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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Oxford Lectures on Poetry + +Author: Andrew Cecil Bradley + +Release Date: July 17, 2011 [EBook #36773] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OXFORD LECTURES ON POETRY *** + + + + +Produced by Marius Masi, Suzanne Shell and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<p class="pt2"> </p> + +<div class="center f80"> +<p><i>BY A. C. BRADLEY, LL.D., LITT.D.</i></p> +<p>*</p> +<p>SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY</p> + +<p class="sc">Lectures on<br /> +Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth</p> + +<p>*</p> + +<p>MACMILLAN & CO LTD.</p> +</div> + + +<p class="center ptb1 sc" style="color: #c11B17; font-size: 250%;">OXFORD LECTURES<br /> +ON POETRY</p> + +<p class="center f80">BY</p> + +<p class="center f120">A. C. BRADLEY</p> + +<p class="center f80"><span class="sc">LL.D., Litt.D.</span><br /> +FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF POETRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD<br /> +AND FELLOW OF BALLIOL COLLEGE</p> + + +<p class="pt2 center">MACMILLAN</p> + +<p class="center f80">London ˇ Melbourne ˇ Toronto</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p class="center" style="letter-spacing: .5em;">ST MARTIN’S PRESS<br /> + +<span class="f80">New York<br /> +1965</span></p> + +<p class="center f80 pt2"><i>This book is copyright in all countries which<br /> +are signatories of the Berne Convention</i></p> + +<p class="center f80 pt2">First Edition, May 1909. Second Edition, November 1909<br /> +Reprinted 1911, 1914, 1917, 1919, 1920, 1923, 1926, 1934,<br /> +1941, 1950, 1955, 1959, 1962, 1963, 1965</p> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center f80 pt2">MACMILLAN AND COMPANY LIMITED<br /> +<i>St Martin’s Street London WC2<br /> +also Bombay Calcutta Madras Melbourne</i></p> + +<p class="center f80">THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA LIMITED<br /> +<i>70 Bond Street Toronto 2</i></p> + +<p class="center f80">ST MARTIN’S PRESS INC<br /> +<i>175 Fifth Avenue New York 10010 NY</i></p> + + +<p class="center f80 pt2">PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN</p> + +<p class="center f80 pt2" style="letter-spacing: .5em;">TO<br /> +MY OXFORD FRIENDS<br /> +1869-1909</p> + + +<p class="center f80 pt1"><i>‘They have seemed to be together, though absent,<br /> +shook hands, as over a vast; and embraced, as it<br /> +were, from the ends of opposed winds.’</i></p> + + +<hr class="art" /> +<p class="chap2 center">PREFACE</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1 fo">This</span> volume consists of lectures delivered during +my tenure of the Chair of Poetry at Oxford and not +included in <i>Shakespearean Tragedy</i>. Most of them +have been enlarged, and all have been revised. +As they were given at intervals, and the majority +before the publication of that book, they contained +repetitions which I have not found it possible +wholly to remove. Readers of a lecture published +by the University of Manchester on <i>English Poetry +and German Philosophy in the Age of Wordsworth</i> +will pardon also the restatement of some ideas +expressed in it.</p> + +<p>The several lectures are dated, as I have been +unable to take account of most of the literature +on their subjects published since they were +delivered.</p> + +<p>They are arranged in the order that seems best +to me, but it is of importance only in the case of +the four which deal with the poets of Wordsworth’s +time.</p> + +<p>I am indebted to the Delegates of the University +Press, and to the proprietors and editors of the +<i>Hibbert Journal</i> and the <i>Albany</i>, <i>Fortnightly</i>, and +<i>Quarterly Reviews</i>, respectively, for permission to +republish the first, third, fifth, eighth, and ninth +lectures. A like acknowledgment is due for leave +to use some sentences of an article on Keats +contributed to <i>Chambers’s Cyclopaedia of English +Literature</i> (1903).</p> + +<p>In the revision of the proof-sheets I owed much +help to a sister who has shared many of my Oxford +friendships.</p> + +<hr class="art" /> +<p class="chap2 center">NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1 fo">This</span> edition is substantially identical with the first; +but it and its later impressions contain a few improvements +in points of detail, and, thanks to +criticisms by my brother, F. H. Bradley, I hope +to have made my meaning clearer in some pages of +the second lecture.</p> + +<p>There was an oversight in the first edition which +I regret. In adding the note on p. 247 I forgot +that I had not referred to Professor Dowden in the +lecture on “Shakespeare the Man.” In everything +that I have written on Shakespeare I am indebted +to Professor Dowden, and certainly not least in that +lecture.</p> + +<hr class="art" /> +<p class="chap2 center">CONTENTS</p> + +<table class="pic" width="90%" summary="Contents"> +<tr><td class="tcr f80" colspan="2">PAGE</td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcl sc">Poetry for Poetry’s Sake</td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#page2">3</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl sc">The Sublime</td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#page36">37</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl sc">Hegel’s Theory of Tragedy</td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#page68">69</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl sc">Wordsworth</td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#page98">99</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl sc">Shelley’s View of Poetry</td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#page150">151</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl sc">The Long Poem in the Age of Wordsworth</td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#page176">177</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl sc">The Letters of Keats</td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#page208">209</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl sc">The Rejection of Falstaff</td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#page246">247</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl sc">Shakespeare’s ‘Antony and Cleopatra’</td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#page278">279</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl sc">Shakespeare the Man</td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#page310">311</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl sc">Shakespeare’s Theatre and Audience</td> <td class="tcr"><a href="#page360">361</a></td></tr> +</table> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:150px; height:35px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img001.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1" id="page1"></a>1</span></p> + +<p class="center chap">POETRY FOR POETRY’S SAKE</p> +<p> </p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page2" id="page2"></a>2<br />3</span></p> + +<p class="center pt2"><span class="chap2">POETRY FOR POETRY’S SAKE</span><a name="fa1a" id="fa1a" href="#ft1a"><span class="sp">1</span></a></p> + +<p class="center pt1 f90">(INAUGURAL LECTURE)</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1 fo">One</span> who, after twenty years, is restored to the +University where he was taught and first tried to +teach, and who has received at the hands of his +Alma Mater an honour of which he never dreamed, +is tempted to speak both of himself and of her. +But I remember that you have come to listen to +my thoughts about a great subject, and not to my +feelings about myself; and of Oxford who that +holds this Professorship could dare to speak, when +he recalls the exquisite verse in which one of his +predecessors described her beauty, and the prose in +which he gently touched on her illusions and protested +that they were as nothing when set against +her age-long warfare with the Philistine? How, +again, remembering him and others, should I +venture to praise my predecessors? It would be +pleasant to do so, and even pleasanter to me and +you if, instead of lecturing, I quoted to you some of +their best passages. But I could not do this for five +years. Sooner or later, my own words would have +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page4" id="page4"></a>4</span> +to come, and the inevitable contrast. Not to sharpen +it now, I will be silent concerning them also; and +will only assure you that I do not forget them, or +the greatness of the honour of succeeding them, +or the responsibility which it entails.</p> + +<p class="pt2">The words ‘Poetry for poetry’s sake’ recall the +famous phrase ‘Art for Art.’ It is far from my +purpose to examine the possible meanings of that +phrase, or all the questions it involves. I propose +to state briefly what I understand by ‘Poetry for +poetry’s sake,’ and then, after guarding against one +or two misapprehensions of the formula, to consider +more fully a single problem connected with it. And +I must premise, without attempting to justify them, +certain explanations. We are to consider poetry in +its essence, and apart from the flaws which in most +poems accompany their poetry. We are to include +in the idea of poetry the metrical form, and not to +regard this as a mere accident or a mere vehicle. +And, finally, poetry being poems, we are to think of +a poem as it actually exists; and, without aiming +here at accuracy, we may say that an actual poem +is the succession of experiences—sounds, images, +thoughts, emotions—through which we pass when +we are reading as poetically as we can.<a name="fa2a" id="fa2a" href="#ft2a"><span class="sp">2</span></a> Of course +this imaginative experience—if I may use the phrase +for brevity—differs with every reader and every +time of reading: a poem exists in innumerable +degrees. But that insurmountable fact lies in the +nature of things and does not concern us now.</p> + +<p>What then does the formula ‘Poetry for poetry’s +sake’ tell us about this experience? It says, as I +understand it, these things. First, this experience +is an end in itself, is worth having on its own +account, has an intrinsic value. Next, its <i>poetic</i> +value is this intrinsic worth alone. Poetry may +have also an ulterior value as a means to culture or +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page5" id="page5"></a>5</span> +religion; because it conveys instruction, or softens +the passions, or furthers a good cause; because it +brings the poet fame or money or a quiet conscience. +So much the better: let it be valued for these +reasons too. But its ulterior worth neither is nor +can directly determine its poetic worth as a satisfying +imaginative experience; and this is to be judged +entirely from within. And to these two positions +the formula would add, though not of necessity, a +third. The consideration of ulterior ends, whether +by the poet in the act of composing or by the reader +in the act of experiencing, tends to lower poetic +value. It does so because it tends to change the +nature of poetry by taking it out of its own atmosphere. +For its nature is to be not a part, nor yet a +copy, of the real world (as we commonly understand +that phrase), but to be a world by itself, independent, +complete, autonomous; and to possess it fully you +must enter that world, conform to its laws, and +ignore for the time the beliefs, aims, and particular +conditions which belong to you in the other world +of reality.</p> + +<p>Of the more serious misapprehensions to which +these statements may give rise I will glance only +at one or two. The offensive consequences often +drawn from the formula ‘Art for Art’ will be found +to attach not to the doctrine that Art is an end in +itself, but to the doctrine that Art is the whole or +supreme end of human life. And as this latter +doctrine, which seems to me absurd, is in any case +quite different from the former, its consequences fall +outside my subject. The formula ‘Poetry is an end +in itself’ has nothing to say on the various questions +of moral judgment which arise from the fact that +poetry has its place in a many-sided life. For +anything it says, the intrinsic value of poetry might +be so small, and its ulterior effects so mischievous, +that it had better not exist. The formula only tells +us that we must not place in antithesis poetry and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page6" id="page6"></a>6</span> +human good, for poetry is one kind of human good; +and that we must not determine the intrinsic value +of this kind of good by direct reference to another. +If we do, we shall find ourselves maintaining what +we did not expect. If poetic value lies in the stimulation +of religious feelings, <i>Lead, kindly Light</i> is no +better a poem than many a tasteless version of a +Psalm: if in the excitement of patriotism, why is +<i>Scots, wha hae</i> superior to <i>We don’t want to fight?</i> +if in the mitigation of the passions, the Odes of +Sappho will win but little praise: if in instruction, +Armstrong’s <i>Art of preserving Health</i> should win +much.</p> + +<p>Again, our formula may be accused of cutting +poetry away from its connection with life. And this +accusation raises so huge a problem that I must ask +leave to be dogmatic as well as brief. There is +plenty of connection between life and poetry, but it +is, so to say, a connection underground. The two +may be called different forms of the same thing: one +of them having (in the usual sense) reality, but +seldom fully satisfying imagination; while the other +offers something which satisfies imagination but has +not full ‘reality.’ They are parallel developments +which nowhere meet, or, if I may use loosely a word +which will be serviceable later, they are analogues. +Hence we understand one by help of the other, and +even, in a sense, care for one because of the other; +but hence also, poetry neither is life, nor, strictly +speaking, a copy of it. They differ not only because +one has more mass and the other a more perfect +shape, but because they have different <i>kinds</i> of +existence. The one touches us as beings occupying +a given position in space and time, and having +feelings, desires, and purposes due to that position: +it appeals to imagination, but appeals to much +besides. What meets us in poetry has not a position +in the same series of time and space, or, if it has +or had such a position, it is taken apart from much +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page7" id="page7"></a>7</span> +that belonged to it there;<a name="fa3a" id="fa3a" href="#ft3a"><span class="sp">3</span></a> and therefore it makes +no direct appeal to those feelings, desires, and purposes, +but speaks only to contemplative imagination—imagination +the reverse of empty or emotionless, +imagination saturated with the results of ‘real’ +experience, but still contemplative. Thus, no doubt, +one main reason why poetry has poetic value for us +is that it presents to us in its own way something +which we meet in another form in nature or life; and +yet the test of its poetic value for us lies simply in +the question whether it satisfies our imagination; the +rest of us, our knowledge or conscience, for example, +judging it only so far as they appear transmuted in +our imagination. So also Shakespeare’s knowledge +or his moral insight, Milton’s greatness of soul, +Shelley’s ‘hate of hate’ and ‘love of love,’ and that +desire to help men or make them happier which may +have influenced a poet in hours of meditation—all +these have, as such, no poetical worth: they have +that worth only when, passing through the unity +of the poet’s being, they reappear as qualities of +imagination, and then are indeed mighty powers +in the world of poetry.</p> + +<p class="pt2">I come to a third misapprehension, and so to my +main subject. This formula, it is said, empties +poetry of its meaning: it is really a doctrine of form +for form’s sake. ‘It is of no consequence what a +poet says, so long as he says the thing well. The +<i>what</i> is poetically indifferent: it is the <i>how</i> that +counts. Matter, subject, content, substance, determines +nothing; there is no subject with which +poetry may not deal: the form, the treatment, is +everything. Nay, more: not only is the matter +indifferent, but it is the secret of Art to “eradicate +the matter by means of the form,”’—phrases and +statements like these meet us everywhere in current +criticism of literature and the other arts. They +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page8" id="page8"></a>8</span> +are the stock-in-trade of writers who understand of +them little more than the fact that somehow or +other they are not ‘bourgeois.’ But we find them +also seriously used by writers whom we must respect, +whether they are anonymous or not; something like +one or another of them might be quoted, for +example, from Professor Saintsbury, the late R. A. M. +Stevenson, Schiller, Goethe himself; and they are +the watchwords of a school in the one country +where Aesthetics has flourished. They come, as a +rule, from men who either practise one of the arts, +or, from study of it, are interested in its methods. +The general reader—a being so general that I may +say what I will of him—is outraged by them. He +feels that he is being robbed of almost all that he +cares for in a work of art. ‘You are asking me,’ he +says, ‘to look at the Dresden Madonna as if it were +a Persian rug. You are telling me that the poetic +value of <i>Hamlet</i> lies solely in its style and versification, +and that my interest in the man and his fate is +only an intellectual or moral interest. You allege +that, if I want to enjoy the poetry of <i>Crossing the +Bar</i>, I must not mind what Tennyson says there, +but must consider solely his way of saying it. But +in that case I can care no more for a poem than I do +for a set of nonsense verses; and I do not believe +that the authors of <i>Hamlet</i> and <i>Crossing the Bar</i> +regarded their poems thus.’</p> + +<p>These antitheses of subject, matter, substance on +the one side, form, treatment, handling on the other, +are the field through which I especially want, in this +lecture, to indicate a way. It is a field of battle; +and the battle is waged for no trivial cause; but +the cries of the combatants are terribly ambiguous. +Those phrases of the so-called formalist may each +mean five or six different things. Taken in one sense +they seem to me chiefly true; taken as the general +reader not unnaturally takes them, they seem to me +false and mischievous. It would be absurd to pretend +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page9" id="page9"></a>9</span> +that I can end in a few minutes a controversy +which concerns the ultimate nature of Art, and leads +perhaps to problems not yet soluble; but we can at +least draw some plain distinctions which, in this +controversy, are too often confused.</p> + +<p>In the first place, then, let us take ‘subject’ in +one particular sense; let us understand by it that +which we have in view when, looking at the title of +an un-read poem, we say that the poet has chosen +this or that for his subject. The subject, in this +sense, so far as I can discover, is generally something, +real or imaginary, as it exists in the minds of +fairly cultivated people. The subject of <i>Paradise +Lost</i> would be the story of the Fall as that story +exists in the general imagination of a Bible-reading +people. The subject of Shelley’s stanzas <i>To a Skylark</i> +would be the ideas which arise in the mind +of an educated person when, without knowing the +poem, he hears the word ‘skylark’. If the title of a +poem conveys little or nothing to us, the ‘subject’ +appears to be either what we should gather by +investigating the title in a dictionary or other book +of the kind, or else such a brief suggestion as might +be offered by a person who had read the poem, and +who said, for example, that the subject of <i>The +Ancient Mariner</i> was a sailor who killed an albatross +and suffered for his deed.</p> + +<p>Now the subject, in this sense (and I intend to +use the word in no other), is not, as such, inside the +poem, but outside it. The contents of the stanzas +<i>To a Skylark</i> are not the ideas suggested by the +work ‘skylark’ to the average man; they belong to +Shelley just as much as the language does. The +subject, therefore, is not the matter <i>of</i> the poem at +all; and its opposite is not the <i>form</i> of the poem, +but the whole poem. The subject is one thing; +the poem, matter and form alike, another thing. +This being so, it is surely obvious that the poetic +value cannot lie in the subject, but lies entirely in +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page10" id="page10"></a>10</span> +its opposite, the poem. How can the subject determine +the value when on one and the same subject +poems may be written of all degrees of merit and +demerit; or when a perfect poem may be composed +on a subject so slight as a pet sparrow, and, if +Macaulay may be trusted, a nearly worthless poem +on a subject so stupendous as the omnipresence of +the Deity? The ‘formalist’ is here perfectly right. +Nor is he insisting on something unimportant. He +is fighting against our tendency to take the work of +art as a mere copy or reminder of something already +in our heads, or at the best as a suggestion of some +idea as little removed as possible from the familiar. +The sightseer who promenades a picture-gallery, +remarking that this portrait is so like his cousin, or +that landscape the very image of his birthplace, or +who, after satisfying himself that one picture is about +Elijah, passes on rejoicing to discover the subject, +and nothing but the subject, of the next—what +is he but an extreme example of this tendency? +Well, but the very same tendency vitiates much +of our criticism, much criticism of Shakespeare, for +example, which, with all its cleverness and partial +truth, still shows that the critic never passed from +his own mind into Shakespeare’s; and it may be +traced even in so fine a critic as Coleridge, as when +he dwarfs the sublime struggle of Hamlet into the +image of his own unhappy weakness. Hazlitt by +no means escaped its influence. Only the third of +that great trio, Lamb, appears almost always to +have rendered the conception of the composer.</p> + +<p>Again, it is surely true that we cannot determine +beforehand what subjects are fit for Art, or name +any subject on which a good poem might not +possibly be written. To divide subjects into two +groups, the beautiful or elevating, and the ugly or +vicious, and to judge poems according as their +subjects belong to one of these groups or the other, +is to fall into the same pit, to confuse with our +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page11" id="page11"></a>11</span> +pre-conceptions the meaning of the poet. What the +thing is in the poem he is to be judged by, not by +the thing as it was before he touched it; and how +can we venture to say beforehand that he cannot +make a true poem out of something which to us was +merely alluring or dull or revolting? The question +whether, having done so, he ought to publish his +poem; whether the thing in the poet’s work will not +be still confused by the incompetent Puritan or the +incompetent sensualist with the thing in <i>his</i> mind, +does not touch this point: it is a further question, +one of ethics, not of art. No doubt the upholders +of ‘Art for art’s sake’ will generally be in favour of +the courageous course, of refusing to sacrifice the +better or stronger part of the public to the weaker +or worse; but their maxim in no way binds them to +this view. Rossetti suppressed one of the best of +his sonnets, a sonnet chosen for admiration by +Tennyson, himself extremely sensitive about the +moral effect of poetry; suppressed it, I believe, +because it was called fleshly. One may regret +Rossetti’s judgment and at the same time respect +his scrupulousness; but in any case he judged +in his capacity of citizen, not in his capacity of +artist.</p> + +<p class="pt2">So far then the ‘formalist’ appears to be right. +But he goes too far, I think, if he maintains that the +subject is indifferent and that all subjects are the +same to poetry. And he does not prove his point +by observing that a good poem might be written on +a pin’s head, and a bad one on the Fall of Man. +That truth shows that the subject <i>settles</i> nothing, +but not that it counts for nothing. The Fall of +Man is really a more favourable subject than a pin’s +head. The Fall of Man, that is to say, offers +opportunities of poetic effects wider in range and +more penetrating in appeal. And the fact is that +such a subject, as it exists in the general imagination, +has some aesthetic value before the poet +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page12" id="page12"></a>12</span> +touches it. It is, as you may choose to call it, +an inchoate poem or the débris of a poem. It is +not an abstract idea or a bare isolated fact, but an +assemblage of figures, scenes, actions, and events, +which already appeal to emotional imagination; and +it is already in some degree organized and formed. +In spite of this a bad poet would make a bad poem +on it; but then we should say he was unworthy of +the subject. And we should not say this if he +wrote a bad poem on a pin’s head. Conversely, a +good poem on a pin’s head would almost certainly +transform its subject far more than a good poem on +the Fall of Man. It might revolutionize its subject +so completely that we should say, ‘The subject may +be a pin’s head, but the substance of the poem has +very little to do with it.’</p> + +<p>This brings us to another and a different antithesis. +Those figures, scenes, events, that form part of the +subject called the Fall of Man, are not the substance +of <i>Paradise Lost</i>; but in <i>Paradise Lost</i> there are +figures, scenes, and events resembling them in some +degree. These, with much more of the same kind, +may be described as its substance, and may then be +contrasted with the measured language of the poem, +which will be called its form. Subject is the opposite +not of form but of the whole poem. Substance +is within the poem, and its opposite, form, is also +within the poem. I am not criticizing this antithesis +at present, but evidently it is quite different from +the other. It is practically the distinction used in +the old-fashioned criticism of epic and drama, and it +flows down, not unsullied, from Aristotle. Addison, +for example, in examining <i>Paradise Lost</i> considers +in order the fable, the characters, and the sentiments; +these will be the substance: then he considers the +language, that is, the style and numbers; this will +be the form. In like manner, the substance or +meaning of a lyric may be distinguished from the +form.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page13" id="page13"></a>13</span></p> + +<p>Now I believe it will be found that a large part +of the controversy we are dealing with arises from +a confusion between these two distinctions of substance +and form, and of subject and poem. The +extreme formalist lays his whole weight on the form +because he thinks its opposite is the mere subject. +The general reader is angry, but makes the same +mistake, and gives to the subject praises that rightly +belong to the substance<a name="fa4a" id="fa4a" href="#ft4a"><span class="sp">4</span></a>. I will read an example of +what I mean. I can only explain the following +words of a good critic by supposing that for the +moment he has fallen into this confusion: ‘The +mere matter of all poetry—to wit, the appearances +of nature and the thoughts and feelings of men—being +unalterable, it follows that the difference between +poet and poet will depend upon the manner +of each in applying language, metre, rhyme, cadence, +and what not, to this invariable material.’ What +has become here of the substance of <i>Paradise Lost</i>—the +story, scenery, characters, sentiments, as they +are in the poem? They have vanished clean away. +Nothing is left but the form on one side, and on the +other not even the subject, but a supposed invariable +material, the appearances of nature and the +thoughts and feelings of men. Is it surprising that +the whole value should then be found in the form?</p> + +<p>So far we have assumed that this antithesis of +substance and form is valid, and that it always has +one meaning. In reality it has several, but we will +leave it in its present shape, and pass to the question +of its validity. And this question we are compelled +to raise, because we have to deal with the two contentions +that the poetic value lies wholly or mainly +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page14" id="page14"></a>14</span> +in the substance, and that it lies wholly or mainly +in the form. Now these contentions, whether false +or true, may seem at least to be clear; but we shall +find, I think, that they are both of them false, or +both of them nonsense: false if they concern anything +outside the poem, nonsense if they apply to +something in it. For what do they evidently imply? +They imply that there are in a poem two parts, +factors, or components, a substance and a form; and +that you can conceive them distinctly and separately, +so that when you are speaking of the one you are +not speaking of the other. Otherwise how can you +ask the question, In which of them does the value +lie? But really in a poem, apart from defects, there +are no such factors or components; and therefore it +is strictly nonsense to ask in which of them the value +lies. And on the other hand, if the substance and +the form referred to are not in the poem, then both +the contentions are false, for its poetic value lies in +itself.</p> + +<p>What I mean is neither new nor mysterious; and +it will be clear, I believe, to any one who reads +poetry poetically and who closely examines his experience. +When you are reading a poem, I would +ask—not analysing it, and much less criticizing it, +but allowing it, as it proceeds, to make its full +impression on you through the exertion of your recreating +imagination—do you then apprehend and +enjoy as one thing a certain meaning or substance, +and as another thing certain articulate sounds, and +do you somehow compound these two? Surely you +do not, any more than you apprehend apart, when +you see some one smile, those lines in the face which +express a feeling, and the feeling that the lines +express. Just as there the lines and their meaning +are to you one thing, not two, so in poetry the +meaning and the sounds are one: there is, if I may +put it so, a resonant meaning, or a meaning resonance. +If you read the line, ‘The sun is warm, the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page15" id="page15"></a>15</span> +sky is clear,’ you do not experience separately the +image of a warm sun and clear sky, on the one side, +and certain unintelligible rhythmical sounds on the +other; nor yet do you experience them together, +side by side; but you experience the one <i>in</i> the +other. And in like manner, when you are really +reading <i>Hamlet</i>, the action and the characters are +not something which you conceive apart from the +words; you apprehend them from point to point <i>in</i> +the words, and the words as expressions of them. +Afterwards, no doubt, when you are out of the +poetic experience but remember it, you may by +analysis decompose this unity, and attend to a substance +more or less isolated, and a form more or +less isolated. But these are things in your analytic +head, not in the poem, which is <i>poetic</i> experience. +And if you want to have the poem again, you cannot +find it by adding together these two products of +decomposition; you can only find it by passing back +into poetic experience. And then what you recover +is no aggregate of factors, it is a unity in which you +can no more separate a substance and a form than +you can separate living blood and the life in the +blood. This unity has, if you like, various ‘aspects’ +or ‘sides,’ but they are not factors or parts; if you +try to examine one, you find it is also the other. +Call them substance and form if you please, but +these are not the reciprocally exclusive substance +and form to which the two contentions <i>must</i> refer. +They do not ‘agree,’ for they are not apart: they +are one thing from different points of view, and in +that sense identical. And this identity of content +and form, you will say, is no accident; it is of the +essence of poetry in so far as it is poetry, and of all +art in so far as it is art. Just as there is in music +not sound on one side and a meaning on the other, +but expressive sound, and if you ask what is the +meaning you can only answer by pointing to the +sounds; just as in painting there is not a meaning +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page16" id="page16"></a>16</span> +<i>plus</i> paint, but a meaning <i>in</i> paint, or significant +paint, and no man can really express the meaning +in any other way than in paint and in <i>this</i> paint; so +in a poem the true content and the true form neither +exist nor can be imagined apart. When then you +are asked whether the value of a poem lies in a +substance got by decomposing the poem, and present, +as such, only in reflective analysis, or whether +the value lies in a form arrived at and existing in +the same way, you will answer, ‘It lies neither in +one, nor in the other, nor in any addition of them, +but in the poem, where they are not.’</p> + +<p>We have then, first, an antithesis of subject and +poem. This is clear and valid; and the question in +which of them does the value lie is intelligible; and +its answer is, In the poem. We have next a distinction +of substance and form. If the substance +means ideas, images, and the like taken alone, and +the form means the measured language taken by +itself, this is a possible distinction, but it is a distinction +of things not in the poem, and the value lies +in neither of them. If substance and form mean +anything <i>in</i> the poem, then each is involved in the +other, and the question in which of them the value +lies has no sense. No doubt you may say, speaking +loosely, that in this poet or poem the aspect of substance +is the more noticeable, and in that the aspect +of form; and you may pursue interesting discussions +on this basis, though no principle or ultimate question +of value is touched by them. And apart from that +question, of course, I am not denying the usefulness +and necessity of the distinction. We cannot dispense +with it. To consider separately the action +or the characters of a play, and separately its style +or versification, is both legitimate and valuable, so +long as we remember what we are doing. But the +true critic in speaking of these apart does not really +think of them apart; the whole, the poetic experience, +of which they are but aspects, is always in +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page17" id="page17"></a>17</span> +his mind; and he is always aiming at a richer, truer, +more intense repetition of that experience. On the +other hand, when the question of principle, of poetic +value, is raised, these aspects <i>must</i> fall apart into +components, separately conceivable; and then there +arise two heresies, equally false, that the value lies +in one of two things, both of which are outside the +poem, and therefore where its value cannot lie.</p> + +<p>On the heresy of the separable substance a few +additional words will suffice. This heresy is seldom +formulated, but perhaps some unconscious holder of +it may object: ‘Surely the action and the characters +of <i>Hamlet</i> are in the play; and surely I can retain +these, though I have forgotten all the words. I +admit that I do not possess the whole poem, but I +possess a part, and the most important part.’ And +I would answer: ‘If we are not concerned with any +question of principle, I accept all that you say +except the last words, which do raise such a question. +Speaking loosely, I agree that the action +and characters, as you perhaps conceive them, +together with a great deal more, are in the poem. +Even then, however, you must not claim to possess +all of this kind that is in the poem; for in forgetting +the words you must have lost innumerable details +of the action and the characters. And, when the +question of value is raised, I must insist that the +action and characters, as you conceive them, are +not in <i>Hamlet</i> at all. If they are, point them out. +You cannot do it. What you find at any moment +of that succession of experiences called <i>Hamlet</i> is +words. In these words, to speak loosely again, the +action and characters (more of them than you can +conceive apart) are focussed; but your experience +is not a combination of them, as ideas, on the one +side, with certain sounds on the other; it is an +experience of something in which the two are indissolubly +fused. If you deny this, to be sure I can +make no answer, or can only answer that I have +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page18" id="page18"></a>18</span> +reason to believe that you cannot read poetically, +or else are misinterpreting your experience. But +if you do not deny this, then you will admit that +the action and characters of the poem, as you separately +imagine them, are no part of it, but a +product of it in your reflective imagination, a +faint analogue of one aspect of it taken in detachment +from the whole. Well, I do not dispute, I +would even insist, that, in the case of so long a +poem as <i>Hamlet</i>, it may be necessary from time to +time to interrupt the poetic experience, in order to +enrich it by forming such a product and dwelling +on it. Nor, in a wide sense of “poetic,” do I +question the poetic value of this product, as you +think of it apart from the poem. It resembles our +recollections of the heroes of history or legend, who +move about in our imaginations, “forms more real +than living man,” and are worth much to us though +we do not remember anything they said. Our +ideas and images of the “substance” of a poem +have this poetic value, and more, if they are at all +adequate. But they cannot determine the poetic +value of the poem, for (not to speak of the competing +claims of the “form”) nothing that is outside +the poem can do that, and they, as such, are outside +it.’<a name="fa5a" id="fa5a" href="#ft5a"><span class="sp">5</span></a></p> + +<p>Let us turn to the so-called form—style and +versification. There is no such thing as mere form +in poetry. All form is expression. Style may have +indeed a certain aesthetic worth in partial abstraction +from the particular matter it conveys, as in a +well-built sentence you may take pleasure in the +build almost apart from the meaning. Even so, +style is expressive—presents to sense, for example, +the order, ease, and rapidity with which ideas move +in the writer’s mind—but it is not expressive of the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page19" id="page19"></a>19</span> +meaning of that particular sentence. And it is +possible, interrupting poetic experience, to decompose +it and abstract for comparatively separate +consideration this nearly formal element of style. +But the aesthetic value of style so taken is not +considerable;<a name="fa6a" id="fa6a" href="#ft6a"><span class="sp">6</span></a> you could not read with pleasure for +an hour a composition which had no other merit. +And in poetic experience you never apprehend this +value by itself; the style is here expressive also of +a particular meaning, or rather is one aspect of that +unity whose other aspect is meaning. So that what +you apprehend may be called indifferently an +expressed meaning or a significant form. Perhaps +on this point I may in Oxford appeal to authority, +that of Matthew Arnold and Walter Pater, the +latter at any rate an authority whom the formalist +will not despise. What is the gist of Pater’s teaching +about style, if it is not that in the end the +one virtue of style is truth or adequacy; that +the word, phrase, sentence, should express perfectly +the writer’s perception, feeling, image, or thought; +so that, as we read a descriptive phrase of Keats’s, +we exclaim, ‘That is the thing itself’; so that, to +quote Arnold, the words are ‘symbols equivalent +with the thing symbolized,’ or, in our technical +language, a form identical with its content? Hence +in true poetry it is, in strictness, impossible to +express the meaning in any but its own words, or +to change the words without changing the meaning. +A translation of such poetry is not really the old +meaning in a fresh dress; it is a new product, +something like the poem, though, if one chooses to +say so, more like it in the aspect of meaning than in +the aspect of form.</p> + +<p>No one who understands poetry, it seems to me, +would dispute this, were it not that, falling away +from his experience, or misled by theory, he takes +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page20" id="page20"></a>20</span> +the word ‘meaning’ in a sense almost ludicrously +inapplicable to poetry. People say, for instance, +‘steed’ and ‘horse’ have the same meaning; and +in bad poetry they have, but not in poetry that +<i>is</i> poetry.</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>‘Bring forth the horse!’ The horse was brought:</p> +<p>In truth he was a noble steed!</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">says Byron in <i>Mazeppa</i>. If the two words mean +the same here, transpose them:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>‘Bring forth the steed!’ The steed was brought:</p> +<p>In truth he was a noble horse!</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">and ask again if they mean the same. Or let me +take a line certainly very free from ‘poetic diction’:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>To be or not to be, that is the question.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">You may say that this means the same as ‘What is +just now occupying my attention is the comparative +disadvantages of continuing to live or putting an +end to myself.’ And for practical purposes—the +purpose, for example, of a coroner—it does. But +as the second version altogether misrepresents the +speaker at that moment of his existence, while the +first does represent him, how can they for any but a +practical or logical purpose be said to have the same +sense? Hamlet was well able to ‘unpack his heart +with words,’ but he will not unpack it with our +paraphrases.</p> + +<p>These considerations apply equally to versification. +If I take the famous line which describes +how the souls of the dead stood waiting by the +river, imploring a passage from Charon:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore;</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">and if I translate it, ‘and were stretching forth their +hands in longing for the further bank,’ the charm of +the original has fled. Why has it fled? Partly +(but we have dealt with that) because I have substituted +for five words, and those the words of +Virgil, twelve words, and those my own. In some +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page21" id="page21"></a>21</span> +measure because I have turned into rhythmless +prose a line of verse which, as mere sound, has +unusual beauty. But much more because in doing +so I have also changed the <i>meaning</i> of Virgil’s line. +What that meaning is <i>I</i> cannot say: Virgil has said +it. But I can see this much, that the translation +conveys a far less vivid picture of the outstretched +hands and of their remaining outstretched, and a +far less poignant sense of the distance of the shore +and the longing of the souls. And it does so partly +because this picture and this sense are conveyed +not only by the obvious meaning of the words, +but through the long-drawn sound of ‘tendebantque,’ +through the time occupied by the five syllables +and therefore by the idea of ‘ulterioris,’ and +through the identity of the long sound ‘or’ in the +penultimate syllables of ‘ulterioris amore’—all this, +and much more, apprehended not in this analytical +fashion, nor as <i>added</i> to the beauty of mere sound +and to the obvious meaning, but in unity with them +and so as expressive of the poetic meaning of the +whole.</p> + +<p>It is always so in fine poetry. The value of +versification, when it is indissolubly fused with +meaning, can hardly be exaggerated. The gift for +feeling it, even more perhaps than the gift for +feeling the value of style, is the <i>specific</i> gift for +poetry, as distinguished from other arts. But versification, +taken, as far as possible, all by itself, has +a very different worth. Some aesthetic worth it +has; how much, you may experience by reading +poetry in a language of which you do not understand +a syllable.<a name="fa7a" id="fa7a" href="#ft7a"><span class="sp">7</span></a> The pleasure is quite appreciable, +but it is not great; nor in actual poetic experience +do you meet with it, as such, at all. For, I repeat, +it is not <i>added</i> to the pleasure of the meaning +when you read poetry that you do understand: by +some mystery the music is then the music <i>of</i> the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page22" id="page22"></a>22</span> +meaning, and the two are one. However fond of +versification you might be, you would tire very +soon of reading verses in Chinese; and before long +of reading Virgil and Dante if you were ignorant +of their languages. But take the music as it is <i>in</i> +the poem, and there is a marvellous change. Now</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>It gives a very echo to the seat</p> +<p>Where love is throned;</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">or ‘carries far into your heart,’ almost like music +itself, the sound</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Of old, unhappy, far-off things</p> + <p class="i2">And battles long ago.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>What then is to be said of the following sentence +of the critic quoted before: ‘But when any one +who knows what poetry is reads—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Our noisy years seem moments in the being</p> +<p>Of the eternal silence,</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">he sees that, quite independently of the meaning, ... +there is one note added to the articulate music +of the world—a note that never will leave off +resounding till the eternal silence itself gulfs it’ +must think that the writer is deceiving himself. For +I could quite understand his enthusiasm, if it were +an enthusiasm for the music of the meaning; but as +for the music, ‘quite independently of the meaning,’ +so far as I can hear it thus (and I doubt if any one +who knows English can quite do so), I find it gives +some pleasure, but only a trifling pleasure. And +indeed I venture to doubt whether, considered as +mere sound, the words are at all exceptionally +beautiful, as Virgil’s line certainly is.</p> + +<p class="pt2">When poetry answers to its idea and is purely or +almost purely poetic, we find the identity of form +and content; and the degree of purity attained may +be tested by the degree in which we feel it hopeless +to convey the effect of a poem or passage in any +form but its own. Where the notion of doing so is +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page23" id="page23"></a>23</span> +simply ludicrous, you have quintessential poetry. +But a great part even of good poetry, especially in +long works, is of a mixed nature; and so we find in +it no more than a partial agreement of a form and +substance which remain to some extent distinct. +This is so in many passages of Shakespeare (the +greatest of poets when he chose, but not always a +conscientious poet); passages where something was +wanted for the sake of the plot, but he did not care +about it or was hurried. The conception of the +passage is then distinct from the execution, and +neither is inspired. This is so also, I think, +wherever we can truly speak of merely decorative +effect. We seem to perceive that the poet had a +truth or fact—philosophical, agricultural, social—distinctly +before him, and then, as we say, clothed +it in metrical and coloured language. Most argumentative, +didactic, or satiric poems are partly of +this kind; and in imaginative poems anything which +is really a mere ‘conceit’ is mere decoration. We +often deceive ourselves in this matter, for what we +call decoration has often a new and genuinely poetic +content of its own; but wherever there is mere +decoration, we judge the poetry to be not wholly +poetic. And so when Wordsworth inveighed +against poetic diction, though he hurled his darts +rather wildly, what he was rightly aiming at was a +phraseology, not the living body of a new content, +but the mere worn-out body of an old one.<a name="fa8a" id="fa8a" href="#ft8a"><span class="sp">8</span></a></p> + +<p>In pure poetry it is otherwise. Pure poetry is not +the decoration of a preconceived and clearly defined +matter: it springs from the creative impulse of a +vague imaginative mass pressing for development +and definition. If the poet already knew exactly +what he meant to say, why should he write the +poem? The poem would in fact already be written. +For only its completion can reveal, even to him, +exactly what he wanted. When he began and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page24" id="page24"></a>24</span> +while he was at work, he did not possess his meaning; +it possessed him. It was not a fully formed +soul asking for a body: it was an inchoate soul in +the inchoate body of perhaps two or three vague +ideas and a few scattered phrases. The growing of +this body into its full stature and perfect shape was +the same thing as the gradual self-definition of the +meaning.<a name="fa9a" id="fa9a" href="#ft9a"><span class="sp">9</span></a> And this is the reason why such poems +strike us as creations, not manufactures, and have +the magical effect which mere decoration cannot +produce. This is also the reason why, if we insist +on asking for the meaning of such a poem, we can +only be answered ‘It means itself.’</p> + +<p>And so at last I may explain why I have troubled +myself and you with what may seem an arid controversy +about mere words. It is not so. These +heresies which would make poetry a compound of +two factors—a matter common to it with the merest +prose, <i>plus</i> a poetic form, as the one heresy says: a +poetical substance <i>plus</i> a negligible form, as the +other says—are not only untrue, they are injurious +to the dignity of poetry. In an age already inclined +to shrink from those higher realms where poetry +touches religion and philosophy, the formalist heresy +encourages men to taste poetry as they would a fine +wine, which has indeed an aesthetic value, but a +small one. And then the natural man, finding an +empty form, hurls into it the matter of cheap pathos, +rancid sentiment, vulgar humour, bare lust, ravenous +vanity—everything which, in Schiller’s phrase,<a name="fa10a" id="fa10a" href="#ft10a"><span class="sp">10</span></a> the +form should extirpate, but which no mere form can +extirpate. And the other heresy—which is indeed +rather a practice than a creed—encourages us in the +habit so dear to us of putting our own thoughts or +fancies into the place of the poet’s creation. What +he meant by <i>Hamlet</i>, or the <i>Ode to a Nightingale</i>, +or <i>Abt Vogler</i>, we say, is this or that which we +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page25" id="page25"></a>25</span> +knew already; and so we lose what he had to tell +us. But he meant what he said, and said what he +meant.</p> + +<p>Poetry in this matter is not, as good critics of +painting and music often affirm, different from the +other arts; in all of them the content is one thing +with the form. What Beethoven meant by his +symphony, or Turner by his picture, was not something +which you can name, but the picture and the +symphony. Meaning they have, but <i>what</i> meaning +can be said in no language but their own: and we +know this, though some strange delusion makes us +think the meaning has less worth because we cannot +put it into words. Well, it is just the same with +poetry. But because poetry is words, we vainly +fancy that some other words than its own will +express its meaning. And they will do so no more—or, +if you like to speak loosely, only a trifle +more—than words will express the meaning of the +Dresden Madonna.<a name="fa11a" id="fa11a" href="#ft11a"><span class="sp">11</span></a> Something a little like it they +may indeed express. And we may find analogues +of the meaning of poetry outside it, which may help +us to appropriate it. The other arts, the best ideas +of philosophy or religion, much that nature and life +offer us or force upon us, are akin to it. But they +are only akin. Nor is it the expression of them. +Poetry does not present to imagination our highest +knowledge or belief, and much less our dreams +and opinions; but it, content and form in unity, +embodies in its own irreplaceable way something +which embodies itself also in other irreplaceable +ways, such as philosophy or religion. And just +as each of these gives a satisfaction which the +other cannot possibly give, so we find in poetry, +which cannot satisfy the needs they meet, that +which by their natures they cannot afford us. +But we shall not find it fully if we look for something +else.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page26" id="page26"></a>26</span></p> + +<p>And now, when all is said, the question will still +recur, though now in quite another sense, What +does poetry mean?<a name="fa12a" id="fa12a" href="#ft12a"><span class="sp">12</span></a> This unique expression, which +cannot be replaced by any other, still seems to be +trying to express something beyond itself. And +this, we feel, is also what the other arts, and religion, +and philosophy are trying to express: and that is +what impels us to seek in vain to translate the one +into the other. About the best poetry, and not +only the best, there floats an atmosphere of infinite +suggestion. The poet speaks to us of one thing, +but in this one thing there seems to lurk the secret +of all. He said what he meant, but his meaning +seems to beckon away beyond itself, or rather to +expand into something boundless which is only +focussed in it; something also which, we feel, would +satisfy not only the imagination, but the whole of +us; that something within us, and without, which +everywhere</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i6">makes us seem</p> +<p>To patch up fragments of a dream,</p> +<p>Part of which comes true, and part</p> +<p>Beats and trembles in the heart.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">Those who are susceptible to this effect of poetry +find it not only, perhaps not most, in the ideals +which she has sometimes described, but in a child’s +song by Christina Rossetti about a mere crown of +wind-flowers, and in tragedies like <i>Lear</i>, where the +sun seems to have set for ever. They hear this +spirit murmuring its undertone through the <i>Aeneid</i>, +and catch its voice in the song of Keats’s nightingale, +and its light upon the figures on the Urn, and +it pierces them no less in Shelley’s hopeless lament, +<i>O world, O life, O time</i>, than in the rapturous +ecstasy of his <i>Life of Life</i>. This all-embracing +perfection cannot be expressed in poetic words or +words of any kind, nor yet in music or in colour, +but the suggestion of it is in much poetry, if not all, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page27" id="page27"></a>27</span> +and poetry has in this suggestion, this ‘meaning,’ a +great part of its value. We do it wrong, and we +defeat our own purposes, when we try to bend it to +them:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>We do it wrong, being so majestical,</p> +<p>To offer it the show of violence;</p> +<p>For it is as the air invulnerable,</p> +<p>And our vain blows malicious mockery.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">It is a spirit. It comes we know not whence. It +will not speak at our bidding, nor answer in our +language. It is not our servant; it is our master.</p> + +<p class="f80">1901</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page28" id="page28"></a>28</span></p> + +<div class="condensed"> +<p class="pt2 center chap">NOTE A</p> + +<p>The purpose of this sentence was not, as has been supposed, +to give a definition of poetry. To define poetry as something +that goes on in us when we read poetically would be absurd +indeed. My object was to suggest to my hearers in passing +that it is futile to ask questions about the end, or substance, +or form of poetry, if we forget that a poem is neither a mere +number of black marks on a white page, nor such experience +as is evoked in us when we read these marks as we read, let us +say, a newspaper article; and I suppose my hearers to know, +sufficiently for the purpose of the lecture, how that sort of +reading differs from poetical reading.</p> + +<p>The truths thus suggested are so obvious, when stated, that +I thought a bare reminder of them would be enough. But +in fact the mistakes we make about ‘subject,’ ‘substance,’ +‘form,’ and the like, are due not solely to misapprehension of +our poetic experience, but to our examining what is not this +experience. The whole lecture may be called an expansion +of this statement.</p> + +<p>The passage to which the present note refers raises difficult +questions which any attempt at a ‘Poetics’ ought to discuss. +I will mention three. (1) If the experience called a poem +varies ‘with every reader and every time of reading’ and ‘exists +in innumerable degrees,’ what is the poem itself, if there is such +a thing? (2) How does a series of successive experiences form +<i>one</i> poem? (3) If the object in the case of poetry and music +(‘arts of hearing’) is a succession somehow and to some extent +unified, how does it differ in this respect from the object in +‘arts of sight’—a building, a statue, a picture?</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page29" id="page29"></a>29</span></p> + +<p class="pt2 center chap">NOTE B</p> + +<p>A lyric, for example, may arise from ‘real’ emotions due to +transitory conditions peculiar to the poet. But these emotions +and conditions, however interesting biographically, are poetically +irrelevant. The poem, what the poet <i>says</i>, is universal, and is +appropriated by people who live centuries after him and perhaps +know nothing of him and his life; and if it arose from mere +imagination it is none the worse (or the better) for that. So +far as it cannot be appropriated without a knowledge of the +circumstances in which it arose, it is probably, so far, faulty +(probably, because the difficulty <i>may</i> come from our distance +from the whole mental world of the poet’s time and country).</p> + +<p>What is said in the text applies equally to all the arts. It +applies also to such aesthetic apprehension as does not issue +in a work of art. And it applies to this apprehension whether +the object belongs to ‘Nature’ or to ‘Man.’ A beautiful landscape +is not a ‘real’ landscape. Much that belongs to the +‘real’ landscape is ignored when it is apprehended aesthetically; +and the painter only carries this unconscious idealisation further +when he deliberately alters the ‘real’ landscape in further ways.</p> + +<p>All this does not in the least imply that the ‘real’ thing, +where there is one (personal emotion, landscape, historical event, +etc.), is of small importance to the aesthetic apprehension or +the work of art. But it is relevant only as it appears <i>in</i> that +apprehension or work.</p> + +<p>If an artist alters a reality (<i>e.g.</i> a well-known scene or historical +character) so much that his product clashes violently with our +familiar ideas, he may be making a mistake: not because his +product is untrue to the reality (this by itself is perfectly +irrelevant), but because the ‘untruth’ may make it difficult or +impossible for others to appropriate his product, or because +this product may be aesthetically inferior to the reality even +as it exists in the general imagination.</p> + +<p class="pt2 center chap">NOTE C</p> + +<p>For the purpose of the experiment you must, of course, know +the sounds denoted by the letters, and you must be able to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page30" id="page30"></a>30</span> +make out the rhythmical scheme. But the experiment will be +vitiated if you get some one who understands the language to +read or recite to you poems written in it, for he will certainly +so read or recite as to convey to you something of the meaning +through the sound (I do not refer of course to the logical +meaning).</p> + +<p>Hence it is clear that, if by ‘versification taken by itself’ one +means the versification of a <i>poem</i>, it is impossible under the +requisite conditions to get at this versification by itself. The +versification of a poem is always, to speak loosely, influenced +by the sense. The bare metrical scheme, to go no further, is +practically never followed by the poet. Suppose yourself to +know no English, and to perceive merely that in its general +scheme</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>It gives a very echo to the seat</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">is an iambic line of five feet; and then read the line as you +would have to read it; and then ask if <i>that</i> noise is the sound +of the line <i>in the poem</i>.</p> + +<p>In the text, therefore, more is admitted than in strictness should +be admitted. For I have assumed for the moment that you can +hear the sound of poetry if you read poetry which you do not +in the least understand, whereas in fact that sound cannot be +produced at all except by a person who knows something of the +meaning.</p> + +<p class="pt2 center chap">NOTE D</p> + +<p>This paragraph has not, to my knowledge, been adversely +criticised, but it now appears to me seriously misleading. It +refers to certain kinds of poetry, and again to certain passages +in poems, which we feel to be less poetical than some other +kinds or passages. But this difference of degree in poeticalness +(if I may use the word) is put as a difference between ‘mixed’ +and ‘pure’ poetry; and that distinction is, I think, unreal and +mischievous. Further, it is implied that in less poetical poetry +there necessarily is only a partial unity of content and form. +This (unless I am now mistaken) is a mistake, and a mistake +due to failure to hold fast the main idea of the lecture. Naturally +it would be most agreeable to me to re-write the paragraph, but +if I reprint it and expose my errors the reader will perhaps be +helped to a firmer grasp of that idea.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page31" id="page31"></a>31</span></p> + +<p>It is true that where poetry is most poetic we feel most +decidedly how impossible it is to separate content and form. +But where poetry is less poetic and does not make us feel this +unity so decidedly, it does not follow that the unity is imperfect. +Failure or partial failure in this unity is always (as in +the case of Shakespeare referred to) a failure on the part of the +<i>poet</i> (though it is not always due to the same causes). It does +not lie of necessity in the nature of a particular kind of poetry +(<i>e.g.</i> satire) or in the nature of a particular passage. All poetry +cannot be equally poetic, but <i>all</i> poetry ought to maintain the +unity of content and form, and, in that sense, to be ‘pure.’ +Only in certain kinds, and in certain passages, it is more difficult +for the poet to maintain it than in others.</p> + +<p>Let us take first the ‘passages’ and suppose them to occur +in one of the more poetic kinds of poetry. In certain parts of +any epic or tragedy matter has to be treated which, though +necessary to the whole, is not in itself favourable to poetry, or +would not in itself be a good ‘subject.’ But it is the business +of the poet to do his best to make this matter poetry, and pure +poetry. And, if he succeeds, the passage, though it will probably +be less poetic than the bulk of the poem, will exhibit the complete +unity of content and form. It will not strike us as a mere +bridge between other passages; it will be enjoyable for itself; +and it will not occur to us to think that the poet was dealing +with an un-poetic ‘matter’ and found his task difficult or +irksome. Shakespeare frequently does not trouble himself to +face this problem and leaves an imperfect unity. The conscientious +artists, like Virgil, Milton, Tennyson, habitually face, +it and frequently solve it.<a name="fa13a" id="fa13a" href="#ft13a"><span class="sp">13</span></a> And when they wholly or partially +fail, the fault is still <i>theirs</i>. It is, in one sense, due to the +‘matter,’ which set a hard problem; but they would be the first +to declare that <i>nothing</i> in the poem ought to be only mixedly +poetic.</p> + +<p>In the same way, satire is not in its nature a highly poetic +kind of poetry, but it ought, in its own kind, to be poetry +throughout, and therefore ought not to show a merely partial +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page32" id="page32"></a>32</span> +unity of content and form. If the satirist makes us exclaim ‘This +is sheer prose wonderfully well disguised,’ that is a fault, and +<i>his</i> fault (unless it happens to be ours). The idea that a tragedy +or lyric could really be reproduced in a form not its own strikes +us as ridiculous; the idea that a satire could so be reproduced +seems much less ridiculous; but if it were true the satire would +not be poetry at all.</p> + +<p>The reader will now see where, in my judgment, the paragraph +is wrong. Elsewhere it is, I think, right, though it deals +with a subject far too large for a paragraph. This is also true +of the next paragraph, which uses the false distinction of ‘pure’ +and ‘mixed,’ and which will hold in various degrees of poetry +in various degrees poetical.</p> + +<p>It is of course possible to use a distinction of ‘pure’ and +‘mixed’ in another sense. Poetry, whatever its kind, would be +pure as far as it preserved the unity of content and form; +mixed, so far as it failed to do so—in other words, failed to be +poetry and was partly prosaic.</p> + +<p class="pt2 center chap">NOTE E</p> + +<p>It is possible therefore that the poem, as it existed at certain +stages in its growth, may correspond roughly with the poem +as it exists in the memories of various readers. A reader who +is fond of the poem and often thinks of it, but remembers +only half the words and perhaps fills up the gaps with his own +words, may possess something like the poem as it was when +half-made. There are readers again who retain only what they +would call the ‘idea’ of the poem; and the poem <i>may</i> have +begun from such an idea. Others will forget all the words, and +will not profess to remember even the ‘meaning,’ but believe +that they possess the ‘spirit’ of the poem. And what they +possess may have, I think, an immense value. The poem, of +course, it is not; but it may answer to the state of imaginative +feeling or emotional imagination which was the germ of the +poem. This is, in one sense, quite definite: it would not be +the germ of a decidedly different poem: but in another sense +it is indefinite, comparatively structureless, more a ‘stimmung’ +than an idea.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page33" id="page33"></a>33</span></p> + +<p>Such correspondences, naturally, must be very rough, if only +because the readers have been at one time in contact with the +fully grown poem.</p> + +<p class="pt2 center chap">NOTE F</p> + +<p>I should be sorry if what is said here and elsewhere were +taken to imply depreciation of all attempts at the interpretation +of works of art. As regards poetry, such attempts, though +they cannot possibly express the whole meaning of a poem, +may do much to facilitate the poetic apprehension of that +meaning. And, although the attempt is still more hazardous +in the case of music and painting, I believe it may have a +similar value. That its results <i>may</i> be absurd or disgusting +goes without saying, and whether they are ever of use to +musicians or the musically educated I do not know. But I +see no reason why an exceedingly competent person should not +try to indicate the emotional tone of a composition, movement, +or passage, or the changes of feeling within it, or even, very +roughly, the ‘idea’ he may suppose it to embody (though he +need not imply that the composer had any of this before his +mind). And I believe that such indications, however inadequate +they must be, may greatly help the uneducated lover of music +to hear more truly the music itself.</p> + +<p class="pt2 center chap">NOTE G</p> + +<p>This new question has ‘quite another sense’ than that of the +question, What is the meaning or content expressed by the form +of a poem? The new question asks, What is it that the <i>poem</i>, +the unity of this content and form, is trying to express? This +‘beyond’ is beyond the content as well as the form.</p> + +<p>Of course, I should add, it is not <i>merely</i> beyond them or +outside of them. If it were, they (the poem) could not ‘suggest’ +it. They are a partial manifestation of it, and point beyond +themselves to it, both because they <i>are</i> a manifestation and +because this is partial.</p> + +<p>The same thing is true, not only (as is remarked in the text) +of the other arts and of religion and philosophy, but also of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page34" id="page34"></a>34</span> +what is commonly called reality. This reality is a manifestation +of a different order from poetry, and in certain important respects +a much more imperfect manifestation. Hence, as was pointed +out (pp. 6, 7, note B), poetry is not a copy of it, but in dealing +with it idealises it, and in doing so produces in certain respects +a fuller manifestation. On the other hand, that imperfect +‘reality’ has for us a character in which poetry is deficient,—the +character in virtue of which we call it ‘reality.’ It is, we +feel, thrust upon us, not made by us or by any other man. +And in this respect it seems more akin than poetry to that +‘beyond,’ or absolute, or perfection, which we want, which +partially expresses itself in both, and which could not be +perfection and could not satisfy us if it were not real (though +it cannot be real in the same sense as that imperfect ‘reality’). +This seems the ultimate ground of the requirement that poetry, +though no copy of ‘reality,’ should not be mere ‘fancy,’ but +should refer to, and interpret, that ‘reality.’ For that reality, +however imperfectly it reveals perfection, is at least no mere +fancy. (Not that the merest fancy can fail to reveal something +of perfection.)</p> + +<p>The lines quoted on p. 26 are from a fragment of Shelley’s +beginning ‘Is it that in some brighter sphere.’</p> +</div> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1a" id="ft1a" href="#fa1a"><span class="fn">1</span></a> The lecture, as printed in 1901, was preceded by the following +note: “This Lecture is printed almost as it was delivered. I am +aware that, especially in the earlier pages, difficult subjects are treated +in a manner far too summary, but they require an exposition so full +that it would destroy the original form of the Lecture, while a slight +expansion would do little to provide against misunderstandings.” A +few verbal changes have now been made, some notes have been added, +and some of the introductory remarks omitted.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2a" id="ft2a" href="#fa2a"><span class="fn">2</span></a> Note A.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3a" id="ft3a" href="#fa3a"><span class="fn">3</span></a> Note B.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4a" id="ft4a" href="#fa4a"><span class="fn">4</span></a> What is here called ‘substance’ is what people generally mean +when they use the word ‘subject’ and insist on the value of the +subject. I am not arguing against this usage, or in favour of the +usage which I have adopted for the sake of clearness. It does not +matter which we employ, so long as we and others know what we +mean. (I use ‘substance’ and ‘content’ indifferently.)</p> + +<p><a name="ft5a" id="ft5a" href="#fa5a"><span class="fn">5</span></a> These remarks will hold good, <i>mutatis mutandis</i>, if by ‘substance’ +is understood the ‘moral’ or the ‘idea’ of a poem, although perhaps +in one instance out of five thousand this may be found in so many +words in the poem.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6a" id="ft6a" href="#fa6a"><span class="fn">6</span></a> On the other hand, the absence, or worse than absence, of style, in +this sense, is a serious matter.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7a" id="ft7a" href="#fa7a"><span class="fn">7</span></a> Note C.</p> + +<p><a name="ft8a" id="ft8a" href="#fa8a"><span class="fn">8</span></a> This paragraph is criticized in Note D.</p> + +<p><a name="ft9a" id="ft9a" href="#fa9a"><span class="fn">9</span></a> Note E.</p> + +<p><a name="ft10a" id="ft10a" href="#fa10a"><span class="fn">10</span></a> Not that to Schiller ‘form’ meant mere style and versification.</p> + +<p><a name="ft11a" id="ft11a" href="#fa11a"><span class="fn">11</span></a> Note F.</p> + +<p><a name="ft12a" id="ft12a" href="#fa12a"><span class="fn">12</span></a> Note G.</p> + +<p><a name="ft13a" id="ft13a" href="#fa13a"><span class="fn">13</span></a> In Schiller’s phrase, they have extirpated the mere ‘matter.’ We often +say that they do this by dint of style. This is roughly true, but in strictness +it means, as we have seen, not that they decorate the mere ‘matter’ +with a mere ‘form,’ but that they produce a new content-form.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:150px; height:35px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img001.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page35" id="page35"></a>35</span></p> + +<p class="center chap">THE SUBLIME</p> +<p> </p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page36" id="page36"></a>36<br />37</span></p> + +<p class="center pt2"><span class="chap2">THE SUBLIME</span><a name="fa1b" id="fa1b" href="#ft1b"><span class="sp">1</span></a></p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1 fo">Coleridge</span> used to tell a story about his visit to the +Falls of Clyde; but he told it with such variations +that the details are uncertain, and without regard to +truth I shall change it to the shape that suits my +purpose best. After gazing at the Falls for some +time, he began to consider what adjective would +answer most precisely to the impression he had +received; and he came to the conclusion that the +proper word was ‘sublime.’ Two other tourists +arrived, and, standing by him, looked in silence at +the spectacle. Then, to Coleridge’s high satisfaction, +the gentleman exclaimed, ‘It is sublime.’ To +which the lady responded, ‘Yes, it is the prettiest +thing I ever saw.’</p> + +<p>This poor lady’s incapacity (for I assume that +Coleridge and her husband were in the right) is +ludicrous, but it is also a little painful. Sublimity +and prettiness are qualities separated by so great +a distance that our sudden attempt to unite them +has a comically incongruous effect. At the same +time the first of these qualities is so exalted that +the exhibition of entire inability to perceive it is +distressing. Astonishment, rapture, awe, even self-abasement, +are among the emotions evoked by +sublimity. Many would be inclined to pronounce it +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page38" id="page38"></a>38</span> +the very highest of all the forms assumed by beauty, +whether in nature or in works of imagination.</p> + +<p>I propose to make some remarks on this quality, +and even to attempt some sort of answer to the +question what sublimity is. I say ‘some sort of +answer,’ because the question is large and difficult, +and I can deal with it only in outline and by drawing +artificial limits round it and refusing to discuss +certain presuppositions on which the answer rests. +What I mean by these last words will be evident +if I begin by referring to a term which will often +recur in this lecture—the term ‘beauty.’</p> + +<p>When we call sublimity a form of beauty, as I +did just now, the word ‘beauty’ is obviously being +used in the widest sense. It is the sense which the +word bears when we distinguish beauty from goodness +and from truth, or when ‘beautiful’ is taken to +signify anything and everything that gives aesthetic +satisfaction, or when ‘Aesthetics’ and ‘Philosophy +of the Beautiful’ are used as equivalent expressions. +Of beauty, thus understood, sublimity is one particular +kind among a number of others, for instance +prettiness. But ‘beauty’ and ‘beautiful’ have also +another meaning, narrower and more specific, as +when we say that a thing is pretty but not beautiful, +or that it is beautiful but not sublime. The beauty +we have in view here is evidently not the same as +beauty in the wider sense; it is only, like sublimity +or prettiness, a particular kind or mode of that +beauty. This ambiguity of the words ‘beauty’ and +‘beautiful’ is a great inconvenience, and especially +so in a lecture, where it forces us to add some +qualification to the words whenever they occur: +but it cannot be helped. (Now that the lecture is +printed I am able to avoid these qualifications by +printing the words in inverted commas where they +bear the narrower sense.)<a name="fa2b" id="fa2b" href="#ft2b"><span class="sp">2</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page39" id="page39"></a>39</span></p> + +<p>Now, obviously, all the particular kinds or modes +of beauty must have, up to a certain point, the same +nature. They must all possess that character in +virtue of which they are called beautiful rather than +good or true. And so a philosopher, investigating +one of these kinds, would first have to determine +this common nature or character; and then he would +go on to ascertain what it is that distinguishes the +particular kind from its companions. But here we +cannot follow such a method. The nature of beauty +in general is so much disputed and so variously +defined that to discuss it here by way of preface +would be absurd; and on the other hand it would +be both presumptuous and useless to assume the +truth of any one account of it. Our only plan, +therefore, must be to leave it entirely alone, and to +consider merely the distinctive character of sublimity. +Let beauty in general be what it may, what is it +that marks off <i>this</i> kind of beauty from others, and +what is there peculiar in our state of mind when we +are moved to apply to anything the specific epithet +‘sublime’?—such is our question. And this plan is +not merely the only possible one, but it is, I believe, +quite justifiable, since, so far as I can see, the answer +to our particular question, unless it is pushed further +than I propose to go, is unaffected by the differences +among theories of repute concerning beauty +in general. At the same time, it is essential to +realise and always to bear in mind one consequence +of this plan; which is that our account of what is +peculiar to sublimity will not be an account of +sublimity in its full nature. For sublimity is not +those peculiar characteristics alone, it is that <i>beauty</i> +which is distinguished by them, and a large part of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page40" id="page40"></a>40</span> +its effect is due to that general nature of beauty +which it shares with other kinds, and which we leave +unexamined.</p> + +<p>In considering the question thus defined I propose +to start from our common aesthetic experience +and to attempt to arrive at an answer by degrees. +It will be understood, therefore, that our first results +may have to be modified as we proceed. And I +will venture to ask my hearers, further, to ignore +for the time any doubts they may feel whether I am +right in saying, by way of illustration, that this or +that thing is sublime. Such differences of opinion +scarcely affect our question, which is not whether in +a given case the epithet is rightly applied, but what +the epithet signifies. And it has to be borne in +mind that, while no two kinds of beauty can be +quite the same, a <i>thing</i> may very well possess beauty +of two different kinds.</p> + +<p class="pt2">Let us begin by placing side by side five terms +which represent five of the many modes of beauty—sublime, +grand, ‘beautiful,’ graceful, pretty. +‘Beautiful’ is here placed in the middle. Before +it come two terms, sublime and grand; and beyond +it lie two others, graceful and pretty. Now is it not +the case that the first two, though not identical, still +seem to be allied in some respect; that the last two +also seem to be allied in some respect; that in this +respect, whatever it may be, these two pairs seem +to stand apart from one another, and even to stand +in contrast; that ‘beauty,’ in this respect, seems to +hold a neutral position, though perhaps inclining +rather to grace than to grandeur; and that the +extreme terms, sublime and pretty, seem in this +respect to be the most widely removed; so that +this series of five constitutes, in a sense, a descending +series,—descending not necessarily in value, +but in some particular respect not yet assigned? +If, for example, in the lady’s answer, ‘Yes, it is +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page41" id="page41"></a>41</span> +the prettiest thing I ever saw,’ you substitute for +‘prettiest’ first ‘most graceful,’ and then ‘most +beautiful,’ and then ‘grandest,’ you will find that +your astonishment at her diminishes at each step, +and that at the last, when she identifies sublimity +and grandeur, she is guilty no longer of an absurdity, +but only of a slight anti-climax. If, I may add, +she had said ‘majestic,’ the anti-climax would have +been slighter still, and, in fact, in one version of the +story Coleridge says that ‘majestic’ was the word +he himself chose.</p> + +<p>What then is the ‘respect’ in question here,—the +something or other in regard to which sublimity +and grandeur seemed to be allied with one another, +and to differ decidedly from grace and prettiness? +It appears to be greatness. Thousands of things +are ‘beautiful,’ graceful, or pretty, and yet make +no impression of greatness, nay, this impression in +many cases appears to collide with, and even to +destroy, that of grace or prettiness, so that if a +pretty thing produced it you would cease to call +it pretty. But whatever strikes us as sublime produces +an impression of greatness, and more—of +exceeding or even overwhelming greatness. And +this greatness, further, is apparently no mere +accompaniment of sublimity, but essential to it: +remove the greatness in imagination, and the +sublimity vanishes. Grandeur, too, seems always +to possess greatness, though not in this superlative +degree; while ‘beauty’ neither invariably possesses +it nor tends, like prettiness and grace, to exclude +it. I will try, not to defend these statements by +argument, but to develop their meaning by help +of illustrations, dismissing from view the minor +differences between these modes of beauty, and, +for the most part, leaving grandeur out of account.</p> + +<p>We need not ask here what is the exact meaning +of that ‘greatness’ of which I have spoken: but we +must observe at once that the greatness in question +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page42" id="page42"></a>42</span> +is of more than one kind. Let us understand by +the term, to begin with, greatness of extent,—of +size, number, or duration; and let us ask whether +sublime things are, in this sense, exceedingly great. +Some certainly are. The vault of heaven, one +expanse of blue, or dark and studded with countless +and prodigiously distant stars; the sea that stretches +to the horizon and beyond it, a surface smooth as glass +or breaking into innumerable waves; time, to which +we can imagine no beginning and no end,—these +furnish favourite examples of sublimity; and to call +them great seems almost mockery, for they are +images of immeasurable magnitude. When we turn +from them to living beings, of course our standard +of greatness changes;<a name="fa3b" id="fa3b" href="#ft3b"><span class="sp">3</span></a> but, using the standard +appropriate to the sphere, we find again that the +sublime things have, for the most part, great +magnitude. A graceful tree need not be a large +one; a pretty tree is almost always small; but a +sublime tree is almost always large. If you were +asked to mention sublime animals, you would perhaps +suggest, among birds, the eagle; among fishes, +if any, the whale; among beasts, the lion or the +tiger, the python or the elephant. But you would +find it hard to name a sublime insect; and indeed it +is not easy, perhaps not possible, to feel sublimity +in any animal smaller than oneself, unless one goes +beyond the special kind of greatness at present +under review. Consider again such facts as these: +that a human being of average, or even of less than +average, stature and build may be graceful and +even ‘beautiful,’ but can hardly, in respect of +stature and build, be grand or sublime; that we +most commonly think of flowers as little things, and +also most commonly think of them as ‘beautiful,’ +graceful, pretty, but rarely as grand, and still more +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page43" id="page43"></a>43</span> +rarely as sublime, and that in these latter cases we +do not think of them as small; that a mighty river +may well be sublime, but hardly a stream; a towering +or far-stretching mountain, but hardly a low +hill; a vast bridge, but hardly one of moderate +span; a great cathedral, but hardly a village +church; that a model of a sublime building is not +sublime, unless in imagination you expand it to the +dimensions of its original; that a plain, though flat, +may be sublime if its extent is immense; that while +we constantly say ‘a pretty little thing,’ or even ‘a +beautiful little thing,’ nobody ever says ‘a sublime +little thing.’ Examples like these seem to show +clearly—not that bigness is sublimity, for bigness +need have no beauty, while sublimity is a mode of +beauty—but that this particular mode of beauty +is frequently connected with, and dependent on, +exceeding greatness of extent.</p> + +<p>Let us now take a further step. Can there be +sublimity when such greatness is absent? And, if +there can, is greatness of some other sort always +present in such cases, and essential to the sublime +effect? The answer to the first of these questions +is beyond doubt. Children have no great extension, +and what Wordsworth calls ‘a six-years’ darling of +a pigmy size’ is (if a darling) generally called pretty +but not sublime; for it <i>is</i> ‘of a pigmy size.’ Yet it +certainly <i>may</i> be sublime, and it is so to the poet +who addresses it thus:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Thou whose exterior semblance doth belie</p> + <p class="i1">Thy soul’s immensity....</p> +<p>Mighty prophet! Seer blest!</p> +<p>On whom those truths do rest</p> +<p>Which we are toiling all our lives to find.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">A baby is still smaller, but a baby too may be +sublime. The starry sky is not more sublime than +the babe on the arm of the Madonna di San Sisto. +A sparrow is more diminutive still; but that it is +possible for a sparrow to be sublime is not difficult +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page44" id="page44"></a>44</span> +to show. This is a translation of a prose poem by +Tourgénieff:</p> + +<div class="condensed"> +<p>I was on my way home from hunting, and was walking up the +garden avenue. My dog was running on in front of me.</p> + +<p>Suddenly he slackened his pace, and began to steal forward as +though he scented game ahead.</p> + +<p>I looked along the avenue; and I saw on the ground a young +sparrow, its beak edged with yellow, and its head covered with +soft down. It had fallen from the nest (a strong wind was +blowing, and shaking the birches of the avenue); and there it +sat and never stirred, except to stretch out its little half-grown +wings in a helpless flutter.</p> + +<p>My dog was slowly approaching it, when suddenly, darting +from the tree overhead, an old black-throated sparrow dropt like +a stone right before his nose, and, all rumpled and flustered, with +a plaintive desperate cry flung itself, once, twice, at his open jaws +with their great teeth.</p> + +<p>It would save its young one; it screened it with its own body; +the tiny frame quivered with terror; the little cries grew wild and +hoarse; it sank and died. It had sacrificed itself.</p> + +<p>What a huge monster the dog must have seemed to it! And +yet it could not stay up there on its safe bough. A power +stronger than its own will tore it away.</p> + +<p>My dog stood still, and then slunk back disconcerted. Plainly +he too had to recognise that power. I called him to me; and a +feeling of reverence came over me as I passed on.</p> + +<p>Yes, do not laugh. It was really reverence I felt before that +little heroic bird and the passionate outburst of its love.</p> + +<p>Love, I thought, is verily stronger than death and the terror of +death. By love, only by love, is life sustained and moved.</p> +</div> + +<p>This sparrow, it will be agreed, is sublime. What, +then, makes it so? Not largeness of size, assuredly, +but, we answer, its love and courage. Yes; but +what do we mean by ‘<i>its</i> love and courage’? We +often meet with love and courage, and always +admire and approve them; but we do not always +find them sublime. Why, then, are they sublime in +the sparrow? From their extraordinary greatness. +It is not in the quality alone, but in the quantity of +the quality, that the sublimity lies. And this may +be readily seen if we imagine the quantity to be +considerably reduced,—if we imagine the parent +bird, after its first brave effort, flinching and flying +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page45" id="page45"></a>45</span> +away, or if we suppose the bird that sacrifices itself +to be no sparrow but a turkey. In either case love +and courage would remain, but sublimity would +recede or vanish, simply because the love and +courage would no longer possess the required +immensity.<a name="fa4b" id="fa4b" href="#ft4b"><span class="sp">4</span></a></p> + +<p>The sublimity of the sparrow, then, no less than +that of the sky or sea, depends on exceeding or +overwhelming greatness—a greatness, however, not +of extension but rather of strength or power, and in +this case of spiritual power. ‘Love is <i>stronger</i> than +death,’ quotes the poet; ‘a power <i>stronger</i> than its +own tore it away.’ So it is with the dog of whom +Scott and Wordsworth sang, whose master had +perished among the crags of Helvellyn, and who +was found three months after by his master’s body,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>How nourished here through such long time</p> +<p>He knows who gave that love sublime,</p> +<p>And gave that strength of feeling, great</p> +<p>Above all human estimate.<a name="fa5b" id="fa5b" href="#ft5b"><span class="sp">5</span></a></p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">And if we look further we shall find that these cases +of sublimity are, in this respect, far from being +exceptions: ‘thy soul’s <i>immensity</i>,’ says Wordsworth +to the child; ‘<i>mighty</i> prophet’ he calls it. We shall +find, in fact, that in the sublime, when there is not +greatness of extent, there is another greatness, which +(without saying that the phrase is invariably the +most appropriate) we may call greatness of power +and which in these cases is essential.</p> + +<p>We must develop this statement a little. Naturally +the power, and therefore the sublimity, will +differ in its character in different instances, and +therefore will affect us variously. It may be—to +classify very roughly—physical, or vital, or (in the +old wide sense of the word) moral, like that of the +sparrow and the dog. And physical force will +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page46" id="page46"></a>46</span> +appeal to the imagination in one way, and vital in +another, and moral or spiritual in another. But it +is still power of some kind that makes a thing +sublime rather than graceful, and immensity of +power that makes it sublime rather than merely +grand. For example, the lines of the water in a +thin cascade may be exquisitely graceful, but such +a cascade has not power enough to be sublime. +Flickering fire in a grate is often ‘beautiful,’ but it +is not sublime; the fire of a big bonfire is on the +way to be so; a ‘great fire’ frequently is so, because +it gives the impression of tremendous power. The +ocean, in those stanzas of <i>Childe Harold</i> which +no amount of familiarity or of defect can deprive of +their sublimity, is the untameable monster which +engulfs men as lightly as rain-drops and shatters +fleets like toys. The sublimity of Behemoth and +Leviathan in the <i>Book of Job</i> lies in the contrast +of their enormous might with the puny power of +man; that of the horse in the fiery energy of his +courage and strength. Think of sublime figures or +ideas in the world of fiction or of history, and you +find that, whether they are radiant or gloomy, +violent or peaceful, terrible or adorable, they all +impress the imagination by their immense or even +irresistible might. It is so with Achilles, standing +alone beyond the wall, with the light of the divine +flame soaring from his head, while he sends across +the trench that shout at whose far-off sound the +hearts of the Trojans die within them; or with +Odysseus, when the moment of his vengeance has +come, and he casts off his rags, and leaps onto the +threshold with his bow, and pours his arrows down +at his feet, and looks down the long hall at the +doomed faces of his feasting enemies. Milton’s +Satan is sublime when he refuses to accept defeat +from an omnipotent foe; he ceases to be so in +tempting Eve, because here he shows not power +but cunning, and we feel not the strength of his +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page47" id="page47"></a>47</span> +cunning but the weakness of his victim. In the +bust of Zeus in the Vatican, in some of the figures +of the Medici Chapel, in ‘The horse and his rider,’ +we feel again sublimity, because we feel gigantic +power, put forth or held in reserve. Fate or Death, +imagined as a lurking assassin, is not sublime, but +may become so when imagined as inevitable, irresistible, +<i>ineluctabile fatum</i>. The eternal laws to +which Antigone appeals, like that Duty which +preserves the strength and freshness of the most +ancient heavens, are sublime. Prometheus, the +saviour of mankind, opposing a boundless power of +enduring pain to a boundless power of inflicting it; +Regulus returning unmoved to his doom; Socrates, +serene and even joyous in the presence of injury +and death and the lamentations of his friends, are +sublime. The words ‘I have overcome the world’ +are among the most sublime on record, and they +are also the expression of the absolute power of +the spirit.<a name="fa6b" id="fa6b" href="#ft6b"><span class="sp">6</span></a></p> + +<p>It seems clear, then, that sublimity very often +arises from an overwhelming greatness of power. +So abundant, indeed, are the instances that one +begins to wonder whether it ever arises from any +other kind of greatness, and whether we were right +in supposing that mere magnitude of extension can +produce it. Would such magnitude, however prodigious, +seem to us sublime unless we insensibly +construed it as the sign of power? In the case of +living things, at any rate, this doubt seems to be +well founded. A tree is sublime not because it +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page48" id="page48"></a>48</span> +occupies a large extent of empty space or time, but +from the power in it which raises aloft and spreads +abroad a thousand branches and a million leaves, or +which has battled for centuries with buffeting storms +and has seen summers and winters arise and pass +like the hours of our day. It is not the mere bulk +of the lion or the eagle that wins them their title as +king of beasts or of birds, but the power exhibited +in the gigantic head and arm or the stretch of wing +and the piercing eye. And even when we pass +from the realm of life our doubt remains. Would +a mountain, a river, or a building be sublime to us +if we did not read their masses and lines as symbols +of force? Would even the illimitable extent of sea +or sky, the endlessness of time, or the countlessness +of stars or sands or waves, bring us anything but +fatigue or depression if we did not apprehend them, +in some way and however vaguely, as expressions +of immeasurable power—power that created them, +or lives in them, or <i>can</i> count them; so that what +impresses us is not the mere absence of limits, but +the presence of something that overpowers any +imaginable limit? If these doubts are justified (as +in my opinion they are), the conclusion will follow +that the exceeding greatness required for sublimity +is <i>always</i> greatness of some kind of power, though +in one class of cases the impression of this greatness +can only be conveyed through immensity of +extent.</p> + +<p>However this question may be decided, our result +so far seems to be that the peculiarity of the +sublime lies in some exceeding and overwhelming +greatness. But before this result can be considered +safe, two obstacles must be removed. In the first +place, are there no negative instances? Is it impossible +to find anything sublime which does <i>not</i> +show this greatness? Naturally I can say no more +than that I have conscientiously searched for exceptions +to the rule and have searched in vain. I can +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page49" id="page49"></a>49</span> +find only apparent exceptions which in reality +confirm the rule; and I will mention only those +which look the most formidable. They are cases +where at first sight there seems to be not merely +an inconsiderable amount of power or other greatness, +but actually the negation of it. For example, +the silence of night, or the sudden pause in a storm +or in stormy music, or again the silence and movelessness +of death, may undoubtedly be sublime; and +how, it may be asked, can a mere absence of sound +and motion be an exhibition of immense greatness? +It cannot, I answer; but neither can it be sublime. +If you apprehend the silence in these cases as a +mere absence, no feeling of sublimity will arise in +your mind; and if you do apprehend the silence as +sublime, it is to you the sign of immense power, +put forth or held in reserve. The ‘dead pause +abrupt of mighty winds’ is the pause <i>of</i> mighty +winds and not of gentle breezes; and it is not the +absence of mighty winds, but their <i>pause</i> before +they burst into renewed fury; or if their silence is +not their will, it is a silence imposed on them by +something mightier even than they. In either case +there may be sublimity, but then there is the +impression of immense power. In the same way +the silence of night, when it seems sublime, is +apprehended not as the absence but as the subdual +of sound,—the stillness wrought by a power so +mighty that at its touch all the restless noises of the +day fall dumb,—or the brooding of an omnipotent +peace over the world. And such a peace it is, +an unassailable peace, that may make the face of +death sublime, a stillness which is not moveless +but immovable.<a name="fa7b" id="fa7b" href="#ft7b"><span class="sp">7</span></a></p> + +<p>At present, then, our result seems to stand firm. +But another danger remains. Granted that in the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page50" id="page50"></a>50</span> +sublime there is always some exceeding and overwhelming +greatness, is that <i>all</i> there is? Is there +not in every case some further characteristic? This +question, premising that the phrase ‘overwhelming +greatness’ contains important implications which +have yet to be considered, I can only answer like +the last. I do not find any other peculiarity that +is <i>always</i> present. Several have been alleged, and +one or two of these will be mentioned later, but +none of them appears to show itself indubitably +wherever sublimity is found. It is easy to give a +much fuller account of the sublime if you include in +it everything that impresses you in a sublime baby +while you omit to consider Behemoth, or if you +build upon Socrates and ignore Satan, or if you +confine yourself to the sublime thunderstorm and +forget the sublime rainbow or sunrise. But then +your account will not answer to the instances you +have ignored; and when you take them in you +will have to pare it down until perhaps you end +in a result like ours. At any rate we had better +be content with it for the present, and turn to +another aspect of the matter.<a name="fa8b" id="fa8b" href="#ft8b"><span class="sp">8</span></a></p> + +<p class="pt2">So far, on the whole, we have been regarding the +sublime object as if its sublimity were independent +of our state of mind in feeling and apprehending it. +Yet the adjective in the phrase ‘overwhelming +greatness’ should at once suggest the truth that +this state of mind is essential to sublimity. Let us +now therefore look inward, and ask how this state +differs from our state in perceiving or imagining +what is graceful or ‘beautiful.’ Since Kant dealt +with the subject, most writers who have thought +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page51" id="page51"></a>51</span> +about it have agreed that there is a decided difference, +which I will try to describe broadly, and +without pledging myself to the entire accuracy of +the description.</p> + +<p>When, on seeing or hearing something, we exclaim, +How graceful! or How lovely! or How +‘beautiful’! there is in us an immediate outflow of +pleasure, an unchecked expansion, a delightful sense +of harmony between the thing and ourselves.</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i12">The air</p> +<p>Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself</p> +<p>Unto our gentle senses.... The heaven’s breath</p> +<p>Smells wooingly here.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">The thing wins us and draws us towards itself without +resistance. Something in us hastens to meet it +in sympathy or love. Our feeling, we may say, is +entirely affirmative. For though it is not always +untouched by pain (for the thing may have sadness +in it),<a name="fa9b" id="fa9b" href="#ft9b"><span class="sp">9</span></a> this touch of pain or sadness does not mean +any disharmony between the thing and us, or involve +any check in our acceptance of it.</p> + +<p>In the case of sublimity, on the other hand, this +acceptance does not seem to be so simple or immediate. +There seem, in fact, to be two ‘aspects’ or +stages in it.<a name="fa10b" id="fa10b" href="#ft10b"><span class="sp">10</span></a> First—if only for a fraction of a +second—there is a sense of being checked, or +baffled, or even stupefied, or possibly even repelled +or menaced, as though something were affecting us +which we could not receive, or grasp, or stand up to. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page52" id="page52"></a>52</span> +In certain cases we appear to shrink away from it, +as though it thrust upon us a sense of our own +feebleness or insignificance. This we may call by +the convenient but too strong name of the negative +stage. It is essential to sublimity; and nothing +seems to correspond to it in our perception of loveliness +or grace except sometimes a sense of surprise +or wonder, which is wholly pleasant, and which does +not necessarily qualify the lovely or graceful thing.</p> + +<p>But this first stage or aspect clearly does not by +itself suffice for sublimity. To it there succeeds, it +may be instantaneously or more gradually, another: +a powerful reaction, a rush of self-expansion, or an +uplifting, or a sense of being borne out of the self +that was checked, or even of being carried away +beyond all checks and limits. These feelings, even +when the sublime thing might be called forbidding, +menacing, or terrible, are always positive,—feelings +of union with it; and, when its nature permits of +this, they may amount to rapture or adoration. But +the mark of the negation from which they have +issued, the ‘smell of the fire,’ usually remains on +them. The union, we may say perhaps, has required +a self-surrender, and the rapture or adoration is often +strongly tinged with awe.</p> + +<p>Now, this peculiar doubleness in our apprehension +of sublimity, this presence of two equally necessary +stages or phases, a negative and a positive, seems +to correspond with the peculiarity which we found +in the sublime object when we were provisionally +regarding it by itself. It is its overwhelming greatness +which for a moment checks, baffles, subdues, +even repels us or makes us feel our littleness, and +which then, forcing its way into the imagination +and emotions, distends or uplifts them to its own +dimensions. We burst our own limits, go out to the +sublime thing, identify ourselves ideally with it, and +share its immense greatness. But if, and in so far +as, we remain conscious of our difference from it, we +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page53" id="page53"></a>53</span> +still feel the insignificance of our actual selves, and +our glory is mingled with awe or even with self-abasement.<a name="fa11b" id="fa11b" href="#ft11b"><span class="sp">11</span></a></p> + +<p>In writing thus I was endeavouring simply and +without any <i>arričre pensée</i> to describe a mode of +aesthetic experience. But it must have occurred to +some of my hearers that the description recalls other +kinds of experience. And if they find it accurate in +the main, they will appreciate, even if they do not +accept, the exalted claim which philosophers, in +various forms, have made for the sublime. It +awakes in us, they say, through the check or shock +which it gives to our finitude, the consciousness of +an infinite or absolute; and this is the reason of the +kinship we feel between this particular mode of +aesthetic experience on the one side, and, on the +other, morality or religion. For there, by the denial +of our merely finite or individual selves, we rise into +union with the law which imposes on us an unconditional +demand, or with the infinite source and end +of our spiritual life.</p> + +<p>These are ideas much too large to be considered +now, and even later I can but touch on them. But +the mere mention of them may carry us to the last +enquiries with which we can deal. For it suggests +this question: Supposing that high claim to be +justified at all, can it really be made for <i>all</i> sublimity, +or must it not be confined to the very highest forms? +A similar question must be raised as to various other +statements regarding the sublime; and I go on to +speak of some of these.</p> + +<p class="pt2">(1) Burke asserted that the sublime is always +founded on fear; indeed he considered this to be +its distinguishing characteristic. Setting aside, +then, the connection of this statement with Burke’s +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page54" id="page54"></a>54</span> +general doctrine (a doctrine impossible to accept), +we may ask, Is it true that the ‘check’ administered +by the sublime object is always one of fear? We +must answer, first, that if this check is part of an +aesthetic experience and not a mere preliminary to +it, it can <i>never</i> be fear in the common meaning of +that word, or what may be called practical or real +fear. So far as we are <i>practically</i> afraid of a storm +or a mountain, afraid, for instance, for ourselves as +bodily beings in this particular spatial and temporal +position, the storm or mountain is not sublime to +us, it is simply terrible. <i>That</i> fear must be absent, +or must not engage attention, or must be changed +in character, if the object is to be for us <i>sublimely</i> +terrible, something with which we identify ourselves +in imaginative sympathy, and which so causes a great +self-expansion. But, secondly, even if ‘fear’ is understood +rightly as indicating a feature in an aesthetic +and not a practical experience, our question must +obviously be answered in the negative. There is +fear in the apprehension of some sublimity, but by +no means in that of all. If there is a momentary +check, for example, in the case of a rainbow, a +glorious sunrise, the starry night, Socrates, or Tourgénieff’s +sparrow, ‘fear,’ unless the meaning of the +word is unnaturally extended, is surely not the name +for this check.</p> + +<p>Burke’s mistake, however, implies a recognition +of the ‘negative aspect’ in sublimity, and it may +remind us of a truth. Instances of the sublime differ +greatly in regard to the prominence and tone of this +aspect. It is less marked, for example, and less +obvious, in the case of a sublime rainbow or sunrise +than in that of a sublime and ‘terrible’ thunderstorm. +And in general we may say that the <i>distinctive</i> +nature of sublimity appears most clearly where +this aspect is most prominent,—so prominent, perhaps, +that we have a more or less explicit sense of +the littleness and powerlessness of ourselves, and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page55" id="page55"></a>55</span> +indeed of the whole world of our usual experience. +It is here that the object is most decidedly more +than ‘glorious,’ or even ‘majestic,’ and that sublimity +appears in antithesis to grace. Only we must +not give an account of the sublime which fully applies +to these cases <i>alone</i>, or suppose that the negative +aspect is absent in other cases. If a rainbow or +sunrise is really sublime, it is overwhelming as well +as uplifting. Nor must we assume that the most +distinctively sublime must also be the most sublime. +The sunrise witnessed from an immense snowfield +in the high Alps may be as sublime as an Alpine +thunderstorm, though its sublimity is different.</p> + +<p>(2) Grace and ‘beauty,’ it has been said, though +not of course merely sensuous, are yet friendly to +sense. It is their essence, in fact, to be a harmonious +unity of sense and spirit, and so to reconcile +powers which in much of our experience are conflicting +and dissonant. But sublimity is harsh and +hostile to sense. It makes us feel in ourselves and +in the world the presence of something irresistibly +superior to sense. And this is the reason why it +does not soothe or delight, but uplifts us.</p> + +<p>This statement recalls some of the ideas we have +been considering, but it may easily mislead. For +one thing, it is impossible for any sublimity whatever +to be <i>merely</i> hostile to ‘sense,’ since everything +aesthetic must appeal to sense or sensuous imagination, +so that the sublime must at least express its +hostility to sense by means of sense. And if we +take the phrase in another meaning, the statement +may mislead still, for it attributes to sublimity in +general what is a characteristic only of certain forms +of the sublime. Scores of examples could easily be +quoted which show no hostility to sense: <i>e.g.</i> a +sublime lion, or bull, or tree. And if we think of +our old examples of the rainbow and the sunrise, or, +better still, of a thunderstorm, or ‘The horse and +his rider,’ or the ‘Sanctus’ in Bach’s Mass, we find +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page56" id="page56"></a>56</span> +the sublime thing actually making a powerful appeal +to sense and depending for its sublimity on the +vehemence or volume of this appeal. Diminish at +all markedly in these cases the amount of light, +colour, or sound, and the sublimity would vanish. +Of course the appeal here is not merely to sense, but +it <i>is</i> to sense.</p> + +<p>But undoubtedly there is another kind of sublimity; +and it is particularly interesting. Here, it +is true, a sort of despite is done to the senses and +what speaks to them. As we have seen, the greatness +of soul in the sparrow is enhanced by contrast +with the smallness and feebleness of its body, and +pours contempt on the visible magnitude of the +hound; and the stillness of night or death is sublime +from its active negation of sound and motion. +Again, there is a famous passage which depends +for its effect on this, that, first, sublime things are +introduced which appeal powerfully to sense, and +then something else, which does not so appeal, is +made to appear even more sublime and to put them +to shame: first a great and strong wind, an earthquake, +a fire; and after the fire a still small voice. +Sometimes, again, as Burke observed, sublimity +depends on, or is increased by, darkness, obscurity, +vagueness,—refusal of satisfaction to the sense of +sight. Often in these cases the sublime object is +terrible, and its terror is increased by inability to +see or distinguish it. Examples are the image of +‘the pestilence that walketh in darkness,’ or Milton’s +description of Death, or the lines in the <i>Book of Job</i>:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>In thoughts from the visions of the night</p> +<p>When deep sleep falleth on men,</p> +<p>Fear came upon me and trembling,</p> +<p>Which made all my bones to shake.</p> +<p>Then a spirit passed before my face;</p> +<p>The hair of my flesh stood up.</p> +<p>It stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof.</p> +<p>An image was before mine eyes.</p> +<p>There was silence, and I heard a voice.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page57" id="page57"></a>57</span></p> + +<p class="noind">It has been observed that attempts to illustrate +such passages as these dissipate their sublimity +by diminishing the obscurity of the object. +Blake’s illustrations of the lines in Milton and +in <i>Job</i><a name="fa12b" id="fa12b" href="#ft12b"><span class="sp">12</span></a> show this, while his design of the +morning-stars singing together is worthy even of +the words.</p> + +<p>We may trace this severity towards sense, again, +in examples already mentioned, the ideas of Fate, +of the eternal laws to which Antigone appeals, of +Duty in Wordsworth’s ode. We imagine these +powers as removed from sight, and indeed wholly +immaterial, and yet as exercising sovereign dominion +over the visible and material world. And their +sublimity would be endangered if we tried to bring +them nearer to sense by picturing the means by +which they exercise their control.</p> + +<p>I will take a last example. It has probably been +mentioned in almost every account of the sublime +since Longinus quoted it in his work on Elevation +of Style. And it is of special interest here because +it illustrates at one and the same time the two kinds +of sublimity which we are engaged in distinguishing. +‘God said, Let there be light, and there was light.’ +The idea of the first and instantaneous appearance +of light, and that the whole light of the whole +world, is already sublime; and its primary appeal is +to sense. The further idea that this transcendently +glorious apparition is due to mere words, to a +breath—our symbol of tenuity, evanescence, impotence +to influence material bulk—heightens enormously +the impression of absolutely immeasurable +power.</p> + +<p>To sum up, then, on this matter. It is not safe +to distinguish the sublime from the ‘beautiful’ by +its hostility to sense. The sublime may impress its +overwhelming greatness in either of two ways, by +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page58" id="page58"></a>58</span> +an appeal to sense, or by a kind of despite done to +it. Nor can we assert, if we think of the sunrise, +the thunderstorm, or of sublime music, that the +second of these ways is more distinctive of the +sublime than the first. But perhaps we may say +this. In ‘beauty’ that which appears in a sensuous +form seems to rest in it, to be perfectly embodied in +it, and to have no tendency to pass beyond it. In +the sublime, even where no such tendency is felt +and sublimity is nearest to ‘beauty,’ we still feel the +presence of a power held in reserve, which could +with ease exceed its present expression. In <i>some</i> +forms of sublimity, again, the sensuous embodiment +seems threatening to break in its effort to express +what appears in it. And in others we definitely +feel that the power which for a moment intimates +its presence to sense is infinite and utterly uncontainable +by any or all vehicles of its manifestation. +Here we are furthest (in a way) from sense, and +furthest also from ‘beauty.’</p> + +<p>(3) I come finally and, as it will at first seem, +needlessly to an idea which has already been +touched on. The words ‘boundless,’ ‘illimitable,’ +‘infinite,’ constantly recur in discussions of sublimity, +and it cannot be denied that our experience constantly +provokes them. The sublime has been said +to awake in us the consciousness of our own infinity. +It has been said, again, to represent in all cases the +inadequacy of all finite forms to express the infinite. +And so we may be told that, even if we do not +adopt some such formula, but continue to speak of +‘greatness,’ we ought at least to go beyond the +adjective ‘exceeding’ or ‘overwhelming,’ and to +substitute ‘immeasurable’ or ‘incomparable’ or +‘infinite.’</p> + +<p>Now, at the point we have reached, it would +seem we might at once answer that a claim is here +being made for the sublime in general which really +holds good only of one kind of sublimity. Sometimes +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page59" id="page59"></a>59</span> +the sublime object <i>is</i> apprehended as the +Infinite, or again as an expression of it. This is, +for example, a point of view frequent in Hebrew +poetry. Sometimes, again, the object (<i>e.g.</i> time or +the heavens) is apprehended, not indeed as <i>the</i> +Infinite, but still as infinite or immeasurable. But +how are we to say that a sublime lion or mountain, +or Satan or Lady Macbeth, is apprehended as the +Infinite, or as infinite, or (usually) as even an +expression of the Infinite? And how are we to +say that the greatness of most sublime objects is +apprehended as incomparable or immeasurable? +It is only failure to observe these distinctions that +leads to errors like one recorded in Coleridge’s +Table-talk (July 25, 1832): ‘Could you ever discover +anything sublime, in our sense of the word, +in the classic Greek literature? I never could. +Sublimity is Hebrew by birth.’</p> + +<p>This reply, however, though sound so far as it +goes, does not settle the question raised. It may +still be maintained that sublimity in all cases, and +even when we have no idea of infinity before us, +does represent the inadequacy of all finite forms +to express the infinite. And it is unfortunately +impossible for us to deal fully with this contention. +It would carry us into the region of metaphysics; +and, while believing that no theory of the sublime +can be complete which stops short of that region, +I am aiming in this lecture at no such theory, but +only at a result which may hold good without +regard to further developments. All that I can do +is to add a few words on the question whether, +going beyond the adjective ‘exceeding’ or ‘overwhelming,’ +we can say that the sublime is the +beautiful which has immeasurable, incomparable, or +infinite greatness. And the answer which I suggest +and will go on to explain may be put thus: the +greatness is only sometimes immeasurable, but it +is <i>always</i> unmeasured.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page60" id="page60"></a>60</span></p> + +<p>We cannot apprehend an object as sublime while +we apprehend it as comparably, measurably, or +finitely great. Let the thing be what it may—physical, +vital, or spiritual—the moment we say to +ourselves, ‘It is very great, but I know <i>how</i> great,’ +or ‘It is very great, but something else is as great +or greater,’ at that moment it has ceased to be +sublime. Outside the consciousness of its sublimity +we may be perfectly well aware that a thing is +limited, measurable, equal or inferior to something +else. But then we are <i>not</i> finding it sublime. And +when we <i>are</i> so finding it, we are absorbed in <i>its</i> +greatness, and have no thought either of the limits +of that or of its equality or inferiority to anything +else. The lion of whom we are thinking, ‘An +elephant could kill him,’ is no sublime lion. The +Falls of Schaffhausen are sublime when you are +lost in astonishment at them, but not when you are +saying to yourself ‘What must Niagara be!’ This +seems indubitable, and hence we may say that, in +one sense, all sublimity has unmeasured greatness, +and that no greatness is sublime which we apprehend +as finite.</p> + +<p>But the absence of a consciousness of measure or +finitude is one thing; the presence of a consciousness +of immeasurableness or infinity is another. +The first belongs to all sublimity, the second only +to one kind of it,—to that where we <i>attempt</i> to +measure, or find limits to, the greatness of the thing. +<i>If</i> we make this attempt, as when we try in +imagination to number the stars or to find an end +to time, then it is essential to sublimity that we +should fail, and so fail that the idea of immeasurability +or endlessness emerges. In like manner, <i>if</i> +we compare things, nothing will appear sublime +whose greatness is surpassed or even equalled by +that of something else; and, if this process of comparison +is pursued, in the end nothing will be found +sublime except the absolute totality (however it may +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page61" id="page61"></a>61</span> +be imagined). And this kind of sublimity, which +arises from attempts to measure or compare, is often +exceedingly striking. But it is only one kind. For +it is an entire delusion—though a very common one +in theories of the sublime—to suppose that we <i>must</i> +attempt to measure or compare. On the contrary, +in the majority of cases our impression of overwhelming +greatness is accompanied neither by any +idea that this greatness has a measure, nor by the +idea that it is immeasurable or infinite.<a name="fa13b" id="fa13b" href="#ft13b"><span class="sp">13</span></a></p> + +<p>It will not do, then, to lay it down that the +sublime is the beautiful which has immeasurable, +incomparable, or infinite greatness. But I suggest +that, after the explanations given, we may conveniently +use the adjective ‘unmeasured,’ so long +as we remember that this means one thing where +we do not measure at all, and another thing where +we try to measure and fail. And, this being so, it +seems that we may say that <i>all</i> sublimity, and not +only that in which the idea of infinite greatness or +of the Infinite emerges, is an image of infinity; +for in all, through a certain check or limitation and +the overcoming of it, we reach the perception or +the imaginative idea of something which, on the +one hand, has a positive nature, and, on the other, +is either <i>not</i> determined as finite or <i>is</i> determined +as infinite. But we must not add that this makes +the sublime superior to the ‘beautiful.’ For the +‘beautiful’ too, though in a different way, is an image +of infinity. In ‘beauty,’ as we said, that which +appears in a sensuous form seems to rest in that +form, to be wholly embodied in it; it shows no +tendency to pass beyond it, and intimates no reserve +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page62" id="page62"></a>62</span> +of force that might strain or break it. So that the +‘beautiful’ thing is a whole complete in itself, and +in moments when beauty fills our souls we know +what Wordsworth meant when he said ‘the least of +things seemed infinite,’ though each thing, being but +one of many, must from another point of view, here +suppressed, be finite. ‘Beauty,’ then, we may perhaps +say, is the image of the total presence of the Infinite +within any limits it may choose to assume; sublimity +the image of its boundlessness, and of its +rejection of any pretension to independence or +absoluteness on the part of its finite forms; the one +the image of its immanence, the other of its transcendence.</p> + +<p class="pt2">Within an hour I could attempt no more than +an outline of our subject. That is inevitable; and +so is another defect, which I regret more. In +analysing any kind of aesthetic experience we have +to begin by disentangling the threads that meet in +it; and when we can only make a beginning, no +time is left for the further task of showing how +they are interwoven. We distinguish, for example, +one kind of sublimity from another, and we must +do so; but in the actual experience, the single +instance, these kinds often melt together. I take +one case of this. Trying to overlook the field in +which sublimity appears, we say that there is a +sublimity of inorganic things, and of things vital, +and of things spiritual, and that these kinds differ. +And this is true; and perhaps it is also true that +sometimes we experience one of these kinds, so to +say, quite pure and unmixed with others. But it is +not always, perhaps not usually so. More frequently +kind mingles with kind, and we mutilate the experience +when we name it after one of them. In life +the imagination, touched at one point, tingles all +over and responds at all points. It is offered an +impression of physical or vital greatness, but at +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page63" id="page63"></a>63</span> +once it brings from the other end of its world +reminiscences of quite another order, and fuses the +impression with them. Or an appeal is made to +the sense of spiritual greatness, but there rises +before the imagination a vision with the outlines +and hues of material Nature. Offer it a sunset—a +mere collection of coloured lines and spots—and +they become to it regrets and hopes and longings +too deep for tears. Tell it of souls made perfect +in bliss, and it sees an immeasurable rose, or city-walls +that flash with the light of all the gems on +earth. The truth that a sparrow and a mountain +are different, and that Socrates is not Satan, interests +it but little. What it cares for is the truth that, +when they are sublime, they are all the same; +for each becomes infinite, and it feels in each its +own infinity.</p> + +<p class="f80">1903.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page64" id="page64"></a>64</span></p> + +<div class="condensed"> +<p class="pt2 center chap">NOTES<a name="fa14b" id="fa14b" href="#ft14b"><span class="sp">14</span></a></p> + +<p>I add here a few remarks on some points which it was not +convenient to discuss in the lecture.</p> + +<p>1. We have seen that in the apprehension of sublimity we +do not always employ comparison or attempt to measure. To +feel a thing overwhelmingly great it is not necessary to have +before the mind either the idea of something less great, or any +standard of greatness. To argue that this must be necessary +because ‘great’ means nothing except as opposed to ‘small,’ is +like arguing that I cannot have a perception of pride without +thinking of humility.</p> + +<p>This point seems to me quite clear. But a question remains. +If we go below consciousness, what is it that happens in us? +The apprehension of sublimity implies that we have received +an exceedingly strong impression. This as a matter of fact must +mean an impression very much stronger than something else; and +this something else must be, so to say, a standard with which +the impression is unconsciously compared. What then is it?</p> + +<p>Stated in the most general terms, it must apparently be the +usual or average strength of impressions.</p> + +<p>But this unconscious standard takes particular concrete forms +in various classes of cases. Not seldom it seems to be our +sense of our own power or of average human power. This is +especially so where the thing felt to be sublime is, in the +relevant respect, <i>in eodem genere</i> with ourselves. A sublime +lion, for example, is immensely superior to us, or to the average +man, in muscular force and so in dangerousness, Tourgénieff’s +sparrow in courage and love, a god in all sorts of ways. And +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page65" id="page65"></a>65</span> +the use of this unconscious standard is probably the reason of +the fact, noted in the lecture, that it is difficult to feel sublimity, +as regards vital force, in a creature smaller than ourselves.</p> + +<p>But this is not the only standard. A sublime lion is not only +immensely stronger than we are, but is generally also exceptional +among lions; and so with a sublime tree or bridge or thunderstorm. +So that we seem also to use as unconscious standard +the idea of the average of the kind to which the thing belongs. +An average thunderstorm hardly seems sublime, and yet it is +overwhelmingly superior to us in power.<a name="fa15b" id="fa15b" href="#ft15b"><span class="sp">15</span></a></p> + +<p>What, again, is the psychical machinery employed when we +attempt to measure the shoreless sea, or time, and find them +immeasurable? Is there any standard of the ‘usual’ here? I +will leave this question to more skilled psychologists than myself.</p> + +<p>2. Since the impression produced by sublimity is one of very +exceptional strength, we are not able to feel it continuously for +long, though we can repeat it after a pause. In this the sublime +differs from the ‘beautiful,’ on which we like to <i>dwell</i> after our +first surprise is over. A tragedy or symphony that was sublime +from beginning to end could not be so experienced. Living +among mountains, we feel their beauty more or less constantly, +their sublimity only by flashes.</p> + +<p>3. If our account of the impression produced by sublimity is +true, why should not any sensation whatever produce this impression +merely by gaining extraordinary strength? It seems to +me it would, supposing at its normal strength it conformed to +the general requirements of aesthetic experience, and supposing +the requisite accession of strength did not remove this conformity. +But this, in one respect at least, it would do. It +would make the light, sound, smell, physiologically painful, and +we should feel it as painful or even dangerous. We find this +in the case of lightning. If it is to be felt as aesthetic it must +not pass a certain degree of brightness; or, as we sometimes +say, it must not be too ‘near.’</p> +</div> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1b" id="ft1b" href="#fa1b"><span class="fn">1</span></a> I have learned something from many discussions of this subject. +In its outline the view I have taken is perhaps nearer to Hartmann’s +than to any other.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2b" id="ft2b" href="#fa2b"><span class="fn">2</span></a> Popular usage coincides roughly with this sense. Indeed, it can +hardly be said to recognise the wider one at all. ‘Beauty’ and +‘beautiful,’ in that wider sense, are technical terms of Aesthetics. +It is a misfortune that the language of Aesthetics should thus differ +from the ordinary language of speech and literature; but the misfortune +seems to be unavoidable, for there is no word in the ordinary +language which means ‘whatever gives aesthetic satisfaction,’ and yet +that idea <i>must</i> have a name in Aesthetics.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3b" id="ft3b" href="#fa3b"><span class="fn">3</span></a> I do not mean to imply that in aesthetic apprehension itself we +always, or generally, make conscious use of a standard or, indeed, +think of greatness. But here we are <i>reflecting</i> on this apprehension.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4b" id="ft4b" href="#fa4b"><span class="fn">4</span></a> Thus, it may be noticed, the sparrow’s size, which is the reverse of +sublime, is yet indirectly essential to the sublimity of the sparrow.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5b" id="ft5b" href="#fa5b"><span class="fn">5</span></a> The poet’s language here has done our analysis for us.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6b" id="ft6b" href="#fa6b"><span class="fn">6</span></a> A word may be added here on a disputed point as to ‘spiritual’ +sublimity. It has been held that intellect cannot be sublime; but +surely in the teeth of facts. Not to speak of intellect as it appears in +the sphere of practice, how can it be denied that the intellect of +Aristotle or Shakespeare or Newton may produce the impression of +sublimity? All that is true is, first, that the intellect must be apprehended +imaginatively and not thought abstractly (otherwise it can +produce <i>no</i> aesthetic impression), and, secondly, that it appears +sublime in virtue not of its quality alone but of the quantity, or force, +of that quality.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7b" id="ft7b" href="#fa7b"><span class="fn">7</span></a> The same principle applies to other cases. If, for example, the +desolation of a landscape is felt to be sublime, it is so not as the mere +negation of life, verdure, etc., but as their <i>active</i> negation.</p> + +<p><a name="ft8b" id="ft8b" href="#fa8b"><span class="fn">8</span></a> The reader will remember that in one sense of the question, Is +there no more in the sublime than overwhelming greatness? this +question must of course be answered in the affirmative. Sublimity is a +mode of beauty: the sublime is not the overwhelmingly great, it is the +beautiful which has overwhelming greatness; and it affects us through +its whole nature, not by mere greatness.</p> + +<p><a name="ft9b" id="ft9b" href="#fa9b"><span class="fn">9</span></a> I am warning the reader against a mistake which may arise from +the complexity of aesthetic experience. We may make a broad +distinction between ‘glad’ and ‘sad’ modes of beauty; but that does +not coincide with the distinction of modes with which we are concerned +in this lecture. What is lovely or ‘beautiful’ may be glad or +sad, and so may what is grand or sublime.</p> + +<p><a name="ft10b" id="ft10b" href="#fa10b"><span class="fn">10</span></a> In what follows I have spoken as if the two were always successive +stages, and as if these always came in the same order. It is easier to +make the matter quickly clear by taking this view, which also seemed +to answer to my own experience. But I do not wish to commit myself +to an opinion on the point, which is of minor importance. What +is essential is to recognise the presence of the two ‘aspects’ or ‘stages,’ +and to see that both are requisite to sublimity.</p> + +<p><a name="ft11b" id="ft11b" href="#fa11b"><span class="fn">11</span></a> ‘Ich fühlte mich so klein, so gross,’ says Faust, remembering the +vision of the Erdgeist, whom he addresses as ‘Erhabener Geist.’ He +was at once overwhelmed and uplifted.</p> + +<p><a name="ft12b" id="ft12b" href="#fa12b"><span class="fn">12</span></a> At least if the ‘Vision’ is sublime its sublimity is not that of the +original. We can ‘discern the form thereof’ distinctly enough.</p> + +<p><a name="ft13b" id="ft13b" href="#fa13b"><span class="fn">13</span></a> To avoid complication I have passed by the case where we +compare the sublime thing with another thing and find it much +greater without finding it immeasurably great. Here the greatness, +it appears to me, is still unmeasured. That is to say, we do not +attempt to determine its amount, and if we did we should lose the +impression of sublimity. We may <i>say</i>, perhaps, that it is ten, fifty, or +a million times, as great; but these words no more represent mathematical +calculations than Hamlet’s ‘forty thousand brothers.’</p> + +<p><a name="ft14b" id="ft14b" href="#fa14b"><span class="fn">14</span></a> I am far from being satisfied with the ideas imperfectly expressed in +the first and third of these Notes, but they require more consideration +than I can give to them during the printing of the Second Edition. The +reader is requested to take them as mere suggestions.</p> + +<p><a name="ft15b" id="ft15b" href="#fa15b"><span class="fn">15</span></a> Hence a creature much less powerful than ourselves <i>may</i>, I suppose, be +sublime, even from the mere point of view of vital energy. But I doubt if +this is so in my own case. I have seen ‘magnificent’ or ‘glorious’ cocks +and cats, but if I called them ‘sublime’ I should say rather more than I +feel. I mention cocks, because Ruskin somewhere mentions a sublime cock; +but I cannot find the passage, and this cock may have been sublime (if it +really was so to Ruskin) from some other than ‘vital’ greatness.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:150px; height:35px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img001.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page66" id="page66"></a>66<br />67</span></p> + +<p class="center chap">HEGEL’S THEORY OF TRAGEDY</p> +<p> </p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page68" id="page68"></a>68<br />69</span></p> + +<p class="center pt2"><span class="chap2">HEGEL’S THEORY OF TRAGEDY</span><a name="fa1c" id="fa1c" href="#ft1c"><span class="sp">1</span></a></p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1 fo">Since</span> Aristotle dealt with tragedy, and, as usual, +drew the main features of his subject with those +sure and simple strokes which no later hand has +rivalled, the only philosopher who has treated it in +a manner both original and searching is Hegel. I +propose here to give a sketch of Hegel’s theory, and +to add some remarks upon it. But I cannot possibly +do justice in a sketch to a theory which fills many +pages of the <i>Aesthetik</i>; which I must tear from its +connections with the author’s general view of poetry, +and with the rest of his philosophy<a name="fa2c" id="fa2c" href="#ft2c"><span class="sp">2</span></a>; and which I +must try to exhibit as far as possible in the language +of ordinary literature. To estimate this theory, +therefore, from my sketch would be neither safe nor +just—all the more because, in the interest of +immediate clearness, I have not scrupled to insert +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page70" id="page70"></a>70</span> +without warning various remarks and illustrations +for which Hegel is not responsible.</p> + +<p>On certain characteristics of tragedy the briefest +reminder will suffice. A large part of the nature of +this form of drama is common to the drama in all its +forms; and of this nothing need be said. It will be +agreed, further, that in all tragedy there is some sort +of collision or conflict—conflict of feelings, modes of +thought, desires, wills, purposes; conflict of persons +with one another, or with circumstances, or with +themselves; one, several, or all of these kinds of +conflict, as the case may be. Again, it may be +taken for granted that a tragedy is a story of +unhappiness or suffering, and excites such feelings +as pity and fear. To this, if we followed the present +usage of the term, we should add that the story of +unhappiness must have an unhappy end; by which +we mean in effect that the conflict must close with +the death of one or more of the principal characters. +But this usage of the word ‘tragedy’ is comparatively +recent; it leaves us without a name for many +plays, in many languages, which deal with unhappiness +without ending unhappily; and Hegel takes +the word in its older and wider sense.</p> + +<p>Passing on from these admitted characteristics of +tragedy, we may best approach Hegel’s peculiar +view by observing that he lays particular stress on +one of them. That a tragedy is a story of suffering +is probably to many people the most obvious fact +about it. Hegel says very little of this; partly, +perhaps, because it is obvious, but more because +the essential point to him is not the suffering but its +cause, namely, the action or conflict. Mere suffering, +he would say, is not tragic, but only the suffering +that comes of a special kind of action. Pity for +mere misfortune, like fear of it, is not tragic pity or +fear. These are due to the spectacle of the conflict +and its attendant suffering, which do not appeal +simply to our sensibilities or our instinct of self-preservation, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page71" id="page71"></a>71</span> +but also to our deeper mind or spirit +(<i>Geist</i>, a word which, with its adjective, I shall +translate ‘spirit,’ ‘spiritual,’ because our words +‘mind’ and ‘mental’ suggest something merely +intellectual).</p> + +<p>The reason why the tragic conflict thus appeals to +the spirit is that it is itself a conflict of the spirit. +It is a conflict, that is to say, between powers that +rule the world of man’s will and action—his ‘ethical +substance.’ The family and the state, the bond of +parent and child, of brother and sister, of husband +and wife, of citizen and ruler, or citizen and citizen, +with the obligations and feelings appropriate to +these bonds; and again the powers of personal love +and honour, or of devotion to a great cause or an +ideal interest like religion or science or some kind +of social welfare—such are the forces exhibited in +tragic action; not indeed alone, not without others +less affirmative and perhaps even evil, but still in +preponderating mass. And as they form the substance +of man, are common to all civilised men, and +are acknowledged as powers rightfully claiming +human allegiance, their exhibition in tragedy has +that interest, at once deep and universal, which is +essential to a great work of art.</p> + +<p>In many a work of art, in many a statue, picture, +tale, or song, such powers are shown in solitary +peace or harmonious co-operation. Tragedy shows +them in collision. Their nature is divine, and in +religion they appear as gods; but, as seen in the +world of tragic action, they have left the repose of +Olympus, have entered into human wills, and now +meet as foes. And this spectacle, if sublime, is +also terrible. The essentially tragic fact is the +self-division and intestinal warfare of the ethical +substance, not so much the war of good with evil as +the war of good with good. Two of these isolated +powers face each other, making incompatible demands. +The family claims what the state refuses, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page72" id="page72"></a>72</span> +love requires what honour forbids. The competing +forces are both in themselves rightful, and so far +the claim of each is equally justified; but the right +of each is pushed into a wrong, because it ignores +the right of the other, and demands that absolute +sway which belongs to neither alone, but to the +whole of which each is but a part.</p> + +<p>And one reason why this happens lies in the +nature of the characters through whom these claims +are made. It is the nature of the tragic hero, at +once his greatness and his doom, that he knows no +shrinking or half-heartedness, but identifies himself +wholly with the power that moves him, and will +admit the justification of no other power. However +varied and rich his inner life and character may be, +in the conflict it is all concentrated in one point. +Antigone <i>is</i> the determination to do her duty to her +dead brother; Romeo is not a son or a citizen as +well as a lover, he is lover pure and simple, and +his love is the whole of him.</p> + +<p>The end of the tragic conflict is the denial of both +the exclusive claims. It is not the work of chance +or blank fate; it is the act of the ethical substance +itself, asserting its absoluteness against the excessive +pretensions of its particular powers. In that sense, +as proceeding from an absolute right which cancels +claims based on right but pushed into wrong, it may +be called the act of ‘eternal justice.’ Sometimes it +can end the conflict peacefully, and the tragedy +closes with a solution. Appearing as a divine being, +the spiritual unity reconciles by some adjustment +the claims of the contending powers (<i>Eumenides</i>); +or at its bidding one of them softens its demand +(<i>Philoctetes</i>); or again, as in the more beautiful +solution of the <i>Oedipus Coloneus</i>, the hero by his +own self-condemnation and inward purification +reconciles himself with the supreme justice, and is +accepted by it. But sometimes the quarrel is +pressed to extremes; the denial of the one-sided +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page73" id="page73"></a>73</span> +claims involves the death of one or more of the +persons concerned; and we have a catastrophe. +The ultimate power thus appears as a destructive +force. Yet even here, as Hegel insists, the end is +not without an aspect of reconciliation. For that +which is denied is not the rightful powers with +which the combatants have identified themselves. +On the contrary, those powers, and with them the +only thing for which the combatants cared, are +affirmed. What is denied is the exclusive and +therefore wrongful assertion of their right.</p> + +<p>Such in outline is Hegel’s main view. It may be +illustrated more fully by two examples, favourites of +his, taken from Aeschylus and Sophocles. Clytemnestra +has murdered Agamemnon, her husband and +king. Orestes, their son, is impelled by filial piety +to avenge his father, and is ordered by Apollo to do +so. But to kill a mother is to sin against filial piety. +The spiritual substance is divided against itself. +The sacred bond of father and son demands what +the equally sacred bond of son and mother forbids. +When, therefore, Orestes has done the deed, the +Furies of his murdered mother claim him for their +prey. He appeals to Apollo, who resists their claim. +A solution is arrived at without a catastrophe. The +cause is referred to Athene, who institutes at Athens +a court of sworn judges. The votes of this court +being equally divided, Athene gives her casting-vote +for Orestes; while the Furies are at last appeased +by a promise of everlasting honour at Athens.</p> + +<p>In the <i>Antigone</i>, on the other hand, to Hegel +the ‘perfect exemplar of tragedy,’ the solution is +negative. The brother of Antigone has brought +against his native city an army of foreigners bent +on destroying it. He has been killed in the battle, +and Creon, the ruler of the city, has issued an edict +forbidding anyone on pain of death to bury the +corpse. In so doing he not only dishonours the +dead man, but violates the rights of the gods of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page74" id="page74"></a>74</span> +the dead. Antigone without hesitation disobeys +the edict, and Creon, despite the remonstrance of +his son, who is affianced to her, persists in exacting +the penalty. Warned by the prophet Teiresias, he +gives way, but too late. Antigone, immured in a +rocky chamber to starve, has anticipated her death. +Her lover follows her example, and his mother +refuses to survive him. Thus Antigone has lost +her life through her absolute assertion of the family +against the state; Creon has violated the sanctity +of the family, and in return sees his own home +laid in ruins. But in this catastrophe neither the +right of the family nor that of the state is denied; +what is denied is the absoluteness of the claim of +each.</p> + +<p>The danger of illustrations like these is that they +divert attention from the principle illustrated to +questions about the interpretation of particular +works. So it will be here. I cannot stay to +discuss these questions, which do not affect Hegel’s +principle; but it will be well, before going further, +to remove a misunderstanding of it which is generally +to be found in criticisms of his treatment of the +<i>Eumenides</i> and the <i>Antigone</i>. The main objection +may be put thus: ‘Hegel talks of equally justified +powers or claims. But Aeschylus never meant that +Orestes and the Furies were equally justified; for +Orestes was acquitted. Nor did Sophocles mean +that Antigone and Creon were equally right. And +how can it have been equally the duty of Orestes to +kill his mother and not to kill her?’ But, in the +first place, it is most important to observe that +Hegel is not discussing at all what we should +generally call the moral quality of the acts and +persons concerned, or, in the ordinary sense, what +it was their duty to do. And, in the second place, +when he speaks of ‘equally justified’ powers, what +he means, and, indeed, sometimes says, is that these +powers are <i>in themselves</i> equally justified. The +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page75" id="page75"></a>75</span> +family and the state, the bond of father and son, +the bond of mother and son, the bond of citizenship, +these are each and all, one as much as another, +powers rightfully claiming human allegiance. It is +tragic that observance of one should involve the +violation of another. These are Hegel’s propositions, +and surely they are true. Their truth is quite +unaffected by the fact (assuming it is one) that in +the circumstances the act combining this observance +of one and violation of another was morally right, +or by the fact (if so it is) that one such act (say +Antigone’s) was morally right, and another (say +Creon’s) was morally wrong. It is sufficient for +Hegel’s principle that the violation should take +place, and that we should feel its weight. We do +feel it. We may approve the act of Antigone or +Orestes, but in approving it we still feel that it is +no light matter to disobey the law or to murder a +mother, that (as we might say) there is much justice +in the pleas of the Furies and of Creon, and that the +<i>tragic</i> effect depends upon these facts. If, again, +it is objected that the underlying conflict in the +<i>Antigone</i> is not between the family and the state, +but between divine and human law, that objection, +if sound, might touch Hegel’s interpretation,<a name="fa3c" id="fa3c" href="#ft3c"><span class="sp">3</span></a> but +it would not affect his principle, except for those +who recognise no obligation in human law; and it +will scarcely be contended that Sophocles is to be +numbered among them. On the other hand, it is, +I think, a matter for regret that Hegel employed +such words as ‘right,’ ‘justified,’ and ‘justice.’ +They do not mislead readers familiar with his +writings, but to others they suggest associations +with criminal law, or our everyday moral judgments, +or perhaps the theory of ‘poetic justice’; and these +are all out of place in a discussion on tragedy.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page76" id="page76"></a>76</span></p> + +<p>Having determined in outline the idea or principle +of tragedy, Hegel proceeds to give an account of +some differences between ancient and modern works. +In the limited time at our disposal we shall do best +to confine ourselves to a selection from his remarks +on the latter. For in speaking of ancient tragedy +Hegel, who finds something modern in Euripides, +makes accordingly but little use of him for purposes +of contrast, while his main point of view as +to Aeschylus and Sophocles has already appeared +in the illustrations we have given of the general +principle. I will only add, by way of preface, that +the pages about to be summarised leave on one, +rightly or wrongly, the impression that to his mind +the principle is more adequately realised in the best +classical tragedies than in modern works. But the +question whether this really was his deliberate +opinion would detain us too long from weightier +matters.<a name="fa4c" id="fa4c" href="#ft4c"><span class="sp">4</span></a></p> + +<p>Hegel considers first the cases where modern +tragedy resembles ancient in dealing with conflicts +arising from the pursuit of ends which may be called +substantial or objective and not merely personal. +And he points out that modern tragedy here shows +a much greater variety. Subjects are taken, for +example, from the quarrels of dynasties, of rivals +for the throne, of kings and nobles, of state and +church. Calderon shows the conflict of love and +honour regarded as powers imposing obligations. +Schiller in his early works makes his characters +defend the rights of nature against convention, or +of freedom of thought against prescription—rights +in their essence universal. Wallenstein aims at the +unity and peace of Germany; Karl Moor attacks +the whole arrangement of society; Faust seeks to +attain in thought and action union with the Absolute. +In such cases the end is more than personal; it +represents a power claiming the allegiance of the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page77" id="page77"></a>77</span> +individual; but, on the other hand, it does not +always or generally represent a great <i>ethical</i> institution +or bond like the family or the state. We have +passed into a wider world.</p> + +<p>But, secondly, he observes, in regard to modern +tragedy, that in a larger number of instances such +public or universal interests either do not appear +at all, or, if they appear, are scarcely more than +a background for the real subject. The real subject, +the impelling end or passion, and the ensuing conflict, +is personal,—these particular characters with +their struggle and their fate. The importance +given to subjectivity—this is the distinctive mark +of modern sentiment, and so of modern art; and +such tragedies bear its impress. A part at least +of Hegel’s meaning may be illustrated thus. We +are interested in the personality of Orestes or +Antigone, but chiefly as it shows itself in one +aspect, as identifying itself with a certain ethical +relation; and our interest in the personality is +inseparable and indistinguishable from our interest +in the power it represents. This is not so with +Hamlet, whose position so closely resembles that +of Orestes. What engrosses our attention is the +whole personality of Hamlet in his conflict, not with +an opposing spiritual power, but with circumstances +and, still more, with difficulties in his own nature. +No one could think of describing Othello as the +representative of an ethical family relation. His +passion, however much nobility he may show in +it, is personal. So is Romeo’s love. It is not +pursued, like Posa’s freedom of thought, as something +universal, a right of man. Its right, if it +could occur to us to use the term at all, is Romeo’s +right.</p> + +<p>On this main characteristic of modern tragedy +others depend. For instance, that variety of subject +to which reference has just been made depends +on it. For when so much weight is attached to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page78" id="page78"></a>78</span> +personality, almost any fatal collision in which a +sufficiently striking character is involved may yield +material for tragedy. Naturally, again, characterisation +has become fuller and more subtle, except in +dramas which are more or less an imitation of the +antique. The characters in Greek tragedy are far +from being types or personified abstractions, as +those of classical French tragedy tend to be: they +are genuine individuals. But still they are comparatively +simple and easy to understand, and have +not the intricacy of the characters in Shakespeare. +These, for the most part, represent simply themselves; +and the loss of that interest which attached +to the Greek characters from their identification +with an ethical power, is compensated by an extraordinary +subtlety in their portrayal, and also by +their possession of some peculiar charm or some +commanding superiority. Finally, the interest in +personality explains the freedom with which characters +more or less definitely evil are introduced in +modern tragedy. Mephistopheles is as essentially +modern as Faust. The passion of Richard or +Macbeth is not only personal, like that of Othello; +it is egoistic and anarchic, and leads to crimes done +with a full knowledge of their wickedness; but to +the modern mind the greatness of the personality +justifies its appearance in the position of hero. +Such beings as Iago and Goneril, almost portents +of evil, are not indeed made the heroes of tragedies; +but, according to Hegel, they would not have been +admitted in Greek tragedy at all. If Clytemnestra +had been cited in objection as a parallel to Lady +Macbeth, he would have replied that Lady Macbeth +had not the faintest ground of complaint against +Duncan, while in reading the <i>Agamemnon</i> we are +frequently reminded that Clytemnestra’s husband +was the sacrificer of their child. He might have +added that Clytemnestra is herself an example of +the necessity, where one of the principal characters +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page79" id="page79"></a>79</span> +inspires hatred or horror, of increasing the subtlety +of the drawing or adding grandeur to the evil will.</p> + +<p>It remains to compare ancient and modern tragedy +in regard to the issue of the conflict. We have +seen that Hegel attributes this issue in the former +to the ethical substance or eternal justice, and so +accounts for such reconciliation as we feel to be +present even where the end is a catastrophe. Now, +in the catastrophe of modern tragedy, he says, a +certain justice is sometimes felt to be present; but +even then it differs from the antique justice. It is +in some cases more ‘abstract’: the end pursued by +the hero, though it is not egoistic, is still presented +rather as his particular end than as something rightful +though partial; and hence the catastrophe +appears as the reaction, not of an undivided ethical +totality, but merely of the universal turning against +a too assertive particular.<a name="fa5c" id="fa5c" href="#ft5c"><span class="sp">5</span></a> In cases, again, where +the hero (Richard or Macbeth) openly attacks an +ethical power and plunges into evil, we feel that he +meets with justice, and only gets what he deserves; +but then this justice is colder and more ‘criminalistic’ +than that of ancient tragedy. Thus even when the +modern work seems to resemble the ancient in its +issue, the sense of reconciliation is imperfect. And +partly for this reason, partly from the concentration +of our interest on individuality as such, we desire +to see in the individual himself some sort of reconciliation +with his fate. What shape this will take +depends, of course, on the story and the character +of the hero. It may appear in a religious form, +as his feeling that he is exchanging his earthly +being for an indestructible happiness; or again, in +his recognition of the justice of his fall; or at least +he may show us that, in face of the forces that +crush him to death, he maintains untouched the +freedom and strength of his own will.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page80" id="page80"></a>80</span></p> + +<p>But there remain, says Hegel, many modern +tragedies where we have to attribute the catastrophe +not to any kind of justice, but to unhappy circumstances +and outward accidents. And then we can +only feel that the individual whose merely personal +ends are thwarted by mere particular circumstances +and chances, pays the penalty that awaits existence +in a scene of contingency and finitude. Such a +feeling cannot rise above sadness, and, if the hero +is a noble soul, it may become the impression of +a dreadful external necessity. This impression can +be avoided only when circumstance and accident +are so depicted that they are felt to coincide with +something in the hero himself, so that he is not +simply destroyed by an outward force. So it is +with Hamlet. ‘This bank and shoal of time’ is too +narrow for his soul, and the death that seems to fall +on him by chance is also within him. And so in +<i>Romeo and Juliet</i> we feel that the rose of a love +so beautiful is too tender to bloom in the storm-swept +valley of its birth. But such a feeling of +reconciliation is still one of pain, an unhappy +blessedness.<a name="fa6c" id="fa6c" href="#ft6c"><span class="sp">6</span></a> And if the situation displayed in a +drama is of such a kind that we feel the issue to +depend <i>simply</i> on the turn the dramatist may choose +to give to the course of events, we are fully justified +in our preference for a happy ending.</p> + +<p>In this last remark (or rather in the pages misrepresented +by it) Hegel, of course, is not criticising +Shakespeare. He is objecting to the destiny-dramas +of his own time, and to the fashionable +indulgence in sentimental melancholy. Strongly as +he asserted the essential function of negation throughout +the universe, the affirmative power of the spirit, +even in its profoundest divisions, was for him the +deepest truth and the most inspiring theme. And +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page81" id="page81"></a>81</span> +one may see this even in his references to Shakespeare. +He appreciated Shakespeare’s representation +of extreme forms of evil, but, even if he was +fully satisfied of its justification, his personal preference +lay in another direction, and while I do not +doubt that he thought <i>Hamlet</i> a greater work +than <i>Iphigenie</i>, I suspect he loved Goethe’s play +the best.</p> + +<p class="pt2">Most of those who have thought about this +subject will agree that the ideas I have tried to +sketch are interesting and valuable; but they suggest +scores of questions. Alike in the account of +tragedy in general, and in that of the differences +between ancient and modern tragedy, everyone will +find statements to doubt and omissions to regret; +and scarcely one of Hegel’s interpretations of particular +plays will escape objection. It is impossible +for me to touch on more than a few points; and +to the main ideas I owe so much that I am more +inclined to dwell on their truth than to criticise +what seem to be defects. But perhaps after all +an attempt to supplement and amend may be the +best way of throwing some part of Hegel’s meaning +more into relief. And I will begin with the attempt +to supplement.</p> + +<p>He seems to be right in laying emphasis on the +action and conflict in tragedy rather than on the +suffering and misfortune. No mere suffering or +misfortune, no suffering that does not spring in +great part from human agency, and in some degree +from the agency of the sufferer, is tragic, however +pitiful or dreadful it may be. But, sufficient connection +with these agencies being present, misfortune, +the fall from prosperity to adversity, with the +suffering attending it, at once becomes tragic; and +in many tragedies it forms a large ingredient, as +does the pity for it in the tragic feeling. Hegel, I +think, certainly takes too little notice of it; and by +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page82" id="page82"></a>82</span> +this omission he also withdraws attention from +something the importance of which he would have +admitted at once; I mean the way in which suffering +is borne. Physical pain, to take an extreme +instance, is one thing: Philoctetes, bearing it, is +another. And the noble endurance of pain that +rends the heart is the source of much that is best +worth having in tragedy.</p> + +<p>Again, there is one particular kind of misfortune +<i>not</i> obviously due to human agency, which undoubtedly +may affect us in a tragic way. I mean +that kind which suggests the idea of fate. Tragedies +which represent man as the mere plaything of +chance or a blank fate or a malicious fate, are never +really deep: it is satisfactory to see that Maeterlinck, +a man of true genius, has now risen above these +ideas. But, where those factors of tragedy are +present which Hegel emphasises, the impression of +something fateful in what we call accident, the +impression that the hero not only invites misfortune +by his exceptional stature and exceptional daring, +but is also, if I may so put it, strangely and terribly +unlucky, is in many plays a genuine ingredient in +tragic effect. It is so, for example, in the <i>Oedipus +Tyrannus</i>. It is so even in dramas like Shakespeare’s, +which exemplify the saying that character +is destiny. Hegel’s own reference to the prominence +of accident in the plot of <i>Hamlet</i> proves it. Othello +would not have become Iago’s victim if his own +character had been different; but still, as we say, it +is an extraordinary fatality which makes him the +companion of the one man in the world who is at +once able enough, brave enough, and vile enough +to ensnare him. In the <i>Antigone</i> itself, and in the +very catastrophe of it, accident plays its part: we +can hardly say that it depends solely on the characters +of Creon and Antigone that the one yields just +too late to save the life of the other. Now, it may +be said with truth that Hegel’s whole account of the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page83" id="page83"></a>83</span> +ultimate power in tragedy is a rationalisation of the +idea of fate, but his remarks on this particular aspect +of fate are neither sufficient nor satisfactory.</p> + +<p>His insistence on the need for some element of +reconciliation in a tragic catastrophe, and his +remarks on the various forms it assumes, have the +greatest value; but one result of the omissions just +noticed is that he sometimes exaggerates it, and at +other times rates it too low. When he is speaking +of the kind of tragedy he most approves, his +language almost suggests that our feeling at the +close of the conflict is, or should be, one of complete +reconciliation. This it surely neither is nor can be. +Not to mention the suffering and death we have +witnessed, the very existence of the conflict, even if +a supreme ethical power is felt to be asserted in its +close, remains a painful fact, and, in large measure, +a fact not understood. For, though we may be said +to see, in one sense, how the opposition of spiritual +powers arises, something in us, and that the best, +still cries out against it. And even the perception +or belief that it must needs be that offences come +would not abolish our feeling that the necessity is +terrible, or our pain in the woe of the guilty and the +innocent. Nay, one may conjecture, the feeling and +the pain would not vanish if we fully understood +that the conflict and catastrophe were by a rational +necessity involved in the divine and eternally accomplished +purpose of the world. But this exaggeration +in Hegel’s language, if partly due to his enthusiasm +for the affirmative, may be mainly, like some other +defects, an accident of lecturing. In the <i>Philosophy +of Religion</i>, I may add, he plainly states that in the +solution even of tragedies like the <i>Antigone</i> something +remains unresolved (ii. 135).</p> + +<p>On the other hand, his treatment of the aspect +of reconciliation in modern tragedy is in several +respects insufficient. I will mention only one. He +does not notice that in the conclusion of not a few +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page84" id="page84"></a>84</span> +tragedies pain is mingled not merely with acquiescence, +but with something like exultation. Is there +not such a feeling at the close of <i>Hamlet</i>, <i>Othello</i>, +and <i>King Lear</i>; and that although the end in the +last two cases touches the limit of legitimate pathos? +This exultation appears to be connected with our +sense that the hero has never shown himself so +great or noble as in the death which seals his failure. +A rush of passionate admiration, and a glory in the +greatness of the soul, mingle with our grief; and the +coming of death, so far from destroying these feelings, +appears to leave them untouched, or even to +be entirely in harmony with them. If in such dramas +we may be said to feel that the ultimate power is no +mere fate, but a spiritual power, then we also feel +that the hero was never so near to this power as in +the moment when it required his life.</p> + +<p>The last omission I would notice in Hegel’s +theory is that he underrates the action in tragedy of +what may be called by a rough distinction moral +evil rather than defect. Certainly the part played +by evil differs greatly in different cases, but it is +never absent, not even from tragedies of Hegel’s +favourite type. If it does not appear in the main +conflict, it appears in its occasion. You may say +that, while Iago and Macbeth have evil purposes, +neither the act of Orestes nor the vengeance of the +Furies, neither Antigone’s breach of the edict nor +even Creon’s insistence on her punishment, springs +from evil in them; but the situation with which +Orestes or Antigone has to deal, and so in a sense +the whole tragedy, arises from evil, the murder of +Agamemnon, and the attempt of Polyneices to bring +ruin on his native city. In fact, if we confine the +title ‘tragedy’ to plays ending with a catastrophe, +it will be found difficult to name great tragedies, +ancient or modern, in which evil has not directly or +indirectly a prominent part. And its presence has +an important bearing on the effect produced by the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page85" id="page85"></a>85</span> +catastrophe. On the one hand, it deepens the sense +of painful awe. The question why affirmative +spiritual forces should collide is hard enough; but +the question why, together with them, there should +be generated violent evil and extreme depravity is +harder and more painful still. But, on the other +hand, the element of reconciliation in the catastrophe +is strengthened by recognition of the part played by +evil in bringing it about; because our sense that +the ultimate power cannot endure the presence of +such evil is implicitly the sense that this power is +at least more closely allied with good. If it rejects +the exaggerated claims of its own isolated powers, +that which provokes from it a much more vehement +reaction must be still more alien to its nature. +This feeling is forcibly evoked by Shakespeare’s +tragedies, and in many Greek dramas it is directly +appealed to by repeated reminders that what is +at work in the disasters is the unsleeping Ate which +follows an ancestral sin. If Aristotle did not in +some lost part of the <i>Poetics</i> discuss ideas like +this, he failed to give a complete rationale of Greek +tragedy.</p> + +<p class="pt2">I come lastly to the matter I have most at heart. +What I take to be the central idea in Hegel’s +theory seems to me to touch the essence of tragedy. +And I will not assert that his own statement of it +fails to cover the whole field of instances. For he +does not teach, as he is often said to do, that tragedy +portrays only the conflict of such ethical powers as +the family and the state. He adds to these, as we +have seen, others, such as love and honour, together +with various universal ends; and it may even be +maintained that he has provided in his general +statement for those numerous cases where, according +to himself, no substantial or universal ends collide, +but the interest is centred on ‘personalities.’ Nevertheless, +when these cases come to be considered +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page86" id="page86"></a>86</span> +more fully—and, in Hegel’s view, they are the most +characteristically modern cases—we are not satisfied. +They naturally tend to appear as declensions from +the more ideal ancient form; for how can a personality +which represents only itself claim the interest +of one which represents something universal? And +further, they are sometimes described in a manner +which strikes the reader, let us say, of Shakespeare, +as both insufficient and misleading. Without raising, +then, unprofitable questions about the comparative +merits of ancient and modern tragedy, I should like +to propose a restatement of Hegel’s general principle +which would make it more obviously apply to +both.</p> + +<p>If we omit all reference to ethical or substantial +powers and interests, what have we left? We have +the more general idea—to use again a formula not +Hegel’s own—that tragedy portrays a self-division +and self-waste of spirit, or a division of spirit +involving conflict and waste. It is implied in this +that on <i>both</i> sides in the conflict there is a spiritual +value. The same idea may be expressed (again, I +think, not in Hegel’s own words) by saying that the +tragic conflict is one not merely of good with evil, +but also, and more essentially, of good with good. +Only, in saying this, we must be careful to observe +that ‘good’ here means anything that has spiritual +value, not moral goodness alone,<a name="fa7c" id="fa7c" href="#ft7c"><span class="sp">7</span></a> and that ‘evil’ +has a similarly wide sense.</p> + +<p>Now this idea of a division of spirit involving +conflict and waste covers the tragedies of ethical +and other universal powers, and it covers much +besides. According to it the collision of such +powers would be one kind of tragic collision, but +only one. <i>Why</i> are we tragically moved by the +conflict of family and state? Because we set a high +value on family and state. Why then should not +the conflict of anything else that has sufficient value +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page87" id="page87"></a>87</span> +affect us tragically? It does. The value must be +sufficient—a moderate value will not serve; and +other characteristics must be present which need +not be considered here. But, granted these conditions, +<i>any</i> spiritual conflict involving spiritual +waste is tragic. And it is just one greatness of +modern art that it has shown the tragic fact in +situations of so many and such diverse kinds. +These situations have not the peculiar effectiveness +of the conflicts preferred by Hegel, but they +may have an equal effectiveness peculiar to themselves.</p> + +<p>Let me attempt to test these ideas by choosing a +most unfavourable instance—unfavourable because +the play seems at first to represent a conflict simply +of good and evil, and so, according both to Hegel’s +statement and the proposed restatement, to be no +tragedy at all: I mean <i>Macbeth</i>. What is the +conflict here? It will be agreed that it does not +lie between two ethical powers or universal ends, +and that, as Hegel says, the main interest is in +personalities. Let us take it first, then, to lie +between Macbeth and the persons opposing him, +and let us ask whether there is not spiritual value +or good on both sides—not an equal amount of +good (that is not necessary), but enough good on +each to give the impression of spiritual waste. Is +there not such good in Macbeth? It is not a +question merely of moral goodness, but of good. +It is not a question of the use made of good, but +of its presence. And such bravery and skill in war +as win the enthusiasm of everyone about him; such +an imagination as few but poets possess; a conscience +so vivid that his deed is to him beforehand +a thing of terror, and, once done, condemns him to +that torture of the mind on which he lies in restless +ecstasy; a determination so tremendous and a +courage so appalling that, for all this torment, he +never dreams of turning back, but, even when he +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page88" id="page88"></a>88</span> +has found that life is a tale full of sound and fury, +signifying nothing, will tell it out to the end though +earth and heaven and hell are leagued against him; +are not these things, in themselves, good, and +gloriously good? Do they not make you, for all +your horror, admire Macbeth, sympathise with his +agony, pity him, and see in him the waste of forces +on which you place a spiritual value? It is simply +on this account that he is for you, not the abstraction +called a criminal who merely ‘gets what he deserves’ +(art, like religion, knows no such thing), but a tragic +hero, and that his war with other forces of indubitable +spiritual worth is a tragic war.<a name="fa8c" id="fa8c" href="#ft8c"><span class="sp">8</span></a></p> + +<p>It is required by the restatement of Hegel’s +principle to show that in the external conflict of +persons there is good on both sides. It is not +required that this should be true, secondly, of both +sides in the conflict within the hero’s soul; for the +hero is only a part of the tragedy. Nevertheless in +almost all cases, if not in all, it is true. It is +obviously so where, as in the hero and also the +heroine of the <i>Cid</i>, the contending powers in this +internal struggle are love and honour. Even when +love is of a quality less pure and has a destructive +force, as in Shakespeare’s Antony, it is clearly true. +And it remains true even where, as in Hamlet and +Macbeth, the contest seems to lie, and for most +purposes might conveniently be said to lie, between +forces simply good and simply the reverse. This is +not really so, and the tragic effect depends upon the +fact. It depends on our feeling that the elements +in the man’s nature are so inextricably blended that +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page89" id="page89"></a>89</span> +the good in him, that which we admire, instead of +simply opposing the evil, reinforces it. Macbeth’s +imagination deters him from murder, but it also +makes the vision of a crown irresistibly bright. If +he had been less determined, nay, if his conscience +had been less maddening in its insistence that he +had thrown the precious jewel of his soul irretrievably +away, he might have paused after his first deed, +might even have repented. Yet his imagination, +his determination, and his conscience were things +good. Hamlet’s desire to do his duty is a good +thing, but what opposes this desire is by no means +simply evil. It is something to which a substantial +contribution is made by the qualities we most admire +in him. Thus the nature of tragedy, as seen in the +external conflict, repeats itself on each side of this +conflict, and everywhere there is a spiritual value in +both the contending forces.</p> + +<p>In showing that <i>Macbeth</i>, a tragedy as far removed +as possible from the <i>Antigone</i> as understood +by Hegel, is still of one nature with it, and equally +answers to the account of tragedy proposed, it has +been necessary to ignore the great difference between +the two plays. But when once the common essence +of all tragedies has been determined, their differences +become the interesting subject. They could +be distinguished according to the character of the +collisions on which they are built, or of the main +forces which move the principal agents. And it +may well be that, other things being equal (as they +never are), the tragedy in which the hero is, as we +say, a good man, is more tragic than that in which +he is, as we say, a bad one. The more spiritual +value, the more tragedy in conflict and waste. The +death of Hamlet or Othello is, so far, more tragic +than that of Macbeth, that of Macbeth than that of +Richard. Below Richard stands Iago, a figure still +tragic, but unfit for the hero’s part; below him +persons like Regan or, in the very depth, Oswald, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page90" id="page90"></a>90</span> +characters no longer (at least in the dramatic sense) +tragic at all. Moral evil, that is to say, so greatly +diminishes the spiritual value we ascribe to the +personality that a very large amount of good of +some kind is required to bring this personality up +to the tragic level, the destruction of evil as such +being in no degree tragic. And again, it may well +be that, other things being equal, the more nearly +the contending forces approach each other in goodness, +the more tragic is the conflict; that the +collision is, so far, more tragic in the <i>Antigone</i> than +in <i>Macbeth</i>, and Hamlet’s internal conflict than his +struggle with outward enemies and obstacles. But +it is dangerous to describe tragedy in terms that +even appear to exclude <i>Macbeth</i>, or to describe +<i>Macbeth</i>, even casually or by implication, in terms +which imply that it portrays a conflict of mere evil +with mere good.</p> + +<p>The restatement of Hegel’s main principle as to +the conflict would involve a similar restatement as +to the catastrophe (for we need not consider here +those ‘tragedies’ which end with a solution). As +before, we must avoid any reference to ethical or +universal ends, or to the work of ‘justice’ in the +catastrophe. We might then simply say that, as +the tragic action portrays a self-division or intestinal +conflict of spirit, so the catastrophe displays the +violent annulling of this division or conflict. But +this statement, which might be pretty generally +accepted, would represent only half of Hegel’s idea, +and perhaps nothing of what is most characteristic +and valuable in it. For the catastrophe (if I may +put his idea in my own way) has two aspects, a +negative and an affirmative, and we have ignored +the latter. On the one hand it is the act of a +power immeasurably superior to that of the conflicting +agents, a power which is irresistible and +unescapable, and which overbears and negates +whatever is incompatible with it. So far, it may +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page91" id="page91"></a>91</span> +be called, in relation to the conflicting agents,<a name="fa9c" id="fa9c" href="#ft9c"><span class="sp">9</span></a> +necessity or fate; and unless a catastrophe affects +us in ways corresponding with this aspect it is not +truly tragic. But then if this were all and this +necessity were merely infinite, characterless, external +force, the catastrophe would not only terrify (as it +should), it would also horrify, depress, or at best +provoke indignation or rebellion; and these are not +tragic feelings. The catastrophe, then, must have +a second and affirmative aspect, which is the source +of our feelings of reconciliation, whatever form they +may assume. And this will be taken into account if +we describe the catastrophe as the violent self-restitution +of the divided spiritual unity. The +necessity which acts and negates in it, that is to +say, is yet of one substance with both the agents. +<i>It</i> is divided against itself in them; they are <i>its</i> +conflicting forces; and in restoring its unity through +negation it affirms them, so far as they are compatible +with that unity. The qualification is essential, +since the hero, for all his affinity with that power, is, +as the living man we see before us, not so compatible. +He must die, and his union with ‘eternal +justice’ (which is more than ‘justice’) must itself +be ‘eternal’ or ideal. But the qualification does +not abolish what it qualifies. This is no occasion +to ask how in particular, and in what various ways +in various works, we feel the effect of this affirmative +aspect in the catastrophe. But it corresponds +at least with that strange double impression which +is produced by the hero’s death. He dies, and +our hearts die with him; and yet his death +matters nothing to us, or we even exult. He is +dead; and he has no more to do with death than +the power which killed him and with which he +is one.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page92" id="page92"></a>92</span></p> + +<p>I leave it to students of Hegel to ask whether +he would have accepted the criticisms and modifications +I have suggested. Naturally I think he would, +as I believe they rest on truth, and am sure he had a +habit of arriving at truth. But in any case their +importance is trifling, compared with that of the +theory which they attempt to strengthen and to +which they owe their existence.</p> + +<p class="f80">1901.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page93" id="page93"></a>93</span></p> + +<div class="condensed"> +<p class="pt2 center chap">NOTE</p> + +<p>Why did Hegel, in his lectures on Aesthetics, so treat of +tragedy as to suggest the idea that the kind of tragedy which +he personally preferred (let us for the sake of brevity call it +‘ancient’) is also the most adequate embodiment of the idea +of tragedy? This question can be answered, I think, only +conjecturally, but some remarks on it may have an interest for +readers of Hegel (they are too brief to be of use to others).</p> + +<p>One answer might be this. Hegel did not really hold that +idea. But he was lecturing, not writing a book. He thought +the principle of tragedy was more clearly and readily visible in +ancient works than in modern; and so, for purposes of +exposition, he emphasised the ancient form. And this fact, +with his personal enthusiasm for certain Greek plays, leads the +reader of the <i>Aesthetik</i> to misconstrue him.</p> + +<p>Again, we must remember the facts of Hegel’s life. He seems +first to have reflected on tragedy at a time when his enthusiasm +for the Greeks and their ‘substantial’ ethics was combined, not +only with a contemptuous dislike for much modern ‘subjectivity’ +(this he never ceased to feel), but with a certain hostility to +the individualism and the un-political character of Christian +morality. His first view of tragedy was thus, in effect, a theory +of Aeschylean and Sophoclean tragedy; and it appears in the +early essay on <i>Naturrecht</i> and more fully in the <i>Phaenomenologie</i>. +Perhaps, then, when he came to deal with the subject more +generally, he insensibly regarded the ancient form as the typical +form, and tended to treat the modern rather as a modification +of this type than as an alternative embodiment of the general +idea of tragedy. The note in the <i>Rechtsphilosophie</i> (p. 196) +perhaps favours this idea.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page94" id="page94"></a>94</span></p> + +<p>But, whether it is correct or no, I believe that the impression +produced by the <i>Aesthetik</i> is a true one, and that Hegel did +deliberately consider the ancient form the more satisfactory. +It would not follow, of course, from that opinion that he +thought the advantage was all on one side, or considered this +or that ancient poet greater than this or that modern, or wished +that modern poets had tried to write tragedies of the Greek +type. Tragedy would, in his view, be in somewhat the same +position as Sculpture. Renaissance sculpture, he might say, +has qualities in which it is superior to Greek, and Michael +Angelo may have been as great an artist as Pheidias; but all +the same for certain reasons Greek sculpture is, and probably +will remain, sculpture <i>par excellence</i>. So, though not to the +same extent, with tragedy.</p> + +<p>And such a view would cohere with his general view of Art. +For he taught that, in a sense, Classical Art is Art <i>par excellence</i>, +and that in Greece beauty held a position such as it never +held before and will not hold again. To explain in a brief +note how this position bears upon his treatment of modern +tragedy would be impossible: but if the student of Hegel will +remember in what sense and on what grounds he held it; that +he describes Beauty as the ‘<i>sinnliches</i> Scheinen der Idee’; +that for him the new idea that distinguished Christianity and +Romantic Art from Greek religion and Classical Art is that +‘<i>unendliche</i> Subjektivität’ which implies a negative, though not +merely negative, relation to sense; and that in Romantic Art +this idea is not only exhibited in the religious sphere, but +appears in the position given to personal honour, love, and +loyalty, and indirectly in what Hegel calls ‘die formelle Selbstständigkeit +der individuellen Besonderheiten,’ and in the fuller +admission of common and un-beautiful reality into the realm of +Beauty,—he will see how all this is connected with those +characteristics of modern tragedy which Hegel regards as +necessary and yet as, in part, drawbacks. This connection, +which Hegel has no occasion to work out, will be apparent +even from consideration of the introductory chapter on ‘die +romantische Kunstform,’ <i>Aesthetik</i>, ii. 120-135.</p> + +<p>There is one marked difference, I may add, between ancient +and modern tragedy, which should be considered with reference +to this subject, and which Hegel, I think, does not explicitly +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page95" id="page95"></a>95</span> +point out. Speaking roughly, we may say that the former +includes, while the latter tends to ignore, the accepted religious +ideas of the time. The ultimate reason of this difference, on +Hegel’s view, would be that the Olympian gods are themselves +the ‘<i>sinnliches</i> Scheinen der Idee,’ and so are in the same +element as Art, while this is, on the whole, not so with modern +religious ideas. One result would be that Greek tragedy +represents the total Greek mind more fully than modern +tragedy can the total modern mind.</p> +</div> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c" id="ft1c" href="#fa1c"><span class="fn">1</span></a> See, primarily, <i>Aesthetik</i>, iii. 479-581, and especially 525-581. +There is much in <i>Aesthetik</i>, i. 219-306, and a good deal in ii. 1-243, +that bears on the subject. See also the section on Greek religion in +<i>Religionsphilosophie</i>, ii. 96-156, especially 131-6, 152-6; and the +references to the death of Socrates in <i>Geschichte der Philosophie</i>, ii. +81 ff., especially 102-5. The works so far cited all consist of posthumous +redactions of lecture-notes. Among works published by +Hegel himself, the early essay on ‘Naturrecht’ (<i>Werke</i>, i. 386 ff.), and +<i>Phaenomenologie d. Geistes</i>, 320-348, 527-542, deal with or bear on +<i>Greek</i> tragedy. See also <i>Rechtsphilosophie</i>, 196, note. There is a +note on <i>Wallenstein</i> in <i>Werke</i>, xvii. 411-4. These references are to +the second edition of the works cited, where there are two editions.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c" id="ft2c" href="#fa2c"><span class="fn">2</span></a> His theory of tragedy is connected with his view of the function +of negation in the universe. No statement therefore which ignores +his metaphysics and his philosophy of religion can be more than a +fragmentary account of that theory.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c" id="ft3c" href="#fa3c"><span class="fn">3</span></a> I say ‘might,’ because Hegel himself in the <i>Phaenomenologie</i> uses +those very terms ‘divine’ and ‘human law’ in reference to the +<i>Antigone</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c" id="ft4c" href="#fa4c"><span class="fn">4</span></a> See Note at end of lecture.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c" id="ft5c" href="#fa5c"><span class="fn">5</span></a> This interpretation of Hegel’s ‘abstract’ is more or less conjectural +and doubtful.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c" id="ft6c" href="#fa6c"><span class="fn">6</span></a> Hegel’s meaning does not fully appear in the sentences here condensed. +The ‘blessedness’ comes from the sense of greatness or +beauty in the characters.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c" id="ft7c" href="#fa7c"><span class="fn">7</span></a> Hegel himself expressly guards against this misconception.</p> + +<p><a name="ft8c" id="ft8c" href="#fa8c"><span class="fn">8</span></a> The same point may be put thus, in view of that dangerous word +‘personality.’ Our interest in Macbeth may be called interest in a +personality; but it is not an interest in some bare form of self-consciousness, +nor yet in a person in the legal sense, but in a personality +full of matter. This matter is not an ethical or universal end, but it +must in a sense be universal—human nature in a particular form—or +it would not excite the horror, sympathy, and admiration it does +excite. Nor, again, could it excite these feelings if it were not composed +largely of qualities on which we set a high value.</p> + +<p><a name="ft9c" id="ft9c" href="#fa9c"><span class="fn">9</span></a> In relation to <i>both</i> sides in the conflict (though it may not need to +negate life in both). For the ultimate agent in the catastrophe is +emphatically not the finite power of one side. It is beyond both, and, +at any rate in relation to them, boundless.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:150px; height:35px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img001.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page96" id="page96"></a>96<br />97</span></p> + +<p class="center chap">WORDSWORTH</p> +<p> </p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page98" id="page98"></a>98<br />99</span></p> + +<p class="center pt2"><span class="chap2">WORDSWORTH</span><a name="fa1d" id="fa1d" href="#ft1d"><span class="sp">1</span></a></p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1 fo">‘Never</span> forget what, I believe, was observed to +you by Coleridge, that every great and original +writer, in proportion as he is great or original, +must himself create the taste by which he is to be +relished; he must teach the art by which he is +to be seen.... My ears are stone-dead to this +idle buzz, and my flesh as insensible as iron to these +petty stings.’ These sentences, from a letter written +by Wordsworth to Lady Beaumont in 1807, may +remind us of the common attitude of his reviewers +in the dozen years when most of his best poetry +was produced. A century has gone by, and there +is now no English poet, either of that period or +of any other, who has been the subject of criticism +more just, more appreciative, we may even say more +reverential. Some of this later criticism might have +satisfied even that sense of wonder, awe, and solemn +responsibility with which the poet himself regarded +the operation of the spirit of poetry within him; +and if we desire an interpretation of that spirit, we +shall find a really astonishing number of excellent +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page100" id="page100"></a>100</span> +guides. Coleridge, Hazlitt, Arnold, Swinburne, +Brooke, Myers, Pater, Lowell, Legouis,—how easy +to add to this list of them! Only the other day +there came another, Mr. Walter Raleigh. And +that the best book on an English poet that has +appeared for some years should be a study of +Wordsworth is just what might have been expected. +The whirligig of time has brought him a +full revenge.</p> + +<p>I have no idea of attempting in these two lectures +another study, or even an estimate, of Wordsworth. +My purpose is much more limited. I think that +in a good deal of current criticism, and also in the +notions of his poetry prevalent among general +readers, a disproportionate emphasis is often laid +on certain aspects of his mind and writings. And +I should like to offer some words of warning as +to this tendency, and also some advice as to the +spirit in which he should be approached. I will +begin with the advice, though I am tempted at the +last moment to omit it, and simply to refer you to +Mr. Raleigh, who throughout his book has practised +what I am about to preach.</p> + +<p class="center pt2">1.</p> + +<p>There have been greater poets than Wordsworth, +but none more original. He saw new +things, or he saw things in a new way. Naturally, +this would have availed us little if his new things +had been private fancies, or if his new perception +had been superficial. But that was not so. +If it had been, Wordsworth might have won +acceptance more quickly, but he would not have +gained his lasting hold on poetic minds. As it +is, those in whom he creates the taste by which +he is relished, those who learn to love him (and +in each generation they are not a few), never let +him go. Their love for him is of the kind that +he himself celebrated, a settled passion, perhaps +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page101" id="page101"></a>101</span> +‘slow to begin,’ but ‘never ending,’ and twined +around the roots of their being. And the reason +is that they find his way of seeing the world, +his poetic experience, what Arnold meant by his +‘criticism of life,’ to be something deep, and therefore +something that will hold. It continues to bring +them joy, peace, strength, exaltation. It does not +thin out or break beneath them as they grow older +and wiser; nor does it fail them, much less repel +them, in sadness or even in their sorest need. And +yet—to return to our starting-point—it continues to +strike them as original, and something more. It +is not like Shakespeare’s myriad-mindedness; it +is, for good or evil or both, peculiar. They can +remember, perhaps, the day when first they saw a +cloud somewhat as Wordsworth saw it, or first +really understood what made him write this poem +or that; his unique way of seeing and feeling, +though now familiar and beloved, still brings them +not only peace, strength, exaltation, but a ‘shock of +mild surprise’; and his paradoxes, long known by +heart and found full of truth, still remain paradoxes.</p> + +<p>If this is so, the road into Wordsworth’s mind +must be through his strangeness and his paradoxes, +and not round them. I do not mean that they are +everywhere in his poetry. Much of it, not to speak +of occasional platitudes, is beautiful without being +peculiar or difficult; and some of this may be as +valuable as that which is audacious or strange. +But unless we get hold of that, we remain outside +Wordsworth’s centre; and, if we have not a most +unusual affinity to him, we cannot get hold of that +unless we realise its strangeness, and refuse to +blunt the sharpness of its edge. Consider, for +example, two or three of his statements; the statements +of a poet, no doubt, and not of a philosopher, +but still evidently statements expressing, +intimating, or symbolising, what for him was the +most vital truth. He said that the meanest +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page102" id="page102"></a>102</span> +flower that blows could give him thoughts that +often lie too deep for tears. He said, in a poem +not less solemn, that Nature was the soul of all his +moral being; and also that she can so influence us +that nothing will be able to disturb our faith that +all that we behold is full of blessings. After making +his Wanderer tell the heart-rending tale of Margaret, +he makes him say that the beauty and +tranquillity of her ruined cottage had once so affected +him</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>That what we feel of sorrow and despair</p> +<p>From ruin and from change, and all the grief</p> +<p>The passing shows of Being leave behind,</p> +<p>Appeared an idle dream, that could not live</p> +<p>Where meditation was.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">He said that this same Wanderer could read in the +silent faces of the clouds unutterable love, and that +among the mountains all things for him breathed +immortality. He said to ‘Almighty God,’</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>But thy most dreaded instrument</p> +<p>For working out a pure intent</p> +<p>Is Man arrayed for mutual slaughter;</p> +<p>Yea, Carnage is thy daughter.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">This last, it will be agreed, is a startling statement; +but is it a whit more extraordinary than the others? +It is so only if we assume that we are familiar +with thoughts that lie too deep for tears, or if we +translate ‘the soul of all my moral being’ into +‘somehow concordant with my moral feelings,’ or +convert ‘all that we behold’ into ‘a good deal that +we behold,’ or transform the Wanderer’s reading +of the silent faces of the clouds into an argument +from ‘design.’ But this is the road round Wordsworth’s +mind, not into it.<a name="fa2d" id="fa2d" href="#ft2d"><span class="sp">2</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page103" id="page103"></a>103</span></p> + +<p>Again, with all Wordsworth’s best poems, it is +essential not to miss the unique tone of his +experience. This doubtless holds good of any +true poet, but not in the same way. With many +poems there is little risk of our failing either to feel +what is distinctive of the writer, or to appropriate +what he says. What is characteristic, for example, +in Byron’s lines, <i>On this day I complete my thirty-sixth +year</i>, or in Shelley’s <i>Stanzas written in +dejection near Naples</i>, cannot escape discovery, +nor is there any difficulty in understanding the +mood expressed. But with Wordsworth, for most +readers, this risk is constantly present in some +degree. Take, for instance, one of the most +popular of his lyrics, the poem about the daffodils +by the lake. It is popular partly because it +remains a pretty thing even to those who convert +it into something quite undistinctive of Wordsworth. +And it is comparatively easy, too, to +perceive and to reproduce in imagination a good +deal that <i>is</i> distinctive; for instance, the feeling of +the sympathy of the waves and the flowers and the +breeze in their glee, and the Wordsworthian +‘emotion recollected in tranquillity’ expressed in +the lines (written by his wife),</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>They flash upon that inward eye</p> +<p>Which is the bliss of solitude.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">But there remains something still more intimately +Wordsworthian:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>I wandered lonely as a Cloud</p> +<p>That floats on high o’er vales and hills.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">It is thrust into the reader’s face, for these are the +opening lines. But with many readers it passes +unheeded, because it is strange and outside their +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page104" id="page104"></a>104</span> +own experience. And yet it is absolutely essential +to the effect of the poem.</p> + +<p>This poem, however, even when thoroughly conventionalised, +would remain, as I said, a pretty +thing; and it could scarcely excite derision. Our +point is best illustrated from the pieces by which +Wordsworth most earned ridicule, the ballad poems. +They arose almost always from some incident +which, for him, had a novel and arresting character +and came on his mind with a certain shock; +and if we do not get back to this through the +poem, we remain outside it. We may, of course, +get back to this and yet consider the poem to be +more or less a failure. There is here therefore +room for legitimate differences of opinion. Mr. +Swinburne sees, no doubt, as clearly as Coleridge +did, the intention of <i>The Idiot Boy</i> and <i>The Thorn</i>, +yet he calls them ‘doleful examples of eccentricity +in dullness,’ while Coleridge’s judgment, though he +criticised both poems, was very different. I believe +(if I may venture into the company of such critics) +that I see why Wordsworth wrote <i>Goody Blake and +Harry Gill</i> and the <i>Anecdote for Fathers</i>, and yet I +doubt if he has succeeded in either; but a great man, +Charles James Fox, selected the former for special +praise, and Matthew Arnold included the latter +in a selection from which he excluded <i>The Sailor’s +Mother</i>.<a name="fa3d" id="fa3d" href="#ft3d"><span class="sp">3</span></a> Indeed, of all the poems at first most +ridiculed there is probably not one that has not +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page105" id="page105"></a>105</span> +been praised by some excellent judge. But they +were ridiculed by men who judged them without +attempting first to get inside them. And this is +fatal.</p> + +<p>I may bring out the point by referring more fully +to one of them. <i>Alice Fell</i> was beloved by the +best critic of the nineteenth century, Charles +Lamb; but the general distaste for it was such that +it was excluded ‘in policy’ from edition after edition +of Wordsworth’s Poems; many still who admire +<i>Lucy Gray</i> see nothing to admire in <i>Alice Fell</i>; +and you may still hear the question asked, What +could be made of a child crying for the loss of her +cloak? And what, I answer, could be made of +a man poking his stick into a pond to find leeches? +What sense is there in asking questions about the +subject of a poem, if you first deprive this subject +of all the individuality it possesses in the poem? +Let me illustrate this individuality methodically. +A child crying for the loss of her cloak is one thing, +quite another is a child who has an imagination, and +who sees the tattered remnants of her cloak whirling +in the wheel-spokes of a post-chaise fiercely driven +by strangers on lonesome roads through a night +of storm in which the moon is drowned. She was +alone, and, having to reach the town she belonged +to, she got up behind the chaise, and her cloak +was caught in the wheel. And she is fatherless and +motherless, and her poverty (the poem is called +<i>Alice Fell, or Poverty</i>) is so extreme that for the loss +of her weather-beaten rag she does not ‘cry’; she +weeps loud and bitterly; weeps as if her innocent +heart would break; sits by the stranger who has +placed her by his side and is trying to console +her, insensible to all relief; sends forth sob after +sob as if her grief could never, never have an end; +checks herself for a moment to answer a question, +and then weeps on as if she had lost her only +friend, and the thought would choke her very heart. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page106" id="page106"></a>106</span> +It was <i>this</i> poverty and <i>this</i> grief that Wordsworth +described with his reiterated hammering blows. Is +it not pathetic? And to Wordsworth it was more. +To him grief like this is sublime. It is the agony +of a soul from which something is torn away that +was made one with its very being. What does it +matter whether the thing is a woman, or a kingdom, +or a tattered cloak? It is the passion that counts. +Othello must not agonise for a cloak, but ‘the little +orphan Alice Fell’ has nothing else to agonise +for. Is all this insignificant? And then—for this +poem about a child is right to the last line—next +day the storm and the tragedy have vanished, and +the new cloak is bought, of duffil grey, as warm a +cloak as man can sell; and the child is as pleased +as Punch.<a name="fa4d" id="fa4d" href="#ft4d"><span class="sp">4</span></a></p> + +<p class="center pt2">2.</p> + +<p>I pass on from this subject to another, allied to +it, but wider. In spite of all the excellent criticism +of Wordsworth, there has gradually been formed, +I think, in the mind of the general reader a partial +and misleading idea of the poet and his work. This +partiality is due to several causes: for instance, to +the fact that personal recollections of Wordsworth +have inevitably been, for the most part, recollections +of his later years; to forgetfulness of his position +in the history of literature, and of the restricted +purpose of his first important poems; and to the +insistence of some of his most influential critics, +notably Arnold, on one particular source of his +power—an insistence perfectly just, but accompanied +now and then by a lack of sympathy with other +aspects of his poetry. The result is an idea of +him which is mainly true and really characteristic, +but yet incomplete, and so, in a sense, untrue; a +picture, I might say, somewhat like Millais’ first +portrait of Gladstone, which renders the inspiration, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page107" id="page107"></a>107</span> +the beauty, the light, but not the sternness or +imperiousness, and not all of the power and fire. +Let me try to express this idea, which, it is needless +to say, I do not attribute, in the shape here given to +it, to anyone in particular.</p> + +<p>It was not Wordsworth’s function to sing, like +most great poets, of war, or love, or tragic passions, +or the actions of supernatural beings. His peculiar +function was ‘to open out the soul of little and +familiar things,’ alike in nature and in human life. +His ‘poetry is great because of the extraordinary +power with which he feels the joy offered to us in +nature, the joy offered to us in the simple primary +affections and duties.’ His field was therefore +narrow; and, besides, he was deficient in romance, +his moral sympathies were somewhat limited, and +he tended also to ignore the darker aspects of the +world. But in this very optimism lay his strength. +The gulf which for Byron and Shelley yawned +between the real and the ideal, had no existence +for him. For him the ideal was realised, and Utopia +a country which he saw every day, and which, he +thought, every man might see who did not strive, +nor cry, nor rebel, but opened his heart in love +and thankfulness to sweet influences as universal +and perpetual as the air. The spirit of his poetry +was also that of his life—a life full of strong but +peaceful affections; of a communion with nature in +keen but calm and meditative joy; of perfect devotion +to the mission with which he held himself +charged; and of a natural piety gradually assuming +a more distinctively religious tone. Some verses of +his own best describe him, and some verses of +Matthew Arnold his influence on his readers. These +are his own words (from <i>A Poet’s Epitaph</i>):</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>But who is he, with modest looks,</p> +<p>And clad in homely russet brown?</p> +<p>He murmurs near the running brooks</p> +<p>A music sweeter than their own. + <span class="pagenum"><a name="page108" id="page108"></a>108</span></p> + +<p class="s">He is retired as noontide dew,</p> +<p>Or fountain in a noon-day grove;</p> +<p>And you must love him, ere to you</p> +<p>He will seem worthy of your love.</p> + +<p class="s">The outward shows of sky and earth,</p> +<p>Of hill and valley, he has viewed;</p> +<p>And impulses of deeper birth</p> +<p>Have come to him in solitude.</p> + +<p class="s">In common things that round us lie</p> +<p>Some random truths he can impart,</p> +<p>—The harvest of a quiet eye</p> +<p>That broods and sleeps on his own heart.</p> + +<p class="s">But he is weak; both man and boy,</p> +<p>Hath been an idler in the land:</p> +<p>Contented if he might enjoy</p> +<p>The things which others understand.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">And these are the words from Arnold’s <i>Memorial +Verses</i>:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>He too upon a wintry clime</p> +<p>Had fallen—on this iron time</p> +<p>Of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears</p> +<p>He found us when the age had bound</p> +<p>Our souls in its benumbing round—</p> +<p>He spoke, and loosed our heart in tears.</p> +<p>He laid us as we lay at birth</p> +<p>On the cool flowery lap of earth;</p> +<p>Smiles broke from us and we had ease.</p> +<p>The hills were round us, and the breeze</p> +<p>Went o’er the sunlit fields again;</p> +<p>Our foreheads felt the wind and rain.</p> +<p>Our youth returned: for there was shed</p> +<p>On spirits that had long been dead,</p> +<p>Spirits dried up and closely furled,</p> +<p>The freshness of the early world.</p> + +<p class="s">Ah, since dark days still bring to light</p> +<p>Man’s prudence and man’s fiery might,</p> +<p>Time may restore us in his course</p> +<p>Goethe’s sage mind and Byron’s force;</p> +<p>But where will Europe’s latter hour</p> +<p>Again find Wordsworth’s healing power?</p> +<p>Others will teach us how to dare,</p> +<p>And against fear our breast to steel;</p> +<p>Others will strengthen us to bear—</p> +<p>But who, ah who, will make us feel? + <span class="pagenum"><a name="page109" id="page109"></a>109</span></p> +<p>The cloud of mortal destiny,</p> +<p>Others will front it fearlessly—</p> +<p>But who, like him, will put it by?</p> + +<p class="s">Keep fresh the grass upon his grave,</p> +<p>O Rotha! with thy living wave.</p> +<p>Sing him thy best! for few or none</p> +<p>Hears thy voice right, now he is gone.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>Those last words are enough to disarm dissent. +No, that voice will never again be heard quite right +now Wordsworth is gone. Nor is it, for the most +part, dissent that I wish to express. The picture +we have been looking at, though we may question +the accuracy of this line or that, seems to me, I +repeat, substantially true. But is there nothing +missing? Consider this picture, and refuse to go +beyond it, and then ask if it accounts for all +that is most characteristic in Wordsworth. How +did the man in the picture ever come to write +the Immortality <i>Ode</i>, or <i>Yew-trees</i>, or why should +he say,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>For I must tread on shadowy ground, must sink</p> +<p>Deep—and, aloft ascending, breathe in worlds</p> +<p>To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil?</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">How, again, could he say that Carnage is God’s +daughter, or write the <i>Sonnets dedicated to National +Liberty and Independence</i>, or the tract on the Convention +of Cintra? Can it be true of him that +many of his best-known poems of human life—perhaps +the majority—deal with painful subjects, +and not a few with extreme suffering? Should we +expect him to make an ‘idol’ of Milton, or to show +a ‘strong predilection for such geniuses as Dante +and Michael Angelo’? He might easily be ‘reserved,’ +but is it not surprising to find him described +as haughty, prouder than Lucifer, inhumanly arrogant? +Why should his forehead have been marked +by the ‘severe worn pressure of thought,’ or his +eyes have looked so ‘supernatural ... like fires, +half burning, half smouldering, with a sort of acrid +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page110" id="page110"></a>110</span> +fixture of regard, and seated at the further end of +two caverns’? In all this there need be nothing +inconsistent with the picture we have been looking +at; but that picture fails to suggest it. In that way +the likeness it presents is only partial, and I propose +to emphasise some of the traits which it omits or +marks too faintly.<a name="fa5d" id="fa5d" href="#ft5d"><span class="sp">5</span></a></p> + +<p>And first as to the restriction of Wordsworth’s +field. Certainly his field, as compared with that +of some poets, is narrow; but to describe it as +confined to external nature and peasant life, or +to little and familiar things, would be absurdly +untrue, as a mere glance at his Table of Contents +suffices to show. And its actual restriction was not +due to any false theory, nor mainly to any narrowness +of outlook. It was due, apart from limitation +of endowment, on the one hand to that diminution +of poetic energy which in Wordsworth began comparatively +soon, and on the other, especially in his +best days, to deliberate choice; and we must not +assume without question that he was inherently +incapable of doing either what he would not do, +or what, in his last five and thirty years, he could +no longer do.</p> + +<p>There is no reason to suppose that Wordsworth +undervalued or objected to the subjects of such +poets as Homer and Virgil, Chaucer and Spenser, +Shakespeare and Milton. And when, after writing +his part of the <i>Lyrical Ballads</i>, he returned from +Germany and settled in the Lake Country, the +subjects he himself revolved for a great poem were +not concerned with rural life or humble persons. +Some old ‘romantic’ British theme, left unsung by +Milton; some tale of Chivalry, dire enchantments, +war-like feats; vanquished Mithridates passing +north and becoming Odin; the fortunes of the +followers of Sertorius; de Gourgues’ journey of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page111" id="page111"></a>111</span> +vengeance to Florida; Gustavus; Wallace and his +exploits in the war for his country’s independence,—these +are the subjects he names first. And, though +his ‘last and favourite aspiration’ was towards</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i4">Some philosophic song</p> +<p>Of Truth that cherishes our daily life,</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">—that song which was never completed—yet, some +ten years later, he still hoped, when it should be +finished, to write an epic. Whether at any time +he was fitted for the task or no, he wished to +undertake it; and his addiction, by no means +entire even in his earlier days, to little and +familiar things was due, not at all to an opinion +that they are the only right subjects or the best, +nor merely to a natural predilection for them, but +to the belief that a particular kind of poetry was +wanted at that time to counteract its special +evils. There prevailed, he thought, a ‘degrading +thirst after outrageous stimulation.’ The violent +excitement of public events, and ‘the increasing +accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity +of their occupations produces a craving for extraordinary +incident, which the rapid communication +of intelligence hourly gratifies,’ had induced a +torpor of mind which only yielded to gross and +sensational effects—such effects as were produced +by ‘frantic novels,’ of the Radcliffe or Monk Lewis +type, full of mysterious criminals, gloomy castles +and terrifying spectres. He wanted to oppose to +this tendency one as far removed from it as +possible; to write a poetry even <i>more</i> alien to it +than Shakespeare’s tragedies or Spenser’s stories of +knights and dragons; to show men that wonder +and beauty can be felt, and the heart be moved, +even when the rate of the pulse is perfectly normal. +In the same way, he grieved Coleridge by refusing +to interest himself in the Somersetshire fairies, and +declared that he desired for his scene no planet +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page112" id="page112"></a>112</span> +but the earth, and no region of the earth stranger +than England and the lowliest ways in England. +And, being by no means merely a gentle shepherd, +but a born fighter who was easily provoked and +could swing his crook with uncommon force, he +asserted his convictions defiantly and carried them +out to extremes. And so in later days, after he +had somewhat narrowed, when in the Seventh +Book of the <i>Excursion</i> he made the Pastor protest +that poetry was not wanted to multiply and aggravate +the din of war, or to propagate the pangs and +turbulence of passionate love, he did this perhaps +because the world which would not listen to him<a name="fa6d" id="fa6d" href="#ft6d"><span class="sp">6</span></a> +was enraptured by <i>Marmion</i> and the earlier poems +of Byron.</p> + +<p>How great Wordsworth’s success might have +been in fields which he deliberately avoided, it is +perhaps idle to conjecture. I do not suppose it +would have been very great, but I see no reason +to believe that he would have failed. With regard, +for instance, to love, one cannot read without a +smile his reported statement that, had he been a +writer of love-poetry, it would have been natural +to him to write it with a degree of warmth which +could hardly have been approved by his principles, +and which might have been undesirable for the +reader. But one may smile at his naďveté without +disbelieving his statement. And, in fact, Wordsworth +neither wholly avoided the subject nor failed +when he touched it. The poems about Lucy are +not poems of passion, in the usual sense, but they +surely are love-poems. The verses <i>’Tis said that +some have died for love</i>, excluded from Arnold’s +selection but praised by Ruskin, are poignant +enough. And the following lines from <i>Vaudracour +and Julia</i> make one wonder how this could be to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page113" id="page113"></a>113</span> +Arnold the only poem of Wordsworth’s that he +could not read with pleasure:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Arabian fiction never filled the world</p> +<p>With half the wonders that were wrought for him.</p> +<p>Earth breathed in one great presence of the spring;</p> +<p>Life turned the meanest of her implements,</p> +<p>Before his eyes, to price above all gold;</p> +<p>The house she dwelt in was a sainted shrine;</p> +<p>Her chamber-window did surpass in glory</p> +<p>The portals of the dawn; all paradise</p> +<p>Could, by the simple opening of a door,</p> +<p>Let itself in upon him:—pathways, walks,</p> +<p>Swarmed with enchantment, till his spirit sank,</p> +<p>Surcharged, within him, overblest to move</p> +<p>Beneath a sun that wakes a weary world</p> +<p>To its dull round of ordinary cares;</p> +<p>A man too happy for mortality!</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">As a whole, <i>Vaudracour and Julia</i> is a failure, +but these lines haunt my memory, and I cannot +think them a poor description of that which they +profess to describe. This is not precisely ‘passion,’ +and, I admit, they do not prove Wordsworth’s +capacity to deal with passion. The main reason +for doubting whether, if he had made the attempt, +he would have reached his highest level, is that, +so far as we can see, he did not strongly feel—perhaps +hardly felt at all—that the <i>passion</i> of love +is a way into the Infinite; and a thing must be +no less than this to Wordsworth if it is to rouse +all his power. Byron, it seemed to him, had</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i13">dared to take</p> +<p>Life’s rule from passion craved for passion’s sake;<a name="fa7d" id="fa7d" href="#ft7d"><span class="sp">7</span></a></p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">and he utterly repudiated that. ‘The immortal +mind craves objects that endure.’</p> + +<p>Then there is that ‘romance’ which Wordsworth +abjured. In using the word I am employing the +familiar distinction between two tendencies of the +Romantic Revival, one called naturalistic and one +called, in a more special sense, romantic, and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page114" id="page114"></a>114</span> +signalised, among other ways, by a love of the +marvellous, the supernatural, the exotic, the worlds +of mythology. It is a just and necessary distinction: +the <i>Ancient Mariner</i> and <i>Michael</i> are +very dissimilar. But, like most distinctions of the +kind, it becomes misleading when it is roughly +handled or pushed into an antithesis; and it would +be easy to show that these two tendencies exclude +one another only in their inferior examples, and +that the better the example of either, the more it +shows its community with the other. There is +not a great deal of truth to nature in <i>Lalla Rookh</i>, +but there is plenty in the <i>Ancient Mariner</i>: in +certain poems of Crabbe there is little romance, but +there is no want of it in <i>Sir Eustace Grey</i> or in +<i>Peter Grimes</i>. Taking the distinction, however, +as we find it, and assuming, as I do, that it lay +beyond Wordsworth’s power to write an <i>Ancient +Mariner</i>, or to tell us of</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i3">magic casements opening on the foam</p> +<p>Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn,</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">we are not therefore to conclude that he was by +nature deficient in romance and incapable of writing +well what he refused to write. The indications are +quite contrary. Not to speak here of his own +peculiar dealings with the supernatural, his vehement +defence (in the <i>Prelude</i>) of fairy-tales as food for +the young is only one of many passages which show +that in his youth he lived in a world not haunted +only by the supernatural powers of nature. He +delighted in ‘Arabian fiction.’ The ‘Arabian sands’ +(<i>Solitary Reaper</i>) had the same glamour for him as +for others. His dream of the Arab and the two +books (<i>Prelude</i>, v.) has a very curious romantic +effect, though it is not romance <i>in excelsis</i>, like +<i>Kubla Khan</i>. His love of Spenser; his very +description of him,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Sweet Spenser, moving through his clouded heaven</p> +<p>With the moon’s beauty and the moon’s soft pace;</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page115" id="page115"></a>115</span></p> + +<p class="noind">the very lines, so characteristic of his habitual +attitude, in which he praises the Osmunda fern as</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i4">lovelier, in its own retired abode</p> +<p>On Grasmere’s beach, than Naiad by the side</p> +<p>Of Grecian brook, or Lady of the Mere</p> +<p>Sole-sitting by the shores of old romance,<a name="fa8d" id="fa8d" href="#ft8d"><span class="sp">8</span></a></p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">—these, and a score of other passages, all point the +same way. He would not carry his readers to the +East, like Southey and Moore and Byron, nor, like +Coleridge, towards the South Pole; but when it +suited his purpose, as in <i>Ruth</i>, he could write well +enough of un-English scenery:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>He told of the magnolia, spread</p> +<p>High as a cloud, high overhead,</p> +<p>The cypress and her spire;</p> +<p>Of flowers that with one scarlet gleam</p> +<p>Cover a hundred leagues, and seem</p> +<p>To set the hills on fire.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">He would not choose Endymion or Hyperion for +a subject, for he was determined to speak of what +Englishmen may see every day; but what he wrote +of Greek religion in the <i>Excursion</i> is full of imagination +and brought inspiration to Keats, and the +most famous expression in English of that longing +for the perished glory of Greek myth which appears +in much Romantic poetry came from Wordsworth’s +pen:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i5">Great God! I’d rather be</p> +<p>A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;</p> +<p>So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,</p> +<p>Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;</p> +<p>Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;</p> +<p>Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>As for war, Wordsworth neither strongly felt, nor +at all approved, that elementary love of fighting +which, together with much nobler things, is gratified +by some great poetry. And assuredly he could not, +even if he would, have rivalled the last canto of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page116" id="page116"></a>116</span> +<i>Marmion</i>, nor even the best passages in the <i>Siege of +Corinth</i>. But he is not to be judged by his intentional +failures. The martial parts of the <i>White Doe +of Rylstone</i> are, with few exceptions, uninteresting, if +not painfully tame. The former at least they were +meant to be. The <i>Lay of the Last Minstrel</i> was on +every tongue. The modest poet was as stiff-necked +a person as ever walked the earth; and he was +determined that no reader of his poem who missed +its spiritual interest should be interested in anything +else. Probably he overshot his mark. For readers +who could understand him the effect he aimed at +would not have been weakened by contrast with +an outward action narrated with more spirit and +sympathy. But, however that may be, he did what +he meant to do. In the <i>Song at the Feast of +Brougham Castle</i>, again, the war-like close of the +Song was not written for its own sake. It was +designed with a view to the transition to the longer +metre, the thought of peace in communion with +nature, and the wonderful stanza ‘Love had he +found in huts where poor men lie.’ But, for the +effect of this transition, it was necessary for Wordsworth +to put his heart into the martial close of the +Song; and surely it has plenty of animation and +glory. Its author need not have shrunk from the +subject of war if he had wished to handle it <i>con amore</i>.</p> + +<p>The poet whose portrait we drew when we began +might have been the author of the <i>White Doe</i>, and +perhaps of <i>Brougham Castle</i>, and possibly of the +<i>Happy Warrior</i>. He could no more have composed +the <i>Poems dedicated to National Independence and +Liberty</i> than the political sonnets of Milton. And yet +Wordsworth wrote nothing more characteristic than +these Poems, which I am not going to praise, since +Mr. Swinburne’s praise of them is, to my mind, not +less just than eloquent. They are characteristic in +many ways. The later are, on the whole, decidedly +inferior to the earlier. Even in this little series, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page117" id="page117"></a>117</span> +which occupies the first fifteen years of the century, +the decline of Wordsworth’s poetic power and the +increasing use of theological ideas are clearly visible. +The Odes, again, are much inferior to the majority +of the Sonnets. And this too is characteristic. +The entire success of the <i>Ode to Duty</i> is exceptional, +and it is connected with the fact that the poem is +written in regular stanzas of a simple metrical +scheme. The irregular Odes are never thus successful. +Wordsworth could not command the tone of +sustained rapture, and where his metrical form is +irregular his ear is uncertain. The Immortality Ode, +like <i>King Lear</i>, is its author’s greatest product, but +not his best piece of work. The Odes among the +<i>Poems</i> which we are now considering are declamatory, +even violent, and yet they stir comparatively +little emotion, and they do not sing. The sense of +massive passion, concentrated, and repressing the +utterance it permits itself, is that which most moves +us in his political verse. And the Sonnet suited this.</p> + +<p>The patriotism of these <i>Poems</i> is equally characteristic. +It illustrates Wordsworth’s total rejection +of the Godwinian ideas in which he had once in +vain sought refuge, and his belief in the necessity +and sanctity of forms of association arising from +natural kinship. It is composed, we may say, of +two elements. The first is the simple love of +country raised to a high pitch, the love of ‘a lover +or a child’; the love that makes it for some men +a miserable doom to be forced to live in a foreign +land, and that makes them feel their country’s +virtues and faults, and joys and sorrows, like +those of the persons dearest to them. We talk as +if this love were common. It is very far from +common; but Wordsworth felt it.<a name="fa9d" id="fa9d" href="#ft9d"><span class="sp">9</span></a> The other +element in his patriotism I must call by the dreaded +name of ‘moral,’ a name which Wordsworth did not +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page118" id="page118"></a>118</span> +dread, because it meant for him nothing stereotyped +or narrow. His country is to him the representative +of freedom, left, as he writes in 1803,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i8">the only light</p> +<p>Of Liberty that yet remains on earth.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">This Liberty is, first, national independence; and +that requires military power, the maintenance of +which is a primary moral duty.<a name="fa10d" id="fa10d" href="#ft10d"><span class="sp">10</span></a> But neither military +power nor even national independence is of value in +itself; and neither could be long maintained without +that which gives value to both. This is the freedom +of the soul, plain living and high thinking, indifference +to the externals of mere rank or wealth or +power, domestic affections not crippled (as they may +be) by poverty. Wordsworth fears for his country +only when he doubts whether this inward freedom +is not failing;<a name="fa11d" id="fa11d" href="#ft11d"><span class="sp">11</span></a> but he seldom fears for long. +England, in the war against Napoleon, is to him +almost what the England of the Long Parliament +and the Commonwealth was to Milton,—an elect +people, the chosen agent of God’s purpose on the +earth. His ideal of life, unlike Milton’s in the stress +he lays on the domestic affections and the influence +of nature, is otherwise of the same Stoical cast. +His country is to him, as to Milton,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>An old and haughty nation, proud in arms.<a name="fa12d" id="fa12d" href="#ft12d"><span class="sp">12</span></a></p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">And his own pride in it is, like Milton’s, in the +highest degree haughty. It would be calumnious +to say that it recalls the description of the English +given by the Irishman Goldsmith,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,</p> +<p>I see the lords of human kind pass by;</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page119" id="page119"></a>119</span></p> + +<p class="noind">for Wordsworth had not the faintest wish to see his +countrymen the lords of human kind, nor is there +anything vulgar in his patriotism; but there <i>is</i> pride +in his port and defiance in his eye. And, lastly, the +character of his ideal and of this national pride, +with him as with Milton, is connected with personal +traits,—impatience of constraint, severity, a certain +austere passion, an inclination of imagination to the +sublime.</p> + +<p class="pt2 center">3.</p> + +<p>These personal traits, though quite compatible +with the portrait on which I am commenting, are +not visible in it. Nor are others, which belong +especially, but not exclusively, to the younger +Wordsworth. He had a spirit so vehement and +affections so violent (it is his sister’s word) as to +inspire alarm for him. If he had been acquainted +with that excuse for impotent idleness and selfishness, +‘the artistic temperament,’ he might have +made out a good claim to it. He was from the +beginning self-willed, and for a long time he +appeared aimless. He would not work at the +studies of his university: he preferred to imagine +a university in which he <i>would</i> work. He had a +passion for wandering which was restrained only by +want of means, and which opened his heart to every +pedlar or tramp whom he met. After leaving +Cambridge he would not fix on a profession. He +remained, to the displeasure of his relatives, an idler +in the land or out of it; and as soon as he had +Ł900 of capital left to him he determined <i>not</i> to +have a profession. Sometimes he worked hard at +his poetry, even heroically hard; but he did not +work methodically, and often he wrote nothing for +weeks, but loafed and walked and enjoyed himself. +He was not blind like Milton, but the act of +writing was physically disagreeable to him, and +he made his woman-kind write to his dictation. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page120" id="page120"></a>120</span> +He would not conform to rules, or attend to the +dinner-bell, or go to church (he made up for this +neglect later). ‘He wrote his <i>Ode to Duty</i>,’ said +one of his friends, ‘and then he had done with +that matter.’ He never ‘tired’ of his ‘unchartered +freedom.’ In age, if he wanted to go out, whatever +the hour and whatever the weather, he must have +his way. ‘In vain one reminded him that a letter +needed an answer or that the storm would soon be +over. It was very necessary for him to do what he +liked.’ If the poetic fit was on him he could attend +to nothing else. He was passionately fond of his +children, but, when the serious illness of one of +them coincided with an onset of inspiration, it was +impossible to rouse him to a sense of danger. At +such times he was as completely possessed as any +wild poet who ruins the happiness of everyone dependent +on him. But he has himself described the +tyranny of inspiration, and the reaction after it, in +his <i>Stanzas written in Thomson’s Castle of Indolence</i>. +It is almost beyond doubt, I think, that the first +portrait there is that of himself; and though it is +idealised it is probably quite as accurate as the +portrait in <i>A Poet’s Epitaph</i>. In the <i>Prelude</i> he +tells us that, though he rarely at Cambridge betrayed +by gestures or looks his feelings about nature, yet, +when he did so, some of his companions said he was +mad. Hazlitt, describing his manner of reading his +own poetry in much later years, says, ‘It is clear +that he is either mad or inspired.’</p> + +<p>Wordsworth’s lawlessness was of the innocuous +kind, but it is a superstition to suppose that he was +a disgustingly well-regulated person. It is scarcely +less unjust to describe his poetic sympathies as +narrow and his poetic morality as puritanical. The +former, of course, had nothing like the range of +minds like Chaucer, or Shakespeare, or Browning, +or the great novelists. Wordsworth’s want of +humour would by itself have made that impossible; +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page121" id="page121"></a>121</span> +and, in addition, though by no means wanting in +psychological curiosity, he was not much interested +in complex natures. Simple souls, and especially +simple souls that are also deep, were the natures +that attracted him: and in the same way the +passions he loved to depict are not those that storm +themselves out or rush to a catastrophe, but those +that hold the soul in a vice for long years. But, +these limitations admitted, it will not be found by +anyone who reviews the characters in the smaller +poems and the <i>Excursion</i> (especially Book vii.), that +Wordsworth’s poetic sympathies are narrow. They +are wider than those of any imaginative writer of his +time and country except Scott and perhaps Crabbe.</p> + +<p>Nor is his morality narrow. It is serious, but it +is human and kindly and not in the least ascetic. +‘It is the privilege of poetic genius,’ he says in his +defence of Burns, ‘to catch a spirit of pleasure +wherever it can be found—in the walks of nature +and in the business of men. The poet, trusting to +primary instincts, luxuriates among the felicities of +love and wine, and is enraptured while he describes +the fairer aspects of war: nor does he shrink +from the company of the passion of love though +immoderate—from convivial pleasure though intemperate—nor +from the presence of war though savage +and recognised as the handmaid of desolation. Who +but some impenetrable dunce or narrow-minded +puritan in works of art ever read without delight +the picture which Burns has drawn of the convivial +exaltation of the rustic adventurer Tam o’ Shanter?’ +There is no want of sympathy in Wordsworth’s +own picture of the ‘convivial exaltation’ of his +Waggoner. It is true that he himself never describes +a scene in which, to quote his astonishing phrase, +‘conjugal fidelity archly bends to the service of +general benevolence,’ and that his treatment of +sexual passion is always grave and, in a true sense, +moral; but it is plain and manly and perfectly +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page122" id="page122"></a>122</span> +free from timidity or monkishness. It would really +be easier to make out against Wordsworth a charge +of excessive tolerance than a charge of excessive +rigidity. A beggar is the sort of person he likes. +It is all very well for him to say that he likes the +Old Cumberland Beggar because, by making people +give, he keeps love alive in their hearts. It may be +so—he says so, and I always believe him. But that +was not his only reason; and it is clear to me that, +when he met the tall gipsy-beggar, he gave her +money because she was beautiful and queenly, and +that he delighted in her two lying boys because of +their gaiety and joy in life. Neither has he the +least objection to a thief. The grandfather and +grandson who go pilfering together, two infants +separated by ninety years, meet with nothing but +smiles from him. The Farmer of Tilsbury Vale, +after thirty years of careless hospitality, found himself +ruined. He borrowed money, spent some of it +in paying a few of his other debts, and absconded +to London.</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>But this he did all in the <i>ease</i> of his heart.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">And for this reason, and because in London he +keeps the ease of his heart and continues to love the +country, Wordsworth dismisses him with a blessing. +What he cannot bear is torpor. He passes a knot +of gipsies in the morning; and, passing them again +after his twelve hours of joyful rambling, he finds +them just as they were, sunk in sloth; and he breaks +out,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i4">Oh, better wrong and strife,</p> +<p>Better vain deeds and evil than such life.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">He changed this shocking exclamation later, but it +represents his original feeling, and he might have +trusted that only an ‘impenetrable dunce or narrow-minded +puritan’ would misunderstand him.<a name="fa13d" id="fa13d" href="#ft13d"><span class="sp">13</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page123" id="page123"></a>123</span></p> + +<p>Wordsworth’s morality is of one piece with his +optimism and with his determination to seize and +exhibit in everything the element of good. But +this is a subject far too large for treatment here, +and I can refer to it only in the most summary way. +What Arnold precisely meant when he said that +Wordsworth ‘put by’ the cloud of human destiny I +am not sure. That Wordsworth saw this cloud and +looked at it steadily is beyond all question. I am +not building on such famous lines as</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>The still sad music of humanity,</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">or</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i3">the fierce confederate storm</p> +<p>Of Sorrow, barricadoed evermore</p> +<p>Within the walls of cities;</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">or</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Amid the groves, under the shadowy hills,</p> +<p>The generations are prepared; the pangs,</p> +<p>The internal pangs, are ready; the dread strife</p> +<p>Of poor humanity’s afflicted will</p> +<p>Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny;</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">for, although such quotations could be multiplied, +isolated expressions, even when not dramatic,<a name="fa14d" id="fa14d" href="#ft14d"><span class="sp">14</span></a> would +prove little. But I repeat the remark already made, +that if we review the subjects of many of Wordsworth’s +famous poems on human life,—the subjects, +for example, of <i>The Thorn</i>, <i>The Sailor’s Mother</i>, +<i>Ruth</i>, <i>The Brothers</i>, <i>Michael</i>, <i>The Affliction of +Margaret</i>, <i>The White Doe of Rylstone</i>, the story of +Margaret in <i>Excursion</i>, i., half the stories told in +<i>Excursion</i>, vi. and vii.—we find ourselves in the +presence of poverty, crime, insanity, ruined innocence, +torturing hopes doomed to extinction, solitary +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page124" id="page124"></a>124</span> +anguish, even despair. Ignore the manner in which +Wordsworth treated his subjects, and you will have +to say that his world, so far as humanity is concerned, +is a dark world,—at least as dark as that +of Byron. Unquestionably then he saw the cloud +of human destiny, and he did not avert his eyes +from it. Nor did he pretend to understand its darkness. +The world was to him in the end ‘this +unintelligible world,’ and the only ‘adequate support +for the calamities of mortal life’ was faith.<a name="fa15d" id="fa15d" href="#ft15d"><span class="sp">15</span></a> But he +was profoundly impressed, through the experience +of his own years of crisis, alike by the dangers of +despondency, and by the superficiality of the views +which it engenders. It was for him (and here, as +in other points, he shows his natural affinity to +Spinoza) a condition in which the soul, concentrated +on its own suffering, for that very reason loses hold +both of its own being and of the reality of which it +forms a part. His experience also made it impossible +for him to doubt that what he grasped</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>At times when most existence with herself</p> +<p>Is satisfied,</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">—and these are the times when existence is most +united in love with other existence—was, in a special +sense or degree, the truth, and therefore that the +evils which we suffer, deplore, or condemn, cannot +really be what they seem to us when we merely +suffer, deplore, or condemn them. He set himself +to <i>see</i> this, as far as he could, and to show it. He +sang of pleasure, joy, glee, blitheness, love, wherever +in nature or humanity they assert their indisputable +power; and turning to pain and wrong, and gazing +at them steadfastly, and setting himself to present +the facts with a quiet but unsparing truthfulness, he +yet endeavoured to show what he had seen, that +sometimes pain and wrong are the conditions of a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page125" id="page125"></a>125</span> +happiness and good which without them could not +have been, that no limit can be set to the power +of the soul to transmute them into its own substance, +and that, in suffering and even in misery, there may +still be such a strength as fills us with awe or with +glory. He did not pretend, I repeat, that what he +saw sufficed to solve the riddle of the painful earth. +‘Our being rests’ on ‘dark foundations,’ and ‘our +haughty life is crowned with darkness.’ But still +what he showed was what he <i>saw</i>, and he saw it +in the cloud of human destiny. We are not here +concerned with his faith in the sun behind that +cloud; my purpose is only to insist that he ‘fronted’ +it ‘fearlessly.’</p> + +<p class="pt2 center">4.</p> + +<p>After quoting the lines from <i>A Poet’s Epitaph</i>, +and Arnold’s lines on Wordsworth, I asked how +the man described in them ever came to write +the <i>Ode</i> on Immortality, or <i>Yew-trees</i>, or why he +should say,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>For I must tread on shadowy ground, must sink</p> +<p>Deep—and, aloft ascending, breathe in worlds</p> +<p>To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">The aspect of Wordsworth’s poetry which answers +this question forms my last subject.</p> + +<p>We may recall this aspect in more than one way. +First, not a little of Wordsworth’s poetry either +approaches or actually enters the province of the +sublime. His strongest natural inclination tended +there. He himself speaks of his temperament as +‘stern,’ and tells us that</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p>to the very going out of youth</p> +<p>[He] too exclusively esteemed <i>that</i> love,</p> +<p>And sought <i>that</i> beauty, which, as Milton says,</p> +<p>Hath terror in it.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">This disposition is easily traced in the imaginative +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page126" id="page126"></a>126</span> +impressions of his childhood as he describes them +in the <i>Prelude</i>. His fixed habit of looking</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i4">with feelings of fraternal love</p> +<p>Upon the unassuming things that hold</p> +<p>A silent station in this beauteous world,</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">was only formed, it would seem, under his sister’s +influence, after his recovery from the crisis that +followed the ruin of his towering hopes in the +French Revolution. It was a part of his endeavour +to find something of the distant ideal in life’s +familiar face. And though this attitude of sympathy +and humility did become habitual, the first +bent towards grandeur, austerity, sublimity, retained +its force. It is evident in the political poems, and +in all those pictures of life which depict the unconquerable +power of affection, passion, resolution, +patience, or faith. It inspires much of his greatest +poetry of Nature. It emerges occasionally with +a strange and thrilling effect in the serene, gracious, +but sometimes stagnant atmosphere of the later +poems,—for the last time, perhaps, in that magnificent +stanza of the <i>Extempore Effusion upon the +Death of James Hogg</i> (1835),</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Like clouds that rake the mountain-summits,</p> + <p class="i1">Or waves that own no curbing hand,</p> +<p>How fast has brother followed brother</p> + <p class="i1">From sunshine to the sunless land!</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">Wordsworth is indisputably the most sublime of +our poets since Milton.</p> + +<p>We may put the matter, secondly, thus. However +much Wordsworth was the poet of small and +humble things, and the poet who saw his ideal +realised, not in Utopia, but here and now before +his eyes, he was, quite as much, what some would +call a mystic. He saw everything in the light of +‘the visionary power.’ He was, for himself,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>The transitory being that beheld</p> +<p>This Vision.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page127" id="page127"></a>127</span></p> + +<p class="noind">He apprehended all things, natural or human, as +the expression of something which, while manifested +in them, immeasurably transcends them. +And nothing can be more intensely Wordsworthian +than the poems and passages most marked by this +visionary power and most directly issuing from this +apprehension. The bearing of these statements on +Wordsworth’s inclination to sublimity will be obvious +at a glance.</p> + +<p>Now we may prefer the Wordsworth of the +daffodils to the Wordsworth of the yew-trees, and +we may even believe the poet’s mysticism to be +moonshine; but it is certain that to neglect or +throw into the shade this aspect of his poetry +is neither to take Wordsworth as he really was +nor to judge his poetry truly, since this aspect +appears in much of it that we cannot deny to +be first-rate. Yet there is, I think, and has been +for some time, a tendency to this mistake. It +is exemplified in Arnold’s Introduction and has +been increased by it, and it is visible in some +degree even in Pater’s essay. Arnold wished to +make Wordsworth more popular; and so he was +tempted to represent Wordsworth’s poetry as much +more simple and unambitious than it really was, +and as much more easily apprehended than it ever +can be. He was also annoyed by attempts to +formulate a systematic Wordsworthian philosophy; +partly, doubtless, because he knew that, however +great the philosophical value of a poet’s ideas may +be, it cannot by itself determine the value of his +poetry; but partly also because, having himself +but little turn for philosophy, he was disposed to +regard it as illusory; and further because, even in +the poetic sphere, he was somewhat deficient in +that kind of imagination which is allied to metaphysical +thought. This is one reason of his curious +failure to appreciate Shelley, and of the evident +irritation which Shelley produced in him. And +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page128" id="page128"></a>128</span> +it is also one reason why, both in his <i>Memorial +Verses</i> and in the introduction to his selection +from Wordsworth, he either ignores or depreciates +that aspect of the poetry with which we are just +now concerned. It is not true, we must bluntly +say, that the cause of the greatness of this poetry +‘is simple and may be told quite simply.’ It is +true, and it is admirably said, that this poetry ‘is +great because of the extraordinary power with +which Wordsworth feels the joy offered to us in +nature, the joy offered to us in the simple primary +affections and duties.’ But this is only half the truth.</p> + +<p>Pater’s essay is not thus one-sided. It is, to my +mind, an extremely fine piece of criticism. Yet the +tendency to which I am objecting does appear in +it. Pater says, for example, that Wordsworth is +the poet of nature, ‘and of nature, after all, in her +modesty. The English Lake country has, of course, +its grandeurs. But the peculiar function of Wordsworth’s +genius, as carrying in it a power to open +out the soul of apparently little and familiar things, +would have found its true test had he become the +poet of Surrey, say! and the prophet of its life.’ +This last sentence is, in one sense, doubtless true. +The ‘function’ referred to could have been exercised +in Surrey, and was exercised in Dorset and +Somerset, as well as in the Lake country. And +this function was a ‘peculiar function of Wordsworth’s +genius.’ But that it was <i>the</i> peculiar +function of his genius, or more peculiar than that +other function which forms our present subject, I +venture to deny; and for the full exercise of this +latter function, it is hardly hazardous to assert, +Wordsworth’s childhood in a mountain district, and +his subsequent residence there, were indispensable. +This will be doubted for a moment, I believe, only +by those readers (and they are not a few) who +ignore the <i>Prelude</i> and the <i>Excursion</i>. But the +<i>Prelude</i> and the <i>Excursion</i>, though there are dull +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page129" id="page129"></a>129</span> +pages in both, contain much of Wordsworth’s best +and most characteristic poetry. And even in a +selection like Arnold’s, which, perhaps wisely, makes +hardly any use of them, many famous poems will be +found which deal with nature but not with nature +‘in her modesty.’</p> + +<p>My main object was to insist that the ‘mystic,’ +‘visionary,’ ‘sublime,’ aspect of Wordsworth’s poetry +must not be slighted. I wish to add a few remarks +on it, but to consider it fully would carry us far +beyond our bounds; and, even if I attempted the +task, I should not formulate its results in a body of +doctrines. Such a formulation is useful, and I see +no objection to it in principle, as one method of +exploring Wordsworth’s mind with a view to the +better apprehension of his poetry. But the method +has its dangers, and it is another matter to put +forward the results as philosophically adequate, or to +take the position that ‘Wordsworth was first and foremost +a philosophical thinker, a man whose intention +and purpose it was to think out for himself, faithfully +and seriously, the questions concerning man and +nature and human life’ (Dean Church). If this were +true, he should have given himself to philosophy and +not to poetry; and there is no reason to think that +he would have been eminently successful. Nobody +ever was so who was not forced by a special natural +power and an imperious impulsion into the business +of ‘thinking out,’ and who did not develope this +power by years of arduous discipline. Wordsworth +does not show it in any marked degree; and, +though he reflected deeply and acutely, he was +without philosophical training. His poetry is immensely +interesting as an imaginative expression +of the same mind which, in his day, produced in +Germany great philosophies. His poetic experience, +his intuitions, his single thoughts, even his large +views, correspond in a striking way, sometimes in +a startling way, with ideas methodically developed +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page130" id="page130"></a>130</span> +by Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer. They +remain admirable material for philosophy; and a +philosophy which found itself driven to treat them +as moonshine would probably be a very poor affair. +But they are like the experience and the utterances +of men of religious genius: great truths are enshrined +in them, but generally the shrine would have to be +broken to liberate these truths in a form which +would satisfy the desire to understand. To claim +for them the power to satisfy that desire is an error, +and it tempts those in whom that desire is predominant +to treat them as mere beautiful illusions.</p> + +<p>Setting aside, then, any questions as to the +ultimate import of the ‘mystic’ strain in Wordsworth’s +poetry, I intend only to call attention to +certain traits in the kind of poetic experience which +exhibits it most plainly. And we may observe at +once that in this there is always traceable a certain +hostility to ‘sense.’ I do not mean that hostility +which is present in <i>all</i> poetic experience, and of +which Wordsworth was very distinctly aware. The +regular action of the senses on their customary +material produces, in his view, a ‘tyranny’ over the +soul. It helps to construct that every-day picture of +the world, of sensible objects and events ‘in +disconnection dead and spiritless,’ which we take +for reality. In relation to this reality we become +passive slaves;<a name="fa16d" id="fa16d" href="#ft16d"><span class="sp">16</span></a> it lies on us with a weight ‘heavy +as frost and deep almost as life.’ It is the origin +alike of our torpor and our superficiality. <i>All</i> poetic +experience frees us from it to some extent, or breaks +into it, and so may be called hostile to sense. But +this experience is, broadly speaking, of two different +kinds. The perception of the daffodils as dancing +in glee, and in sympathy with other gleeful beings, +shows us a living, joyous, loving world, and so a +‘spiritual’ world, not a merely ‘sensible’ one. But +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page131" id="page131"></a>131</span> +the hostility to sense is here no more than a hostility +to <i>mere</i> sense: this ‘spiritual’ world is itself the +sensible world more fully apprehended: the daffodils +do not change or lose their colour in disclosing their +glee. On the other hand, in the kind of experience +which forms our present subject, there is always +some feeling of definite contrast with the limited +sensible world. The arresting feature or object is +felt in some way <i>against</i> this background, or even as +in some way a denial of it. Sometimes it is a +visionary unearthly light resting on a scene or on +some strange figure. Sometimes it is the feeling +that the scene or figure belongs to the world of +dream. Sometimes it is an intimation of boundlessness, +contradicting or abolishing the fixed limits of +our habitual view. Sometimes it is the obscure +sense of ‘unknown modes of being,’ unlike the +familiar modes. This kind of experience, further, +comes often with a distinct shock, which may +bewilder, confuse or trouble the mind. And, lastly, +it is especially, though not invariably, associated +with mountains, and again with solitude. Some of +these bald statements I will go on to illustrate, only +remarking that the boundary between these modes +of imagination is, naturally, less marked and more +wavering in Wordsworth’s poetry than in my brief +analysis.</p> + +<p>We may begin with a poem standing near this +boundary, the famous verses <i>To the Cuckoo</i>, ‘O +blithe new-comer.’ It stands near the boundary +because, like the poem on the Daffodils, it is +entirely happy. But it stands unmistakably on the +further side of the boundary, and is, in truth, more +nearly allied to the <i>Ode</i> on Immortality than to the +poem on the Daffodils. The sense of sight is +baffled, and its tyranny broken. Only a cry is heard, +which makes the listener look a thousand ways, so +shifting is the direction from which it reaches him. +It seems to come from a mere ‘voice,’ ‘an invisible +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page132" id="page132"></a>132</span> +thing,’ ‘a mystery.’ It brings him ‘a tale of +visionary hours,’—hours of childhood, when he +sought this invisible thing in vain, and the earth +appeared to his bewildered but liberated fancy ‘an +unsubstantial fairy place.’ And still, when he hears +it, the great globe itself, we may say, fades like an +unsubstantial pageant; or, to quote from the +Immortality <i>Ode</i>, the ‘shades of the prison house’ +melt into air. These words are much more solemn +than the Cuckoo poem; but the experience is of +the same type, and ‘the visionary gleam’ of the ode, +like the ‘wandering voice’ of the poem, is the +expression through sense of something beyond +sense.</p> + +<p>Take another passage referring to childhood. It +is from the <i>Prelude</i>, ii. Here there is something +more than perplexity. There is apprehension, and +we are approaching the sublime:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i1">One summer evening (led by her<a name="fa17d" id="fa17d" href="#ft17d"><span class="sp">17</span></a>) I found</p> +<p>A little boat tied to a willow tree</p> +<p>Within a rocky cave, its usual home.</p> +<p>Straight I unloosed her chain, and stepping in</p> +<p>Pushed from the shore. It was an act of stealth</p> +<p>And troubled pleasure, nor without the voice</p> +<p>Of mountain-echoes did my boat move on;</p> +<p>Leaving behind her still, on either side,</p> +<p>Small circles glittering idly in the moon,</p> +<p>Until they melted all into one track</p> +<p>Of sparkling light. But now, like one who rows,</p> +<p>Proud of his skill, to reach a chosen point</p> +<p>With an unswerving line, I fixed my view</p> +<p>Upon the summit of a craggy ridge,</p> +<p>The horizon’s utmost boundary; far above</p> +<p>Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.</p> +<p>She was an elfin pinnace; lustily</p> +<p>I dipped my oars into the silent lake,</p> +<p>And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat</p> +<p>Went heaving through the water like a swan;</p> +<p>When, from behind that craggy steep till then</p> +<p>The horizon’s bound, a huge peak, black and huge,</p> +<p>As if with voluntary power instinct,</p> +<p>Upreared its head. I struck and struck again, + <span class="pagenum"><a name="page133" id="page133"></a>133</span></p> +<p>And growing still in stature the grim shape</p> +<p>Towered up between me and the stars, and still,</p> +<p>For so it seemed, with purpose of its own</p> +<p>And measured motion like a living thing,</p> +<p>Strode after me. With trembling oars I turned,</p> +<p>And through the silent water stole my way</p> +<p>Back to the covert of the willow tree;</p> +<p>There in her mooring-place I left my bark,—</p> +<p>And through the meadows homeward went, in grave</p> +<p>And serious mood; but after I had seen</p> +<p>That spectacle, for many days, my brain</p> +<p>Worked with a dim and undetermined sense</p> +<p>Of unknown modes of being; o’er my thoughts</p> +<p>There hung a darkness, call it solitude</p> +<p>Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes</p> +<p>Remained, no pleasant images of trees,</p> +<p>Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields;</p> +<p>But huge and mighty forms, that do not live</p> +<p>Like living men, moved slowly through the mind</p> +<p>By day, and were a trouble to my dreams.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The best commentary on a poem is generally to +be found in the poet’s other works. And those last +dozen lines furnish the best commentary on that +famous passage in the <i>Ode</i>, where the poet, looking +back to his childhood, gives thanks for it,—not +however for its careless delight and liberty,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i2">But for those obstinate questionings</p> + <p class="i2">Of sense and outward things,</p> + <p class="i2">Fallings from us, vanishings;</p> + <p class="i2">Blank misgivings of a Creature</p> +<p>Moving about in worlds not realised,</p> +<p>High instincts before which our mortal Nature</p> +<p>Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">Whether, or how, these experiences afford ‘intimations +of immortality’ is not in question here; but it +will never do to dismiss them so airily as Arnold +did. Without them Wordsworth is not Wordsworth.</p> + +<p>The most striking recollections of his childhood +have not in all cases this manifest affinity to the +<i>Ode</i>, but wherever the visionary feeling appears in +them (and it appears in many), this affinity is still +traceable. There is, for instance, in <i>Prelude</i>, xii., +the description of the crag, from which, on a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page134" id="page134"></a>134</span> +wild dark day, the boy watched eagerly the two +highways below for the ponies that were coming to +take him home for the holidays. It is too long to +quote, but every reader of it will remember</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i4">the wind and sleety rain,</p> +<p>And all the business of the elements,</p> +<p>The single sheep, and the one blasted tree,</p> +<p>And the bleak music from that old stone wall,</p> +<p>The noise of wood and water, and the mist</p> +<p>That on the line of each of those two roads</p> +<p>Advanced in such indisputable shapes.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">Everything here is natural, but everything is apocalyptic. +And we happen to know why. Wordsworth +is describing the scene in the light of memory. In +that eagerly expected holiday his father died; and +the scene, as he recalled it, was charged with the +sense of contrast between the narrow world of +common pleasures and blind and easy hopes, and +the vast unseen world which encloses it in beneficent +yet dark and inexorable arms. The visionary feeling +has here a peculiar tone; but always, openly or +covertly, it is the intimation of something illimitable, +over-arching or breaking into the customary ‘reality.’ +Its character varies; and so sometimes at its touch +the soul, suddenly conscious of its own infinity, melts +in rapture into that infinite being; while at other +times the ‘mortal nature’ stands dumb, incapable of +thought, or shrinking from some presence</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Not un-informed with Phantasy, and looks</p> +<p>That threaten the profane.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>This feeling is so essential to many of Wordsworth’s +most characteristic poems that it may almost +be called their soul; and failure to understand +them frequently arises from obtuseness to it. It +appears in a mild and tender form, but quite openly, +in the lines <i>To a Highland Girl</i>, where the child, +and the rocks and trees and lake and road by her +home, seem to the poet</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Like something fashioned in a dream.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page135" id="page135"></a>135</span></p> + +<p class="noind">It gives to <i>The Solitary Reaper</i> its note of remoteness +and wonder; and even the slight shock of +bewilderment due to it is felt in the opening line of +the most famous stanza:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Will no one tell me what she sings?</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">Its etherial music accompanies every vision of the +White Doe, and sounds faintly to us from far away +through all the tale of failure and anguish. Without +it such shorter narratives as <i>Hartleap Well</i> and +<i>Resolution and Independence</i> would lose the imaginative +atmosphere which adds mystery and grandeur +to the apparently simple ‘moral.’</p> + +<p>In <i>Hartleap Well</i> it is conveyed at first by slight +touches of contrast. Sir Walter, in his long pursuit +of the Hart, has mounted his third horse.</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Joy sparkled in the prancing courser’s eyes;</p> +<p>The horse and horseman are a happy pair;</p> +<p>But, though Sir Walter like a falcon flies,</p> +<p>There is a doleful silence in the air.</p> + +<p class="s">A rout this morning left Sir Walter’s hall,</p> +<p>That as they galloped made the echoes roar;</p> +<p>But horse and man are vanished, one and all;</p> +<p>Such race, I think, was never seen before.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>At last even the dogs are left behind, stretched one +by one among the mountain fern.</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Where is the throng, the tumult of the race?</p> +<p>The bugles that so joyfully were blown?</p> +<p>—This chase it looks not like an earthly chase;</p> +<p>Sir Walter and the Hart are left alone.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">Thus the poem begins. At the end we have the +old shepherd’s description of the utter desolation of +the spot where the waters of the little spring had +trembled with the last deep groan of the dying +stag, and where the Knight, to commemorate his +exploit, had built a basin for the spring, three pillars +to mark the last three leaps of his victim, and a +pleasure-house, surrounded by trees and trailing +plants, for the summer joy of himself and his +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page136" id="page136"></a>136</span> +paramour. But now ‘the pleasure-house is dust,’ +and the trees are grey, ‘with neither arms nor +head’:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Now, here is neither grass nor pleasant shade;</p> +<p>The sun on drearier hollow never shone;</p> +<p>So will it be, as I have often said,</p> +<p>Till trees, and stones, and fountain all are gone.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">It is only this feeling of the presence of mysterious +inviolable Powers, behind the momentary powers of +hard pleasure and empty pride, that justifies the +solemnity of the stanza:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>The Being, that is in the clouds and air,</p> +<p>That is in the green leaves among the groves,</p> +<p>Maintains a deep and reverential care</p> +<p>For the unoffending creatures whom he loves.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><i>Hartleap Well</i> is a beautiful poem, but whether +it is entirely successful is, perhaps, doubtful. There +can be no sort of doubt as to <i>Resolution and +Independence</i>, probably, if we must choose, the +most Wordsworthian of Wordsworth’s poems, and +the best test of ability to understand him. The +story, if given in a brief argument, would sound +far from promising. We should expect for it, too, +a ballad form somewhat like that of <i>Simon Lee</i>. +When we read it, we find instead lines of extraordinary +grandeur, but, mingled with them, lines +more pedestrian than could be found in an impressive +poem from any other hand,—for instance,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>And, drawing to his side, to him did say,</p> +<p>‘This morning gives us promise of a glorious day.’</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">or,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>‘How is it that you live, and what is it you do?’</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">We meet also with that perplexed persistence, and +that helpless reiteration of a question (in this case +one already clearly answered), which in other poems +threatens to become ludicrous, and on which a +writer with a keener sense of the ludicrous would +hardly have ventured. Yet with all this, and by +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page137" id="page137"></a>137</span> +dint of all this, we read with bated breath, almost +as if we were in the presence of that ‘majestical’ +Spirit in <i>Hamlet</i>, come to ‘admonish’ from another +world, though not this time by terror. And one +source of this effect is the confusion, the almost +hypnotic obliteration of the habitual reasoning mind, +that falls on the poet as he gazes at the leech-gatherer, +and hears, without understanding, his +plain reply to the enquiry about himself and the +prosaic ‘occupation’ he ‘pursues’:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>The old man still stood talking by my side;</p> +<p>But now his voice to me was like a stream</p> +<p>Scarce heard; nor word from word could I divide;</p> +<p>And the whole body of the man did seem</p> +<p>Like one whom I had met with in a dream;</p> +<p>Or like a man from some far region sent,</p> +<p>To give me human strength, by apt admonishment.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">The same question was asked again, and the answer +was repeated. But</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>While he was talking thus, the lonely place,</p> +<p>The old man’s shape, and speech, all troubled me.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">‘Trouble’ is a word not seldom employed by the +poet to denote the confusion caused by some visionary +experience. Here are, again, the fallings from +us, vanishings, blank misgivings, dim fore-feelings of +the soul’s infinity.</p> + +<p>Out of many illustrations I will choose three more. +There is in the <i>Prelude</i>, iv., the passage (so strongly +resembling <i>Resolution and Independence</i> that I +merely refer to it) where Wordsworth describes an +old soldier suddenly seen, leaning against a milestone +on the moon-lit road, all alone:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>No living thing appeared in earth or air;</p> +<p>And, save the flowing water’s peaceful voice,</p> +<p>Sound there was none ...</p> + <p class="i11">... still his form</p> +<p>Kept the same awful steadiness—at his feet</p> +<p>His shadow lay, and moved not.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">His shadow proves he was no ghost; but a ghost +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page138" id="page138"></a>138</span> +was never ghostlier than he. And by him we may +place the London beggar of <i>Prelude</i>, vii.:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>How oft, amid those overflowing streets,</p> +<p>Have I gone forward with the crowd, and said</p> +<p>Unto myself, ‘The face of every one</p> +<p>That passes by me is a mystery!’</p> +<p>Thus have I looked, nor ceased to look, oppressed</p> +<p>By thoughts of what and whither, when and how,</p> +<p>Until the shapes before my eyes became</p> +<p>A second-sight procession, such as glides</p> +<p>Over still mountains, or appears in dreams;</p> +<p>And once, far-travelled in such mood, beyond</p> +<p>The reach of common indication, lost</p> +<p>Amid the moving pageant, I was smitten</p> +<p>Abruptly, with the view (a sight not rare)</p> +<p>Of a blind Beggar, who, with upright face,</p> +<p>Stood, propped against a wall, upon his chest</p> +<p>Wearing a written paper, to explain</p> +<p>His story, whence he came, and who he was.</p> +<p>Caught by the spectacle my mind turned round</p> +<p>As with the might of waters; an apt type</p> +<p>This label seemed of the utmost we can know,</p> +<p>Both of ourselves and of the universe;</p> +<p>And, on the shape of that unmoving man,</p> +<p>His steadfast face and sightless eyes, I gazed,</p> +<p>As if admonished from another world.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>Still more curious psychologically is the passage, +in the preceding book of the <i>Prelude</i>, which tells +us of a similar shock and leads to the description of +its effects. The more prosaically I introduce the +passage, the better. Wordsworth and Jones (‘Jones, +as from Calais southward you and I’) set out to +walk over the Simplon, then traversed only by a +rough mule-track. They wandered out of the way, +and, meeting a peasant, discovered from his answers +to their questions that, without knowing it, they ‘<i>had +crossed the Alps</i>.’ This may not sound important, +and the italics are Wordsworth’s, not mine. But +the next words are these:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i1">Imagination—here the Power so called</p> +<p>Through sad incompetence of human speech,</p> +<p>That awful Power rose from the mind’s abyss</p> +<p>Like an unfathered vapour that enwraps, + <span class="pagenum"><a name="page139" id="page139"></a>139</span></p> +<p>At once, some lonely traveller. I was lost;</p> +<p>Halted without an effort to break through;</p> +<p>But to my conscious soul I now can say—</p> +<p>‘I recognise thy glory’: in such strength</p> +<p>Of usurpation, when the light of sense</p> +<p>Goes out, but with a flash that has revealed</p> +<p>The invisible world, doth greatness make abode,</p> +<p>There harbours; whether we be young or old,</p> +<p>Our destiny, our being’s heart and home,</p> +<p>Is with infinitude, and only there;</p> +<p>With hope it is, hope that can never die,</p> +<p>Effort, and expectation, and desire,</p> +<p>And something evermore about to be.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>And what was the result of this shock? The poet +may answer for himself in some of the greatest lines +in English poetry. The travellers proceeded on +their way down the Defile of Gondo.</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i7">Downwards we hurried fast,</p> +<p>And, with the half-shaped road which we had missed,</p> +<p>Entered a narrow chasm. The brook and road</p> +<p>Were fellow-travellers in this gloomy strait,</p> +<p>And with them did we journey several hours</p> +<p>At a slow pace. The immeasurable height</p> +<p>Of woods decaying, never to be decayed,</p> +<p>The stationary blasts of waterfalls,</p> +<p>And in the narrow rent at every turn</p> +<p>Winds thwarting winds, bewildered and forlorn,</p> +<p>The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky,</p> +<p>The rocks that muttered close upon our ears,</p> +<p>Black drizzling crags that spake by the way-side</p> +<p>As if a voice were in them, the sick sight</p> +<p>And giddy prospect of the raving stream,</p> +<p>The unfettered clouds and region of the Heavens,</p> +<p>Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light—</p> +<p>Were all like workings of one mind, the features</p> +<p>Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree;</p> +<p>Characters of the great Apocalypse,</p> +<p>The types and symbols of Eternity,</p> +<p>Of first, and last, and midst, and without end.<a name="fa18d" id="fa18d" href="#ft18d"><span class="sp">18</span></a></p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page140" id="page140"></a>140</span></p> + +<p>I hardly think that ‘the poet of Surrey, say, and +the prophet of its life’ could have written thus. And +of all the poems to which I have lately referred, +and all the passages I have quoted, there are but +two or three which do not cry aloud that their +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page141" id="page141"></a>141</span> +birth-place was the moor or the mountain, and +that severed from their birth-place they would +perish. The more sublime they are, or the nearer +they approach sublimity, the more is this true. +The cry of the cuckoo in <i>O blithe new-comer</i>, +though visionary, is not sublime; but, echoed by +the mountain, it is</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Like—but oh, how different!<a name="fa19d" id="fa19d" href="#ft19d"><span class="sp">19</span></a></p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">It was among the mountains that Wordsworth, as +he says of his Wanderer, <i>felt</i> his faith. It was there +that all things</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Breathed immortality, revolving life,</p> +<p>And greatness still revolving; infinite.</p> +<p>There littleness was not; the least of things</p> +<p>Seemed infinite; and there his spirit shaped</p> +<p>Her prospects, nor did he believe,—he <i>saw</i>.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">And even if we count his vision a mere dream, still +he put into words, as no other poet has, the spirit +of the mountains.</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Two voices are there; one is of the sea,</p> +<p>One of the mountains; each a mighty voice.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">And of the second of these we may say that ‘few +or none hears it right’ now he is gone.</p> + +<p>Partly because he is the poet of mountains he is, +even more pre-eminently, the poet of solitude. For +there are tones in the mountain voice scarcely +audible except in solitude, and the reader whom +Wordsworth’s greatest poetry baffles could have no +better advice offered him than to do what he has +probably never done in his life—to be on a mountain +alone. But for Wordsworth not this solitude only, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page142" id="page142"></a>142</span> +but all solitude and all things solitary had an extraordinary +fascination.</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>The outward shows of sky and earth,</p> +<p>Of hill and valley, he has viewed;</p> +<p>And impulses <i>of deeper birth</i></p> +<p>Have come to him in solitude.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">The sense of solitude, it will readily be found, is +essential to nearly all the poems and passages we +have been considering, and to some of quite a +different character, such as the Daffodil stanzas. +And it is not merely that the poet is alone; what he +sees is so too. If the leech-gatherer and the +soldier on the moon-lit road had not been solitary +figures, they would not have awaked ‘the visionary +power’; and it is scarcely fanciful to add that if the +boy who was watching for his father’s ponies had +had beside him any more than</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>The <i>single</i> sheep and the <i>one</i> blasted tree,</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">the mist would not have advanced along the roads +‘in such indisputable shapes.’ With Wordsworth +that power seems to have sprung into life at once +on the perception of loneliness. What is lonely is a +spirit. To call a thing lonely or solitary is, with +him, to say that it opens a bright or solemn vista +into infinity. He himself ‘wanders lonely as a +cloud’: he seeks the ‘souls of lonely places’: he +listens in awe to</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>One voice, the solitary raven ...</p> +<p>An iron knell, with echoes from afar:</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">against the distant sky he descries the shepherd,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>A solitary object and sublime,</p> +<p>Above all height! like an aerial cross</p> +<p>Stationed alone upon a spiry rock</p> +<p>Of the Chartreuse, for worship.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">But this theme might be pursued for hours, and I +will refer only to two poems more. The editor of +the <i>Golden Treasury</i>, a book never to be thought +of without gratitude, changed the title <i>The Solitary</i> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page143" id="page143"></a>143</span> +<i>Reaper</i> into <i>The Highland Reaper</i>. He may have +had his reasons. Perhaps he had met some one who +thought that the Reaper belonged to Surrey. Still +the change was a mistake: the ‘solitary’ in Wordsworth’s +title gave the keynote. The other poem is +<i>Lucy Gray</i>. ‘When I was little,’ a lover of Wordsworth +once said, ‘I could hardly bear to read <i>Lucy +Gray</i>, it made me feel so lonely.’ Wordsworth +called it <i>Lucy Gray, or Solitude</i>, and this young +reader understood him. But there is too much, +reason to fear that for half his readers his ‘solitary +child’ is generalised into a mere ‘little girl,’ and +that they never receive the main impression he +wished to produce. Yet his intention is announced +in the opening lines, and as clearly shown in the +lovely final stanzas, which give even to this ballad +the visionary touch which distinguishes it from <i>Alice +Fell</i>:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Yet some maintain that to this day</p> +<p>She is a living child;</p> +<p>That you may see sweet Lucy Gray</p> +<p>Upon the lonesome wild.</p> + +<p class="s">O’er rough and smooth she trips along,</p> +<p>And never looks behind;</p> +<p>And sings a solitary song</p> +<p>That whistles in the wind.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The solitariness which exerted so potent a spell +on Wordsworth had in it nothing ‘Byronic.’ He +preached in the <i>Excursion</i> against the solitude of +‘self-indulging spleen.’ He was even aware that he +himself, though free from that weakness, had felt</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i7">perhaps too much</p> +<p>The self-sufficing power of Solitude.<a name="fa20d" id="fa20d" href="#ft20d"><span class="sp">20</span></a></p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">No poet is more emphatically the poet of community. +A great part of his verse—a part as +characteristic and as precious as the part on which +I have been dwelling—is dedicated to the affections +of home and neighbourhood and country, and to +that soul of joy and love which links together all +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page144" id="page144"></a>144</span> +Nature’s children, and ‘steals from earth to man, +from man to earth.’ And this soul is for him as +truly the presence of ‘the Being that is in the +clouds and air’ and in the mind of man as are the +power, the darkness, the silence, the strange gleams +and mysterious visitations which startle and confuse +with intimations of infinity. But solitude and +solitariness were to him, in the main, one of these +intimations. They had not for him merely the +‘eeriness’ which they have at times for everyone, +though that was essential to some of the poems we +have reviewed. They were the symbol of power to +stand alone, to be ‘self-sufficing,’ to dispense with +custom and surroundings and aid and sympathy—a +self-dependence at once the image and the communication +of ‘the soul of all the worlds.’ Even when +they were full of ‘sounds and sweet airs that give +delight and hurt not,’ the solitude of the Reaper or +of Lucy, they so appealed to him. But they appealed +also to that austerer strain which led him to love +‘bare trees and mountains bare,’ and lonely places, +and the bleak music of the old stone wall, and to +dwell with awe, and yet with exultation, on the +majesty of that ‘unconquerable mind’ which through +long years holds its solitary purpose, sustains its +solitary passion, feeds upon its solitary anguish. +For this mind, as for the blind beggar or the leech-gatherer, +the ‘light of sense’ and the sweetness of +life have faded or ‘gone out’; but in it ‘greatness +makes abode,’ and it ‘retains its station proud,’ ‘by +form or image unprofaned.’ Thus, in whatever +guise it might present itself, solitariness ‘carried far +into his heart’ the haunting sense of an ‘invisible +world’; of some Life beyond this ‘transitory being’ +and ‘unapproachable by death’;</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Of Life continuous, Being unimpaired;</p> +<p>That hath been, is, and where it was and is</p> +<p>There shall endure,—existence unexposed</p> +<p>To the blind walk of mortal accident; + <span class="pagenum"><a name="page145" id="page145"></a>145</span></p> +<p>From diminution safe and weakening age;</p> +<p>While man grows old, and dwindles, and decays;</p> +<p>And countless generations of mankind</p> +<p>Depart; and leave no vestige where they trod.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>For me, I confess, all this is far from being ‘mere +poetry’—partly because I do not believe that any +such thing as ‘mere poetry’ exists. But whatever +kind or degree of truth we may find in all this, everything +in Wordsworth that is sublime or approaches +sublimity has, directly or more remotely, to do with +it. And without this part of his poetry Wordsworth +would be ‘shorn of his strength,’ and would +no longer stand, as he does stand, nearer than any +other poet of the Nineteenth Century to Milton.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page146" id="page146"></a>146</span></p> + +<div class="condensed"> +<p class="pt2 center chap">NOTE.</p> + +<p>I take this opportunity of airing a heresy about <i>We are Seven</i>. +Wordsworth’s friend, James Tobin, who saw the <i>Lyrical Ballads</i> +while they were going through the press, told him that this poem +would make him everlastingly ridiculous, and entreated him in +vain to cancel it. I have forgotten how it was received in 1798, +but it has long been one of the most popular of the ballad poems, +and I do not think I have ever heard it ridiculed. I wonder, +however, what its readers take to be the ‘moral’ of it, for I have +never been able to convince myself that the ‘moral’ given in +the poem itself truly represents the imaginative impression from +which the poem arose.</p> + +<p>The ‘moral’ is in this instance put at the beginning, in the +mutilated opening stanza:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>————A simple child,</p> + <p class="i1">That lightly draws its breath,</p> +<p>And feels its life in every limb,</p> + <p class="i1">What should it know of death?</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">Wordsworth, in composing, began his poem with the end; and +when it was all but finished he recited it to Dorothy and +Coleridge, and observed that a prefatory stanza was wanted, +and that he should enjoy his tea better if he could add it first. +Coleridge at once threw off the stanza as we have it, except that +the first line ran, ‘A simple child, dear brother Jim,’—this Jim, who +rhymes with ‘limb,’ being the James Tobin who protested +afterwards against the poem. The stanza was printed in the +<i>Lyrical Ballads</i> as Coleridge made it, Wordsworth objecting +to the words ‘dear brother Jim’ as ludicrous, but (apparently) +giving way for the sake of the joke of introducing Tobin.</p> + +<p>Now the poem gains in one way by this stanza, which has a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page147" id="page147"></a>147</span> +felicity of style such as Wordsworth perhaps would not have +achieved in expressing the idea. And the idea was not only +accepted by Wordsworth, but, according to his own account, he +had mentioned in substance what he wished to be expressed. It +must seem, therefore, outrageous to hint a doubt whether the +stanza truly represents the imaginative experience from which the +poem arose; and I can only say, in excuse, that this doubt does +not spring from reflection, or from knowledge of Coleridge’s +authorship of the stanza, for I do not remember ever having +read <i>We are Seven</i> without feeling it or without saying to myself +at the end, ‘This means more than the first stanza says.’ And, +however improbable, it cannot be called impossible that even so +introspective a poet as Wordsworth might misconstrue the +impression that stirred him to write. I will take courage, therefore, +to confess the belief that what stirred him was the coincidence +of the child’s feelings with some of those feelings of his own +childhood which he described in the Immortality <i>Ode</i>, and once +or twice in conversation, and which, in a less individual and +peculiar form, he attributes, in the Essay on Epitaphs, to children +in general. But, rather than argue the point, I will refer to one +or two passages. ‘At that time I could not believe that I should +lie down quietly in the grave, and that my body would moulder +into dust’ (remark recorded by Bishop Wordsworth, <i>Prose Works</i>, +ed. Grosart, iii. 464). Is not this the condition of the child +in <i>We are Seven</i>? ‘Nothing,’ he says to Miss Fenwick, ‘was +more difficult for me in childhood than to admit the notion of +death as a state applicable to my own being’ (<i>ib.</i> iii. 194). He +then quotes the first stanza of <i>We are Seven</i>. It is true that +thereupon he expressly distinguishes his own case from the +child’s, attributing the difficulty in her case to ‘animal vivacity.’ +But I have already fully admitted that Wordsworth’s direct +testimony goes against me; and I have now only to call attention +to a passage in the Essay on Epitaphs. In that essay Wordsworth +begins by saying that the custom of raising monuments to +the dead ‘proceeded obviously from a two-fold desire; first, to +guard the remains of the deceased from irreverent approach or +from savage violation, and, secondly, to preserve their memory.’ +But these desires, in his opinion, resolve themselves into one, and +both proceed from the consciousness or fore-feeling of immortality, +also described as ‘an intimation or assurance within us, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page148" id="page148"></a>148</span> +that some part of our nature is imperishable.’ And he goes on +thus: ‘If we look back upon the days of childhood, we shall find +that the time is not in remembrance when, with respect to our +own individual Being, the mind was without this assurance.... +Forlorn, and cut off from communication with the best part of +his nature, must that man be, who should derive the sense of +immortality, as it exists in the mind of a child, from the same +unthinking gaiety or liveliness of animal spirits with which the +lamb in the meadow or any other irrational creature is endowed; +to an inability arising from the imperfect state of his faculties to +come, in any point of his being, into contact with a notion of +death; or to an unreflecting acquiescence in what had been +instilled into him!’ Now Coleridge’s stanza, and Wordsworth’s +own distinction between the child and himself, do come at least +very near to attributing the child’s inability to realise the fact of +death to that very liveliness of animal spirits which, as a sufficient +cause of it, is here indignantly repudiated. According to the +present passage, this inability ought to have been traced to that +‘sense’ or ‘consciousness’ of immortality which is inherent in +human nature. And (whether or no Wordsworth rightly describes +this sense) it was <i>this</i>, I suggest, that, unknown to himself, arrested +him in the child’s persistent ignoring of the fact of death. The +poem is thus allied to the Immortality <i>Ode</i>. The child is in +possession of one of those ‘truths that wake to perish never,’ +though the tyranny of the senses and the deadening influence of +custom obscure them as childhood passes away. When the +conversation took place (in 1793), and even when the poem was +written (1798), Wordsworth had not yet come to regard the +experiences of his own childhood as he saw them later (<i>Tintern +Abbey</i>, 1798, shows this), and so he gave to the poem a moral +which is not adequate to it. Or perhaps he accepted from +Coleridge a formulation of his moral which was not quite true +even to his own thoughts at that time. It is just worth observing +as possibly significant that the child in <i>We are Seven</i> is not +described as showing any particular ‘animal vivacity’: she strikes +one as rather a quiet, though determined, little person.</p> + +<p>These remarks, of course, can have no interest for those +readers who feel no misgivings, such as I have always felt, in +reading the poem. But many, I think, must feel them.</p> +</div> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1d" id="ft1d" href="#fa1d"><span class="fn">1</span></a> The following pages reproduce the two concluding lectures of a +short course on the Age of Wordsworth, given at Oxford in April, +1903, and intended specially for undergraduates in the School of +English Language and Literature. A few passages from the other +lectures appear elsewhere in this volume. On the subject of the +course may I advise any reader who may need the advice to consult +Professor Herford’s <i>The Age of Wordsworth</i>, a little book which is +familiar to students of the history of English Literature, and the more +admired the more they use it?</p> + +<p><a name="ft2d" id="ft2d" href="#fa2d"><span class="fn">2</span></a> These statements, with the exception of the last, were chosen +partly because they all say, with the most manifest seriousness, much +the same thing that is said, with a touch of playful exaggeration, in +<i>The Tables Turned</i>, where occurs that outrageous stanza about ‘one +impulse from a vernal wood’ which Mr. Raleigh has well defended. +When all fitting allowance has been made for the fact that these +statements, and many like them, are ‘poetic,’ they ought to remain +startling. Two of them—that from the story of Margaret (<i>Excursion</i>, +I.), and that from the <i>Ode</i>, 1815—were made less so, to the +injury of the passages, by the Wordsworth of later days, who had +forgotten what he felt, or yielded to the objections of others.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3d" id="ft3d" href="#fa3d"><span class="fn">3</span></a> <i>Goody Blake</i>, to my mind, tries vainly to make the kind of +impression overwhelmingly made by Coleridge’s <i>Three Graves</i>. The +question as to the <i>Anecdote for Fathers</i> is not precisely whether it +makes you laugh, but whether it makes you laugh at the poet, and in +such a way that the end fails to restore your sobriety. The danger +is in the lines,</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>And five times to the child I said,</p> +<p>Why, Edward, tell me why?</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">The reiteration, with the struggle between the poet and his victim, +is thoroughly Wordsworthian, and there are cases where it is +managed with perfect success, as we shall see; but to me it has here +the effect so delightfully reproduced in <i>Through the Looking-glass</i> +(‘I’ll tell thee everything I can’).</p> + +<p><a name="ft4d" id="ft4d" href="#fa4d"><span class="fn">4</span></a> Some remarks on <i>We are seven</i> are added in a note at the end of +the lecture.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5d" id="ft5d" href="#fa5d"><span class="fn">5</span></a> The phrases quoted in this paragraph are taken chiefly from +Hazlitt and De Quincey.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6d" id="ft6d" href="#fa6d"><span class="fn">6</span></a> The publication of the <i>Excursion</i> seems to have been postponed +for financial reasons. One edition of a thousand copies sufficed the +world for thirteen years.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7d" id="ft7d" href="#fa7d"><span class="fn">7</span></a> <i>Evening Voluntaries</i>, iv. We know that he refers to Byron.</p> + +<p><a name="ft8d" id="ft8d" href="#fa8d"><span class="fn">8</span></a> <i>Poems on the Naming of Places</i>, iv. Keats need not have been +ashamed to write the last line.</p> + +<p><a name="ft9d" id="ft9d" href="#fa9d"><span class="fn">9</span></a> ‘’Tis past, that melancholy dream,’—so he describes his sojourn in +Germany.</p> + +<p><a name="ft10d" id="ft10d" href="#fa10d"><span class="fn">10</span></a> Wordsworth’s Letter to Major-General Pasley (<i>Prose Works</i>, i.) +contains an excellent statement both of his views on this duty and +of his hostility to mere militarism.</p> + +<p><a name="ft11d" id="ft11d" href="#fa11d"><span class="fn">11</span></a> I am writing of the years of the Napoleonic War. Later, he lost +courage, as he himself said. But it is not true that he ever ceased +to sympathise with the cause of national independence in Europe.</p> + +<p><a name="ft12d" id="ft12d" href="#fa12d"><span class="fn">12</span></a> [This great line, as I am reminded, refers to the Welsh (<i>Comus</i>, 33); +but it does not seem necessary to change the quotation.]</p> + +<p><a name="ft13d" id="ft13d" href="#fa13d"><span class="fn">13</span></a> In saying that what Wordsworth could not bear was torpor, of +course I do not mean that he could bear faithlessness, ingratitude, +cruelty, and the like. He had no tolerance for such things, either in +his poetry or in his life. ‘I could kick such a man across England +with my naked foot,’ the old poet burst forth when he heard of a base +action. This reminds one of Browning, whose antinomian morality +was not so very unlike Wordsworth’s. And neither poet would have +found it difficult to include the worst vices under the head of torpor or +‘the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin.’</p> + +<p><a name="ft14d" id="ft14d" href="#fa14d"><span class="fn">14</span></a> The third quotation is from a speech by the Solitary (<i>Excursion</i>, +vi.).</p> + +<p><a name="ft15d" id="ft15d" href="#fa15d"><span class="fn">15</span></a> The second half of this sentence, true of the Wordsworth of the +<i>Excursion</i>, is perhaps not quite true of his earlier mind.</p> + +<p><a name="ft16d" id="ft16d" href="#fa16d"><span class="fn">16</span></a> This is just the opposite of the ‘wise passiveness’ of imaginative +but unreflective feeling.</p> + +<p><a name="ft17d" id="ft17d" href="#fa17d"><span class="fn">17</span></a> Nature.</p> + +<p><a name="ft18d" id="ft18d" href="#fa18d"><span class="fn">18</span></a> I add here some notes which would have disturbed the lecture, +but may be of use to the student of Wordsworth’s mind who cares +to return to them.</p> + +<p>The collocation of the last two quotations shows how, for Wordsworth, +‘the visionary power’ arises from, and testifies to, the mind’s +infinity, and how the feeling of this is, or involves, or is united +with, a feeling or idea of <i>the</i> infinite or ‘one mind,’ and of union with +it. This connection of ideas (as to which I purposely use vague +alternative terms, because I do not want to theorise the poet’s experience), +is frequent or constant in Wordsworth, and it ought always to be +borne in mind in regard to his language about ‘immortality’ or +‘eternity.’ His sense or consciousness of ‘immortality,’ that is to say, is +at once a consciousness that he (in some sense of that word) is potentially +infinite, and a consciousness that ‘he’ belongs to, is part of, is the home +of, or is, an ‘active principle’ which is eternal, indivisible, and the +‘soul of all the worlds’ (cf. opening of <i>Excursion</i>, ix.). Whatever we +may make of this connection of ideas, unless we realise it we shall +remain entirely outside Wordsworth’s mind in passages like that just +referred to, and in passages where he talks of ‘acts of immortality in +Nature’s course,’ or says that to the Wanderer ‘all things among the +mountains breathed immortality,’ or says that he has been unfolding +‘far-stretching views of immortality,’ though he may not appear to us +to have touched in any way on the subject. Nature and Man (in one +sense) are for Wordsworth ‘transitory,’ but Nature always and everywhere +<i>reveals</i> ‘immortality,’ and Man (in another sense) is ‘immortal.’ +Unquestionably for Wordsworth he is so. In what precise sense he is +so for Wordsworth may not be discoverable, but the only chance of +discovering it is to forget what we or anybody else, except Wordsworth, +may mean by ‘man’ and ‘immortal,’ and to try to get into <i>his</i> mind.</p> + +<p>There is an illuminating passage on ‘the visionary power’ and the +mind’s infinity or immortality, in <i>Prelude</i>, ii.:</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i4">and hence, from the same source,</p> +<p>Sublimer joy; for I would walk alone,</p> +<p>Under the quiet stars, and at that time</p> +<p>Have felt whate’er there is of power in sound</p> +<p>To breathe an elevated mood, by form</p> +<p>Or image unprofaned; and I would stand,</p> +<p>If the night blackened with a coming storm,</p> +<p>Beneath some rock, listening to notes that are</p> +<p>The ghostly language of the ancient earth,</p> +<p>Or make their dim abode in distant winds.</p> +<p>Thence did I drink the visionary power;</p> +<p>And deem not profitless those fleeting moods</p> +<p>Of shadowy exultation: not for this,</p> +<p>That they are kindred to our purer mind</p> +<p>And intellectual life; but that the soul,</p> +<p>Remembering how she felt, but what she felt</p> +<p>Remembering not, retains an obscure sense</p> +<p>Of possible sublimity, whereto</p> +<p>With growing faculties she doth aspire,</p> +<p>With faculties still growing, feeling still</p> +<p>That whatsoever point they gain, they yet</p> +<p>Have something to pursue.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>An interesting point, worth fuller treatment, is the connection of +this feeling of infinity and the endless passing of limits with Wordsworth’s +love of wandering, wanderers, and high roads. See, for +instance, <i>Prelude</i>, xiii., ‘Who doth not love to follow with his eye The +windings of a public way?’ And compare the enchantment of the +question, <i>What, are you stepping westward</i>?</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i9">’twas a sound</p> +<p>Of something without place or bound.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><a name="ft19d" id="ft19d" href="#fa19d"><span class="fn">19</span></a> <i>Yes, it was the mountain echo</i>, placed in Arnold’s selection, with his +usual taste, next to the earlier poem <i>To the Cuckoo</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="ft20d" id="ft20d" href="#fa20d"><span class="fn">20</span></a> This was Coleridge’s opinion.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:150px; height:35px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img001.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page149" id="page149"></a>149</span></p> + +<p class="center chap">SHELLEY’S VIEW OF POETRY</p> +<p> </p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page150" id="page150"></a>150<br />151</span></p> + +<p class="center pt2 chap2">SHELLEY’S VIEW OF POETRY</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1 fo">The</span> ideas of Wordsworth and of Coleridge about +poetry have often been discussed and are familiar. +Those of Shelley are much less so, and in his +eloquent exposition of them there is a radiance which +almost conceals them from many readers. I wish, +at the cost of all the radiance, to try to see them +and show them rather more distinctly. Even if +they had little value for the theory of poetry, they +would still have much as material for it, since they +allow us to look into a poet’s experience in conceiving +and composing. And, in addition, they +throw light on some of the chief characteristics of +Shelley’s own poetry.</p> + +<p>His poems in their turn form one of the sources +from which his ideas on the subject may be gathered. +We have also some remarks in his letters and in +prose pieces dealing with other topics. We have +the prefaces to those of his works which he himself +published. And, lastly, there is the <i>Defence of +Poetry</i>. This essay was written in reply to an +attack made on contemporary verse by Shelley’s +friend Peacock,—not a favourable specimen of +Peacock’s writing. The <i>Defence</i>, we can see, was +hurriedly composed, and it remains a fragment, +being only the first of three projected parts. It +contains a good deal of historical matter, highly +interesting, but too extensive to be made use of here. +Being polemical, it no doubt exaggerates such of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page152" id="page152"></a>152</span> +Shelley’s views as collided with those of his antagonist. +But, besides being the only full expression +of these views, it is the most mature, for it was +written within eighteen months of his death. It +appears to owe very little either to Wordsworth’s +Prefaces or to Coleridge’s <i>Biographia Literaria</i>; +but there are a few reminiscences of Sidney’s +<i>Apology</i>, which Shelley had read just before he +wrote his own <i>Defence</i>; and it shows, like much +of his mature poetry, how deeply he was influenced +by the more imaginative dialogues of Plato.</p> + +<p class="pt2 center">1.</p> + +<p>Any one familiar with the manner in which Shelley +in his verse habitually represents the world could +guess at his general view of poetry. The world to +him is a melancholy place, a ‘dim vast vale of tears,’ +illuminated in flashes by the light of a hidden but +glorious power. Nor is this power, as that favourite +metaphor would imply, wholly outside the world. +It works within it as a soul contending with obstruction +and striving to penetrate and transform the +whole mass. And though the fulness of its glory +is concealed, its nature is known in outline. It +is the realised perfection of everything good and +beautiful on earth; or, in other words, all such +goodness and beauty is its partial manifestation. +‘All,’ I say: for the splendour of nature, the love of +lovers, every affection and virtue, any good action +or just law, the wisdom of philosophy, the creations +of art, the truths deformed by superstitious religion,—all +are equally operations or appearances of the +hidden power. It is of the first importance for the +understanding of Shelley to realise how strong in +him is the sense and conviction of this unity in life: +it is one of his Platonic traits. The intellectual +Beauty of his <i>Hymn</i> is absolutely the same thing +as the Liberty of his <i>Ode</i>, the ‘Great Spirit’ of Love +that he invokes to bring freedom to Naples, the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page153" id="page153"></a>153</span> +One which in <i>Adonaďs</i> he contrasts with the Many, +the Spirit of Nature of <i>Queen Mab</i>, and the Vision +of <i>Alastor</i> and <i>Epipsychidion</i>. The skylark of the +famous stanzas is free from our sorrows, not because +it is below them, but because, as an embodiment of +that perfection, it knows the rapture of love without +its satiety, and understands death as we cannot. +The voice of the mountain, if a whole nation could +hear it with the poet’s ear, would ‘repeal large +codes of fraud and woe’; it is the same voice as +the reformer’s and the martyr’s. And in the far-off +day when the ‘plastic stress’ of this power has +mastered the last resistance and is all in all, outward +nature, which now suffers with man, will be redeemed +with him, and man, in becoming politically free, will +become also the perfect lover. Evidently, then, +poetry, as the world now is, must be one of the +voices of this power, or one tone of its voice. To +use the language so dear to Shelley, it is the revelation +of those eternal ideas which lie behind the +many-coloured, ever-shifting veil that we call reality +or life. Or rather, it is one such revelation among +many.</p> + +<p>When we turn to the <i>Defence of Poetry</i> we meet +substantially the same view. There is indeed a +certain change; for Shelley is now philosophising +and writing prose, and he wishes not to sing from +the mid-sky, but, for a while at least, to argue with +his friend on the earth. Hence at first we hear +nothing of that perfect power at the heart of things, +and poetry is considered as a creation rather than +a revelation. But for Shelley, we soon discover, +this would be a false antithesis. The poet creates, +but this creation is no mere fancy of his; it represents +‘those forms which are common to universal +nature and existence,’ and ‘a poem is the very +image of life expressed in its eternal truth.’ We +notice, further, that the more voluntary and conscious +work of invention and execution is regarded +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page154" id="page154"></a>154</span> +as quite subordinate in the creative process. In +that process the mind, obedient to an influence +which it does not understand and cannot control, +is driven to produce images of perfection which +rather form themselves in it than are formed by it. +The greatest stress is laid on this influence or +inspiration; and in the end we learn that the origin +of the whole process lies in certain exceptional +moments when visitations of thought and feeling, +elevating and delightful beyond all expression, but +always arising unforeseen and departing unbidden, +reach the soul; that these are, as it were, the inter-penetration +of a diviner nature through our own; +and that the province of the poet is to arrest these +apparitions, to veil them in language, to colour +every other form he touches with their evanescent +hues, and so to ‘redeem from decay the visitations +of the divinity in man.’</p> + +<p>Even more decided is the emphasis laid on the +unity of all the forms in which the ‘divinity’ or +ideal power thus attests its presence. Indeed, +throughout a large part of the essay, that ‘Poetry’ +which Shelley is defending is something very much +wider than poetry in the usual sense. The enemy +he has to meet is the contention that poetry and its +influence steadily decline as civilisation advances, +and that they are giving place, and ought to give +place, to reasoning and the pursuit of utility. His +answer is that, on the contrary, imagination has been, +is, and always will be, the prime source of everything +that has intrinsic value in life. Reasoning, he +declares, cannot create, it can only operate upon the +products of imagination. Further, he holds that the +predominance of mere reasoning and mere utility +has become in great part an evil; for while it has +accumulated masses of material goods and moral +truths, we distribute the goods iniquitously and fail +to apply the truths, because, for want of imagination, +we have not sympathy in our hearts and do not feel +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page155" id="page155"></a>155</span> +what we know. The ‘Poetry’ which he defends, +therefore, is the whole creative imagination with all +its products. And these include not merely literature +in verse, but, first, whatever prose writing is allied +to that literature; and, next, all the other fine arts; +and, finally, all actions, inventions, institutions, and +even ideas and moral dispositions, which imagination +brings into being in its effort to satisfy the longing +for perfection. Painters and musicians are poets. +Plato and Bacon, even Herodotus and Livy, were +poets, though there is much in their works which +is not poetry. So were the men who invented the +arts of life, constructed laws for tribes or cities, disclosed, +as sages or founders of religion, the excellence +of justice and love. And every one, Shelley would +say, who, perceiving the beauty of an imagined +virtue or deed, translates the image into a fact, is +so far a poet. For all these things come from +imagination.</p> + +<p>Shelley’s exposition of this, which is probably the +most original part of his theory, is not very clear; +but, if I understand his meaning, that which he +takes to happen in all these cases might be thus +described. The imagination—that is to say, the +soul imagining—has before it, or feels within it, +something which, answering perfectly to its nature, +fills it with delight and with a desire to realise what +delights it. This something, for the sake of brevity, +we may call an idea, so long as we remember that +it need not be distinctly imagined and that it is +always accompanied by emotion. The reason why +such ideas delight the imagining soul is that they +are, in fact, images or forebodings of its own perfection—of +itself become perfect—in one aspect or +another. These aspects are as various as the +elements and forms of its own inner life and outward +existence; and so the idea may be that of the +perfect harmony of will and feeling (a virtue), or of +the perfect union of soul with soul (love), or of the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page156" id="page156"></a>156</span> +perfect order of certain social relations or forces (a +law or institution), or of the perfect adjustment of +intellectual elements (a truth); and so on. The +formation and expression of any such idea is thus +the work of Poetry in the widest sense; while at the +same time (as we must add, to complete Shelley’s +thought) any such idea is a gleam or apparition of +the perfect Intellectual Beauty.</p> + +<p>I choose this particular title of the hidden power +or divinity in order to point out (what the reader is +left to observe for himself) that the imaginative idea +is always regarded by Shelley as beautiful. It is, +for example, desirable for itself and not merely as a +means to a further result; and it has the formal +characters of beauty. For, as will have been noticed +in the instances given, it is always the image of an +order, or harmony, or unity in variety, of the elements +concerned. Shelley sometimes even speaks of their +‘rhythm.’ For example, he uses this word in +reference to an action; and I quote the passage +because, though it occurs at some distance from the +exposition of his main view, it illustrates it well. +He is saying that the true poetry of Rome, unlike +that of Greece, did not fully express itself in poems. +‘The true poetry of Rome lived in its institutions: +for whatever of beautiful, true and majestic they +contained, could have sprung only from the faculty +which creates the order in which they consist. The +life of Camillus; the death of Regulus; the expectation +of the senators, in their god-like state, of the +victorious Gauls; the refusal of the Republic to +make peace with Hannibal after the battle of +Cannć’—these he describes as ‘a rhythm and order +in the shows of life,’ an order not arranged with +a view to utility or outward result, but due to the +imagination, which, ‘beholding the beauty of this +order, created it out of itself according to its own +idea.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page157" id="page157"></a>157</span></p> + +<p class="pt2 center">2.</p> + +<p>If this, then, is the nature of Poetry in the widest +sense, how does the poet, in the special sense, differ +from other unusually creative souls? Not essentially +in the inspiration and general substance of his poetry, +but in the kind of expression he gives to them. In +so far as he is a poet, his medium of expression, +of course, is not virtue, or action, or law; poetry +is one of the acts. And, again, it differs from +the rest, because its particular vehicle is language. +We have now to see, therefore, what Shelley has +to say of the form of poetry, and especially of poetic +language.</p> + +<p>First, he claims for language the highest place +among the vehicles of artistic expression, on the +ground that it is the most direct and also the most +plastic. It is itself produced by imagination instead +of being simply encountered by it, and it has no +relation except to imagination; whereas any more +material medium has a nature of its own, and +relations to other things in the material world, and +this nature and these relations intervene between +the artist’s conception and his expression of it in the +medium. It is to the superiority of its vehicle that +Shelley attributes the greater fame which poetry has +always enjoyed as compared with other arts. He +forgets (if I may interpose a word of criticism) that +the media of the other arts have, on their side, +certain advantages over language, and that these +perhaps counterbalance the inferiority which he +notices. He would also have found it difficult to +show that language, on its physical side, is any more +a product of imagination than stone or pigments. +And his idea that the medium in the other arts +is an obstacle intervening between conception and +expression is, to say the least, one-sided. A +sculptor, painter, or musician, would probably reply +that it is only the qualities of his medium that +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page158" id="page158"></a>158</span> +enable him to express at all; that what he +expresses is inseparable from the vehicle of expression; +and that he has no conceptions which are +not from the beginning sculpturesque, pictorial, or +musical. It is true, no doubt, that his medium is +an obstacle as well as a medium; but this is also +true of language.</p> + +<p>But to resume. Language, Shelley goes on to +say, receives in poetry a peculiar form. As it represents +in its meaning a perfection which is always an +order, harmony, or rhythm, so it itself, as so much +sound, <i>is</i> an order, harmony, or rhythm. It is +measured language, which is not the proper vehicle +for the mere recital of facts or for mere reasoning. +For Shelley, however, this measured language is +not of necessity metrical. The order or measure +may remain at the stage which it reaches in beautiful +prose, like that of Plato, the melody of whose +language, Shelley declares, is the most intense it is +possible to conceive. It may again advance to +metre; and he admits that metrical form is convenient, +popular, and preferable, especially in poetry +containing much action. But he will not have any +new great poet tied down to it. It is not essential, +while measure is absolutely so. For it is no mere +accident of poetry that its language is measured, +nor does a delight in this measure mean little. As +sensitiveness to the order of the relations of sounds +is always connected with sensitiveness to the order +of the relations of thoughts, so also the harmony of +the words is scarcely less indispensable than their +meaning to the communication of the influence of +poetry. ‘Hence,’ says Shelley, ‘the vanity of translation: +it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible +that you might discover the formal principle of its +colour and odour, as seek to transfuse from one +language into another the creations of a poet.’ +Strong words to come from the translator of the +<i>Hymn to Mercury</i> and of Agathon’s speech in the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page159" id="page159"></a>159</span> +<i>Symposium</i>!<a name="fa1e" id="fa1e" href="#ft1e"><span class="sp">1</span></a> And is not all that Shelley says of +the difference between measured and unrhythmical +language applicable, at least in some degree, to the +difference between metrical and merely measured +language? Could he really have supposed that +metre is no more than a ‘convenience,’ which contributes +nothing of any account to the influence of +poetry? But I will not criticise. Let me rather +point out how surprising, at first sight, and how +significant, is Shelley’s insistence on the importance +of measure or rhythm. No one could assert more +absolutely than he the identity of the general substance +of poetry with that of moral life and action, of +the other arts, and of the higher kinds of philosophy. +And yet it would be difficult to go beyond the +emphasis of his statement that the formal element +(as he understood it) is indispensable to the effect +of poetry.</p> + +<p>Shelley, however, nowhere considers this element +more at length. He has no discussions, like those +of Wordsworth and Coleridge, on diction. He +never says, with Keats, that he looks on fine phrases +like a lover. We hear of his deep-drawn sigh of +satisfaction as he finished reading a passage of +Homer, but not of his shouting his delight, as he +ramped through the meadows of Spenser, at some +marvellous flower. When in his letters he refers +to any poem he is reading, he scarcely ever mentions +particular lines or expressions; and we have no +evidence that, like Coleridge and Keats, he was a +curious student of metrical effects or the relations of +vowel-sounds. I doubt if all this is wholly accidental. +Poetry was to him so essentially an effusion of +aspiration, love and worship, that we can imagine +his feeling it almost an impiety to break up its unity +even for purposes of study, and to give a separate +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page160" id="page160"></a>160</span> +attention to its means of utterance. And what he +does say on the subject confirms this impression. +In the first place, as we have seen, he lays great +stress on inspiration; and his statements, if exaggerated +and misleading, must still reflect in some degree +his own experience. No poem, he asserts, however +inspired it may be, is more than a feeble shadow of +the original conception; for when composition begins, +inspiration is already on the decline. And so in a +letter he speaks of the detail of execution destroying +all wild and beautiful visions. Still, inspiration, if +diminished by composition, is not wholly dispelled; +and he appeals to the greatest poets of his day +whether it is not an error to assert that the finest +passages of poetry are produced by labour and study. +Such toil he would restrict to those parts which +connect the inspired passages, and he speaks with +contempt of the fifty-six various readings of the first +line of the <i>Orlando Furioso</i>. He seems to exaggerate +on this matter because in the <i>Defence</i> his foe +is cold reason and calculation. Elsewhere he writes +more truly of the original conception as being obscure +as well as intense;<a name="fa2e" id="fa2e" href="#ft2e"><span class="sp">2</span></a> from which it would seem to +follow that the feeble shadow, if darker, is at least +more distinct than the original. He forgets, too, +what is certainly the fact, that the poet in reshaping +and correcting is able to revive in some degree the +fire of the first impulse. And we know from himself +that his greatest works cost him a severe labour not +confined to the execution, while his manuscripts show +plenty of various readings, if never so many as fifty-six +in one line.</p> + +<p>Still, what he says is highly characteristic of his +own practice in composition. He allowed the rush +of his ideas to have its way, without pausing to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page161" id="page161"></a>161</span> +complete a troublesome line or to find a word that +did not come; and the next day (if ever) he filled +up the gaps and smoothed the ragged edges. And +the result answers to his theory. Keats was right +in telling him that he might be more of an artist. +His language, indeed, unlike Wordsworth’s or +Byron’s, is, in his mature work, always that of a +poet; we never hear his mere speaking voice; but +he is frequently diffuse and obscure, and even in +fine passages his constructions are sometimes trailing +and amorphous. The glowing metal rushes into +the mould so vehemently that it overleaps the +bounds and fails to find its way into all the +little crevices. But no poetry is more manifestly +inspired, and even when it is plainly imperfect it +is sometimes so inspired that it is impossible to +wish it changed. It has the rapture of the mystic, +and that is too rare to lose. Tennyson quaintly +said of the hymn <i>Life of Life</i>: ‘He seems to go +up into the air and burst.’ It is true: and, if we +are to speak of poems as fireworks, I would not +compare <i>Life of Life</i> with a great set piece of +Homer or Shakespeare that illumines the whole +sky; but, all the same, there is no more thrilling +sight than the heavenward rush of a rocket, and +it bursts at a height no other fire can reach.</p> + +<p>In addition to his praise of inspiration Shelley +has some scattered remarks on another point which +show the same spirit. He could not bear in poetic +language any approach to artifice, or any sign that +the writer had a theory or system of style. He +thought Keats’s earlier poems faulty in this respect, +and there is perhaps a reference to Wordsworth +in the following sentence from the Preface to the +<i>Revolt of Islam</i>: ‘Nor have I permitted any system +relating to mere words to divert the attention of +the reader, from whatever interest I may have +succeeded in creating, to my own ingenuity in +contriving,—to disgust him according to the rules +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page162" id="page162"></a>162</span> +of criticism. I have simply clothed my thoughts in +what appeared to me the most obvious and appropriate +language. A person familiar with nature, and +with the most celebrated productions of the human +mind, can scarcely err in following the instinct, +with respect to selection of language, produced by +that familiarity.’<a name="fa3e" id="fa3e" href="#ft3e"><span class="sp">3</span></a> His own poetic style certainly +corresponds with his intention. It cannot give +the kind of pleasure afforded by what may be +called without disparagement a learned and artful +style, such as Virgil’s or Milton’s; but, like the +best writing of Shakespeare and Goethe, it is, +with all its individuality, almost entirely free from +mannerism and the other vices of self-consciousness, +and appears to flow so directly from the thought +that one is ashamed to admire it for itself. This +is equally so whether the appropriate style is +impassioned and highly figurative, or simple and +even plain. It is indeed in the latter case that +Shelley wins his greatest, because most difficult, +triumph. In the dialogue part of <i>Julian and +Maddalo</i> he has succeeded remarkably in keeping +the style quite close to that of familiar though +serious conversation, while making it nevertheless +unmistakably poetic. And the <i>Cenci</i> is an example +of a success less complete only because the problem +was even harder. The ideal of the style of tragic +drama in the nineteenth or twentieth century +should surely be, not to reproduce with modifications +the style of Shakespeare, but to do what +Shakespeare did—to idealise, without deserting, +the language of contemporary speech. Shelley in +the <i>Cenci</i> seems to me to have come nearest to this +ideal.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page163" id="page163"></a>163</span></p> + +<p class="pt2 center">3.</p> + +<p>So much for general exposition. If now we +consider more closely what Shelley says of the +substance of poetry, a question at once arises. He +may seem to think of poetry solely as the direct +expression of perfection in some form, and accordingly +to imagine its effect as simply joy or delighted +aspiration. Much of his own poetry, too, is such an +expression; and we understand when we find him +saying that Homer embodied the ideal perfection of +his age in human character, and unveiled in Achilles, +Hector, and Ulysses ‘the truth and beauty of friendship, +patriotism, and persevering devotion to an +object.’ But poetry, it is obvious, is not wholly, +perhaps not even mainly, of this kind. What is to +be said, on Shelley’s theory, of his own melancholy +lyrics, those ‘sweetest songs’ that ‘tell of saddest +thought’? What of satire, of the epic of conflict +and war, or of tragic exhibitions of violent and +destructive passion? Does not his theory reflect +the weakness of his own practice, his tendency to +portray a thin and abstract ideal instead of interpreting +the concrete detail of nature and life; and +ought we not to oppose to it a theory which would +consider poetry simply as a representation of fact?</p> + +<p>To this last question I should answer No. +Shelley’s theory, rightly understood, will take in, +I think, everything really poetic. And to a considerable +extent he himself shows the way to meet +these doubts. He did not mean that the <i>immediate</i> +subject of poetry must be perfection in some form. +The poet, he says, can colour with the hues of the +ideal everything he touches. If so, he may write +of absolutely anything so long as he <i>can</i> so colour +it, and nothing would be excluded from his province +except those things (if any such exist) in which no +positive relation to the ideal, however indirect, can +be shown or intimated. Thus to take the instance +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page164" id="page164"></a>164</span> +of Shelley’s melancholy lyrics, clearly the lament +which arises from loss of the ideal, and mourns the +evanescence of its visitations or the desolation of its +absence, is indirectly an expression <i>of</i> the ideal; and +so on his theory is the simplest song of unhappy +love or the simplest dirge. Further, he himself +observes that, though the joy of poetry is often +unalloyed, yet the pleasure of the ‘highest portions +of our being is frequently connected with the pain +of the inferior,’ that ‘the pleasure that is in sorrow +is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself,’ and +that not sorrow only, but ‘terror, anguish, despair +itself, are often the chosen expressions of an +approximation to the highest good.’ That, then, +which appeals poetically to such painful emotions +will again be an indirect portrayal of the ideal; and +it is clear, I think, that this was how Shelley in the +<i>Defence</i> regarded heroic and tragic poetry, whether +narrative or dramatic, with its manifestly imperfect +characters and its exhibition of conflict and wild +passion. He had, it is true, another and an unsatisfactory +way of explaining the presence of these +things in poetry; and I will refer to this in a +moment. But he tells us that the Athenian tragedies +represent the highest idealisms (his name for ideals) +of passion and of power (not merely of virtue); and +that in them we behold ourselves, ‘under a thin +disguise of circumstance, stripped of all but that +ideal perfection and energy which every one feels to +be the internal type of all that he loves, admires, +and would become.’ He writes of Milton’s Satan +in somewhat the same strain. The Shakespearean +tragedy from which he most often quotes is one +in which evil holds the stage, <i>Macbeth</i>; and he was +inclined to think <i>King Lear</i>, which certainly is no +direct portrait of perfection, the greatest drama +in the world. Lastly, in the Preface to his own +<i>Cenci</i> he truly says that, while the story is fearful +and monstrous, ‘the poetry which exists in these +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page165" id="page165"></a>165</span> +tempestuous sufferings and crimes,’ if duly brought +out, ‘mitigates the pain of the contemplation of moral +deformity’: so that he regards Count Cenci himself +as a <i>poetic</i> character, and therefore as in <i>some</i> sense +an expression of the ideal. He does not further +explain his meaning. Perhaps it was that the perfection +which poetry is to exhibit includes, together +with those qualities which win our immediate and +entire approval or sympathy, others which are +capable of becoming the instruments of evil. For +these, the energy, power and passion of the soul, +though they may be perverted, are in themselves +elements of perfection; and so, even in their perversion +or their combination with moral deformity, +they retain their value, they are not simply ugly or +horrible, but appeal through emotions predominantly +painful to the same love of the ideal which is directly +satisfied by pictures of goodness and beauty. Now +to these various considerations we shall wish to add +others; but if we bear these in mind, I believe we +shall find Shelley’s theory wide enough, and must +hold that the substance of poetry is never mere fact, +but is always ideal, though its method of representation +is sometimes more direct, sometimes more +indirect.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, he does not seem to have made his +view quite clear to himself, or to hold to it consistently. +We are left with the impression, not +merely that he personally preferred the direct +method (as he was, of course, entitled to do), but +that his use of it shows a certain weakness, and +also that even in theory he unconsciously tends to +regard it as the primary and proper method, and +to admit only by a reluctant after-thought the +representation of imperfection. Let me point out +some signs of this. He considered his own <i>Cenci</i> +as a poem inferior in kind to his other main works, +even as a sort of accommodation to the public. +With all his modesty he knew what to think of the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page166" id="page166"></a>166</span> +neglected <i>Prometheus</i> and <i>Adonaďs</i>, but there is +no sign that he, any more than the world, was +aware that the character of Cenci was a creation +without a parallel in our poetry since the seventeenth +century. His enthusiasm for some second-rate and +third-rate Italian paintings, and his failure to understand +Michael Angelo, seem to show the same +tendency. He could not enjoy comedy: it seemed +to him simply cruel: he did not perceive that to +show the absurdity of the imperfect is to glorify the +perfect. And, as I mentioned just now, he wavers +in his view of the representation of heroic and tragic +imperfection. We find in the Preface to <i>Prometheus +Unbound</i> the strange notion that Prometheus is a +more poetic character than Milton’s Satan because +he is free from Satan’s imperfections, which are said +to interfere with the interest. And in the <i>Defence</i> +a similar error appears. Achilles, Hector, Ulysses, +though they exhibit ideal virtues, are, he admits, +imperfect. Why, then, did Homer make them so? +Because, he seems to reply, Homer’s contemporaries +regarded their vices (<i>e.g.</i> revengefulness and deceitfulness) +as virtues. Homer accordingly had to +conceal in the costume of these vices the unspotted +beauty that he himself imagined; and, like Homer, +‘few poets of the highest class have chosen to +exhibit the beauty of their conceptions in its naked +truth and splendour.’ Now, this idea, to say nothing +of its grotesque improbability in reference to Homer, +and its probable baselessness in reference to most +other poets, is quite inconsistent with that truer +view of heroic and tragic character which was +explained just now. It is an example of Shelley’s +tendency to abstract idealism or spurious Platonism. +He is haunted by the fancy that if he could only +get at the One, the eternal Idea, in complete +aloofness from the Many, from life with all its +change, decay, struggle, sorrow and evil, he would +have reached the true object of poetry: as if the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page167" id="page167"></a>167</span> +whole finite world were a mere mistake or illusion, +the sheer opposite of the infinite One, and in no +way or degree its manifestation. Life, he says—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,</p> +<p>Stains the white radiance of eternity;</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">but the other side, the fact that the many colours +<i>are</i> the white light broken, he tends to forget, by +no means always, but in one, and that not the least +inspired, of his moods. This is the source of that +thinness and shallowness of which his view of the +world and of history is justly accused, a view in +which all imperfect being is apt to figure as absolutely +gratuitous, and everything and everybody as pure +white or pitch black. Hence also his ideals of good, +whether as a character or as a mode of life, resting +as they do on abstraction from the mass of real +existence, tend to lack body and individuality; and +indeed, if the existence of the many is a mere +calamity, clearly the next best thing to their disappearance +is that they should all be exactly alike +and have as little character as possible. But we +must remember that Shelley’s strength and weakness +are closely allied, and it may be that the very +abstractness of his ideal was a condition of that +quivering intensity of aspiration towards it in which +his poetry is unequalled. We must not go for this +to Homer and Shakespeare and Goethe; and if we +go for it to Dante, we shall find, indeed, a mind far +vaster than Shelley’s, but also that dualism of +which we complain in him, and the description of +a heaven which, equally with Shelley’s regenerated +earth, is no place for mere mortality. In any case, +as we have seen, the weakness in his poetical practice, +though it occasionally appears also as a defect +in his poetical theory, forms no necessary part of it.</p> + +<p class="pt2 center">4.</p> + +<p>I pass to his views on a last point. If the business +of poetry is somehow to express ideal perfection, it +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page168" id="page168"></a>168</span> +may seem to follow that the poet should embody in +his poems his beliefs about this perfection and the +way to approach it, and should thus have a moral +purpose and aim to be a teacher. And in regard +to Shelley this conclusion seems the more natural +because his own poetry allows us to see clearly some +of his beliefs about morality and moral progress. +Yet alike in his Prefaces and in the <i>Defence</i> he takes +up most decidedly the position that the poet ought +neither to affect a moral aim nor to express his own +conceptions of right and wrong. ‘Didactic poetry,’ +he declares, ‘is my abhorrence: nothing can be +equally well expressed in prose that is not tedious +and supererogatory in verse.’<a name="fa4e" id="fa4e" href="#ft4e"><span class="sp">4</span></a> ‘There was little +danger,’ he tells us in the <i>Defence</i>, ‘that Homer or +any of the eternal poets’ should make a mistake in +this matter; but ‘those in whom the poetical faculty, +though great, is less intense, as Euripides, Lucan, +Tasso, Spenser, have frequently affected a moral +aim, and the effect of their poetry is diminished in +exact proportion to the degree in which they compel +us to advert to this purpose.’ These statements +may appeal to us, but are they consistent with +Shelley’s main views of poetry? To answer this +question we must observe what exactly it is that he +means to condemn.</p> + +<p>Shelley was one of the few persons who can +literally be said to <i>love</i> their kind. He held most +strongly, too, that poetry does benefit men, and +benefits them morally. The moral purpose, then, +to which he objects cannot well be a poet’s general +purpose of doing moral as well as other good through +his poetry—such a purpose, I mean, as he may +cherish when he contemplates his life and his life’s +work. And, indeed, it seems obvious that nobody +with any humanity or any sense can object to that, +except through some intellectual confusion. Nor, +secondly, does Shelley mean, I think, to condemn +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page169" id="page169"></a>169</span> +even the writing of a particular poem with a view +to a particular moral or practical effect; certainly, +at least, if this was his meaning he was condemning +some of his own poetry. Nor, thirdly, can he be +referring to the portrayal of moral ideals; for that +he regarded as one of the main functions of poetry, +and in the very place where he says that didactic +poetry is his abhorrence he also says, by way of +contrast, that he has tried to familiarise the minds +of his readers with beautiful idealisms of moral +excellence. It appears, therefore, that what he is +really attacking is the attempt to give, in the strict +sense, moral <i>instruction</i>, to communicate doctrines, +to offer argumentative statements of opinion on +right and wrong, and more especially, I think, on +controversial questions of the day. An example +would be Wordsworth’s discourse on education at +the end of the <i>Excursion</i>, a discourse of which +Shelley, we know, had a very low opinion. In +short, his enemy is not the purpose of producing +a moral effect, it is the appeal made for this purpose +to the reasoning intellect. He says to the poet: +By all means aim at bettering men; you are a man, +and are bound to do so; but you are also a poet, +and therefore your proper way of doing so is not +by reasoning and preaching. His idea is of a +piece with his general championship of imagination, +and it is quite consistent with his main view of +poetry.<a name="fa5e" id="fa5e" href="#ft5e"><span class="sp">5</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page170" id="page170"></a>170</span></p> + +<p>What, then, are the <i>grounds</i> of this position? +They are not clearly set out, but we can trace +several, and they are all solid. Reasoning on moral +subjects, moral philosophy, was by no means ‘tedious’ +to Shelley; it seldom is to real poets. He loved it, +and (outside his <i>Defence</i>) he rated its value very +high.<a name="fa6e" id="fa6e" href="#ft6e"><span class="sp">6</span></a> But he thought it tedious and out of place +in poetry, because it can be equally well expressed +in ‘unmeasured’ language—much better expressed, +one may venture to add. You invent an art in +order to effect by it a particular purpose which +nothing else can effect as well. How foolish, then, +to use this art for a purpose better served by something +else! I know no answer to this argument, +and its application is far wider than that given to +it by Shelley. Secondly, Shelley remarks that a +poet’s own conceptions on moral subjects are usually +those of his place and time, while the matter of his +poem ought to be eternal, or, as we say, of permanent +and universal interest. This, again, seems true, and +has a wide application; and it holds good even +when the poet, like Shelley himself, is in rebellion +against orthodox moral opinion; for his heterodox +opinions will equally show the marks of his place +and time, and constitute a perishable element in his +work. Doubtless no poetry can be without a perishable +element; but that poetry has least of it which +interprets life least through the medium of systematic +and doctrinal ideas. The veil which time and place +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page171" id="page171"></a>171</span> +have hung between Homer or Shakespeare and the +general reader of to-day is almost transparent, while +even a poetry so intense as that of Dante and Milton +is impeded in its passage to him by systems which +may be unfamiliar, and, if familiar, may be distasteful.</p> + +<p>Lastly—and this is Shelley’s central argument—as +poetry itself is directly due to imaginative inspiration +and not to reasoning, so its true moral effect +is produced through imagination and not through +doctrine. Imagination is, for Shelley, ‘the great +instrument of moral good.’ The ‘secret of morals +is love.’ It is not ‘for want of admirable doctrines +that men hate and despise and censure and deceive +and subjugate one another’: it is for want of love. +And love is ‘a going out of our own nature, and an +identification of ourselves with the beautiful which +exists in thought, action or person not our own.’ +‘A man,’ therefore, ‘to be greatly good must +imagine intensely and comprehensively.’ And +poetry ministers to moral good, the effect, by acting +on its cause, imagination. It strengthens imagination +as exercise strengthens a limb, and so it indirectly +promotes morality. It also fills the imagination with +beautiful impersonations of all that we should wish +to be. But moral reasoning does not act upon the +cause, it only analyses the effect; and the poet has +no right to be content to analyse what he ought +indirectly to create. Here, again, in his eagerness, +Shelley cuts his antitheses too clean, but the defect +is easily made good, and the main argument is +sound.</p> + +<p>Limits of time will compel me to be guilty of the +same fault in adding a consideration which is in the +spirit of Shelley’s. The chief moral effect claimed +for poetry by Shelley is exerted, primarily, by +imagination on the emotions; but there is another +influence, exerted primarily through imagination on +the understanding. Poetry is largely an interpretation +of life; and, considering what life is, that +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page172" id="page172"></a>172</span> +must mean a moral interpretation. This, to have +poetic value, must satisfy imagination; but we value +it also because it gives us knowledge, a wider comprehension, +a new insight into ourselves and the +world.<a name="fa7e" id="fa7e" href="#ft7e"><span class="sp">7</span></a> Now, it may be held—and this view answers +to a very general feeling among lovers of poetry +now—that the most deep and original moral interpretation +is not likely to be that which most shows +a moral purpose or is most governed by reflective +beliefs and opinions, and that as a rule we learn +most from those who do not try to teach us, and +whose opinions may even remain unknown to us: +so that there is this weighty objection to the +appearance of such purpose and opinions, that it +tends to defeat its own intention. And the reason +that I wish to suggest is this, that always we get +most from the <i>genius</i> in a man of genius and not +from the rest of him. Now, although poets often +have unusual powers of reflective thought, the specific +genius of a poet does not lie there, but in imagination. +Therefore his deepest and most original interpretation +is likely to come by the way of imagination. +And the specific way of imagination is not to clothe +in imagery consciously held ideas; it is to produce +half-consciously a matter from which, when produced, +the reader may, if he chooses, extract ideas. Poetry +(I must exaggerate to be clear), psychologically +considered, is not the <i>expression</i> of ideas or of a +view of life; it is their discovery or creation, or +rather both discovery and creation in one. The +interpretation contained in <i>Hamlet</i> or <i>King Lear</i> +was not brought ready-made to the old stories. +What was brought to them was the huge substance +of Shakespeare’s imagination, in which all his +experience and thought was latent; and this, dwelling +and working on the stories with nothing but a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page173" id="page173"></a>173</span> +dramatic purpose, and kindling into heat and motion, +gradually discovered or created in them a meaning +and a mass of truth about life, which was brought +to birth by the process of composition, but never +preceded it in the shape of ideas, and probably +never, even after it, took that shape to the poet’s +mind. And <i>this</i> is the interpretation which we find +inexhaustibly instructive, because Shakespeare’s +<i>genius</i> is in it. On the other hand, however much +from curiosity and personal feeling towards him we +may wish to know his opinions and beliefs about +morals or religion or his own poems or Queen +Elizabeth, we have not really any reason to suppose +that their value would prove extraordinary. And +so, to apply this generally, the opinions, reasonings +and beliefs of poets are seldom of the same quality +as their purely imaginative product. Occasionally, +as with Goethe, they are not far off it; but sometimes +they are intense without being profound, and +more eccentric than original; and often they are +very sane and sound, but not very different from +those of wise men without genius. And therefore +poetry is not the place for them. For we want in +poetry a moral interpretation, but not the interpretation +we have already. As a rule the genuine +artist’s quarrel with ‘morality’ in art is not really +with morality, it is with a stereotyped or narrow +morality; and when he refuses in his art to consider +things from what he calls the moral point of view, +his reasons are usually wrong, but his instinct is +right.</p> + +<p>Poetry itself confirms on the whole this contention, +though doubtless in these last centuries a great poet’s +work will usually reveal more of conscious reflection +than once it did. Homer and Shakespeare show no +moral aim and no system of opinion. Milton was +far from justifying the ways of God to men by the +argumentation he put into divine and angelic lips; +his truer moral insight is in the creations of his +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page174" id="page174"></a>174</span> +genius; for instance, in the character of Satan or the +picture of the glorious humanity of Adam and Eve. +Goethe himself could never have told the world +what he was going to express in the First Part of +<i>Faust</i>: the poem told <i>him</i>, and it is one of the +world’s greatest. He knew too well what he was +going to express in the Second Part, and with all +its wisdom and beauty it is scarcely a great poem. +Wordsworth’s original message was delivered, not +when he was a Godwinian semi-atheist, nor when +he had subsided upon orthodoxy, but when his +imagination, with a few hints from Coleridge, was +creating a kind of natural religion; and this religion +itself is more profoundly expressed in his descriptions +of his experience than in his attempts to +formulate it. The moral virtue of Tennyson is in +poems like <i>Ulysses</i> and parts of <i>In Memoriam</i>, +where sorrow and the consciousness of a deathless +affection or an unquenchable desire for experience +forced an utterance; but when in the <i>Idylls</i> he tried +to found a great poem on explicit ideas about the +soul and the ravages wrought in it by lawless +passion, he succeeded but partially, because these +ideas, however sound, were no product of his genius. +And so the moral virtue of Shelley’s poetry lay, not +in his doctrines about the past and future of man, +but in an intuition, which was the substance of his +soul, of the unique value of love. In the end, +for him, the truest name of that perfection called +Intellectual Beauty, Liberty, Spirit of Nature, is +Love. Whatever in the world has any worth is an +expression of Love. Love sometimes talks. Love +talking musically is Poetry.</p> + +<p class="f80">1904.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1e" id="ft1e" href="#fa1e"><span class="fn">1</span></a> Statements equally emphatic on this subject may be found in a +passage quoted by Mrs. Shelley in a footnote to Shelley’s letter to +John Gisborne, Nov. 16, 1819 (Letter XXX. in Mrs. Shelley’s edition). +Cf. also Letter XXXIII. to Leigh Hunt, Nov. 1819.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2e" id="ft2e" href="#fa2e"><span class="fn">2</span></a> I cannot find the passage or passages to which I referred in +making this statement, and therefore I do not vouch for its accuracy. +Cf. from the fragment <i>Fiordispina</i>,</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>The ardours of a vision which obscure</p> +<p>The very idol of its portraiture.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><a name="ft3e" id="ft3e" href="#fa3e"><span class="fn">3</span></a> Cf. from the Preface to the <i>Cenci</i>: ‘I entirely agree with those +modern critics who assert that, in order to move men to true sympathy, +we must use the familiar language of men.... But it must be the +real language of men in general, and not that of any particular class +to whose society the writer happens to belong.’</p> + +<p><a name="ft4e" id="ft4e" href="#fa4e"><span class="fn">4</span></a> Preface to <i>Prometheus Unbound</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5e" id="ft5e" href="#fa5e"><span class="fn">5</span></a> I do not discuss the adequacy of Shelley’s position, or assert that +he held it quite clearly or consistently. In support of my interpretation, +of it I may refer to the Preface to the <i>Cenci</i>. There he repudiates the +idea of making the dramatic exhibition of the story ‘subservient to +what is vulgarly called a moral purpose,’ and, as the context shows, +he identifies such a treatment of the story with the ‘enforcement’ of +a ‘dogma.’</p> + +<p>This passage has a further interest. The dogma which Shelley +would not enforce in his tragedy was that ‘no person can truly be +dishonoured by the act of another, and the fit return to make to the +most enormous injuries is kindness and forbearance, and a resolution +to convert the injurer from his dark passions by peace and love’; and +accordingly he held that ‘if Beatrice had thought in this manner, she +would have been wiser and better.’ How inexcusable then is the not +uncommon criticism on the <i>Cenci</i> that he represents Beatrice as a +perfect character and justifies her murder of ‘the injurer.’</p> + +<p>Shelley’s position in the <i>Defence</i>, it may be added, is in total +disagreement with his youthful doctrine and practice. In 1811 he +wrote to Miss Hitchener, ‘My opinion is that all poetical beauty ought +to be subordinate to the inculcated moral,’ and a large part of <i>Queen +Mab</i> is frankly didactic. Even there, however, he reserved most of +the formal instruction for the Notes, perceiving that ‘a poem very +didactic is ... very stupid.’</p> + +<p><a name="ft6e" id="ft6e" href="#fa6e"><span class="fn">6</span></a> ‘I consider poetry very subordinate to moral and political science,’ +he says in a letter to Peacock, Jan. 1819.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7e" id="ft7e" href="#fa7e"><span class="fn">7</span></a> And, I may add, the more it does this, so long as it does it imaginatively, +the more does it satisfy imagination, and the greater is its +<i>poetic</i> value.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:150px; height:35px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img001.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page175" id="page175"></a>175</span></p> + +<p class="center chap">THE LONG POEM<br /> +IN THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH</p> +<p> </p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page176" id="page176"></a>176<br />177</span></p> + +<p class="center pt2"><span class="chap2">THE LONG POEM<br /> +IN THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH</span><a name="fa1f" id="fa1f" href="#ft1f"><span class="sp">1</span></a></p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1 fo">The</span> poetry of the age of Wordsworth, we are all +agreed, is one of the glories of our literature. It is +surpassed, many would add, by the poetry of no +other period except the Elizabethan. But it has +obvious flaws, of which perhaps we are becoming +more and more distinctly conscious now; and, apart +from these definite defects, it also leaves with us, +when we review it, a certain feeling of disappointment. +It is great, we say to ourselves, but why is +it not greater still? It shows a wonderful abundance +of genius: why does it not show an equal +accomplishment?</p> + +<p class="pt2 center">1.</p> + +<p>Matthew Arnold, in his essay on <i>The Function +of Criticism at the Present Time</i>, gave an answer +to this question. ‘It has long seemed to me,’ he +wrote, ‘that the burst of creative activity in our +literature, through the first quarter of this century, +had about it, in fact, something premature.... And +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page178" id="page178"></a>178</span> +this prematureness comes from its having proceeded +without having its proper data, without sufficient +materials to work with. In other words, the English +poetry of the first quarter of this century, with +plenty of energy, plenty of creative force, did not +know enough. This makes Byron so empty of +matter, Shelley so incoherent, Wordsworth even, +profound as he is, yet so wanting in completeness +and in variety.’ The statement that this poetry +‘did not know enough’ means, of course, for Arnold, +not that it lacked information, reading, ideas of a +kind, but that it lacked ‘criticism.’ And this means +that it did not live and move freely in an atmosphere +of the best available ideas, of ideas gained by +a free, sincere, and continued effort, in theology, +philosophy, history, science, to see things as they +are. In such an atmosphere Goethe lived. There +was not indeed in Goethe’s Germany, nor was there +in the England of our poets, the ‘national glow +of life and thought’ that prevailed in the Athens of +Pericles or the England of Elizabeth. That happiest +atmosphere for poetry was wanting in both countries. +But there was for Goethe ‘a sort of equivalent for it +in the complete culture and unfettered thinking of a +large body of Germans,’ a culture produced by a +many-sided learning and a long and widely-combined +critical effort. It was this that our poets lacked.</p> + +<p>Now, if this want existed, as Arnold affirms, it +may not have had all the importance he ascribes to +it, but considerable importance it must have had. +And as to its existence there can hardly be a doubt. +One of the most striking characteristics of Wordsworth’s +age is the very unusual superiority of the +imaginative literature to the scientific. I mean by +the ‘scientific’ literature that of philosophy, theology, +history, politics, economics, not only that of the +sciences of Nature, which for our present purpose +are perhaps the least important. In this kind of +literature Wordsworth’s age has hardly an author +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page179" id="page179"></a>179</span> +to show who could for a moment be placed +on a level with some five of the poets, with +the novelists Scott and Jane Austen, or with the +poetic critics Lamb, Hazlitt, and Coleridge. It +has no writers to compare with Bacon, Newton, +Hume, Gibbon, Johnson, or Burke. It is the +time of Paley, Godwin, Stewart, Bentham, Mitford, +Lingard, Coleridge the philosopher and theologian. +These are names worthy of all respect, but they +represent a literature quite definitely of the second +rank. And this great disproportion between the +two kinds of literature, we must observe, is a +peculiar phenomenon. If we go back as far as the +Elizabethan age we shall find no parallel to it. +The one kind was doubtless superior to the +other in Shakespeare’s time, possibly even in +Milton’s; but Hooker and Bacon and Taylor and +Clarendon and Hobbes are not separated from the +best poets of their day by any startling difference +of quality;<a name="fa2f" id="fa2f" href="#ft2f"><span class="sp">2</span></a> while in the later periods, right +down to the age of Wordsworth, the scientific +literature quite holds its own, to say no more, with +the imaginative. Nor in the Germany of Wordsworth’s +own time is there that gap between the two +that we find in England. In respect of genius the +philosophers, for example, though none of them was +the equal of Goethe, were as a body not at all +inferior to the poets. The case of England in +Wordsworth’s age is anomalous.</p> + +<p>This peculiarity must be symptomatic, and it must +have been influential. It confirms Arnold’s view +that the intellectual atmosphere of the time was not +of the best. If we think of the periodical literature—of +the <i>Quarterly</i> and <i>Edinburgh</i> and <i>Blackwood</i>—we +shall be still more inclined to assent to that +view. And when we turn to the poets themselves, +and especially to their prose writings, letters, and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page180" id="page180"></a>180</span> +recorded conversation, and even to the critiques of +Hazlitt, of Lamb, and of Coleridge, we cannot +reject it. Assuredly we read with admiration, and +the signs of native genius we meet with in abundance—in +greater abundance, I think, than in the poetry +and criticism of Germany, if Goethe is excepted. +But the freedom of spirit, the knowledge, the superiority +to prejudice and caprice and fanaticism, the +openness to ideas, the atmosphere that is all about us +when we read Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Heine, we +do not find. Can we imagine any one of those four +either inspired or imprisoned as Shelley was by the +doctrines of Godwin? Could any of them have seen +in the French Revolution no more significance than +Scott appears to have detected? How cramped are +the attitudes, sympathetic or antipathetic, of nearly +all our poets towards the Christian religion! Could +anything be more <i>borné</i> than Coleridge’s professed +reason for not translating <i>Faust</i>?<a name="fa3f" id="fa3f" href="#ft3f"><span class="sp">3</span></a> Is it possible +that a German poet with the genius of Byron or +Wordsworth could have inhabited a mental world +so small and so tainted with vulgarity as is opened +to us by the brilliant letters of the former, or could +have sunk, like the latter, to suggesting that the +cholera was a divine condemnation of Catholic +Emancipation and the Reform Bill?</p> + +<p>But if we accept Arnold’s statement as to the +intellectual atmosphere of the poetry of Wordsworth’s +time, a question will remain. Was he right +in regarding this atmosphere as the sole, or even +as the chief, cause of the fact (if it is one) that the +poetry does not fully correspond in greatness with +the genius of the poets? And before we come to +this question we must put another. Is the fact +really as it has just been stated? I do not think +so. The disappointment that we feel attends, it +seems to me, mainly our reading of the long poems. +Reviewing these in memory, and asking ourselves +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page181" id="page181"></a>181</span> +how many we can unreservedly call ‘great,’ we +hesitate. Beyond doubt there is great poetry in +some of them, fine poetry in many; but that does +not make a great whole. Which of them is great +as a whole? Not the <i>Prelude</i> or the <i>Excursion</i>, +still less <i>Endymion</i> or <i>The Revolt of Islam</i> or <i>Childe +Harold</i>, which hardly pretends to unity. <i>Christabel</i>, +the wonderful fragment, is a fragment; so is +<i>Hyperion</i>; <i>Don Juan</i>, also unfinished, becomes +more discursive the further it proceeds, and in +spirit is nowhere great. All the principal poets +wrote dramas, or at least dramatic pieces; and +some readers think that in <i>Manfred</i>, and still more +certainly in <i>Cain</i>, we have great poems, while others +think this of <i>Prometheus Unbound</i> and <i>The Cenci</i>. +But if as to one or more of these we assent, is our +judgment quite confident, and can we say that any +of them <i>satisfy</i> us, like some works of earlier times? +We are thus satisfied, it seems to me, only when we +come to poems of smaller dimensions, like <i>The +Ancient Mariner</i>, or <i>The Eve of Saint Agnes</i>, or +<i>Adonaďs</i>, or <i>The Vision of Judgment</i>, or when we +read the lyrics. To save time I will confine myself +to the latter.</p> + +<p>Within this sphere we have no longer that +impression of genius which fails to reach full +accomplishment. I would go further. No poet, of +course, of Wordsworth’s age is the equal of Shakespeare +or of Milton; and there are certain qualities, +too, of lyrical verse in which the times of Shakespeare +and of Milton are superior to that of Wordsworth. +But if we take the better part of the lyrical +poetry of these three periods in the mass, or again +in a representative selection, it will not be the latest +period, I think, that need fear the comparison. In +the original edition of the <i>Golden Treasury</i>, Book I. +(Wyatt to Shakespeare) occupies forty pages; Book +II. (the rest of the seventeenth century) sixty-five; +Book IV., which covers the very much shorter +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page182" id="page182"></a>182</span> +period from Wordsworth to Hood, close on a +hundred and forty. ‘Book I.,’ perhaps most of us +would say, ‘should be longer, and Book IV. a good +deal shorter: some third-rate pieces are included in +it, and Wordsworth is over-represented. And the +Elizabethan poems are mostly quite short, while the +Nineteenth Century poets shine equally in the +longer kinds of lyric. And Mr. Palgrave excluded +the old ballads, but admitted poems like Coleridge’s +<i>Love</i> and Wordsworth’s <i>Ruth</i> (seven whole pages). +And in any case we cannot judge by mere quantity.’ +No; but still quantity must count for something, +and the <i>Golden Treasury</i> is a volume excellent in +selection, arrangement, and taste. It does, I think, +leave the impression that the age of Wordsworth +was our greatest period in lyrical poetry. And if +Book I. were swelled to the dimensions of Book IV., +this impression would not be materially altered; it +might even be deepened. For the change would +force into notice the comparative monotony of the +themes of the earlier poetry, and the immensely +wider range of the thought and emotion that attain +expression in the later. It might also convince us +that, on the whole, this more varied material is +treated with a greater intensity of feeling, though on +this point it is difficult to be sure, since we recognise +what may be called the conventions of an earlier +age, and are perhaps a little blind to those of a time +near our own.</p> + +<p>Now the eminence of Wordsworth’s age in lyrical +poetry, even if it is not also a pre-eminence, is a +significant fact. It may mean that the whole poetic +spirit of the time was lyrical in tendency; and this +may indirectly be a cause of that sense of disappointment +which mingles with our admiration of +the long poems. I will call attention, therefore, to +two or three allied facts. (1) The longer poems of +Campbell are already dead; he survives only in +lyrics. This is also true of Moore. In spite of fine +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page183" id="page183"></a>183</span> +passages (and the battle in <i>Marmion</i> is in certain +qualities superior to anything else of the time) +Scott’s longer poems cannot be classed with the +best contemporary poetry; but in some of his +ballads and songs he attains that rank. (2) Again, +much of the most famous narrative poetry is semi-lyrical +in form, as a moment’s thought of Scott, +Byron, and Coleridge will show. Some of it (for +instance, several of Byron’s tales, or Wordsworth’s +<i>White Doe of Rylstone</i>) is strongly tinged with the +lyrical spirit. The centre of interest is inward. It +is an interest in emotion, thought, will, rather than +in scenes, events, actions, which express and re-act +on emotions, thoughts, will. It would hardly be +going too far to say that in the most characteristic +narrative poetry the balance of outward and inward +is rarely attained.<a name="fa4f" id="fa4f" href="#ft4f"><span class="sp">4</span></a> (3) The same tendencies are +visible in much of the dramatic writing. Byron’s +regular dramas, for instance, if they ever lived, +are almost forgotten; but <i>Heaven and Earth</i>, +which is still alive, is largely composed of lyrics, +and the first two acts of <i>Manfred</i> are full of them. +<i>Prometheus Unbound</i> is called ‘a lyrical drama.’ +Though it has some very fine and some very +beautiful blank verse passages (usually undramatic), +its lyrics are its glory; and this is even +more the case with <i>Hellas</i>. It would be untrue to +say that the comparative failure of most of the +dramas of the time is principally due to the lyrical +spirit, but many of them show it. (4) The strength +of this spirit may be illustrated lastly by a curious +fact. The ode is one of the longest and most +ambitious forms of lyric, and some of the most +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page184" id="page184"></a>184</span> +famous poems of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats +are odes. But the greatest of the lyrists, who wrote +the Odes to Liberty and Naples and the West +Wind, found the limits even of the ode too narrow +for his ‘flight of fire.’ If <i>Lycidas</i> and <i>L’Allegro</i> +and Spenser’s <i>Epithalamion</i> are lyrical poems, and +if we are not arbitrarily to determine that nothing +shall be called lyrical which exceeds a certain +length, <i>Adonaďs</i> will be a lyrical elegy in fifty-five +Spenserian stanzas, and the <i>Lines written among +the Euganean Hills</i> and <i>Epipsychidion</i> will be lyrics +consisting respectively of 370 and 600 lines.</p> + +<p>It will however be agreed that in general a lyrical +poem may be called short as compared with a narrative +or drama. It is usual, further, to say that +lyrical poetry is ‘subjective,’ since, instead of telling +or representing a story of people, actions, and +events, it expresses the thoughts and feelings of +the poet himself. This statement is ambiguous and +in other ways defective; but it will be admitted to +have a basis in fact. It may be suggested, then, +that the excellence of the lyrical poetry of Wordsworth’s +time, and the imperfection of the long +narratives and dramas, may have a common origin. +Just as it was most natural to Homer or to Shakespeare +to express the imaginative substance of +his mind in the ‘objective’ shape of a world of +persons and actions ostensibly severed from his +own thoughts and feelings, so, perhaps, for some +reason or reasons, it was most natural to the best +poets of this later time to express that substance +in the shape of impassioned reflections, aspirations, +prophecies, laments, outcries of joy, murmurings of +peace. The matter of these might, in another +sense of the word, be ‘objective’ enough, a matter +of general human interest, not personal in any exclusive +way; but it appeared in the form of the poet’s +thought and feeling. Just because he most easily +expressed it thus, he succeeded less completely +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page185" id="page185"></a>185</span> +when he attempted the more objective form of +utterance; and for the same reason it was especially +important that he should be surrounded and penetrated +by an atmosphere of wide, deep, and liberal +‘criticism.’ For he not only lived among ideas; he +expressed ideas, and expressed them <i>as</i> ideas.</p> + +<p>These suggestions seem to be supported by +other phenomena of the poetry. The ‘subjective’ +spirit extends, we saw, into many of the longer +poems. This is obvious when it can plausibly +be said, as in Byron’s case, that the poet’s one +hero is himself. It appears in another way when +the poem, through its story or stories, displays the +poet’s favourite ideas and beliefs. The <i>Excursion</i> +does this; most of Shelley’s longer poems do it. +And the strength of this tendency may be seen in +an apparent contradiction. One of the marks of the +Romantic Revival is a disposition to substitute the +more concrete and vivid forms of narrative and +drama for the eighteenth century form of satiric +or so-called didactic reflection. Yet most of the +greater poets, especially in their characteristic beginnings, +show a strong tendency to reflective verse; +Coleridge, for example, in <i>Religious Musings</i>, Byron +in the first two cantos of <i>Childe Harold</i>, Shelley in +<i>Queen Mab</i>, and Keats in <i>Sleep and Poetry</i>. These +are not, like the <i>Pleasures of Memory</i> and <i>Pleasures +of Hope</i>, continuations of the traditional style; they +are thoroughly Romantic; and yet they are reflective. +Scott, indeed, goes straight to the objective +forms; but then Scott, for good and evil, was little +affected by the spiritual upheaval of his time. +Those who were deeply affected by it, directly or +indirectly, had their minds full of theoretic ideas. +They were groping after, or were already inflamed +by, some explicit view of life, and of life seen in +relation to an ideal which it revealed or contradicted. +And this view of life, at least at first, +pressed for utterance in a more or less abstract +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page186" id="page186"></a>186</span> +shape, or became a sort of soul or second meaning +within those appearances of nature, or actions of +men, or figures and fantasies of youthful imagination, +which formed the ostensible subject of the +poetry.</p> + +<p>Considered in this light, the following facts become +very significant. Wordsworth, now about +thirty, and the author of many characteristic lyrics, +on returning from Germany and settling at Grasmere, +begins to meditate a long poem. He tells us +in the <i>Prelude</i> of the subjects he thought of. They +are good subjects, legendary and historical, stories +of action, not at all theoretical.<a name="fa5f" id="fa5f" href="#ft5f"><span class="sp">5</span></a> But it will not +do: his mind ‘turns recreant to her task.’ He has +another hope, a ‘favourite aspiration’ towards ‘a +philosophic song of Truth.’ But even this will +not do; it is premature; even Truth (I venture to +suggest) is not inward enough. He must first tell +the story of his own mind: the subject of his long +poem must be Poetry itself. He tells this story, to +our great gain, in the <i>Prelude</i>; and it is the story +of the steps by which he came to see reality, Nature +and Man, as the partial expression of the ideal, of +an all-embracing and perfect spiritual life or Being. +Not till this is done can he proceed to the <i>Excursion</i>, +which, together with much reflection and even +argumentation, contains pictures of particular men.</p> + +<p>‘This for our greatest’; but it is not his history +alone. The first longer poem of Shelley which +can be called mature was <i>Alastor</i>. And what is +its subject? The subject of the <i>Prelude</i>; the +story of a Poet’s soul, and of the effect on it +of the revelation of its ideal. The first long +poem of Keats was <i>Endymion</i>. The tendency to +the concrete was strong in Keats; he has been +called, I think, an Elizabethan born out of due +time; and <i>Endymion</i>, like <i>Venus and Adonis</i>, is a +mythological story. But it is by no means that +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page187" id="page187"></a>187</span> +alone. The infection of his time was in him. The +further subject of <i>Endymion</i> is again the subject of the +<i>Prelude</i>, the story of a poet’s soul smitten by love of +its ideal, the Principle of Beauty, and striving for +union with it, for the ‘wedding’ of the mind of man +‘with this goodly universe in love and holy passion.’ +What, again, is the subject of <i>Epipsychidion</i>? The +same.</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>There was a Being whom my spirit oft</p> +<p>Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft</p> +<p>In the clear golden prime of my youth’s dawn.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">The poem is all about the search of the poet’s soul +for this ideal Being. And the <i>Sensitive Plant</i> is +this soul, and the Lady of the Garden this Being, +And <i>Prince Athanase</i> is the same soul, and if the +poem had been continued the Being would soon +have appeared. Is it not an astonishing proof of +Shelley’s powers that the <i>Cenci</i> was ever written? +Shelley, when he died, had half escaped—Keats, +some time before he died, had quite escaped—from +that bewitching inward world of the poet’s soul +and its shadowy adventures. Could that well be +the world of what we call emphatically a ‘great +poem’?</p> + +<p class="pt2 center">2.</p> + +<p>Let us review for a moment the course of our +discussion. I have been suggesting that, if our +pleasure and glory in the poetry of Wordsworth’s +age is tinged with disappointment, this does not +extend to the lyrical poetry; that the lyrical spirit, +or, more generally, an inward or subjective tendency, +shows itself in many of the longer works; +and that their imperfection is partly due to it. +Now, let me suggest that the atmosphere of adequate +‘criticism’ which Arnold misses in the age +and its poetry, while doubtless it would have influenced +favourably even the lyrics, and much more +the larger works, could hardly have diminished the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page188" id="page188"></a>188</span> +force of that tendency, and that the main difficulty +lay <i>there</i>. But, before developing this idea further, +I propose to leave for a time the English poetry of +Wordsworth’s age, to look beyond it, and to ask +certain questions.</p> + +<p>First, granted that in that age the atmosphere of +‘criticism’ was more favourable in Germany than in +England, how many long poems were produced in +Germany that we can call without hesitation or +qualification ‘great’? Were <i>any</i> produced except +by Goethe? And, if we admit (as I gladly do) that +he produced several, was not the <i>main</i> reason simply +that he was born with more poetic genius than any +of his contemporaries, just as Dante and Shakespeare +and Milton were? And again, with this native +genius and his long laborious life, did he produce +anything like as many great poems as might have +been expected? And, if not, why not? I do not +suggest that his general culture, so superior to that +of his English contemporaries, did not help him; +but are we sure that it did not also hinder him? +And is it not also significant that, in spite of his +love of new ideas, he felt an instinctive dread of the +influence of philosophy, in the strict sense, as of +something dangerous to the poetic modes of vision +and creation?</p> + +<p>Secondly, if we look beyond the first quarter of +the century to the second and third, do we find in +Europe a large number of those emphatically great +poems, solid coherent structures of concrete imagination? +It seems more than doubtful. To confine +ourselves to English examples, is it not the case +that Tennyson is primarily a lyrical poet, that the +best of his longer poems, <i>Maud</i> and <i>In Memoriam</i>, +are lyrical, and that the most ambitious, the narrative +<i>Idylls of the King</i>, is, as a whole, not great? +Is the <i>Ring and the Book</i>, however fine in parts, a +great whole, or comparable as a whole with <i>Andrea +del Sarto</i> or <i>Rabbi ben Ezra</i>? And is any one of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page189" id="page189"></a>189</span> +Browning’s dramas a great play? What these questions +suggest is that, while the difficulty about the +long poem affects in an extreme degree the age of +Wordsworth, it affects in some degree the time that +follows. Its beginnings, too, are traceable before +the nineteenth century. In fact it is connected +with essential characteristics of modern poetry and +art; and these characteristics are connected with +the nature of modern life, and the position of the +artist within that life. I wish to touch on this huge +subject before returning to the age of Wordsworth.</p> + +<p>Art, we may say, has become free, and, in a sense, +universal. The poet is no longer the minstrel of +king or nobles, nor even of a city or country. +Literature, as Goethe foretold, becomes increasingly +European, and more than European; and the poet, +however national, is a citizen of the Republic of +Letters. No class of subject, again, has any prerogative +claim on him. Whatever, in any time or +place, is human, whatever has been conceived as +divine, whatever belongs even to external nature, he +may choose, as it suits his bent or offers a promising +material. The world is all before him; and it is a +world which the increase of knowledge has made +immensely wide and rich. His art, further, has +asserted its independence. Its public exhibition +must conform to the law; but otherwise it neither +asks the approval nor submits to the control of any +outward authority; and it is the handmaid of nothing. +It claims a value for itself, as an expression of mind +co-ordinate with other expressions, theoretic and +practical; satisfying a need and serving a purpose +that none of them can fulfil; subject only, as they too +are subject, to the unity of human nature and human +good. Finally, in respect of the methods of his art +the poet claims and enjoys the same freedom. The +practice of the past, the ‘rules’ of the past (if they +existed or exist), are without authority for him. It +is improbable beforehand that a violent breach with +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page190" id="page190"></a>190</span> +them will lead him to a real advance, just as it is +improbable that such a breach with the morals or +the science of his day will do so. But there is no +certainty beforehand; and if he fails, he expects +blame not because he innovates, but because he has +failed by innovating.</p> + +<p>The freedom of modern art, and the universality +of its field, are great things, and the value of the +second is easily seen in the extraordinary variety of +subject-matter in the longer poems of the nineteenth +century. But in candid minds most recitals of our +modern advantages are followed by a melancholy +sense of our feebleness in using them. And so in +some degree it is here. The unrivalled opportunities +fail to produce unrivalled works. And we can see +that the deepest cause of this is not a want of native +genius or of acquired skill or even of conscientious +labour, but the fact that the opportunities themselves +bring danger and difficulty. The poet who knows +everything and may write about anything has, after +all, a hard task. Things must have been easier, it +seems to us, for an artist whose choice, if his aim +was high, was restricted to a cycle of ideas and +stories, mythological, legendary, or historical, or all +together, concerning beings divine, daemonic, +angelic, or heroic. His matter, as it existed in the +general imagination, was already highly poetical. +If not created by imagination, it was shaped or +coloured by it; a world not of bodiless thoughts and +emotions, but of scenes, figures, actions, and events. +For the most part he lived in unity with it; it +appealed to his own religious and moral feelings and +beliefs, sometimes to his patriotic feelings; and he +wrote, painted, or carved, for people who shared +with him both his material and his attitude towards +it. It belonged usually to the past, but he did not +view it over a great gulf of time with the eye of a +scientific historian. If he wished to robe it in the +vesture of the life around him, he was checked by +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page191" id="page191"></a>191</span> +no scruples as to truth; and the life around him can +seldom, we think, have appeared to him repulsively +prosaic. Broad statements like these require much +qualification; but, when it is supplied, they may still +describe periods in which perhaps most of the +greatest architecture, sculpture, painting, and poetry +has come into being.</p> + +<p>How different the position of the artist has now +become we see at a glance, and I confine myself to +some points which specially concern the difficulty of +the long poem. If a poem is to be anything like +great it must, in one sense, be concerned with the +present. Whatever its ‘subject’ may be, it must +express something living in the mind from which it +comes and the minds to which it goes. Wherever +its body is, its soul must be here and now. What +subject, then, in the measureless field of choice, is the +poet to select and fashion into a body? The outward +life around him, as he and his critics so often lament, +appears uniform, ugly, and rationally regulated, a +world of trousers, machinery and policemen. Law—the +rule, however imperfect, of the general reasonable +will—is a vast achievement and priceless +possession; but it is not favourable to striking +events or individual actions on the grand scale. +Beneath the surface, and breaking through it, there +is doubtless an infinity of poetic matter; but this is +inward, or it fails to appear in impressive forms; +and therefore it may suit the lyric or idyll, the +monologue or short story, the prose drama or novel, +but hardly the long poem or high tragedy. Even +war, for reasons not hard to find, is no longer the +subject that it was.</p> + +<p>But when the poet turns to a subject distant in +place or time or both, new troubles await him. If +he aims at complete truth to time and place the soul +of the present will hardly come into his work. Yet +he lives in an age of history and science, and these +hamper as well as help him. The difficulty is not +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page192" id="page192"></a>192</span> +that he is bound to historical or scientific truth, for +in principle, I venture to say, he is free. If he <i>can</i> +satisfy imagination by violating them he is justified. +It is no function of his to attain or propagate them; +and a critic who objected, say, to the First Part of +<i>Faust</i> on the ground that it puts a modern spirit +into the legend, would rightly be laughed at. It is +its triumph to do so and yet to succeed. But then +success is exceedingly difficult. For the poet lives +in a time when the violation of truth is <i>prima facie</i> +felt to be a fault, something that does require justification +by the result. Further, he has himself to +start from a clear consciousness of difference between +the present and the past, the spirit and the story, +and has to produce on this basis a harmony of spirit +and story. And again, living in an age of analytical +thought, he is likely—all the more likely, if he has +much greatness of mind—to be keenly interested in +ideas; and so he is exposed to the temptation of +using as the spirit of the old story some highly +reflective idea—an idea not only historically alien to +his material, but perhaps not very poetical, or again +not very deep, because it belongs to him rather as +philosopher than poet, while his genius is that of a +poet.</p> + +<p>The influence of some of these difficulties might +readily be shown in the Second Part of <i>Faust</i> or in +<i>Prometheus Unbound</i>, especially where we perceive +in a figure or action some symbolical meaning, but +find this meaning deficient in interest or poetic truth, +or are vexed by the doubt how far it ought to be +pursued.<a name="fa6f" id="fa6f" href="#ft6f"><span class="sp">6</span></a> But the matter is more easily illustrated +by the partial failure of the <i>Idylls of the King</i>. We +have no right to condemn beforehand an attempt +to modernise the Arthurian legends. Tennyson’s +treatment of them, even his outrage on the story +of Tristram, might conceivably have been justified +by the result. And, indeed, in the <i>Holy Grail</i> and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page193" id="page193"></a>193</span> +the <i>Passing of Arthur</i> his treatment, to my mind, +was more than justified. But, in spite of countless +beauties, the total result of the <i>Idylls</i> was disappointing, +not merely from the defects of this or that poem, +but because the old unity of spirit and story was +broken up, and the new was neither equal to the old +nor complete in itself. For the main semi-allegorical +idea, having already the disadvantage of not being +poetic in its origin, was, as a reflective idea, by no +means profound, and it led to such inconsistency in +the very centre of the story as the imagination +refuses to accept. Tennyson’s Lancelot might have +wronged the Arthur who is merely a blameless king +and represents Conscience; but Tennyson’s Lancelot +would much rather have killed himself than be +systematically treacherous to the friend and lover-husband +who appears in <i>Guinevere</i>.<a name="fa7f" id="fa7f" href="#ft7f"><span class="sp">7</span></a></p> + +<p>These difficulties belong in some measure to the +whole modern time—the whole time that begins +with the Renaissance; but they become so much +clearer and so much more serious with the advance +of knowledge and criticism, that in speaking of them +I have been referring specially to the last century. +There are other difficulties not so closely connected +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page194" id="page194"></a>194</span> +with that advance, and I will venture some very +tentative remarks on one of these, which also has +increased with time. It has to do with the kind of +life commonly lived by our poets. Is there not some +significance in the fact that the most famous of our +narrative poets were all three, in their various ways +and degrees, public men, or in contact with great +affairs; and that poets in earlier times no less must +usually have seen something at first hand of adventure, +political struggles, or war; whereas poets now, +for the most part, live wholly private lives, and, like +the majority of their readers, are acquainted only +by report with anything of the kind? If Chaucer +had never been at Court, or seen service in the +French war, or gone on embassies abroad; if +Spenser had not known Sidney and Raleigh and +been secretary to Lord Grey in Ireland; if Milton +had spent his whole life at Horton; would it have +made no difference to their poetry? Again, if we turn +to the drama and ask why the numerous tragedies +of the nineteenth century poets so rarely satisfy, +what is the answer? There are many reasons, and +among them the poet’s ignorance of the stage will +doubtless count for much; but must we not also +consider that he scarcely ever saw anything resembling +the things he tried to portray? When we study +the history of the time in which the Elizabethan +dramas were composed, when we examine the portraits +of the famous men, or read such a book as the +autobiography of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, we +realise that the violent actions and passions which +the dramatist depicted were like the things he saw. +Whatever Shakespeare’s own disposition was, he +lived among these men, jested with the fellow-actor +who had borne arms abroad and killed his man in a +duel at home, conversed with nobles whose heads +perhaps were no great way from the block. But the +poet who strolls about the lanes or plods the London +streets with an umbrella for a sword, and who has +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page195" id="page195"></a>195</span> +probably never seen a violent deed in his life, or +for a moment really longed to kill so much as a +critic, how is he to paint the vengeance of Hamlet +or the frenzy of Macbeth, and not merely to thrill +you with the emotions of his actors but to make +them <i>do</i> things that take your imagination by the +throat?</p> + +<p class="pt2 center">3.</p> + +<p>Assuming, now, that (even if this last idea is +doubtful or unimportant) there is some truth in the +suggestion that the difficulties of the long poem +arise largely from the conditions described, and +especially from the nature of the intellectual atmosphere +which the modern poet breathes, let us return +to Wordsworth’s age in particular. In that age +these difficulties were aggravated in a quite exceptional +way by special causes, causes responsible also +in part for the unusual originality and intensity of +the poetry. In it we find conditions removed to the +extremest distance from those of the poet who wrote, +in the midst of a generally accepted social order, +for an audience with which he shared traditional +ideas and beliefs and a more or less traditional +imaginative material. It was, in a word, a revolutionary +age, in the electric atmosphere of which the +most potent intellectual influences were those of +Rousseau and (for the English poets) of Godwin. +Milton’s time was not in the same sense revolutionary, +much less Shakespeare’s. The forces of the +great movement of mind in Shakespeare’s day <i>we</i> +may formulate as ‘ideas,’ but they were not the +abstractly conceived ideas of Wordsworth’s day. +Such theoretical ideas were potent in Milton’s time, +but they were not ideas that made a total breach +with the past, rejecting as worthless, or worse, the +institutions, beliefs, and modes of life in which +human nature had endeavoured to realise itself, and +drawing airy pictures of a different human nature +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page196" id="page196"></a>196</span> +on a new earth. Nor was the poetic mind of those +ages enraptured or dejected by the haunting many-featured +contrast of real and ideal. But the poetic +mind in Wordsworth’s age breathed this atmosphere +of revolution, though it was not always sensitive to +the influence. Nor is it a question of the acceptance +or rejection of the ‘ideas of the Revolution.’ That +influence is clearly traceable in all the greater writers +except Scott and Jane Austen. It is equally obvious +in Wordsworth, who hungered for realities, recovered +from his theoretic malady, sought for good in life’s +familiar face, yet remained a preacher; in Byron, +who was too shrewd, sceptical, and selfish to contract +that particular malady, but who suffered from +the sickness from which Goethe freed himself by +writing <i>Werther</i>,<a name="fa8f" id="fa8f" href="#ft8f"><span class="sp">8</span></a> and who punctuates his story in +<i>Don Juan</i> with bursts of laughter and tears; and +in Shelley, whose ‘rapid spirit’ was quickened, and +then clogged, by the abstractions of revolutionary +theory.</p> + +<p>But doubtless Shelley is, in a sense, the typical +example of this influence and of its effects. From +the world of his imagination the shapes of the old +world had disappeared, and their place was taken +by a stream of radiant vapours, incessantly forming, +shifting, and dissolving in the ‘clear golden +dawn,’ and hymning with the voices of seraphs, to +the music of the stars and the ‘singing rain,’ the +sublime ridiculous formulas of Godwin. In his +heart were emotions that responded to the vision,—an +aspiration or ecstasy, a dejection or despair, like +those of spirits rapt into Paradise or mourning over +its ruin. And he wrote, not, like Shakespeare or +Pope, for Londoners sitting in a theatre or a coffee-house, +intelligences vivid enough but definitely +embodied in a definite society; he wrote, or rather +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page197" id="page197"></a>197</span> +he sang, to his own soul, to other spirit-sparks of +the fire of Liberty scattered over the dark earth, +to spirits in the air, to the boundless spirit of +Nature or Freedom or Love, his one place of rest +and the one source of his vision, ecstasy, and sorrow. +He sang <i>to</i> this, and he sang <i>of</i> it, and of the +emotions it inspired, and of its world-wide contest +with such shapes of darkness as Faith and Custom. +And he made immortal music; now in melodies +as exquisite and varied as the songs of Schubert, +and now in symphonies where the crudest of +Philosophies of History melted into golden harmony. +But the songs were more perfect than the +symphonies; and they could hardly fail to be so. +For a single thought and mood, expressive of one +aspect of things, suffices, with its melody, for a +lyric, but not for a long poem. That requires +a substance which implicitly contains a whole +‘criticism’ or interpretation of life. And although +there was something always working in Shelley’s +mind, and issuing in those radiant vapours, that +was far deeper and truer than his philosophic +creed, its expression and even its development +were constantly checked or distorted by the hard +and narrow framework of that creed. And it was +one which in effect condemned nine-tenths of the +human nature that has formed the material of the +world’s great poems.<a name="fa9f" id="fa9f" href="#ft9f"><span class="sp">9</span></a></p> + +<p>The second and third quarters of the century +were not in the same degree as the first a +revolutionary time, and we feel this change in the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page198" id="page198"></a>198</span> +poetry. The fever-heat is gone, the rapture and +the dejection moderate, the culture is wider, the +thought more staid and considerate, the fascination +of abstractions less potent, and the formative or +plastic impulse, if not stronger, less impeded. Late +in the period, with Morris, the born teller of +tales re-appears. If, as we saw, the lyrical spirit +continues to prevail, no one would deny to Browning +the full and robust sympathy of the dramatist +with all the variety of character and passion. Yet +these changes and others are far from obliterating +those features of the earlier generation on which +we have dwelt. To describe the atmosphere of +‘criticism’ as that of a common faith or view of +the world would be laughable. If not revolutionary, +it was agitated, restless, and distressed by the conflict +of theoretic ideas. To Arnold’s mind it was +indeed a most unhappy time for poetry, though the +poetic impulse remained as yet, and even later, +powerful. The past was dead, but he could share +neither the soaring hope nor the passionate melancholy +of the opening century. He was</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Wandering between two worlds, one dead,</p> + <p class="i1">The other powerless to be born,</p> +<p>With nowhere yet to rest his head.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">And the two greatest poets, as well as he, still +offer not only, as poets always must, an interpretation, +but a definite theory of life, and, more +insistently than ever before, of death. Confidence +in the detail, at least, of such theories has diminished, +and with the rapid advance of the critical +sciences the poets may prophesy less than their +predecessors; but they probe, and weigh, and deliberate +more. And the strength of the ‘inward’ +tendency, obvious in Tennyson and Arnold, may be +clearly seen even in Browning, and not alone in +such works as <i>Christmas Eve and Easter Day</i> or +<i>La Saisiaz</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page199" id="page199"></a>199</span></p> + +<p>Objective and dramatic as Browning is called +and by comparison is, he is surely most at home, +and succeeds most completely, in lyrics, and in +monologues divested of action and merely suggestive +of a story or suggested by one. He too must +begin, in <i>Pauline</i>, with the picture of a youthful +poet’s soul. Dramatic the drama of <i>Paracelsus</i> +neither is nor tries to be: it consists of scenes in +the history of souls. Of the narrative <i>Sordello</i> +its author wrote: ‘The historical decoration was +purposely of no more importance than a background +requires; and my stress lay on the incidents +in the development of a soul: little else is +worth study.’ Even if that is so, great narrative +poems are not written thus. And what Browning +says here applies more or less fully to most of his +works. In the end, if we set aside the short lyrics, +his best poems are all ‘studies’ of souls. ‘Well,’ +it may be answered, ‘so are Shakespeare’s tragedies +and tragi-comedies.’ But the difference is great. +Shakespeare, doubtless, is little concerned with the +accuracy of the historical background,—much less +concerned than Browning. But his subject is not +a soul, nor even souls: it is the actions of souls, +or souls coming into action. It is more. It is that +clash of souls which exhibits not them alone, but +a whole of spiritual forces, appearing in them, but +spreading beyond them into the visible society to +which they essentially belong, and into invisible +regions which enclose it. The thing shown, therefore, +is huge, multiform, ponderous, yet quivering +with an inward agitation which explodes into violent +bodily expression and speaks to the <i>eye</i> of imagination. +What specially interests Browning is not +this. It is the soul moving in itself, often in its +most secret windings and recesses; before action or +after it, where there is action at all; and this soul +not essentially as in its society (that is ‘background’ +or ‘decoration’), but alone, or in relation +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page200" id="page200"></a>200</span> +to another soul, or to God. He exhibits it best, +therefore, in monologue, musing, explaining, debating, +pleading, overflowing into the expression of +feeling or passion, but not acting. The ‘men and +women’ that haunt the reader’s imagination are not +so much men of action as lovers, artists, men of +religion. And when they act (as for example in +<i>The Ring and the Book</i>, or the dramas) what rivets +attention, and is first recalled to memory by their +names, is not the action, but its reflection in the +soul of the doer or spectator. Such, at least, is my +experience; and in the end a critic can only offer +to others his considered experience. But with +Homer and Shakespeare and Milton it is otherwise. +Even with Dante it is otherwise. I see not +souls alone, but souls in visible attitudes, in outward +movement, often in action. I see Paolo and +Francesca drifting on the wind: I see them sitting +and reading: I see them kiss: I <i>see</i> Dante’s pity:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>E caddi come corpo morto cade.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="pt2 center">4.</p> + +<p>I spoke of Tennyson and Browning in order to +point out that, although in their day the intellectual +atmosphere was no longer ‘revolutionary,’ it remained +an atmosphere of highly reflective ideas +representing no common ‘faith’ or way of envisaging +the world, and that the inward tendency still +asserts itself in their poetry. We cannot pursue the +history further, but it does not appear that in the +last forty years culture has advanced much, or at all, +towards such a faith or way, or shows the working +of new semi-conscious creative ideas beneath the +surface of warring theories and opinions. Only the +younger among us can hope to see what Arnold +descried in the distance,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>One mighty wave of thought and joy</p> + <p class="i1">Lifting mankind again.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page201" id="page201"></a>201</span></p> + +<p class="noind">And even when, for them or their descendants, +that hope is realised, and with it the hope of a +new great poetry, the atmosphere must assuredly +still be one of ‘criticism,’ and Arnold’s insistence +on the necessity of the best criticism will still be as +urgently required. It must indeed be more and +more needed as the power of half-educated journalism +grows. How poetry then will overcome the +obstacles which, therefore, must in some measure +still beset it, is a question for it, a question answerable +not by the reflections of critics, but by the +creative deeds of poets themselves. Accordingly, +while one may safely prophesy that their long +poems will differ from those of any past age, I have +no idea of predicting the nature of this difference, +and will refer in conclusion only to certain views +which seem to me delusive.</p> + +<p>It must surely be vain for the poet to seek an +escape from modern difficulties by any attempt to +withdraw himself from the atmosphere of free and +scientific culture, to maintain by force simplicity +of view and concreteness of imagination, to live in +a past century or a sanctuary of esoteric art, whether +secular or religious. Whatever of value such an +attempt may yield—and that it may yield much I +do not deny—it will never yield poems at once long +and great.</p> + +<p>Such poems, we may allow ourselves to hope, will +sometimes deal with much of the common and +painful and ugly stuff of life, and be in that sense +more ‘democratic’ or universal than any poetry of +the past. But it is vain to imagine that this can +be done by a refusal to ‘interpret’ and an endeavour +to photograph. Even in the most thorough-going +prose ‘realism’ there is selection; and, to go no +further, selection itself is interpretation. And, as +for poetry, the mirror which the least theoretical +of great poets holds up to nature is his soul. And +that, whether he likes it or not, is an activity +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page202" id="page202"></a>202</span> +which divides, and sifts, and recombines into a +unity of its own, and by a method of its own, the +crude material which experience thrusts upon it. +This must be so; the only question is of the choice +of matter and the method of treatment. Nor can +the end to be achieved be anything but beauty, +though the meaning of that word may be extended +and deepened. And beauty in its essence is something +that gives satisfaction, however much of pain, +repulsion, or horror that satisfaction may contain and +overcome.</p> + +<p>‘But, even so,’ it may be said, ‘why should the +poet trouble himself about figures, events, and +actions? That inward tendency in which you see +danger and difficulty is, on the contrary, simply +and solely what on one side you admit it to be, the +sign of our advance. What we really need is to +make our long poems <i>entirely</i> interior. We only +want to know how Dante felt; we do not <i>wish</i> to +see his pity felling him to the ground; and much +less do we wish to hear Othello say “and smote him +thus,” or even to imagine the blow. We are not +children or savages.’ We do not want, I agree, +attempts to repeat the Elizabethan drama. But +those who speak thus forget, perhaps, in how +many kinds of poem this inward tendency can +display its power without any injury or drawback. +They fail to ask themselves, perhaps, whether a +<i>long</i> poem so entirely ‘interior’ can possibly have +the clearness, variety, and solidity of effect that +the best long poems have possessed; whether it +can produce the same impression of a massive, +building, organising, ‘architectonic’ power of imagination; +and whether all this and much else is of +little value. They can hardly have realised, one +must suspect, how much of life they wish to leave +unrepresented. They fail to consider, too, that +perhaps the business of art is not to ignore, but at +once to satisfy and to purify, the primitive instincts +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page203" id="page203"></a>203</span> +from which it arises; and that, in the case of poetic +art, the love of a story, and of exceptional figures, +scenes, events, and actions, is one of those instincts, +and one that in the immense majority of men shows +no sign of decay. And finally, if they suppose that +the desire to see or imagine action, in particular, is +a symptom of mere sensationalism or a relic of +semi-barbarism, I am sure they are woefully mistaken. +There is more virtue than their philosophy +dreams of in deeds, in ‘the motion of a muscle +this way or that.’ Doubtless it is the soul that +matters; but the soul that remains interior is not +the whole soul. If I suppose that mere self-scrutiny +can show me that, I deceive myself; and my deeds, +good and evil, will undeceive me.</p> + +<p>A last delusion remains. ‘There is,’ we may be +told, ‘a simple, final, and comfortable answer to all +these doubts and fears. The long poem is not +merely difficult, it is impossible. It is dead, and +should be publicly buried, and there is not the least +occasion to mourn it. It has become impossible +not because we cannot write it, but because we see +that we ought not. And, in truth, it never was +written. The thing called a long poem was really, +as any long poem must be, a number of short ones, +linked together by passages of prose. And these +passages <i>could</i> be nothing except prose; for poetry +is the language of a state of crisis, and a crisis is +brief. The long poem is an offence to art.’ I +believe I have stated this theory fairly. It was, +unless I mistake, the invention of Poe, and it is +about as true as I conceive his story of the composition +of <i>The Raven</i> to be. It became a gospel with +some representatives of the Symbolist movement in +France; and in fact it would condemn not only the +long poem, but the middle-sized one, and indeed all +sizes but the smallest. To reject this theory is to +imply no want of gratitude for the lyrics of some of +its adherents; but the theory itself seems strangely +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page204" id="page204"></a>204</span> +thoughtless. Naturally, in any poem not quite +short, there must be many variations and grades of +poetic intensity; but to represent the differences of +these numerous grades as a simple antithesis +between pure poetry and mere prose is like saying +that, because the eyes are the most expressive part +of the face, the rest of the face expresses nothing. +To hold, again, that this variation of intensity is a +defect is like holding that a face would be more +beautiful if it were all eyes, a picture better if the +illumination were equally intense all over it, a +symphony better if it consisted of one movement, +and if that were all crisis. And to speak as if a +small poem could do all that a long one does, and +do it much more completely, is to speak as though a +humming-bird could have the same kind of beauty +as an eagle, the rainbow in a fountain produce +the same effect as the rainbow in the sky, or a +moorland stream thunder like Niagara. A long +poem, as we have seen, requires imaginative powers +superfluous in a short one; and it would be easy to +show that it admits of strictly poetic effects of the +highest value which the mere brevity of a short one +excludes. That the long poem is doomed is a +possible, however groundless, belief; but it is futile +to deny that, if it dies, something of inestimable +worth will perish.<a name="fa10f" id="fa10f" href="#ft10f"><span class="sp">10</span></a></p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1f" id="ft1f" href="#fa1f"><span class="fn">1</span></a> The material of these pages belongs in part to the course mentioned +on p. 99, and in part to a lecture given in November, 1905. +They have in consequence defects which I have not found it possible +to remove; and they also open questions too large and difficult for a +single lecture. This is one reason why I have not referred to the prevalence +of the novel in the nineteenth century, a prevalence which +doubtless influenced both the character and the popularity of the long +poems. I hope the reader will not gain from the lecture the false +impression that the writer’s admiration for those poems is lukewarm, +or that he has any tendency to reaction against the Romantic Revival +of Wordsworth’s time.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2f" id="ft2f" href="#fa2f"><span class="fn">2</span></a> This, and not the permanent value of the scientific product, +is the point.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3f" id="ft3f" href="#fa3f"><span class="fn">3</span></a> <i>Table-talk</i>, Feb. 16, 1833.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4f" id="ft4f" href="#fa4f"><span class="fn">4</span></a> The narrative poems that satisfy most, because in their way they +come nearest to perfection, will be found, I believe, to show this +balance. Such, for instance, are <i>The Eve of St. Agnes</i>, <i>Lamia</i>, +<i>Michael</i>, <i>The Vision of Judgment</i>, some of Crabbe’s tales. It does +not follow, of course, that such poems must contain the greatest +poetry. Crabbe, for example, was probably the best artist of the +day in narrative; but he does not represent the full ideal spirit of +the time.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5f" id="ft5f" href="#fa5f"><span class="fn">5</span></a> See p. 110.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6f" id="ft6f" href="#fa6f"><span class="fn">6</span></a> Demogorgon is an instance of such a figure.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7f" id="ft7f" href="#fa7f"><span class="fn">7</span></a> This incongruity is not the only cause of the discomfort with which +many lovers of Tennyson read parts of Arthur’s speech in that Idyll; +but it is the main cause, and, unlike other defects, it lies in the plan of +the story. It may be brought out further thus. So far as Arthur is +merely the blameless king and representative of Conscience, the +attitude of a judge which he assumes in the speech is appropriate, +and, again, Lancelot’s treachery to him is intelligible and, however +wrong, forgivable. But then this Arthur or Conscience could never +be a satisfactory husband, and ought not to astound or shock us by +uttering his recollections of past caresses. If, on the other hand, these +utterances are appropriate, and if all along Lancelot and Guinevere +have had no reason to regard Arthur as cold and wholly absorbed in +his public duties, Lancelot has behaved not merely wrongly but +abominably, and as the Lancelot of the <i>Idylls</i> could not have behaved. +The truth is that Tennyson’s design requires Arthur to be at once +perfectly ideal and completely human. And this is not imaginable.</p> + +<p>Having written this criticism, I cannot refrain from adding that I +think the depreciation of Tennyson’s genius now somewhat prevalent a +mistake. I admire and love his poetry with all my heart, and regard +him as considerably our greatest poet since the time of Wordsworth.</p> + +<p><a name="ft8f" id="ft8f" href="#fa8f"><span class="fn">8</span></a> It is never to be forgotten, in comparing Goethe with the English +poets, that he was twenty years older than Wordsworth and Coleridge, +and forty years older than Byron and Shelley.</p> + +<p><a name="ft9f" id="ft9f" href="#fa9f"><span class="fn">9</span></a> The reader will remember that he must take these paragraphs as +an exaggerated presentment of a single, though essential, aspect of +the poetry of the time, and of Shelley’s poetry in particular, and +must supply the corrections and additions for himself. But I may +beg him to observe that Godwin’s formulas are called sublime as +well as ridiculous. <i>Political Justice</i> would never have fascinated +such young men as Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, unless a +great truth had been falsified in it; and the inspiration of this truth +can be felt all through the preposterous logical structure reared on +its misapprehension.</p> + +<p><a name="ft10f" id="ft10f" href="#fa10f"><span class="fn">10</span></a> The theory criticised in this paragraph arises, I think, from a +misapplication of the truth that the content of a genuine poem is +fully expressible only in the words of that poem. It is seen that +this is so in a lyric, and then it is assumed that it is <i>not</i> so in a +narrative or drama. But the assumption is false. At first sight we +may seem able to give a more adequate account of the long poem +than of the short one; but in reality you can no more convey the +whole poetic content of the <i>Divine Comedy</i> in a form not its own than +you can the content of a song.</p> + +<p>The theory is connected in some minds with the view that ‘music +is the true type or measure of perfected art.’ That view again rests +on the idea that ‘it is the art of music which most completely realises +[the] artistic ideal, [the] perfect identification of form and matter,’ and +that accordingly ‘the arts may be represented as continually struggling +after the law or principle of music, to a condition which music alone +completely realises’ (Pater, <i>The Renaissance</i>, pp. 144, 145). I have by +implication expressed dissent from this idea (p. 25); but, even if its +truth is granted, what follows is that poetry should endeavour <i>in its +own way</i> to achieve that perfect identification; but it does not in the +least follow that it should endeavour to do so by reducing itself as +nearly as possible to mere sound. Nor did Pater affirm this, or (so +far as I see) imply it. But others have.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:150px; height:35px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img001.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page205" id="page205"></a>205<br />206<br />207</span></p> + +<p class="center chap">THE LETTERS OF KEATS</p> +<p> </p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page208" id="page208"></a>208<br />209</span></p> + +<p class="center pt2 chap2">THE LETTERS OF KEATS</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1 fo">There</span> is no lack of good criticism on the poetry +of Keats. It has been discussed by the leading +poets of three generations or semi-generations; by +Matthew Arnold, by Mr. Swinburne, and, much +more fully, by Mr. Bridges. Lord Houghton’s +<i>Life and Letters</i> and Mr. Colvin’s biography +both contain excellent criticisms or studies of the +poems. And (to go no further) they have lately +been edited by Mr. de Sélincourt in a volume invaluable +to students of Keats, and reflecting honour +not only on its author but on the Oxford School of +English, to the strength of which he has contributed +so much. My principal object is to consider Keats’s +attitude to poetry and his views about it, in connection +with the ideas set forth in previous lectures on +Shelley’s views and on the age of Wordsworth. But +I wish to preface my remarks on this subject, and to +prepare for them, by an urgent appeal, addressed to +any reader of the poems who may need it, to study +the letters of Keats. If I may judge from my experience, +such readers are still far too numerous; +and I am sure that no one already familiar with the +letters will be sorry to listen to quotations from them.<a name="fa1g" id="fa1g" href="#ft1g"><span class="sp">1</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page210" id="page210"></a>210</span></p> + +<p>The best of Keats’s poems, of course, can be fully +appreciated without extraneous help; but the letters +throw light on all, and they are almost necessary +to the understanding of <i>Endymion</i> and of some +of the earlier or contemporaneous pieces. They +clearly reveal those changes in his mind and temper +which appear in his poetry. They dispose for ever +of the fictions once current of a puny Keats who +was ‘snuffed out by an article,’ a sensual Keats +who found his ideal in claret and ‘slippery blisses,’ +and a mere artist Keats who cared nothing for his +country and his fellow-creatures. Written in his +last four years by a man who died at twenty-five, +they contain abundant evidence of his immaturity +and his faults, but they disclose a nature and character +which command on the whole not less respect +than affection, and they show not a little of that +general intellectual power which rarely fails to +accompany poetic genius.</p> + +<p>Of Keats’s character, as the letters manifest it, +Arnold has written. While speaking plainly and +decidedly of the weakness visible in those to Miss +Brawne, Arnold brought together the evidence which +proves that Keats ‘had flint and iron in him,’ ‘had +virtue in the true and large sense of the word.’ +And he selected passages, too, which illustrate the +‘admirable wisdom and temper’ and the ‘strength +and clearness of judgment’ shown by Keats, alike +in matters of friendship and in his criticisms of his +own productions, of the public, and of the literary +circles,—the ‘jabberers about pictures and books,’ as +Keats in a bitter mood once called them. We may +notice, in addition, two characteristics. In spite of +occasional despondency, and of feelings of awe at +the magnitude of his ambition, Keats, it is tolerably +plain from these letters, had a clear and habitual +consciousness of his genius. He never dreamed of +being a minor poet. He knew that he was a poet; +sometimes he hoped to be a great one. I remember +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page211" id="page211"></a>211</span> +no sign that he felt himself the inferior of any living +poet except Wordsworth. How he thought of +Byron, whom in boyhood he had admired, is obvious. +When Shelley wrote, hinting a criticism, but +referring to himself as excelled by Keats in genius, +he returned the criticism without the compliment. +His few references to Coleridge are critical, and his +amusing description of Coleridge’s talk is not more +reverential than Carlyle’s. Something, indeed, of +the native pugnacity which his friends ascribe to +him seems to show itself in his allusions to contemporaries, +including even Wordsworth. Yet with +all this, and with all his pride and his desire of fame, +no letters extant breathe a more simple and natural +modesty than these; and from end to end they +exhibit hardly a trace, if any trace, either of the +irritable vanity attributed to poets or of the sublime +egotism of Milton and Wordsworth. He was of +Shakespeare’s tribe.</p> + +<p>The other trait that I wish to refer to appears +in a particular series of letters—sometimes mere +notes—scattered through the collection. They are +addressed to Keats’s school-girl sister Fanny, who +was eight years younger than he, and who died in +the same year as Browning.<a name="fa2g" id="fa2g" href="#ft2g"><span class="sp">2</span></a> Keats, as we see +him in 1817 and 1818, in the first half of Mr. +Colvin’s collection, was absorbed by an enthusiasm +and ambition which his sister was too young to +understand. During his last two years he was, +besides, passionately and miserably in love, and, +latterly, ill and threatened with death. His soul +was full of bitterness. He shrank into himself, +avoided society, and rarely sought even intimate +friends. Yet, until he left England, he never ceased +to visit his sister when he could; and, when he +could not, he continued to write letters to her, full of +amusing nonsense, full of brotherly care for her, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page212" id="page212"></a>212</span> +and of excellent advice offered as by an equal who +happened to be her senior; letters quite free from +thoughts of himself, and from the forced gaiety and +the resentment against fate which in parts of his +later correspondence with others betray his suffering. +These letters to his sister are, in one sense, +the least remarkable in the collection, yet it would +lose much by their omission. They tell us next to +nothing of his genius, but as we come upon them +the light in our picture of him, if it had grown for a +moment hard or troubled, becomes once more soft +and bright.</p> + +<p>To turn (with apologies for the distinction) from +the character to the mind of Keats, if the reader has +formed a notion of him as a youth with a genius for +poetry and an exclusive interest in poetry, but otherwise +not intellectually remarkable, this error will +soon be dispelled by the letters. With Keats, +no doubt, poetry and the hope of success in it were +passions more glowing than we have reason to +attribute to his contemporaries at the same time of +life.<a name="fa3g" id="fa3g" href="#ft3g"><span class="sp">3</span></a> The letters remind us also that, compared +with them, he was at a disadvantage in intellectual +training and acquisitions, like the young Shakespeare +among the University wits. They show, too—the +earlier far more than the later—in certain +literary mannerisms the unwholesome influence +of Leigh Hunt and his circle. But everywhere we +feel in them the presence of an intellectual nature, +not merely sensitive and delicate, but open, daring, +rich, and strong; exceedingly poetic and romantic, +yet observant, acute, humorous, and sensible; intense +without narrowness, and quite as various +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page213" id="page213"></a>213</span> +both in its interests and its capacities as the mind +of Wordsworth or of Shelley. Fundamentally, and +in spite of abundant high spirits and a love of nonsense, +the mind of Keats was very serious and +thoughtful. It was original, and not more imitative +than an original mind should be in youth; an intelligence +which now startles by flashes of sudden +beauty, and now is seen struggling with new and +deep thoughts, which labour into shape, with scanty +aid from theories, out of personal experience. +In quality—and I speak of nothing else—the mind +of Shakespeare at three and twenty may not have +been very different.</p> + +<p>Short extracts can give but little idea of all this; +but they may at least illustrate the variety of +Keats’s mind, and the passages I am about to read +have been chosen mainly with this intention, and +not because the majority are among the most striking +that might be found. The earliest belong to +the September of 1817, and I take them partly for +their local interest. Keats spent most of that +month here in Oxford, staying in the Magdalen +Hall of those days with his friend Bailey, a man +whose gentle and disinterested character he warmly +admired. ‘We lead,’ he writes to his sister, ‘very +industrious lives—he in general studies, and I in +proceeding at a pretty good pace with a Poem +which I hope you will see early in the next year.’ +It was <i>Endymion</i>: he wrote, it seems, the whole of +the Third Book in Bailey’s rooms. Unluckily the +hero in that Book is wandering at the bottom of the +sea; but even in those regions, as Keats imagined +them, a diligent student may perhaps find some +traces of Oxford. In the letters we hear of towers +and quadrangles, cloisters and groves; of the deer +in Magdalen Park; and how</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i2">The mouldering arch,</p> + <p class="i2">Shaded o’er by a larch,</p> +<p>Lives next door to Wilson the hosier</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page214" id="page214"></a>214</span></p> + +<p class="noind">(that should be discoverable). But we hear most of +the clear streams—‘more clear streams than ever I +saw together.’ ‘I take a walk by the side of one of +them every evening.’ ‘For these last five or six +days,’ he writes to Reynolds, ‘we have had regularly +a boat on the Isis, and explored all the streams +about, which are more in number than your eyelashes. +We sometimes skim into a bed of rushes, +and there become naturalised river-folks. There is +one particularly nice nest, which we have christened +“Reynolds’s Cove,” in which we have read Wordsworth +and talked as may be.’ Of those talks over +Wordsworth with the grave religious Bailey came +perhaps the thoughts expressed later in the best-known +of all the letters (it is too well known to +quote), thoughts which take their origin from the +<i>Lines written near Tintern Abbey</i>.<a name="fa4g" id="fa4g" href="#ft4g"><span class="sp">4</span></a></p> + +<p>About a year after this, Keats went with his +friend Brown on a walking-tour to the Highlands; +and I will quote two passages from the letters +written during this tour, for the sake of the contrast +they exhibit between the two strains in +Keats’s mind. The first is the later. The letter +is dated ‘Cairn-something July 17th’:</p> + +<div class="condensed"> +<p>Steam-boats on Loch Lomond, and Barouches on its sides, +take a little from the pleasure of such romantic chaps as Brown +and I. The banks of the Clyde are extremely beautiful—the +north end of Loch Lomond grand in excess—the entrance at the +lower end to the narrow part is precious good—the evening was +beautiful—nothing could surpass our fortune in the weather. +Yet was I worldly enough to wish for a fleet of chivalry Barges +with trumpets and banners, just to die away before me into that +blue place among the mountains.<a name="fa5g" id="fa5g" href="#ft5g"><span class="sp">5</span></a></p> +</div> + +<p class="noind">Keats all over! Yes; but so is this, which was +written a fortnight earlier from Carlisle:</p> + +<div class="condensed"> +<p>After Skiddaw, we walked to Ireby, the oldest market town in +Cumberland, where we were greatly amused by a country dancing-school +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page215" id="page215"></a>215</span> +holden at the Tun. It was indeed ‘no new cotillion fresh +from France.’ No, they kickit and jumpit with mettle extraordinary, +and whiskit, and friskit, and toed it and go’d it, and +twirl’d it and whirl’d it, and stamped it, and sweated it, tattooing +the floor like mad. The difference between our country dances +and these Scottish figures is about the same as leisurely stirring a +cup o’ tea and beating up a batter-pudding. I was extremely +gratified to think that, if I had pleasures they knew nothing of, +they had also some into which I could not possibly enter. I +hope I shall not return without having got the Highland fling. +There was as fine a row of boys and girls as you ever saw; some +beautiful faces, and one exquisite mouth. I never felt so near +the glory of Patriotism, the glory of making by any means a +country happier. This is what I like better than scenery.<a name="fa6g" id="fa6g" href="#ft6g"><span class="sp">6</span></a></p> +</div> + +<p>There is little enough here of the young poet who +believes himself to care for nothing but ‘Art’; and +as little of the theoretic cosmopolitanism of some of +Keats’s friends.</p> + +<p>Some three months later we find Keats writing +from London to his brother and his sister-in-law in +America; and he tells them of a young lady from +India whom he has just met:</p> + +<div class="condensed"> +<p>She is not a Cleopatra, but she is at least a Charmian. She +has a rich Eastern look. When she comes into a room she +makes an impression the same as the beauty of a leopardess.... +You will by this time think I am in love with her; so before I go +any further I will tell you I am not—she kept me awake one +night as a tune of Mozart’s might do. I speak of the thing as a +pastime and an amusement, than which I can feel none deeper +than a conversation with an imperial woman, the very ‘yes’ and +‘no’ of whose lips is to me a banquet.... I believe, though, +she has faults—the same as Charmian and Cleopatra might have +had. Yet she is a fine thing, speaking in a worldly way: for there +are two distinct tempers of mind in which we judge of things,—the +worldly, theatrical and pantomimical; and the unearthly, +spiritual and ethereal. In the former, Buonaparte, Lord Byron, +and this Charmian, hold the first place in our minds; in the +latter, John Howard, Bishop Hooker rocking his child’s cradle, +and you, my dear sister, are the conquering feelings.<a name="fa7g" id="fa7g" href="#ft7g"><span class="sp">7</span></a></p> +</div> + +<p>I do not read this passage merely for its +biographical interest, but a word may be ventured +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page216" id="page216"></a>216</span> +on that. The lady was not Miss Brawne; but less +than a month later, on meeting Miss Brawne, he +immediately became her slave. When we observe +the fact, and consider how very unlike the words I +have quoted are to anything in Keats’s previous +letters, we can hardly help suspecting that he was +at this time in a peculiar condition and ripe for his +fate. Then we remember that he had lately returned +from his Scotch tour, which was broken +off because the Inverness doctor used the most +menacing language about the state of his throat; +and further, that he was now, in the late autumn, +nursing his brother Tom, who died of consumption +before the year was out. And an idea suggests +itself which, if exceedingly prosaic, has yet some +comfort in it. How often have readers of Keats’s +life cried out that, if only he had never met Miss +Brawne, he might have lived and prospered! Does +it not seem at least as probable that, if Miss Brawne +had never existed, what happened would still have +happened, and even that the fever of passion which +helped to destroy him was itself a token of incipient +disease?</p> + +<p>I turn the leaf and come, in the same letter, to a +passage on politics. The friends of Keats were, for +the most part, advanced liberals. His own sympathies +went that way. A number of lines in the +poems of his boyhood show this, and so do many +remarks in the letters. And his sympathies were +not mere sentiments. ‘I hope sincerely,’ he wrote +in September, 1819, ‘I shall be able to put a mite +of help to the liberal side of the question before +I die’; and a few days later, when he tells Brown +of his wish to act instead of dreaming, and to work +for his livelihood, composing deliberate poems only +when he can afford to, he says that he will write +as a journalist for whoever will pay him, but he +makes it a condition that he is to write ‘on the +liberal side of the question.’ It is a mistake to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page217" id="page217"></a>217</span> +suppose that he had no political interests. But he +cared nothing for the mere quarrels of Whig and +Tory; a ‘Radical’ was for him the type of an +‘obstinate and heady’ man; and the perfectibility +theories of friends like Shelley and Dilke slipped +from his mind like water from a duck’s back. We +have seen the concrete shape his patriotism took. +He always saw ideas embodied, and was ‘convinced +that small causes make great alterations.’ I could +easily find passages more characteristic than the +following; but it is short, it shows that Keats +thought for himself, and it has a curious interest +just now (1905):<a name="fa8g" id="fa8g" href="#ft8g"><span class="sp">8</span></a></p> + +<div class="condensed"> +<p>Notwithstanding the part which the Liberals take in the cause +of Napoleon, I cannot but think he has done more harm to the +life of Liberty than anyone else could have done. Not that the +divine right gentlemen have done, or intend to do, any good. +No, they have taken a lesson of him, and will do all the further +harm he would have done, without any of the good. The worst +thing he has done is that he has taught them how to organise +their monstrous armies. The Emperor Alexander, it is said, +intends to divide his Empire as did Diocletian, creating two +Czars beside himself, and continuing the supreme monarch of +the whole. Should he do this, and they for a series of years +keep peaceable among themselves, Russia may spread her conquest +even to China. I think it a very likely thing that China +itself may fall; Turkey certainly will. Meanwhile European +North Russia will hold its horns against the rest of Europe, +intriguing constantly with France.</p> +</div> + +<p>Still aiming chiefly to show the variety there is +in these letters, I may take next one or two passages +which have an interest also from their bearing +on Keats’s poems. Here we have, for example, the +unmistakable origin of the <i>Ode on Indolence</i>:</p> + +<div class="condensed"> +<p>This morning I am in a sort of temper indolent and supremely +careless. I long after a stanza or two of Thomson’s <i>Castle of +Indolence</i>. My passions are all asleep, from my having slumbered +till nearly eleven and weakened the animal fibre all over me to a +delightful sensation, about three degrees on this side of faintness. +If I had teeth of pearl and the breath of lilies, I should call it +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page218" id="page218"></a>218</span> +languor, but as I am* I must call it laziness. In this state of +effeminacy the fibres of the brain are relaxed in common with the +rest of the body, and to such a happy degree that pleasure has +no show of enticement, and pain no unbearable power.<a name="fa9g" id="fa9g" href="#ft9g"><span class="sp">9</span></a> Neither +Poetry nor Ambition nor Love have any alertness of countenance +as they pass by me. They seem rather like figures on a Greek +vase—a man and two women whom no one but myself could +distinguish in their disguisement. This is the only happiness, +and is a rare instance of the advantage of the body overpowering +the mind.<a name="fa10g" id="fa10g" href="#ft10g"><span class="sp">10</span></a></p> + +<p class="center">* Especially as I have a black eye.</p> +</div> + +<p>‘This is the only happiness’—the sentence will +surprise no one who has even dipped into Keats’s +letters. It expresses a settled conviction. Happiness, +he feels, belongs only to childhood and early +youth. A young man thinks he can keep it, but a +little experience shows him he must do without it. +The mere growth of the mind, if nothing else, is +fatal to it. To think is to be full of sorrow, because +it is to realise the sorrow of the world and to feel +the burden of the mystery. ‘Health and spirits,’ +he says, ‘can only belong unalloyed to the selfish +man.’<a name="fa11g" id="fa11g" href="#ft11g"><span class="sp">11</span></a> Shelley might be speaking. ‘To see an +entirely disinterested girl quite happy is the most +pleasant and extraordinary thing in the world. It +depends upon a thousand circumstances. On my +word it is extraordinary. Women must want +Imagination, and they may thank God for it: and +so may we, that a delicate being can feel happy +without any sense of crime.’<a name="fa12g" id="fa12g" href="#ft12g"><span class="sp">12</span></a> These passages, +taken alone, even when we observe his qualifications, +would give a false impression of Keats; but +they supply a curious commentary on the legend of +the sensuous Keats. We may connect with them +his feeling of the inferiority of poets (or rather of +such ‘dreaming’ poets as himself) to men of action.</p> + +<p>In this same letter he copies out for his correspondents +several recently written poems, and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page219" id="page219"></a>219</span> +among them the ballad <i>La Belle Dame Sans Merci</i>. +He copies it without a word of introduction. He +could not say, ‘Here is the record of my love and +my despair,’ for on this one subject he never opened +his heart to his brother. But when he has finished +the copy he adds a few lines referring to the stanza +(afterwards altered):</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>She took me to her elfin grot,</p> + <p class="i1">And there she wept and sighed full sore,</p> +<p>And there I shut her wild wild eyes</p> + With kisses four. +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">‘Why four kisses, you will say, why four? Because +I wish to restrain the headlong impetuosity of my +Muse. She would have fain said “score” without +hurting the rhyme: but we must temper the +Imagination, as the Critics say, with Judgment. +I was obliged to choose an even number that both +eyes might have fair play; and, to speak truly, I +think two apiece quite sufficient. Suppose I had +said seven, there would have been three and a +half apiece—a very awkward affair, and well got +out of on my side.’ This is not very like the +comments of Wordsworth on his best poems, but +I dare say the author of <i>Hamlet</i> made such jests +about it. Is it not strange, let me add, to think +that Keats and his friends were probably unconscious +of the extraordinary merit of this poem? +It was not published with the Odes in the volume +of 1820.</p> + +<p>I will quote, finally, three passages to illustrate in +different ways Keats’s insight into human nature. +It appears, on the whole, more decidedly in the +letters than in the poems, and it helps us to believe +that, so far as his gifts were concerned, his hope +of ultimate success in dramatic poetry was well +founded. The first is a piece of ‘nonsense,’ rattled +off on the spur of the moment to amuse his correspondents, +and worth quoting only for its last +sentence. He has been describing ‘three witty +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page220" id="page220"></a>220</span> +people, all distinct in their excellence’; and he goes +on:</p> + +<div class="condensed"> +<p>I know three people of no wit at all, each distinct in his +excellence—A, B, and C. A is the foolishest, B the sulkiest, C is +a negative. A makes you yawn, B makes you hate, as for C you +never see him at all though he were six feet high. I bear the first, +I forbear the second, I am not certain that the third is. The first +is gruel, the second ditch-water, the third is spilt—he ought to be +wiped up.</p> +</div> + +<p class="noind">C, who is spilt and ought to be wiped up, how often +we have met and still shall meet him! Shakespeare, +I think, would gladly have fathered the phrase that +describes him, and the words that follow are not +much out of the tune of Falstaff: ‘C, they say, is not +his mother’s true child, but she bought him of the +man who cries, Young lambs to sell.’<a name="fa13g" id="fa13g" href="#ft13g"><span class="sp">13</span></a></p> + +<p>In the second passage Keats is describing one of +his friends:</p> + +<div class="condensed"> +<p>Dilke is a man who cannot feel he has a personal identity +unless he has made up his mind about everything. The only +means of strengthening one’s intellect is to make up one’s mind +about nothing—to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts, +not a select party. The genus is not scarce in population: all +the stubborn arguers you meet are of the same brood. They +never begin on a subject they have not pre-resolved on. They +want to hammer their nail into you, and if you turn the point, +still they think you wrong. Dilke will never come at a truth so +long as he lives, because he is always trying at it. He is a +Godwin Methodist.<a name="fa14g" id="fa14g" href="#ft14g"><span class="sp">14</span></a></p> +</div> + +<p>These lines illustrate the instinctive feeling of +Keats that it is essential to the growth of the poetic +mind to preserve its natural receptiveness and to +welcome all the influences that stream in upon it. +They illustrate also his dislike of the fixed theories +held and preached by some members of his circle. +We shall have to consider later the meaning of his +occasional outbreaks against ‘thought,’ ‘knowledge,’ +‘philosophy.’ It is important not to be +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page221" id="page221"></a>221</span> +misled by them, and not to forget the frequent +expressions of his feeling that what he lacks and +must strive to gain is this very ‘knowledge’ and +‘philosophy.’ Here I will only observe that his +polemics against them, though coloured by his +temperament, coincide to a large extent with +Wordsworth’s dislike of ‘a reasoning self-sufficing +thing,’ his depreciation of mere book-knowledge, and +his praise of a wise passiveness. And, further, what +he objects to here is not the pursuit of truth, it is +the ‘Methodism,’ the stubborn argument, and the +habit of bringing to the argument and maintaining +throughout it a ready-made theory. He offers his +own thoughts and speculations freely enough to +Bailey and to his brother—men willing to probe +with him any serious idea—but not to Dilke. It is +clear that he neither liked nor rated high the confident +assertions and negations of Shelley and his +other Godwinian friends and acquaintances. Probably +from his ignorance of theories he felt at a +disadvantage in talking with them. But he did not +dismiss their theories as something of no interest to +a poet. He thought about them, convinced himself +that they were fundamentally unsound, and himself +philosophises in criticising them. The following +passage, from a letter to George and Georgiana +Keats, is the nearest approach to be found in his +writings to a theory of the world, a theology as he +jestingly calls it; and although it is long, I make no +apology for quoting it. He has been reading, he +says, Robertson’s <i>History of America</i> and Voltaire’s +<i>Sičcle de Louis XIV.</i>, and he observes that, though +the two civilisations described are so different, the +case of the great body of the people is equally +lamentable in both. And he goes on thus:</p> + +<div class="condensed"> +<p>The whole appears to resolve into this—that man is originally a +poor forked creature, subject to the same mischances as the beasts +of the forest, destined to hardships and disquietude of some kind +or other. If he improves by degrees his bodily accommodations +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page222" id="page222"></a>222</span> +and comforts, at each stage, at each ascent, there are waiting for +him a fresh set of annoyances—he is mortal, and there is still a +heaven with its stars above his head. The most interesting +question that can come before us is, How far by the persevering +endeavours of a seldom-appearing Socrates mankind may be made +happy. I can imagine such happiness carried to an extreme, but +what must it end in? Death—and who could in such a case bear +with death? The whole troubles of life, which are now frittered +away in a series of years, would then be accumulated for the last +days of a being who, instead of hailing its approach, would leave +this world as Eve left Paradise. But in truth I do not at all +believe in this sort of perfectibility. The nature of the world will +not admit of it—the inhabitants of the world will correspond to +itself. Let the fish philosophise the ice away from the rivers in +winter time, and they shall be at continual play in the tepid +delight of summer. Look at the Poles, and at the sands of Africa—whirlpools +and volcanoes. Let men exterminate them, and I +will say that they may arrive at earthly happiness. The point at +which man may arrive is as far as the parallel state in inanimate +nature, and no further. For instance, suppose a rose to have +sensation; it blooms on a beautiful morning; it enjoys itself; but +then comes a cold wind, a hot sun. It cannot escape it, it +cannot destroy its annoyances—they are as native to the world as +itself. No more can man be happy in spite [?], the worldly +elements will prey upon his nature.</p> + +<p>The common cognomen of this world among the misguided +and superstitious is ‘a vale of tears,’ from which we are to be +redeemed by a certain arbitrary interposition of God and taken to +Heaven. What a little circumscribed straitened notion! Call +the world if you please ‘The vale of Soul-making.’ Then you +will find out the use of the world (I am speaking now in the +highest terms for human nature, admitting it to be immortal, +which I will here take for granted for the purpose of showing a +thought which has struck me concerning it). I say ‘<i>Soul-making</i>’—Soul +as distinguished from an Intelligence.<a name="fa15g" id="fa15g" href="#ft15g"><span class="sp">15</span></a> There may be +intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions, but they are not +Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself. +Intelligences are atoms of perception—they know and they see +and they are pure; in short they are God. How then are souls +to be made? How then are these sparks which are God to have +identity given them—so as ever to possess a bliss peculiar to each +one’s individual existence? How but by the medium of a world +like this? This point I sincerely wish to consider, because I +think it a grander system of salvation than the Christian religion—or +rather it is a system of Spirit-creation. This is effected by +three grand materials acting the one upon the other for a series of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page223" id="page223"></a>223</span> +years. These three materials are the <i>Intelligence</i>, the <i>human heart</i> +(as distinguished from intelligence or mind), and the World or +elemental space suited for the proper action of <i>Mind</i> and <i>Heart</i> +on each other for the purpose of forming the <i>Soul</i> or <i>Intelligence +destined to possess the sense of Identity</i>. I can scarcely express +what I but dimly perceive—and yet I think I perceive it. That +you may judge the more clearly I will put it in the most homely +form possible. I will call the <i>world</i> a School instituted for the +purpose of teaching little children to read. I will call the <i>human +heart</i> the horn-book read in that School. And I will call the +<i>Child able to read</i>, the <i>Soul</i> made from that School and its horn-book. +Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and +troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a Soul? A +place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse +ways. Not merely is the Heart a horn-book, it is the Mind’s +Bible, it is the mind’s experience, it is the text from which the +Mind or Intelligence sucks its identity. As various as the lives of +men are, so various become their Souls; and thus does God make +individual beings, Souls, identical Souls, of the sparks of his own +essence. This appears to me a faint sketch of a system of +Salvation which does not offend our reason and humanity.<a name="fa16g" id="fa16g" href="#ft16g"><span class="sp">16</span></a></p> +</div> + +<p>Surely, when Keats’s education is considered, +this, with all its crudity, is not a little remarkable. +It would not be easy to find anything written at the +same age by another poet of the time which shows +more openness of mind, more knowledge of human +nature, or more original power of thought.</p> + +<p class="pt2">About a fortnight after Keats wrote that description +of A, B, and C, he received what he recognised +at once for his death-warrant. He had yet fourteen +months to endure, but at this point the development +of his mind was arrested. During the three preceding +years it had been very rapid, and is easy to +trace; and it is all the more interesting because, in +spite of its continuity, we are aware of a decided +difference between the Keats of the earlier letters +and the Keats of the later. The tour in Scotland +in the summer of 1818 may be taken with sufficient +accuracy as a dividing-line. The earlier Keats is +the youth who had written the <i>Sonnet on first</i> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page224" id="page224"></a>224</span> +<i>looking into Chapman’s Homer</i>, and <i>Sleep and +Poetry</i>, and who was writing <i>Endymion</i>. He is +thoughtful, often grave, sometimes despondent; but +he is full of the enthusiasm of beauty, and of the joy +and fear, the hope and the awe, that accompanied +the sense of poetic power. He is the poet who +looked, we are told, as though he had been gazing +on some glorious sight; whose eyes shone and whose +face worked with pleasure as he walked in the fields +about Hampstead; who is described watching with +rapture the billowing of the wind through the trees +and over meadow-grasses and corn, and looking +sometimes like a young eagle and sometimes like a +wild fawn waiting for some cry from the forest +depths. This is the Keats who wrote ‘A thing of +beauty is a joy for ever’; who found ‘the Religion +of Joy’ in the monuments of the Greek spirit, in +sculpture and vases, and mere translations and mere +handbooks of mythology; who never ceased, he +said, to wonder at all that incarnate delight, and +would point out to Severn how essentially modern, +how imperishable, the Greek spirit is—a joy for +ever.</p> + +<p>Yet, as we have seen already, he was aware, +and we find him becoming more and more aware, +that joy is not the only word. He had not read for +nothing Wordsworth’s great Ode, and <i>Tintern Abbey</i>, +and the <i>Excursion</i>. We know it from <i>Endymion</i>, +and the letter about the ‘burden of the mystery’ +was written before the tour in Scotland. But after +this we feel a more decided change, doubtless +hastened by outward events. The Blackwood and +Quarterly reviews of <i>Endymion</i> appeared—reviews +not less inexcusable because we understand their +origin. Then came his brother’s death. A few +weeks later he met Miss Brawne. Henceforth his +youth has vanished. There are traces of morbid +feeling in the change, painful traces; but they are +connected, I think, solely with his passion. His +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page225" id="page225"></a>225</span> +brother’s death deepened his sympathies. The +reviews, so long as health remained to him, did him +nothing but good. He rated them at their true +value, but they gave him a salutary shock. They +quickened his perception, already growing keen, of +the weaknesses and mannerism of Hunt’s verse and +his own. Through them he saw a false but useful +picture of himself, as a silly boy, dandled into self-worship +by foolish friends, and posturing as a man +of genius. He kept his faith in his genius, but he +felt that he must prove it. He became impatient of +dreaming. Poetry, he felt, is not mere luxury and +rapture, it is a deed. We trace at times a kind of +fierceness. He turns against his old self harshly. +Some of his friends, he says, think he has lost his +old poetic ardour, and perhaps they are right. He +speaks slightingly of wonders, even of scenery: the +human heart is something finer,—not its dreams, but +its actions and its anguish. His gaze is as intent as +ever,—more intent; but the glory he would see walks +in a fiery furnace, and to see it he must think and +learn. He is young, he says, writing at random, +straining his eyes at particles of light in the +midst of a great darkness. He knows at times +the ‘agony’ of ignorance. In one year he writes +six or seven of the best poems in the language, but +he is little satisfied. ‘Thus far,’ he says, ‘I have +a consciousness of having been pretty dull and +heavy, both in subject and phrase.’ Two months +later he ends a note to Haydon with the words, ‘I +am afraid I shall pop off just when my mind is able +to run alone.’ And so it was.</p> + +<p class="pt2">It is important to remember this change in Keats +in considering his ideas about poetry; but we +have first to look at them in a more general +way. Many of the most interesting occur in +detached remarks or aphorisms, and these I must +pass by. The others I intended at first to deal with +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page226" id="page226"></a>226</span> +in connection with Shelley’s view of poetry; and, +although that plan proved to be too large for a +single lecture, I do not wish altogether to abandon +it, because in the extracts which I have been reading +the difference between the minds of the two poets +has already appeared, and because it re-appears both +in their poetic practice and in their opinions about +their art. Indeed, with so much difference, it might +be thought unlikely that these opinions would show +also a marked resemblance. For Keats, it may be +said, was of all the great poets then alive the one +least affected by the spirit of the time, or by that +‘revolutionary’ atmosphere of which I spoke in a +previous lecture. He did not concern himself, we +may be told, with the progress of humanity, or with +Manchester Massacres or risings in Naples. He +cared nothing for theories, abstractions, or ideals. +He worshipped Beauty, not Liberty; and the beauty +he worshipped was not ‘intellectual,’ but visible, +audible, tangible. ‘O for a life of sensations,’ he +cried, ‘rather than of thoughts.’ He was an artist, +intent upon fashioning his material until the outward +sensible form is perfectly expressive and delightful. +In all this he was at the opposite pole to Shelley; +and he himself felt it. He refused to visit Shelley, +in order that he might keep his own unfettered +scope; and he never speaks of Shelley cordially. +He told him, too, that he might be more of an artist +and load every rift of his subject with ore; and that, +while many people regard the purpose of a work as +the God, and the poetry as the Mammon, an artist +must serve Mammon. And his practice, like his +opinions, proves that, both in his strength and his +limitations, he belongs to quite a different type.</p> + +<p>In such a plea there would certainly be much +truth; and yet it is not <i>the</i> truth, for it ignores other +truths which must somehow be combined with it. +There are great differences between the two poets, +but then in Keats himself there are contending +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page227" id="page227"></a>227</span> +strains. Along with the differences, too, we find +very close affinities. And these affinities with +Shelley also show that Keats was deeply influenced +by the spirit of his time. Let me illustrate these +statements.</p> + +<p>The poet who cried, ‘O for a life of sensations,’ +was consoled, as his life withered away, by the +remembrance that he ‘had loved the principle of +beauty in all things.’ And this is not a chance +expression; it repeats, for instance, a phrase used +two years before, ‘the mighty abstract idea I have +of Beauty in all things.’ If Shelley had used this +language, it would be taken to prove his love of +abstractions. How does it differ from the language +of the <i>Hymn to Intellectual Beauty</i>?<a name="fa17g" id="fa17g" href="#ft17g"><span class="sp">17</span></a></p> + +<p>Again, we noticed in a previous lecture the likeness +between <i>Alastor</i> and <i>Endymion</i>, each the first +poem of any length in which the writer’s genius +decisively declared itself. Both tell the story of a +young poet; of a dream in which his ideal appears +in human form, and he knows the rapture of union +with it; of the passion thus enkindled, and the +search for its complete satisfaction. We may prefer +to read <i>Endymion</i> simply as we read <i>Isabella</i>; but +the question here is not of our preferences. If we +examine the poem without regard to them, we shall +be unable to doubt that to some extent the story +symbolises or allegorises this pursuit of the principle +of beauty by the poetic soul. This is one of the +causes of its failure as a narrative. Keats had not +in himself the experience required by parts of his +design, and hence in them he had to write from mere +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page228" id="page228"></a>228</span> +imagination. And the poem, besides, shows in a +flagrant degree the defect felt here and there in +<i>Prometheus Unbound</i>. If we wish to read it as the +author meant it, we must ask for the significance of +the figures, events, and actions. Yet it is clear +that not all of them are intended to have this further +significance, and we are perplexed by the question +where, and how far, we are to look for it.<a name="fa18g" id="fa18g" href="#ft18g"><span class="sp">18</span></a></p> + +<p>Take, again, some of the most famous of the +lyrical poems. Is it true that Keats was untroubled +by that sense of contrast between ideal and real +which haunted Shelley and was so characteristic of +the time? So far is this from being the case that a +critic might more plausibly object to his monotonous +insistence on that contrast. Probably the best-known +lyrics of the two poets are the stanzas <i>To a +Skylark</i> and the <i>Ode to a Nightingale</i>. Well, if +we summarise prosaically the subject of the one +poem we have summarised that of the other. ‘Our +human life is all unrest and sorrow, an oscillation +between longing and satiety, a looking before and +after. We are aware of a perfection that we cannot +attain, and that leaves us dissatisfied by everything +attainable. And we die, and do not understand +death. But the bird is beyond this division and +dissonance; it attains the ideal;</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Das Unzulängliche,</p> +<p>Hier wird’s Ereigniss.’</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">This is the burden of both poems. In style, metre, +tone, atmosphere, they are far apart; the ‘idea’ is +identical. And what else is the idea of the <i>Ode</i> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page229" id="page229"></a>229</span> +<i>on a Grecian Urn</i>, where a moment, arrested in its +ideality by art and made eternal, is opposed to the +change and decay of reality? And what else is the +idea of the playful lines <i>To Fancy</i>,—Fancy who +brings together the joys which in life are parted by +distances of time and place, and who holds in sure +possession what life wins only to lose? Even a +poem so pictorial and narrative and free from +symbolism as the <i>The Eve of St. Agnes</i> rests on +the same feeling. The contrast, so exquisitely +imagined and conveyed, between the cold, the +storm, the old age, the empty pleasure and noisy +enmity of the world outside Madeline’s chamber, +and the glow, the hush, the rich and dreamy bliss +within it, is in effect the contrast which inspired the +<i>Ode to a Nightingale</i>.</p> + +<p>It would be easy to pursue this subject. It would +be easy, too, to show that Keats was far from +indifferent to the ‘progress of humanity.’ He conceived +it in his own way, but it is as much the +theme of <i>Hyperion</i> as of <i>Prometheus Unbound</i>. We +are concerned however here not with the interpretation +of his poems, but with his view of poetry, and +especially with certain real or apparent inconsistencies +in it. For in the letters he now praises +‘sensation’ and decries thought or knowledge, and +now cries out for ‘knowledge’ as his greatest need; +in one place declares that an artist must have self-concentration, +perhaps selfishness, and in others +insists that what he desires is to be of use to his +fellow-men. We shall gain light on these matters +and on his relation to Shelley if I try to reduce his +general view to a precise and prosaic form.</p> + +<p>That which the poet seeks is Beauty. Beauty is +a ‘principle’; it is One. All things beautiful manifest +it, and so far therefore are one and the same. +This idea of the unity of all beauty comes out in +many crucial passages in the poems and letters. +I take a single example. The goddess Cynthia +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page230" id="page230"></a>230</span> +in <i>Endymion</i> is the Principle of Beauty. In this +story she is also identified with the Moon. Accordingly +the hero, gazing at the moon, declares that in +all that he ever loved he loved <i>her</i>:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i10">thou wast the deep glen—</p> +<p>Thou wast the mountain-top—the sage’s pen—</p> +<p>The poet’s harp—the voice of friends—the sun;</p> +<p>Thou wast the river—thou wast glory won;</p> +<p>Thou wast my clarion’s blast—thou wast my steed—</p> +<p>My goblet full of wine—my topmost deed:—</p> +<p>Thou wast the charm of women, lovely Moon!</p> +<p>O what a wild and harmonised tune</p> +<p>My spirit struck from all the beautiful!</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">When he says this he does not yet understand that +the Moon and his strange visitant are one; he thinks +they are rivals. So later, when he loves the Indian +maid, and is in despair because he fancies himself +therefore false to his goddess, he is in error; for she +is only his goddess veiled, the shaded half of the +moon.</p> + +<p>Still the mountain-top and the voice of friends +differ. Indeed, the one Beauty is infinitely various. +But its manifestations, for Keats, tend to fall into +two main classes. On the one hand there is the +kind of beauty that comes easily and is all sweetness +and pleasure. In receiving it we seem to suppress +nothing in our nature. Though it is not merely +sensuous, for the Principle of Beauty is in it, it +speaks to sense and delights us. It is ‘luxury.’ +But the other kind is won through thought, and also +through pain. And this second and more difficult +kind is also the higher, the fuller, the nearer to the +Principle. That it is won through pain is doubly +true. First, because the poet cannot reach it unless +he consents to suffer painful sympathies, which +disturb his enjoyment of the simpler and sweeter +beauty, and may even seem to lead him away from +beauty altogether. Thus Endymion can attain +union with his goddess only by leaving the green +hill-sides where he met her first, and by wandering +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page231" id="page231"></a>231</span> +unhappily in cold moonless regions inside the earth +and under the sea. Here he feels for the woes of +other lovers, and to help them undertakes tasks +which seem to interrupt his search for Cynthia. +Returning to earth he becomes enamoured of a +maiden devoted to sorrow, and gains his goddess +just when he thinks he has resigned her. The +highest beauty, then, is reached through the poet’s +pain; and, in the second place, it has pain in itself, +or at least appears in objects that are painful. In +his early poem <i>Sleep and Poetry</i> Keats asks himself +the question,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>And can I ever bid these joys farewell?</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">And he answers:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Yes, I must pass them for a nobler life,</p> +<p>Where I may find the agonies, the strife</p> +<p>Of human hearts.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">He felt himself as yet unequal to this task. He +never became equal to it, but the idea was realised +to some extent in <i>Isabella</i> and <i>Lamia</i> and <i>Hyperion</i>. +The first two of these are tales of passion, ‘agony,’ +and death. The third, obviously, is on one side a +story of ‘strife.’</p> + +<p>Such, in its bare outline, is Keats’s habitual view +of poetry. What, then, are the points where, in +spite of its evident resemblance to Shelley’s, we feel +a marked difference? The most important seem to +be two. In the first place Keats lays far the +heavier stress on the idea that beauty is manifested +in suffering and conflict. The idea itself is to +be found in Shelley, but (as we saw in another +lecture) it is not congenial to him; it appears +almost incidentally and is stated half-heartedly; +and of the further idea that beauty is not only +manifested in this sphere, but is there manifested +most fully, we find, I believe, no trace. And +this was inevitable; for the whole tendency of +Shelley’s mind was to regard suffering and conflict +with mere distress and horror as something senseless +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page232" id="page232"></a>232</span> +and purely evil, and to look on the world as naturally +a paradise entirely free from them, but ruined by an +inexplicable failure on the part of man. To this +world of woe his Intellectual Beauty does not really +belong; it appears there only in flashes; its true +home is a place where no contradictions, not even +reconciled contradictions, exist. The idealism of +Keats is much more concrete. He has no belief +either in this natural paradise or in ‘Godwinian +perfectibility.’ Pain and conflict have a meaning +to him. Without them souls could not be made; +and the business of the world, he conjectures, is the +making of souls. They are not therefore simply +obstacles to the ideal. On the contrary, in this +world it manifests itself most fully in and through +them. For ‘scenery is fine, but human nature is +finer’;<a name="fa19g" id="fa19g" href="#ft19g"><span class="sp">19</span></a> and the passions and actions of man are +finer than his enjoyments and dreams. In the same +way, the conflict in <i>Hyperion</i> is not one between +light and darkness, the ideal and mere might, as +in <i>Prometheus Unbound</i>. The Titans must yield +to the Olympians because, in a word, they are less +beautiful, and</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i7">’tis the eternal law</p> +<p>That first in beauty should be first in might.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">But the Titans, though less beautiful, <i>are</i> beautiful; +it is one and the same ‘principle’ that manifests +itself in them and more fully in their victors. Their +defeat therefore is not, in the end, defeat, but the +completion of their own being. This, it seems +probable, the hero in <i>Hyperion</i> would have come +to recognise, so that the poem, at least so far as +he is concerned, would have ended with a reconciliation +born of strife.</p> + +<p>Man is ‘finer,’ Keats says, and the Titans must +submit because they are less ‘beautiful.’ The +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page233" id="page233"></a>233</span> +second point of difference between him and Shelley +lies in this emphasis on beauty. The ideal with +Shelley has many names, and one of them is beauty, +but we hardly feel it to be the name nearest to his +heart. The spirit of his worship is rather</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i6">that sustaining Love</p> +<p>Which, through the web of being blindly wove</p> +<p>By man and beast and earth and air and sea,</p> +<p>Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of</p> +<p>The fire for which all thirst;</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">and ‘love’ is a word less distinctively aesthetic, if the +term must be used, than ‘beauty.’ But the ideal for +Keats is always and emphatically beauty or the +‘principle of beauty.’ When he sets the agonies +and strifes of human hearts above a painless or +luxurious loveliness, it is because they are the more +beautiful. He would not have said that the <i>Midsummer +Night’s Dream</i> is superior to <i>King Lear</i> in +beauty, but inferior to it in some other respect; it is +inferior in <i>beauty</i> to <i>King Lear</i>. Let art only be +‘intense’ enough, let the poet only look hard +enough and feel with force enough, so that the pain +in his object is seen truly as the vesture of great +passion and action, and all ‘disagreeables’ will +‘evaporate,’ and nothing will remain but beauty.<a name="fa20g" id="fa20g" href="#ft20g"><span class="sp">20</span></a> +Hence, though well aware how little he has as yet +of the great poet’s power of vision, he is still +content when he can feel that a poem of his has +intensity, has (as he says of <i>Lamia</i>) ‘that sort of +fire in it that must take hold of people some way.’<a name="fa21g" id="fa21g" href="#ft21g"><span class="sp">21</span></a> +And an earlier and inferior poem, <i>Isabella</i>, may +show his mind. The mere subject is exceedingly +painful, and Keats by no means suppresses the +painful incidents and details; but the poem can +hardly be called painful at all; for the final impression +is that of beauty, almost as decidedly so as the +final impression left by the blissful story of <i>St. Agnes’ +Eve</i>. And this is most characteristic of Keats. If +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page234" id="page234"></a>234</span> +the word beauty is used in his sense, and not in +the common contracted sense, we may truly say +that he was, and must have remained, more than +any other poet of his time, a worshipper of Beauty.</p> + +<p>When, then—to come to his apparent inconsistencies—he +exalts sensation and decries thought or +knowledge, what he is crying out for is beauty. +The word ‘sensation,’ as a comparison of passages +would readily show, has not in his letters its usual +meaning. It stands for <i>poetic</i> sensation, and, indeed, +for much more. It is, to speak broadly, a name for +<i>all</i> poetic or imaginative experience; and the contents +of the speech of Oceanus are, in kind, just as +much ‘sensation’ as the eating of nectarines (which +may well be poetic to the poetic). This is, I repeat, +to speak broadly. For it is true that sometimes +in the earlier letters we find Keats false to his better +mind. Knowing that the more difficult beauty is +the fuller, he is yet, to our great advantage, so +entranced by the delight or glory of the easier, that +he rebels against everything that would disturb its +magic or trouble his ‘exquisite sense of the luxurious.’ +And then he is tempted to see in thought +only that vexatious questioning that ‘spoils the +singing of the nightingale,’ and to forget that it is +necessary to the fuller and more difficult kind of +beauty. But these moods are occasional. He knew +that there was something wilful and weak about +them; and they gradually disappear. On the +whole, the gist of his attitude to ‘thought’ or +‘philosophy’ may be stated as follows.</p> + +<p>He was far from being indifferent to truth, or +from considering it unimportant for poetry. In an +early letter, when he criticises a poem of Wordsworth’s, +he ventures to say that ‘if Wordsworth +had thought a little deeper at that moment he would +not have written it,’ and that ‘it is a kind of sketchy +intellectual landscape, not a search after truth.’<a name="fa22g" id="fa22g" href="#ft22g"><span class="sp">22</span></a> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page235" id="page235"></a>235</span> +He writes of a passage in <i>Endymion</i>: ‘The whole +thing must, I think, have appeared to you, who are +a consecutive man, as a thing almost of mere words, +but I assure you that, when I wrote it, it was the +regular stepping of Imagination towards a truth.’<a name="fa23g" id="fa23g" href="#ft23g"><span class="sp">23</span></a> +And many passages show his conviction that for his +progress towards this truth ‘thought,’ ‘knowledge,’ +‘philosophy,’ are indispensable;<a name="fa24g" id="fa24g" href="#ft24g"><span class="sp">24</span></a> that he must submit +to the toil and the solitude that they involve, +just as he must undergo the pains of sympathy; +that ‘there is but one way for him,’ and that this +one ‘road lies through application, study, and +thought.’<a name="fa25g" id="fa25g" href="#ft25g"><span class="sp">25</span></a> On the other hand he had, in the first +place, as we saw, a strong feeling that a man, and +especially a poet, must not be in a hurry to arrive +at results, and must not shut up his mind in the box +of his supposed results, but must be content with +half-knowledge, and capable of ‘living in uncertainties, +mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching +after fact and reason.’ And, in the second place, +a poet, he felt, will never be able to rest in thoughts +and reasonings which do not also satisfy imagination +and give a truth which is also beauty; and +in so far as they fail to do this, in so far as they are +<i>mere</i> thoughts and reasonings, they are no more +than a means, though a necessary means, to an end, +which end is beauty,—that beauty which is also truth. +This alone is the poet’s end, and therefore his law. +‘With a great poet the sense of beauty overcomes +every other consideration, or rather obliterates all +consideration.’<a name="fa26g" id="fa26g" href="#ft26g"><span class="sp">26</span></a> Thought, knowledge, philosophy, +if they fall short of this, are nothing but a ‘road’ +to his goal. They bring matter for him to mould +to his purpose of beauty; but he must not allow +them to impose <i>their</i> purpose on him, or to ask that +it shall appear in his product. These statements +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page236" id="page236"></a>236</span> +formulate Keats’s position more than he formulates +it, but I believe that they represent it truly. He +was led to it mainly by the poetic instinct in him, or +because, while his mind had much general power, +he was, more than Wordsworth or Coleridge or +Shelley, a poet pure and simple.<a name="fa27g" id="fa27g" href="#ft27g"><span class="sp">27</span></a></p> + +<p>We can now deal more briefly with another +apparent inconsistency. Keats says again and again +that the poet must not live for himself, but must +feel for others and try to help them; that ‘there +is no worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some +good for the world’; that he is ambitious to do +some good or to serve his country. Yet he writes +to Shelley about the <i>Cenci</i>: ‘There is only one part +of it I am judge of—the poetry and dramatic effect, +which by many spirits nowadays is considered the +Mammon. A modern work, it is said, must have a +purpose, which may be the God. An artist must +serve Mammon; he must have “self-concentration”—selfishness, +perhaps.’<a name="fa28g" id="fa28g" href="#ft28g"><span class="sp">28</span></a> These are ungracious sentences, +especially when we remember the letter to +which Keats is replying; and they are also unfair to +Shelley, whose tragedy cannot justly be accused of +having an ultra-poetic purpose, and whose Count +Cenci shows much more dramatic imagination +than any figure drawn by Keats. But it is ungracious +too to criticise the irritability of a man +condemned to death; and in any case these sentences +are perfectly consistent with Keats’s expressed +desire to do good. The poet is to do good; yes, +but by being a poet. He is to have a purpose of +doing good by his poetry; yes, but he is not to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page237" id="page237"></a>237</span> +obtrude it in his poetry, or to show that he has a +design upon us.<a name="fa29g" id="fa29g" href="#ft29g"><span class="sp">29</span></a> To make beauty is <i>his</i> philanthropy. +He will not succeed in it best by making +what is only in part beauty,—something like the +<i>Excursion</i>, half poem and half lecture. He must be +unselfish, no doubt, but perhaps by being selfish; +by refusing, that is, to be diverted from his poetic +way of helping by the desire to help in another way. +This is the drift of Keats’s thought. If we remember +what he means by ‘beauty’ and ‘poet,’ and how +he distinguishes the poet from the ‘dreamer,’<a name="fa30g" id="fa30g" href="#ft30g"><span class="sp">30</span></a> we +shall think it sound doctrine.</p> + +<p>Keats was by nature both dreamer and poet, and +his ambition was to become poet pure and simple. +There was, in a further sense, a double strain in his +nature. He had in him the poetic temper of his +time, the ever-present sense of an infinite, the +tendency to think of this as an ideal perfection +manifesting itself in reality, and yet surpassing +reality, and so capable of being contrasted with it. +He was allied here especially to Wordsworth and to +Shelley, by the former of whom he was greatly +influenced. But there was also in him another +tendency; and this, it would seem, was strengthening +at the expense of the first, and would in time +have dominated it. It was perhaps the deeper and +more individual. It may be called the Shakespearean +strain, and it works against any inclination to erect +walls between ideal and real, or to magnify differences +of grade into oppositions of kind. Keats had +the impulse to interest himself in everything he saw +or heard of, to be curious about a thing, accept it, +identify himself with it, without first asking whether +it is better or worse than another, or how far it is +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page238" id="page238"></a>238</span> +from the ideal principle. It is this impulse that +speaks in the words, ‘If a sparrow come before my +window, I take part in its existence and pick about +the gravel’;<a name="fa31g" id="fa31g" href="#ft31g"><span class="sp">31</span></a> and in the words, ‘When she comes +into a room she makes an impression the same as the +beauty of a leopardess’; and in the feeling that she +is fine, though Bishop Hooker is finer. It too is the +source of his complaint that he has no personal identity, +and of his description of the poetical character; +‘It has no self; it is everything and nothing.... It +enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul +or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated. +It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an +Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher +delights the chameleon poet. It does no harm from +its relish of the dark side of things, any more than +from its taste for the bright one, because they both +end in speculation.<a name="fa32g" id="fa32g" href="#ft32g"><span class="sp">32</span></a> A poet is the most unpoetical +of anything in existence, because he has no identity. +He is continually in, for, and filling some other +body.’<a name="fa33g" id="fa33g" href="#ft33g"><span class="sp">33</span></a> That is not a description of Milton or +Wordsworth or Shelley; neither does it apply very +fully to Keats; but it describes something at least +of the spirit of Shakespeare.</p> + +<p>Now this spirit, it is obvious, tends in poetry, +I do not say to a realistic, but to what may be +called a concrete method of treatment; to the vivid +presentment of scenes, individualities, actions, in +preference to the expression of unembodied thoughts +and feelings. The atmosphere of Wordsworth’s +age, as we have seen, was not, on the whole, +favourable to it, and in various degrees it failed +in strength, or it suffered, in all the greater poets. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page239" id="page239"></a>239</span> +Scott had it in splendid abundance and vigour; but +he had too little of the idealism or the metaphysical +imagination which was common to those poets, and +which Shakespeare united with his universal comprehension; +nor was he, like Shakespeare and like +some of them, a master of magic in language. But +Keats had that magic in fuller measure, perhaps, +than any of our poets since Milton; and, sharing +the idealism of Wordsworth and Shelley, he possessed +also wider sympathies, and, if not a more +plastic or pictorial imagination than the latter, at +least a greater freedom from the attraction of +theoretic ideas. To what results might not this +combination have led if his life had been as long as +Wordsworth’s or even as Byron’s? It would be more +than hazardous, I think, to say that he was the +most highly endowed of all our poets in the nineteenth +century, but he might well have written its +greatest long poems.</p> + +<p class="f80">1905.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page240" id="page240"></a>240</span></p> + +<div class="condensed"> +<p class="pt2 center chap">NOTE</p> + +<p>I have pointed out certain marked resemblances between +<i>Alastor</i> and <i>Endymion</i>, and it would be easy to extend the +list. These resemblances are largely due to similarities in the +minds of the two poets, and to the action of a common influence +on both. But I believe that, in addition, Keats was affected by +the reading of <i>Alastor</i>, which appeared in 1816, while his own +poem was begun in the spring of 1817.</p> + +<p>The common influence to which I refer was that of Wordsworth, +and especially of the <i>Excursion</i>, published in 1814. There +is a quotation, or rather a misquotation, from it in the Preface +to <i>Alastor</i>. The <i>Excursion</i> is concerned in part with the danger +of inactive and unsympathetic solitude; and this, treated of +course in Shelley’s own way, is the subject of <i>Alastor</i>, which +also contains phrases reminiscent of Wordsworth’s poem. Its +Preface too reminds one immediately of the <i>Elegiac Stanzas on +a Picture of Peele Castle</i>; of the main idea, and of the lines,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Farewell, farewell, the heart that lives alone,</p> +<p>Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">As for Keats, the reader of his letters knows how much he was +occupied in 1817 and 1818 with thoughts due to the reading of +Wordsworth, and how great, though qualified, was his admiration +of the <i>Excursion</i>. These thoughts concerned chiefly the poetic +nature, its tendency to ‘dream,’ and the necessity that it should +go beyond itself and feel for the sorrows of others. They may +have been suggested <i>only</i> by Wordsworth; but we must remember +that <i>Alastor</i> had been published, and that Keats would naturally +read it. In comparing that poem with <i>Endymion</i> I am obliged +to repeat remarks already made in the lecture.</p> + +<p><i>Alastor</i>, composed under the influence described, tells of the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page241" id="page241"></a>241</span> +fate of a young poet, who is ‘pure and tender-hearted,’ but who, +in his search for communion with the ideal influences of nature +and of knowledge, keeps aloof from sympathies with his kind. +‘So long as it is possible for his desires to point towards +objects thus infinite and unmeasured, he is joyous and tranquil +and self-possessed.’ But a time comes when he thirsts for intercourse +with an intelligence like himself. His ideal requirements +are embodied in the form of a being who appears to him in a +dream, and to whom he is united in passionate love. But his +‘self-centred seclusion’ now avenges itself. The ‘spirit of sweet +human love’ vanishes as he wakes, and he wanders over the +earth, vainly seeking the ‘prototype’ of the vision until he dies.</p> + +<p>In <i>Endymion</i> the story of a dream-vision, of rapturous union +with it, and of the consequent pursuit of it, re-appears, though the +beginning and the end are different. The hero, before the coming +of the vision, has of course a poetic soul, but he is not self-secluded, +or inactive, or fragile, or philosophic; and his pursuit +of the goddess leads not to extinction but to immortal union +with her. It does lead, however, to adventures of which the +main idea evidently is that the poetic soul can only reach complete +union with the ideal (which union is immortality) by +wandering in a world which seems to deprive him of it; by +trying to mitigate the woes of others instead of seeking the ideal +for himself; and by giving himself up to love for what seems to +be a mere woman, but is found to be the goddess herself. It +seems almost beyond doubt that the story of Cynthia and +Endymion would not have taken this shape but for <i>Alastor</i>.</p> + +<p>The reader will find this impression confirmed if he compares +the descriptions in <i>Alastor</i> and <i>Endymion</i>, Book I., of the +dreamer’s feelings on awakening from his dream, of the disenchantment +that has fallen on the landscape, and of his ‘eager’ +pursuit of the lost vision. Everything is, in one sense, different, +for the two poets differ greatly, and Keats, of course, was writing +without any conscious recollection of the passage in <i>Alastor</i>; but +the conception is the same.<a name="fa34g" id="fa34g" href="#ft34g"><span class="sp">34</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page242" id="page242"></a>242</span></p> + +<p>Consider, again, the passage (near the beginning of <i>Endymion</i>, +Book III.) quoted on p. 230 of the lecture. The hero is addressing +the moon; and he says, to put it baldly, that from his +boyhood everything that was beautiful to him was associated +with his love of the moon’s beauty. The passage continues +thus:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>On some bright essence could I lean, and lull</p> +<p>Myself to immortality: I prest</p> +<p>Nature’s soft pillow in a wakeful rest.</p> +<p>But, gentle Orb! there came a nearer bliss—</p> +<p>My strange love came—Felicity’s abyss!</p> +<p>She came, and thou didst fade, and fade away.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">In spite of the dissimilarities, surely the ‘wakeful rest’ here +corresponds to the condition of the poet in <i>Alastor</i> prior to the +dream. ‘So long as it is possible for his desires to point towards +objects thus infinite and unmeasured, he is joyous and tranquil +and self-possessed’; but when his ‘strange love’ comes these +objects, like the objects of Endymion’s earlier desires, no longer +suffice him.</p> + +<p>There is, however, further evidence, indeed positive proof, of +the effect of <i>Alastor</i>, and especially of its Preface, on Keats’s +mind. In the revised version of <i>Hyperion</i>, Book I., the dreamer +in the Temple wonders why he has been preserved from death. +The Prophetess tells him the reason (I italicise certain words):</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>‘None can usurp this height,’ returned that shade,</p> +<p>‘But those to whom the <i>miseries of the world</i></p> +<p>Are misery, and will not let them rest.</p> +<p><i>All else</i> who find a haven in the world,</p> +<p>Where they may thoughtless sleep away their days,</p> +<p>If by a chance into this fane they come,</p> +<p>Rot on the pavement where thou rottedst half.’</p> +<p>‘Are there not thousands in the world,’ said I,</p> +<p>Encouraged by the sooth voice of the shade,</p> +<p>‘Who <i>love their fellows</i> even to the death,</p> +<p>Who feel the giant agony of the world,</p> +<p>And more, like slaves to poor humanity,</p> +<p>Labour for mortal good?’</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">If the reader compares with this the following passage from the +Preface to <i>Alastor</i>, and if he observes the words I have italicised +in it, he will hardly doubt that some unconscious recollection of +the Preface was at work in Keats’s mind. Shelley is distinguishing +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page243" id="page243"></a>243</span> +the self-centred seclusion of his poet from that of common selfish +souls:</p> + +<p>‘The picture is not barren of instruction to actual men. The +Poet’s self-centred seclusion was avenged by the furies of an +irresistible passion pursuing him to speedy ruin. But that Power +which strikes the luminaries of the world with sudden darkness +and extinction, by awakening them to too exquisite a perception +of its influences, dooms to a slow and poisonous decay those +meaner spirits that dare to abjure its dominion. Their destiny is +more abject and inglorious as their delinquency is more contemptible +and pernicious. They who, deluded by no generous +error, instigated by no sacred thirst of doubtful knowledge, duped +by no illustrious superstition, loving nothing on this earth, and +cherishing no hopes beyond, yet keep aloof from sympathies with +their kind, rejoicing neither in human joy nor mourning with +human grief; these, and such as they, have their apportioned +curse. They languish, because none feel with them their common +nature. They are morally dead. They are neither friends, nor +lovers, nor fathers, nor citizens of the world, nor benefactors of +their country. Among those who attempt to exist without human +sympathy, the pure and tender-hearted perish through the intensity +and passion of their search after its communities, when the +vacancy of their spirit suddenly makes itself felt. <i>All else</i>, selfish, +blind, and torpid, are those unforeseeing multitudes who constitute, +together with their own, the lasting <i>misery</i> and loneliness <i>of the +world</i>. Those who <i>love not their fellow-beings</i>, live unfruitful +lives, and prepare for their old age a miserable grave.’<a name="fa35g" id="fa35g" href="#ft35g"><span class="sp">35</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page244" id="page244"></a>244</span></p> + +<p>I have still a passage to refer to. Let the reader turn to the +quotation on p. 236 from Keats’s reply to Shelley’s letter of invitation +to his home in Italy; and let him ask himself why Keats +puts the word “self-concentration” in inverted commas. He is +not referring to anything in Shelley’s letter, and he is not in the +habit in the letters of using inverted commas except to mark a +quotation. Without doubt, I think, he is referring from memory +to the Preface to <i>Alastor</i> and the phrase ‘self-centred seclusion.’ +He has come to feel that this self-centred seclusion is <i>right</i> for a +poet like himself, and that the direct pursuit of philanthropy in +poetry (which he supposes Shelley to advocate) is wrong. But +this is another proof how much he had been influenced by +Shelley’s poem; and it is perhaps not too rash to conjecture +that his consciousness of this influence was one reason why he +had earlier refused to visit Shelley, in order that he might ‘have +his own unfettered scope.’<a name="fa36g" id="fa36g" href="#ft36g"><span class="sp">36</span></a></p> + +<p>If it seems to anyone that these conclusions are derogatory +to Keats, either as a man or a poet, I can only say that I differ +from him entirely. But I will add that there seems to me some +reason to conjecture that Shelley had read the <i>Ode to a Nightingale</i> +before he wrote the stanzas <i>To a Skylark</i>.</p> +</div> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1g" id="ft1g" href="#fa1g"><span class="fn">1</span></a> The Letters (except those to Miss Brawne, and a few others) have +been edited by Colvin, and (without exception) by Forman (pub. +Gowans & Gray). I refer to them by their numbers, followed by the +initial of the editor’s name. Both editions reproduce peculiarities of +punctuation, etc.; but for my present purpose these are usually without +interest, and I have consulted the convenience of the reader in +making changes.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2g" id="ft2g" href="#fa2g"><span class="fn">2</span></a> Keats himself, it is strange to think, was born in the same year as +Carlyle.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3g" id="ft3g" href="#fa3g"><span class="fn">3</span></a> These passions were in his last two years overclouded at times, but +they remained to the end. When, in the bitterness of his soul, he +begged Severn to put on his tombstone no name, but only ‘Here lies +one whose name was writ in water,’ he was thinking not merely of +the reviewers who had robbed him of fame in his short life, but also of +those unwritten poems, of which ‘the faint conceptions’ in happier days +used to ‘bring the blood into his forehead.’</p> + +<p><a name="ft4g" id="ft4g" href="#fa4g"><span class="fn">4</span></a> <span class="scs">LII</span>, C., <span class="scs">LV</span>, F. The quotations above are from <span class="scs">XIV</span>, <span class="scs">XVI</span>, C., +<span class="scs">XV</span>, <span class="scs">XVII</span>, <span class="scs">XVIII</span>, F. The verses are a parody of Wordsworth’s lines, +‘The cock is crowing.’</p> + +<p><a name="ft5g" id="ft5g" href="#fa5g"><span class="fn">5</span></a> <span class="scs">LXI</span>, C., <span class="scs">LXVI</span>, F.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6g" id="ft6g" href="#fa6g"><span class="fn">6</span></a> <span class="scs">LVI</span>, C., <span class="scs">LXI</span>, F.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7g" id="ft7g" href="#fa7g"><span class="fn">7</span></a> <span class="scs">LXXIII</span>, C., <span class="scs">LXXXI</span>, F. Mr. Hooker, I may remark, would not have +thanked Keats for his bishopric.</p> + +<p><a name="ft8g" id="ft8g" href="#fa8g"><span class="fn">8</span></a> From the letter last quoted. See also <span class="scs">CXVI, CXVIII, CXIX</span>, C., +<span class="scs">CXXXVII, CXXXIV, CXXXV</span>, F.</p> + +<p><a name="ft9g" id="ft9g" href="#fa9g"><span class="fn">9</span></a> ‘Pain had no sting and pleasure’s wreath no flower.’</p> + +<p><a name="ft10g" id="ft10g" href="#fa10g"><span class="fn">10</span></a> <span class="scs">XCII</span>, C., <span class="scs">CVI</span>, F.</p> + +<p><a name="ft11g" id="ft11g" href="#fa11g"><span class="fn">11</span></a> <span class="scs">XIX</span>, C., <span class="scs">XXI</span>, F.</p> + +<p><a name="ft12g" id="ft12g" href="#fa12g"><span class="fn">12</span></a> <span class="scs">LIV</span>, C., <span class="scs">LIX</span>, F.</p> + +<p><a name="ft13g" id="ft13g" href="#fa13g"><span class="fn">13</span></a> <span class="scs">CXXXI</span>, C., <span class="scs">CLII</span>, F.</p> + +<p><a name="ft14g" id="ft14g" href="#fa14g"><span class="fn">14</span></a> <span class="scs">CXVI</span>, C., <span class="scs">CXXXVII</span>, F. The word ‘turn’ in the last sentence but +two seems to be doubtful. Mr. Colvin reads ‘have.’</p> + +<p><a name="ft15g" id="ft15g" href="#fa15g"><span class="fn">15</span></a> Keats’s use of the word is suggested, probably, by Milton’s ‘pure +intelligence of heaven.’</p> + +<p><a name="ft16g" id="ft16g" href="#fa16g"><span class="fn">16</span></a> <span class="scs">XCII</span>, C., <span class="scs">CVI</span>, F.</p> + +<p><a name="ft17g" id="ft17g" href="#fa17g"><span class="fn">17</span></a> <span class="scs">CLXVI</span>, F., <span class="scs">LXXIII</span>, C., <span class="scs">LXXXI</span>, F. In <span class="scs">XLI</span>, C., <span class="scs">XLIV</span>, F., occurs a +passage ending with the words, ‘they are able to “<i>consecrate whate’er +they look upon</i>.”’ Is not this a quotation from the <i>Hymn</i>:</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Spirit of <span class="sc">Beauty</span> that dost consecrate</p> +<p>With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon?</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">If so, and if my memory serves me, this is the only quotation from +Shelley’s poetry in the letters of Keats. The <i>Hymn</i> had been +published in Hunt’s <i>Examiner</i>, Jan., 1817.</p> + +<p><a name="ft18g" id="ft18g" href="#fa18g"><span class="fn">18</span></a> The first critic, I believe, who seriously attempted to investigate +Keats’s mind, and the ideas that were trying to take shape in +some of his poems, was F. M. Owen, whose <i>John Keats, a Study</i> +(1880) never attracted in her too brief life-time the attention it +deserved. Mr. Bridges’s treatment of these ideas is masterly. +To what is said above may be added that, although Keats was +dissatisfied with <i>Endymion</i> even before he had finished it, he did not +at any time criticise it on the ground that it tried to put too much +meaning into the myth. On <i>Alastor</i> and <i>Endymion</i> see further the +Note appended to this lecture.</p> + +<p><a name="ft19g" id="ft19g" href="#fa19g"><span class="fn">19</span></a> A notable (but not isolated) remark, seeing that the poetic genius +of Keats showed itself soonest and perhaps most completely in the +rendering of Nature.</p> + +<p><a name="ft20g" id="ft20g" href="#fa20g"><span class="fn">20</span></a> <span class="scs">XXIV</span>, C., <span class="scs">XXVI</span>, F.</p> + +<p><a name="ft21g" id="ft21g" href="#fa21g"><span class="fn">21</span></a> <span class="scs">CXVI</span>, C., <span class="scs">CXXXVII</span>, F.</p> + +<p><a name="ft22g" id="ft22g" href="#fa22g"><span class="fn">22</span></a> <span class="scs">XIX</span>, C., <span class="scs">XXI</span>, F.</p> + +<p><a name="ft23g" id="ft23g" href="#fa23g"><span class="fn">23</span></a> <span class="scs">XXXII</span>, C., <span class="scs">XXXIV</span>, F.</p> + +<p><a name="ft24g" id="ft24g" href="#fa24g"><span class="fn">24</span></a> He contemplates even the study of metaphysics, <span class="scs">LI</span>, C., <span class="scs">LIV</span>, F.</p> + +<p><a name="ft25g" id="ft25g" href="#fa25g"><span class="fn">25</span></a> <span class="scs">L</span>, C., <span class="scs">LIII</span>, F.</p> + +<p><a name="ft26g" id="ft26g" href="#fa26g"><span class="fn">26</span></a> <span class="scs">XXIV</span>, C., <span class="scs">XXVI</span>, F.</p> + +<p><a name="ft27g" id="ft27g" href="#fa27g"><span class="fn">27</span></a> Cf. in addition to the letters already referred to, the obscure letter +to Bailey, <span class="scs">XXII</span>, C., <span class="scs">XXIV</span>, F., which, however, is early, and not quite in +agreement with later thoughts. I should observe perhaps that if +Keats’s position, as formulated above, is accepted, the question still +remains whether a truth which is also beauty, or a beauty which is also +truth, can be found by man; and, if so, whether it can, in strictness, +be called by either of those names.</p> + +<p><a name="ft28g" id="ft28g" href="#fa28g"><span class="fn">28</span></a> <span class="scs">CLV</span>, C., <span class="scs">CCVI</span>, F. See on these sentences the Note at the end of +the lecture.</p> + +<p><a name="ft29g" id="ft29g" href="#fa29g"><span class="fn">29</span></a> An expression used in reference to Wordsworth, <span class="scs">XXXIV</span>, C., +<span class="scs">XXXVI</span>, F.</p> + +<p><a name="ft30g" id="ft30g" href="#fa30g"><span class="fn">30</span></a> I have not space to dwell on this distinction, but I must warn the +reader that he will probably misunderstand the important passage in +the revised <i>Hyperion</i>, 161 ff., unless he consults Mr. de Sélincourt’s +edition.</p> + +<p><a name="ft31g" id="ft31g" href="#fa31g"><span class="fn">31</span></a> <span class="scs">XXII</span>, C., <span class="scs">XXV</span>, F.</p> + +<p><a name="ft32g" id="ft32g" href="#fa32g"><span class="fn">32</span></a> That is, in ‘half-knowledge,’ ‘doubts,’ ‘mysteries’ (see p. 235), +while the philosopher is sometimes supposed by Keats to have a +reasoned certainty about everything. It is curious to reflect that great +metaphysicians, like Spinoza and Hegel, are often accused of the +un-moral impartiality which Keats attributes to the poet.</p> + +<p><a name="ft33g" id="ft33g" href="#fa33g"><span class="fn">33</span></a> <span class="scs">LXXVI</span>, C., <span class="scs">LXXX</span>, F.</p> + +<p><a name="ft34g" id="ft34g" href="#fa34g"><span class="fn">34</span></a> The ultimate origin of the dream-passage in both poems may well be +Adam’s dream in <i>Paradise Lost</i>, Book viii.:</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>She disappear’d, and left me dark: I waked</p> +<p>To find her, or for ever to deplore</p> +<p>Her loss, and other pleasures all abjure.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">Keats alludes to this in <span class="scs">XXII</span>, C., <span class="scs">XXIV</span>, F.</p> + +<p><a name="ft35g" id="ft35g" href="#fa35g"><span class="fn">35</span></a> It is tempting to conjecture with Mr. Forman that the full-stop before the +last sentence is a misprint, and that we should read ‘the world,—those who,’ +etc., so that the last two clauses would be relative clauses co-ordinate with +‘who love not their fellow-beings.’ Not to speak of the run of the sentences, +this conjecture is tempting because of the comma after ‘fellow-beings,’ and +because the paragraph is followed by the quotation (‘those’ should be ‘they’),</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i9">The good die first,</p> +<p>And those whose hearts are dry as summer’s dust</p> +<p>Burn to the socket.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">The good who die first correspond with the ‘pure and tender-hearted’ who +perish and, as we naturally suppose, perish young, like the poet in <i>Alastor</i>. +But, as the last sentence stands, these, as well as the torpid, live to old age. +It is hard to believe that Shelley meant this; but as he was in England when +<i>Alastor</i> was printed, he probably revised the proofs, and it is perhaps easier to +suppose that he wrote what is printed than that he passed unobserved the +serious misprint supposed by Mr. Forman.</p> + +<p><a name="ft36g" id="ft36g" href="#fa36g"><span class="fn">36</span></a> <span class="scs">XVIII</span>, C., <span class="scs">XX</span>, F.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:150px; height:35px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img001.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page245" id="page245"></a>245</span></p> + +<p class="center chap">THE REJECTION OF FALSTAFF</p> +<p> </p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page246" id="page246"></a>246<br />247</span></p> + +<p class="center pt2"><span class="chap2">THE REJECTION OF FALSTAFF</span><a name="fa1h" id="fa1h" href="#ft1h"><span class="sp">1</span></a></p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1 fo">Of</span> the two persons principally concerned in the +rejection of Falstaff, Henry, both as Prince and as +King, has received, on the whole, full justice from +readers and critics. Falstaff, on the other hand, has +been in one respect the most unfortunate of Shakespeare’s +famous characters. All of them, in passing +from the mind of their creator into other minds, +suffer change; they tend to lose their harmony +through the disproportionate attention bestowed on +some one feature, or to lose their uniqueness by +being conventionalised into types already familiar. +But Falstaff was degraded by Shakespeare himself. +The original character is to be found alive in the +two parts of <i>Henry IV.</i>, dead in <i>Henry V.</i>, and +nowhere else. But not very long after these plays +were composed, Shakespeare wrote, and he afterwards +revised, the very entertaining piece called +<i>The Merry Wives of Windsor</i>. Perhaps his company +wanted a new play on a sudden; or perhaps, as +one would rather believe, the tradition may be true +that Queen Elizabeth, delighted with the Falstaff +scenes of <i>Henry IV.</i>, expressed a wish to see the +hero of them again, and to see him in love. Now +it was no more possible for Shakespeare to show his +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page248" id="page248"></a>248</span> +own Falstaff in love than to turn twice two into five. +But he could write in haste—the tradition says, in a +fortnight—a comedy or farce differing from all his +other plays in this, that its scene is laid in English +middle-class life, and that it is prosaic almost to the +end. And among the characters he could introduce +a disreputable fat old knight with attendants, and +could call them Falstaff, Bardolph, Pistol, and Nym. +And he could represent this knight assailing, for +financial purposes, the virtue of two matrons, and in +the event baffled, duped, treated like dirty linen, +beaten, burnt, pricked, mocked, insulted, and, worst +of all, repentant and didactic. It is horrible. It is +almost enough to convince one that Shakespeare +himself could sanction the parody of Ophelia in the +<i>Two Noble Kinsmen</i>. But it no more touches the +real Falstaff than Ophelia is degraded by that +parody. To picture the real Falstaff befooled like +the Falstaff of the <i>Merry Wives</i> is like imagining +Iago the gull of Roderigo, or Becky Sharp the dupe +of Amelia Osborne. Before he had been served +the least of these tricks he would have had his +brains taken out and buttered, and have given them +to a dog for a New Year’s gift. I quote the words +of the impostor, for after all Shakespeare made him +and gave to him a few sentences worthy of Falstaff +himself. But they are only a few—one side of a +sheet of notepaper would contain them. And yet +critics have solemnly debated at what period in his +life Sir John endured the gibes of Master Ford, and +whether we should put this comedy between the +two parts of <i>Henry IV.</i>, or between the second +of them and <i>Henry V.</i> And the Falstaff of the +general reader, it is to be feared, is an impossible +conglomerate of two distinct characters, while the +Falstaff of the mere play-goer is certainly much +more like the impostor than the true man.</p> + +<p>The separation of these two has long ago been +effected by criticism, and is insisted on in almost all +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page249" id="page249"></a>249</span> +competent estimates of the character of Falstaff. +I do not propose to attempt a full account either of +this character or of that of Prince Henry, but shall +connect the remarks I have to make on them with a +question which does not appear to have been satisfactorily +discussed—the question of the rejection of +Falstaff by the Prince on his accession to the +throne. What do we feel, and what are we meant +to feel, as we witness this rejection? And what +does our feeling imply as to the characters of +Falstaff and the new King?</p> + +<p class="pt2 center">1.</p> + +<p>Sir John, you remember, is in Gloucestershire, +engaged in borrowing a thousand pounds from +Justice Shallow; and here Pistol, riding helter-skelter +from London, brings him the great news +that the old King is as dead as nail in door, and +that Harry the Fifth is the man. Sir John, in +wild excitement, taking any man’s horses, rushes to +London; and he carries Shallow with him, for he +longs to reward all his friends. We find him standing +with his companions just outside Westminster +Abbey, in the crowd that is waiting for the King +to come out after his coronation. He himself is +stained with travel, and has had no time to spend +any of the thousand pounds in buying new liveries +for his men. But what of that? This poor show +only proves his earnestness of affection, his devotion, +how he could not deliberate or remember or have +patience to shift himself, but rode day and night, +thought of nothing else but to see Henry, and put +all affairs else in oblivion, as if there were nothing +else to be done but to see him. And now he stands +sweating with desire to see him, and repeating and +repeating this one desire of his heart—‘to see him.’ +The moment comes. There is a shout within the +Abbey like the roaring of the sea, and a clangour +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page250" id="page250"></a>250</span> +of trumpets, and the doors open and the procession +streams out.</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p class="i1"><span class="sc">Fal.</span> God save thy grace, King Hal! my royal Hal!</p> + +<p class="i1"><span class="sc">Pist.</span> The heavens thee guard and keep, most royal</p> +<p>imp of fame!</p> + +<p class="i1"><span class="sc">Fal.</span> God save thee, my sweet boy!</p> + +<p class="i1"><span class="sc">King.</span> My Lord Chief Justice, speak to that vain man.</p> + +<p class="i1"><span class="sc">Ch. Just.</span> Have you your wits? Know you what ’tis</p> +<p>you speak?</p> + +<p class="i1"><span class="sc">Fal.</span> My King! my Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!</p> + +<p><span class="sc">King.</span> I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers.</p> +<p>How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!</p> +<p>I have long dream’d of such a kind of man,</p> +<p>So surfeit-swell’d, so old and so profane;</p> +<p>But being awaked I do despise my dream.</p> +<p>Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace;</p> +<p>Leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape</p> +<p>For thee thrice wider than for other men.</p> +<p>Reply not to me with a fool-born jest:</p> +<p>Presume not that I am the thing I was;</p> +<p>For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,</p> +<p>That I have turn’d away my former self;</p> +<p>So will I those that kept me company.</p> +<p>When thou dost hear I am as I have been,</p> +<p>Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast,</p> +<p>The tutor and the feeder of my riots:</p> +<p>Till then, I banish thee, on pain of death,</p> +<p>As I have done the rest of my misleaders,</p> +<p>Not to come near our person by ten mile.</p> +<p>For competence of life I will allow you,</p> +<p>That lack of means enforce you not to evil:</p> +<p>And, as we hear you do reform yourselves,</p> +<p>We will, according to your strengths and qualities,</p> +<p>Give you advancement. Be it your charge, my lord,</p> +<p>To see perform’d the tenour of our word.</p> +<p>Set on.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The procession passes out of sight, but Falstaff +and his friends remain. He shows no resentment. +He comforts himself, or tries to comfort himself—first, +with the thought that he has Shallow’s thousand +pounds, and then, more seriously, I believe, with +another thought. The King, he sees, must look +thus to the world; but he will be sent for in private +when night comes, and will yet make the fortunes +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page251" id="page251"></a>251</span> +of his friends. But even as he speaks, the Chief +Justice, accompanied by Prince John, returns, and +gives the order to his officers:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Go, carry Sir John Falstaff to the Fleet;</p> +<p>Take all his company along with him.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">Falstaff breaks out, ‘My lord, my lord,’ but he is +cut short and hurried away; and after a few words +between the Prince and the Chief Justice the scene +closes, and with it the drama.</p> + +<p>What are our feelings during this scene? They +will depend on our feelings about Falstaff. If we +have not keenly enjoyed the Falstaff scenes of the +two plays, if we regard Sir John chiefly as an old +reprobate, not only a sensualist, a liar, and a coward, +but a cruel and dangerous ruffian, I suppose we +enjoy his discomfiture and consider that the King +has behaved magnificently. But if we <i>have</i> keenly +enjoyed the Falstaff scenes, if we have enjoyed +them as Shakespeare surely meant them to be +enjoyed, and if, accordingly, Falstaff is not to us +solely or even chiefly a reprobate and ruffian, we +feel, I think, during the King’s speech, a good deal +of pain and some resentment; and when, without +any further offence on Sir John’s part, the Chief +Justice returns and sends him to prison, we stare in +astonishment. These, I believe, are, in greater or +less degree, the feelings of most of those who really +enjoy the Falstaff scenes (as many readers do not). +Nor are these feelings diminished when we remember +the end of the whole story, as we find it in +<i>Henry V.</i>, where we learn that Falstaff quickly +died, and, according to the testimony of persons not +very sentimental, died of a broken heart.<a name="fa2h" id="fa2h" href="#ft2h"><span class="sp">2</span></a> Suppose +this merely to mean that he sank under the shame +of his public disgrace, and it is pitiful enough: but +the words of Mrs. Quickly, ‘The king has killed his +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page252" id="page252"></a>252</span> +heart’; of Nym, ‘The king hath run bad humours +on the knight; that’s the even of it’; of Pistol,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i2">Nym, thou hast spoke the right,</p> +<p>His heart is fracted and corroborate,</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">assuredly point to something more than wounded +pride; they point to wounded affection, and remind +us of Falstaff’s own answer to Prince Hal’s question, +‘Sirrah, do I owe you a thousand pound?’ ‘A +thousand pound, Hal? a million: thy love is worth +a million: thou owest me thy love.’</p> + +<p>Now why did Shakespeare end his drama with a +scene which, though undoubtedly striking, leaves an +impression so unpleasant? I will venture to put +aside without discussion the idea that he meant us +throughout the two plays to regard Falstaff with +disgust or indignation, so that we naturally feel +nothing but pleasure at his fall; for this idea implies +that kind of inability to understand Shakespeare +with which it is idle to argue. And there is another +and a much more ingenious suggestion which must +equally be rejected as impossible. According to it, +Falstaff, having listened to the King’s speech, did +not seriously hope to be sent for by him in private; +he fully realised the situation at once, and was only +making game of Shallow; and in his immediate +turn upon Shallow when the King goes out, ‘Master +Shallow, I owe you a thousand pound,’ we are meant +to see his humorous superiority to any rebuff, so that +we end the play with the delightful feeling that, +while Henry has done the right thing, Falstaff, in +his outward overthrow, has still proved himself +inwardly invincible. This suggestion comes from a +critic who understands Falstaff, and in the suggestion +itself shows that he understands him.<a name="fa3h" id="fa3h" href="#ft3h"><span class="sp">3</span></a> But it +provides no solution, because it wholly ignores, and +could not account for, that which follows the short +conversation with Shallow. Falstaff’s dismissal to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page253" id="page253"></a>253</span> +the Fleet, and his subsequent death, prove beyond +doubt that his rejection was meant by Shakespeare +to be taken as a catastrophe which not even his +humour could enable him to surmount.</p> + +<p>Moreover, these interpretations, even if otherwise +admissible, would still leave our problem only partly +solved. For what troubles us is not only the disappointment +of Falstaff, it is the conduct of Henry. +It was inevitable that on his accession he should +separate himself from Sir John, and we wish nothing +else. It is satisfactory that Sir John should have a +competence, with the hope of promotion in the highly +improbable case of his reforming himself. And if +Henry could not trust himself within ten miles of so +fascinating a companion, by all means let him be +banished that distance: we do not complain. These +arrangements would not have prevented a satisfactory +ending: the King could have communicated +his decision, and Falstaff could have accepted it, in +a private interview rich in humour and merely +touched with pathos. But Shakespeare has so contrived +matters that Henry could not send a private +warning to Falstaff even if he wished to, and in +their public meeting Falstaff is made to behave in so +infatuated and outrageous a manner that great sternness +on the King’s part was unavoidable. And the +curious thing is that Shakespeare did not stop here. +If this had been all we should have felt pain for +Falstaff, but not, perhaps, resentment against +Henry. But two things we do resent. Why, +when this painful incident seems to be over, should +the Chief Justice return and send Falstaff to prison? +Can this possibly be meant for an act of private +vengeance on the part of the Chief Justice, unknown +to the King? No; for in that case Shakespeare +would have shown at once that the King disapproved +and cancelled it. It must have been the +King’s own act. This is one thing we resent; the +other is the King’s sermon. He had a right to turn +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page254" id="page254"></a>254</span> +away his former self, and his old companions with +it, but he had no right to talk all of a sudden like a +clergyman; and surely it was both ungenerous and +insincere to speak of them as his ‘misleaders,’ as +though in the days of Eastcheap and Gadshill he +had been a weak and silly lad. We have seen his +former self, and we know that it was nothing of the +kind. He had shown himself, for all his follies, a +very strong and independent young man, deliberately +amusing himself among men over whom he +had just as much ascendency as he chose to exert. +Nay, he amused himself not only among them, but +at their expense. In his first soliloquy—and first +soliloquies are usually significant—he declares that +he associates with them in order that, when at some +future time he shows his true character, he may be +the more wondered at for his previous aberrations. +You may think he deceives himself here; you may +believe that he frequented Sir John’s company out +of delight in it and not merely with this cold-blooded +design; but at any rate he <i>thought</i> the +design was his one motive. And, that being so, +two results follow. He ought in honour long ago +to have given Sir John clearly to understand that +they must say good-bye on the day of his accession. +And, having neglected to do this, he ought not to +have lectured him as his misleader. It was not +only ungenerous, it was dishonest. It looks disagreeably +like an attempt to buy the praise of the +respectable at the cost of honour and truth. And it +succeeded. Henry <i>always</i> succeeded.</p> + +<p>You will see what I am suggesting, for the +moment, as a solution of our problem. I am suggesting +that our fault lies not in our resentment at +Henry’s conduct, but in our surprise at it; that if +we had read his character truly in the light that +Shakespeare gave us, we should have been prepared +for a display both of hardness and of policy at this +point in his career, And although this suggestion +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page255" id="page255"></a>255</span> +does not suffice to solve the problem before us, I am +convinced that in itself it is true. Nor is it rendered +at all improbable by the fact that Shakespeare has +made Henry, on the whole, a fine and very attractive +character, and that here he makes no one express +any disapprobation of the treatment of Falstaff. +For in similar cases Shakespeare is constantly misunderstood. +His readers expect him to mark in +some distinct way his approval or disapproval of +that which he represents; and hence where <i>they</i> +disapprove and <i>he</i> says nothing, they fancy that he +does <i>not</i> disapprove, and they blame his indifference, +like Dr. Johnson, or at the least are puzzled. But +the truth is that he shows the fact and leaves the +judgment to them. And again, when he makes us +like a character we expect the character to have no +faults that are not expressly pointed out, and when +other faults appear we either ignore them or try to +explain them away. This is one of our methods +of conventionalising Shakespeare. We want the +world’s population to be neatly divided into sheep +and goats, and we want an angel by us to say, +‘Look, that is a goat and this is a sheep,’ and we +try to turn Shakespeare into this angel. His impartiality +makes us uncomfortable: we cannot bear +to see him, like the sun, lighting up everything and +judging nothing. And this is perhaps especially +the case in his historical plays, where we are always +trying to turn him into a partisan. He shows us +that Richard II. was unworthy to be king, and we +at once conclude that he thought Bolingbroke’s +usurpation justified; whereas he shows merely, +what under the conditions was bound to exist, +an inextricable tangle of right and unright. Or, +Bolingbroke being evidently wronged, we suppose +Bolingbroke’s statements to be true, and are quite +surprised when, after attaining his end through them, +he mentions casually on his death-bed that they +were lies. Shakespeare makes us admire Hotspur +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page256" id="page256"></a>256</span> +heartily; and accordingly, when we see Hotspur discussing +with others how large his particular slice +of his mother-country is to be, we either fail to +recognise the monstrosity of the proceeding, or, +recognising it, we complain that Shakespeare is +inconsistent. Prince John breaks a tottering rebellion +by practising a detestable fraud on the +rebels. We are against the rebels, and have heard +high praise of Prince John, but we cannot help +seeing that his fraud is detestable; so we say indignantly +to Shakespeare, ‘Why, you told us he +was a sheep’; whereas, in fact, if we had used our +eyes we should have known beforehand that he was +the brave, determined, loyal, cold-blooded, pitiless, +unscrupulous son of a usurper whose throne was in +danger.</p> + +<p>To come, then, to Henry. Both as prince and as +king he is deservedly a favourite, and particularly so +with English readers, being, as he is, perhaps the +most distinctively English of all Shakespeare’s men. +In <i>Henry V.</i> he is treated as a national hero. In +this play he has lost much of the wit which in him +seems to have depended on contact with Falstaff, +but he has also laid aside the most serious faults of +his youth. He inspires in a high degree fear, +enthusiasm, and affection; thanks to his beautiful +modesty he has the charm which is lacking to +another mighty warrior, Coriolanus; his youthful +escapades have given him an understanding of +simple folk, and sympathy with them; he is the +author of the saying, ‘There is some soul of goodness +in things evil’; and he is much more obviously +religious than most of Shakespeare’s heroes. Having +these and other fine qualities, and being without +certain dangerous tendencies which mark the tragic +heroes, he is, perhaps, the most <i>efficient</i> character +drawn by Shakespeare, unless Ulysses, in <i>Troilus +and Cressida</i>, is his equal. And so he has been +described as Shakespeare’s ideal man of action; +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page257" id="page257"></a>257</span> +nay, it has even been declared that here for once +Shakespeare plainly disclosed his own ethical creed, +and showed us his ideal, not simply of a man of +action, but of a man.</p> + +<p>But Henry is neither of these. The poet who +drew Hamlet and Othello can never have thought +that even the ideal man of action would lack that +light upon the brow which at once transfigures them +and marks their doom. It is as easy to believe that, +because the lunatic, the lover, and the poet are not +far apart, Shakespeare would have chosen never to +have loved and sung. Even poor Timon, the most +inefficient of the tragic heroes, has something in him +that Henry never shows. Nor is it merely that his +nature is limited: if we follow Shakespeare and look +closely at Henry, we shall discover with the many +fine traits a few less pleasing. Henry IV. describes +him as the noble image of his own youth; and, for +all his superiority to his father, he is still his father’s +son, the son of the man whom Hotspur called a ‘vile +politician.’ Henry’s religion, for example, is genuine, +it is rooted in his modesty; but it is also superstitious—an +attempt to buy off supernatural vengeance +for Richard’s blood; and it is also in part +political, like his father’s projected crusade. Just as +he went to war chiefly because, as his father told +him, it was the way to keep factious nobles quiet +and unite the nation, so when he adjures the Archbishop +to satisfy him as to his right to the French +throne, he knows very well that the Archbishop +<i>wants</i> the war, because it will defer and perhaps +prevent what he considers the spoliation of the +Church. This same strain of policy is what Shakespeare +marks in the first soliloquy in <i>Henry IV.</i>, +where the prince describes his riotous life as a mere +scheme to win him glory later. It implies that +readiness to use other people as means to his own +ends which is a conspicuous feature in his father; +and it reminds us of his father’s plan of keeping +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page258" id="page258"></a>258</span> +himself out of the people’s sight while Richard was +making himself cheap by his incessant public +appearances. And if I am not mistaken there is a +further likeness. Henry is kindly and pleasant to +every one as Prince, to every one deserving as +King; and he is so not merely out of policy: but +there is no sign in him of a strong affection for any +one, such an affection as we recognise at a glance in +Hamlet and Horatio, Brutus and Cassius, and many +more. We do not find this in <i>Henry V.</i>, not even +in the noble address to Lord Scroop, and in +<i>Henry IV.</i> we find, I think, a liking for Falstaff +and Poins, but no more: there is no more than a +liking, for instance, in his soliloquy over the supposed +corpse of his fat friend, and he never speaks +of Falstaff to Poins with any affection. The truth +is, that the members of the family of Henry IV. +have love for one another, but they cannot spare +love for any one outside their family, which stands +firmly united, defending its royal position against +attack and instinctively isolating itself from outside +influence.</p> + +<p>Thus I would suggest that Henry’s conduct in his +rejection of Falstaff is in perfect keeping with his +character on its unpleasant side as well as on its +finer; and that, so far as Henry is concerned, we +ought not to feel surprise at it. And on this view +we may even explain the strange incident of the +Chief Justice being sent back to order Falstaff to +prison (for there is no sign of any such uncertainty +in the text as might suggest an interpolation by the +players). Remembering his father’s words about +Henry, ‘Being incensed, he’s flint,’ and remembering +in <i>Henry V.</i> his ruthlessness about killing the +prisoners when he is incensed, we may imagine that, +after he had left Falstaff and was no longer +influenced by the face of his old companion, he gave +way to anger at the indecent familiarity which had +provoked a compromising scene on the most ceremonial +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page259" id="page259"></a>259</span> +of occasions and in the presence alike of +court and crowd, and that he sent the Chief Justice +back to take vengeance. And this is consistent with +the fact that in the next play we find Falstaff shortly +afterwards not only freed from prison, but unmolested +in his old haunt in Eastcheap, well within ten miles +of Henry’s person. His anger had soon passed, +and he knew that the requisite effect had been produced +both on Falstaff and on the world.</p> + +<p>But all this, however true, will not solve our +problem. It seems, on the contrary, to increase +its difficulty. For the natural conclusion is that +Shakespeare <i>intended</i> us to feel resentment against +Henry. And yet that cannot be, for it implies that +he meant the play to end disagreeably; and no one +who understands Shakespeare at all will consider +that supposition for a moment credible. No; he +must have meant the play to end pleasantly, although +he made Henry’s action consistent. And hence it +follows that he must have intended our sympathy +with Falstaff to be so far weakened when the rejection-scene +arrives that his discomfiture should be +satisfactory to us; that we should enjoy this sudden +reverse of enormous hopes (a thing always ludicrous +if sympathy is absent); that we should approve the +moral judgment that falls on him; and so should +pass lightly over that disclosure of unpleasant traits +in the King’s character which Shakespeare was too +true an artist to suppress. Thus our pain and resentment, +if we feel them, are wrong, in the sense that +they do not answer to the dramatist’s intention. But +it does not follow that they are wrong in a further +sense. They may be right, because the dramatist +has missed what he aimed at. And this, though +the dramatist was Shakespeare, is what I would +suggest. In the Falstaff scenes he overshot his +mark. He created so extraordinary a being, and +fixed him so firmly on his intellectual throne, that +when he sought to dethrone him he could not. The +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page260" id="page260"></a>260</span> +moment comes when we are to look at Falstaff in a +serious light, and the comic hero is to figure as a +baffled schemer; but we cannot make the required +change, either in our attitude or in our sympathies. +We wish Henry a glorious reign and much joy of +his crew of hypocritical politicians, lay and clerical; +but our hearts go with Falstaff to the Fleet, or, if +necessary, to Arthur’s bosom or wheresomever +he is.<a name="fa4h" id="fa4h" href="#ft4h"><span class="sp">4</span></a></p> + +<p>In the remainder of the lecture I will try to make +this view clear. And to that end we must go back +to the Falstaff of the body of the two plays, the +immortal Falstaff, a character almost purely humorous, +and therefore no subject for moral judgments. +I can but draw an outline, and in describing one +aspect of this character must be content to hold +another in reserve.</p> + +<p class="pt2 center">2.</p> + +<p>Up to a certain point Falstaff is ludicrous in the +same way as many other figures, his distinction +lying, so far, chiefly in the mere abundance of +ludicrous traits. <i>Why</i> we should laugh at a man +with a huge belly and corresponding appetites; at +the inconveniences he suffers on a hot day, or in +playing the footpad, or when he falls down and there +are no levers at hand to lift him up again; at the +incongruity of his unwieldy bulk and the nimbleness +of his spirit, the infirmities of his age and his youthful +lightness of heart; at the enormity of his lies and +wiles, and the suddenness of their exposure and +frustration; at the contrast between his reputation +and his real character, seen most absurdly when, at +the mere mention of his name, a redoubted rebel +surrenders to him—<i>why</i>, I say, we should laugh at +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page261" id="page261"></a>261</span> +these and many such things, this is no place to +inquire; but unquestionably we do. Here we have +them poured out in endless profusion and with that +air of careless ease which is so fascinating in Shakespeare; +and with the enjoyment of them I believe +many readers stop. But while they are quite essential +to the character, there is in it much more. For +these things by themselves do not explain why, +beside laughing at Falstaff, we are made happy by +him and laugh <i>with</i> him. He is not, like Parolles, +a mere <i>object</i> of mirth.</p> + +<p>The main reason why he makes us so happy and +puts us so entirely at our ease is that he himself is +happy and entirely at his ease. ‘Happy’ is too +weak a word; he is in bliss, and we share his glory. +Enjoyment—no fitful pleasure crossing a dull life, +nor any vacant convulsive mirth—but a rich deep-toned +chuckling enjoyment circulates continually +through all his being. If you ask <i>what</i> he enjoys, +no doubt the answer is, in the first place, eating and +drinking, taking his ease at his inn, and the company +of other merry souls. Compared with these things, +what we count the graver interests of life are nothing +to him. But then, while we are under his spell, it +is impossible to consider these graver interests; +gravity is to us, as to him, inferior to gravy; and +what he does enjoy he enjoys with such a luscious +and good-humoured zest that we sympathise and he +makes us happy. And if any one objected, we +should answer with Sir Toby Belch, ‘Dost thou +think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no +more cakes and ale?’</p> + +<p>But this, again, is far from all. Falstaff’s ease +and enjoyment are not simply those of the happy +man of appetite;<a name="fa5h" id="fa5h" href="#ft5h"><span class="sp">5</span></a> they are those of the humorist, +and the humorist of genius. Instead of being comic +to you and serious to himself, he is more ludicrous +to himself than to you; and he makes himself out +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page262" id="page262"></a>262</span> +more ludicrous than he is, in order that he and +others may laugh. Prince Hal never made such +sport of Falstaff’s person as he himself did. It is +<i>he</i> who says that his skin hangs about him like an +old lady’s loose gown, and that he walks before his +page like a sow that hath o’erwhelmed all her litter +but one. And he jests at himself when he is alone +just as much as when others are by. It is the same +with his appetites. The direct enjoyment they bring +him is scarcely so great as the enjoyment of laughing +at this enjoyment; and for all his addiction to +sack you never see him for an instant with a brain +dulled by it, or a temper turned solemn, silly, +quarrelsome, or pious. The virtue it instils into +him, of filling his brain with nimble, fiery, and +delectable shapes—this, and his humorous attitude +towards it, free him, in a manner, from slavery to it; +and it is this freedom, and no secret longing for +better things (those who attribute such a longing to +him are far astray), that makes his enjoyment contagious +and prevents our sympathy with it from +being disturbed.</p> + +<p>The bliss of freedom gained in humour is the +essence of Falstaff. His humour is not directed +only or chiefly against obvious absurdities; he is +the enemy of everything that would interfere with +his ease, and therefore of anything serious, and +especially of everything respectable and moral. For +these things impose limits and obligations, and make +us the subjects of old father antic the law, and +the categorical imperative, and our station and its +duties, and conscience, and reputation, and other +people’s opinions, and all sorts of nuisances. I say +he is therefore their enemy; but I do him wrong; +to say that he is their enemy implies that he regards +them as serious and recognises their power, when in +truth he refuses to recognise them at all. They are +to him absurd; and to reduce a thing <i>ad absurdum</i> +is to reduce it to nothing and to walk about free +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page263" id="page263"></a>263</span> +and rejoicing. This is what Falstaff does with all +the would-be serious things of life, sometimes only +by his words, sometimes by his actions too. He +will make truth appear absurd by solemn statements, +which he utters with perfect gravity and which he +expects nobody to believe; and honour, by demonstrating +that it cannot set a leg, and that neither the +living nor the dead can possess it; and law, by +evading all the attacks of its highest representative +and almost forcing him to laugh at his own defeat; +and patriotism, by filling his pockets with the bribes +offered by competent soldiers who want to escape +service, while he takes in their stead the halt and +maimed and the gaol-birds; and duty, by showing +how he labours in his vocation—of thieving; and +courage, alike by mocking at his own capture of +Colvile and gravely claiming to have killed Hotspur; +and war, by offering the Prince his bottle of +sack when he is asked for a sword; and religion, +by amusing himself with remorse at odd times when +he has nothing else to do; and the fear of death, +by maintaining perfectly untouched, in the face of +imminent peril and even while he <i>feels</i> the fear of +death, the very same power of dissolving it in persiflage +that he shows when he sits at ease in his inn. +These are the wonderful achievements which he +performs, not with the sourness of a cynic, but +with the gaiety of a boy. And, therefore, we +praise him, we laud him, for he offends none but +the virtuous, and denies that life is real or life is +earnest, and delivers us from the oppression of such +nightmares, and lifts us into the atmosphere of perfect +freedom.</p> + +<p>No one in the play understands Falstaff fully, any +more than Hamlet was understood by the persons +round him. They are both men of genius. Mrs. +Quickly and Bardolph are his slaves, but they know +not why. ‘Well, fare thee well,’ says the hostess +whom he has pillaged and forgiven; ‘I have known +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page264" id="page264"></a>264</span> +thee these twenty-nine years, come peas-cod time, +but an honester and truer-hearted man—well, fare +thee well.’ Poins and the Prince delight in him; +they get him into corners for the pleasure of seeing +him escape in ways they cannot imagine; but they +often take him much too seriously. Poins, for +instance, rarely sees, the Prince does not always +see, and moralising critics never see, that when +Falstaff speaks ill of a companion behind his back, +or writes to the Prince that Poins spreads it abroad +that the Prince is to marry his sister, he knows +quite well that what he says will be repeated, or +rather, perhaps, is absolutely indifferent whether it +be repeated or not, being certain that it can only +give him an opportunity for humour. It is the +same with his lying, and almost the same with his +cowardice, the two main vices laid to his charge +even by sympathisers. Falstaff is neither a liar nor +a coward in the usual sense, like the typical cowardly +boaster of comedy. He tells his lies either for +their own humour, or on purpose to get himself into +a difficulty. He rarely expects to be believed, perhaps +never. He abandons a statement or contradicts +it the moment it is made. There is scarcely more +intent in his lying than in the humorous exaggerations +which he pours out in soliloquy just as much +as when others are by. Poins and the Prince +understand this in part. You see them waiting +eagerly to convict him, not that they may really +put him to shame, but in order to enjoy the greater +lie that will swallow up the less. But their sense +of humour lags behind his. Even the Prince seems +to accept as half-serious that remorse of his which +passes so suddenly into glee at the idea of taking a +purse, and his request to his friend to bestride him +if he should see him down in the battle. Bestride +Falstaff! ‘Hence! Wilt thou lift up Olympus?’</p> + +<p>Again, the attack of the Prince and Poins on +Falstaff and the other thieves on Gadshill is contrived, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page265" id="page265"></a>265</span> +we know, with a view to the incomprehensible +lies it will induce him to tell. But when, more than +rising to the occasion, he turns two men in buckram +into four, and then seven, and then nine, and then +eleven, almost in a breath, I believe they partly +misunderstand his intention, and too many of his +critics misunderstand it altogether. Shakespeare +was not writing a mere farce. It is preposterous to +suppose that a man of Falstaff’s intelligence would +utter these gross, palpable, open lies with the serious +intention to deceive, or forget that, if it was too +dark for him to see his own hand, he could hardly +see that the three misbegotten knaves were wearing +Kendal green. No doubt, if he <i>had</i> been believed, +he would have been hugely tickled at it, but he no +more expected to be believed than when he claimed +to have killed Hotspur. Yet he is supposed to be +serious even then. Such interpretations would destroy +the poet’s whole conception; and of those who +adopt them one might ask this out of some twenty +similar questions:—When Falstaff, in the men in +buckram scene, begins by calling twice at short +intervals for sack, and then a little later calls for +more and says, ‘I am a rogue if I drunk to-day,’ +and the Prince answers, ‘O villain, thy lips are +scarce wiped since thou drunk’st last,’ do they think +that <i>that</i> lie was meant to deceive? And if not, +why do they take it for granted that the others +were? I suppose they consider that Falstaff was in +earnest when, wanting to get twenty-two yards of +satin on trust from Master Dombledon the silk-mercer, +he offered Bardolph as security; or when +he said to the Chief Justice about Mrs. Quickly, +who accused him of breaking his promise to marry +her, ‘My lord, this is a poor mad soul, and she says +up and down the town that her eldest son is like +you’; or when he explained his enormous bulk by +exclaiming, ‘A plague of sighing and grief! It +blows a man up like a bladder’; or when he +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page266" id="page266"></a>266</span> +accounted for his voice being cracked by declaring +that he had ‘lost it with singing of anthems’; or +even when he sold his soul on Good-Friday to the +devil for a cup of Madeira and a cold capon’s leg. +Falstaff’s lies about Hotspur and the men in buckram +do not essentially differ from these statements. +There is nothing serious in any of them except the +refusal to take anything seriously.</p> + +<p>This is also the explanation of Falstaff’s cowardice, +a subject on which I should say nothing if +Maurice Morgann’s essay,<a name="fa6h" id="fa6h" href="#ft6h"><span class="sp">6</span></a> now more than a century +old, were better known. That Falstaff sometimes +behaves in what we should generally call a cowardly +way is certain; but that does not show that he was +a coward; and if the word means a person who feels +painful fear in the presence of danger, and yields to +that fear in spite of his better feelings and convictions, +then assuredly Falstaff was no coward. +The stock bully and boaster of comedy is one, but +not Falstaff. It is perfectly clear in the first place +that, though he had unfortunately a reputation for +stabbing and caring not what mischief he did if his +weapon were out, he had not a reputation for +cowardice. Shallow remembered him five-and-fifty +years ago breaking Scogan’s head at the court-gate +when he was a crack not thus high; and Shallow +knew him later a good back-swordsman. Then we +lose sight of him till about twenty years after, when +his association with Bardolph began; and that +association implies that by the time he was thirty-five +or forty he had sunk into the mode of life we +witness in the plays. Yet, even as we see him +there, he remains a person of consideration in the +army. Twelve captains hurry about London searching +for him. He is present at the Council of War +in the King’s tent at Shrewsbury, where the only +other persons are the King, the two princes, a nobleman +and Sir Walter Blunt. The messenger who +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page267" id="page267"></a>267</span> +brings the false report of the battle to Northumberland +mentions, as one of the important incidents, the +death of Sir John Falstaff. Colvile, expressly described +as a famous rebel, surrenders to him as soon +as he hears his name. And if his own wish that his +name were not so terrible to the enemy, and his own +boast of his European reputation, are not evidence +of the first rank, they must not be entirely ignored +in presence of these other facts. What do these +facts mean? Does Shakespeare put them all in with +no purpose at all, or in defiance of his own intentions? +It is not credible.</p> + +<p>And when, in the second place, we look at +Falstaff’s actions, what do we find? He boldly confronted +Colvile, he was quite ready to fight with +him, however pleased that Colvile, like a kind fellow, +gave himself away. When he saw Henry and Hotspur +fighting, Falstaff, instead of making off in a +panic, stayed to take his chance if Hotspur should +be the victor. He <i>led</i> his hundred and fifty ragamuffins +where they were peppered, he did not <i>send</i> +them. To draw upon Pistol and force him downstairs +and wound him in the shoulder was no great +feat, perhaps, but the stock coward would have +shrunk from it. When the Sheriff came to the inn +to arrest him for an offence whose penalty was +death, Falstaff, who was hidden behind the arras, +did not stand there quaking for fear, he immediately +fell asleep and snored. When he stood in the battle +reflecting on what would happen if the weight of his +paunch should be increased by that of a bullet, he +cannot have been in a tremor of craven fear. He +<i>never</i> shows such fear; and surely the man who, in +danger of his life, and with no one by to hear him, +meditates thus: ‘I like not such grinning honour as +Sir Walter hath. Give me life: which if I can save, +so; if not, honour comes unlooked-for, and there’s +an end,’ is not what we commonly call a coward.</p> + +<p>‘Well,’ it will be answered, ‘but he ran away on +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page268" id="page268"></a>268</span> +Gadshill; and when Douglas attacked him he fell +down and shammed dead.’ Yes, I am thankful to +say, he did. For of course he did not want to be +dead. He wanted to live and be merry. And as +he had reduced the idea of honour <i>ad absurdum</i>, had +scarcely any self-respect, and only a respect for +reputation as a means of life, naturally he avoided +death when he could do so without a ruinous loss of +reputation, and (observe) with the satisfaction of +playing a colossal practical joke. For <i>that</i> after all +was his first object. If his one thought had been to +avoid death he would not have faced Douglas at all, +but would have run away as fast as his legs could +carry him; and unless Douglas had been one of +those exceptional Scotchmen who have no sense of +humour, he would never have thought of pursuing so +ridiculous an object as Falstaff running. So that, as +Mr. Swinburne remarks, Poins is right when he +thus distinguishes Falstaff from his companions in +robbery: ‘For two of them, I know them to be as +true-bred cowards as ever turned back; and for the +third, if he fight longer than he sees reason, I’ll +forswear arms.’ And the event justifies this distinction. +For it is exactly thus that, according to the +original stage-direction, Falstaff behaves when +Henry and Poins attack him and the others. The +rest run away at once; Falstaff, here as afterwards +with Douglas, fights for a blow or two, but, finding +himself deserted and outmatched, runs away also. +Of course. He saw no reason to stay. <i>Any</i> man +who had risen superior to all serious motives would +have run away. But it does not follow that he +would run from mere fear, or be, in the ordinary +sense, a coward.<a name="fa7h" id="fa7h" href="#ft7h"><span class="sp">7</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page269" id="page269"></a>269</span></p> + +<p class="pt2 center">3.</p> + +<p>The main source, then, of our sympathetic delight +in Falstaff is his humorous superiority to everything +serious, and the freedom of soul enjoyed in it. But, +of course, this is not the whole of his character. +Shakespeare knew well enough that perfect freedom +is not to be gained in this manner; we are ourselves +aware of it even while we are sympathising with +Falstaff; and as soon as we regard him seriously it +becomes obvious. His freedom is limited in two +main ways. For one thing he cannot rid himself +entirely of respect for all that he professes to ridicule. +He shows a certain pride in his rank: unlike the +Prince, he is haughty to the drawers, who call him a +proud Jack. He is not really quite indifferent to +reputation. When the Chief Justice bids him pay +his debt to Mrs. Quickly for his reputation’s sake, I +think he feels a twinge, though to be sure he proceeds +to pay her by borrowing from her. He is +also stung by any thoroughly serious imputation on +his courage, and winces at the recollection of his +running away on Gadshill; he knows that his +behaviour there certainly looked cowardly, and +perhaps he remembers that he would not have +behaved so once. It is, further, very significant +that, for all his dissolute talk, he has never yet +allowed the Prince and Poins to <i>see</i> him as they saw +him afterwards with Doll Tearsheet; not, of course, +that he has any moral shame in the matter, but he +knows that in such a situation he, in his old age, +must appear contemptible—not a humorist but a +mere object of mirth. And, finally, he has affection +in him—affection, I think, for Poins and Bardolph, +and certainly for the Prince; and that is a thing +which he cannot jest out of existence. Hence, as +the effect of his rejection shows, he is not really +invulnerable. And then, in the second place, since +he is in the flesh, his godlike freedom has consequences +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page270" id="page270"></a>270</span> +and conditions; consequences, for there is +something painfully wrong with his great toe; conditions, +for he cannot eat and drink for ever without +money, and his purse suffers from consumption, a +disease for which he can find no remedy.<a name="fa8h" id="fa8h" href="#ft8h"><span class="sp">8</span></a> As +the Chief Justice tells him, his means are very +slender and his waste great; and his answer, ‘I +would it were otherwise; I would my means were +greater and my waist slenderer,’ though worth +much money, brings none in. And so he is driven +to evil deeds; not only to cheating his tailor like +a gentleman, but to fleecing Justice Shallow, and +to highway robbery, and to cruel depredations on +the poor woman whose affection he has secured. +All this is perfectly consistent with the other side +of his character, but by itself it makes an ugly +picture.</p> + +<p>Yes, it makes an ugly picture when you look at it +seriously. But then, surely, so long as the humorous +atmosphere is preserved and the humorous attitude +maintained, you do not look at it so. You no more +regard Falstaff’s misdeeds morally than you do the +much more atrocious misdeeds of Punch or Reynard +the Fox. You do not exactly ignore them, but you +attend only to their comic aspect. This is the very +spirit of comedy, and certainly of Shakespeare’s +comic world, which is one of make-believe, not +merely as his tragic world is, but in a further sense—a +world in which gross improbabilities are accepted +with a smile, and many things are welcomed as +merely laughable which, regarded gravely, would +excite anger and disgust. The intervention of a +serious spirit breaks up such a world, and would +destroy our pleasure in Falstaff’s company. Accordingly +through the greater part of these dramas +Shakespeare carefully confines this spirit to the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page271" id="page271"></a>271</span> +scenes of war and policy, and dismisses it entirely +in the humorous parts. Hence, if <i>Henry IV.</i> had +been a comedy like <i>Twelfth Night</i>, I am sure that +he would no more have ended it with the painful +disgrace of Falstaff than he ended <i>Twelfth Night</i> +by disgracing Sir Toby Belch.<a name="fa9h" id="fa9h" href="#ft9h"><span class="sp">9</span></a></p> + +<p>But <i>Henry IV.</i> was to be in the main a historical +play, and its chief hero Prince Henry. In the +course of it his greater and finer qualities were to be +gradually revealed, and it was to end with beautiful +scenes of reconciliation and affection between his +father and him, and a final emergence of the wild +Prince as a just, wise, stern, and glorious King. +Hence, no doubt, it seemed to Shakespeare that +Falstaff at last must be disgraced, and must therefore +appear no longer as the invincible humorist, but +as an object of ridicule and even of aversion. And +probably also his poet’s insight showed him that +Henry, as he conceived him, <i>would</i> behave harshly +to Falstaff in order to impress the world, especially +when his mind had been wrought to a high pitch by +the scene with his dying father and the impression +of his own solemn consecration to great duties.</p> + +<p>This conception was a natural and a fine one; +and if the execution was not an entire success, it is +yet full of interest. Shakespeare’s purpose being to +work a gradual change in our feelings towards +Falstaff, and to tinge the humorous atmosphere +more and more deeply with seriousness, we see him +carrying out this purpose in the Second Part of +<i>Henry IV.</i> Here he separates the Prince from +Falstaff as much as he can, thus withdrawing him +from Falstaff’s influence, and weakening in our minds +the connection between the two. In the First Part +we constantly see them together; in the Second (it +is a remarkable fact) only once before the rejection. +Further, in the scenes where Henry appears apart +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page272" id="page272"></a>272</span> +from Falstaff, we watch him growing more and +more grave, and awakening more and more poetic +interest; while Falstaff, though his humour scarcely +flags to the end, exhibits more and more of his +seamy side. This is nowhere turned to the full +light in Part I.; but in Part II. we see him as the +heartless destroyer of Mrs. Quickly, as a ruffian +seriously defying the Chief Justice because his +position as an officer on service gives him power +to do wrong, as the pike preparing to snap up the +poor old dace Shallow, and (this is the one scene +where Henry and he meet) as the worn-out lecher, +not laughing at his servitude to the flesh but sunk +in it. Finally, immediately before the rejection, the +world where he is king is exposed in all its sordid +criminality when we find Mrs. Quickly and Doll +arrested for being concerned in the death of one +man, if not more, beaten to death by their bullies; +and the dangerousness of Falstaff is emphasised in +his last words as he hurries from Shallow’s house to +London, words at first touched with humour but at +bottom only too seriously meant: ‘Let us take any +man’s horses; the laws of England are at my commandment. +Happy are they which have been my +friends, and woe unto my Lord Chief Justice.’ His +dismissal to the Fleet by the Chief Justice is the +dramatic vengeance for that threat.</p> + +<p>Yet all these excellent devices fail. They cause +us momentary embarrassment at times when repellent +traits in Falstaff’s character are disclosed; but +they fail to change our attitude of humour into one +of seriousness, and our sympathy into repulsion. +And they were bound to fail, because Shakespeare +shrank from adding to them the one device which +would have ensured success. If, as the Second +Part of <i>Henry IV.</i> advanced, he had clouded over +Falstaff’s humour so heavily that the man of genius +turned into the Falstaff of the <i>Merry Wives</i>, we +should have witnessed his rejection without a pang. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page273" id="page273"></a>273</span> +This Shakespeare was too much of an artist to do—though +even in this way he did something—and +without this device he could not succeed. As I +said, in the creation of Falstaff he overreached himself. +He was caught up on the wind of his own +genius, and carried so far that he could not descend +to earth at the selected spot. It is not a misfortune +that happens to many authors, nor is it one we can +regret, for it costs us but a trifling inconvenience in +one scene, while we owe to it perhaps the greatest +comic character in literature. For it is in this +character, and not in the judgment he brings +upon Falstaff’s head, that Shakespeare asserts his +supremacy. To show that Falstaff’s freedom of soul +was in part illusory, and that the realities of life +refused to be conjured away by his humour—this +was what we might expect from Shakespeare’s unfailing +sanity, but it was surely no achievement +beyond the power of lesser men. The achievement +was Falstaff himself, and the conception of that +freedom of soul, a freedom illusory only in part, and +attainable only by a mind which had received from +Shakespeare’s own the inexplicable touch of infinity +which he bestowed on Hamlet and Macbeth and +Cleopatra, but denied to Henry the Fifth.</p> + +<p class="f80">1902.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page274" id="page274"></a>274</span></p> + +<div class="condensed"> +<p class="pt2 center chap">NOTE</p> + +<p>For the benefit of readers unacquainted with Morgann’s Essay +I reproduce here, with additions, some remarks omitted from the +lecture for want of time. ‘Maurice Morgann, Esq. the ingenious +writer of this work, descended from an antient and respectable +family in Wales; he filled the office of under Secretary of State +to the late Marquis of Lansdown, during his first administration; +and was afterwards Secretary to the Embassy for ratifying the +peace with America, in 1783. He died at his house in Knightsbridge, +in the seventy-seventh year of his age, on the 28th March, +1802’ (Preface to the edition of 1825). He was a remarkable +and original man, who seems to have written a good deal, but, +beyond this essay and some pamphlets on public affairs, all or +nearly all anonymous, he published nothing, and at his death +he left orders that all his papers should be destroyed. The +<i>Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff</i> was first +published in 1777. It arose out of a conversation in which +Morgann expressed his belief that Shakespeare never meant +Falstaff for a coward. He was challenged to explain and support +in print what was considered an extraordinary paradox, and his +essay bears on its title-page the quotation, ‘I am not John of +Gaunt, your grandfather: but yet no coward, Hal’—one of +Falstaff’s few serious sentences. But Morgann did not confine +himself to the question of Falstaff’s cowardice; he analysed the +whole character, and incidentally touched on many points in +Shakespearean criticism. ‘The reader,’ he observes, ‘will not +need to be told that this inquiry will resolve itself of course +into a critique on the genius, the arts, and the conduct, of +Shakespeare: for what is Falstaff, what Lear, what Hamlet, or +Othello, but different modifications of Shakespeare’s thought? +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page275" id="page275"></a>275</span> +It is true that this inquiry is narrowed almost to a single point; +but general criticism is as uninstructive as it is easy: Shakespeare +deserves to be considered in detail;—a task hitherto unattempted.’</p> + +<p>The last words are significant. Morgann was conscious that +he was striking out a new line. The Eighteenth Century critics +had done much for Shakespeare in the way of scholarship; some +of them had praised him well and blamed him well; but they +had done little to interpret the process of his imagination from +within. This was what Morgann attempted. His attitude towards +Shakespeare is that of Goethe, Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt. The +dangers of his method might be illustrated from the Essay, but +in his hands it yielded most valuable results. And though he +did not attempt the eloquence of some of his successors, but +wrote like a cultivated ironical man of the world, he wrote +delightfully; so that in all respects his Essay, which has long +been out of print, deserves to be republished and better known. +[It was republished in Mr. Nichol Smith’s excellent <i>Eighteenth +Century Essays on Shakespeare</i>, 1903; and, in 1912, by itself, +with an introduction by W. A. Gill.]</p> + +<p>Readers of Boswell (under the year 1783) will remember that +Morgann, who once met Johnson, favoured his biographer with +two most characteristic anecdotes. Boswell also records Johnson’s +judgment of Morgann’s Essay, which, says Mr. Swinburne, elicited +from him ‘as good a jest and as bad a criticism as might have +been expected.’ Johnson, we are told, being asked his opinion +of the Essay, answered: ‘Why, Sir, we shall have the man come +forth again; and as he has proved Falstaff to be no coward, he +may prove Iago to be a very good character.’ The following +passage from Morgann’s <i>Essay</i> (p. 66 of the 1825 edition, p. 248 +of Mr. Nichol Smith’s book) gives, I presume, his opinion of +Johnson. Having referred to Warburton, he adds: ‘Another has +since undertaken the custody of our author, whom he seems to +consider as a sort of wild Proteus or madman, and accordingly +knocks him down with the butt-end of his critical staff, as often +as he exceeds that line of sober discretion, which this learned +Editor appears to have chalked out for him: yet is this Editor, +notwithstanding, “a man, take him for all in all,” very highly +respectable for his genius and his learning.’</p> +</div> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1h" id="ft1h" href="#fa1h"><span class="fn">1</span></a> In this lecture and the three that follow it I have mentioned the +authors my obligations to whom I was conscious of in writing or have +discovered since; but other debts must doubtless remain, which from +forgetfulness I am unable to acknowledge.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2h" id="ft2h" href="#fa2h"><span class="fn">2</span></a> See on this and other points Swinburne, <i>A Study of Shakespeare</i>, +p. 106 ff.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3h" id="ft3h" href="#fa3h"><span class="fn">3</span></a> Rötscher, <i>Shakespeare in seinen höchsten Charaktergebilden</i>, 1864.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4h" id="ft4h" href="#fa4h"><span class="fn">4</span></a> That from the beginning Shakespeare intended Henry’s accession +to be Falstaff’s catastrophe is clear from the fact that, when the two +characters first appear, Falstaff is made to betray at once the hopes +with which he looks forward to Henry’s reign. See the First Part of +<i>Henry IV.</i>, Act <span class="scs">I.</span>, Scene ii.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5h" id="ft5h" href="#fa5h"><span class="fn">5</span></a> Cf. Hazlitt, <i>Characters of Shakespear’s Plays</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6h" id="ft6h" href="#fa6h"><span class="fn">6</span></a> See Note at end of lecture.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7h" id="ft7h" href="#fa7h"><span class="fn">7</span></a> It is to be regretted, however, that in carrying his guts away so +nimbly he ‘roared for mercy’; for I fear we have no ground for +rejecting Henry’s statement to that effect, and I do not see my way to +adopt the suggestion (I forget whose it is) that Falstaff spoke the +truth when he swore that he knew Henry and Poins as well as he that +made them.</p> + +<p><a name="ft8h" id="ft8h" href="#fa8h"><span class="fn">8</span></a> Panurge too was ‘naturally subject to a kind of disease which at +that time they called lack of money’; it was a ‘flux in his purse’ +(Rabelais, Book II., chapters xvi., xvii.).</p> + +<p><a name="ft9h" id="ft9h" href="#fa9h"><span class="fn">9</span></a> I seem to remember that, according to Gervinus, Shakespeare did +disgrace Sir Toby—by marrying him to Maria!</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:150px; height:35px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img001.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page276" id="page276"></a>276<br />277</span></p> + +<p class="center chap">SHAKESPEARE’S <i>ANTONY AND +CLEOPATRA</i></p> +<p> </p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page278" id="page278"></a>278<br />279</span></p> + +<p class="center pt2"><span class="chap2">SHAKESPEARE’S <i>ANTONY AND +CLEOPATRA</i></span><a name="fa1i" id="fa1i" href="#ft1i"><span class="sp">1</span></a></p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1 fo">Coleridge’s</span> one page of general criticism on <i>Antony +and Cleopatra</i> contains some notable remarks. ‘Of +all Shakespeare’s historical plays,’ he writes, ‘<i>Antony +and Cleopatra</i> 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.’ In a later +sentence he refers to the play as ‘this astonishing +drama.’ In another he describes the style: ‘<i>feliciter +audax</i> is the motto for its style comparatively with +that of Shakespeare’s other works.’ And he translates +this motto in the phrase ‘happy valiancy of +style.’</p> + +<p>Coleridge’s assertion that in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> +Shakespeare followed history more minutely than in +any other play might well be disputed; and his +statement about the style of this drama requires +some qualification in view of the results of later +criticism as to the order of Shakespeare’s works. +The style is less individual than he imagined. On +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page280" id="page280"></a>280</span> +the whole it is common to the six or seven dramas +subsequent to <i>Macbeth</i>, though in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, +probably the earliest of them, its development +is not yet complete. And we must add that this +style has certain special defects, unmentioned by +Coleridge, as well as the quality which he points out +in it. But it is true that here that quality is almost +continuously present; and in the phrase by which he +describes it, as in his other phrases, he has signalised +once for all some of the most salient features of the +drama.</p> + +<p>It is curious to notice, for example, alike in books +and in conversation, how often the first epithets +used in reference to <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> are +‘wonderful’ and ‘astonishing.’ And the main +source of the feeling thus expressed seems to be +the ‘angelic strength’ or ‘fiery force’ of which +Coleridge wrote. The first of these two phrases is, +I think, the more entirely happy. Except perhaps +towards the close, one is not so conscious of fiery +force as in certain other tragedies; but one is +astonished at the apparent ease with which extraordinary +effects are produced, the ease, if I may +paraphrase Coleridge, of an angel moving with a +wave of the hand that heavy matter which men find +so intractable. We feel this sovereign ease in contemplating +Shakespeare’s picture of the world—a +vast canvas, crowded with figures, glowing with +colour and a superb animation, reminding one +spectator of Paul Veronese and another of Rubens. +We feel it again when we observe (as we can even +without consulting Plutarch) the nature of the +material; how bulky it was, and, in some respects, +how undramatic; and how the artist, though he +could not treat history like legend or fiction, seems +to push whole masses aside, and to shift and +refashion the remainder, almost with the air of an +architect playing (at times rather carelessly) with a +child’s bricks.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page281" id="page281"></a>281</span></p> + +<p>Something similar is felt even in the portrait of +Cleopatra. Marvellous as it is, the drawing of it +suggests not so much the passionate concentration +or fiery force of <i>Macbeth</i>, as that sense of effortless +and exultant mastery which we feel in the portraits +of Mercutio and Falstaff. And surely it is a total +mistake to find in this portrait any trace of the +distempered mood which disturbs our pleasure in +<i>Troilus and Cressida</i>. If the sonnets about the +dark lady were, as need not be doubted, in some +degree autobiographical, Shakespeare may well have +used his personal experience both when he drew +Cressida and when he drew Cleopatra. And, if he +did, the story in the later play was the nearer to his +own; for Antony might well have said what Troilus +could never say,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>When my love swears that she is made of truth,</p> +<p>I do believe her, though I know she lies.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">But in the later play, not only is the poet’s vision +unclouded, but his whole nature, emotional as well +as intellectual, is free. The subject no more embitters +or seduces him than the ambition of Macbeth. +So that here too we feel the angelic strength of +which Coleridge speaks. If we quarrelled with the +phrase at all, it would be because we fancied we +could trace in Shakespeare’s attitude something of +the irony of superiority; and this may not altogether +suit our conception of an angel.</p> + +<p>I have still another sentence to quote from +Coleridge: ‘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.”’ +Now, unless the clause here about the ‘giant power’ +may be taken to restrict the rivalry to the quality of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page282" id="page282"></a>282</span> +angelic strength, Coleridge’s doubt seems to show a +lapse in critical judgment. To regard this tragedy +as a rival of the famous four, whether on the stage +or in the study, is surely an error. The world +certainly has not so regarded it; and, though the +world’s reasons for its verdicts on works of art may +be worth little, its mere verdict is worth much. +Here, it seems to me, that verdict must be accepted. +One may notice that, in calling <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> +wonderful or astonishing, we appear to be +thinking first of the artist and his activity, while in +the case of the four famous tragedies it is the +product of this activity, the thing presented, that +first engrosses us. I know that I am stating this +difference too sharply, but I believe that it is often +felt; and, if this is so, the fact is significant. It +implies that, although <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> may +be for us as wonderful an achievement as the +greatest of Shakespeare’s plays, it has not an equal +value. Besides, in the attempt to rank it with them +there is involved something more, and more important, +than an error in valuation. There is a +failure to discriminate the peculiar marks of <i>Antony +and Cleopatra</i> itself, marks which, whether or no it +be the equal of the earlier tragedies, make it +decidedly different. If I speak first of some of +these differences it is because they thus contribute +to the individuality of the play, and because they +seem often not to be distinctly apprehended in +criticism.</p> + +<p class="pt2 center">1.</p> + +<p>Why, let us begin by asking, is <i>Antony and +Cleopatra</i>, though so wonderful an achievement, a +play rarely acted? For a tragedy, it is not painful. +Though unfit for children, it cannot be called indecent; +some slight omissions, and such a flattening +of the heroine’s part as might confidently be expected, +would leave it perfectly presentable. It is, no doubt, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page283" id="page283"></a>283</span> +in the third and fourth Acts, very defective in construction. +Even on the Elizabethan stage, where +scene followed scene without a pause, this must +have been felt; and in our theatres it would be felt +much more. There, in fact, these two and forty +scenes could not possibly be acted as they stand. +But defective construction would not distress the +bulk of an audience, if the matter presented were +that of <i>Hamlet</i> or <i>Othello</i>, of <i>Lear</i> or <i>Macbeth</i>. +The matter, then, must lack something which is +present in those tragedies; and it is mainly owing +to this difference in substance that <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> +has never attained their popularity either on +the stage or off it.</p> + +<p>Most of Shakespeare’s tragedies are dramatic, in +a special sense of the word as well as in its general +sense, from beginning to end. The story is not +merely exciting and impressive from the movement +of conflicting forces towards a terrible issue, but +from time to time there come situations and events +which, even apart from their bearing on this issue, +appeal most powerfully to the dramatic feelings—scenes +of action or passion which agitate the +audience with alarm, horror, painful expectation, or +absorbing sympathies and antipathies. Think of +the street fights in <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, the killing of +Mercutio and Tybalt, the rapture of the lovers, and +their despair when Romeo is banished. Think of +the ghost-scenes in the first Act of <i>Hamlet</i>, the +passion of the early soliloquies, the scene between +Hamlet and Ophelia, the play-scene, the sparing +of the King at prayer, the killing of Polonius. Is +not <i>Hamlet</i>, if you choose so to regard it, the best +melodrama in the world? Think at your leisure of +<i>Othello</i>, <i>Lear</i>, and <i>Macbeth</i> from the same point of +view; but consider here and now even the two +tragedies which, as dealing with Roman history, are +companions of <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>. Recall in +<i>Julius Cćsar</i> the first suggestion of the murder, the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page284" id="page284"></a>284</span> +preparation for it in a ‘tempest dropping fire,’ the +murder itself, the speech of Antony over the corpse, +and the tumult of the furious crowd; in <i>Coriolanus</i> +the bloody battles on the stage, the scene in which +the hero attains the consulship, the scene of rage in +which he is banished. And remember that in each +of these seven tragedies the matter referred to is +contained in the first three Acts.</p> + +<p>In the first three Acts of our play what is there +resembling this? Almost nothing. People converse, +discuss, accuse one another, excuse themselves, +mock, describe, drink together, arrange a +marriage, meet and part; but they do not kill, do +not even tremble or weep. We see hardly one +violent movement; until the battle of Actium is +over we witness scarcely any vehement passion; +and that battle, as it is a naval action, we do not +see. Even later, Enobarbus, when he dies, simply +dies; he does not kill himself.<a name="fa2i" id="fa2i" href="#ft2i"><span class="sp">2</span></a> We hear wonderful +talk; but it is not talk, like that of Macbeth and +Lady Macbeth, or that of Othello and Iago, at +which we hold our breath. The scenes that we +remember first are those that portray Cleopatra; +Cleopatra coquetting, tormenting, beguiling her lover +to stay; Cleopatra left with her women and longing +for him; Cleopatra receiving the news of his marriage; +Cleopatra questioning the messenger about +Octavia’s personal appearance. But this is to say +that the scenes we remember first are the least +indispensable to the plot. One at least is not essential +to it at all. And this, the astonishing scene +where she storms at the messenger, strikes him, +and draws her dagger on him, is the one passage in +the first half of the drama that contains either an +explosion of passion or an exciting bodily action. +Nor is this all. The first half of the play, though +it forebodes tragedy, is not decisively tragic in +tone. Certainly the Cleopatra scenes are not so. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page285" id="page285"></a>285</span> +We read them, and we should witness them, in +delighted wonder and even with amusement. The +only scene that can vie with them, that of the revel +on Pompey’s ship, though full of menace, is in great +part humorous. Enobarbus, in this part of the play, +is always humorous. Even later, when the tragic +tone is deepening, the whipping of Thyreus, in spite +of Antony’s rage, moves mirth. A play of which all +this can truly be said may well be as masterly as +<i>Othello</i> or <i>Macbeth</i>, and more delightful; but, in the +greater part of its course, it cannot possibly excite +the same emotions. It makes no attempt to do so; +and to regard it as though it made this attempt is to +miss its specific character and the intention of its +author.</p> + +<p>That character depends only in part on Shakespeare’s +fidelity to his historical authority, a fidelity +which, I may remark, is often greatly exaggerated. +For Shakespeare did not merely present the story +of ten years as though it occupied perhaps one fifth +of that time, nor did he merely invent freely, but in +critical places he effected startling changes in the +order and combination of events. Still it may be +said that, dealing with a history so famous, he could +not well make the first half of his play very exciting, +moving, or tragic. And this is true so far as mere +situations and events are concerned. But, if he had +chosen, he might easily have heightened the tone +and tension in another way. He might have made +the story of Antony’s attempt to break his bondage, +and the story of his relapse, extremely exciting, by +portraying with all his force the severity of the +struggle and the magnitude of the fatal step.</p> + +<p>And the structure of the play might seem at first +to suggest this intention. At the opening, Antony +is shown almost in the beginning of his infatuation; +for Cleopatra is not sure of her power over him, +exerts all her fascination to detain him, and plays +the part of the innocent victim who has yielded to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page286" id="page286"></a>286</span> +passion and must now expect to be deserted by +her seducer. Alarmed and ashamed at the news +of the results of his inaction, he rouses himself, +tears himself away, and speeds to Italy. His very +coming is enough to frighten Pompey into peace. +He reconciles himself with Octavius, and, by his +marriage with the good and beautiful Octavia, seems +to have knit a bond of lasting amity with her +brother, and to have guarded himself against the +passion that threatened him with ruin. At this +point his power, the world’s peace, and his own +peace, appear to be secured; his fortune has +mounted to its apex. But soon (very much sooner +than in Plutarch’s story) comes the downward turn +or counter-stroke. New causes of offence arise +between the brothers-in-law. To remove them +Octavia leaves her husband in Athens and hurries +to Rome. Immediately Antony returns to Cleopatra +and, surrendering himself at once and wholly +to her enchantment is quickly driven to his doom.</p> + +<p>Now Shakespeare, I say, with his matchless power +of depicting an inward struggle, might have made +this story, even where it could not furnish him with +thrilling incidents, the source of powerful tragic +emotions; and, in doing so, he would have departed +from his authority merely in his conception of the +hero’s character. But he does no such thing till +the catastrophe is near. Antony breaks away from +Cleopatra without any strenuous conflict. No +serious doubt of his return is permitted to agitate +us. We are almost assured of it through the impression +made on us by Octavius, through occasional +glimpses into Antony’s mind, through the absence +of any doubt in Enobarbus, through scenes in +Alexandria which display Cleopatra and display her +irresistible. And, finally, the downward turn itself, +the fatal step of Antony’s return, is shown without +the slightest emphasis. Nay, it is not shown, it is +only reported; and not a line portrays any inward +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page287" id="page287"></a>287</span> +struggle preceding it. On this side also, then, the +drama makes no attempt to rival the other tragedies; +and it was essential to its own peculiar character and +its most transcendent effects that this attempt should +not be made, but that Antony’s passion should be +represented as a force which he could hardly even +desire to resist. By the very scheme of the work, +therefore, tragic impressions of any great volume or +depth were reserved for the last stage of the conflict; +while the main interest, down to the battle of +Actium, was directed to matters exceedingly interesting +and even, in the wider sense, dramatic, but not +overtly either terrible or piteous: on the one hand, +to the political aspect of the story; on the other, to +the personal causes which helped to make the issue +inevitable.</p> + +<p class="pt2 center">2.</p> + +<p>The political situation and its development are +simple. The story is taken up almost where it was +left, years before, in <i>Julius Cćsar</i>. There Brutus +and Cassius, to prevent the rule of one man, assassinate +Cćsar. Their purpose is condemned to +failure, not merely because they make mistakes, but +because that political necessity which Napoleon +identified with destiny requires the rule of one man. +They spill Cćsar’s blood, but his spirit walks abroad +and turns their swords against their own breasts; +and the world is left divided among three men, his +friends and his heir. Here <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> +takes up the tale; and its business, from this point +of view, is to show the reduction of these three to +one. That Lepidus will not be this one was clear +already in <i>Julius Cćsar</i>; it must be Octavius or +Antony. Both ambitious, they are also men of such +opposite tempers that they would scarcely long agree +even if they wished to, and even if destiny were not +stronger than they. As it is, one of them has fixed +his eyes on the end, sacrifices everything for it, uses +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page288" id="page288"></a>288</span> +everything as a means to it. The other, though far +the greater soldier and worshipped by his followers, +has no such singleness of aim; nor yet is power, +however desirable to him, the most desirable thing +in the world. At the beginning he is risking it for +love; at the end he has lost his half of the world, +and lost his life, and Octavius rules alone. Whether +Shakespeare had this clearly in his mind is a question +neither answerable nor important; this is what came +out of his mind.</p> + +<p>Shakespeare, I think, took little interest in the +character of Octavius, and he has not made it +wholly clear. It is not distinct in Plutarch’s ‘Life +of Antony’; and I have not found traces that the +poet studied closely the ‘Life of Octavius’ included +in North’s volume. To Shakespeare he is one of +those men, like Bolingbroke and Ulysses, who have +plenty of ‘judgment’ and not much ‘blood.’ Victory +in the world, according to the poet, almost always +goes to such men; and he makes us respect, fear, +and dislike them. His Octavius is very formidable. +His cold determination half paralyses Antony; it is +so even in <i>Julius Cćsar</i>. In <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> +Octavius is more than once in the wrong; but he +never admits it; he silently pushes his rival a step +backward; and, when he ceases to fear, he shows +contempt. He neither enjoys war nor is great in it; +at first, therefore, he is anxious about the power of +Pompey, and stands in need of Antony. As soon +as Antony’s presence has served his turn, and he +has patched up a union with him and seen him safely +off to Athens, he destroys first Pompey and next +Lepidus. Then, dexterously using Antony’s faithlessness +to Octavia and excesses in the East in +order to put himself in the right, he makes for his +victim with admirable celerity while he is still drunk +with the joy of reunion with Cleopatra. For his +ends Octavius is perfectly efficient, but he is so +partly from his limitations. One phrase of his is +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page289" id="page289"></a>289</span> +exceedingly characteristic. When Antony in rage +and desperation challenges him to single combat, +Octavius calls him ‘the old ruffian.’ There is a +horrid aptness in the phrase, but it disgusts us. It +is shameful in this boy, as hard and smooth as +polished steel, to feel at such a time nothing of the +greatness of his victim and the tragedy of his victim’s +fall. Though the challenge of Antony is absurd, +we would give much to see them sword to sword. +And when Cleopatra by her death cheats the conqueror +of his prize, we feel unmixed delight.</p> + +<p>The doubtful point in the character is this. Plutarch +says that Octavius was reported to love his +sister dearly; and Shakespeare’s Octavius several +times expresses such love. When, then, he proposed +the marriage with Antony (for of course it +was he who spoke through Agrippa), was he honest, +or was he laying a trap and, in doing so, sacrificing +his sister? Did he hope the marriage would really +unite him with his brother-in-law; or did he merely +mean it to be a source of future differences; or did +he calculate that, whether it secured peace or dissension, +it would in either case bring him great +advantage? Shakespeare, who was quite as intelligent +as his readers, must have asked himself some +such question; but he may not have cared to +answer it even to himself; and, in any case, he has +left the actor (at least the actor in days later than +his own) to choose an answer. If I were forced to +choose, I should take the view that Octavius was, +at any rate, not wholly honest; partly because I +think it best suits Shakespeare’s usual way of conceiving +a character of the kind; partly because +Plutarch construed in this manner Octavius’s behaviour +in regard to his sister at a later time, and +this hint might naturally influence the poet’s way of +imagining his earlier action.<a name="fa3i" id="fa3i" href="#ft3i"><span class="sp">3</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page290" id="page290"></a>290</span></p> + +<p>Though the character of Octavius is neither +attractive nor wholly clear, his figure is invested +with a certain tragic dignity, because he is felt to be +the Man of Destiny, the agent of forces against +which the intentions of an individual would avail +nothing. He is represented as having himself some +feeling of this sort. His lament over Antony, his +grief that their stars were irreconcilable, may well +be genuine, though we should be surer if it were +uttered in soliloquy. His austere words to Octavia +again probably speak his true mind:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Be you not troubled with the time, which drives</p> +<p>O’er your content these strong necessities;</p> +<p>But let determined things to destiny</p> +<p>Hold unbewailed their way.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">In any case the feeling of fate comes through to us. +It is aided by slight touches of supernatural effect; +first in the Soothsayer’s warning to Antony that his +genius or angel is overpowered whenever he is near +Octavius; then in the strangely effective scene where +Antony’s soldiers, in the night before his last battle, +hear music in the air or under the earth:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>‘Tis the god Hercules, whom Antony loved,</p> +<p>Now leaves him.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">And to the influence of this feeling in giving +impressiveness to the story is added that of the +immense scale and world-wide issue of the conflict. +Even the distances traversed by fleets and armies +enhance this effect.</p> + +<p>And yet there seems to be something half-hearted +in Shakespeare’s appeal here, something even ironical +in his presentation of this conflict. Its external +magnitude, like Antony’s magnificence in lavishing +realms and gathering the kings of the East in his +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page291" id="page291"></a>291</span> +support, fails to uplift or dilate the imagination. +The struggle in Lear’s little island seems to us to +have an infinitely wider scope. It is here that we +are sometimes reminded of <i>Troilus and Cressida</i>, +and the cold and disenchanting light that is there +cast on the Trojan War. The spectacle which he +portrays leaves Shakespeare quite undazzled; he +even makes it appear inwardly small. The lordship +of the world, we ask ourselves, what is it worth, and +in what spirit do these ‘world-sharers’ contend for +it? They are no champions of their country like +Henry V. The conqueror knows not even the +glory of battle. Their aims, for all we see, are as +personal as if they were captains of banditti; and +they are followed merely from self-interest or private +attachment. The scene on Pompey’s galley is full +of this irony. One ‘third part of the world’ is +carried drunk to bed. In the midst of this mock +boon-companionship the pirate whispers to his leader +to cut first the cable of his ship and then the throats +of the two other Emperors; and at the moment we +should not greatly care if Pompey took the advice. +Later, a short scene, totally useless to the plot and +purely satiric in its purport, is slipped in to show +how Ventidius fears to pursue his Parthian conquests +because it is not safe for Antony’s lieutenant to +outdo his master.<a name="fa4i" id="fa4i" href="#ft4i"><span class="sp">4</span></a> A painful sense of hollowness +oppresses us. We know too well what must happen +in a world so splendid, so false, and so petty. We +turn for relief from the political game to those who +are sure to lose it; to those who love some human +being better than a prize, to Eros and Charmian +and Iras; to Enobarbus, whom the world corrupts, +but who has a heart that can break with shame; to +the lovers, who seem to us to find in death something +better than their victor’s life.</p> + +<p>This presentation of the outward conflict has two +results. First, it blunts our feeling of the greatness +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page292" id="page292"></a>292</span> +of Antony’s fall from prosperity. Indeed this feeling, +which we might expect to be unusually acute, is +hardly so; it is less acute, for example, than the like +feeling in the case of Richard II., who loses so much +smaller a realm. Our deeper sympathies are focussed +rather on Antony’s heart, on the inward fall to +which the enchantment of passion leads him, and +the inward recovery which succeeds it. And the +second result is this. The greatness of Antony and +Cleopatra in their fall is so much heightened by +contrast with the world they lose and the conqueror +who wins it, that the positive element in the final +tragic impression, the element of reconciliation, is +strongly emphasised. The peculiar effect of the +drama depends partly, as we have seen, on the +absence of decidedly tragic scenes and events in its +first half; but it depends quite as much on this +emphasis. In any Shakespearean tragedy we watch +some elect spirit colliding, partly through its error +and defect, with a superhuman power which bears it +down; and yet we feel that this spirit, even in the +error and defect, rises by its greatness into ideal +union with the power that overwhelms it. In some +tragedies this latter feeling is relatively weak. In +<i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> it is unusually strong; stronger, +with some readers at least, than the fear and grief +and pity with which they contemplate the tragic +error and the advance of doom.</p> + +<p class="pt2 center">3.</p> + +<p>The two aspects of the tragedy are presented +together in the opening scene. Here is the first. +In Cleopatra’s palace one friend of Antony is +describing to another, just arrived from Rome, the +dotage of their great general; and, as the lovers +enter, he exclaims:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i7">Look, where they come:</p> +<p>Take but good note, and you shall see in him</p> +<p>The triple pillar of the world transformed</p> +<p>Into a strumpet’s fool: behold and see.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page293" id="page293"></a>293</span></p> + +<p class="noind">With the next words the other aspect appears:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p><span class="sc">Cleo.</span> If it be love indeed, tell me how much.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Ant.</span> There’s beggary in the love that can be reckoned.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Cleo.</span> I’ll set a bourne how far to be beloved.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Ant.</span> Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">And directly after, when he is provoked by reminders +of the news from Rome:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch</p> +<p>Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space.</p> +<p>Kingdoms are clay: our dungy earth alike</p> +<p>Feeds beast as man: the nobleness of life</p> +<p>Is to do thus.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">Here is the tragic excess, but with it the tragic +greatness, the capacity of finding in something +the infinite, and of pursuing it into the jaws of +death.</p> + +<p>The two aspects are shown here with the exaggeration +proper in dramatic characters. Neither the +phrase ‘a strumpet’s fool,’ nor the assertion ‘the +nobleness of life is to do thus,’ answers to the total +effect of the play. But the truths they exaggerate +are equally essential; and the commoner mistake in +criticism is to understate the second. It is plain +that the love of Antony and Cleopatra is destructive; +that in some way it clashes with the nature of +things; that, while they are sitting in their paradise +like gods, its walls move inward and crush them at +last to death. This is no invention of moralising +critics; it is in the play; and any one familiar with +Shakespeare would expect beforehand to find it +there. But then to forget because of it the other +side, to deny the name of love to this ruinous +passion, to speak as though the lovers had utterly +missed the good of life, is to mutilate the tragedy +and to ignore a great part of its effect upon us. +For we sympathise with them in their passion; +we feel in it the infinity there is in man; even +while we acquiesce in their defeat we are exulting +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page294" id="page294"></a>294</span> +in their victory; and when they have vanished +we say,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i6">the odds is gone,</p> +<p>And there is nothing left remarkable</p> +<p>Beneath the visiting moon.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>Though we hear nothing from Shakespeare of the +cruelty of Plutarch’s Antony, or of the misery caused +by his boundless profusion, we do not feel the hero +of the tragedy to be a man of the noblest type, +like Brutus, Hamlet, or Othello. He seeks power +merely for himself, and uses it for his own pleasure. +He is in some respects unscrupulous; and, while it +would be unjust to regard his marriage exactly as if +it were one in private life, we resent his treatment +of Octavia, whose character Shakespeare was obliged +to leave a mere sketch, lest our feeling for the hero +and heroine should be too much chilled. Yet, for +all this, we sympathise warmly with Antony, are +greatly drawn to him, and are inclined to regard +him as a noble nature half spoiled by his time.</p> + +<p>It is a large, open, generous, expansive nature, +quite free from envy, capable of great magnanimity, +even of entire devotion. Antony is unreserved, +naturally straightforward, we may almost say simple. +He can admit faults, accept advice and even reproof, +take a jest against himself with good-humour. +He is courteous (to Lepidus, for example, whom +Octavius treats with cold contempt); and, though +he can be exceedingly dignified, he seems to prefer +a blunt though sympathetic plainness, which is one +cause of the attachment of his soldiers. He has +none of the faults of the brooder, the sentimentalist, +or the man of principle; his nature tends to splendid +action and lusty enjoyment. But he is neither a +mere soldier nor a mere sensualist. He has +imagination, the temper of an artist who revels in +abundant and rejoicing appetites, feasts his senses +on the glow and richness of life, flings himself into +its mirth and revelry, yet feels the poetry in all this, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page295" id="page295"></a>295</span> +and is able also to put it by and be more than +content with the hardships of adventure. Such a +man could never have sought a crown by a murder +like Macbeth’s, or, like Brutus, have killed on principle +the man who loved him, or have lost the world +for a Cressida.</p> + +<p>Beside this strain of poetry he has a keen intellect, +a swift perception of the lie of things, and much +quickness in shaping a course to suit them. In +<i>Julius Cćsar</i> he shows this after the assassination, +when he appears as a dexterous politician as well as +a warm-hearted friend. He admires what is fine, +and can fully appreciate the nobility of Brutus; but +he is sure that Brutus’s ideas are moonshine, that +(as he says in our play) Brutus is mad; and, since +his mighty friend, who was incomparably the finest +thing in the world, has perished, he sees no reason +why the inheritance should not be his own. Full of +sorrow, he yet uses his sorrow like an artist to work +on others, and greets his success with the glee of a +successful adventurer. In the earlier play he proves +himself a master of eloquence, and especially of +pathos; and he does so again in the later. With a +few words about his fall he draws tears from his +followers and even from the caustic humorist +Enobarbus. Like Richard II., he sees his own fall +with the eyes of a poet, but a poet much greater +than the young Shakespeare, who could never have +written Antony’s marvellous speech about the sunset +clouds. But we listen to Antony, as we do not to +Richard, with entire sympathy, partly because he is +never unmanly, partly because he himself is sympathetic +and longs for sympathy.</p> + +<p>The first of living soldiers, an able politician, a +most persuasive orator, Antony nevertheless was +not born to rule the world. He enjoys being a +great man, but he has not the love of rule for rule’s +sake. Power for him is chiefly a means to pleasure. +The pleasure he wants is so huge that he needs a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page296" id="page296"></a>296</span> +huge power; but half the world, even a third of it, +would suffice. He will not pocket wrongs, but he +shows not the slightest wish to get rid of his fellow +Triumvirs and reign alone. He never minded +being subordinate to Julius Cćsar. By women he +is not only attracted but governed; from the effect +of Cleopatra’s taunts we can see that he had +been governed by Fulvia. Nor has he either the +patience or the steadfastness of a born ruler. He +contends fitfully, and is prone to take the step that +is easiest at the moment. This is the reason why +he consents to marry Octavia. It seems the shortest +way out of an awkward situation. He does not +intend even to try to be true to her. He will not +think of the distant consequences.</p> + +<p>A man who loved power as much as thousands +of insignificant people love it, would have made a +sterner struggle than Antony’s against his enchantment. +He can hardly be said to struggle at all. +He brings himself to leave Cleopatra only because +he knows he will return. In every moment of his +absence, whether he wake or sleep, a siren music in +his blood is singing him back to her; and to this +music, however he may be occupied, the soul within +his soul leans and listens. The joy of life had +always culminated for him in the love of women: +he could say ‘no’ to none of them: of Octavia +herself he speaks like a poet. When he meets +Cleopatra he finds his Absolute. She satisfies, +nay glorifies, his whole being. She intoxicates +his senses. Her wiles, her taunts, her furies and +meltings, her laughter and tears, bewitch him all +alike. She loves what he loves, and she surpasses +him. She can drink him to his bed, out-jest his +practical jokes, out-act the best actress who ever +amused him, out-dazzle his own magnificence. She +is his play-fellow, and yet a great queen. Angling +in the river, playing billiards, flourishing the sword +he used at Philippi, hopping forty paces in a public +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page297" id="page297"></a>297</span> +street, she remains an enchantress. Her spirit is +made of wind and flame, and the poet in him +worships her no less than the man. He is under +no illusion about her, knows all her faults, sees +through her wiles, believes her capable of betraying +him. It makes no difference. She is his heart’s +desire made perfect. To love her is what he was +born for. What have the gods in heaven to say +against it? To imagine heaven is to imagine her; +to die is to rejoin her. To deny that this is love is +the madness of morality. He gives her every atom +of his heart.</p> + +<p>She destroys him. Shakespeare, availing himself +of the historic fact, portrays, on Antony’s return +to her, the suddenness and the depth of his descent. +In spite of his own knowledge, the protests of his +captains, the entreaties even of a private soldier, +he fights by sea simply and solely because she +wishes it. Then in mid-battle, when she flies, he +deserts navy and army and his faithful thousands +and follows her. ‘I never saw an action of such +shame,’ cries Scarus; and we feel the dishonour of +the hero keenly. Then Shakespeare begins to +raise him again. First, his own overwhelming sense +of shame redeems him. Next, we watch the rage +of the dying lion. Then the mere sally before the +final defeat—a sally dismissed by Plutarch in three +lines—is magnified into a battle, in which Antony +displays to us, and himself feels for the last time, +the glory of his soldiership. And, throughout, the +magnanimity and gentleness which shine through his +desperation endear him to us. How beautiful is +his affection for his followers and even for his servants, +and the devotion they return! How noble +his reception of the news that Enobarbus has deserted +him! How touchingly significant the refusal of Eros +either to kill him or survive him! How pathetic +and even sublime the completeness of his love for +Cleopatra! His anger is born and dies in an hour. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page298" id="page298"></a>298</span> +One tear, one kiss, outweighs his ruin. He believes +she has sold him to his enemy, yet he kills himself +because he hears that she is dead. When, dying, +he learns that she has deceived him once more, no +thought of reproach crosses his mind: he simply +asks to be carried to her. He knows well that she +is not capable of dying because he dies, but that +does not sting him; when, in his last agony, he calls +for wine that he may gain a moment’s strength to +speak, it is to advise her for the days to come. +Shakespeare borrowed from Plutarch the final +speech of Antony. It is fine, but it is not miraculous. +The miraculous speeches belong only to his +own hero:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>I am dying, Egypt, dying; only</p> +<p>I here importune death awhile, until</p> +<p>Of many thousand kisses the poor last</p> +<p>I lay upon thy lips;</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">or the first words he utters when he hears of Cleopatra’s +death:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Unarm, Eros: the long day’s task is done,</p> +<p>And we must sleep.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">If he meant the task of statesman and warrior, that +is not what his words mean to us. They remind us +of words more familiar and less great—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>No rest but the grave for the pilgrim of love.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">And he is more than love’s pilgrim; he is love’s +martyr.</p> + +<p class="pt2 center">4.</p> + +<p>To reserve a fragment of an hour for Cleopatra, +if it were not palpably absurd, would seem an insult. +If only one could hear her own remarks upon it! +But I had to choose between this absurdity and the +plan of giving her the whole hour; and to that plan +there was one fatal objection. She has been described +(by Ten Brink) as a courtesan of genius. +So brief a description must needs be incomplete, +and Cleopatra never forgets, nor, if we read aright, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page299" id="page299"></a>299</span> +do we forget, that she is a great queen. Still the +phrase is excellent; only a public lecture is no +occasion for the full analysis and illustration of the +character it describes.</p> + +<p>Shakespeare has paid Cleopatra a unique compliment. +The hero dies in the fourth Act, and the +whole of the fifth is devoted to the heroine.<a name="fa5i" id="fa5i" href="#ft5i"><span class="sp">5</span></a> In +that Act she becomes unquestionably a tragic character, +but, it appears to me, not till then. This, no +doubt, is a heresy; but as I cannot help holding it, +and as it is connected with the remarks already +made on the first half of the play, I will state it +more fully. Cleopatra stands in a group with +Hamlet and Falstaff. We might join with them +Iago if he were not decidedly their inferior in one +particular quality. They are inexhaustible. You +feel that, if they were alive and you spent your +whole life with them, their infinite variety could +never be staled by custom; they would continue +every day to surprise, perplex, and delight you. +Shakespeare has bestowed on each of them, though +they differ so much, his own originality, his genius. +He has given it most fully to Hamlet, to whom +none of the chambers of experience is shut, and +perhaps more of it to Cleopatra than to Falstaff. +Nevertheless, if we ask whether Cleopatra, in the +first four Acts, is a tragic figure like Hamlet, we +surely cannot answer ‘yes.’ Naturally it does not +follow that she is a comic figure like Falstaff. This +would be absurd; for, even if she were ridiculous +like Falstaff, she is not ridiculous to herself; she is +no humorist. And yet there is a certain likeness. +She shares a weakness with Falstaff—vanity; and +when she displays it, as she does quite naively +(for instance, in the second interview with the +Messenger), she does become comic. Again, +though like Falstaff she is irresistible and carries +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page300" id="page300"></a>300</span> +us away no less than the people around her, we are +secretly aware, in the midst of our delight, that her +empire is built on sand. And finally, as his love for +the Prince gives dignity and pathos to Falstaff in +his overthrow, so what raises Cleopatra at last into +pure tragedy is, in part, that which some critics +have denied her, her love for Antony.</p> + +<p>Many unpleasant things can be said of Cleopatra; +and the more that are said the more wonderful she +appears. The exercise of sexual attraction is the +element of her life; and she has developed nature +into a consummate art. When she cannot exert it +on the present lover she imagines its effects on him +in absence. Longing for the living, she remembers +with pride and joy the dead; and the past which +the furious Antony holds up to her as a picture of +shame is, for her, glory. She cannot see an ambassador, +scarcely even a messenger, without desiring +to bewitch him. Her mind is saturated with this +element. If she is dark, it is because the sun himself +has been amorous of her. Even when death is +close at hand she imagines his touch as a lover’s. +She embraces him that she may overtake Iras and +gain Antony’s first kiss in the other world.</p> + +<p>She lives for feeling. Her feelings are, so to +speak, sacred, and pain must not come near her. +She has tried numberless experiments to discover +the easiest way to die. Her body is exquisitely +sensitive, and her emotions marvellously swift. +They are really so; but she exaggerates them so +much, and exhibits them so continually for effect, +that some readers fancy them merely feigned. They +are all-important, and everybody must attend to +them. She announces to her women that she is +pale, or sick and sullen; they must lead her to her +chamber but must not speak to her. She is as +strong and supple as a leopard, can drink down a +master of revelry, can raise her lover’s helpless heavy +body from the ground into her tower with the aid +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page301" id="page301"></a>301</span> +only of two women; yet, when he is sitting apart +sunk in shame, she must be supported into his +presence, she cannot stand, her head droops, she +will die (it is the opinion of Eros) unless he comforts +her. When she hears of his marriage and has discharged +her rage, she bids her women bear her +away; she faints; at least she would faint, but that +she remembers various questions she wants put to +the Messenger about Octavia. Enobarbus has seen +her die twenty times upon far poorer moment than +the news that Antony is going to Rome.</p> + +<p>Some of her feelings are violent, and, unless for a +purpose, she does not dream of restraining them; +her sighs and tears are winds and waters, storms +and tempests. At times, as when she threatens to +give Charmian bloody teeth, or hales the luckless +Messenger up and down by the hair, strikes him +and draws her knife on him, she resembles (if I dare +say it) Doll Tearsheet sublimated. She is a mother; +but the threat of Octavius to destroy her children if +she takes her own life passes by her like the wind +(a point where Shakespeare contradicts Plutarch). +She ruins a great man, but shows no sense of the +tragedy of his ruin. The anguish of spirit that +appears in his language to his servants is beyond +her; she has to ask Enobarbus what he means. +Can we feel sure that she would not have sacrificed +him if she could have saved herself by doing so? +It is not even certain that she did not attempt it. +Antony himself believes that she did—that the fleet +went over to Octavius by her orders. That she +and her people deny the charge proves nothing. +The best we can say is that, if it were true, Shakespeare +would have made that clear. She is willing +also to survive her lover. Her first thought, to +follow him after the high Roman fashion, is too +great for her. She would live on if she could, and +would cheat her victor too of the best part of her +fortune. The thing that drives her to die is the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page302" id="page302"></a>302</span> +certainty that she will be carried to Rome to grace +his triumph. That alone decides her.<a name="fa6i" id="fa6i" href="#ft6i"><span class="sp">6</span></a></p> + +<p>The marvellous thing is that the knowledge of all +this makes hardly more difference to us than it did +to Antony. It seems to us perfectly natural, nay, +in a sense perfectly right, that her lover should +be her slave; that her women should adore her +and die with her; that Enobarbus, who foresaw +what must happen, and who opposes her wishes and +braves her anger, should talk of her with rapture +and feel no bitterness against her; that Dolabella, +after a minute’s conversation, should betray to her +his master’s intention and enable her to frustrate it. +And when Octavius shows himself proof against her +fascination, instead of admiring him we turn from +him with disgust and think him a disgrace to his +species. Why? It is not that we consider him +bound to fall in love with her. Enobarbus did not; +Dolabella did not; we ourselves do not. The feeling +she inspires was felt then, and is felt now, by +women no less than men, and would have been +shared by Octavia herself. Doubtless she wrought +magic on the senses, but she had not extraordinary +beauty, like Helen’s, such beauty as seems divine.<a name="fa7i" id="fa7i" href="#ft7i"><span class="sp">7</span></a> +Plutarch says so. The man who wrote the sonnets +to the dark lady would have known it for himself. +He goes out of his way to add to her age, and tells +us of her wrinkles and the waning of her lip. But +Enobarbus, in his very mockery, calls her a wonderful +piece of work. Dolabella interrupts her with the +cry, ‘Most sovereign creature,’ and we echo it. +And yet Octavius, face to face with her and listening +to her voice, can think only how best to trap her and +drag her to public dishonour in the streets of Rome. +We forgive him only for his words when he sees her +dead:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i6">She looks like sleep,</p> +<p>As she would catch another Antony</p> +<p>In her strong toil of grace.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page303" id="page303"></a>303</span></p> + +<p class="noind">And the words, I confess, sound to me more like +Shakespeare’s than his.</p> + +<p>That which makes her wonderful and sovereign +laughs at definition, but she herself came nearest +naming it when, in the final speech (a passage surpassed +in poetry, if at all, only by the final speech of +Othello), she cries,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>I am fire and air; my other elements</p> +<p>I give to baser life.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">The fire and air which at death break from union +with those other elements, transfigured them during +her life, and still convert into engines of enchantment +the very things for which she is condemned. I can +refer only to one. She loves Antony. We should +marvel at her less and love her more if she loved +him more—loved him well enough to follow him at +once to death; but it is to blunder strangely to +doubt that she loved him, or that her glorious +description of him (though it was also meant to +work on Dolabella) came from her heart. Only +the spirit of fire and air within her refuses to be +trammelled or extinguished; burns its way through +the obstacles of fortune and even through the +resistance of her love and grief; and would lead +her undaunted to fresh life and the conquest of +new worlds. It is this which makes her ‘strong +toil of grace’ unbreakable; speaks in her brows’ +bent and every tone and movement; glorifies the +arts and the rages which in another would merely +disgust or amuse us; and, in the final scenes of her +life, flames into such brilliance that we watch her +entranced as she struggles for freedom, and thrilled +with triumph as, conquered, she puts her conqueror +to scorn and goes to meet her lover in the splendour +that crowned and robed her long ago, when her +barge burnt on the water like a burnished throne, +and she floated to Cydnus on the enamoured +stream to take him captive for ever.<a name="fa8i" id="fa8i" href="#ft8i"><span class="sp">8</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page304" id="page304"></a>304</span></p> + +<p>Why is it that, although we close the book in a +triumph which is more than reconciliation, this is +mingled, as we look back on the story, with a +sadness so peculiar, almost the sadness of disenchantment? +Is it that, when the glow has faded, +Cleopatra’s ecstasy comes to appear, I would not say +factitious, but an effort strained and prodigious as +well as glorious, not, like Othello’s last speech, the +final expression of character, of thoughts and emotions +which have dominated a whole life? Perhaps this +is so, but there is something more, something that +sounds paradoxical: we are saddened by the very +fact that the catastrophe saddens us so little; it +pains us that we should feel so much triumph and +pleasure. In <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, <i>Hamlet</i>, <i>Othello</i>, +though in a sense we accept the deaths of hero and +heroine, we feel a keen sorrow. We look back, +think how noble or beautiful they were, wish that +fate had opposed to them a weaker enemy, dream +possibly of the life they might then have led. Here +we can hardly do this. With all our admiration and +sympathy for the lovers we do not wish them to +gain the world. It is better for the world’s sake, +and not less for their own, that they should fail and +die. At the very first they came before us, unlike +those others, unlike Coriolanus and even Macbeth, +in a glory already tarnished, half-ruined by their +past. Indeed one source of strange and most unusual +effect in their story is that this marvellous +passion comes to adepts in the experience and art of +passion, who might be expected to have worn its +charm away. Its splendour dazzles us; but, when +the splendour vanishes, we do not mourn, as we +mourn for the love of Romeo or Othello, that a thing +so bright and good should die. And the fact that +we mourn so little saddens us.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page305" id="page305"></a>305</span></p> + +<p>A comparison of Shakespearean tragedies seems +to prove that the tragic emotions are stirred in the +fullest possible measure only when such beauty or +nobility of character is displayed as commands unreserved +admiration or love; or when, in default of +this, the forces which move the agents, and the +conflict which results from these forces, attain a +terrifying and overwhelming power. The four most +famous tragedies satisfy one or both of these conditions; +<i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, though a great +tragedy, satisfies neither of them completely. But +to say this is not to criticise it. It does not attempt +to satisfy these conditions, and then fail in the +attempt. It attempts something different, and succeeds +as triumphantly as <i>Othello</i> itself. In doing +so it gives us what no other tragedy can give, and +it leaves us, no less than any other, lost in astonishment +at the powers which created it.</p> + +<p class="f80">1905</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page306" id="page306"></a>306</span></p> + +<div class="condensed"> +<p class="pt2 center chap">NOTE A</p> + +<p>We are to understand, surely, that Enobarbus dies of ‘thought’ +(melancholy or grief), and has no need to seek a ‘swifter mean.’ +Cf. <span class="scs">IV.</span> vi. 34 <i>seq.</i>, with the death-scene and his address there to +the moon as the ‘sovereign mistress of true melancholy’ (<span class="scs">IV.</span> ix.). +Cf. also <span class="scs">III.</span> xiii., where, to Cleopatra’s question after Actium, +‘What shall we do, Enobarbus?’ he answers, ‘Think, and die.’</p> + +<p>The character of Enobarbus is practically an invention of +Shakespeare’s. The death-scene, I may add, is one of the many +passages which prove that he often wrote what pleased his +imagination but would lose half its effect in the theatre. The +darkness and moonlight could not be represented on a public +stage in his time.</p> + +<p class="pt2 center chap">NOTE B</p> + +<p>The scene is the first of the third Act. Here Ventidius says:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Cćsar and Antony have ever won</p> +<p>More in their officer than person: Sossius,</p> +<p>One of my place in Syria, his lieutenant,</p> +<p>For quick accumulation of renown,</p> +<p>Which he achieved by the minute, lost his favour.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">Plutarch (North, sec. 19) says that ‘Sossius, one of Antonius’ +lieutenants in Syria, did notable good service,’ but I cannot find +in him the further statement that Sossius lost Antony’s favour. +I presume it is Shakespeare’s invention, but I call attention to it +on the bare chance that it may be found elsewhere than in +Plutarch, when it would point to Shakespeare’s use of a second +authority.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page307" id="page307"></a>307</span></p> + +<p class="pt2 center chap">NOTE C</p> + +<p>Since this lecture was published (<i>Quarterly Review</i>, April, 1906) +two notable editions of <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> have been produced. +Nothing recently written on Shakespeare, I venture to +say, shows more thorough scholarship or better judgment than +Mr. Case’s edition in the Arden series; and Dr. Furness has +added to the immense debt which students of Shakespeare owe +to him, and (if that is possible) to the admiration and respect +with which they regard him, by the appearance of <i>Antony and +Cleopatra</i> in his New Variorum edition.</p> + +<p>On one question about Cleopatra both editors, Mr. Case more +tentatively and Dr. Furness very decidedly, dissent from the +interpretation given in the last pages of my lecture. The question +is how we are to understand the fact that, although on Antony’s +death Cleopatra expresses her intention of following him, she +does not carry out this intention until she has satisfied herself +that Octavius means to carry her to Rome to grace his triumph. +Though I do not profess to feel certain that my interpretation is +right, it still seems to me a good deal the most probable, and +therefore I have not altered what I wrote. But my object here +is not to defend my view or to criticise other views, but merely +to call attention to the discussion of the subject in Mr. Case’s +Introduction and Dr. Furness’s Preface.</p> + +<p class="pt2 center chap">NOTE D</p> + +<p>Shakespeare, it seems clear, imagined Cleopatra as a gipsy. +And this, I would suggest, may be the explanation of a word +which has caused much difficulty. Antony, when ‘all is lost,’ +exclaims (<span class="scs">IV.</span> x. 38):</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>O this false soul of Egypt! this grave charm,—</p> +<p>Whose eye beck’d forth my wars, and call’d them home,</p> +<p>Whose bosom was my crownet, my chief end,—</p> +<p>Like a right gipsy, hath, at fast and loose,</p> +<p>Beguil’d me to the very heart of loss.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">Pope changed ‘grave’ in the first line into ‘gay.’ Others conjecture +‘great’ and ‘grand.’ Steevens says that ‘grave’ means +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page308" id="page308"></a>308</span> +‘deadly,’ and that the word ‘is often used by Chapman’ thus; +and one of his two quotations supports his statement; but +certainly in Shakespeare the word does not elsewhere bear this +sense. It could mean ‘majestic,’ as Johnson takes it here. But +why should it not have its usual meaning? Cleopatra, we know, +was a being of ‘infinite variety,’ and her eyes may sometimes +have had, like those of some gipsies, a mysterious gravity or +solemnity which would exert a spell more potent than her gaiety. +Their colour, presumably, was what is called ‘black’; but surely +they were not, like those of Tennyson’s Cleopatra, ‘<i>bold</i> black +eyes.’ Readers interested in seeing what criticism is capable of +may like to know that it has been proposed to read, for the first +line of the quotation above, ‘O this false fowl of Egypt! haggard +charmer.’ [Though I have not cancelled this note I have +modified some phrases in it, as I have not much confidence in +my suggestion, and am inclined to think that Steevens was right.]</p> +</div> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1i" id="ft1i" href="#fa1i"><span class="fn">1</span></a> As this lecture was composed after the publication of my <i>Shakespearean +Tragedy</i> I ignored in it, as far as possible, such aspects of +the play as were noticed in that book, to the Index of which I may +refer the reader.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2i" id="ft2i" href="#fa2i"><span class="fn">2</span></a> See Note A.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3i" id="ft3i" href="#fa3i"><span class="fn">3</span></a> ‘Now whilest Antonius was busie in this preparation, Octavia his +wife, whom he had left at Rome, would needs take sea to come unto +him. Her brother Octauius Cćsar was willing vnto it, not for his +respect at all (as most authors do report) as for that he might haue an +honest colour to make warre with Antonius if he did misuse her, and +not esteeme of her as she ought to be.’—<i>Life of Antony</i> (North’s +Translation), sect. 29. The view I take does not, of course, imply +that Octavius had no love for his sister.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4i" id="ft4i" href="#fa4i"><span class="fn">4</span></a> See Note B.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5i" id="ft5i" href="#fa5i"><span class="fn">5</span></a> The point of this remark is unaffected by the fact that the play is +not divided into acts and scenes in the folios.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6i" id="ft6i" href="#fa6i"><span class="fn">6</span></a> See Note C.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7i" id="ft7i" href="#fa7i"><span class="fn">7</span></a> See Note D.</p> + +<p><a name="ft8i" id="ft8i" href="#fa8i"><span class="fn">8</span></a> Of the ‘good’ heroines, Imogen is the one who has most of this +spirit of fire and air; and this (in union, of course, with other qualities) +is perhaps the ultimate reason why for so many readers she is, what +Mr. Swinburne calls her, ‘the woman above all Shakespeare’s women.’</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:150px; height:35px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img001.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page309" id="page309"></a>309</span></p> + +<p class="center chap">SHAKESPEARE THE MAN</p> +<p> </p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page310" id="page310"></a>310<br />311</span></p> + +<p class="center pt2 chap2">SHAKESPEARE THE MAN</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1 fo">Such</span> phrases as ‘Shakespeare the man’ or ‘Shakespeare’s +personality’ are, no doubt, open to objection. +They seem to suggest that, if we could subtract from +Shakespeare the mind that produced his works, +the residue would be the man himself; and that +his mind was some pure impersonal essence unaffected +by the accidents of physique, temperament, +and character. If this were so, one could but +echo Tennyson’s thanksgiving that we know so +little of Shakespeare. But as it is assuredly not +so, and as ‘Shakespeare the man’ really means +the one indivisible Shakespeare, regarded for the +time from a particular point of view, the natural +desire to know whatever can be known of him is +not to be repressed merely because there are people +so foolish as to be careless about his works and yet +curious about his private life. For my own part I +confess that, though I should care nothing about the +man if he had not written the works, yet, since we +possess them, I would rather see and hear him for +five minutes in his proper person than discover a +new one. And though we may be content to die +without knowing his income or even the surname +of Mr. W. H., we cannot so easily resign the wish +to find the man in his writings, and to form some +idea of the disposition, the likes and dislikes, the +character and the attitude towards life, of the human +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page312" id="page312"></a>312</span> +being who seems to us to have understood best our +common human nature.</p> + +<p>The answer of course will be that our biographical +knowledge of Shakespeare is so small, and his +writings are so completely dramatic, that this wish, +however natural, is idle. But I cannot think so. +Doubtless, in trying to form an idea of Shakespeare, +we soon reach the limits of reasonable certainty; +and it is also true that the idea we can form without +exceeding them is far from being as individual as +we could desire. But it is more distinct than is +often supposed, and it <i>is</i> reasonably certain; and +although we can add to its distinctness only by +more or less probable conjectures, they are not +mere guesses, they really have probability in various +degrees. On this whole subject there is a tendency +at the present time to an extreme scepticism, which +appears to me to be justified neither by the circumstances +of the particular case nor by our knowledge +of human nature in general.</p> + +<p>This scepticism is due in part to the interest +excited by Mr. Lee’s discussion of the Sonnets in +his <i>Life</i> of Shakespeare, and to the importance +rightly attached to that discussion. The Sonnets +are lyrical poems of friendship and love. In them +the poet ostensibly speaks in his own person and +expresses his own feelings. Many critics, no doubt, +had denied that he really did so; but they had not +Mr. Lee’s knowledge, nor had they examined the +matter so narrowly as he; and therefore they had not +much weakened the general belief that the Sonnets, +however conventional or exaggerated their language +may sometimes be, do tell us a good deal about +their author. Mr. Lee, however, showed far more +fully than any previous writer that many of the +themes, many even of the ideas, of these poems +are commonplaces of Renaissance sonnet-writing; +and he came to the conclusion that in the Sonnets +Shakespeare ‘unlocked,’ not ‘his heart,’ but a very +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page313" id="page313"></a>313</span> +different kind of armoury, and that the sole biographical +inference deducible from them is that ‘at +one time in his career Shakespeare disdained no +weapon of flattery in an endeavour to monopolise +the bountiful patronage of a young man of rank.’ +Now, if that inference is correct, it certainly tells +us something about Shakespeare the man; but it +also forbids us to take seriously what the Sonnets +profess to tell us of his passionate affection, with its +hopes and fears, its pain and joy; of his pride and +his humility, his self-reproach and self-defence, his +weariness of life and his consciousness of immortal +genius. And as, according to Mr. Lee’s statement, +the Sonnets alone of Shakespeare’s works ‘can be +held to throw any illumination on a personal trait,’ +it seems to follow that, so far as the works are +concerned (for Mr. Lee is not specially sceptical as to +the external testimony), the only idea we can form +of the man is contained in that single inference.</p> + +<p>Now, I venture to surmise that Mr. Lee’s words +go rather beyond his meaning. But that is not our +business here, nor could a brief discussion do justice +to a theory to which those who disagree with it +are still greatly indebted. What I wish to deny +is the presupposition which seems to be frequently +accepted as an obvious truth. Even if Mr. Lee’s +view of the Sonnets were indisputably correct, nay, +if even, to go much further, the persons and the +story in the Sonnets were as purely fictitious as +those of <i>Twelfth Night</i>, they might and would still +tell us something of the personality of their author. +For however free a poet may be from the emotions +which he simulates, and however little involved in +the conditions which he imagines, he cannot (unless +he is a mere copyist) write a hundred and fifty +lyrics expressive of those simulated emotions without +disclosing something of himself, something of +the way in which he in particular <i>would</i> feel and +behave under the imagined conditions. And the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page314" id="page314"></a>314</span> +same thing holds in principle of the dramas. Is it +really conceivable that a man can write some five +and thirty dramas, and portray in them an enormous +amount and variety of human nature, without +betraying anything whatever of his own disposition +and preferences? I do not believe that he could +do this, even if he deliberately set himself to the +task. The only question is how much of himself +he would betray.</p> + +<p>One is entitled to say this, I think, on general +grounds; but we may appeal further to specific experience. +Of many poets and novelists we know a +good deal from external sources. And in these cases +we find that the man so known to us appears also +in his works, and that these by themselves would +have left on us a personal impression which, though +imperfect and perhaps in this or that point even +false, would have been broadly true. Of course this +holds of some writers much more fully than of +others; but, except where the work is very scanty +in amount, it seems to hold in some degree of all.<a name="fa1j" id="fa1j" href="#ft1j"><span class="sp">1</span></a> +If so, there is an antecedent probability that it will +apply to Shakespeare too. After all, he was human. +We may exclaim in our astonishment that he was as +universal and impartial as nature herself; but this +is the language of religious rapture. If we assume +that he was six times as universal as Sir Walter +Scott, which is praise enough for a mortal, we may +hope to form an idea of him from his plays only +six times as dim as the idea of Scott that we should +derive from the Waverley Novels.</p> + +<p>And this is not all. As a matter of fact, the great +majority of Shakespeare’s readers—lovers of poetry +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page315" id="page315"></a>315</span> +untroubled by theories and questions—do form from +the plays some idea of the man. Knowingly or +not, they possess such an idea; and up to a certain +point the idea is the same. Ask such a man +whether he thinks Shakespeare was at all like +Shelley, or Wordsworth, or Milton, and it will not +occur to him to answer ‘I have not the faintest +notion’; he will answer unhesitatingly No. Ask +him whether he supposes that Shakespeare was at +all like Fielding or Scott, and he will probably be +found to imagine that, while differing greatly from +both, he did belong to the same type or class. And +such answers unquestionably imply an idea which, +however deficient in detail, is definite.</p> + +<p>Again, to go a little further in the same direction, +take this fact. After I had put together my notes +for the present lecture, I re-read Bagehot’s essay +on Shakespeare the Man, and I read a book by +Goldwin Smith and an essay by Leslie Stephen +(who, I found, had anticipated a good deal that I +meant to say).<a name="fa2j" id="fa2j" href="#ft2j"><span class="sp">2</span></a> These three writers, with all their +variety, have still substantially the same idea of +Shakespeare; and it is the idea of the competent +‘general reader’ more fully developed. Nor is the +value of their agreement in the least diminished by +the fact that they make no claim to be Shakespeare +scholars. They show themselves much abler than +most scholars, and if they lack the scholar’s +knowledge they are free from his defects. When +they wrote their essays they had not wearied +themselves with rival hypotheses, or pored over +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page316" id="page316"></a>316</span> +minutiae until they lost the broad and deep impressions +which vivid reading leaves. Ultra-scepticism +in this matter does not arise merely or mainly +from the humility which every man of sense must +feel as he creeps to and fro in Shakespeare’s prodigious +mind. It belongs either to the clever +faddist who can see nothing straight, or it proceeds +from those dangers and infirmities which the expert +in any subject knows too well.</p> + +<p>The remarks I am going to make can have an +interest only for those who share the position I have +tried to indicate; who believe that the most dramatic +of writers must reveal in his writings something of +himself, but who recognise that in Shakespeare’s +case we can expect a reasonable certainty only +within narrow limits, while beyond them we have +to trust to impressions, the value of which must +depend on familiarity with his writings, on freedom +from prejudice and the desire to reach any particular +result, and on the amount of perception +we may happen to possess. I offer my own impressions, +insecure and utterly unprovable as I +know them to be, simply because those of other +readers have an interest for me; and I offer them +for the most part without argument, because even +where argument might be useful it requires more +time than a lecture can afford. For the same +reason I shall assume, without attempting to define +it further, and without dilating on its implications, +the truth of that general feeling about Shakespeare +and Fielding and Scott.</p> + +<p>But, before we come to impressions at all, we +must look at the scanty store of external evidence: +for we may lay down at once the canon that impressions +derived from the works must supplement +and not contradict this evidence, so far as it appears +trustworthy. It is scanty, but it yields a decided +outline.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page317" id="page317"></a>317</span></p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>This figure that thou here seest put,</p> +<p>It was for gentle Shakespeare cut:</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">—so Jonson writes of the portrait in the Folio, and +the same adjective ‘gentle’ is used elsewhere of +Shakespeare. It had not in Elizabethan English +so confined a meaning as it has now; but it meant +something, and I do not remember that their contemporaries +called Marlowe or Jonson or Marston +‘gentle.’ Next, in the earliest extant reference that +we have to Shakespeare, the writer says that he +himself has seen his ‘demeanour’ to be ‘civil.’<a name="fa3j" id="fa3j" href="#ft3j"><span class="sp">3</span></a> It +is not saying much; but it is not the first remark an +acquaintance would probably have made about Ben +Jonson or Samuel Johnson. The same witness adds +about Shakespeare that ‘divers of worship have +reported his uprightness of dealing which argues +his honesty.’ ‘Honesty’ and ‘honest’ in an Elizabethan +passage like this mean more than they would +now; they answer rather to our ‘honourable’ or +‘honour.’ Lastly we have the witness borne by +Jonson in the words: ‘I loved the man, and do +honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much +as any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open +and free nature.’ With this notable phrase, to +which I shall have to return, we come to an end +of the testimony of eye-witnesses to Shakespeare +the Man (for we have nothing to do with references +to the mere actor or author). It is scanty, and +insufficient to discriminate him from other persons +who were gentle, civil, upright in their dealings, +honourable, open, and free: but I submit that there +have been not a few writers to whom all these +qualities could not be truly ascribed, and that the +testimony therefore does tell us something definite. +To which must be added that we have absolutely +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page318" id="page318"></a>318</span> +no evidence which conflicts with it. Whatever +Greene in his jealous embitterment might have +said would carry little weight, but in fact, apart +from general abuse of actors, he only says that +the upstart had an over-weening opinion of his own +capacities.</p> + +<p>There remain certain traditions and certain facts; +and without discussing them I will mention what +seems to me to have a more or less probable +significance. Stratford stories of drinking bouts +may go for nothing, but not the consensus of tradition +to the effect that Shakespeare was a pleasant +and convivial person, ‘very good company, and of a +very ready and pleasant smooth wit.’<a name="fa4j" id="fa4j" href="#ft4j"><span class="sp">4</span></a> That after +his retirement to Stratford he spent at the rate of +Ł1000 a year is incredible, but that he spent freely +seems likely enough. The tradition that as a +young man he got into trouble with Sir Thomas +Lucy for deer-stealing (which would probably be +an escapade rather than an essay in serious poaching) +is supported by his unsavoury jest about the +‘luces’ in Sir Robert Shallow’s coat. The more +general statement that in youth he was wild +does not sound improbable; and, obscure as the +matter is, I cannot regard as comfortable the +little we know of the circumstances of his very +early marriage. A contemporary story of an +amorous adventure in London may well be pure +invention, but we have no reason to reject it +peremptorily as we should any similar gossip about +Milton. Lastly, certain inferences may safely be +drawn from the facts that, once securely started in +London, Shakespeare soon began to prosper, and +acquired, for an actor and playwright, considerable +wealth; that he bought property in his native town, +and was consulted sometimes by fellow-townsmen +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page319" id="page319"></a>319</span> +on matters of business; that he enforced the payment +of certain debts; and that he took the trouble +to get a coat of arms. But what cannot with any +logic or any safety be inferred is that he, any more +than Scott, was impelled to write simply and solely +by the desire to make money and improve his social +position; and the comparative abundance of business +records will mislead only those who are thoughtless +enough to forget that, if they buy a house or sue a +debtor, the fact will be handed down, while their +kind or generous deeds may be recorded, if at all, +only in the statement that they were ‘of an open +and free nature.’</p> + +<p class="pt2">That Shakespeare was a good and perhaps keen +man of business, or that he set store by a coat of +arms, we could not have inferred from his writings. +But we could have judged from them that he worked +hard, and have guessed with some probability that +he would rather have been a ‘gentleman’ than an +actor. And most of the other characteristics that +appear from the external evidence would, I think, +have seemed probable from a study of the works. +This should encourage us to hope that we may be +right in other impressions which we receive from +them. And we may begin with one on which the +external evidence has a certain bearing.</p> + +<p>Readers of Shakespeare, I believe, imagine him +to have been not only sweet-tempered but modest +and unassuming. I do not doubt that they are +right; and, vague as the Folio portrait and the +Stratford bust are, it would be difficult to believe +that their subject was an irritable, boastful, or pushing +person. But if we confine ourselves to the +works, it is not easy to give reasons for the idea that +their author was modest and unassuming; and a +man is not necessarily so because he is open, free, +and very good company. Perhaps we feel that a +man who was not so would have allowed much +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page320" id="page320"></a>320</span> +more of himself to appear in his works than Shakespeare +does. Perhaps again we think that anything +like presumption or self-importance was incompatible +with Shakespeare’s sense of the ridiculous, his +sublime common-sense, and his feeling of man’s +insignificance. And, lastly, it seems to us clear that +the playwright admires and likes people who are +modest, unassuming, and plain; while it may perhaps +safely be said that those who lack these qualities +rarely admire them in others and not seldom despise +them. But, however we may justify our impression +that Shakespeare possessed them, we certainly +receive it; and assuming it to be as correct as the +similar impression left by the Waverley Novels +indubitably is, I go on to observe that the possession +of them does not of necessity imply a want of spirit, +or of proper self-assertion or insistence on rights.<a name="fa5j" id="fa5j" href="#ft5j"><span class="sp">5</span></a> +It did not in Scott, and we have ground for saying +that it did not in Shakespeare. If it had, he could +not, being of an open and free nature, have prospered +as he prospered. He took offence at Greene’s attack +on him, and showed that he took it. He was ‘gentle,’ +but he liked his debts to be paid. However his +attitude as to the enclosure at Welcombe may be +construed, it is clear that he had to be reckoned +with. It appears probable that he held himself +wronged by Sir Thomas Lucy, and, pocketing up +the injury because he could not resent it, gave him +tit for tat after some fifteen years. The man in the +Sonnets forgives his friend easily, but it is not from +humility; and towards the world he is very far from +humble. Of the dedication of <i>The Rape of Lucrece</i> +we cannot judge, for we do not know Shakespeare’s +relations with Lord Southampton at that date; but, +as for the dedication of <i>Venus and Adonis</i>, could +modesty and dignity be better mingled in a letter +from a young poet to a great noble than they are there?</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page321" id="page321"></a>321</span></p> + +<p>Some of Shakespeare’s writings point to a strain +of deep reflection and of quasi-metaphysical imagination +in his nature; and a few of them seem to +reveal a melancholy, at times merely sad, at times +embittered or profound, if never hopeless. It is +on this side mainly that we feel a decided difference +between him and Fielding, and even between him +and Scott. Yet nothing in the contemporary allusions +or in the traditions would suggest that he was +notably thoughtful or serious, and much less that he +was melancholy. And although we could lay no +stress on this fact if it stood alone, it is probably +significant. Shakespeare’s writings, on the whole, +leave a strong impression that his native disposition +was much more gay than grave. They seem always +to have made this impression. Fuller tells us that +‘though his genius generally was jocular and inclining +him to festivity, yet he could, when so disposed, +be solemn and serious, as appears by his tragedies.’<a name="fa6j" id="fa6j" href="#ft6j"><span class="sp">6</span></a> +Johnson agreed with Rymer that his ‘natural disposition’ +led him to comedy; and, although Johnson +after his manner distorts a true idea by wilful +exaggeration and by perverting distinctions into +antitheses, there is truth in his development of +Rymer’s remark. It would be easy to quote nineteenth +century critics to the same effect; and the +study of Shakespeare’s early works leads to a similar +result. It has been truly said that we feel ourselves +in much closer contact with his personality in the +early comedies and in <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> than in +<i>Henry VI.</i> and <i>Richard III.</i> and <i>Titus Andronicus</i>. +In the latter, so far as we suppose them to be his +own, he seems on the whole to be following, and +then improving on, an existing style, and to be +dealing with subjects which engage him as a playwright +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page322" id="page322"></a>322</span> +without much appealing to him personally. +With <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, on the other hand, and with +<i>Richard II.</i> (which seems clearly to be his first +attempt to write historical tragedy in a manner +entirely his own), it is different, and we feel the +presence of the whole man. The stories are tragic, +but it is not precisely the <i>tragic</i> aspect of them that +attracts him most; and even Johnson’s statement, +grotesquely false of the later tragedies, that ‘in +tragedy he is always struggling after some occasion +to be comic,’ is no more than an exaggeration in +respect to <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>.<a name="fa7j" id="fa7j" href="#ft7j"><span class="sp">7</span></a> From these tragedies, +as from <i>Love’s Labour’s Lost</i> and the other early +comedies, we should guess that the author was a +young man, happy, alert, light-hearted, full of +romance and poetry, but full also of fun; blessed +with a keen enjoyment of absurdities, but, for all his +intellectual subtlety and power, not markedly reflective, +and certainly not particularly grave or much +inclined to dejection. One might even suspect, +I venture to think, that with such a flow of spirits +and such exceeding alacrity of mind he might at +present be a trifle wanting in feeling and disposed +to levity. In any case, if our general impression is +correct, we shall not find it hard to believe that +the author of these plays and the creator of Falstaff +was ‘very good company’ and a convivial good-fellow; +and it might easily happen that he was +tempted at times to ‘go here and there’ in society, +and ‘make himself a motley to the view’ in a fashion +that left some qualms behind.<a name="fa8j" id="fa8j" href="#ft8j"><span class="sp">8</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page323" id="page323"></a>323</span></p> + +<p>There is a tradition that Shakespeare was ‘a handsome +well-shaped man.’ If the Stratford monument +does not lie, he was not in later life a meagre man. +And if our notion of his temperament has any truth, +he can hardly have been physically feeble, bloodless, +or inactive. Most readers probably imagine him the +reverse. Even sceptical critics tell us that he was +fond of field-sports; and of his familiar knowledge +of them there can be no question. Yet—I can but +record the impression without trying to justify it—his +writings do not at all suggest to me that he was +a splendidly powerful creature like Fielding, or that +he greatly enjoyed bodily exertion, or was not easily +tired. He says much of horses, but he does not +make one think, as Scott does, that a gallop was a +great delight to him. Nor again do I feel after +reading him that he had a strong natural love of +adventurous deeds, or longed to be an explorer or a +soldier. The island of his boyish dreams—if he +heard much of voyages as a boy—was, I fancy, the +haunt of marmosets and hedgehogs, quaint moon-calves +and flitting sprites, lovely colours, sounds +and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not, +less like Treasure Island than the Coral Island of +Ballantyne in the original illustrations, and more +full of wonders than of dangers. He would have +liked the Arabian Nights better than Dumas. +Of course he admired men of action, understood +them, and could express their feelings; but we do +not feel particularly close to his personality as we +read the warrior speeches of Hotspur, Henry, +Othello, Coriolanus, as we do when we read of +Romeo or Hamlet, or when we feel the attraction +of Henry’s modesty. In the same way, I suppose +nobody feels Shakespeare’s personal presence in the +ambition of Macbeth or the pride of Coriolanus; +many feel it in Macbeth’s imaginative terrors, and in +the disgust of Coriolanus at the idea of recounting +his exploits in order to win votes. When we seem +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page324" id="page324"></a>324</span> +to hear Shakespeare’s voice—and we hear it from +many mouths besides Romeo’s or Hamlet’s—it is the +voice of a man with a happy, enjoying, but still +contemplative and even dreamy nature, not of a +man richly endowed with the impulses and feelings +either of strenuous action or of self-assertion. If he +had drawn a Satan, we should not have felt his +personality, as we do Milton’s, in Satan’s pride and +indomitable courage and intolerance of rule.</p> + +<p class="pt2">We know how often Shakespeare uses the antithesis +of blood or passion, and judgment or reason; +how he praises the due commingling of the two, or +the control of the first by the second; how frequently +it is the want of such control that exposes +his heroes to the attack of Fortune or Fate. What, +then, were the passions or the ‘affections of the +blood’ most dangerous to himself? Not, if we have +been right, those of pride or ambition; nor yet those +of envy, hatred, or revenge; and still less that of +avarice. But, in the first place, let us remember +Jonson’s words, ‘he was honest and of an open and +free nature,’ and let me repeat an observation, made +elsewhere in passing, that these words are true also +of the great majority of Shakespeare’s heroes, and +not least of his tragic heroes. Jonson almost quotes +Iago:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>The Moor is of a free and open nature,</p> +<p>That thinks men honest that but seem to be so.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">The king says that Hamlet,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i11">being remiss,</p> +<p>Most generous, and free from all contrivings,</p> +<p>Will not peruse the foils.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">The words ‘open and free’ apply no less eminently +to Brutus, Lear, and Timon. Antony and Coriolanus +are men naturally frank, liberal, and large. +Prospero lost his dukedom through his trustfulness. +Romeo and Troilus and Orlando, and many slighter +characters, are so far of the same type. Now such +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page325" id="page325"></a>325</span> +a free and open nature, obviously, is specially exposed +to the risks of deception, perfidy, and ingratitude. +If it is also a nature sensitive and intense, but not +particularly active or (if the word may be excused) +volitional, such experiences will tempt it to melancholy, +embitterment, anger, possibly even misanthropy. +If it <i>is</i> thus active or volitional, it may +become the prey of violent and destructive passion, +such as that of Othello and of Coriolanus, and such +as Lear’s would be if he were not so old. These +affections, passions, and sufferings of free and open +natures are Shakespeare’s favourite tragic subject; +and his favouritism, surely, goes so far as to constitute +a decided peculiarity, not found thus in other +tragic poets. Here he painted most, one cannot but +think, what his own nature was most inclined to +feel. But it would rather be melancholy, embitterment, +an inactive rage or misanthropy, than any +destructive passion; and it would be a further +question whether, and how far, he may at any time +have experienced what he depicts. I am speaking +here only of his disposition.<a name="fa9j" id="fa9j" href="#ft9j"><span class="sp">9</span></a></p> + +<p>That Shakespeare was as much inclined to be a +lover as most poets we may perhaps safely assume; +but can we conjecture anything further on this +subject? I will confine myself to two points. He +treats of love romantically, and tragically, and +humorously. In the earlier plays especially the +humorous aspect of the matter, the aspect so +prominent in the <i>Midsummer-Night’s Dream</i>, the +changefulness, brevity, irrationality, of the feeling, is +at least as much dwelt on as the romantic, and with +at least as much relish:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Lord! what fools these mortals be!</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page326" id="page326"></a>326</span></p> + +<p class="noind">Now, if there is anything peculiar in the pictures +here, it is, perhaps, the special interest that Shakespeare +seems to take in what we may call the +unreality of the feeling of love in an imaginative +nature. Romeo as he first appears, and, in a later +play, Orsino, are examples of this. They are +perfectly sincere, of course, but neither of them is +really in love with a woman; each is in love with +the state of being in love. This state is able to +attach itself to a particular object, but it is not +induced by the particular qualities of that object; +it is more a dream than a passion, and can melt +away without carrying any of the lover’s heart with +it; and in that sense it is unreal. This weakness, +no doubt, is not confined to imaginative natures, +but they may well be specially disposed to it (as +Shelley was), and Shakespeare may have drawn +it from his own experience. The suspicion is +strengthened when we think of <i>Richard II</i>. In +Richard this imaginative weakness is exhibited +again, though not in relation to love. He luxuriates +in images of his royal majesty, of the angels who +guard his divine right, and of his own pathetic +and almost sacred sufferings. The images are not +insincere, and yet they are like dreams, for they +refuse to touch earth and to connect themselves +either with his past misdeeds or with the actions he +ought now to perform. A strain of a similar weakness +appears again in Hamlet, though only as one +strain in a much more deep and complex nature. +But this is not a common theme in poetry, much +less in dramatic poetry.<a name="fa10j" id="fa10j" href="#ft10j"><span class="sp">10</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page327" id="page327"></a>327</span></p> + +<p>To come to our second question. When Shakespeare +painted Cressida or described her through +the mouth of Ulysses (‘O these encounterers,’ etc.), +or, again, when he portrayed the love of Antony for +Cleopatra, was he using his personal experience? +To answer that he <i>must</i> have done so would be as +ridiculous as to argue that Iago must be a portrait +of himself; and the two plays contain nothing +which, by itself, would justify us even in thinking +that he probably did so. But we have the series +of sonnets about the dark lady; and if we accept +the sonnets to the friend as to some considerable +extent based on fact and expressive of personal +feelings, how can we refuse to take the others +on the same footing? Even if the stories of the +two series were not intertwined, we should have +no ground for treating the two in different ways, +unless we could say that external evidence, or the +general impression we derive from Shakespeare’s +works, forbids us to believe that he could ever have +been entangled in an intrigue like that implied in +the second series, or have felt and thought in the +manner there portrayed. Being unable to say this, +I am compelled, most regretfully, to hold it probable +that this series is, in the main, based on personal +experience. And I say ‘most regretfully,’ not merely +because one would regret to think that Shakespeare +was the victim of a Cressida or even the lover of +a Cleopatra, but because the story implied in these +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page328" id="page328"></a>328</span> +sonnets is of quite another kind. They leave, on +the whole, a very disagreeable impression. We +cannot compare it with the impressions produced, +for example, by the ‘heathen’ spirit of Goethe’s +<i>Roman Elegies</i>, or by the passion of Shakespeare’s +Antony. In these two cases, widely dissimilar of +course, we may speak of ‘immorality,’ but we are +not discomfited, much less disgusted. The feeling +and the attitude are poetic, whole-hearted, and in one +case passionate in the extreme. But the state of +mind expressed in the sonnets about the dark lady +is half-hearted, often prosaic, and never worthy of +the name of passion. It is uneasy, dissatisfied, distempered, +the state of mind of a man who despises +his ‘passion’ and its object and himself, but, standing +intellectually far above it, still has not resolution to +end it, and only pains us by his gross and joyless +jests. In <i>Troilus and Cressida</i>—not at all in the +portrayal of Troilus’s love, but in the atmosphere +of the drama—we seem to trace a similar mood of +dissatisfaction, and of intellectual but practically +impotent contempt.</p> + +<p>In this connection it is natural to think of the +‘unhappy period’ which has so often been surmised +in Shakespeare’s life. There is not time here to +expand the summary remarks made elsewhere on +this subject; but I may refer a little more fully to a +persistent impression left on my mind by writings +which we have reason to assign to the years 1602-6.<a name="fa11j" id="fa11j" href="#ft11j"><span class="sp">11</span></a> +There is surely something unusual in their tone +regarding certain ‘vices of the blood,’ regarding +drunkenness and sexual corruption. It does not +lie in Shakespeare’s <i>view</i> of these vices, but in an +undertone of disgust. Read Hamlet’s language +about the habitual drunkenness of his uncle, or even +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page329" id="page329"></a>329</span> +Cassio’s words about his casual excess; then think +of the tone of <i>Henry IV.</i> or <i>Twelfth Night</i> or the +<i>Tempest</i>; and ask if the difference is not striking. +And if you are inclined to ascribe it wholly to the +fact that <i>Hamlet</i> and <i>Othello</i> are tragedies, compare +the passages in them with the scene on Pompey’s +galley in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>. The intent of that +scene is terrible enough, but in the tone there is no +more trace of disgust than in <i>Twelfth Night</i>. As to +the other matter, what I refer to is not the transgression +of lovers like Claudio and Juliet, nor even +light-hearted irregularities like those of Cassio: here +Shakespeare’s speech has its habitual tone. But, +when he is dealing with lechery and corruption, the +undercurrent of disgust seems to become audible. Is +it not true that in the plays from <i>Hamlet</i> to <i>Timon</i> +that subject, in one shape or another, is continually +before us; that the intensity of loathing in Hamlet’s +language about his mother’s lust is unexampled in +Shakespeare; that the treatment of the subject in +<i>Measure for Measure</i>, though occasionally purely +humorous, is on the whole quite unlike the treatment +in <i>Henry IV.</i> or even in the brothel scenes of +<i>Pericles</i>;<a name="fa12j" id="fa12j" href="#ft12j"><span class="sp">12</span></a> that while <i>Troilus and Cressida</i> is full of +disgust and contempt, there is not a trace of either +in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, though some of the jesting +there is obscene enough; that this same tone is as +plainly heard in the unquestioned parts of <i>Timon</i>; +and that, while it is natural in Timon to inveigh +against female lechery when he speaks to Alcibiades +and his harlots, there is no apparent reason why +Lear in his exalted madness should choose this +subject for similar invectives? ‘Pah! give me an +ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my +imagination’—it is a fainter echo of this exclamation +that one seems to hear in the plays of those +years. Of course I am not suggesting that it is +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page330" id="page330"></a>330</span> +mainly due, or as regards drunkenness due in the +least, to any private experience of Shakespeare’s. +It may have no connection whatever with that +experience. It might well be connected with it +only in so far as a man frequently wearied and +depressed might be unusually sensitive to the ugly +aspects of life. But, if we do not take the second +series of sonnets to be purely fanciful, we shall think +it probable that to some undefined extent it owed its +origin to the experience depicted in them.<a name="fa13j" id="fa13j" href="#ft13j"><span class="sp">13</span></a></p> + +<p class="pt2">There remain the sonnets addressed to the friend. +Even if it were possible to discuss the general +question about them here, it would be needless; +for I accept almost wholly, and in some points am +greatly indebted to, the views put forward by Mr. +Beeching in his admirable edition, to which I may +therefore refer my hearers.<a name="fa14j" id="fa14j" href="#ft14j"><span class="sp">14</span></a> I intend only to state +the main reason why I believe the sonnets to be, +substantially, what they purport to be, and then to +touch upon one or two of the points where they +seem to throw light on Shakespeare’s personality.</p> + +<p>The sonnets to the friend are, so far as we know, +unique in Renaissance sonnet literature in being a +prolonged and varied record of the intense affection +of an older friend for a younger, and of other feelings +arising from their relations. They have no real +parallel in any series imitative of Virgil’s second +Eclogue, or in occasional sonnets to patrons or +patron-friends couched in the high-flown language of +the time. The intensity of the feelings expressed, +however, ought not, by itself, to convince us that +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page331" id="page331"></a>331</span> +they are personal. The author of the plays could, +I make no doubt, have written the most intimate +of these poems to a mere creature of his imagination +and without ever having felt them except in imagination. +Nor is there any but an aesthetic reason why +he should not have done so if he had wished. But +an aesthetic reason there is; and this is the decisive +point. No capable poet, much less a Shakespeare, +intending to produce a merely ‘dramatic’ +series of poems, would dream of inventing a story +like that of these sonnets, or, even if he did, of +treating it as they treat it. The story is very +odd and unattractive. Such capacities as it has +are but slightly developed. It is left obscure, +and some of the poems are unintelligible to us +because they contain allusions of which we can make +nothing. Now all this is perfectly natural if the +story is substantially a real story of Shakespeare +himself and of certain other persons; if the sonnets +were written from time to time as the relations of +the persons changed, and sometimes in reference to +particular incidents; and if they were written <i>for</i> +one or more of these persons (far the greater number +for only one), and perhaps in a few cases for other +friends,—written, that is to say, for people who +knew the details and incidents of which we are +ignorant. But it is all unnatural, well-nigh incredibly +unnatural, if, with the most sceptical +critics, we regard the sonnets as a free product +of mere imagination.<a name="fa15j" id="fa15j" href="#ft15j"><span class="sp">15</span></a></p> + +<p>Assuming, then, that the persons of the story, +with their relations, are real, I would add only two +remarks about the friend. In the first place, Mr. +Beeching seems to me right in denying that there is +sufficient evidence of his standing to Shakespeare +and the ‘rival’ poet or poets in the position of a +literary patron; while, even if he did, it appears to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page332" id="page332"></a>332</span> +me quite impossible to take the language of many +of the sonnets as that of interested flattery. And in +the second place I should be inclined to push even +further Mr. Beeching’s view on another point. It +is clear that the young man was considerably +superior to the actor-dramatist in social position; but +any gentleman would be so, and there is nothing to +prove that he was more than a gentleman of some +note, more than plain ‘Mr. W. H.’ (for these, on +the obvious though not compulsory interpretation of +the dedication, seem to have been his initials). It +is remarkable besides that, while the earlier sonnets +show much deference, the later show very little, so +little that, when the writer, finding that he has +pained his young friend by neglecting him, begs to +be forgiven, he writes almost, if not quite, as an +equal. Read, for example, sonnets 109, 110, 120, +and ask whether it is probable that Shakespeare is +addressing here a great nobleman. It seems therefore +most likely (though the question is not of much +importance) that the sonnets are, to quote Meres’s +phrase,<a name="fa16j" id="fa16j" href="#ft16j"><span class="sp">16</span></a> his ‘sonnets among his private friends.’</p> + +<p>If then there is, as it appears, no obstacle of any +magnitude to our taking the sonnets as substantially +what they purport to be, we may naturally look in +them for personal traits (and, indeed, to repeat a +remark made earlier, we might still expect to find +such traits even if we knew the sonnets to be purely +dramatic). But in drawing inferences we have to +bear in mind what is implied by the qualification +‘substantially.’ We have to remember that <i>some</i> +of these poems may be mere exercises of art; that +all of them are poems, and not letters, much less +<i>affidavits</i>; that they are Elizabethan poems; that +the Elizabethan language of deference, and also of +affection, is to our minds habitually extravagant and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page333" id="page333"></a>333</span> +fantastic;<a name="fa17j" id="fa17j" href="#ft17j"><span class="sp">17</span></a> and that in Elizabethan plays friends +openly express their love for one another as +Englishmen now rarely do. Allowance being made, +however, on account of these facts, the sonnets will +still leave two strong impressions—that the poet +was exceedingly sensitive to the charm of beauty, +and that his love for his friend was, at least at one +time, a feeling amounting almost to adoration, and +so intense as to be absorbing. Those who are +surprised by the first of these traits must have read +Shakespeare’s dramas with very inactive minds, and +I must add that they seem to be somewhat ignorant +of human nature. We do not necessarily love best +those of our relatives, friends, and acquaintances +who please our eyes most; and we should look +askance on anyone who regulated his behaviour +chiefly by the standard of beauty; but most of us, +I suppose, love any human being, of either sex and +of any age, the better for being beautiful, and are +not the least ashamed of the fact. It is further +the case that men who are beginning, like the +writer of the sonnets, to feel tired and old, are +apt to feel an increased and special pleasure +in the beauty of the young.<a name="fa18j" id="fa18j" href="#ft18j"><span class="sp">18</span></a> If we remember, in +addition, what some critics appear constantly to +forget, that Shakespeare was a particularly poetical +being, we shall hardly be surprised that the beginning +of this friendship seems to have been something +like a falling in love; and, if we must needs +praise and blame, we should also remember that +it became a ‘marriage of true minds.’<a name="fa19j" id="fa19j" href="#ft19j"><span class="sp">19</span></a> And as +to the intensity of the feeling expressed in the +sonnets, we can easily believe it to be characteristic +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page334" id="page334"></a>334</span> +of the man who made Valentine and Proteus, Brutus +and Cassius, Horatio and Hamlet; who painted +that strangely moving portrait of Antonio, middle-aged, +sad, and almost indifferent between life and +death, but devoted to the young, brilliant spendthrift +Bassanio; and who portrayed the sudden +compelling enchantment exercised by the young +Sebastian over the Antonio of <i>Twelfth Night</i>. ‘If +you will not murder me for your love, let me be +your servant.’ Antonio is accused of piracy: he +may lose his life if he is identified:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>I have many enemies in Orsino’s court,</p> +<p>But, come what may, I do adore thee so</p> +<p>That danger shall seem sport, and I will go.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">The adoration, the ‘prostration,’ of the writer of the +sonnets is of one kind with this.</p> + +<p>I do not remember what critic uses the word +‘prostration.’ It applies to Shakespeare’s attitude +only in some of the sonnets, but there it does apply, +unless it is taken to suggest humiliation. <i>That</i> is +the term used by Hallam, but chiefly in view of a +particular point, namely the failure of the poet to +‘resent,’ though he ‘felt and bewailed,’ the injury +done him in ‘the seduction of his mistress.’ Though +I think we should substitute ‘resent more strongly’ +for the mere ‘resent,’ I do not deny that the poet’s +attitude in this matter strikes us at first as surprising +as well as unpleasant to contemplate. But +Hallam’s explanation of it as perhaps due to the +exalted position of the friend, would make it much +more than unpleasant; and his language seems to +show that he, like many critics, did not fully imagine +the situation. It is not easy to speak of it in public +with the requisite frankness; but it is necessary +to realise that, whatever the friend’s rank might +be, he and the poet were intimate friends; that, +manifestly, it was rather the mistress who seduced +the friend than the friend the mistress; and that she +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page335" id="page335"></a>335</span> +was apparently a woman not merely of no reputation, +but of such a nature that she might readily be +expected to be mistress to two men at one and the +same time. Anyone who realises this may call the +situation ‘humiliating’ in one sense, and I cannot +quarrel with him; but he will not call it ‘humiliating’ +in respect of Shakespeare’s relation to his friend; +nor will he wonder much that the poet felt more +pain than resentment at his friend’s treatment of +him. There is something infinitely stranger in a +play of Shakespeare’s, and it may be symptomatic. +Ten Brink called attention to it. Proteus actually +offers violence to Sylvia, a spotless lady and the true +love of his friend Valentine; and Valentine not only +forgives him at once when he professes repentance, +but offers to resign Sylvia to him! The incident +is to us so utterly preposterous that we find it hard +to imagine how the audience stood it; but, even if +we conjecture that Shakespeare adopted it from +the story he was using, we can hardly suppose that +it was so absurd to him as it is to us.<a name="fa20j" id="fa20j" href="#ft20j"><span class="sp">20</span></a> And it is +not the Sonnets alone which lead us to surmise +that forgiveness was particularly attractive to him, +and the forgiveness of a friend much easier than +resentment. From the Sonnets we gather—and +there is nothing in the plays or elsewhere to +contradict the impression—that he would not be +slow to resent the criticisms, slanders, or injuries of +strangers or the world, and that he bore himself +towards them with a proud, if silent, self-sufficiency. +But, we surmise, for anyone whom he loved</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>He carried anger as a flint bears fire;</p> +<p>Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark</p> +<p>And straight is cold again;</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">and towards anyone so fondly loved as the friend of +the Sonnets he was probably incapable of fierce or +prolonged resentment.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page336" id="page336"></a>336</span></p> + +<p>The Sonnets must not occupy us further; and I +will not dwell on the indications they afford that +Shakespeare sometimes felt bitterly both the social +inferiority of his position as an actor,<a name="fa21j" id="fa21j" href="#ft21j"><span class="sp">21</span></a> and its influence +on his own character; or that (as we have +already conjectured) he may sometimes have played +the fool in society, sometimes felt weary of life, and +often was over-tired by work. It is time to pass +on to a few hesitating conjectures about what may +be called his tastes.</p> + +<p>Some passages of his about music have become +household words. It is not downright impossible +that, like Bottom, having only a reasonable good +ear, he liked best the tongs and the bones; that he +wondered, with Benedick, how sheeps-guts should +hale souls out of men’s bodies; and that he wrote +the famous lines in the <i>Merchant of Venice</i> and in +<i>Twelfth Night</i> from mere observation and imagination. +But it is futile to deal with scepticism run +well-nigh mad, and certainly inaccessible to argument +from the cases of poets whose tastes are +matter of knowledge. Assuming therefore that +Shakespeare was fond of music, I may draw attention +to two points. Almost always he speaks of +music as having a softening, tranquillising, or pensive +influence. It lulls killing care and grief of heart to +sleep. It soothes the sick and weary, and even +makes them drowsy. Hamlet calls for it in his +hysterical excitement after the success of the play +scene. When it is hoped that Lear’s long sleep will +have carried his madness away, music is played as +he awakes, apparently to increase the desired +‘temperance.’ It harmonises with the still and +moon-lit night, and the dreamy happiness of newly-wedded +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page337" id="page337"></a>337</span> +lovers. Almost all the rare allusions to +lively or exciting music, apart from dancing, refer, I +believe, to ‘the lofty instruments of <i>war</i>.’ These +facts would almost certainly have a personal significance +if Shakespeare were a more modern poet. +Whether they have any, or have much, in an +Elizabethan I do not venture to judge.</p> + +<p>The second point is diminutive, but it may be +connected with the first. The Duke in <i>Measure +for Measure</i> observes that music often has</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i8">a charm</p> +<p>To make bad good and good provoke to harm.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">If we ask how it should provoke good to harm, we +may recall what was said (p. 326) of the weaknesses +of some poetic natures, and that no one speaks more +feelingly of music than Orsino; further, how he +refers to music as ‘the food of love,’ and who it is +that almost repeats the phrase.</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Give me some music: music, moody food</p> +<p>Of us that trade in love:</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">—the words are Cleopatra’s.<a name="fa22j" id="fa22j" href="#ft22j"><span class="sp">22</span></a> Did Shakespeare as +he wrote them remember, I wonder, the dark lady +to whose music he had listened (Sonnet 128)?</p> + +<p>We should be greatly surprised to find in Shakespeare +signs of the nineteenth century feeling for +mountain scenery, but we can no more doubt that +within certain limits he was sensitive to the beauty +of nature than that he was fond of music.<a name="fa23j" id="fa23j" href="#ft23j"><span class="sp">23</span></a> The only +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page338" id="page338"></a>338</span> +question is whether we can guess at any preferences +here. It is probably inevitable that the flowers +most often mentioned should be the rose and the +lily;<a name="fa24j" id="fa24j" href="#ft24j"><span class="sp">24</span></a> but hardly that the violet should come next +and not far behind, and that the fragrance of the +violet should be spoken of more often even than +that of the rose, and, it seems, with special affection. +This may be a fancy, and it will be thought a sentimental +fancy too; but poets, like other people, may +have favourite flowers; that of Keats, we happen to +know, was the violet.</p> + +<p>Again, if we may draw any conclusion from the +frequency and the character of the allusions, the lark +held for Shakespeare the place of honour among +birds; and the lines,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Hark! hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings,</p> + <p class="i1">And Phœbus gins arise,</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">may suggest one reason for this. The lark, as +several other collocations show, was to him the bird +of joy that welcomes the sun; and it can hardly be +doubted that dawn and early morning was the time +of day that most appealed to him. That he felt the +beauty of night and of moonlight is obvious; but we +find very little to match the lines in <i>Richard II.</i>,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>The setting sun, and music at the close,</p> +<p>As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last;</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">and still less to prove that he felt the magic of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page339" id="page339"></a>339</span> +evening twilight, the ‘heavenliest hour’ of a famous +passage in <i>Don Juan</i>. There is a wonderful line in +Sonnet 132,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>And that full star that ushers in the even,</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">but I remember little else of the same kind. Shakespeare, +as it happens, uses the word ‘twilight’ only +once, and in an unforgetable passage:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>In me thou see’st the twilight of such day</p> +<p>As after sunset fadeth in the west:</p> +<p>Which by and by black night doth take away,</p> +<p>Death’s second self that seals up all in rest.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">And this feeling, though not often so solemn, is on +the whole the prevailing sentiment in the references +to sunset and evening twilight. It corresponds with +the analogy between the times of the day and the +periods of human life. The sun sets from the +weariness of age; but he rises in the strength and +freshness of youth, firing the proud tops of the +eastern pines, and turning the hills and the sea into +burnished gold, while jocund day stands tiptoe on +the misty mountain tops, and the lark sings at the +gate of heaven. In almost all the familiar lines +about dawn one seems to catch that ‘indescribable +gusto’ which Keats heard in Kean’s delivery of the +words:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Stir with the lark to-morrow, gentle Norfolk.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>Two suggestions may be ventured as to Shakespeare’s +feelings towards four-footed animals. The +first must be very tentative. We do not expect in +a writer of that age the sympathy with animals +which is so beautiful a trait in much of the poetry +of the last hundred and fifty years. And I can +remember in Shakespeare scarcely any sign of <i>fondness</i> +for an animal,—not even for a horse, though he +wrote so often of horses. But there are rather +frequent, if casual, expressions of pity, in references, +for example, to the hunted hare or stag, or to the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page340" id="page340"></a>340</span> +spurred horse:<a name="fa25j" id="fa25j" href="#ft25j"><span class="sp">25</span></a> and it may be questioned whether +the passage in <i>As You Like It</i> about the wounded +deer is quite devoid of personal significance. No +doubt Shakespeare thought the tears of Jaques +sentimental; but he put a piece of himself into +Jaques. And, besides, it is not Jaques alone who +dislikes the killing of the deer, but the Duke; and +we may surely hear some tone of Shakespeare’s +voice in the Duke’s speech about the life in the +forest. Perhaps we may surmise that, while he +enjoyed field-sports, he felt them at times to be out +of tune with the harmony of nature.</p> + +<p>On the second point, I regret to say, I can feel +no doubt. Shakespeare did not care for dogs, as +Homer did; he even disliked them, as Goethe did. +Of course he can write eloquently about the points +of hounds and the music of their voices in the +chase, and humorously about Launce’s love for his +cur and even about the cur himself; but this is no +more significant on the one side than is his conventional +use of ‘dog’ as a term of abuse on the +other. What is significant is the absence of allusion, +or (to be perfectly accurate) of sympathetic +allusion, to the characteristic virtues of dogs, and +the abundance of allusions of an insulting kind. +Shakespeare has observed and recorded, in some +instances profusely, every vice that I can think of +in an ill-conditioned dog. He fawns and cringes +and flatters, and then bites the hand that caressed +him; he is a coward who attacks you from behind, +and barks at you the more the farther off you +go; he knows neither charity, humanity, nor gratitude; +as he flatters power and wealth, so he takes +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page341" id="page341"></a>341</span> +part against the poor and unfashionable, and if +fortune turns against you so does he.<a name="fa26j" id="fa26j" href="#ft26j"><span class="sp">26</span></a> The plays +swarm with these charges. Whately’s exclamation—uttered +after a College meeting or a meeting of +Chapter, I forget which—‘The more I see of men, +the more I like dogs,’ would never have been echoed +by Shakespeare. The things he most loathed in men +he found in dogs too. And yet all this might go for +nothing if we could set anything of weight against it. +But what can we set? Nothing whatever, so far as +I remember, except a recognition of courage in bear-baiting, +bull-baiting mastiffs. For I cannot quote as +favourable to the spaniel the appeal of Helena:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius,</p> +<p>The more you beat me I will fawn on you:</p> +<p>Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me,</p> +<p>Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave,</p> +<p>Unworthy as I am, to follow you.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">This may show that Shakespeare was alive to the +baseness of a spaniel-owner, but not that he appreciated +that self-less affection which he describes. +It is more probable that it irritated him, as it does +many men still; and, as for its implying fidelity, +there is no reference, I believe, to the fidelity of +the dog in the whole of his works, and he chooses +the spaniel himself as a symbol of flattery and +ingratitude: his Cćsar talks of</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Knee-crooked court’sies and base spaniel-fawning;</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">his Antony exclaims:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i11">the hearts</p> +<p>That spaniel’d me at heels, to whom I gave</p> +<p>Their wishes, do discandy, melt their sweets</p> +<p>On blossoming Cćsar.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">To all that he loved most in men he was blind in +dogs. And then we call him universal!</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page342" id="page342"></a>342</span></p> + +<p>This line of research into Shakespeare’s tastes +might be pursued a good deal further, but we must +return to weightier matters. We saw that he could +sympathise with anyone who erred and suffered +from impulse, affections of the blood, or even such +passions as were probably no danger to himself,—ambition, +for instance, and pride. Can we learn +anything more about him by observing virtues or +types of character with which he appears to feel +little sympathy, though he may approve them? He +certainly does not show this imperfect sympathy +towards self-control; we seem to feel even a special +liking for Brutus, and again for Horatio, who has +suffered much, is quietly patient, and has mastered +both himself and fortune. But, not to speak of +coldly selfish natures, he seems averse to bloodless +people, those who lack, or those who have deadened, +the natural desires for joy and sympathy, and those +who tend to be precise.<a name="fa27j" id="fa27j" href="#ft27j"><span class="sp">27</span></a> Nor does he appear to +be drawn to men who, as we say, try to live or to +act on principle; nor to those who aim habitually +at self-improvement; nor yet to the saintly type of +character. I mean, not that he <i>could</i> not sympathise +with them, but that they did not attract him. +Isabella, in <i>Measure for Measure</i>, is drawn, of +course, with understanding, but, it seems to me, +with little sympathy. Her readiness to abandon her +pleading for Claudio, out of horror at his sin and +a sense of the justice of Angelo’s reasons for refusing +his pardon, is doubtless in character; but if +Shakespeare had sympathised more with her at this +point, so should we; while, as it is, we are tempted +to exclaim,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>She loves him not, she wants the natural touch;</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">and perhaps if Shakespeare had liked her better and +had not regarded her with some irony, he would +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page343" id="page343"></a>343</span> +not have allowed himself, for mere convenience, +to degrade her by marrying her to the Duke. +Brutus and Cordelia, on the other hand, are drawn +with the fullest imaginative sympathy, and they, it +may be said, are characters of principle; but then +(even if Cordelia could be truly so described) they +are also intensely affectionate, and by no means +inhumanly self-controlled.</p> + +<p>The mention of Brutus may carry us somewhat +farther. Shakespeare’s Brutus kills Cćsar, not +because Cćsar aims at absolute power, but because +Brutus fears that absolute power may make him +cruel. That is not Plutarch’s idea, it is Shakespeare’s. +He could fully sympathise with the +gentleness of Brutus, with his entire superiority to +private aims and almost entire freedom from personal +susceptibilities, and even with his resolution +to sacrifice his friend; but he could not so sympathise +with mere horror of monarchy or absolute +power. And now extend this a little. Can you +imagine Shakespeare an enthusiast for an ‘idea’; a +devotee of divine right, or the rights of Parliament, +or any particular form of government in Church or +State; a Fifth Monarchy man, or a Quaker, or a +thick-and-thin adherent of any compact, exclusive, +abstract creed, even if it were as rational and noble +as Mazzini’s? This type of mind, even at its best, +is alien from his. Scott is said, rightly or wrongly, +to have portrayed the Covenanters without any deep +understanding of them; it would have been the +same with Shakespeare. I am not praising him, +or at least not merely praising him. One may even +suggest that on this side he was limited. In any +age he would have been safe against fanaticism and +one-sided ideas; but perhaps in no age would he +have been the man to insist with the necessary +emphasis on those one-sided ideas which the moment +may need, or even to give his whole heart to men +who join a forlorn hope or are martyred for a faith. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page344" id="page344"></a>344</span> +And though it is rash to suggest that anything in +the way of imagination was beyond his reach, +perhaps the legend of Faust, with his longings for +infinite power and knowledge and enjoyment of +beauty, would have suited him less well than Marlowe; +and if he had written on the subject that +Cervantes took, his Don Quixote would have been +at least as laughable as the hero we know, but would +he have been a soul so ideally noble and a figure +so profoundly pathetic?</p> + +<p>This would be the natural place to discuss Shakespeare’s +politics if we were to discuss them at all. +But even if the question whether he shows any +interest in the political differences of his time, or any +sympathies or antipathies in regard to them, admits +of an answer, it could be answered only by an +examination of details; and I must pass it by, and +offer only the briefest remarks on a wider question. +Shakespeare, as we might expect, shows no sign of +believing in what is sometimes called a political +‘principle.’ The main ideas which, consciously or +unconsciously, seem to govern or emerge from his +presentation of state affairs, might perhaps be put +thus. National welfare is the end of politics, and +the criterion by which political actions are to be +judged. It implies of necessity ‘degree’; that is, +differences of position and function in the members +of the body politic.<a name="fa28j" id="fa28j" href="#ft28j"><span class="sp">28</span></a> And the first requisites of +national welfare are the observance of this degree, +and the concordant performance of these functions +in the general interest. But there appear to be no +further absolute principles than these: beyond them +all is relative to the particular case and its particular +conditions. We find no hint, for example, in <i>Julius +Cćsar</i> that Shakespeare regarded a monarchical +form of government as intrinsically better than a +republican, or <i>vice versa</i>; no trace in <i>Richard II.</i> +that the author shares the king’s belief in his +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page345" id="page345"></a>345</span> +inviolable right, or regards Bolingbroke’s usurpation +as justifiable. We perceive, again, pretty clearly +in several plays a dislike and contempt of demagogues, +and an opinion that mobs are foolish, fickle, +and ungrateful. But these are sentiments which the +most determined of believers in democracy, if he has +sense, may share; and if he thinks that the attitude +of aristocrats like Volumnia and Coriolanus is +inhuman and as inexcusable as that of the mob, and +that a mob is as easily led right as wrong and has +plenty of good nature in it, he has abundant ground +for holding that Shakespeare thought so too. That +Shakespeare greatly liked and admired the typical +qualities of the best kind of aristocrat seems highly +probable; but then this taste has always been compatible +with a great variety of political opinions. +It is interesting but useless to wonder what his own +opinions would have been at various periods of +English history: perhaps the only thing we can be +pretty sure of in regard to them is that they would +never have been extreme, and that he would never +have supposed his opponents to be entirely wrong.</p> + +<p class="pt2">We have tried to conjecture the impulses, +passions, and errors with which Shakespeare could +easily sympathise, and the virtues and types of +character which he may have approved without +much sympathy. It remains to ask whether we can +notice tendencies and vices to which he felt any +special antipathy; and it is obvious and safe to +point to those most alien to a gentle, open, and +free nature, the vices of a cold and hard disposition, +self-centred and incapable of fusion with others. +Passing over, again, the plainly hideous forms or +extremes of such vice, as we see them in characters +like Richard III., Iago, Goneril and Regan, or the +Queen in <i>Cymbeline</i>, we seem to detect a particular +aversion to certain vices which have the common +mark of baseness; for instance, servility and flattery +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page346" id="page346"></a>346</span> +(especially when deliberate and practised with a +view to self-advancement), feigning in friendship, +and ingratitude. Shakespeare’s <i>animus</i> against the +dog arises from the attribution of these vices to him, +and against them in men are directed the invectives +which seem to have a personal ring. There appears +to be traceable also a feeling of a special, though +less painful, kind against unmercifulness. I do not +mean, of course, cruelty, but unforgivingness, and +even the tendency to prefer justice to mercy. From +no other dramatic author, probably, could there be +collected such prolonged and heart-felt praises of +mercy as from Shakespeare. He had not at all +strongly, I think, that instinct and love of justice +and retribution which in many men are so powerful; +but Prospero’s words,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i5">they being penitent,</p> +<p>The sole drift of my purpose doth extend</p> +<p>Not a jot further,</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">came from his heart. He perceived with extreme +clearness the connection of acts with their consequences; +but his belief that in this sense ‘the gods +are just’ was accompanied by the strongest feeling +that forgiveness ought to follow repentance, and (if I +may so put it) his favourite petition was the one that +begins ‘Forgive us our trespasses.’ To conclude, +I have fancied that he shows an unusual degree +of disgust at slander and dislike of censoriousness; +and where he speaks in the Sonnets of those who +censured him he betrays an exceptionally decided +feeling that a man’s offences are his own affair and +not the world’s.<a name="fa29j" id="fa29j" href="#ft29j"><span class="sp">29</span></a></p> + +<p>Some of the vices which seem to have been +particularly odious to Shakespeare have, we may +notice, a special connection with prosperity and +power. Men feign and creep and flatter to please +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page347" id="page347"></a>347</span> +the powerful and to win their own way to ease or +power; and they envy and censure and slander +their competitors in the race; and when they +succeed, they are ungrateful to their friends and +helpers and patrons; and they become hard and +unmerciful, and despise and bully those who are +now below them. So, perhaps, Shakespeare said +to himself in those years when, as we imagine, +melancholy and embitterment often overclouded his +sky, though they did not obscure his faith in goodness +and much less his intellectual vision. And +prosperity and power, he may have added, come +less frequently by merit than by those base arts +or by mere fortune. The divorce of goodness and +power was, to Shelley, the ‘woe of the world’; +if we substitute for ‘goodness’ the wider word +‘merit,’ we may say that this divorce, with the evil +bred by power, is to Shakespeare also the root of +bitterness. This fact, presented in its extreme form +of the appalling cruelty of the prosperous, and the +heart-rending suffering of the defenceless, forms +the problem of his most tremendous drama. We +have no reason to surmise that his own sufferings +were calamitous; and the period which seems to +be marked by melancholy and embitterment was +one of outward, or at least financial, prosperity; but +nevertheless we can hardly doubt that he felt on +the small scale of his own life the influence of that +divorce of power and merit. His complaint against +Fortune, who had so ill provided for his life, runs +through the Sonnets. Even if we could regard as +purely conventional the declarations that his verses +would make his friend immortal, it is totally impossible +that he can have been unaware of the gulf +between his own gifts and those of others, or can +have failed to feel the disproportion between his position +and his mind. Hamlet had never experienced</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i8">the spurns</p> +<p>That patient merit of the unworthy takes,</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page348" id="page348"></a>348</span></p> + +<p class="noind">and that make the patient soul weary of life; the +man who had experienced them was the writer of +Sonnet 66, who cried for death because he was tired +with beholding</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i4">desert a beggar born,</p> +<p>And needy nothing trimmed in jollity,</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">—a beggarly soul flaunting in brave array. Neither +had Hamlet felt in his own person ‘the insolence of +office’; but the actor had doubtless felt it often +enough, and we can hardly err in hearing his own +voice in dramatic expressions of wonder and contempt +at the stupid pride of mere authority and at +men’s slavish respect for it. Two examples will +suffice. ‘Thou hast seen a farmer’s dog bark at a +beggar, and the creature run from the cur? There +thou mightst behold the great image of authority. +A dog’s obeyed in office’: so says Lear, when +madness has cleared his vision, and indignation +makes the Timon-like verses that follow. The +other example is almost too famous for quotation +but I have a reason for quoting it:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i5">man, proud man,</p> +<p>Drest in a little brief authority,</p> +<p>Most ignorant of what he’s most assured,</p> +<p>His glassy essence, like an angry ape,</p> +<p>Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven</p> +<p>As makes the angels weep; who, with our spleens,</p> +<p>Would all themselves laugh mortal.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">It is Isabella who says that; but it is scarcely in +character; Shakespeare himself is speaking.<a name="fa30j" id="fa30j" href="#ft30j"><span class="sp">30</span></a></p> + +<p class="pt2">It is with great hesitation that I hazard a few +words on Shakespeare’s religion. Any attempt to +penetrate his reserve on this subject may appear a +crowning impertinence; and, since his dramas are +almost exclusively secular, any impressions we +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page349" id="page349"></a>349</span> +may form must here be even more speculative than +usual. Yet it is scarcely possible to read him much +without such speculations; and there are at least +some theories which may confidently be dismissed. +It cannot be called absolutely impossible that Shakespeare +was indifferent to music and to the beauty of +Nature, and yet the idea is absurd; and in the same +way it is barely possible, and yet it is preposterous, +to suppose that he was an ardent and devoted +atheist or Brownist or Roman Catholic, and that +all the indications to the contrary are due to his +artfulness and determination not to get into trouble. +There is no absurdity, on the other hand, nor of +necessity anything hopeless, in the question whether +there are signs that he belonged to this or that +church, and was inclined to one mode of thought +within it rather than to another. Only the question +is scarcely worth asking for our present purpose, +unless there is some reason to believe that he took +a keen interest in these matters. Suppose, for +example, that we had ground to accept a tradition +that he ‘died a papist,’ this would not tell us much +about him unless we had also ground to think that +he lived a papist, and that his faith went far into +his personality. But in fact we receive from his +writings, it appears to me, a rather strong impression +that he concerned himself little, if at all, with +differences of doctrine or church government.<a name="fa31j" id="fa31j" href="#ft31j"><span class="sp">31</span></a> And +we may go further. Have we not reason to surmise +that he was not, in the distinctive sense of the +word, a religious man—a man, that is to say, whose +feelings and actions are constantly and strongly +influenced by thoughts of his relation to an object of +worship? If Shakespeare had been such a man, is +it credible that we should find nothing in tradition +or in his works to indicate the fact; and is it likely +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page350" id="page350"></a>350</span> +that we should find in his works some things that +we do find there?<a name="fa32j" id="fa32j" href="#ft32j"><span class="sp">32</span></a></p> + +<p>Venturing with much doubt a little farther I will +put together certain facts and impressions without +at once drawing any conclusion from them. Almost +all the speeches that can be called pronouncedly +religious and Christian in phraseology and spirit are +placed in the mouths of persons to whom they are +obviously appropriate, either from their position +(<i>e.g.</i> bishops, friars, nuns), or from what Shakespeare +found in histories (<i>e.g.</i> Henry IV., V., and VI.), or +for some other plain reason. We cannot build, +therefore, on these speeches in the least. On the +other hand (except, of course, where they are +hypocritical or politic), we perceive in Shakespeare’s +tone in regard to them not the faintest trace of dislike +or contempt; nor can we find a trace anywhere +of such feelings, or of irreverence, towards Christian +ideas, institutions, or customs (mere humorous +irreverence is not relevant here); and in the +case of ‘sympathetic’ characters, living in Christian +times but not in any decided sense religious, no +disposition is visible to suppress or ignore their +belief in, and use of, religious ideas. Some characters, +again, Christian or heathen, who appear to +be drawn with rather marked sympathy, have strong, +if simple, religious convictions (e.g. Horatio, Edgar, +Hermione); and in others, of whom so much can +hardly be said, but who strike many readers, rightly +or wrongly, as having a good deal of Shakespeare in +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page351" id="page351"></a>351</span> +them (<i>e.g.</i> Romeo and Hamlet), we observe a quiet +but deep sense that they and other men are neither +their own masters nor responsible only to themselves +and other men, but are in the hands of +‘Providence’ or guiding powers ‘above.’<a name="fa33j" id="fa33j" href="#ft33j"><span class="sp">33</span></a></p> + +<p>To this I will add two remarks. To every one, I +suppose, certain speeches sound peculiarly personal. +Perhaps others may share my feeling about Hamlet’s +words:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,</p> +<p>Rough-hew them how we will;</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">and about those other words of his:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,</p> +<p>Than are dreamt of in your philosophy;</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">and about the speech of Prospero ending, ‘We are +such stuff as dreams are made on.’<a name="fa34j" id="fa34j" href="#ft34j"><span class="sp">34</span></a> On the other +hand, we observe that Hamlet seems to have arrived +at that conviction as to the ‘divinity’ after reflection, +and that, while he usually speaks as one who accepts +the received Christian ideas, yet, when meditating +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page352" id="page352"></a>352</span> +profoundly, he appears to ignore them.<a name="fa35j" id="fa35j" href="#ft35j"><span class="sp">35</span></a> In the +same way the Duke in <i>Measure for Measure</i> is for +the most part, and necessarily, a Christian; yet +nobody would guess it from the great speech, ‘Be +absolute for death,’ addressed by a supposed friar to +a youth under sentence to die, yet containing not a +syllable about a future life.<a name="fa36j" id="fa36j" href="#ft36j"><span class="sp">36</span></a></p> + +<p>Without adducing more of the endless but baffling +material for a conclusion, I will offer the result left +on my mind, and, merely for the sake of brevity, +will state it with hardly any of the qualifications it +doubtless needs. Shakespeare, I imagine, was not, +in the sense assigned to the word some minutes ago, +a religious man. Nor was it natural to him to +regard good and evil, better and worse, habitually +from a theological point of view. But (this appears +certain) he had a lively and serious sense of ‘conscience,’ +of the pain of self-reproach and self-condemnation, +and of the torment to which this +pain might rise.<a name="fa37j" id="fa37j" href="#ft37j"><span class="sp">37</span></a> He was not in the least disposed +to regard conscience as somehow illusory or a +human invention, but on the contrary thought of +it (I use the most non-committal phrase I can find) +as connected with the power that rules the world +and is not escapable by man. He realised very +fully and felt very keenly, after his youth was past +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page353" id="page353"></a>353</span> +and at certain times of stress, the sufferings and +wrongs of men, the strength of evil, the hideousness +of certain forms of it, and its apparent incurability +in certain cases. And he must sometimes +have felt all this as a terrible problem. But, however +he may have been tempted, and may have +yielded, to exasperation and even despair, he never +doubted that it is best to be good; felt more and +more that one must be patient and must forgive;<a name="fa38j" id="fa38j" href="#ft38j"><span class="sp">38</span></a> +and probably maintained unbroken a conviction, +practical if not formulated, that to be good is to be at +peace with that unescapable power. But it is unlikely +that he attempted to theorise further on the nature of +the power. All was for him, in the end, mystery; +and, while we have no reason whatever to attribute +to him a belief in the ghosts and oracles he used in +his dramas, he had no inclination to play the spy on +God or to limit his power by our notions of it. +That he had dreams and ponderings about the +mystery such as he never put into the mouths of +actors I do not doubt; but I imagine they were +no more than dreams and ponderings and movings +about in worlds unrealised.</p> + +<p>Whether to this ‘religion’ he joined a more or +less conventional acceptance of some or all of the +usual Christian ideas, it is impossible to tell. There +is no great improbability to me in the idea that he +did not, but it is more probable to me that he did,—that, +in fact, though he was never so tormented as +Hamlet, his position in this matter was, at least in +middle life (and he never reached old age), much +like Hamlet’s. If this were so it might naturally +happen that, as he grew older and wearier of labour, +and perhaps of the tumult of pleasure and thought +and pain, his more personal religion, the natural piety +which seems to gain in weight and serenity in the +latest plays, came to be more closely joined with +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page354" id="page354"></a>354</span> +Christian ideas. But I can find no clear indications +that this did happen; and though some have +believed that they discovered these ideas displayed +in full, though not explicitly, in the <i>Tempest</i>, I am +not able to hear there more than the stream of +Shakespeare’s own ‘religion’ moving with its fullest +volume and making its deepest and most harmonious +music.<a name="fa39j" id="fa39j" href="#ft39j"><span class="sp">39</span></a></p> + +<p class="pt2">This lecture must end, though its subject is endless, +and I will touch on only one point more,—one +that may to some extent recall and connect the +scattered suggestions I have offered.</p> + +<p>If we were obliged to answer the question which +of Shakespeare’s plays contains, not indeed the +fullest picture of his mind, but the truest expression +of his nature and habitual temper, unaffected by +special causes of exhilaration or gloom, I should be +disposed to choose <i>As You Like It</i>. It wants, to +go no further, the addition of a touch of Sir Toby +or Falstaff, and the ejection of its miraculous +conversions of ill-disposed characters. But the +misbehaviour of Fortune, and the hardness and +ingratitude of men, form the basis of its plot, and +are a frequent topic of complaint. And, on the +other hand, he who is reading it has a smooth brow +and smiling lips, and a heart that murmurs,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i4">Happy is your grace,</p> +<p>That can translate the stubbornness of fortune</p> +<p>Into so quiet and so sweet a style.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page355" id="page355"></a>355</span></p> + +<p class="noind">And it is full not only of sweetness, but of romance, +fun, humour of various kinds, delight in the oddities +of human nature, love of modesty and fidelity and +high spirit and patience, dislike of scandal and censure, +contemplative curiosity, the feeling that in the +end we are all merely players, together with a touch +of the feeling that</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Then is there mirth in heaven</p> +<p>When earthly things made even</p> + <p class="i1">Atone together.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">And, finally, it breathes the serene holiday mood of +escape from the toil, competition, and corruption of +city and court into the sun and shadow and peace +of the country, where one can be idle and dream +and meditate and sing, and pursue or watch the deer +as the fancy takes one, and make love or smile at +lovers according to one’s age.<a name="fa40j" id="fa40j" href="#ft40j"><span class="sp">40</span></a></p> + +<p>If, again, the question were put to us, which of +Shakespeare’s characters reveals most of his personality, +the majority of those who consented to +give an answer would answer ‘Hamlet.’ This +impression may be fanciful, but it is difficult to +think it wholly so, and, speaking for those who share +it, I will try to trace some of its sources. There is +a good deal of Shakespeare that is not in Hamlet. +But Hamlet, we think, is the only character in +Shakespeare who could possibly have composed his +plays (though it appears unlikely, from his verses to +Ophelia, that he could have written the best songs). +Into Hamlet’s mouth are put what are evidently +Shakespeare’s own views on drama and acting. +Hamlet alone, among the great serious characters, +can be called a humorist. When in some trait of +another character we seem to touch Shakespeare’s +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page356" id="page356"></a>356</span> +personality, we are frequently reminded of Hamlet.<a name="fa41j" id="fa41j" href="#ft41j"><span class="sp">41</span></a> +When in a profound reflective speech we hear +Shakespeare’s voice, we usually hear Hamlet’s too, +and his peculiar humour and turns of phrase appear +unexpectedly in persons otherwise unlike him and +unlike one another. The most melancholy group +of Sonnets (71-74) recalls Hamlet at once, here and +there recalls even his words; and he and the writer +of Sonnet 66 both recount in a list the ills that +make men long for death. And then Hamlet ‘was +indeed honest and of an open and free nature’; +sweet-tempered and modest, yet not slow to resent +calumny or injury; of a serious but not a melancholy +disposition; and the lover of his friend. And, with +these traits, we remember his poet ecstasy at the +glory of earth and sky and the marvellous endowments +of man; his eager affectionate response to +everything noble or sweet in human nature; his +tendency to dream and to live in the world of +his own mind; his liability to sudden vehement +emotion, and his admiration for men whose blood +and judgment are better commingled; the overwhelming +effect of disillusionment upon him; his +sadness, fierceness, bitterness and cynicism. All +this, and more: his sensitiveness to the call of +duty; his longing to answer to it, and his anguish +over his strange delay; the conviction gathering in +his tortured soul that man’s purposes and failures +are divinely shaped to ends beyond his vision; his +incessant meditation, and his sense that there are +mysteries which no meditation can fathom; nay, +even little traits like his recourse to music to calm +his excitement, or his feeling on the one hand that +the peasant should not tread on the courtier’s heels, +and on the other that the mere courtier is spacious +in the possession of dirt—all this, I say, corresponds +with our impression of Shakespeare, or rather of +characteristic traits in Shakespeare, probably here +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page357" id="page357"></a>357</span> +and there a good deal heightened, and mingled +with others not characteristic of Shakespeare at +all. And if this is more than fancy, it may explain +to us why Hamlet is the most fascinating character, +and the most inexhaustible, in all imaginative +literature. What else should he be, if the world’s +greatest poet, who was able to give almost the +reality of nature to creations totally unlike himself, +put his own soul straight into this creation, and when +he wrote Hamlet’s speeches wrote down his own +heart?<a name="fa42j" id="fa42j" href="#ft42j"><span class="sp">42</span></a></p> + +<p class="f80">1904.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1j" id="ft1j" href="#fa1j"><span class="fn">1</span></a> Unquestionably it holds in a considerable degree of Browning, +who in <i>At the Mermaid</i> and <i>House</i> wrote as though he imagined that +neither his own work nor Shakespeare’s betrayed anything of the inner +man. But if we are to criticise those two poems as arguments, we +must say that they involve two hopelessly false assumptions, that we +have to choose between a self-revelation like Byron’s and no self-revelation +at all, and that the relation between a poet and his work is +like that between the inside and the outside of a house.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2j" id="ft2j" href="#fa2j"><span class="fn">2</span></a> Almost all Shakespearean criticism, of course, contains something +bearing on our subject; but I have a practical reason for mentioning +in particular Mr. Frank Harris’s articles in the <i>Saturday Review</i> for +1898. A good many of Mr. Harris’s views I cannot share, and I had +arrived at almost all the ideas expressed in the lecture (except some +on the Sonnets question) before reading his papers. But I found in +them also valuable ideas which were quite new to me and would +probably be so to many readers. It is a great pity that the articles are +not collected and published in a book. [Mr. Harris has published, in +<i>The Man Shakespeare</i>, the substance of the articles, and also matter +which, in my judgment, has much less value.]</p> + +<p><a name="ft3j" id="ft3j" href="#fa3j"><span class="fn">3</span></a> He is apologising for an attack made on Shakespeare in a pamphlet +of which he was the publisher and Greene the writer.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4j" id="ft4j" href="#fa4j"><span class="fn">4</span></a> It was said of him, indeed, in his lifetime that, had he not played +some kingly parts in sport (<i>i.e.</i> on the stage), he would have been a +companion for a king.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5j" id="ft5j" href="#fa5j"><span class="fn">5</span></a> Nor, <i>vice versa</i>, does the possession of these latter qualities at all +imply, as some writers seem to assume, the absence of the former or +of gentleness.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6j" id="ft6j" href="#fa6j"><span class="fn">6</span></a> Fuller may be handing down a tradition, but it is not safe to +assume this. His comparison, on the other hand, of Shakespeare +and Jonson, in their wit combats, to an English man-of-war and a +Spanish great galleon, reads as if his own happy fancy were operating +on the reports, direct or indirect, of eye-witnesses.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7j" id="ft7j" href="#fa7j"><span class="fn">7</span></a> See, for example, Act <span class="scs">IV.</span> Sc. v., to which I know no parallel in the +later tragedies.</p> + +<p><a name="ft8j" id="ft8j" href="#fa8j"><span class="fn">8</span></a> I allude to Sonnet 110, Mr. Beeching’s note on which seems to be +unquestionably right: ‘There is no reference to the poet’s profession +of player. The sonnet gives the confession of a favourite of society.’ +This applies, I think, to the whole group of sonnets (it begins with +107) in which the poet excuses his neglect of his friend, though there +are <i>also</i> references to his profession and its effect on his nature and +his reputation. (By a slip Mr. Beeching makes the neglect last for +three years.)</p> + +<p><a name="ft9j" id="ft9j" href="#fa9j"><span class="fn">9</span></a> It is perhaps most especially in his rendering of the shock and the +effects of <i>disillusionment</i> in open natures that we seem to feel +Shakespeare’s personality. The nature of this shock is expressed in +Henry’s words to Lord Scroop:</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i6">I will weep for thee;</p> +<p>For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like</p> +<p>Another fall of man.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><a name="ft10j" id="ft10j" href="#fa10j"><span class="fn">10</span></a> There is nothing of this semi-reality, of course, in the <i>passion</i> of +love as portrayed, for example, in men so different as Orlando, Othello, +Antony, Troilus, whose love for Cressida resembles that of Romeo for +Juliet. What I have said of Romeo’s ‘love’ for Rosaline corresponds +roughly with Coleridge’s view; and, without subscribing to all of +Coleridge’s remarks, I believe he was right in finding an intentional +contrast between this feeling and the passion that displaces it (though +it does not follow that the feeling would not have become a genuine +passion if Rosaline had been kind). Nor do I understand the notion +that Coleridge’s view is refuted and even rendered ridiculous by the +mere fact that Shakespeare found the Rosaline story in Brooke +(Halliwell-Phillipps, <i>Outlines</i>, 7th ed., illustrative note 2). Was he +compelled then to use whatever he found? Was it his practice to +do so? The question is always <i>why</i> he used what he found, and +<i>how</i>. Coleridge’s view of this matter, it need hardly be said, is far +from indisputable; but it must be judged by our knowledge of +Shakespeare’s mind and not of his material alone. I may add, as I +have referred to Halliwell-Phillipps, that Shakespeare made changes +in the story he found; that it is arbitrary to assume (not that it +matters) that Coleridge, who read Steevens, was unaware of Shakespeare’s +use of Brooke; and that Brooke was by no means a +‘wretched poetaster.’</p> + +<p><a name="ft11j" id="ft11j" href="#fa11j"><span class="fn">11</span></a> <i>Hamlet</i>, <i>Measure for Measure</i>, <i>Othello</i>, <i>Troilus and Cressida</i>, <i>King +Lear</i>, <i>Timon of Athens</i>. See <i>Shakespearean Tragedy</i>, pp. 79-85, +275-6. I should like to insist on the view there taken that the tragedies +subsequent to <i>Lear</i> and <i>Timon</i> do not show the pressure of painful +feelings.</p> + +<p><a name="ft12j" id="ft12j" href="#fa12j"><span class="fn">12</span></a> It is not implied that these scenes are certainly Shakespeare’s; but +I see no sufficient ground for decisively rejecting them.</p> + +<p><a name="ft13j" id="ft13j" href="#fa13j"><span class="fn">13</span></a> That experience, certainly in part and probably wholly, belongs +to an earlier time, since sonnets 138 and 144 were printed in the +<i>Passionate Pilgrim</i>. But I see no difficulty in that. What bears +little fruit in a normal condition of spirits may bear abundant fruit +later, in moods of discouragement and exasperation induced largely by +other causes.</p> + +<p><a name="ft14j" id="ft14j" href="#fa14j"><span class="fn">14</span></a> <i>The Sonnets of Shakespeare with an Introduction and Notes.</i> +Ginn & Co., 1904.</p> + +<p><a name="ft15j" id="ft15j" href="#fa15j"><span class="fn">15</span></a> I find that Mr. Beeching, in the Stratford Town edition of Shakespeare +(1907), has also urged these considerations.</p> + +<p><a name="ft16j" id="ft16j" href="#fa16j"><span class="fn">16</span></a> I do not mean to imply that Meres necessarily refers to the +sonnets we possess, or that all of these are likely to have been written +by 1598.</p> + +<p><a name="ft17j" id="ft17j" href="#fa17j"><span class="fn">17</span></a> A fact to be remembered in regard to references to the social +position of the friend.</p> + +<p><a name="ft18j" id="ft18j" href="#fa18j"><span class="fn">18</span></a> Mr. Beeching’s illustration of the friendship of the sonnets from +the friendship of Gray and Bonstetten is worth pages of argument.</p> + +<p><a name="ft19j" id="ft19j" href="#fa19j"><span class="fn">19</span></a> In 125 the poet repudiates the accusation that his friendship is too +much based on beauty.</p> + +<p><a name="ft20j" id="ft20j" href="#fa20j"><span class="fn">20</span></a> This does not imply that the Sonnets are as early as the <i>Two +Gentlemen of Verona</i>, and much less that they are earlier.</p> + +<p><a name="ft21j" id="ft21j" href="#fa21j"><span class="fn">21</span></a> This seems to be referred to in lines by John Davies of Hereford, +reprinted in Ingleby’s <i>Shakespeare’s Centurie of Prayse</i>, second +edition, pp. 58, 84, 94. In the first of these passages, dated 1603 (and +perhaps in the second, 1609), there are signs that Davies had read +Sonnet 111, a fact to be noted with regard to the question of the +chronology of the Sonnets.</p> + +<p><a name="ft22j" id="ft22j" href="#fa22j"><span class="fn">22</span></a> ‘Mistress Tearsheet’ too ‘would fain hear some music,’ and ‘Sneak’s +noise’ had to be sent for (2 <i>Henry IV.</i>, <span class="scs">II.</span> iv. 12).</p> + +<p><a name="ft23j" id="ft23j" href="#fa23j"><span class="fn">23</span></a> It is tempting, though not safe, to infer from the <i>Tempest</i> and the +great passage in <i>Pericles</i> that Shakespeare must have been in a storm +at sea; but that he felt the poetry of a sea-storm is beyond all doubt. +Few moments in the reading of his works are more overwhelming +than that in which, after listening not without difficulty to the writer +of the first two Acts of <i>Pericles</i>, suddenly, as the third opens, one +hears the authentic voice:</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Thou god of this great vast, rebuke these surges</p> +<p>That wash both heaven and hell.... The seaman’s whistle</p> +<p>Is as a whisper in the ears of death,</p> +<p>Unheard.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">Knowing that this is coming, I cannot stop to read the Prologue to +Act <span class="scs">III.</span>, though I believe Shakespeare wrote it. How it can be +imagined that he did more than touch up Acts <span class="scs">I.</span> and <span class="scs">II.</span> passes my +comprehension.</p> + +<p>I may call attention to another point. Unless I mistake, there is +nothing in Shakespeare’s authorities, as known to us, which corresponds +with the feeling of Timon’s last speech, beginning,</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Come not to me again: but say to Athens,</p> +<p>Timon hath made his everlasting mansion</p> +<p>Upon the beached verge of the salt flood:</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">a feeling made more explicit in the final speech of Alcibiades.</p> + +<p><a name="ft24j" id="ft24j" href="#fa24j"><span class="fn">24</span></a> The lily seems to be in almost all cases the Madonna lily. It is +very doubtful whether the lily of the valley is referred to at all.</p> + +<p><a name="ft25j" id="ft25j" href="#fa25j"><span class="fn">25</span></a> But there is something disappointing, and even estranging, in +Sonnet 50, which, promising to show a real sympathy, cheats us in +the end. I may observe, without implying that the fact has any +personal significance, that the words about ‘the poor beetle that +we tread upon’ are given to a woman (Isabella), and that it is Marina +who says:</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>I trod upon a worm against my will,</p> +<p>But I wept for it.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><a name="ft26j" id="ft26j" href="#fa26j"><span class="fn">26</span></a> Three times in one drama Shakespeare refers to this detestable +trait. See <i>Shakespearean Tragedy</i>, p. 268, where I should like to +qualify still further the sentence containing the qualification ‘on the +whole.’ Good judges, at least, assure me that I have admitted too +much against the dog.</p> + +<p><a name="ft27j" id="ft27j" href="#fa27j"><span class="fn">27</span></a> Nor can I recall any sign of liking, or even approval, of that +‘prudent, <i>cautious</i>, self-control’ which, according to a passage in +Burns, is ‘wisdom’s root.’</p> + +<p><a name="ft28j" id="ft28j" href="#fa28j"><span class="fn">28</span></a> The <i>locus classicus</i>, of course, is <i>Troilus and Cressida</i>, <span class="scs">I.</span> iii. 75 ff.</p> + +<p><a name="ft29j" id="ft29j" href="#fa29j"><span class="fn">29</span></a> Of all the evils inflicted by man on man those chosen for mention +in the dirge in <i>Cymbeline</i>, one of the last plays, are the frown o’ the +great, the tyrant’s stroke, slander, censure rash.</p> + +<p><a name="ft30j" id="ft30j" href="#fa30j"><span class="fn">30</span></a> Having written these paragraphs, I should like to disclaim the +belief that Shakespeare was habitually deeply discontented with his +position in life.</p> + +<p><a name="ft31j" id="ft31j" href="#fa31j"><span class="fn">31</span></a> Allusions to puritans show at most what we take almost for +granted, that he did not like precisians or people hostile to the +stage.</p> + +<p><a name="ft32j" id="ft32j" href="#fa32j"><span class="fn">32</span></a> In the Sonnets, for example, there is an almost entire absence of +definitely religious thought or feeling. The nearest approach to it +is in Sonnet 146 (‘Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth’), where, +however, there is no allusion to a divine law or judge. According to +Sonnet 129, lust in action is</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>The expense of spirit in a waste of shame;</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">but no word shows that it is also felt as alienation from God. It must +be added that in 108 and 110 there are references to the Lord’s Prayer +and, perhaps, to the First Commandment, from which a decidedly +religious Christian would perhaps have shrunk. Of course I am not +saying that we can draw any <i>necessary</i> inference from these facts.</p> + +<p><a name="ft33j" id="ft33j" href="#fa33j"><span class="fn">33</span></a> It is only this ‘quiet but deep sense’ that is significant. No +inference can be drawn from the fact that the mere belief in powers +above seems to be taken as a matter of course in practically all the +characters, good and bad alike. On the other hand there may well +be something symptomatic in the apparent absence of interest in +theoretical disbelief in such powers and in the immortality of the +soul. I have observed elsewhere that the atheism of Aaron does not +increase the probability that the conception of the character is +Shakespeare’s.</p> + +<p><a name="ft34j" id="ft34j" href="#fa34j"><span class="fn">34</span></a> With the first compare, what to me has, though more faintly, the +same ring, Hermione’s</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i7">If powers divine</p> +<p>Behold our human actions, as they do:</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">with the second, Helena’s</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>It is not so with Him that all things knows</p> +<p>As ’tis with us that square our guess by shows;</p> +<p>But most it is presumption in us when</p> +<p>The help of heaven we count the act of men:</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">followed soon after by Lafeu’s remark:</p> + +<div class="condensed"> +<p>They say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical persons to +make modern and familiar things supernatural and causeless. Hence it is +that we make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge, +when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.</p> +</div> + +<p><a name="ft35j" id="ft35j" href="#fa35j"><span class="fn">35</span></a> It is worth noting that the reference, which appears in the First +Quarto version of ‘To be or not to be,’ to ‘an everlasting judge,’ +disappears in the revised versions.</p> + +<p><a name="ft36j" id="ft36j" href="#fa36j"><span class="fn">36</span></a> The suggested inference, of course, is that this speech, thus out of +character, and Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ (though that is in +character), show us Shakespeare’s own mind. It has force, I think, +but not compulsory force. The topics of these speeches are, in the +old sense of the word, commonplaces. Shakespeare may have felt, +Here is my chance to show what I can do with certain feelings and +thoughts of supreme interest to men of all times and places and modes +of belief. It would not follow from this that they are not ‘personal,’ but +any inference to a non-acceptance of received religious ideas would be +much weakened. (‘All the world’s a stage’ is a patent example of the +suggested elaboration of a commonplace.)</p> + +<p><a name="ft37j" id="ft37j" href="#fa37j"><span class="fn">37</span></a> What actions in particular <i>his</i> conscience approved and disapproved +is another question and one not relevant here.</p> + +<p><a name="ft38j" id="ft38j" href="#fa38j"><span class="fn">38</span></a> This does not at all imply to Shakespeare, so far as we see, that +evil is never to be forcibly resisted.</p> + +<p><a name="ft39j" id="ft39j" href="#fa39j"><span class="fn">39</span></a> I do not mean to reject the idea that in some passages in the +<i>Tempest</i> Shakespeare, while he wrote them with a dramatic purpose, +also thought of himself. It seems to me likely. And if so, there <i>may</i> +have been such a thought in the words,</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>And thence retire me to my Milan, where</p> +<p>Every third thought shall be my grave;</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">and also in those lines about prayer and pardon which close the +Epilogue, and to my ear come with a sudden effect of great seriousness, +contrasting most strangely with their context. If they <i>had</i> a +grave and personal under-meaning it cannot have been intended for +the audience, which would take the prayer as addressed to itself.</p> + +<p><a name="ft40j" id="ft40j" href="#fa40j"><span class="fn">40</span></a> It may be added that <i>As You Like It</i>, though idyllic, is not so +falsely idyllic as some critics would make it. It is based, we may +roughly say, on a contrast between court and country; but those who +inhale virtue from the woodland are courtiers who bring virtue with +them, and the country has its churlish masters and unkind or uncouth +maidens.</p> + +<p><a name="ft41j" id="ft41j" href="#fa41j"><span class="fn">41</span></a> This has been strongly urged and fully illustrated by Mr. Harris.</p> + +<p><a name="ft42j" id="ft42j" href="#fa42j"><span class="fn">42</span></a> It may be suggested that, in the catalogue above, I should have +mentioned that imaginative ‘unreality’ in love referred to on p. 326. +But I do not see in Hamlet either this, or any sign that he took +Ophelia for an Imogen or even a Juliet, though naturally he was +less clearly aware of her deficiencies than Shakespeare.</p> + +<p>I may add, however, another item to the catalogue. We do not +feel that the problems presented to most of the tragic heroes could +have been fatal to Shakespeare himself. The immense breadth +and clearness of his intellect would have saved him from the fate of +Othello, Troilus, or Antony. But we do feel, I think, and he himself +may have felt, that he could not have coped with Hamlet’s +problem; and there is no improbability in the idea that he may +have experienced in some degree the melancholia of his hero.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:150px; height:35px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img001.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page358" id="page358"></a>358<br />359</span></p> + +<p class="center chap">SHAKESPEARE’S THEATRE AND +AUDIENCE.</p> +<p> </p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page360" id="page360"></a>360<br />361</span></p> + +<p class="center pt2 chap2">SHAKESPEARE’S THEATRE AND +AUDIENCE.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1 fo">Why</span> should we concern ourselves with Shakespeare’s +theatre and audience? The vast majority +of his readers since the Restoration have known +nothing about them, and have enjoyed his plays +enormously. And if they have enjoyed without fully +understanding, it was for want of imagination and of +knowledge of human nature, and not from ignorance +of the conditions under which his plays were produced. +At any rate, such ignorance does not exclude +us from the <i>soul</i> of Shakespearean drama, any +more than from the soul of Homeric epic or Athenian +tragedy; and it is the soul that counts and endures. +For the rest, we all know that Shakespeare’s time +was rough, indecorous, and inexpert in regard to +machinery; and so we are prepared for coarse +speech and primitive stage-arrangements, and we +make allowance for them without thinking about the +matter. Antiquarians may naturally wish to know +more; but what more is needed for intelligent enjoyment +of the plays?</p> + +<p>I have begun with these questions because I sympathise +with their spirit. Everything I am going to +speak of in this lecture is comparatively unimportant +for the appreciation of that which is most vital in +Shakespeare; and if I were allowed my choice between +an hour’s inspection of a performance at the +Globe and a glimpse straight into his mind when he +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page362" id="page362"></a>362</span> +was planning the <i>Tempest</i>, I should not hesitate which +to choose. Nevertheless, to say nothing of the intrinsic +interest of antiquarian knowledge, we cannot +make a clear division between the soul and body, or +the eternal and the perishable, in works of art. Nor +can we lay the finger on a line which separates that +which has poetic interest from that which has none. +Nor yet can we assume that any knowledge of +Shakespeare’s theatre and audience, however trivial +it may appear, may not help us to appreciate, or +save us from misapprehending, the ‘soul’ of a +play or a scene. If our own souls were capacious +and vivid enough, every atom of information on +these subjects, or again on the material he used +in composing, would so assist us. The danger of +devotion to such knowledge lies merely in our weakness. +Research, though toilsome, is easy; imaginative +vision, though delightful, is difficult; and we +may be tempted to prefer the first. Or we note that +in a given passage Shakespeare has used what he +found in his authority; and we excuse ourselves +from asking why he used it and what he made of it. +Or we see that he has done something that would +please his audience; and we dismiss it as accounted +for, forgetting that perhaps it also pleased <i>him</i>, and +that we have to account for <i>that</i>. Or knowledge of +his stage shows us the stage-convenience of a scene; +and we say that the scene was due to stage-convenience, +as if the cause of a thing must needs be single +and simple. Such errors provoke the man who +reads his Shakespeare poetically, and make him +blaspheme our knowledge. But we ought not to +fall into them; and we cannot reject any knowledge +that may help us into Shakespeare’s mind because +of the danger it brings.</p> + +<p>I cannot attempt to describe Shakespeare’s theatre +and audience, and much less to discuss the evidence +on which a description must be based, or the difficult +problems it raises. I must confine myself for the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page363" id="page363"></a>363</span> +most part to a few points which are not always fully +realised, or on which there is a risk of misapprehension.</p> + +<p class="pt2 center">1.</p> + +<p>Shakespeare, we know, was a popular playwright. +I mean not only that many of his plays were +favourites in his day, but that he wrote, mainly at +least, for the more popular kind of audience, and +that, within certain limits, he conformed to its tastes. +He was not, to our knowledge, the author of +masques composed for performance at Court or in a +great mansion, or of dramas intended for a University +or one of the Inns of Court; and though his +company for some time played at the Blackfriars, we +may safely assume that the great majority of his +works were meant primarily for a common or ‘public’ +theatre like the Globe. The broad distinction between +a ‘private’ and a ‘public’ theatre is familiar, +and I need only remind you that at the former, +which was smaller, provided seats even in the area, +and was nowhere open to the weather, the audience +was more select. Accordingly, dramatists who express +their contempt for the audience, and their +disapproval of those who consult its tastes, often +discriminate between the audiences at the private +and public theatres, and reserve their unmeasured +language for the latter. It was for the latter that +Shakespeare mainly wrote; and it is pretty clear +that Jonson, who greatly admired and loved him, +was still of opinion that he condescended to his +audience.<a name="fa1k" id="fa1k" href="#ft1k"><span class="sp">1</span></a></p> + +<p>So far we seem to be on safe ground; and yet +even here there is some risk of mistake. We are +not to imagine that the audience at a private theatre +(say the Blackfriars) accepted Jonson’s dramatic +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page364" id="page364"></a>364</span> +theories, while the audience at the Globe rejected +them; or that the one was composed chiefly of +cultured and ‘judicious’ gentlemen, and the other of +riotous and malodorous plebeians; and still less that +Shakespeare tried to please the latter section in +preference to the former, and was beloved by the +one more than by the other. The two audiences +must have had the same general character, differing +only in degree. Neither of them accepted +Jonson’s theories, nor were the ‘judicious’ of one +mind on that subject. The same play was frequently +offered to both. Both were very mixed. The tastes +to which objection was taken cannot have been confined +to the mob. From our knowledge of human +nature generally, and of the Elizabethan nobility +and gentry in particular, we may be sure of this; +and Jonson himself implies it. Nor is it credible +that an appreciation of the best things was denied +to the mob, which doubtless loved what we should +despise, but appears also to have admired what we +admire, and to have tolerated more poetry than most +of us can stomach. Neither can these groundlings +have formed the majority of the ‘public’ audience +or have been omnipotent in their theatre, when it +was possible for dramatists (Shakespeare included) +to say such rude things of them to their faces. We +must not delude ourselves as to these matters; and +in particular we must realise that the mass of the +audience in both kinds of theatre must have been +indifferent to the unities of time and place, and +more or less so to improbabilities and to decorum +(at least as we conceive it) both in manners and in +speech; and that it must have liked excitement, the +open exhibition of violent and bloody deeds, and +the intermixture of seriousness and mirth. What +distinguished the more popular audience, and the +more popular section in it, was a higher degree of +this indifference and this liking, and in addition a +special fondness for certain sources of inartistic joy. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page365" id="page365"></a>365</span> +The most prominent of these, perhaps, were noise; +rant; mere bawdry; ‘shews’; irrelevant songs, +ballads, jokes, dances, and clownage in general; +and, lastly, target-fighting and battles.<a name="fa2k" id="fa2k" href="#ft2k"><span class="sp">2</span></a></p> + +<p>We may describe Shakespeare’s practice in broad +and general terms by saying that he neither resisted +the wishes of his audience nor gratified them without +reserve. He accepted the type of drama that +he found, and developed it without altering its +fundamental character. And in the same way, in +particular matters, he gave the audience what it +wanted, but in doing so gave it what it never +dreamed of. It liked tragedy to be relieved by +rough mirth, and it got the Grave-diggers in <i>Hamlet</i> +and the old countryman in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>. +It liked a ‘drum and trumpet’ history, and it got +<i>Henry V.</i> It liked clowns or fools, and it got Feste +and the Fool in <i>King Lear</i>. Shakespeare’s practice +was by no means always on this level, but this was +its tendency; and I imagine that (unless perhaps in +early days) he knew clearly what he was doing, did +it deliberately, and, when he gave the audience poor +stuff, would not seriously have defended himself. +Jonson, it would seem, did not understand this position. +A fool was a fool to him; and if a play could +be called a drum and trumpet history it was at once +condemned in his eyes. One can hardly doubt that +he was alluding to the <i>Tempest</i> and the <i>Winter’s +Tale</i> when, a few years after the probable date of +their appearance, he spoke of writers who ‘make +nature afraid in their plays,’ begetting ‘tales, tempests, +and such like drolleries,’ and bringing in ‘a +servant-monster’ or ‘a nest of antiques.’ Caliban +was a ‘monster,’ and the London public loved to +gape at monsters; and so, it appears, that wonderful +creation was to Jonson something like the fat +woman, or the calf with five legs, that we pay a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page366" id="page366"></a>366</span> +penny to see at a fair. In fact (how could he fail to +take the warning?) he saw Caliban with the eyes of +Trinculo and Stephano. ‘A strange fish!’ says +Trinculo: ‘were I in England now, as once I was, +and had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool +there but would give a piece of silver.’ ‘If I can +recover him,’ says Stephano, ‘and keep him tame +and get to Naples with him, he’s a present for any +emperor that ever trod on neat’s-leather.’ Shakespeare +understood his monster otherwise; but, I +fancy, when Jonson fulminated at the Mermaid +against Caliban, he smiled and said nothing.</p> + +<p>But my present subject is rather the tastes of the +audience than Shakespeare’s way of meeting them.<a name="fa3k" id="fa3k" href="#ft3k"><span class="sp">3</span></a> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page367" id="page367"></a>367</span> +Let me give two illustrations of them which may have +some novelty. His public, in the first place, dearly +loved to see soldiers, combats, and battles on the +stage. They swarm in some of the dramas a little +earlier than Shakespeare’s time, and the cultured +dramatists speak very contemptuously of these productions, +if not of Shakespeare’s historical plays. +We may take as an example the First Part of +<i>Henry VI.</i>, a feeble piece, to which Shakespeare +probably contributed touches throughout, and perhaps +one or two complete scenes. It appears from +the stage directions (which may be defective, but +cannot well be redundant) that in this one play there +were represented a pitched battle of two armies, an +attack on a city wall with scaling-ladders, two street-scuffles, +four single combats, four skirmishes, and +seven excursions. No genuine play of Shakespeare’s, +I suppose, is so military from beginning to +end; and we know how in <i>Henry V.</i> he laments +that he must disgrace the name of Agincourt by +showing four or five men with vile and ragged foils</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Right ill-disposed in brawl ridiculous.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">Still he does show them; and his serious dramas +contain such a profusion of combats and battles as +no playwright now would dream of exhibiting. We +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page368" id="page368"></a>368</span> +expect these things perhaps in the English history-plays, +and we find them in abundance there: but +not there alone. The last Act in <i>Julius Cćsar</i>, +<i>Troilus and Cressida</i>, <i>King Lear</i>, <i>Macbeth</i>, and +<i>Cymbeline</i>; the fourth Act of <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>; +the opening Acts of <i>Coriolanus</i>,—these are all full of +battle-scenes. If battle cannot be shown, it can be +described. If it cannot be described, still soldiers +can be shown, and twice in <i>Hamlet</i> Fortinbras +and his army march upon the stage.<a name="fa4k" id="fa4k" href="#ft4k"><span class="sp">4</span></a> At worst +there can be street-brawls and single fights, as in +<i>Romeo and Juliet</i>. In reading Shakespeare we +scarcely realise how much of this kind is exhibited. +In seeing him acted we do not fully realise it, for +much of it is omitted. But beyond doubt it helped +to make him the most popular dramatist of his time.</p> + +<p>If we examine Shakespeare’s battles we shall +observe a certain peculiarity, which is connected with +the nature of his theatre and also explains the treatment +of them in ours. In most cases he does not +give a picture of two whole armies engaged, but +makes a pair of combatants rush upon the stage, +fight, and rush off again; and this pair is succeeded +by a second, and perhaps by a third. This hurried +series of single combats admitted of speech-making; +perhaps it also gave some impression of the changes +and confusion of a battle. Our tendency, on the +other hand, is to contrive one spectacle with scenic +effects, or even to exhibit one magnificent tableau in +which nobody says a word. And this plan, though +it has the advantage of getting rid of Shakespeare’s +poetry, is not exactly dramatic. It is adopted chiefly +because the taste of our public is, or is supposed to +be, less dramatic than spectacular, and because, +unlike the Elizabethans, we are able to gratify such +a taste. But there is another fact to be remembered +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page369" id="page369"></a>369</span> +here. Few playgoers now can appreciate a fencing-match, +and much fewer a broad-sword and target +fight. But the Elizabethan public went to see performances +of this kind as we go to see cricket or +football matches. They might watch them in the +very building which at other times was used as a +playhouse.<a name="fa5k" id="fa5k" href="#ft5k"><span class="sp">5</span></a> They could judge of the merit of the +exhibition when Hotspur and Prince Henry fought, +when Macduff ‘laid on,’ or when Tybalt and Mercutio +used their rapiers. And this was probably +another reason why Shakespeare’s battles so often +consist of single combats, and why these scenes +were beloved by the simpler folk among his +audience.</p> + +<p>Our second illustration concerns the popular +appetite for musical and other sounds. The introduction +of songs and dances<a name="fa6k" id="fa6k" href="#ft6k"><span class="sp">6</span></a> was censured as a +corrupt gratification of this appetite. And so it was +when the songs and dances were excessive in +number, irrelevant, or out of keeping with the scene. +I do not remember that in Shakespeare’s plays this +is ever the case; but, in respect of songs, we may +perhaps take Marston’s <i>Antonio and Mellida</i> as an +instance of abuse. For in each of the two Parts +of that play there are directions for five songs; +and, since not even the first lines of these songs +are printed, we must suppose that the leader of +the band, or the singing actor in the company, +introduced whatever he chose. In addition to +songs and dances, the musicians, at least in some +plays, performed between the Acts; and the practice +of accompanying certain speeches by low +music—a practice which in some performances of +Shakespeare now has become a pest—has the +sanction of several Elizabethan playwrights, and +(to a slight extent) of Shakespeare. It seems +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page370" id="page370"></a>370</span> +clear, for example, that in <i>Twelfth Night</i> low +music was played while the lovely opening lines +(‘That strain again’) were being spoken, and also +during a part of the dialogue preceding the song +‘Come away, come away, death.’ Some lines, too, +of Lorenzo’s famous speech about music in the +<i>Merchant of Venice</i> were probably accompanied; +and there is a still more conspicuous instance in +the scene where Lear wakes from his long sleep +and sees Cordelia standing by his side.</p> + +<p>But, beyond all this, if we attend to the stage-directions +we shall realise that in the serious plays +of Shakespeare other musical sounds were of frequent +occurrence. Almost always the ceremonial +entrance of a royal person is marked by a ‘flourish’ +or a ‘sennet’ on trumpets, cornets, or hautboys; +and wherever we have armies and battles we find +directions for drums, or for particular series of notes +of trumpets or cornets appropriate to particular +military movements. In the First Part of <i>Henry VI.</i>, +to take that early play again, we must imagine a +dead march, two other marches, three retreats, three +sennets, seven flourishes, eighteen alarums; and +there are besides five directions for drums, one for a +horn, and five for soundings, of a kind not specified, +by trumpets. In the last three scenes of the first +Act in <i>Coriolanus</i>—scenes containing less than three +hundred and fifty lines—there are directions for a +parley, a retreat, five flourishes, and eight alarums, +with three, less specific, for trumpets, and four for +drums. We find about twenty such directions in +<i>King Lear</i>, and about twenty-five in <i>Macbeth</i>, +a short play in which hautboys seem to have +been unusually favoured.<a name="fa7k" id="fa7k" href="#ft7k"><span class="sp">7</span></a> It is evident that the +audience loved these sounds, which, from their +prevalence in passages of special kinds, seem to +have been intended chiefly to stimulate excitement, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page371" id="page371"></a>371</span> +and sometimes to heighten impressions of grandeur +or of awe.</p> + +<p>But this is not all. Such purposes were also +served by noises not musical. Four times in <i>Macbeth</i>, +when the Witches appear, thunder is heard. +It thunders and lightens at intervals through the +storm-scenes in <i>King Lear</i>. Casca and Cassius, +dark thoughts within them, walk the streets of +Rome in a terrific thunderstorm. That loud insistent +knocking which appalled Macbeth is repeated +thrice at intervals while Lady Macbeth in vain +endeavours to calm him, and five times while the +Porter fumbles with his keys. The gate has hardly +been opened and the murder discovered when the +castle-bell begins its hideous alarum. The alarm-bell +is used for the same purpose of intensifying +excitement in the brawl that ruins Cassio, and its +effect is manifest in Othello’s immediate order, +‘Silence that dreadful bell.’ I will add but one +instance more. In the days of my youth, before +the melodrama audience dreamed of seeing chariot-races, +railway accidents, or the infernal regions, +on the stage, it loved few things better than the +explosion of fire-arms; and its favourite weapon was +the pistol. The Elizabethans had the same fancy +for fire-arms, only they preferred cannon. Shakespeare’s +theatre was burnt down in 1613 at a performance +of <i>Henry VIII.</i>, not, I suppose, as Prynne +imagined, by a Providence which shared his opinion +of the drama, but because the wadding of a cannon +fired during the play flew to the thatch of the roof +and set it ablaze. In <i>Hamlet</i> Shakespeare gave the +public plenty that they could not understand, but he +made it up to them in explosions. While Hamlet, +Horatio, and Marcellus are waiting for the Ghost, a +flourish is heard, and then the roar of cannon. It +is the custom to fire them when the King drinks a +pledge; and this King drinks many. In the fencing-scene +at the end he proposes to drink one for every +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page372" id="page372"></a>372</span> +hit scored by his beloved nephew; and the first hit +is duly honoured by the cannon. Unexpected events +prevented the celebration of the second, but the +audience lost nothing by that. While Hamlet lies +dying, a sudden explosion is heard. Fortinbras is +coming with his army. And, as if that were not +enough, the very last words of the play are, ‘Go, +bid the soldiers shoot,’ and the very last sound of +the performance is a peal of ordnance. Into this +most mysterious and inward of his works, it would +seem, the poet flung, as if in derision of his cultured +critics, well-nigh every stimulant of popular excitement +he could collect: ‘carnal, bloody, and unnatural +acts’; five deaths on the open stage, three appearances +of a ghost, two of a mad woman, a dumb-show, +two men raving and fighting in a grave at a +funeral, the skulls and bones of the dead, a clown +bandying jests with a prince, songs at once indecent +and pathetic, marching soldiers, a fencing-match, +then a litter of corpses, and explosions in the first +Act and explosions in the last. And yet out of this +sensational material—not in spite of it, but out of +it—he made the most mysterious and inward of his +dramas, which leaves us haunted by thoughts beyond +the reaches of our souls; and he knew that the very +audience that rejoiced in ghosts and explosions +would listen, even while it was waiting for the +ghost, to that which the explosion had suggested,—a +general disquisition, twenty-five lines long, on the +manner in which one defect may spoil a noble +reputation. In this strange harmony of discords, +surely unexampled before or since, we may see at +a glance the essence of Elizabethan drama, of its +poet, and of its audience.</p> + +<p class="pt2 center">2.</p> + +<p>We have been occupied so far with characteristics +of the drama which reflect the more distinctively +popular tastes objected to by critics like Jonson. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page373" id="page373"></a>373</span> +We may now pass on to arrangements common to +all public theatres, whether the play performed were +Jonson’s or Shakespeare’s; and in the first instance +to a characteristic common to the public and private +theatres alike.</p> + +<p>As everyone knows, the female parts in stage-plays +were taken by boys, youths, or men (a mask +being sometimes worn in the last case). The indecorous +Elizabethans regarded this custom almost +entirely from the point of view of decorum and +morality. And as to morality, no one, I believe, +who examines the evidence, especially as it concerns +the state of things that followed the introduction of +actresses at the Restoration, will be very ready to +dissent from their opinion. But it is often assumed +as a matter beyond dispute that, on the side of +dramatic effect, the Elizabethan practice was extremely +unfortunate, if not downright absurd. This +idea appears to me, to say the least, exaggerated. +Our practice may be the better; for a few Shakespearean +parts it <i>ought</i> to be much better; but that, +on the whole, it is decidedly so, or that the old +custom had anything absurd about it, there seems +no reason to believe. In the first place, experience +in private and semi-private performances shows that +female parts may be excellently acted by youths or +men, and that the most obvious drawback, that of +the adult male voice, is not felt to be nearly so +serious as we might anticipate. For a minute or +two it may call for a slight exertion of imagination +in the audience; but there is no more radical error +than to suppose that an audience finds this irksome, +or to forget that the use of imagination at one point +quickens it at other points, and so is a positive gain. +And we have further to remember that the Elizabethan +actor of female parts was no amateur, but a +professional as carefully trained as an actress now; +while dramatically he had this advantage over the +actress, that he was regarded simply as a player, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page374" id="page374"></a>374</span> +and not also as a woman with an attractive or +unattractive person.<a name="fa8k" id="fa8k" href="#ft8k"><span class="sp">8</span></a></p> + +<p>In the second place, if the current ideas on this +subject were true, there would be, it seems to me, +more evidence of their truth. We should find, for +example, that when first the new fashion came in, it +was hailed by good judges as a very great improvement +on the old. But the traces of such an opinion +appear very scanty and doubtful, while it is certain +that one of the few actors who after the Restoration +still played female parts maintained a high reputation +and won great applause. Again, if these parts +in Shakespeare’s day were very inadequately performed, +would not the effect of that fact be distinctly +visible in the plays themselves? The rôles +in question would be less important in Shakespeare’s +dramas, for example, than in dramas of later times: +but I do not see that they are. Besides, in the +Shakespearean play itself the female parts would be +much less important than the male: but on the +whole they are not. In the tragedies and histories, +it is true, the impelling forces of the action usually +belong in larger measure to men than to women. +But that is because the action in such plays is laid +in the sphere of public life; and in cases where, in +spite of this, the heroine is as prominent as the +hero, her part—the part of Juliet, Cleopatra, Lady +Macbeth—certainly requires as good acting as his. +As to the comedies, if we ask ourselves who are the +central or the most interesting figures in them, we +shall find that we pronounce a woman’s name at +least as often as a man’s. I understate the case. +Of Shakespeare’s mature comedies the <i>Merchant of +Venice</i>, I believe, is the only one where this name +would unquestionably be a man’s, and in three of the +last five it would almost certainly be a woman’s—Isabella’s, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page375" id="page375"></a>375</span> +Imogen’s, Hermione’s. How shall we +reconcile with these facts the idea that in his day +the female parts were, on the whole, much less +adequately played than the male? And finally, if +the dramatists themselves believed this, why do we +not find frequent indications of the belief in their +prologues, epilogues, prefaces, and plays?<a name="fa9k" id="fa9k" href="#ft9k"><span class="sp">9</span></a></p> + +<p>We must conclude, it would seem, that the +absence of actresses from the Elizabethan theatre, +though at first it may appear to us highly important, +made no great difference to the dramas themselves.</p> + +<p class="pt2 center">3.</p> + +<p>That certainly cannot be said of the construction +and arrangements of the stage. On this subject a +great deal has been written of late years, and as +regards many details there is still much difference +of opinion.<a name="fa10k" id="fa10k" href="#ft10k"><span class="sp">10</span></a> But fortunately all that is of great +moment for our present purpose is tolerably certain. +In trying to bring it out, I will begin by reminding +you of our present stage. For it is the stage, and +not the rest of the theatre, that is of special interest +here; and no serious harm will be done if, for the +rest, we imagine Shakespeare’s theatre with boxes, +circles, and galleries like our own, though in the +shape of a more elongated horse-shoe than ours. +We must imagine, of course, an area too; but there, +as we shall see, an important difference comes in.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page376" id="page376"></a>376</span></p> + +<p>Our present stage may be called a box with one +of its sides knocked out. Through this opening, +which has an ornamental frame, we look into the +box. Its three upright sides (for we may ignore +the bottom and the top) are composed of movable +painted scenes, which are changed from time to +time during the course of the play. Before the play +and after it the opening is blocked by a curtain, +dropped from the top of the frame; and this is also +dropped at intervals during the performance, that +the scenes may be changed.</p> + +<p>In all these respects the Elizabethan arrangement +was quite different. The stage came forward to +about the middle of the area; so that a line bisecting +the house would have coincided with the line of +footlights, if there had been such things. The stage +was therefore a platform viewed from both sides +and not only from the front; and along its sides, as +well as in front of it, stood the people who paid +least, the groundlings, sometimes punningly derided +by dramatists as ‘the men of understanding.’ Obviously, +the sides of this platform were open; nor were +there movable scenes even at the back of it; nor +was there any front curtain. It was overshadowed +by a projecting roof; but the area, or ‘yard,’ where +the groundlings stood, was open to the weather, +and accordingly the theatre could not be darkened. +It will be seen that, when the actors were on the +forward part of the stage, they were (to exaggerate +a little) in the middle of the audience, like the performers +in a circus now. And on this forward naked +part of the stage most of a Shakespearean drama +was played. We may call it the main or front +stage.<a name="fa11k" id="fa11k" href="#ft11k"><span class="sp">11</span></a></p> + +<p>If now we look towards the rear of this stage, +what do we find? In the first place, while the back +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page377" id="page377"></a>377</span> +of our present-day box consists of a movable scene, +that of the Elizabethan stage was formed by the +‘tiring-house,’ or dressing-room, of the actors. In +its wall were two doors, by which entrances and +exits were made. But it was not merely a tiring-house. +In the play it might represent a room, a +house, a castle, the wall of a town; and the doors +played their parts accordingly. Again, when a +person speaks ‘from within,’ that doubtless means +that he is in the tiring-house, opens one of the doors +a little, and speaks through the chink. So apparently +did the prompter.</p> + +<p>Secondly, on the top of the tiring-house was the +‘upper stage’ or ‘balcony,’ which looked down on +the platform stage. It is hardly possible to make +brief statements about it that would be secure. For +our purposes it may be imagined as a balcony +jutting forward a little from the line of the tiring-house; +and it will suffice to add that, though the +whole or part of it was on some occasions, or in +some theatres, occupied by spectators, the whole or +part of it was sometimes used by the actors and was +indispensably requisite to the performance of the +play. ‘Enter above’ or ‘enter aloft’ means that +the actor was to appear on this upper stage or +balcony. Usually, no doubt, he reached it by a +ladder or stair inside the tiring-house; but on +occasions there were ascents or descents directly +from, or to, the main stage, as we see from ‘climbs +the tree and is received above’ or ‘the citizens leap +from the walls.’ The reader of Shakespeare will at +once remember many scenes where the balcony was +used. On it, as the city wall, appeared the Governor +and citizens of Harfleur, while King Henry and his +train stood before the gates below. From it Arthur +made his fatal leap. It was Cleopatra’s monument, +into which she and her women drew up the dying +Antony. Juliet talked to Romeo from it; and from +it Romeo (‘one kiss and I’ll descend’) ‘goeth down’ +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page378" id="page378"></a>378</span> +to the main stage. Richard appeared there between +the two bishops; and there the spectators imagined +Duncan murdered in his sleep.<a name="fa12k" id="fa12k" href="#ft12k"><span class="sp">12</span></a> But they could not +look into his chamber. The balcony could be concealed +by curtains, running, like all Elizabethan +stage curtains, on a rod.</p> + +<p>In the third place, there was, towards the back of +the main stage, a part that could be curtained off, +and so separated from the front part of that stage. +Let us call it the back stage. It is the matter about +which there is most difficulty and controversy; but +the general description just given would be accepted +by almost all scholars and will suffice for us. Here +was the curtain (more strictly, the curtains) through +which the actors peeped at the audience before the +play began, and at which the groundlings hurled +apples and other missiles to hasten their coming or +signify disapproval of them. And this ‘back stage’ +was essential to many performances, and was used in +a variety of ways. It was the room where Henry IV. +lay dying; the cave of Timon or of Belarius; probably +the tent in which Richmond slept before the +battle of Bosworth; the cell of Prospero, who draws +the curtains apart and shows Ferdinand and Miranda +playing at chess within; and here, I imagine, and +not on the balcony, Juliet, after drinking the potion, +‘falls upon her bed within the curtains.’<a name="fa13k" id="fa13k" href="#ft13k"><span class="sp">13</span></a> Finally, the +back stage accounts for those passages where, at the +close of a death-scene, there is no indication that +the corpse was carried off the stage. If the death +took place on the open stage, as it usually did, this +of course was necessary, since there was no front +curtain to drop; and so we usually find in the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page379" id="page379"></a>379</span> +dialogue words like ‘Take up the bodies’ (<i>Hamlet</i>), +or ‘Bear them from hence’ (<i>King Lear</i>). But Desdemona +was murdered in her bed on the back stage; +and there died also Othello and Emilia; so that +Lodovico orders the bodies to be ‘hid,’ not carried +off. The curtains were drawn together, and the +dead actors withdrew into the tiring-house unseen,<a name="fa14k" id="fa14k" href="#ft14k"><span class="sp">14</span></a> +while the living went off openly.</p> + +<p>This triple stage is the primary thing to remember +about Shakespeare’s theatre: a platform coming well +forward into the yard, completely open in the larger +front part, but having further back a part that could +be curtained off, and overlooked by an upper stage +or balcony above the tiring-house. Only a few +further details need be mentioned. Though scenery +was unknown, there were plenty of properties, as +may be gathered from the dramas and, more quickly, +from the accounts of Henslowe, the manager of the +Rose. Chairs, benches, and tables are a matter of +course. Kent sat in the stocks. The witches had +a caldron. Imogen slept in a bed, and Iachimo +crept out of his trunk in her room. Falstaff was +carried off the stage in a clothes-basket. I have +quoted the direction ‘climb the tree.’ A ‘banquet’ +figures in Henslowe’s list, and in the <i>Tempest</i> +‘several strange shapes’ bring one in. He mentions +a ‘tomb,’ and it is possible, though not likely, +that the tomb of the Capulets was a property; and +he mentions a ‘moss-bank,’ doubtless such as that +where the wild thyme was blowing for Titania. Her +lover, you remember, wore an ass’s head, and the +Falstaff of the <i>Merry Wives</i> a buck’s. There were +whole animals, too. ‘A great horse with his legs’ +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page380" id="page380"></a>380</span> +is in Henslowe’s list; and in a play not by Shakespeare +Jonah is cast out of the whale’s belly on to +the stage. Besides these properties there was a +contrivance with ropes and pulleys, by which a +heavenly being could descend from the stage-roof +(the ‘heaven’), as in <i>Cymbeline</i> Jupiter descends +upon his eagle. When his speech is over we find +the direction ‘ascends.’ Soon after comes another +direction: ‘vanish.’ This is addressed not to Jupiter +but to various ghosts who are present. For there +was a hollow space under the stage, and a trap-door +into it. Through this ghosts usually made their +entrances and exits; and ‘vanish’ seems commonly +to mean an exit that way. Through it, too, arose +and sank the witches’ caldron and the apparitions +shown to Macbeth. A person could speak from +under the stage, as the Ghost does when Hamlet +calls him ‘old mole’; and the musicians could go +and play there, as they do in the scene where +Antony’s soldiers hear strange music on the night +before the battle; ‘Musicke of the Hoboyes is under +the Stage’ the direction runs (‘Hoboyes’ were used +also in the witch-scene just mentioned).</p> + +<p class="pt2 center">4.</p> + +<p>We have now to observe certain ways in which +this stage with its arrangements influenced the +dramas themselves; and we shall find that the +majority of these influences are connected with +the absence of scenery. In this, to begin with, lies +the main, though not the whole, explanation of the +shortness of the performance. In our Shakespeare +revivals the drama is always considerably cut down; +and yet, even where no excessive prominence is +given to scenic display, the time occupied is seldom +less than three hours, and often a good deal more. +In Shakespeare’s day, as we gather from various +sources (<i>e.g.</i> from the Prologues to <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page381" id="page381"></a>381</span> +and <i>Henry VIII.</i>), the customary time taken by the +un-shortened play was about two hours. And the +chief reason of this great difference obviously is +that the time which we spend in setting and changing +scenes his company spent in acting the piece. +At a given signal certain characters appeared. +Unless a placard announced the place where they +were supposed to be,<a name="fa15k" id="fa15k" href="#ft15k"><span class="sp">15</span></a> the audience gathered this +from their conversation, or in the absence of such +indications asked no questions on the subject. +They talked for a time and went away; and at +once another set appeared. The intervals between +the acts (if intervals there were, and however they +were occupied) had no purpose connected with +scene-changing, and must have been short; and +the introduction and removal of a few properties +would take next to no time from the performance.<a name="fa16k" id="fa16k" href="#ft16k"><span class="sp">16</span></a> +We may safely assume that not less than a hundred +of the hundred and twenty minutes were given to +the play itself.</p> + +<p>The absence of scenery, however, will not wholly +account for the difference in question. If you take +a Shakespearean play of average length and read it +at about the pace usual in our revivals, you will find, +I think, that you have occupied considerably more +than a hundred or a hundred and twenty minutes.<a name="fa17k" id="fa17k" href="#ft17k"><span class="sp">17</span></a> +The Elizabethan actor can hardly have spoken so +slowly. Probably the position of the stage, and +especially of the front part of it where most of the +action took place, was of advantage to him in this +respect. Standing almost in the middle of his +audience, and at no great distance from any section +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page382" id="page382"></a>382</span> +of it, he could with safety deliver his lines much +faster than an actor can now. He could speak even +a ‘passionate’ speech ‘trippingly on the tongue.’ +Hamlet bids him do so, warns him not to mouth, +and, when the time for his speech comes, calls impatiently +to him to leave his damnable faces and +begin; and this is not the only passage in Elizabethan +literature which suggests that good judges +objected to a slow and over-emphatic delivery. +We have some actors not inferior in elocution, we +must presume, to Burbage or Taylor, but even Mr. +Vezin or Mr. Forbes Robertson may find it difficult +to deliver blank verse intelligibly, musically, and +rapidly out of our stage-box.<a name="fa18k" id="fa18k" href="#ft18k"><span class="sp">18</span></a></p> + +<p>I return to the absence of scenery, which even in +this matter must be more important than the position +of the stage or the preference for rapid speech. It +explains, secondly, the great difference between +Elizabethan and more modern plays in the number +of the scenes.<a name="fa19k" id="fa19k" href="#ft19k"><span class="sp">19</span></a> This number, with Shakespeare, +averages somewhere about twenty: it reaches forty-two +in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, and sinks to nine +in <i>Love’s Labour’s Lost</i>, the <i>Midsummer-Night’s +Dream</i>, and the <i>Tempest</i>. In the fourth act of the +first of these plays there are thirteen scenes, no one +of them in the same place as the next. The average +number in Schiller’s plays seems to be about eight. +In plays written now it corresponds not unfrequently +with the number of acts.<a name="fa20k" id="fa20k" href="#ft20k"><span class="sp">20</span></a> The primary cause of +this difference, though not the only one, is, I presume, +that we expect to see appropriate surroundings, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page383" id="page383"></a>383</span> +at the least, for every part of the story. Such +surroundings mean more or less elaborate scenery, +which, besides being expensive, takes a long time to +set and change. For a dramatist accordingly who +is a dramatist and wishes to hold his audience by +the play itself, it is an advantage to have as few +scenes as may be. And so the absence of scenery +in Shakespeare’s day, and its presence in ours, +result in two totally different systems, not merely +of theatrical effect, but of dramatic construction.</p> + +<p>In certain ways it was clearly an advantage to a +playwright to be able to produce a large number of +scenes, varying in length according to his pleasure, +and separated by almost inappreciable intervals. Nor +could there be any disadvantage in this freedom, if +he had a strong feeling for dramatic construction, +and a gift for it, and a determination to construct +as well as he could. But, as a matter of fact, many, +perhaps the majority, of the pre-Shakespearean +dramas are put together very loosely; scene follows +scene in the manner of a casual narrative rather +than a play; and a good deal is admitted for the +sake of its immediate attraction and not because it +is essential to the plot. The freedom which we are +considering, though it could not necessitate these +defects, gave the widest scope for them; the majority +of the audience probably was, and continued to +be, well-nigh indifferent to them; and a large proportion +of the plays of Shakespeare’s time exhibits +them in some degree. The average drama of that +day has great merits of a strictly dramatic kind, +but it is not well-built, it is not what we mean by +‘a good play’; and if we look at it from the +restricted point of view implied by that phrase we +shall be inclined, I think, to believe that it would +have been a better play if its author had been +compelled by the stage-arrangements to halve the +number of the scenes. These remarks will hold of +Shakespeare himself. Some of his most delightful +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page384" id="page384"></a>384</span> +dramas, indeed,—for instance, the two Parts of +<i>Henry IV.</i>—make little or no pretence to be well-constructed +wholes; and even in those which fully +deserve that title a certain amount of matter not +indispensable to the plot is usually to be found. In +point of construction <i>Othello</i> is the best of his +tragedies, <i>Julius Cćsar</i> better than <i>King Lear</i>, and +<i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> perhaps the faultiest. To +say that this depends solely on the number of scenes +would be ridiculous, but still it is probably significant +that the numbers are, respectively, fifteen, eighteen, +twenty-one, and forty-two.</p> + +<p>The average Elizabethan play could not, of +course, have been converted into a well-built fabric +by a <i>mere</i> reduction of the number of its scenes; +and in some cases no amount of rearrangement +of the whole material employed could have produced +this result. This means, however, on the other +hand, that the Elizabethans, partly from the very +simplicity of their theatrical conditions, were able to +handle with decided, though usually imperfect, +dramatic effect subjects which would present difficulties +still greater, if not insuperable, to a playwright +now. And in Shakespeare we can trace, in this +respect and in others, the advantages connected +with the absence of scenery. He could carry his +audience freely from one country, town, house or +room, to another, or from this part of a battle-field +to that, because the audience imagined each place +and saw none. I take an extreme example. The +Third Act of <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, according to +modern editions, contains thirteen scenes, and these +are the localities assigned to them: (1) a plain in +Syria, (2) Rome, an ante-chamber in Cćsar’s house, +(3) Alexandria, Cleopatra’s palace, (4) Athens, a +room in Antony’s house, (5) the same, another room, +(6) Rome, Cćsar’s house, (7) near Actium, Antony’s +camp, (8) a plain near Actium, (9) another part of +the plain, (10) another part of the plain, (11) +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page385" id="page385"></a>385</span> +Alexandria, Cleopatra’s palace, (12) Egypt, Cćsar’s +camp, (13) Alexandria, Cleopatra’s palace. I wonder +how long this Act would take on our stage, where +each locality must be represented. Three hours +perhaps, of which the performance might occupy +one-eighth. But in Shakespeare’s day there was no +occasion for any stage-direction as to locality +throughout the Act.</p> + +<p>Again, Shakespeare’s method of working a double +plot depends largely on his ability to bring the +persons belonging to the two plots on to the stage +in alternate scenes of no great length until the +threads are combined. This is easily seen in <i>King +Lear</i>; and there we can observe, further, how he +varies the pitch of feeling and provides relief by +interposing short quiet scenes between longer exciting +ones. By this means, as I have pointed out +elsewhere, the Storm-scene on the heath, which if +undivided would be intolerable, is broken into three, +separated by very short duologues spoken within the +Castle and in prose. Again, since scene follows +scene without a pause, he could make one tell on +another in the way either of intensification or of +contrast. We catch the effect in reading, but in our +theatres it is usually destroyed by the interval. +Finally, however many scenes an Act may contain, +Shakespeare can keep attention glued to the play +throughout the Act, because there are no intervals. +So can our playwrights, because they have but one +or two scenes in the Act. But in our reproductions +of Shakespeare, though the number of scenes is +reduced, it can scarcely ever be reduced to that +extent; so that several times during an Act, and +many times during the play, we are withdrawn +perforce from the dramatic atmosphere into +that of everyday life, solitary impatience or ennui, +distracting conversation, third-rate music, or, occasionally, +good music half-drowned in a babble of +voices.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page386" id="page386"></a>386</span></p> + +<p>If we consider the characteristics on which I have +been dwelling, and bear in mind also the rapidity of +speech which we have found to be probable, we +shall realise that a performance in Shakespeare’s +day, though more of the play was performed, must +have been something much more variegated and +changeful, and much lighter in movement, than a +revival now. And this difference will have been +observed by those who have seen Shakespeare +acted by the Elizabethan Stage Society, under the +direction of Mr. Poel, who not only played scene +after scene without intervals, but secured in a considerable +degree that rapidity of speech.</p> + +<p>A minor point remains. The Elizabethan stage, +we have seen, had no front curtain. The front +curtain and the use of scenery naturally came in +together, for the second, so far as the front stage +was concerned, was dependent on the first; and as +we have already glanced at some effects of the +absence of the second, that of the first will require +but a few additional words. It was clearly in some +ways a great disadvantage; for every situation at +the front of the stage had to be begun and ended +before the eyes of the audience. In our dramas the +curtain may rise on a position which the actors then +had to produce by movements not really belonging +to the play; and, what is more important, the scene +may advance to a striking climax, the effect of which +would be greatly diminished and sometimes destroyed +if the actors had to leave the stage instead of being +suddenly hidden. In Elizabethan plays, accordingly, +we seldom meet with this kind of effect, though it is +not difficult to discover places where it would have +been appropriate. But we shall not find them, I +venture to think, in tragedies. This effect, in other +words, appears properly to belong to comedy and to +melodrama (if that species of play is to be considered +here at all); and the Elizabethans lost nothing by +their inability to misuse it in tragedy, and especially +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page387" id="page387"></a>387</span> +at the close of a tragedy. Whether it can be artistic +to end any serious scene whatever at the point of +greatest tension seems doubtful, but surely it is little +short of barbarous to drop the curtain on the last +dying words, or, it may be, the last convulsion, of a +tragic hero. In tragedy the Elizabethan practice, +like the Greek, was to lower the pitch of emotion +from this point by a few quiet words, followed perhaps +by sounds which, in intention at least, were +majestic or solemn, and so to restore the audience +to common life ‘in calm of mind, all passion spent.’ +Thus Shakespeare’s tragedies always close; and the +end of Marlowe’s <i>Doctor Faustus</i> is not <i>Exeunt +Devils with Faustus</i>, but the speech beginning</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,</p> +<p>And burned is Apollo’s laurel-bough,</p> +<p>That sometime grew within this learned man.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">In this particular case Marlowe, if he had not been a +poet, might have dispensed with the final descent, +or ascent, from the violent emotions attending the +catastrophe; but in the immense majority of their +tragedies the Elizabethans, even if they had wished +to do as we too often do, were saved from the +temptation by the absence of a front curtain.<a name="fa21k" id="fa21k" href="#ft21k"><span class="sp">21</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page388" id="page388"></a>388</span></p> + +<p class="pt2 center">5.</p> + +<p>Hitherto we have not considered a Shakespearean +performance on the side, I will not say of its spectacular, +but of its pictorial effect. This must be our +last subject. We have to bear in mind here three +things: the fact that the stage was viewed from +three sides, its illumination by daylight throughout +the play, and the absence of scenery. It is obvious +that the last two deprived the audience of many +attractive or impressive pictures; while, as to the +first, it seems unlikely that actors who were watched +from the sides as well as the front would study to +group themselves as parts of a composition addressed +to the eye. Indeed one may doubt whether, except +in regard to costume, they seriously attended to the +pictorial effect of a drama at all; their tiny crowds +and armies, for example, cannot have provided much +of a show. And in any case it is clear that the +audience had to dispense with many more or less +beautiful sights that we may now enjoy. But the +question whether their loss was, on the whole, a +disadvantage is not so easy to answer; for here again +it freed them from a temptation—that of sacrificing +dramatic to pictorial effect; and we cannot tell +whether, or how far, they would have been proof +against its influence. Let us try, however, to see +the position clearly.</p> + +<p>The essence of drama—and certainly of Shakespearean +drama—lies in actions and words expressive +of inward movements of human nature. Pictorial +effects (if for convenience’ sake the various matters +under consideration may be signified by that phrase) +are in themselves no more dramatic than songs, +dances, military music, or the jests of a ‘fool.’ Like +these other things, they may be made dramatic. +They may be used and apprehended, that is to say, +as elements fused with the essential elements of +dramatic effect. And, so far as this is the case and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page389" id="page389"></a>389</span> +they thus contribute to that effect, they are, it seems +clear, an unmixed advantage. But a distinct and +separate attention to them is another matter; for, +the moment it sets in, attention begins to be withdrawn +from the actions and words, and therefore +from the inward movements that these express. And +experience shows that, as soon as pictorial attractions +exceed a certain limit, impossible to specify in +general terms, they at once influence the average +play-goer in this mischievous way. It is, further, +well-nigh inevitable that this should happen. However +interesting the actions, words, and inward +movements may be, they call for some effort of +imagination and of other mental activities,<a name="fa22k" id="fa22k" href="#ft22k"><span class="sp">22</span></a> while +stage-pictures demand very little; and accordingly, +at the present time at any rate, the bulk of an +audience to which the latter are abundantly presented +will begin to enjoy them for their own sakes, +or as parts of a panorama and not of a drama. No +one, I think, can honestly doubt this who watches +and listens to the people sitting near him at what +the newspapers too truly call ‘an amazing Shakespearean +spectacle.’ If we are offered a pretty +picture of the changing colours of the sky at dawn, +or of a forest glade with deer miraculously moving +across its sunny grass, most of us cease for the time +to be an audience and become mere spectators; and +let Romeo and Juliet, or Rosalind and Orlando, talk +as like angels as they will, they will talk but half-heeded. +Our dramatists know this well enough. +Mr. Barrie and Mr. Pinero and Mr. Shaw, who +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page390" id="page390"></a>390</span> +want the audience to listen and understand, take +good care not to divert its attention and deaden its +imagination by scenic displays. And yet, with the +heartiest admiration for their best work, one may +say that Shakespeare’s requires more attention and +imagination than theirs.</p> + +<p>Whether the Elizabethan companies, if they had +had the power to use the attractions of scenery, +would have abused it, and whether in that case the +audience would have been as readily debauched as +ours, it is useless to dispute. The audience was +not composed mainly of groundlings; and even the +groundlings in that age had drama in their blood. +But I venture to disbelieve that the main fault in +these matters lies, in any age, with the audience. It +is like the populace in Shakespeare’s plays, easy to +lead wrong but just as easy to lead right. If you +give people in the East End, or even in the Albert +Hall, nothing but third-rate music, most of them +will be content with it, and possibly may come to +disrelish what is better. But if you have a little +faith in great art and in human nature, and offer +them, I do not say the Diabelli variations, but such +music as the symphonies of Beethoven or even of +Brahms, they will justify your faith. This is not +theory, but fact; and I cannot think that it is otherwise +with drama, or at least with the dramas of +Shakespeare. Did they ever ‘spell ruin to managers’ +if they were, through the whole cast, satisfactorily +acted? What spells real ruin to managers and +actors alike is what spells degradation to audiences.<a name="fa23k" id="fa23k" href="#ft23k"><span class="sp">23</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page391" id="page391"></a>391</span></p> + +<p>But whether or no Shakespeare’s audience could +have been easily degraded by scenic pleasure, it had +not the chance; and I will not raise the further +question how far its disabilities were the cause of +its virtues, but will end with a few words on two of +the virtues themselves. It possessed, first, a vivid +imagination. Shakespeare could address to it not +in vain the injunction, ‘Work, work your thoughts!’ +Probably in three scenes out of five the place and +surroundings of the action were absolutely invisible +to its eyes. In a fourth it took the barest symbol +for reality. A couple of wretched trees made the +Forest of Arden for it, five men with ragged foils +the army that conquered at Agincourt: are we +stronger than it, or weaker? It heard Romeo say</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i2">Look, love, what envious streaks</p> +<p>Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east;</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">and to its mind’s eye they were there. It looked at +a shabby old balcony, but as it listened it saw the +swallows flitting round the sun-lit battlements of +Macbeth’s castle, and our pitiful sense of grotesque +incongruity never troubled it.<a name="fa24k" id="fa24k" href="#ft24k"><span class="sp">24</span></a> The simplest convention +sufficed to set its imagination at work. If +Prospero entered wearing a particular robe, it knew +that no one on the stage could see his solid shape;<a name="fa25k" id="fa25k" href="#ft25k"><span class="sp">25</span></a> +and if Banquo, rising through the trap-door, had his +bloody face dusted over with meal, it recognised +him for a ghost and thrilled with horror; and we, +Heaven help us, should laugh. Though the stage +stood in broad daylight, again, Banquo, for it, was +being murdered on a dark wet night, for he carried +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page392" id="page392"></a>392</span> +a torch and spoke of rain; and the chaste stars were +shining for it outside Desdemona’s chamber as the +awful figure entered and extinguished the lamp. +Consider how extraordinary is the fact I am about +to mention, and what a testimony it bears to the +imagination of the audience. In <i>Hamlet</i>, <i>Othello</i>, +and <i>Macbeth</i>, not one scene here and there but +actually the majority of the most impressive scenes +take place at night, and, to a reader, depend not +a little on the darkness for their effect. Yet the +Ghost-scenes, the play-scene, the sparing of the king +at prayer, that conversation of Hamlet with his +mother which is opened by the killing of Polonius +and interrupted by the appearance of the Ghost; +the murder of Duncan, the murder of Banquo, the +Banquet-scene, the Sleep-walking scene; the whole +of the first Act of <i>Othello</i>, the scene of Cassio’s +drunken revel and fight, and the whole of the terrible +last Act,—all of this was played in a theatre open to +the afternoon sun, and was written by a man who +knew that it was so to be played. But he knew his +audience too.<a name="fa26k" id="fa26k" href="#ft26k"><span class="sp">26</span></a></p> + +<p>That audience had not only imagination, and the +power to sink its soul in the essence of drama. It +had something else of scarcely less import for +Shakespeare, the love of poetry. Ignorant, noisy, +malodorous, too fond of dances and songs and dirty +jokes, of soldiers and trumpets and cannon, the +groundling might be: but he liked poetry. If he +had not liked it, he, with his brutal manners, would +have silenced it, and the Elizabethan drama could +never have been the thing it was. The plays of +Shakespeare swarm with long speeches, almost all +of which are cut down or cut clean away for our +theatres. They are never, of course, irrelevant; +sometimes they are indispensable to the full appreciation +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page393" id="page393"></a>393</span> +of a character; but it is manifest that they +were not written solely for a dramatic purpose, but +also because the author and his audience loved +poetry. A sign of this is the fact that they especially +abound where, from the nature of the story, the +dramatic structure is imperfect.<a name="fa27k" id="fa27k" href="#ft27k"><span class="sp">27</span></a> They abound in +<i>Troilus and Cressida</i> and <i>Henry V.</i> more than in +<i>Othello</i> or <i>Much Ado</i>. Remember, for a standard +of size, that ‘To be or not to be’ is thirty-three +lines in length, and then consider the following fact. +<i>Henry V.</i> contains seventeen speeches longer than +that soliloquy. Five of them are between forty and +fifty lines long, two between fifty and sixty, and two +exceed sixty. Yet if any play entirely by Shakespeare +were open to the charge of being a ‘drum +and trumpet history’ written to please the populace, +it would be <i>Henry V.</i> Not only then the cultured +section of the audience loved poetry; the whole +audience loved it. How long would they have continued +to relish this ‘perpetual feast of nectared +sweets’ if their eyes had been feasted too? Or +is it likely that, once habituated to spectacular +stimulants, they would have welcomed ‘the crystal +clearness of the Muses’ spring’?</p> + +<p class="f80">1902.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1k" id="ft1k" href="#fa1k"><span class="fn">1</span></a> This, one may suspect, was also the position of Webster, who praises +Shakespeare, but groups him with Dekker and Heywood, and mentions +him after Chapman, Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher (Preface to +the <i>White Devil</i>).</p> + +<p><a name="ft2k" id="ft2k" href="#fa2k"><span class="fn">2</span></a> I am obliged to speak summarily. Some of these things declined +in popularity as time went on.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3k" id="ft3k" href="#fa3k"><span class="fn">3</span></a> The examples just cited show his method at its best, and it would +be easy to mention others far less satisfactory. Nor do I doubt that +his plays would be much more free from blemishes of various kinds if +his audience had added to their virtues greater cultivation. On the +other hand the question whether, or how far, he knowingly ‘wrote +down to’ his audience, in the sense of giving it what he despised, +seems to me very difficult, if not impossible, to answer: and I may +mention some causes of this difficulty.</p> + +<p>(1) There is no general presumption against interpolations in an +Elizabethan drama published piratically or after the author’s death. +We have, further, positive grounds of the strongest kind for believing +that ‘Shakespeare’s plays’ contain a good deal that Shakespeare never +wrote. We cannot therefore simply take it for granted that he wrote +every silly or offensive thing that we find in the volume; and least of +all should we do this when the passage is more or less irrelevant and +particularly easy to excise. I do not say that these considerations +have great importance here, but they have some; and readers of +Shakespeare, and even some scholars, constantly tend to forget them, +and to regard the texts as if they had been published by himself, or +by scrupulously careful men of letters immediately after his death.</p> + +<p>(2) We must never take for granted that what seems to us feeble or +bad seemed so to Shakespeare. Evidently he was amused by puns +and quips and verbal ingenuities in which most of us find little +entertainment. Gross jokes, scarcely redeemed in our eyes by their +humour, may have diverted him. He sometimes writes, and clearly +in good faith, what seems to us bombastic or ‘conceited.’ So far as +this was the case he was not writing down to his audience. He +shared its tastes, or the tastes of some section of it. So it may have +been, again, with such a blot as the blinding of Gloucester on the open +stage.</p> + +<p>(3) Jonson defied his audience, yet he wrote a good deal that we +think bad. In the same way certain of Shakespeare’s faults <i>cannot</i> be +due to condescension to his audience: <i>e.g.</i> the obscurities and distortions +of language not infrequent in his later plays. And this may be +so with some faults which have the appearance of arising from that condescension.</p> + +<p>(4) Other defects again he might have deliberately defended; <i>e.g.</i> +the highly improbable conclusions and the distressing mis-marriages of +some of the comedies. ‘It is of the essence of romantic comedy,’ he +might have said, ‘to treat such things with indifference. There is a +convention that you should take the characters with some degree of +seriousness while they are in difficulties, and should cease to do so +when they are to be delivered from them.’ Do not we ourselves adopt +this point of view to some extent when we go to the theatre now?</p> + +<p>I added this note after reading Mr. Bridges’s very interesting and +original contribution to the Stratford Town edition of Shakespeare +(vol x.). I disagree with some of Mr. Bridges’s remarks, and am not +always repelled by things that he dislikes. But this brief note is not, +of course, meant for an answer to his paper; it merely suggests +reasons for at least diminishing the proportion of defect attributable +to a conscious sacrifice of art to the tastes of the audience.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4k" id="ft4k" href="#fa4k"><span class="fn">4</span></a> To us their first appearance is of interest chiefly because it introduces +the soliloquy ‘How all occasions.’ But, it is amusing to notice, +the Folio, which probably represents the acting version in 1623, omits +the soliloquy but retains the marching soldiers.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5k" id="ft5k" href="#fa5k"><span class="fn">5</span></a> I do not refer to the Globe.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6k" id="ft6k" href="#fa6k"><span class="fn">6</span></a> The latter, no doubt, accompanied by the band, except when the +clown played the tabor while he danced alone.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7k" id="ft7k" href="#fa7k"><span class="fn">7</span></a> This may possibly be one of the signs that <i>Macbeth</i> was altered +after Shakespeare’s retirement or death.</p> + +<p><a name="ft8k" id="ft8k" href="#fa8k"><span class="fn">8</span></a> Surely every company that plays Shakespeare should include a +boy. There would then be no excuse for giving to a woman such +parts as Ariel and Brutus’s boy Lucius.</p> + +<p><a name="ft9k" id="ft9k" href="#fa9k"><span class="fn">9</span></a> This question will not be answered by the citation of one famous +speech of Cleopatra’s—a speech, too, which is strictly in character. +But, as to this matter and the other considerations put forward above, +I must add that, while my impression is that what has been said of +Shakespeare holds of most of the contemporary dramatists, I have not +verified it by a research. A student looking for a subject for his thesis +might well undertake such a research.</p> + +<p><a name="ft10k" id="ft10k" href="#fa10k"><span class="fn">10</span></a> When the lecture was given (in 1902) I went more fully into details, +having arrived at certain conclusions mainly by an examination of +Elizabethan dramas. I suppress them here because I have been +unable to study all that has since been written on the Elizabethan +stage. The reader who is interested in the subject should refer in the +first instance to an excellent article by Mr. Archer in the <i>Quarterly +Review</i> for April, 1908.</p> + +<p><a name="ft11k" id="ft11k" href="#fa11k"><span class="fn">11</span></a> This is a description of a public theatre. A private one, it will be +remembered, had seats in the area (there called the pit), was completely +roofed, and could be darkened.</p> + +<p><a name="ft12k" id="ft12k" href="#fa12k"><span class="fn">12</span></a> ‘The doors are open, and the surfeited grooms Do mock their +charge with snores,’ says Lady Macbeth on the stage below; and no +doubt the tiring-house doors <i>were</i> open.</p> + +<p><a name="ft13k" id="ft13k" href="#fa13k"><span class="fn">13</span></a> This view, into the grounds of which I cannot go, implies that +Juliet’s bedroom was, in one scene, the upper stage, and, in another, +the back stage; but the Elizabethans, I believe, would make no difficulty +about that.</p> + +<p><a name="ft14k" id="ft14k" href="#fa14k"><span class="fn">14</span></a> Perhaps. It seems necessary to suppose that the sides of the backstage, +as well as its front, could be open; otherwise many of the +spectators could not have seen what took place there. But it is not +<i>necessary</i>, so far as I remember, to suppose that the sides could be +closed by curtains. The Elizabethans probably would not have been +troubled by seeing dead bodies get up and go into the tiring-house +when a play or even a scene was over.</p> + +<p><a name="ft15k" id="ft15k" href="#fa15k"><span class="fn">15</span></a> Where this contrivance was used at all it probably only announced +the general place of the action throughout the play: <i>e.g.</i> <i>Denmark</i>, or, +a little more fully, <i>Verona</i>, <i>Mantua</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="ft16k" id="ft16k" href="#fa16k"><span class="fn">16</span></a> It is possibly significant that <i>Macbeth</i> and the <i>Tempest</i>, plays +containing more ‘shews’ than most, are exceptionally short.</p> + +<p><a name="ft17k" id="ft17k" href="#fa17k"><span class="fn">17</span></a> It suffices for this rough experiment to read a column in an edition +like the Globe, and then to multiply the time taken by the number of +columns in the play.</p> + +<p><a name="ft18k" id="ft18k" href="#fa18k"><span class="fn">18</span></a> I do not know whether the average size of our theatres differs much +from that of the Elizabethan. The diameter of the area at the <i>Fortune</i> +and the <i>Globe</i> seems to have been fifty feet.</p> + +<p><a name="ft19k" id="ft19k" href="#fa19k"><span class="fn">19</span></a> I mean by a scene a section of a play before and after which the +stage is unoccupied. Most editions of Shakespeare are faulty in the +division of scenes (see <i>Shakespearean Tragedy</i>, p. 451).</p> + +<p><a name="ft20k" id="ft20k" href="#fa20k"><span class="fn">20</span></a> So it very nearly does in some Restoration comedies. In the <i>Way +of the World</i> the scenery is changed only twice in the five acts, though +there are more than five scenes.</p> + +<p><a name="ft21k" id="ft21k" href="#fa21k"><span class="fn">21</span></a> The ‘back’ stage, which had curtains, must, I suppose, have been +too small to accommodate the number of persons commonly present, +alive or dead, at the close of a tragedy. I do not know if any recent +writer has raised and discussed the questions how often the back stage +is used in the last scene of an Elizabethan play, and, again, whether it +is often employed at all in order to produce, by the closing of the +curtains, the kind of effect referred to in the paragraph above. Perhaps +the fact that the curtains had to be closed by an actor, within them or +without, made this effect impossible. Or perhaps it was not desired. +In Shakespeare’s tragedies, if my memory serves me, the only sudden +or startling appeals of an outward kind (apart, of course, from actions) +are those produced by supernatural appearances and disappearances, +as in <i>Hamlet</i> and <i>Macbeth</i>. These, we have seen, were usually +managed by means of the trap-door, which, it would seem from some +passages, must have been rather large. These matters deserve investigation +if they have not already received it.</p> + +<p><a name="ft22k" id="ft22k" href="#fa22k"><span class="fn">22</span></a> I do not refer to such deliberate and sustained effort as a reader +may sometimes make. It is not commonly realised that continuous +attention to any imaginative or intellectual matter, however enjoyable, +involves considerable strain. If at a lecture or sermon a careless +person makes himself observable in arriving late or leaving early, the +eyes of half the audience will turn to him and follow him. And the +reason is not always that the speaker bores them; it is that involuntarily +they seek relief from this strain. The same thing may be seen +in the concert-room or theatre, but very much less at a panorama, +because the mere use of the eyes, even when continuous, is comparatively +easy.</p> + +<p><a name="ft23k" id="ft23k" href="#fa23k"><span class="fn">23</span></a> I am not referring here, or elsewhere, to such a moderate use of +scenery in Shakespearean performances as most of our actor-managers +(<i>e.g.</i> Mr. Benson) now adopt. I regret it in so far as it involves a +curtailing of the play; but I do not think it withdraws from the play +any attention that is of value, and for some of the audience it probably +heightens the dramatic effect. Still, in my belief, it would be desirable +to decrease it, because the less there is of it, the more is good acting +necessary, and the more of the play itself can be acted. Some use of +scenery, with its consequences to the play, must unquestionably be +accepted as the rule, but I would add that it ought always to be +possible for us to see performances, such as we owed to Mr. Poel, +nearer to those of Shakespeare’s time.</p> + +<p><a name="ft24k" id="ft24k" href="#fa24k"><span class="fn">24</span></a> When, in the time of Malone and Steevens, the question was +debated whether Shakespeare’s stage had scenery, it was argued that +it must have had it, because otherwise the contrast between the words +and the visible stage in the passage referred to would have been hopelessly +ludicrous.</p> + +<p><a name="ft25k" id="ft25k" href="#fa25k"><span class="fn">25</span></a> ‘Enter invisible’ (a common stage-direction) means ‘Enter in the +dress which means to the audience that you are invisible.’</p> + +<p><a name="ft26k" id="ft26k" href="#fa26k"><span class="fn">26</span></a> Probably he never needed to think of the audience, but wrote what +pleased his own imagination, which, like theirs, was not only dramatic +but, in the best sense, theatrical.</p> + +<p><a name="ft27k" id="ft27k" href="#fa27k"><span class="fn">27</span></a> Their abundance in <i>Hamlet</i> results partly from the character of +the hero. They helped, however, to make that play too long; and +the omission of ‘How all occasions’ from the Folio doubtless means +that the company cut this soliloquy (whether they did so in the +author’s life-time we cannot tell). It may be noticed that, where a +play shows clear signs of revision by Shakespeare himself, we rarely +find a disposition to shorten long poetical speeches.</p> +</div> + +<hr class="art" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page394" id="page394"></a>394</span></p> + +<p>In some of these lectures<a name="fa1l" id="fa1l" href="#ft1l"><span class="sp">1</span></a>—for the duties and +pleasures that have fallen to me as Professor of +Poetry are now to end—I may have betrayed a +certain propensity to philosophise. But I should +ask pardon for this only if I believed it to intrude +where it has no place, in the imaginative perception +of poetry. Philosophy has long been at home in +this University; in the remarkable development of +English philosophical thought during the last five-and-thirty +years Oxford has played a leading part; +and I hope the time will never come when a son of +hers will need to apologise to his brethren for talking +philosophy. Besides, though I owe her gratitude +for many gifts, and most for the friendships she gave +me, her best intellectual gift was the conviction +that what imagination loved as poetry reason might +love as philosophy, and that in the end these are +two ways of saying the same thing. And, finally, I +hoped, by dwelling in these lectures (for instance, +with reference to the poets of Wordsworth’s time) +on the connection of poetry with the wider life around +it, to correct an impression which my opening lecture +seems here and there to have left. Not that I can +withdraw or even modify the view put forward then. +So far as any single function of spiritual life can be +said to have an intrinsic value, poetry, it seems to +me, possesses it just as other functions do, and it is +in each case irreplaceable. And further, it seems to +me, poetry attains its own aim, and in doing so +makes its contribution to the whole, most surely and +fully when it seeks its own end without attempting +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page395" id="page395"></a>395</span> +to reach those of co-ordinate functions, such as the +attainment of philosophic truth or the furtherance of +moral progress. But then I believe this because I +also believe that the unity of human nature in its +diverse activities is so intimate and pervasive that +no influence can affect any one of them alone, and +that no one of them can operate or change without +transmitting its influence to the rest. If I may use +the language of paradox I would say that the pursuit +of poetry for its own sake is the pursuit both of +truth and of goodness. Devotion to it is devotion +to ‘the good cause of the world’; and wherever the +imagination is satisfied, there, if we had a knowledge +we have not, we should discover no idle fancy but +the image of a truth.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1l" id="ft1l" href="#fa1l"><span class="fn">1</span></a> As the order of the lectures has been changed for the purposes of +publication, I have been obliged to move these concluding sentences +from their original place at the end of the lecture on <i>The Long Poem +in the Age of Wordsworth</i>.</p> +</div> + +<hr class="art" /> +<p class="center f80">PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY<br /> +MORRISON AND GIBB LTD., LONDON AND EDINBURGH</p> + +<hr class="art" /> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Oxford Lectures on Poetry, by Andrew Cecil Bradley + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OXFORD LECTURES ON POETRY *** + +***** This file should be named 36773-h.htm or 36773-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/6/7/7/36773/ + +Produced by Marius Masi, Suzanne Shell and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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