering up and down, from house to mansion.... Some added + more, that the same souls do sometimes ascend up to heaven, + and come down again.... Origen waked them eternally, to go + and come from a good to a bad estate. The opinion that Varro + reporteth is, that in the revolutions of four hundred and + forty years they reconjoin themselves unto their first + bodies.... Behold her (the soul's) progress elsewhere: He + that hath lived well reconjoineth himself unto that star or + planet to which he is assigned; who evil, passeth into a + woman. And if then he amend not himself, he transchangeth + himself into a beast, of condition agreeing to his vicious + customs, and shall never see an end of his punishments until + ... by virtue of reason he have deprived himself of those + gross, stupid, and elementary qualities that were in him.... + They (the Epicureans) demand, what order there should be if + the throng of the dying should be greater than that of such + as be born ... and demand besides, what they should pass + their time about, whilst they should stay, until any other + mansion were made ready for them.... Others have staved the + soul in the deceased bodies, wherewith to animate serpents, + worms, and other beasts, which are said to engender from the + corruption of our members, yea, and from our ashes.... + Others make it immortal without any science or knowledge. + Nay, there are some of ours who have deemed that of + condemned men's souls devils were made...."[93] + +It is at a short distance from this passage that we find the suggestion +of a frozen purgatory: + + "Amongst them (barbarous nations) was also found the belief + of purgatory, but after a new form, for what we ascribe unto + fire they impute unto cold, and imagine that souls are both + purged and punished by the vigor of an extreme + coldness."[94] + +And over and above this peculiar correspondence between the Essays and +the two speeches on death, we may note how some of the lines of the Duke +in the opening scene connect with two of the passages above cited in +connection with Hamlet's last soliloquy, expressing the idea that nature +or deity confers gifts in order that they should be used. The Duke's +lines are among Shakspere's best: + + "Thyself and thy belongings + Are not thine own so proper as to waste + Thyself upon thy virtues, them on thee. + Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, + Not light them for themselves: for if our virtues + Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike + As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touched + But to fine issues: nor nature never lends + The smallest scruple of her excellence, + But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines + Herself the glory of a creditor, + Both thanks and use...." + +Here we have once more a characteristically Shaksperean transmutation +and development of the idea rather than a reproduction; and the same +appears when we compare the admirable lines of the poet with a homiletic +sentence from the APOLOGY OF RAYMOND SEBONDE:-- + + "It is not enough for us to serve God in spirit and soul; we + owe him besides and we yield unto him a corporal + worshipping: we apply our limbs, our motions, and all + external things to honour him." + +But granting the philosophic as well as the poetic heightening, we are +still led to infer a stimulation of the poet's thought by the Essays--a +stimulation not limited to one play, but affecting other plays written +about the same time. Another point of connection between HAMLET and +MEASURE FOR MEASURE is seen when we compare the above passage, "Spirits +are not finely touched but to fine issues," with Laertes' lines[95]: + + "Nature is fine in love, and when 'tis fine + It sends some precious instance of itself + After the thing it loves." + +And though such data are of course not conclusive as to the time of +composition of the plays, there is so much of identity between the +thought in the Duke's speech, just quoted, and a notable passage in +TROILUS AND CRESSIDA, as to strengthen greatly the surmise that the +latter play was also written, or rather worked-over, by Shakspere about +1604. The phrase: + + "if our virtues + Did not go forth of us, 'twere all the same + As if we had them not," + +is developed in the speech of Ulysses to Achilles[96]: + + "A strange fellow here + Writes me that man--how dearly ever parted + How much in having, or without, or in-- + Cannot make boast to have that which he hath, + Nor feels not what he knows, but by reflection; + As when his virtues shining upon others + Heat them, and they retort their heat again + To the first giver." + +I do not remember in Montaigne any such development of the idea as +Shakspere here gives it; indeed, we have seen him putting forth a +contrary teaching; and looking to the context, where Ulysses admits the +thesis to be "familiar," we are bound to infer a direct source for it. +In all probability it derives from Seneca, who in his treatise DE +BENEFICIIS[97] throws out the germ of the ideas as to Nature demanding +back her gifts, and as to virtue being nothing if not reflected; and +even suggests the principle of "thanks and use."[98] This treatise, too, +lay to Shakspere's hand in the translation of 1578, where the passages: +"Rerum natura nihil dicitur perdere, quia quidquid illi avellitur, ad +illam redit; nec perire quidquam potest, quod quo excidat non habet, sed +eodem evolvitur unde discedit"; and "quaedam quum sint honesta, +pulcherrima summae virtutis, nisi cum altero non habent locum," are +translated: + + "The nature of a thing cannot be said to have foregone + aught, because that whatsoever is plucked from it returneth + to it again; neither can anything be lost which hath not + whereout of to pass, but windeth back again unto whence it + came;" + +and + + "Some things though they be honest, very goodly and right + excellently vertuous, yet have they not their effect but in + a co-partner." + +Whether it was Shakspere's reading of Montaigne that sent him to Seneca, +to whom Montaigne[99] avows so much indebtedness, we of course cannot +tell; but it is enough for the purpose of our argument to say that we +have here another point or stage in a line of analytical thought on +which Shakspere was embarked about 1603, and of which the starting point +or initial stimulus was the perusal of Florio's Montaigne. We have the +point of contact with Montaigne in HAMLET, where the saying that reason +is implanted in us to be used, is seen to be one of the many +correspondences of thought between the play and the Essays. The idea is +more subtly and deeply developed in MEASURE FOR MEASURE, and still more +subtly and philosophically in TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. The fact of the +process of development is all that is here affirmed, over and above the +actual phenomena of reproduction before set forth. + +As to these, the proposition is that in sum they constitute such an +amount of reproduction of Montaigne as explains Jonson's phrase about +habitual "stealings." There is no justification for applying that to the +passage in the TEMPEST, since not only is that play not known to have +existed in its present form in 1605,[100] when VOLPONE was produced, but +the phrase plainly alleges not one but many borrowings. I am not aware +that extracts from Montaigne have been traced in any others of the +English contemporary dramatists. But here in two plays of Shakspere, +then fresh in memory--the Second Quarto having been published in 1604 +and MEASURE FOR MEASURE produced in the same year--were echoes enough +from Montaigne to be noted by Jonson, whom we know to have owned, as did +Shakspere, the Florio folio, and to have been Florio's warm admirer. And +there seems to be a confirmation of our thesis in the fact that, while +we find detached passages savouring of Montaigne in some later plays of +the same period, as in one of the concluding period, the TEMPEST, we do +not again find in any one play such a cluster of reminiscences as we +have seen in HAMLET and MEASURE FOR MEASURE, though the spirit +of Montaigne's thought, turned to a deepening pessimism, may be said to +tinge all the later tragedies. + +(a) In OTHELLO (? 1604) we have Iago's "'tis in ourselves that we are +thus or thus," already considered, to say nothing of Othello's phrase-- + + "I saw it not, thought it not, it harmed not me.... + He that is robb'd, not wanting what is stolen, + Let him not know it, and he's not robb'd at all." + +--a philosophical commonplace which compares with various passages in +the Fortieth Essay. + +(b) In LEAR (1606) we have such a touch as the king's lines[101]-- + + "And take upon's the mystery of things + As if we were God's spies;" + +--which recalls the vigorous protest of the essays, THAT A MAN OUGHT +SOBERLY TO MEDDLE WITH THE JUDGING OF THE DIVINE LAWS,[102] where +Montaigne avows that if he dared he would put in the category of +imposters the + + "interpreters and ordinary controllers of the designs of + God, setting about to find the causes of each accident, and + to see in the secrets of the divine will the + incomprehensible motives of its works." + +This, again, is a recurrent note with Montaigne; and much of the +argument of the APOLOGY is typified in the sentence:-- + + "What greater vanity can there be than to go about by our + proportions and conjectures to guess at God?" + +(c) But there is a yet more striking coincidence between a passage in +the essay[103] of JUDGING OF OTHERS' DEATH and the speech of Edmund[104] +on the subject of stellar influences. In the essay Montaigne sharply +derides the habit of ascribing human occurrences to the interference of +the stars--which very superstition he was later to support by his own +authority in the APOLOGY, as we have seen above, in the passage on the +"power and domination" of the celestial bodies. The passage in the +thirteenth essay is the more notable in itself, being likewise a protest +against human self-sufficiency, though the bearing of the illustration +is directly reversed. Here he derides man's conceit: "We entertain and +carry all with us: whence it followeth that we deem our death to be some +great matter, and which passeth not so easily, nor without a solemn +consultation of the stars." Then follow references to Caesar's sayings as +to his star, and the "common foppery" as to the sun mourning his death a +year. + + "And a thousand such, wherewith the world suffers itself to + be so easily cony-catched, deeming that our own interests + disturb heaven, and his infinity is moved at our least + actions. 'There is no such society between heaven and us + that by our destiny the shining of the stars should be as + mortal as we are.'" + +There seems to be an unmistakable reminiscence of this passage in +Edmund's speech, where the word "foppery" is a special clue: + + "This is the excellent foppery of the world! that when we + are sick in fortune (often the surfeit of our own + behaviour), we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the + moon, and the stars: as if we were villains by necessity; + fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and traitors + by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers + by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all + that we are evil in, by divine thrusting on...." + +(d) Again, in MACBETH (1606), the words of Malcolm to Macduff[105]: + + "Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak, + Whispers the o'erfraught heart and bids it break" + +--an idea which also underlies Macbeth's "this perilous stuff, which +weighs upon the heart"--recalls the essay[106] OF SADNESS, in which +Montaigne remarks on the + + "mournful silent stupidity which so doth pierce us when + accidents surpassing our strength overwhelm us," and on the + way in which "the soul, bursting afterwards forth into tears + and complaints ... seemeth to clear and dilate itself"; + going on to tell how the German Lord Raisciac looked on his + dead son "till the vehemency of his sad sorrow, having + suppressed and choked his vital spirits, felled him stark + dead to the ground." + +The parallel here, such as it is, is at least much more vivid than that +drawn between Shakspere's lines and one of Seneca: + + Curae leves loquuntur: ingentes stupent[107]--"Light + troubles speak: the great ones are dumb." + +Certainly no one of these latter passages would singly suffice to prove +that Shakspere had read Montaigne, though the peculiar coincidence of +one word in Edgar's speech with a word in Florio, above noted, would +alone raise the question. But even had Shakspere not passed, as we shall +see cause to acknowledge, beyond the most melancholy mood of Montaigne +into one of far sterner and more stringent pessimism, an absence or +infrequency of suggestions of Montaigne in the plays between 1605 and +1610 would be a very natural result of Jonson's gibe in VOLPONE. That +gibe, indeed, is not really so ill-natured as the term "steal" is apt to +make it sound for our ears, especially if we are prepossessed--as even +Mr. Fleay still seems to be--by the old commentators' notion of a deep +ill-will on Jonson's part towards Shakspere. There was probably no such +ill-will in the matter, the burly scholar's habit of robust banter being +enough to account for the form of his remark. As a matter of fact, his +own plays are strewn with classic transcriptions; and though he +evidently plumed himself on his power of "invention"[108] in the matter +of plots--a faculty which he knew Shakspere to lack--he cannot +conceivably have meant to charge his rival with having committed any +discreditable plagiarism in drawing upon Montaigne. At most he would +mean to convey that borrowing from the English translation of Montaigne +was an easy game as compared with his own scholar-like practice of +translating from the Greek and Latin, and from out-of-the-way authors, +too. + +However that might be, the fact stands that Shakspere did about 1604 +reproduce Montaigne as we have seen; and it remains to consider what the +reproduction signifies, as regards Shakspere's mental development. + + + + +III. + + +But first there has to be asked the question whether the Montaigne +influence is unique or exceptional. Of the many literary influences +which an Elizabethan dramatist might undergo, was Montaigne's the only +one which wrought deeply upon Shakspere's spirit, apart from those of +his contemporary dramatists and the pre-existing plays, which were then +models and points of departure? It is clear that Shakspere must have +thought much and critically of the methods and the utterance of his +co-rivals in literary art, as he did of the methods of his +fellow-actors. The author of the advice to the players in HAMLET was +hardly less a critic than a poet; and the sonnet[109] which speaks of +its author as + + "Desiring this man's art and that man's scope," + +is one of the least uncertain revelations that these enigmatic poems +yield us. We may confidently decide, too, with Professor Minto,[110] +that the Eighty-sixth Sonnet, beginning: + + "Was it the full, proud sail of his great verse?" + +has reference to Chapman, in whom Shakspere might well see one of his +most formidable competitors in poetry. But we are here concerned with +influences of thought, as distinct from influences of artistic example; +and the question is: Do the plays show any other culture-contact +comparable to that which we have been led to recognise in the case of +Montaigne's Essays? + +The matter cannot be said to have been very fully investigated when even +the Montaigne influence has been thus far left so much in the vague. As +regards the plots, there has been exhaustive and instructive research +during two centuries; and of collations of parallel passages, apart from +Montaigne, there has been no lack; but the deeper problem of the +dramatist's mental history can hardly be said to have arisen till our +own generation. As regards many of the parallel passages, the ground +has been pretty well cleared by the dispassionate scholarship brought to +bear on them from Farmer onwards; though the idolatry of the Coleridgean +school, as represented by Knight, did much to retard scientific +conclusions on this as on other points. + +Farmer's Essay on the Learning of Shakspere (1767) proved for all +open-minded readers that much of Shakspere's supposed classical +knowledge was derived from translations alone;[111] and further +investigation does but establish his general view.[112] Such is the +effect of M. Stapfer's chapter on Shakspere's Classical Knowledge;[113] +and the pervading argument of that chapter will be found to hold good as +against the view suggested, with judicious diffidence, by Dr. John W. +Cunliffe, concerning the influence of Seneca's tragedies on Shakspere's. +Unquestionably the body of Senecan tragedy, as Dr. Cunliffe's valuable +research has shown, did much to colour the style and thought of the +Elizabethan drama, as well as to suggest its themes and shape its +technique. But it is noteworthy that while there are in the plays, as we +have seen, apparent echoes from the Senecan treatises, and while, as we +have seen, Dr. Cunliffe suggests sources for some Shaksperean passages +in the Senecan tragedies, he is doubtful as to whether they represent +any direct study of Seneca by Shakspere. + + "Whether Shakspere was directly indebted to Seneca," he + writes, "is a question as difficult as it is interesting. As + English tragedy advances, there grows up an accumulation of + Senecan influence within the English drama, in addition to + the original source, and it becomes increasingly difficult + to distinguish between the direct and the indirect influence + of Seneca. In no case is the difficulty greater than in that + of Shakspere. Of Marlowe, Jonson, Chapman, Marston, and + Massinger, we can say with certainty that they read Seneca, + and reproduced their readings in their tragedies; of + Middleton and Heywood we can say with almost equal certainty + that they give no sign of direct indebtedness to Seneca; and + that they probably came only under the indirect influence, + through the imitations of their predecessors and + contemporaries. In the case of Shakspere we cannot be + absolutely certain either way. Professor Baynes thinks it is + probable that Shakspere read Seneca at school; and even if + he did not, we may be sure that, at some period of his + career, he would turn to the generally accepted model of + classical tragedy, either in the original or in the + translation."[114] + +This seems partially inconsistent; and, so far as the evidence from +particular parallels goes, we are not led to take with any confidence +the view put in the last sentence. The above-noted parallels between +Seneca's tragedies and Shakspere's are but cases of citation of +sentences likely to have grown proverbial; and the most notable of the +others that have been cited by Dr. Cunliffe is one which, as he notes, +points to AEschylus as well as to Seneca. The cry of Macbeth: + + "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood + Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather + The multitudinous seas incarnadine, + Making the green one red:" + +certainly corresponds closely with that of Seneca's Hercules:[115] + + "Quis Tanais, aut quis Nilus, aut quis persica + Violentus unda Tigris, aut Rhenus ferox + Tagusve ibera turbidus gaza fluens, + Abluere dextram poterit? Arctoum licet + Maeotis in me gelida transfundat mare, + Et tota Tethys per meas currat manus, + Haerebit altum facinus" + +and that of Seneca's Hippolytus:[116] + + "Quis eluet me Tanais? Aut quae barbaris, + Maeotis undis pontico incumbens mari. + Non ipso toto magnus Oceano pater + Tantum expiarit sceleris." + +But these declamations, deriving as they do, to begin with, from +AEschylus,[117] are seen from their very recurrence in Seneca to have +become stock speeches for the ancient tragic drama; and they were +clearly well-fitted to become so for the mediaeval. The phrases used were +already classic when Catullus employed them before Seneca: + + "Suscipit, O Gelli, quantum non ultima Thetys + Non genitor Nympharum, abluit Oceanus."[118] + +In the Renaissance we find the theme reproduced by Tasso;[119] and it +had doubtless been freely used by Shakspere's English predecessors and +contemporaries. What he did was but to set the familiar theme to a +rhetoric whose superb sonority must have left theirs tame, as it leaves +Seneca's stilted in comparison. Marston did his best with it, in a play +which may have been written before, though published after, +MACBETH[120]:-- + + "Although the waves of all the Northern sea + Should flow for ever through those guilty hands, + Yet the sanguinolent stain would extant be" + +--a sad foil to Shakspere's + + "The multitudinous seas incarnadine." + +It is very clear, then, that we are not here entitled to suppose +Shakspere a reader of the Senecan tragedies; and even were it otherwise, +the passage in question is a figure of speech rather than a reflection +on life or a stimulus to such reflection. And the same holds good of the +other interesting but inconclusive parallels drawn by Dr. Cunliffe. +Shakspere's + + "Diseases desperate grown + By desperate appliance are relieved, + Or not at all,"[121] + +which he compares with Seneca's + + "Et ferrum et ignis saepe medicinae loco est. + Extrema primo nemo tentavit loco,"[122] + +--a passage that may very well be the original +for the modern oracle about fire and iron--is +really much closer to the aphorism of Hippocrates, +that "Extreme remedies are proper for +extreme diseases," and cannot be said to be +more than a proverb. In any case, it lay to +Shakspere's hand in Montaigne,[123] as translated +by Florio: + + "To extreme sicknesses, extreme remedies." + +Equally inconclusive is the equally close parallel between Macbeth's + + "Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?" + +and the sentence of Hercules: + + "Nemo polluto queat + Animo mederi."[124] + +Such a reflection was sure to secure a proverbial vogue, and in THE TWO +NOBLE KINSMEN (in which Shakspere indeed seems to have had a hand), we +have the doctor protesting: "I think she has a perturbed mind, which I +cannot minister to."[125] + +And so, again, with the notable resemblance between Hercules' cry: + + "Cur animam in ista luce detineam amplius, + Morerque, nihil est. Cuncta jam amisi bona, + Mentem, arma, famem, conjugam, natos, manus, + Etiam furorem."[126] + +and Macbeth's: + + "I have lived long enough: my way of life + Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf; + And that which should accompany old age, + As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, + I must not look to have."[127] + +Here there is indeed every appearance of imitation; but, though the +versification in Macbeth's speech is certainly Shakspere's, such a +lament had doubtless been made in other English plays, in direct +reproduction of Seneca; and Shakspere, in all probability, was again +only perfecting some previous declamation. + +There is a quite proverbial quality, finally, in such phrases as: + + "Things at the worst will cease, or else climb upward + To that they were before;"[128] + +and + + "We but teach + Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return + To plague the inventor."[129] + +--which might be traced to other sources nearer Shakspere's hand than +Seneca. And beyond such sentences and such tropes as those above +considered, there was really little or nothing in the tragedies of +Seneca to catch Shakspere's eye or ear; nothing to generate in him a +deep philosophy of life or to move him to the manifold play of +reflection which gives his later tragedies their commanding +intellectuality. Some such stimulus, as we have seen, he might indeed +have drawn from one or two of Seneca's treatises, which do, in their +desperately industrious manner, cover a good deal of intellectual +ground, making some tolerable discoveries by the way. But by the tests +alike of quantity and quality of reproduced matter, it is clear that the +indirect influence of the Senecan tragedies and treatises on Shakspere +was slight compared with the direct influence of Montaigne's essays. Nor +is it hard to see why; even supposing Shakspere to have had Seneca at +hand in translation. Despite Montaigne's own leaning to Seneca, as +compared with Cicero, we may often say of the former what Montaigne +says of the latter, that "his manner of writing seemeth very tedious." +Over the DE BENEFICIIS and the DE IRA one is sometimes moved to say, as +the essayist does[130] over Cicero, "I understand sufficiently what +death and voluptuousness are; let not a man busy himself to anatomise +them." For the swift and penetrating flash of Montaigne, which either +goes to the heart of a matter once for all or opens up a far vista of +feeling and speculation, leaving us newly related to our environment and +even to our experience, Seneca can but give us a conscientious +examination of the ground, foot by foot, with a policeman's lantern, +leaving us consciously footsore, eyesore, and ready for bed. Under no +stress of satisfaction from his best finds can we be moved to call him a +man of genius, which is just what we call Montaigne after a few pages. +It is the broad difference between industry and inspiration, between +fecundity and pregnancy, between Jonson and Shakspere. And, though a man +of genius is not necessarily dependent on other men of genius for +stimulus, we shall on scrutiny find reason to believe that in +Shakspere's case the nature of the stimulus counted for a great deal. + +Even before that is made clear, however, there can be little hesitation +about dismissing the only other outstanding theory of a special +intellectual influence undergone by Shakspere--the theory of Dr. Benno +Tschischwitz, that he read and was impressed by the Italian writings of +Giordano Bruno. In this case, the bases of the hypothesis are of the +scantiest and the flimsiest. Bruno was in England from 1583 to 1586, +before Shakspere came to London. Among his patrons were Sidney and +Leicester, but neither Southampton nor Pembroke. In all his writings +only one passage can be cited which even faintly suggests a coincidence +with any in Shakspere; and in that the suggestion is faint indeed. In +Bruno's ill-famed comedy IL CANDELAJO, Octavio asks the pedant Manfurio, +"Che e la materia di vostri versi," and the pedant replies, "Litterae, +syllabae, dictio et oratio, partes propinquae et remotae," on which Octavio +again asks: "Io dico, quale e il suggetto et il proposito."[131] So far +as it goes this is something of a parallel to Polonius's question to +Hamlet as to what he reads, and Hamlet's answer, "Words, words." But the +scene is obviously a stock situation; and if there are any passages in +HAMLET which clearly belong to the pre-Shaksperean play, the fooling of +Hamlet with Polonius is one of them. And beyond this, Dr. Tschischwitz's +parallels are flatly unconvincing, or rather they promptly put +themselves out of court. He admits that nothing else in Bruno's comedy +recalls anything else in Shakspere;[132] but he goes on to find +analogies between other passages in HAMLET and some of Bruno's +philosophic doctrines. Quoting Bruno's theorem that all things are made +up of indestructible atoms, and that death is but a transformation, Dr. +Tschischwitz cites as a reproduction of it Hamlet's soliloquy: + + "O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt!" + +It is difficult to be serious over such a contention; and it is quite +impossible for anybody out of Germany or the Bacon-Shakspere party to +be as serious over it as Dr. Tschischwitz, who finds that Hamlet's +figure of the melting of flesh into dew is an illustration of Bruno's +"atomic system," and goes on to find a further Brunonian significance in +Hamlet's jeering answers to the king's demand for the body of Polonius. +Of these passages he finds the source or suggestion in one which he +translates from Bruno's CENA DE LE CENERI:-- + + "For to this matter, of which our planet is formed, death + and dissolution do not come; and the annihilation of all + nature is not possible; but it attains from time to time, by + a fixed law, to renew itself and to change all its parts, + rearranging and recombining them; all this necessarily + taking place in a determinate series, under which everything + assumes the place of another."[133] + +In the judgment of Dr. Tschischwitz, this theorem, which anticipates so +remarkably the modern scientific conception of the universe, +"elucidates" Hamlet's talk about worms and bodies, and his further +sketch of the progress of Alexander's dust to the plugging of a +beer-barrel. It seems unnecessary to argue that all this is the idlest +supererogation. The passages cited from HAMLET, all of them found in the +First Quarto, might have been drafted by a much lesser man than +Shakspere, and that without ever having heard of Bruno or the theory of +the indestructibility of matter. There is nothing in the case +approaching to a reproduction of Bruno's far-reaching thought; while on +the contrary the "leave not a wrack behind," in the TEMPEST, is an +expression which sets aside, as if it were unknown, the conception of an +endless transmutation of matter, in a context where the thought would +naturally suggest itself to one who had met with it. Where Hamlet is +merely sardonic in the plane of popular or at least exoteric humour, Dr. +Tschischwitz credits him with pantheistic philosophy. Where, on the +other hand, Hamlet speaks feelingly and ethically of the serious side of +drunkenness,[134] Dr. Tschischwitz parallels the speech with a sentence +in the BESTIA TRIONFANTE, which gives a merely Rabelaisian picture of +drunken practices.[135] Yet again, he puts Bruno's large aphorism, "Sol +et homo generant hominem," beside Hamlet's gibe about the sun breeding +maggots in a dead dog--a phrase possible to any euphuist of the period. +That the parallels amount at best to little, Dr. Tschischwitz himself +indirectly admits, though he proceeds to a new extravagance of +affirmation: + + "We do not maintain that such expressions are philosophemes, + or that Shakspere otherwise went any deeper into Bruno's + system than suited his purpose, but that such passages show + Shakspere, at the time of his writing of HAMLET, to have + already reached the heights of the thought of the age + (Zeitbewusstsein), and to have made himself familiar with + the most abstract of the sciences. Many hitherto almost + unintelligible passages in HAMLET are now cleared up by the + poet's acquaintance with the atomic philosophy and the + writings of the Nolan." + +All this belongs to the uncritical method of the German +Shakspere-criticism of the days before Ruemelin. It is quite possible +that Shakspere may have heard something of Bruno's theories from his +friends; and we may be sure that much of Bruno's teaching would have +profoundly interested him. If Bruno's lectures at Oxford on the +immortality of the soul included the matter he published later on the +subject, they may have called English attention to the Pythagorean lore +concerning the fate of the soul after death,[136] above cited from +Montaigne. We might again, on Dr. Tschischwitz's lines, trace the +verses on the "shaping fantasies" of "the lunatic, the lover, and the +poet," in the MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM,[137] to such a passage in Bruno +as this:-- + + "The first and most capital painter is the vivacity of the + phantasy; the first and most capital poet is the inspiration + that originally arises with the impulse of deep thought, or + is set up by that, through the divine or akin-to-divine + breath of which they feel themselves moved to the fit + expression of their thoughts. For each it creates the other + principle. Therefore are the philosophers in a certain sense + painters; the poets, painters and philosophers; the + painters, philosophers and poets: true poets, painters, and + philosophers love and reciprocally admire each other. There + is no philosopher who does not poetise and paint. Therefore + is it said, not without reason: To understand is to perceive + the figures of phantasy, and understanding is phantasy, or + is nothing without it."[138] + +But since Shakspere does not recognisably echo a passage which he would +have been extremely likely to produce in such a context, had he known +it, we are bound to decide that he had not even heard it cited, much +less read it. And so with any other remote resemblances between his +work and that of any author whom he may have read. In regard even to +passages in Shakspere which come much nearer their originals than any of +these above cited come to Bruno, we are forced to decide that Shakspere +got his thought at second or third hand. Thus the famous passage in +HENRY V.,[139] in which the Archbishop figures the State as a divinely +framed harmony of differing functions, is clearly traceable to Plato's +REPUBLIC and Cicero's DE REPUBLICA; yet rational criticism must decide +with M. Stapfer[140] that Shakspere knew neither of these treatises, but +got his suggestion from some English translation or citation. + +In fine, we are constrained by all our knowledge concerning Shakspere, +as well as by the abstract principles of proof, to regard him in general +as a reader of his own language only, albeit not without a smattering of +others; and among the books in his own language which we know him to +have read in, and can prove him to have been influenced by, we come back +to Montaigne's Essays, as by far the most important and the most +potential for suggestion and provocation. + + + + +IV. + + +To have any clear idea, however, of what Montaigne did or could do for +Shakspere, we must revise our conception of the poet in the light of the +positive facts of his life and circumstances--a thing made difficult for +us in England through the transcendental direction given to our +Shakspere lore by those who first shaped it sympathetically, to wit, +Coleridge and the Germans. An adoring idea of Shakspere, as a mind of +unapproachable superiority, has thus become so habitual with most of us +that it is difficult to reduce our notion to terms of normal +individuality, of character and mind as we know them in life. When we +read Coleridge, Schlegel, and Gervinus, or even the admirable essay of +Charles Lamb, or the eloquent appreciations of Mr. Swinburne, or such +eulogists as Hazlitt and Knight, we are in a world of abstract aesthetics +or of abstract ethics; we are not within sight of the man Shakspere, who +became an actor for a livelihood in an age when the best actors played +in inn-yards for rude audiences, mostly illiterate and not a little +brutal; then added to his craft of acting the craft of play-patching and +refashioning; who had his partnership share of the pence and sixpences +paid by the mob of noisy London prentices and journeymen and idlers that +filled the booth theatre in which his company performed; who sued his +debtors rigorously when they did not settle-up; worked up old plays or +took a hand in new, according as the needs of his concern and his +fellow-actors dictated; and finally went with his carefully collected +fortune to spend his last years in ease and quiet in the country town in +which he was born. Our sympathetic critics, even when, like Dr. +Furnivall, they know absolutely all the archaeological facts as to +theatrical life in Shakspere's time, do not seem to bring those facts +into vital touch with their aesthetic estimate of his product; they +remain under the spell of Coleridge and Gervinus.[141] Emerson, it is +true, protested at the close of his essay that he "could not marry this +fact," of Shakspere's being a jovial actor and manager, "to his verse;" +but that deliverance has served only as a text for those who have +embraced the fantastic tenet that Shakspere was but the theatrical +agent and representative of Bacon; a delusion of which the vogue may be +partly traced to the lack of psychological solidity in the ordinary +presentment of Shakspere by his admirers. The heresy, of course, merely +leaps over the difficulty, into absolute irrelevance. Emerson was +intellectually to blame in that, seeing as he did the hiatus between the +poet's life and the prevailing conception of his verse, he did not try +to conceive it all anew, but rather resigned himself to the solution +that Shakspere's mind was out of human ken. "A good reader can in a sort +nestle into Plato's brain and think from thence," he said; "but not into +Shakspere's; we are still out of doors." We should indeed remain so for +ever did we not set about patiently picking the locks where the +transcendentalist has dreamily turned away. + +It is imperative that we should recommence vigilantly with the concrete +facts, ignoring all the merely aesthetic and metaphysic syntheses. Where +Coleridge and Schlegel more or less ingeniously invite us to acknowledge +a miraculous artistic perfection, where Lamb more movingly gives forth +the intense vibration aroused in his spirit by Shakspere's ripest work, +we must turn back to track down the youth from Stratford; son of a +burgess once prosperous, but destined to sink steadily in the world; +married at eighteen, under pressure of circumstances, with small +prospect of income, to the woman of twenty-five; ill at ease in that +position; and at length, having made friends with a travelling company +of actors, come to London to earn a living in any tolerable way by means +of his moderate education, his "small Latin and less Greek," his knack +of fluent rhyming, and his turn for play-acting. To know him as he began +we must measure him narrowly by his first performances. These are not to +be looked for in even the earliest of his plays, not one of which can be +taken to represent his young and unaided faculty, whether as regards +construction or diction. Collaboration, the natural resort of the modern +dramatist, must have been to some extent forced on him in those years by +the nature of his situation; and after all that has been said by adorers +of the quality of his wit and his verse in such early comedies as +LOVE'S LABOUR LOST and THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA, the critical reader +is apt to be left pretty evenly balanced between the two reflections +that the wit and the versification have indeed at times a certain happy +naturalness of their own, and that nevertheless, if they really be +Shakspere's throughout, the most remarkable thing in the matter is his +later progress. But even apart from such disputable issues, we may +safely say with Mr. Fleay that "there is not a play of his that can be +referred even on the rashest conjecture to a date anterior to 1594, +which does not bear the plainest internal evidence of having been +refashioned at a later time."[142] These plays, then, with all their +evidences of immaturity, of what Mr. Bagehot called "clever +young-mannishness," cannot serve us as safe measures of Shakspere's mind +at the beginning of his career. + +But it happens that we have such a measure in performances which, since +they imply no technical arrangement, are of a homogenous literary +substance, and can be shown to be the work of a man brought up in the +Warwickshire dialect,[143] are not even challenged, I believe, by the +adherents of the Baconian faith. The tasks which the greatest of our +poets set himself when near the age of thirty, and to which he +presumably brought all the powers of which he was then conscious, were +the uninspired and pitilessly prolix poems of VENUS AND ADONIS and THE +RAPE OF LUCRECE, the first consisting of some 1,200 lines and the second +of more than 1,800; one a calculated picture of female concupiscence and +the other a still more calculated picture of female chastity: the two +alike abnormally fluent, yet external, unimpassioned, endlessly +descriptive, elaborately unimpressive. Save for the sexual attraction of +the subjects, on the commercial side of which the poet had obviously +reckoned in choosing them, these performances could have no unstudious +readers in our day and few warm admirers in their own, so little sign do +they give of any high poetic faculty save the two which singly go so +often without any determining superiority of mind--inexhaustible flow of +words and endless observation of concrete detail. Of the countless +thrilling felicities of phrase and feeling for which Shakspere is +renowned above all English poets, not one, I think, is to be found in +those three thousand fluently-scanned and smoothly-worded lines: on the +contrary, the wearisome succession of stanzas, stretching the succinct +themes immeasurably beyond all natural fitness and all narrative +interest, might seem to signalise such a lack of artistic judgment as +must preclude all great performance; while the apparent plan of +producing an effect by mere multiplication of words, mere extension of +description without intension of idea, might seem to prove a lack of +capacity for any real depth of passion. They were simply manufactured +poems, consciously constructed for the market, the first designed at the +same time to secure the patronage of the Maecenas of the hour, Lord +Southampton, to whom it was dedicated, and the second produced and +similarly dedicated on the strength of the success of the first. The +point here to be noted is that they gained the poet's ends. They +succeeded as saleable literature, and they gained the Earl's favour. + +And the rest of the poet's literary career, from this point forward, +seems to have been no less prudently calculated. Having plenty of +evidence that men could not make a living by poetry, even if they +produced it with facility; and that they could as little count on living +steadily by the sale of plays, he joined with his trade of actor the +business not merely of playwright but of part-sharer in the takings of +the theatre. The presumption from all we know of the commercial side of +the play-making of the times is that, for whatever pieces Shakspere +touched up, collaborated in, or composed for his company, he received a +certain payment once for all;[144] since there was no reason why his +partners should treat his plays differently in this regard from the +plays they bought of other men. Doubtless, when his reputation was made, +the payments would be considerable. But the main source of his income, +or rather of the accumulations with which he bought land and house and +tithes at Stratford, must have been his share in the takings of the +theatre--a share which would doubtless increase as the earlier partners +disappeared. He must have speedily become the principal man in the +firm, combining as he did the work of composer, reviser, and adaptor of +plays with that of actor and working partner. We are thus dealing with a +temperament or mentality not at all obviously original or masterly, not +at all conspicuous at the outset for intellectual depth or seriousness, +not at all obtrusive of its "mission;" but exhibiting simply a gift for +acting, an abundant faculty of rhythmical speech, and a power of minute +observation, joined with a thoroughly practical or commercial handling +of the problem of life, in a calling not usually taken-to by +commercially-minded men. What emerges for us thus far is the conception +of a very plastic intelligence, a good deal led and swayed by immediate +circumstances; but at bottom very sanely related to life, and so +possessing a latent faculty for controlling its destinies; not much +cultured, not profound, not deeply passionate; not particularly +reflective though copious in utterance; a personality which of itself, +if under no pressure of pecuniary need, would not be likely to give the +world any serious sign of mental capacity whatever. + +In order, then, that such a man as this should develop into the +Shakspere of the great tragedies and tragic comedies, there must concur +two kinds of life-conditions with those already noted--the fresh +conditions of deeply-moving experience and of deep intellectual +stimulus. Without these, such a mind would no more arrive at the highest +poetic and dramatic capacity than, lacking the spur of necessity or of +some outside call, it would be moved to seek poetic and dramatic +utterance for its own relief. There is no sign here of an innate burden +of thought, bound to be delivered; there is only the sensitive plate or +responsive faculty, capable of giving back with peculiar vividness and +spontaneity every sort of impression which may be made on it. The +faculty, in short, which could produce those 3,000 fluent lines on the +bare data of the stories of Venus and Adonis and Tarquin and Lucrece, +with only the intellectual material of a rakish Stratford lad's +schooling and reading, and the culture coming of a few years' +association with the primitive English stage and its hangers-on, was +capable of broadening and deepening, with vital experience and vital +culture, into the poet of LEAR and MACBETH. But the vital culture must +come to it, like the experience: this was not a man who would go out of +his way to seek the culture. A man so minded, a man who would bear +hardship in order to win knowledge, would not have settled down so +easily into the actor-manager with a good share in the company's +profits. There is almost nothing to show that the young Shakspere read +anything save current plays, tales, and poems. Such a notable book as +North's PLUTARCH, published in 1579, does not seem to have affected his +literary activity till about the year 1600: and even then the subject of +JULIUS CAESAR may have been suggested to him by some other play-maker, as +was the case with his chronicle histories. In his contemporary, Ben +Jonson, we do have the type of the young man bent on getting scholarship +as the best thing possible to him. The bricklayer's apprentice, +unwillingly following the craft of his stepfather, sticking obstinately +all the while to his Horace and his Homer, resolute to keep and to add +to the humanities he had learned in the grammar school, stands out +clearly alongside of the other, far less enthusiastic for knowledge and +letters, but also far more plastically framed, and at the same time far +more clearly alive to the seriousness of the struggle for existence as a +matter of securing the daily bread-and-butter. It may be, indeed--who +knows--that but for that peculiarly early marriage, with its consequent +family responsibilities, Shakspere would have allowed himself a little +more of youthful breathing-time: it may be that it was the existence of +Ann Hathaway and her three children that made him a seeker for pelf +rather than a seeker for knowledge in the years between twenty and +thirty, when the concern for pelf sits lightly on most intellectual men. +The thesis undertaken in LOVE'S LABOUR LOST--that the truly effective +culture is that of life in the world rather than that of secluded +study--perhaps expresses a process of inward and other debate in which +the wish has become father to the thought. Scowled upon by jealous +collegians like Greene for presuming, actor as he was, to write dramas, +he must have asked himself whether there was not something to be gained +from such schooling as theirs.[145] But then he certainly made more than +was needed to keep the Stratford household going; and the clear shallow +flood of VENUS AND ADONIS and the RAPE OF LUCRECE stands for ever to +show how far from tragic consciousness was the young husband and father +when close upon thirty years old. It was in 1596 that his little Hamnet +died at Stratford; and there is nothing to show, says Mr. Fleay,[146] +that Shakspere had ever been there in the interval between his departure +in 1587 and the child's funeral. + +But already, it may be, some vital experience had come. Whatever view we +take of the drama of the sonnets, we may so far adopt Mr. Fleay's +remarkable theory[147] as to surmise that the central episode of +faithless love occurred about 1594. If so, here was enough to deepen and +impassion the plastic personality of the rhymer of VENUS AND ADONIS; to +add a new string to the heretofore Mercurial lyre. All the while, too, +he was undergoing the kind of culture and of psychological training +involved in his craft of acting--a culture involving a good deal of +contact with the imaginative literature of the Renaissance, so far as +then translated, and a psychological training of great though little +recognised importance to the dramatist. It seems obvious that the +practice of acting, by a plastic and receptive temperament, capable of +manifold appreciation, must have counted for much in developing the +faculties at once of sympathy and expression. In this respect Shakspere +stood apart from his rivals, with their merely literary training. And in +point of fact, we do find in his plays, year by year, a strengthening +sense of the realities of human nature, despite their frequently +idealistic method of portraiture, the verbalism and factitiousness of +much of their wit, and their conventionality of plot. Above all things, +the man who drew so many fancifully delightful types of womanhood must +have been intensely appreciative of the charm of sex; and it is on that +side that we are to look for his first contacts with the deeper forces +of life. What marks off the Shakspere of thirty-five, in fine, from all +his rivals, is just his peculiarly true and new[148] expression of the +living grace of womanhood, always, it is true, abstracted to the form of +poetry and skilfully purified from the blemishes of the actual, but none +the less convincing and stimulating. We are here in presence at once of +a rare receptive faculty and a rare expressive faculty: the plastic +organism of the first poems touched through and through with a hundred +vibrations of deeper experience; the external and extensive method +gradually ripening into an internal and intensive; the innate facility +of phrase and alertness of attention turned from the physical to the +psychical. But still it is to the psychics of sex, for the most part, +that we are limited. Of the deeps of human nature, male nature, as apart +from the love of woman, the playwright still shows no special +perception, save in the vivid portrait of Shylock, the exasperated Jew. +The figures in which we can easily recognise his hand in the earlier +historical plays are indeed marked by his prevailing sanity of +perception; always they show the play of the seeing eye, the ruling +sense of reality which shaped his life; it is this visible actuality +that best marks them off from the non-Shaksperean figures around them. +And in the wonderful figures of Falstaff and his group we have a +roundness of comic reality to which nothing else in modern literature +thus far could be compared. But still this, the most remarkable of all, +remains comic reality; and, what is more, it is a comic reality of +which, as in the rest of his work, the substratum was pre-Shaksperean. +For it is clear that the figure of Falstaff, as Oldcastle, had been +popularly successful before Shakspere took hold of it:[149] and what he +did here, as elsewhere, with his uninventive mind, in which the faculty +of imagination always rectified and expanded rather than originated +types and actions, was doubtless to give the hues and tones of perfect +life to the half-real inventions of others. This must always be insisted +on as the special psychological characteristic of Shakspere. Excepting +in the doubtful case of LOVE'S LABOUR LOST, he never invented a plot; +his male characters are almost always developments from an already +sketched original; it is in drawing his heroines, where he is most +idealistic, that he seems to have been most independently creative, his +originals here being doubtless the women who had charmed him, set living +in ideal scenes to charm others. And it resulted from this specialty of +structure that the greater reality of his earlier male historic figures, +as compared with those of most of his rivals, is largely a matter of +saner and more felicitous declamation--the play of his great and growing +faculty of expression--since he had no more special knowledge of the +types in hand than had his competitors. It is only when his unequalled +receptive faculty has been acted upon by a peculiarly concentrated and +readily assimilated body of culture, the English translation by Sir +Thomas North of Amyot's French translation of Plutarch's Lives, that we +find Shakspere incontestably superior to his contemporaries in the +virile treatment of virile problems no less than in the sympathetic +rendering of emotional charm and tenderness and the pathos of passion. +The tragedy of ROMEO AND JULIET, with all its burning fervours and +swooning griefs, remains for us a picture of the luxury of woe: it is +truly said of it that it is not fundamentally unhappy. But in JULIUS +CAESAR we have touched a further depth of sadness. For the moving tragedy +of circumstance, of lovers sundered by fate only to be swiftly joined in +exultant death, we have the profounder tragedy of mutually destroying +energies, of grievously miscalculating men, of failure and frustration +dogging the steps of the strenuous and the wise, of destiny searching +out the fatal weakness of the strong. To the poet has now been added the +reader; to the master of the pathos of passion the student of the +tragedy of universal life. It is thus by culture and experience--culture +limited but concentrated, and experience limited but intense--that the +man Shakspere has been intelligibly made into the dramatist Shakspere as +we find him when he comes to his greatest tasks. For the formation of +the supreme artist there was needed alike the purely plastic organism +and the special culture to which it was so uniquely fitted to respond; +culture that came without search, and could be undergone as +spontaneously as the experience of life itself; knowledge that needed no +more wooing than Ann Hathaway, or any dubious angel in the sonnets. In +the English version of Plutarch's LIVES, pressed upon him doubtless by +the play-making plans of other men, Shakspere found the most effectively +concentrated history of ancient humanity that could possibly have +reached him; and he responded to the stimulus with all his energy of +expression because he received it so freely and vitally, in respect +alike of his own plasticity and the fact that the vehicle of the +impression was his mother tongue. It is plain that to the last he made +no secondary study of antiquity. He made blunders which alone might warn +the Baconians off their vain quest: he had no notion of chronology: +finding Cato retrospectively spoken of by Plutarch as one to whose ideal +Coriolanus had risen, he makes a comrade of Coriolanus say it, as if +Cato were a dead celebrity in Coriolanus' day; just as he makes Hector +quote Aristotle in Troy. These clues are not to be put aside with +aesthetic platitudes: they are capital items in our knowledge of the man. +And if even the idolator feels perturbed by their obtrusion, he has but +to reflect that where the trained scholars around Shakspere reproduced +antiquity with greater accuracy in minor things, tithing the mint and +anise and cumin of erudition, they gave us of the central human forces, +which it was their special business to realise, mere hollow and tedious +parodies. Jonson was a scholar whose variety of classic reading might +have constituted him a specialist to-day; but Jonson's ancients are +mostly dead for us, even as are Jonson's moderns, because they are the +expression of a psychic faculty which could neither rightly perceive +reality, nor rightly express what it did perceive. He represents +industry in art without inspiration. The two contrasted pictures, of +Jonson writing out his harangues in prose in order to turn them into +verse, and of Shakspere giving his lines unblotted to the +actors--speaking in verse, in the white heat of his cerebration, as +spontaneously as he breathed--these historic data, which happen to be +among the most perfectly certified that we possess concerning the two +men, give us at once half the secret of one and all the secret of the +other. Jonson had the passion for book knowledge, the patience for hard +study, the faculty for plot-invention; and withal he produced dramatic +work which gives little or no permanent pleasure. Shakspere had none of +these characteristics; and yet, being the organism he was, it only +needed the culture which fortuitously reached him in his own tongue to +make him successively the greatest dramatic master of eloquence, mirth, +charm, tenderness, passion, pathos, pessimism, and philosophic serenity +that literature can show, recognisably so even though his work be almost +constantly hampered by the framework of other men's enterprises, which +he was so singularly content to develop or improve. Hence the critical +importance of following up the culture which evolved him, and above all, +that which finally touched him to his most memorable performance. + + + + +V. + + +It is to Montaigne, then, that we now come, in terms of our preliminary +statement of evidence. When Florio's translation was published, in 1603, +Shakspere was thirty-seven years old, and he had written or refashioned +KING JOHN, HENRY IV., THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, +RICHARD II., TWELFTH NIGHT, AS YOU LIKE IT, HENRY V., ROMEO AND JULIET, +THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, and JULIUS CAESAR. It is very likely that he +knew Florio, being intimate with Jonson, who was Florio's friend and +admirer; and the translation, long on the stocks, must have been +discussed in his hearing. Hence, presumably, his immediate perusal of +it. Portions of it he may very well have seen or heard of before it was +fully printed (necessarily a long task in the then state of the +handicraft); but in the book itself, we have seen abundant reason to +believe, he read largely in 1603-4. + +Having inductively proved the reading, and at the same time the fact of +the impression it made, we may next seek to realise deductively what +kind of impression it was fitted to make. We can readily see what +North's Plutarch could be and was to the sympathetic and +slightly-cultured playwright; it was nothing short of a new world of +human knowledge; a living vision of two great civilisations, giving to +his universe a vista of illustrious realities beside which the charmed +gardens of Renaissance romance and the bustling fields of English +chronicle-history were as pleasant dreams or noisy interludes. He had +done wonders with the chronicles; but in presence of the long +muster-rolls of Greece and Rome he must have felt their insularity; and +he never returned to them in the old spirit. But if Plutarch could do so +much for him, still greater could be the service rendered by Montaigne. +The difference, broadly speaking, is very much as the difference in +philosophic reach between JULIUS CAESAR and HAMLET, between CORIOLANUS +and LEAR. + +For what was in its nett significance Montaigne's manifold book, coming +thus suddenly, in a complete and vigorous translation, into English life +and into Shakspere's ken? Simply the most living book then existing in +Europe. This is not the place, nor am I the person, to attempt a +systematic estimate of the most enduring of French writers, who has +stirred to their best efforts the ablest of French critics; but I must +needs try to indicate briefly, as I see it, his significance in general +European culture. And I would put it that Montaigne is really, for the +civilised world at this day, what Petrarch has been too enthusiastically +declared to be--the first of the moderns. He is so as against even the +great Rabelais, because Rabelais misses directness, misses universality, +misses lucidity, in his gigantic mirth; he is so as against Petrarch, +because he is emphatically an impressionist where Petrarch is a framer +of studied compositions; he is so against Erasmus, because Erasmus also +is a framer of artificial compositions in a dead language, where +Montaigne writes with absolute spontaneity in a language not only +living but growing. Only Chaucer, and he only in the Canterbury Tales, +can be thought of as a true modern before Montaigne; and Chaucer is +there too English to be significant for all Europe. The high figure of +Dante is decisively mediaeval: it is the central point in mediaeval +literature. Montaigne was not only a new literary phenomenon in his own +day: he remains so still; for his impressionism, which he carried to +such lengths in originating it, is the most modern of literary +inspirations; and all our successive literary and artistic developments +are either phases of the same inspiration or transient reactions against +it. Where literature in the mass has taken centuries to come within +sight of the secret that the most intimate form of truth is the most +interesting, he went, in his one collection of essays, so far towards +absolute self-expression that our practice is still in the rear of his, +which is quite too unflinching for contemporary nerves. Our _bonne foi_ +is still sophisticated in comparison with that of the great Gascon. Of +all essayists who have yet written, he is the most transparent, the most +sincere even in his stratagems, the most discursive, the most +free-tongued, and therefore the most alive. A classic commonplace +becomes in his hands a new intimacy of feeling: where verbal +commonplaces have, as it were, glazed over the surface of our sense, he +goes behind them to rouse anew the living nerve. And there is no theme +on which he does not some time or other dart his sudden and searching +glance. It is truly said of him by Emerson that "there have been men +with deeper insight; but, one would say, never a man with such abundance +of thoughts: he is never dull, never insincere, and has the genius to +make the reader care for all that he cares for. Cut these words and they +bleed; they are vascular and alive." Such a voice, speaking at +Shakspere's ear in an English nearly as racy and nervous as the +incomparable old-new French of the original, was in itself a revelation. + +I have said above that we seem to see passing from Montaigne to +Shakspere a vibration of style as well as of thought; and it would be +difficult to overstate the importance of such an influence. A writer +affects us often more by the pulse and pressure of his speech than by +his matter. Such an action is indeed the secret of all great literary +reputations; and in no author of any age are the cadence of phrases and +the beat of words more provocative of attention than in Montaigne. They +must have affected Shakspere as they have done so many others; and in +point of fact his work, from HAMLET forth, shows a gain in nervous +tension and pith, fairly attributable to the stirring impact of the +style of Montaigne, with its incessancy of stroke, its opulence of +colour, its hardy freshness of figure and epithet, its swift, unflagging +stride. Seek in any of Shakspere's plays for such a strenuous rush of +idea and rhythm as pulses through the soliloquy: + + "How all occasions do inform against me," + +and you will gather that there has been a technical change wrought, no +less than a moral and an intellectual. The poet's nerves have caught a +new vibration. + +But it was not merely a congenial felicity and energy of utterance that +Montaigne brought to bear on his English reader, though the more we +consider this quality of spontaneity in the essayist the more we shall +realise its perennial fascination. The culture-content of Montaigne's +book is more than even the self-revelation of an extremely vivacious and +reflective intelligence; it is the living quintessence of all Latin +criticism of life, and of a large part of Greek; a quintessence as fresh +and pungent as the essayist's expression of his special individuality. +For Montaigne stands out among all the humanists of the epochs of the +Renaissance and the Reformation in respect of the peculiar directness of +his contact with Latin literature. Other men must have come to know +Latin as well as he; and hundreds could write it with an accuracy and +facility which, if he were ever capable of it, he must, by his own +confession, have lost before middle life,[150] though he read it +perfectly to the last. But he is the only modern man whom we know to +have learned Latin as a mother tongue; and this fact was probably just +as important in psychology as was the similar fact, in Shakspere's case, +of his whole adult culture being acquired in his own language. It seems +to me, at least, that there is something significant in the facts: (1) +that the man who most vividly brought the spirit or outcome of classic +culture into touch with the general European intelligence, in the age +when the modern languages first decisively asserted their birthright, +learned his Latin as a living and not as a dead tongue, and knew Greek +literature almost solely by translation; (2) that the dramatist who of +all of his craft has put most of breathing vitality into his pictures of +ancient history, despite endless inaccuracies of detail, read his +authorities only in his own language; and (3) that the English poet who +in our own century has most intensely and delightedly sympathised with +the Greek spirit--I mean Keats--read his Homer only in an English +translation. As regards Montaigne, the full importance of the fact does +not seem to me to have been appreciated by the critics. Villemain, +indeed, who perhaps could best realise it, remarked in his youthful +eloge that the fashion in which the elder Montaigne had his child taught +Latin would bring the boy to the reading of the classics with an eager +interest where others had been already fatigued by the toil of grammar; +but beyond this the peculiarity of the case has not been much +considered. Montaigne, however, gives us details which seem full of +suggestion to scientific educationists. "Without art, without book, +without grammar or precept, without whipping, without tears, I learned a +Latin as pure as my master could give;" and his first exercises were to +turn bad Latin into good.[151] So he read his Ovid's Metamorphoses at +seven or eight, where other forward boys had the native fairy tales; and +a wise teacher led him later through Virgil and Terence and Plautus and +the Italian poets in the same freedom of spirit. Withal, he never +acquired any facility in Greek,[152] and, refusing to play the +apprentice where he was accustomed to be master,[153] he declined to +construe in a difficult tongue; read his Plutarch in Amyot; and his +Plato, doubtless, in the Latin version. It all goes with the peculiar +spontaneity of his mind, his reactions, his style; and it was in virtue +of this undulled spontaneity that he was fitted to be for Shakspere, as +he has since been for so many other great writers, an intellectual +stimulus unique in kind and in potency. + +This fact of Montaigne's peculiar influence on other spirits, +comparatively considered, may make it easier for some to conceive that +his influence on Shakspere could be so potent as has been above +asserted. Among those whom we know him to have acted upon in the highest +degree--setting aside the disputed case of Bacon--are Pascal, +Montesquieu, Rousseau, Flaubert, Emerson, and Thoreau. In the case of +Pascal, despite his uneasy assumption that his philosophy was contrary +to Montaigne's, the influence went so far that the _Pensees_ again and +again set forth Pascal's doctrine in passages taken almost literally +from the ESSAYS. Stung by the lack of all positive Christian credence in +Montaigne, Pascal represents him as "putting all things in doubt;" +whereas it is just by first putting all things in doubt that Pascal +justifies his own credence. The only difference is that where Montaigne, +disparaging the powers of reason by the use of that very reason, used +his "doubt" to defend himself alike against the atheists and the +orthodox Christians, Catholic or Protestant, himself standing simply to +the classic theism of antiquity, Pascal seeks to demolish the theists +with the atheists, falling back on the Christian faith after denying the +capacity of the human reason to judge for itself. The two procedures +were of course alike fallacious; but though Pascal, the more austere +thinker of the two, readily saw the invalidity of Montaigne's as a +defence of theism, he could do no more for himself than repeat the +process, disparaging reason in the very language of the essayist, and +setting up in his turn his private predilection in Montaigne's manner. +In sum, his philosophy is just Montaigne's, turned to the needs of a +broken spirit instead of a confident one--to the purposes of a chagrined +and exhausted convertite instead of a theist of the stately school of +Cicero and Seneca and Plutarch. Without Montaigne, one feels, the +_Pensees_ might never have been written: they represent to-day, for all +vigilant readers, rather the painful struggles of a wounded intelligence +to fight down the doubts it has caught from contact with other men's +thought than any coherent or durable philosophic construction. + +It would be little more difficult to show the debt of the _Esprit des +Lois_ to Montaigne's inspiration, even if we had not Montesquieu's +avowal that "In most authors I see the man who writes: in Montaigne, the +man who thinks."[154] That is precisely Montaigne's significance, in +sociology as in philosophy. His whole activity is a seeking for causes; +and in the very act of undertaking to "humble reason" he proceeds to +instruct and re-edify it by endless corrective comparison of facts. To +be sure, he departed so far from his normal _bonne foi_ as to affect to +think there could be no certainties while parading a hundred of his own, +and with these some which were but pretences; and his pet doctrine of +daimonic fortune is not ostensibly favourable to social science; but in +the concrete, he is more of a seeker after rational law than any +humanist of his day. In discussing sumptuary laws, he anticipates the +economics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as in discussing +ecclesiastical law he anticipates the age of tolerance; in discussing +criminal law, the work of Beccaria; in discussing _a priori_ science, +the protest of Bacon; and in discussing education, many of the ideas of +to-day. And it would be difficult to cite, in humanist literature before +our own century, a more comprehensive expression of the idea of natural +law than this paragraph of the APOLOGY: + + "If nature enclose within the limits of her ordinary + progress, as all other things, so the beliefs, the + judgments, the opinions of men, if they have their + revolutions, their seasons, their birth, and their death, + even as cabbages; if heaven doth move, agitate, and roll + them at his pleasure, what powerful and permanent authority + do we ascribe unto them. If, by uncontrolled experience, we + palpably touch [orig. "Si par experience nous touchons a la + main," _i.e._, nous maintenons, nous pretendons: an idiom + which Florio has not understood] that the form of our being + depends of the air, of the climate, and of the soil wherein + we are born, and not only the hair, the stature, the + complexion, and the countenance, but also the soul's + faculties ... in such manner that as fruits and beasts do + spring up diverse and different, so men are born, either + more or less war-like, martial, just, temperate, and docile; + here subject to wine, there to theft and whoredom, here + inclined to superstition, there addicted to misbelieving.... + If sometimes we see one art to flourish, or a belief, and + sometimes another, by some heavenly influence; ... men's + spirits one while flourishing, another while barren, even as + fields are seen to be, what become of all those goodly + prerogatives wherewith we still flatter ourselves?"[155] + +All this, of course, has a further bearing than Montaigne gives it in +the context, and affects his own professed theology as it does the +opinions he attacks; but none the less, the passage strikes at the +dogmatists and the pragmatists of all the preceding schools, and hardily +clears the ground for a new inductive system. And in the last essay of +all he makes a campaign against bad laws, which unsays many of his +previous sayings on the blessedness of custom. + +In tracing his influence elsewhere, it would be hard to point to an +eminent French prose-writer who has not been affected by him. +Sainte-Beuve finds[156] that La Bruyere "at bottom is close to +Montaigne, in respect not only of his style and his skilfully +inconsequent method, but of his way of judging men and life"; and the +literary heredity from Montaigne to Rousseau is recognised by all who +have looked into the matter. The temperaments are profoundly different; +yet the style of Montaigne had evidently taken as deep a hold of the +artistic consciousness of Rousseau as had the doctrines of the later +writers on whom he drew for his polemic. But indeed he found in the +essay on the Cannibals the very theme of his first paradox; in +Montaigne's emphatic denunciations[157] of laws more criminal than the +crimes they dealt with, he had a deeper inspiration still; in the essay +on the training of children he had his starting-points for the +argumentation of _Emile_; and in the whole unabashed self-portraiture of +the ESSAYS he had his great exemplar for the _Confessions_. Even in the +very different case of Voltaire, we may go at least as far as Villemain +and say that the essayist must have helped to shape the thought of the +great freethinker; whose _Philosophe Ignorant_ may indeed be connected +with the APOLOGY without any of the hesitation with which Villemain +suggests his general parallel. In fine, Montaigne has scattered his +pollen over all the literature of France. The most typical thought of La +Rochefoucauld is thrown out[158] in the essay[159] _De l'utile et de +l'honneste_; and the most modern-seeming currents of thought, as M. +Stapfer remarks, can be detected in the passages of the all-discussing +Gascon. + +Among English-speaking writers, to say nothing of those who, like Sterne +and Lamb, have been led by his example to a similar felicity of freedom +in style, we may cite Emerson as one whose whole work is coloured by +Montaigne's influence, and Thoreau as one who, specially developing one +side of Emerson's gospel, may be said to have found it all where Emerson +found it, in the Essay on Solitude.[160] The whole doctrine of +intellectual self-preservation, the ancient thesis "flee from the press +and dwell in soothfastness," is there set forth in a series of ringing +sentences, most of which, set in Emerson or Thoreau, would seem part of +their text and thought. That this is no random attribution may be +learned from the lecture on "Montaigne: the Sceptic," which Emerson has +included in his REPRESENTATIVE MEN. "I remember," he says, telling how +in his youth he stumbled on Cotton's translation, "I remember the +delight and wonder in which I lived with it. It seemed to me as if I had +myself written the book in some former life, so sincerely it spoke to +my thought and experience." That is just what Montaigne has done for a +multitude of others, in virtue of his prime quality of spontaneous +self-expression. As Sainte-Beuve has it, there is a Montaigne in all of +us. Flaubert, we know, read him constantly for style; and no less +constantly "found himself" in the self-revelation and analysis of the +essays. + +After all these testimonies to Montaigne's seminal virtue, and after +what we have seen of the special dependence of Shakspere's genius on +culture and circumstance, stimulus and initiative, for its evolution, +there can no longer seem to an open mind anything of mere paradox in the +opinion that the essays are the source of the greatest expansive +movement of the poet's mind, the movement which made him--already a +master of the whole range of passional emotion, of the comedy of mirth +and the comedy and tragedy of sex--the great master of the tragedy of +the moral intelligence. Taking the step from JULIUS CAESAR to HAMLET as +corresponding to this movement in his mind, we may say that where the +first play exhibits the concrete perception of the fatality of things, +"the riddle of the painful earth"; in the second, in its final form, the +perception has emerged in philosophic consciousness as a pure +reflection. The poet has in the interim been revealed to himself; what +he had perceived he now conceives. And this is the secret of the whole +transformation which the old play of HAMLET has received at his hands. +Where he was formerly the magical sympathetic plate, receiving and +rectifying and giving forth in inspired speech every impression, however +distorted by previous instruments, that is brought within the scope of +its action, he is now in addition the inward judge of it all, so much so +that the secondary activity tends to overshadow the primary. The old +HAMLET, it is clear, was a tragedy of blood, of physical horror. The +least that Shakspere, at this age, could have done with it, would be to +overlay and transform the physical with moral perception; and this has +already been in part done in the First Quarto form. The mad Hamlet and +the mad Ophelia, who had been at least as much comic as tragic figures +in the older play, are already purified of that taint of their barbaric +birth, save in so far as Hamlet still gibes at Polonius and jests with +Ophelia in the primitive fashion of the pretended madman seeking his +revenge. But the sense of the futility of the whole heathen plan, of the +vanity of the revenge to which the Christian ghost hounds his son, of +the moral void left by the initial crime and its concomitants, not to be +filled by any hecatomb of slain wrongdoers--the sense of all this, which +is the essence of the tragedy, though so few critics seem to see it, +clearly emerges only in the finished play. The dramatist is become the +chorus to his plot, and the impression it all makes on his newly active +spirit comes out in soliloquy after soliloquy, which hamper as much as +they explain the action. In the old prose story, the astute barbarian +takes a curiously circuitous course to his revenge, but at last attains +it. In the intermediate tragedy of blood, the circuitous action had been +preserved, and withal the revenge was attained only in the general +catastrophe, by that daimonic "fortune" on which Montaigne so often +enlarges. For Shakspere, then, with his mind newly at work in reverie +and judgment, where before it had been but perceptive and reproductive, +the theme was one of human impotence, failure of will, weariness of +spirit in presence of over-mastering fate, recoil from the immeasurable +evil of the world. Hamlet becomes the mouthpiece of the all-sympathetic +spirit which has put itself in his place, as it had done with a hundred +suggested types before, but with a new inwardness of comprehension, a +self-consciousness added to the myriad-sided consciousness of the past. +Hence an involution rather than an elucidation of the play. There can be +no doubt that Shakspere, in heightening and deepening the theme, has +obscured it, making the scheming barbarian into a musing pessimist, who +yet waywardly plays the mock-madman as of old, and kills the "rat" +behind the arras; doubts the Ghost while acting on his message; +philosophises with Montaigne and yet delays his revenge in the spirit of +the Christianised savage, who fears to send the praying murderer to +heaven. There is no solution of these anomalies: the very state of +Shakspere's consciousness, working in his subjective way on the old +material, made inevitable a moral anachronism and contradiction, +analogous in its kind to the narrative anachronisms of his historical +plays. But none the less, this tragedy, the first of the great group +which above all his other work make him immortal, remains perpetually +fascinating, by virtue even of that "pale cast of thought" which has +"sicklied it o'er" in the sense of making it too intellectual for +dramatic unity and strict dramatic success. Between these undramatic, +brooding soliloquies which stand so aloof from the action, but dominate +the minds of those who read and meditate the text, and the old +sensational elements of murder, ghost, fencing and killing, which hold +the interest of the crowd--between these constituents, HAMLET remains +the most familiar Shaksperean play. + +This very pre-eminence and permanence, no doubt, will make many students +still demur to the notion that a determining factor in the framing of +the play was the poet's perusal of Montaigne's essays. And it would be +easy to overstate that thesis in such a way as to make it untrue. +Indeed, M. Chasles has, to my thinking, so overstated it. Had I come to +his main proposition before realising the infusion of Montaigne's ideas +in HAMLET, I think I should have felt it to be as excessive in the +opposite direction as the proposition of Mr. Feis. Says M. +Chasles:[161]-- + + "This date of 1603 (publication of Florio's translation) is + instructive; the change in Shakspere's style dates from this + very year. Before 1603, imitation of Petrarch, of Ariosto, + and of Spenser is evident in his work: after 1603, this + coquettish copying of Italy has disappeared; no more + crossing rhymes, no more sonnets and concetti. All is + reformed at once. Shakspere, who had hitherto studied the + ancients only in the fashion of the fine writers of modern + Italy, ... now seriously studies Plutarch and Sallust, and + seeks of them those great teachings on human life with which + the chapters of Michael Montaigne are filled. Is it not + surprising to see Julius Caesar and Coriolanus suddenly taken + up by the man who has just (tout a l'heure) been describing + in thirty-six stanzas, like Marini, the doves of the car of + Venus? And does not one see that he comes fresh from the + reading of Montaigne, who never ceased to translate, + comment, and recommend the ancients ...? The dates of + Shakspere's CORIOLANUS, CLEOPATRA, and JULIUS CAESAR are + incontestable. These dramas follow on from 1606 to 1608, + with a rapidity which proves the fecund heat of an + imagination still moved." + +All this must be revised in the light of a more correct chronology. +Shakspere's JULIUS CAESAR dates, not from 1604 but from 1600 or 1601, +being referred to in Weever's MIRROR OF MARTYRS, published in 1601, to +say nothing of the reference in the third Act of HAMLET itself, where +Polonius speaks of such a play. And, even if it had been written in +1604, it would still be a straining of the evidence to ascribe its +production, with that of CORIOLANUS and ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, to the +influence of Montaigne, when every one of these themes was sufficiently +obtruded on the Elizabethan theatre by North's translation of Amyot's +PLUTARCH. Any one who will compare CORIOLANUS with the translation in +North will see that Shakspere has followed the text down to the most +minute and supererogatory details, even to the making of blunders by +putting the biographer's remarks in the mouths of the characters. The +comparison throws a flood of light on Shakspere's mode of procedure; but +it tells us nothing of his perusal of Montaigne. Rather it suggests a +return from the method of the revised HAMLET, with its play of reverie, +to the more strictly dramatic method of the chronicle histories, though +with a new energy and concision of presentment. The real clue to +Montaigne's influence on Shakspere beyond HAMLET, as we have seen, lies +not in the Roman plays, but in MEASURE FOR MEASURE. + +There is a misconception involved, again, in M. Chasles' picture of an +abrupt transition from Shakspere's fantastic youthful method to that of +HAMLET and the Roman plays. He overlooks the intermediate stages +represented by such plays as ROMEO AND JULIET, HENRY IV., KING JOHN, the +MERCHANT OF VENICE, and AS YOU LIKE IT, all of which exhibit a great +advance on the methods of LOVE'S LABOUR LOST, with its rhymes and +sonnets and "concetti." The leap suggested by M. Chasles is exorbitant; +such a headlong development would be unintelligible. Shakspere had first +to come practically into touch with the realities of life and character +before he could receive from Montaigne the full stimulus he actually did +undergo. Plastic as he was, he none the less underwent a normal +evolution; and his early concreteness and verbalism and externality had +to be gradually transmuted into a more inward knowledge of life and art +before there could be superimposed on that the mood of the thinker, +reflectively aware of the totality of what he had passed through. + +Finally, the most remarkable aspect of Shakspere's mind is not that +presented by CORIOLANUS and ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, which with all their +intense vitality represent rather his marvellous power of reproducing +impressions than the play of his own criticism on the general problem of +life. For the full revelation of this we must look rather in the great +tragedies, notably in LEAR, and thereafter in the subsiding movement of +the later serious plays. There it is that we learn to give exactitude to +our conception of the influence exerted upon him by Montaigne, and to +see that, even as in the cases of Pascal and Montesquieu, Rousseau and +Emerson, what happened was not a mere transference or imposition of +opinions, but a living stimulus, a germination of fresh intellectual +life, which developed under new forms. It would be strange if the most +receptive and responsive of all the intelligences which Montaigne has +touched should not have gone on differentiating itself from his. + + + + +VI. + + +What then is the general, and what the final relation of Shakspere's +thought to that of Montaigne? How far did the younger man approve and +assimilate the ideas of the elder, how far did he reject them, how far +modify them? In some respects this is the most difficult part of our +inquiry, were it only because Shakspere is firstly and lastly a dramatic +writer. But he is not only that: he is at once the most subjective, the +most sympathetic, and the most self-witholding of dramatic writers. +Conceiving all situations, all epochs, in terms of his own psychology, +he is yet the furthest removed from all dogmatic design on the opinions +of his listeners; and it is only after a most vigilant process of moral +logic that we can ever be justified in attributing to him this or that +thesis of any one of his personages, apart from the general ethical +sympathies which must be taken for granted. Much facile propaganda has +been made by the device of crediting him in person with every religious +utterance found in his plays--even in the portions which analytical +criticism proves to have come from other hands. Obviously we must look +to his general handling of the themes with which the current religion +deals, in order to surmise his attitude to that religion. And in the +same way we must compare his general handling of tragic and moral +issues, in order to gather his general attitude to the doctrine of +Montaigne. + +At the very outset, we must make a clean sweep of the strange +proposition of Mr. Jacob Feis--that Shakspere deeply disliked the +philosophy of Montaigne, and wrote HAMLET to discredit it. It is hard to +realise how such a hopeless misconception can ever have arisen in the +mind of anyone capable of making the historic research on which Mr. Feis +seeks to found his assertion. If there were no other argument against +it, the bare fact that the tragedy of HAMLET existed before Shakspere, +and that he was, as usual, simply working over a play already on the +boards, should serve to dismiss such a wild hypothesis. And from every +other point of view, the notion is equally preposterous. + +No human being in Shakspere's day could have gathered from HAMLET such a +criticism of Montaigne as Mr. Feis reads into it by means of violences +of interpretation which might almost startle Mr. Donnelly. Even if they +blamed Hamlet for delaying his revenge, in the manner of the ordinary +critical moralist, they could not possibly regard that delay as a kind +of vice arising from the absorption of Montaignesque opinions. In the +very year of the appearance of Florio's folio, it was a trifle too soon +to make the assumption that Montaigne was demoralising mankind, even if +we assume Shakspere to have ever been capable of such a judgment. And +that assumption is just as impossible as the other. According to Mr. +Feis, Shakspere detested such a creed and such conduct as Hamlet's, and +made him die by poison in order to show his abhorrence of them--this, +when we know Hamlet to have died by the poisoned foil in the earlier +play. On that view, Cordelia died by hanging in order to show +Shakspere's conviction that she was a malefactor; and Desdemona by +stifling as a fitting punishment for adultery. The idea is outside of +serious discussion. Barely to assume that Shakspere held Hamlet for a +pitiable weakling is a sufficiently shallow interpretation of the play; +but to assume that he made him die by way of condign punishment for his +opinions is merely ridiculous. Once for all, there is absolutely nothing +in Hamlet's creed or conduct which Shakspere was in a position to regard +as open to his denunciation. The one intelligible idea which Mr. Feis +can suggest as connecting Hamlet's conduct with Montaigne's philosophy +is that Montaigne was a quietest, preaching and practising withdrawal +from public broils. But Shakspere's own practice was on all fours with +this. He sedulously held aloof from all meddling in public affairs; and +as soon as he had gained a competence he retired, at the age of +forty-seven, to Stratford-on-Avon. Mr. Feis's argument brings us to the +very crudest form of the good old Christian verdict that if Hamlet had +been a good and resolute man he would have killed his uncle out of hand, +whether at prayers or anywhere else, and would then have married +Ophelia, put his mother in a nunnery, and lived happily ever after.[162] +And to that edifying assumption, Mr. Feis adds the fantasy that +Shakspere dreaded the influence of Montaigne as a deterrent from the +retributive slaughter of guilty uncles by wronged nephews. + +In the hands of Herr Stedefeld, who in 1871 anticipated Mr. Feis's view +of HAMLET as a sermon against Montaigne, the thesis is not a whit more +plausible. Herr Stedefeld entitles his book[163]: "Hamlet: a +Drama-with-a-purpose (TENDENZDRAMA) opposing the sceptical and +cosmopolitan view of things taken by Michael de Montaigne"; and his +general position is that Shakspere wrote the play as "the apotheosis of +a practical Christianity," by way of showing how any one like Hamlet, +lacking in Christian piety, and devoid of faith, love, and hope, must +needs come to a bad end, even in a good cause. We are not entitled to +charge Herr Stedefeld's thesis to the account of religious bias, seeing +that Mr. Feis in his turn writes from the standpoint of a kind of +Protestant freethinker, who sees in Shakspere a champion of free inquiry +against the Catholic conformist policy of Montaigne; while strictly +orthodox Christians have found in Hamlet's various allusions to deity, +and in his "as for me, I will go pray," a proof alike of his and of +Shakspere's steadfast piety. Against all such superficialities of +exegesis alike our safeguard must be a broad common-sense induction. + +We are entitled to say at the outset, then, only this, that Shakspere at +the time of working over HAMLET and MEASURE FOR MEASURE in 1603-1604 had +in his mind a great deal of the reasoning in Montaigne's Essays; and +that a number of the speeches in the two plays reproduce portions of +what he had read. We are not entitled to assume that these portions are +selected as being in agreement with Shakspere's own views: we are here +limited to saying that he put certain of Montaigne's ideas or statements +in the mouths of his characters where they would be appropriate. It does +not follow that he shared the feelings of Claudio as to the possible +life of the soul after death. And when Hamlet says to Horatio, on the +strangeness of the scene with the Ghost: + + "And therefore as a stranger give it welcome! + There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, + Than are dreamt of in our philosophy"-- + +though this may be said to be a summary of the whole drift of +Montaigne's essay,[164] THAT IT IS FOLLY TO REFER TRUTH OR FALSEHOOD TO +OUR SUFFICIENCY; and though we are entitled to believe that Shakspere +had that essay or its thesis in his mind, there is no reason to suppose +that the lines express Shakspere's own belief in ghosts. Montaigne had +indicated his doubts on that head even in protesting against sundry +denials of strange allegations: and it is dramatically fitting that +Hamlet in the circumstances should say what he does. On the other hand, +when the Duke in MEASURE FOR MEASURE, playing the part of a friar +preparing a criminal for death, gives Claudio a consolation which does +not contain a word of Christian doctrine, not a syllable of sacrificial +salvation and sacramental forgiveness, we are entitled to infer from +such a singular negative phenomenon, if not that Shakspere rejected the +Christian theory of things, at least that it formed no part of his +habitual thinking. It was the special business of the Duke, playing in +such a character, to speak to Claudio of sin and salvation, of +forgiveness and absolution. Such a singular omission must at least imply +disregard on the part of the dramatist. It is true that Isabella, +pleading to Angelo in the second Act, speaks as a believing Christian on +the point of forgiveness for sins; and the versification here is quite +Shaksperean. But a solution of the anomaly is to be found here as +elsewhere in the fact that Shakspere was working over an existing +play;[165] and that in ordinary course he would, if need were, put the +religious pleading of Isabella into his own magistral verse just as he +would touch up the soliloquy of Hamlet on the question of killing his +uncle at prayers--a soliloquy which we know to have existed in the +earlier forms of the play. The writer who first made Isabella plead +religiously with Angelo would have made the Duke counsel Claudio +religiously. The Duke's speech, then, is to be regarded as Shakspere's +special insertion; and it is to be taken as negatively exhibiting his +opinions. + +In the same way, the express withdrawal of the religious note at the +close of HAMLET--where in the Second Quarto we have Shakspere making the +dying prince say "the rest is silence" instead of "heaven receive my +soul," as in the First Quarto--may reasonably be taken to express the +same agnosticism on the subject of a future life as is implied in the +Duke's speech to Claudio. It cannot reasonably be taken to suggest a +purpose of holding Hamlet up to blame as an unbeliever, because Hamlet +is made repeatedly to express himself, in talk and in soliloquy, as a +believer in deity, in prayer, in hell, and in heaven. These speeches are +mostly reproductions of the old play, the new matter being in the nature +of the pagan allusion to the "divinity that shapes our ends." What is +definitely Shaksperean is just the agnostic conclusion. + +Did Shakspere, then, derive this agnosticism from Montaigne? What were +really Montaigne's religious and philosophic opinions? We must consider +this point also with more circumspection than has been shown by most of +Montaigne's critics. The habit of calling him "sceptic," a habit +initiated by the Catholic priests who denounced his heathenish use of +the term "Fortune," and strengthened by various writers from Pascal to +Emerson, is a hindrance to an exact notion of the facts, inasmuch as the +word "sceptic" has passed through two phases of significance, and may +still have either. In the original sense of the term, Montaigne is a +good deal of a "sceptic," because the main purport of the APOLOGY OF +RAYMOND SEBONDE appears to be the discrediting of human reason all +round, and the consequent shaking of all certainty. And this method +strikes not only indirectly but directly at the current religious +beliefs; for Montaigne indicates a lack of belief in immortality,[166] +besides repeatedly ignoring the common faith where he would naturally +be expected to endorse it, as in the nineteenth and fortieth essays +hereinbefore cited, and in his discussion of the Apology of Socrates. As +is complained by Dean Church:[167] "His views, both of life and death, +are absolutely and entirely unaffected by the fact of his profession to +believe the Gospel." That profession, indeed, partakes rather obviously +of the nature of his other formal salutes[168] to the Church, which are +such as Descartes felt it prudent to make in a later generation. His +profession of fidelity to Catholicism, again, is rather his way of +showing that he saw no superiority of reasonableness in Protestantism, +than the expression of any real conformity to Catholic ideals; for he +indicates alike his aversion to heretic-hunting and his sense of the +folly of insisting on the whole body of dogma. When fanatical +Protestants, uncritical of their own creed, affected to doubt the +sincerity of any man who held by Catholicism, he was naturally piqued. +But he was more deeply piqued, as Naigeon has suggested, when the few +but keen freethinkers of the time treated the THEOLOGIA NATURALIS of +Sebonde, which Montaigne had translated at his father's wish, as a +feeble and inconclusive piece of argumentation; and it was primarily to +retaliate on such critics--who on their part no doubt exhibited some +ill-founded convictions while attacking others--that he penned the +APOLOGY, which assails atheism in the familiar sophistical fashion, but +with a most unfamiliar energy and splendour of style, as a manifestation +of the foolish pride of a frail and perpetually erring reason. For +himself, he was, as we have said, a classic theist, of the school of +Cicero and Seneca; and as regards that side of his own thought he is not +at all sceptical, save in so far as he nominally protested against all +attempts to bring deity down to human conceptions, while himself doing +that very thing, as every theist needs must. + +Shakspere, then, could find in Montaigne the traditional deism of the +pagan and Christian world, without any colour of specifically Christian +faith, and with a direct lead to unbelief in a future state. But, +whether we suppose Shakspere to have been already led, as he might be +by the initiative of his colleague Marlowe, an avowed atheist, to +agnostic views on immortality, or whether we suppose him to have had his +first serious lead to such thought from Montaigne, we find him to all +appearance carrying further the initial impetus, and proceeding from the +serene semi-Stoicism of the essayist to a deeper and sterner conception +of things. It lay, indeed, in the nature of Shakspere's psychosis, so +abnormally alive to all impressions, that when he fully faced the darker +sides of universal drama, with his reflective powers at work, he must +utter a pessimism commensurate with the theme. This is part, if not the +whole, of the answer to the question "Why did Shakspere write +tragedies?"[169] The whole answer can hardly be either Mr. Spedding's, +that the poet wrote his darkest tragedies in a state of philosophic +serenity,[170] or Dr. Furnivall's, that he "described hell because he +had felt hell."[171] But when we find Shakspere writing a series of +tragedies, including an extremely sombre comedy (MEASURE FOR MEASURE), +after having produced mainly comedies and history-plays, we must +conclude that the change was made of his own choice, and that whereas +formerly his theatre took its comedies mostly from him, and its +tragedies mostly from others, it now took its comedies mostly from +others and its tragedies from him. Further, we must assume that the +gloomy cast of thought so pervadingly given to the new tragedies is +partly a reflex of his own experience, but also in large part an +expression of the philosophy to which he had been led by his reading, as +well as by his life. For we must finally avow that the pervading thought +in the tragedies outgoes the simple artistic needs of the case. In +OTHELLO we have indeed a very strictly dramatic array of the forces of +wrong--weakness, blind passion, and pitiless egoism; but there is +already a full suggestion of the overwhelming energy of the element of +evil; and in LEAR the conception is worked out with a desperate +insistence which carries us far indeed from the sunny cynicism and +prudent scepticism of Montaigne. Nowhere in the essays do we find such a +note of gloom as is struck in the lines: + + "As flies to wanton boys are we to the Gods: + They kill us for their sport." + +And since there is no pretence of balancing that mordant saying with any +decorous platitude of Christian Deism, we are led finally to the +admission that Shakspere sounded a further depth of philosophy than +Montaigne's unembittered "cosmopolitan view of things." Instead of +reacting against Montaigne's "scepticism," as Herr Stedefeld supposes, +he produced yet other tragedies in which the wrongdoers and the wronged +alike exhibit less and not more of Christian faith than Hamlet,[172] and +in which there is no hint of any such faith on the part of the +dramatist, but, on the contrary, a sombre persistence in the presentment +of unrelieved evil. The utterly wicked Iago has as much of religion in +his talk as anyone else in OTHELLO, using the phrases "Christian and +heathen," "God bless the mark," "Heaven is my judge," "You are one of +those that will not serve God, if the devil bid you," "the little +godliness I have," "God's will," and so forth; the utterly wicked Edmund +in LEAR, as we have seen, is made to echo Montaigne's "sceptical" +passage on the subject of stellar influences, spoken with a moral +purpose, rather than the quite contrary utterance in the APOLOGY, in +which the essayist, theistically bent on abasing human pretensions, +gives to his scepticism the colour of a belief in those very +influences.[173] There is here, clearly, no pro-religious thesis. The +whole drift of the play shows that Shakspere shares the disbelief in +stellar control, though he puts the expression of the disbelief in the +mouth of a villain; though he makes the honest Kent, on the other hand, +declare that "it is the stars ... that govern our conditions;"[174] and +though he had previously made Romeo speak of "the yoke of inauspicious +stars," and the Duke describe mankind as "servile to all the skiey +influences," and was later to make Prospero, in the TEMPEST[175] express +his belief in "a most auspicious star." In the case of Montaigne, who +goes on yet again to contradict himself in the APOLOGY itself, +satirising afresh the habit of associating deity with all human +concerns, we are driven to surmise an actual variation of opinion--the +vivacious intelligence springing this way or that according as it is +reacting against the atheists or against the dogmatists. Montaigne, of +course, is not a coherent philosopher; the way to systematic philosophic +truth is a path too steep to be climbed by such an undisciplined spirit +as his, "sworn enemy to obligation, to assiduity, to constancy";[176] +and the net result of his "Apology" for Raimond Sebonde is to upset the +system of that sober theologian as well as all others. Whether +Shakspere, on the other hand, could or did detect all the +inconsistencies of Montaigne's reasoning, is a point on which we are not +entitled to more than a surmise; but we do find that on certain issues +on which Montaigne dogmatises very much as did his predecessors, +Shakspere applies a more penetrating logic, and explicitly reverses the +essayist's verdicts. Montaigne, for instance, carried away by his master +doctrine that we should live "according to nature," is given to talking +of "art" and "nature" in the ordinary manner, carrying the primitive +commonplace indeed to the length of a paradox. Thus in the essay on the +Cannibals,[177] speaking of "savages," he protests that + + "They are even savage, as we call those fruits wild which + nature of herself and of her ordinary progress hath + produced, whereas indeed they are those which ourselves have + altered by our artificial devices, and diverted from their + common order, we should rather call savage. In those are the + true and more profitable virtues and natural properties most + lively and vigorous;"[178] + +deciding with Plato that + + "all things are produced either by nature, by fortune, or by + art; the greatest and fairest by one or other of the two + first; the least and imperfect by this last." + +And in the APOLOGY,[179] after citing some as arguing that + + "Nature by a maternal gentleness accompanies and guides" the + lower animals, "as if by the hand, to all the actions and + commodities of their life," while, "as for us, she abandons + us to hazard and fortune, and to seek by art the things + necessary to our conservation," + +though he proceeds to insist on the contrary that "nature has +universally embraced all her creatures," man as well as the rest, and to +argue that man is as much a creature of nature as the rest--since even +speech, "if not natural, is necessary"--he never seems to come within +sight of the solution that art, on his own showing, is just nature in a +new phase. But to that point Shakspere proceeds at a stride in the +WINTER'S TALE, one of the latest plays (? 1611), written about the time +when we know him to have been reading or re-reading the essay on the +Cannibals. When Perdita refuses to plant gillyflowers in her garden, + + "For I have heard it said + There is an art which in their piedness shares + With great creating nature," + +the old king answers: + + "Say there be: + Yet nature is made better by no mean, + But nature makes that mean; so o'er that art + Which you say adds to nature, is an art + That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry + A gentle scion to the wildest stock + And make conceive a bark of baser kind + By bud of nobler race: This is an art + Which does mend nature--change it rather; but + The art itself is nature."[180] + +It is an analysis, a criticism, a philosophic demonstration; and the +subtle poet smilingly lets us see immediately that he had tried the +argument on the fanatics of "nature," fair or other, and knew them +impervious to it. "I'll not put," says Puritan Perdita, after demurely +granting that "so it is"-- + + "I'll not put + The dibble in earth to set one slip of them." + +The mind which could thus easily pierce below the inveterate fallacy of +three thousand years of conventional speech may well be presumed capable +of rounding Montaigne's philosophy wherever it collapses, and of setting +it aside wherever it is arbitrary. Certain it is that we can never +convict Shakspere of bad reasoning in person; and in his later plays we +never seem to touch bottom in his thought. The poet of VENUS AND ADONIS +seems to have deepened beyond the plummet-reach even of the +deep-striking intelligence that first stirred him to philosophise. + +And yet, supposing this to be so, there is none the less a lasting +community of thought between the two spirits, a lasting debt from the +younger to the elder. Indeed, we cannot say that at all points +Shakspere outwent his guide. It is a curious reflection that they had +probably one foible in common; for we know Montaigne's little weakness +of desiring his family to be thought ancient, of suppressing the fact of +its recent establishment by commerce; and we have evidence which seems +to show that Shakspere sought zealously,[181] despite rebuffs, the +formal constitution of a coat-of-arms for his family. On the other hand, +there is nothing in Shakspere's work--the nature of the case indeed +forbade it--to compare in democratic outspokenness with Montaigne's +essay[182] OF THE INEQUALITY AMONG US. The Frenchman's hardy saying[183] +that "the souls of emperors and cobblers are all cast in one same mould" +could not well be echoed in Elizabethan drama; and indeed we cannot well +be sure that Shakspere would have endorsed it, with his fixed habit of +taking kings and princes and generals and rich ones for his personages. +But then, on the other hand, we cannot be sure that this was anything +more than a part of his deliberate life's work of producing for the +English multitude what that multitude cared to see, and catching London +with that bait of royalty which commonly attracted it. It remains a fine +question whether his extravagant idealisation and justification of Henry +V.--which, though it gives so little pause to some of our English +critics, entitled M. Guizot to call him a mere John Bull in his ideas of +international politics--it remains disputable whether this was exactly +an expression of his own thought. It is notable that he never again +strikes the note of blatant patriotism. And the poets of that time, +further, seem to have had their tongues very much in their cheeks with +regard to their Virgin Queen; so that we cannot be sure that Shakspere, +paying her his fanciful compliment,[184] was any more sincere about it +than Ben Jonson, who would do as much while privately accepting the +grossest scandal concerning her.[185] It is certainly a remarkable fact +that Shakspere abstained from joining in the poetic out-cry over her +death, incurring reproof by his silence.[186] + +However all that may have been, we find Shakspere, after his period of +pessimism, viewing life in a spirit which could be expressed in terms of +Montaigne's philosophy. He certainly shaped his latter years in +accordance with the essayist's ideal. We can conceive of no other man in +Shakspere's theatrical group deliberately turning his back, as he did, +on the many-coloured London life when he had means to enjoy it at +leisure, and seeking to possess his own soul in Stratford-on-Avon, in +the circle of a family which had already lived so long without him. But +that retirement, rounding with peace the career of manifold and intense +experience, is a main fact in Shakspere's life, and one of our main +clues to his innermost character. Emerson, never quite delivered from +Puritan prepossessions, avowed his perplexity over the fact "that this +man of men, he who gave to the science of mind a new and larger subject +than had ever existed, and planted the standard of humanity some +furlongs forward into Chaos--that he should not be wise for himself: it +must even go into the world's history that the best poet led an obscure +(!) and profane life, using his genius for the public amusement." If +this were fundamentally so strange a thing, one might have supposed that +the transcendentalist would therefore "as a stranger give it welcome." +Approaching it on another plane, one finds nothing specially perplexing +in the matter. Shakspere's personality was an uncommon combination; but +was not that what should have been looked for? And where, after all, is +the evidence that he was "not wise for himself"?[187] Did he not make +his fortune where most of his rivals failed? If he was "obscure," how +otherwise could he have been less so? How could the bankrupt tradesman's +son otherwise rise to fame? Should he have sought, at all costs, to +become a lawyer, and rise perchance to the seat of Bacon, and the +opportunity of eking out his stipend by bribes? If it be conceded that +he must needs try literature, and such literature as a man could live +by; and if it be further conceded that his plays, being so marvellous in +their content, were well worth the writing, where enters the "profanity" +of having written them, or of having acted in them, "for the public +amusement"? Even wise men seem to run special risks when they discourse +on Shakspere: Emerson's essay has its own anomaly. + +It is indeed fair to say that Shakspere must have drunk a bitter cup in +his life as an actor. It is true that that calling is apt to be more +humiliating than another to a man's self-respect, if his judgment remain +sane and sensitive. We have the expression of it all in the +Sonnets:[188] + + "Alas! 'tis true, I have gone here and there, + And made myself a motley to the view, + _Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear_, + _Made old offences of affections new_." + +It is impossible to put into fewer and fuller words the story, many a +year long, of sordid compulsion laid on an artistic nature to turn its +own inner life into matter for the stage. But he who can read Shakspere +might be expected to divine that it needed, among other things, even +some such discipline as that to give his spirit its strange universality +of outlook. And he who could esteem both Shakspere and Montaigne might +have been expected to note how they drew together at that very point of +the final retirement, the dramatic caterer finally winning, out of his +earnings, the peace and self-possession that the essayist had inherited +without toil. He must, one thinks, have repeated to himself Montaigne's +very words[189]: "My design is to pass quietly, and not laboriously, +what remains to me of life; there is nothing for which I am minded to +make a strain: not knowledge, of whatever great price it be." And when +he at length took himself away to the quiet village of his birth, it +could hardly be that he had not in mind those words of the essay[190] on +SOLITUDE: + + "We should reserve a storehouse for ourselves ... altogether + ours, and wholly free, wherein we may hoard up and establish + our true liberty, the principal retreat and solitariness, + wherein we must go alone to ourselves.... We have lived long + enough for others, live we the remainder of all life unto + ourselves.... Shake we off these violent hold-fasts which + elsewhere engage us, and estrange us from ourselves. The + greatest thing of the world is for a man to know how to be + his own. It is high time to shake off society, since we can + bring nothing to it...." + +A kindred note is actually struck in the 146th Sonnet,[191] which tells +of revolt at the expenditure of inner life on the outward garniture, and +exhorts the soul to live aright: + + "Then soul live thou upon thy servant's loss, + And let that live to aggravate thy store; + Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross; + Within be fed; without be rich no more: + So shalt thou feed on death that feeds on men, + And death once dead, there's no more dying then"-- + +an echo of much of Montaigne's discourse, herein before cited.[192] + +In perfect keeping with all this movement towards peace and +contemplation, and in final keeping, too, with the deeper doctrine of +Montaigne, is the musing philosophy which lights, as with a wondrous +sunset, the play which one would fain believe the last of all. At the +end, as at the beginning, we find the poet working on a pre-existing +basis, re-making an old play; and at the end, as at the beginning, we +find him picturing, with an incomparable delicacy, new ideal types of +womanhood, who stand out with a fugitive radiance from the surroundings +of mere humanity; but over all alike, in the TEMPEST, there is the +fusing spell of philosophic reverie. Years before, in HAMLET, he had +dramatically caught the force of Montaigne's frequent thought that +daylight life might be taken as a nightmare, and the dream life as the +real. It was the kind of thought to recur to the dramatist above all +men, even were it not pressed upon him by the essayist's reiterations: + + "Those which have compared our life unto a dream, have + happily had more reason so to do than they were aware. When + we dream, our soul liveth, worketh, and exerciseth all her + faculties, even and as much as when it waketh.... We wake + sleeping, and sleep waking. In my sleep I see not so clear, + yet can I never find my waking clear enough, or without + dimness.... Why make we not a doubt whether our thinking + and our working be another dreaming, and our waking some + kind of sleeping?"[193] + + "Let me think of building castles in Spain, my imagination + will forge me commodities and afford means and delights + wherewith my mind is really tickled and essentially gladded. + How often do we pester our spirits with anger or sadness by + such shadows, and entangle ourselves into fantastical + passions which alter both our mind and body?... Enquire of + yourself, where is the object of this alteration? Is there + anything but us in nature, except subsisting nullity? over + whom it hath any power?... Aristodemus, king of the + Messenians, killed himself upon a conceit he took of some + ill presage by I know not what howling of dogs.... It is the + right way to prize one's life at the right worth of it, to + forego it for a dream."[194] + + " ... Our reasons do often anticipate the effect and have + the extension of their jurisdiction so infinite, that they + judge and exercise themselves in inanity, and to a not + being. Besides the flexibility of our invention, to frame + reasons unto all manner of dreams; our imagination is + likewise found easy to receive impressions from falsehood, + by very frivolous appearances."[195] + +Again and again does the essayist return to this note of mysticism, so +distinct from the daylight practicality of his normal utterance. And it +was surely with these musings in his mind that the poet makes Prospero +pronounce upon the phantasmagoria that the spirits have performed at his +behest. We know, indeed, that the speech proceeds upon a reminiscence of +four lines in the Earl of Stirling's DARIUS (1604), lines in themselves +very tolerable, alike in cadence and sonority, but destined to be +remembered by reason of the way in which the master, casting them into +his all-transmuting alembic, has remade them in the fine gold of his +subtler measure. The Earl's lines run: + + "Let greatness of her glassy scepters vaunt; + Not scepters, no, but reeds, soon bruised, soon broken; + And let this worldly pomp our wits enchant; + All fades, and scarcely leaves behind a token. + Those golden palaces, those gorgeous halls, + With furniture superfluously fair; + Those stately courts, those sky-encountering walls, + Evanish all like vapours in the air." + +The sonorities of the rhymed verse seem to have vibrated in the poet's +brain amid the memories of the prose which had suggested to him so much; +and the verse and prose alike are raised to an immortal movement in the +great lines of Prospero: + + "These our actors, + As I foretold you, are all spirits, and + Are melted into air, into thin air. + And like the baseless fabric of this vision, + The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, + The solemn temples, the great globe itself, + Yea, all which it inherits, shall dissolve + And, like this unsubstantial pageant faded, + Leave not a wrack behind. _We are such stuff + As dreams are made on_, and our little life + Is rounded with a sleep." + +In the face of that vast philosophy, it seems an irrelevance to reason, +as some do, that in the earlier scene in which Gonzalo expounds his +Utopia of incivilisation, Shakspere so arranges the dialogue as to +express his own ridicule of the conception. The interlocutors, it will +be remembered, are Sebastian and Antonio, two of the villains of the +piece, and Alonso, the wrecked usurper. The kind Gonzalo talks of the +ideal community to distract Alonso's troubled thoughts; Sebastian and +Antonio jeer at him; and Alonso finally cries, "Pr'ythee, no more, thou +dost talk nothing to me." Herr Gervinus is quite sure that this was +meant to state Shakspere's prophetic derision for all communisms and +socialisms and peace congresses, Shakspere being the fore-ordained +oracle of the political gospel of his German commentators, on the +principle of "Gott mit uns." And it may well have been that Shakspere, +looking on the society of his age, had no faith in any Utopia, and that +he humorously put what he felt to be a valid criticism of Montaigne's in +the mouth of a surly rascal--he has done as much elsewhere. But he was +surely the last man to have missed seeing that Montaigne's Utopia was no +more Montaigne's personal political counsel to his age than AS YOU LIKE +IT was his own; and, as regards the main purpose of Montaigne's essay, +which was to show that civilisation was no unmixed gain as contrasted +with some forms of barbarism, the author of CYMBELINE was hardly the man +to repugn it, even if he amused himself by putting forward Caliban[196] +as the real "cannibal," in contrast to Montaigne's. He had given his +impression of certain aspects of civilisation in HAMLET, Measure for +Measure, and KING LEAR. As his closing plays show, however, he had +reached the knowledge that for the general as for the private wrong, the +sane man must cease to cherish indignation. That teaching, which he +could not didactically impose, for such a world as his, on the old +tragedy of revenge which he recoloured with Montaigne's thought, he +found didactically enough set down in the essay on Diversion:[197] + + "Revenge is a sweet pleasing passion, of a great and natural + impression: I perceive it well, albeit I have made no trial + of it. To divert of late a young prince from it, I told him + not he was to offer the one side of his cheek to him who had + struck him on the other in regard of charity; nor displayed + I unto him the tragical events poesy bestoweth upon that + passion. There I left him and strove to make him taste the + beauty of a contrary image; the honour, the favour, and the + goodwill he should acquire by gentleness and goodness; I + diverted him to ambition." + +And now it is didactically uttered by the wronged magician in the +drama:-- + + "Though with their high wrongs I am struck to the quick, + Yet with my nobler reason, 'gainst my fury + Do I take part; the rarer action is + In virtue than in vengeance...." + +The principle now pervades the whole of Prospero's society; even the +cursed and cursing Caliban is recognised[198] as a necessary member of +it:-- + + "We cannot miss him; he does make our fire, + Fetch in our wood; and serves in offices + That profit us." + +It is surely not unwarrantable to pronounce, then, finally, that the +poet who thus watchfully lit his action from the two sides of passion +and sympathy was in the end at one with his "guide, philosopher, and +friend," who in that time of universal strife and separateness could of +his own accord renew the spirit of Socrates, and say:[199] "I esteem all +men my compatriots, and embrace a Pole even as a Frenchman, +subordinating this national tie to the common and universal." Here, too, +was not Montaigne the first of the moderns? + + [1] Preface to Eng. trans. of Simrock on _The Plots of + Shakespere's Plays_, 1850. + + [2] _Lady Politick Would-be._ All our English writers, + I mean such as are happy in the Italian, + Will deign to steal out of this author [_Pastor Fido_] mainly + Almost as much as from Montaignie; + He has so modern and facile a vein, + Fitting the time, and catching the court ear. + + --Act iii. sc. 2. + + [3] _London and Westminster Review_, July, 1838, p. 321. + + [4] Article in _Journal des Debats_, 7 November, 1846, + reprinted in _L'Angleterre au Seizieme Siecle_, ed. 1879, p. + 136. + + [5] _Montaigne_ (Serie des _Grands Ecrivains Francais_), + 1895, p. 105. + + [6] _Moliere et Shakspere._ + + [7] _Shakspere and Classical Antiquity_, Eng. tr. p. 297. + + [8] See this point discussed in the _Free Review_ of July, + 1895: and compare the lately published essay of Mr. John + Corbin, on _The Elizabethan Hamlet_, (Elkin Matthews, 1895). + + [9] _Hamlet_, Act V, scene 2. + + [10] Book I, Essay 33. + + [11] _Advice_ in Florio. + + [12] B. III, Ch. 8. _Of the art of conferring._ + + [13] B. III, Ch. 12. + + [14] Act II, Sc. 1, 144. + + [15] Book I, ch. II, _end_. + + [16] Book I, ch. 23. + + [17] _Ibid._ + + [18] Some slip of the pen seems to have occurred in this + confused line. The original _Et male consultis pretium est: + prudentia fallax_--is sufficiently close to Shakspere's + phrase. + + [19] "O heaven! a beast that wants discourse of reason" (Act + I, Scene 2.) + + [20] Act II, Sc. 2. + + [21] Act IV, Scene 2. + + [22] Act IV, Scene 4. + + [23] See Furniss's Variorum edition of _Hamlet, in loc._ + + [24] B. I, Chap. 19; Edit. Firmin-Didot, vol. i, p. 68. + + [25] B. II, Chap. 4; Ed. cited, p. 382. + + [26] B. II, Chap. 12; _Ibid_, p. 459. + + [27] B. II, Chap. 33. + + [28] _Shakespere and Montaigne_, 1884, p. 88. + + [29] B. III, Chap. 12. + + [30] Act III, Scene 3. + + [31] B. I, ch. 22. + + [32] Act II, Scene 2. + + [33] _Othello_, Act II, Scene 3. + + [34] B. I, ch. 40, "That the taste of goods or evils doth + greatly depend on the opinion we have of them." + + [35] B. I, ch. 50. + + [36] B. I, ch. 22. + + [37] B. III, ch. 10. + + [38] Act V, Scene 4. + + [39] On reverting to Mr. Feis's book I find that in 1884 he + had noted this and others of the above parallels, which I + had not observed when writing on the subject in 1883. In + view of some other parallels and clues drawn by him, our + agreements leave me a little uneasy. He decides, for + instance (p. 93) that Hamlet's phrase "foul as Vulcan's + stithy" is a "sly thrust at Florio" who in his preface calls + himself "Montaigne's Vulcan"; that the Queen's phrase + "thunders in the index" is a reference to "the Index of the + Holy See and its thunders"; and that Hamlet's lines "Why let + the stricken deer go weep" are clearly a satire against + Montaigne, "who fights shy of action." Mr. Feis's book + contains so many propositions of this order that it is + difficult to feel sure that he is ever judicious. Still, I + find myself in agreement with him on some four or five + points of textual coincidence in the two authors. + + [40] Act I, Scene 4. + + [41] B. II, Chap. 33. + + [42] It is further relevant to note that in the essay _Of + Drunkenness_ (ii. 2) Montaigne observes that "drunkenness + amongst others appeareth to me a gross and brutish vice," + that "the worst estate of man is where he loseth the + knowledge and government of himself," and that "the grossest + and rudest nation that liveth amongst us at this day, is + only that which keepeth it in credit." The reference is to + Germany: but Shakspere in _Othello_ (Act II, Sc. 3) makes + Iago pronounce the English harder drinkers than either the + Danes or the Hollanders; and the lines: + + "This heavy-headed revel, east and west, + Makes us traduced and taxed of other nations; + They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase, + Soil our addition." + + might also be reminiscent of Montaigne, though of course + there is nothing peculiar in such a coincidence. + + [43] B. III, Chap. 7. + + [44] B. III, Chap. 4. + + [45] B. III, Chap. 10. + + [46] B. III, Chap. 2. + + [47] B. III, Chap. 13. + + [48] B. I, Chap. 38. + + [49] B. III, Chap. 4. + + [50] B. I, Chap. 40. + + [51] B. II, Chap. 8. + + [52] B. II, Chap. 18. + + [53] _De Officus_ i, 4: _cf._ 30. + + [54] 1534, 1558, 1583, 1600. See also the compilation + entitled _A Treatise of Morall Philosophie_ by W. Baudwin, + 4th enlargement by T. Paulfreyman. 1600, pp. 44-46, where + there is a closely parallel passage from Zeno as well as + that of Cicero. + + [55] Mr. Feis makes this attribution. + + [56] B. II, Chap. 1. + + [57] This may fairly be argued, perhaps, even of the + somewhat close parallel, noted by Mr. Feis, between Laertes' + lines (I, 3): + + "For nature, crescent, does not grow alone + In thews and bulk, but as this temple waxes + The inward service of the mind and soul + Grows wide withal," + + and Florio's rendering of an extract from Lucretius in the + _Apology_ + + "The mind is with the body bred, we do behold. + It jointly grows with it, it waxeth old." + + Only the slight coincidence of the use of the (then + familiar) verb "wax" in both passages could suggest + imitation in the case of such a well-worn commonplace. + + [58] See some cited at the close of this essay in another + connection. + + [59] B. II, Chap. 12. + + [60] Act IV, Scene 3. + + [61] "_Le monde est un branloire perenne_" (Book III, Essay + 2). Florio translates that particular sentence: "The world + runs all on wheels" a bad rendering. + + [62] B. III, Chap. 3. + + [63] B. II, Chap. 17. + + [64] It may fairly be laid down as practically certain, from + what we know of the habit of circulating works in manuscript + at that period, and from what Florio tells us in his + preface, that translations of some of the essays had been + passed about before Florio's folio was printed. [65] _Varia + Historia_, XII, 23. + + [66] The story certainly had a wide vogue, being found in + Aristotle, _Eudemian Ethics_, iii, 1, and in Nicolas of + Damascus; while Strabo (vii, ii. Sec. 1) gives it further + currency by contradicting it as regards the Cimbri. + + [67] B. II, Chap. 5. + + [68] B. II, Chap. 3. + + [69] Richard III, I, 4; V, 3. + + [70] _The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy_, 1893, + p. 80-5. + + [71] Actus III, 865-866. + + [72] Actus IV, 1526-7. + + [73] This in turn is an echo from the Greek. See note in + Doering's edition. + + [74] See Boswell's edition of Malone's Shakspere, _in loc._ + + [75] Yet again, in Marston's _Insatiate Countess_, the + commentators have noticed the same sentiment. + + "Death, From whose stern cave none tracks a backward path." + + It was in fact a poetic commonplace. + + [76] Act 5, Scene 6. + + [77] Act v, sc. 1. + + [78] I, 22. + + [79] 2 _H. IV_, iv. 3 + + [80] ii, 2 + + [81] ii, 10. + + [82] So far as I remember, the idea of suicide as a + desertion of one's post without the deity's permission is + first found, in English literature, in Sidney, and he would + find it in Montaigne's essay on the _Custom of the Isle of + Cea_ (edit. Firmin-Didot, i. 367). + + [83] When this is compared with the shorter speech of + similar drift in the anonymous play of _Edward III._ ("To + die is all as common as to live" etc., Act iv., sc. 4) it + will be seen that the querying form as well as the + elaboration constitutes a special resemblance between the + speech in Shakspere and the passages in Montaigne + + [84] _APOLOGY OF RAYMOND SEBONDE._ + + [85] ii, 6, _Of Exercise or Practice_. + + [86] _Apology._ + + [87] _Ibid._, near end. + + [88] _On Isis and Osiris_, c. 26. + + [89] Canto v. + + [90] Canto xxxii. + + [91] It would seem to be from those early monkish legends + that the mediaeval Inferno was built up. The torture of cold + was the northern contribution to the scheme. Compare Warton, + _History of English Poetry_, sec. 49, and Wright's _Saint + Patrick's Purgatory_, 1844, p. 18. + + [92] _Paradise Lost_, B. II, 587-603. + + [93] Edit. Firmin-Didot. i, 597-598. + + [94] _Ibid._ p. 621. + + [95] Act iv, sc. 5. + + [96] iii, 3. + + [97] B. v, cc. 8, 9, 10. _Cf._ vi, 2, 3. + + [98] B. v, cc. 22-25. + + [99] ii, 32. + + [100] The arguments of Dr. Karl Elze, in his _Essays on + Shakspere_ (Eng. tr., p. 15), to show that the _Tempest_ was + written about 1604, seem to me to possess no weight + whatever. He goes so far as to assume that the speech of + Prospero in which Shakspere transmutes four lines of the + Earl of Stirling's _Darius_ must have been written + immediately after the publication of that work. The argument + is (1) that Shakspere must have seen _Darius_ when it came + out, and (2) that he would imitate the passage then or + never. + + [101] Act v, sc. 3. + + [102] i, 31. + + [103] ii, 13. + + [104] Act i, sc. 2. + + [105] Act iv, sc. 3. + + [106] i, 2. + + [107] _Hippolytus_, 615 (607). + + [108] See the Prologue to _Every Man in His Humour_, first + ed., preserved by Gifford. + + [109] The 29th. + + [110] See his _Characteristics of English Poets_, 2nd. ed. + p. 222. + + [111] The most elaborate and energetic attempt to prove + Shakspere classically learned is that made in the _Critital + Observations on Shakspere_ (1746) of the Rev. John Upton, a + man of great erudition and much random acuteness (shown + particularly in bold attempts to excise interpolations from + the Gospels), but as devoid of the higher critical wisdom as + was Bentley, whom he congenially criticised. To a reader of + to-day, his arguments from Shakspere's diction and syntax + are peculiarly unconvincing. + + [112] It may not be out of place here to say a word for + Farmer in passing, as against the strictures of M. Stapfer, + who, after recognising the general pertinence of his + remarks, proceeds to say (_Shakspere and Classical + Antiquity_, Eng. trans, p. 83) that Farmer "fell into the + egregious folly of speaking in a strain of impertinent + conceit: it is as if the little man for little he must + assuredly have been--was eaten up with vanity." This is in + its way as unjust as the abuse of Knight. M. Stapfer has + misunderstood Farmer's tone, which is one of banter against, + not Shakspere, but those critics who blunderingly ascribed + to him a wide and close knowledge of the classics. Towards + Shakspere, Farmer was admiringly appreciative--and in the + preface to the second edition of his essay he wrote: + "Shakspere wanted not the stilts of languages to raise him + above all other men." + + [113] Ch. iv, of vol. cited. + + [114] _The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy_, pp. + 66-67. + + [115] _Hercules Furens_, ad fin. (1324-1329.). + + [116] _Hippolytus_, Act. II, 715-718 (723-726.) + + [117] _Choephori_, 63-65. + + [118] Carm. lxxxviii, _In Gellium_. See the note in + Doering's edition. + + [119] _Gerusalemme_, xviii, 8. + + [120] _The Insatiate Countess_, published in 1613. + + [121] _Hamlet_, Act iv, sc. 3. + + [122] _Agamemnon_, 152-153. + + [123] ii, 3 (near beginning.) + + [124] _Hercules Furens_, Act. V. 1261-2. + + [125] Act iv, Sc. 3. + + [126] _Hercules Furens_, 1258-61. + + [127] _Macbeth_, Act v, Sc. 2. + + [128] _Ibid._ Act iv, Sc. 2. + + [129] _Ibid._ Act i, sc. 7. + + [130] B. ii, ch. 10. + + [131] Tschischwitz, _Shakspere-Forschungen_, i. 1868, S. 52. + + [132] "Es ist ubrigens nicht zu bedauern dass Shakspere + Brunos Komodie nicht durchweg zum Muster genommen, den sie + enthaelt so masslose Obscoenitaten, dass Shakspere an seinen + staerksten Stellen daneben fast jungfraeulich erscheint" (Work + cited, S. 52). + + [133] Work cited, S. 57. I follow Dr. Tschischwitz's + translation, so far as syntax permits. + + [134] Act i, Sc. 4. + + [135] Work cited, Sc. 59. + + [136] See Frith's _Life of Giordano Bruno_, 1889, pp. + 121-128. + + [137] Act v. Sc. 1. + + [138] Cited by Noack, art. _Bruno_, in + _Philosophie-geschichtliches Lexikon_. + + [139] Act i, Sc. 2. + + [140] Work cited, p. 90. + + [141] It would be unjust to omit to acknowledge that Dr. + Furnivall seeks to frame an inductive notion of Shakspere, + even when rejecting good evidence and proceeding on + deductive lines; that in the works of Professor Dowden on + Shakspere there is always an effort towards a judicial + method, though he refuses to take some of the most necessary + steps; and that the work of Mr. Appleton Morgan, President + of the New York Shakspere Society, entitled _Shakspere in + Fact and Criticism_ (New York, 1888), is certainly not open + to the criticism I have passed. Mr. Morgan's essentially + rationalistic attitude is indicated in a sentence of his + preface: "My own idea has been that William Shakspere was a + man of like passions with ourselves, whose moods and veins + were influenced, just as are ours, by his surroundings, + employments, vocations ... and that, great as he was, and + oceanic as was his genius, we can read him all the better + because he was, after all, a man...." In recognising the + good sense of Mr. Morgan's general attitude, I must not be + understood to endorse his rejection of the "metrical tests" + of Mr. Fleay and other English critics. These seem to me to + be about the most important English contribution to the + scientific comprehension of Shakspere. On the other hand, it + may be said that the naturalistic conception of Shakspere as + an organism in an environment was first closely approached + in the present century by French critics, as Guizot and + Chasles (Taine's picture of the Elizabethan theatre, adopted + by Green, having been founded on a study by Chasles); that + the naturalistic comprehension of _Hamlet_, as an incoherent + whole resulting from the putting of new cloth into an old + garment, was first reached by the German Ruemelin (_Shakspere + Studien_); and that the structural anomalies of _Hamlet_ as + an acting play were first clearly put by the German Benedix + (_Die Shakspereomanie_) these two critics thus making amends + for much vain discussion of _Hamlet_ by their countrymen + before and since; while the naturalistic conception of the + man Shakspere is being best developed at present in America. + The admirable work of Messrs. Clarke and Wright and Fleay in + the analysis of the text and the revelation of its + non-Shaksperean elements, seems to make little impression on + English culture; while such a luminous manual as Mr. Barrett + Wendell's _William Shakspere: a Study in Elizabethan + Literature_ (New York, 1894), with its freshness of outlook + and appreciation, points to decided progress in rational + Shakspere-study in the States, though, like the _Shakspere + Primer_ of Professor Dowden, it is not consistently + scientific throughout. + + [142] _Life of Shakspere_, 1886, p. 128. + + [143] See Mr. Appleton Morgan's _Shakspere's Venus and + Adonis: a Study in Warwickshire Dialect_. + + [144] Professor Dowden notes in his _Shakspere Primer_ (p. + 12) that before 1600 the prices paid for plays, by Henslowe, + the theatrical lessee, vary from L4 to L8, and not till + later did it rise as high as L20 for a play by a popular + dramatist. + + [145] Compare the 78th Sonnet, which ends;-- + + But thou art all my art, and dost advance + As high as learning my rude ignorance. + + [146] _Life of Shakspere_, pp. 29, 128. + + [147] See it in his _Life of Shakspere_, pp. 120-124. Mr. + Fleay's theory, though perhaps the best "documented" of all, + has received little attention in comparison with Mr. + Tyler's, which has the attraction of fuller detail. + + [148] Only in Chaucer (_e.g._, _The Book of the Duchess_) do + we find before his time the successful expression of the + same perception; and Chaucer counted for almost nothing in + Elizabethan letters. + + [149] See Fleay's _Life of Shakspere_, pp. 130-1. + + [150] Cp. the _Essays_, ii, 17: iii, 2. (Edit. cited, vol. + ii, pp. 40, 231.) + + [151] _Essays_, i, 25; _cf._ i, 48. (Edit. cited, vol. i, + pp. 304, 429.) + + [152] ii, 4. (Edit. cited, i, 380.) + + [153] ii, 10. (Edit. cited, i, 429.) + + [154] _Pensees Diverses._ Less satisfying is the further + _pensee_ in the same collection:--"Les quatre grand poetes, + Platon, _Malebranche_, _Shaftesbury_, Montaigne." + + [155] Edition cited, i, 622-623. + + [156] _Port Royal_, 4ieme edit., ii. 400, _note_. + + [157] B. iii, Chap. 13. + + [158] "In the midst of our compassion, we feel within I know + not what bitter sweet touch of malign pleasure in seeing + others suffer." (Comp. La Rochefoucauld, _Pensee_ 104.) + + [159] B. iii, Chap. 1. + + [160] i, Chap. 38. + + [161] _L'Angleterre au Seizieme Siecle_, p. 133. + + [162] This seems to be the ideal implied in the criticisms + even of Mr. Lowell and Mr. Dowden. + + [163] _Hamlet: ein Tendenzdrama Sheakspere's_ [_sic_ + throughout book] _gegen die skeptische und cosmopolitische + Weltanschanung des Michael de Montaigne_, von G. F. + Stedefeld, Kreisgerichtsrath, Berlin. 1871. + + [164] B. i, Chap. 26. + + [165] It is not disputed that the plot existed beforehand in + Whetstone's _Promos and Cassandra_; and there was probably + an intermediate drama. + + [166] Edit. Firmin-Didot, i, 590. + + [167] _Oxford Essays_, p. 279. Sterling, from his + Christian-Carlylese point of view, declared of Montaigne + that "All that we find in him of Christianity would be + suitable to apes and dogs rather than to rational and moral + beings" (_London and Westminster Review_, July, 1838, p. + 340.) + + [168] Sainte-Beuve has noted how in the essay on Prayer he + added many safeguarding clauses in the later editions. + + [169] See Mr. Spedding's essay, so entitled, in the + _Cornhill Magazine_, August, 1880. + + [170] Art. cited, _end_. + + [171] Note cited by Mr. Spedding. Cp. Introd. to _Leopold_ + Shakspere p. lxxxvii. + + [172] Lear once (iii. 4) says he will pray; but his religion + goes no further. + + [173] See the passage cited above in section iii in + connection with _Measure for Measure_. + + [174] Act iv, Sc. 2. + + [175] Act i, Sc. 2. + + [176] B. i, Chap. 20. + + [177] B. i, Chap. 30. + + [178] Edit. Firmin-Didot, i, 202. + + [179] _Ibid._, pp. 477-478. + + [180] _Here_, it may be said, there is a trace of the + influence of Bruno's philosophy; and it may well be that + Shakspere did not spontaneously strike out the thought for + himself. But I am not aware that any parallel passage has + been cited. + + [181] Fleay's _Life_, pp. 138, &c. + + [182] B. i, Chap. 42. + + [183] B. ii, Chap. 12. (Edit. cited, i. 501.) + + [184] _Midsummer Nights Dream_, Act ii. Sc. 2. + + [185] See his Conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden + + [186] Halliwell-Phillipps, _Outlines of the Life of + Shakspere_, 5th ed., p. 175. + + [187] I find even Mr. Appleton Morgan creating a needless + difficulty on this head. In his _Shakspere in Fact and + Criticism_, already cited, he writes (p. 316): "I find him + ... living and dying so utterly unsuspicious that he had + done anything of which his children might care to hear, that + he never even troubled himself to preserve the manuscript of + or the literary property in a single one of the plays which + had raised him to affluence." As I have already pointed out, + there is no reason to suppose that Shakspere could retain + the ownership of his plays any more than did the other + writers who supplied his theatre. They belonged to the + partnership. Besides, he could not possibly have published + as _his_ the existing mass, so largely made up of other + men's work. His fellow-players did so without scruple after + his death, being simply bent on making money. + + [188] Sonnet 110. Compare the next. + + [189] B. ii, Chap. 10. + + [190] B. i, Chap. 38. + + [191] This may be presumed to have been written between 1603 + and 1609, the date of the publication of the Sonnets. As Mr. + Minto argues, "the only sonnet of really indisputable date + is the 107th, containing the reference to the death of + Elizabeth" (_Characteristics_, as cited, p. 220). As the + first 126 sonnets make a series, it is reasonable to take + those remaining as of later date. + + [192] It more particularly echoes, however, two passages in + the nineteenth essay: "There is no evil in life for him that + hath well conceived, how the privation of life is no evil. + To know how to die, doth free us from all subjection and + constraint." "No man did ever prepare himself to quit the + world more simply and fully ... than I am fully assured I + shall do. The deadest deaths are the best" + + [193] ii, 12. + + [194] iii, 11. + + [195] iii, 4. + + [196] In all probability this character existed in the + previous play, the name being originally, as was suggested + last century by Dr. Farmer, a mere variant of "Canibal." + + [197] iii, 4. + + [198] Act ii, Sc. 2. + + [199] iii, 9. + + + + +BY THE SAME AUTHOR. + +BUCKLE AND HIS CRITICS: A Study in +Sociology. + +THE SAXON AND THE CELT: A Study in +Sociology. + +ESSAYS TOWARDS A CRITICAL METHOD: +New Series. + +MODERN HUMANISTS. + +THE FALLACY OF SAVING: A Study in +Economics. + +THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION: A Study +in Economics. + +CHRIST AND KRISHNA: A Study in Mythology. +Etc. Etc. + +THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, LIMITED, + +16, John Street, Bedford Row, London, W.C. + +Now Ready 2s. 6d. net. + ++THE BLIGHT OF RESPECTABILITY.+ + +_An Anatomy of the Disease and a Theory of Curative Treatment._ + +BY GEOFFREY MORTIMER. + + ++PRESS OPINIONS.+ + +_Pall Mall Gazette_, MAY 31, 1897: + +" ... That, of a surety, is an unpleasant indictment; and, having thus +genially introduced himself to his reader, the author goes bald-headed +for Mrs. Grundy, Mr. Podsnap, and public opinion as voiced according to +the oracles of Mrs. Smith and Brown, of Little Muddleton Road, and for +all the cherished fetishes of Suburbia." + +_Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper_, MAY 30, 1897: + +"To persons who like hard hitting, vigorous English levelled at the cant +of Grundyism, this book will come as a great treat." + +_Weekly Times and Echo_, MAY 30, 1897: + +"'The Blight of Respectability,' by Geoffrey Mortimer, is well worth +reading, and by more of us, perhaps, than imagine it. The shoddy god has +votaries in England, where one would least expect to find them." + +THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, LIMITED, + +16. John Street, Bedford Row, London, W.C. + +Now Ready. 8s. net, + ++THE SAXON AND THE CELT.+ + +BY JOHN M. ROBERTSON. + + ++PRESS OPINIONS.+ + + +_Daily Chronicle_: + +Although the title of this book defines its scope, it does not indicate +its main purpose. That is to show that the Celtic race has been +misrepresented by a number of historians, from Mommsen to Froude, as +incapable of self-government; and to prove, by inference, its fitness +for Home Rule.... The major argument is based by Mommsen and his school +on the assumption of permanent distinctions among races; and therefore +Mr. Robertson applies himself, with a large measure of success, to the +task of showing that the theory of innate persistent qualities marking +off one people from another has no ethnological justification.... Mr. +Robertson is able to make short and easy work of the loose writing which +sums up those (imaginary) characters in epithet or epigram.... Mr. +Robertson's lively style and happy allusiveness keep the reader +interested to the end.... + +THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, LIMITED, + +16, John Street, Bedford Row, London, W.C. + +Just published, 10s. net, + ++PSEUDO-PHILOSOPHY+ + +_AT THE END OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY._ + +By HUGH MORTIMER CECIL. + + ++PRESS OPINIONS.+ + +_The Sun_, MARCH 31, 1897: + +The author of "Pseudo-Philosophy" handles his weapons well, and seems to +us in many instances to occupy positions which, with our present human +intelligence, are almost unassailable. On the other hand, of course, +champions of orthodoxy, as a rule, frankly admit that some of their +tenets and the justice of certain aspects of the divine policy cannot be +comprehended by the natural man. But Mr. Cecil's strong feelings +occasionally carry him too far, as when in the preface he seems to use +"religious obscurantism" as a synonym for religion generally. The former +may have been opposed to social progress, as he says. To contend that +the same charge will stand against the latter is only to ignore the +fact, if not indeed the law, that the great social awakenings have +almost invariably followed hard upon the great religious revivals. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Montaigne and Shakspere, by John M. 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