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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Shakespeare, by Robert G. Ingersoll
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Shakespeare
+       A Lecture
+
+Author: Robert G. Ingersoll
+
+Release Date: November 22, 2011 [EBook #38105]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHAKESPEARE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SHAKESPEARE
+
+A LECTURE
+
+By Robert G. Ingersoll
+
+Shakespeare.--An intellectual ocean, whose waves touched all the shores
+of thought.
+
+
+
+
+SHAKESPEARE.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE was the greatest genius of our world. He left to
+us the richest legacy of all the dead--the treasures of the rarest soul
+that ever lived and loved and wrought of words the statues, pictures,
+robes and gems of thought. He was the greatest man that ever touched
+this grain of sand and tears, we call the world.
+
+It is hard to overstate the debt we owe to the men and women of genius.
+Take from our world what they have given, and all the niches would be
+empty, all the walls naked--meaning and connection would fall from words
+of poetry and fiction, music would go back to common air, and all the
+forms of subtle and enchanting Art would lose proportion and become the
+unmeaning waste and shattered spoil of thoughtless Chance.
+
+Shakespeare is too great a theme. I feel as though endeavoring to grasp
+a globe so large that the hand obtains no hold. He who would worthily
+speak of the great dramatist should be inspired by "a muse of fire that
+should ascend the brightest heaven of invention"--he should have "a
+kingdom for a stage, and monarchs to behold the swelling scene."
+
+More than three centuries ago, the most intellectual of the human race
+was born. He was not of supernatural origin. At his birth there were
+no celestial pyrotechnics. His father and mother were both English, and
+both had the cheerful habit of living in this world. The cradle in which
+he was rocked was canopied by neither myth nor miracle, and in his veins
+there was no drop of royal blood.
+
+This babe became the wonder of mankind. Neither of his parents could
+read or write. He grew up in a small and ignorant village on the banks
+of the Avon, in the midst of the common people of three hundred years
+ago. There was nothing in the peaceful, quiet landscape on which he
+looked, nothing in the low hills, the cultivated and undulating fields,
+and nothing in the murmuring stream, to excite the imagination--nothing,
+so far as we can see, calculated to sow the seeds of the subtlest and
+sublimest thought.
+
+So there is nothing connected with his education, or his lack of
+education, that in any way accounts for what he did. It is supposed that
+he attended school in his native town--but of this we are not certain.
+Many have tried to show that he was, after all, of gentle blood, but the
+fact seems to be the other way. Some of his biographers have sought to
+do him honor by showing that he was patronized by Queen Elizabeth, but
+of this there is not the slightest proof.
+
+As a matter of fact, there never sat on any throne, a king, queen, or
+emperor who could have honored William Shakespeare.
+
+Ignorant people are apt to overrate the value of what is called
+education. The sons of the poor, having suffered the privations of
+poverty, think of wealth as the mother of joy. On the other hand, the
+children of the rich, finding that gold does not produce happiness, are
+apt to underrate the value of wealth. So the children of the educated
+often care but little for books, and hold all culture in contempt. The
+children of great authors do not, as a rule, become writers.
+
+Nature is filled with tendencies and obstructions. Extremes beget
+limitations, even as a river by its own swiftness creates obstructions
+for itself.
+
+Possibly, many generations of culture breed a desire for the rude joys
+of savagery, and possibly generations of ignorance breed such a longing
+for knowledge, that of this desire, of this hunger of the brain, Genius
+is born. It may be that the mind, by lying fallow, by remaining idle for
+generations, gathers strength.
+
+Shakespeare's father seems to have been an ordinary man of his time and
+class. About the only thing we know of him is that he was officially
+reported for not coming monthly to church. This is good as far as it
+goes. We can hardly blame him, because at that time Richard Bifield
+was the minister at Stratford, and an extreme Puritan, one who read the
+Psalter by Sternhold and Hopkins.
+
+The church was at one time Catholic, but in John Shakespeare's day it
+was Puritan, and in 1564, the year of Shakespeare's birth, they had the
+images defaced. It is greatly to the honor of John Shakespeare that
+he refused to listen to the "tidings of great joy" as delivered by the
+Puritan Bifield.
+
+Nothing is known of his mother, except her beautiful name--Mary Arden.
+In those days but little attention was given to the biographies of
+women. They were born, married, had children, and died. No matter how
+celebrated their sons became, the mothers were forgotten. In old times,
+when a man achieved distinction, great pains were taken to find
+out about the father and grandfather--the idea being that genius is
+inherited from the father's side. The truth is, that all great men have
+had great mothers. Great women have had, as a rule, great fathers.
+
+The mother of Shakespeare was, without doubt, one of the greatest of
+women. She dowered her son with passion and imagination and the higher
+qualities of the soul, beyond all other men. It has been said that a
+man of genius should select his ancestors with great care--and yet
+there does not seem to be as much in heredity as most people think.
+The children of the great are often small. Pigmies are born in palaces,
+while over the children of genius is the roof of straw. Most of the
+great are like mountains, with the valley of ancestors on one side and
+the depression of posterity on the other.
+
+In his day Shakespeare was of no particular importance. It may be that
+his mother had some marvelous and prophetic dreams, but Stratford was
+unconscious of the immortal child. He was never engaged in a reputable
+business. Socially he occupied a position below servants. The law
+described him as "a sturdy vagabond." He was neither a noble, a soldier,
+nor a priest. Among the half-civilized people of England, he who amused
+and instructed them was regarded as a menial. Kings had their clowns,
+the people their actors and musicians. Shakespeare was scheduled as a
+servant. It is thus that successful stupidity has always treated genius.
+Mozart was patronized by an Archbishop--lived in the palace,--but was
+compelled to eat with the scullions.
+
+The composer of divine melodies was not fit to sit by the side of the
+theologian, who long ago would have been forgotten but for the fame of
+the composer.
+
+We know but little of the personal peculiarities, of the daily life, or
+of what may be called the outward Shakespeare, and it may be fortunate
+that so little is known. He might have been belittled by friendly fools.
+What silly stories, what idiotic personal reminiscences, would have
+been remembered by those who scarcely saw him! We have his best--his
+sublimest--and we have probably lost only the trivial and the worthless.
+All that is known can be written on a page.
+
+We are tolerably certain of the date of his birth, of his marriage and
+of his death. We think he went to London in 1586, when he was twenty-two
+years old. We think that three years afterwards he was part owner
+of Blackfriars' Theatre. We have a few signatures, some of which are
+supposed to be genuine. We know that he bought some land--that he had
+two or three law-suits. We know the names of his children. We also know
+that this incomparable man--so apart from, and so familiar with, all the
+world--lived during his literary life in London--that he was an actor,
+dramatist and manager--that he returned to Stratford, the place of his
+birth,--that he gave his writings to negligence, deserted the children
+of his brain--that he died on the anniversary of his birth at the age
+of fifty-two, and that he was buried in the church where the images
+had been defaced, and that on his tomb was chiseled a rude, absurd and
+ignorant epitaph.
+
+No letter of his to any human being has been found, and no line written
+by him can be shown.
+
+And here let me give my explanation of the epitaph. Shakespeare was an
+actor--a disreputable business--but he made money--always reputable. He
+came back from London a rich man. He bought land, and built houses. Some
+of the supposed great probably treated him with deference. When he died
+he was buried in the church. Then came a reaction. The pious thought the
+church had been profaned. They did not feel that the ashes of an actor
+were fit to lie in holy ground. The people began to say the body
+ought to be removed. Then it was, as I believe, that Dr. John Hall,
+Shakespeare's son-in-law, had this epitaph cut on the tomb:
+
+"Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare To digg the dust enclosed heare:
+Blese be ye man yt spares thes stones, And curst be he yt moves my
+bones."
+
+Certainly Shakespeare could have had no fear that his tomb would be
+violated. How could it have entered his mind to have put a warning, a
+threat and a blessing, upon his grave? But the ignorant people of that
+day were no doubt convinced that the epitaph was the voice of the dead,
+and so feeling they feared to invade the tomb. In this way the dust was
+left in peace.
+
+This epitaph gave me great trouble for years. It puzzled me to explain
+why he, who erected the intellectual pyramids,--great ranges of
+mountains--should put such a pebble at his tomb. But when I stood beside
+the grave and read the ignorant words, the explanation I have given
+flashed upon me.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+IT has been said that Shakespeare was hardly mentioned by his
+contemporaries, and that he was substantially unknown. This is a
+mistake. In 1600 a book was published called "_England's Parnassus_"
+and it contained ninety extracts from Shakespeare. In the same year
+was published the "_Garden of the Muses_" containing several pieces from
+Shakespeare, Chapman, Marston and Ben Johnson. "_England's Helicon_"
+was printed in the same year, and contained poems from Spenser, Greene,
+Harvey and Shakespeare.
+
+In 1600 a play was acted at Cambridge, in which Shakespeare was alluded
+to as follows: "Why, here's our fellow Shakespeare who puts them all
+down." John Weaver published a book of poems in 1595, in which there
+was a sonnet to Shakespeare. In 1598 Richard Bamfield wrote a poem
+to Shakespeare. Francis Meres, "clergyman, master of arts in both
+universities, compiler of school books," was the author of the "Wits'
+Treasury." In this he compares the ancient and modern tragic poets, and
+mentions Marlowe, Peel, Kyd and Shakespeare. So he compares the writers
+of comedies, and mentions Lilly, Lodge, Greene and Shakespeare. He
+speaks of elegiac poets, and names Surrey, Wyatt, Sidney, Raleigh and
+Shakespeare. He compares the lyric poets, and names Spencer, Drayton,
+Shakespeare and others. This same writer, speaking of Horace, says that
+England has Sidney, Shakespeare and others, and that "as the soul of
+Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweet-wittie soul
+of Ovid lives in the mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare." He
+also says: "If the Muses could speak English, they would speak in
+Shakespeare's phrase." This was in 1598. In 1607, John Davies alludes in
+a poem to Shakespeare.
+
+Of course we are all familiar with what rare Ben Jonson wrote. Henry
+Chettle took Shakespeare to task because he wrote nothing on the death
+of Queen Elizabeth.
+
+It may be wonderful that he was not better known. But is it not
+wonderful that he gained the reputation that he did in so short a time,
+and that twelve years after he began to write he stood at least with the
+first?
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+BUT there is a wonderful fact connected with the writings of
+Shakespeare: In the Plays there is no direct mention of any of his
+contemporaries. We do not know of any poet, author, soldier, sailor,
+statesman, priest, nobleman, king, or queen, that Shakespeare directly
+mentioned.
+
+Is it not marvellous that he, living in an age of great deeds, of
+adventures in far off lands and unknown seas--in a time of religious
+wars--in the days of the Armada--the massacre of St. Bartholomew--the
+Edict of Nantes--the assassination of Henry III.--the victory of
+Lepanto--the execution of Marie Stuart--did not mention the name of any
+man or woman of his time? Some have insisted that the paragraph ending
+with the lines:
+
+"The imperial votress passed on in maiden meditation fancy free,"
+
+referred to Queen Elizabeth; but it is impossible for me to believe that
+the daubed and wrinkled face, the small black eyes, the cruel nose, the
+thin lips, the bad teeth, and the red wig of Queen Elizabeth could by
+any possibility have inspired these marvellous lines.
+
+It is perfectly apparent from Shakespeare's writings that he knew but
+little of the nobility, little of kings and queens. He gives to these
+supposed great people great thoughts, and puts great words in their
+mouths and makes them speak--not as they really did--but as Shakespeare
+thought such people should. This demonstrates that he did not know them
+personally.
+
+Some have insisted that Shakespeare mentions Queen Elizabeth in the
+last Scene of Henry VIII. The answer to this is that Shakespeare did not
+write the last Scene in that Play. The probability is that Fletcher was
+the author.
+
+Shakespeare lived during the great awakening of the world, when Europe
+emerged from the darkness of the Middle Ages, when the discovery of
+America had made England, that blossom of the Gulf-Stream, the centre
+of commerce, and during a period when some of the greatest writers,
+thinkers, soldiers and discoverers were produced.
+
+Cervantes was born in 1547, dying on the same day that Shakespeare died.
+He was undoubtedly the greatest writer that Spain has produced. Rubens
+was born in 1577. Camoens, the Portuguese, the author of the _Lusiad_,
+died in 1597. Giordano Bruno--greatest of martyrs--was born in
+1548--visited London in Shakespeare's time--delivered lectures at
+Oxford, and called that institution "the widow of learning." Drake
+circled the globe in 1580. Galileo was born in 1564--the same year
+with Shakespeare. Michael Angelo died in 1563. Kepler--he of the Three
+Laws--born in 1571. Calderon, the Spanish dramatist, born in 1601.
+Corneille, the French poet, in 1606. Rembrandt, greatest of painters,
+1607. Shakespeare was born in 1564. In that year John Calvin died. What
+a glorious exchange!
+
+Seventy-two years after the discovery of America Shakespeare was born,
+and England was filled with the voyages and discoveries written by
+Hakluyt, and the wonders that had been seen by Raleigh, by Drake, by
+Frobisher and Hawkins. London had become the centre of the world, and
+representatives from all known countries were in the new metropolis. The
+world had been doubled. The imagination had been touched and kindled by
+discovery. In the far horizon were unknown lands, strange shores beyond
+untraversed seas. Toward every part of the world were turned the prows
+of adventure. All these things fanned the imagination into flame,
+and this had its effect upon the literary and dramatic world. And
+yet Shakespeare--the master spirit of mankind--in the midst of these
+discoveries, of these adventures, mentioned no navigator, no general, no
+discoverer, no philosopher.
+
+Galileo was reading the open volume of the sky, but Shakespeare did not
+mention him. This to me is the most marvellous thing connected with this
+most marvellous man.
+
+At that time England was prosperous--was then laying the foundation of
+her future greatness and power.
+
+When men are prosperous, they are in love with life. Nature grows
+beautiful, the arts begin to flourish, there is work for painter and
+sculptor, the poet is born, the stage is erected--and this life with
+which men are in love, is represented in a thousand forms.
+
+Nature, or Fate, or Chance prepared a stage for Shakespeare, and
+Shakespeare prepared a stage for Nature.
+
+Famine and faith go together. In disaster and want the gaze of man is
+fixed upon another world. He that eats a crust has a creed. Hunger falls
+upon its knees, and heaven, looked for through tears, is the mirage
+of misery. But prosperity brings joy and wealth and leisure--and the
+beautiful is born.
+
+One of the effects of the worlds awakening was Shakespeare. We account
+for this man as we do for the highest mountain, the greatest river, the
+most perfect gem. We can only say: He was.
+
+     "It hath been taught us from the primal state
+     That he which is was wished until he were."
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+IN Shakespeare's time the actor was a vagabond, the dramatist a
+disreputable person--and yet the greatest dramas were then written. In
+spite of law, and social ostracism, Shakespeare reared the many-colored
+dome that fills and glorifies the intellectual heavens.
+
+Now the whole civilized world believes in the theatre--asks for some
+great dramatist--is hungry for a play worthy of the century, is anxious
+to give gold and fame to any one who can worthily put our age upon the
+stage--and yet no great play has been written since Shakespeare died.
+
+Shakespeare pursued the highway of the right. He did not seek to put his
+characters in a position where it was right to do wrong. He was sound
+and healthy to the centre. It never occurred to him to write a play in
+which a wife's lover should be jealous of her husband.
+
+There was in his blood the courage of his thought. He was true to
+himself and enjoyed the perfect freedom of the highest art. He did not
+write according to rules--but smaller men make rules from what he wrote.
+
+How fortunate that Shakespeare was not educated at Oxford--that the
+winged god within him never knelt to the professor. How fortunate
+that this giant was not captured, tied and tethered by the literary
+Liliputians of his time.
+
+He was an idealist. He did not--like most writers of our time--take
+refuge in the real, hiding a lack of genius behind a pretended love of
+truth. All realities are not poetic, or dramatic, or even worth knowing.
+The real sustains the same relation to the ideal that a stone does to
+a statue--or that paint does to a painting. Realism degrades and
+impoverishes. In no event can a realist be more than an imitator and
+copyist. According to the realist's philosophy, the wax that receives
+and retains an image is an artist.
+
+Shakespeare did not rely on the stage-carpenter, or the scenic painter.
+He put his scenery in his lines. There you will find mountains and
+rivers and seas, valleys and cliffs, violets and clouds, and over all
+"the firmament fretted with gold and fire." He cared little for plot,
+little for surprise. He did not rely on stage effects, or red fire. The
+plays grow before your eyes, and they come as the morning comes. Plot
+surprises but once. There must be something in a play besides surprise.
+Plot in an author is a kind of strategy--that is to say, a sort of
+cunning, and cunning does not belong to the highest natures.
+
+There is in Shakespeare such a wealth of thought that the plot becomes
+almost immaterial--and such is this wealth that you can hardly know the
+play--there is too much. After you have heard it again and again, it
+seems as pathless as an untrodden forest.
+
+He belonged to all lands. "Timon of Athens" is as Greek as any tragedy
+of Eschylus. "Julius Caesar" and "Coriolanus" are perfect Roman, and as
+you read, the mighty ruins rise and the Eternal City once again becomes
+the mistress of the world. No play is more Egyptian than "Antony and
+Cleopatra"--the Nile runs through it, the shadows of the pyramids
+fall upon it, and from its scenes the Sphinx gazes forever on the
+outstretched sands.
+
+In "Lear" is the true pagan spirit. "Romeo and Juliet" is
+Italian--everything is sudden, love bursts into immediate flower, and in
+every scene is the climate of the land of poetry and passion.
+
+The reason of this is, that Shakespeare dealt with elemental things,
+with universal man. He knew that locality colors without changing, and
+that in all surroundings the human heart is substantially the same.
+
+Not all the poetry written before his time would make his sum--not all
+that has been written since, added to all that was written before, would
+equal his.
+
+There was nothing within the range of human thought, within the horizon
+of intellectual effort, that he did not touch. He knew the brain and
+heart of man--the theories, customs, superstitions, hopes, fears,
+hatreds, vices and virtues of the human race.
+
+He knew the thrills and ecstacies of love, the savage joys of hatred and
+revenge. He heard the hiss of envy's snakes and watched the eagles of
+ambition soar. There was no hope that did not put its star above his
+head--no fear he had not felt--no joy that had not shed its sunshine
+on his face. He experienced the emotions of mankind. He was the
+intellectual spendthrift of the world. He gave with the generosity, the
+extravagance, of madness.
+
+Read one play, and you are impressed with the idea that the wealth
+of the brain of a god has been exhausted--that there are no more
+comparisons, no more passions to be expressed, no more definitions, no
+more philosophy, beauty, or sublimity to be put in words--and yet, the
+next play opens as fresh as the dewy gates of another day.
+
+The outstretched wings of his imagination filled the sky. He was the
+intellectual crown o' the earth.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+THE plays of Shakespeare show so much knowledge, thought and learning,
+that many people--those who imagine that universities furnish
+capacity--contend that Bacon must have been the author.
+
+We know Bacon. We know that he was a scheming politician, a courtier,
+a time-server of church and king, and a corrupt judge. We know that he
+never admitted the truth of the Copernican system--that he was
+doubtful whether instruments were of any advantage in scientific
+investigation--that he was ignorant of the higher branches of
+mathematics, and that, as a matter of fact, he added but little to the
+knowledge of the world. When he was more than sixty years of age, he
+turned his attention to poetry, and dedicated his verses to George
+Herbert.
+
+If you will read these verses you will say that the author of "Lear" and
+"Hamlet" did not write them.
+
+Bacon dedicated his work on the _Advancement of Learning, Divine and
+Human_, to James I., and in his dedication he stated that there had not
+been, since the time of Christ, any king or monarch so learned in all
+erudition, divine or human. He placed James the First before Marcus
+Aurelius and all other kings and emperors since Christ, and concluded
+by saying that James the First had "the power and fortune of a king,
+the illumination of a priest, the learning and universality of a
+philosopher." This was written of James the First, described by Macauley
+as a "stammering, slobbering, trembling coward, whose writings were
+deformed by the grossest and vilest superstitions--witches being the
+special objects of his fear, his hatred, and his persecution."
+
+It seems to have been taken for granted that if Shakespeare was not the
+author of the great dramas, Lord Bacon must have been.
+
+It has been claimed that Bacon was the greatest philosopher of his
+time. And yet in reading his works we find that there was in his mind a
+strange mingling of foolishness and philosophy. He takes pains to tell
+us, and to write it down for the benefit of posterity, that "snow
+is colder than water, because it hath more spirit in it, and that
+quicksilver is the coldest of all metals, because it is the fullest of
+spirit."
+
+He stated that he hardly believed that you could contract air by putting
+opium on top of the weather glass, and gave the following reason:
+
+"I conceive that opium and the like make spirits fly rather by malignity
+than by cold."
+
+This great philosopher gave the following recipe for staunching blood:
+
+"Thrust the part that bleedeth into the body of a capon, new ripped and
+bleeding. This will staunch the blood. The blood, as it seemeth, sucking
+and drawing up by similitude of substance the blood it meeteth with, and
+so itself going back."
+
+The philosopher also records this important fact:
+
+"Divers witches among heathen and Christians have fed upon man's flesh
+to aid, as it seemeth, their imagination with high and foul vapors."
+
+Lord Bacon was not only a philosopher, but he was a biologist, as
+appears from the following:
+
+"As for living creatures, it is certain that their vital spirits are a
+substance compounded of an airy and flamy matter, and although air and
+flame being free will not mingle, yet bound in by a body that hath some
+fixing, will."
+
+Now and then the inventor of deduction reasons by analogy. He says:
+
+"As snow and ice holpen, and their cold activated by nitre or salt, will
+turn water into ice, so it may be it will turn wood or stiff clay into
+stone."
+
+Bacon seems to have been a believer in the transmutation of metals, and
+solemnly gives a formula for changing silver or copper into gold. He
+also believed in the transmutation of plants, and had arrived at such
+a height in entomology that he informed the world that "insects have no
+blood."
+
+It is claimed that he was a great observer, and as evidence of this
+he recorded the wonderful fact that "tobacco cut and dried by the fire
+loses weight;" that "bears in the winter wax fat in sleep, though they
+eat nothing;" that "tortoises have no bones;" that "there is a kind of
+stone, if ground and put in water where cattle drink, the cows will give
+more milk;" that "it is hard to cure a hurt in a Frenchman's head, but
+easy in his leg; that it is hard to cure a hurt in an Englishman's leg,
+but easy in his head;" that "wounds made with brass weapons are easier
+to cure than those made with iron;" that "lead will multiply and
+increase, as in statues buried in the ground;" and that "the rainbow
+touching anything causeth a sweet smell."
+
+Bacon seems also to have turned his attention to ornithology, and says
+that "eggs laid in the full of the moon breed better birds," and that
+"you can make swallows white by putting ointment on the eggs before they
+are hatched."
+
+He also informs us "that witches cannot hurt kings as easily as they can
+common people;" that "perfumes dry and strengthen the brain;" that "any
+one in the moment of triumph can be injured by another who casts an
+envious eye, and the injury is greatest when the envious glance comes
+from the oblique eye."
+
+Lord Bacon also turned his attention to medicine, and he states that
+"bracelets made of snakes are good for curing cramps;" that the "skin of
+a wolf might cure the colic, because a wolf has great digestion;" that
+"eating the roasted brains of hens and hares strengthens the memory;"
+that "if a woman about to become a mother eats a good many quinces and
+considerable coriander seed, the child will be ingenious," and that
+"the moss which groweth on the skull of an unburied dead man is good for
+staunching blood."
+
+He expresses doubt, however, "as to whether you can cure a wound by
+putting ointment on the weapon that caused the wound, instead of on the
+wound itself."
+
+It is claimed by the advocates of the Baconian theory that their hero
+stood at the top of science; and yet "it is absolutely certain that he
+was ignorant of the law of the acceleration of falling bodies, although
+the law had been made known and printed by Galileo thirty years before
+Bacon wrote upon the subject. Neither did this great man understand the
+principle of the lever. He was not acquainted with the precession of the
+equinoxes, and as a matter of fact was ill-read in those branches of
+learning in which, in his time, the most rapid progress had been made."
+
+After Kepler discovered his third law, which was on the 15th of May,
+1618, Bacon was more than ever opposed to the Copernican system. This
+great man was far behind his own time, not only in astronomy, but in
+mathematics. In the preface to the "Descriptio Globi Intellectualisa" it
+is admitted either that Bacon had never heard of the correction of the
+parallax, or was unable to understand it. He complained on account of
+the want of some method for shortening mathematical calculations; and
+yet "Napier's Logarithms" had been printed nine years before the date of
+his complaint.
+
+He attempted to form a table of specific gravities by a rude process
+of his own, a process that no one has ever followed; and he did this in
+spite of the fact that a far better method existed.
+
+We have the right to compare what Bacon wrote with what it is claimed
+Shakespeare produced. I call attention to one thing--to Bacon's opinion
+of human love. It is this:
+
+"The stage is more beholding to love than the life of man. As to the
+stage, love is ever matter of comedies and now and then of tragedies,
+but in life it doth much mischief--sometimes like a siren, sometimes
+like a fury. Amongst all the great and worthy persons there is not one
+that hath been transported to the mad degree of love, which shows that
+great spirits and great business do keep out this weak passion."
+
+The author of "Romeo and Juliet" never wrote that.
+
+It seems certain that the author of the wondrous Plays was one of the
+noblest of men.
+
+Let us see what sense of honor Bacon had.
+
+In writing commentaries on certain passages of Scripture, Lord Bacon
+tells a courtier, who has committed some offense, how to get back into
+the graces of his prince or king. Among other things he tells him not to
+appear too cheerful, but to assume a very grave and modest face; not to
+bring the matter up himself; to be extremely industrious, so that the
+prince will see that it is hard to get along without him; also to get
+his friends to tell the prince or king how badly he, the courtier,
+feels; and then he says, all these failing, "let him contrive to
+transfer the fault to others."
+
+It is true that we know but little of Shakespeare, and consequently
+do not positively know that he did not have the ability to write the
+Plays--but we do know Bacon, and we know that he could not have
+written these Plays--consequently, they must have been written by a
+comparatively unknown man--that is to say, by a man who was known by no
+other writings. The fact that we do not know Shakespeare, except through
+the Plays and Sonnets, makes it possible for us to believe that he was
+the author.
+
+Some people have imagined that the Plays were written by several--but
+this only increases the wonder, and adds a useless burden to credulity.
+
+Bacon published in his time all the writings that he claimed. Naturally,
+he would have claimed his best. Is it possible that Bacon left the
+wondrous children of his brain on the door-step of Shakespeare, and kept
+the deformed ones at home? Is it possible that he fathered the failures
+and deserted the perfect?
+
+Of course, it is wonderful that so little has been found touching
+Shakespeare--but is it not equally wonderful, if Bacon was the
+author, that not a line has been found in all his papers, containing a
+suggestion, or a hint, that he was the writer of these Plays? Is it
+not wonderful that no fragment of any scene--no line--no word--has been
+found?
+
+Some have insisted that Bacon kept the authorship secret, because it
+was disgraceful to write Plays. This argument does not cover the
+Sonnets--and besides, one who had been stripped of the robes of office,
+for receiving bribes as a judge, could have borne the additional
+disgrace of having written "Hamlet." The fact that Bacon did not claim
+to be the author, demonstrates that he was not. Shakespeare claimed
+to be the author, and no one in his time or day denied the claim. This
+demonstrates that he was.
+
+Bacon published his works, and said to the world: This is what I have
+done.
+
+Suppose you found in a cemetery a monument erected to John Smith,
+inventor of the Smith-churn, and suppose you were told that Mr.
+Smith provided for the monument in his will, and dictated the
+inscription--would it be possible to convince you that Mr. Smith was
+also the inventor of the locomotive and telegraph?
+
+Bacon's best can be compared with Shakespeare's common, but
+Shakespeare's best rises above Bacon's best, like a domed temple above a
+beggar's hut.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+OF course it is admitted that there were many dramatists before and
+during the time of Shakespeare--but they were only the foot hills of
+that mighty peak the top of which the clouds and mists still hide.
+Chapman and Marlowe, Heywood and Jonson, Webster, Beaumont and Fletcher
+wrote some great lines, and in the monotony of declamation now and then
+is found a strain of genuine music--but all of them together constituted
+only a herald of Shakespeare. In all these Plays there is but a hint,
+a prophecy, of the great drama destined to revolutionize the poetic
+thought of the world.
+
+Shakespeare was the greatest of poets. What Greece and Rome produced was
+great until his time. "Lions make leopards tame."
+
+The great poet is a great artist. He is painter and sculptor. The
+greatest pictures and statues have been painted and chiseled with words.
+They outlast all others. All the galleries of the world are poor and
+cheap compared with the statues and pictures in Shakespeare's book.
+
+Language is made of pictures represented by sounds. The outer world is
+a dictionary of the mind, and the artist called the soul uses this
+dictionary of things to express what happens in the noiseless and
+invisible world of thought. First a sound represents something in the
+outer world, and afterwards something in the inner, and this sound at
+last is represented by a mark, and this mark stands for a picture,
+and every brain is a gallery, and the artists--that is to say, the
+souls--exchange pictures and statues.
+
+All art is of the same parentage. The poet uses words--makes pictures
+and statues of sounds. The sculptor expresses harmony, proportion,
+passion, in marble; the composer, in music; the painter in form and
+color. The dramatist expresses himself not only in words, not only
+paints these pictures, but he expresses his thought in action.
+
+Shakespeare was not only a poet, but a dramatist, and expressed the
+ideal, the poetic, not only in words, but in action. There are the
+wit, the humor, the pathos, the tragedy of situation, of relation. The
+dramatist speaks and acts through others--his personality is lost.
+The poet lives in the world of thought and feeling, and to this the
+dramatist adds the world of action. He creates characters that seem to
+act in accordance with their own natures and independently of him. He
+compresses lives into hours, tells us the secrets of the heart, shows us
+the springs of action--how desire bribes the judgment and corrupts the
+will--how weak the reason is when passion pleads, and how grand it is to
+stand for right against the world.
+
+It is not enough to say fine things,--great things, dramatic things,
+must be done.
+
+Let me give you an illustration of dramatic incident accompanying the
+highest form of poetic expression:
+
+Macbeth having returned from the murder of Duncan says to his wife:
+
+     "Methought I heard a voice cry:
+     Sleep no more, Macbeth does murder sleep; the innocent sleep;
+     Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,
+     The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
+     Balm of hurt minds, great Nature's second course,
+     Chief nourisher in life's feast."  *  *  *
+
+     "Still it cried:
+     Sleep no more, to all the house,
+     Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor
+     Shall sleep no more--Macbeth shall sleep no more."
+
+She exclaims:
+
+     "Who was it that thus cried? Why, worthy
+     Thane, you do unbend your noble strength
+     To think so brain-sickly of things; get some water,
+     And wash this filthy witness from your hand.
+     Why did you bring the daggers from the place?"
+
+Macbeth was so overcome with horror at his own deed, that he not only
+mistook his thoughts for the words of others, but was so carried away
+and beyond himself that he brought with him the daggers--the evidence of
+his guilt--the daggers that he should have left with the dead. This is
+dramatic.
+
+In the same play, the difference of feeling before and after the
+commission of a crime is illustrated to perfection. When Macbeth is
+on his way to assassinate the king, the bell strikes, and he says, or
+whispers:
+
+     "Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell."
+
+Afterward, when the deed has been committed, and a knocking is heard at
+the gate, he cries:
+
+     "Wake Duncan with thy knocking.    I would thou couldst."
+
+Let me give one more instance of dramatic action. When Antony speaks
+above the body of Cæsar he says:
+
+     "You all do know this mantle: I remember
+     The first time ever Cæsar put it on--
+     'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent,
+     That day he overcame the Nervii:
+     Look!    In this place ran Cassius' dagger through:
+     See what a rent the envious Casca made!
+     Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed,
+     And as he plucked his cursed steel away,
+     Mark how the blood of Cæsar followed it."
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+THERE are men, and many of them, who are always trying to show that
+somebody else chiseled the statue or painted the picture,--that the poem
+is attributed to the wrong man, and that the battle was really won by a
+subordinate.
+
+Of course Shakespeare made use of the work of others--and, we might
+almost say, of all others. Every writer must use the work of others.
+The only question is, how the accomplishments of other minds are used,
+whether as a foundation to build higher, or whether stolen to the end
+that the thief may make a reputation for himself, without adding to the
+great structure of literature.
+
+Thousands of people have stolen stones from the Coliseum to make huts
+for themselves. So thousands of writers have taken the thoughts of
+others with which to adorn themselves. These are plagiarists. But the
+man who takes the thought of another, adds to it, gives it intensity and
+poetic form, throb and life,--is in the highest sense original.
+
+Shakespeare found nearly all of his facts in the writings of others
+and was indebted to others for most of the stories of his plays. The
+question is not: Who furnished the stone, or who owned the quarry, but
+who chiseled the statue?
+
+We now know all the books that Shakespeare could have read, and
+consequently know many of the sources of his information. We find in
+_Pliny's Natural History_, published in 1601, the following: "The sea
+Pontis evermore floweth and runneth out into the Propontis; but the sea
+never retireth back again with the Impontis." This was the raw material,
+and out of it Shakespeare made the following:
+
+     "Like to the Pontic Sea,
+     Whose icy current and compulsive course
+     Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on
+     To the Propontic and the Hellespont------
+
+     "Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace,
+     Shall ne'er turn back, ne'er ebb to humble love,
+     Till that a capable and wide revenge
+     Swallow them up."
+
+Perhaps we can give an idea of the difference between Shakespeare and
+other poets, by a passage from "Lear." When Cordelia places her hand
+upon her father's head and speaks of the night and of the storm, an
+ordinary poet might have said:
+
+     "On such a night, a dog
+     Should have stood against my fire."
+
+A very great poet might have gone a step further and exclaimed:
+
+     "On such a night, mine enemy's dog
+     Should have stood against my fire."
+
+But Shakespeare said:
+
+     "Mine enemy's dog, though he had bit me,
+     Should have stood, that night, against my fire."
+
+Of all the poets--of all the writers--Shakespeare is the most original.
+He is as original as Nature.
+
+It may truthfully be said that "Nature wants stuff to vie strange forms
+with fancy, to make another."
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+THERE is in the greatest poetry a kind of extravagance that touches the
+infinite, and in this Shakespeare exceeds all others.
+
+You will remember the description given of the voyage of Paris in search
+of Helen:
+
+     "The seas and winds, old wranglers, made a truce,
+     And did him service; he touched the ports desired,"
+
+And for an old aunt, whom the Greeks held captive,
+
+     "He brought a Grecian queen whose youth and freshness
+     Wrinkles Apollo, and makes stale the morning."
+
+So, in Pericles, when the father finds his daughter, he cries out:
+
+     "O Helicanus! strike me, honored sir;
+     Give me a gash, put me to present pain,
+     Lest this great sea of joys, rushing upon me,
+     O'erbear the shores of my mortality."
+
+The greatest compliment that man has ever paid to the woman he adores is
+this line:
+
+     "Eyes that do mislead the morn."
+
+Nothing can be conceived more perfectly poetic.
+
+In that marvellous play, the "Midsummer Nights Dream," is one of the
+most extravagant things in literature:
+
+              "Thou rememberest
+     Since once I sat upon a promontory,
+     And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back
+     Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
+     That the rude sea grew civil at her song,
+     And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
+     To hear the sea-maid's music."
+
+This is so marvellously told that it almost seems probable.
+
+So the description of Mark Antony:
+
+                "For his bounty
+      There was no winter in't--an autumn t'was
+      That grew the more by reaping.
+      His delights Were dolphin-like--they showed his back above
+      The element they lived in."
+
+Think of the astronomical scope and amplitude of this:
+
+     "Her bed is India--there she lies a pearl."
+
+Is there anything more intense than these words of Cleopatra?
+
+     "Rather on Nilus mud lay me stark naked
+     And let the water-flies blow me into abhorring."
+
+Or this of Isabella:
+
+     "The impression of keen whips I'd wear as rubies,
+     And strip myself to death as to a bed
+     That longing I've been sick for, ere I yield
+     My body up to shame."
+
+Is there an intellectual man in the world who will not agree with this?
+
+          "Let me not live
+     After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff
+     Of younger spirits."
+
+Can anything exceed the words of Troilus when parting with Cressida:
+
+     "We two, that with so many thousand sighs
+     Did buy each other, most poorly sell ourselves
+     With the rude brevity and discharge of one.
+
+     "Injurious time now with a robber's haste
+     Crams his rich thievery up, he knows not how;
+     As many farewells as be stars in heaven,
+     With distinct breath and consigned kisses to them,
+     He fumbles up into a loose adieu,
+     And scants us with a single famished kiss,
+     Distasted with the salt of broken tears."
+
+Take this example, where pathos almost touches the grotesque.
+
+     "O dear Juliet, why art thou yet so fair?
+     Shall I believe that unsubstantial death is amorous,
+     And that the lean, abhorred monster keeps thee here
+     I' the dark, to be his paramour?"
+
+Often when reading the marvellous lines of Shakespeare, I feel that his
+thoughts are "too subtle potent, tuned too sharp in sweetness, for the
+capacity of my ruder powers." Sometimes I cry out, "O churl!--write all,
+and leave no thoughts for those who follow after."
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+SHAKESPEARE was an innovator, an iconoclast. He cared nothing for
+the authority of men or of schools. He violated the "unities," and
+cared--nothing for the models of the ancient world.
+
+The Greeks insisted that nothing should be in a play that did not tend
+to the catastrophe. They did not believe in the episode--in the sudden
+contrasts of light and shade--in mingling the comic and the tragic.
+The sunlight never fell upon their tears, and darkness did not overtake
+their laughter. They believed that nature sympathized or was in harmony
+with the events of the play. When crime was about to be committed--some
+horror to be perpetrated--the light grew dim, the wind sighed, the trees
+shivered, and upon all was the shadow of the coming event.
+
+Shakespeare knew that the play had little to do with the tides and
+currents of universal life--that Nature cares neither for smiles nor
+tears, for life nor death, and that the sun shines as gladly on coffins
+as on cradles.
+
+The first time I visited the Place de la Concorde, where during the
+French Revolution stood the guillotine, and where now stands an
+Egyptian obelisk--a bird, sitting on the top, was singing with all its
+might.--Nature forgets.
+
+One of the most notable instances of the violation by Shakespeare of the
+classic model, is found in the 6th Scene of the I. Act of Macbeth.
+
+When the King and Banquo approach the castle in which the King is to be
+murdered that night, no shadow falls athwart the threshold. So beautiful
+is the scene that the King says:
+
+     "This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air
+     Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
+     Unto our gentle senses."
+
+And Banquo adds:
+
+     "This guest of summer,
+     The temple-haunting martlet, does approve
+     By his loved mansionry that the heaven's breath
+     Smells wooingly here; no jutty, frieze,
+     Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird
+     Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle.
+     Where they most breed and haunt,
+     I have observed
+     The air is delicate."
+
+Another notable instance is the porter scene immediately following
+the murder. So, too, the dialogue with the clown who brings the asp to
+Cleopatra just before the suicide, illustrates my meaning.
+
+I know of one paragraph in the Greek drama worthy of Shakespeare. This
+is in "Medea." When Medea kills her children she curses Jason, using the
+ordinary Billingsgate and papal curse, but at the conclusion says: "I
+pray the gods to make him virtuous, that he may the more deeply feel the
+pang that I inflict."
+
+Shakespeare dealt in lights and shadows. He was intense. He put noons
+and midnights side by side. No other dramatist would have dreamed of
+adding to the pathos--of increasing our appreciation of Lear's agony,
+by supplementing the wail of the mad king with the mocking laughter of a
+loving clown.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+THE ordinary dramatists--the men of talent--(and there is the same
+difference between talent and genius that there is between a stone-mason
+and a sculptor) create characters that become types. Types are
+of necessity caricatures--actual men and women are to some extent
+contradictory in their actions. Types are blown in the one direction by
+the one wind--characters have pilots.
+
+In real people, good and evil mingle. Types are all one way, or all the
+other--all good, or all bad, all wise or all foolish.
+
+Pecksniff was a perfect type, a perfect hypocrite--and will remain a
+type as long as language lives--a hypocrite that even drunkenness could
+not change. Everybody understands Pecksniff, and compared with him
+Tartuffe was an honest man. Hamlet is an individual, a person, an actual
+being--and for that reason there is a difference of opinion ias to his
+motives and as to his character. We differ About Hamlet as we do about
+Cæsar, or about Shakespeare himself.
+
+Hamlet saw the ghost of his father and heard again his father's voice,
+and yet, afterwards, he speaks of
+
+     "the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns."
+
+In this there is no contradiction. The reason outweighs the senses. If
+we should see a dead man rise from his grave, we would not, the next
+day, believe that we did. No one can credit a miracle until it becomes
+so common that it ceases to be miraculous.
+
+Types are puppets--controlled from without--characters act from within.
+There is the same difference between characters and types that there
+is between springs and water-works, between canals and rivers, between
+wooden soldiers and heroes.
+
+In most plays and in most novels the characters are so shadowy that we
+have to piece them out with the imagination.
+
+One waking in the morning sometimes sees at the foot of his bed a
+strange figure--it may be of an ancient lady with cap and ruffles and
+with the expression of garrulous and fussy old age--but when the light
+gets stronger, the figure gradually changes and he sees a few clothes on
+a chair.
+
+The dramatist lives the lives of others, and in order to delineate
+character must not only have imagination but sympathy with the character
+delineated. The great dramatist thinks of a character as an entirety, as
+an individual.
+
+I once had a dream, and in this dream I was discussing a subject with
+another man. It occurred to me that I was dreaming, and I then said
+to myself: If this is a dream, I am doing the talking for both
+sides--consequently I ought to know in advance what the other man is
+going to say. In my dream I tried the experiment. I then asked the other
+man a question, and before he answered made up my mind what the answer
+was to be. To my surprise, the man did not say what I expected he would,
+and so great was my astonishment that I awoke.
+
+It then occurred to me that I had discovered the secret of Shakespeare.
+He did, when awake, what I did when asleep--that is, he threw off a
+character so perfect that it acted independently of him.
+
+In the delineation of character Shakespeare has no rivals. He creates no
+monsters. His characters do not act without reason, without motive.
+
+Iago had his reasons. In Caliban, nature was not destroyed--and Lady
+Macbeth certifies that the woman still was in her heart, by saying:
+
+     "Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done it."
+
+Shakespeare's characters act from within. They are centres of energy.
+They are not pushed by unseen hands, or pulled by unseen strings. They
+have objects, desires. They are persons--real, living beings.
+
+Few dramatists succeed in getting their characters loose from the
+canvas--their backs stick to the wall--they do not have free and
+independent action--they have no background, no unexpressed motives--no
+untold desires. They lack the complexity of the real.
+
+Shakespeare makes the character true to itself. Christopher Sly,
+surrounded by the luxuries of a lord, true to his station, calls for a
+pot of the smallest ale.
+
+Take one expression by Lady Macbeth. You remember that after the murder
+is discovered--after the alarm bell is rung--she appears upon the scene
+wanting to know what has happened. Macduff refuses to tell her, saying
+that the slightest word would murder as it fell. At this moment Banquo
+comes upon the scene and Macduff cries out to him:
+
+     "Our royal master's murdered."
+
+What does Lady Macbeth then say? She in fact makes a confession of
+guilt. The weak point in the terrible tragedy is that Duncan was
+murdered in Macbeth's castle. So when Lady Macbeth hears what they
+suppose is news to her, she cries:
+
+     "What!   In our house!"
+
+Had she been innocent, her horror of the crime would have made her
+forget the place--the venue. Banquo sees through this, and sees through
+her.
+
+Her expression was a light, by which he saw her guilt--and he answers:
+
+     "Too cruel anywhere."
+
+No matter whether Shakespeare delineated clown or king, warrior or
+maiden--no matter whether his characters are taken from the gutter or
+the throne--each is a work of consummate art, and when he is unnatural,
+he is so splendid that the defect is forgotten.
+
+When Romeo is told of the death of Juliet, and thereupon makes up his
+mind to die upon her grave, he gives a description of the shop where
+poison could be purchased. He goes into particulars and tells of the
+alligators stuffed, of the skins of ill-shaped fishes, of the beggarly
+account of empty boxes, of the remnants of pack-thread, and old cakes
+of roses--and while it is hardly possible to believe that under such
+circumstances a man would take the trouble to make an inventory of a
+strange kind of drug-store, yet the inventory is so perfect--the picture
+is so marvellously drawn--that we forget to think whether it is natural
+or not.
+
+In making the frame of a great picture--of a great scene--Shakespeare
+was often careless, but the picture is perfect. In making the sides of
+the arch he was negligent, but when he placed the keystone, it burst
+into blossom. Of course there are many lines in Shakepeare that never
+should have been written. In other words, there are imperfections in his
+plays. But we must remember that Shakespeare furnished the torch that
+enables us to see these imperfections.
+
+Shakespeare speaks through his characters, and we must not mistake what
+the characters say, for the opinion of Shakespeare. No one can believe
+that Shakespeare regarded life as "a tale told by an idiot, full of
+sound and fury, signifying nothing." That was the opinion of a murderer,
+surrounded by avengers, and whose wife--partner in his crimes--troubled
+with thick-coming fancies--had gone down to her death.
+
+Most actors and writers seem to suppose that the lines called "The Seven
+Ages" contain Shakespeare's view of human life. Nothing could be farther
+from the truth. The lines were uttered by a cynic, in contempt and scorn
+of the human race.
+
+Shakespeare did not put his characters in the livery and uniform of
+some weakness, peculiarity or passion. He did not use names as tags or
+brands. He did not write under the picture, "This is a villain." His
+characters need no suggestive names to tell us what they are--we see
+them and we know them for ourselves.
+
+It may be that in the greatest utterances of the greatest characters in
+the supreme moments, we have the real thoughts, opinions and convictions
+of Shakespeare.
+
+Of all writers Shakespeare is the most impersonal.. He speaks through
+others, and the others seem to speak for themselves. The didactic is
+lost in the dramatic. He does not use the stage as a pulpit to enforce
+some maxim. He is as reticent as Nature.
+
+He idealizes the common and transfigures all he touches--but he does not
+preach. He was in-terested in men and things as they were. He did not
+seek: to change them--but to portray, he was _Nature's mirror_--and in
+that mirror Nature saw herself.
+
+When I stood amid the great trees of California that lift their
+spreading capitals against the clouds, looking like Nature's columns to
+support the sky, I thought of the poetry of Shakespeare.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+WHAT a procession of men and women--statesmen and warriors--kings and
+clowns--issued from Shakespeare's brain. What women!
+
+Isabella--in whose spotless life love and reason blended into perfect
+truth.
+
+Juliet--within whose heart passion and purity met like white and red
+within the bosom of a rose.
+
+Cordelia--who chose to suffer loss, rather than show her wealth of love
+with those who gilded lies in hope of gain.
+
+Hermione--"tender as infancy and grace"--who bore with perfect hope and
+faith the cross of shame, and who at last forgave with all her heart.
+
+Desdemona--so innocent, so perfect, her love so pure, that she was
+incapable of suspecting that another could suspect, and who with dying
+words sought to hide her lover's crime--and with her last faint breath
+uttered a loving lie that burst into a perfumed lily between her pallid
+lips.
+
+Perdita--A violet dim, and sweeter than the lids of Junos eyes--"The
+sweetest low-born lass that ever ran on the green sward." And
+Helena--who said:
+
+     "I know I love in vain, strive against hope--
+     Yet in this captious and intenable sieve
+     I still pour in the waters of my love,
+     And lack not to lose still,
+     Thus, Indian-like, Religious in mine error, I adore
+     The sun that looks upon his worshipper,
+     But knows of him no more."
+
+Miranda--who told her love as gladly as a flower gives its bosom to the
+kisses of the sun.
+
+And Cordelia, whose kisses cured and whose tears restored. And stainless
+Imogen, who cried:
+
+     "What is it to be false?"
+
+And here is the description of the perfect woman:
+
+     "To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love;
+     To keep her constancy in plight and youth--
+     Outliving beauty's outward with a mind
+     That doth renew swifter than blood decays."
+
+Shakespeare done more for woman than all the other dramatists of the
+world.
+
+For my part. I love the Clowns. I love _Launce_ and his dog Crabb, and
+_Gobbo_, whose conscience threw its arms around the neck of his heart,
+and _Touchstone_, with his lie seven times removed; and dear old
+_Dogberry_--a pretty piece of flesh, tedious as a king. And _Bottom_,
+the very paramour for a sweet voice, longing to take the part to tear
+a cat in; and _Autolycus_, the snapper-up of unconsidered trifles,
+sleeping out the thought for the life to come. And great _Sir John_,
+without conscience, and for that reason unblamed and enjoyed--and who
+at the end babbles of green fields, and is almost loved. And ancient
+_Pistol_, the world his oyster. And _Bardolph_, with the flea on his
+blazing nose, putting beholders in mind of a damned soul in hell. And
+the poor _Fool_, who followed the mad king, and went "to bed at
+noon." And the clown who carried the worm of Nilus, whose "biting was
+immortal." And _Corin_, the shepherd--who described the perfect man:
+"I am a true laborer: I earn that I eat--get that I wear--owe no man
+aught--envy no man's happiness--glad of other men's good--content."
+
+And mingling in this motley throng, _Lear_, within whose brain a tempest
+raged until the depths were stirred, and the intellectual wealth of a
+life was given back to memory--and then by madness thrown to storm and
+night--and when I read the living lines I feel as though I looked upon
+the sea and saw it wrought by frenzied whirlwinds, until the buried
+treasures and the sunken wrecks of all the years were cast upon the
+shores.
+
+And _Othello_--who like the base Indian threw a pearl away richer than
+all his tribe.
+
+And _Hamlet_--thought-entangted--hesitating between two worlds.
+
+And _Macbeth_--strange mingling of cruelty and conscience, reaping
+the sure harvest of successful crime--"Curses not loud but
+deep--mouth-honor,--breath."
+
+And _Brutus_, falling on his sword that Cæsar might be still.
+
+And _Romeo_, dreaming of the white wonder of Juliet's hand. And
+_Ferdinand_, the patient log-man for Miranda's sake. And _Florizel_,
+who, "for all the sun sees, or the close earth wombs, or the
+profound seas hide," would not be faithless to the low-born lass. And
+_Constance_, weeping for her son, while grief "stuffs out his vacant
+garments with his form."
+
+And in the midst of tragedies and tears, of love and laughter and crime,
+we hear the voice of the good friar, who declares that in every human
+heart, as in the smallest flower, there are encamped the opposed hosts
+of good and evil--and our philosophy is interrupted by the garrulous old
+nurse, whose talk is as busily useless as the babble of a stream that
+hurries by a ruined mill.
+
+From every side the characters crowd upon us--the men and women born of
+Shakespeare's brain. They utter with a thousand voices the thoughts of
+the "myriad-minded" man, and impress themselves upon us as deeply and
+vividly as though they really lived with us.
+
+Shakespeare alone has delineated love in every possible phase--has
+ascended to the very top, and actually reached heights that no other has
+imagined. I do not believe the human mind will ever produce or be in a
+position to appreciate, a greater love-play than "Romeo and Juliet." It
+is a symphony in which all music seems to blend. The heart bursts into
+blossom, and he who reads feels the swooning intoxication of a divine
+perfume.
+
+In the alembic of Shakespeare's brain the baser metals were turned to
+gold--passions became virtues--weeds became exotics, from some diviner
+land--and common mortals made of ordinary clay outranked the Olympian
+Gods. In his brain there was the touch of chaos that suggests
+the infinite--that belongs to genius. Talent is measured and
+mathematical--dominated by prudence and the thought of use. Genius is
+tropical. The creative instinct runs riot, delights in extravagance and
+waste, and overwhelms the mental beggars of the world with uncounted
+gold and unnumbered gems.
+
+Some things are immortal: The plays of Shakespeare, the marbles of the
+Greeks, and the music of Wagner.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+Shakespeare was the greatest of philosophers.
+
+He knew the conditions of success--of happiness--the relations _that men,
+sustain_ to each other, and the duties of all. He knew the tides and
+currents of the heart--the cliffs and caverns of the brain. He knew the
+weakness of the will, the sophistry of desire--and "That pleasure
+and revenge have ears more deaf than adders to the voice of any true
+decision."
+
+He knew that the soul lives in an invisible world--that flesh is but a
+mask, and that "There is no art to find the mind's construction In the
+face."
+
+He knew that courage should be the servant of judgment, and that
+
+     "When valor preys on reason it eats the sword It fights with."
+
+He knew that man is never "master of the event, that he is to some
+extent the sport or prey of the blind forces of the world, and that
+
+      "In the reproof of chance lies the true proof of men."
+
+Feeling that the past is unchangeable, and that that which must happen
+is as much beyond control as though it had happened, he says:
+
+     "Let determined things to destiny Hold unbewailed their way."
+
+Shakespeare was great enough to know that every human being prefers
+happiness to misery, and that crimes are but mistakes. Looking in
+pity upon the human race, upon the pain and poverty, the crimes and
+cruelties, the limping travelers on the thorny paths, he was great and
+good enough to say:
+
+     "There is no darkness but ignorance."
+
+In all the philosophies there is no greater line. This great truth fills
+the heart with pity.
+
+He knew that place and power do not give happiness--that the crowned are
+subject as the lowest to fate and chance.
+
+     "Within the hollow crown
+     That rounds the mortal temples of a king
+     Keeps death his Court, and there the antic sits
+     Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
+     Allowing him a brief and little scene
+     To monarchize by fear and kill with looks,
+     Infusing him with self and vain conceit--
+     As if this flesh that walls about our life
+     Were brass impregnable; and humored thus,
+     Comes at the last and with a little pin
+     Bores through his castle wall--and farewell king!"
+
+So, too, he knew that gold could not bring joy--that death and
+misfortune come alike to rich and poor, because:
+
+     "If thou art rich thou art poor;
+     For like an ass whose back with ingots bows
+     Thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey,
+     And death unloads thee."
+
+In some of his philosophy there was a kind of scorn--a hidden meaning
+that could not in his day and time have safely been expressed. You will
+remember that Laertes was about to kill the king, and this king was the
+murderer of his own brother, and sat upon the throne by reason of his
+crime--and in the mouth of such a king Shakespeare puts these words:
+
+     "There's such divinity doth hedge a king."
+
+So, in Macbeth
+
+                 "How he solicits
+     Heaven himself best knows; but strangely visited people
+     All swollen and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,
+     The mere despairs of surgery, he cures;
+     Hanging a golden stamp about their necks.
+     Put on with holy prayers; and 'tis spoken
+     To the succeeding royalty--he leaves
+     The healing benediction.
+
+     "With this strange virtue
+     He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy,
+     And sundry blessings hang about his throne,
+     That speak him full of grace."
+
+Shakespeare was the master of the human heart--knew all the hopes, fears,
+ambitions, and passions that sway the mind of man; and thus knowing, he
+declared that
+
+     "Love is not love that alters
+     When it alteration finds."
+
+This is the sublimest declaration in the literature of the world.
+
+Shakespeare seems to give the generalization--the result--without the
+process of thought. He seems always to be at the conclusion--standing
+where all truths meet.
+
+In one of the Sonnets is this fragment of a line that contains the
+highest possible truth:
+
+     "Conscience is born of love."
+
+If man were incapable of suffering, the words right and wrong never
+could have been spoken. If man were destitute of imagination, the flower
+of pity never could have blossomed in his heart.
+
+We suffer--we cause others to suffer--those that we love--and of this
+fact conscience is born.
+
+Love is the many-colored flame that makes the fireside of the heart. It
+is the mingled spring and autumn--the perfect climate of the soul.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+IN the realm of comparison Shakespeare seems to have exhausted the
+relations, parallels and similitudes of things, He only could have said:
+
+     "Tedious as a twice-told tale
+     Vexing the ears of a drowsy man."
+
+     "Duller than a great thaw.
+     Dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage."
+
+In the words of Ulysses, spoken to Achilles, we find the most wonderful
+collection of pictures and comparisons ever compressed within the same
+number of lines:
+
+     "Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
+     Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,--
+     A great-sized monster of ingratitudes--
+     Those scraps are good deeds passed; which are devoured
+     As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
+     As done; perseverance, dear my lord,
+     Keeps honor bright: to have done is to hang
+     Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail In monumental mockery.
+
+     "Take the instant way;
+     For honor travels in a strait so narrow
+     Where one but goes abreast; keep then the path;
+     For emulation hath a thousand sons
+     That one by one pursue; if you give way,
+     Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
+     Like to an entered tide, they all rush by
+     And leave you hindmost:
+     Or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank,
+     Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,
+     O'errun and trampled on: then what they do in present,
+     Tho' less than yours in past, must o' ertop yours;
+     For time is like a fashionable host
+     That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
+     And with his arms outstretched as he would fly,
+     Grasps in the comer:
+     Welcome ever smiles,
+     And Farewell goes out sighing."
+
+So the words of Cleopatra, when Charmain speaks:
+
+     "Peace, peace:
+     Dost thou not see my baby at my breast
+     That sucks the nurse asleep?"
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+NOTHING is more difficult than a definition--a crystallization of
+thought so perfect that it emits light. Shakespeare says of suicide:
+
+     "It is great to do that thing
+     That ends all other deeds,
+     Which shackles accident, and bolts up change."
+
+He defines drama to be:
+
+     "Turning the accomplishments of many years
+     Into an hour glass."
+
+Of death:
+
+     "This sensible warm motion to become a kneaded clod,
+     To lie in cold obstruction and to rot."
+
+Of memory:
+
+     "The warder of the brain."
+
+Of the body:
+
+     "This muddy vesture of decay."
+
+And he declares that
+
+     "Our little life is rounded with a sleep."
+
+He speaks of Echo as:
+
+     "The babbling gossip of the air"--
+
+Romeo, addressing the poison that he is about to take, says:
+
+     "Come, bitter conduct, come unsavory guide,
+     Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
+     The dashing rocks thy sea-sick, weary bark."
+
+He describes the world as
+
+     "This bank and shoal of time."
+
+He says of rumor--
+
+     "That it doubles, like the voice and echo."
+
+It would take days to call attention to the perfect definitions,
+comparisons and generalizations of Shakespeare. He gave us the deeper
+meanings of our words--taught us the art of speech. He was the lord of
+language--master of expression and compression.
+
+He put the greatest thoughts into the shortest words--made the poor rich
+and the common royal.
+
+Production enriched his brain. Nothing exhausted him. The moment his
+attention was called to any subject--comparisons, definitions, metaphors
+and generalizations filled his mind and begged for utterance. His
+thoughts like bees robbed every blossom in the world, and then with
+"merry march" brought the rich booty home "to the tent royal of their
+emperor."
+
+Shakespeare was the confidant of Nature. To him she opened her "infinite
+book of secrecy," and in his brain were "the hatch and brood of time."
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+THERE is in Shakespeare the mingling of laughter and tears, humor and
+pathos. Humor is the rose, wit the thorn. Wit is a crystallization,
+humor an efflorescence. Wit comes from the brain, humor from the heart.
+Wit is the lightning of the soul.
+
+In Shakespeare's nature was the climate of humor. He saw and felt the
+sunny side even of the saddest things. "You have seen sunshine and rain
+at once." So Shakespeare's tears fell oft upon his smiles. In moments of
+peril--on the very darkness of death--there comes a touch of humor that
+falls like a fleck of sunshine.
+
+Gonzalo, when the ship is about to sink, having seen the boatswain,
+exclaims:
+
+     "I have great comfort from this fellow;
+     Methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him;
+     His complexion is perfect gallows."
+
+Shakespeare is filled with the strange contrasts of grief and laughter.
+While poor Hero is supposed to be dead--wrapped in the shroud of
+dishonor--Dogberry and Verges unconsciously put again the wedding wreath
+upon her pure brow.
+
+The soliloquy of Launcelot--great as Hamlet's--offsets the bitter and
+burning words of Shylock.
+
+There is only time to speak of Maria in "Twelfth Night," of Autolycus in
+the "Winter's Tale," of the parallel drawn by Fluellen between Alexander
+of Macedon and Harry of Monmouth, or of the marvellous humor of
+Falstaff, who never had the faintest thought of right or wrong--or of
+Mercutio, that embodiment of wit and humor--for of the grave-diggers who
+lamented that "great folk should have countenance in this world to drown
+and hang themselves, more than their even Christian," and who reached
+the generalization that
+
+     "the gallows does well because it does well to those who do ill."
+
+There is also an example of grim humor--an example without a parallel in
+literature, so far as I know. Hamlet having killed Polonius is asked:
+
+     "Where's Polonais?"
+     "At supper."
+     "At supper! where?"
+     "Not where he eats, but where he is eaten."
+
+Above all others, Shakespeare appreciated the pathos of situation.
+
+Nothing is more pathetic than the last scene in "Lear." No one has
+ever bent above his dead who did not feel the words uttered by the mad
+king,--words born of a despair deeper than tears:
+
+     "Oh, that a horse, a dog, a rat hath life
+     And thou no breath!"
+
+So Iago, after he has been wounded, says:
+
+     "I bleed, sir; but not killed."
+
+And Othello answers from the wreck and shattered remnant of his life:
+
+     "I would have thee live;
+     For in my sense it is happiness to die."
+
+When Troilus finds Cressida has been false, he cries:
+
+     "Let it not be believed for womanhood;
+     Think! we had mothers."
+
+Ophelia, in her madness, "the sweet bells jangled out o' tune," says
+softly:
+
+     "I would give you some violets;
+     But they withered all when my father died."
+
+When Macbeth has reaped the harvest, the seeds of which were sown by his
+murderous hand, he exclaims,--and what could be more pitiful?
+
+     "I 'gin to be aweary of the sun."
+
+Richard the Second feels how small a thing it is to be, or to have been,
+a king, or to receive honors before or after power is lost; and so, of
+those who stood uncovered before him, he asks this piteous question:
+
+     "I live with bread, like you; feel want,
+     Taste grief, need friends; subjected thus,
+     How can you say to me I am a king?"
+
+Think of the salutation of Antony to the dead Cæsar:
+
+     "Pardon me, thou piece of bleeding earth."
+
+When Pisanio informs Imogen that he had been ordered by Posthumus to
+murder her, she bares her neck and cries:
+
+     "The lamb entreats the butcher:
+     Where is thy knife?
+     Thou art too slow
+     To do thy master's bidding when I desire it."
+
+Antony, as the last drops are falling from his self-inflicted wound,
+utters with his dying breath to Cleopatra, this:
+
+     "I here importune death awhile, until
+     Of many thousand kisses the poor last I lay upon thy lips."
+
+To me, the last words of Hamlet are full of pathos:
+
+     "I die, Horatio.
+     The potent poison quite o'er crows my spirit   *   *   *
+     The rest is silence."
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+SOME have insisted that Shakespeare must have been a physician, for
+the reason that he shows such knowledge of medicine--of the symptoms of
+disease and death--was so familiar with the brain, and with insanity in
+all its forms.
+
+I do not think he was a physician. He knew too much--his generalizations
+were too splendid. He had none of the prejudices of that profession
+in his time. We might as well say that he was a musician, a composer,
+because we find in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" nearly every musical
+term known in Shakespeare's time.
+
+Others maintain that he was a lawyer, perfectly acquainted with the
+forms, with the expressions familiar to that profession--yet there is
+nothing to show that he was a lawyer, or that he knew more about law
+than any intelligent man should know.
+
+He was not a lawyer. His sense of justice was never dulled by reading
+English law.
+
+Some think that he was a botanist, because he named nearly all known
+plants. Others, that he was an astronomer, a naturalist, because he gave
+hints and suggestions of nearly all discoveries.
+
+Some have thought that he must have been a sailor, for the reason that
+the orders given in the opening of "The Tempest" were the best that
+could, under the circumstances, have been given to save the ship.
+
+For my part, I think there is nothing in the plays to show that he was
+a lawyer, doctor, botanist or scientist. He had the observant eyes
+that really see, the ears that really hear, the brain that retains all
+pictures, all thoughts, logic as unerring as light, the imagination
+that supplies defects and builds the perfect from a fragment. And these
+faculties, these aptitudes, working together, account for what he did.
+
+He exceeded all the sons of men in the splendor of his imagination. To
+him the whole world paid tribute, and nature poured her treasures at his
+feet. In him all races lived again, and even those to be were pictured
+in his brain.
+
+He was a man of imagination--that is to say, of genius, and having seen
+a leaf, and a drop of water, he could construct the forests, the rivers,
+and the seas--and in his presence all the cataracts would fall and foam,
+the mists rise, the clouds form and float.
+
+If Shakespeare knew one fact, he knew its kindred and its neighbors.
+Looking at a coat of mail, he instantly imagined the society, the
+conditions, that produced it and what it, in turn, produced. He saw
+the castle, the moat, the draw-bridge, the lady in the tower, and the
+knightly lover spurring across the plain. He saw the bold baron and the
+rude retainer, the trampled serf, and all the glory and the grief of
+feudal life.
+
+He lived the life of all.
+
+He was a citizen of Athens in the days of Pericles. He listened to the
+eager eloquence of the great orators, and sat upon the cliffs, and with
+the tragic poet heard "the multitudinous laughter of the sea." He saw
+Socrates thrust the spear of question through the shield and heart of
+falsehood. He was present when the great man drank hemlock, and met the
+night of death, tranquil as a star meets morning. He listened to the
+peripatetic philosophers, and was unpuzzled by the sophists. He watched
+Phidias as he chiseled shapeless stone to forms of love and awe.
+
+He lived by the mysterious Nile, amid the vast and monstrous. He knew
+the very thought that wrought the form and features of the Sphinx. He
+heard great Memnon's morning song when marble lips were smitten by
+the sun. He laid him down with the embalmed and waiting dead, and felt
+within their dust the expectation of another life, mingled with cold and
+suffocating doubts--the children born of long delay.
+
+He walked the ways of mighty Rome, and saw great Cæsar with his legions
+in the field. He stood with vast and motley throngs and watched the
+triumphs given to victorious men, followed by uncrowned kings, the
+captured hosts, and all the spoils of ruthless war. He heard the
+shout that shook the Coliseums roofless walls, when from the reeling
+gladiator's hand the short sword fell, while from his bosom gushed the
+stream of wasted life.
+
+He lived the life of savage men. He trod the forests' silent depths, and
+in the desperate game of life or death he matched his thought against
+the instinct of the beast.
+
+He knew all crimes and all regrets, all virtues and their rich rewards.
+He was victim and victor, pursuer and pursued, outcast and king. He
+heard the applause and curses of the world, and on his heart had fallen
+all the nights and noons of failure and success.
+
+He knew the unspoken thoughts, the dumb desires, the wants and ways of
+beasts. He felt the crouching tigers thrill, the terror of the ambushed
+prey, and with the eagles he had shared the ecstasy of flight and poise
+and swoop, and he had lain with sluggish serpents on the barren rocks
+uncoiling slowly in the heat of noon.
+
+He sat beneath the bo-tree's contemplative shade, wrapped in Buddha's
+mighty thought, and dreamed all dreams that light, the alchemist, has
+wrought from dust and dew, and stored within the slumbrous poppy's
+subtle blood.
+
+He knelt with awe and dread at every shrine--he offered every sacrifice,
+and every prayer--felt the consolation and the shuddering fear--mocked
+and worshipped all the gods--enjoyed all heavens, and felt the pangs of
+every hell.
+
+He lived all lives, and through his blood and brain there crept the
+shadow and the chill of every death, and his soul, like Mazeppa, was
+lashed naked to the wild horse of every fear and love and hate.
+
+The Imagination had a stage in Shakespeare's brain, whereon were set all
+scenes that lie between the morn of laughter and the night of tears, and
+where his players bodied forth the false and true, the joys and griefs,
+the careless shallows and the tragic deeps of universal life.
+
+From Shakespeare's brain there poured a Niagara of gems spanned by
+Fancy's seven-hued arch. He was as many-sided as clouds are many-formed.
+To him giving was hoarding--sowing was harvest--and waste itself the
+source of wealth. Within his marvellous mind were the fruits of all
+thought past, the seeds of all to be. As a drop of dew contains the
+image of the earth and sky, so all there is of life was mirrored forth
+in Shakespeare's brain.
+
+Shakespeare was an intellectual ocean, whose waves touched all the
+shores of thought; within which were all the tides and waves of destiny
+and will; over which swept all the storms of fate, ambition and revenge;
+upon which fell the gloom and darkness of despair and death and all the
+sunlight of content and love, and within which was the inverted sky lit
+with the eternal stars--an intellectual ocean--towards which all rivers
+ran, and from which now the isles and continents of thought receive
+their dew and rain.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Shakespeare, by Robert G. Ingersoll
+
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+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Shakespeare, by Robert G. Ingersoll
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+    
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+    
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Shakespeare, by Robert G. Ingersoll
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Shakespeare
+       A Lecture
+
+Author: Robert G. Ingersoll
+
+Release Date: November 22, 2011 [EBook #38105]
+Last Updated: January 25, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHAKESPEARE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      SHAKESPEARE
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      A LECTURE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Robert G. Ingersoll
+    </h2>
+    <h4>
+      Shakespeare.&mdash;An intellectual ocean, whose waves touched all the
+      shores of thought.
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      Contents
+    </h3>
+    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <b>SHAKESPEARE</b> </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> I. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> II. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> III. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> IV. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> V. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VI. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VII. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> VIII. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> IX. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> X. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> XI. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> XII. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> XIII. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> XIV. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> XV. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> XVI. </a>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      SHAKESPEARE.
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      I.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE was the greatest genius of our world. He left to us
+      the richest legacy of all the dead&mdash;the treasures of the rarest soul
+      that ever lived and loved and wrought of words the statues, pictures,
+      robes and gems of thought. He was the greatest man that ever touched this
+      grain of sand and tears, we call the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is hard to overstate the debt we owe to the men and women of genius.
+      Take from our world what they have given, and all the niches would be
+      empty, all the walls naked&mdash;meaning and connection would fall from
+      words of poetry and fiction, music would go back to common air, and all
+      the forms of subtle and enchanting Art would lose proportion and become
+      the unmeaning waste and shattered spoil of thoughtless Chance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shakespeare is too great a theme. I feel as though endeavoring to grasp a
+      globe so large that the hand obtains no hold. He who would worthily speak
+      of the great dramatist should be inspired by "a muse of fire that should
+      ascend the brightest heaven of invention"&mdash;he should have "a kingdom
+      for a stage, and monarchs to behold the swelling scene."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      More than three centuries ago, the most intellectual of the human race was
+      born. He was not of supernatural origin. At his birth there were no
+      celestial pyrotechnics. His father and mother were both English, and both
+      had the cheerful habit of living in this world. The cradle in which he was
+      rocked was canopied by neither myth nor miracle, and in his veins there
+      was no drop of royal blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This babe became the wonder of mankind. Neither of his parents could read
+      or write. He grew up in a small and ignorant village on the banks of the
+      Avon, in the midst of the common people of three hundred years ago. There
+      was nothing in the peaceful, quiet landscape on which he looked, nothing
+      in the low hills, the cultivated and undulating fields, and nothing in the
+      murmuring stream, to excite the imagination&mdash;nothing, so far as we
+      can see, calculated to sow the seeds of the subtlest and sublimest
+      thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So there is nothing connected with his education, or his lack of
+      education, that in any way accounts for what he did. It is supposed that
+      he attended school in his native town&mdash;but of this we are not
+      certain. Many have tried to show that he was, after all, of gentle blood,
+      but the fact seems to be the other way. Some of his biographers have
+      sought to do him honor by showing that he was patronized by Queen
+      Elizabeth, but of this there is not the slightest proof.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a matter of fact, there never sat on any throne, a king, queen, or
+      emperor who could have honored William Shakespeare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ignorant people are apt to overrate the value of what is called education.
+      The sons of the poor, having suffered the privations of poverty, think of
+      wealth as the mother of joy. On the other hand, the children of the rich,
+      finding that gold does not produce happiness, are apt to underrate the
+      value of wealth. So the children of the educated often care but little for
+      books, and hold all culture in contempt. The children of great authors do
+      not, as a rule, become writers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nature is filled with tendencies and obstructions. Extremes beget
+      limitations, even as a river by its own swiftness creates obstructions for
+      itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Possibly, many generations of culture breed a desire for the rude joys of
+      savagery, and possibly generations of ignorance breed such a longing for
+      knowledge, that of this desire, of this hunger of the brain, Genius is
+      born. It may be that the mind, by lying fallow, by remaining idle for
+      generations, gathers strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shakespeare's father seems to have been an ordinary man of his time and
+      class. About the only thing we know of him is that he was officially
+      reported for not coming monthly to church. This is good as far as it goes.
+      We can hardly blame him, because at that time Richard Bifield was the
+      minister at Stratford, and an extreme Puritan, one who read the Psalter by
+      Sternhold and Hopkins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The church was at one time Catholic, but in John Shakespeare's day it was
+      Puritan, and in 1564, the year of Shakespeare's birth, they had the images
+      defaced. It is greatly to the honor of John Shakespeare that he refused to
+      listen to the "tidings of great joy" as delivered by the Puritan Bifield.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing is known of his mother, except her beautiful name&mdash;Mary
+      Arden. In those days but little attention was given to the biographies of
+      women. They were born, married, had children, and died. No matter how
+      celebrated their sons became, the mothers were forgotten. In old times,
+      when a man achieved distinction, great pains were taken to find out about
+      the father and grandfather&mdash;the idea being that genius is inherited
+      from the father's side. The truth is, that all great men have had great
+      mothers. Great women have had, as a rule, great fathers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mother of Shakespeare was, without doubt, one of the greatest of
+      women. She dowered her son with passion and imagination and the higher
+      qualities of the soul, beyond all other men. It has been said that a man
+      of genius should select his ancestors with great care&mdash;and yet there
+      does not seem to be as much in heredity as most people think. The children
+      of the great are often small. Pigmies are born in palaces, while over the
+      children of genius is the roof of straw. Most of the great are like
+      mountains, with the valley of ancestors on one side and the depression of
+      posterity on the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his day Shakespeare was of no particular importance. It may be that his
+      mother had some marvelous and prophetic dreams, but Stratford was
+      unconscious of the immortal child. He was never engaged in a reputable
+      business. Socially he occupied a position below servants. The law
+      described him as "a sturdy vagabond." He was neither a noble, a soldier,
+      nor a priest. Among the half-civilized people of England, he who amused
+      and instructed them was regarded as a menial. Kings had their clowns, the
+      people their actors and musicians. Shakespeare was scheduled as a servant.
+      It is thus that successful stupidity has always treated genius. Mozart was
+      patronized by an Archbishop&mdash;lived in the palace,&mdash;but was
+      compelled to eat with the scullions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The composer of divine melodies was not fit to sit by the side of the
+      theologian, who long ago would have been forgotten but for the fame of the
+      composer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We know but little of the personal peculiarities, of the daily life, or of
+      what may be called the outward Shakespeare, and it may be fortunate that
+      so little is known. He might have been belittled by friendly fools. What
+      silly stories, what idiotic personal reminiscences, would have been
+      remembered by those who scarcely saw him! We have his best&mdash;his
+      sublimest&mdash;and we have probably lost only the trivial and the
+      worthless. All that is known can be written on a page.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are tolerably certain of the date of his birth, of his marriage and of
+      his death. We think he went to London in 1586, when he was twenty-two
+      years old. We think that three years afterwards he was part owner of
+      Blackfriars' Theatre. We have a few signatures, some of which are supposed
+      to be genuine. We know that he bought some land&mdash;that he had two or
+      three law-suits. We know the names of his children. We also know that this
+      incomparable man&mdash;so apart from, and so familiar with, all the world&mdash;lived
+      during his literary life in London&mdash;that he was an actor, dramatist
+      and manager&mdash;that he returned to Stratford, the place of his birth,&mdash;that
+      he gave his writings to negligence, deserted the children of his brain&mdash;that
+      he died on the anniversary of his birth at the age of fifty-two, and that
+      he was buried in the church where the images had been defaced, and that on
+      his tomb was chiseled a rude, absurd and ignorant epitaph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No letter of his to any human being has been found, and no line written by
+      him can be shown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And here let me give my explanation of the epitaph. Shakespeare was an
+      actor&mdash;a disreputable business&mdash;but he made money&mdash;always
+      reputable. He came back from London a rich man. He bought land, and built
+      houses. Some of the supposed great probably treated him with deference.
+      When he died he was buried in the church. Then came a reaction. The pious
+      thought the church had been profaned. They did not feel that the ashes of
+      an actor were fit to lie in holy ground. The people began to say the body
+      ought to be removed. Then it was, as I believe, that Dr. John Hall,
+      Shakespeare's son-in-law, had this epitaph cut on the tomb:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare To digg the dust enclosed heare:
+      Blese be ye man yt spares thes stones, And curst be he yt moves my bones."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Certainly Shakespeare could have had no fear that his tomb would be
+      violated. How could it have entered his mind to have put a warning, a
+      threat and a blessing, upon his grave? But the ignorant people of that day
+      were no doubt convinced that the epitaph was the voice of the dead, and so
+      feeling they feared to invade the tomb. In this way the dust was left in
+      peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This epitaph gave me great trouble for years. It puzzled me to explain why
+      he, who erected the intellectual pyramids,&mdash;great ranges of mountains&mdash;should
+      put such a pebble at his tomb. But when I stood beside the grave and read
+      the ignorant words, the explanation I have given flashed upon me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      IT has been said that Shakespeare was hardly mentioned by his
+      contemporaries, and that he was substantially unknown. This is a mistake.
+      In 1600 a book was published called "<i>England's Parnassus</i>" and it
+      contained ninety extracts from Shakespeare. In the same year was published
+      the "<i>Garden of the Muses</i>" containing several pieces from
+      Shakespeare, Chapman, Marston and Ben Johnson. "<i>England's Helicon</i>"
+      was printed in the same year, and contained poems from Spenser, Greene,
+      Harvey and Shakespeare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1600 a play was acted at Cambridge, in which Shakespeare was alluded to
+      as follows: "Why, here's our fellow Shakespeare who puts them all down."
+      John Weaver published a book of poems in 1595, in which there was a sonnet
+      to Shakespeare. In 1598 Richard Bamfield wrote a poem to Shakespeare.
+      Francis Meres, "clergyman, master of arts in both universities, compiler
+      of school books," was the author of the "Wits' Treasury." In this he
+      compares the ancient and modern tragic poets, and mentions Marlowe, Peel,
+      Kyd and Shakespeare. So he compares the writers of comedies, and mentions
+      Lilly, Lodge, Greene and Shakespeare. He speaks of elegiac poets, and
+      names Surrey, Wyatt, Sidney, Raleigh and Shakespeare. He compares the
+      lyric poets, and names Spencer, Drayton, Shakespeare and others. This same
+      writer, speaking of Horace, says that England has Sidney, Shakespeare and
+      others, and that "as the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in
+      Pythagoras, so the sweet-wittie soul of Ovid lives in the mellifluous and
+      honey-tongued Shakespeare." He also says: "If the Muses could speak
+      English, they would speak in Shakespeare's phrase." This was in 1598. In
+      1607, John Davies alludes in a poem to Shakespeare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course we are all familiar with what rare Ben Jonson wrote. Henry
+      Chettle took Shakespeare to task because he wrote nothing on the death of
+      Queen Elizabeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may be wonderful that he was not better known. But is it not wonderful
+      that he gained the reputation that he did in so short a time, and that
+      twelve years after he began to write he stood at least with the first?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      BUT there is a wonderful fact connected with the writings of Shakespeare:
+      In the Plays there is no direct mention of any of his contemporaries. We
+      do not know of any poet, author, soldier, sailor, statesman, priest,
+      nobleman, king, or queen, that Shakespeare directly mentioned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Is it not marvellous that he, living in an age of great deeds, of
+      adventures in far off lands and unknown seas&mdash;in a time of religious
+      wars&mdash;in the days of the Armada&mdash;the massacre of St. Bartholomew&mdash;the
+      Edict of Nantes&mdash;the assassination of Henry III.&mdash;the victory of
+      Lepanto&mdash;the execution of Marie Stuart&mdash;did not mention the name
+      of any man or woman of his time? Some have insisted that the paragraph
+      ending with the lines:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The imperial votress passed on in maiden meditation fancy free,"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      referred to Queen Elizabeth; but it is impossible for me to believe that
+      the daubed and wrinkled face, the small black eyes, the cruel nose, the
+      thin lips, the bad teeth, and the red wig of Queen Elizabeth could by any
+      possibility have inspired these marvellous lines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is perfectly apparent from Shakespeare's writings that he knew but
+      little of the nobility, little of kings and queens. He gives to these
+      supposed great people great thoughts, and puts great words in their mouths
+      and makes them speak&mdash;not as they really did&mdash;but as Shakespeare
+      thought such people should. This demonstrates that he did not know them
+      personally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some have insisted that Shakespeare mentions Queen Elizabeth in the last
+      Scene of Henry VIII. The answer to this is that Shakespeare did not write
+      the last Scene in that Play. The probability is that Fletcher was the
+      author.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shakespeare lived during the great awakening of the world, when Europe
+      emerged from the darkness of the Middle Ages, when the discovery of
+      America had made England, that blossom of the Gulf-Stream, the centre of
+      commerce, and during a period when some of the greatest writers, thinkers,
+      soldiers and discoverers were produced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cervantes was born in 1547, dying on the same day that Shakespeare died.
+      He was undoubtedly the greatest writer that Spain has produced. Rubens was
+      born in 1577. Camoens, the Portuguese, the author of the <i>Lusiad</i>,
+      died in 1597. Giordano Bruno&mdash;greatest of martyrs&mdash;was born in
+      1548&mdash;visited London in Shakespeare's time&mdash;delivered lectures
+      at Oxford, and called that institution "the widow of learning." Drake
+      circled the globe in 1580. Galileo was born in 1564&mdash;the same year
+      with Shakespeare. Michael Angelo died in 1563. Kepler&mdash;he of the
+      Three Laws&mdash;born in 1571. Calderon, the Spanish dramatist, born in
+      1601. Corneille, the French poet, in 1606. Rembrandt, greatest of
+      painters, 1607. Shakespeare was born in 1564. In that year John Calvin
+      died. What a glorious exchange!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seventy-two years after the discovery of America Shakespeare was born, and
+      England was filled with the voyages and discoveries written by Hakluyt,
+      and the wonders that had been seen by Raleigh, by Drake, by Frobisher and
+      Hawkins. London had become the centre of the world, and representatives
+      from all known countries were in the new metropolis. The world had been
+      doubled. The imagination had been touched and kindled by discovery. In the
+      far horizon were unknown lands, strange shores beyond untraversed seas.
+      Toward every part of the world were turned the prows of adventure. All
+      these things fanned the imagination into flame, and this had its effect
+      upon the literary and dramatic world. And yet Shakespeare&mdash;the master
+      spirit of mankind&mdash;in the midst of these discoveries, of these
+      adventures, mentioned no navigator, no general, no discoverer, no
+      philosopher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Galileo was reading the open volume of the sky, but Shakespeare did not
+      mention him. This to me is the most marvellous thing connected with this
+      most marvellous man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that time England was prosperous&mdash;was then laying the foundation
+      of her future greatness and power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When men are prosperous, they are in love with life. Nature grows
+      beautiful, the arts begin to flourish, there is work for painter and
+      sculptor, the poet is born, the stage is erected&mdash;and this life with
+      which men are in love, is represented in a thousand forms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nature, or Fate, or Chance prepared a stage for Shakespeare, and
+      Shakespeare prepared a stage for Nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Famine and faith go together. In disaster and want the gaze of man is
+      fixed upon another world. He that eats a crust has a creed. Hunger falls
+      upon its knees, and heaven, looked for through tears, is the mirage of
+      misery. But prosperity brings joy and wealth and leisure&mdash;and the
+      beautiful is born.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the effects of the worlds awakening was Shakespeare. We account for
+      this man as we do for the highest mountain, the greatest river, the most
+      perfect gem. We can only say: He was.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "It hath been taught us from the primal state
+     That he which is was wished until he were."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      IN Shakespeare's time the actor was a vagabond, the dramatist a
+      disreputable person&mdash;and yet the greatest dramas were then written.
+      In spite of law, and social ostracism, Shakespeare reared the many-colored
+      dome that fills and glorifies the intellectual heavens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the whole civilized world believes in the theatre&mdash;asks for some
+      great dramatist&mdash;is hungry for a play worthy of the century, is
+      anxious to give gold and fame to any one who can worthily put our age upon
+      the stage&mdash;and yet no great play has been written since Shakespeare
+      died.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shakespeare pursued the highway of the right. He did not seek to put his
+      characters in a position where it was right to do wrong. He was sound and
+      healthy to the centre. It never occurred to him to write a play in which a
+      wife's lover should be jealous of her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was in his blood the courage of his thought. He was true to himself
+      and enjoyed the perfect freedom of the highest art. He did not write
+      according to rules&mdash;but smaller men make rules from what he wrote.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How fortunate that Shakespeare was not educated at Oxford&mdash;that the
+      winged god within him never knelt to the professor. How fortunate that
+      this giant was not captured, tied and tethered by the literary Liliputians
+      of his time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was an idealist. He did not&mdash;like most writers of our time&mdash;take
+      refuge in the real, hiding a lack of genius behind a pretended love of
+      truth. All realities are not poetic, or dramatic, or even worth knowing.
+      The real sustains the same relation to the ideal that a stone does to a
+      statue&mdash;or that paint does to a painting. Realism degrades and
+      impoverishes. In no event can a realist be more than an imitator and
+      copyist. According to the realist's philosophy, the wax that receives and
+      retains an image is an artist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shakespeare did not rely on the stage-carpenter, or the scenic painter. He
+      put his scenery in his lines. There you will find mountains and rivers and
+      seas, valleys and cliffs, violets and clouds, and over all "the firmament
+      fretted with gold and fire." He cared little for plot, little for
+      surprise. He did not rely on stage effects, or red fire. The plays grow
+      before your eyes, and they come as the morning comes. Plot surprises but
+      once. There must be something in a play besides surprise. Plot in an
+      author is a kind of strategy&mdash;that is to say, a sort of cunning, and
+      cunning does not belong to the highest natures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is in Shakespeare such a wealth of thought that the plot becomes
+      almost immaterial&mdash;and such is this wealth that you can hardly know
+      the play&mdash;there is too much. After you have heard it again and again,
+      it seems as pathless as an untrodden forest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He belonged to all lands. "Timon of Athens" is as Greek as any tragedy of
+      Eschylus. "Julius Caesar" and "Coriolanus" are perfect Roman, and as you
+      read, the mighty ruins rise and the Eternal City once again becomes the
+      mistress of the world. No play is more Egyptian than "Antony and
+      Cleopatra"&mdash;the Nile runs through it, the shadows of the pyramids
+      fall upon it, and from its scenes the Sphinx gazes forever on the
+      outstretched sands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In "Lear" is the true pagan spirit. "Romeo and Juliet" is Italian&mdash;everything
+      is sudden, love bursts into immediate flower, and in every scene is the
+      climate of the land of poetry and passion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reason of this is, that Shakespeare dealt with elemental things, with
+      universal man. He knew that locality colors without changing, and that in
+      all surroundings the human heart is substantially the same.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not all the poetry written before his time would make his sum&mdash;not
+      all that has been written since, added to all that was written before,
+      would equal his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was nothing within the range of human thought, within the horizon of
+      intellectual effort, that he did not touch. He knew the brain and heart of
+      man&mdash;the theories, customs, superstitions, hopes, fears, hatreds,
+      vices and virtues of the human race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew the thrills and ecstacies of love, the savage joys of hatred and
+      revenge. He heard the hiss of envy's snakes and watched the eagles of
+      ambition soar. There was no hope that did not put its star above his head&mdash;no
+      fear he had not felt&mdash;no joy that had not shed its sunshine on his
+      face. He experienced the emotions of mankind. He was the intellectual
+      spendthrift of the world. He gave with the generosity, the extravagance,
+      of madness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Read one play, and you are impressed with the idea that the wealth of the
+      brain of a god has been exhausted&mdash;that there are no more
+      comparisons, no more passions to be expressed, no more definitions, no
+      more philosophy, beauty, or sublimity to be put in words&mdash;and yet,
+      the next play opens as fresh as the dewy gates of another day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The outstretched wings of his imagination filled the sky. He was the
+      intellectual crown o' the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      THE plays of Shakespeare show so much knowledge, thought and learning,
+      that many people&mdash;those who imagine that universities furnish
+      capacity&mdash;contend that Bacon must have been the author.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We know Bacon. We know that he was a scheming politician, a courtier, a
+      time-server of church and king, and a corrupt judge. We know that he never
+      admitted the truth of the Copernican system&mdash;that he was doubtful
+      whether instruments were of any advantage in scientific investigation&mdash;that
+      he was ignorant of the higher branches of mathematics, and that, as a
+      matter of fact, he added but little to the knowledge of the world. When he
+      was more than sixty years of age, he turned his attention to poetry, and
+      dedicated his verses to George Herbert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If you will read these verses you will say that the author of "Lear" and
+      "Hamlet" did not write them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bacon dedicated his work on the <i>Advancement of Learning, Divine and
+      Human</i>, to James I., and in his dedication he stated that there had not
+      been, since the time of Christ, any king or monarch so learned in all
+      erudition, divine or human. He placed James the First before Marcus
+      Aurelius and all other kings and emperors since Christ, and concluded by
+      saying that James the First had "the power and fortune of a king, the
+      illumination of a priest, the learning and universality of a philosopher."
+      This was written of James the First, described by Macauley as a
+      "stammering, slobbering, trembling coward, whose writings were deformed by
+      the grossest and vilest superstitions&mdash;witches being the special
+      objects of his fear, his hatred, and his persecution."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seems to have been taken for granted that if Shakespeare was not the
+      author of the great dramas, Lord Bacon must have been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It has been claimed that Bacon was the greatest philosopher of his time.
+      And yet in reading his works we find that there was in his mind a strange
+      mingling of foolishness and philosophy. He takes pains to tell us, and to
+      write it down for the benefit of posterity, that "snow is colder than
+      water, because it hath more spirit in it, and that quicksilver is the
+      coldest of all metals, because it is the fullest of spirit."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stated that he hardly believed that you could contract air by putting
+      opium on top of the weather glass, and gave the following reason:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I conceive that opium and the like make spirits fly rather by malignity
+      than by cold."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This great philosopher gave the following recipe for staunching blood:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thrust the part that bleedeth into the body of a capon, new ripped and
+      bleeding. This will staunch the blood. The blood, as it seemeth, sucking
+      and drawing up by similitude of substance the blood it meeteth with, and
+      so itself going back."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The philosopher also records this important fact:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Divers witches among heathen and Christians have fed upon man's flesh to
+      aid, as it seemeth, their imagination with high and foul vapors."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Bacon was not only a philosopher, but he was a biologist, as appears
+      from the following:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As for living creatures, it is certain that their vital spirits are a
+      substance compounded of an airy and flamy matter, and although air and
+      flame being free will not mingle, yet bound in by a body that hath some
+      fixing, will."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now and then the inventor of deduction reasons by analogy. He says:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As snow and ice holpen, and their cold activated by nitre or salt, will
+      turn water into ice, so it may be it will turn wood or stiff clay into
+      stone."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bacon seems to have been a believer in the transmutation of metals, and
+      solemnly gives a formula for changing silver or copper into gold. He also
+      believed in the transmutation of plants, and had arrived at such a height
+      in entomology that he informed the world that "insects have no blood."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is claimed that he was a great observer, and as evidence of this he
+      recorded the wonderful fact that "tobacco cut and dried by the fire loses
+      weight;" that "bears in the winter wax fat in sleep, though they eat
+      nothing;" that "tortoises have no bones;" that "there is a kind of stone,
+      if ground and put in water where cattle drink, the cows will give more
+      milk;" that "it is hard to cure a hurt in a Frenchman's head, but easy in
+      his leg; that it is hard to cure a hurt in an Englishman's leg, but easy
+      in his head;" that "wounds made with brass weapons are easier to cure than
+      those made with iron;" that "lead will multiply and increase, as in
+      statues buried in the ground;" and that "the rainbow touching anything
+      causeth a sweet smell."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bacon seems also to have turned his attention to ornithology, and says
+      that "eggs laid in the full of the moon breed better birds," and that "you
+      can make swallows white by putting ointment on the eggs before they are
+      hatched."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He also informs us "that witches cannot hurt kings as easily as they can
+      common people;" that "perfumes dry and strengthen the brain;" that "any
+      one in the moment of triumph can be injured by another who casts an
+      envious eye, and the injury is greatest when the envious glance comes from
+      the oblique eye."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Bacon also turned his attention to medicine, and he states that
+      "bracelets made of snakes are good for curing cramps;" that the "skin of a
+      wolf might cure the colic, because a wolf has great digestion;" that
+      "eating the roasted brains of hens and hares strengthens the memory;" that
+      "if a woman about to become a mother eats a good many quinces and
+      considerable coriander seed, the child will be ingenious," and that "the
+      moss which groweth on the skull of an unburied dead man is good for
+      staunching blood."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He expresses doubt, however, "as to whether you can cure a wound by
+      putting ointment on the weapon that caused the wound, instead of on the
+      wound itself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is claimed by the advocates of the Baconian theory that their hero
+      stood at the top of science; and yet "it is absolutely certain that he was
+      ignorant of the law of the acceleration of falling bodies, although the
+      law had been made known and printed by Galileo thirty years before Bacon
+      wrote upon the subject. Neither did this great man understand the
+      principle of the lever. He was not acquainted with the precession of the
+      equinoxes, and as a matter of fact was ill-read in those branches of
+      learning in which, in his time, the most rapid progress had been made."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After Kepler discovered his third law, which was on the 15th of May, 1618,
+      Bacon was more than ever opposed to the Copernican system. This great man
+      was far behind his own time, not only in astronomy, but in mathematics. In
+      the preface to the "Descriptio Globi Intellectualisa" it is admitted
+      either that Bacon had never heard of the correction of the parallax, or
+      was unable to understand it. He complained on account of the want of some
+      method for shortening mathematical calculations; and yet "Napier's
+      Logarithms" had been printed nine years before the date of his complaint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He attempted to form a table of specific gravities by a rude process of
+      his own, a process that no one has ever followed; and he did this in spite
+      of the fact that a far better method existed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have the right to compare what Bacon wrote with what it is claimed
+      Shakespeare produced. I call attention to one thing&mdash;to Bacon's
+      opinion of human love. It is this:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The stage is more beholding to love than the life of man. As to the
+      stage, love is ever matter of comedies and now and then of tragedies, but
+      in life it doth much mischief&mdash;sometimes like a siren, sometimes like
+      a fury. Amongst all the great and worthy persons there is not one that
+      hath been transported to the mad degree of love, which shows that great
+      spirits and great business do keep out this weak passion."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The author of "Romeo and Juliet" never wrote that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seems certain that the author of the wondrous Plays was one of the
+      noblest of men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us see what sense of honor Bacon had.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In writing commentaries on certain passages of Scripture, Lord Bacon tells
+      a courtier, who has committed some offense, how to get back into the
+      graces of his prince or king. Among other things he tells him not to
+      appear too cheerful, but to assume a very grave and modest face; not to
+      bring the matter up himself; to be extremely industrious, so that the
+      prince will see that it is hard to get along without him; also to get his
+      friends to tell the prince or king how badly he, the courtier, feels; and
+      then he says, all these failing, "let him contrive to transfer the fault
+      to others."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is true that we know but little of Shakespeare, and consequently do not
+      positively know that he did not have the ability to write the Plays&mdash;but
+      we do know Bacon, and we know that he could not have written these Plays&mdash;consequently,
+      they must have been written by a comparatively unknown man&mdash;that is
+      to say, by a man who was known by no other writings. The fact that we do
+      not know Shakespeare, except through the Plays and Sonnets, makes it
+      possible for us to believe that he was the author.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some people have imagined that the Plays were written by several&mdash;but
+      this only increases the wonder, and adds a useless burden to credulity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bacon published in his time all the writings that he claimed. Naturally,
+      he would have claimed his best. Is it possible that Bacon left the
+      wondrous children of his brain on the door-step of Shakespeare, and kept
+      the deformed ones at home? Is it possible that he fathered the failures
+      and deserted the perfect?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course, it is wonderful that so little has been found touching
+      Shakespeare&mdash;but is it not equally wonderful, if Bacon was the
+      author, that not a line has been found in all his papers, containing a
+      suggestion, or a hint, that he was the writer of these Plays? Is it not
+      wonderful that no fragment of any scene&mdash;no line&mdash;no word&mdash;has
+      been found?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some have insisted that Bacon kept the authorship secret, because it was
+      disgraceful to write Plays. This argument does not cover the Sonnets&mdash;and
+      besides, one who had been stripped of the robes of office, for receiving
+      bribes as a judge, could have borne the additional disgrace of having
+      written "Hamlet." The fact that Bacon did not claim to be the author,
+      demonstrates that he was not. Shakespeare claimed to be the author, and no
+      one in his time or day denied the claim. This demonstrates that he was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bacon published his works, and said to the world: This is what I have
+      done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suppose you found in a cemetery a monument erected to John Smith, inventor
+      of the Smith-churn, and suppose you were told that Mr. Smith provided for
+      the monument in his will, and dictated the inscription&mdash;would it be
+      possible to convince you that Mr. Smith was also the inventor of the
+      locomotive and telegraph?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bacon's best can be compared with Shakespeare's common, but Shakespeare's
+      best rises above Bacon's best, like a domed temple above a beggar's hut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      OF course it is admitted that there were many dramatists before and during
+      the time of Shakespeare&mdash;but they were only the foot hills of that
+      mighty peak the top of which the clouds and mists still hide. Chapman and
+      Marlowe, Heywood and Jonson, Webster, Beaumont and Fletcher wrote some
+      great lines, and in the monotony of declamation now and then is found a
+      strain of genuine music&mdash;but all of them together constituted only a
+      herald of Shakespeare. In all these Plays there is but a hint, a prophecy,
+      of the great drama destined to revolutionize the poetic thought of the
+      world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shakespeare was the greatest of poets. What Greece and Rome produced was
+      great until his time. "Lions make leopards tame."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great poet is a great artist. He is painter and sculptor. The greatest
+      pictures and statues have been painted and chiseled with words. They
+      outlast all others. All the galleries of the world are poor and cheap
+      compared with the statues and pictures in Shakespeare's book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Language is made of pictures represented by sounds. The outer world is a
+      dictionary of the mind, and the artist called the soul uses this
+      dictionary of things to express what happens in the noiseless and
+      invisible world of thought. First a sound represents something in the
+      outer world, and afterwards something in the inner, and this sound at last
+      is represented by a mark, and this mark stands for a picture, and every
+      brain is a gallery, and the artists&mdash;that is to say, the souls&mdash;exchange
+      pictures and statues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All art is of the same parentage. The poet uses words&mdash;makes pictures
+      and statues of sounds. The sculptor expresses harmony, proportion,
+      passion, in marble; the composer, in music; the painter in form and color.
+      The dramatist expresses himself not only in words, not only paints these
+      pictures, but he expresses his thought in action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shakespeare was not only a poet, but a dramatist, and expressed the ideal,
+      the poetic, not only in words, but in action. There are the wit, the
+      humor, the pathos, the tragedy of situation, of relation. The dramatist
+      speaks and acts through others&mdash;his personality is lost. The poet
+      lives in the world of thought and feeling, and to this the dramatist adds
+      the world of action. He creates characters that seem to act in accordance
+      with their own natures and independently of him. He compresses lives into
+      hours, tells us the secrets of the heart, shows us the springs of action&mdash;how
+      desire bribes the judgment and corrupts the will&mdash;how weak the reason
+      is when passion pleads, and how grand it is to stand for right against the
+      world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not enough to say fine things,&mdash;great things, dramatic things,
+      must be done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let me give you an illustration of dramatic incident accompanying the
+      highest form of poetic expression:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Macbeth having returned from the murder of Duncan says to his wife:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Methought I heard a voice cry:
+     Sleep no more, Macbeth does murder sleep; the innocent sleep;
+     Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,
+     The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
+     Balm of hurt minds, great Nature's second course,
+     Chief nourisher in life's feast."  *  *  *
+
+     "Still it cried:
+     Sleep no more, to all the house,
+     Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor
+     Shall sleep no more&mdash;Macbeth shall sleep no more."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      She exclaims:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Who was it that thus cried? Why, worthy
+     Thane, you do unbend your noble strength
+     To think so brain-sickly of things; get some water,
+     And wash this filthy witness from your hand.
+     Why did you bring the daggers from the place?"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Macbeth was so overcome with horror at his own deed, that he not only
+      mistook his thoughts for the words of others, but was so carried away and
+      beyond himself that he brought with him the daggers&mdash;the evidence of
+      his guilt&mdash;the daggers that he should have left with the dead. This
+      is dramatic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the same play, the difference of feeling before and after the
+      commission of a crime is illustrated to perfection. When Macbeth is on his
+      way to assassinate the king, the bell strikes, and he says, or whispers:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Afterward, when the deed has been committed, and a knocking is heard at
+      the gate, he cries:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Wake Duncan with thy knocking.    I would thou couldst."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Let me give one more instance of dramatic action. When Antony speaks above
+      the body of Cæsar he says:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "You all do know this mantle: I remember
+     The first time ever Cæsar put it on&mdash;
+     'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent,
+     That day he overcame the Nervii:
+     Look!    In this place ran Cassius' dagger through:
+     See what a rent the envious Casca made!
+     Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed,
+     And as he plucked his cursed steel away,
+     Mark how the blood of Cæsar followed it."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      THERE are men, and many of them, who are always trying to show that
+      somebody else chiseled the statue or painted the picture,&mdash;that the
+      poem is attributed to the wrong man, and that the battle was really won by
+      a subordinate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course Shakespeare made use of the work of others&mdash;and, we might
+      almost say, of all others. Every writer must use the work of others. The
+      only question is, how the accomplishments of other minds are used, whether
+      as a foundation to build higher, or whether stolen to the end that the
+      thief may make a reputation for himself, without adding to the great
+      structure of literature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thousands of people have stolen stones from the Coliseum to make huts for
+      themselves. So thousands of writers have taken the thoughts of others with
+      which to adorn themselves. These are plagiarists. But the man who takes
+      the thought of another, adds to it, gives it intensity and poetic form,
+      throb and life,&mdash;is in the highest sense original.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shakespeare found nearly all of his facts in the writings of others and
+      was indebted to others for most of the stories of his plays. The question
+      is not: Who furnished the stone, or who owned the quarry, but who chiseled
+      the statue?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We now know all the books that Shakespeare could have read, and
+      consequently know many of the sources of his information. We find in <i>Pliny's
+      Natural History</i>, published in 1601, the following: "The sea Pontis
+      evermore floweth and runneth out into the Propontis; but the sea never
+      retireth back again with the Impontis." This was the raw material, and out
+      of it Shakespeare made the following:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Like to the Pontic Sea,
+     Whose icy current and compulsive course
+     Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on
+     To the Propontic and the Hellespont&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;
+
+     "Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace,
+     Shall ne'er turn back, ne'er ebb to humble love,
+     Till that a capable and wide revenge
+     Swallow them up."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps we can give an idea of the difference between Shakespeare and
+      other poets, by a passage from "Lear." When Cordelia places her hand upon
+      her father's head and speaks of the night and of the storm, an ordinary
+      poet might have said:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "On such a night, a dog
+     Should have stood against my fire."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      A very great poet might have gone a step further and exclaimed:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "On such a night, mine enemy's dog
+     Should have stood against my fire."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      But Shakespeare said:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Mine enemy's dog, though he had bit me,
+     Should have stood, that night, against my fire."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Of all the poets&mdash;of all the writers&mdash;Shakespeare is the most
+      original. He is as original as Nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may truthfully be said that "Nature wants stuff to vie strange forms
+      with fancy, to make another."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VIII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      THERE is in the greatest poetry a kind of extravagance that touches the
+      infinite, and in this Shakespeare exceeds all others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You will remember the description given of the voyage of Paris in search
+      of Helen:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "The seas and winds, old wranglers, made a truce,
+     And did him service; he touched the ports desired,"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And for an old aunt, whom the Greeks held captive,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "He brought a Grecian queen whose youth and freshness
+     Wrinkles Apollo, and makes stale the morning."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      So, in Pericles, when the father finds his daughter, he cries out:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "O Helicanus! strike me, honored sir;
+     Give me a gash, put me to present pain,
+     Lest this great sea of joys, rushing upon me,
+     O'erbear the shores of my mortality."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The greatest compliment that man has ever paid to the woman he adores is
+      this line:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Eyes that do mislead the morn."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Nothing can be conceived more perfectly poetic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In that marvellous play, the "Midsummer Nights Dream," is one of the most
+      extravagant things in literature:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+              "Thou rememberest
+     Since once I sat upon a promontory,
+     And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back
+     Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
+     That the rude sea grew civil at her song,
+     And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
+     To hear the sea-maid's music."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      This is so marvellously told that it almost seems probable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So the description of Mark Antony:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                "For his bounty
+      There was no winter in't&mdash;an autumn t'was
+      That grew the more by reaping.
+      His delights Were dolphin-like&mdash;they showed his back above
+      The element they lived in."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Think of the astronomical scope and amplitude of this:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Her bed is India&mdash;there she lies a pearl."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Is there anything more intense than these words of Cleopatra?
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Rather on Nilus mud lay me stark naked
+     And let the water-flies blow me into abhorring."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Or this of Isabella:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "The impression of keen whips I'd wear as rubies,
+     And strip myself to death as to a bed
+     That longing I've been sick for, ere I yield
+     My body up to shame."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Is there an intellectual man in the world who will not agree with this?
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+          "Let me not live
+     After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff
+     Of younger spirits."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Can anything exceed the words of Troilus when parting with Cressida:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "We two, that with so many thousand sighs
+     Did buy each other, most poorly sell ourselves
+     With the rude brevity and discharge of one.
+
+     "Injurious time now with a robber's haste
+     Crams his rich thievery up, he knows not how;
+     As many farewells as be stars in heaven,
+     With distinct breath and consigned kisses to them,
+     He fumbles up into a loose adieu,
+     And scants us with a single famished kiss,
+     Distasted with the salt of broken tears."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Take this example, where pathos almost touches the grotesque.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "O dear Juliet, why art thou yet so fair?
+     Shall I believe that unsubstantial death is amorous,
+     And that the lean, abhorred monster keeps thee here
+     I' the dark, to be his paramour?"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Often when reading the marvellous lines of Shakespeare, I feel that his
+      thoughts are "too subtle potent, tuned too sharp in sweetness, for the
+      capacity of my ruder powers." Sometimes I cry out, "O churl!&mdash;write
+      all, and leave no thoughts for those who follow after."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IX.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      SHAKESPEARE was an innovator, an iconoclast. He cared nothing for the
+      authority of men or of schools. He violated the "unities," and cared&mdash;nothing
+      for the models of the ancient world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Greeks insisted that nothing should be in a play that did not tend to
+      the catastrophe. They did not believe in the episode&mdash;in the sudden
+      contrasts of light and shade&mdash;in mingling the comic and the tragic.
+      The sunlight never fell upon their tears, and darkness did not overtake
+      their laughter. They believed that nature sympathized or was in harmony
+      with the events of the play. When crime was about to be committed&mdash;some
+      horror to be perpetrated&mdash;the light grew dim, the wind sighed, the
+      trees shivered, and upon all was the shadow of the coming event.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shakespeare knew that the play had little to do with the tides and
+      currents of universal life&mdash;that Nature cares neither for smiles nor
+      tears, for life nor death, and that the sun shines as gladly on coffins as
+      on cradles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first time I visited the Place de la Concorde, where during the French
+      Revolution stood the guillotine, and where now stands an Egyptian obelisk&mdash;a
+      bird, sitting on the top, was singing with all its might.&mdash;Nature
+      forgets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the most notable instances of the violation by Shakespeare of the
+      classic model, is found in the 6th Scene of the I. Act of Macbeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the King and Banquo approach the castle in which the King is to be
+      murdered that night, no shadow falls athwart the threshold. So beautiful
+      is the scene that the King says:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air
+     Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
+     Unto our gentle senses."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And Banquo adds:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "This guest of summer,
+     The temple-haunting martlet, does approve
+     By his loved mansionry that the heaven's breath
+     Smells wooingly here; no jutty, frieze,
+     Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird
+     Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle.
+     Where they most breed and haunt,
+     I have observed
+     The air is delicate."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Another notable instance is the porter scene immediately following the
+      murder. So, too, the dialogue with the clown who brings the asp to
+      Cleopatra just before the suicide, illustrates my meaning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I know of one paragraph in the Greek drama worthy of Shakespeare. This is
+      in "Medea." When Medea kills her children she curses Jason, using the
+      ordinary Billingsgate and papal curse, but at the conclusion says: "I pray
+      the gods to make him virtuous, that he may the more deeply feel the pang
+      that I inflict."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shakespeare dealt in lights and shadows. He was intense. He put noons and
+      midnights side by side. No other dramatist would have dreamed of adding to
+      the pathos&mdash;of increasing our appreciation of Lear's agony, by
+      supplementing the wail of the mad king with the mocking laughter of a
+      loving clown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      X.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      THE ordinary dramatists&mdash;the men of talent&mdash;(and there is the
+      same difference between talent and genius that there is between a
+      stone-mason and a sculptor) create characters that become types. Types are
+      of necessity caricatures&mdash;actual men and women are to some extent
+      contradictory in their actions. Types are blown in the one direction by
+      the one wind&mdash;characters have pilots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In real people, good and evil mingle. Types are all one way, or all the
+      other&mdash;all good, or all bad, all wise or all foolish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pecksniff was a perfect type, a perfect hypocrite&mdash;and will remain a
+      type as long as language lives&mdash;a hypocrite that even drunkenness
+      could not change. Everybody understands Pecksniff, and compared with him
+      Tartuffe was an honest man. Hamlet is an individual, a person, an actual
+      being&mdash;and for that reason there is a difference of opinion ias to
+      his motives and as to his character. We differ About Hamlet as we do about
+      Cæsar, or about Shakespeare himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hamlet saw the ghost of his father and heard again his father's voice, and
+      yet, afterwards, he speaks of
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In this there is no contradiction. The reason outweighs the senses. If we
+      should see a dead man rise from his grave, we would not, the next day,
+      believe that we did. No one can credit a miracle until it becomes so
+      common that it ceases to be miraculous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Types are puppets&mdash;controlled from without&mdash;characters act from
+      within. There is the same difference between characters and types that
+      there is between springs and water-works, between canals and rivers,
+      between wooden soldiers and heroes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In most plays and in most novels the characters are so shadowy that we
+      have to piece them out with the imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One waking in the morning sometimes sees at the foot of his bed a strange
+      figure&mdash;it may be of an ancient lady with cap and ruffles and with
+      the expression of garrulous and fussy old age&mdash;but when the light
+      gets stronger, the figure gradually changes and he sees a few clothes on a
+      chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dramatist lives the lives of others, and in order to delineate
+      character must not only have imagination but sympathy with the character
+      delineated. The great dramatist thinks of a character as an entirety, as
+      an individual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I once had a dream, and in this dream I was discussing a subject with
+      another man. It occurred to me that I was dreaming, and I then said to
+      myself: If this is a dream, I am doing the talking for both sides&mdash;consequently
+      I ought to know in advance what the other man is going to say. In my dream
+      I tried the experiment. I then asked the other man a question, and before
+      he answered made up my mind what the answer was to be. To my surprise, the
+      man did not say what I expected he would, and so great was my astonishment
+      that I awoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It then occurred to me that I had discovered the secret of Shakespeare. He
+      did, when awake, what I did when asleep&mdash;that is, he threw off a
+      character so perfect that it acted independently of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the delineation of character Shakespeare has no rivals. He creates no
+      monsters. His characters do not act without reason, without motive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Iago had his reasons. In Caliban, nature was not destroyed&mdash;and Lady
+      Macbeth certifies that the woman still was in her heart, by saying:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done it."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Shakespeare's characters act from within. They are centres of energy. They
+      are not pushed by unseen hands, or pulled by unseen strings. They have
+      objects, desires. They are persons&mdash;real, living beings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Few dramatists succeed in getting their characters loose from the canvas&mdash;their
+      backs stick to the wall&mdash;they do not have free and independent action&mdash;they
+      have no background, no unexpressed motives&mdash;no untold desires. They
+      lack the complexity of the real.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shakespeare makes the character true to itself. Christopher Sly,
+      surrounded by the luxuries of a lord, true to his station, calls for a pot
+      of the smallest ale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Take one expression by Lady Macbeth. You remember that after the murder is
+      discovered&mdash;after the alarm bell is rung&mdash;she appears upon the
+      scene wanting to know what has happened. Macduff refuses to tell her,
+      saying that the slightest word would murder as it fell. At this moment
+      Banquo comes upon the scene and Macduff cries out to him:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Our royal master's murdered."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      What does Lady Macbeth then say? She in fact makes a confession of guilt.
+      The weak point in the terrible tragedy is that Duncan was murdered in
+      Macbeth's castle. So when Lady Macbeth hears what they suppose is news to
+      her, she cries:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "What!   In our house!"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Had she been innocent, her horror of the crime would have made her forget
+      the place&mdash;the venue. Banquo sees through this, and sees through her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her expression was a light, by which he saw her guilt&mdash;and he
+      answers:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Too cruel anywhere."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      No matter whether Shakespeare delineated clown or king, warrior or maiden&mdash;no
+      matter whether his characters are taken from the gutter or the throne&mdash;each
+      is a work of consummate art, and when he is unnatural, he is so splendid
+      that the defect is forgotten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Romeo is told of the death of Juliet, and thereupon makes up his mind
+      to die upon her grave, he gives a description of the shop where poison
+      could be purchased. He goes into particulars and tells of the alligators
+      stuffed, of the skins of ill-shaped fishes, of the beggarly account of
+      empty boxes, of the remnants of pack-thread, and old cakes of roses&mdash;and
+      while it is hardly possible to believe that under such circumstances a man
+      would take the trouble to make an inventory of a strange kind of
+      drug-store, yet the inventory is so perfect&mdash;the picture is so
+      marvellously drawn&mdash;that we forget to think whether it is natural or
+      not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In making the frame of a great picture&mdash;of a great scene&mdash;Shakespeare
+      was often careless, but the picture is perfect. In making the sides of the
+      arch he was negligent, but when he placed the keystone, it burst into
+      blossom. Of course there are many lines in Shakepeare that never should
+      have been written. In other words, there are imperfections in his plays.
+      But we must remember that Shakespeare furnished the torch that enables us
+      to see these imperfections.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shakespeare speaks through his characters, and we must not mistake what
+      the characters say, for the opinion of Shakespeare. No one can believe
+      that Shakespeare regarded life as "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound
+      and fury, signifying nothing." That was the opinion of a murderer,
+      surrounded by avengers, and whose wife&mdash;partner in his crimes&mdash;troubled
+      with thick-coming fancies&mdash;had gone down to her death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Most actors and writers seem to suppose that the lines called "The Seven
+      Ages" contain Shakespeare's view of human life. Nothing could be farther
+      from the truth. The lines were uttered by a cynic, in contempt and scorn
+      of the human race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shakespeare did not put his characters in the livery and uniform of some
+      weakness, peculiarity or passion. He did not use names as tags or brands.
+      He did not write under the picture, "This is a villain." His characters
+      need no suggestive names to tell us what they are&mdash;we see them and we
+      know them for ourselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may be that in the greatest utterances of the greatest characters in
+      the supreme moments, we have the real thoughts, opinions and convictions
+      of Shakespeare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of all writers Shakespeare is the most impersonal.. He speaks through
+      others, and the others seem to speak for themselves. The didactic is lost
+      in the dramatic. He does not use the stage as a pulpit to enforce some
+      maxim. He is as reticent as Nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He idealizes the common and transfigures all he touches&mdash;but he does
+      not preach. He was in-terested in men and things as they were. He did not
+      seek: to change them&mdash;but to portray, he was <i>Nature's mirror</i>&mdash;and
+      in that mirror Nature saw herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I stood amid the great trees of California that lift their spreading
+      capitals against the clouds, looking like Nature's columns to support the
+      sky, I thought of the poetry of Shakespeare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      WHAT a procession of men and women&mdash;statesmen and warriors&mdash;kings
+      and clowns&mdash;issued from Shakespeare's brain. What women!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isabella&mdash;in whose spotless life love and reason blended into perfect
+      truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Juliet&mdash;within whose heart passion and purity met like white and red
+      within the bosom of a rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cordelia&mdash;who chose to suffer loss, rather than show her wealth of
+      love with those who gilded lies in hope of gain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hermione&mdash;"tender as infancy and grace"&mdash;who bore with perfect
+      hope and faith the cross of shame, and who at last forgave with all her
+      heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Desdemona&mdash;so innocent, so perfect, her love so pure, that she was
+      incapable of suspecting that another could suspect, and who with dying
+      words sought to hide her lover's crime&mdash;and with her last faint
+      breath uttered a loving lie that burst into a perfumed lily between her
+      pallid lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perdita&mdash;A violet dim, and sweeter than the lids of Junos eyes&mdash;"The
+      sweetest low-born lass that ever ran on the green sward." And Helena&mdash;who
+      said:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "I know I love in vain, strive against hope&mdash;
+     Yet in this captious and intenable sieve
+     I still pour in the waters of my love,
+     And lack not to lose still,
+     Thus, Indian-like, Religious in mine error, I adore
+     The sun that looks upon his worshipper,
+     But knows of him no more."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Miranda&mdash;who told her love as gladly as a flower gives its bosom to
+      the kisses of the sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Cordelia, whose kisses cured and whose tears restored. And stainless
+      Imogen, who cried:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "What is it to be false?"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And here is the description of the perfect woman:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love;
+     To keep her constancy in plight and youth&mdash;
+     Outliving beauty's outward with a mind
+     That doth renew swifter than blood decays."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Shakespeare done more for woman than all the other dramatists of the
+      world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For my part. I love the Clowns. I love <i>Launce</i> and his dog Crabb,
+      and <i>Gobbo</i>, whose conscience threw its arms around the neck of his
+      heart, and <i>Touchstone</i>, with his lie seven times removed; and dear
+      old <i>Dogberry</i>&mdash;a pretty piece of flesh, tedious as a king. And
+      <i>Bottom</i>, the very paramour for a sweet voice, longing to take the
+      part to tear a cat in; and <i>Autolycus</i>, the snapper-up of
+      unconsidered trifles, sleeping out the thought for the life to come. And
+      great <i>Sir John</i>, without conscience, and for that reason unblamed
+      and enjoyed&mdash;and who at the end babbles of green fields, and is
+      almost loved. And ancient <i>Pistol</i>, the world his oyster. And <i>Bardolph</i>,
+      with the flea on his blazing nose, putting beholders in mind of a damned
+      soul in hell. And the poor <i>Fool</i>, who followed the mad king, and
+      went "to bed at noon." And the clown who carried the worm of Nilus, whose
+      "biting was immortal." And <i>Corin</i>, the shepherd&mdash;who described
+      the perfect man: "I am a true laborer: I earn that I eat&mdash;get that I
+      wear&mdash;owe no man aught&mdash;envy no man's happiness&mdash;glad of
+      other men's good&mdash;content."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And mingling in this motley throng, <i>Lear</i>, within whose brain a
+      tempest raged until the depths were stirred, and the intellectual wealth
+      of a life was given back to memory&mdash;and then by madness thrown to
+      storm and night&mdash;and when I read the living lines I feel as though I
+      looked upon the sea and saw it wrought by frenzied whirlwinds, until the
+      buried treasures and the sunken wrecks of all the years were cast upon the
+      shores.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And <i>Othello</i>&mdash;who like the base Indian threw a pearl away
+      richer than all his tribe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And <i>Hamlet</i>&mdash;thought-entangted&mdash;hesitating between two
+      worlds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And <i>Macbeth</i>&mdash;strange mingling of cruelty and conscience,
+      reaping the sure harvest of successful crime&mdash;"Curses not loud but
+      deep&mdash;mouth-honor,&mdash;breath."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And <i>Brutus</i>, falling on his sword that Cæsar might be still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And <i>Romeo</i>, dreaming of the white wonder of Juliet's hand. And <i>Ferdinand</i>,
+      the patient log-man for Miranda's sake. And <i>Florizel</i>, who, "for all
+      the sun sees, or the close earth wombs, or the profound seas hide," would
+      not be faithless to the low-born lass. And <i>Constance</i>, weeping for
+      her son, while grief "stuffs out his vacant garments with his form."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in the midst of tragedies and tears, of love and laughter and crime,
+      we hear the voice of the good friar, who declares that in every human
+      heart, as in the smallest flower, there are encamped the opposed hosts of
+      good and evil&mdash;and our philosophy is interrupted by the garrulous old
+      nurse, whose talk is as busily useless as the babble of a stream that
+      hurries by a ruined mill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From every side the characters crowd upon us&mdash;the men and women born
+      of Shakespeare's brain. They utter with a thousand voices the thoughts of
+      the "myriad-minded" man, and impress themselves upon us as deeply and
+      vividly as though they really lived with us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shakespeare alone has delineated love in every possible phase&mdash;has
+      ascended to the very top, and actually reached heights that no other has
+      imagined. I do not believe the human mind will ever produce or be in a
+      position to appreciate, a greater love-play than "Romeo and Juliet." It is
+      a symphony in which all music seems to blend. The heart bursts into
+      blossom, and he who reads feels the swooning intoxication of a divine
+      perfume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the alembic of Shakespeare's brain the baser metals were turned to gold&mdash;passions
+      became virtues&mdash;weeds became exotics, from some diviner land&mdash;and
+      common mortals made of ordinary clay outranked the Olympian Gods. In his
+      brain there was the touch of chaos that suggests the infinite&mdash;that
+      belongs to genius. Talent is measured and mathematical&mdash;dominated by
+      prudence and the thought of use. Genius is tropical. The creative instinct
+      runs riot, delights in extravagance and waste, and overwhelms the mental
+      beggars of the world with uncounted gold and unnumbered gems.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some things are immortal: The plays of Shakespeare, the marbles of the
+      Greeks, and the music of Wagner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Shakespeare was the greatest of philosophers.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      He knew the conditions of success&mdash;of happiness&mdash;the relations
+      <i>that men, sustain</i> to each other, and the duties of all. He knew the
+      tides and currents of the heart&mdash;the cliffs and caverns of the brain.
+      He knew the weakness of the will, the sophistry of desire&mdash;and "That
+      pleasure and revenge have ears more deaf than adders to the voice of any
+      true decision."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew that the soul lives in an invisible world&mdash;that flesh is but
+      a mask, and that "There is no art to find the mind's construction In the
+      face."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew that courage should be the servant of judgment, and that
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "When valor preys on reason it eats the sword It fights with."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      He knew that man is never "master of the event, that he is to some extent
+      the sport or prey of the blind forces of the world, and that
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      "In the reproof of chance lies the true proof of men."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Feeling that the past is unchangeable, and that that which must happen is
+      as much beyond control as though it had happened, he says:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Let determined things to destiny Hold unbewailed their way."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Shakespeare was great enough to know that every human being prefers
+      happiness to misery, and that crimes are but mistakes. Looking in pity
+      upon the human race, upon the pain and poverty, the crimes and cruelties,
+      the limping travelers on the thorny paths, he was great and good enough to
+      say:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "There is no darkness but ignorance."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In all the philosophies there is no greater line. This great truth fills
+      the heart with pity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew that place and power do not give happiness&mdash;that the crowned
+      are subject as the lowest to fate and chance.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Within the hollow crown
+     That rounds the mortal temples of a king
+     Keeps death his Court, and there the antic sits
+     Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
+     Allowing him a brief and little scene
+     To monarchize by fear and kill with looks,
+     Infusing him with self and vain conceit&mdash;
+     As if this flesh that walls about our life
+     Were brass impregnable; and humored thus,
+     Comes at the last and with a little pin
+     Bores through his castle wall&mdash;and farewell king!"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      So, too, he knew that gold could not bring joy&mdash;that death and
+      misfortune come alike to rich and poor, because:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "If thou art rich thou art poor;
+     For like an ass whose back with ingots bows
+     Thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey,
+     And death unloads thee."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In some of his philosophy there was a kind of scorn&mdash;a hidden meaning
+      that could not in his day and time have safely been expressed. You will
+      remember that Laertes was about to kill the king, and this king was the
+      murderer of his own brother, and sat upon the throne by reason of his
+      crime&mdash;and in the mouth of such a king Shakespeare puts these words:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "There's such divinity doth hedge a king."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      So, in Macbeth
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                 "How he solicits
+     Heaven himself best knows; but strangely visited people
+     All swollen and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,
+     The mere despairs of surgery, he cures;
+     Hanging a golden stamp about their necks.
+     Put on with holy prayers; and 'tis spoken
+     To the succeeding royalty&mdash;he leaves
+     The healing benediction.
+
+     "With this strange virtue
+     He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy,
+     And sundry blessings hang about his throne,
+     That speak him full of grace."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Shakespeare was the master of the human heart&mdash;knew all the hopes,
+      fears, ambitions, and passions that sway the mind of man; and thus
+      knowing, he declared that
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Love is not love that alters
+     When it alteration finds."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      This is the sublimest declaration in the literature of the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shakespeare seems to give the generalization&mdash;the result&mdash;without
+      the process of thought. He seems always to be at the conclusion&mdash;standing
+      where all truths meet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In one of the Sonnets is this fragment of a line that contains the highest
+      possible truth:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Conscience is born of love."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      If man were incapable of suffering, the words right and wrong never could
+      have been spoken. If man were destitute of imagination, the flower of pity
+      never could have blossomed in his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We suffer&mdash;we cause others to suffer&mdash;those that we love&mdash;and
+      of this fact conscience is born.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Love is the many-colored flame that makes the fireside of the heart. It is
+      the mingled spring and autumn&mdash;the perfect climate of the soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      IN the realm of comparison Shakespeare seems to have exhausted the
+      relations, parallels and similitudes of things, He only could have said:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Tedious as a twice-told tale
+     Vexing the ears of a drowsy man."
+
+     "Duller than a great thaw.
+     Dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In the words of Ulysses, spoken to Achilles, we find the most wonderful
+      collection of pictures and comparisons ever compressed within the same
+      number of lines:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
+     Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,&mdash;
+     A great-sized monster of ingratitudes&mdash;
+     Those scraps are good deeds passed; which are devoured
+     As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
+     As done; perseverance, dear my lord,
+     Keeps honor bright: to have done is to hang
+     Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail In monumental mockery.
+
+     "Take the instant way;
+     For honor travels in a strait so narrow
+     Where one but goes abreast; keep then the path;
+     For emulation hath a thousand sons
+     That one by one pursue; if you give way,
+     Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
+     Like to an entered tide, they all rush by
+     And leave you hindmost:
+     Or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank,
+     Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,
+     O'errun and trampled on: then what they do in present,
+     Tho' less than yours in past, must o' ertop yours;
+     For time is like a fashionable host
+     That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
+     And with his arms outstretched as he would fly,
+     Grasps in the comer:
+     Welcome ever smiles,
+     And Farewell goes out sighing."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      So the words of Cleopatra, when Charmain speaks:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Peace, peace:
+     Dost thou not see my baby at my breast
+     That sucks the nurse asleep?"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIV.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      NOTHING is more difficult than a definition&mdash;a crystallization of
+      thought so perfect that it emits light. Shakespeare says of suicide:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "It is great to do that thing
+     That ends all other deeds,
+     Which shackles accident, and bolts up change."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      He defines drama to be:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Turning the accomplishments of many years
+     Into an hour glass."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Of death:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "This sensible warm motion to become a kneaded clod,
+     To lie in cold obstruction and to rot."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Of memory:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "The warder of the brain."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Of the body:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "This muddy vesture of decay."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And he declares that
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Our little life is rounded with a sleep."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      He speaks of Echo as:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "The babbling gossip of the air"&mdash;
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Romeo, addressing the poison that he is about to take, says:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Come, bitter conduct, come unsavory guide,
+     Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
+     The dashing rocks thy sea-sick, weary bark."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      He describes the world as
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "This bank and shoal of time."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      He says of rumor&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "That it doubles, like the voice and echo."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      It would take days to call attention to the perfect definitions,
+      comparisons and generalizations of Shakespeare. He gave us the deeper
+      meanings of our words&mdash;taught us the art of speech. He was the lord
+      of language&mdash;master of expression and compression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He put the greatest thoughts into the shortest words&mdash;made the poor
+      rich and the common royal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Production enriched his brain. Nothing exhausted him. The moment his
+      attention was called to any subject&mdash;comparisons, definitions,
+      metaphors and generalizations filled his mind and begged for utterance.
+      His thoughts like bees robbed every blossom in the world, and then with
+      "merry march" brought the rich booty home "to the tent royal of their
+      emperor."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shakespeare was the confidant of Nature. To him she opened her "infinite
+      book of secrecy," and in his brain were "the hatch and brood of time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XV.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      THERE is in Shakespeare the mingling of laughter and tears, humor and
+      pathos. Humor is the rose, wit the thorn. Wit is a crystallization, humor
+      an efflorescence. Wit comes from the brain, humor from the heart. Wit is
+      the lightning of the soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Shakespeare's nature was the climate of humor. He saw and felt the
+      sunny side even of the saddest things. "You have seen sunshine and rain at
+      once." So Shakespeare's tears fell oft upon his smiles. In moments of
+      peril&mdash;on the very darkness of death&mdash;there comes a touch of
+      humor that falls like a fleck of sunshine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gonzalo, when the ship is about to sink, having seen the boatswain,
+      exclaims:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "I have great comfort from this fellow;
+     Methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him;
+     His complexion is perfect gallows."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Shakespeare is filled with the strange contrasts of grief and laughter.
+      While poor Hero is supposed to be dead&mdash;wrapped in the shroud of
+      dishonor&mdash;Dogberry and Verges unconsciously put again the wedding
+      wreath upon her pure brow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The soliloquy of Launcelot&mdash;great as Hamlet's&mdash;offsets the
+      bitter and burning words of Shylock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is only time to speak of Maria in "Twelfth Night," of Autolycus in
+      the "Winter's Tale," of the parallel drawn by Fluellen between Alexander
+      of Macedon and Harry of Monmouth, or of the marvellous humor of Falstaff,
+      who never had the faintest thought of right or wrong&mdash;or of Mercutio,
+      that embodiment of wit and humor&mdash;for of the grave-diggers who
+      lamented that "great folk should have countenance in this world to drown
+      and hang themselves, more than their even Christian," and who reached the
+      generalization that
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "the gallows does well because it does well to those who do ill."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      There is also an example of grim humor&mdash;an example without a parallel
+      in literature, so far as I know. Hamlet having killed Polonius is asked:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Where's Polonais?"
+     "At supper."
+     "At supper! where?"
+     "Not where he eats, but where he is eaten."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Above all others, Shakespeare appreciated the pathos of situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing is more pathetic than the last scene in "Lear." No one has ever
+      bent above his dead who did not feel the words uttered by the mad king,&mdash;words
+      born of a despair deeper than tears:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Oh, that a horse, a dog, a rat hath life
+     And thou no breath!"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      So Iago, after he has been wounded, says:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "I bleed, sir; but not killed."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And Othello answers from the wreck and shattered remnant of his life:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "I would have thee live;
+     For in my sense it is happiness to die."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      When Troilus finds Cressida has been false, he cries:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Let it not be believed for womanhood;
+     Think! we had mothers."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Ophelia, in her madness, "the sweet bells jangled out o' tune," says
+      softly:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "I would give you some violets;
+     But they withered all when my father died."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      When Macbeth has reaped the harvest, the seeds of which were sown by his
+      murderous hand, he exclaims,&mdash;and what could be more pitiful?
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "I 'gin to be aweary of the sun."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Richard the Second feels how small a thing it is to be, or to have been, a
+      king, or to receive honors before or after power is lost; and so, of those
+      who stood uncovered before him, he asks this piteous question:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "I live with bread, like you; feel want,
+     Taste grief, need friends; subjected thus,
+     How can you say to me I am a king?"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Think of the salutation of Antony to the dead Cæsar:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "Pardon me, thou piece of bleeding earth."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      When Pisanio informs Imogen that he had been ordered by Posthumus to
+      murder her, she bares her neck and cries:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "The lamb entreats the butcher:
+     Where is thy knife?
+     Thou art too slow
+     To do thy master's bidding when I desire it."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Antony, as the last drops are falling from his self-inflicted wound,
+      utters with his dying breath to Cleopatra, this:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "I here importune death awhile, until
+     Of many thousand kisses the poor last I lay upon thy lips."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      To me, the last words of Hamlet are full of pathos:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "I die, Horatio.
+     The potent poison quite o'er crows my spirit   *   *   *
+     The rest is silence."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XVI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      SOME have insisted that Shakespeare must have been a physician, for the
+      reason that he shows such knowledge of medicine&mdash;of the symptoms of
+      disease and death&mdash;was so familiar with the brain, and with insanity
+      in all its forms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not think he was a physician. He knew too much&mdash;his
+      generalizations were too splendid. He had none of the prejudices of that
+      profession in his time. We might as well say that he was a musician, a
+      composer, because we find in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" nearly every
+      musical term known in Shakespeare's time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Others maintain that he was a lawyer, perfectly acquainted with the forms,
+      with the expressions familiar to that profession&mdash;yet there is
+      nothing to show that he was a lawyer, or that he knew more about law than
+      any intelligent man should know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was not a lawyer. His sense of justice was never dulled by reading
+      English law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some think that he was a botanist, because he named nearly all known
+      plants. Others, that he was an astronomer, a naturalist, because he gave
+      hints and suggestions of nearly all discoveries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some have thought that he must have been a sailor, for the reason that the
+      orders given in the opening of "The Tempest" were the best that could,
+      under the circumstances, have been given to save the ship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For my part, I think there is nothing in the plays to show that he was a
+      lawyer, doctor, botanist or scientist. He had the observant eyes that
+      really see, the ears that really hear, the brain that retains all
+      pictures, all thoughts, logic as unerring as light, the imagination that
+      supplies defects and builds the perfect from a fragment. And these
+      faculties, these aptitudes, working together, account for what he did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He exceeded all the sons of men in the splendor of his imagination. To him
+      the whole world paid tribute, and nature poured her treasures at his feet.
+      In him all races lived again, and even those to be were pictured in his
+      brain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a man of imagination&mdash;that is to say, of genius, and having
+      seen a leaf, and a drop of water, he could construct the forests, the
+      rivers, and the seas&mdash;and in his presence all the cataracts would
+      fall and foam, the mists rise, the clouds form and float.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Shakespeare knew one fact, he knew its kindred and its neighbors.
+      Looking at a coat of mail, he instantly imagined the society, the
+      conditions, that produced it and what it, in turn, produced. He saw the
+      castle, the moat, the draw-bridge, the lady in the tower, and the knightly
+      lover spurring across the plain. He saw the bold baron and the rude
+      retainer, the trampled serf, and all the glory and the grief of feudal
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lived the life of all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a citizen of Athens in the days of Pericles. He listened to the
+      eager eloquence of the great orators, and sat upon the cliffs, and with
+      the tragic poet heard "the multitudinous laughter of the sea." He saw
+      Socrates thrust the spear of question through the shield and heart of
+      falsehood. He was present when the great man drank hemlock, and met the
+      night of death, tranquil as a star meets morning. He listened to the
+      peripatetic philosophers, and was unpuzzled by the sophists. He watched
+      Phidias as he chiseled shapeless stone to forms of love and awe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lived by the mysterious Nile, amid the vast and monstrous. He knew the
+      very thought that wrought the form and features of the Sphinx. He heard
+      great Memnon's morning song when marble lips were smitten by the sun. He
+      laid him down with the embalmed and waiting dead, and felt within their
+      dust the expectation of another life, mingled with cold and suffocating
+      doubts&mdash;the children born of long delay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He walked the ways of mighty Rome, and saw great Cæsar with his legions in
+      the field. He stood with vast and motley throngs and watched the triumphs
+      given to victorious men, followed by uncrowned kings, the captured hosts,
+      and all the spoils of ruthless war. He heard the shout that shook the
+      Coliseums roofless walls, when from the reeling gladiator's hand the short
+      sword fell, while from his bosom gushed the stream of wasted life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lived the life of savage men. He trod the forests' silent depths, and
+      in the desperate game of life or death he matched his thought against the
+      instinct of the beast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew all crimes and all regrets, all virtues and their rich rewards. He
+      was victim and victor, pursuer and pursued, outcast and king. He heard the
+      applause and curses of the world, and on his heart had fallen all the
+      nights and noons of failure and success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew the unspoken thoughts, the dumb desires, the wants and ways of
+      beasts. He felt the crouching tigers thrill, the terror of the ambushed
+      prey, and with the eagles he had shared the ecstasy of flight and poise
+      and swoop, and he had lain with sluggish serpents on the barren rocks
+      uncoiling slowly in the heat of noon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat beneath the bo-tree's contemplative shade, wrapped in Buddha's
+      mighty thought, and dreamed all dreams that light, the alchemist, has
+      wrought from dust and dew, and stored within the slumbrous poppy's subtle
+      blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knelt with awe and dread at every shrine&mdash;he offered every
+      sacrifice, and every prayer&mdash;felt the consolation and the shuddering
+      fear&mdash;mocked and worshipped all the gods&mdash;enjoyed all heavens,
+      and felt the pangs of every hell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lived all lives, and through his blood and brain there crept the shadow
+      and the chill of every death, and his soul, like Mazeppa, was lashed naked
+      to the wild horse of every fear and love and hate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Imagination had a stage in Shakespeare's brain, whereon were set all
+      scenes that lie between the morn of laughter and the night of tears, and
+      where his players bodied forth the false and true, the joys and griefs,
+      the careless shallows and the tragic deeps of universal life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From Shakespeare's brain there poured a Niagara of gems spanned by Fancy's
+      seven-hued arch. He was as many-sided as clouds are many-formed. To him
+      giving was hoarding&mdash;sowing was harvest&mdash;and waste itself the
+      source of wealth. Within his marvellous mind were the fruits of all
+      thought past, the seeds of all to be. As a drop of dew contains the image
+      of the earth and sky, so all there is of life was mirrored forth in
+      Shakespeare's brain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shakespeare was an intellectual ocean, whose waves touched all the shores
+      of thought; within which were all the tides and waves of destiny and will;
+      over which swept all the storms of fate, ambition and revenge; upon which
+      fell the gloom and darkness of despair and death and all the sunlight of
+      content and love, and within which was the inverted sky lit with the
+      eternal stars&mdash;an intellectual ocean&mdash;towards which all rivers
+      ran, and from which now the isles and continents of thought receive their
+      dew and rain.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Shakespeare, by Robert G. Ingersoll
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Shakespeare, by Robert G. Ingersoll
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Shakespeare
+       A Lecture
+
+Author: Robert G. Ingersoll
+
+Release Date: November 22, 2011 [EBook #38105]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHAKESPEARE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SHAKESPEARE
+
+A LECTURE
+
+By Robert G. Ingersoll
+
+Shakespeare.--An intellectual ocean, whose waves touched all the shores
+of thought.
+
+
+
+
+SHAKESPEARE.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE was the greatest genius of our world. He left to
+us the richest legacy of all the dead--the treasures of the rarest soul
+that ever lived and loved and wrought of words the statues, pictures,
+robes and gems of thought. He was the greatest man that ever touched
+this grain of sand and tears, we call the world.
+
+It is hard to overstate the debt we owe to the men and women of genius.
+Take from our world what they have given, and all the niches would be
+empty, all the walls naked--meaning and connection would fall from words
+of poetry and fiction, music would go back to common air, and all the
+forms of subtle and enchanting Art would lose proportion and become the
+unmeaning waste and shattered spoil of thoughtless Chance.
+
+Shakespeare is too great a theme. I feel as though endeavoring to grasp
+a globe so large that the hand obtains no hold. He who would worthily
+speak of the great dramatist should be inspired by "a muse of fire that
+should ascend the brightest heaven of invention"--he should have "a
+kingdom for a stage, and monarchs to behold the swelling scene."
+
+More than three centuries ago, the most intellectual of the human race
+was born. He was not of supernatural origin. At his birth there were
+no celestial pyrotechnics. His father and mother were both English, and
+both had the cheerful habit of living in this world. The cradle in which
+he was rocked was canopied by neither myth nor miracle, and in his veins
+there was no drop of royal blood.
+
+This babe became the wonder of mankind. Neither of his parents could
+read or write. He grew up in a small and ignorant village on the banks
+of the Avon, in the midst of the common people of three hundred years
+ago. There was nothing in the peaceful, quiet landscape on which he
+looked, nothing in the low hills, the cultivated and undulating fields,
+and nothing in the murmuring stream, to excite the imagination--nothing,
+so far as we can see, calculated to sow the seeds of the subtlest and
+sublimest thought.
+
+So there is nothing connected with his education, or his lack of
+education, that in any way accounts for what he did. It is supposed that
+he attended school in his native town--but of this we are not certain.
+Many have tried to show that he was, after all, of gentle blood, but the
+fact seems to be the other way. Some of his biographers have sought to
+do him honor by showing that he was patronized by Queen Elizabeth, but
+of this there is not the slightest proof.
+
+As a matter of fact, there never sat on any throne, a king, queen, or
+emperor who could have honored William Shakespeare.
+
+Ignorant people are apt to overrate the value of what is called
+education. The sons of the poor, having suffered the privations of
+poverty, think of wealth as the mother of joy. On the other hand, the
+children of the rich, finding that gold does not produce happiness, are
+apt to underrate the value of wealth. So the children of the educated
+often care but little for books, and hold all culture in contempt. The
+children of great authors do not, as a rule, become writers.
+
+Nature is filled with tendencies and obstructions. Extremes beget
+limitations, even as a river by its own swiftness creates obstructions
+for itself.
+
+Possibly, many generations of culture breed a desire for the rude joys
+of savagery, and possibly generations of ignorance breed such a longing
+for knowledge, that of this desire, of this hunger of the brain, Genius
+is born. It may be that the mind, by lying fallow, by remaining idle for
+generations, gathers strength.
+
+Shakespeare's father seems to have been an ordinary man of his time and
+class. About the only thing we know of him is that he was officially
+reported for not coming monthly to church. This is good as far as it
+goes. We can hardly blame him, because at that time Richard Bifield
+was the minister at Stratford, and an extreme Puritan, one who read the
+Psalter by Sternhold and Hopkins.
+
+The church was at one time Catholic, but in John Shakespeare's day it
+was Puritan, and in 1564, the year of Shakespeare's birth, they had the
+images defaced. It is greatly to the honor of John Shakespeare that
+he refused to listen to the "tidings of great joy" as delivered by the
+Puritan Bifield.
+
+Nothing is known of his mother, except her beautiful name--Mary Arden.
+In those days but little attention was given to the biographies of
+women. They were born, married, had children, and died. No matter how
+celebrated their sons became, the mothers were forgotten. In old times,
+when a man achieved distinction, great pains were taken to find
+out about the father and grandfather--the idea being that genius is
+inherited from the father's side. The truth is, that all great men have
+had great mothers. Great women have had, as a rule, great fathers.
+
+The mother of Shakespeare was, without doubt, one of the greatest of
+women. She dowered her son with passion and imagination and the higher
+qualities of the soul, beyond all other men. It has been said that a
+man of genius should select his ancestors with great care--and yet
+there does not seem to be as much in heredity as most people think.
+The children of the great are often small. Pigmies are born in palaces,
+while over the children of genius is the roof of straw. Most of the
+great are like mountains, with the valley of ancestors on one side and
+the depression of posterity on the other.
+
+In his day Shakespeare was of no particular importance. It may be that
+his mother had some marvelous and prophetic dreams, but Stratford was
+unconscious of the immortal child. He was never engaged in a reputable
+business. Socially he occupied a position below servants. The law
+described him as "a sturdy vagabond." He was neither a noble, a soldier,
+nor a priest. Among the half-civilized people of England, he who amused
+and instructed them was regarded as a menial. Kings had their clowns,
+the people their actors and musicians. Shakespeare was scheduled as a
+servant. It is thus that successful stupidity has always treated genius.
+Mozart was patronized by an Archbishop--lived in the palace,--but was
+compelled to eat with the scullions.
+
+The composer of divine melodies was not fit to sit by the side of the
+theologian, who long ago would have been forgotten but for the fame of
+the composer.
+
+We know but little of the personal peculiarities, of the daily life, or
+of what may be called the outward Shakespeare, and it may be fortunate
+that so little is known. He might have been belittled by friendly fools.
+What silly stories, what idiotic personal reminiscences, would have
+been remembered by those who scarcely saw him! We have his best--his
+sublimest--and we have probably lost only the trivial and the worthless.
+All that is known can be written on a page.
+
+We are tolerably certain of the date of his birth, of his marriage and
+of his death. We think he went to London in 1586, when he was twenty-two
+years old. We think that three years afterwards he was part owner
+of Blackfriars' Theatre. We have a few signatures, some of which are
+supposed to be genuine. We know that he bought some land--that he had
+two or three law-suits. We know the names of his children. We also know
+that this incomparable man--so apart from, and so familiar with, all the
+world--lived during his literary life in London--that he was an actor,
+dramatist and manager--that he returned to Stratford, the place of his
+birth,--that he gave his writings to negligence, deserted the children
+of his brain--that he died on the anniversary of his birth at the age
+of fifty-two, and that he was buried in the church where the images
+had been defaced, and that on his tomb was chiseled a rude, absurd and
+ignorant epitaph.
+
+No letter of his to any human being has been found, and no line written
+by him can be shown.
+
+And here let me give my explanation of the epitaph. Shakespeare was an
+actor--a disreputable business--but he made money--always reputable. He
+came back from London a rich man. He bought land, and built houses. Some
+of the supposed great probably treated him with deference. When he died
+he was buried in the church. Then came a reaction. The pious thought the
+church had been profaned. They did not feel that the ashes of an actor
+were fit to lie in holy ground. The people began to say the body
+ought to be removed. Then it was, as I believe, that Dr. John Hall,
+Shakespeare's son-in-law, had this epitaph cut on the tomb:
+
+"Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare To digg the dust enclosed heare:
+Blese be ye man yt spares thes stones, And curst be he yt moves my
+bones."
+
+Certainly Shakespeare could have had no fear that his tomb would be
+violated. How could it have entered his mind to have put a warning, a
+threat and a blessing, upon his grave? But the ignorant people of that
+day were no doubt convinced that the epitaph was the voice of the dead,
+and so feeling they feared to invade the tomb. In this way the dust was
+left in peace.
+
+This epitaph gave me great trouble for years. It puzzled me to explain
+why he, who erected the intellectual pyramids,--great ranges of
+mountains--should put such a pebble at his tomb. But when I stood beside
+the grave and read the ignorant words, the explanation I have given
+flashed upon me.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+IT has been said that Shakespeare was hardly mentioned by his
+contemporaries, and that he was substantially unknown. This is a
+mistake. In 1600 a book was published called "_England's Parnassus_"
+and it contained ninety extracts from Shakespeare. In the same year
+was published the "_Garden of the Muses_" containing several pieces from
+Shakespeare, Chapman, Marston and Ben Johnson. "_England's Helicon_"
+was printed in the same year, and contained poems from Spenser, Greene,
+Harvey and Shakespeare.
+
+In 1600 a play was acted at Cambridge, in which Shakespeare was alluded
+to as follows: "Why, here's our fellow Shakespeare who puts them all
+down." John Weaver published a book of poems in 1595, in which there
+was a sonnet to Shakespeare. In 1598 Richard Bamfield wrote a poem
+to Shakespeare. Francis Meres, "clergyman, master of arts in both
+universities, compiler of school books," was the author of the "Wits'
+Treasury." In this he compares the ancient and modern tragic poets, and
+mentions Marlowe, Peel, Kyd and Shakespeare. So he compares the writers
+of comedies, and mentions Lilly, Lodge, Greene and Shakespeare. He
+speaks of elegiac poets, and names Surrey, Wyatt, Sidney, Raleigh and
+Shakespeare. He compares the lyric poets, and names Spencer, Drayton,
+Shakespeare and others. This same writer, speaking of Horace, says that
+England has Sidney, Shakespeare and others, and that "as the soul of
+Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweet-wittie soul
+of Ovid lives in the mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare." He
+also says: "If the Muses could speak English, they would speak in
+Shakespeare's phrase." This was in 1598. In 1607, John Davies alludes in
+a poem to Shakespeare.
+
+Of course we are all familiar with what rare Ben Jonson wrote. Henry
+Chettle took Shakespeare to task because he wrote nothing on the death
+of Queen Elizabeth.
+
+It may be wonderful that he was not better known. But is it not
+wonderful that he gained the reputation that he did in so short a time,
+and that twelve years after he began to write he stood at least with the
+first?
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+BUT there is a wonderful fact connected with the writings of
+Shakespeare: In the Plays there is no direct mention of any of his
+contemporaries. We do not know of any poet, author, soldier, sailor,
+statesman, priest, nobleman, king, or queen, that Shakespeare directly
+mentioned.
+
+Is it not marvellous that he, living in an age of great deeds, of
+adventures in far off lands and unknown seas--in a time of religious
+wars--in the days of the Armada--the massacre of St. Bartholomew--the
+Edict of Nantes--the assassination of Henry III.--the victory of
+Lepanto--the execution of Marie Stuart--did not mention the name of any
+man or woman of his time? Some have insisted that the paragraph ending
+with the lines:
+
+"The imperial votress passed on in maiden meditation fancy free,"
+
+referred to Queen Elizabeth; but it is impossible for me to believe that
+the daubed and wrinkled face, the small black eyes, the cruel nose, the
+thin lips, the bad teeth, and the red wig of Queen Elizabeth could by
+any possibility have inspired these marvellous lines.
+
+It is perfectly apparent from Shakespeare's writings that he knew but
+little of the nobility, little of kings and queens. He gives to these
+supposed great people great thoughts, and puts great words in their
+mouths and makes them speak--not as they really did--but as Shakespeare
+thought such people should. This demonstrates that he did not know them
+personally.
+
+Some have insisted that Shakespeare mentions Queen Elizabeth in the
+last Scene of Henry VIII. The answer to this is that Shakespeare did not
+write the last Scene in that Play. The probability is that Fletcher was
+the author.
+
+Shakespeare lived during the great awakening of the world, when Europe
+emerged from the darkness of the Middle Ages, when the discovery of
+America had made England, that blossom of the Gulf-Stream, the centre
+of commerce, and during a period when some of the greatest writers,
+thinkers, soldiers and discoverers were produced.
+
+Cervantes was born in 1547, dying on the same day that Shakespeare died.
+He was undoubtedly the greatest writer that Spain has produced. Rubens
+was born in 1577. Camoens, the Portuguese, the author of the _Lusiad_,
+died in 1597. Giordano Bruno--greatest of martyrs--was born in
+1548--visited London in Shakespeare's time--delivered lectures at
+Oxford, and called that institution "the widow of learning." Drake
+circled the globe in 1580. Galileo was born in 1564--the same year
+with Shakespeare. Michael Angelo died in 1563. Kepler--he of the Three
+Laws--born in 1571. Calderon, the Spanish dramatist, born in 1601.
+Corneille, the French poet, in 1606. Rembrandt, greatest of painters,
+1607. Shakespeare was born in 1564. In that year John Calvin died. What
+a glorious exchange!
+
+Seventy-two years after the discovery of America Shakespeare was born,
+and England was filled with the voyages and discoveries written by
+Hakluyt, and the wonders that had been seen by Raleigh, by Drake, by
+Frobisher and Hawkins. London had become the centre of the world, and
+representatives from all known countries were in the new metropolis. The
+world had been doubled. The imagination had been touched and kindled by
+discovery. In the far horizon were unknown lands, strange shores beyond
+untraversed seas. Toward every part of the world were turned the prows
+of adventure. All these things fanned the imagination into flame,
+and this had its effect upon the literary and dramatic world. And
+yet Shakespeare--the master spirit of mankind--in the midst of these
+discoveries, of these adventures, mentioned no navigator, no general, no
+discoverer, no philosopher.
+
+Galileo was reading the open volume of the sky, but Shakespeare did not
+mention him. This to me is the most marvellous thing connected with this
+most marvellous man.
+
+At that time England was prosperous--was then laying the foundation of
+her future greatness and power.
+
+When men are prosperous, they are in love with life. Nature grows
+beautiful, the arts begin to flourish, there is work for painter and
+sculptor, the poet is born, the stage is erected--and this life with
+which men are in love, is represented in a thousand forms.
+
+Nature, or Fate, or Chance prepared a stage for Shakespeare, and
+Shakespeare prepared a stage for Nature.
+
+Famine and faith go together. In disaster and want the gaze of man is
+fixed upon another world. He that eats a crust has a creed. Hunger falls
+upon its knees, and heaven, looked for through tears, is the mirage
+of misery. But prosperity brings joy and wealth and leisure--and the
+beautiful is born.
+
+One of the effects of the worlds awakening was Shakespeare. We account
+for this man as we do for the highest mountain, the greatest river, the
+most perfect gem. We can only say: He was.
+
+     "It hath been taught us from the primal state
+     That he which is was wished until he were."
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+IN Shakespeare's time the actor was a vagabond, the dramatist a
+disreputable person--and yet the greatest dramas were then written. In
+spite of law, and social ostracism, Shakespeare reared the many-colored
+dome that fills and glorifies the intellectual heavens.
+
+Now the whole civilized world believes in the theatre--asks for some
+great dramatist--is hungry for a play worthy of the century, is anxious
+to give gold and fame to any one who can worthily put our age upon the
+stage--and yet no great play has been written since Shakespeare died.
+
+Shakespeare pursued the highway of the right. He did not seek to put his
+characters in a position where it was right to do wrong. He was sound
+and healthy to the centre. It never occurred to him to write a play in
+which a wife's lover should be jealous of her husband.
+
+There was in his blood the courage of his thought. He was true to
+himself and enjoyed the perfect freedom of the highest art. He did not
+write according to rules--but smaller men make rules from what he wrote.
+
+How fortunate that Shakespeare was not educated at Oxford--that the
+winged god within him never knelt to the professor. How fortunate
+that this giant was not captured, tied and tethered by the literary
+Liliputians of his time.
+
+He was an idealist. He did not--like most writers of our time--take
+refuge in the real, hiding a lack of genius behind a pretended love of
+truth. All realities are not poetic, or dramatic, or even worth knowing.
+The real sustains the same relation to the ideal that a stone does to
+a statue--or that paint does to a painting. Realism degrades and
+impoverishes. In no event can a realist be more than an imitator and
+copyist. According to the realist's philosophy, the wax that receives
+and retains an image is an artist.
+
+Shakespeare did not rely on the stage-carpenter, or the scenic painter.
+He put his scenery in his lines. There you will find mountains and
+rivers and seas, valleys and cliffs, violets and clouds, and over all
+"the firmament fretted with gold and fire." He cared little for plot,
+little for surprise. He did not rely on stage effects, or red fire. The
+plays grow before your eyes, and they come as the morning comes. Plot
+surprises but once. There must be something in a play besides surprise.
+Plot in an author is a kind of strategy--that is to say, a sort of
+cunning, and cunning does not belong to the highest natures.
+
+There is in Shakespeare such a wealth of thought that the plot becomes
+almost immaterial--and such is this wealth that you can hardly know the
+play--there is too much. After you have heard it again and again, it
+seems as pathless as an untrodden forest.
+
+He belonged to all lands. "Timon of Athens" is as Greek as any tragedy
+of Eschylus. "Julius Caesar" and "Coriolanus" are perfect Roman, and as
+you read, the mighty ruins rise and the Eternal City once again becomes
+the mistress of the world. No play is more Egyptian than "Antony and
+Cleopatra"--the Nile runs through it, the shadows of the pyramids
+fall upon it, and from its scenes the Sphinx gazes forever on the
+outstretched sands.
+
+In "Lear" is the true pagan spirit. "Romeo and Juliet" is
+Italian--everything is sudden, love bursts into immediate flower, and in
+every scene is the climate of the land of poetry and passion.
+
+The reason of this is, that Shakespeare dealt with elemental things,
+with universal man. He knew that locality colors without changing, and
+that in all surroundings the human heart is substantially the same.
+
+Not all the poetry written before his time would make his sum--not all
+that has been written since, added to all that was written before, would
+equal his.
+
+There was nothing within the range of human thought, within the horizon
+of intellectual effort, that he did not touch. He knew the brain and
+heart of man--the theories, customs, superstitions, hopes, fears,
+hatreds, vices and virtues of the human race.
+
+He knew the thrills and ecstacies of love, the savage joys of hatred and
+revenge. He heard the hiss of envy's snakes and watched the eagles of
+ambition soar. There was no hope that did not put its star above his
+head--no fear he had not felt--no joy that had not shed its sunshine
+on his face. He experienced the emotions of mankind. He was the
+intellectual spendthrift of the world. He gave with the generosity, the
+extravagance, of madness.
+
+Read one play, and you are impressed with the idea that the wealth
+of the brain of a god has been exhausted--that there are no more
+comparisons, no more passions to be expressed, no more definitions, no
+more philosophy, beauty, or sublimity to be put in words--and yet, the
+next play opens as fresh as the dewy gates of another day.
+
+The outstretched wings of his imagination filled the sky. He was the
+intellectual crown o' the earth.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+THE plays of Shakespeare show so much knowledge, thought and learning,
+that many people--those who imagine that universities furnish
+capacity--contend that Bacon must have been the author.
+
+We know Bacon. We know that he was a scheming politician, a courtier,
+a time-server of church and king, and a corrupt judge. We know that he
+never admitted the truth of the Copernican system--that he was
+doubtful whether instruments were of any advantage in scientific
+investigation--that he was ignorant of the higher branches of
+mathematics, and that, as a matter of fact, he added but little to the
+knowledge of the world. When he was more than sixty years of age, he
+turned his attention to poetry, and dedicated his verses to George
+Herbert.
+
+If you will read these verses you will say that the author of "Lear" and
+"Hamlet" did not write them.
+
+Bacon dedicated his work on the _Advancement of Learning, Divine and
+Human_, to James I., and in his dedication he stated that there had not
+been, since the time of Christ, any king or monarch so learned in all
+erudition, divine or human. He placed James the First before Marcus
+Aurelius and all other kings and emperors since Christ, and concluded
+by saying that James the First had "the power and fortune of a king,
+the illumination of a priest, the learning and universality of a
+philosopher." This was written of James the First, described by Macauley
+as a "stammering, slobbering, trembling coward, whose writings were
+deformed by the grossest and vilest superstitions--witches being the
+special objects of his fear, his hatred, and his persecution."
+
+It seems to have been taken for granted that if Shakespeare was not the
+author of the great dramas, Lord Bacon must have been.
+
+It has been claimed that Bacon was the greatest philosopher of his
+time. And yet in reading his works we find that there was in his mind a
+strange mingling of foolishness and philosophy. He takes pains to tell
+us, and to write it down for the benefit of posterity, that "snow
+is colder than water, because it hath more spirit in it, and that
+quicksilver is the coldest of all metals, because it is the fullest of
+spirit."
+
+He stated that he hardly believed that you could contract air by putting
+opium on top of the weather glass, and gave the following reason:
+
+"I conceive that opium and the like make spirits fly rather by malignity
+than by cold."
+
+This great philosopher gave the following recipe for staunching blood:
+
+"Thrust the part that bleedeth into the body of a capon, new ripped and
+bleeding. This will staunch the blood. The blood, as it seemeth, sucking
+and drawing up by similitude of substance the blood it meeteth with, and
+so itself going back."
+
+The philosopher also records this important fact:
+
+"Divers witches among heathen and Christians have fed upon man's flesh
+to aid, as it seemeth, their imagination with high and foul vapors."
+
+Lord Bacon was not only a philosopher, but he was a biologist, as
+appears from the following:
+
+"As for living creatures, it is certain that their vital spirits are a
+substance compounded of an airy and flamy matter, and although air and
+flame being free will not mingle, yet bound in by a body that hath some
+fixing, will."
+
+Now and then the inventor of deduction reasons by analogy. He says:
+
+"As snow and ice holpen, and their cold activated by nitre or salt, will
+turn water into ice, so it may be it will turn wood or stiff clay into
+stone."
+
+Bacon seems to have been a believer in the transmutation of metals, and
+solemnly gives a formula for changing silver or copper into gold. He
+also believed in the transmutation of plants, and had arrived at such
+a height in entomology that he informed the world that "insects have no
+blood."
+
+It is claimed that he was a great observer, and as evidence of this
+he recorded the wonderful fact that "tobacco cut and dried by the fire
+loses weight;" that "bears in the winter wax fat in sleep, though they
+eat nothing;" that "tortoises have no bones;" that "there is a kind of
+stone, if ground and put in water where cattle drink, the cows will give
+more milk;" that "it is hard to cure a hurt in a Frenchman's head, but
+easy in his leg; that it is hard to cure a hurt in an Englishman's leg,
+but easy in his head;" that "wounds made with brass weapons are easier
+to cure than those made with iron;" that "lead will multiply and
+increase, as in statues buried in the ground;" and that "the rainbow
+touching anything causeth a sweet smell."
+
+Bacon seems also to have turned his attention to ornithology, and says
+that "eggs laid in the full of the moon breed better birds," and that
+"you can make swallows white by putting ointment on the eggs before they
+are hatched."
+
+He also informs us "that witches cannot hurt kings as easily as they can
+common people;" that "perfumes dry and strengthen the brain;" that "any
+one in the moment of triumph can be injured by another who casts an
+envious eye, and the injury is greatest when the envious glance comes
+from the oblique eye."
+
+Lord Bacon also turned his attention to medicine, and he states that
+"bracelets made of snakes are good for curing cramps;" that the "skin of
+a wolf might cure the colic, because a wolf has great digestion;" that
+"eating the roasted brains of hens and hares strengthens the memory;"
+that "if a woman about to become a mother eats a good many quinces and
+considerable coriander seed, the child will be ingenious," and that
+"the moss which groweth on the skull of an unburied dead man is good for
+staunching blood."
+
+He expresses doubt, however, "as to whether you can cure a wound by
+putting ointment on the weapon that caused the wound, instead of on the
+wound itself."
+
+It is claimed by the advocates of the Baconian theory that their hero
+stood at the top of science; and yet "it is absolutely certain that he
+was ignorant of the law of the acceleration of falling bodies, although
+the law had been made known and printed by Galileo thirty years before
+Bacon wrote upon the subject. Neither did this great man understand the
+principle of the lever. He was not acquainted with the precession of the
+equinoxes, and as a matter of fact was ill-read in those branches of
+learning in which, in his time, the most rapid progress had been made."
+
+After Kepler discovered his third law, which was on the 15th of May,
+1618, Bacon was more than ever opposed to the Copernican system. This
+great man was far behind his own time, not only in astronomy, but in
+mathematics. In the preface to the "Descriptio Globi Intellectualisa" it
+is admitted either that Bacon had never heard of the correction of the
+parallax, or was unable to understand it. He complained on account of
+the want of some method for shortening mathematical calculations; and
+yet "Napier's Logarithms" had been printed nine years before the date of
+his complaint.
+
+He attempted to form a table of specific gravities by a rude process
+of his own, a process that no one has ever followed; and he did this in
+spite of the fact that a far better method existed.
+
+We have the right to compare what Bacon wrote with what it is claimed
+Shakespeare produced. I call attention to one thing--to Bacon's opinion
+of human love. It is this:
+
+"The stage is more beholding to love than the life of man. As to the
+stage, love is ever matter of comedies and now and then of tragedies,
+but in life it doth much mischief--sometimes like a siren, sometimes
+like a fury. Amongst all the great and worthy persons there is not one
+that hath been transported to the mad degree of love, which shows that
+great spirits and great business do keep out this weak passion."
+
+The author of "Romeo and Juliet" never wrote that.
+
+It seems certain that the author of the wondrous Plays was one of the
+noblest of men.
+
+Let us see what sense of honor Bacon had.
+
+In writing commentaries on certain passages of Scripture, Lord Bacon
+tells a courtier, who has committed some offense, how to get back into
+the graces of his prince or king. Among other things he tells him not to
+appear too cheerful, but to assume a very grave and modest face; not to
+bring the matter up himself; to be extremely industrious, so that the
+prince will see that it is hard to get along without him; also to get
+his friends to tell the prince or king how badly he, the courtier,
+feels; and then he says, all these failing, "let him contrive to
+transfer the fault to others."
+
+It is true that we know but little of Shakespeare, and consequently
+do not positively know that he did not have the ability to write the
+Plays--but we do know Bacon, and we know that he could not have
+written these Plays--consequently, they must have been written by a
+comparatively unknown man--that is to say, by a man who was known by no
+other writings. The fact that we do not know Shakespeare, except through
+the Plays and Sonnets, makes it possible for us to believe that he was
+the author.
+
+Some people have imagined that the Plays were written by several--but
+this only increases the wonder, and adds a useless burden to credulity.
+
+Bacon published in his time all the writings that he claimed. Naturally,
+he would have claimed his best. Is it possible that Bacon left the
+wondrous children of his brain on the door-step of Shakespeare, and kept
+the deformed ones at home? Is it possible that he fathered the failures
+and deserted the perfect?
+
+Of course, it is wonderful that so little has been found touching
+Shakespeare--but is it not equally wonderful, if Bacon was the
+author, that not a line has been found in all his papers, containing a
+suggestion, or a hint, that he was the writer of these Plays? Is it
+not wonderful that no fragment of any scene--no line--no word--has been
+found?
+
+Some have insisted that Bacon kept the authorship secret, because it
+was disgraceful to write Plays. This argument does not cover the
+Sonnets--and besides, one who had been stripped of the robes of office,
+for receiving bribes as a judge, could have borne the additional
+disgrace of having written "Hamlet." The fact that Bacon did not claim
+to be the author, demonstrates that he was not. Shakespeare claimed
+to be the author, and no one in his time or day denied the claim. This
+demonstrates that he was.
+
+Bacon published his works, and said to the world: This is what I have
+done.
+
+Suppose you found in a cemetery a monument erected to John Smith,
+inventor of the Smith-churn, and suppose you were told that Mr.
+Smith provided for the monument in his will, and dictated the
+inscription--would it be possible to convince you that Mr. Smith was
+also the inventor of the locomotive and telegraph?
+
+Bacon's best can be compared with Shakespeare's common, but
+Shakespeare's best rises above Bacon's best, like a domed temple above a
+beggar's hut.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+OF course it is admitted that there were many dramatists before and
+during the time of Shakespeare--but they were only the foot hills of
+that mighty peak the top of which the clouds and mists still hide.
+Chapman and Marlowe, Heywood and Jonson, Webster, Beaumont and Fletcher
+wrote some great lines, and in the monotony of declamation now and then
+is found a strain of genuine music--but all of them together constituted
+only a herald of Shakespeare. In all these Plays there is but a hint,
+a prophecy, of the great drama destined to revolutionize the poetic
+thought of the world.
+
+Shakespeare was the greatest of poets. What Greece and Rome produced was
+great until his time. "Lions make leopards tame."
+
+The great poet is a great artist. He is painter and sculptor. The
+greatest pictures and statues have been painted and chiseled with words.
+They outlast all others. All the galleries of the world are poor and
+cheap compared with the statues and pictures in Shakespeare's book.
+
+Language is made of pictures represented by sounds. The outer world is
+a dictionary of the mind, and the artist called the soul uses this
+dictionary of things to express what happens in the noiseless and
+invisible world of thought. First a sound represents something in the
+outer world, and afterwards something in the inner, and this sound at
+last is represented by a mark, and this mark stands for a picture,
+and every brain is a gallery, and the artists--that is to say, the
+souls--exchange pictures and statues.
+
+All art is of the same parentage. The poet uses words--makes pictures
+and statues of sounds. The sculptor expresses harmony, proportion,
+passion, in marble; the composer, in music; the painter in form and
+color. The dramatist expresses himself not only in words, not only
+paints these pictures, but he expresses his thought in action.
+
+Shakespeare was not only a poet, but a dramatist, and expressed the
+ideal, the poetic, not only in words, but in action. There are the
+wit, the humor, the pathos, the tragedy of situation, of relation. The
+dramatist speaks and acts through others--his personality is lost.
+The poet lives in the world of thought and feeling, and to this the
+dramatist adds the world of action. He creates characters that seem to
+act in accordance with their own natures and independently of him. He
+compresses lives into hours, tells us the secrets of the heart, shows us
+the springs of action--how desire bribes the judgment and corrupts the
+will--how weak the reason is when passion pleads, and how grand it is to
+stand for right against the world.
+
+It is not enough to say fine things,--great things, dramatic things,
+must be done.
+
+Let me give you an illustration of dramatic incident accompanying the
+highest form of poetic expression:
+
+Macbeth having returned from the murder of Duncan says to his wife:
+
+     "Methought I heard a voice cry:
+     Sleep no more, Macbeth does murder sleep; the innocent sleep;
+     Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,
+     The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
+     Balm of hurt minds, great Nature's second course,
+     Chief nourisher in life's feast."  *  *  *
+
+     "Still it cried:
+     Sleep no more, to all the house,
+     Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor
+     Shall sleep no more--Macbeth shall sleep no more."
+
+She exclaims:
+
+     "Who was it that thus cried? Why, worthy
+     Thane, you do unbend your noble strength
+     To think so brain-sickly of things; get some water,
+     And wash this filthy witness from your hand.
+     Why did you bring the daggers from the place?"
+
+Macbeth was so overcome with horror at his own deed, that he not only
+mistook his thoughts for the words of others, but was so carried away
+and beyond himself that he brought with him the daggers--the evidence of
+his guilt--the daggers that he should have left with the dead. This is
+dramatic.
+
+In the same play, the difference of feeling before and after the
+commission of a crime is illustrated to perfection. When Macbeth is
+on his way to assassinate the king, the bell strikes, and he says, or
+whispers:
+
+     "Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell."
+
+Afterward, when the deed has been committed, and a knocking is heard at
+the gate, he cries:
+
+     "Wake Duncan with thy knocking.    I would thou couldst."
+
+Let me give one more instance of dramatic action. When Antony speaks
+above the body of Caesar he says:
+
+     "You all do know this mantle: I remember
+     The first time ever Caesar put it on--
+     'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent,
+     That day he overcame the Nervii:
+     Look!    In this place ran Cassius' dagger through:
+     See what a rent the envious Casca made!
+     Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed,
+     And as he plucked his cursed steel away,
+     Mark how the blood of Caesar followed it."
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+THERE are men, and many of them, who are always trying to show that
+somebody else chiseled the statue or painted the picture,--that the poem
+is attributed to the wrong man, and that the battle was really won by a
+subordinate.
+
+Of course Shakespeare made use of the work of others--and, we might
+almost say, of all others. Every writer must use the work of others.
+The only question is, how the accomplishments of other minds are used,
+whether as a foundation to build higher, or whether stolen to the end
+that the thief may make a reputation for himself, without adding to the
+great structure of literature.
+
+Thousands of people have stolen stones from the Coliseum to make huts
+for themselves. So thousands of writers have taken the thoughts of
+others with which to adorn themselves. These are plagiarists. But the
+man who takes the thought of another, adds to it, gives it intensity and
+poetic form, throb and life,--is in the highest sense original.
+
+Shakespeare found nearly all of his facts in the writings of others
+and was indebted to others for most of the stories of his plays. The
+question is not: Who furnished the stone, or who owned the quarry, but
+who chiseled the statue?
+
+We now know all the books that Shakespeare could have read, and
+consequently know many of the sources of his information. We find in
+_Pliny's Natural History_, published in 1601, the following: "The sea
+Pontis evermore floweth and runneth out into the Propontis; but the sea
+never retireth back again with the Impontis." This was the raw material,
+and out of it Shakespeare made the following:
+
+     "Like to the Pontic Sea,
+     Whose icy current and compulsive course
+     Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on
+     To the Propontic and the Hellespont------
+
+     "Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace,
+     Shall ne'er turn back, ne'er ebb to humble love,
+     Till that a capable and wide revenge
+     Swallow them up."
+
+Perhaps we can give an idea of the difference between Shakespeare and
+other poets, by a passage from "Lear." When Cordelia places her hand
+upon her father's head and speaks of the night and of the storm, an
+ordinary poet might have said:
+
+     "On such a night, a dog
+     Should have stood against my fire."
+
+A very great poet might have gone a step further and exclaimed:
+
+     "On such a night, mine enemy's dog
+     Should have stood against my fire."
+
+But Shakespeare said:
+
+     "Mine enemy's dog, though he had bit me,
+     Should have stood, that night, against my fire."
+
+Of all the poets--of all the writers--Shakespeare is the most original.
+He is as original as Nature.
+
+It may truthfully be said that "Nature wants stuff to vie strange forms
+with fancy, to make another."
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+THERE is in the greatest poetry a kind of extravagance that touches the
+infinite, and in this Shakespeare exceeds all others.
+
+You will remember the description given of the voyage of Paris in search
+of Helen:
+
+     "The seas and winds, old wranglers, made a truce,
+     And did him service; he touched the ports desired,"
+
+And for an old aunt, whom the Greeks held captive,
+
+     "He brought a Grecian queen whose youth and freshness
+     Wrinkles Apollo, and makes stale the morning."
+
+So, in Pericles, when the father finds his daughter, he cries out:
+
+     "O Helicanus! strike me, honored sir;
+     Give me a gash, put me to present pain,
+     Lest this great sea of joys, rushing upon me,
+     O'erbear the shores of my mortality."
+
+The greatest compliment that man has ever paid to the woman he adores is
+this line:
+
+     "Eyes that do mislead the morn."
+
+Nothing can be conceived more perfectly poetic.
+
+In that marvellous play, the "Midsummer Nights Dream," is one of the
+most extravagant things in literature:
+
+              "Thou rememberest
+     Since once I sat upon a promontory,
+     And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back
+     Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
+     That the rude sea grew civil at her song,
+     And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
+     To hear the sea-maid's music."
+
+This is so marvellously told that it almost seems probable.
+
+So the description of Mark Antony:
+
+                "For his bounty
+      There was no winter in't--an autumn t'was
+      That grew the more by reaping.
+      His delights Were dolphin-like--they showed his back above
+      The element they lived in."
+
+Think of the astronomical scope and amplitude of this:
+
+     "Her bed is India--there she lies a pearl."
+
+Is there anything more intense than these words of Cleopatra?
+
+     "Rather on Nilus mud lay me stark naked
+     And let the water-flies blow me into abhorring."
+
+Or this of Isabella:
+
+     "The impression of keen whips I'd wear as rubies,
+     And strip myself to death as to a bed
+     That longing I've been sick for, ere I yield
+     My body up to shame."
+
+Is there an intellectual man in the world who will not agree with this?
+
+          "Let me not live
+     After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff
+     Of younger spirits."
+
+Can anything exceed the words of Troilus when parting with Cressida:
+
+     "We two, that with so many thousand sighs
+     Did buy each other, most poorly sell ourselves
+     With the rude brevity and discharge of one.
+
+     "Injurious time now with a robber's haste
+     Crams his rich thievery up, he knows not how;
+     As many farewells as be stars in heaven,
+     With distinct breath and consigned kisses to them,
+     He fumbles up into a loose adieu,
+     And scants us with a single famished kiss,
+     Distasted with the salt of broken tears."
+
+Take this example, where pathos almost touches the grotesque.
+
+     "O dear Juliet, why art thou yet so fair?
+     Shall I believe that unsubstantial death is amorous,
+     And that the lean, abhorred monster keeps thee here
+     I' the dark, to be his paramour?"
+
+Often when reading the marvellous lines of Shakespeare, I feel that his
+thoughts are "too subtle potent, tuned too sharp in sweetness, for the
+capacity of my ruder powers." Sometimes I cry out, "O churl!--write all,
+and leave no thoughts for those who follow after."
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+SHAKESPEARE was an innovator, an iconoclast. He cared nothing for
+the authority of men or of schools. He violated the "unities," and
+cared--nothing for the models of the ancient world.
+
+The Greeks insisted that nothing should be in a play that did not tend
+to the catastrophe. They did not believe in the episode--in the sudden
+contrasts of light and shade--in mingling the comic and the tragic.
+The sunlight never fell upon their tears, and darkness did not overtake
+their laughter. They believed that nature sympathized or was in harmony
+with the events of the play. When crime was about to be committed--some
+horror to be perpetrated--the light grew dim, the wind sighed, the trees
+shivered, and upon all was the shadow of the coming event.
+
+Shakespeare knew that the play had little to do with the tides and
+currents of universal life--that Nature cares neither for smiles nor
+tears, for life nor death, and that the sun shines as gladly on coffins
+as on cradles.
+
+The first time I visited the Place de la Concorde, where during the
+French Revolution stood the guillotine, and where now stands an
+Egyptian obelisk--a bird, sitting on the top, was singing with all its
+might.--Nature forgets.
+
+One of the most notable instances of the violation by Shakespeare of the
+classic model, is found in the 6th Scene of the I. Act of Macbeth.
+
+When the King and Banquo approach the castle in which the King is to be
+murdered that night, no shadow falls athwart the threshold. So beautiful
+is the scene that the King says:
+
+     "This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air
+     Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
+     Unto our gentle senses."
+
+And Banquo adds:
+
+     "This guest of summer,
+     The temple-haunting martlet, does approve
+     By his loved mansionry that the heaven's breath
+     Smells wooingly here; no jutty, frieze,
+     Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird
+     Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle.
+     Where they most breed and haunt,
+     I have observed
+     The air is delicate."
+
+Another notable instance is the porter scene immediately following
+the murder. So, too, the dialogue with the clown who brings the asp to
+Cleopatra just before the suicide, illustrates my meaning.
+
+I know of one paragraph in the Greek drama worthy of Shakespeare. This
+is in "Medea." When Medea kills her children she curses Jason, using the
+ordinary Billingsgate and papal curse, but at the conclusion says: "I
+pray the gods to make him virtuous, that he may the more deeply feel the
+pang that I inflict."
+
+Shakespeare dealt in lights and shadows. He was intense. He put noons
+and midnights side by side. No other dramatist would have dreamed of
+adding to the pathos--of increasing our appreciation of Lear's agony,
+by supplementing the wail of the mad king with the mocking laughter of a
+loving clown.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+THE ordinary dramatists--the men of talent--(and there is the same
+difference between talent and genius that there is between a stone-mason
+and a sculptor) create characters that become types. Types are
+of necessity caricatures--actual men and women are to some extent
+contradictory in their actions. Types are blown in the one direction by
+the one wind--characters have pilots.
+
+In real people, good and evil mingle. Types are all one way, or all the
+other--all good, or all bad, all wise or all foolish.
+
+Pecksniff was a perfect type, a perfect hypocrite--and will remain a
+type as long as language lives--a hypocrite that even drunkenness could
+not change. Everybody understands Pecksniff, and compared with him
+Tartuffe was an honest man. Hamlet is an individual, a person, an actual
+being--and for that reason there is a difference of opinion ias to his
+motives and as to his character. We differ About Hamlet as we do about
+Caesar, or about Shakespeare himself.
+
+Hamlet saw the ghost of his father and heard again his father's voice,
+and yet, afterwards, he speaks of
+
+     "the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns."
+
+In this there is no contradiction. The reason outweighs the senses. If
+we should see a dead man rise from his grave, we would not, the next
+day, believe that we did. No one can credit a miracle until it becomes
+so common that it ceases to be miraculous.
+
+Types are puppets--controlled from without--characters act from within.
+There is the same difference between characters and types that there
+is between springs and water-works, between canals and rivers, between
+wooden soldiers and heroes.
+
+In most plays and in most novels the characters are so shadowy that we
+have to piece them out with the imagination.
+
+One waking in the morning sometimes sees at the foot of his bed a
+strange figure--it may be of an ancient lady with cap and ruffles and
+with the expression of garrulous and fussy old age--but when the light
+gets stronger, the figure gradually changes and he sees a few clothes on
+a chair.
+
+The dramatist lives the lives of others, and in order to delineate
+character must not only have imagination but sympathy with the character
+delineated. The great dramatist thinks of a character as an entirety, as
+an individual.
+
+I once had a dream, and in this dream I was discussing a subject with
+another man. It occurred to me that I was dreaming, and I then said
+to myself: If this is a dream, I am doing the talking for both
+sides--consequently I ought to know in advance what the other man is
+going to say. In my dream I tried the experiment. I then asked the other
+man a question, and before he answered made up my mind what the answer
+was to be. To my surprise, the man did not say what I expected he would,
+and so great was my astonishment that I awoke.
+
+It then occurred to me that I had discovered the secret of Shakespeare.
+He did, when awake, what I did when asleep--that is, he threw off a
+character so perfect that it acted independently of him.
+
+In the delineation of character Shakespeare has no rivals. He creates no
+monsters. His characters do not act without reason, without motive.
+
+Iago had his reasons. In Caliban, nature was not destroyed--and Lady
+Macbeth certifies that the woman still was in her heart, by saying:
+
+     "Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done it."
+
+Shakespeare's characters act from within. They are centres of energy.
+They are not pushed by unseen hands, or pulled by unseen strings. They
+have objects, desires. They are persons--real, living beings.
+
+Few dramatists succeed in getting their characters loose from the
+canvas--their backs stick to the wall--they do not have free and
+independent action--they have no background, no unexpressed motives--no
+untold desires. They lack the complexity of the real.
+
+Shakespeare makes the character true to itself. Christopher Sly,
+surrounded by the luxuries of a lord, true to his station, calls for a
+pot of the smallest ale.
+
+Take one expression by Lady Macbeth. You remember that after the murder
+is discovered--after the alarm bell is rung--she appears upon the scene
+wanting to know what has happened. Macduff refuses to tell her, saying
+that the slightest word would murder as it fell. At this moment Banquo
+comes upon the scene and Macduff cries out to him:
+
+     "Our royal master's murdered."
+
+What does Lady Macbeth then say? She in fact makes a confession of
+guilt. The weak point in the terrible tragedy is that Duncan was
+murdered in Macbeth's castle. So when Lady Macbeth hears what they
+suppose is news to her, she cries:
+
+     "What!   In our house!"
+
+Had she been innocent, her horror of the crime would have made her
+forget the place--the venue. Banquo sees through this, and sees through
+her.
+
+Her expression was a light, by which he saw her guilt--and he answers:
+
+     "Too cruel anywhere."
+
+No matter whether Shakespeare delineated clown or king, warrior or
+maiden--no matter whether his characters are taken from the gutter or
+the throne--each is a work of consummate art, and when he is unnatural,
+he is so splendid that the defect is forgotten.
+
+When Romeo is told of the death of Juliet, and thereupon makes up his
+mind to die upon her grave, he gives a description of the shop where
+poison could be purchased. He goes into particulars and tells of the
+alligators stuffed, of the skins of ill-shaped fishes, of the beggarly
+account of empty boxes, of the remnants of pack-thread, and old cakes
+of roses--and while it is hardly possible to believe that under such
+circumstances a man would take the trouble to make an inventory of a
+strange kind of drug-store, yet the inventory is so perfect--the picture
+is so marvellously drawn--that we forget to think whether it is natural
+or not.
+
+In making the frame of a great picture--of a great scene--Shakespeare
+was often careless, but the picture is perfect. In making the sides of
+the arch he was negligent, but when he placed the keystone, it burst
+into blossom. Of course there are many lines in Shakepeare that never
+should have been written. In other words, there are imperfections in his
+plays. But we must remember that Shakespeare furnished the torch that
+enables us to see these imperfections.
+
+Shakespeare speaks through his characters, and we must not mistake what
+the characters say, for the opinion of Shakespeare. No one can believe
+that Shakespeare regarded life as "a tale told by an idiot, full of
+sound and fury, signifying nothing." That was the opinion of a murderer,
+surrounded by avengers, and whose wife--partner in his crimes--troubled
+with thick-coming fancies--had gone down to her death.
+
+Most actors and writers seem to suppose that the lines called "The Seven
+Ages" contain Shakespeare's view of human life. Nothing could be farther
+from the truth. The lines were uttered by a cynic, in contempt and scorn
+of the human race.
+
+Shakespeare did not put his characters in the livery and uniform of
+some weakness, peculiarity or passion. He did not use names as tags or
+brands. He did not write under the picture, "This is a villain." His
+characters need no suggestive names to tell us what they are--we see
+them and we know them for ourselves.
+
+It may be that in the greatest utterances of the greatest characters in
+the supreme moments, we have the real thoughts, opinions and convictions
+of Shakespeare.
+
+Of all writers Shakespeare is the most impersonal.. He speaks through
+others, and the others seem to speak for themselves. The didactic is
+lost in the dramatic. He does not use the stage as a pulpit to enforce
+some maxim. He is as reticent as Nature.
+
+He idealizes the common and transfigures all he touches--but he does not
+preach. He was in-terested in men and things as they were. He did not
+seek: to change them--but to portray, he was _Nature's mirror_--and in
+that mirror Nature saw herself.
+
+When I stood amid the great trees of California that lift their
+spreading capitals against the clouds, looking like Nature's columns to
+support the sky, I thought of the poetry of Shakespeare.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+WHAT a procession of men and women--statesmen and warriors--kings and
+clowns--issued from Shakespeare's brain. What women!
+
+Isabella--in whose spotless life love and reason blended into perfect
+truth.
+
+Juliet--within whose heart passion and purity met like white and red
+within the bosom of a rose.
+
+Cordelia--who chose to suffer loss, rather than show her wealth of love
+with those who gilded lies in hope of gain.
+
+Hermione--"tender as infancy and grace"--who bore with perfect hope and
+faith the cross of shame, and who at last forgave with all her heart.
+
+Desdemona--so innocent, so perfect, her love so pure, that she was
+incapable of suspecting that another could suspect, and who with dying
+words sought to hide her lover's crime--and with her last faint breath
+uttered a loving lie that burst into a perfumed lily between her pallid
+lips.
+
+Perdita--A violet dim, and sweeter than the lids of Junos eyes--"The
+sweetest low-born lass that ever ran on the green sward." And
+Helena--who said:
+
+     "I know I love in vain, strive against hope--
+     Yet in this captious and intenable sieve
+     I still pour in the waters of my love,
+     And lack not to lose still,
+     Thus, Indian-like, Religious in mine error, I adore
+     The sun that looks upon his worshipper,
+     But knows of him no more."
+
+Miranda--who told her love as gladly as a flower gives its bosom to the
+kisses of the sun.
+
+And Cordelia, whose kisses cured and whose tears restored. And stainless
+Imogen, who cried:
+
+     "What is it to be false?"
+
+And here is the description of the perfect woman:
+
+     "To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love;
+     To keep her constancy in plight and youth--
+     Outliving beauty's outward with a mind
+     That doth renew swifter than blood decays."
+
+Shakespeare done more for woman than all the other dramatists of the
+world.
+
+For my part. I love the Clowns. I love _Launce_ and his dog Crabb, and
+_Gobbo_, whose conscience threw its arms around the neck of his heart,
+and _Touchstone_, with his lie seven times removed; and dear old
+_Dogberry_--a pretty piece of flesh, tedious as a king. And _Bottom_,
+the very paramour for a sweet voice, longing to take the part to tear
+a cat in; and _Autolycus_, the snapper-up of unconsidered trifles,
+sleeping out the thought for the life to come. And great _Sir John_,
+without conscience, and for that reason unblamed and enjoyed--and who
+at the end babbles of green fields, and is almost loved. And ancient
+_Pistol_, the world his oyster. And _Bardolph_, with the flea on his
+blazing nose, putting beholders in mind of a damned soul in hell. And
+the poor _Fool_, who followed the mad king, and went "to bed at
+noon." And the clown who carried the worm of Nilus, whose "biting was
+immortal." And _Corin_, the shepherd--who described the perfect man:
+"I am a true laborer: I earn that I eat--get that I wear--owe no man
+aught--envy no man's happiness--glad of other men's good--content."
+
+And mingling in this motley throng, _Lear_, within whose brain a tempest
+raged until the depths were stirred, and the intellectual wealth of a
+life was given back to memory--and then by madness thrown to storm and
+night--and when I read the living lines I feel as though I looked upon
+the sea and saw it wrought by frenzied whirlwinds, until the buried
+treasures and the sunken wrecks of all the years were cast upon the
+shores.
+
+And _Othello_--who like the base Indian threw a pearl away richer than
+all his tribe.
+
+And _Hamlet_--thought-entangted--hesitating between two worlds.
+
+And _Macbeth_--strange mingling of cruelty and conscience, reaping
+the sure harvest of successful crime--"Curses not loud but
+deep--mouth-honor,--breath."
+
+And _Brutus_, falling on his sword that Caesar might be still.
+
+And _Romeo_, dreaming of the white wonder of Juliet's hand. And
+_Ferdinand_, the patient log-man for Miranda's sake. And _Florizel_,
+who, "for all the sun sees, or the close earth wombs, or the
+profound seas hide," would not be faithless to the low-born lass. And
+_Constance_, weeping for her son, while grief "stuffs out his vacant
+garments with his form."
+
+And in the midst of tragedies and tears, of love and laughter and crime,
+we hear the voice of the good friar, who declares that in every human
+heart, as in the smallest flower, there are encamped the opposed hosts
+of good and evil--and our philosophy is interrupted by the garrulous old
+nurse, whose talk is as busily useless as the babble of a stream that
+hurries by a ruined mill.
+
+From every side the characters crowd upon us--the men and women born of
+Shakespeare's brain. They utter with a thousand voices the thoughts of
+the "myriad-minded" man, and impress themselves upon us as deeply and
+vividly as though they really lived with us.
+
+Shakespeare alone has delineated love in every possible phase--has
+ascended to the very top, and actually reached heights that no other has
+imagined. I do not believe the human mind will ever produce or be in a
+position to appreciate, a greater love-play than "Romeo and Juliet." It
+is a symphony in which all music seems to blend. The heart bursts into
+blossom, and he who reads feels the swooning intoxication of a divine
+perfume.
+
+In the alembic of Shakespeare's brain the baser metals were turned to
+gold--passions became virtues--weeds became exotics, from some diviner
+land--and common mortals made of ordinary clay outranked the Olympian
+Gods. In his brain there was the touch of chaos that suggests
+the infinite--that belongs to genius. Talent is measured and
+mathematical--dominated by prudence and the thought of use. Genius is
+tropical. The creative instinct runs riot, delights in extravagance and
+waste, and overwhelms the mental beggars of the world with uncounted
+gold and unnumbered gems.
+
+Some things are immortal: The plays of Shakespeare, the marbles of the
+Greeks, and the music of Wagner.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+Shakespeare was the greatest of philosophers.
+
+He knew the conditions of success--of happiness--the relations _that men,
+sustain_ to each other, and the duties of all. He knew the tides and
+currents of the heart--the cliffs and caverns of the brain. He knew the
+weakness of the will, the sophistry of desire--and "That pleasure
+and revenge have ears more deaf than adders to the voice of any true
+decision."
+
+He knew that the soul lives in an invisible world--that flesh is but a
+mask, and that "There is no art to find the mind's construction In the
+face."
+
+He knew that courage should be the servant of judgment, and that
+
+     "When valor preys on reason it eats the sword It fights with."
+
+He knew that man is never "master of the event, that he is to some
+extent the sport or prey of the blind forces of the world, and that
+
+      "In the reproof of chance lies the true proof of men."
+
+Feeling that the past is unchangeable, and that that which must happen
+is as much beyond control as though it had happened, he says:
+
+     "Let determined things to destiny Hold unbewailed their way."
+
+Shakespeare was great enough to know that every human being prefers
+happiness to misery, and that crimes are but mistakes. Looking in
+pity upon the human race, upon the pain and poverty, the crimes and
+cruelties, the limping travelers on the thorny paths, he was great and
+good enough to say:
+
+     "There is no darkness but ignorance."
+
+In all the philosophies there is no greater line. This great truth fills
+the heart with pity.
+
+He knew that place and power do not give happiness--that the crowned are
+subject as the lowest to fate and chance.
+
+     "Within the hollow crown
+     That rounds the mortal temples of a king
+     Keeps death his Court, and there the antic sits
+     Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
+     Allowing him a brief and little scene
+     To monarchize by fear and kill with looks,
+     Infusing him with self and vain conceit--
+     As if this flesh that walls about our life
+     Were brass impregnable; and humored thus,
+     Comes at the last and with a little pin
+     Bores through his castle wall--and farewell king!"
+
+So, too, he knew that gold could not bring joy--that death and
+misfortune come alike to rich and poor, because:
+
+     "If thou art rich thou art poor;
+     For like an ass whose back with ingots bows
+     Thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey,
+     And death unloads thee."
+
+In some of his philosophy there was a kind of scorn--a hidden meaning
+that could not in his day and time have safely been expressed. You will
+remember that Laertes was about to kill the king, and this king was the
+murderer of his own brother, and sat upon the throne by reason of his
+crime--and in the mouth of such a king Shakespeare puts these words:
+
+     "There's such divinity doth hedge a king."
+
+So, in Macbeth
+
+                 "How he solicits
+     Heaven himself best knows; but strangely visited people
+     All swollen and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,
+     The mere despairs of surgery, he cures;
+     Hanging a golden stamp about their necks.
+     Put on with holy prayers; and 'tis spoken
+     To the succeeding royalty--he leaves
+     The healing benediction.
+
+     "With this strange virtue
+     He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy,
+     And sundry blessings hang about his throne,
+     That speak him full of grace."
+
+Shakespeare was the master of the human heart--knew all the hopes, fears,
+ambitions, and passions that sway the mind of man; and thus knowing, he
+declared that
+
+     "Love is not love that alters
+     When it alteration finds."
+
+This is the sublimest declaration in the literature of the world.
+
+Shakespeare seems to give the generalization--the result--without the
+process of thought. He seems always to be at the conclusion--standing
+where all truths meet.
+
+In one of the Sonnets is this fragment of a line that contains the
+highest possible truth:
+
+     "Conscience is born of love."
+
+If man were incapable of suffering, the words right and wrong never
+could have been spoken. If man were destitute of imagination, the flower
+of pity never could have blossomed in his heart.
+
+We suffer--we cause others to suffer--those that we love--and of this
+fact conscience is born.
+
+Love is the many-colored flame that makes the fireside of the heart. It
+is the mingled spring and autumn--the perfect climate of the soul.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+IN the realm of comparison Shakespeare seems to have exhausted the
+relations, parallels and similitudes of things, He only could have said:
+
+     "Tedious as a twice-told tale
+     Vexing the ears of a drowsy man."
+
+     "Duller than a great thaw.
+     Dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage."
+
+In the words of Ulysses, spoken to Achilles, we find the most wonderful
+collection of pictures and comparisons ever compressed within the same
+number of lines:
+
+     "Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
+     Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,--
+     A great-sized monster of ingratitudes--
+     Those scraps are good deeds passed; which are devoured
+     As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
+     As done; perseverance, dear my lord,
+     Keeps honor bright: to have done is to hang
+     Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail In monumental mockery.
+
+     "Take the instant way;
+     For honor travels in a strait so narrow
+     Where one but goes abreast; keep then the path;
+     For emulation hath a thousand sons
+     That one by one pursue; if you give way,
+     Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
+     Like to an entered tide, they all rush by
+     And leave you hindmost:
+     Or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank,
+     Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,
+     O'errun and trampled on: then what they do in present,
+     Tho' less than yours in past, must o' ertop yours;
+     For time is like a fashionable host
+     That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
+     And with his arms outstretched as he would fly,
+     Grasps in the comer:
+     Welcome ever smiles,
+     And Farewell goes out sighing."
+
+So the words of Cleopatra, when Charmain speaks:
+
+     "Peace, peace:
+     Dost thou not see my baby at my breast
+     That sucks the nurse asleep?"
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+NOTHING is more difficult than a definition--a crystallization of
+thought so perfect that it emits light. Shakespeare says of suicide:
+
+     "It is great to do that thing
+     That ends all other deeds,
+     Which shackles accident, and bolts up change."
+
+He defines drama to be:
+
+     "Turning the accomplishments of many years
+     Into an hour glass."
+
+Of death:
+
+     "This sensible warm motion to become a kneaded clod,
+     To lie in cold obstruction and to rot."
+
+Of memory:
+
+     "The warder of the brain."
+
+Of the body:
+
+     "This muddy vesture of decay."
+
+And he declares that
+
+     "Our little life is rounded with a sleep."
+
+He speaks of Echo as:
+
+     "The babbling gossip of the air"--
+
+Romeo, addressing the poison that he is about to take, says:
+
+     "Come, bitter conduct, come unsavory guide,
+     Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
+     The dashing rocks thy sea-sick, weary bark."
+
+He describes the world as
+
+     "This bank and shoal of time."
+
+He says of rumor--
+
+     "That it doubles, like the voice and echo."
+
+It would take days to call attention to the perfect definitions,
+comparisons and generalizations of Shakespeare. He gave us the deeper
+meanings of our words--taught us the art of speech. He was the lord of
+language--master of expression and compression.
+
+He put the greatest thoughts into the shortest words--made the poor rich
+and the common royal.
+
+Production enriched his brain. Nothing exhausted him. The moment his
+attention was called to any subject--comparisons, definitions, metaphors
+and generalizations filled his mind and begged for utterance. His
+thoughts like bees robbed every blossom in the world, and then with
+"merry march" brought the rich booty home "to the tent royal of their
+emperor."
+
+Shakespeare was the confidant of Nature. To him she opened her "infinite
+book of secrecy," and in his brain were "the hatch and brood of time."
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+THERE is in Shakespeare the mingling of laughter and tears, humor and
+pathos. Humor is the rose, wit the thorn. Wit is a crystallization,
+humor an efflorescence. Wit comes from the brain, humor from the heart.
+Wit is the lightning of the soul.
+
+In Shakespeare's nature was the climate of humor. He saw and felt the
+sunny side even of the saddest things. "You have seen sunshine and rain
+at once." So Shakespeare's tears fell oft upon his smiles. In moments of
+peril--on the very darkness of death--there comes a touch of humor that
+falls like a fleck of sunshine.
+
+Gonzalo, when the ship is about to sink, having seen the boatswain,
+exclaims:
+
+     "I have great comfort from this fellow;
+     Methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him;
+     His complexion is perfect gallows."
+
+Shakespeare is filled with the strange contrasts of grief and laughter.
+While poor Hero is supposed to be dead--wrapped in the shroud of
+dishonor--Dogberry and Verges unconsciously put again the wedding wreath
+upon her pure brow.
+
+The soliloquy of Launcelot--great as Hamlet's--offsets the bitter and
+burning words of Shylock.
+
+There is only time to speak of Maria in "Twelfth Night," of Autolycus in
+the "Winter's Tale," of the parallel drawn by Fluellen between Alexander
+of Macedon and Harry of Monmouth, or of the marvellous humor of
+Falstaff, who never had the faintest thought of right or wrong--or of
+Mercutio, that embodiment of wit and humor--for of the grave-diggers who
+lamented that "great folk should have countenance in this world to drown
+and hang themselves, more than their even Christian," and who reached
+the generalization that
+
+     "the gallows does well because it does well to those who do ill."
+
+There is also an example of grim humor--an example without a parallel in
+literature, so far as I know. Hamlet having killed Polonius is asked:
+
+     "Where's Polonais?"
+     "At supper."
+     "At supper! where?"
+     "Not where he eats, but where he is eaten."
+
+Above all others, Shakespeare appreciated the pathos of situation.
+
+Nothing is more pathetic than the last scene in "Lear." No one has
+ever bent above his dead who did not feel the words uttered by the mad
+king,--words born of a despair deeper than tears:
+
+     "Oh, that a horse, a dog, a rat hath life
+     And thou no breath!"
+
+So Iago, after he has been wounded, says:
+
+     "I bleed, sir; but not killed."
+
+And Othello answers from the wreck and shattered remnant of his life:
+
+     "I would have thee live;
+     For in my sense it is happiness to die."
+
+When Troilus finds Cressida has been false, he cries:
+
+     "Let it not be believed for womanhood;
+     Think! we had mothers."
+
+Ophelia, in her madness, "the sweet bells jangled out o' tune," says
+softly:
+
+     "I would give you some violets;
+     But they withered all when my father died."
+
+When Macbeth has reaped the harvest, the seeds of which were sown by his
+murderous hand, he exclaims,--and what could be more pitiful?
+
+     "I 'gin to be aweary of the sun."
+
+Richard the Second feels how small a thing it is to be, or to have been,
+a king, or to receive honors before or after power is lost; and so, of
+those who stood uncovered before him, he asks this piteous question:
+
+     "I live with bread, like you; feel want,
+     Taste grief, need friends; subjected thus,
+     How can you say to me I am a king?"
+
+Think of the salutation of Antony to the dead Caesar:
+
+     "Pardon me, thou piece of bleeding earth."
+
+When Pisanio informs Imogen that he had been ordered by Posthumus to
+murder her, she bares her neck and cries:
+
+     "The lamb entreats the butcher:
+     Where is thy knife?
+     Thou art too slow
+     To do thy master's bidding when I desire it."
+
+Antony, as the last drops are falling from his self-inflicted wound,
+utters with his dying breath to Cleopatra, this:
+
+     "I here importune death awhile, until
+     Of many thousand kisses the poor last I lay upon thy lips."
+
+To me, the last words of Hamlet are full of pathos:
+
+     "I die, Horatio.
+     The potent poison quite o'er crows my spirit   *   *   *
+     The rest is silence."
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+SOME have insisted that Shakespeare must have been a physician, for
+the reason that he shows such knowledge of medicine--of the symptoms of
+disease and death--was so familiar with the brain, and with insanity in
+all its forms.
+
+I do not think he was a physician. He knew too much--his generalizations
+were too splendid. He had none of the prejudices of that profession
+in his time. We might as well say that he was a musician, a composer,
+because we find in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" nearly every musical
+term known in Shakespeare's time.
+
+Others maintain that he was a lawyer, perfectly acquainted with the
+forms, with the expressions familiar to that profession--yet there is
+nothing to show that he was a lawyer, or that he knew more about law
+than any intelligent man should know.
+
+He was not a lawyer. His sense of justice was never dulled by reading
+English law.
+
+Some think that he was a botanist, because he named nearly all known
+plants. Others, that he was an astronomer, a naturalist, because he gave
+hints and suggestions of nearly all discoveries.
+
+Some have thought that he must have been a sailor, for the reason that
+the orders given in the opening of "The Tempest" were the best that
+could, under the circumstances, have been given to save the ship.
+
+For my part, I think there is nothing in the plays to show that he was
+a lawyer, doctor, botanist or scientist. He had the observant eyes
+that really see, the ears that really hear, the brain that retains all
+pictures, all thoughts, logic as unerring as light, the imagination
+that supplies defects and builds the perfect from a fragment. And these
+faculties, these aptitudes, working together, account for what he did.
+
+He exceeded all the sons of men in the splendor of his imagination. To
+him the whole world paid tribute, and nature poured her treasures at his
+feet. In him all races lived again, and even those to be were pictured
+in his brain.
+
+He was a man of imagination--that is to say, of genius, and having seen
+a leaf, and a drop of water, he could construct the forests, the rivers,
+and the seas--and in his presence all the cataracts would fall and foam,
+the mists rise, the clouds form and float.
+
+If Shakespeare knew one fact, he knew its kindred and its neighbors.
+Looking at a coat of mail, he instantly imagined the society, the
+conditions, that produced it and what it, in turn, produced. He saw
+the castle, the moat, the draw-bridge, the lady in the tower, and the
+knightly lover spurring across the plain. He saw the bold baron and the
+rude retainer, the trampled serf, and all the glory and the grief of
+feudal life.
+
+He lived the life of all.
+
+He was a citizen of Athens in the days of Pericles. He listened to the
+eager eloquence of the great orators, and sat upon the cliffs, and with
+the tragic poet heard "the multitudinous laughter of the sea." He saw
+Socrates thrust the spear of question through the shield and heart of
+falsehood. He was present when the great man drank hemlock, and met the
+night of death, tranquil as a star meets morning. He listened to the
+peripatetic philosophers, and was unpuzzled by the sophists. He watched
+Phidias as he chiseled shapeless stone to forms of love and awe.
+
+He lived by the mysterious Nile, amid the vast and monstrous. He knew
+the very thought that wrought the form and features of the Sphinx. He
+heard great Memnon's morning song when marble lips were smitten by
+the sun. He laid him down with the embalmed and waiting dead, and felt
+within their dust the expectation of another life, mingled with cold and
+suffocating doubts--the children born of long delay.
+
+He walked the ways of mighty Rome, and saw great Caesar with his legions
+in the field. He stood with vast and motley throngs and watched the
+triumphs given to victorious men, followed by uncrowned kings, the
+captured hosts, and all the spoils of ruthless war. He heard the
+shout that shook the Coliseums roofless walls, when from the reeling
+gladiator's hand the short sword fell, while from his bosom gushed the
+stream of wasted life.
+
+He lived the life of savage men. He trod the forests' silent depths, and
+in the desperate game of life or death he matched his thought against
+the instinct of the beast.
+
+He knew all crimes and all regrets, all virtues and their rich rewards.
+He was victim and victor, pursuer and pursued, outcast and king. He
+heard the applause and curses of the world, and on his heart had fallen
+all the nights and noons of failure and success.
+
+He knew the unspoken thoughts, the dumb desires, the wants and ways of
+beasts. He felt the crouching tigers thrill, the terror of the ambushed
+prey, and with the eagles he had shared the ecstasy of flight and poise
+and swoop, and he had lain with sluggish serpents on the barren rocks
+uncoiling slowly in the heat of noon.
+
+He sat beneath the bo-tree's contemplative shade, wrapped in Buddha's
+mighty thought, and dreamed all dreams that light, the alchemist, has
+wrought from dust and dew, and stored within the slumbrous poppy's
+subtle blood.
+
+He knelt with awe and dread at every shrine--he offered every sacrifice,
+and every prayer--felt the consolation and the shuddering fear--mocked
+and worshipped all the gods--enjoyed all heavens, and felt the pangs of
+every hell.
+
+He lived all lives, and through his blood and brain there crept the
+shadow and the chill of every death, and his soul, like Mazeppa, was
+lashed naked to the wild horse of every fear and love and hate.
+
+The Imagination had a stage in Shakespeare's brain, whereon were set all
+scenes that lie between the morn of laughter and the night of tears, and
+where his players bodied forth the false and true, the joys and griefs,
+the careless shallows and the tragic deeps of universal life.
+
+From Shakespeare's brain there poured a Niagara of gems spanned by
+Fancy's seven-hued arch. He was as many-sided as clouds are many-formed.
+To him giving was hoarding--sowing was harvest--and waste itself the
+source of wealth. Within his marvellous mind were the fruits of all
+thought past, the seeds of all to be. As a drop of dew contains the
+image of the earth and sky, so all there is of life was mirrored forth
+in Shakespeare's brain.
+
+Shakespeare was an intellectual ocean, whose waves touched all the
+shores of thought; within which were all the tides and waves of destiny
+and will; over which swept all the storms of fate, ambition and revenge;
+upon which fell the gloom and darkness of despair and death and all the
+sunlight of content and love, and within which was the inverted sky lit
+with the eternal stars--an intellectual ocean--towards which all rivers
+ran, and from which now the isles and continents of thought receive
+their dew and rain.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Shakespeare, by Robert G. Ingersoll
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