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diff --git a/25585-0.txt b/25585-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..86c5762 --- /dev/null +++ b/25585-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9504 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and +Fletcher by S. T. Coleridge + + + +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 http://www.gutenberg.org/license + + + +Title: Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher + +Author: S. T. Coleridge + +Release Date: May 24, 2008 [Ebook #25585] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHAKESPEARE, BEN JONSON, BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER*** + + + + + + *Shakespeare* + + Ben Jonson + + Beaumont And Fletcher + + Notes and Lectures + + by S. T. Coleridge + + New Edition + + Liverpool + + Edward Howell + + MDCCCLXXIV + + + + + +CONTENTS + + +Shakespeare + Definition Of Poetry. + Greek Drama. + Progress Of The Drama. + The Drama Generally, And Public Taste. + Shakespeare, A Poet Generally. + Shakespeare’s Judgment equal to his Genius. + Recapitulation, And Summary Of the Characteristics of Shakespeare’s + Dramas. + Outline Of An Introductory Lecture Upon Shakespeare. + Order Of Shakespeare’s Plays. + Notes On The “Tempest.” + “Love’s Labour’s Lost.” + “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” + “Comedy Of Errors.” + “As You Like It.” + “Twelfth Night.” + “All’s Well That Ends Well.” + “Merry Wives Of Windsor.” + “Measure For Measure.” + “Cymbeline.” + “Titus Andronicus.” + “Troilus And Cressida.” + “Coriolanus.” + “Julius Cæsar.” + “Antony And Cleopatra.” + “Timon Of Athens.” + “Romeo And Juliet.” + Shakespeare’s English Historical Plays. + “King John.” + “Richard II.” + “Henry IV.—Part I.” + “Henry IV.—Part II.” + “Henry V.” + “Henry VI.—Part I.” + “Richard III.” + “Lear.” + “Hamlet.” + “Macbeth.” + “Winter’s Tale.” + “Othello.” +Notes on Ben Jonson. + Whalley’s Preface. + “Whalley’s ‘Life Of Jonson.’ ” + “Every Man Out Of His Humour.” + “Poetaster.” + “Fall Of Sejanus.” + “Volpone.” + “Apicæne.” + “The Alchemist.” + “Catiline’s Conspiracy.” + “Bartholomew Fair.” + “The Devil Is An Ass.” + “The Staple Of News.” + “The New Inn.” +Notes On Beaumont And Fletcher. + Harris’s Commendatory Poem On Fletcher. + Life Of Fletcher In Stockdale’s Edition, 1811. + “Maid’s Tragedy.” + “A King And No King.” + “The Scornful Lady.” + “The Custom Of The Country.” + “The Elder Brother.” + “The Spanish Curate.” + “Wit Without Money.” + “The Humorous Lieutenant.” + “The Mad Lover.” + “The Loyal Subject.” + “Rule A Wife And Have A Wife.” + “The Laws Of Candy.” + “The Little French Lawyer.” + “Valentinian.” + “Rollo.” + “The Wildgoose Chase.” + “A Wife For A Month.” + “The Pilgrim.” + “The Queen Of Corinth.” + “The Noble Gentleman.” + “The Coronation.” + “Wit At Several Weapons.” + “The Fair Maid Of The Inn.” + “The Two Noble Kinsmen.” + “The Woman Hater.” + + + + + + +SHAKESPEARE, WITH INTRODUCTORY MATTER ON POETRY, THE DRAMA, AND THE STAGE. + + + + +Definition Of Poetry. + + +Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is +opposed to science, and prose to metre. The proper and immediate object of +science is the acquirement, or communication, of truth; the proper and +immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate pleasure. +This definition is useful; but as it would include novels and other works +of fiction, which yet we do not call poems, there must be some additional +character by which poetry is not only divided from opposites, but likewise +distinguished from disparate, though similar, modes of composition. Now +how is this to be effected? In animated prose, the beauties of nature, and +the passions and accidents of human nature, are often expressed in that +natural language which the contemplation of them would suggest to a pure +and benevolent mind; yet still neither we nor the writers call such a work +a poem, though no work could deserve that name which did not include all +this, together with something else. What is this? It is that pleasurable +emotion, that peculiar state and degree of excitement, which arises in the +poet himself in the act of composition;—and in order to understand this, +we must combine a more than ordinary sympathy with the objects, emotions, +or incidents contemplated by the poet, consequent on a more than common +sensibility, with a more than ordinary activity of the mind in respect of +the fancy and the imagination. Hence is produced a more vivid reflection +of the truths of nature and of the human heart, united with a constant +activity modifying and correcting these truths by that sort of pleasurable +emotion, which the exertion of all our faculties gives in a certain +degree; but which can only be felt in perfection under the full play of +those powers of mind, which are spontaneous rather than voluntary, and in +which the effort required bears no proportion to the activity enjoyed. +This is the state which permits the production of a highly pleasurable +whole, of which each part shall also communicate for itself a distinct and +conscious pleasure; and hence arises the definition, which I trust is now +intelligible, that poetry, or rather a poem, is a species of composition, +opposed to science, as having intellectual pleasure for its object, and as +attaining its end by the use of language natural to us in a state of +excitement,—but distinguished from other species of composition, not +excluded by the former criterion, by permitting a pleasure from the whole +consistent with a consciousness of pleasure from the component parts;—and +the perfection of which is, to communicate from each part the greatest +immediate pleasure compatible with the largest sum of pleasure on the +whole. This, of course, will vary with the different modes of poetry;—and +that splendour of particular lines, which would be worthy of admiration in +an impassioned elegy, or a short indignant satire, would be a blemish and +proof of vile taste in a tragedy or an epic poem. + +It is remarkable, by the way, that Milton in three incidental words has +implied all which for the purposes of more distinct apprehension, which at +first must be slow-paced in order to be distinct, I have endeavoured to +develope in a precise and strictly adequate definition. Speaking of +poetry, he says, as in a parenthesis, “which is simple, sensuous, +passionate.” How awful is the power of words!—fearful often in their +consequences when merely felt, not understood; but most awful when both +felt and understood!—Had these three words only been properly understood +by, and present in the minds of, general readers, not only almost a +library of false poetry would have been either precluded or still-born, +but, what is of more consequence, works truly excellent and capable of +enlarging the understanding, warming and purifying the heart, and placing +in the centre of the whole being the germs of noble and manlike actions, +would have been the common diet of the intellect instead. For the first +condition, simplicity,—while, on the one hand, it distinguishes poetry +from the arduous processes of science, labouring towards an end not yet +arrived at, and supposes a smooth and finished road, on which the reader +is to walk onward easily, with streams murmuring by his side, and trees +and flowers and human dwellings to make his journey as delightful as the +object of it is desirable, instead of having to toil with the pioneers and +painfully make the road on which others are to travel,—precludes, on the +other hand, every affectation and morbid peculiarity;—the second +condition, sensuousness, insures that framework of objectivity, that +definiteness and articulation of imagery, and that modification of the +images themselves, without which poetry becomes flattened into mere +didactics of practice, or evaporated into a hazy, unthoughtful, +day-dreaming; and the third condition, passion, provides that neither +thought nor imagery shall be simply objective, but that the _passio vera_ +of humanity shall warm and animate both. + +To return, however, to the previous definition, this most general and +distinctive character of a poem originates in the poetic genius itself; +and though it comprises whatever can with any propriety be called a poem +(unless that word be a mere lazy synonym for a composition in metre), it +yet becomes a just, and not merely discriminative, but full and adequate, +definition of poetry in its highest and most peculiar sense, only so far +as the distinction still results from the poetic genius, which sustains +and modifies the emotions, thoughts, and vivid representations of the poem +by the energy without effort of the poet’s own mind,—by the spontaneous +activity of his imagination and fancy, and by whatever else with these +reveals itself in the balancing and reconciling of opposite or discordant +qualities, sameness with difference, a sense of novelty and freshness with +old or customary objects, a more than usual state of emotion with more +than usual order, self-possession and judgment with enthusiasm and +vehement feeling,—and which, while it blends and harmonizes the natural +and the artificial, still subordinates art to nature, the manner to the +matter, and our admiration of the poet to our sympathy with the images, +passions, characters, and incidents of the poem:— + +“Doubtless, this could not be, but that she turns +Bodies to _spirit_ by sublimation strange, +As fire converts to fire the things it burns— +As we our food into our nature change! + +“From their gross matter she abstracts _their_ forms, +And draws a kind of quintessence from things, +Which to her proper nature she transforms +To bear them light on her celestial wings! + +“_Thus_ doth she, when from _individual states_ +She doth abstract the universal kinds, +_Which then reclothed in divers names and fates_ +_Steal access thro’ our senses to our minds_.” + + + + +Greek Drama. + + +It is truly singular that Plato,—whose philosophy and religion were but +exotic at home, and a mere opposition to the finite in all things, genuine +prophet and anticipator as he was of the Protestant Christian æra,—should +have given in his Dialogue of the Banquet, a justification of our +Shakespeare. For he relates that, when all the other guests had either +dispersed or fallen asleep, Socrates only, together with Aristophanes and +Agathon, remained awake, and that, while he continued to drink with them +out of a large goblet, he compelled them, though most reluctantly, to +admit that it was the business of one and the same genius to excel in +tragic and comic poetry, or that the tragic poet ought, at the same time, +to contain within himself the powers of comedy. Now, as this was directly +repugnant to the entire theory of the ancient critics, and contrary to all +their experience, it is evident that Plato must have fixed the eye of his +contemplation on the innermost essentials of the drama, abstracted from +the forms of age or country. In another passage he even adds the reason, +namely, that opposites illustrate each other’s nature, and in their +struggle draw forth the strength of the combatants, and display the +conqueror as sovereign even on the territories of the rival power. + +Nothing can more forcibly exemplify the separative spirit of the Greek +arts than their comedy as opposed to their tragedy. But as the immediate +struggle of contraries supposes an arena common to both, so both were +alike ideal; that is, the comedy of Aristophanes rose to as great a +distance above the ludicrous of real life, as the tragedy of Sophocles +above its tragic events and passions,—and it is in this one point, of +absolute ideality, that the comedy of Shakespeare and the old comedy of +Athens coincide. In this also alone did the Greek tragedy and comedy +unite; in every thing else they were exactly opposed to each other. +Tragedy is poetry in its deepest earnest; comedy is poetry in unlimited +jest. Earnestness consists in the direction and convergence of all the +powers of the soul to one aim, and in the voluntary restraint of its +activity in consequence; the opposite, therefore, lies in the apparent +abandonment of all definite aim or end, and in the removal of all bounds +in the exercise of the mind,—attaining its real end, as an entire +contrast, most perfectly, the greater the display is of intellectual +wealth squandered in the wantonness of sport without an object, and the +more abundant the life and vivacity in the creations of the arbitrary +will. + +The later comedy, even where it was really comic, was doubtless likewise +more comic, the more free it appeared from any fixed aim. +Misunderstandings of intention, fruitless struggles of absurd passion, +contradictions of temper, and laughable situations there were; but still +the form of the representation itself was serious; it proceeded as much +according to settled laws, and used as much the same means of art, though +to a different purpose, as the regular tragedy itself. But in the old +comedy the very form itself is whimsical; the whole work is one great +jest, comprehending a world of jests within it, among which each maintains +its own place without seeming to concern itself as to the relation in +which it may stand to its fellows. In short, in Sophocles, the +constitution of tragedy is monarchical, but such as it existed in elder +Greece, limited by laws, and therefore the more venerable,—all the parts +adapting and submitting themselves to the majesty of the heroic +sceptre:—in Aristophanes, comedy, on the contrary, is poetry in its most +democratic form, and it is a fundamental principle with it, rather to risk +all the confusion of anarchy, than to destroy the independence and +privileges of its individual constituents,—place, verse, characters, even +single thoughts, conceits, and allusions, each turning on the pivot of its +own free will. + +The tragic poet idealizes his characters by giving to the spiritual part +of our nature a more decided preponderance over the animal cravings and +impulses, than is met with in real life: the comic poet idealizes his +characters by making the animal the governing power, and the intellectual +the mere instrument. But as tragedy is not a collection of virtues and +perfections, but takes care only that the vices and imperfections shall +spring from the passions, errors, and prejudices which arise out of the +soul;—so neither is comedy a mere crowd of vices and follies, but whatever +qualities it represents, even though they are in a certain sense amiable, +it still displays them as having their origin in some dependence on our +lower nature, accompanied with a defect in true freedom of spirit and +self-subsistence, and subject to that unconnection by contradictions of +the inward being, to which all folly is owing. + +The ideal of earnest poetry consists in the union and harmonious melting +down, and fusion of the sensual into the spiritual,—of man as an animal +into man as a power of reason and self-government. And this we have +represented to us most clearly in the plastic art, or statuary; where the +perfection of outward form is a symbol of the perfection of an inward +idea; where the body is wholly penetrated by the soul, and spiritualized +even to a state of glory, and like a transparent substance, the matter, in +its own nature darkness, becomes altogether a vehicle and fixture of +light, a means of developing its beauties, and unfolding its wealth of +various colours without disturbing its unity, or causing a division of the +parts. The sportive ideal, on the contrary, consists in the perfect +harmony and concord of the higher nature with the animal, as with its +ruling principle and its acknowledged regent. The understanding and +practical reason are represented as the willing slaves of the senses and +appetites, and of the passions arising out of them. Hence we may admit the +appropriateness to the old comedy, as a work of defined art, of allusions +and descriptions, which morality can never justify, and, only with +reference to the author himself, and only as being the effect or rather +the cause of the circumstances in which he wrote, can consent even to +palliate. + +The old comedy rose to its perfection in Aristophanes, and in him also it +died with the freedom of Greece. Then arose a species of drama, more fitly +called dramatic entertainment than comedy, but of which, nevertheless, our +modern comedy (Shakespeare’s altogether excepted) is the genuine +descendant. Euripides had already brought tragedy lower down and by many +steps nearer to the real world than his predecessors had ever done, and +the passionate admiration which Menander and Philemon expressed for him, +and their open avowals that he was their great master, entitle us to +consider their dramas as of a middle species, between tragedy and +comedy,—not the tragi-comedy, or thing of heterogeneous parts, but a +complete whole, founded on principles of its own. Throughout we find the +drama of Menander distinguishing itself from tragedy, but not as the +genuine old comedy, contrasting with, and opposing it. Tragedy, indeed, +carried the thoughts into the mythologic world, in order to raise the +emotions, the fears, and the hopes, which convince the inmost heart that +their final cause is not to be discovered in the limits of mere mortal +life, and force us into a presentiment, however dim, of a state in which +those struggles of inward free will with outward necessity, which form the +true subject of the tragedian, shall be reconciled and solved;—the +entertainment or new comedy, on the other hand, remained within the circle +of experience. Instead of the tragic destiny, it introduced the power of +chance; even in the few fragments of Menander and Philemon now remaining +to us, we find many exclamations and reflections concerning chance and +fortune, as in the tragic poets concerning destiny. In tragedy, the moral +law, either as obeyed or violated, above all consequences—its own +maintenance or violation constituting the most important of all +consequences—forms the ground; the new comedy, and our modern comedy in +general (Shakespeare excepted as before) lies in prudence or imprudence, +enlightened or misled self-love. The whole moral system of the +entertainment exactly like that of fable, consists in rules of prudence, +with an exquisite conciseness, and at the same time an exhaustive fulness +of sense. An old critic said that tragedy was the flight or elevation of +life, comedy (that of Menander) its arrangement or ordonnance. + +Add to these features a portrait-like truth of character,—not so far +indeed as that a _bona fide_ individual should be described or imagined, +but yet so that the features which give interest and permanence to the +class should be individualized. The old tragedy moved in an ideal +world,—the old comedy in a fantastic world. As the entertainment, or new +comedy, restrained the creative activity both of the fancy and the +imagination, it indemnified the understanding in appealing to the judgment +for the probability of the scenes represented. The ancients themselves +acknowledged the new comedy as an exact copy of real life. The grammarian, +Aristophanes, somewhat affectedly exclaimed:—“O Life and Menander! which +of you two imitated the other?” In short the form of this species of drama +was poetry, the stuff or matter was prose. It was prose rendered +delightful by the blandishments and measured motions of the muse. Yet even +this was not universal. The mimes of Sophron, so passionately admired by +Plato, were written in prose, and were scenes out of real life conducted +in dialogue. The exquisite feast of Adonis (Συρακούσιαι ῆ Ἀδωνιάζουσαι) in +Theocritus, we are told, with some others of his eclogues, were close +imitations of certain mimes of Sophron—free translations of the prose into +hexameters. + +It will not be improper, in this place, to make a few remarks on the +remarkable character and functions of the chorus in the Greek tragic +drama. + +The chorus entered from below, close by the orchestra, and there, pacing +to and fro during the choral odes, performed their solemn measured dance. +In the centre of the _orchestra_, directly over against the middle of the +_scene_, there stood an elevation with steps in the shape of a large +altar, as high as the boards of the _logeion_ or moveable stage. This +elevation was named the _thymele_ (θυμέλη), and served to recall the +origin and original purpose of the chorus, as an altar-song in honour of +the presiding deity. Here, and on these steps the persons of the chorus +sate collectively, when they were not singing; attending to the dialogue +as spectators, and acting as (what in truth they were) the ideal +representatives of the real audience, and of the poet himself in his own +character, assuming the supposed impressions made by the drama, in order +to direct and rule them. But when the chorus itself formed part of the +dialogue, then the leader of the band, the foreman, or _coryphæus_, +ascended, as some think, the level summit of the _thymele_ in order to +command the stage, or, perhaps, the whole chorus advanced to the front of +the orchestra, and thus put themselves in ideal connection, as it were, +with the _dramatis personæ_ there acting. This _thymele_ was in the centre +of the whole edifice, all the measurements were calculated, and the +semi-circle of the amphitheatre was drawn from this point. It had a double +use, a twofold purpose; it constantly reminded the spectators of the +origin of tragedy as a religious service, and declared itself as the ideal +representative of the audience by having its place exactly in the point, +to which all the radii from the different seats or benches converged. + +In this double character, as constituent parts, and yet at the same time +as spectators, of the drama, the chorus could not but tend to enforce the +unity of place;—not on the score of any supposed improbability, which the +understanding or common sense might detect in a change of place;—but +because the senses themselves put it out of the power of any imagination +to conceive a place coming to, and going away from the persons, instead of +the persons changing their place. Yet there are instances, in which, +during the silence of the chorus, the poets have hazarded this by a change +in that part of the scenery which represented the more distant objects to +the eye of the spectator—a demonstrative proof, that this alternately +extolled and ridiculed unity (as ignorantly ridiculed as extolled) was +grounded on no essential principle of reason, but arose out of +circumstances which the poet could not remove, and therefore took up into +the form of the drama, and co-organised it with all the other parts into a +living whole. + +The Greek tragedy may rather be compared to our serious opera than to the +tragedies of Shakespeare; nevertheless, the difference is far greater than +the likeness. In the opera all is subordinated to the music, the dresses, +and the scenery;—the poetry is a mere vehicle for articulation, and as +little pleasure is lost by ignorance of the Italian language, so is little +gained by the knowledge of it. But in the Greek drama all was but as +instruments and accessaries to the poetry; and hence we should form a +better notion of the choral music from the solemn hymns and psalms of +austere church music than from any species of theatrical singing. A single +flute or pipe was the ordinary accompaniment; and it is not to be +supposed, that any display of musical power was allowed to obscure the +distinct hearing of the words. On the contrary, the evident purpose was to +render the words more audible, and to secure by the elevations and pauses +greater facility of understanding the poetry. For the choral songs are, +and ever must have been, the most difficult part of the tragedy; there +occur in them the most involved verbal compounds, the newest expressions, +the boldest images, the most recondite allusions. Is it credible that the +poets would, one and all, have been thus prodigal of the stores of art and +genius, if they had known that in the representation the whole must have +been lost to the audience,—at a time too, when the means of after +publication were so difficult and expensive, and the copies of their works +so slowly and narrowly circulated? + +The masks also must be considered—their vast variety and admirable +workmanship. Of this we retain proof by the marble masks which represented +them; but to this in the real mask we must add the thinness of the +substance and the exquisite fitting on to the head of the actor; so that +not only were the very eyes painted with a single opening left for the +pupil of the actor’s eye, but in some instances, even the iris itself was +painted, when the colour was a known characteristic of the divine or +heroic personage represented. + +Finally, I will note down those fundamental characteristics which +contradistinguish the ancient literature from the modern generally, but +which more especially appear in prominence in the tragic drama. The +ancient was allied to statuary, the modern refers to painting. In the +first there is a predominance of rhythm and melody, in the second of +harmony and counterpoint. The Greeks idolized the finite, and therefore +were the masters of all grace, elegance, proportion, fancy, dignity, +majesty—of whatever, in short, is capable of being definitely conveyed by +defined forms or thoughts: the moderns revere the infinite, and affect the +indefinite as a vehicle of the infinite;—hence their passions, their +obscure hopes and fears, their wandering through the unknown, their +grander moral feelings, their more august conception of man as man, their +future rather than their past—in a word, their sublimity. + + + + +Progress Of The Drama. + + +Let two persons join in the same scheme to ridicule a third, and either +take advantage of, or invent, some story for that purpose, and mimicry +will have already produced a sort of rude comedy. It becomes an inviting +treat to the populace, and gains an additional zest and burlesque by +following the already established plan of tragedy; and the first man of +genius who seizes the idea, and reduces it into form,—into a work of +art,—by metre and music, is the Aristophanes of the country. + +How just this account is will appear from the fact that in the first or +old comedy of the Athenians, most of the _dramatis personæ_ were living +characters introduced under their own names; and no doubt, their ordinary +dress, manner, person and voice were closely mimicked. In less favourable +states of society, as that of England in the middle ages, the beginnings +of comedy would be constantly taking place from the mimics and satirical +minstrels; but from want of fixed abode, popular government, and the +successive attendance of the same auditors, it would still remain in +embryo. I shall, perhaps, have occasion to observe that this remark is not +without importance in explaining the essential differences of the modern +and ancient theatres. + +Phenomena, similar to those which accompanied the origin of tragedy and +comedy among the Greeks, would take place among the Romans much more +slowly, and the drama would, in any case, have much longer remained in its +first irregular form from the character of the people, their continual +engagements in wars of conquest, the nature of their government, and their +rapidly increasing empire. But, however this might have been, the conquest +of Greece precluded both the process and the necessity of it; and the +Roman stage at once presented imitations or translations of the Greek +drama. This continued till the perfect establishment of Christianity. Some +attempts, indeed, were made to adapt the persons of Scriptural or +ecclesiastical history to the drama; and sacred plays, it is probable, +were not unknown in Constantinople under the emperors of the East. The +first of the kind is, I believe, the only one preserved,—namely, the +Χριστὸς Πάσχων, or, “Christ in his sufferings,” by Gregory +Nazianzen,—possibly written in consequence of the prohibition of profane +literature to the Christians by the apostate Julian. In the West, however, +the enslaved and debauched Roman world became too barbarous for any +theatrical exhibitions more refined than those of pageants and +chariot-races; while the spirit of Christianity, which in its most corrupt +form still breathed general humanity, whenever controversies of faith were +not concerned, had done away the cruel combats of the gladiators, and the +loss of the distant provinces prevented the possibility of exhibiting the +engagements of wild beasts. + +I pass, therefore, at once to the feudal ages which soon succeeded, +confining my observation to this country; though, indeed, the same remark +with very few alterations will apply to all the other states, into which +the great empire was broken. Ages of darkness succeeded;—not, indeed, the +darkness of Russia or of the barbarous lands unconquered by Rome; for from +the time of Honorius to the destruction of Constantinople and the +consequent introduction of ancient literature into Europe, there was a +continued succession of individual intellects;—the golden chain was never +wholly broken, though the connecting links were often of baser metal. A +dark cloud, like another sky, covered the entire cope of heaven,—but in +this place it thinned away, and white stains of light showed a half +eclipsed star behind it,—in that place it was rent asunder, and a star +passed across the opening in all its brightness, and then vanished. Such +stars exhibited themselves only; surrounding objects did not partake of +their light. There were deep wells of knowledge, but no fertilizing rills +and rivulets. For the drama, society was altogether a state of chaos, out +of which it was, for a while at least, to proceed anew, as if there had +been none before it. And yet it is not undelightful to contemplate the +education of good from evil. The ignorance of the great mass of our +countrymen was the efficient cause of the reproduction of the drama; and +the preceding darkness and the returning light were alike necessary in +order to the creation of a Shakespeare. + +The drama re-commenced in England, as it first began in Greece, in +religion. The people were not able to read,—the priesthood were unwilling +that they should read; and yet their own interest compelled them not to +leave the people wholly ignorant of the great events of sacred history. +They did that, therefore, by scenic representations, which in after ages +it has been attempted to do in Roman Catholic countries by pictures. They +presented Mysteries, and often at great expense; and reliques of this +system still remain in the south of Europe, and indeed throughout Italy, +where at Christmas the convents and the great nobles rival each other in +the scenic representation of the birth of Christ and its circumstances. I +heard two instances mentioned to me at different times, one in Sicily and +the other in Rome, of noble devotees, the ruin of whose fortunes was said +to have commenced in the extravagant expense which had been incurred in +presenting the _præsepe_ or manger. But these Mysteries, in order to +answer their design, must not only be instructive, but entertaining; and +as, when they became so, the people began to take pleasure in acting them +themselves—in interloping—(against which the priests seem to have fought +hard and yet in vain) the most ludicrous images were mixed with the most +awful personations; and whatever the subject might be, however sublime, +however pathetic, yet the Vice and the Devil, who are the genuine +antecessors of Harlequin and the Clown, were necessary component parts. I +have myself a piece of this kind, which I transcribed a few years ago at +Helmstadt, in Germany, on the education of Eve’s children, in which after +the fall and repentance of Adam, the offended Maker, as in proof of his +reconciliation, condescends to visit them, and to catechise the +children,—who with a noble contempt of chronology are all brought together +from Abel to Noah. The good children say the ten Commandments, the Belief, +and the Lord’s Prayer; but Cain and his rout, after he had received a box +on the ear for not taking off his hat, and afterwards offering his left +hand, is prompted by the devil so to blunder in the Lord’s Prayer as to +reverse the petitions and say it backward! + +Unaffectedly I declare I feel pain at repetitions like these, however +innocent. As historical documents they are valuable; but I am sensible +that what I can read with my eye with perfect innocence, I cannot without +inward fear and misgivings pronounce with my tongue. + +Let me, however, be acquitted of presumption if I say that I cannot agree +with Mr. Malone, that our ancestors did not perceive the ludicrous in +these things, or that they paid no separate attention to the serious and +comic parts. Indeed his own statement contradicts it. For what purpose +should the Vice leap upon the Devil’s back and belabour him, but to +produce this separate attention? The people laughed heartily, no doubt. +Nor can I conceive any meaning attached to the words “separate attention,” +that is not fully answered by one part of an exhibition exciting +seriousness or pity, and the other raising mirth and loud laughter. That +they felt no impiety in the affair is most true. For it is the very +essence of that system of Christian polytheism, which in all its +essentials is now fully as gross in Spain, in Sicily, and the South of +Italy, as it ever was in England in the days of Henry VI. (nay, more so, +for a Wicliffe had not then appeared only, but scattered the good seed +widely),—it is an essential part, I say, of that system to draw the mind +wholly from its own inward whispers and quiet discriminations, and to +habituate the conscience to pronounce sentence in every case according to +the established verdicts of the church and the casuists. I have looked +through volume after volume of the most approved casuists,—and still I +find disquisitions whether this or that act is right, and under what +circumstances, to a minuteness that makes reasoning ridiculous, and of a +callous and unnatural immodesty, to which none but a monk could harden +himself, who has been stripped of all the tender charities of life, yet is +goaded on to make war against them by the unsubdued hauntings of our +meaner nature, even as dogs are said to get the _hydrophobia_ from +excessive thirst. I fully believe that our ancestors laughed as heartily, +as their posterity do at Grimaldi;—and not having been told that they +would be punished for laughing, they thought it very innocent;—and if +their priests had left out murder in the catalogue of their prohibitions +(as indeed they did under certain circumstances of heresy), the greater +part of them,—the moral instincts common to all men having been smothered +and kept from development,—would have thought as little of murder. + +However this may be, the necessity of at once instructing and gratifying +the people produced the great distinction between the Greek and the +English theatres;—for to this we must attribute the origin of +tragi-comedy, or a representation of human events more lively, nearer the +truth, and permitting a larger field of moral instruction, a more ample +exhibition of the recesses of the human heart, under all the trials and +circumstances that most concern us, than was known or guessed at by +Æschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides;—and at the same time we learn to +account for, and—relatively to the author—perceive the necessity of, the +Fool or Clown or both, as the substitutes of the Vice and the Devil, which +our ancestors had been so accustomed to see in every exhibition of the +stage, that they could not feel any performance perfect without them. Even +to this day in Italy, every opera—(even Metastasio obeyed the claim +throughout)—must have six characters, generally two pairs of cross lovers, +a tyrant and a confidant, or a father and two confidants, themselves +lovers;—and when a new opera appears, it is the universal fashion to +ask—which is the tyrant, which the lover? &c. + +It is the especial honour of Christianity, that in its worst and most +corrupted form it cannot wholly separate itself from morality;—whereas the +other religions in their best form (I do not include Mohammedanism, which +is only an anomalous corruption of Christianity, like Swedenborgianism) +have no connection with it. The very impersonation of moral evil under the +name of Vice, facilitated all other impersonations; and hence we see that +the Mysteries were succeeded by Moralities, or dialogues and plots of +allegorical personages. Again, some character in real history had become +so famous, so proverbial, as Nero for instance, that they were introduced +instead of the moral quality, for which they were so noted;—and in this +manner the stage was moving on to the absolute production of heroic and +comic real characters, when the restoration of literature, followed by the +ever-blessed Reformation, let in upon the kingdom not only new knowledge, +but new motive. A useful rivalry commenced between the metropolis on the +one hand,—the residence, independently of the court and nobles, of the +most active and stirring spirits who had not been regularly educated, or +who, from mischance or otherwise, had forsaken the beaten track of +preferment,—and the universities on the other. The latter prided +themselves on their closer approximation to the ancient rules and ancient +regularity—taking the theatre of Greece, or rather its dim reflection, the +rhetorical tragedies of the poet Seneca, as a perfect ideal, without any +critical collation of the times, origin, or circumstances;—whilst, in the +mean time, the popular writers, who could not and would not abandon what +they had found to delight their countrymen sincerely, and not merely from +inquiries first put to the recollection of rules, and answered in the +affirmative, as if it had been an arithmetical sum, did yet borrow from +the scholars whatever they advantageously could, consistently with their +own peculiar means of pleasing. + +And here let me pause for a moment’s contemplation of this interesting +subject. + +We call, for we see and feel, the swan and the dove both transcendantly +beautiful. As absurd as it would be to institute a comparison between +their separate claims to beauty from any abstract rule common to both, +without reference to the life and being of the animals themselves,—or as +if, having first seen the dove, we abstracted its outlines, gave them a +false generalization, called them the principles or ideal of bird-beauty, +and then proceeded to criticise the swan or the eagle;—not less absurd is +it to pass judgment on the works of a poet on the mere ground that they +have been called by the same class-name with the works of other poets in +other times and circumstances, or on any ground, indeed, save that of +their inappropriateness to their own end and being, their want of +significance, as symbols or physiognomy. + +O! few have there been among critics, who have followed with the eye of +the imagination the imperishable yet ever wandering spirit of poetry +through its various metempsychoses, and consequent metamorphoses;—or who +have rejoiced in the light of clear perception at beholding with each new +birth, with each rare _avatar_, the human race frame to itself a new body, +by assimilating materials of nourishment out of its new circumstances, and +work for itself new organs of power appropriate to the new sphere of its +motion and activity! + +I have before spoken of the Romance, or the language formed out of the +decayed Roman and the Northern tongues; and comparing it with the Latin, +we find it less perfect in simplicity and relation—the privileges of a +language formed by the mere attraction of homogeneous parts;—but yet more +rich, more expressive and various, as one formed by more obscure +affinities out of a chaos of apparently heterogeneous atoms. As more than +a metaphor,—as an analogy of this, I have named the true genuine modern +poetry the romantic; and the works of Shakespeare are romantic poetry, +revealing itself in the drama. If the tragedies of Sophocles are in the +strict sense of the word tragedies, and the comedies of Aristophanes +comedies, we must emancipate ourselves from a false association arising +from misapplied names, and find a new word for the plays of Shakespeare. +For they are, in the ancient sense, neither tragedies nor comedies, nor +both in one,—but a different _genus_, diverse in kind, and not merely +different in degree. They may be called romantic dramas, or dramatic +romances. + +A deviation from the simple forms and unities of the ancient stage is an +essential principle, and, of course, an appropriate excellence, of the +romantic drama. For these unities were to a great extent the natural form +of that which in its elements was homogeneous, and the representation of +which was addressed pre-eminently to the outward senses;—and though the +fable, the language, and the characters appealed to the reason rather than +to the mere understanding, inasmuch as they supposed an ideal state rather +than referred to an existing reality,—yet it was a reason which was +obliged to accommodate itself to the senses, and so far became a sort of +more elevated understanding. On the other hand, the romantic poetry—the +Shakespearian drama—appealed to the imagination rather than to the senses, +and to the reason as contemplating our inward nature, and the workings of +the passions in their most retired recesses. But the reason, as reason, is +independent of time and space; it has nothing to do with them: and hence +the certainties of reason have been called eternal truths. As for +example—the endless properties of the circle:—what connection have they +with this or that age, with this or that country?—The reason is aloof from +time and space; the imagination is an arbitrary controller over both;—and +if only the poet have such power of exciting our internal emotions as to +make us present to the scene in imagination chiefly, he acquires the right +and privilege of using time and space as they exist in imagination, and +obedient only to the laws by which the imagination itself acts. These laws +it will be my object and aim to point out as the examples occur, which +illustrate them. But here let me remark what can never be too often +reflected on by all who would intelligently study the works either of the +Athenian dramatists, or of Shakespeare, that the very essence of the +former consists in the sternest separation of the diverse in kind and the +disparate in the degree, whilst the latter delights in interlacing, by a +rainbow-like transfusion of hues, the one with the other. + +And here it will be necessary to say a few words on the stage and on +stage-illusion. + +A theatre, in the widest sense of the word, is the general term for all +places of amusement through the ear or eye, in which men assemble in order +to be amused by some entertainment presented to all at the same time and +in common. Thus an old Puritan divine says:—“Those who attend public +worship and sermons only to amuse themselves, make a theatre of the +church, and turn God’s house into the devil’s. _Theatra ædes +diabololatricæ._” The most important and dignified species of this _genus_ +is, doubtless, the stage (_res theatralis histrionica_), which, in +addition to the generic definition above given, may be characterized in +its idea, or according to what it does, or ought to, aim at, as a +combination of several or of all the fine arts in an harmonious whole, +having a distinct end of its own, to which the peculiar end of each of the +component arts, taken separately, is made subordinate and +subservient,—that, namely, of imitating reality—whether external things, +actions, or passions—-under a semblance of reality. Thus, Claude imitates +a landscape at sunset, but only as a picture; while a forest-scene is not +presented to the spectators as a picture, but as a forest; and though, in +the full sense of the word, we are no more deceived by the one than by the +other, yet are our feelings very differently affected; and the pleasure +derived from the one is not composed of the same elements as that afforded +by the other, even on the supposition that the _quantum_ of both were +equal. In the former, a picture, it is a condition of all genuine delight +that we should not be deceived; in the latter, stage-scenery (inasmuch as +its principle end is not in or for itself, as is the case in a picture, +but to be an assistance and means to an end out of itself), its very +purpose is to produce as much illusion as its nature permits. These, and +all other stage presentations, are to produce a sort of temporary +half-faith, which the spectator encourages in himself and supports by a +voluntary contribution on his own part, because he knows that it is at all +times in his power to see the thing as it really is. I have often observed +that little children are actually deceived by stage-scenery, never by +pictures; though even these produce an effect on their impressible minds, +which they do not on the minds of adults. The child, if strongly +impressed, does not indeed positively think the picture to be the reality; +but yet he does not think the contrary. As Sir George Beaumont was shewing +me a very fine engraving from Rubens, representing a storm at sea without +any vessel or boat introduced, my little boy, then about five years old, +came dancing and singing into the room, and all at once (if I may so say) +_tumbled in_ upon the print. He instantly started, stood silent and +motionless, with the strongest expression, first of wonder and then of +grief in his eyes and countenance, and at length said “And where is the +ship? But that is sunk, and the men are all drowned!” still keeping his +eyes fixed on the print. Now what pictures are to little children, stage +illusion is to men, provided they retain any part of the child’s +sensibility; except, that in the latter instance, the suspension of the +act of comparison, which permits this sort of negative belief, is somewhat +more assisted by the will, than in that of a child respecting a picture. + +The true stage-illusion in this and in all other things consists—not in +the mind’s judging it to be a forest, but, in its remission of the +judgment that it is not a forest. And this subject of stage-illusion is so +important, and so many practical errors and false criticisms may arise, +and indeed have arisen, either from reasoning on it as actual delusion +(the strange notion, on which the French critics built up their theory, +and on which the French poets justify the construction of their +tragedies), or from denying it altogether (which seems the end of Dr. +Johnson’s reasoning, and which, as extremes meet, would lead to the very +same consequences, by excluding whatever would not be judged probable by +us in our coolest state of feeling, with all our faculties in even +balance), that these few remarks will, I hope, be pardoned, if they should +serve either to explain or to illustrate the point. For not only are we +never absolutely deluded—or any thing like it, but the attempt to cause +the highest delusion possible to beings in their senses sitting in a +theatre, is a gross fault, incident only to low minds, which, feeling that +they cannot affect the heart or head permanently, endeavour to call forth +the momentary affections. There ought never to be more pain than is +compatible with coexisting pleasure, and to be amply repaid by thought. + +Shakespeare found the infant stage demanding an intermixture of ludicrous +character as imperiously as that of Greece did the chorus, and high +language accordant. And there are many advantages in this;—a greater +assimilation to nature, a greater scope of power, more truths, and more +feelings;—the effects of contrast, as in Lear and the Fool; and especially +this, that the true language of passion becomes sufficiently elevated by +your having previously heard, in the same piece, the lighter conversation +of men under no strong emotion. The very nakedness of the stage, too, was +advantageous,—for the drama thence became something between recitation and +a representation; and the absence or paucity of scenes allowed a freedom +from the laws of unity of place and unity of time, the observance of which +must either confine the drama to as few subjects as may be counted on the +fingers, or involve gross improbabilities, far more striking than the +violation would have caused. Thence, also, was precluded the danger of a +false ideal,—of aiming at more than what is possible on the whole. What +play of the ancients, with reference to their ideal, does not hold out +more glaring absurdities than any in Shakespeare? On the Greek plan a man +could more easily be a poet than a dramatist; upon our plan more easily a +dramatist than a poet. + + + + +The Drama Generally, And Public Taste. + + +Unaccustomed to address such an audience, and having lost by a long +interval of confinement the advantages of my former short schooling, I had +miscalculated in my last Lecture the proportion of my matter to my time, +and by bad economy and unskilful management, the several heads of my +discourse failed in making the entire performance correspond with the +promise publicly circulated in the weekly annunciation of the subjects to +be treated. It would indeed have been wiser in me, and perhaps better on +the whole, if I had caused my Lectures to be announced only as +continuations of the main subject. But if I be, as perforce I must be, +gratified by the recollection of whatever has appeared to give you +pleasure, I am conscious of something better, though less flattering, a +sense of unfeigned gratitude for your forbearance with my defects. Like +affectionate guardians, you see without disgust the awkwardness, and +witness with sympathy the growing pains, of a youthful endeavour, and look +forward with a hope, which is its own reward, to the contingent results of +practice—to its intellectual maturity. + +In my last address I defined poetry to be the art, or whatever better term +our language may afford, of representing external nature and human +thoughts, both relatively to human affections, so as to cause the +production of as great immediate pleasure in each part, as is compatible +with the largest possible sum of pleasure on the whole. Now this +definition applies equally to painting and music as to poetry; and in +truth the term poetry is alike applicable to all three. The vehicle alone +constitutes the difference; and the term “poetry” is rightly applied by +eminence to measured words, only because the sphere of their action is far +wider, the power of giving permanence to them much more certain, and +incomparably greater the facility, by which men, not defective by nature +or disease, may be enabled to derive habitual pleasure and instruction +from them. On my mentioning these considerations to a painter of great +genius, who had been, from a most honourable enthusiasm, extolling his own +art, he was so struck with their truth, that he exclaimed, “I want no +other arguments;—poetry, that is, verbal poetry, must be the greatest; all +that proves final causes in the world, proves this; it would be shocking +to think otherwise!”—And in truth, deeply, O! far more than words can +express, as I venerate the Last Judgment and the Prophets of Michel Angelo +Buonarotti,—yet the very pain which I repeatedly felt as I lost myself in +gazing upon them, the painful consideration that their having been painted +in _fresco_ was the sole cause that they had not been abandoned to all the +accidents of a dangerous transportation to a distant capital, and that the +same caprice, which made the Neapolitan soldiery destroy all the exquisite +masterpieces on the walls of the church of _Trinitado Monte_, after the +retreat of their antagonist barbarians, might as easily have made vanish +the rooms and open gallery of Raffael, and the yet more unapproachable +wonders of the sublime Florentine in the Sixtine Chapel, forced upon my +mind the reflection: How grateful the human race ought to be that the +works of Euclid, Newton, Plato, Milton, Shakespeare, are not subjected to +similar contingencies,—that they and their fellows, and the great, though +inferior, peerage of undying intellect, are secured;—secured even from a +second irruption of Goths and Vandals, in addition to many other +safeguards, by the vast empire of English language, laws, and religion +founded in America, through the overflow of the power and the virtue of my +country;—and that now the great and certain works of genuine fame can only +cease to act for mankind, when men themselves cease to be men, or when the +planet on which they exist, shall have altered its relations, or have +ceased to be. Lord Bacon, in the language of the gods, if I may use an +Homeric phrase, has expressed a similar thought:— + + + “Lastly, leaving the vulgar arguments, that by learning man + excelleth man in that wherein man excelleth beasts; that by + learning man ascendeth to the heavens and their motions, where in + body he cannot come, and the like; let us conclude with the + dignity and excellency of knowledge and learning in that whereunto + man’s nature doth most aspire, which is immortality or + continuance: for to this tendeth generation, and raising of houses + and families; to this tend buildings, foundations, and monuments; + to this tendeth the desire of memory, fame, and celebration, and + in effect the strength of all other human desires. We see then how + far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the + monuments of power, or of the hands. For have not the verses of + Homer continued twenty-five hundred years, or more, without the + loss of a syllable or letter; during which time, infinite palaces, + temples, castles, cities, have been decayed and demolished? It is + not possible to have the true pictures or statues of Cyrus, + Alexander, Cæsar; no, nor of the kings or great personages of much + later years; for the originals cannot last, and the copies cannot + but lose of the life and truth. But the images of men’s wits and + knowledges remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time, and + capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they fitly to be + called images, because they generate still, and cast their seeds + in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and + opinions in succeeding ages: so that, if the invention of the ship + was thought so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from + place to place, and consociateth the most remote regions in + participation of their fruits; how much more are letters to be + magnified, which, as ships, pass through the vast seas of time, + and make ages so distant to participate of the wisdom, + illuminations, and inventions, the one of the other?” + + +But let us now consider what the drama should be. And first, it is not a +copy, but an imitation, of nature. This is the universal principle of the +fine arts. In all well laid out grounds what delight do we feel from that +balance and antithesis of feelings and thoughts! How natural! we say;—but +the very wonder that caused the exclamation, implies that we perceived art +at the same moment. We catch the hint from nature itself. Whenever in +mountains or cataracts we discover a likeness to any thing artificial +which yet we know is not artificial—what pleasure! And so it is in +appearances known to be artificial, which appear to be natural. This +applies in due degrees, regulated by steady good sense, from a clump of +trees to the _Paradise Lost_ or _Othello_. It would be easy to apply it to +painting and even, though with greater abstraction of thought, and by more +subtle yet equally just analogies—to music. But this belongs to others; +suffice it that one great principle is common to all the fine arts, a +principle which probably is the condition of all consciousness, without +which we should feel and imagine only by discontinuous moments, and be +plants or brute animals instead of men;—I mean that ever-varying balance, +or balancing, of images, notions, or feelings, conceived as in opposition +to each other;—in short, the perception of identity and contrariety; the +least degree of which constitutes likeness, the greatest absolute +difference; but the infinite gradations between these two form all the +play and all the interest of our intellectual and moral being, till it +leads us to a feeling and an object more awful than it seems to me +compatible with even the present subject to utter aloud, though I am most +desirous to suggest it. For there alone are all things at once different +and the same; there alone, as the principle of all things, does +distinction exist unaided by division; there are will and reason, +succession of time and unmoving eternity, infinite change and ineffable +rest!— + +“Return Alpheus! the dread voice is past +Which shrunk thy streams!” + + ——“Thou honour’d flood, +Smooth-_flowing_ Avon, crown’d with vocal reeds, +That strain I heard, was of a higher mood!— +But now my _voice_ proceeds.” + +We may divide a dramatic poet’s characteristics before we enter into the +component merits of any one work, and with reference only to those things +which are to be the materials of all, into language, passion, and +character; always bearing in mind that these must act and react on each +other,—the language inspired by the passion, and the language and the +passion modified and differenced by the character. To the production of +the highest excellencies in these three, there are requisite in the mind +of the author;—good sense, talent, sensibility, imagination;—and to the +perfection of a work we should add two faculties of lesser importance, yet +necessary for the ornaments and foliage of the column and the roof—fancy +and a quick sense of beauty. + +As to language;—it cannot be supposed that the poet should make his +characters say all that they would, or that, his whole drama considered, +each scene, or paragraph should be such as, on cool examination, we can +conceive it likely that men in such situations would say, in that order, +or with that perfection. And yet, according to my feelings, it is a very +inferior kind of poetry, in which, as in the French tragedies, men are +made to talk in a style which few indeed even of the wittiest can be +supposed to converse in, and which both is, and on a moment’s reflection +appears to be, the natural produce of the hot-bed of vanity, namely, the +closet of an author, who is actuated originally by a desire to excite +surprise and wonderment at his own superiority to other men,—instead of +having felt so deeply on certain subjects, or in consequence of certain +imaginations, as to make it almost a necessity of his nature to seek for +sympathy,—no doubt, with that honourable desire of permanent action, which +distinguishes genius.—Where then is the difference?—In this that each part +should be proportionate, though the whole may be perhaps, impossible. At +all events, it should be compatible with sound sense and logic in the mind +of the poet himself. + +It is to be lamented that we judge of books by books, instead of referring +what we read to our own experience. One great use of books is to make +their contents a motive for observation. The German tragedies have in some +respects been justly ridiculed. In them the dramatist often becomes a +novelist in his directions to the actors, and thus degrades tragedy into +pantomime. Yet still the consciousness of the poet’s mind must be diffused +over that of the reader or spectator; but he himself, according to his +genius, elevates us, and by being always in keeping, prevents us from +perceiving any strangeness, though we feel great exultation. Many +different kinds of style may be admirable, both in different men, and in +different parts of the same poem. + +See the different language which strong feelings may justify in Shylock, +and learn from Shakespeare’s conduct of that character the terrible force +of every plain and calm diction, when known to proceed from a resolved and +impassioned man. + +It is especially with reference to the drama, and its characteristics in +any given nation, or at any particular period, that the dependence of +genius on the public taste becomes a matter of the deepest importance. I +do not mean that taste which springs merely from caprice or fashionable +imitation, and which, in fact, genius can, and by degrees will, create for +itself; but that which arises out of wide-grasping and heart-enrooted +causes, which is epidemic, and in the very air that all breathe. This it +is which kills, or withers, or corrupts. Socrates, indeed, might walk arm +in arm with Hygeia, whilst pestilence, with a thousand furies running to +and fro, and clashing against each other in a complexity and agglomeration +of horrors, was shooting her darts of fire and venom all around him. Even +such was Milton; yea, and such, in spite of all that has been babbled by +his critics in pretended excuse for his damning, because for them too +profound excellencies,—such was Shakespeare. But alas! the exceptions +prove the rule. For who will dare to force his way out of the crowd,—not +of the mere vulgar,—but of the vain and banded aristocracy of intellect, +and presume to join the almost supernatural beings that stand by +themselves aloof? + +Of this diseased epidemic influence there are two forms especially +preclusive of tragic worth. The first is the necessary growth of a sense +and love of the ludicrous, and a morbid sensibility of the assimilative +power,—an inflammation produced by cold and weakness,—which in the boldest +bursts of passion will lie in wait for a jeer at any phrase, that may have +an accidental coincidence in the mere words with something base or +trivial. For instance,—to express woods, not on a plain, but clothing a +hill, which overlooks a valley, or dell, or river, or the sea,—the trees +rising one above another, as the spectators in an ancient theatre,—I know +no other word in our language (bookish and pedantic terms out of the +question), but _hanging_ woods, the _sylvæ superimpendentes_ of Catullus; +yet let some wit call out in a slang tone,—“the gallows!” and a peal of +laughter would damn the play. Hence it is that so many dull pieces have +had a decent run, only because nothing unusual above, or absurd below, +mediocrity furnished an occasion,—a spark for the explosive materials +collected behind the orchestra. But it would take a volume of no ordinary +size, however laconically the sense were expressed, if it were meant to +instance the effects, and unfold all the causes, of this disposition upon +the moral, intellectual, and even physical character of a people, with its +influences on domestic life and individual deportment. A good document +upon this subject would be the history of Paris society and of French, +that is, Parisian, literature from the commencement of the latter half of +the reign of Louis XIV. to that of Buonaparte, compared with the preceding +philosophy and poetry even of Frenchmen themselves. + +The second form, or more properly, perhaps, another distinct cause, of +this diseased disposition is matter of exultation to the philanthropist +and philosopher, and of regret to the poet, the painter, and the statuary +alone, and to them only as poets, painters, and statuaries;—namely, the +security, the comparative equability, and ever increasing sameness of +human life. Men are now so seldom thrown into wild circumstances, and +violences of excitement, that the language of such states, the laws of +association of feeling with thought, the starts and strange far-flights of +the assimilative power on the slightest and least obvious likeness +presented by thoughts, words, or objects,—these are all judged of by +authority, not by actual experience,—by what men have been accustomed to +regard as symbols of these states, and not the natural symbols, or +self-manifestations of them. + +Even so it is in the language of man, and in that of nature. The sound +_sun_, or the figures _s_, _u_, _n_, are purely arbitrary modes of +recalling the object, and for visual mere objects they are not only +sufficient, but have infinite advantages from their very nothingness _per +se_. But the language of nature is a subordinate _Logos_, that was in the +beginning, and was with the thing it represented, and was the thing it +represented. + +Now the language of Shakespeare, in his _Lear_ for instance, is a +something intermediate between these two; or rather it is the former +blended with the latter,—the arbitrary, not merely recalling the cold +notion of the thing, but expressing the reality of it, and, as arbitrary +language is an heir-loom of the human race, being itself a part of that +which it manifests. What shall I deduce from the preceding positions? Even +this,—the appropriate, the never to be too much valued advantage of the +theatre, if only the actors were what we know they have been,—a +delightful, yet most effectual remedy for this dead palsy of the public +mind. What would appear mad or ludicrous in a book, when presented to the +senses under the form of reality, and with the truth of nature, supplies a +species of actual experience. This is indeed the special privilege of a +great actor over a great poet. No part was ever played in perfection, but +nature justified herself in the hearts of all her children, in what state +soever they were, short of absolute moral exhaustion, or downright +stupidity. There is no time given to ask questions, or to pass judgments; +we are taken by storm, and, though in the histrionic art many a clumsy +counterfeit, by caricature of one or two features, may gain applause as a +fine likeness, yet never was the very thing rejected as a counterfeit. O! +when I think of the inexhaustible mine of virgin treasure in our +Shakespeare, that I have been almost daily reading him since I was ten +years old,—that the thirty intervening years have been unintermittingly +and not fruitlessly employed in the study of the Greek, Latin, English, +Italian, Spanish, and German _belle lettrists_, and the last fifteen years +in addition, far more intensely in the analysis of the laws of life and +reason as they exist in man,—and that upon every step I have made forward +in taste, in acquisition of facts from history or my own observation, and +in knowledge of the different laws of being and their apparent exceptions, +from accidental collision of disturbing forces,—that at every new +accession of information, after every successful exercise of meditation, +and every fresh presentation of experience, I have unfailingly discovered +a proportionate increase of wisdom and intuition in Shakespeare;—when I +know this, and know too, that by a conceivable and possible, though hardly +to be expected, arrangement of the British theatres, not all, indeed, but +a large, a very large, proportion of this indefinite all—(round which no +comprehension has yet drawn the line of circumscription, so as to say to +itself, “I have seen the whole”)—might be sent into the heads and +hearts—into the very souls of the mass of mankind, to whom, except by this +living comment and interpretation, it must remain for ever a sealed +volume, a deep well without a wheel or a windlass;—it seems to me a +pardonable enthusiasm to steal away from sober likelihood, and share in so +rich a feast in the faery world of possibility! Yet even in the grave +cheerfulness of a circumspect hope, much, very much, might be done; +enough, assuredly, to furnish a kind and strenuous nature with ample +motives for the attempt to effect what may be effected. + + + + +Shakespeare, A Poet Generally. + + +Clothed in radiant armour, and authorized by titles sure and manifold, as +a poet, Shakespeare came forward to demand the throne of fame, as the +dramatic poet of England. His excellences compelled even his +contemporaries to seat him on that throne, although there were giants in +those days contending for the same honour. Hereafter I would fain +endeavour to make out the title of the English drama as created by, and +existing in, Shakespeare, and its right to the supremacy of dramatic +excellence in general. But he had shown himself a poet, previously to his +appearance as a dramatic poet; and had no _Lear_, no _Othello_, no _Henry +IV._, no _Twelfth Night_ ever appeared, we must have admitted that +Shakespeare possessed the chief, if not every, requisite of a poet,—deep +feeling and exquisite sense of beauty, both as exhibited to the eye in the +combinations of form, and to the ear in sweet and appropriate melody; that +these feelings were under the command of his own will; that in his very +first productions he projected his mind out of his own particular being, +and felt, and made others feel, on subjects no way connected with himself, +except by force of contemplation and that sublime faculty by which a great +mind becomes that on which it meditates. To this must be added that +affectionate love of nature and natural objects, without which no man +could have observed so steadily, or painted so truly and passionately, the +very minutest beauties of the external world:— + +“And when thou hast on foot the purblind hare, +Mark the poor wretch; to overshoot his troubles, +How he outruns the wind, and with what care, +He cranks and crosses with a thousand doubles; +The many musits through the which he goes +Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes. + +“Sometimes he runs among the flock of sheep, +To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell; +And sometime where earth-delving conies keep, +To stop the loud pursuers in their yell; +And sometime sorteth with the herd of deer: +Danger deviseth shifts, wit waits on fear. + +“For there his smell with others’ being mingled, +The hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt, +Ceasing their clamorous cry, till they have singled +With much ado, the cold fault cleanly out, +Then do they spend their mouths; echo replies, +As if another chase were in the skies. + +“By this poor Wat far off, upon a hill, +Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear, +To harken if his foes pursue him still: +Anon their loud alarums he doth hear, +And now his grief may be compared well +To one sore-sick, that hears the passing bell. + +“Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch +Turn, and return, indenting with the way: +Each envious briar his weary legs doth scratch, +Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay. +For misery is trodden on by many, +And being low, never relieved by any.” + +_Venus and Adonis._ + +And the preceding description:— + +“But lo! from forth a copse that neighbours by, +A breeding jennet, lusty, young and proud,” &c. + +is much more admirable, but in parts less fitted for quotation. + +Moreover Shakespeare had shown that he possessed fancy, considered as the +faculty of bringing together images dissimilar in the main by some one +point or more of likeness, as in such a passage as this:— + +“Full gently now she takes him by the hand, +A lily prisoned in a jail of snow, +Or ivory in an alabaster band: +So white a friend ingirts so white a foe!”—_Ib._ + +And still mounting the intellectual ladder, he had as unequivocally proved +the indwelling in his mind of imagination, or the power by which one image +or feeling is made to modify many others, and by a sort of fusion to force +many into one;—that which afterwards showed itself in such might and +energy in Lear, where the deep anguish of a father spreads the feeling of +ingratitude and cruelty over the very elements of heaven;—and which, +combining many circumstances into one moment of consciousness, tends to +produce that ultimate end of all human thought and human feeling, unity, +and thereby the reduction of the spirit to its principle and fountain, who +is alone truly one. Various are the workings of this the greatest faculty +of the human mind, both passionate and tranquil. In its tranquil and +purely pleasurable operation, it acts chiefly by creating out of many +things, as they would have appeared in the description of an ordinary +mind, detailed in unimpassioned succession, a oneness, even as nature, the +greatest of poets, acts upon us, when we open our eyes upon an extended +prospect. Thus the flight of Adonis in the dusk of the evening:— + +“Look! how a bright star shooteth from the sky; +So glides he in the night from Venus’ eye!” + +How many images and feelings are here brought together without effort and +without discord, in the beauty of Adonis, the rapidity of his flight, the +yearning, yet hopelessness, of the enamoured gazer, while a shadowy ideal +character is thrown over the whole! Or this power acts by impressing the +stamp of humanity, and of human feelings, on inanimate or mere natural +objects:— + +“Lo! here the gentle lark, weary of rest, +From his moist cabinet mounts up on high, +And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast +The sun ariseth in his majesty, +Who doth the world so gloriously behold, +The cedar-tops and hills seem burnish’d gold.” + +Or again, it acts by so carrying on the eye of the reader as to make him +almost lose the consciousness of words,—to make him see every thing +flashed, as Wordsworth has grandly and appropriately said:— + +“_Flashed_ upon the inward eye +Which is the bliss of solitude;”— + +and this without exciting any painful or laborious attention, without any +anatomy of description (a fault not uncommon in descriptive poetry),—but +with the sweetness and easy movement of nature. This energy is an absolute +essential of poetry, and of itself would constitute a poet, though not one +of the highest class;—it is, however, a most hopeful symptom, and the +_Venus and Adonis_ is one continued specimen of it. + +In this beautiful poem there is an endless activity of thought in all the +possible associations of thought with thought, thought with feeling, or +with words, of feelings with feelings, and of words with words. + +“Even as the sun, with purple-colour’d face, +Had ta’en his last leave of the weeping morn, +Rose-cheek’d Adonis hied him to the chase: +Hunting he loved, but love he laughed to scorn. +Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him, +And like a bold-faced suitor ’gins to woo him.” + +Remark the humanizing imagery and circumstances of the first two lines, +and the activity of thought in the play of words in the fourth line. The +whole stanza presents at once the time, the appearance of the morning, and +the two persons distinctly characterised, and in six simple lines puts the +reader in possession of the whole argument of the poem. + +“Over one arm the lusty courser’s rein, +Under the other was the tender boy, +Who blush’d and pouted in a dull disdain, +With leaden appetite, unapt to toy, +She red and hot, as coals of glowing fire, +He red for shame, but frosty to desire:”— + +This stanza and the two following afford good instances of that poetic +power, which I mentioned above, of making every thing present to the +imagination—both the forms, and the passions which modify those forms, +either actually, as in the representations of love or anger, or other +human affections; or imaginatively, by the different manner in which +inanimate objects, or objects unimpassioned themselves, are caused to be +seen by the mind in moments of strong excitement, and according to the +kind of the excitement,—whether of jealousy, or rage, or love, in the only +appropriate sense of the word, or of the lower impulses of our nature, or +finally of the poetic feeling itself. It is, perhaps, chiefly in the power +of producing and reproducing the latter that the poet stands distinct. + +The subject of the _Venus and Adonis_ is unpleasing; but the poem itself +is for that very reason the more illustrative of Shakespeare. There are +men who can write passages of deepest pathos and even sublimity on +circumstances personal to themselves and stimulative of their own +passions; but they are not, therefore, on this account poets. Read that +magnificent burst of woman’s patriotism and exultation, _Deborah’s Song of +Victory_; it is glorious, but nature is the poet there. It is quite +another matter to become all things and yet remain the same,—to make the +changeful god be felt in the river, the lion, and the flame;—this it is, +that is the true imagination. Shakespeare writes in this poem, as if he +were of another planet, charming you to gaze on the movements of Venus and +Adonis, as you would on the twinkling dances of two vernal butterflies. + +Finally, in this poem and the _Rape of Lucrece_, Shakespeare gave ample +proof of his possession of a most profound, energetic, and philosophical +mind, without which he might have pleased, but could not have been a great +dramatic poet. Chance and the necessity of his genius combined to lead him +to the drama his proper province: in his conquest of which we should +consider both the difficulties which opposed him, and the advantages by +which he was assisted. + + + + +Shakespeare’s Judgment equal to his Genius. + + +Thus then Shakespeare appears, from his _Venus and Adonis_ and _Rape of +Lucrece_ alone, apart from all his great works, to have possessed all the +conditions of the true poet. Let me now proceed to destroy, as far as may +be in my power, the popular notion that he was a great dramatist by mere +instinct, that he grew immortal in his own despite, and sank below men of +second or third rate power, when he attempted aught beside the drama—even +as bees construct their cells and manufacture their honey to admirable +perfection; but would in vain attempt to build a nest. Now this mode of +reconciling a compelled sense of inferiority with a feeling of pride, +began in a few pedants, who having read that Sophocles was the great model +of tragedy, and Aristotle the infallible dictator of its rules, and +finding that the _Lear_, _Hamlet_, _Othello_ and other master-pieces were +neither in imitation of Sophocles, nor in obedience to Aristotle,—and not +having (with one or two exceptions) the courage to affirm, that the +delight which their country received from generation to generation, in +defiance of the alterations of circumstances and habits, was wholly +groundless,—took upon them, as a happy medium and refuge, to talk of +Shakespeare as a sort of beautiful _lusus naturæ_, a delightful +monster,—wild, indeed, and without taste or judgment, but like the +inspired idiots so much venerated in the East, uttering, amid the +strangest follies, the sublimest truths. In nine places out of ten in +which I find his awful name mentioned, it is with some epithet of “wild,” +“irregular,” “pure child of nature,” &c. If all this be true, we must +submit to it; though to a thinking mind it cannot but be painful to find +any excellence, merely human, thrown out of all human analogy, and thereby +leaving us neither rules for imitation, nor motives to imitate;—but if +false, it is a dangerous falsehood;—for it affords a refuge to secret +self-conceit,—enables a vain man at once to escape his reader’s +indignation by general swoln panegyrics, and merely by his _ipse dixit_ to +treat, as contemptible, what he has not intellect enough to comprehend, or +soul to feel, without assigning any reason, or referring his opinion to +any demonstrative principle;—thus leaving Shakespeare as a sort of grand +Lama, adored indeed, and his very excrements prized as relics, but with no +authority or real influence. I grieve that every late voluminous edition +of his works would enable me to substantiate the present charge with a +variety of facts, one-tenth of which would of themselves exhaust the time +allotted to me. Every critic, who has or has not made a collection of +black letter books—in itself a useful and respectable amusement,—puts on +the seven-league boots of self-opinion, and strides at once from an +illustrator into a supreme judge, and blind and deaf, fills his +three-ounce phial at the waters of Niagara; and determines positively the +greatness of the cataract to be neither more nor less than his three-ounce +phial has been able to receive. + +I think this a very serious subject. It is my earnest desire—my passionate +endeavour—to enforce at various times and by various arguments and +instances the close and reciprocal connection of just taste with pure +morality. Without that acquaintance with the heart of man, or that +docility and childlike gladness to be made acquainted with it, which those +only can have, who dare look at their own hearts—and that with a +steadiness which religion only has the power of reconciling with sincere +humility;—without this, and the modesty produced by it, I am deeply +convinced that no man, however wide his erudition, however patient his +antiquarian researches, can possibly understand, or be worthy of +understanding, the writings of Shakespeare. + +Assuredly that criticism of Shakespeare will alone be genial which is +reverential. The Englishman who, without reverence—a proud and +affectionate reverence—can utter the name of William Shakespeare, stands +disqualified for the office of critic. He wants one at least of the very +senses, the language of which he is to employ, and will discourse at best +but as a blind man, while the whole harmonious creation of light and shade +with all its subtle interchange of deepening and dissolving colours rises +in silence to the silent _fiat_ of the uprising Apollo. However inferior +in ability I may be to some who have followed me, I own I am proud that I +was the first in time who publicly demonstrated to the full extent of the +position, that the supposed irregularity and extravagances of Shakespeare +were the mere dreams of a pedantry that arraigned the eagle because it had +not the dimensions of the swan. In all the successive courses of lectures +delivered by me, since my first attempt at the Royal Institution, it has +been, and it still remains, my object, to prove that in all points from +the most important to the most minute, the judgment of Shakespeare is +commensurate with his genius,—nay, that his genius reveals itself in his +judgment, as in its most exalted form. And the more gladly do I recur to +this subject from the clear conviction, that to judge aright, and with +distinct consciousness of the grounds of our judgment, concerning the +works of Shakespeare, implies the power and the means of judging rightly +of all other works of intellect, those of abstract science alone excepted. + +It is a painful truth, that not only individuals, but even whole nations, +are ofttimes so enslaved to the habits of their education and immediate +circumstances, as not to judge disinterestedly even on those subjects, the +very pleasure arising from which consists in its disinterestedness, +namely, on subjects of taste and polite literature. Instead of deciding +concerning their own modes and customs by any rule of reason, nothing +appears rational, becoming, or beautiful to them, but what coincides with +the peculiarities of their education. In this narrow circle, individuals +may attain to exquisite discrimination, as the French critics have done in +their own literature; but a true critic can no more be such without +placing himself on some central point, from which he may command the +whole,—that is, some general rule, which, founded in reason, or the +faculties common to all men, must therefore apply to each,—than an +astronomer can explain the movements of the solar system without taking +his stand in the sun. And let me remark, that this will not tend to +produce despotism, but, on the contrary, true tolerance, in the critic. He +will, indeed, require, as the spirit and substance of a work, something +true in human nature itself, and independent of all circumstances; but in +the mode of applying it, he will estimate genius and judgment according to +the felicity with which the imperishable soul of intellect shall have +adapted itself to the age, the place, and the existing manners. The error +he will expose, lies in reversing this, and holding up the mere +circumstances as perpetual to the utter neglect of the power which can +alone animate them. For art cannot exist without, or apart from nature; +and what has man of his own to give to his fellow man, but his own +thoughts and feelings, and his observations, so far as they are modified +by his own thoughts or feelings? + +Let me, then, once more submit this question to minds emancipated alike +from national, or party, or sectarian prejudice:—Are the plays of +Shakespeare works of rude uncultivated genius, in which the splendour of +the parts compensates, if aught can compensate, for the barbarous +shapelessness and irregularity of the whole?—Or is the form equally +admirable with the matter, and the judgment of the great poet not less +deserving our wonder than his genius?—Or, again, to repeat the question in +other words:—is Shakespeare a great dramatic poet on account only of those +beauties and excellences which he possesses in common with the ancients, +but with diminished claims to our love and honour to the full extent of +his differences from them?—Or are these very differences additional proofs +of poetic wisdom, at once results and symbols of living power as +contrasted with lifeless mechanism—of free and rival originality as +contradistinguished from servile imitation, or, more accurately, a blind +copying of effects, instead of a true imitation of the essential +principles?—Imagine not that I am about to oppose genius to rules. No! the +comparative value of these rules is the very cause to be tried. The spirit +of poetry, like all other living powers, must of necessity circumscribe +itself by rules, were it only to unite power with beauty. It must embody +in order to reveal itself; but a living body is of necessity an organized +one; and what is organization but the connection of parts in and for a +whole, so that each part is at once end and means?—This is no discovery of +criticism;—it is a necessity of the human mind; and all nations have felt +and obeyed it, in the invention of metre, and measured sounds, as the +vehicle and _involucrum_ of poetry—itself a fellow-growth from the same +life,—even as the bark is to the tree! + +No work of true genius dares want its appropriate form, neither indeed is +there any danger of this. As it must not, so genius cannot, be lawless; +for it is even this that constitutes it genius—the power of acting +creatively under laws of its own origination. How then comes it that not +only single _Zoili_, but whole nations have combined in unhesitating +condemnation of our great dramatist, as a sort of African nature, rich in +beautiful monsters—as a wild heath where islands of fertility look the +greener from the surrounding waste, where the loveliest plants now shine +out among unsightly weeds, and now are choked by their parasitic growth, +so intertwined that we cannot disentangle the weed without snapping the +flower?—In this statement I have had no reference to the vulgar abuse of +Voltaire, save as far as his charges are coincident with the decisions of +Shakespeare’s own commentators and (so they would tell you) almost +idolatrous admirers. The true ground of the mistake lies in the +confounding mechanical regularity with organic form. The form is mechanic, +when on any given material we impress a pre-determined form, not +necessarily arising out of the properties of the material;—as when to a +mass of wet clay we give whatever shape we wish it to retain when +hardened. The organic form, on the other hand is innate; it shapes, as it +developes, itself from within, and the fulness of its development is one +and the same with the perfection of its outward form. Such as the life is, +such is the form. Nature, the prime genial artist, inexhaustible in +diverse powers, is equally inexhaustible in forms;—each exterior is the +physiognomy of the being within,—its true image reflected and thrown out +from the concave mirror;—and even such is the appropriate excellence of +her chosen poet, of our own Shakespeare,—himself a nature humanized, a +genial understanding directing self-consciously a power and an implicit +wisdom deeper even than our consciousness. + +I greatly dislike beauties and selections in general; but as proof +positive of his unrivalled excellence, I should like to try Shakespeare by +this criterion. Make out your amplest catalogue of all the human +faculties, as reason or the moral law, the will, the feeling of the +coincidence of the two (a feeling _sui generis et demonstratio +demonstrationum_) called the conscience, the understanding or prudence, +wit, fancy, imagination, judgment,—and then of the objects on which these +are to be employed, as the beauties, the terrors, and the seeming caprices +of nature, the realities and the capabilities, that is, the actual and the +ideal, of the human mind, conceived as an individual or as a social being, +as in innocence or in guilt, in a play-paradise, or in a war-field of +temptation;—and then compare with Shakespeare under each of these heads +all or any of the writers in prose and verse that have ever lived! Who, +that is competent to judge, doubts the result?—And ask your own hearts—ask +your own common-sense—to conceive the possibility of this man being—I say +not, the drunken savage of that wretched sciolist, whom Frenchmen, to +their shame, have honoured before their elder and better worthies,—but the +anomalous, the wild, the irregular, genius of our daily criticism! What! +are we to have miracles in sport?—Or, I speak reverently, does God choose +idiots by whom to convey divine truths to man? + + + + +Recapitulation, And Summary Of the Characteristics of Shakespeare’s +Dramas. + + +In lectures, of which amusement forms a large part of the object, there +are some peculiar difficulties. The architect places his foundation out of +sight, and the musician tunes his instrument before he makes his +appearance; but the lecturer has to try his chords in the presence of the +assembly; an operation not likely, indeed, to produce much pleasure, but +yet indispensably necessary to a right understanding of the subject to be +developed. + +Poetry in essence is as familiar to barbarous as to civilized nations. The +Laplander and the savage Indian are cheered by it as well as the +inhabitants of London and Paris;—its spirit takes up and incorporates +surrounding materials, as a plant clothes itself with soil and climate, +whilst it exhibits the working of a vital principle within independent of +all accidental circumstances. And to judge with fairness of an author’s +works, we ought to distinguish what is inward and essential from what is +outward and circumstantial. It is essential to poetry that it be simple, +and appeal to the elements and primary laws of our nature; that it be +sensuous, and by its imagery elicit truth at a flash; that it be +impassioned, and be able to move our feelings and awaken our affections. +In comparing different poets with each other, we should inquire which have +brought into the fullest play our imagination and our reason, or have +created the greatest excitement and produced the completest harmony. If we +consider great exquisiteness of language and sweetness of metre alone, it +is impossible to deny to Pope the character of a delightful writer; but +whether he be a poet, must depend upon our definition of the word; and, +doubtless, if everything that pleases be poetry, Pope’s satires and +epistles must be poetry. This, I must say, that poetry, as distinguished +from other modes of composition, does not rest in metre, and that it is +not poetry, if it make no appeal to our passions or our imagination. One +character belongs to all true poets, that they write from a principle +within, not originating in any thing without; and that the true poet’s +work in its form, its shapings, and its modifications, is distinguished +from all other works that assume to belong to the class of poetry, as a +natural from an artificial flower, or as the mimic garden of a child from +an enamelled meadow. In the former the flowers are broken from their stems +and stuck into the ground; they are beautiful to the eye and fragrant to +the sense, but their colours soon fade, and their odour is transient as +the smile of the planter;—while the meadow may be visited again and again +with renewed delight; its beauty is innate in the soil, and its bloom is +of the freshness of nature. + +The next ground of critical judgment, and point of comparison, will be as +to how far a given poet has been influenced by accidental circumstances. +As a living poet must surely write, not for the ages past, but for that in +which he lives, and those which are to follow, it is on the one hand +natural that he should not violate, and on the other necessary that he +should not depend on, the mere manners and modes of his day. See how +little does Shakespeare leave us to regret that he was born in his +particular age! The great æra in modern times was what is called the +Restoration of Letters;—the ages preceding it are called the dark ages; +but it would be more wise, perhaps, to call them the ages in which we were +in the dark. It is usually overlooked that the supposed dark period was +not universal, but partial and successive, or alternate; that the dark age +of England was not the dark age of Italy, but that one country was in its +light and vigour, whilst another was in its gloom and bondage. But no +sooner had the Reformation sounded through Europe like the blast of an +archangel’s trumpet, than from king to peasant there arose an enthusiasm +for knowledge; the discovery of a manuscript became the subject of an +embassy; Erasmus read by moonlight, because he could not afford a torch, +and begged a penny, not for the love of charity, but for the love of +learning. The three great points of attention were religion, morals, and +taste; men of genius, as well as men of learning, who in this age need to +be so widely distinguished, then alike became copyists of the ancients; +and this, indeed, was the only way by which the taste of mankind could be +improved, or their understandings informed. Whilst Dante imagined himself +a humble follower of Virgil, and Ariosto of Homer, they were both +unconscious of that greater power working within them, which in many +points carried them beyond their supposed originals. All great discoveries +bear the stamp of the age in which they are made;—hence we perceive the +effects of the purer religion of the moderns visible for the most part in +their lives; and in reading their works we should not content ourselves +with the mere narratives of events long since passed, but should learn to +apply their maxims and conduct to ourselves. + +Having intimated that times and manners lend their form and pressure to +genius, let me once more draw a slight parallel between the ancient and +modern stage,—the stages of Greece and of England. The Greeks were +polytheists; their religion was local; almost the only object of all their +knowledge, art, and taste, was their gods; and, accordingly, their +productions were, if the expression may be allowed, statuesque, whilst +those of the moderns are picturesque. The Greeks reared a structure, +which, in its parts, and as a whole, filled the mind with the calm and +elevated impression of perfect beauty, and symmetrical proportion. The +moderns also produced a whole—a more striking whole; but it was by +blending materials, and fusing the parts together. And as the Pantheon is +to York Minster or Westminster Abbey, so is Sophocles compared with +Shakespeare; in the one a completeness, a satisfaction, an excellence, on +which the mind rests with complacency; in the other a multitude of +interlaced materials, great and little, magnificent and mean, accompanied, +indeed, with the sense of a falling short of perfection, and yet, at the +same time, so promising of our social and individual progression, that we +would not, if we could, exchange it for that repose of the mind which +dwells on the forms of symmetry in the acquiescent admiration of grace. +This general characteristic of the ancient and modern drama might be +illustrated by a parallel of the ancient and modern music;—the one +consisting of melody arising from a succession only of pleasing +sounds,—the modern embracing harmony also, the result of combination, and +the effect of a whole. + +I have said, and I say it again, that great as was the genius of +Shakespeare, his judgment was at least equal to it. Of this any one will +be convinced, who attentively considers those points in which the dramas +of Greece and England differ, from the dissimilitude of circumstances by +which each was modified and influenced. The Greek stage had its origin in +the ceremonies of a sacrifice, such as of the goat to Bacchus, whom we +most erroneously regard as merely the jolly god of wine;—for among the +ancients he was venerable, as the symbol of that power which acts without +our consciousness in the vital energies of nature—the _vinum mundi_—as +Apollo was that of the conscious agency of our intellectual being. The +heroes of old, under the influences of this Bacchic enthusiasm, performed +more than human actions; hence tales of the favourite champions soon +passed into dialogue. On the Greek stage the chorus was always before the +audience; the curtain was never dropped, as we should say; and change of +place being therefore, in general, impossible, the absurd notion of +condemning it merely as improbable in itself was never entertained by any +one. If we can believe ourselves at Thebes in one act, we may believe +ourselves at Athens in the next. + +If a story lasts twenty-four hours or twenty-four years, it is equally +improbable. There seems to be no just boundary but what the feelings +prescribe. But on the Greek stage, where the same persons were perpetually +before the audience, great judgment was necessary in venturing on any such +change. The poets never, therefore, attempted to impose on the senses by +bringing places to men, but they did bring men to places, as in the +well-known instance in the _Eumenides_, where, during an evident +retirement of the chorus from the orchestra, the scene is changed to +Athens, and Orestes is first introduced in the temple of Minerva, and the +chorus of Furies come in afterwards in pursuit of him. + +In the Greek drama there were no formal divisions into scenes and acts; +there were no means, therefore, of allowing for the necessary lapse of +time between one part of the dialogue and another, and unity of time in a +strict sense was, of course, impossible. To overcome that difficulty of +accounting for time, which is effected on the modern stage by dropping a +curtain, the judgment and great genius of the ancients supplied music and +measured motion, and with the lyric ode filled up the vacuity. In the +story of the _Agamemnon_ of Æschylus, the capture of Troy is supposed to +be announced by a fire lighted on the Asiatic shore, and the transmission +of the signal by successive beacons to Mycenæ. The signal is first seen at +the 21st line, and the herald from Troy itself enters at the 486th, and +Agamemnon himself at the 783rd line. But the practical absurdity of this +was not felt by the audience, who, in imagination stretched minutes into +hours, while they listened to the lofty narrative odes of the chorus which +almost entirely filled up the interspace. Another fact deserves attention +here, namely, that regularly on the Greek stage a drama, or acted story, +consisted in reality of three dramas, called together a trilogy, and +performed consecutively in the course of one day. Now you may conceive a +tragedy of Shakespeare’s as a trilogy connected in one single +representation. Divide _Lear_ into three parts, and each would be a play +with the ancients; or take the three Æschylean dramas of _Agamemnon_, and +divide them into, or call them, as many acts, and they together would be +one play. The first act would comprise the usurpation of Ægisthus, and the +murder of Agamemnon; the second, the revenge of Orestes, and the murder of +his mother; and the third, the penance and absolution of +Orestes;—occupying a period of twenty-two years. + +The stage in Shakespeare’s time was a naked room with a blanket for a +curtain; but he made it a field for monarchs. That law of unity, which has +its foundations, not in the factitious necessity of custom, but in nature +itself, the unity of feeling, is everywhere and at all times observed by +Shakespeare in his plays. Read _Romeo and Juliet_;—all is youth and +spring;—youth with its follies, its virtues, its precipitancies;—spring +with its odours, its flowers, and its transiency; it is one and the same +feeling that commences, goes through, and ends the play. The old men, the +Capulets and Montagues, are not common old men; they have an eagerness, a +heartiness, a vehemence, the effect of spring; with Romeo, his change of +passion, his sudden marriage, and his rash death, are all the effects of +youth;—whilst in Juliet love has all that is tender and melancholy in the +nightingale, all that is voluptuous in the rose, with whatever is sweet in +the freshness of spring; but it ends with a long deep sigh like the last +breeze of the Italian evening. This unity of feeling and character +pervades every drama of Shakespeare. + +It seems to me that his plays are distinguished from those of all other +dramatic poets by the following characteristics:— + +1. Expectation in preference to surprise. It is like the true reading of +the passage—“God said, Let there be light, and there was _light_;”—not, +there _was_ light. As the feeling with which we startle at a shooting star +compared with that of watching the sunrise at the pre-established moment, +such and so low is surprise compared with expectation. + +2. Signal adherence to the great law of nature, that all opposites tend to +attract and temper each other. Passion in Shakespeare generally displays +libertinism, but involves morality; and if there are exceptions to this, +they are, independently of their intrinsic value, all of them indicative +of individual character, and, like the farewell admonitions of a parent, +have an end beyond the parental relation. Thus the Countess’s beautiful +precepts to Bertram, by elevating her character, raise that of Helena her +favourite, and soften down the point in her which Shakespeare does not +mean us not to see, but to see and to forgive, and at length to justify. +And so it is in Polonius, who is the personified memory of wisdom no +longer actually possessed. This admirable character is always +misrepresented on the stage. Shakespeare never intended to exhibit him as +a buffoon; for although it was natural that Hamlet—a young man of fire and +genius, detesting formality, and disliking Polonius on political grounds, +as imagining that he had assisted his uncle in his usurpation—should +express himself satirically, yet this must not be taken as exactly the +poet’s conception of him. In Polonius a certain induration of character +had arisen from long habits of business; but take his advice to Laertes, +and Ophelia’s reverence for his memory, and we shall see that he was meant +to be represented as a statesman somewhat past his faculties,—his +recollections of life all full of wisdom, and showing a knowledge of human +nature, whilst what immediately takes place before him, and escapes from +him, is indicative of weakness. + +But as in Homer all the deities are in armour, even Venus; so in +Shakespeare all the characters are strong. Hence real folly and dulness +are made by him the vehicles of wisdom. There is no difficulty for one +being a fool to imitate a fool; but to be, remain, and speak like a wise +man and a great wit, and yet so as to give a vivid representation of a +veritable fool,—_hic labor, hoc opus est_. A drunken constable is not +uncommon, nor hard to draw; but see and examine what goes to make up a +Dogberry. + +3. Keeping at all times in the high road of life. Shakespeare has no +innocent adulteries, no interesting incests, no virtuous vice;—he never +renders that amiable which religion and reason alike teach us to detest, +or clothes impurity in the garb of virtue, like Beaumont and Fletcher, the +Kotzebues of the day. Shakespeare’s fathers are roused by ingratitude, his +husbands stung by unfaithfulness; in him, in short, the affections are +wounded in those points in which all may, nay, must, feel. Let the +morality of Shakespeare be contrasted with that of the writers of his own, +or the succeeding age, or of those of the present day, who boast their +superiority in this respect. No one can dispute that the result of such a +comparison is altogether in favour of Shakespeare;—even the letters of +women of high rank in his age were often coarser than his writings. If he +occasionally disgusts a keen sense of delicacy, he never injures the mind; +he neither excites, nor flatters, passion, in order to degrade the subject +of it; he does not use the faulty thing for a faulty purpose, nor carries +on warfare against virtue, by causing wickedness to appear as no +wickedness, through the medium of a morbid sympathy with the unfortunate. +In Shakespeare vice never walks as in twilight; nothing is purposely out +of its place;—he inverts not the order of nature and propriety,—does not +make every magistrate a drunkard or glutton, nor every poor man meek, +humane, and temperate; he has no benevolent butchers, nor any sentimental +rat-catchers. + +4. Independence of the dramatic interest on the plot. The interest in the +plot is always in fact on account of the characters, not _vice versa_, as +in almost all other writers; the plot is a mere canvass and no more. Hence +arises the true justification of the same stratagem being used in regard +to Benedict and Beatrice,—the vanity in each being alike. Take away from +the _Much Ado about Nothing_ all that which is not indispensable to the +plot, either as having little to do with it, or, at best, like Dogberry +and his comrades, forced into the service, when any other less ingeniously +absurd watchmen and night-constables would have answered the mere +necessities of the action;—take away Benedict, Beatrice, Dogberry, and the +reaction of the former on the character of Hero,—and what will remain? In +other writers the main agent of the plot is always the prominent +character; in Shakespeare it is so, or is not so, as the character is in +itself calculated, or not calculated, to form the plot. Don John is the +main-spring of the plot of this play; but he is merely shown and then +withdrawn. + +5. Independence of the interest on the story as the ground-work of the +plot. Hence Shakespeare never took the trouble of inventing stories. It +was enough for him to select from those that had been already invented or +recorded such as had one or other, or both, of two recommendations, +namely, suitableness to his particular purpose, and their being parts of +popular tradition,—names of which we had often heard, and of their +fortunes, and as to which all we wanted was, to see the man himself. So it +is just the man himself—the Lear, the Shylock, the Richard—that +Shakespeare makes us for the first time acquainted with. Omit the first +scene in _Lear_, and yet everything will remain; so the first and second +scenes in the _Merchant of Venice_. Indeed it is universally true. + +6. Interfusion of the lyrical—that which in its very essence is +poetical—not only with the dramatic, as in the plays of Metastasio, where +at the end of the scene comes the _aria_ as the _exit_ speech of the +character,—but also in and through the dramatic. Songs in Shakespeare are +introduced as songs only, just as songs are in real life, beautifully as +some of them are characteristic of the person who has sung or called for +them, as Desdemona’s “Willow,” and Ophelia’s wild snatches, and the sweet +carollings in _As You Like It_. But the whole of the _Midsummer Night’s +Dream_ is one continued specimen of the dramatised lyrical. And observe +how exquisitely the dramatic of Hotspur;— + +“Marry, and I’m glad on’t with all my heart; +I’d rather be a kitten and cry—mew.” &c. + +melts away into the lyric of Mortimer;— + +“I understand thy looks: that pretty Welsh +Which thou pourest down from these swelling heavens, +I am too perfect in,” &c. + +_Henry IV._ part i. act iii, sc. 1. + +7. The characters of the _dramatis personæ_, like those in real life, are +to be inferred by the reader;—they are not told to him. And it is well +worth remarking that Shakespeare’s characters, like those in real life, +are very commonly misunderstood, and almost always understood by different +persons in different ways. The causes are the same in either case. If you +take only what the friends of the character say, you may be deceived, and +still more so, if that which his enemies say; nay, even the character +himself sees himself through the medium of his character, and not exactly +as he is. Take all together, not omitting a shrewd hint from the clown or +the fool, and perhaps your impression will be right; and you may know +whether you have in fact discovered the poet’s own idea, by all the +speeches receiving light from it, and attesting its reality by reflecting +it. + +Lastly, in Shakespeare the heterogeneous is united, as it is in nature. +You must not suppose a pressure or passion always acting on or in the +character!—passion in Shakespeare is that by which the individual is +distinguished from others, not that which makes a different kind of him. +Shakespeare followed the main march of the human affections. He entered +into no analysis of the passions or faiths of men, but assured himself +that such and such passions and faiths were grounded in our common nature, +and not in the mere accidents of ignorance or disease. This is an +important consideration, and constitutes our Shakespeare the morning star, +the guide and the pioneer, of true philosophy. + + + + +Outline Of An Introductory Lecture Upon Shakespeare. + + +Of that species of writing termed tragi-comedy, much has been produced and +doomed to the shelf. Shakespeare’s comic are continually reacting upon his +tragic characters. Lear, wandering amidst the tempest, has all his +feelings of distress increased by the overflowings of the wild wit of the +Fool, as vinegar poured upon wounds exacerbates their pain. Thus, even his +comic humour tends to the development of tragic passion. + +The next characteristic of Shakespeare is his keeping at all times in the +high road of life, &c. Another evidence of his exquisite judgment is, that +he seizes hold of popular tales; _Lear_ and the _Merchant of Venice_ were +popular tales, but are so excellently managed, that both are the +representations of men in all countries and of all times. + +His dramas do not arise absolutely out of some one extraordinary +circumstance, the scenes may stand independently of any such one +connecting incident, as faithful representations of men and manners. In +his mode of drawing characters there are no pompous descriptions of a man +by himself; his character is to be drawn, as in real life, from the whole +course of the play, or out of the mouths of his enemies or friends. This +may be exemplified in Polonius, whose character has been often +misrepresented. Shakespeare never intended him for a buffoon, &c. + +Another excellence of Shakespeare, in which no writer equals him, is in +the language of nature. So correct is it, that we can see ourselves in +every page. The style and manner have also that felicity, that not a +sentence can be read, without its being discovered if it is Shakespearian. +In observation of living characters—of landlords and postilions—Fielding +has great excellence; but in drawing from his own heart, and depicting +that species of character, which no observation could teach, he failed in +comparison with Richardson, who perpetually places himself, as it were, in +a day-dream. Shakespeare excels in both. Witness the accuracy of character +in Juliet’s name; while for the great characters of Iago, Othello, Hamlet, +Richard III., to which he could never have seen anything similar, he seems +invariably to have asked himself—How should I act or speak in such +circumstances? His comic characters are also peculiar. A drunken constable +was not uncommon; but he makes folly a vehicle for wit, as in Dogberry: +everything is a _sub-stratum_ on which his genius can erect the mightiest +superstructure. + +To distinguish that which is legitimate in Shakespeare from what does not +belong to him, we must observe his varied images symbolical of novel +truth, thrusting by, and seeming to trip up each other, from an +impetuosity of thought, producing a flowing metre, and seldom closing with +the line. In _Pericles_, a play written fifty years before, but altered by +Shakespeare, his additions may be recognised to half a line, from the +metre, which has the same perfection in the flowing continuity of +interchangeable metrical pauses in his earliest plays, as in _Love’s +Labour’s Lost_. + +Lastly, contrast his _morality_ with the writers of his own or of the +succeeding age, &c. If a man speak injuriously of our friend, our +vindication of him is naturally warm. Shakespeare has been accused of +profaneness. I for my part have acquired from perusal of him, a habit of +looking into my own heart, and am confident that Shakespeare is an author +of all others the most calculated to make his readers better as well as +wiser. + + * * * * * + +Shakespeare, possessed of wit, humour, fancy, and imagination, built up an +outward world from the stores within his mind, as the bee finds a hive +from a thousand sweets gathered from a thousand flowers. He was not only a +great poet but a great philosopher. Richard III., Iago, and Falstaff are +men who reverse the order of things, who place intellect at the head, +whereas it ought to follow, like Geometry, to prove and to confirm. No +man, either hero or saint, ever acted from an unmixed motive; for let him +do what he will rightly, still Conscience whispers “it is your duty.” +Richard, laughing at conscience and sneering at religion, felt a +confidence in his intellect, which urged him to commit the most horrid +crimes, because he felt himself, although inferior in form and shape, +superior to those around him; he felt he possessed a power which they had +not. Iago, on the same principle, conscious of superior intellect, gave +scope to his envy, and hesitated not to ruin a gallant, open, and generous +friend in the moment of felicity, because he was not promoted as he +expected. Othello was superior in place, but Iago felt him to be inferior +in intellect, and, unrestrained by conscience, trampled upon him. +Falstaff, not a degraded man of genius, like Burns, but a man of degraded +genius, with the same consciousness of superiority to his companions, +fastened himself on a young Prince, to prove how much his influence on an +heir-apparent would exceed that of a statesman. With this view he +hesitated not to adopt the most contemptible of all characters, that of an +open and professed liar: even his sensuality was subservient to his +intellect: for he appeared to drink sack, that he might have occasion to +show off his wit. One thing, however, worthy of observation, is the +perpetual contrast of labour in Falstaff to produce wit, with the ease +with which Prince Henry parries his shafts; and the final contempt which +such a character deserves and receives from the young king, when Falstaff +exhibits the struggle of inward determination with an outward show of +humility. + + + + +Order Of Shakespeare’s Plays. + + +Various attempts have been made to arrange the plays of Shakespeare, each +according to its priority in time, by proofs derived from external +documents. How unsuccessful these attempts have been might easily be +shewn, not only from the widely different results arrived at by men, all +deeply versed in the black-letter books, old plays, pamphlets, manuscript +records, and catalogues of that age, but also from the fallacious and +unsatisfactory nature of the facts and assumptions on which the evidence +rests. In that age, when the press was chiefly occupied with controversial +or practical divinity,—when the law, the Church, and the State engrossed +all honour and respectability,—when a degree of disgrace, _levior quædam +infamiæ macula_, was attached to the publication of poetry, and even to +have sported with the Muse, as a private relaxation, was supposed to be—a +venial fault, indeed, yet—something beneath the gravity of a wise +man,—when the professed poets were so poor, that the very expenses of the +press demanded the liberality of some wealthy individual, so that +two-thirds of Spenser’s poetic works, and those most highly praised by his +learned admirers and friends, remained for many years in manuscript, and +in manuscript perished,—when the amateurs of the stage were comparatively +few, and therefore for the greater part more or less known to each +other,—when we know that the plays of Shakespeare, both during and after +his life, were the property of the stage, and published by the players, +doubtless according to their notions of acceptability with the visitants +of the theatre,—in such an age, and under such circumstances, can an +allusion or reference to any drama or poem in the publication of a +contemporary be received as conclusive evidence, that such drama or poem +had at that time been published? Or, further, can the priority of +publication itself prove anything in favour of actually prior composition? + +We are tolerably certain, indeed, that the _Venus and Adonis_, and the +_Rape of Lucrece_, were his two earliest poems, and though not printed +until 1593, in the twenty-ninth year of his age, yet there can be little +doubt that they had remained by him in manuscript many years. For Mr. +Malone has made it highly probable that he had commenced as a writer for +the stage in 1591, when he was twenty-seven years old, and Shakespeare +himself assures us that the _Venus and Adonis_ was the first heir of his +invention. + +Baffled, then, in the attempt to derive any satisfaction from outward +documents, we may easily stand excused if we turn our researches towards +the internal evidences furnished by the writings themselves, with no other +positive _data_ than the known facts that the _Venus and Adonis_ was +printed in 1593, the _Rape of Lucrece_ in 1594, and that the _Romeo and +Juliet_ had appeared in 1595,—and with no other presumptions than that the +poems, his very first productions, were written many years earlier—(for +who can believe that Shakespeare could have remained to his twenty-ninth +or thirtieth year without attempting poetic composition of any kind?),—and +that between these and _Romeo and Juliet_ there had intervened one or two +other dramas, or the chief materials, at least of them, although they may +very possibly have appeared after the success of the _Romeo and Juliet_, +and some other circumstances, had given the poet an authority with the +proprietors, and created a prepossession in his favour with the theatrical +audiences. + +CLASSIFICATION ATTEMPTED, 1802. + +FIRST EPOCH. + + The London Prodigal. + Cromwell. + Henry VI., three parts, first edition. + The old King John. + Edward III. + The old Taming of the Shrew. + Pericles. + +All these are transition works, _Uebergangswerke_; not his, yet of him. + +SECOND EPOCH. + + All’s Well that Ends Well;—but afterwards worked up afresh + (_umgearbeitet_), especially Parolles. + The Two Gentlemen of Verona; a sketch. + Romeo and Juliet; first draft of it. + +THIRD EPOCH + +rises into the full, although youthful, Shakespeare; it was the negative +period of his perfection. + + Love’s Labour’s Lost. + Twelfth Night. + As You Like It. + Midsummer Night’s Dream. + Richard II. + Henry IV. and V. + Henry VIII.; _Gelegenheitsgedicht_. + Romeo and Juliet, as at present. + Merchant of Venice. + +FOURTH EPOCH. + + Much Ado about Nothing. + Merry Wives of Windsor; first edition. + Henry VI.; _rifacimento_. + +FIFTH EPOCH. + +The period of beauty was now past; and that of δεινότης and grandeur +succeeds. + + Lear. + Macbeth. + Hamlet. + Timon of Athens; an after vibration of Hamlet. + Troilus and Cressida; _Uebergang in die Ironie_. + The Roman Plays. + King John, as at present. + Merry Wives of Windsor + Taming of the Shrew _umgearbeitet._ + Measure for Measure. + Othello. + Tempest. + Winter’s Tale. + Cymbeline. + +CLASSIFICATION ATTEMPTED, 1810. + +Shakespeare’s earliest dramas I take to be— + + Love’s Labour’s Lost. + All’s Well that Ends Well. + Comedy of Errors. + Romeo and Juliet. + +In the second class I reckon— + + Midsummer Night’s Dream. + As You Like It. + Tempest. + Twelfth Night. + +In the third, as indicating a greater energy—not merely of poetry, but of +all the world of thought, yet still with some of the growing pains, and +the awkwardness of growth—I place— + + Troilus and Cressida. + Cymbeline. + Merchant of Venice. + Much Ado about Nothing. + Taming of the Shrew. + +In the fourth, I place the plays containing the greatest characters— + + Macbeth. + Lear. + Hamlet. + Othello. + +And lastly, the historic dramas, in order to be able to show my reasons +for rejecting some whole plays, and very many scenes in others. + +CLASSIFICATION ATTEMPTED, 1819. + +I think Shakespeare’s earliest dramatic attempt—perhaps even prior in +conception to the _Venus and Adonis_, and planned before he left +Stratford—was _Love’s Labour’s Lost_. Shortly afterwards I suppose +_Pericles_ and certain scenes in _Jeronymo_ to have been produced; and in +the same epoch, I place the _Winter’s Tale_ and _Cymbeline_, differing +from the _Pericles_ by the entire _rifacimento_ of it, when Shakespeare’s +celebrity as poet, and his interest, no less than his influence, as +manager, enabled him to bring forward the laid-by labours of his youth. +The example of _Titus Andronicus_, which, as well as _Jeronymo_, was most +popular in Shakespeare’s first epoch, had led the young dramatist to the +lawless mixture of dates and manners. In this same epoch I should place +the _Comedy of Errors_, remarkable as being the only specimen of poetical +farce in our language, that is, intentionally such; so that all the +distinct kinds of drama, which might be educed _a priori_, have their +representatives in Shakespeare’s works. I say intentionally such; for many +of Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays, and the greater part of Ben Jonson’s +comedies, are farce plots. I add _All’s Well that Ends Well_, originally +intended as the counterpart of _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, _Taming of the +Shrew_, _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, _Much Ado about Nothing_, and _Romeo +and Juliet_. + +SECOND EPOCH. + + Richard II. + King John. + Henry VI.,—_rifacimento_ only. + Richard III. + +THIRD EPOCH. + + Henry IV. + Henry V. + Merry Wives of Windsor. + Henry VIII.,—a sort of historical masque, or show play. + +FOURTH EPOCH + +gives all the graces and facilities of a genius in full possession and +habitual exercise of power, and peculiarly of the feminine, the _lady’s_ +character. + + Tempest. + As You Like It + Merchant of Venice. + Twelfth Night. + +And, finally, at its very point of culmination— + + Lear. + Hamlet. + Macbeth. + Othello. + +LAST EPOCH. + +when the energies of intellect in the cycle of genius were, though in a +rich and more potentiated form, becoming predominant over passion and +creative self-manifestation— + + Measure for Measure, + Timon of Athens. + Coriolanus. + Julius Cæsar. + Antony and Cleopatra. + Troilus and Cressida. + +Merciful, wonder-making Heaven! what a man was this Shakespeare! +Myriad-minded, indeed, he was. + + + + +Notes On The “Tempest.” + + +There is a sort of improbability with which we are shocked in dramatic +representation, not less than in a narrative of real life. Consequently, +there must be rules respecting it; and as rules are nothing but means to +an end previously ascertained—(inattention to which simple truth has been +the occasion of all the pedantry of the French school),—we must first +determine what the immediate end or object of the drama is. And here, as I +have previously remarked, I find two extremes of critical decision;—the +French, which evidently presupposes that a perfect delusion is to be aimed +at,—an opinion which needs no fresh confutation; and the exact opposite to +it, brought forward by Dr. Johnson, who supposes the auditors throughout +in the full reflective knowledge of the contrary. In evincing the +impossibility of delusion, he makes no sufficient allowance for an +intermediate state, which I have before distinguished by the term +illusion, and have attempted to illustrate its quality and character by +reference to our mental state when dreaming. In both cases we simply do +not judge the imagery to be unreal; there is a negative reality, and no +more. Whatever, therefore, tends to prevent the mind from placing itself, +or being placed, gradually in that state in which the images have such +negative reality for the auditor, destroys this illusion, and is +dramatically improbable. + +Now, the production of this effect—a sense of improbability—will depend on +the degree of excitement in which the mind is supposed to be. Many things +would be intolerable in the first scene of a play, that would not at all +interrupt our enjoyment in the height of the interest, when the narrow +cockpit may be made to hold + +“The vasty field of France, or we may cram +Within its wooden O, the very casques, +That did affright the air at Agincourt.” + +Again, on the other hand, many obvious improbabilities will be endured, as +belonging to the groundwork of the story rather than to the drama itself, +in the first scenes, which would disturb or disentrance us from all +illusion in the acme of our excitement; as for instance, Lear’s division +of his kingdom, and the banishment of Cordelia. + +But, although the other excellences of the drama besides this dramatic +probability, as unity of interest, with distinctness and subordination of +the characters, and appropriateness of style, are all, so far as they tend +to increase the inward excitement, means towards accomplishing the chief +end, that of producing and supporting this willing illusion,—yet they do +not on that account cease to be ends themselves; and we must remember +that, as such, they carry their own justification with them, as long as +they do not contravene or interrupt the total illusion. It is not even +always, or of necessity, an objection to them, that they prevent the +illusion from rising to as great a height as it might otherwise have +attained;—it is enough that they are simply compatible with as high a +degree of it as is requisite for the purpose. Nay, upon particular +occasions, a palpable improbability may be hazarded by a great genius for +the express purpose of keeping down the interest of a merely instrumental +scene, which would otherwise make too great an impression for the harmony +of the entire illusion. Had the panorama been invented in the time of Pope +Leo X., Raffael would still, I doubt not, have smiled in contempt at the +regret, that the broom twigs and scrubby bushes at the back of some of his +grand pictures were not as probable trees as those in the exhibition. + +The _Tempest_ is a specimen of the purely romantic drama, in which the +interest is not historical, or dependent upon fidelity of portraiture, or +the natural connection of events, but is a birth of the imagination, and +rests only upon the coaptation and union of the elements granted to, or +assumed by, the poet. It is a species of drama which owes no allegiance to +time or space, and in which, therefore, errors of chronology and +geography—no mortal sins in any species—are venial faults, and count for +nothing. It addresses itself entirely to the imaginative faculty; and +although the illusion may be assisted by the effect on the senses of the +complicated scenery and decorations of modern times, yet this sort of +assistance is dangerous. For the principal and only genuine excitement +ought to come from within—from the moved and sympathetic imagination; +whereas, where so much is addressed to the mere external senses of seeing +and bearing, the spiritual vision is apt to languish, and the attraction +from without will withdraw the mind from the proper and only legitimate +interest which is intended to spring from within. + +The romance opens with a busy scene admirably appropriate to the kind of +drama, and giving, as it were, the key-note to the whole harmony. It +prepares and initiates the excitement required for the entire piece, and +yet does not demand anything from the spectators, which their previous +habits had not fitted them to understand. It is the bustle of a tempest, +from which the real horrors are abstracted;—therefore it is poetical, +though not in strictness natural—(the distinction to which I have so often +alluded)—and is purposely restrained from concentering the interest on +itself, but used merely as an induction or tuning for what is to follow. + +In the second scene, Prospero’s speeches, till the entrance of Ariel, +contain the finest example I remember of retrospective narration for the +purpose of exciting immediate interest, and putting the audience in +possession of all the information necessary for the understanding of the +plot. Observe, too, the perfect probability of the moment chosen by +Prospero (the very Shakespeare himself, as it were, of the tempest) to +open out the truth to his daughter, his own romantic bearing, and how +completely anything that might have been disagreeable to us in the +magician, is reconciled and shaded in the humanity and natural feelings of +the father. In the very first speech of Miranda, the simplicity and +tenderness of her character are at once laid open;—it would have been lost +in direct contact with the agitation of the first scene. The opinion once +prevailed, but happily is now abandoned, that Fletcher alone wrote for +women;—the truth is, that with very few, and those partial exceptions, the +female characters in the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher are, when of the +light kind, not decent; when heroic, complete viragos. But in Shakespeare +all the elements of womanhood are holy, and there is the sweet yet +dignified feeling of all that _continuates_ society, as sense of ancestry +and of sex, with a purity unassailable by sophistry, because it rests not +in the analytic processes, but in that sane equipoise of the faculties, +during which the feelings are representative of all past experience,—not +of the individual only, but of all those by whom she has been educated, +and their predecessors, even up to the first mother that lived. +Shakespeare saw that the want of prominence, which Pope notices for +sarcasm, was the blessed beauty of the woman’s character, and knew that it +arose not from any deficiency, but from the more exquisite harmony of all +the parts of the moral being constituing one living total of head and +heart. He has drawn it, indeed, in all its distinctive energies of faith, +patience, constancy, fortitude,—shown in all of them as following the +heart, which gives its results by a nice tact and happy intuition, without +the intervention of the discursive faculty, sees all things in and by the +light of the affections, and errs, if it ever err, in the exaggerations of +love alone. In all the Shakespearian women there is essentially the same +foundation and principle; the distinct individuality and variety are +merely the result of modification of circumstances, whether in Miranda the +maiden, in Imogen the wife, or in Katherine the queen. + +But to return. The appearance and characters of the super or ultra natural +servants are finely contrasted. Ariel has in everything the airy tint +which gives the name; and it is worthy of remark that Miranda is never +directly brought into comparison with Ariel, lest the natural and human of +the one and the supernatural of the other should tend to neutralise each +other; Caliban, on the other hand, is all earth, all condensed and gross +in feelings and images; he has the dawnings of understanding without +reason or the moral sense, and in him, as in some brute animals, this +advance to the intellectual faculties, without the moral sense, is marked +by the appearance of vice. For it is in the primacy of the moral being +only that man is truly human; in his intellectual powers he is certainly +approached by the brutes, and, man’s whole system duly considered, those +powers cannot be considered other than means to an end—that is, to +morality. + +In this scene, as it proceeds, is displayed the impression made by +Ferdinand and Miranda on each other; it is love at first sight;— + + ... “At the first sight +They have chang’d eyes;”— + +and it appears to me, that in all cases of real love, it is at one moment +that it takes place. That moment may have been prepared by previous +esteem, admiration, or even affection,—yet love seems to require a +momentary act of volition, by which a tacit bond of devotion is imposed,—a +bond not to be thereafter broken without violating what should be sacred +in our nature. How finely is the true Shakespearian scene contrasted with +Dryden’s vulgar alteration of it, in which a mere ludicrous psychological +experiment, as it were, is tried—displaying nothing but indelicacy without +passion. + +Prospero’s interruption of the courtship has often seemed to me to have +had no sufficient motive; still, his alleged reason— + + ... “Lest too light winning +Make the prize light”— + +is enough for the ethereal connections of the romantic imagination, +although it would not be so for the historical. The whole courting scene, +indeed, in the beginning of the third act, between the lovers, is a +masterpiece; and the first dawn of disobedience in the mind of Miranda to +the command of her father is very finely drawn, so as to seem the working +of the Scriptural command—“Thou shalt leave father and mother,” &c. Oh! +with what exquisite purity this scene is conceived and executed! +Shakespeare may sometimes be gross, but I boldly say that he is always +moral and modest. Alas! in this our day, decency of manners is preserved +at the expense of morality of heart, and delicacies for vice are allowed, +whilst grossness against it is hypocritically, or at least morbidly, +condemned. + +In this play are admirably sketched the vices generally accompanying a low +degree of civilisation; and in the first scene of the second act +Shakespeare has, as in many other places, shown the tendency in bad men to +indulge in scorn and contemptuous expressions as a mode of getting rid of +their own uneasy feelings of inferiority to the good, and also, by making +the good ridiculous, of rendering the transition of others to wickedness +easy. Shakespeare never puts habitual scorn into the mouths of other than +bad men, as here in the instances of Antonio and Sebastian. The scene of +the intended assassination of Alonzo and Gonzalo is an exact counterpart +of the scene between Macbeth and his lady, only pitched in a lower key +throughout, as designed to be frustrated and concealed, and exhibiting the +same profound management in the manner of familiarising a mind, not +immediately recipient, to the suggestion of guilt, by associating the +proposed crime with something ludicrous or out of place,—something not +habitually matter of reverence. By this kind of sophistry the imagination +and fancy are first bribed to contemplate the suggested act, and at length +to become acquainted with it. Observe how the effect of this scene is +heightened by contrast with another counterpart of it in low life,—that +between the conspirators Stephano, Caliban, and Trinculo in the second +scene of the third act, in which there are the same essential +characteristics. + +In this play, and in this scene of it, are also shown the springs of the +vulgar in politics,—of that kind of politics which is inwoven with human +nature. In his treatment of this subject, wherever it occurs, Shakespeare +is quite peculiar. In other writers we find the particular opinions of the +individual; in Massinger it is rank republicanism; in Beaumont and +Fletcher even _jure divino_ principles are carried to excess;—but +Shakespeare never promulgates any party tenets. He is always the +philosopher and the moralist, but at the same time with a profound +veneration for all the established institutions of society, and for those +classes which form the permanent elements of the State,—especially never +introducing a professional character, as such, otherwise than as +respectable. If he must have any name, he should be styled a philosophical +aristocrat, delighting in those hereditary institutions which have a +tendency to bind one age to another, and in that distinction of ranks, of +which, although few may be in possession, all enjoy the advantages. Hence, +again, you will observe the good nature with which he seems always to make +sport with the passions and follies of a mob, as with an irrational +animal. He is never angry with it, but hugely content with holding up its +absurdities to its face; and sometimes you may trace a tone of almost +affectionate superiority, something like that in which a father speaks of +the rogueries of a child. See the good-humoured way in which he describes +Stephano passing from the most licentious freedom to absolute despotism +over Trinculo and Caliban. The truth is, Shakespeare’s characters are all +_genera_ intensely individualised; the results of meditation, of which +observation supplied the drapery and the colours necessary to combine them +with each other. He had virtually surveyed all the great component powers +and impulses of human nature,—had seen that their different combinations +and subordinations were in fact the individualisers of men, and showed how +their harmony was produced by reciprocal disproportions of excess or +deficiency. The language in which these truths are expressed was not drawn +from any set fashion, but from the profoundest depths of his moral being, +and is therefore for all ages. + + + + +“Love’s Labour’s Lost.” + + +The characters in this play are either impersonated out of Shakespeare’s +own multiformity by imaginative self-position, or out of such as a country +town and schoolboy’s observation might supply,—the curate, the +schoolmaster, the Armado (who even in my time was not extinct in the +cheaper inns of North Wales), and so on. The satire is chiefly on follies +of words. Biron and Rosaline are evidently the pre-existent state of +Benedict and Beatrice, and so, perhaps, is Boyet of Lafeu, and Costard of +the tapster in _Measure for Measure_; and the frequency of the rhymes, the +sweetness as well as the smoothness of the metre, and the number of acute +and fancifully illustrated aphorisms, are all as they ought to be in a +poet’s youth. True genius begins by generalising and condensing; it ends +in realising and expanding. It first collects the seeds. + +Yet, if this juvenile drama had been the only one extant of our +Shakespeare, and we possessed the tradition only of his riper works, or +accounts of them in writers who had not even mentioned this play,—how many +of Shakespeare’s characteristic features might we not still have +discovered in _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, though as in a portrait taken of him +in his boyhood. + +I can never sufficiently admire the wonderful activity of thought +throughout the whole of the first scene of the play, rendered natural, as +it is, by the choice of the characters, and the whimsical determination on +which the drama is founded. A whimsical determination certainly;—yet not +altogether so very improbable to those who are conversant in the history +of the middle ages, with their Courts of Love, and all that lighter +drapery of chivalry, which engaged even mighty kings with a sort of +serio-comic interest, and may well be supposed to have occupied more +completely the smaller princes, at a time when the noble’s or prince’s +court contained the only theatre of the domain or principality. This sort +of story, too, was admirably suited to Shakespeare’s times, when the +English court was still the foster-mother of the state and the muses; and +when, in consequence, the courtiers, and men of rank and fashion, affected +a display of wit, point, and sententious observation, that would be deemed +intolerable at present,—but in which a hundred years of controversy, +involving every great political, and every dear domestic, interest, had +trained all but the lowest classes to participate. Add to this the very +style of the sermons of the time, and the eagerness of the Protestants to +distinguish themselves by long and frequent preaching, and it will be +found that, from the reign of Henry VIII. to the abdication of James II. +no country ever received such a national education as England. + +Hence the comic matter chosen in the first instance is a ridiculous +imitation or apery of this constant striving after logical precision and +subtle opposition of thoughts, together with a making the most of every +conception or image, by expressing it under the least expected property +belonging to it, and this, again, rendered specially absurd by being +applied to the most current subjects and occurrences. The phrases and +modes of combination in argument were caught by the most ignorant from the +custom of the age, and their ridiculous misapplication of them is most +amusingly exhibited in Costard; whilst examples suited only to the gravest +propositions and impersonations, or apostrophes to abstract thoughts +impersonated, which are in fact the natural language only of the most +vehement agitations of the mind, are adopted by the coxcombry of Armado as +mere artifices of ornament. + +The same kind of intellectual action is exhibited in a more serious and +elevated strain in many other parts of this play. Biron’s speech at the +end of the Fourth Act is an excellent specimen of it. It is logic clothed +in rhetoric;—but observe how Shakespeare, in his two-fold being of poet +and philosopher, avails himself of it to convey profound truths in the +most lively images,—the whole remaining faithful to the character supposed +to utter the lines, and the expressions themselves constituting a further +development of that character:— + +“Other slow arts entirely keep the brain: +And therefore finding barren practisers, +Scarce show a harvest of their heavy toil: +But love, first learned in a lady’s eyes, +Lives not alone immured in the brain; +But, with the motion of all elements, +Courses as swift as thought in every power; +And gives to every power a double power, +Above their functions and their offices. +It adds a precious seeing to the eye, +A lover’s eyes will gaze an eagle blind; +A lover’s ear will hear the lowest sound, +When the suspicious head of theft is stopp’d: +Love’s feeling is more soft and sensible, +Than are the tender horns of cockled snails; +Love’s tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste; +For valour, is not love a Hercules, +Still climbing trees in the Hesperides? +Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical, +As bright Apollo’s lute, strung with his hair; +And when love speaks, the voice of all the gods +Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony. +Never durst poet touch a pen to write, +Until his ink were tempered with love’s sighs; +Oh, then his lines would ravish savage ears, +And plant in tyrants mild humility. +From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive: +They sparkle still the right Promethean fire; +They are the books, the arts, the academes, +That show, contain, and nourish all the world; +Else, none at all in aught proves excellent; +Then fools you were these women to forswear; +Or, keeping what is sworn, you will prove fools. +For wisdom’s sake, a word that all men love; +Or for love’s sake, a word that loves all men; +Or for men’s sake, the authors of these women; +Or women’s sake, by whom we men are men; +Let us once lose our oaths, to find ourselves, +Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths: +It is religion to be thus forsworn: +For charity itself fulfils the law: +And who can sever love from charity?”— + +This is quite a study;—sometimes you see this youthful god of poetry +connecting disparate thoughts purely by means of resemblances in the words +expressing them,—a thing in character in lighter comedy, especially of +that kind in which Shakespeare delights, namely, the purposed display of +wit, though sometimes too, disfiguring his graver scenes;—but more often +you may see him doubling the natural connection or order of logical +consequence in the thoughts by the introduction of an artificial and +sought for resemblance in the words, as, for instance, in the third line +of the play,— + +“And then grace us in the disgrace of death;”— + +this being a figure often having its force and propriety, as justified by +the law of passion, which, inducing in the mind an unusual activity, seeks +for means to waste its superfluity,—when in the highest degree—in lyric +repetitions and sublime tautology—“At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay +down; at her feet he bowed, he fell; where he bowed, there he fell down +dead,”—and, in lower degrees, in making the words themselves the subjects +and materials of that surplus action, and for the same cause that agitates +our limbs, and forces our very gestures into a tempest in states of high +excitement. + +The mere style of narration in _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, like that of Ægeon +in the first scene of the _Comedy of Errors_, and of the Captain in the +second scene of _Macbeth_, seems imitated with its defects and its +beauties from Sir Philip Sidney; whose _Arcadia_, though not then +published, was already well known in manuscript copies, and could hardly +have escaped the notice and admiration of Shakespeare as the friend and +client of the Earl of Southampton. The chief defect consists in the +parentheses and parenthetic thoughts and descriptions, suited neither to +the passion of the speaker, nor the purpose of the person to whom the +information is to be given, but manifestly betraying the author +himself,—not by way of continuous undersong, but—palpably, and so as to +show themselves addressed to the general reader. However, it is not +unimportant to notice how strong a presumption the diction and allusions +of this play afford, that, though Shakespeare’s acquirements in the dead +languages might not be such as we suppose in a learned education, his +habits had, nevertheless, been scholastic, and those of a student. For a +young author’s first work almost always bespeaks his recent pursuits, and +his first observations of life are either drawn from the immediate +employments of his youth, and from the characters and images most deeply +impressed on his mind in the situations in which those employments had +placed him;—or else they are fixed on such objects and occurrences in the +world, as are easily connected with, and seem to bear upon, his studies +and the hitherto exclusive subjects of his meditation. Just as Ben Jonson, +who applied himself to the drama after having served in Flanders, fills +his earliest plays with true or pretended soldiers, the wrongs and +neglects of the former, and the absurd boasts and knavery of their +counterfeits. So Lessing’s first comedies are placed in the universities, +and consist of events and characters conceivable in an academic life. + +I will only further remark the sweet and tempered gravity, with which +Shakespeare in the end draws the only fitting moral which such a drama +afforded. Here Rosaline rises up to the full height of Beatrice:— + +“_Ros._ Oft have I heard of you, my lord Biron, +Before I saw you: and the world’s large tongue +Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks; +Full of comparisons, and wounding flouts, +Which you on all estates will execute +That lie within the mercy of your wit: +To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain, +And therewithal, to win me, if you please +(Without the which I am not to be won), +You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day +Visit the speechless sick, and still converse +With groaning wretches; and your talk shall be, +With all the fierce endeavour of your wit, +To enforce the pained impotent to smile. + +_Biron._ To move wild laughter in the throat of death? +It cannot be; it is impossible; +Mirth cannot move a soul in agony. + +_Ros._ Why, that’s the way to choke a gibing spirit, +Whose influence is begot of that loose grace, +Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools; +A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear +Of him that hears it, never in the tongue +Of him that makes it: then, if sickly ears, +Deaf’d with the clamours of their own dear groans, +Will hear your idle scorns, continue then, +And I will have you, and that fault withal: +But, if they will not, throw away that spirit, +And I shall find you empty of that fault, +Right joyful of your reformation.” + +Act v. sc. 2. In Biron’s speech to the Princess: + + “And, therefore, like the eye, +Full of _straying_ shapes, of habits, and of forms”— + +either read _stray_, which I prefer; or throw _full_ back to the preceding +lines,— + + “Like the eye, full +Of straying shapes,” &c, + +In the same scene:— + +“_Biron._ And what to me, my love? and what to me? + +_Ros._ You must be purged too, your sins are rank; +You are attaint with fault and perjury: +Therefore, if you my favour mean to get, +A twelvemonth shall you spend, and never rest, +But seek the weary beds of people sick.” + +There can be no doubt, indeed, about the propriety of expunging this +speech of Rosaline’s; it soils the very page that retains it. But I do not +agree with Warburton and others in striking out the preceding line also. +It is quite in Biron’s character; and Rosaline, not answering it +immediately, Dumain takes up the question for him, and, after he and +Longaville are answered, Biron, with evident propriety, says:— + +“_Studies_ my mistress?” &c. + + + + +“Midsummer Night’s Dream.” + + +Act i. sc. 1.— + +“_Her._ O cross! too high to be enthrall’d to low— + +_Lys._ Or else misgrafted in respect of years; + +_Her._ O spite! too old to be engaged to young— + +_Lys._ Or else it stood upon the choice of friends; + +_Her._ O hell! to chuse love by another’s eye!” + +There is no authority for any alteration;—but I never can help feeling how +great an improvement it would be, if the two former of Hermia’s +exclamations were omitted;—the third and only appropriate one would then +become a beauty, and most natural. + +_Ib._ Helena’s speech:— + +“I will go tell him of fair Hermia’s flight,” &c. + +I am convinced that Shakespeare availed himself of the title of this play +in his own mind, and worked upon it as a dream throughout, but especially, +and perhaps unpleasingly, in this broad determination of ungrateful +treachery in Helena, so undisguisedly avowed to herself, and this, too, +after the witty cool philosophising that precedes. The act itself is +natural, and the resolve so to act is, I fear, likewise too true a picture +of the lax hold which principles have on a woman’s heart, when opposed to, +or even separated from, passion and inclination. For women are less +hypocrites to their own minds than men are, because in general they feel +less proportionate abhorrence of moral evil in and for itself, and more of +its outward consequences, as detection and loss of character, than +men,—their natures being almost wholly extroitive. Still, however just in +itself, the representation of this is not poetical; we shrink from it, and +cannot harmonise it with the ideal. + +Act ii. sc. 1. Theobald’s edition— + +“_Through_ bush, _through_ briar— + +_Through_ flood, _through fire_—” + +What a noble pair of ears this worthy Theobald must have had! The eight +amphimacers or cretics,— + +“Ovĕr hīll, ōvĕr dāle, +Thōrŏ’ būsh, thōrŏ’ brīar, +Ovĕr pārk, ōvĕr pāle, +Thrōrŏ’ flōōd, thōrŏ’ fīre”— + +have a delightful effect on the ear in their sweet transition to the +trochaic,— + +“I dŏ wāndĕr ēv’ry whērĕ +Swīftĕr thān thĕ mōōnĕs sphērĕ,” &c. + +The last words, as sustaining the rhyme, must be considered, as in fact +they are, trochees in time. + +It may be worth while to give some correct examples in English of the +principle metrical feet:— + +Pyrrhic or Dibrach, u u = _bŏdy_, _spĭrĭt_. +Tribrach, u u u = _nŏbŏdy_, hastily pronounced. +Iambus, u - = _dĕlīght_. +Trochee, - u = _līghtlȳ_. +Spondee, - - = _Gōd spāke_. + +The paucity of spondees in single words in English, and indeed in the +modern languages in general, makes perhaps the greatest distinction, +metrically considered, between them and the Greek and Latin. + +Dactyl, - u u = _mērrĭlȳ_. +Anapæst, u u - = _ă prŏpōs_, or the first three syllables of _cĕrĕmōny_. +Amphibrachys, u - u = _dĕlīghtfŭl_. +Amphimacer, - u - = _ōvĕr hīll_. +Antibacchius, u - = _thĕ Lōrd Gōd_. +Bacchius, - - u = _Hēlvēllȳn_. +Molossus, - - - = _Jōhn Jāmes Jōnes_. + +These simple feet may suffice for understanding the metres of Shakespeare, +for the greater part at least;—but Milton cannot be made harmoniously +intelligible without the composite feet, the Ionics, Pæons, and Epitrites. + +_Ib._ sc. 2. Titania’s speech (Theobald, adopting Warburton’s reading):— + +“Which she, with pretty and with swimming gate +_Follying_ (her womb then rich with my young squire) +Would imitate,” &c. + +Oh! oh! Heaven have mercy on poor Shakespeare, and also on Mr. Warburton’s +mind’s eye! + +Act v. sc. 1. Theseus’ speech (Theobald):— + +“And what poor [_willing_] duty cannot do, +Noble respect takes it in might, not merit.” + +To my ears it would read far more Shakespearian thus:— + +“And what poor duty cannot do, _yet would_, +Noble respect,” &c. + +_Ib._ sc. 2.— + +“_Puck._ Now the hungry lion roars, + And the wolf behowls the moon; +Whilst the heavy ploughman snores + All with weary task foredone,” &c. + +Very Anacreon in perfectness, proportion, grace, and spontaneity! So far +it is Greek;—but then add, O! what wealth, what wild ranging, and yet what +compression and condensation of, English fancy! In truth, there is nothing +in Anacreon more perfect than these thirty lines, or half so rich and +imaginative. They form a speckless diamond. + + + + +“Comedy Of Errors.” + + +The myriad-minded man, our, and all men’s Shakespeare, has in this piece +presented us with a legitimate farce in exactest consonance with the +philosophical principles and character of farce, as distinguished from +comedy and from entertainments. A proper farce is mainly distinguished +from comedy by the licence allowed, and even required, in the fable, in +order to produce strange and laughable situations. The story need not be +probable, it is enough that it is possible. A comedy would scarcely allow +even the two Antipholuses; because, although there have been instances of +almost indistinguishable likeness in two persons, yet these are mere +individual accidents, _casus ludentis naturæ_, and the _verum_ will not +excuse the _inverisimile_. But farce dares add the two Dromios, and is +justified in so doing by the laws of its end and constitution. In a word, +farces commence in a postulate, which must be granted. + + + + +“As You Like It.” + + +Act i. sc. 1. + +“_Oli._ What, boy! + +_Orla._ Come, come, elder brother, you are too young in this. + +_Oli._ Wilt thou lay hands on me, villain?” + +There is a beauty here. The word “boy” naturally provokes and awakens in +Orlando the sense of his manly powers; and with the retort of “elder +brother,” he grasps him with firm hands, and makes him feel he is no boy. + +_Ib._— + +“_Oli._ Farewell, good Charles. Now will I stir this gamester: I hope, I +shall see an end of him; for my soul, yet I know not why, hates nothing +more than him. Yet he’s gentle; never school’d, and yet learn’d; full of +noble device; of all sorts enchantingly beloved! and, indeed, so much in +the heart of the world, and especially of my own people, who best know +him, that I am altogether misprised: but it shall not be so long; this +wrestler shall clear all.” + +This has always appeared to me one of the most un-Shakespearian speeches +in all the genuine works of our poet; yet I should be nothing surprised, +and greatly pleased, to find it hereafter a fresh beauty, as has so often +happened to me with other supposed defects of great men.—1810. + +It is too venturous to charge a passage in Shakespeare with want of truth +to nature; and yet at first sight this speech of Oliver’s expresses +truths, which it seems almost impossible that any mind should so +distinctly, so livelily, and so voluntarily, have presented to itself, in +connection with feelings and intentions so malignant, and so contrary to +those which the qualities expressed would naturally have called forth. But +I dare not say that this seeming unnaturalness is not in the nature of an +abused wilfulness, when united with a strong intellect. In such characters +there is sometimes a gloomy self-gratification in making the absoluteness +of the will (_sit pro ratione voluntas!_) evident to themselves by setting +the reason and the conscience in full array against it.—1818. + +_Ib._ sc. 2.— + +“_Celia._ If your saw yourself with _your_ eyes, or knew yourself with +_your_ judgment, the fear of your adventure would counsel you to a more +equal enterprise.” + +Surely it should be “_our_ eyes” and “_our_ judgment.” + +_Ib._ sc 3.— + +“_Cel._ But is all this for your father? + +_Ros._ No; some of it is for _my child’s father_.” + +Theobald restores this as the reading of the older editions. It may be so: +but who can doubt that it is a mistake for “my father’s child,” meaning +herself? According to Theobald’s note, a most indelicate anticipation is +put into the mouth of Rosalind without reason;—and besides, what a strange +thought, and how out of place and unintelligible! + +Act iv. sc. 2.— + +“Take thou no scorn +To wear the horn, the lusty horn; +It was a crest ere thou wast born.” + +I question whether there exists a parallel instance of a phrase, that like +this of “horns” is universal in all languages, and yet for which no one +has discovered even a plausible origin. + + + + +“Twelfth Night.” + + +Act i. sc. 1. Duke’s speech:— + + ... “So full of shapes is fancy, +That it alone is high fantastical.” + +Warburton’s alteration of _is_ into _in_ is needless. “Fancy” may very +well be interpreted “exclusive affection,” or “passionate preference.” +Thus, bird-fanciers; gentlemen of the fancy, that is, amateurs of boxing, +&c. The play of assimilation,—the meaning one sense chiefly, and yet +keeping both senses in view, is perfectly Shakespearian. + +Act ii. sc. 3. Sir Andrew’s speech:— + +An explanatory note on _Pigrogromitus_ would have been more acceptable +than Theobald’s grand discovery that “lemon” ought to be “leman.” + +_Ib._ Sir Toby’s speech (Warburton’s note on the Peripatetic philosophy):— + +“Shall we rouse the night-owl in a catch, that will draw three +“souls out of one weaver?” + +O genuine, and inimitable (at least I hope so) Warburton! This note of +thine, if but one in five millions, would be half a one too much. + +_Ib._ sc. 4.— + +“_Duke._ My life upon’t, young though thou art, thine eye +Hath stay’d upon some favour that it loves; +Hath it not, boy? + +_Vio._ A little, by your favour. + +_Duke._ What kind of woman is’t?” + +And yet Viola was to have been presented to Orsino as a eunuch!—Act i. sc. +2. Viola’s speech. Either she forgot this, or else she had altered her +plan. + +_Ib._— + +“_Vio._ A blank, my lord: she never told her love!— +But let concealment,” &c. + +After the first line (of which the last five words should be spoken with, +and drop down in, a deep sigh), the actress ought to make a pause; and +then start afresh, from the activity of thought, born of suppressed +feelings, and which thought had accumulated during the brief interval, as +vital heat under the skin during a dip in cold water. + +_Ib._ sc. 5.— + +“_Fabian._ Though our silence be drawn from us by _cars_, yet +peace.” + +Perhaps, “cables.” + +Act iii. sc. 1.— + +“_Clown._ A sentence is but a _cheveril_ glove to a good wit.” +(Theobald’s note.) + +Theobald’s etymology of “cheveril” is, of course, quite right;—but he is +mistaken in supposing that there were no such things as gloves of +chicken-skin. They were at one time a main article in chirocosmetics. + +Act v. sc. 1. Clown’s speech:— + +“So that, _conclusions to be as kisses_, if your four negatives make +your two affirmatives, why, then, the worse for my friends, and the +better for my foes.” + +(Warburton reads “conclusion to be asked, is.”) + +Surely Warburton could never have wooed by kisses and won, or he would not +have flounder-flatted so just and humorous, nor less pleasing than +humorous, an image into so profound a nihility. In the name of love and +wonder, do not four kisses make a double affirmative? The humour lies in +the whispered “No!” and the inviting “Don’t!” with which the maiden’s +kisses are accompanied, and thence compared to negatives, which by +repetition constitute an affirmative. + + + + +“All’s Well That Ends Well.” + + +Act i. sc. 1.— + +“_Count._ If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess makes +it soon mortal. + +_Bert._ _Madam, I desire your holy wishes._ + +_Laf._ _How understand we that?_” + +Bertram and Lafeu, I imagine, both speak together,—Lafeu referring to the +Countess’s rather obscure remark. + +Act ii. sc. 1. (Warburton’s note.) + +“_King._ ... let _higher_ Italy +(Those _’bated_, that inherit but the fall +Of the last monarchy) see, that you come +Not to woo honour, but to wed it.” + +It would be, I own, an audacious and unjustifiable change of the text; but +yet, as a mere conjecture, I venture to suggest “bastards,” for “’bated.” +As it stands, in spite of Warburton’s note, I can make little or nothing +of it. Why should the king except the then most illustrious states, which, +as being republics, were the more truly inheritors of the Roman +grandeur?—With my conjecture, the sense would be;—“let higher, or the more +northern part of Italy—(unless ‘higher’ be a corruption for ‘hir’d,’—the +metre seeming to demand a monosyllable) (those bastards that inherit the +infamy only of their fathers) see,” &c. The following “woo” and “wed” are +so far confirmative as they indicate Shakespeare’s manner of connection by +unmarked influences of association from some preceding metaphor. This it +is which makes his style so peculiarly vital and organic. Likewise “those +girls of Italy” strengthen the guess. The absurdity of Warburton’s gloss, +which represents the king calling Italy superior, and then excepting the +only part the lords were going to visit, must strike every one. + +_Ib._ sc. 3.— + +“_Laf._ They say, miracles are past; and we have our philosophical +persons to make modern and familiar, things supernatural +and _causeless_.” + +Shakespeare, inspired, as it might seem, with all knowledge, here uses the +word “causeless” in its strict philosophical sense;—cause being truly +predicable only of _phenomena_, that is, things natural, and not of +_noumena_, or things supernatural. + +Act iii. sc. 5.— + +“_Dia._ The Count Rousillon:—know you such a one? + +_Hel._ But by the ear that hears most nobly of him; +His face I know not.” + +Shall we say here, that Shakespeare has unnecessarily made his loveliest +character utter a lie?—Or shall we dare think that, where to deceive was +necessary, he thought a pretended verbal verity a double crime, equally +with the other a lie to the hearer, and at the same time an attempt to lie +to one’s own conscience? + + + + +“Merry Wives Of Windsor.” + + +Act i. sc. 1.— + +“_Shal._ The luce is the fresh fish, the salt fish is an old coat.” + +I cannot understand this. Perhaps there is a corruption both of words and +speakers. Shallow no sooner corrects one mistake of Sir Hugh’s, namely, +“louse” for “luce,” a pike, but the honest Welchman falls into another, +namely, “cod” (_baccalà_). _Cambrice_—“cot” for coat. + +“_Shal._ The luce is the fresh fish— + +_Evans._ The salt fish is an old cot.” + +“Luce is a fresh fish, and not a louse;” says Shallow. “Aye, aye,” quoth +Sir Hugh; “the _fresh_ fish is the luce; it is an old cod that is the salt +fish.” At all events, as the text stands, there is no sense at all in the +words. + +_Ib._ sc. 3— + +“_Fal._ Now, the report goes, she has all the rule of her husband’s +purse; He hath a legion of angels. + +_Pist._ As many devils entertain; and _To her, boy_, say I.” + +Perhaps it is— + +“As many devils enter (or enter’d) swine; and _to her, boy_, +say I:”— + +a somewhat profane, but not un-Shakespearian, allusion to the “legion” in +St. Luke’s “gospel.” + + + + +“Measure For Measure.” + + +This play, which is Shakespeare’s throughout, is to me the most +painful—say rather, the only painful—part of his genuine works. The comic +and tragic parts equally border on the μισητὸν,—the one being disgusting, +the other horrible; and the pardon and marriage of Angelo not merely +baffles the strong indignant claim of justice—(for cruelty, with lust and +damnable baseness, cannot be forgiven, because we cannot conceive them as +being morally repented of); but it is likewise degrading to the character +of woman. Beaumont and Fletcher, who can follow Shakespeare in his errors +only, have presented a still worse, because more loathsome and +contradictory, instance of the same kind in the _Night-Walker_, in the +marriage of Alathe to Algripe. Of the counter-balancing beauties of +_Measure for Measure_, I need say nothing; for I have already remarked +that the play is Shakespeare’s throughout. + +Act iii. sc. 1.— + +“Ay, but to die, and go we know not where,” &c. + + + “This natural fear of Claudio, from the antipathy we have to + death, seems very little varied from that infamous wish of + Mæcenas, recorded in the 101st epistle of Seneca:— + + “_Debilem facito manu,_ + _Debilem pede, coxa_” &c.—Warburton’s note. + + +I cannot but think this rather a heroic resolve, than an infamous wish. It +appears to me to be the grandest symptom of an immortal spirit, when even +that bedimmed and overwhelmed spirit recked not of its own immortality, +still to seek to be,—to be a mind, a will. + +As fame is to reputation, so heaven is to an estate, or immediate +advantage. The difference is, that the self-love of the former cannot +exist but by a complete suppression and habitual supplantation of +immediate selfishness. In one point of view, the miser is more estimable +than the spendthrift;—only that the miser’s present feelings are as much +of the present as the spendthrift’s. But _cæteris paribus_, that is, upon +the supposition that whatever is good or lovely in the one coexists +equally in the other, then, doubtless, the master of the present is less a +selfish being, an animal, than he who lives for the moment with no +inheritance in the future. Whatever can degrade man, is supposed in the +latter case; whatever can elevate him, in the former. And as to +self;—strange and generous self! that can only be such a self by a +complete divestment of all that men call self,—of all that can make it +either practically to others, or consciously to the individual himself, +different from the human race in its ideal. Such self is but a perpetual +religion, an inalienable acknowledgment of God, the sole basis and ground +of being. In this sense, how can I love God, and not love myself, as far +as it is of God? + +_Ib._ sc. 2.— + +“Pattern in himself to know, +Grace to stand, and virtue go.” + +Worse metre, indeed, but better English would be,— + +“Grace to stand, virtue to go.” + + + + +“Cymbeline.” + + +Act i. sc. 1.— + +“You do not meet a man, but frowns: our bloods +No more obey the heavens, than our courtiers’ +Still seem, as does the king’s.” + +There can be little doubt of Mr. Tyrwhitt’s emendations of “courtiers” and +“king,” as to the sense;—only it is not impossible that Shakespeare’s +dramatic language may allow of the word “brows” or “faces” being +understood after the word “courtiers’,” which might then remain in the +genitive case plural. But the nominative plural makes excellent sense, and +is sufficiently elegant, and sounds to my ear Shakespearian. What, +however, is meant by “our bloods no more obey the heavens?”—Dr. Johnson’s +assertion that “bloods” signify “countenances,” is, I think, mistaken both +in the thought conveyed—(for it was never a popular belief that the stars +governed men’s countenances)—and in the usage, which requires an +antithesis of the blood,—or the temperament of the four humours, choler, +melancholy, phlegm, and the red globules, or the sanguine portion, which +was supposed not to be in our own power, but to be dependent on the +influences of the heavenly bodies,—and the countenances which are in our +power really, though from flattery we bring them into a no less apparent +dependence on the sovereign, than the former are in actual dependence on +the constellations. + +I have sometimes thought that the word “courtiers” was a misprint for +“countenances,” arising from an anticipation, by foreglance of the +compositor’s eye, of the word “courtier” a few lines below. The written +_r_ is easily and often confounded with, the written _n_. The compositor +read the first syllable _court_, and—his eye at the same time catching the +word “courtier” lower down—he completed the word without reconsulting the +copy. It is not unlikely that Shakespeare intended first to express, +generally, the same thought, which a little afterwards he repeats with a +particular application to the persons meant;—a common usage of the +pronominal “our,” where the speaker does not really mean to include +himself; and the word “you” is an additional confirmation of the “our,” +being used in this place for “men” generally and indefinitely,—just as +“you do not meet” is the same as “one does not meet.” + +Act i. sc. 1 Imogen’s speech:— + + ... “My dearest husband, +I something fear my father’s wrath; but nothing +(Always reserved my holy duty) what +His rage can do on me;” + +Place the emphasis on “me”; for “rage” is a mere repetition of “wrath.” + +“_Cym._ O disloyal thing; +That should’st repair my youth; thou heapest +A year’s age on me!” + +How is it that the commentators take no notice of the un-Shakespearian +defect in the metre of the second line, and what in Shakespeare is the +same, in the harmony with the sense and feeling? Some word or words must +have slipped out after “youth,”—possibly “and see”:— + +“That should’st repair my youth!—and see, thou heap’st,” &c. + +_Ib._ sc. 3. Pisanio’s speech:— + + ... “For so long +As he could make me with _this_ eye or ear +Distinguish him from others,” &c. + +But “_this_ eye,” in spite of the supposition of its being used δεικτικῶς, +is very awkward. I should think that either “or” or “the” was +Shakespeare’s word;— + +“As he could make me or with eye or ear.” + +_Ib._ sc. 6. Iachimo’s speech:— + + ... “Hath nature given them eyes +To see this vaulted arch, and the rich crop +Of sea and land, which can distinguish ’twixt +The fiery orbs above, and the twinn’d stones +Upon the number’d beach.” + +I would suggest “cope” for “crop.” As to “twinn’d stones”—may it not be a +bold _catachresis_ for muscles, cockles, and other empty shells with +hinges, which are truly twinned? I would take Dr. Farmer’s “umber’d,” +which I had proposed before I ever heard of its having been already +offered by him: but I do not adopt his interpretation of the word, which I +think is not derived from _umbra_, a shade, but from _umber_, a dingy +yellow-brown soil, which most commonly forms the mass of the sludge on the +sea-shore, and on the banks of tide-rivers at low water. One other +possible interpretation of this sentence has occurred to me, just barely +worth mentioning;—that the “twinn’d stones” are the _augrim_ stones upon +the number’d beech,—that is, the astronomical tables of beech-wood. + +Act v. sc. 5.— + +“_Sooth._ When, as a lion’s whelp,” &c. + +It is not easy to conjecture why Shakespeare should have introduced this +ludicrous scroll, which answers no one purpose, either propulsive, or +explicatory, unless as a joke on etymology. + + + + +“Titus Andronicus.” + + +Act i. sc. 1. Theobald’s note:— + + + “I never heard it so much as intimated, that he (Shakespeare) had + turned his genius to stage-writing, before he associated with the + players, and became one of their body.” + + +That Shakespeare never “turned his genius to stage-writing,” as Theobald +most _Theobaldice_ phrases it, before he became an actor, is an assertion +of about as much authority as the precious story that he left Stratford +for deer-stealing, and that he lived by holding gentlemen’s horses at the +doors of the theatre, and other trash of that arch-gossip, old Aubrey. The +metre is an argument against _Titus Andronicus_ being Shakespeare’s, worth +a score such chronological surmises. Yet I incline to think that both in +this play and in _Jeronymo_, Shakespeare wrote some passages, and that +they are the earliest of his compositions. + +Act v. sc. 2. I think it not improbable that the lines from— + +“I am not mad; I know thee well enough; + +to + +So thou destroy Rapine, and Murder there”— + +were written by Shakespeare in his earliest period. But instead of the +text— + + “Revenge, _which makes the foul offenders quake._ +_Tit. Art thou_ Revenge? and art thou sent to me?”— + +the words in italics ought to be omitted. + + + + +“Troilus And Cressida.” + + + “Mr. Pope (after Dryden) informs us that the story of _Troilus and + Cressida_ was originally the work of one Lollius, a Lombard: but + Dryden goes yet further; he declares it to have been written in + Latin verse, and that Chaucer translated it. _Lollius was a + historiographer of Urbino in Italy._”—Note in Stockdale’s edition, + 1807. + + +“Lollius was a historiographer of Urbino in Italy.” So affirms the notary +to whom the Sieur Stockdale committed the _disfaciménto_ of Ayscough’s +excellent edition of Shakespeare. Pity that the researchful notary has not +either told us in what century, and of what history, he was a writer, or +been simply content to depose, that Lollius, if a writer of that name +existed at all, was a somewhat somewhere. The notary speaks of the _Troy +Boke_ of Lydgate, printed in 1513. I have never seen it; but I deeply +regret that Chalmers did not substitute the whole of Lydgate’s works from +the MSS. extant, for the almost worthless Gower. + +The _Troilus and Cressida_ of Shakespeare can scarcely be classed with his +dramas of Greek and Roman history; but it forms an intermediate link +between the fictitious Greek and Roman histories, which we may call +legendary dramas, and the proper ancient histories,—that is, between the +_Pericles_ or _Titus Andronicus_, and the _Coriolanus_ or _Julius Cæsar_. +_Cymbeline_ is a _congener_ with _Pericles_, and distinguished from _Lear_ +by not having any declared prominent object. But where shall we class the +_Timon of Athens_? Perhaps immediately below _Lear_. It is a _Lear_ of the +satirical drama; a _Lear_ of domestic or ordinary life;—a local eddy of +passion on the high road of society, while all around is the week-day +goings on of wind and weather; a _Lear_, therefore, without its +soul-searching flashes, its ear-cleaving thunder-claps, its meteoric +splendours,—without the contagion and the fearful sympathies of nature, +the fates, the furies, the frenzied elements, dancing in and out, now +breaking through and scattering,—now hand in hand with,—the fierce or +fantastic group of human passions, crimes, and anguishes, reeling on the +unsteady ground, in a wild harmony to the shock and the swell of an +earthquake. But my present subject was _Troilus and Cressida_; and I +suppose that, scarcely knowing what to say of it, I by a cunning of +instinct ran off to subjects on which I should find it difficult not to +say too much, though certain after all that I should still leave the +better part unsaid, and the gleaning for others richer than my own +harvest. + +Indeed, there is no one of Shakespeare’s plays harder to characterise. The +name and the remembrances connected with it, prepare us for the +representation of attachment no less faithful than fervent on the side of +the youth, and of sudden and shameless inconstancy on the part of the +lady. And this is, indeed, as the gold thread on which the scenes are +strung, though often kept out of sight and out of mind by gems of greater +value than itself. But as Shakespeare calls forth nothing from the +mausoleum of history, or the catacombs of tradition, without giving, or +eliciting, some permanent and general interest, and brings forward no +subject which he does not moralise or intellectualise,—so here he has +drawn in Cressida the portrait of a vehement passion, that, having its +true origin and proper cause in warmth of temperament, fastens on, rather +than fixes to, some one object by liking and temporary preference. + +“There’s language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, +Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirit looks out +At every joint and motive of her body.” + +This Shakespeare has contrasted with the profound affection represented in +Troilus, and alone worthy the name of love;—affection, passionate +indeed,—swoln with the confluence of youthful instincts and youthful +fancy, and growing in the radiance of hope newly risen, in short, enlarged +by the collective sympathies of nature;—but still having a depth of calmer +element in a will stronger than desire, more entire than choice, and which +gives permanence to its own act by converting it into faith and duty. +Hence, with excellent judgment, and with an excellence higher than mere +judgment can give, at the close of the play, when Cressida has sunk into +infamy below retrieval and beneath hope, the same will, which had been the +substance and the basis of his love, while the restless pleasures and +passionate longings, like sea-waves, had tossed but on its surface,—this +same moral energy is represented as snatching him aloof from all +neighbourhood with her dishonour, from all lingering fondness and +languishing regrets, whilst it rushes with him into other and nobler +duties, and deepens the channel, which his heroic brother’s death had left +empty for its collected flood. Yet another secondary and subordinate +purpose Shakespeare has inwoven with his delineation of these two +characters,—that of opposing the inferior civilisation, but purer morals, +of the Trojans to the refinements, deep policy, but duplicity and sensual +corruptions of the Greeks. + +To all this, however, so little comparative projection is given,—nay, the +masterly group of Agamemnon, Nestor, and Ulysses, and, still more in +advance, that of Achilles, Ajax, and Thersites, so manifestly occupying +the fore-ground, that the subservience and vassalage of strength and +animal courage to intellect and policy seems to be the lesson most often +in our poet’s view, and which he has taken little pains to connect with +the former more interesting moral impersonated in the titular hero and +heroine of the drama. But I am half inclined to believe, that +Shakespeare’s main object, or shall I rather say his ruling impulse, was +to translate the poetic heroes of paganism into the not less rude, but +more intellectually vigorous, and more _featurely_, warriors of Christian +chivalry,—and to substantiate the distinct and graceful profiles or +outlines of the Homeric epic into the flesh and blood of the romantic +drama;—in short, to give a grand history-piece in the robust style of +Albert Durer. + +The character of Thersites, in particular, well deserves a more careful +examination, as the Caliban of demagogic life;—the admirable portrait of +intellectual power deserted by all grace, all moral principle, all not +momentary impulse;—just wise enough to detect the weak head, and fool +enough to provoke the armed fist of his betters;—one whom malcontent +Achilles can inveigle from malcontent Ajax, under the one condition, that +he shall be called on to do nothing but abuse and slander, and that he +shall be allowed to abuse as much and as purulently as he likes, that is, +as he can;—in short, a mule,—quarrelsome by the original discord of his +nature;—a slave by tenure of his own baseness,—made to bray and be brayed +at, to despise and be despicable. “Aye, Sir, but say what you will, he is +a very clever fellow, though the best friends will fall out. There was a +time when Ajax thought he deserved to have a statue of gold erected to him +and handsome Achilles, at the head of the Myrmidons, gave no little credit +to his _friend Thersites_!” + +Act iv. sc. 5. Speech of Ulysses:— + +“O, these encounterers, so glib of tongue, +That give a _coasting_ welcome ere it comes”— + +Should it be “accosting?” “Accost her, knight, accost!” in the _Twelfth +Night_. Yet there sounds a something so Shakespearian in the phrase—“give +a coasting welcome” (“coasting” being taken as the epithet and adjective +of “welcome”), that had the following words been, “ere _they land_,” +instead of “ere it comes,” I should have preferred the interpretation. The +sense now is, “that give welcome to a salute ere it comes.” + + + + +“Coriolanus.” + + +This play illustrates the wonderfully philosophic impartiality of +Shakespeare’s politics. His own country’s history furnished him with no +matter but what was too recent to be devoted to patriotism. Besides, he +knew that the instruction of ancient history would seem more +dispassionate. In _Coriolanus_ and _Julius Cæsar_, you see Shakespeare’s +good-natured laugh at mobs. Compare this with Sir Thomas Brown’s +aristocracy of spirit. + +Act i. sc. 1. Marcius’ speech:— + + ... “He that depends +Upon your favours, swims with fins of lead, +And hews down oaks with rushes. Hang ye! Trust ye?” + +I suspect that Shakespeare wrote it transposed! + +“Trust ye? Hang ye!” + +_Ib._ sc. 10. Speech of Aufidius:— + + ... “Mine emulation +Hath not that honour in’t, it had; for where +I thought to crush him in an equal force, +True sword to sword; I’ll potch at him some way +Or wrath, or craft may get him.— + ... My valour (poison’d +With only suffering stain by him) for him +Shall fly out of itself: nor sleep, nor sanctuary, +Being naked, sick, nor fane, nor capitol, +The prayers of priests, nor times of sacrifices, +Embankments all of fury, shall lift up +Their rotten privilege and custom ’gainst +My hate to Marcius.” + +I have such deep faith in Shakespeare’s heart-lore, that I take for +granted that this is in nature, and not as a mere anomaly; although I +cannot in myself discover any germ of possible feeling, which could wax +and unfold itself into such sentiment as this. However, I perceive that in +this speech is meant to be contained a prevention of shock at the +after-change in Aufidius’s character. + +Act ii. sc. 1. Speech of Menenius:— + +“The most sovereign prescription in _Galen_,” &c. + +Was it without, or in contempt of, historical information that Shakespeare +made the contemporaries of Coriolanus quote Cato and Galen? I cannot +decide to my own satisfaction. + +_Ib._ sc. 3. Speech of Coriolanus:— + +“Why in this wolvish toge should I stand hero” + +That the gown of the candidate was of whitened wool, we know. Does +“wolvish” or “woolvish” mean “made of wool?” If it means “wolfish,” what +is the sense? + +Act iv. sc. 7. Speech of Aufidius:— + +“All places yield to him ere he sits down,” &c. + +I have always thought this, in itself so beautiful speech, the least +explicable from the mood and full intention of the speaker of any in the +whole works of Shakespeare. I cherish the hope that I am mistaken, and +that, becoming wiser, I shall discover some profound excellence in that, +in which I now appear to detect an imperfection. + + + + +“Julius Cæsar.” + + +Act i. sc. 1.— + +“_Mar._ What meanest _thou_ by that? Mend me, thou saucy +fellow!” + +The speeches of Flavius and Marullus are in blank verse. Wherever regular +metre can be rendered truly imitative of character, passion, or personal +rank, Shakespeare seldom, if ever, neglects it. Hence this line should be +read:— + +“What mean’st by that? mend me, thou saucy fellow!” + +I say regular metre: for even the prose has in the highest and lowest +dramatic personage, a Cobbler or a Hamlet, a rhythm so felicitous and so +severally appropriate, as to be a virtual metre. + +_Ib._ sc. 2.— + +“_Bru._ A soothsayer bids you beware the Ides of March.” + +If my ear does not deceive me, the metre of this line was meant to express +that sort of mild philosophic contempt, characterising Brutus even in his +first casual speech. The line is a trimeter,—each _dipodia_ containing two +accented and two unaccented syllables, but variously arranged, as thus:— + +u - - u | - u u - | u - u - +A soothsayer | bids you beware | the Ides of March. + +_Ib._ Speech of Brutus:— + +“Set honour in one eye, and death i’ the other, +And I will look on _both_ indifferently.” + +Warburton would read “death” for “both;” but I prefer the old text. There +are here three things, the public good, the individual Brutus’ honour, and +his death. The latter two so balanced each other, that he could decide for +the first by equipoise; nay—the thought growing—that honour had more +weight than death. That Cassius understood it as Warburton, is the beauty +of Cassius as contrasted with Brutus. + +_Ib._ Cæsar’s speech:— + + ... “He loves no plays +As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music,” &c. + + + “This is not a trivial observation, nor does our poet mean barely + by it, that Cassius was not a merry, sprightly man; but that he + had not a due temperament of harmony in his + disposition.”—Theobald’s note. + + +O Theobald! what a commentator wast thou, when thou would’st affect to +understand Shakespeare, instead of contenting thyself with collating the +text! The meaning here is too deep for a line ten-fold the length of thine +to fathom. + +_Ib._ sc. 3. Cæsar’s speech:— + +“Be _factious_ for redress of all these griefs; +And I will set this foot of mine as far, +As who goes farthest.” + +I understand it thus: “You have spoken as a conspirator; be so in _fact_, +and I will join you. Act on your principles, and realize them in a fact.” + +Act ii. sc. 1. Speech of Brutus:— + +“It must be by his death; and, for my part, +I know no personal cause to spurn at him, +But for the general. He would be crown’d: +How that might change his nature, there’s the question. + ... And, to speak truth of Cæsar, +I have not known when his affections sway’d +More than his reason. + ... So Cæsar may; +Then, lest he may, prevent.” + +This speech is singular;—at least, I do not at present see into +Shakespeare’s motive, his _rationale_, or in what point of view he meant +Brutus’ character to appear. For surely—(this, I mean, is what I say to +myself, with my present _quantum_ of insight, only modified by my +experience in how many instances I have ripened into a perception of +beauties, where I had before descried faults;) surely, nothing can seem +more discordant with our historical preconceptions of Brutus, or more +lowering to the intellect of the Stoico-Platonic tyrannicide, than the +tenets here attributed to him—to him, the stern Roman republican; +namely,—that he would have no objection to a king, or to Cæsar, a monarch +in Rome, would Cæsar but be as good a monarch as he now seems disposed to +be! How, too, could Brutus say that he found no personal cause—none in +Cæsar’s past conduct as a man? Had he not passed the Rubicon? Had he not +entered Rome as a conqueror? Had he not placed his Gauls in the +Senate?—Shakespeare, it may be said, has not brought these things +forward—True;—and this is just the ground of my perplexity. What character +did Shakespeare mean his Brutus to be? + +_Ib._ Speech of Brutus:— + +“For if thou _path_, thy native semblance on.” + +Surely, there need be no scruple in treating this “path” as a mere +misprint or mis-script for “put.” In what place does Shakespeare—where +does any other writer of the same age—use “path” as a verb for “walk?” + +_Ib._ sc. 2. Cæsar’s speech:— + +“She dreamt to-night, she saw my _statue_.” + +No doubt, it should be _statua_, as in the same age, they more often +pronounced “heroes” as a trisyllable than dissyllable. A modern tragic +poet would have written,— + +“Last night she dreamt that she my statue saw.” + +But Shakespeare never avails himself of the supposed license of +transposition, merely for the metre. There is always some logic either of +thought or passion to justify it. + +Act iii. sc. 1. Antony’s speech:— + +“Pardon me, Julius—here wast thou bay’d, brave hart: +Here didst thou fall; and here thy hunters stand +Sign’d in thy spoil, and crimson’d in thy lethe. +_O world! thou wast the forest to this hart,_ +_And this, indeed, O world! the heart of thee._” + +I doubt the genuineness of the last two lines;—not because they are vile; +but first, on account of the rhythm, which is not Shakespearian, but just +the very tune of some old play, from which the actor might have +interpolated them;—and secondly, because they interrupt, not only the +sense and connection, but likewise the flow both of the passion, and (what +is with me still more decisive) of the Shakespearian link of association. +As with many another parenthesis or gloss slipt into the text, we have +only to read the passage without it, to see that it never was in it. I +venture to say there is no instance in Shakespeare fairly like this. +Conceits he has; but they not only rise out of some word in the lines +before, but also lead to the thought in the lines following. Here the +conceit is a mere alien: Antony forgets an image, when he is even touching +it, and then recollects it, when the thought last in his mind must have +led him away from it. + +Act iv. sc. 3. Speech of Brutus:— + + ... “What, shall one of us, +That struck the foremost man of all this world, +But for _supporting robbers_.” + +This seemingly strange assertion of Brutus is unhappily verified in the +present day. What is an immense army, in which the lust of plunder has +quenched all the duties of the citizen, other than a horde of robbers, or +differenced only as fiends are from ordinarily reprobate men? Cæsar +supported, and was supported by, such as these;—and even so Buonaparte in +our days. + +I know no part of Shakespeare that more impresses on me the belief of his +genius being superhuman, than this scene between Brutus and Cassius. In +the Gnostic heresy it might have been credited with less absurdity than +most of their dogmas, that the Supreme had employed him to create, +previously to his function of representing, characters. + + + + +“Antony And Cleopatra.” + + +Shakespeare can be complimented only by comparison with himself: all other +eulogies are either heterogeneous, as when they are in reference to +Spenser or Milton; or they are flat truisms, as when he is gravely +preferred to Corneille, Racine, or even his own immediate successors, +Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger and the rest. The highest praise, or +rather form of praise, of this play, which I can offer in my own mind, is +the doubt which the perusal always occasions in me, whether the _Antony +and Cleopatra_ is not, in all exhibitions of a giant power in its strength +and vigour of maturity, a formidable rival of _Macbeth_, _Lear_, _Hamlet_, +and _Othello_. _Feliciter audax_ is the motto for its style comparatively +with that of Shakespeare’s other works, even as it is the general motto of +all his works compared with those of other poets. Be it remembered, too, +that this happy valiancy of style is but the representative and result of +all the material excellencies so expressed. + +This play should be perused in mental contrast with _Romeo and Juliet_;—as +the love of passion and appetite opposed to the love of affection and +instinct. But the art displayed in the character of Cleopatra is profound; +in this, especially, that the sense of criminality in her passion is +lessened by our insight into its depth and energy, at the very moment that +we cannot but perceive that the passion itself springs out of the habitual +craving of a licentious nature, and that it is supported and reinforced by +voluntary stimulus and sought-for associations, instead of blossoming out +of spontaneous emotion. + +Of all Shakespeare’s historical plays, _Antony and Cleopatra_ is by far +the most wonderful. There is not one in which he has followed history so +minutely, and yet there are few in which he impresses the notion of +angelic strength so much;—perhaps none in which he impresses it more +strongly. This is greatly owing to the manner in which the fiery force is +sustained throughout, and to the numerous momentary flashes of nature +counteracting the historic abstraction. As a wonderful specimen of the way +in which Shakespeare lives up to the very end of this play, read the last +part of the concluding scene. And if you would feel the judgment as well +as the genius of Shakespeare in your heart’s core, compare this +astonishing drama with Dryden’s _All For Love_. + +Act i. sc. 1. Philo’s speech:— + + ... “His captain’s heart +Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst +The buckles on his breast, _reneges_ all temper.” + +It should be “reneagues,” or “reniegues,” as “fatigues,” &c. + +_Ib._— + +“Take but good note, and you shall see in him +The triple pillar of the world transform’d +Into a strumpet’s _fool_.” + +Warburton’s conjecture of “stool” is ingenious, and would be a probable +reading, if the scene opening had discovered Antony with Cleopatra on his +lap. But, represented as he is walking and jesting with her, “fool” must +be the word. Warburton’s objection is shallow, and implies that he +confounded the dramatic with the epic style. The “pillar” of a state is so +common a metaphor as to have lost the image in the thing meant to be +imaged. + +_Ib._ sc. 2.— + + ... “Much is breeding; +Which, like the courser’s hair, hath yet but life, +And not a serpent’s poison.” + +This is so far true to appearance, that a horse-hair, “laid,” as +Hollinshed says, “in a pail of water,” will become the supporter of +seemingly one worm, though probably of an immense number of small slimy +water-lice. The hair will twirl round a finger, and sensibly compress it. +It is a common experiment with school boys in Cumberland and Westmoreland. + +Act ii. sc. 2. Speech of Enobarbus:— + +“Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides, +So many _mermaids_, tended her i’ th’ eyes, +And made their bends adornings. At the helm +A seeming mermaid steers.” + +I have the greatest difficulty in believing that Shakespeare wrote the +first “mermaids.” He never, I think, would have so weakened by useless +anticipation the fine image immediately following. The epithet “seeming” +becomes so extremely improper after the whole number had been positively +called “so many mermaids.” + + + + +“Timon Of Athens.” + + +Act i. sc. 1.— + +“_Tim._ The man is honest. + +_Old Ath._ _Therefore he will be_, Timon. +His honesty rewards him in itself.” + +Warburton’s comment—“If the man be honest, for that reason he will be so +in this, and not endeavour at the injustice of gaining my daughter without +my consent”—is, like almost all his comments, ingenious in blunder; he can +never see any other writer’s thoughts for the mist-working swarm of his +own. The meaning of the first line the poet himself explains, or rather +unfolds, in the second. “The man is honest!”—“True;—and for that very +cause, and with no additional or extrinsic motive, he will be so. No man +can be justly called honest, who is not so for honesty’s sake, itself +including its own reward.” Note, that “honesty” in Shakespeare’s age +retained much of its old dignity, and that contradistinction of the +_honestum_ from the _utile_, in which its very essence and definition +consist. If it be _honestum_, it cannot depend on the _utile_. + +_Ib._ Speech of Apemantus, printed as prose in Theobald’s edition:— + +“So, so! aches contract, and starve your supple joints!” + +I may remark here the fineness of Shakespeare’s sense of musical period, +which would almost by itself have suggested (if the hundred positive +proofs had not been extant) that the word “aches” was then _ad libitum_, a +dissyllable—_aitches_. For read it “aches,” in this sentence, and I would +challenge you to find any period in Shakespeare’s writings with the same +musical or, rather dissonant, notation. Try the one, and then the other, +by your ear, reading the sentence aloud, first with the word as a +dissyllable and then as a monosyllable, and you will feel what I mean. + +_Ib._ sc. 2. Cupid’s speech: Warburton’s correction of— + +“There taste, touch, all pleas’d from thy table rise”— + +into + +“Th’ ear, taste, touch, smell,” &c. + +This is indeed an excellent emendation. + +Act ii. sc. 1. Senator’s speech:— + + ... “Nor then silenc’d with +“Commend me to your master”—_and the cap_ +_Plays in the right hand, thus_.” + +Either, methinks, “plays” should be “play’d,” or “and” should be changed +to “while.” I can certainly understand it as a parenthesis, an +interadditive of scorn; but it does not sound to my ear as in +Shakespeare’s manner. + +_Ib._ sc. 2. Timon’s speech (Theobald):— + +“And that unaptness made _you_ minister, +Thus to excuse yourself.” + +Read _your_;—at least I cannot otherwise understand the line. You made my +chance indisposition and occasional inaptness your minister—that is, the +ground on which you now excuse yourself. Or, perhaps, no correction is +necessary, if we construe “made you” as “did you make;” “and that +unaptness did you make help you thus to excuse yourself.” But the former +seems more in Shakespeare’s manner, and is less liable to be +misunderstood. + +Act iii. sc. 3. Servant’s speech:— + + + “How fairly this lord strives to appear foul!—takes virtuous + copies to be wicked; _like those that under hot, ardent zeal would + set whole realms on fire. Of such a nature is his politic love_.” + + +This latter clause I grievously suspect to have been an addition of the +players, which had hit, and, being constantly applauded, procured a +settled occupation in the prompter’s copy. Not that Shakespeare does not +elsewhere sneer at the Puritans; but here it is introduced so _nolenter +volenter_ (excuse the phrase) by the head and shoulders!—and is besides so +much more likely to have been conceived in the age of Charles I. + +Act iv. sc. 3. Timon’s speech:— + +“Raise me this beggar, and _deny’t_ that lord.” + +Warburton reads “denude.” + +I cannot see the necessity of this alteration. The editors and +commentators are, all of them, ready enough to cry out against +Shakespeare’s laxities and licenses of style, forgetting that he is not +merely a poet, but a dramatic poet; that, when the head and the heart are +swelling with fulness, a man does not ask himself whether he has +grammatically arranged, but only whether (the context taken in) he has +conveyed his meaning. “Deny” is here clearly equal to “withhold;” and the +“it,” quite in the genius of vehement conversation, which a syntaxist +explains by ellipses and _subauditurs_ in a Greek or Latin classic, yet +triumphs over as ignorances in a contemporary, refers to accidental and +artificial rank or elevation, implied in the verb “raise.” Besides, does +the word “denude” occur in any writer before, or of, Shakespeare’s age? + + + + +“Romeo And Juliet.” + + +I have previously had occasion to speak at large on the subject of the +three unities of time, place, and action, as applied to the drama in the +abstract, and to the particular stage for which Shakespeare wrote, as far +as he can be said to have written for any stage but that of the universal +mind. I hope I have in some measure succeeded in demonstrating that the +former two, instead of being rules, were mere inconveniences attached to +the local peculiarities of the Athenian drama; that the last alone +deserved the name of a principle, and that in the preservation of this +unity Shakespeare stood pre-eminent. Yet, instead of unity of action, I +should greatly prefer the more appropriate, though scholastic and uncouth, +words homogeneity, proportionateness, and totality of +interest,—expressions, which involve the distinction, or rather the +essential difference, betwixt the shaping skill of mechanical talent, and +the creative, productive, life-power of inspired genius. In the former +each part is separately conceived, and then by a succeeding act put +together;—not as watches are made for wholesale—(for there each part +supposes a pre-conception of the whole in some mind),—but more like +pictures on a motley screen. Whence arises the harmony that strikes us in +the wildest natural landscapes,—in the relative shapes of rocks, the +harmony of colours in the heaths, ferns, and lichens, the leaves of the +beech and the oak, the stems and rich brown branches of the birch and +other mountain trees, varying from verging autumn to returning +spring,—compared with the visual effect from the greater number of +artificial plantations?—From this, that the natural landscape is effected, +as it were, by a single energy modified _ab intra_ in each component part. +And as this is the particular excellence of the Shakespearian drama +generally, so is it especially characteristic of the _Romeo and Juliet_. + +The groundwork of the tale is altogether in family life, and the events of +the play have their first origin in family feuds. Filmy as are the eyes of +party-spirit, at once dim and truculent, still there is commonly some real +or supposed object in view, or principle to be maintained; and though but +the twisted wires on the plate of rosin in the preparation for electrical +pictures, it is still a guide in some degree, an assimilation to an +outline. But in family quarrels, which have proved scarcely less injurious +to states, wilfulness, and precipitancy, and passion from mere habit and +custom can alone be expected. With his accustomed judgment, Shakespeare +has begun by placing before us a lively picture of all the impulses of the +play; and, as nature ever presents two sides, one for Heraclitus, and one +for Democritus, he has, by way of prelude, shown the laughable absurdity +of the evil by the contagion of it reaching the servants who have so +little to do with it, but who are under the necessity of letting the +superfluity of sensoreal power fly off through the escape-valve of +wit-combats, and of quarrelling with weapons of sharper edge, all in +humble imitation of their masters. Yet there is a sort of unhired +fidelity, an _ourishness_ about all this that makes it rest pleasant on +one’s feelings. All the first scene, down to the conclusion of the +Prince’s speech, is a motley dance of all ranks and ages to one tune, as +if the horn of Huon had been playing behind the scenes. + +Benvolio’s speech:— + +“Madam, an hour before the worshipp’d sun +Peer’d forth the golden window of the east”— + +and, far more strikingly, the following speech of old Montague:— + +“Many a morning hath he there been seen +With tears augmenting the fresh morning dew”— + +prove that Shakespeare meant the _Romeo and Juliet_ to approach to a poem, +which, and indeed its early date, may be also inferred from the multitude +of rhyming couplets throughout. And if we are right, from the internal +evidence, in pronouncing this one of Shakespeare’s early dramas, it +affords a strong instance of the fineness of his insight into the nature +of the passions, that Romeo is introduced already love-bewildered. The +necessity of loving creates an object for itself in man and woman; and yet +there is a difference in this respect between the sexes, though only to be +known by a perception of it. It would have displeased us if Juliet had +been represented as already in love, or as fancying herself so;—but no +one, I believe, ever experiences any shock at Romeo’s forgetting his +Rosaline, who had been a mere name for the yearning of his youthful +imagination, and rushing into his passion for Juliet. Rosaline was a mere +creation of his fancy; and we should remark the boastful positiveness of +Romeo in a love of his own making, which is never shown where love is +really near the heart. + +“When the devout religion of mine eye +Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires! + +One fairer than my love! the all-seeing sun +Ne’er saw her match, since first the world begun.” + +The character of the Nurse is the nearest of any thing in Shakespeare to a +direct borrowing from mere observation; and the reason is, that as in +infancy and childhood the individual in nature is a representative of a +class,—just as in describing one larch tree, you generalise a grove of +them,—so it is nearly as much so in old age. The generalisation is done to +the poet’s hand. Here you have the garrulity of age strengthened by the +feelings of a long-trusted servant, whose sympathy with the mother’s +affections gives her privileges and rank in the household; and observe the +mode of connection by accidents of time and place, and the childlike +fondness of repetition in a second childhood, and also that happy humble, +ducking under, yet constant resurgence against, the check of her +superiors!— + +“Yes, madam!—Yet I cannot choose but laugh,” &c. + +In the fourth scene we have Mercutio introduced to us. O! how shall I +describe that exquisite ebullience and overflow of youthful life, wafted +on over the laughing waves of pleasure and prosperity, as a wanton beauty +that distorts the face on which she knows her lover is gazing enraptured, +and wrinkles her forehead in the triumph of its smoothness! Wit ever +wakeful, fancy busy and procreative as an insect, courage, an easy mind +that, without cares of its own, is at once disposed to laugh away those of +others, and yet to be interested in them,—these and all congenial +qualities, melting into the common _copula_ of them all, the man of rank +and the gentleman, with all its excellencies and all its weaknesses, +constitute the character of Mercutio! + +Act i. sc. 5.— + +“_Tyb._ It fits when such a villain is a guest; +I’ll not endure him. + +_Cap._ He shall be endur’d. +What, goodman boy!—I say, he shall:—Go to;— +Am I the master here, or you?—Go to. +You’ll not endure him!—God shall mend my soul— +You’ll make a mutiny among my guests! +You will set cock-a-hoop! you’ll be the man! + +_Tyb._ Why, uncle, ’tis a shame. + +_Cap._ Go to, go to, +You are a saucy boy!” &c. + +How admirable is the old man’s impetuosity at once contrasting, yet +harmonised, with young Tybalt’s quarrelsome violence! But it would be +endless to repeat observations of this sort. Every leaf is different on an +oak tree; but still we can only say—our tongues defrauding our eyes— “This +is another oak-leaf!” + +Act ii. sc. 2. The garden scene. + +Take notice in this enchanting scene of the contrast of Romeo’s love with +his former fancy; and weigh the skill shown in justifying him from his +inconstancy by making us feel the difference of his passion. Yet this, +too, is a love in, although not merely of, the imagination. + +_Ib._— + +“_Jul._ Well, do not swear; although I joy in thee, +I have no joy in this contract to-night: +It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden,” &c. + +With love, pure love, there is always an anxiety for the safety of the +object, a disinterestedness, by which it is distinguished from the +counterfeits of its name. Compare this scene with Act iii. sc. 1 of the +_Tempest_. I do not know a more wonderful instance of Shakespeare’s +mastery in playing a distinctly rememberable variety on the same +remembered air, than in the transporting love confessions of Romeo and +Juliet and Ferdinand and Miranda. There seems more passion in the one, and +more dignity in the other; yet you feel that the sweet girlish lingering +and busy movement of Juliet, and the calmer and more maidenly fondness of +Miranda, might easily pass into each other. + +_Ib._ sc. 3. The Friar’s speech. + +The reverend character of the Friar, like all Shakespeare’s +representations of the great professions, is very delightful and +tranquillising, yet it is no digression, but immediately necessary to the +carrying on of the plot. + +_Ib._ sc. 4.— + + + “_Rom._ Good morrow to you both. What counterfeit did I give you?” + &c. + + +Compare again Romeo’s half-exerted, and half real, ease of mind with his +first manner when in love with Rosaline! His will had come to the +clenching point. + +_Ib._ sc. 6.— + +“_Rom._ Do thou but close our hands with holy words, +Then love-devouring death do what he dare, +It is enough I may but call her mine.” + +The precipitancy, which is the character of the play, is well marked in +this short scene of waiting for Juliet’s arrival. + +Act iii. sc. 1.— + + + “_Mer._ No, ’tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church + door; but ’tis enough: ’twill serve: ask for me to-morrow, and you + shall find me a grave man,” &c. + + +How fine an effect the wit and raillery habitual to Mercutio, even +struggling with his pain, give to Romeo’s following speech, and at the +same time so completely justifying his passionate revenge on Tybalt! + +_Ib._ Benvolio’s speech:— + + ... “But that he tilts +With piercing steel at bold Mercutio’s breast.” + +This small portion of untruth in Benvolio’s narrative is finely conceived. + +_Ib._ sc. 2. Juliet’s speech:— + +“For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night +Whiter than new snow on a raven’s back.” + +Indeed the whole of this speech is imagination strained to the highest; +and observe the blessed effect on the purity of the mind. What would +Dryden have made of it? + +_Ib._— + +“_Nurse._ Shame come to Romeo. + +_Jul._ Blister’d be thy tongue +For such a wish!” + +Note the Nurse’s mistake of the mind’s audible struggles with itself for +its decision _in toto_. + +_Ib._ sc. 3. Romeo’s speech:— + +“’Tis torture, and not mercy: heaven’s here, +Where Juliet lives,” &c. + +All deep passions are a sort of atheists, that believe no future. + +_Ib._ sc. 5.— + +“_Cap._ Soft! take me with you, take me with you, wife—How! +will she none?” &c. + +A noble scene! Don’t I see it with my own eyes?—Yes! but not with +Juliet’s. And observe in Capulet’s last speech in this scene his mistake, +as if love’s causes were capable of being generalised. + +Act iv. sc. 3. Juliet’s speech.:— + +“O, look! methinks I see my cousin’s ghost +Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body +Upon a rapier’s point:—Stay, Tybalt, stay!— +Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.” + +Shakespeare provides for the finest decencies. It would have been too bold +a thing for a girl of fifteen;—but she swallows the draught in a fit of +fright. + +_Ib._ sc. 5.— + +As the audience know that Juliet is not dead, this scene is, perhaps, +excusable. But it is a strong warning to minor dramatists not to introduce +at one time many separate characters agitated by one and the same +circumstance. It is difficult to understand what effect, whether that of +pity or of laughter, Shakespeare meant to produce;—the occasion and the +characteristic speeches are so little in harmony! For example, what the +Nurse says is excellently suited to the Nurse’s character, but grotesquely +unsuited to the occasion. + +Act v. sc. 1. Romeo’s speech:— + + ... “O mischief! thou art swift +To enter in the thoughts of desperate men! +I do remember an apothecary,” &c. + +This famous passage is so beautiful as to be self-justified; yet, in +addition, what a fine preparation it is for the tomb scene! + +_Ib._ sc. 3. Romeo’s speech:— + +“Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man, +Fly hence and leave me.” + +The gentleness of Romeo was shown before, as softened by love; and now it +is doubled by love and sorrow and awe of the place where he is. + +_Ib._ Romeo’s speech:—-- + +“How oft when men are at the point of death +Have they been merry! which their keepers call +A lightning before death. O, how may I +Call this a lightning?—--O, my love, my wife!” &c. + +Here, here, is the master example how beauty can at once increase and +modify passion! + +_Ib._ Last scene. + +How beautiful is the close! The spring and the winter meet;—winter assumes +the character of spring, and spring the sadness of winter. + + + + +Shakespeare’s English Historical Plays. + + +The first form of poetry is the epic, the essence of which may be stated +as the successive in events and characters. This must be distinguished +from narration, in which there must always be a narrator, from whom the +objects represented receive a colouring and a manner;—whereas in the epic, +as in the so-called poems of Homer, the whole is completely objective, and +the representation is a pure reflection. The next form into which poetry +passed was the dramatic;—both forms having a common basis with a certain +difference, and that difference not consisting in the dialogue alone. Both +are founded on the relation of providence to the human will; and this +relation is the universal element, expressed under different points of +view according to the difference of religion, and the moral and +intellectual cultivation of different nations. In the epic poem fate is +represented as overruling the will, and making it instrumental to the +accomplishment of its designs:— + +... Διὸς τελείετο βονλή + +In the drama, the will is exhibited as struggling with fate, a great and +beautiful instance and illustration of which is the _Prometheus_ of +Æschylus; and the deepest effect is produced when the fate is represented +as a higher and intelligent will, and the opposition of the individual as +springing from a defect. + +In order that a drama may be properly historical, it is necessary that it +should be the history of the people to whom it is addressed. In the +composition, care must be taken that there appear no dramatic +improbability, as the reality is taken for granted. It must, likewise, be +poetical;—that only, I mean, must be taken which is the permanent in our +nature, which is common, and therefore deeply interesting to all ages. The +events themselves are immaterial, otherwise than as the clothing and +manifestation of the spirit that is working within. In this mode, the +unity resulting from succession is destroyed, but is supplied by a unity +of a higher order, which connects the events by reference to the workers, +gives a reason for them in the motives, and presents men in their +causative character. It takes, therefore, that part of real history which +is the least known, and infuses a principle of life and organisation into +the naked facts, and makes them all the framework of an animated whole. + +In my happier days, while I had yet hope and onward-looking thoughts, I +planned an historical drama of King Stephen, in the manner of Shakespeare. +Indeed, it would be desirable that some man of dramatic genius should +dramatise all those omitted by Shakespeare, as far down as Henry VII. +Perkin Warbeck would make a most interesting drama. A few scenes of +Marlow’s _Edward II._ might be preserved. After Henry VIII., the events +are too well and distinctly known, to be, without plump inverisimilitude, +crowded together in one night’s exhibition. Whereas, the history of our +ancient kings—the events of the reigns, I mean—are like stars in the +sky;—whatever the real interspaces may be, and however great, they seem +close to each other. The stars—the events—strike us and remain in our eye, +little modified by the difference of dates. An historic drama is, +therefore, a collection of events borrowed from history, but connected +together in respect of cause and time, poetically and by dramatic fiction. +It would be a fine national custom to act such a series of dramatic +histories in orderly succession, in the yearly Christmas holidays, and +could not but tend to counteract that mock cosmopolitism, which under a +positive term really implies nothing but a negation of, or indifference +to, the particular love of our country. By its nationality must every +nation retain its independence;—I mean a nationality _quoad_ the nation. +Better thus;—nationality in each individual, _quoad_ his country, is equal +to the sense of individuality _quoad_ himself; but himself as sub-sensuous +and central. Patriotism is equal to the sense of individuality reflected +from every other individual. There may come a higher virtue in both—just +cosmopolitism. But this latter is not possible but by antecedence of the +former. + +Shakespeare has included the most important part of nine reigns in his +historical dramas;—namely—King John, Richard II.—Henry IV. (two)—Henry +V.—Henry VI. (three) including Edward V. and Henry VIII., in all ten +plays. There remain, therefore, to be done, with the exception of a single +scene or two that should be adopted from Marlow—eleven reigns—of which the +first two appear the only unpromising subjects;—and those two dramas must +be formed wholly or mainly of invented private stories, which, however, +could not have happened except in consequence of the events and measures +of these reigns, and which should furnish opportunity both of exhibiting +the manners and oppressions of the times, and of narrating dramatically +the great events;—if possible, the death of the two sovereigns, at least +of the latter, should be made to have some influence on the finale of the +story. All the rest are glorious subjects; especially Henry I. (being the +struggle between the men of arms and of letters, in the persons of Henry +and Becket), Stephen, Richard I., Edward II., and Henry VII. + + + + +“King John.” + + +Act i. sc. 1.— + +“_Bast._ James Gurney, wilt thou give us leave awhile? + +_Gur._ Good leave, good Philip. + +_Bast._ Philip? _sparrow!_ James,” &c. + +Theobald adopts Warburton’s conjecture of “_spare me_.” + +O true Warburton! and the _sancta simplicitas_ of honest dull Theobald’s +faith in him! Nothing can be more lively or characteristic than “Philip? +Sparrow!” Had Warburton read old Skelton’s _Philip Sparrow_, an exquisite +and original poem, and, no doubt, popular in Shakespeare’s time, even +Warburton would scarcely have made so deep a plunge into the _bathetic_ as +to have deathified “_sparrow_” into “_spare me_!” + +Act iii. sc. 2. Speech of Faulconbridge:— + +“Now, by my life, this day grows wondrous hot; +Some _airy_ devil hovers in the sky,” &c. + +Theobald adopts Warburton’s conjecture of “fiery.” + +I prefer the old text: the word “devil” implies “fiery.” You need only +read the line, laying a full and strong emphasis on “devil,” to perceive +the uselessness and tastelessness of Warburton’s alteration. + + + + +“Richard II.” + + +I have stated that the transitional link between the epic poem and the +drama is the historic drama; that in the epic poem a pre-announced fate +gradually adjusts and employs the will and the events as its instruments, +whilst the drama, on the other hand, places fate and will in opposition to +each other, and is then most perfect, when the victory of fate is obtained +in consequence of imperfections in the opposing will, so as to leave a +final impression that the fate itself is but a higher and a more +intelligent will. + +From the length of the speeches, and the circumstance that, with one +exception, the events are all historical, and presented in their results, +not produced by acts seen by, or taking place before, the audience, this +tragedy is ill suited to our present large theatres. But in itself, and +for the closet, I feel no hesitation in placing it as the first and most +admirable of all Shakespeare’s purely historical plays. For the two parts +of _Henry IV._ form a species of themselves, which may be named the mixed +drama. The distinction does not depend on the mere quantity of historical +events in the play compared with the fictions; for there is as much +history in _Macbeth_ as in _Richard_, but in the relation of the history +to the plot. In the purely historical plays, the history forms the plot; +in the mixed, it directs it; in the rest, as _Macbeth_, _Hamlet_, +_Cymbeline_, _Lear_, it subserves it. But, however unsuited to the stage +this drama may be, God forbid that even there it should fall dead on the +hearts of jacobinised Englishmen! Then, indeed, we might say—_præteriit +gloria mundi!_ For the spirit of patriotic reminiscence is the +all-permeating soul of this noble work. It is, perhaps, the most purely +historical of Shakespeare’s dramas. There are not in it, as in the others, +characters introduced merely for the purpose of giving a greater +individuality and realness, as in the comic parts of _Henry IV._, by +presenting as it were our very selves. Shakespeare avails himself of every +opportunity to effect the great object of the historic drama,—that, +namely, of familiarising the people to the great names of their country, +and thereby of exciting a steady patriotism, a love of just liberty, and a +respect for all those fundamental institutions of social life, which bind +men together:— + +“This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, +This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, +This other Eden, demi-paradise; +This fortress, built by nature for herself, +Against infection, and the hand of war; +This happy breed of men, this little world; +This precious stone set in the silver sea, +Which serves it in the office of a wall, +Or as a moat defensive to a home, +Against the envy of less happier lands; +This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, +This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, +Fear’d by their breed, and famous by their birth,” &c. + +Add the famous passage in _King John_:— + +“This England never did nor ever shall, +Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, +But when it first did help to wound itself. +Now these her princes are come home again, +Come the three corners of the world in arms, +And we shall shock them: nought shall make us rue, +If England to itself do rest but true.” + +And it certainly seems that Shakespeare’s historic dramas produced a very +deep effect on the minds of the English people, and in earlier times they +were familiar even to the least informed of all ranks, according to the +relation of Bishop Corbett. Marlborough, we know, was not ashamed to +confess that his principal acquaintance with English history was derived +from them; and I believe that a large part of the information as to our +old names and achievements even now abroad is due, directly or indirectly, +to Shakespeare. + +Admirable is the judgment with which Shakespeare always in the first +scenes prepares, yet how naturally, and with what concealment of art, for +the catastrophe. Observe how he here presents the germ of all the after +events in Richard’s insincerity, partiality, arbitrariness, and +favouritism, and in the proud, tempestuous, temperament of his barons. In +the very beginning, also, is displayed that feature in Richard’s +character, which is never forgotten throughout the play—his attention to +decorum, and high feeling of the kingly dignity. These anticipations show +with what judgment Shakespeare wrote, and illustrate his care to connect +the past and the future, and unify them with the present by forecast and +reminiscence. + +It is interesting to a critical ear to compare the six opening lines of +the play— + +“Old John of Gaunt, time-honour’d Lancaster, +Hast thou, according to thy oath and band,” &c. + +each closing at the tenth syllable, with the rhythmless metre of the verse +in _Henry VI._ and _Titus Andronicus_, in order that the difference, +indeed, the heterogeneity, of the two may be felt _etiam in simillimis +prima superficie_. Here the weight of the single words supplies all the +relief afforded by intercurrent verse, while the whole represents the +mood. And compare the apparently defective metre of Bolingbroke’s first +line— + +“Many years of happy days befal”— + +with Prospero’s— + +“Twelve years since, Miranda! twelve years since.” + +The actor should supply the time by emphasis, and pause on the first +syllable of each of these verses. + +Act i. sc. 1. Bolingbroke’s speech:— + +“First (heaven be the record to my speech!), +In the devotion of a subject’s love,” &c. + +I remember in the Sophoclean drama no more striking example of the τὸ +πρέπον καὶ σεμνὸν than this speech; and the rhymes in the last six lines +well express the preconcertedness of Bolingbroke’s scheme so beautifully +contrasted with the vehemence and sincere irritation of Mowbray. + +_Ib._ Bolingbroke’s speech:— + +“Which blood, like sacrificing Abel’s, cries, +Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth, +To _me_, for justice and rough chastisement.” + +Note the δεινὸν of this “to me,” which is evidently felt by Richard:— + +“How high a pitch his resolution soars!” + +and the affected depreciation afterwards;— + +“As he is but my father’s brother’s son.” + +_Ib._ Mowbray’s speech:— + +“In haste whereof, most heartily I pray +Your highness to assign our trial day.” + +The occasional interspersion of rhymes, and the more frequent winding up +of a speech therewith—what purpose was this designed to answer? In the +earnest drama, I mean. Deliberateness? An attempt, as in Mowbray, to +collect himself and be cool at the close?—I can see that in the following +speeches the rhyme answers the end of the Greek chorus, and distinguishes +the general truths from the passions of the dialogue; but this does not +exactly justify the practice, which is unfrequent in proportion to the +excellence of Shakespeare’s plays. One thing, however, is to be +observed,—that the speakers are historical, known, and so far formal +characters, and their reality is already a fact. This should be borne in +mind. The whole of this scene of the quarrel between Mowbray and +Bolingbroke seems introduced for the purpose of showing by anticipation +the characters of Richard and Bolingbroke. In the latter there is +observable a decorous and courtly checking of his anger in subservience to +a predetermined plan, especially in his calm speech after receiving +sentence of banishment compared with Mowbray’s unaffected lamentation. In +the one, all is ambitious hope of something yet to come; in the other it +is desolation and a looking backward of the heart, + +_Ib._ sc. 2.— + +“_Gaunt._ God’s is the quarrel; for God’s substitute, +His deputy anointed in his right, +Hath caus’d his death: the which, if wrongfully, +Let heaven revenge; for I may never lift +An angry arm against his minister.” + +Without the hollow extravagance of Beaumont and Fletcher’s ultra-royalism, +how carefully does Shakespeare acknowledge and reverence the eternal +distinction between the mere individual, and the symbolic or +representative, on which all genial law, no less than patriotism, depends. +The whole of this second scene commences, and is anticipative of, the tone +and character of the play at large. + +_Ib._ sc. 3. In none of Shakespeare’s fictitious dramas, or in those +founded on a history as unknown to his auditors generally as fiction, is +this violent rupture of the succession of time found:—a proof, I think, +that the pure historic drama, like _Richard II._ and _King John_, had its +own laws. + +_Ib._ Mowbray’s speech:— + +“A dearer _merit_ +Have I deserved at your highness’ hand.” + +O, the instinctive propriety of Shakespeare in the choice of words! + +_Ib._ Richard’s speech:— + +“Nor never by advised purpose meet, +To plot, contrive, or complot any ill, +’Gainst us, our state, our subjects, or our land.” + +Already the selfish weakness of Richard’s character opens. Nothing will +such minds so readily embrace, as indirect ways softened down to their +_quasi_-consciences by policy, expedience, &c. + +_Ib._ Mowbray’s speech:— + +... “All the world’s my way.” + +“The world was all before him.”—_Milt._ + +_Ib._— + + “_Boling._ How long a time lies in one little word! +Four lagging winters, and four wanton springs, +End in a word: such is the breath of kings.” + +Admirable anticipation! + +_Ib._ sc. 4. This is a striking conclusion of a first act,—letting the +reader into the secret;—having before impressed us with the dignified and +kingly manners of Richard, yet by well managed anticipations leading us on +to the full gratification of pleasure in our own penetration. In this +scene a new light is thrown on Richard’s character. Until now he has +appeared in all the beauty of royalty; but here, as soon as he is left to +himself, the inherent weakness of his character is immediately shown. It +is a weakness, however, of a peculiar kind, not arising from want of +personal courage, or any specific defect of faculty, but rather an +intellectual feminineness, which feels a necessity of ever leaning on the +breasts of others, and of reclining on those who are all the while known +to be inferiors. To this must be attributed as its consequences all +Richard’s vices, his tendency to concealment, and his cunning, the whole +operation of which is directed to the getting rid of present difficulties. +Richard is not meant to be a debauchee; but we see in him that sophistry +which is common to man, by which we can deceive our own hearts, and at one +and the same time apologize for, and yet commit, the error. Shakespeare +has represented this character in a very peculiar manner. He has not made +him amiable with counterbalancing faults; but has openly and broadly drawn +those faults without reserve, relying on Richard’s disproportionate +sufferings and gradually emergent good qualities for our sympathy; and +this was possible, because his faults are not positive vices, but spring +entirely from defect of character. + +Act ii. sc. 1.— + +“_K. Rich._ Can sick men play so nicely with their names?” + +Yes! on a death-bed there is a feeling which may make all things appear +but as puns and equivocations. And a passion there is that carries off its +own excess by plays on words as naturally, and, therefore, as +appropriately to drama, as by gesticulations, looks, or tones. This +belongs to human nature as such, independently of associations and habits +from any particular rank of life or mode of employment; and in this +consists Shakespeare’s vulgarisms, as in Macbeth’s— + +“The devil damn thee black, thou cream-fac’d loon!” &c. + +This is (to equivocate on Dante’s words) in truth the _nobile volgare +eloquenza_. Indeed it is profoundly true that there is a natural, an +almost irresistible, tendency in the mind, when immersed in one strong +feeling, to connect that feeling with every sight and object around it; +especially if there be opposition, and the words addressed to it are in +any way repugnant to the feeling itself, as here in the instance of +Richard’s unkind language:— + +“Misery makes sport to mock itself.” + +No doubt, something of Shakespeare’s punning must be attributed to his +age, in which direct and formal combats of wit were a favourite pastime of +the courtly and accomplished. It was an age more favourable, upon the +whole, to vigour of intellect than the present, in which a dread of being +thought pedantic dispirits and flattens the energies of original minds. +But independently of this, I have no hesitation in saying that a pun, if +it be congruous with the feeling of the scene, is not only allowable in +the dramatic dialogue, but oftentimes one of the most effectual intensives +of passion. + +_Ib._— + +“_K. Rich._ Right; you say true, as Hereford’s love, so his; +As theirs, so mine; and all be as it is.” + +The depth of this compared with the first scene:— + +“How high a pitch,” &c. + +There is scarcely anything in Shakespeare in its degree, more admirably +drawn than York’s character; his religious loyalty struggling with a deep +grief and indignation at the king’s follies; his adherence to his word and +faith, once given in spite of all, even the most natural, feelings. You +see in him the weakness of old age, and the overwhelmingness of +circumstances, for a time surmounting his sense of duty,—the junction of +both exhibited in his boldness in words and feebleness in immediate act; +and then again his effort to retrieve himself in abstract loyalty, even at +the heavy price of the loss of his son. This species of accidental and +adventitious weakness is brought into parallel with Richard’s continually +increasing energy of thought, and as constantly diminishing power of +acting;—and thus it is Richard that breathes a harmony and a relation into +all the characters of the play. + +_Ib._ sc. 2.— + +“_Queen._ To please the king I did; to please myself +I cannot do it; yet I know no cause +Why I should welcome such a guest as grief, +Save bidding farewell to so sweet a guest +As my sweet Richard: yet again, methinks, +Some unborn sorrow, ripe in sorrow’s womb, +Is coming toward me; and my inward soul +With nothing trembles: at something it grieves, +More than with parting from my lord the king.” + +It is clear that Shakespeare never meant to represent Richard as a vulgar +debauchee, but a man with a wantonness of spirit in external show, a +feminine _friendism_, an intensity of woman-like love of those immediately +about him, and a mistaking of the delight of being loved by him for a love +of him. And mark in this scene Shakespeare’s gentleness in touching the +tender superstitions, the _terræ incognitæ_ of presentiments, in the human +mind; and how sharp a line of distinction he commonly draws between these +obscure forecastings of general experience in each individual, and the +vulgar errors of mere tradition. Indeed, it may be taken once for all as +the truth, that Shakespeare, in the absolute universality of his genius, +always reverences whatever arises out of our moral nature; he never +profanes his muse with a contemptuous reasoning away of the genuine and +general, however unaccountable, feelings of mankind. + +The amiable part of Richard’s character is brought full upon us by his +queen’s few words— + + ... “So sweet a guest +As my sweet Richard:”— + +and Shakespeare has carefully shown in him an intense love of his country, +well-knowing how that feeling would, in a pure historic drama, redeem him +in the hearts of the audience. Yet even in this love there is something +feminine and personal:— + +“Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hand,— +As a long parted mother with her child +Plays fondly with her tears, and smiles in meeting; +So weeping, smiling, greet I thee, my earth, +And do thee favour with my royal hands.” + +With this is combined a constant overflow of emotions from a total +incapability of controlling them, and thence a waste of that energy, which +should have been reserved for actions, in the passion and effort of mere +resolves and menaces. The consequence is moral exhaustion, and rapid +alternations of unmanly despair and ungrounded hope,—every feeling being +abandoned for its direct opposite upon the pressure of external accident. +And yet when Richard’s inward weakness appears to seek refuge in his +despair, and his exhaustion counterfeits repose, the old habit of +kingliness, the effect of flatterers from his infancy, is ever and anon +producing in him a sort of wordy courage which only serves to betray more +clearly his internal impotence. The second and third scenes of the third +act combine and illustrate all this:— + +“_Aumerle._ He means, my lord, that we are too remiss; +Whilst Bolingbroke, through our security, +Grows strong and great, in substance, and in friends. + +_K. Rich._ Discomfortable cousin! know’st thou not, +That when the searching eye of heaven is hid +Behind the globe, that lights the lower world, +Then thieves and robbers range abroad unseen, +In murders and in outrage, bloody here; +But when, from under this terrestrial ball, +He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines, +And darts his light through every guilty hole, +Then murders, treasons, and detested sins, +The cloke of night being pluckt from off their backs, +Stand bare and naked, trembling at themselves? +So when this thief, this traitor, Bolingbroke, &c. + +_Aumerle._ Where is the Duke my father with his power? + +_K. Rich._ No matter where; of comfort no man speak: +Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs, +Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes +Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth, &c. + +_Aumerle._ My father hath a power, enquire of him; +And learn to make a body of a limb. + +_K. Rich._ Thou chid’st me well: proud Bolingbroke, I come +To change blows with thee for our day of doom. +This ague-fit of fear is over-blown; +An easy task it is to win our own. + +_Scroop._ Your uncle York hath join’d with Bolingbroke.— + +_K. Rich._ Thou hast said enough, +Beshrew thee, cousin, which didst lead me forth +Of that sweet way I was in to despair! +What say you now? what comfort have we now? +By heaven, I’ll hate him everlastingly, +That bids me be of comfort any more.” + +Act iii. sc. 3. Bolingbroke’s speech:— + +“Noble lord, +Go to the rude ribs of that ancient castle,” &c. + +Observe the fine struggle of a haughty sense of power and ambition in +Bolingbroke with the necessity for dissimulation. + +_Ib._ sc. 4. See here the skill and judgment of our poet in giving reality +and individual life, by the introduction of accidents in his historic +plays, and thereby making them dramas, and not histories. How beautiful an +islet of repose—a melancholy repose, indeed—is this scene with the +Gardener and his Servant. And how truly affecting and realising is the +incident of the very horse Barbary, in the scene with the Groom in the +last act!— + +“_Groom._ I was a poor groom of thy stable, King, +When thou wert King; who, travelling towards York, +With much ado, at length have gotten leave +To look upon my sometimes master’s face. +O, how it yearn’d my heart, when I beheld, +In London streets, that coronation day, +When Bolingbroke rode on roan Barbary! +That horse, that thou so often hast bestrid; +That horse, that I so carefully have dress’d! + +_K. Rich._ Rode he on Barbary?” + +Bolingbroke’s character, in general, is an instance how Shakespeare makes +one play introductory to another; for it is evidently a preparation for +Henry IV., as Gloster in the third part of _Henry VI._ is for Richard III. + +I would once more remark upon the exalted idea of the only true loyalty +developed in this noble and impressive play. We have neither the rants of +Beaumont and Fletcher, nor the sneers of Massinger;—the vast importance of +the personal character of the sovereign is distinctly enounced, whilst, at +the same time, the genuine sanctity which surrounds him is attributed to, +and grounded on, the position in which he stands as the convergence and +exponent of the life and power of the state. + +The great end of the body politic appears to be to humanise, and assist in +the progressiveness of, the animal man;—but the problem is so complicated +with contingencies as to render it nearly impossible to lay down rules for +the formation of a state. And should we be able to form a system of +government, which should so balance its different powers as to form a +check upon each, and so continually remedy and correct itself, it would, +nevertheless, defeat its own aim;—for man is destined to be guided by +higher principles, by universal views, which can never be fulfilled in +this state of existence,—by a spirit of progressiveness which can never be +accomplished, for then it would cease to be. Plato’s Republic is like +Bunyan’s Town of Man-Soul,—a description of an individual, all of whose +faculties are in their proper subordination and inter-dependence; and this +it is assumed may be the prototype of the state as one great individual. +But there is this sophism in it, that it is forgotten that the human +faculties, indeed, are parts and not separate things; but that you could +never get chiefs who were wholly reason, ministers who were wholly +understanding, soldiers all wrath, labourers all concupiscence, and so on +through the rest. Each of these partakes of, and interferes with, all the +others. + + + + +“Henry IV.—Part I.” + + +Act i. sc. 1. King Henry’s speech:— + +“No more the thirsty entrance of this soil +Shall daub her lips with her own children’s blood.” + +A most obscure passage: but I think Theobald’s interpretation right, +namely, that “thirsty entrance” means the dry penetrability, or bibulous +drought, of the soil. The obscurity of this passage is of the +Shakespearian sort. + +_Ib._ sc. 2. In this, the first introduction of Falstaff, observe the +consciousness and the intentionality of his wit, so that when it does not +flow of its own accord, its absence is felt, and an effort visibly made to +recall it. Note also throughout how Falstaff’s pride is gratified in the +power of influencing a prince of the blood, the heir apparent, by means of +it. Hence his dislike to Prince John of Lancaster, and his mortification +when he finds his wit fail on him:— + +“_P. John._ Fare you well, Falstaff: I, in my condition, +Shall better speak of you than you deserve. + +_Fal._ I would you had but the wit; ’twere better than your +dukedom.—Good faith, this same young sober-blooded boy doth +not love me;—nor a man cannot make him laugh.” + +Act ii. sc. 1. Second Carrier’s speech:— + +... “breeds fleas like a _loach_.” + +Perhaps it is a misprint, or a provincial pronunciation, for “leach,” that +is, blood-suckers. Had it been gnats, instead of fleas, there might have +been some sense, though small probability, in Warburton’s suggestion of +the Scottish “loch.” Possibly “loach,” or “lutch,” may be some lost word +for dovecote, or poultry-lodge, notorious for breeding fleas. In Stevens’s +or my reading, it should properly be “loaches,” or “leeches,” in the +plural; except that I think I have heard anglers speak of trouts like _a_ +salmon. + +Act iii. sc. 1.— + +“_Glend._ _Nay_, if you melt, then will she run mad.” + +This “nay” so to be dwelt on in speaking, as to be equivalent to a +dissyllable - u, is characteristic of the solemn Glendower; but the +imperfect line + +“_She bids you_ +Upon the wanton rushes lay you down,” &c., + +is one of those fine hair-strokes of exquisite judgment peculiar to +Shakespeare;—thus detaching the Lady’s speech, and giving it the +individuality and entireness of a little poem, while he draws attention to +it. + + + + +“Henry IV.—Part II.” + + +Act ii. sc. 2— + +“_P. Hen._ Sup any women with him? + +_Page._ None, my lord, but old mistress Quickly, and mistress +Doll Tear-sheet. + +_P. Hen._ This Doll Tear-sheet should be some road.” + +I am sometimes disposed to think that this respectable young lady’s name +is a very old corruption for Tear-street—street-walker, _terere stratam_ +(_viam_). Does not the Prince’s question rather show this?— + +“This Doll Tear-street should be some road?” + +Act iii. sc. 1. King Henry’s speech:— + + ... “Then, _happy low, lie down_; +Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” + +I know no argument by which to persuade any one to be of my opinion, or +rather of my feeling; but yet I cannot help feeling that “Happy +low-lie-down!” is either a proverbial expression, or the burthen of some +old song, and means, “Happy the man, who lays himself down on his straw +bed or chaff pallet on the ground or floor!” + +_Ib._ sc. 2. Shallow’s speech:— + +“_Rah, tah, tah_, would ’a say; _bounce_, would ’a say,” &c. + +That Beaumont and Fletcher have more than once been guilty of sneering at +their great master, cannot, I fear, be denied; but the passage quoted by +Theobald from the _Knight of the Burning Pestle_ is an imitation. If it be +chargeable with any fault, it is with plagiarism, not with sarcasm. + + + + +“Henry V.” + + +Act i. sc. 2. Westmoreland’s speech:— + +“They know your _grace_ hath cause, and means, and might; +So hath your _highness_; never King of England +Had nobles richer,” &c. + +Does “grace” mean the king’s own peculiar domains and legal revenue, and +“highness” his feudal rights in the military service of his nobles?—I have +sometimes thought it possible that the words “grace” and “cause” may have +been transposed in the copying or printing;— + +“They know your cause hath grace,” &c. + +What Theobald meant, I cannot guess. To me his pointing makes the passage +still more obscure. Perhaps the lines ought to be recited dramatically +thus:— + +“They know your Grace hath cause, and means, and might:— +So _hath_ your Highness—never King of England +_Had_ nobles richer,” &c. + +He breaks off from the grammar and natural order from earnestness, and in +order to give the meaning more passionately. + +_Ib._ Exeter’s speech:— + +“Yet that is but a _crush’d_ necessity.” + +Perhaps it may be “crash” for “crass” from _crassus_, clumsy; or it may be +“curt,” defective, imperfect: anything would be better than Warburton’s +“’scus’d,” which honest Theobald, of course, adopts. By the by, it seems +clear to me that this speech of Exeter’s properly belongs to Canterbury, +and was altered by the actors for convenience. + +Act iv. sc. 3. King Henry’s speech:— + +“We would not _die_ in that man’s company +That fears his fellowship to die with us.” + +Should it not be “live” in the first line? + +_Ib._ sc. 5.— + +“_Const._ _O diable!_ + +_Orl._ _O seigneur! le jour est perdu, tout est perdu!_ + +_Dan._ _Mort de ma vie!_ all is confounded, all! +Reproach and everlasting shame +Sit mocking in our plumes!—_O meschante fortune!_ +Do not run away!” + +Ludicrous as these introductory scraps of French appear, so instantly +followed by good, nervous mother-English, yet they are judicious, and +produce the impression which Shakespeare intended,—a sudden feeling struck +at once on the ears, as well as the eyes, of the audience, that “here come +the French, the baffled French braggards!”—And this will appear still more +judicious, when we reflect on the scanty apparatus of distinguishing +dresses in Shakespeare’s tyring-room. + + + + +“Henry VI.—Part I.” + + +Act i. sc. 1. Bedford’s speech:— + +“Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night! +Comets, importing change of times and states, +Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky; +And with them scourge the bad revolting stars +That have consented unto Henry’s death! +Henry the fifth, too famous to live long! +England ne’er lost a king of so much worth.” + +Read aloud any two or three passages in blank verse even from +Shakespeare’s earliest dramas, as _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, or _Romeo and +Juliet_; and then read in the same way this speech, with especial +attention to the metre; and if you do not feel the impossibility of the +latter having been written by Shakespeare, all I dare suggest is, that you +may have ears,—for so has another animal,—but an ear you cannot have, _me +judice_. + + + + +“Richard III.” + + +This play should be contrasted with _Richard II._ Pride of intellect is +the characteristic of Richard, carried to the extent of even boasting to +his own mind of his villany, whilst others are present to feed his pride +of superiority; as in his first speech, act ii. sc. 1. Shakespeare here, +as in all his great parts, developes in a tone of sublime morality the +dreadful consequences of placing the moral, in subordination to the mere +intellectual, being. In Richard there is a predominance of irony, +accompanied with apparently blunt manners to those immediately about him, +but formalised into a more set hypocrisy towards the people as represented +by their magistrates. + + + + +“Lear.” + + +Of all Shakespeare’s plays _Macbeth_ is the most rapid, _Hamlet_ the +slowest, in movement. _Lear_ combines length with rapidity,—like the +hurricane and the whirlpool, absorbing while it advances. It begins as a +stormy day in summer, with brightness; but that brightness is lurid, and +anticipates the tempest. + +It was not without forethought, nor is it without its due significance, +that the division of Lear’s kingdom is in the first six lines of the play +stated as a thing already determined in all its particulars, previously to +the trial of professions, as the relative rewards of which the daughters +were to be made to consider their several portions. The strange, yet by no +means unnatural, mixture of selfishness, sensibility, and habit of feeling +derived from, and fostered by, the particular rank and usages of the +individual;—the intense desire of being intensely beloved,—selfish, and +yet characteristic of the selfishness of a loving and kindly nature +alone;—the self-supportless leaning for all pleasure on another’s +breast;—the craving after sympathy with a prodigal disinterestedness, +frustrated by its own ostentation, and the mode and nature of its +claims;—the anxiety, the distrust, the jealousy, which more or less +accompany all selfish affections, and are amongst the surest +contradistinctions of mere fondness from true love, and which originate +Lear’s eager wish to enjoy his daughter’s violent professions, whilst the +inveterate habits of sovereignty convert the wish into claim and positive +right, and an incompliance with it into crime and treason;—these facts, +these passions, these moral verities, on which the whole tragedy is +founded, are all prepared for, and will to the retrospect be found +implied, in these first four or five lines of the play. They let us know +that the trial is but a trick; and that the grossness of the old king’s +rage is in part the natural result of a silly trick suddenly and most +unexpectedly baffled and disappointed. + +It may here be worthy of notice, that _Lear_ is the only serious +performance of Shakespeare, the interest and situations of which are +derived from the assumption of a gross improbability; whereas Beaumont and +Fletcher’s tragedies are, almost all of them, founded on some out of the +way accident or exception to the general experience of mankind. But +observe the matchless judgment of our Shakespeare. First, improbable as +the conduct of Lear is in the first scene, yet it was an old story rooted +in the popular faith,—a thing taken for granted already, and consequently +without any of the effects of improbability. Secondly, it is merely the +canvass for the characters and passions,—a mere occasion for,—and not, in +the manner of Beaumont and Fletcher, perpetually recurring as the cause, +and _sine qua non_ of,—the incidents and emotions. Let the first scene of +this play have been lost, and let it only be understood that a fond father +had been duped by hypocritical professions of love and duty on the part of +two daughters to disinherit the third, previously, and deservedly, more +dear to him;—and all the rest of the tragedy would retain its interest +undiminished, and be perfectly intelligible. + +The accidental is nowhere the groundwork of the passions, but that which +is catholic, which in all ages has been, and ever will be, close and +native to the heart of man,—parental anguish from filial ingratitude, the +genuineness of worth, though coffined in bluntness, and the execrable +vileness of a smooth iniquity. Perhaps I ought to have added the _Merchant +of Venice_; but here too the same remarks apply. It was an old tale; and +substitute any other danger than that of the pound of flesh (the +circumstance in which the improbability lies), yet all the situations and +the emotions appertaining to them remain equally excellent and +appropriate. Whereas take away from the _Mad Lover_ of Beaumont and +Fletcher the fantastic hypothesis of his engagement to cut out his own +heart, and have it presented to his mistress, and all the main scenes must +go with it. + +Kotzebue is the German Beaumont and Fletcher, without their poetic powers, +and without their _vis comica_. But, like them, he always deduces his +situations and passions from marvellous accidents, and the trick of +bringing one part of our moral nature to counteract another; as our pity +for misfortune and admiration of generosity and courage to combat our +condemnation of guilt as in adultery, robbery, and other heinous +crimes;—and, like them too, he excels in his mode of telling a story +clearly and interestingly, in a series of dramatic dialogues. Only the +trick of making tragedy-heroes and heroines out of shopkeepers and +barmaids was too low for the age, and too unpoetic for the genius, of +Beaumont and Fletcher, inferior in every respect as they are to their +great predecessor and contemporary. How inferior would they have appeared, +had not Shakespeare existed for them to imitate;—which in every play, more +or less, they do, and in their tragedies most glaringly:—and yet—(O shame! +shame!)—they miss no opportunity of sneering at the divine man, and +sub-detracting from his merits! + +To return to _Lear_. Having thus in the fewest words, and in a natural +reply to as natural a question,—which yet answers the secondary purpose of +attracting our attention to the difference or diversity between the +characters of Cornwall and Albany,—provided the _prémisses_ and _data_, as +it were, for our after insight into the mind and mood of the person, whose +character, passions, and sufferings are the main subject-matter of the +play;—from Lear, the _persona patiens_ of his drama, Shakespeare passes +without delay to the second in importance, the chief agent and prime +mover, and introduces Edmund to our acquaintance, preparing us with the +same felicity of judgment, and in the same easy and natural way, for his +character in the seemingly casual communication of its origin and +occasion. From the first drawing up of the curtain Edmund has stood before +us in the united strength and beauty of earliest manhood. Our eyes have +been questioning him. Gifted as he is with high advantages of person, and +further endowed by nature with a powerful intellect and a strong energetic +will, even without any concurrence of circumstances and accident, pride +will necessarily be the sin that most easily besets him. But Edmund is +also the known and acknowledged son of the princely Gloster: he, +therefore, has both the germ of pride, and the conditions best fitted to +evolve and ripen it into a predominant feeling. Yet hitherto no reason +appears why it should be other than the not unusual pride of person, +talent, and birth,—a pride auxiliary, if not akin, to many virtues, and +the natural ally of honourable impulses. But alas! in his own presence his +own father takes shame to himself for the frank avowal that he is his +father,—he has “blushed so often to acknowledge him that he is now brazed +to it!” Edmund hears the circumstances of his birth spoken of with a most +degrading and licentious levity,—his mother described as a wanton by her +own paramour, and the remembrance of the animal sting, the low criminal +gratifications connected with her wantonness and prostituted beauty, +assigned as the reason why “the whoreson must be acknowledged!” This, and +the consciousness of its notoriety; the gnawing conviction that every show +of respect is an effort of courtesy, which recalls, while it represses, a +contrary feeling;—this is the ever trickling flow of wormwood and gall +into the wounds of pride,—the corrosive _virus_ which inoculates pride +with a venom not its own, with envy, hatred, and a lust for that power +which in its blaze of radiance would hide the dark spots on his disc,—with +pangs of shame personally undeserved, and therefore felt as wrongs, and +with a blind ferment of vindictive working towards the occasions and +causes, especially towards a brother, whose stainless birth and lawful +honours were the constant remembrancers of his own debasement, and were +ever in the way to prevent all chance of its being unknown, or overlooked +and forgotten. Add to this, that with excellent judgment, and provident +for the claims of the moral sense,—for that which, relatively to the +drama, is called poetic justice, and as the fittest means for reconciling +the feelings of the spectators to the horrors of Gloster’s after +sufferings,—at least, of rendering them somewhat less unendurable—(for I +will not disguise my conviction, that in this one point the tragic in this +play has been urged beyond the outermost mark and _ne plus ultra_ of the +dramatic);—Shakespeare has precluded all excuse and palliation of the +guilt incurred by both the parents of the base-born Edmund, by Gloster’s +confession that he was at the time a married man, and already blest with a +lawful heir of his fortunes. The mournful alienation of brotherly love, +occasioned by the law of primogeniture in noble families, or rather by the +unnecessary distinctions engrafted thereon, and this in children of the +same stock, is still almost proverbial on the continent,—especially, as I +know from my own observation, in the south of Europe,—and appears to have +been scarcely less common in our own island before the Revolution of 1688, +if we may judge from the characters and sentiments so frequent in our +elder comedies. There is the younger brother, for instance, in Beaumont +and Fletcher’s play of the _Scornful Lady_, on the one side, and Oliver in +Shakespeare’s _As You Like It_, on the other. Need it be said how heavy an +aggravation, in such a case, the stain of bastardy must have been, were it +only that the younger brother was liable to hear his own dishonour and his +mother’s infamy related by his father with an excusing shrug of the +shoulders, and in a tone betwixt waggery and shame! + +By the circumstances here enumerated as so many predisposing causes, +Edmund’s character might well be deemed already sufficiently explained; +and our minds prepared for it. But in this tragedy the story or fable +constrained Shakespeare to introduce wickedness in an outrageous form in +the persons of Regan and Goneril. He had read nature too heedfully not to +know that courage, intellect, and strength of character are the most +impressive forms of power, and that to power in itself, without reference +to any moral end, an inevitable admiration and complacency appertains, +whether it be displayed in the conquests of a Buonaparte or Tamerlane, or +in the foam and the thunder of a cataract. But in the exhibition of such a +character it was of the highest importance to prevent the guilt from +passing into utter monstrosity,—which again depends on the presence or +absence of causes and temptations sufficient to account for the +wickedness, without the necessity of recurring to a thorough fiendishness +of nature for its origination. For such are the appointed relations of +intellectual power to truth, and of truth to goodness, that it becomes +both morally and poetically unsafe to present what is admirable—what our +nature compels us to admire—in the mind, and what is most detestable in +the heart, as co-existing in the same individual without any apparent +connection, or any modification of the one by the other. That Shakespeare +has in one instance, that of Iago, approached to this, and that he has +done it successfully, is perhaps the most astonishing proof of his genius, +and the opulence of its resources. But in the present tragedy, in which he +was compelled to present a Goneril and a Regan, it was most carefully to +be avoided;—and therefore the only one conceivable addition to the +inauspicious influences on the preformation of Edmund’s character is +given, in the information that all the kindly counteractions to the +mischievous feelings of shame, which might have been derived from +co-domestication with Edgar and their common father, had been cut off by +his absence from home, and foreign education from boyhood to the present +time, and a prospect of its continuance, as if to preclude all risk of his +interference with the father’s views for the elder and legitimate son:— + +“He hath been out nine years, and away he shall again.” + +Act i. sc. 1.— + +“_Cor._ Nothing my lord. + +_Lear._ Nothing? + +_Cor._ Nothing. + +_Lear._ Nothing can come of nothing: speak again. + +_Cor._ Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave +My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty +According to my bond; nor more, nor less.” + +There is something of disgust at the ruthless hypocrisy of her sisters, +and some little faulty admixture of pride and sullenness in Cordelia’s +“Nothing;” and her tone is well contrived, indeed, to lessen the glaring +absurdity of Lear’s conduct, but answers the yet more important purpose of +forcing away the attention from the nursery-tale, the moment it has served +its end, that of supplying the canvas for the picture. This is also +materially furthered by Kent’s opposition, which displays Lear’s moral +incapability of resigning the sovereign power in the very act of disposing +of it. Kent is, perhaps, the nearest to perfect goodness in all +Shakespeare’s characters, and yet the most individualised. There is an +extraordinary charm, in his bluntness, which is that only of a nobleman, +arising from a contempt of overstrained courtesy, and combined with easy +placability where goodness of heart is apparent. His passionate affection +for, and fidelity to, Lear act on our feelings in Lear’s own favour: +virtue itself seems to be in company with him. + +_Ib._ sc. 2. Edmund’s speech:— + +“Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take +More composition and fierce quality +Than doth,” &c. + +Warburton’s note upon a quotation from Vanini. + +Poor Vanini!—Any one but Warburton would have thought this precious +passage more characteristic of Mr. Shandy than of atheism. If the fact +really were so (which it is not, but almost the contrary) I do not see why +the most confirmed theist might not very naturally utter the same wish. +But it is proverbial that the youngest son in a large family is commonly +the man of the greatest talents in it; and as good an authority as Vanini +has said—“incalescere in venerem ardentius, spei sobolis injuriosum esse.” + +In this speech of Edmund you see, as soon as a man cannot reconcile +himself to reason, how his conscience flies off by way of appeal to +nature, who is sure upon such occasions never to find fault, and also how +shame sharpens a predisposition in the heart to evil. For it is a profound +moral, that shame will naturally generate guilt; the oppressed will be +vindictive, like Shylock, and in the anguish of undeserved ignominy the +delusion secretly springs up of getting over the moral quality of an +action by fixing the mind on the mere physical act alone. + +_Ib._ Edmund’s speech:— + + + “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,” &c. + + +Thus scorn and misanthropy are often the anticipations and mouth-pieces of +wisdom in the detection of superstitions. Both individuals and nations may +be free from such prejudices by being below them, as well as by rising +above them. + +_Ib._ sc. 3. The Steward should be placed in exact antithesis to Kent, as +the only character of utter irredeemable baseness in Shakespeare. Even in +this the judgment and invention of the poet are very observable;—for what +else could the willing tool of a Goneril be? Not a vice but this of +baseness was left open to him. + +_Ib._ sc. 4. In Lear old age is itself a character,—its natural +imperfections being increased by life-long habits of receiving a prompt +obedience. Any addition of individuality would have been unnecessary and +painful; for the relations of others to him, of wondrous fidelity and of +frightful ingratitude, alone sufficiently distinguish him. Thus Lear +becomes the open and ample play-room of nature’s passions. + +_Ib._— + +“_Knight._ Since my young lady’s going into France, Sir; the +fool hath much pined away.” + +The Fool is no comic buffoon to make the groundlings laugh,—no forced +condescension of Shakespeare’s genius to the taste of his audience. +Accordingly the poet prepares for his introduction, which he never does +with any of his common clowns and fools, by bringing him into living +connection with the pathos of the play. He is as wonderful a creation as +Caliban;—his wild babblings, and inspired idiocy, articulate and gauge the +horrors of the scene. + +The monster Goneril prepares what is necessary, while the character of +Albany renders a still more maddening grievance possible—namely, Regan and +Cornwall in perfect sympathy of monstrosity. Not a sentiment, not an +image, which can give pleasure on its own account is admitted; whenever +these creatures are introduced, and they are brought forward as little as +possible, pure horror reigns throughout. In this scene and in all the +early speeches of Lear, the one general sentiment of filial ingratitude +prevails as the main-spring of the feelings;—in this early stage the +outward object causing the pressure on the mind, which is not yet +sufficiently familiarised with the anguish for the imagination to work +upon it. + +_Ib._— + +“_Gon._ Do you mark that, my lord? + +_Alb._ I cannot be so partial, Goneril, +To the great love I bear you. + +_Gon._ Pray you content,” &c. + +Observe the baffled endeavour of Goneril to act on the fears of Albany, +and yet his passiveness, his _inertia_; he is not convinced, and yet he is +afraid of looking into the thing. Such characters always yield to those +who will take the trouble of governing them, or for them. Perhaps the +influence of a princess, whose choice of him had royalised his state, may +be some little excuse for Albany’s weakness. + +_Ib._ sc. 5.— + +“_Lear._ O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven! +Keep me in temper! I would not be mad!” + +The mind’s own anticipation of madness! The deepest tragic notes are often +struck by a half sense of an impending blow. The Fool’s conclusion of this +act by a grotesque prattling seems to indicate the dislocation of feeling +that has begun and is to be continued. + +Act ii. sc. 1. Edmund’s speech:— + + ... “He replied, +Thou unpossessing bastard!” &c. + +Thus the secret poison in Edmund’s own heart steals forth; and then +observe poor Gloster’s— + +“Loyal and _natural_ boy!”— + +as if praising the crime of Edmund’s birth! + +_Ib._ Compare Regan’s— + +“What, did _my father’s_ godson seek your life? +He whom _my father_ named?”— + +with the unfeminine violence of her— + +“All vengeance comes too short,” &c.— + +and yet no reference to the guilt, but only to the accident, which she +uses as an occasion for sneering at her father. Regan is not, in fact, a +greater monster than Goneril, but she has the power of casting more venom. + +_Ib._ sc. 2. Cornwall’s speech:—- + + ... “This is some fellow, +Who, having been praised for bluntness, doth affect +A saucy roughness,” &c. + +In thus placing these profound general truths in the mouths of such men as +Cornwall, Edmund, Iago, &c., Shakespeare at once gives them utterance, and +yet shows how indefinite their application is. + +_Ib._ sc. 3. Edgar’s assumed madness serves the great purpose of taking +off part of the shock which would otherwise be caused by the true madness +of Lear, and further displays the profound difference between the two. In +every attempt at representing madness throughout the whole range of +dramatic literature, with the single exception of Lear, it is mere +lightheadedness, as especially in Otway. In Edgar’s ravings Shakespeare +all the while lets you see a fixed purpose, a practical end in view;—in +Lear’s, there is only the brooding of the one anguish, an eddy without +progression. + +_Ib._ sc. 4. Lear’s speech:— + +“The king would speak with Cornwall; the dear father +Would with his daughter speak, &c. + +No, but not yet: may be he is not well,” &c. + +The strong interest now felt by Lear to try to find excuses for his +daughter is most pathetic. + +_Ib._ Lear’s speech:— + + ... “Beloved Regan, +Thy sister’s naught;—O Regan, she hath tied +Sharp-tooth’d unkindness, like a vulture, here. +I can scarce speak to thee;—thou’lt not believe +Of how deprav’d a quality—O Regan! + +_Reg._ I pray you, Sir, take patience; I have hope, +You less know how to value her desert, +Than she to scant her duty. + +_Lear._ Say, how is that?” + +Nothing is so heart-cutting as a cold unexpected defence or palliation of +a cruelty passionately complained of, or so expressive of thorough +hard-heartedness. And feel the excessive horror of Regan’s “O, Sir, you +are old!”—and then her drawing from that universal object of reverence and +indulgence the very reason for her frightful conclusion— + +“Say, you have wrong’d her!” + +All Lear’s faults increase our pity for him. We refuse to know them +otherwise than as means of his sufferings, and aggravations of his +daughters’ ingratitude. + +_Ib._ Lear’s speech:— + +“O, reason not the need: our basest beggars +Are in the poorest thing superfluous,” &c. + +Observe that the tranquillity which follows the first stunning of the blow +permits Lear to reason. + +Act iii. sc. 4. O, what a world’s convention of agonies is here! All +external nature in a storm, all moral nature convulsed,—the real madness +of Lear, the feigned madness of Edgar, the babbling of the Fool, the +desperate fidelity of Kent—surely such a scene was never conceived before +or since! Take it but as a picture for the eye only, it is more terrific +than any which a Michael Angelo, inspired by a Dante, could have +conceived, and which none but a Michael Angelo could have executed. Or let +it have been uttered to the blind, the howlings of nature would seem +converted into the voice of conscious humanity. This scene ends with the +first symptoms of positive derangement; and the intervention of the fifth +scene is particularly judicious,—the interruption allowing an interval for +Lear to appear in full madness in the sixth scene. + +_Ib._ sc. 7. Gloster’s blinding. + +What can I say of this scene?—There is my reluctance to think Shakespeare +wrong, and yet— + +Act iv. sc. 6. Lear’s speech:— + + + “Ha! Goneril!—with a white beard!—They flattered me like a dog; + and told me, I had white hairs in my beard, ere the black ones + were there. To say _Ay_ and _No_ to every thing I said!—Ay and No + too was no good divinity. When the rain came to wet me once,” &c. + + +The thunder recurs, but still at a greater distance from our feelings. + +_Ib._ sc. 7. Lear’s speech:— + +“Where have I been? Where am I?—Fair daylight?— +I am mightily abused.—I should even die with pity +To see another thus,” &c. + +How beautifully the affecting return of Lear to reason, and the mild +pathos of these speeches prepare the mind for the last sad, yet sweet, +consolation of the aged sufferer’s death! + + + + +“Hamlet.” + + +Hamlet was the play, or rather Hamlet himself was the character, in the +intuition and exposition of which I first made my turn for philosophical +criticism, and especially for insight into the genius of Shakespeare, +noticed. This happened first amongst my acquaintances, as Sir George +Beaumont will bear witness; and subsequently, long before Schlegel had +delivered at Vienna the lectures on Shakespeare, which he afterwards +published, I had given on the same subject eighteen lectures substantially +the same, proceeding from the very same point of view, and deducing the +same conclusions, so far as I either then agreed, or now agree, with him. +I gave these lectures at the Royal Institution, before six or seven +hundred auditors of rank and eminence, in the spring of the same year, in +which Sir Humphrey Davy, a fellow-lecturer, made his great revolutionary +discoveries in chemistry. Even in detail the coincidence of Schlegel with +my lectures was so extraordinary, that all who at a later period heard the +same words, taken by me from my notes of the lectures at the Royal +Institution, concluded a borrowing on my part from Schlegel. Mr. Hazlitt, +whose hatred of me is in such an inverse ratio to my zealous kindness +towards him, as to be defended by his warmest admirer, Charles Lamb—(who, +God bless him! besides his characteristic obstinacy of adherence to old +friends, as long at least as they are at all down in the world, is linked +as by a charm to Hazlitt’s conversation)—only as “frantic;”—Mr. Hazlitt, I +say, himself replied to an assertion of my plagiarism from Schlegel in +these words;—“That is a lie; for I myself heard the very same character of +Hamlet from Coleridge before he went to Germany, and when he had neither +read nor could read a page of German!” Now Hazlitt was on a visit to me at +my cottage at Nether Stowey, Somerset, in the summer of the year 1798, in +the September of which year I first was out of sight of the shores of +Great Britain.—Recorded by me, S. T. Coleridge, 7th January, 1819. + +The seeming inconsistencies in the conduct and character of Hamlet have +long exercised the conjectural ingenuity of critics; and, as we are always +loth to suppose that the cause of defective apprehension is in ourselves, +the mystery has been too commonly explained by the very easy process of +setting it down as in fact inexplicable, and by resolving the phenomenon +into a misgrowth or _lusus_ of the capricious and irregular genius of +Shakespeare. The shallow and stupid arrogance of these vulgar and indolent +decisions I would fain do my best to expose. I believe the character of +Hamlet may be traced to Shakespeare’s deep and accurate science in mental +philosophy. Indeed, that this character must have some connection with the +common fundamental laws of our nature may be assumed from the fact, that +Hamlet has been the darling of every country in which the literature of +England has been fostered. In order to understand him, it is essential +that we should reflect on the constitution of our own minds. Man is +distinguished from the brute animals in proportion as thought prevails +over sense: but in the healthy processes of the mind, a balance is +constantly maintained between the impressions from outward objects and the +inward operations of the intellect;—for if there be an overbalance in the +contemplative faculty, man thereby becomes the creature of mere +meditation, and loses his natural power of action. Now one of +Shakespeare’s modes of creating characters is, to conceive any one +intellectual or moral faculty in morbid excess, and then to place himself, +Shakespeare, thus mutilated or diseased, under given circumstances. In +Hamlet he seems to have wished to exemplify the moral necessity of a due +balance between our attention to the objects of our senses, and our +meditation on the workings of our minds,—an _equilibrium_ between the real +and the imaginary worlds. In Hamlet this balance is disturbed: his +thoughts, and the images of his fancy, are far more vivid than his actual +perceptions, and his very perceptions, instantly passing through the +_medium_ of his contemplations, acquire, as they pass, a form and a colour +not naturally their own. Hence we see a great, an almost enormous, +intellectual activity, and a proportionate aversion to real action, +consequent upon it, with all its symptoms and accompanying qualities. This +character Shakespeare places in circumstances, under which it is obliged +to act on the spur of the moment:—Hamlet is brave and careless of death; +but he vacillates from sensibility, and procrastinates from thought, and +loses the power of action in the energy of resolve. Thus it is that this +tragedy presents a direct contrast to that of _Macbeth_; the one proceeds +with the utmost slowness, the other with a crowded and breathless +rapidity. + +The effect of this overbalance of the imaginative power is beautifully +illustrated in the everlasting broodings and superfluous activities of +Hamlet’s mind, which, unseated from its healthy relation, is constantly +occupied with the world within, and abstracted from the world +without,—giving substance to shadows, and throwing a mist over all +commonplace actualities. It is the nature of thought to be +indefinite;—definiteness belongs to external imagery alone. Hence it is +that the sense of sublimity arises, not from the sight of an outward +object, but from the beholder’s reflection upon it;—not from the sensuous +impression, but from the imaginative reflex. Few have seen a celebrated +waterfall without feeling something akin to disappointment: it is only +subsequently that the image comes back full into the mind, and brings with +it a train of grand or beautiful associations. Hamlet feels this; his +senses are in a state of trance, and he looks upon external things as +hieroglyphics. His soliloquy— + +“O! that this too too solid flesh would melt,” &c.— + +springs from that craving after the indefinite—for that which is not—which +most easily besets men of genius; and the self-delusion common to this +temper of mind is finely exemplified in the character which Hamlet gives +of himself;— + + ... “It cannot be +But I am pigeon-liver’d, and lack gall +To make oppression bitter.” + +He mistakes the seeing his chains for the breaking them, delays action +till action is of no use, and dies the victim of mere circumstance and +accident. + +There is a great significancy in the names of Shakespeare’s plays. In the +_Twelfth Night_, _Midsummer __ Night’s Dream_, _As You Like It_, and +_Winter’s Tale_, the total effect is produced by a co-ordination of the +characters as in a wreath of flowers. But in _Coriolanus_, _Lear_, _Romeo +and Juliet_, _Hamlet_, _Othello_, &c., the effect arises from the +subordination of all to one, either as the prominent person, or the +principal object. _Cymbeline_ is the only exception; and even that has its +advantages in preparing the audience for the chaos of time, place, and +costume, by throwing the date back into a fabulous king’s reign. + +But as of more importance, so more striking, is the judgment displayed by +our truly dramatic poet, as well as poet of the drama, in the management +of his first scenes. With the single exception of _Cymbeline_, they either +place before us at one glance both the past and the future in some effect, +which implies the continuance and full agency of its cause, as in the +feuds and party-spirit of the servants of the two houses in the first +scene of _Romeo and Juliet_; or in the degrading passion for shows and +public spectacles, and the overwhelming attachment for the newest +successful war-chief in the Roman people, already become a populace, +contrasted with the jealousy of the nobles in _Julius Cæsar_;—or they at +once commence the action so as to excite a curiosity for the explanation +in the following scenes, as in the storm of wind and waves, and the +boatswain in the _Tempest_, instead of anticipating our curiosity, as in +most other first scenes, and in too many other first acts;—or they act, by +contrast of diction suited to the characters, at once to heighten the +effect, and yet to give a naturalness to the language and rhythm of the +principal personages, either as that of Prospero and Miranda by the +appropriate lowness of the style, or as in _King John_, by the equally +appropriate stateliness of official harangues or narratives, so that the +after blank verse seems to belong to the rank and quality of the speakers, +and not to the poet;—or they strike at once the key-note, and give the +predominant spirit of the play, as in the _Twelfth Night_ and in +_Macbeth_;—or finally, the first scene comprises all these advantages at +once, as in _Hamlet_. + +Compare the easy language of common life, in which this drama commences, +with the direful music and wild wayward rhythm and abrupt lyrics of the +opening of _Macbeth_. The tone is quite familiar;—there is no poetic +description of night, no elaborate information conveyed by one speaker to +another of what both had immediately before their senses—(such as the +first distich in Addison’s _Cato_, which is a translation into poetry of +“Past four o’clock and a dark morning!”);—and yet nothing bordering on the +comic on the one hand, nor any striving of the intellect on the other. It +is precisely the language of sensation among men who feared no charge of +effeminacy for feeling what they had no want of resolution to bear. Yet +the armour, the dead silence, the watchfulness that first interrupts it, +the welcome relief of the guard, the cold, the broken expressions of +compelled attention to bodily feelings still under control—all excellently +accord with, and prepare for, the after gradual rise into tragedy;—but, +above all, into a tragedy, the interest of which is as eminently _ad et +apud intra_, as that of _Macbeth_ is directly _ad extra_. + +In all the best attested stories of ghosts and visions, as in that of +Brutus, of Archbishop Cranmer, that of Benvenuto Cellini recorded by +himself, and the vision of Galileo communicated by him to his favourite +pupil Torricelli, the ghost-seers were in a state of cold or chilling damp +from without, and of anxiety inwardly. It has been with all of them as +with Francisco on his guard,—alone, in the depth and silence of the night; +“’twas bitter cold, and they were sick at heart, and _not a mouse +stirring_.” The attention to minute sounds,—naturally associated with the +recollection of minute objects, and the more familiar and trifling, the +more impressive from the unusualness of their producing any impression at +all—gives a philosophic pertinency to this last image; but it has likewise +its dramatic use and purpose. For its commonness in ordinary conversation +tends to produce the sense of reality, and at once hides the poet, and yet +approximates the reader or spectator to that state in which the highest +poetry will appear, and in its component parts, though not in the whole +composition, really is, the language of nature. If I should not speak it, +I feel that I should be thinking it;—the voice only is the poet’s,—the +words are my own. That Shakespeare meant to put an effect in the actor’s +power in the very first words—“Who’s there?”—is evident from the +impatience expressed by the startled Francisco in the words that +follow—“Nay, answer me: stand and unfold yourself.” A brave man is never +so peremptory, as when he fears that he is afraid. Observe the gradual +transition from the silence and the still recent habit of listening in +Francisco’s—“I think I hear them”—to the more cheerful call out, which a +good actor would observe, in the—“Stand ho! Who is there?” Bernardo’s +inquiry after Horatio, and the repetition of his name and in his own +presence indicate a respect or an eagerness that implies him as one of the +persons who are in the foreground; and the scepticism attributed to him,— + +“Horatio says, ’tis but our fantasy; +And will not let belief take hold of him,”— + +prepares us for Hamlet’s after eulogy on him as one whose blood and +judgment were happily commingled. The actor should also be careful to +distinguish the expectation and gladness of Bernardo’s “Welcome, Horatio!” +from the mere courtesy of his “Welcome, good Marcellus!” + +Now observe the admirable indefiniteness of the first opening out of the +occasion of all this anxiety. The preparation informative of the audience +is just as much as was precisely necessary, and no more;—it begins with +the uncertainty appertaining to a question:— + +“_Mar._ What, has _this thing_ appear’d again to-night?”— + +Even the word “again” has its _credibilising_ effect. Then Horatio, the +representative of the ignorance of the audience, not himself, but by +Marcellus to Bernardo, anticipates the common solution—“’tis but our +fantasy!” upon which Marcellus rises into— + +“This dreaded sight, twice seen of us”— + +which immediately afterwards becomes “this apparition,” and that, too, an +intelligent spirit—that is, to be spoken to! Then comes the confirmation +of Horatio’s disbelief;— + +“Tush! tush! ’twill not appear!”— + +and the silence, with which the scene opened, is again restored in the +shivering feeling of Horatio sitting down, at such a time, and with the +two eye-witnesses, to hear a story of a ghost, and that, too, of a ghost +which had appeared twice before at the very same hour. In the deep feeling +which Bernardo has of the solemn nature of what he is about to relate, he +makes an effort to master his own imaginative terrors by an elevation of +style,—itself a continuation of the effort,—and by turning off from the +apparition, as from something which would force him too deeply into +himself, to the outward objects, the realities of nature, which had +accompanied it:— + +“_Ber._ Last night of all, +When yon same star, that’s westward from the pole +Had made his course to illume that part of heaven +Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself, +The bell then beating one.” + +This passage seems to contradict the critical law that what is told, makes +a faint impression compared with what is beholden; for it does indeed +convey to the mind more than the eye can see; whilst the interruption of +the narrative at the very moment when we are most intensely listening for +the sequel, and have our thoughts diverted from the dreaded sight in +expectation of the desired, yet almost dreaded, tale—this gives all the +suddenness and surprise of the original appearance:— + +“_Mar._ Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again!” + +Note the judgment displayed in having the two persons present, who, as +having seen the Ghost before, are naturally eager in confirming their +former opinions,—whilst the sceptic is silent, and after having been twice +addressed by his friends, answers with two hasty syllables—“Most +like,”—and a confession of horror:— + +“It harrows me with fear and wonder.” + +O heaven! words are wasted on those who feel, and to those who do not feel +the exquisite judgment of Shakespeare in this scene, what can be said? +Hume himself could not but have had faith in this Ghost dramatically, let +his anti-ghostism have been as strong as Sampson against other ghosts less +powerfully raised. + +Act i. sc. 1.— + +“_Mar._ Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows, +Why this same strict and most observant watch,” &c. + +How delightfully natural is the transition, to the retrospective +narrative! And observe, upon the Ghost’s reappearance, how much Horatio’s +courage is increased by having translated the late individual spectator +into general thought and past experience,—and the sympathy of Marcellus +and Bernardo with his patriotic surmises in daring to strike at the Ghost; +whilst in a moment, upon its vanishing, the former solemn awe-stricken +feeling returns upon them:— + +“We do it wrong, being so majestical, +To offer it the show of violence.” + +_Ib._ Horatio’s speech:— + + ... “I have heard, +The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn, +Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat +Awake the god of day,” &c. + +No Addison could be more careful to be poetical in diction than +Shakespeare in providing the grounds and sources of its propriety. But how +to elevate a thing almost mean by its familiarity, young poets may learn +in this treatment of the cock-crow. + +_Ib._ Horatio’s speech:— + + ... “And, by my advice, +Let us impart what we have seen to-night +Unto young Hamlet; for, upon my life, +The spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.” + +Note the inobtrusive and yet fully adequate mode of introducing the main +character, “young Hamlet,” upon whom it transferred all the interest +excited for the acts and concerns of the king his father. + +_Ib._ sc. 2. The audience are now relieved by a change of scene to the +royal court, in order that Hamlet may not have to take up the leavings of +exhaustion. In the king’s speech, observe the set and pedantically +antithetic form of the sentences when touching that which galled the heels +of conscience,—the strain of undignified rhetoric,—and yet in what follows +concerning the public weal, a certain appropriate majesty. Indeed was he +not a royal brother?— + +_Ib._ King’s speech:— + +“And now, Laertes, what’s the news with you?” &c. + +Thus with great art Shakespeare introduces a most important, but still +subordinate character first, Laertes, who is yet thus graciously treated +in consequence of the assistance given to the election of the late king’s +brother instead of his son by Polonius. + +_Ib._— + +“_Ham._ A little more than kin, and less than kind. + +_King._ How is it that the clouds still hang on you? + +_Ham._ Not so, my lord, I am too much i’ the sun.” + +Hamlet opens his mouth with a playing on words, the complete absence of +which throughout characterises Macbeth. This playing on words may be +attributed to many causes or motives, as either to an exuberant activity +of mind, as in the higher comedy of Shakespeare generally;—or to an +imitation of it as a mere fashion, as if it were said—“Is not this better +than groaning?”—or to a contemptuous exultation in minds vulgarised and +overset by their success, as in the poetic instance of Milton’s Devils in +the battle;—or it is the language of resentment, as is familiar to every +one who has witnessed the quarrels of the lower orders, where there is +invariably a profusion of punning invective, whence, perhaps, nicknames +have in a considerable degree sprung up;—or it is the language of +suppressed passion, and especially of a hardly smothered personal dislike. +The first and last of these combine in Hamlet’s case; and I have little +doubt that Farmer is right in supposing the equivocation carried on in the +expression “too much i’ the sun,” or son. + +_Ib._— + +“_Ham._ Ay, madam, it is common.” + +Here observe Hamlet’s delicacy to his mother, and how the suppression +prepares him for the overflow in the next speech, in which his character +is more developed by bringing forward his aversion to externals, and which +betrays his habit of brooding over the world within him, coupled with a +prodigality of beautiful words, which are the half embodyings of thought, +and are more than thought, and have an outness, a reality _sui generis_, +and yet retain their correspondence and shadowy affinity to the images and +movements within. Note also Hamlet’s silence to the long speech of the +king which follows, and his respectful, but general, answer to his mother. + +_Ib._ Hamlet’s first soliloquy:— + +“O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, +Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!” &c. + +This _tædium vitæ_ is a common oppression on minds cast in the Hamlet +mould, and is caused by disproportionate mental exertion, which +necessitates exhaustion of bodily feeling. Where there is a just +coincidence of external and internal action, pleasure is always the +result; but where the former is deficient, and the mind’s appetency of the +ideal is unchecked, realities will seem cold and unmoving. In such cases, +passion combines itself with the indefinite alone. In this mood of his +mind the relation of the appearance of his father’s spirit in arms is made +all at once to Hamlet:—it is—Horatio’s speech in particular—a perfect +model of the true style of dramatic narrative;—the purest poetry, and yet +in the most natural language, equally remote from the ink-horn and the +plough. + +_Ib._ sc. 3. This scene must be regarded as one of Shakespeare’s lyric +movements in the play, and the skill with which it is interwoven with the +dramatic parts is peculiarly an excellence of our poet. You experience the +sensation of a pause without the sense of a stop. You will observe in +Ophelia’s short and general answer to the long speech of Laertes the +natural carelessness of innocence, which cannot think such a code of +cautions and prudences necessary to its own preservation. + +_Ib._ Speech of Polonius (in Stockdale’s edition):— + +“Or (not to crack the wind of the poor phrase), +Wronging it thus, you’ll tender me a fool.” + +I suspect this “wronging” is here used much in the same sense as +“wringing” or “wrenching,” and that the parenthesis should be extended to +“thus.” + +_Ib._ Speech of Polonius:— + + ... “How prodigal the soul +Lends the tongue vows:—these blazes, daughter,” &c. + +A spondee has, I doubt not, dropped out of the text. Either insert “Go to” +after “vows”;— + +“Lends the tongue vows: Go to, these blazes, daughter”— + +or read— + +“Lends the tongue vows:—These blazes, daughter, mark you”— + +Shakespeare never introduces a catalectic line without intending an +equivalent to the foot omitted in the pauses, or the dwelling emphasis, or +the diffused retardation. I do not, however, deny that a good actor might, +by employing the last mentioned means—namely, the retardation, or solemn +knowing drawl—supply the missing spondee with good effect. But I do not +believe that in this or any other of the foregoing speeches of Polonius, +Shakespeare meant to bring out the senility or weakness of that +personage’s mind. In the great ever-recurring dangers and duties of life, +where to distinguish the fit objects for the application of the maxims +collected by the experience of a long life, requires no fineness of tact, +as in the admonitions to his son and daughter, Polonius is uniformly made +respectable. But if an actor were even capable of catching these shades in +the character, the pit and the gallery would be malcontent at their +exhibition. It is to Hamlet that Polonius is, and is meant to be, +contemptible, because in inwardness and uncontrollable activity of +movement, Hamlet’s mind is the logical contrary to that of Polonius; and +besides, as I have observed before, Hamlet dislikes the man as false to +his true allegiance in the matter of the succession to the crown. + +_Ib._ sc. 4. The unimportant conversation with which this scene opens is a +proof of Shakespeare’s minute knowledge of human nature. It is a well +established fact, that on the brink of any serious enterprise, or event of +moment, men almost invariably endeavour to elude the pressure of their own +thoughts by turning aside to trivial objects and familiar circumstances: +thus this dialogue on the platform begins with remarks on the coldness of +the air, and inquiries, obliquely connected, indeed, with the expected +hour of the visitation, but thrown out in a seeming vacuity of topics, as +to the striking of the clock and so forth. The same desire to escape from +the impending thought is carried on in Hamlet’s account of, and moralizing +on, the Danish custom of wassailing: he runs off from the particular to +the universal, and, in his repugnance to personal and individual concerns, +escapes, as it were, from himself in generalisations, and smothers the +impatience and uneasy feelings of the moment in abstract reasoning. +Besides this, another purpose is answered;—for by thus entangling the +attention of the audience in the nice distinctions and parenthetical +sentences of this speech of Hamlet’s, Shakespeare takes them completely by +surprise on the appearance of the Ghost, which comes upon them in all the +suddenness of its visionary character. Indeed, no modern writer would have +dared, like Shakespeare, to have preceded this last visitation by two +distinct appearances,—or could have contrived that the third should rise +upon the former two in impressiveness and solemnity of interest. + +But in addition to all the other excellences of Hamlet’s speech concerning +the wassail-music—so finely revealing the predominant idealism, the +ratiocinative meditativeness, of his character—it has the advantage of +giving nature and probability to the impassioned continuity of the speech +instantly directed to the Ghost. The _momentum_ had been given to his +mental activity; the full current of the thoughts and words had set in, +and the very forgetfulness, in the fervour of his argumentation, of the +purpose for which he was there, aided in preventing the appearance from +benumbing the mind. Consequently, it acted as a new impulse,—a sudden +stroke which increased the velocity of the body already in motion, whilst +it altered the direction. The co-presence of Horatio, Marcellus, and +Bernardo is most judiciously contrived; for it renders the courage of +Hamlet, and his impetuous eloquence, perfectly intelligible. The +knowledge,—the unthought of consciousness,—the sensation of human +auditors—of flesh and blood sympathists—acts as a support and a +stimulation _a tergo_, while the front of the mind, the whole +consciousness of the speaker, is filled, yea, absorbed, by the apparition. +Add too, that the apparition itself has, by its previous appearances, been +brought nearer to a thing of this world. This accrescence of objectivity +in a Ghost that yet retains all its ghostly attributes and fearful +subjectivity, is truly wonderful. + +_Ib._ sc. 5. Hamlet’s speech:— + +“O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else? +And shall I couple hell?” + +I remember nothing equal to this burst, unless it be the first speech of +Prometheus in the Greek drama, after the exit of Vulcan and the two +Afrites. But Shakespeare alone could have produced the vow of Hamlet to +make his memory a blank of all maxims and generalised truths, that +“observation had copied there,”—followed immediately by the speaker noting +down the generalised fact,— + +“That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain!” + +_Ib._— + +“_Mar._ Hillo, ho, ho, my lord! + +_Ham._ Hillo, ho, ho, boy! come bird, come,” &c. + +This part of the scene, after Hamlet’s interview with the Ghost, has been +charged with an improbable eccentricity. But the truth is, that after the +mind has been stretched beyond its usual pitch and tone, it must either +sink into exhaustion and inanity, or seek relief by change. It is thus +well known, that persons conversant in deeds of cruelty contrive to escape +from conscience by connecting something of the ludicrous with them, and by +inventing grotesque terms, and a certain technical phraseology, to +disguise the horror of their practices. Indeed, paradoxical as it may +appear, the terrible by a law of the human mind always touches on the +verge of the ludicrous. Both arise from the perception of something out of +the common order of things—something, in fact, out of its place; and if +from this we can abstract danger, the uncommonness will alone remain, and +the sense of the ridiculous be excited. The close alliance of these +opposites—they are not contraries—appears from the circumstance, that +laughter is equally the expression of extreme anguish and horror as of +joy: as there are tears of sorrow and tears of joy, so is there a laugh of +terror and a laugh of merriment. These complex causes will naturally have +produced in Hamlet the disposition to escape from his own feelings of the +overwhelming and supernatural by a wild transition to the ludicrous,—a +sort of cunning bravado, bordering on the flights of delirium. For you +may, perhaps, observe that Hamlet’s wildness is but half false; he plays +that subtle trick of pretending to act only when he is very near really +being what he acts. + +The subterraneous speeches of the Ghost are hardly defensible;—but I would +call your attention to the characteristic difference between this Ghost, +as a superstition connected with the most mysterious truths of revealed +religion,—and Shakespeare’s consequent reverence in his treatment of +it,—and the foul earthly witcheries and wild language in _Macbeth_. + +Act ii. sc. 1. Polonius and Reynaldo. + +In all things dependent on, or rather made up of, fine address, the manner +is no more or otherwise rememberable than the light notions, steps, and +gestures of youth and health. But this is almost everything:—no wonder, +therefore, if that which can be put down by rule in the memory should +appear to us as mere poring, maudlin, cunning,—slyness blinking through +the watery eye of superannuation. So in this admirable scene, Polonius, +who is throughout the skeleton of his own former skill and statecraft, +hunts the trail of policy at a dead scent, supplied by the weak +fever-smell in his own nostrils. + +_Ib._ sc. 2. Speech of Polonius:— + +“My liege, and madam, to expostulate,” &c. + +Warburton’s note. + + + “Then as to the jingles, and play on words, let us but look into + the sermons of Dr. Donne (the wittiest man of that age), and we + shall find them full of this vein.” + + +I have, and that most carefully, read Dr. Donne’s sermons, and find none +of these jingles. The great art of an orator—to make whatever he talks of +appear of importance—this, indeed, Donne has effected with consummate +skill. + +_Ib._— + +“_Ham._ Excellent well; +You are a fishmonger.” + +That is, you are sent to fish out this secret. This is Hamlet’s own +meaning. + +_Ib._— + +“_Ham._ For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, +Being a god, kissing carrion.” + +These purposely obscure lines, I rather think, refer to some thought in +Hamlet’s mind, contrasting the lovely daughter with such a tedious old +fool, her father, as he, Hamlet, represents Polonius to himself:—“Why, +fool as he is, he is some degrees in rank above a dead dog’s carcase; and +if the sun, being a god that kisses carrion, can raise life out of a dead +dog,—why may not good fortune, that favours fools, have raised a lovely +girl out of this dead-alive old fool?” Warburton is often led astray, in +his interpretations, by his attention to general positions without the due +Shakespearian reference to what is probably passing in the mind of his +speaker, characteristic, and expository of his particular character and +present mood. The subsequent passage,— + +“O Jephthah, judge of Israel! what a treasure hadst thou!” + +is confirmatory of my view of these lines. + +_Ib._— + +“_Ham._ You cannot, Sir, take from me any thing that I will +more willingly part withal; except my life, except my life, except +my life.” + +This repetition strikes me as most admirable. + +_Ib._— + +“_Ham._ Then are our beggars, bodies; and our monarchs, and +out-stretched heroes, the beggars’ shadows?” + +I do not understand this; and Shakespeare seems to have intended the +meaning not to be more than snatched at:—“By my fay, I cannot reason!” + +_Ib._— + +“The rugged Pyrrhus—he whose sable arms,” &c. + +This admirable substitution of the epic for the dramatic, giving such a +reality to the impassioned dramatic diction of Shakespeare’s own dialogue, +and authorised too, by the actual style of the tragedies before his time +(_Porrex and Ferrex_, _Titus Andronicus_, &c.)—is well worthy of notice. +The fancy, that a burlesque was intended, sinks below criticism: the +lines, as epic narrative, are superb. + +In the thoughts, and even in the separate parts of the diction, this +description is highly poetical: in truth, taken by itself, that is its +fault that it is too poetical!—the language of lyric vehemence and epic +pomp, and not of the drama. But if Shakespeare had made the diction truly +dramatic, where would have been the contrast between Hamlet and the play +in _Hamlet_? + +_Ib._— + +... “Had seen the _mobled_ queen,” &c. + +A mob-cap is still a word in common use for a morning cap, which conceals +the whole head of hair, and passes under the chin. It is nearly the same +as the night-cap, that is, it is an imitation of it, so as to answer the +purpose (“I am not drest for company”), and yet reconciling it with +neatness and perfect purity. + +_Ib._ Hamlet’s soliloquy:— + +“O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!” &c. + +This is Shakespeare’s own attestation to the truth of the idea of Hamlet +which I have before put forth. + +_Ib._— + +“The spirit that I have seen, +May be a devil: and the devil hath power +To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and, perhaps +Out of my weakness, and my melancholy +(As he is very potent with such spirits), +Abuses me to damn me.” + +See Sir Thomas Brown:— + + + “I believe ... that those apparitions and ghosts of departed + persons are not the wandering souls of men, but the unquiet walks + of devils, prompting and suggesting us unto mischief, blood, and + villany, instilling and stealing into our hearts, that the blessed + spirits are not at rest in their graves, but wander solicitous of + the affairs of the world.”—_Relig. Med._ part. i. sect. 37. + + +Act iii. sc. 1. Hamlet’s soliloquy:— + +“To be, or not to be, that is the question,” &c. + +This speech is of absolutely universal interest,—and yet to which of all +Shakespeare’s characters could it have been appropriately given but to +Hamlet? For Jaques it would have been too deep, and for Iago too habitual +a communion with the heart; which in every man belongs, or ought to +belong, to all mankind. + +_Ib._— + +“The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn +No traveller returns.” + +Theobald’s note in defence of the supposed contradiction of this in the +apparition of the Ghost. + +O miserable defender! If it be necessary to remove the apparent +contradiction,—if it be not rather a great beauty,—surely, it were easy to +say, that no traveller returns to this world, as to his home, or +abiding-place. + +_Ib._— + +“_Ham._ Ha, ha! are you honest? + +_Oph._ My lord? + +_Ham._ Are you fair?” + +Here it is evident that the penetrating Hamlet perceives, from the strange +and forced manner of Ophelia, that the sweet girl was not acting a part of +her own, but was a decoy; and his after speeches are not so much directed +to her as to the listeners and spies. Such a discovery in a mood so +anxious and irritable accounts for a certain harshness in him;—and yet a +wild up-working of love, sporting with opposites in a wilful +self-tormenting strain of irony, is perceptible throughout. “I did love +you once:”—“I lov’d you not:”—and particularly in his enumeration of the +faults of the sex from which Ophelia is so free, that the mere freedom +therefrom constitutes her character. Note Shakespeare’s charm of composing +the female character by the absence of characters, that is, marks and +out-juttings. + +_Ib._ Hamlet’s speech:— + + + “I say, we will have no more marriages: those that are married + already, all but one, shall live: the rest shall keep as they + are.” + + +Observe this dallying with the inward purpose, characteristic of one who +had not brought his mind to the steady acting point. He would fain sting +the uncle’s mind;—but to stab his body!—The soliloquy of Ophelia, which +follows, is the perfection of love—so exquisitely unselfish! + +_Ib._ sc. 2. This dialogue of Hamlet with the players is one of the +happiest instances of Shakespeare’s power of diversifying the scene while +he is carrying on the plot. + +_Ib._— + +“_Ham._ My lord, you played once i’ the university, you say?” +(_To Polonius._) + +To have kept Hamlet’s love for Ophelia before the audience in any direct +form, would have made a breach in the unity of the interest;—but yet to +the thoughtful reader it is suggested by his spite to poor Polonius, whom +he cannot let rest. + +_Ib._ The style of the interlude here is distinguished from the real +dialogue by rhyme, as in the first interview with the players by epic +verse. + +_Ib._— + +“_Ros._ My lord, you once did love me. + +_Ham._ _So_ I do still, by these pickers and stealers.” + +I never heard an actor give this word “so” its proper emphasis. +Shakespeare’s meaning is—“lov’d you? Hum!—_so_ I do still,” &c. There has +been no change in my opinion:—I think as ill of you as I did. Else Hamlet +tells an ignoble falsehood, and a useless one, as the last speech to +Guildenstern—“Why look you now,” &c.—proves. + +_Ib._ Hamlet’s soliloquy:— + + “Now could I drink hot blood, +And do such business as the bitter day +Would quake to look on.” + +The utmost at which Hamlet arrives, is a disposition, a mood, to do +something:—but what to do, is still left undecided, while every word he +utters tends to betray his disguise. Yet observe how perfectly equal to +any call of the moment is Hamlet, let it only not be for the future. + +_Ib._ sc. 3. Speech of Polonius. Polonius’s volunteer obtrusion of himself +into this business, while it is appropriate to his character, still +itching after former importance, removes all likelihood that Hamlet should +suspect his presence, and prevents us from making his death injure Hamlet +in our opinion. + +_Ib._ The king’s speech:— + +“O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven,” &c. + +This speech well marks the difference between crime and guilt of habit. +The conscience here is still admitted to audience. Nay, even as an audible +soliloquy, it is far less improbable than is supposed by such as have +watched men only in the beaten road of their feelings. But the final—“all +may be well!” is remarkable;—the degree of merit attributed by the +self-flattering soul to its own struggle, though baffled, and to the +indefinite half-promise, half-command, to persevere in religious duties. +The solution is in the divine _medium_ of the Christian doctrine of +expiation:—not what you have done, but what you are, must determine. + +_Ib._ Hamlet’s speech:— + +“Now might I do it, pat, now he is praying: +And now I’ll do’t:—And so he goes to heaven: +And so am I revenged? That would be scann’d,” &c. + +Dr. Johnson’s mistaking of the marks of reluctance and procrastination for +impetuous, horror-striking, fiendishness!—Of such importance is it to +understand the germ of a character. But the interval taken by Hamlet’s +speech is truly awful! And then— + +“My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: +Words, without thoughts, never to heaven go.” + +O what a lesson concerning the essential difference between wishing and +willing, and the folly of all motive-mongering, while the individual self +remains! + +_Ib._ sc. 4.— + +“_Ham._ A bloody deed;—almost as bad, good mother, +As kill a king, and marry with his brother. + +_Queen._ As kill a king?” + +I confess that Shakespeare has left the character of the Queen in an +unpleasant perplexity. Was she, or was she not, conscious of the +fratricide? + +Act iv. sc. 2.— + +“_Ros._ Take you me for a spunge, my lord? + +_Ham._ Ay, Sir; that soaks up the King’s countenance, his +rewards, his authorities,” &c. + +Hamlet’s madness is made to consist in the free utterance of all the +thoughts that had passed through his mind before;—in fact, in telling +home-truths. + +Act iv. sc. 5. Ophelia’s singing. O, note the conjunction here of these +two thoughts that had never subsisted in disjunction, the love for Hamlet, +and her filial love, with the guileless floating on the surface of her +pure imagination of the cautions so lately expressed, and the fears not +too delicately avowed, by her father and brother, concerning the dangers +to which her honour lay exposed. Thought, affliction, passion, murder +itself—she turns to favour and prettiness. This play of association is +instanced in the close:— + + + “My brother shall know of it, and I thank you for your good + counsel.” + + +_Ib._ Gentleman’s speech:— + +“And as the world were now but to begin +Antiquity forgot, custom not known, +The ratifiers and props of every word— +They cry,” &c. + +Fearful and self-suspicious as I always feel, when I seem to see an error +of judgment in Shakespeare, yet I cannot reconcile the cool, and, as +Warburton calls it, “rational and consequential,” reflection in these +lines with the anonymousness, or the alarm, of this Gentleman or +Messenger, as he is called in other editions. + +_Ib._ King’s speech:— + +“There’s such divinity doth hedge a king, +That treason can but peep to what it would, +Acts little of his will.” + +Proof, as indeed all else is, that Shakespeare never intended us to see +the King with Hamlet’s eyes; though, I suspect, the managers have long +done so. + +_Ib._ Speech of Laertes:— + +“To hell, allegiance! vows, to the blackest devil!” + + + “Laertes is a _good_ character, but,” &c.—WARBURTON. + + +Mercy on Warburton’s notion of goodness! Please to refer to the seventh +scene of this act;— + +“I will do’t; +And for that purpose I’ll anoint my sword,” &c.— + +uttered by Laertes after the King’s description of Hamlet;— + + ... “He being remiss, +Most generous, and free from all contriving, +Will not peruse the foils.” + +Yet I acknowledge that Shakespeare evidently wishes, as much as possible, +to spare the character of Laertes,—to break the extreme turpitude of his +consent to become an agent and accomplice of the King’s treachery;—and to +this end he re-introduces Ophelia at the close of this scene to afford a +probable stimulus of passion in her brother. + +_Ib._ sc. 6. Hamlet’s capture by the pirates. This is almost the only play +of Shakespeare, in which mere accidents, independent of all will, form an +essential part of the plot;—but here how judiciously in keeping with the +character of the over-meditative Hamlet, ever at last determined by +accident or by a fit of passion! + +_Ib._ sc. 7. Note how the King first awakens Laertes’s vanity by praising +the reporter, and then gratifies it by the report itself, and finally +points it by— + + ... “Sir, this report of his +Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy!” + +_Ib._ King’s speech:— + +“For goodness, growing to a _pleurisy_, +Dies in his own too much.” + +Theobald’s note from Warburton, who conjectures “plethory.” + +I rather think that Shakespeare meant “pleurisy,” but involved in it the +thought of _plethora_, as supposing pleurisy to arise from too much blood; +otherwise I cannot explain the following line— + +“And then this _should_ is like a spendthrift sigh, +That hurts by easing.” + +In a stitch in the side every one must have heaved a sigh that “hurt by +easing.” + +Since writing the above I feel confirmed that “pleurisy” is the right +word; for I find that in the old medical dictionaries the pleurisy is +often called the “plethory.” + +_Ib._— + +“_Queen._ Your sister’s drown’d, Laertes. + +_Laer._ Drown’d! O, where?” + +That Laertes might be excused in some degree for not cooling, the Act +concludes with the affecting death of Ophelia,—who in the beginning lay +like a little projection of land into a lake or stream, covered with +spray-flowers, quietly reflected in the quiet waters, but at length is +undermined or loosened, and becomes a faery isle, and after a brief +vagrancy sinks almost without an eddy! + +Act v. sc. 1. O, the rich contrast between the Clowns and Hamlet, as two +extremes! You see in the former the mockery of logic, and a traditional +wit valued, like truth, for its antiquity, and treasured up, like a tune, +for use. + +_Ib._ sc. 1 and 2. Shakespeare seems to mean all Hamlet’s character to be +brought together before his final disappearance from the scene;—his +meditative excess in the grave-digging, his yielding to passion with +Laertes, his love for Ophelia blazing out, his tendency to generalise on +all occasions in the dialogue with Horatio, his fine gentlemanly manners +with Osrick, and his and Shakespeare’s own fondness for presentment:— + + + “But thou wouldst not think, how ill all’s here about my heart: + but it is no matter.” + + + + +“Macbeth.” + + +“Macbeth” stands in contrast throughout with _Hamlet_; in the manner of +opening more especially. In the latter, there is a gradual ascent from the +simplest forms of conversation to the language of impassioned +intellect,—yet the intellect still remaining the seat of passion: in the +former, the invocation is at once made to the imagination and the emotions +connected therewith. Hence the movement throughout is the most rapid of +all Shakespeare’s plays; and hence also, with the exception of the +disgusting passage of the Porter (Act ii. sc. 3), which I dare pledge +myself to demonstrate to be an interpolation of the actors, there is not, +to the best of my remembrance, a single pun or play on words in the whole +drama. I have previously given an answer to the thousand times repeated +charge against Shakespeare upon the subject of his punning, and I here +merely mention the fact of the absence of any puns in _Macbeth_, as +justifying a candid doubt, at least, whether even in these figures of +speech and fanciful modifications of language, Shakespeare may not have +followed rules and principles that merit and would stand the test of +philosophic examination. And hence, also, there is an entire absence of +comedy, nay, even of irony and philosophic contemplation in _Macbeth_,—the +play being wholly and purely tragic. For the same cause, there are no +reasonings of equivocal morality, which would have required a more +leisurely state and a consequently greater activity of mind;—no sophistry +of self-delusion,—except only that previously to the dreadful act, Macbeth +mistranslates the recoilings and ominous whispers of conscience into +prudential and selfish reasonings; and, after the deed done, the terrors +of remorse into fear from external dangers,—like delirious men who run +away from the phantoms of their own brains, or, raised by terror to rage, +stab the real object that is within their reach:—whilst Lady Macbeth +merely endeavours to reconcile his and her own sinkings of heart by +anticipations of the worst, and an affected bravado in confronting them. +In all the rest, Macbeth’s language is the grave utterance of the very +heart, conscience-sick, even to the last faintings of moral death. It is +the same in all the other characters. The variety arises from rage, caused +ever and anon by disruption of anxious thought, and the quick transition +of fear into it. + +In _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_ the scene opens with superstition; but, in each +it is not merely different, but opposite. In the first it is connected +with the best and holiest feelings; in the second with the shadowy, +turbulent, and unsanctified cravings of the individual will. Nor is the +purpose the same; in the one the object is to excite, whilst in the other +it is to mark a mind already excited. Superstition, of one sort or +another, is natural to victorious generals; the instances are too +notorious to need mentioning. There is so much of chance in warfare, and +such vast events are connected with the acts of a single individual,—the +representative, in truth, of the efforts of myriads, and yet to the +public, and doubtless to his own feelings, the aggregate of all,—that the +proper temperament for generating or receiving superstitious impressions +is naturally produced. Hope, the master element of a commanding genius, +meeting with an active and combining intellect, and an imagination of just +that degree of vividness which disquiets and impels the soul to try to +realise its images, greatly increases the creative power of the mind; and +hence the images become a satisfying world of themselves, as is the case +in every poet and original philosopher:—but hope fully gratified, and yet +the elementary basis of the passion remaining, becomes fear; and, indeed, +the general, who must often feel, even though he may hide it from his own +consciousness, how large a share chance had in his successes, may very +naturally be irresolute in a new scene, where he knows that all will +depend on his own act and election. + +The Weird Sisters are as true a creation of Shakespeare’s, as his Ariel +and Caliban,—fates, furies, and materialising witches being the elements. +They are wholly different from any representation of witches in the +contemporary writers, and yet presented a sufficient external resemblance +to the creatures of vulgar prejudice to act immediately on the audience. +Their character consists in the imaginative disconnected from the good; +they are the shadowy obscure and fearfully anomalous of physical nature, +the lawless of human nature,—elemental avengers without sex or kin:— + +“Fair is foul, and foul is fair; +Hover through the fog and filthy air.” + +How much it were to be wished in playing _Macbeth_, that an attempt should +be made to introduce the flexile character-mask of the ancient +pantomime;—that Flaxman would contribute his genius to the embodying and +making sensuously perceptible that of Shakespeare! + +The style and rhythm of the Captain’s speeches in the second scene should +be illustrated by reference to the interlude in _Hamlet_, in which the +epic is substituted for the tragic, in order to make the latter be felt as +the real-life diction. In _Macbeth_ the poet’s object was to raise the +mind at once to the high tragic tone, that the audience might be ready for +the precipitate consummation of guilt in the early part of the play. The +true reason for the first appearance of the Witches is to strike the +key-note of the character of the whole drama, as is proved by their +re-appearance in the third scene, after such an order of the king’s as +establishes their supernatural power of information. I say +information,—for so it only is as to Glamis and Cawdor; the “king +hereafter” was still contingent,—still in Macbeth’s moral will; although, +if he should yield to the temptation, and thus forfeit his free agency, +the link of cause and effect _more physico_ would then commence. I need +not say, that the general idea is all that can be required from the +poet,—not a scholastic logical consistency in all the parts so as to meet +metaphysical objectors. But O! how truly Shakespearian is the opening of +Macbeth’s character given in the _unpossessedness_ of Banquo’s mind, +wholly present to the present object,—an unsullied, unscarified mirror! +And how strictly true to nature it is that Banquo, and not Macbeth +himself, directs our notice to the effect produced on Macbeth’s mind, +rendered temptible by previous dalliance of the fancy with ambitious +thoughts:— + +“Good Sir, why do you start; and seem to fear +Things that do sound so fair?” + +And then, again, still unintroitive, addresses the Witches:— + + ... “I’ the name of truth, +Are ye fantastical, or that indeed +Which outwardly ye show?” + +Banquo’s questions are those of natural curiosity,—such as a girl would +put after hearing a gipsy tell her schoolfellow’s fortune;—all perfectly +general, or rather, planless. But Macbeth, lost in thought, raises himself +to speech only by the Witches being about to depart:— + +“Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more:”— + +and all that follows is reasoning on a problem already discussed in his +mind,—on a hope which he welcomes, and the doubts concerning the +attainment of which he wishes to have cleared up. Compare his +eagerness,—the keen eye with which he has pursued the Witches’ evanishing— + +“Speak, I charge you!” + +with the easily satisfied mind of the self-uninterested Banquo:— + +“The air hath bubbles, as the water has, +And these are of them:—Whither are they vanish’d?” + +and then Macbeth’s earnest reply,— + +“Into the air; and what seem’d corporal, melted +As breath into the wind.—_Would they had stay’d!_” + +Is it too minute to notice the appropriateness of the simile “as breath,” +&c., in a cold climate? + +Still again Banquo goes on wondering like any common spectator,— + +“Were such things here as we do speak about?” + +whilst Macbeth persists in recurring to the self-concerning:— + +“Your children shall be kings. + +_Ban._ You shall be king. + +_Macb._ And thane of Cawdor too: went it not so?” + +So surely is the guilt in its germ anterior to the supposed cause, and +immediate temptation! Before he can cool, the confirmation of the tempting +half of the prophecy arrives, and the concatenating tendency of the +imagination is fostered by the sudden coincidence:— + +“Glamis, and thane of Cawdor: +The greatest is behind.” + +Oppose this to Banquo’s simple surprise:— + +“What, can the devil speak true?” + +_Ib._ Banquo’s speech:— + +“That, trusted home, +Might yet enkindle you unto the crown, +Besides the thane of Cawdor.” + +I doubt whether “enkindle” has not another sense than that of +“stimulating;” I mean of “kind” and “kin,” as when rabbits are said to +“kindle.” However, Macbeth no longer hears anything _ab extra_:— + +“Two truths are told, +As happy prologues to the swelling act +Of the imperial theme.” + +Then in the necessity of recollecting himself,— + +“I thank you, gentlemen.” + +Then he relapses into himself again, and every word of his soliloquy shows +the early birth-date of his guilt. He is all-powerful without strength; he +wishes the end, but is irresolute as to the means; conscience distinctly +warns him, and he lulls it imperfectly:— + +“If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me +Without my stir.” + +Lost in the prospective of his guilt, he turns round alarmed lest others +may suspect what is passing in his own mind, and instantly vents the lie +of ambition:— + +“My dull brain was wrought +With things _forgotten_;”— + +and immediately after pours forth the promising courtesies of a usurper in +intention:— + + ... “Kind gentlemen, your pains +Are register’d where every day I turn +The leaf to read them.” + +_Ib._ Macbeth’s speech:— + + ... “Present _fears_ +Are less than horrible imaginings.” + +Warburton’s note, and substitution of “feats” for “fears.” + +Mercy on this most wilful ingenuity of blundering, which, nevertheless, +was the very Warburton of Warburton—his inmost being! “Fears,” here, are +present fear-striking objects, _terribilia adstantia_. + +_Ib._ sc. 4. O! the affecting beauty of the death of Cawdor, and the +presentimental speech of the king:— + +“There’s no art +To find the mind’s construction in the face: +He was a gentleman on whom I built +An absolute trust.” + +Interrupted by— + +“O worthiest cousin!” + +on the entrance of the deeper traitor for whom Cawdor had made way! And +here in contrast with Duncan’s “plenteous joys,” Macbeth has nothing but +the common-places of loyalty, in which he hides himself with “our duties.” +Note the exceeding effort of Macbeth’s addresses to the king, his +reasoning on his allegiance, and then especially when a new difficulty, +the designation of a successor, suggests a new crime. This, however, seems +the first distinct notion, as to the plan of realising his wishes; and +here, therefore, with great propriety, Macbeth’s cowardice of his own +conscience discloses itself. I always think there is something especially +Shakespearian in Duncan’s speeches throughout this scene, such pourings +forth, such abandonments, compared with the language of vulgar dramatists, +whose characters seem to have made their speeches as the actors learn +them. + +_Ib:_ Duncan’s speech:— + + ... “Sons, kinsmen, thanes, +And you whose places are the nearest, know, +We will establish our estate upon +Our eldest Malcolm, whom we name hereafter +The Prince of Cumberland: which honour must +Not unaccompanied, invest him only; +But signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine +On all deservers.” + +It is a fancy;—but I can never read this and the following speeches of +Macbeth, without involuntarily thinking of the Miltonic Messiah and Satan. + +_Ib._ sc. 5. Macbeth is described by Lady Macbeth so as at the same time +to reveal her own character. Could he have every thing he wanted, he would +rather have it innocently;—ignorant, as alas! how many of us are, that he +who wishes a temporal end for itself, does in truth will the means; and +hence the danger of indulging fancies. + +Lady Macbeth, like all in Shakespeare, is a class individualised:—of high +rank, left much alone, and feeding herself with day-dreams of ambition, +she mistakes the courage of fantasy for the power of bearing the +consequences of the realities of guilt. His is the mock fortitude of a +mind deluded by ambition; she shames her husband with a superhuman +audacity of fancy which she cannot support, but sinks in the season of +remorse, and dies in suicidal agony. Her speech:— + + ... “Come, you spirits +That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,” &c.— + +is that of one who had habitually familiarised her imagination to dreadful +conceptions, and was trying to do so still more. Her invocations and +requisitions are all the false efforts of a mind accustomed only hitherto +to the shadows of the imagination, vivid enough to throw the every-day +substances of life into shadow, but never as yet brought into direct +contact with their own correspondent realities. She evinces no womanly +life, no wifely joy, at the return of her husband, no pleased terror at +the thought of his past dangers, whilst Macbeth bursts forth naturally— + +“My dearest love”— + +and shrinks from the boldness with which she presents his own thoughts to +him. With consummate art she at first uses as incentives the very +circumstances, Duncan’s coming to their house, &c., which Macbeth’s +conscience would most probably have adduced to her as motives of +abhorrence or repulsion. Yet Macbeth is not prepared:— + +“We will speak further.” + +_Ib._ sc. 6. The lyrical movement with which this scene opens, and the +free and unengaged mind of Banquo, loving nature, and rewarded in the love +itself, form a highly dramatic contrast with the laboured rhythm and +hypocritical over-much of Lady Macbeth’s welcome, in which you cannot +detect a ray of personal feeling, but all is thrown upon the “dignities,” +the general duty. + +_Ib._ sc. 7. Macbeth’s speech:— + +“We will proceed no further in this business: +He hath honour’d me of late; and I have bought +Golden opinions from all sorts of people, +Which would be worn now in their newest gloss, +Not cast aside so soon.” + +Note the inward pangs and warnings of conscience interpreted into +prudential reasonings. + +Act ii. sc. 1. Banquo’s speech:— + +“A heavy summons lies like lead upon me, +And yet I would not sleep. Merciful powers! +Restrain in me the cursed thoughts, that nature +Gives way to in repose.” + +The disturbance of an innocent soul by painful suspicions of another’s +guilty intentions and wishes, and fear of the cursed thoughts of sensual +nature. + +_Ib._ sc. 2. Now that the deed is done or doing—now that the first reality +commences, Lady Macbeth shrinks. The most simple sound strikes terror, the +most natural consequences are horrible, whilst previously every thing, +however awful, appeared a mere trifle; conscience, which before had been +hidden to Macbeth in selfish and prudential fears, now rushes in upon him +in her own veritable person:— + +“Methought I heard a voice cry—Sleep no more! + I could not say Amen, +When they did say, God bless us!” + +And see the novelty given to the most familiar images by a new state of +feeling. + +_Ib._ sc. 3. This low soliloquy of the Porter and his few speeches +afterwards, I believe to have been written for the mob by some other hand, +perhaps with Shakespeare’s consent; and that finding it take, he with the +remaining ink of a pen otherwise employed, just interpolated the words— + + + “I’ll devil-porter it no further: I had thought to have let in + some of all professions, that go the primrose way to the + everlasting bonfire.” + + +Of the rest not one syllable has the ever-present being of Shakespeare. + +Act iii. sc. 1. Compare Macbeth’s mode of working on the murderers in this +place with Schiller’s mistaken scene between Butler, Devereux, and +Macdonald in _Wallenstein_.—(Part II. act iv. sc. 2.) The comic was wholly +out of season. Shakespeare never introduces it, but when it may react on +the tragedy by harmonious contrast. + +_Ib._ sc. 2. Macbeth’s speech:— + +“But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer, +Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep +In the affliction of these terrible dreams +That shake us nightly.” + +Ever and ever mistaking the anguish of conscience for fears of +selfishness, and thus as a punishment of that selfishness, plunging still +deeper in guilt and ruin. + +_Ib._ Macbeth’s speech:— + +“Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, +Till thou applaud the deed.” + +This is Macbeth’s sympathy with his own feelings, and his mistaking his +wife’s opposite state. + +_Ib._ sc. 4.— + +“_Macb._ It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood: +Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak; +Augurs, and understood relations, have +By magot-pies, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth +The secret’st man of blood.” + +The deed is done; but Macbeth receives no comfort, no additional security. +He has by guilt torn himself live-asunder from nature, and is, therefore, +himself in a preternatural state: no wonder, then, that he is inclined to +superstition, and faith in the unknown of signs and tokens, and +super-human agencies. + +Act iv. sc. 1.— + +“_Len._ ’Tis two or three, my lord, that bring you word +Macduff is fled to England. + +_Macb._ Fled to England!” + +The acme of the avenging conscience. + +_Ib._ sc. 2. This scene, dreadful as it is, is still a relief, because a +variety, because domestic, and therefore soothing, as associated with the +only real pleasures of life. The conversation between Lady Macduff and her +child heightens the pathos, and is preparatory for the deep tragedy of +their assassination. Shakespeare’s fondness for children is everywhere +shown;—in Prince Arthur, in _King John_; in the sweet scene in the +_Winter’s Tale_ between Hermione and her son; nay, even in honest Evans’s +examination of Mrs. Page’s schoolboy. To the objection that Shakespeare +wounds the moral sense by the unsubdued, undisguised description of the +most hateful atrocity—that he tears the feelings without mercy, and even +outrages the eye itself with scenes of insupportable horror—I, omitting +_Titus Andronicus_, as not genuine, and excepting the scene of Gloster’s +blinding in _Lear_, answer boldly in the name of Shakespeare, not guilty. + +_Ib._ sc. 3. Malcolm’s speech:— + + ... “Better Macbeth, +Than such an one to reign.” + +The moral is—the dreadful effects even on the best minds of the +soul-sickening sense of insecurity. + +_Ib._ How admirably Macduff’s grief is in harmony with the whole play! It +rends, not dissolves, the heart. “The tune of it goes manly.” Thus is +Shakespeare always master of himself and of his subject,—a genuine +Proteus:—we see all things in him, as images in a calm lake, most +distinct, most accurate,—only more splendid, more glorified. This is +correctness in the only philosophical sense. But he requires your sympathy +and your submission; you must have that recipiency of moral impression +without which the purposes and ends of the drama would be frustrated, and +the absence of which demonstrates an utter want of all imagination, a +deadness to that necessary pleasure of being innocently—shall I say, +deluded?—or rather, drawn away from ourselves to the music of noblest +thought in harmonious sounds. Happy he, who not only in the public +theatre, but in the labours of a profession, and round the light of his +own hearth, still carries a heart so pleasure-fraught! + +Alas for Macbeth! now all is inward with him; he has no more prudential +prospective reasonings. His wife, the only being who could have had any +seat in his affections, dies; he puts on despondency, the final +heart-armour of the wretched, and would fain think every thing shadowy and +unsubstantial, as indeed all things are to those who cannot regard them as +symbols of goodness:— + + “Out, out, brief candle! +Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player, +That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, +And then is heard no more; it is a tale +Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, +Signifying nothing.” + + + + +“Winter’s Tale.” + + +Although, on the whole, this play is exquisitely respondent to its title, +and even in the fault I am about to mention, still a winter’s tale; yet it +seems a mere indolence of the great bard not to have provided in the +oracular response (Act ii. sc. 2.) some ground for Hermione’s seeming +death and fifteen years’ voluntary concealment. This might have been +easily effected by some obscure sentence of the oracle, as for example:— + + + “ ‘Nor shall he ever recover an heir, if he have a wife before + that recovery.’ ” + + +The idea of this delightful drama is a genuine jealousy of disposition, +and it should be immediately followed by the perusal of _Othello_, which +is the direct contrast of it in every particular. For jealousy is a vice +of the mind, a culpable tendency of the temper, having certain well-known +and well-defined effects and concomitants, all of which are visible in +Leontes, and, I boldly say, not one of which marks its presence in +Othello;—such as, first, an excitability by the most inadequate causes, +and an eagerness to snatch at proofs; secondly, a grossness of conception, +and a disposition to degrade the object of the passion by sensual fancies +and images; thirdly, a sense of shame of his own feelings exhibited in a +solitary moodiness of humour, and yet from the violence of the passion +forced to utter itself, and therefore catching occasions to ease the mind +by ambiguities, equivoques, by talking to those who cannot, and who are +known not to be able to, understand what is said to them,—in short, by +soliloquy in the form of dialogue, and hence a confused, broken, and +fragmentary, manner; fourthly, a dread of vulgar ridicule, as distinct +from a high sense of honour, or a mistaken sense of duty; and lastly, and +immediately, consequent on this, a spirit of selfish vindictiveness. + +Act i. sc. 1, 2.— + +Observe the easy style of chitchat between Camillo and Archidamus as +contrasted with the elevated diction on the introduction of the kings and +Hermione in the second scene: and how admirably Polixenes’ obstinate +refusal to Leontes to stay,— + +“There is no tongue that moves; none, none i’ the world +So soon as yours, could win me;”— + +prepares for the effect produced by his afterwards yielding to +Hermione;—which is, nevertheless, perfectly natural from mere courtesy of +sex, and the exhaustion of the will by former efforts of denial, and well +calculated to set in nascent action the jealousy of Leontes. This, when +once excited, is unconsciously increased by Hermione,— + + ... “Yet, good deed, Leontes, +I love thee not a jar o’ the clock behind +What lady she her lord;”— + +accompanied, as a good actress ought to represent it, by an expression and +recoil of apprehension that she had gone too far. + +“At my request, he would not:”— + +The first working of the jealous fit;— + +“Too hot, too hot:”— + +The morbid tendency of Leontes to lay hold of the merest trifles, and his +grossness immediately afterwards,— + +“Paddling palms and pinching fingers;”— + +followed by his strange loss of self-control in his dialogue with the +little boy. + +Act iii. sc. 2. Paulina’s speech:— + +“That thou betray’dst Polixenes, ’twas nothing; +That did but show thee, of a _fool_, inconstant, +And damnable ingrateful.” + +Theobald reads “soul.” + +I think the original word is Shakespeare’s. 1. My ear feels it to be +Shakespearian; 2. The involved grammar is Shakespearian—“show thee, being +a fool naturally, to have improved thy folly by inconstancy;” 3. The +alteration is most flat, and un-Shakespearian. As to the grossness of the +abuse—she calls him “gross and foolish” a few lines below. + +Act iv. sc. 3. Speech of Autolycus:— + +“For the life to come, I sleep out the thought of it.” + +Fine as this is, and delicately characteristic of one who had lived and +been reared in the best society, and had been precipitated from it by dice +and drabbing; yet still it strikes against my feelings as a note out of +tune, and as not coalescing with that pastoral tint which gives such a +charm to this act. It is too Macbeth-like in the “snapper up of +unconsidered trifles.” + +_Ib._ sc. 4. Perdita’s speech:— + +“From Dis’s waggon! daffodils.” + +An epithet is wanted here, not merely or chiefly for the metre, but for +the balance, for the æsthetic logic. Perhaps “golden” was the word which +would set off the “violets dim.” + +_Ib._— + + ... “Pale primroses +That die unmarried.” + +Milton’s— + +“And the rathe primrose that forsaken dies.” + +_Ib._ Perdita’s speech:— + +“Even here undone: +I was not much afraid; for once or twice +I was about to speak, and tell him plainly, +The self-same sun, that shines upon his court, +Hides not his visage from our cottage, but +Looks on alike. Will’t please you, Sir, be gone! + (_To Florizel._) +I told you, what would come of this. Beseech you, +Of your own state take care: this dream of mine, +Being now awake, I’ll queen it no inch farther, +But milk my ewes, and weep.” + +O how more than exquisite is this whole speech! And that profound nature +of noble pride and grief venting themselves in a momentary peevishness of +resentment toward Florizel:— + +... “Will’t please you, Sir, be gone!” + +_Ib._ Speech of Autolycus:— + + + “Let me have no lying; it becomes none but tradesmen, and they + often give us soldiers the lie; but we pay them for it with + stamped coin, not stabbing steel;—therefore they do not _give_ us + the lie.” + + +As we _pay_ them, they, therefore, do not _give_ it us. + + + + +“Othello.” + + +Act i. sc. 1.— + +Admirable is the preparation, so truly and peculiarly Shakespearian, in +the introduction of Roderigo, as the dupe on whom Iago shall first +exercise his art, and in so doing display his own character. Roderigo, +without any fixed principle, but not without the moral notions and +sympathies with honour, which his rank and connections had hung upon him, +is already well fitted and predisposed for the purpose; for very want of +character and strength of passion, like wind loudest in an empty house, +constitute his character. The first three lines happily state the nature +and foundation of the friendship between him and Iago,—the purse,—as also +the contrast of Roderigo’s intemperance of mind with Iago’s coolness,—the +coolness of a preconceiving experimenter. The mere language of +protestation,— + +“If ever I did dream of such a matter, abhor me,”— + +which, falling in with the associative link, determines Roderigo’s +continuation of complaint,— + +“Thou told’st me, thou didst hold him in thy hate,”— + +elicits at length a true feeling of Iago’s mind, the dread of contempt +habitual to those who encourage in themselves, and have their keenest +pleasure in, the expression of contempt for others. Observe Iago’s high +self-opinion, and the moral, that a wicked man will employ real feelings, +as well as assume those most alien from his own, as instruments of his +purposes:— + + “And, by the faith of man, +I know my price, I am worth no worse a place.” + +I think Tyrwhitt’s reading of “life” for “wife”— + +“A fellow almost damn’d in a fair _wife_”— + +the true one, as fitting to Iago’s contempt for whatever did not display +power, and that intellectual power. In what follows, let the reader feel +how by and through the glass of two passions, disappointed vanity and +envy, the very vices of which he is complaining, are made to act upon him +as if they were so many excellences, and the more appropriately, because +cunning is always admired and wished for by minds conscious of inward +weakness;—but they act only by half, like music on an inattentive auditor, +swelling the thoughts which prevent him from listening to it. + +_Ib._— + +“_Rod._ What a full fortune does the _thick-lips_ owe, +If he can carry ’t thus.” + +Roderigo turns off to Othello; and here comes one, if not the only, +seeming justification of our blackamoor or negro Othello. Even if we +supposed this an uninterrupted tradition of the theatre, and that +Shakespeare himself, from want of scenes, and the experience that nothing +could be made too marked for the senses of his audience, had practically +sanctioned it,—would this prove aught concerning his own intention as a +poet for all ages? Can we imagine him so utterly ignorant as to make a +barbarous negro plead royal birth,—at a time, too, when negroes were not +known except as slaves? As for Iago’s language to Brabantio, it implies +merely that Othello was a Moor,—that is, black. Though I think the rivalry +of Roderigo sufficient to account for his wilful confusion of Moor and +Negro,—yet, even if compelled to give this up, I should think it only +adapted for the acting of the day, and should complain of an enormity +built on a single word, in direct contradiction to Iago’s “Barbary horse.” +Besides, if we could in good earnest believe Shakespeare ignorant of the +distinction, still why should we adopt one disagreeable possibility +instead of a ten times greater and more pleasing probability? It is a +common error to mistake the epithets applied by the _dramatis personæ_ to +each other, as truly descriptive of what the audience ought to see or +know. No doubt Desdemona saw Othello’s visage in his mind; yet, as we are +constituted, and most surely as an English audience was disposed in the +beginning of the seventeenth century, it would be something monstrous to +conceive this beautiful Venetian girl falling in love with a veritable +negro. It would argue a disproportionateness, a want of balance, in +Desdemona, which Shakespeare does not appear to have in the least +contemplated. + +_Ib._ Brabantio’s speech:— + +“This accident is not unlike my dream.” + +The old careful senator, being caught careless, transfers his caution to +his dreaming power at least. + +_Ib._ Iago’s speech:— + + ... “For their souls, +Another of his fathom they have not, +To lead their business.” + +The forced praise of Othello, followed by the bitter hatred of him in this +speech! And observe how Brabantio’s dream prepares for his recurrence to +the notion of philtres, and how both prepare for carrying on the plot of +the arraignment of Othello on this ground. + +_Ib._ sc. 2.— + +“_Oth._ ’Tis better as it is.” + +How well these few words impress at the outset the truth of Othello’s own +character of himself at the end—“that he was not easily wrought!” His +self-government contradistinguishes him throughout from Leontes. + +_Ib._ Othello’s speech:— + + ... “And my demerits +May speak, _unbonneted_.” + +The argument in Theobald’s note, where “and bonneted” is suggested, goes +on the assumption that Shakespeare could not use the same word differently +in different places; whereas I should conclude, that as in the passage in +_Lear_ the word is employed in its direct meaning, so here it is used +metaphorically; and this is confirmed by what has escaped the editors, +that it is not “I,” but “my demerits” that may speak unbonneted,—without +the symbol of a petitioning inferior. + +_Ib._ sc. 3. Othello’s speech:— + +“So please your grace, my ancient; +A man he is of honesty and trust: +To his conveyance I assign my wife.” + +Compare this with the behaviour of Leontes to his true friend Camillo. + +_Ib._— + +“_Bra._ Look to her, Moor; if thou hast eyes to see; +She has deceived her father, and may thee. + +_Oth._ My life upon her faith.” + +In real life, how do we look back to little speeches as presentimental of, +or contrasted with, an affecting event! Even so, Shakespeare, as secure of +being read over and over, of becoming a family friend, provides this +passage for his readers, and leaves it to them. + +_Ib._ Iago’s speech:— + +“Virtue? a fig! ’tis in ourselves, that we are thus, or thus,” &c. + +This speech comprises the passionless character of Iago. It is all will in +intellect; and therefore he is here a bold partizan of a truth, but yet of +a truth converted into a falsehood by the absence of all the necessary +modifications caused by the frail nature of man. And then comes the last +sentiment:— + + + “Our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts, + whereof I take this, that you call—love, to be a sect or scion!” + + +Here is the true Iagoism of, alas! how many! Note Iago’s pride of mastery +in the repetition of “Go, make money!” to his anticipated dupe, even +stronger than his love of lucre: and when Roderigo is completely won,— + +“I am chang’d. I’ll go sell all my land,”— + +when the effect has been fully produced, the repetition of triumph:— + +“Go to; farewell; put money enough in your purse!” + +The remainder—Iago’s soliloquy—the motive-hunting of a motiveless +malignity—how awful it is! Yea, whilst he is still allowed to bear the +divine image, it is too fiendish for his own steady view,—for the lonely +gaze of a being next to devil, and only not quite devil,—and yet a +character which Shakespeare has attempted and executed, without disgust +and without scandal! + +Dr. Johnson has remarked that little or nothing is wanting to render the +_Othello_ a regular tragedy, but to have opened the play with the arrival +of Othello in Cyprus, and to have thrown the preceding act into the form +of narration. Here then is the place to determine whether such a change +would or would not be an improvement;—nay (to throw down the glove with a +full challenge), whether the tragedy would or not by such an arrangement +become more regular,—that is, more consonant with the rules dictated by +universal reason, on the true common-sense of mankind, in its application +to the particular case. For in all acts of judgment, it can never be too +often recollected, and scarcely too often repeated, that rules are means +to ends, and, consequently, that the end must be determined and understood +before it can be known what the rules are or ought to be. Now, from a +certain species of drama, proposing to itself the accomplishment of +certain ends,—these partly arising from the idea of the species itself, +but in part, likewise, forced upon the dramatist by accidental +circumstances beyond his power to remove or control,—three rules have been +abstracted;—in other words, the means most conducive to the attainment of +the proposed ends have been generalised, and prescribed under the names of +the three unities,—the unity of time, the unity of place, and the unity of +action—which last would, perhaps, have been as appropriately, as well as +more intelligibly, entitled the unity of interest. With this last the +present question has no immediate concern: in fact, its conjunction with +the former two is a mere delusion of words. It is not properly a rule, but +in itself the great end not only of the drama, but of the epic poem, the +lyric ode, of all poetry, down to the candle-flame cone of an +epigram,—nay, of poesy in general, as the proper generic term inclusive of +all the fine arts as its species. But of the unities of time and place, +which alone are entitled to the name of rules, the history of their origin +will be their best criterion. You might take the Greek chorus to a place, +but you could not bring a place to them without as palpable an equivoque +as bringing Birnam wood to Macbeth at Dunsinane. It was the same, though +in a less degree, with regard to the unity of time:—the positive fact, not +for a moment removed from the senses, the presence, I mean, of the same +identical chorus, was a continued measure of time;—and although the +imagination may supersede perception, yet it must be granted to be an +imperfection—however easily tolerated—to place the two in broad +contradiction to each other. In truth, it is a mere accident of terms; for +the Trilogy of the Greek theatre was a drama in three acts, and +notwithstanding this, what strange contrivances as to place there are in +the Aristophanic Frogs. Besides, if the law of mere actual perception is +once violated—as it repeatedly is, even in the Greek tragedies—why is it +more difficult to imagine three hours to be three years than to be a whole +day and night? + +Act ii. sc. 1.— + +Observe in how many ways Othello is made, first, our acquaintance, then +our friend, then the object of our anxiety, before the deeper interest is +to be approached! + +_Ib._— + +“_Mont._ But, good lieutenant, is your general wived? + +_Cas._ Most fortunately: he hath achieved a maid +That paragons description, and wild fame; +One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens, +And, in the essential vesture of creation, +Does tire the ingener.” + +Here is Cassio’s warm-hearted, yet perfectly disengaged, praise of +Desdemona, and sympathy with the “most fortunately” wived Othello;—and yet +Cassio is an enthusiastic admirer, almost a worshipper, of Desdemona. Oh, +that detestable code that excellence cannot be loved in any form that is +female, but it must needs be selfish! Observe Othello’s “honest” and +Cassio’s “bold” Iago, and Cassio’s full guileless-hearted wishes for the +safety and love-raptures of Othello and “the divine Desdemona.” And also +note the exquisite circumstance of Cassio’s kissing Iago’s wife, as if it +ought to be impossible that the dullest auditor should not feel Cassio’s +religious love of Desdemona’s purity. Iago’s answers are the sneers which +a proud bad intellect feels towards women, and expresses to a wife. Surely +it ought to be considered a very exalted compliment to women, that all the +sarcasms on them in Shakespeare are put in the mouths of villains. + +_Ib._— + +“_Des._ I am not merry; but I do beguile,” &c. + +The struggle of courtesy in Desdemona to abstract her attention. + +_Ib._— + + + “(_Iago aside_). He takes her by the palm: Ay, well said, whisper; + with as little a web as this, will I ensnare as great a fly as + Cassio. Ay, smile upon her, do,” &c. + + +The importance given to trifles, and made fertile by the villany of the +observer. + +_Ib._ Iago’s dialogue with Roderigo. + +This is the rehearsal on the dupe of the traitor’s intentions on Othello. + +_Ib._ Iago’s soliloquy:— + +“But partly led to diet my revenge, +For that I do suspect the lusty Moor +Hath leap’d into my seat.” + +This thought, originally by Iago’s own confession a mere suspicion, is now +ripening, and gnaws his base nature as his own “poisonous mineral” is +about to gnaw the noble heart of his general. + +_Ib._ sc. 3. Othello’s speech:— + +“I know, Iago, +Thy honesty and love doth mince this matter, +Making it light to Cassio.” + +Honesty and love! Ay, and who but the reader of the play could think +otherwise? + +_Ib._ Iago’s soliloquy:— + +“And what’s he then that says—I play the villain? +When this advice is free I give, and honest, +Provable to thinking, and, indeed, the course +To win the Moor again.” + +He is not, you see, an absolute fiend; or, at least, he wishes to think +himself not so. + +Act iii. sc. 3.— + +“_Des._ Before Æmilia here, +I give thee warrant of thy place.” + +The over-zeal of innocence in Desdemona. + +_Ib._— + +“_Enter Desdemona and Æmilia._ + +_Oth._ If she be false, O, then, heaven mocks itself! +I’ll not believe’t.” + +Divine! The effect of innocence and the better genius! + +Act iv. sc. 3.— + +“_Æmil._ Why, the wrong is but a wrong i’ the world; and +having the world for your labour, ’tis a wrong in your own world, +and you might quickly make it right.” + +Warburton’s note. + +What any other man, who had learning enough, might have quoted as a +playful and witty illustration of his remarks against the Calvinistic +_thesis_, Warburton gravely attributes to Shakespeare as intentional; and +this, too, in the mouth of a lady’s woman! + +Act v. last scene. Othello’s speech:— + +... “Of one, whose hand, +Like the base _Indian_, threw a pearl away +Richer than all his tribe,” &c. + +Theobald’s note from Warburton. + +Thus it is for no-poets to comment on the greatest of poets! To make +Othello say that he, who had killed his wife, was like Herod who killed +Mariamne!—O, how many beauties, in this one line, were impenetrable to the +ever thought-swarming, but idealess, Warburton! Othello wishes to excuse +himself on the score of ignorance, and yet not to excuse himself,—to +excuse himself by accusing. This struggle of feeling is finely conveyed in +the word “base,” which is applied to the rude Indian, not in his own +character, but as the momentary representative of Othello’s. “Indian”—for +I retain the old reading—means American, a savage _in genere_. + +Finally, let me repeat that Othello does not kill Desdemona in jealousy, +but in a conviction forced upon him by the almost superhuman art of Iago, +such a conviction as any man would and must have entertained who had +believed Iago’s honesty as Othello did. We, the audience, know that Iago +is a villain, from the beginning; but in considering the essence of the +Shakespearian Othello, we must perseveringly place ourselves in his +situation, and under his circumstances. Then we shall immediately feel the +fundamental difference between the solemn agony of the noble Moor, and the +wretched fishing jealousies of Leontes, and the morbid suspiciousness of +Leonatus, who is, in other respects, a fine character. Othello had no life +but in Desdemona:—the belief that she, his angel, had fallen from the +heaven of her native innocence, wrought a civil war in his heart. She is +his counterpart; and, like him, is almost sanctified in our eyes by her +absolute unsuspiciousness, and holy entireness of love. As the curtain +drops, which do we pity the most? + +_Extremum hunc_——. There are three powers:—Wit, which discovers partial +likeness hidden in general diversity; subtlety, which discovers the +diversity concealed in general apparent sameness;—and profundity, which +discovers an essential unity under all the semblances of difference. + +Give to a subtle man fancy, and he is a wit; to a deep man imagination, +and he is a philosopher. Add, again, pleasurable sensibility in the +threefold form of sympathy with the interesting in morals, the impressive +in form, and the harmonious in sound,—and you have the poet. + +But combine all,—wit, subtlety, and fancy, with profundity, imagination, +and moral and physical susceptibility of the pleasurable,—and let the +object of action be man universal; and we shall have—O, rash prophecy! +say, rather, we have—a SHAKESPEARE! + + + + + +NOTES ON BEN JONSON. + + +It would be amusing to collect out of our dramatists from Elizabeth to +Charles I. proofs of the manners of the times. One striking symptom of +general coarseness of manners, which may co-exist with great refinement of +morals, as, alas! _vice versa_, is to be seen in the very frequent +allusions to the olfactories with their most disgusting stimulants, and +these, too, in the conversation of virtuous ladies. This would not appear +so strange to one who had been on terms of familiarity with Sicilian and +Italian women of rank: and bad as they may, too many of them, actually be, +yet I doubt not that the extreme grossness of their language has impressed +many an Englishman of the present era with far darker notions than the +same language would have produced in the mind of one of Elizabeth’s or +James’s courtiers. Those who have read Shakespeare only, complain of +occasional grossness in his plays; but compare him with his +contemporaries, and the inevitable conviction, is that of the exquisite +purity of his imagination. + +The observation I have prefixed to the _Volpone_ is the key to the faint +interest which these noble efforts of intellectual power excite, with the +exception of the fragment of the _Sad Shepherd_; because in that piece +only is there any character with whom you can morally sympathise. On the +other hand, _Measure for Measure_ is the only play of Shakespeare’s in +which there are not some one or more characters, generally many, whom you +follow with affectionate feeling. For I confess that Isabella, of all +Shakespeare’s female characters, pleases me the least; and _Measure for +Measure_ is, indeed, the only one of his genuine works, which is painful +to me. + +Let me not conclude this remark, however, without a thankful +acknowledgment to the _manes_ of Ben Jonson, that the more I study his +writings, I the more admire them; and the more my study of him resembles +that of an ancient classic, in the _minutiæ_ of his rhythm, metre, choice +of words, forms of connection, and so forth, the more numerous have the +points of my admiration become. I may add, too, that both the study and +the admiration cannot but be disinterested, for to expect therefrom any +advantage to the present drama would be ignorance. The latter is utterly +heterogeneous from the drama of the Shakespearian age, with a diverse +object and contrary principle. The one was to present a model by imitation +of real life, taking from real life all that in it which it ought to be, +and supplying the rest;—the other is to copy what is, and as it is,—at +best a tolerable but most frequently a blundering, copy. In the former the +difference was an essential element; in the latter an involuntary defect. +We should think it strange, if a tale in dance were announced, and the +actors did not dance at all;—and yet such is modern comedy. + + + + +Whalley’s Preface. + + + “But Jonson was soon sensible, how inconsistent this medley of + names and manners was in reason and nature; and with how little + propriety it could ever have a place in a legitimate and just + picture of real life.” + + +But did Jonson reflect that the very essence of a play, the very language +in which it is written, is a fiction to which all the parts must conform? +Surely, Greek manners in English should be a still grosser improbability +than a Greek name transferred to English manners. Ben’s _personæ_ are too +often not characters, but derangements;—the hopeless patients of a +mad-doctor rather,—exhibitions of folly betraying itself in spite of +exciting reason and prudence. He not poetically, but painfully exaggerates +every trait; that is, not by the drollery of the circumstance, but by the +excess of the originating feeling. + + + “But to this we might reply, that far from being thought to build + his characters upon abstract ideas, he was really accused of + representing particular persons then existing; and that even those + characters which appear to be the most exaggerated, are said to + have had their respective archetypes in nature and life.” + + +This degrades Jonson into a libeller, instead of justifying him as a +dramatic poet. _Non quod verum est, sed quod verisimile_, is the +dramatist’s rule. At all events, the poet who chooses transitory manners, +ought to content himself with transitory praise. If his object be +reputation, he ought not to expect fame. The utmost he can look forwards +to, is to be quoted by, and to enliven the writings of, an antiquarian. +Pistol, Nym, and _id genus omne_, do not please us as characters, but are +endured as fantastic creations, foils to the native wit of Falstaff.—I say +wit emphatically; for this character so often extolled as the masterpiece +of humour, neither contains, nor was meant to contain, any humour at all. + + + + +“Whalley’s ‘Life Of Jonson.’ ” + + + “It is to the honour of Jonson’s judgment, that _the greatest poet + of our nation_ had the same opinion of Donne’s genius and wit; and + hath preserved part of him from perishing, by putting his thoughts + and satire into modern verse.” + + +_Videlicet_ Pope!— + + + “He said further to Drummond, Shakespeare wanted art, and + sometimes sense; for in one of his plays he brought in a number of + men, saying they had suffered shipwreck in Bohemia, where is no + sea near by a hundred miles.” + + +I have often thought Shakespeare justified in this seeming anachronism. In +Pagan times a single name of a German kingdom might well be supposed to +comprise a hundred miles more than at present. The truth is, these notes +of Drummond’s are more disgraceful to himself than to Jonson. It would be +easy to conjecture how grossly Jonson must have been misunderstood, and +what he had said in jest, as of Hippocrates, interpreted in earnest. But +this is characteristic of a Scotchman; he has no notion of a jest, unless +you tell him—“This is a joke!”—and still less of that finer shade of +feeling, the half-and-half, in which Englishmen naturally delight. + + + + +“Every Man Out Of His Humour.” + + +Epilogue.— + +“The throat of war be stopt within her land, +And _turtle-footed_ peace dance fairie rings +About her court.” + +“Turtle-footed” is a pretty word, a very pretty word: pray, what does it +mean? Doves, I presume, are not dancers; and the other sort of turtle, +land or sea, green-fat or hawksbill, would, I should suppose, succeed +better in slow minuets than in the brisk rondillo. In one sense, to be +sure, pigeons and ring-doves could not dance but with _éclat_—_a claw_! + + + + +“Poetaster.” + + +Introduction.— + +“Light! I salute thee, but with wounded nerves, +Wishing thy golden splendour pitchy darkness.” + +There is no reason to suppose Satan’s address to the sun in the _Paradise +Lost_, more than a mere coincidence with these lines; but were it +otherwise, it would be a fine instance what usurious interest a great +genius pays in borrowing. It would not be difficult to give a detailed +psychological proof from these constant outbursts of anxious +self-assertion, that Jonson was not a genius, a creative power. Subtract +that one thing, and you may safely accumulate on his name all other +excellences of a capacious, vigorous, agile, and richly-stored intellect. + +Act i. sc. 1.— + +“_Ovid._ While slaves be false, fathers hard, and bawds be +whorish.” + +The roughness noticed by Theobald and Whalley, may be cured by a simple +transposition:— + +“While fathers hard, slaves false, and bawds be whorish.” + +Act. iv. sc. 3— + +“_Crisp._ O—oblatrant—furibund—fatuate—strenuous. +O—conscious.” + +It would form an interesting essay, or rather series of essays, in a +periodical work, were all the attempts to ridicule new phrases brought +together, the proportion observed of words ridiculed which have been +adopted, and are now common, such as _strenuous_, _conscious_, &c., and a +trial made how far any grounds can be detected, so that one might +determine beforehand whether a word was invented under the conditions of +assimilability to our language or not. Thus much is certain, that the +ridiculers were as often wrong as right; and Shakespeare himself could not +prevent the naturalisation of _accommodation_, _remuneration_, &c.; or +Swift the gross abuse even of the word _idea_. + + + + +“Fall Of Sejanus.” + + +Act i.— + +“_Arruntius._ The name Tiberius, +I hope, will keep, howe’er he hath foregone +The dignity and power. + +_Silius._ Sure, while he lives. + +_Arr._ And dead, it comes to Drusus. Should he fail, +To the brave issue of Germanicus; +And they are three: too many (ha?) for him +To have a plot upon? + +_Sil._ I do not know +The heart of his designs; but, sure, their face +Looks farther than the present. + +_Arr._ By the gods, +If I could guess he had but such a thought, +My sword should cleave him down,” &c. + +The anachronic mixture in this Arruntius of the Roman republican, to whom +Tiberius must have appeared as much a tyrant as Sejanus, with his +James-and-Charles-the-First zeal for legitimacy of descent in this +passage, is amusing. Of our great names Milton was, I think, the first who +could properly be called a republican. My recollections of Buchanan’s +works are too faint to enable me to judge whether the historian is not a +fair exception. + +Act ii. Speech of Sejanus:— + +“Adultery! it is the lightest ill +I will commit. A race of wicked acts +Shall flow out of my anger, and o’erspread +The world’s wide face, which no posterity +Shall e’er approve, nor yet keep silent,” &c. + +The more we reflect and examine, examine and reflect, the more astonished +shall we be at the immense superiority of Shakespeare over his +contemporaries;—and yet what contemporaries!—giant minds indeed! Think of +Jonson’s erudition, and the force of learned authority in that age; and +yet, in no genuine part of Shakespeare’s works is there to be found such +an absurd rant and ventriloquism as this, and too, too many other passages +ferruminated by Jonson from Seneca’s tragedies, and the writings of the +later Romans. I call it ventriloquism, because Sejanus is a puppet, out of +which the poet makes his own voice appear to come. + +Act v. Scene of the sacrifice to Fortune. + +This scene is unspeakably irrational. To believe, and yet to scoff at, a +present miracle is little less than impossible. Sejanus should have been +made to suspect priestcraft and a secret conspiracy against him. + + + + +“Volpone.” + + +This admirable, indeed, but yet more wonderful than admirable, play is, +from the fertility and vigour of invention, character, language, and +sentiment, the strongest proof how impossible it is to keep up any +pleasurable interest in a tale, in which there is no goodness of heart in +any of the prominent characters. After the third act, this play becomes +not a dead, but a painful, weight on the feelings. _Zeluco_ is an instance +of the same truth. Bonario and Celia should have been made in some way or +other principals in the plot; which they might have been, and the objects +of interest, without having been made characters. In novels, the person in +whose fate you are most interested, is often the least marked character of +the whole. If it were possible to lessen the paramountcy of Volpone +himself, a most delightful comedy might be produced, by making Celia the +ward or niece of Corvino, instead of his wife, and Bonario her lover. + + + + +“Apicæne.” + + +This is to my feelings the most entertaining of old Ben’s comedies, and, +more than any other, would admit of being brought out anew, if under the +management of a judicious and stage-understanding playwright; and an +actor, who had studied Morose, might make his fortune. + +Act i. sc. 1. Clerimont’s speech:— + +“He would have hang’d a pewterer’s ’prentice once upon a Shrove +Tuesday’s riot, for being of that trade, when the rest were _quiet_.” + + + “The old copies read _quit_,—_i.e._, discharged from working, and + gone to divert themselves.”—Whalley’s note. + + +It should be “quit” no doubt, but not meaning “discharged from working,” +&c.—but quit, that is, acquitted. The pewterer was at his holiday +diversion as well as the other apprentices, and they as forward in the +riot as he. But he alone was punished under pretext of the riot, but in +fact for his trade. + +Act ii. sc. 1.— + + + “_Morose._ Cannot I, yet, find out a more compendious method than + by this _trunk_, to save my servants the labour of speech, and + mine ears the discord of sounds?” + + +What does “trunk” mean here, and in the first scene of the first act? Is +it a large ear-trumpet?—or rather a tube, such as passes from parlour to +kitchen, instead of a bell? + +Whalley’s note at the end:— + + + “Some critics of the last age imagined the character of Morose to + be wholly out of nature. But to vindicate our poet, Mr. Dryden + tells us from tradition, and we may venture to take his word, that + Jonson was really acquainted with a person of this whimsical turn + of mind: and as humour is a personal quality, the poet is + acquitted from the charge of exhibiting a monster, or an + extravagant unnatural _caricatura_.” + + +If Dryden had not made all additional proof superfluous by his own plays, +this very vindication would evince that he had formed a false and vulgar +conception of the nature and conditions of drama and dramatic personation. +Ben Jonson would himself have rejected such a plea:— + +“For he knew, poet never credit gain’d +By writing _truths_, but things, like truths, well feign’d.” + +By “truths” he means “facts.” Caricatures are not less so because they are +found existing in real life. Comedy demands characters, and leaves +caricatures to farce. The safest and the truest defence of old Ben would +be to call the _Epicœne_ the best of farces. The defect in Morose, as in +other of Jonson’s _dramatis personæ_, lies in this;—that the accident is +not a prominence growing out of, and nourished by, the character which +still circulates in it; but that the character, such as it is, rises out +of, or, rather, consists in, the accident. Shakespeare’s comic personages +have exquisitely characteristic features; however awry, disproportionate, +and laughable they may be, still, like Bardolph’s nose, they are features. +But Jonson’s are either a man with a huge wen, having a circulation of its +own, and which we might conceive amputated, and the patient thereby losing +all his character; or they are mere wens themselves instead of men,—wens +personified, or with eyes, nose, and mouth cut out, mandrake-fashion. + +_Nota bene._—All the above, and much more, will have justly been said, if, +and whenever, the drama of Jonson is brought into comparisons of rivalry +with the Shakespearian. But this should not be. Let its inferiority to the +Shakespearian be at once fairly owned,—but at the same time as the +inferiority of an altogether different _genius_ of the drama. On this +ground, old Ben would still maintain his proud height. He, no less than +Shakespeare stands on the summit of his hill, and looks round him like a +master,—though his be Lattrig and Shakespeare’s Skiddaw. + + + + +“The Alchemist.” + + +Act i. sc. 2. Face’s speech:— + +“Will take his oath o’ the Greek _Xenophon_, +If need be, in his pocket.” + +Another reading is “Testament.” + +Probably, the meaning is—that intending to give false evidence, he carried +a Greek _Xenophon_ to pass it off for a Greek Testament, and so avoid +perjury—as the Irish do, by contriving to kiss their thumb-nails instead +of the book. + +Act ii. sc. 2. Mammon’s speech:— + +“I will have all my beds blown up; not stuft: +Down is too hard.” + +Thus the air-cushions, though perhaps only lately brought into use, were +invented in idea in the seventeenth century! + + + + +“Catiline’s Conspiracy.” + + +A fondness for judging one work by comparison with others, perhaps +altogether of a different class, argues a vulgar taste. Yet it is chiefly +on this principle that the _Catiline_ has been rated so low. Take it and +_Sejanus_, as compositions of a particular kind, namely, as a mode of +relating great historical events in the liveliest and most interesting +manner, and I cannot help wishing that we had whole volumes of such plays. +We might as rationally expect the excitement of the _Vicar of Wakefield_ +from Goldsmith’s _History of England_, as that of _Lear_, _Othello_, &c., +from the _Sejanus_ or _Catiline_. + +Act i. sc. 4.— + +“_Cat._ Sirrah, what ail you? + + (_He spies one of his boys not answer._) + +_Pag._ Nothing. + +_Best._ Somewhat modest. + +_Cat._ Slave, I will strike your soul out with my foot,” &c. + +This is either an unintelligible, or, in every sense, a most unnatural, +passage,—improbable, if not impossible, at the moment of signing and +swearing such a conspiracy, to the most libidinous satyr. The very +presence of the boys is an outrage to probability. I suspect that these +lines down to the words “throat opens,” should be removed back so as to +follow the words “on this part of the house,” in the speech of Catiline +soon after the entry of the conspirators. A total erasure, however, would +be the best, or, rather, the only possible, amendment. + +Act ii. sc. 2. Sempronia’s speech:— + + ...“He is but a new fellow, +An _inmate_ here in Rome, as Catiline calls him.” + +A “lodger” would have been a happier imitation of the _inquilinus_ of +Sallust. + +Act iv. sc. 6. Speech of Cethegus:— + +“Can these or such be any aids to us,” &c. + +What a strange notion Ben must have formed of a determined, remorseless, +all-daring, foolhardiness, to have represented it in such a mouthing +Tamburlane, and bombastic tonguebully as this Cethegus of his! + + + + +“Bartholomew Fair.” + + +Induction. Scrivener’s speech:— + +“If there be never a _servant-monster_ in the Fair, who can help it +he says, nor a nest of antiques?” + +The best excuse that can be made for Jonson, and in a somewhat less degree +for Beaumont and Fletcher, in respect of these base and silly sneers at +Shakespeare is, that his plays were present to men’s minds chiefly as +acted. They had not a neat edition of them, as we have, so as, by +comparing the one with the other, to form a just notion of the mighty mind +that produced the whole. At all events, and in every point of view, Jonson +stands far higher in a moral light than Beaumont and Fletcher. He was a +fair contemporary, and in his way, and as far as Shakespeare is concerned, +an original. But Beaumont and Fletcher were always imitators of, and often +borrowers from him, and yet sneer at him with a spite far more malignant +than Jonson, who, besides, has made noble compensation by his praises. + +Act ii. sc. 3.— + +“_Just._ I mean a child of the horn-thumb, a babe _of booty_, boy, a +cut purse.” + +Does not this confirm, what the passage itself cannot but suggest, the +propriety of substituting “booty” for “beauty” in Falstaff’s speech, +_Henry IV._ part i. act i. sc. 2. “Let not us, &c.?” + +It is not often that old Ben condescends to imitate a modern author; but +Master Dan. Knockhum Jordan, and his vapours are manifest reflexes of Nym +and Pistol. + +_Ib._ sc. 5.— + +“_Quarl._ She’ll make excellent geer for the coachmakers here in +Smithfield, to anoint wheels and axletrees with.” + +Good! but yet it falls short of the speech of a Mr. Johnes, M.P., in the +Common Council, on the invasion intended by Buonaparte:—“Houses +plundered—then burnt;—sons conscribed—wives and daughters ravished,” &c., +&c.—“But as for you, you luxurious Aldermen! with your fat will he grease +the wheels of his triumphant chariot!” + +_Ib._ sc. 6.— + +“_Cok._ Avoid in your satin doublet, Numps.” + +This reminds me of Shakespeare’s “Aroint thee, witch!” I find in several +books of that age the words _aloigne_ and _eloigne_—that is,—“keep your +distance!” or “off with you!” Perhaps “aroint” was a corruption of +“aloigne” by the vulgar. The common etymology from _ronger_ to gnaw seems +unsatisfactory. + +Act iii. sc. 4.— + +“_Quarl._ How now, Numps! almost tired in your protectorship? +overparted, overparted?” + +An odd sort of propheticality in this Numps and old Noll! + +_Ib._ sc. 6. Knockhum’s speech:— + +“He eats with his eyes, as well as his teeth.” + +A good motto for the Parson in Hogarth’s _Election Dinner_,—who shows how +easily he might be reconciled to the Church of Rome, for he worships what +he eats. + +Act v. sc. 5.— + +“_Pup._ _Di._ It is not profane. + +_Lan._ It is not profane, he says. + +_Boy._ It is profane. + +_Pup._ It is not profane. + +_Boy._ It is profane. + +_Pup._ It is not profane. + +_Lan._ Well said, confute him with Not, still.” + +An imitation of the quarrel between Bacchus and the Frogs in +Aristophanes:— + +“Χορός. +ἀλλὰ μὴν κεκραξόμεσθά γ’, +ὁπόσον ἡ φάρυνξ ἂν ἡμῶν +χανδάνη δι’ ἡμέρας, +βρεκεκεκὲξ, κοὰξ, κοὰξ. + +Διόνυσος. +τούτω γὰρ οὐ νικήσετε. + +Χορός. +οὐδὲ μὴν ἡμᾶς σὺ τάντως. + +Διόνυσος. +οὐδὲ μὴν ὑμεῖς γε δή μ’ οὐδέποτε.” + + + + +“The Devil Is An Ass.” + + +Act i. sc. 1.— + +“_Pug._ Why any: Fraud, +Or Covetousness, or lady Vanity, +Or old Iniquity, _I’ll call him hither_.” + + + “The words in italics should probably be given to the + master-devil, Satan.”—Whalley’s note. + + +That is, against all probability, and with a (for Jonson) impossible +violation of character. The words plainly belong to Pug, and mark at once +his simpleness and his impatience. + +_Ib._ sc. 4. Fitz-dottrel’s soliloquy. + +Compare this exquisite piece of sense, satire, and sound philosophy in +1616 with Sir M. Hale’s speech from the bench in a trial of a witch many +years afterwards. + +Act ii. sc. 1. Meercraft’s speech:— + +“Sir, money’s a whore, a bawd, a drudge.” + +I doubt not that “money” was the first word of the line, and has dropped +out:— + +“Money! Sir, money’s a,” &c. + + + + +“The Staple Of News.” + + +Act iv. sc. 3. Pecunia’s speech:— + +“No, he would ha’ done, +That lay not in his power: he had the use +Of your bodies, Band and Wax, and sometimes Statute’s.” + +Read (1815)— + + ... “he had the use of +Your bodies,” &c. + +Now, however, I doubt the legitimacy of my transposition of the “of” from +the beginning of this latter line to the end of the one preceding;—for +though it facilitates the metre and reading of the latter line, and is +frequent in Massinger, this disjunction of the preposition from its case +seems to have been disallowed by Jonson. Perhaps the better reading is— + +“O’ your bodies,” &c.— + +the two syllables being slurred into one, or rather snatched, or sucked, +up into the emphasised “your.” In all points of view, therefore, Ben’s +judgment is just; for in this way, the line cannot be read, as metre, +without that strong and quick emphasis on “your” which the sense +requires;—and had not the sense required an emphasis on “your,” the +_tmesis_ of the sign of its cases “of,” “to,” &c., would destroy almost +all boundary between the dramatic verse and prose in comedy:—a lesson not +to be rash in conjectural amendments.—1818. + +_Ib._ sc. 4.— + +“_P. jun._ I love all men of virtue, _frommy_ Princess.” + +“Frommy,” _fromme_—pious, dutiful, &c. + +Act v. sc. 4. Penny-boy, sen., and Porter. + +I dare not, will not, think that honest Ben had _Lear_ in his mind in this +mock mad scene. + + + + +“The New Inn.” + + +Act i. sc. 1. Host’s speech:— + +“A heavy purse, and then two turtles, _makes_.” + +“Makes,” frequent in old books, and even now used in some counties for +mates, or pairs. + +_Ib._ sc. 3. Host’s speech:— + + ...“And for a leap +Of the vaulting horse, to _play_ the vaulting _house_.” + +Instead of reading with Whalley “ply” for “play,” I would suggest “horse” +for “house.” The meaning would then be obvious and pertinent. The punlet, +or pun-maggot, or pun intentional, “horse and house,” is below Jonson. The +_jeu-de-mots_ just below— + + ...“Read a lecture +Upon _Aquinas_ at St. Thomas à _Water_ings”— + +had a learned smack in it to season its insipidity. + +_Ib._ sc. 6. Lovel’s speech:— + +“Then shower’d his bounties on me, like the Hours, +That open-handed sit upon the clouds, +And press the liberality of heaven +Down to the laps of thankful men!” + +Like many other similar passages in Jonson, this is εῖδος χαλεπὸν ἰδεῖν—a +sight which it is difficult to make one’s self see,—a picture my fancy +cannot copy detached from the words. + +Act ii. sc. 5. Though it was hard upon old Ben, yet Felton, it must be +confessed, was in the right in considering the Fly, Tipto, Bat Burst, &c., +of this play mere dotages. Such a scene as this was enough to damn a new +play; and Nick Stuff is worse still,—most abominable stuff indeed! + +Act iii. sc. 2. Lovel’s speech:— + +“So knowledge first begets benevolence, +Benevolence breeds friendship, friendship love.” + +Jonson has elsewhere proceeded thus far; but the part most difficult and +delicate, yet, perhaps, not the least capable of being both morally and +poetically treated, is the union itself, and what, even in this life, it +can be. + + + + + +NOTES ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. + + +SEWARD’S Preface. 1750.— + + + “The _King and No King_, too, is extremely spirited in all its + characters; Arbaces holds up a mirror to all men of virtuous + principles but violent passions. Hence he is, as it were, at once + magnanimity and pride, patience and fury, gentleness and rigour, + chastity and incest, and is one of the finest mixtures of virtues + and vices that any poet has drawn,” &c. + + +These are among the endless instances of the abject state to which +psychology had sunk from the reign of Charles I. to the middle of the +present reign of George III.; and even now it is but just awaking. + +_Ib._ Seward’s comparison of Julia’s speech in the _Two Gentlemen of +Verona_, act iv. last scene— + +“Madam, ’twas Ariadne passioning,” &c. + +with Aspatia’s speech in the _Maid’s Tragedy_— + +“I stand upon the sea-beach now,” &c.—Act ii.— + +and preference of the latter. + +It is strange to take an incidental passage of one writer, intended only +for a subordinate part, and compare it with the same thought in another +writer, who had chosen it for a prominent and principal figure. + +_Ib._ Seward’s preference of Alphonso’s poisoning in _A Wife for a Month_, +act i. sc. 1, to the passage in _King John_, act v. sc. 7:— + +“Poison’d, ill fare! dead, forsook, cast off!” + +Mr. Seward! Mr. Seward! you may be, and I trust you are, an angel; but you +were an ass. + +_Ib._— + + + “Every reader of _taste_ will see how superior this is to the + quotation from Shakespeare.” + + +Of what taste? + +_Ib._ Seward’s classification of the plays. + +Surely _Monsieur Thomas_, the _Chances_, _Beggar’s Bush_, and the +_Pilgrim_, should have been placed in the very first class! But the whole +attempt ends in a woful failure. + + + + +Harris’s Commendatory Poem On Fletcher. + + +“I’d have a state of wit convok’d, which hath +A _power_ to take up on common faith:”— + +This is an instance of that modifying of quantity by emphasis, without +which our elder poets cannot be scanned. “Power,” here, instead of being +one long syllable—pow’r—must be sounded, not indeed as a spondee, nor yet +as a trochee; but as - u u;—the first syllable is 1-1/4. + +We can, indeed, never expect an authentic edition of our elder dramatic +poets (for in those times a drama was a poem), until some man undertakes +the work, who has studied the philosophy of metre. This has been found the +main torch of sound restoration in the Greek dramatists by Bentley, +Porson, and their followers;—how much more, then, in writers in our own +language! It is true that quantity, an almost iron law with the Greek, is +in English rather a subject for a peculiarly fine ear, than any law or +even rule; but, then, instead of it, we have, first, accent; secondly, +emphasis; and lastly, retardation, and acceleration of the times of +syllables according to the meaning of the words, the passion that +accompanies them, and even the character of the person that uses them. +With due attention to these,—above all, to that, which requires the most +attention and the finest taste, the character, Massinger, for example, +might be reduced to a rich and yet regular metre. But then the _regulæ_ +must be first known; though I will venture to say, that he who does not +find a line (not corrupted) of Massinger’s flow to the time total of a +trimeter catalectic iambic verse, has not read it aright. But by virtue of +the last principle—the retardation of acceleration of time—we have the +proceleusmatic foot u u u u, and the _dispondæus_ - - - -, not to mention +the _choriambus_, the ionics, pæons, and epitrites. Since Dryden, the +metre of our poets leads to the sense; in our elder and more genuine +bards, the sense, including the passion, leads to the metre. Read even +Donne’s satires as he meant them to be read, and as the sense and passion +demand, and you will find in the lines a manly harmony. + + + + +Life Of Fletcher In Stockdale’s Edition, 1811. + + + “In general their plots are more regular than Shakespeare’s.” + + +This is true, if true at all, only before a court of criticism, which +judges one scheme by the laws of another and a diverse one. Shakespeare’s +plots have their own laws of _regulæ_, and according to these they are +regular. + + + + +“Maid’s Tragedy.” + + +Act i. The metrical arrangement is most slovenly throughout. + +“_Strat._ As well as masque can be,” &c.— + +and all that follows to “who is return’d”—is plainly blank verse, and +falls easily into it. + +_Ib._ Speech of Melantius:— + +“These soft and silken wars are not for me: +The music must be shrill, and all confus’d, +That stirs my blood; and then I dance with arms.” + +What strange self-trumpeters and tongue-bullies all the brave soldiers of +Beaumont and Fletcher are! Yet I am inclined to think it was the fashion +of the age from the Soldier’s speech in the Counter Scuffle; and deeper +than the fashion B. and F. did not fashion. + +_Ib._ Speech of Lysippus:— + +“Yes, but this lady +Walks discontented, with her wat’ry eyes +Bent on the earth,” &c. + +Opulent as Shakespeare was, and of his opulence prodigal, he yet would not +have put this exquisite piece of poetry in the mouth of a no-character, or +as addressed to a Melantius. I wish that B. and F. had written poems +instead of tragedies. + +_Ib._— + +“_Mel._ I might run fiercely, not more hastily, +Upon my foe.” + +Read + +“I mĭght rūn _mŏre_ fiērcelȳ, not more hastily.” + +_Ib._ Speech of Calianax:— + + + “Office! I would I could put it off! I am sure I sweat quite + through my office!” + + +The syllable _off_ reminds the testy statesman of his robe, and he carries +on the image. + +_Ib._ Speech of Melantius:— + + ... “Would that blood, +That sea of blood, that I have lost in fight,” &c. + +All B. and F.’s generals are pugilists or cudgel-fighters, that boast of +their bottom and of the _claret_ they have shed. + +_Ib._ The Masque;—Cinthia’s speech:— + +“But I will give a greater state and glory, +And raise to time a _noble_ memory +Of what these lovers are.” + +I suspect that “nobler,” pronounced as “nobiler” - u -, was the poet’s +word, and that the accent is to be placed on the penultimate of “memory.” +As to the passage— + +“Yet, while our reign lasts, let us stretch our power,” &c.— + +removed from the text of Cinthia’s speech, by these foolish editors as +unworthy of B. and F.—the first eight lines are not worse, and the last +couplet incomparably better, than the stanza retained. + +Act ii. Amintor’s speech:— + +“Oh, thou hast nam’d a word, that wipes away +All thoughts revengeful! In that sacred name, +‘The king,’ there lies a terror.” + +It is worth noticing that of the three greatest tragedians, Massinger was +a democrat, Beaumont and Fletcher the most servile _jure divino_ +royalists, and Shakespeare a philosopher;—if aught personal, an +aristocrat. + + + + +“A King And No King.” + + +Act iv. Speech of Tigranes:— + +“She, that forgat the greatness of her grief +And miseries, that must follow such mad passions, +Endless and wild as women!” &c. + +Seward’s note and suggestion of “in.” + +It would be amusing to learn from some existing friend of Mr. Seward what +he meant, or rather dreamed, in this note. It is certainly a difficult +passage, of which there are two solutions;—one, that the writer was +somewhat more injudicious than usual;—the other, that he was very, very +much more profound and Shakespearian than usual. Seward’s emendation, at +all events, is right and obvious. Were it a passage of Shakespeare, I +should not hesitate to interpret it as characteristic of Tigranes’ state +of mind, disliking the very virtues, and therefore half-consciously +representing them as mere products of the violence of the sex in general +in all their whims, and yet forced to admire, and to feel and to express +gratitude for, the exertion in his own instance. The inconsistency of the +passage would be the consistency of the author. But this is above Beaumont +and Fletcher. + + + + +“The Scornful Lady.” + + +Act ii. Sir Roger’s speech:— + + + “Did I for this consume my _quarters_ in meditations, vows, and + woo’d her in heroical epistles? Did I expound the _Owl_, and + undertake, with labour and expense, the recollection of those + thousand pieces, consum’d in cellars and tobacco-shops, of that + our honour’d Englishman, Nic. Broughton?” &c. + + +Strange, that neither Mr. Theobald nor Mr. Seward should have seen that +this mock heroic speech is in full-mouthed blank verse! Had they seen +this, they would have seen that “quarters” is a substitution of the +players for “quires” or “squares,” (that is) of paper:— + +“Consume my quires in meditations, vows, +And woo’d her in heroical epistles.” + +They ought, likewise, to have seen that the abbreviated “Ni. Br.” of the +text was properly “Mi. Dr.”—and that Michael Drayton, not Nicholas +Broughton, is here ridiculed for his poem _The Owl_ and his _Heroical +Epistles_. + +_Ib._ Speech of Younger Loveless:— + +“Fill him some wine. Thou dost not see me mov’d,” &c. + +These Editors ought to have learnt, that scarce an instance occurs in B. +and F. of a long speech not in metre. This is plain staring blank verse. + + + + +“The Custom Of The Country.” + + +I cannot but think that in a country conquered by a nobler race than the +natives, and in which the latter became villeins and bondsmen, this +custom, _lex merchetæ_, may have been introduced for wise purposes,—as of +improving the breed, lessening the antipathy of different races, and +producing a new bond of relationship between the lord and the tenant, who, +as the eldest born, would at least have a chance of being, and a +probability of being thought, the lord’s child. In the West Indies it +cannot have these effects, because the mulatto is marked by nature +different from the father, and because there is no bond, no law, no +custom, but of mere debauchery.—1815. + +Act i. sc. 1. Rutilio’s speech:— + +“Yet if you play not fair play,” &c. + +Evidently to be transposed, and read thus:— + +“Yet if you play not fair, above-board too, +I’ll tell you what— +I’ve a foolish engine here:—I say no more— +But if your Honour’s guts are not enchanted.” + +Licentious as the comic metre of B. and F. is,—a far more lawless, and yet +far less happy, imitation of the rhythm of animated talk in real life than +Massinger’s—still it is made worse than it really is by ignorance of the +halves, thirds, and two-thirds of a line which B. and F. adopted from the +Italian and Spanish dramatists. Thus, in Rutilio’s speech:— + +“Though I confess +Any man would desire to have her, and by any means,” &c. + +Correct the whole passage,— + +“Though I confess +Any man would +Desire to have her, and by any means, +At any rate too, yet this common hangman +That hath whipt off a thousănd măids heads already— +That he should glean the harvest, sticks in my stomach!” + +In all comic metres the gulping of short syllables, and the abbreviation +of syllables ordinarily long by the rapid pronunciation of eagerness and +vehemence, are not so much a license as a law,—a faithful copy of nature, +and let them be read characteristically, the times will be found nearly +equal. Thus, the three words marked above make a _choriambus_ -- u u, or +perhaps a _pæon primus_ - u u u; a dactyl, by virtue of comic rapidity, +being only equal to an iambus when distinctly pronounced. I have no doubt +that all B. and F.’s works might be safely corrected by attention to this +rule, and that the editor is entitled to transpositions of all kinds, and +to not a few omissions. For the rule of the metre once lost—what was to +restrain the actors from interpolation? + + + + +“The Elder Brother.” + + +Act i. sc. 2. Charles’s speech:— + + ... “For what concerns tillage, +Who better can deliver it than Virgil +In his Georgicks? and to cure your herds, +His Bucolicks is a master-piece.” + +Fletcher was too good a scholar to fall into so gross a blunder, as +Messrs. Sympson and Colman suppose. I read the passage thus:— + + ... “For what concerns tillage, +Who better can deliver it than Virgil, +In his Georgicks, _or_ to cure your herds +(His Bucolicks are a master-piece); but when,” &c. + +Jealous of Virgil’s honour, he is afraid lest, by referring to the +_Georgics_ alone, he might be understood as undervaluing the preceding +work. “Not that I do not admire the _Bucolics_ too, in their way.—But +when,” &c. + +Act iii. sc. 3. Charles’s speech:— + + ... “She has a face looks like a _story_; +The _story_ of the heavens looks very like her.” + +Seward reads “glory;” and Theobald quotes from Philaster:— + +“That reads the story of a woman’s face.” + +I can make sense of this passage as little as Mr. Seward;—the passage from +Philaster is nothing to the purpose. Instead of “a story,” I have +sometimes thought of proposing “Astræa.” + +_Ib._ Angellina’s speech:— + + ... “You’re old and dim, Sir, +And the shadow of the earth eclips’d your judgment.” + +Inappropriate to Angellina, but one of the finest lines in our language. + +Act iv. sc. 3. Charles’s speech:— + +“And lets the serious part of life run by +As thin neglected sand, whiteness of name. +You must be mine,” &c. + +Seward’s note, and reading:— + + ... “Whiteness of name, +You must be mine!” + +Nonsense! “Whiteness of name” is in apposition to “the serious part of +life,” and means a deservedly pure reputation. The following line—“You +_must_ be mine!” means—“Though I do not enjoy you to-day, I shall +hereafter, and without reproach.” + + + + +“The Spanish Curate.” + + +Act iv. sc. 7. Amaranta’s speech:— + +“And still I push’d him on, as he had been _coming_.” + +Perhaps the true word is “conning,”—that is, learning, or reading, and +therefore inattentive. + + + + +“Wit Without Money.” + + +Act i. Valentine’s speech:— + +“One without substance,” &c. + +The present text, and that proposed by Seward, are equally vile. I have +endeavoured to make the lines sense, though the whole is, I suspect, +incurable except by bold conjectural reformation. I would read thus:— + +“One without substance of herself, that’s woman; +Without the pleasure of her life, that’s wanton; +Tho’ she be young, forgetting it; tho’ fair, +Making her glass the eyes of honest men, +Not her own admiration.” + +“That’s wanton,” or, “that is to say, wantonness.” + +Act ii. Valentine’s speech:— + +“Of half-a crown a week for pins and puppets.” + + + “As there is a syllable wanting in the measure here.”—Seward. + + +A syllable wanting! Had this Seward neither ears nor fingers? The line is +a more than usually regular iambic hendecasyllable. + +_Ib._— + +“With one man satisfied, with one rein guided; +With one faith, one content, one bed; +_Aged_, she makes the wife, preserves the fame and issue; +A widow is,” &c. + +Is “apaid”—contented—too obsolete for B. and F.? If not, we might read it +thus:— + +“Content with one faith, with one bed apaid, +She makes the wife, preserves the fame and issue;”— + +Or, it may be,— + +... “with one breed apaid”— + +that is, satisfied with one set of children, in opposition to,— + +“A widow is a Christmas-box,” &c. + +Colman’s note on Seward’s attempt to put this play into metre. + +The editors, and their contemporaries in general, were ignorant of any but +the regular iambic verse. A study of the Aristophanic and Plautine metres +would have enabled them to reduce B. and F. throughout into metre, except +where prose is really intended. + + + + +“The Humorous Lieutenant.” + + +Act i. sc. 1. Second Ambassador’s speech:— + +... “When your angers, +_Like_ so many brother billows, rose together, +And, curling up _your_ foaming crests, defied,” &c. + +This worse than superfluous “like” is very like an interpolation of some +matter of fact critic—all _pus, prose atque venenum_. The “your” in the +next line, instead of “their,” is likewise yours, Mr. Critic! + +Act ii. sc. 1. Timon’s speech:— + +“Another of a new _way_ will be look’d at.” + + + “We must suspect the poets wrote, ‘of a new _day_.’ So immediately + after, + + ... Time may + For all his wisdom, yet give us a day.” + + Seward’s Note. + + +For this very reason I more than suspect the contrary. + +_Ib._ sc. 3. Speech of Leucippe:— + +“I’ll put her into action for a _wastcoat_.” + +What we call a riding-habit,—some mannish dress. + + + + +“The Mad Lover.” + + +Act iv. Masque of beasts:— + + ... “This goodly tree, +An usher that still grew before his lady, +Wither’d at root: this, for he could not woo, +A grumbling lawyer:” &c. + +Here must have been omitted a line rhyming to “tree;” and the words of the +next line have been transposed:— + + ... “This goodly tree, +_Which leafless, and obscur’d with moss you see_, +An usher this, that ’fore his lady grew, +Wither’d at root: this, for he could not woo,” &c. + + + + +“The Loyal Subject.” + + +It is well worthy of notice, and yet has not been, I believe, noticed +hitherto, what a marked difference there exists in the dramatic writers of +the Elizabetho-Jacobæan age—(Mercy on me! what a phrase for “the writers +during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I.!”)—in respect of their +political opinions. Shakespeare, in this, as in all other things, himself +and alone, gives the permanent politics of human nature, and the only +predilection which appears, shows itself in his contempt of mobs and the +populacy. Massinger is a decided Whig;—Beaumont and Fletcher high-flying, +passive-obedience, Tories. The Spanish dramatists furnished them with +this, as with many other ingredients. By the by, an accurate and familiar +acquaintance with all the productions of the Spanish stage previously to +1620, is an indispensable qualification for an editor of B. and F.;—and +with this qualification a most interesting and instructive edition might +be given. This edition of Colman’s (Stockdale, 1811) is below criticism. + +In metre, B. and F. are inferior to Shakespeare, on the one hand, as +expressing the poetic part of the drama, and to Massinger, on the other, +in the art of reconciling metre with the natural rhythm of +conversation,—in which, indeed, Massinger is unrivalled. Read him aright, +and measure by time, not syllables, and no lines can be more +legitimate,—none in which the substitution of equipollent feet, and the +modifications by emphasis, are managed with such exquisite judgment. B. +and F. are fond of the twelve syllable (not Alexandrine) line, as:— + +“Too many fears ’tis thought too: and to nourish those.” + +This has often a good effect, and is one of the varieties most common in +Shakespeare. + + + + +“Rule A Wife And Have A Wife.” + + +Act iii. Old Woman’s speech:— + + ... “I fear he will knock my +Brains out for lying.” + +Mr. Seward discards the words “for lying,” because “most of the things +spoke of Estifania are true, with only a little exaggeration, and because +they destroy all appearance of measure.”—Colman’s note. + +Mr. Seward had his brains out. The humour lies in Estifania’s having +ordered the Old Woman to tell these tales of her; for though an intriguer, +she is not represented as other than chaste; and as to the metre, it is +perfectly correct. + +_Ib._— + +“_Marg._ As you love me, give way. + +_Leon._ It shall be better, I will give none, madam,” &c. + +The meaning is:—“It shall be a better way, first;—as it is, I will not +give it, or any that you in your present mood would wish.” + + + + +“The Laws Of Candy.” + + +Act i. Speech of Melitus:— + +“Whose insolence and never yet match’d pride +Can by no character be well express’d, +But in her only name, the proud Erota.” + +Colman’s note. + +The poet intended no allusion to the word “Erota” itself; but says that +her very name, “the proud Erota,” became a character and adage;—as we say, +a Quixote or a Brutus: so to say an “Erota,” expressed female pride and +insolence of beauty. + +_Ib._ Speech of Antinous:— + +“Of my peculiar honours, not deriv’d +From _successary_, but purchas’d with my blood.” + +The poet doubtless wrote “successry,” which, though not adopted in our +language, would be, on many occasions, as here, a much more significant +phrase than ancestry. + + + + +“The Little French Lawyer.” + + +Act i. sc. 1. Dinant’s speech:— + +“Are you become a patron too? ’Tis a new one, +No more on’t,” &c. + +Seward reads:— + +“Are you become a patron too? _How long_ +_Have you been conning this speech?_ ’Tis a new one,” &c. + +If conjectural emendation like this be allowed, we might venture to read:— + +“Are you become a patron _to a new tune_?” + +or,— + +“Are you become a patron? ’Tis a new _tune_.” + +_Ib._— + +“_Din._ Thou wouldst not willingly +Live a protested coward, or be call’d one? + +_Cler._ Words are but words. + +_Din._ Nor wouldst thou take a blow?” + +Seward’s note. + +O miserable! Dinant sees through Cleremont’s gravity, and the actor is to +explain it. “Words are but words,” is the last struggle of affected +morality. + + + + +“Valentinian.” + + +Act i. sc. 3.— + +It is a real trial of charity to read this scene with tolerable temper +towards Fletcher. So very slavish—so reptile—are the feelings and +sentiments represented as duties. And yet, remember, he was a bishop’s +son, and the duty to God was the supposed basis. + +Personals, including body, house, home, and religion;—property, +subordination, and inter-community;—these are the fundamentals of society. +I mean here, religion negatively taken,—so that the person be not +compelled to do or utter, in relation of the soul to God, what would be, +in that person, a lie;—such as to force a man to go to church, or to swear +that he believes what he does not believe. Religion, positively taken, may +be a great and useful privilege, but cannot be a right,—were it for this +only, that it cannot be pre-defined. The ground of this distinction +between negative and positive religion, as a social right, is plain. No +one of my fellow-citizens is encroached on by my not declaring to him what +I believe respecting the super-sensual; but should every man be entitled +to preach against the preacher, who could hear any preacher? Now, it is +different in respect of loyalty. There we have positive rights, but not +negative rights;—for every pretended negative would be in effect a +positive;—as if a soldier had a right to keep to himself whether he would, +or would not, fight. Now, no one of these fundamentals can be rightfully +attacked, except when the guardian of it has abused it to subvert one or +more of the rest. The reason is, that the guardian, as a fluent, is less +than the permanent which he is to guard. He is the temporary and mutable +mean, and derives his whole value from the end. In short, as robbery is +not high treason, so neither is every unjust act of a king the converse. +All must be attacked and endangered. Why? Because the king, as _a_ to A, +is a mean to A, or subordination, in a far higher sense than a proprietor, +as _b_ to A, is a mean to B, or property. + +Act ii. sc. 2. Claudia’s speech:— + +“Chimney-pieces!” &c. + +The whole of this speech seems corrupt; and if accurately printed,—that +is, if the same in all the prior editions,—irremediable but by bold +conjecture. “_Till_ my tackle,” should be, I think, “_While_,” &c. + +Act iii. sc. 1. B. and F. always write as if virtue or goodness were a +sort of talisman, or strange something, that might be lost without the +least fault on the part of the owner. In short, their chaste ladies value +their chastity as a material thing,—not as an act or state of being; and +this mere thing being imaginary, no wonder that all their women are +represented with the minds of strumpets, except a few irrational +humourists, far less capable of exciting our sympathy than a Hindoo who +has had a basin of cow-broth thrown over him;—for this, though a debasing +superstition, is still real, and we might pity the poor wretch, though we +cannot help despising him. But B. and F.’s Lucinas are clumsy fictions. It +is too plain that the authors had no one idea of chastity as a virtue, but +only such a conception as a blind man might have of the power of seeing by +handling an ox’s eye. In _The Queen of Corinth_, indeed, they talk +differently; but it is all talk, and nothing is real in it but the dread +of losing a reputation. Hence the frightful contrast between their women +(even those who are meant for virtuous) and Shakespeare’s. So, for +instance, _The Maid in the Mill_:—a woman must not merely have grown old +in brothels, but have chuckled over every abomination committed in them +with a rampant sympathy of imagination, to have had her fancy so drunk +with the _minutiæ_ of lechery as this icy chaste virgin evinces hers to +have been. + +It would be worth while to note how many of these plays are founded on +rapes,—how many on incestuous passions, and how many on mere lunacies. +Then their virtuous women are either crazy superstitions of a mere bodily +negation of having been acted on, or strumpets in their imaginations and +wishes, or, as in this _Maid in the Mill_, both at the same time. In the +men, the love is merely lust in one direction,—exclusive preference of one +object. The tyrant’s speeches are mostly taken from the mouths of +indignant denouncers of the tyrant’s character, with the substitution of +“I” for “he,”" and the omission of the prefatory “he acts as if he +thought” so and so. The only feelings they can possibly excite are disgust +at the Æciuses, if regarded as sane loyalists, or compassion if considered +as Bedlamites. So much for their tragedies. But even their comedies are, +most of them, disturbed by the fantasticalness, or gross caricature, of +the persons or incidents. There are few characters that you can really +like (even though you should have erased from your mind all the filth +which bespatters the most likeable of them, as Piniero in _The Island +Princess_ for instance),—scarcely one whom you can love. How different +this from Shakespeare, who makes one have a sort of sneaking affection +even for his Barnardines;—whose very Iagos and Richards are awful, and, by +the counteracting power of profound intellects, rendered fearful rather +than hateful;—and even the exceptions, as Goneril and Regan, are proofs of +superlative judgment and the finest moral tact, in being left utter +monsters, _nulla virtute redemptæ_, and in being kept out of sight as much +as possible,—they being, indeed, only means for the excitement and +deepening of noblest emotions towards the Lear, Cordelia, &c. and employed +with the severest economy! But even Shakespeare’s grossness—that which is +really so, independently of the increase in modern times of vicious +associations with things indifferent (for there is a state of manners +conceivable so pure, that the language of Hamlet at Ophelia’s feet might +be a harmless rallying, or playful teazing, of a shame that would exist in +Paradise)—at the worst, how diverse in kind is it from Beaumont and +Fletcher’s! In Shakespeare it is the mere generalities of sex, mere words +for the most part, seldom or never distinct images, all head-work, and +fancy drolleries; there is no sensation supposed in the speaker. I need +not proceed to contrast this with B. and F. + + + + +“Rollo.” + + +This, perhaps, the most energetic of Fletcher’s tragedies. He evidently +aimed at a new Richard III. in Rollo;—but, as in all his other imitations +of Shakespeare, he was not philosopher enough to bottom his original. +Thus, in Rollo, he has produced a mere personification of outrageous +wickedness, with no fundamental characteristic impulses to make either the +tyrant’s words or actions philosophically intelligible. Hence the most +pathetic situations border on the horrible, and what he meant for the +terrible, is either hateful, τὸ μισητὸν, or ludicrous. The scene of +Baldwin’s sentence in the third act is probably the grandest working of +passion in all B. and F.’s dramas;—but the very magnificence of filial +affection given to Edith, in this noble scene, renders the after scene (in +imitation of one of the least Shakespearian of all Shakespeare’s works, if +it be his, the scene between Richard and Lady Anne) in which Edith is +yielding to a few words and tears, not only unnatural, but disgusting. In +Shakespeare, Lady Anne is described as a weak, vain, very woman +throughout. + +Act i. sc. 1.— + +“_Gis._ He is indeed the perfect character +Of a good man, and so his actions speak him.” + +This character of Aubrey, and the whole spirit of this and several other +plays of the same authors, are interesting as traits of the morals which +it was fashionable to teach in the reigns of James I. and his successor, +who died a martyr to them. Stage, pulpit, law, fashion,—all conspired to +enslave the realm. Massinger’s plays breathe the opposite spirit; +Shakespeare’s the spirit of wisdom which is for all ages. By the by, the +Spanish dramatists—Calderon, in particular,—had some influence in this +respect, of romantic loyalty to the greatest monsters, as well as in the +busy intrigues of B. and F.’s plays. + + + + +“The Wildgoose Chase.” + + +Act ii. sc. 1. Belleur’s speech:— + +... “That wench, methinks, +If I were but well set on, for she is a _fable_, +If I were but hounded right, and one to teach me.” + +Sympson reads “affable,” which Colman rejects, and says, “the next line +seems to enforce” the reading in the text. + +Pity, that the editor did not explain wherein the sense, “seemingly +enforced by the next line,” consists. May the true word be “a sable”—that +is, a black fox, hunted for its precious fur? Or “at-able,”—as we now +say,—“she is come-at-able?” + + + + +“A Wife For A Month.” + + +Act iv. sc. 1. Alphonso’s speech:— + +“Betwixt the cold bear and the raging lion +Lies my safe way.” + +Seward’s note and alteration to— + +“’Twixt the cold bears, far from the raging lion”— + +This Mr. Seward is a blockhead of the provoking species. In his itch for +correction, he forgot the words—“lies my safe way!” The bear is the +extreme pole, and thither he would travel over the space contained between +it and “the raging lion.” + + + + +“The Pilgrim.” + + +Act iv. sc. 2.— + +Alinda’s interview with her father is lively, and happily hit off; but +this scene with Roderigo is truly excellent. Altogether, indeed, this play +holds the first place in B. and F.’s romantic entertainments, +_Lustspiele_, which collectively are their happiest performances, and are +only inferior to the romance of Shakespeare in the _As You Like It_, +_Twelfth Night_, &c. + +_Ib._— + +“_Alin._ To-day you shall wed Sorrow, +And Repentance will come to-morrow.” + +Read “Penitence,” or else— + +“Repentance, she will come to-morrow.” + + + + +“The Queen Of Corinth.” + + +Act ii. sc. 1.— + +Merione’s speech. Had the scene of this tragi-comedy been laid in +Hindostan instead of Corinth, and the gods here addressed been the Vishnu +and Co. of the Indian Pantheon, this rant would not have been much amiss. + +In respect of style and versification, this play and the following of +_Bonduca_ may be taken as the best, and yet as characteristic, specimens +of Beaumont and Fletcher’s dramas. I particularly instance the first scene +of the _Bonduca_. Take Shakespeare’s _Richard II._, and having selected +some one scene of about the same number of lines, and consisting mostly of +long speeches, compare it with the first scene in _Bonduca_,—not for the +idle purpose of finding out which is the better, but in order to see and +understand the difference. The latter, that of B. and F., you will find a +well-arranged bed of flowers, each having its separate root, and its +position determined aforehand by the will of the gardener,—each fresh +plant a fresh volition. In the former you see an Indian fig-tree, as +described by Milton;—all is growth, evolution;—each line, each word +almost, begets the following, and the will of the writer is an +interfusion, a continuous agency, and not a series of separate acts. +Shakespeare is the height, breadth, and depth of Genius: Beaumont and +Fletcher the excellent mechanism, in juxta-position and succession, of +talent. + + + + +“The Noble Gentleman.” + + +Why have the dramatists of the times of Elizabeth, James I., and the first +Charles become almost obsolete, with the exception of Shakespeare? Why do +they no longer belong to the English, being once so popular? And why is +Shakespeare an exception?—One thing, among fifty, necessary to the full +solution is, that they all employed poetry and poetic diction on unpoetic +subjects, both characters and situations, especially in their comedy. Now +Shakespeare is all, all ideal,—of no time, and therefore for all times. +Read, for instance, Marine’s panegyric in the first scene of this play:— + + ... “Know +The eminent court, to them that can be wise, +And fasten on her blessings, is a sun,” &c. + +What can be more unnatural and inappropriate (not only is, but must be +felt as such) than such poetry in the mouth of a silly dupe? In short, the +scenes are mock dialogues, in which the poet _solus_ plays the +ventriloquist, but cannot keep down his own way of expressing himself. +Heavy complaints have been made respecting the transposing of the old +plays by Cibber; but it never occurred to these critics to ask, how it +came that no one ever attempted to transpose a comedy of Shakespeare’s. + + + + +“The Coronation.” + + +Act i. Speech of Seleucus:— + +“Altho’ he be my enemy, should any +Of the gay flies that buz about the court, +_Sit_ to catch trouts i’ the summer, tell me so, +I durst,” &c. + +Colman’s note. + +Pshaw! “Sit” is either a misprint for “set,” or the old and still +provincial word for “set,” as the participle passive of “seat” or “set.” I +have heard an old Somersetshire gardener say:—“Look, Sir! I set these +plants here; those yonder I _sit_ yesterday.” + +Act ii. Speech of Arcadius:— + +“Nay, some will swear they love their mistress, +Would hazard lives and fortunes,” &c. + +Read thus:— + +“Nay, some will swear they love their mistress so, +They would hazard lives and fortunes to preserve +One of her hairs brighter than Berenice’s, +Or young Apollo’s; and yet, after this,” &c. + +“Thĕy woŭld hāzard”—furnishes an anapæst for an _iambus_. “And yet,” which +must be read, _anyĕt_, is an instance of the enclitic force in an accented +monosyllable. “And yēt,” is a complete _iambus_; but _anyet_ is, like +_spirit_, a dibrach u u, trocheized, however, by the _arsis_ or first +accent damping, though not extinguishing, the second. + + + + +“Wit At Several Weapons.” + + +Act i. Oldcraft’s speech:— + +“I’m arm’d at all points,” &c. + +It would be very easy to restore all this passage to metre, by supplying a +sentence of four syllables, which the reasoning almost demands, and by +correcting the grammar. Read thus:— + +“Arm’d at all points ’gainst treachery, I hold +My humour firm. If, living, I can see thee +Thrive by thy wits, I shall have the more courage, +Dying, to trust thee with my lands. If not, +The best wit, I can hear of, carries them. +For since so many in my time and knowledge, +Rich children of the city, have concluded +_For lack of wit_ in beggary, I’d rather +Make a wise stranger my executor, +Than a fool son my heir, and have my lands call’d +After my wit than name: and that’s my nature!” + +_Ib._ Oldcraft’s speech:— + +“To prevent which I have sought out a match for her.” + +Read— + +“Which to prevent I’ve sought a match out for her.” + +_Ib._ Sir Gregory’s speech:— + + ... “_Do you think_ +I’ll have any of the wits hang upon me after I am married once?” + +Read it thus:— + + ... “Do you think +That I’ll have any of the wits to hang +Upon me after I am married once?” + +and afterwards— + + ... “Is it a fashion in London +To marry a woman, and to never see her?” + +The superfluous “to” gives it the Sir Andrew Ague-cheek character. + + + + +“The Fair Maid Of The Inn.” + + +Act ii. Speech of Albertus:— + + ... “But, Sir, +By my life, I vow to take assurance from you, +That right hand never more shall strike my son, + +Chop his hand off!” + +In this (as, indeed, in all other respects, but most in this) it is that +Shakespeare is so incomparably superior to Fletcher and his friend,—in +judgment! What can be conceived more unnatural and motiveless than this +brutal resolve? How is it possible to feel the least interest in Albertus +afterwards? or in Cesario after his conduct? + + + + +“The Two Noble Kinsmen.” + + +On comparing the prison scene of _Palamon and Arcite_, act ii. sc. 2, with +the dialogue between the same speakers, act i. sc. 2, I can scarcely +retain a doubt as to the first act’s having been written by Shakespeare. +Assuredly it was not written by B. and F. I hold Jonson more probable than +either of these two. + +The main presumption, however, for Shakespeare’s share in this play rests +on a point, to which the sturdy critics of this edition (and indeed all +before them) were blind,—that is, the construction of the blank verse, +which proves beyond all doubt an intentional imitation, if not the proper +hand, of Shakespeare. Now, whatever improbability there is in the former +(which supposes Fletcher conscious of the inferiority, the too poematic +_minus_-dramatic nature of his versification, and of which, there is +neither proof nor likelihood) adds so much to the probability of the +latter. On the other hand, the harshness of many of these very passages, a +harshness unrelieved by any lyrical inter-breathings, and still more the +want of profundity in the thoughts, keep me from an absolute decision. + +Act i. sc. 3. Emilia’s speech:— + + ... “Since his depart, his _sports_, +Tho’ craving seriousness and skill,” &c. + +I conjecture “imports,”—that is, duties or offices of importance. The flow +of the versification in this speech seems to demand the trochaic ending - +u; while the text blends jingle and _hisses_ to the annoyance of less +sensitive ears than Fletcher’s—not to say, Shakespeare’s. + + + + +“The Woman Hater.” + + +Act i. sc. 2.— + +This scene from the beginning is prose printed as blank verse, down to the +line— + +“E’en all the valiant stomachs in the court”— + +where the verse recommences. This transition from the prose to the verse +enhances, and indeed forms the comic effect. Lazarillo concludes his +soliloquy with a hymn to the goddess of plenty. + +THE END. + + + + +Advertisement. + + +_NEW EDITION, REVISED._ + +AIDS TO REFLECTION + +IN THE FORMATION OF A MANLY CHARACTER, ON THE SEVERAL GROUNDS OF PRUDENCE, +MORALITY, AND RELIGION. + +BY S. T. COLERIDGE. + +WITH A COPIOUS INDEX TO THE WORK, AND TRANSLATIONS OF THE GREEK AND LATIN +QUOTATIONS. + +BY THOMAS FENBY. + +400 pp. _Fscp. 8vo, cloth extra_, 3/6. + +EDWARD HOWELL, PUBLISHER, LIVERPOOL + +MDCCCLXXIV. + + + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHAKESPEARE, BEN JONSON, BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER*** + + + +CREDITS + + +May 24, 2008 + + Project Gutenberg TEI edition 1 + Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, David King, and the + Online Distributed Proofreading Team at + <http://www.pgdp.net/>. (This file was made using scans of + public domain works from the University of Mochigan Digital + Libraries.) 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