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diff --git a/old/7rem210.txt b/old/7rem210.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..72bd3a7 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/7rem210.txt @@ -0,0 +1,12806 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Literary Remains, Vol. 2, by Coleridge +#9 in our series by Coleridge + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Literary Remains, Vol. 2 + +Author: Coleridge + +Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8533] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on July 20, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERARY REMAINS, VOL. 2 *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Clytie Siddall +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + +THE LITERARY REMAINS + +OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE + + + +COLLECTED AND EDITED BY + +HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE, ESQ. M.A. + + +VOLUME THE SECOND + + + + + +CONTENTS + + +VOL. II. + + + +LITERARY REMAINS. + + + +Extract from a Letter written by Mr. Coleridge, in February, 1818, to a +Gentleman who attended the Course of Lectures given in the Spring of +that Year. + +Extract from a Letter to J. Britton, Esq. + + +SHAKSPEARE, WITH INTRODUCTORY MATTER ON POETRY, THE DRAMA, AND THE STAGE + Definition of Poetry + Greek Drama + Progress of the Drama + The Drama generally, and Public Taste + Shakspeare, a Poet generally + Shakspeare's Judgment equal to his Genius + Recapitulation, and Summary of the Characteristics of Shakspeare's Dramas + Order of Shakspeare's Plays + Notes on the Tempest + Love's Labour's Lost + Midsummer Night's Dream + Comedy of Errors + As You Like It + Twelfth Night + All's Well that Ends Well + Merry Wives of Windsor + Measure for Measure + Cymbeline + Titus Andronicus + Troilus and Cressida + Coriolanus + Julius Caesar + Antony and Cleopatra + Timon of Athens + Romeo and Juliet + Shakspeare's English Historical Plays + King John + Richard II. + Henry IV. Part I. + Henry IV. Part II. + Henry V. + Henry VI. Part I. + Richard III. + Lear + Hamlet + Notes on Macbeth + Notes on the Winter's Tale + Notes on Othello + +NOTES ON BEN JONSON + Whalley's Preface + Whalley's Life of Jonson + Every Man out of His Humour + Poetaster + Fall of Sejanus + Volpone + Epicene + The Alchemist + Catiline's Conspiracy + Bartholomew Fair + The Devil is an Ass + The Staple of News + The New Inn + +NOTES ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER + Harris's Commendatory Poem on Fletcher + Life of Fletcher in Stockdale's Edition. 1811 + Maid's Tragedy + A King and no King + The Scornful Lady + The Custom of the Country + The Elder Brother + The Spanish Curate + Wit Without Money + The Humorous Lieutenant + The Mad Lover + The Loyal Subject + Rule a Wife and have a Wife + The Laws of Candy + The Little French Lawyer + Valentinian + Rollo + The Wildgoose Chase + A Wife for a Month + The Pilgrim + The Queen of Corinth + The Noble Gentleman + The Coronation + Wit at Several Weapons + The Fair Maid of the Inn + The Two Noble Kinsmen + The Woman Hater + +On the 'Prometheus' of AEschylus + +Note on Chalmers's 'Life of Daniel' + +Bishop Corbet Notes on Selden's 'Table Talk' + +Note on Theological Lectures of Benjamin Wheeler, D.D. + +Note on a Sermon on the Prevalence of Infidelity and Enthusiasm, by +Walter Birch, B. D. + +Fenelon on Charity + +Change of the Climates + +Wonderfulness of Prose + +Notes on Tom Jones + +Jonathan Wild + +Barry Cornwall + +The Primitive Christian's Address to the Cross + +Fuller's Holy State + +Fuller's Profane State + +Fuller's Appeal of Injured Innocence + +Fuller's Church History + +Asgill's Argument + +Introduction to Asgill's Defence upon his Expulsion from the House of +Commons. + +Notes on Sir Thomas Browne's 'Religio Medici' + +Notes on Sir Thomas Browne's Garden of Cyrus + +Notes on Sir Thomas Browne's Vulgar Errors + + + + + +LITERARY REMAINS + + + + + +Extract from a Letter written by Mr. Coleridge, in February, 1818, to a +gentleman who attended the course of Lectures given in the spring of +that year. + +See the 'Canterbury Magazine', September, 1834. Ed. + + +My next Friday's lecture will, if I do not grossly flatter-blind myself, +be interesting, and the points of view not only original, but new to the +audience. I make this distinction, because sixteen or rather seventeen +years ago, I delivered eighteen lectures on Shakspeare, at the Royal +Institution; three-fourths of which appeared at that time startling +paradoxes, although they have since been adopted even by men, who then +made use of them as proofs of my flighty and paradoxical turn of mind; +all tending to prove that Shakspeare's judgment was, if possible, still +more wonderful than his genius; or rather, that the contradistinction +itself between judgment and genius rested on an utterly false theory. +This, and its proofs and grounds have been--I should not have said +adopted, but produced as their own legitimate children by some, and by +others the merit of them attributed to a foreign writer, whose lectures +were not given orally till two years after mine, rather than to their +countryman; though I dare appeal to the most adequate judges, as Sir +George Beaumont, the Bishop of Durham, Mr. Sotheby, and afterwards to +Mr. Rogers and Lord Byron, whether there is one single principle in +Schlegel's work (which is not an admitted drawback from its merits), +that was not established and applied in detail by me. Plutarch tells us, +that egotism is a venial fault in the unfortunate, and justifiable in +the calumniated, &c. ... + + + + + + +Extract from a Letter to J. Britton, Esq. + + +28th Feb., 1819, Highgate. + +Dear Sir, + +--First permit me to remove a very natural, indeed almost inevitable, +mistake, relative to my lectures; namely, that I 'have' them, or that +the lectures of one place or season are in any way repeated in another. +So far from it, that on any point that I had ever studied (and on no +other should I dare discourse--I mean, that I would not lecture on any +subject for which I had to 'acquire' the main knowledge, even though a +month's or three months' previous time were allowed me; on no subject +that had not employed my thoughts for a large portion of my life since +earliest manhood, free of all outward and particular purpose)--on any +point within my habit of thought, I should greatly prefer a subject I +had never lectured on, to one which I had repeatedly given; and those +who have attended me for any two seasons successively will bear witness, +that the lecture given at the London Philosophical Society, on the +'Romeo and Juliet', for instance, was as different from that given at +the Crown and Anchor, as if they had been by two individuals who, +without any communication with each other, had only mastered the same +principles of philosophic criticism. This was most strikingly evidenced +in the coincidence between my lectures and those of Schlegel; such, and +so close, that it was fortunate for my moral reputation that I had not +only from five to seven hundred ear witnesses that the passages had been +given by me at the Royal Institution two years before Schlegel commenced +his lectures at Vienna, but that notes had been taken of these by +several men and ladies of high rank. The fact is this; during a course +of lectures, I faithfully employ all the intervening days in collecting +and digesting the materials, whether I have or have not lectured on the +same subject before, making no difference. The day of the lecture, till +the hour of commencement, I devote to the consideration, what of the +mass before me is best fitted to answer the purposes of a lecture, that +is, to keep the audience awake and interested during the delivery, and +to leave a sting behind, that is, a disposition to study the subject +anew, under the light of a new principle. Several times, however, partly +from apprehension respecting my health and animal spirits, partly from +the wish to possess copies that might afterwards be marketable among the +publishers, I have previously written the lecture; but before I had +proceeded twenty minutes, I have been obliged to push the MS. away, and +give the subject a new turn. Nay, this was so notorious, that many of my +auditors used to threaten me, when they saw any number of written papers +on my desk, to steal them away; declaring they never felt so secure of a +good lecture as when they perceived that I had not a single scrap of +writing before me. I take far, far more pains than would go to the set +composition of a lecture, both by varied reading and by meditation; but +for the words, illustrations, &c., I know almost as little as any one of +the audience (that is, those of anything like the same education with +myself) what they will be five minutes before the lecture begins. Such +is my way, for such is my nature; and in attempting any other, I should +only torment myself in order to disappoint my auditors--torment myself +during the delivery, I mean; for in all other respects it would be a +much shorter and easier task to deliver them from writing. I am anxious +to preclude any semblance of affectation; and have therefore troubled +you with this lengthy preface before I have the hardihood to assure you, +that you might as well ask me what my dreams were in the year 1814, as +what my course of lectures was at the Surrey Institution. + +'Fuimus Troes.' + + + + + + +SHAKSPEARE, + +WITH INTRODUCTORY MATTER ON POETRY, THE DRAMA, AND THE STAGE. + + +DEFINITION OF POETRY. + +Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is +opposed to science, and prose to metre. The proper and immediate object +of science is the acquirement, or communication, of truth; the proper +and immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate +pleasure. This definition is useful; but as it would include novels and +other works of fiction, which yet we do not call poems, there must be +some additional character by which poetry is not only divided from +opposites, but likewise distinguished from disparate, though similar, +modes of composition. Now how is this to be effected? In animated prose, +the beauties of nature, and the passions and accidents of human nature, +are often expressed in that natural language which the contemplation of +them would suggest to a pure and benevolent mind; yet still neither we +nor the writers call such a work a poem, though no work could deserve +that name which did not include all this, together with something else. +What is this? It is that pleasurable emotion, that peculiar state and +degree of excitement, which arises in the poet himself in the act of +composition;--and in order to understand this, we must combine a more +than ordinary sympathy with the objects, emotions, or incidents +contemplated by the poet, consequent on a more than common sensibility, +with a more than ordinary activity of the mind in respect of the fancy +and the imagination. Hence is produced a more vivid reflection of the +truths of nature and of the human heart, united with a constant activity +modifying and correcting these truths by that sort of pleasurable +emotion, which the exertion of all our faculties gives in a certain +degree; but which can only be felt in perfection under the full play of +those powers of mind, which are spontaneous rather than voluntary, and +in which the effort required bears no proportion to the activity +enjoyed. This is the state which permits the production of a highly +pleasurable whole, of which each part shall also communicate for itself +a distinct and conscious pleasure; and hence arises the definition, +which I trust is now intelligible, that poetry, or rather a poem, is a +species of composition, opposed to science, as having intellectual +pleasure for its object, and as attaining its end by the use of language +natural to us in a state of excitement,--but distinguished from other +species of composition, not excluded by the former criterion, by +permitting a pleasure from the whole consistent with a consciousness of +pleasure from the component parts;--and the perfection of which is, to +communicate from each part the greatest immediate pleasure compatible +with the largest sum of pleasure on the whole. This, of course, will +vary with the different modes of poetry;--and that splendour of +particular lines, which would be worthy of admiration in an impassioned +elegy, or a short indignant satire, would be a blemish and proof of vile +taste in a tragedy or an epic poem. + +It is remarkable, by the way, that Milton in three incidental words has +implied all which for the purposes of more distinct apprehension, which +at first must be slow-paced in order to be distinct, I have endeavoured +to develope in a precise and strictly adequate definition. Speaking of +poetry, he says, as in a parenthesis, "which is simple, sensuous, +passionate." How awful is the power of words!--fearful often in their +consequences when merely felt, not understood; but most awful when both +felt and understood!--Had these three words only been properly +understood by, and present in the minds of, general readers, not only +almost a library of false poetry would have been either precluded or +still-born, but, what is of more consequence, works truly excellent and +capable of enlarging the understanding, warming and purifying the heart, +and placing in the centre of the whole being the germs of noble and +manlike actions, would have been the common diet of the intellect +instead. For the first condition, simplicity,--while, on the one hand, +it distinguishes poetry from the arduous processes of science, labouring +towards an end not yet arrived at, and supposes a smooth and finished +road, on which the reader is to walk onward easily, with streams +murmuring by his side, and trees and flowers and human dwellings to make +his journey as delightful as the object of it is desirable, instead of +having to toil, with the pioneers and painfully make the road on which +others are to travel,--precludes, on the other hand, every affectation +and morbid peculiarity;--the second condition, sensuousness, insures +that framework of objectivity, that definiteness and articulation of +imagery, and that modification of the images themselves, without which +poetry becomes flattened into mere didactics of practice, or evaporated +into a hazy, unthoughtful, daydreaming; and the third condition, +passion, provides that neither thought nor imagery shall be simply +objective, but that the _passio vera_ of humanity shall warm and animate +both. + +To return, however, to the previous definition, this most general and +distinctive character of a poem originates in the poetic genius itself; +and though it comprises whatever can with any propriety be called a +poem, (unless that word be a mere lazy synonyme for a composition in +metre,) it yet becomes a just, and not merely discriminative, but full +and adequate, definition of poetry in its highest and most peculiar +sense, only so far as the distinction still results from the poetic +genius, which sustains and modifies the emotions, thoughts, and vivid +representations of the poem by the energy without effort of the poet's +own mind,--by the spontaneous activity of his imagination and fancy, and +by whatever else with these reveals itself in the balancing and +reconciling of opposite or discordant qualities, sameness with +difference, a sense of novelty and freshness with old or customary +objects, a more than usual state of emotion with more than usual order, +self-possession and judgment with enthusiasm and vehement feeling,--and +which, while it blends and harmonizes the natural and the artificial, +still subordinates art to nature, the manner to the matter, and our +admiration of the poet to our sympathy with the images, passions, +characters, and incidents of the poem:- + + + Doubtless, this could not be, but that she turns + Bodies to _spirit_ by sublimation strange, + As fire converts to fire the things it burns-- + As we our food into our nature change! + + From their gross matter she abstracts _their_ forms, + And draws a kind of quintessence from things, + Which to her proper nature she transforms + To bear them light on her celestial wings! + + _Thus_ doth she, when from _individual states_ + She doth abstract the universal kinds, + _Which then reclothed in diverse names and fates + Steal access thro' our senses to our minds._ [1] + + +[Footnote 1: Sir John Davies on the Immortality of the Soul, sect. iv. +The words and lines in italics (_between_) are substituted to apply +these verses to the poetic genius. The greater part of this latter +paragraph may be found adopted, with some alterations, in the 'Biographia +Literaria', vol. ii. c. 14; but I have thought it better in this +instance and some others, to run the chance of bringing a few passages +twice over to the recollection of the reader, than to weaken the force +of the original argument by breaking the connection. Ed.] + + + + + +GREEK DRAMA. + +It is truly singular that Plato,--whose philosophy and religion were but +exotic at home, and a mere opposition to the finite in all things, +genuine prophet and anticipator as he was of the Protestant Christian +aera,--should have given in his Dialogue of the Banquet, a justification +of our Shakspeare. For he relates that, when all the other guests had +either dispersed or fallen asleep, Socrates only, together with +Aristophanes and Agathon, remained awake, and that, while he continued +to drink with them out of a large goblet, he compelled them, though most +reluctantly, to admit that it was the business of one and the same +genius to excel in tragic and comic poetry, or that the tragic poet +ought, at the same time, to contain within himself the powers of comedy. +[1] Now, as this was directly repugnant to the entire theory of the +ancient critics, and contrary to all their experience, it is evident +that Plato must have fixed the eye of his contemplation on the innermost +essentials of the drama, abstracted from the forms of age or country. In +another passage he even adds the reason, namely, that opposites +illustrate each other's nature, and in their struggle draw forth the +strength of the combatants, and display the conqueror as sovereign even +on the territories of the rival power. + +Nothing can more forcibly exemplify the separative spirit of the Greek +arts than their comedy as opposed to their tragedy. But as the immediate +struggle of contraries supposes an arena common to both, so both were +alike ideal; that is, the comedy of Aristophanes rose to as great a +distance above the ludicrous of real life, as the tragedy of Sophocles +above its tragic events and passions;--and it is in this one point, of +absolute ideality, that the comedy of Shakspeare and the old comedy of +Athens coincide. In this also alone did the Greek tragedy and comedy +unite; in every thing else they were exactly opposed to each other. +Tragedy is poetry in its deepest earnest; comedy is poetry in unlimited +jest. Earnestness consists in the direction and convergence of all the +powers of the soul to one aim, and in the voluntary restraint of its +activity in consequence; the opposite, therefore, lies in the apparent +abandonment of all definite aim or end, and in the removal of all bounds +in the exercise of the mind,--attaining its real end, as an entire +contrast, most perfectly, the greater the display is of intellectual +wealth squandered in the wantonness of sport without an object, and the +more abundant the life and vivacity in the creations of the arbitrary +will. + +The later comedy, even where it was really comic, was doubtless likewise +more comic, the more free it appeared from any fixed aim. +Misunderstandings of intention, fruitless struggles of absurd passion, +contradictions of temper, and laughable situations there were; but still +the form of the representation itself was serious; it proceeded as much +according to settled laws, and used as much the same means of art, +though to a different purpose, as the regular tragedy itself. But in the +old comedy the very form itself is whimsical; the whole work is one +great jest, comprehending a world of jests within it, among which each +maintains its own place without seeming to concern itself as to the +relation in which it may stand to its fellows. In short, in Sophocles, +the constitution of tragedy is monarchical, but such as it existed in +elder Greece, limited by laws, and therefore the more venerable,--all +the parts adapting and submitting themselves to the majesty of the +heroic sceptre:--in Aristophanes, comedy, on the contrary, is poetry in +its most democratic form, and it is a fundamental principle with it, +rather to risk all the confusion of anarchy, than to destroy the +independence and privileges of its individual constituents,--place, +verse, characters, even single thoughts, conceits, and allusions, each +turning on the pivot of its own free will. + +The tragic poet idealizes his characters by giving to the spiritual part +of our nature a more decided preponderance over the animal cravings and +impulses, than is met with in real life: the comic poet idealizes his +characters by making the animal the governing power, and the +intellectual the mere instrument. But as tragedy is not a collection of +virtues and perfections, but takes care only that the vices and +imperfections shall spring from the passions, errors, and prejudices +which arise out of the soul;--so neither is comedy a mere crowd of vices +and follies, but whatever qualities it represents, even though they are +in a certain sense amiable, it still displays them as having their +origin in some dependence on our lower nature, accompanied with a defect +in true freedom of spirit and self-subsistence, and subject to that +unconnection by contradictions of the inward being, to which all folly +is owing. + +The ideal of earnest poetry consists in the union and harmonious melting +down, and fusion of the sensual into the spiritual,--of man as an animal +into man as a power of reason and self-government. And this we have +represented to us most clearly in the plastic art, or statuary; where +the perfection of outward form is a symbol of the perfection of an +inward idea; where the body is wholly penetrated by the soul, and +spiritualized even to a state of glory, and like a transparent +substance, the matter, in its own nature darkness, becomes altogether a +vehicle and fixure of light, a mean of developing its beauties, and +unfolding its wealth of various colors without disturbing its unity, or +causing a division of the parts. The sportive ideal, on the contrary, +consists in the perfect harmony and concord of the higher nature with +the animal, as with its ruling principle and its acknowledged regent. +The understanding and practical reason are represented as the willing +slaves of the senses and appetites, and of the passions arising out of +them. Hence we may admit the appropriateness to the old comedy, as a +work of defined art, of allusions and descriptions, which morality can +never justify, and, only with reference to the author himself, and only +as being the effect or rather the cause of the circumstances in which he +wrote, can consent even to palliate. + +The old comedy rose to its perfection in Aristophanes, and in him also +it died with the freedom of Greece. Then arose a species of drama, more +fitly called, dramatic entertainment than comedy, but of which, +nevertheless, our modern comedy (Shakspeare's altogether excepted) is +the genuine descendant. Euripides had already brought tragedy lower down +and by many steps nearer to the real world than his predecessors had +ever done, and the passionate admiration which Menander and Philemon +expressed for him, and their open avowals that he was their great +master, entitle us to consider their dramas as of a middle species, +between tragedy and comedy,--not the tragi-comedy, or thing of +heterogeneous parts, but a complete whole, founded on principles of its +own. Throughout we find the drama of Menander distinguishing itself from +tragedy, but not, as the genuine old comedy, contrasting with, and +opposing, it. Tragedy, indeed, carried the thoughts into the mythologic +world, in order to raise the emotions, the fears, and the hopes, which +convince the inmost heart that their final cause is not to be discovered +in the limits of mere mortal life, and force us into a presentiment, +however dim, of a state in which those struggles of inward free will +with outward necessity, which form the true subject of the tragedian, +shall be reconciled and solved;--the entertainment or new comedy, on the +other hand, remained within the circle of experience. Instead of the +tragic destiny, it introduced the power of chance; even in the few +fragments of Menander and Philemon now remaining to us, we find many +exclamations and reflections concerning chance and fortune, as in the +tragic poets concerning destiny. In tragedy, the moral law, either as +obeyed or violated, above all consequences--its own maintenance or +violation constituting the most important of all consequences--forms the +ground; the new comedy, and our modern comedy in general, (Shakspeare +excepted as before) lies in prudence or imprudence, enlightened or +misled self-love. The whole moral system of the entertainment exactly +like that of fable, consists in rules of prudence, with an exquisite +conciseness, and at the same time an exhaustive fulness of sense. An old +critic said that tragedy was the flight or elevation of life, comedy +(that of Menander) its arrangement or ordonnance. + +Add to these features a portrait-like truth of character,--not so far +indeed as that a 'bona fide' individual should be described or imagined, +but yet so that the features which give interest and permanence to the +class should be individualized. The old tragedy moved in an ideal +world,--the old comedy in a fantastic world. As the entertainment, or +new comedy, restrained the creative activity both of the fancy and the +imagination, it indemnified the understanding in appealing to the +judgment for the probability of the scenes represented. The ancients +themselves acknowledged the new comedy as an exact copy of real life. +The grammarian, Aristophanes, somewhat affectedly exclaimed:--"O Life +and Menander! which of you two imitated the other?" In short the form of +this species of drama was poetry; the stuff or matter was prose. It was +prose rendered delightful by the blandishments and measured motions of +the muse. Yet even this was not universal. The mimes of Sophron, so +passionately admired by Plato, were written in prose, and were scenes +out of real life conducted in dialogue. The exquisite Feast of Adonis +([Greek (transliterated): Surakousiai ae Ad'oniazousai]) in Theocritus, +we are told, with some others of his eclogues, were close imitations of +certain mimes of Sophron--free translations of the prose into +hexameters. + +It will not be improper, in this place, to make a few remarks on the +remarkable character and functions of the chorus in the Greek tragic +drama. + +The chorus entered from below, close by the orchestra, and there, pacing +to and fro during the choral odes, performed their solemn measured +dance. In the centre of the 'orchestra', directly over against the +middle of the 'scene', there stood an elevation with steps in the shape +of a large altar, as high as the boards of the 'logeion' or moveable +stage. This elevation was named the 'thymele', ([Greek (transliterated): +thumelae]) and served to recall the origin and original purpose of the +chorus, as an altar-song in honour of the presiding deity. Here, and on +these steps, the persons of the chorus sate collectively, when they were +not singing; attending to the dialogue as spectators, and acting as +(what in truth they were) the ideal representatives of the real +audience, and of the poet himself in his own character, assuming the +supposed impressions made by the drama, in order to direct and rule +them. But when the chorus itself formed part of the dialogue, then the +leader of the band, the foreman or 'coryphaeus', ascended, as some +think, the level summit of the 'thymele' in order to command the stage, +or, perhaps, the whole chorus advanced to the front of the orchestra, +and thus put themselves in ideal connection, as it were, with the +'dramatis personae' there acting. This 'thymele' was in the centre of the +whole edifice, all the measurements were calculated, and the semi-circle +of the amphitheatre was drawn, from this point. It had a double use, a +twofold purpose; it constantly reminded the spectators of the origin of +tragedy as a religious service, and declared itself as the ideal +representative of the audience by having its place exactly in the point, +to which all the radii from the different seats or benches converged. In +this double character, as constituent parts, and yet at the same time as +spectators, of the drama, the chorus could not but tend to enforce the +unity of place;--not on the score of any supposed improbability, which +the understanding or common sense might detect in a change of +place;--but because the senses themselves put it out of the power of any +imagination to conceive a place coming to, and going away from the +persons, instead of the persons changing their place. Yet there are +instances, in which, during the silence of the chorus, the poets have +hazarded this by a change in that part of the scenery which represented +the more distant objects to the eye of the spectator--a demonstrative +proof, that this alternately extolled and ridiculed unity (as ignorantly +ridiculed as extolled) was grounded on no essential principle of reason, +but arose out of circumstances which the poet could not remove, and +therefore took up into the form of the drama, and co-organized it with +all the other parts into a living whole. + +The Greek tragedy may rather be compared to our serious opera than to +the tragedies of Shakspeare; nevertheless, the difference is far greater +than the likeness. In the opera all is subordinated to the music, the +dresses and the scenery;--the poetry is a mere vehicle for articulation, +and as little pleasure is lost by ignorance of the Italian language, so +is little gained by the knowledge of it. But in the Greek drama all was +but as instruments and accessaries to the poetry; and hence we should +form a better notion of the choral music from the solemn hymns and +psalms of austere church music than from any species of theatrical +singing. A single flute or pipe was the ordinary accompaniment; and it +is not to be supposed, that any display of musical power was allowed to +obscure the distinct hearing of the words. On the contrary, the evident +purpose was to render the words more audible, and to secure by the +elevations and pauses greater facility of understanding the poetry. For +the choral songs are, and ever must have been, the most difficult part +of the tragedy; there occur in them the most involved verbal compounds, +the newest expressions, the boldest images, the most recondite +allusions. Is it credible that the poets would, one and all, have been +thus prodigal of the stores of art and genius, if they had known that in +the representation the whole must have been lost to the audience,--at a +time too, when the means of after publication were so difficult, and +expensive, and the copies of their works so slowly and narrowly +circulated? + +The masks also must be considered--their vast variety and admirable +workmanship. Of this we retain proof by the marble masks which +represented them; but to this in the real mask we must add the thinness +of the substance and the exquisite fitting on to the head of the actor; +so that not only were the very eyes painted with a single opening left +for the pupil of the actor's eye, but in some instances, even the iris +itself was painted, when the colour was a known characteristic of the +divine or heroic personage represented. + +Finally, I will note down those fundamental characteristics which +contradistinguish the ancient literature from the modern generally, but +which more especially appear in prominence in the tragic drama. The +ancient was allied to statuary, the modern refers to painting. In the +first there is a predominance of rhythm and melody, in the second of +harmony and counterpoint. The Greeks idolized the finite, and therefore +were the masters of all grace, elegance, proportion, fancy, dignity, +majesty--of whatever, in short, is capable of being definitely conveyed +by defined forms or thoughts: the moderns revere the infinite, and +affect the indefinite as a vehicle of the infinite;--hence their +passions, their obscure hopes and fears, their wandering through the +unknown, their grander moral feelings, their more august conception of +man as man, their future rather than their past--in a word, their +sublimity. + + +[Footnote 1: Greek (transliterated): exegromenos de idein tous men +allous katheudontas kai oichomenous, Agath'ona de kai Aristophanaen kai +S'okratae eti monous egraegorenai, kai pinein ek phialaes megalaes +epidexia ton oun S'okratae autois dialegesthai kai ta men alla ho +Aristodaemos ouk ephae memnaesthai ton logon (oute gar ex archaes +paragenesthai, uponustazein te) to mentoi kethalaion ethae, +prosanagkazein ton S'okratae omologein autous tou autou andros einai +k'om'odian kai trag'odian epistasthai poiein, kai ton technae +trag'odopoion onta, kai k'om'odopoion einai. Symp. sub fine.] + + + + + +PROGRESS OF THE DRAMA. + +Let two persons join in the same scheme to ridicule a third, and either +take advantage of, or invent, some story for that purpose, and mimicry +will have already produced a sort of rude comedy. It becomes an inviting +treat to the populace, and gains an additional zest and burlesque by +following the already established plan of tragedy; and the first man of +genius who seizes the idea, and reduces it into form,--into a work of +art,--by metre and music, is the Aristophanes of the country. + +How just this account is will appear from the fact that in the first or +old comedy of the Athenians, most of the 'dramatis personae' were living +characters introduced under their own names; and no doubt, their +ordinary dress, manner, person and voice were closely mimicked. In less +favourable states of society, as that of England in the middle ages, the +beginnings of comedy would be constantly taking place from the mimics +and satirical minstrels; but from want of fixed abode, popular +government, and the successive attendance of the same auditors, it would +still remain in embryo. I shall, perhaps, have occasion to observe that +this remark is not without importance in explaining the essential +differences of the modern and ancient theatres. + +Phaenomena, similar to those which accompanied the origin of tragedy and +comedy among the Greeks, would take place among the Romans much more +slowly, and the drama would, in any case, have much longer remained in +its first irregular form from the character of the people, their +continual engagements in wars of conquest, the nature of their +government, and their rapidly increasing empire. But, however this might +have been, the conquest of Greece precluded both the process and the +necessity of it; and the Roman stage at once presented imitations or +translations of the Greek drama. This continued till the perfect +establishment of Christianity. Some attempts, indeed, were made to adapt +the persons of Scriptural or ecclesiastical history to the drama; and +sacred plays, it is probable, were not unknown in Constantinople under +the emperors of the East. The first of the kind is, I believe, the only +one preserved,--namely, the [Greek (transliterated): Christos Paschon], +or "Christ in his sufferings," by Gregory Nazianzen,--possibly written +in consequence of the prohibition of profane literature to the +Christians by the apostate Julian. [1] In the West, however, the +enslaved and debauched Roman world became too barbarous for any +theatrical exhibitions more refined than those of pageants and +chariot-races; while the spirit of Christianity, which in its most +corrupt form still breathed general humanity, whenever controversies of +faith were not concerned, had done away the cruel combats of the +gladiators, and the loss of the distant provinces prevented the +possibility of exhibiting the engagements of wild beasts. + +I pass, therefore, at once to the feudal ages which soon succeeded, +confining my observation to this country; though, indeed, the same +remark with very few alterations will apply to all the other states, +into which the great empire was broken. Ages of darkness +succeeded;--not, indeed, the darkness of Russia or of the barbarous +lands unconquered by Rome; for from the time of Honorius to the +destruction of Constantinople and the consequent introduction of ancient +literature into Europe, there was a continued succession of individual +intellects;--the golden chain was never wholly broken, though the +connecting links were often of baser metal. A dark cloud, like another +sky, covered the entire cope of heaven,--but in this place it thinned +away, and white stains of light showed a half eclipsed star behind +it,--in that place it was rent asunder, and a star passed across the +opening in all its brightness, and then vanished. Such stars exhibited +themselves only; surrounding objects did not partake of their light. +There were deep wells of knowledge, but no fertilizing rills and +rivulets. For the drama, society was altogether a state of chaos, out of +which it was, for a while at least, to proceed anew, as if there had +been none before it. + +And yet it is not undelightful to contemplate the eduction of good from +evil. The ignorance of the great mass of our countrymen, was the +efficient cause of the reproduction of the drama; and the preceding +darkness and the returning light were alike necessary in order to the +creation of a Shakspeare. + +The drama re-commenced in England, as it first began in Greece, in +religion. The people were not able to read,--the priesthood were +unwilling that they should read; and yet their own interest compelled +them not to leave the people wholly ignorant of the great events of +sacred history. They did that, therefore, by scenic representations, +which in after ages it has been attempted to do in Roman Catholic +countries by pictures. They presented Mysteries, and often at great +expense; and reliques of this system still remain in the south of +Europe, and indeed throughout Italy, where at Christmas the convents and +the great nobles rival each other in the scenic representation of the +birth of Christ and its circumstances. I heard two instances mentioned +to me at different times, one in Sicily and the other in Rome, of noble +devotees, the ruin of whose fortunes was said to have commenced in the +extravagant expense which had been incurred in presenting the 'praesepe' +or manger. But these Mysteries, in order to answer their design, must +not only be instructive, but entertaining; and as, when they became so, +the people began to take pleasure in acting them themselves--in +interloping,--(against which the priests seem to have fought hard and +yet in vain) the most ludicrous images were mixed with the most awful +personations; and whatever the subject might be, however sublime, +however pathetic, yet the Vice and the Devil, who are the genuine +antecessors of Harlequin and the Clown, were necessary component parts. +I have myself a piece of this kind, which I transcribed a few years ago +at Helmstadt, in Germany, on the education of Eve's children, in which +after the fall and repentance of Adam, the offended Maker, as in proof +of his reconciliation, condescends to visit them, and to catechise the +children,--who with a noble contempt of chronology are all brought +together from Abel to Noah. The good children say the ten Commandments, +the Belief and the Lord's Prayer; but Cain and his rout, after he had +received a box on the ear for not taking off his hat, and afterwards +offering his left hand, is prompted by the devil so to blunder in the +Lord's Prayer as to reverse the petitions and say it backward! [2] + +Unaffectedly I declare I feel pain at repetitions like these, however +innocent. As historical documents they are valuable; but I am sensible +that what I can read with my eye with perfect innocence, I cannot +without inward fear and misgivings pronounce with my tongue. + +Let me, however, be acquitted of presumption if I say that I cannot +agree with Mr. Malone, that our ancestors did not perceive the ludicrous +in these things, or that they paid no separate attention to the serious +and comic parts. Indeed his own statement contradicts it. For what +purpose should the Vice leap upon the Devil's back and belabour him, but +to produce this separate attention? The people laughed heartily, no +doubt. Nor can I conceive any meaning attached to the words "separate +attention," that is not fully answered by one part of an exhibition +exciting seriousness or pity, and the other raising mirth and loud +laughter. That they felt no impiety in the affair is most true. For it +is the very essence of that system of Christian polytheism, which in all +its essentials is now fully as gross in Spain, in Sicily and the south +of Italy, as it ever was in England in the days of Henry VI.--(nay, more +so; for a Wicliffe had then not appeared only, but scattered the good +seed widely,) it is an essential part, I say, of that system to draw the +mind wholly from its own inward whispers and quiet discriminations, and +to habituate the conscience to pronounce sentence in every case +according to the established verdicts of the church and the casuists. I +have looked through volume after volume of the most approved +casuists,--and still I find disquisitions whether this or that act is +right, and under what circumstances, to a minuteness that makes +reasoning ridiculous, and of a callous and unnatural immodesty, to which +none but a monk could harden himself, who has been stripped of all the +tender charities of life, yet is goaded on to make war against them by +the unsubdued hauntings of our meaner nature, even as dogs are said to +get the 'hydrophobia' from excessive thirst. I fully believe that our +ancestors laughed as heartily, as their posterity do at Grimaldi;--and +not having been told that they would be punished for laughing, they +thought it very innocent;--and if their priests had left out murder in +the catalogue of their prohibitions (as indeed they did under certain +circumstances of heresy,) the greater part of them,--the moral instincts +common to all men having been smothered and kept from +development,--would have thought as little of murder. However this may +be, the necessity of at once instructing and gratifying the people +produced the great distinction between the Greek and the English +theatres;--for to this we must attribute the origin of tragi-comedy, or +a representation of human events more lively, nearer the truth, and +permitting a larger field of moral instruction, a more ample exhibition +of the recesses of the human heart, under all the trials and +circumstances that most concern us, than was known or guessed at by +AEschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides;--and at the same time we learn to +account for, and--relatively to the author--perceive the necessity of, +the Fool or Clown or both, as the substitutes of the Vice and the Devil, +which our ancestors had been so accustomed to see in every exhibition of +the stage, that they could not feel any performance perfect without +them. Even to this day in Italy, every opera--(even Metastasio obeyed +the claim throughout)--must have six characters, generally two pairs of +cross lovers, a tyrant and a confidant, or a father and two confidants, +themselves lovers;--and when a new opera appears, it is the universal +fashion to ask--which is the tyrant, which the lover? &c. + +It is the especial honour of Christianity, that in its worst and most +corrupted form it cannot wholly separate itself from morality;--whereas +the other religions in their best form (I do not include Mohammedanism, +which is only an anomalous corruption of Christianity, like +Swedenborgianism,) have no connection with it. The very impersonation of +moral evil under the name of Vice, facilitated all other impersonations; +and hence we see that the Mysteries were succeeded by Moralities, or +dialogues and plots of allegorical personages. Again, some character in +real history had become so famous, so proverbial, as Nero for instance, +that they were introduced instead of the moral quality, for which they +were so noted;--and in this manner the stage was moving on to the +absolute production of heroic and comic real characters, when the +restoration of literature, followed by the ever-blessed Reformation, let +in upon the kingdom not only new knowledge, but new motive. A useful +rivalry commenced between the metropolis on the one hand, the residence, +independently of the court and nobles, of the most active and stirring +spirits who had not been regularly educated, or who, from mischance or +otherwise, had forsaken the beaten track of preferment,--and the +universities on the other. The latter prided themselves on their closer +approximation to the ancient rules and ancient regularity--taking the +theatre of Greece, or rather its dim reflection, the rhetorical +tragedies of the poet Seneca, as a perfect ideal, without any critical +collation of the times, origin, or circumstances;--whilst, in the mean +time, the popular writers, who could not and would not abandon what they +had found to delight their countrymen sincerely, and not merely from +inquiries first put to the recollection of rules, and answered in the +affirmative, as if it had been an arithmetical sum, did yet borrow from +the scholars whatever they advantageously could, consistently with their +own peculiar means of pleasing. + +And here let me pause for a moment's contemplation of this interesting +subject. + +We call, for we see and feel, the swan and the dove both transcendantly +beautiful. As absurd as it would be to institute a comparison between +their separate claims to beauty from any abstract rule common to both, +without reference to the life and being of the animals themselves,--or +as if, having first seen the dove, we abstracted its outlines, gave them +a false generalization, called them the principles or ideal of +bird-beauty, and then proceeded to criticise the swan or the eagle;--not +less absurd is it to pass judgment on the works of a poet on the mere +ground that they have been called by the same class-name with the works +of other poets in other times and circumstances, or on any ground, +indeed, save that of their inappropriateness to their own end and being, +their want of significance, as symbols or physiognomy. + +O! few have there been among critics, who have followed with the eye of +the imagination the imperishable yet ever wandering spirit of poetry +through its various metempsychoses, and consequent metamorphoses;--or +who have rejoiced in the light of clear perception at beholding with +each new birth, with each rare 'avatar', the human race frame to itself +a new body, by assimilating materials of nourishment out of its new +circumstances, and work for itself new organs of power appropriate to +the new sphere of its motion and activity! + +I have before spoken of the Romance, or the language formed out of the +decayed Roman and the Northern tongues; and comparing it with the Latin, +we find it less perfect in simplicity and relation--the privileges of a +language formed by the mere attraction of homogeneous parts;--but yet +more rich, more expressive and various, as one formed by more obscure +affinities out of a chaos of apparently heterogeneous atoms. As more +than a metaphor,--as an analogy of this, I have named the true genuine +modern poetry the romantic; and the works of Shakspeare are romantic +poetry revealing itself in the drama. If the tragedies of Sophocles are +in the strict sense of the word tragedies, and the comedies of +Aristophanes comedies, we must emancipate ourselves from a false +association arising from misapplied names, and find a new word for the +plays of Shakspeare. For they are, in the ancient sense, neither +tragedies nor comedies, nor both in one,--but a different 'genus', +diverse in kind, and not merely different in degree. They may be called +romantic dramas, or dramatic romances. + +A deviation from the simple forms and unities of the ancient stage is an +essential principle, and, of course, an appropriate excellence, of the +romantic drama. For these unities were to a great extent the natural +form of that which in its elements was homogeneous, and the +representation of which was addressed pre-eminently to the outward +senses;--and though the fable, the language and the characters appealed +to the reason rather than to the mere understanding, inasmuch as they +supposed an ideal state rather than referred to an existing +reality,--yet it was a reason which was obliged to accommodate itself to +the senses, and so far became a sort of more elevated understanding. On +the other hand, the romantic poetry--the Shakspearian drama--appealed to +the imagination rather than to the senses, and to the reason as +contemplating our inward nature, and the workings of the passions in +their most retired recesses. But the reason, as reason, is independent +of time and space; it has nothing to do with them; and hence the +certainties of reason have been called eternal truths. As for +example--the endless properties of the circle:--what connection have +they with this or that age, with this or that country?--The reason is +aloof from time and space;--the imagination is an arbitrary controller +over both;--and if only the poet have such power of exciting our +internal emotions as to make us present to the scene in imagination +chiefly, he acquires the right and privilege of using time and space as +they exist in imagination, and obedient only to the laws by which the +imagination itself acts. These laws it will be my object and aim to +point out as the examples occur, which illustrate them. But here let me +remark what can never be too often reflected on by all who would +intelligently study the works either of the Athenian dramatists, or of +Shakspeare, that the very essence of the former consists in the sternest +separation of the diverse in kind and the disparate in the degree, +whilst the latter delights in interlacing by a rainbow-like transfusion +of hues the one with the other. + +And here it will be necessary to say a few words on the stage and on +stage-illusion. + +A theatre, in the widest sense of the word, is the general term for all +places of amusement through the ear or eye, in which men assemble in +order to be amused by some entertainment presented to all at the same +time and in common. Thus, an old Puritan divine says:--"Those who attend +public worship and sermons only to amuse themselves, make a theatre of +the church, and turn God's house into the devil's. 'Theatra aedes +diabololatricae'." The most important and dignified species of this genus +is, doubtless, the stage, ('res theatralis histrionica'), which, in +addition to the generic definition above given, may be characterized in +its idea, or according to what it does, or ought to, aim at, as a +combination of several or of all the fine arts in an harmonious whole, +having a distinct end of its own, to which the peculiar end of each of +the component arts, taken separately, is made subordinate and +subservient,--that, namely, of imitating reality--whether external +things, actions, or passions--under a semblance of reality. Thus, Claude +imitates a landscape at sunset, but only as a picture; while a +forest-scene is not presented to the spectators as a picture, but as a +forest; and though, in the full sense of the word, we are no more +deceived by the one than by the other, yet are our feelings very +differently affected; and the pleasure derived from the one is not +composed of the same elements as that afforded by the other, even on the +supposition that the 'quantum' of both were equal. In the former, a +picture, it is a condition of all genuine delight that we should not be +deceived; in the latter, stage-scenery, (inasmuch as its principal end +is not in or for itself, as is the case in a picture, but to be an +assistance and means to an end out of itself) its very purpose is to +produce as much illusion as its nature permits. These, and all other +stage presentations, are to produce a sort of temporary half-faith, +which the spectator encourages in himself and supports by a voluntary +contribution on his own part, because he knows that it is at all times +in his power to see the thing as it really is. I have often observed +that little children are actually deceived by stage-scenery, never by +pictures; though even these produce an effect on their impressible +minds, which they do not on the minds of adults. The child, if strongly +impressed, does not indeed positively think the picture to be the +reality; but yet he does not think the contrary. As Sir George Beaumont +was shewing me a very fine engraving from Rubens, representing a storm +at sea without any vessel or boat introduced, my litte boy, then about +five years old, came dancing and singing into the room, and all at once +(if I may so say) 'tumbled in' upon the print. He instantly started, +stood silent and motionless, with the strongest expression, first of +wonder and then of grief in his eyes and countenance, and at length +said, "And where is the ship? But that is sunk, and the men are all +drowned!" still keeping his eyes fixed on the print. Now what pictures +are to little children, stage-illusion is to men, provided they retain +any part of the child's sensibility; except, that in the latter +instance, the suspension of the act of comparison, which permits this +sort of negative belief, is somewhat more assisted by the will, than in +that of a child respecting a picture. + +The true stage-illusion in this and in all other things consists--not in +the mind's judging it to be a forest, but, in its remission of the +judgment that it is not a forest. And this subject of stage-illusion is +so important, and so many practical errors and false criticisms may +arise, and indeed have arisen, either from reasoning on it as actual +delusion, (the strange notion, on which the French critics built up +their theory, and on which the French poets justify the construction of +their tragedies), or from denying it altogether, (which seems the end of +Dr. Johnson's reasoning, and which, as extremes meet, would lead to the +very same consequences, by excluding whatever would not be judged +probable by us in our coolest state of feeling, with all our faculties +in even balance), that these few remarks will, I hope, be pardoned, if +they should serve either to explain or to illustrate the point. For not +only are we never absolutely deluded--or any thing like it, but the +attempt to cause the highest delusion possible to beings in their senses +sitting in a theatre, is a gross fault, incident only to low minds, +which, feeling that they cannot affect the heart or head permanently, +endeavour to call forth the momentary affections. There ought never to +be more pain than is compatible with co-existing pleasure, and to be +amply repaid by thought. + +Shakspeare found the infant stage demanding an intermixture of ludicrous +character as imperiously as that of Greece did the chorus, and high +language accordant. And there are many advantages in this;--a greater +assimilation to nature, a greater scope of power, more truths, and more +feelings;-the effects of contrast, as in Lear and the Fool; and +especially this, that the true language of passion becomes sufficiently +elevated by your having previously heard, in the same piece, the lighter +conversation of men under no strong emotion. The very nakedness of the +stage, too, was advantageous,--for the drama thence became something +between recitation and a re-presentation; and the absence or paucity of +scenes allowed a freedom from the laws of unity of place and unity of +time, the observance of which must either confine the drama to as few +subjects as may be counted on the fingers, or involve gross +improbabilities, far more striking than the violation would have caused. +Thence, also, was precluded the danger of a false ideal,--of aiming at +more than what is possible on the whole. What play of the ancients, with +reference to their ideal, does not hold out more glaring absurdities +than any in Shakspeare? On the Greek plan a man could more easily be a +poet than a dramatist; upon our plan more easily a dramatist than a +poet. + + +[Footnote 1: A. D. 363. But I believe the prevailing opinion amongst +scholars now is, that the [Greek: Christos Paschon] is not genuine. Ed.] + +[Footnote 2: See vol. i. p. 76, where this is told more at length and +attributed to Hans Sachs. Ed.] + + + + + +THE DRAMA GENERALLY, AND PUBLIC TASTE. + +Unaccustomed to address such an audience, and having lost by a long +interval of confinement the advantages of my former short schooling, I +had miscalculated in my last Lecture the proportion of my matter to my +time, and by bad economy and unskilful management, the several heads of +my discourse failed in making the entire performance correspond with the +promise publicly circulated in the weekly annunciation of the subjects, +to be treated. It would indeed have been wiser in me, and perhaps better +on the whole, if I had caused my Lectures to be announced only as +continuations of the main subject. But if I be, as perforce I must be, +gratified by the recollection of whatever has appeared to give you +pleasure, I am conscious of something better, though less flattering, a +sense of unfeigned gratitude for your forbearance with my defects. Like +affectionate guardians, you see without disgust the awkwardness, and +witness with sympathy the growing pains, of a youthful endeavour, and +look forward with a hope, which is its own reward, to the contingent +results of practice--to its intellectual maturity. + +In my last address I defined poetry to be the art, or whatever better +term our language may afford, of representing external nature and human +thoughts, both relatively to human affections, so as to cause the +production of as great immediate pleasure in each part, as is compatible +with the largest possible sum of pleasure on the whole. Now this +definition applies equally to painting and music as to poetry; and in +truth the term poetry is alike applicable to all three. The vehicle +alone constitutes the difference; and the term 'poetry' is rightly +applied by eminence to measured words, only because the sphere of their +action is far wider, the power of giving permanence to them much more +certain, and incomparably greater the facility, by which men, not +defective by nature or disease, may be enabled to derive habitual +pleasure and instruction from them. On my mentioning these +considerations to a painter of great genius, who had been, from a most +honourable enthusiasm, extolling his own art, he was so struck with +their truth, that he exclaimed, "I want no other arguments;--poetry, +that is, verbal poetry, must be the greatest; all that proves final +causes in the world, proves this; it would be shocking to think +otherwise!"--And in truth, deeply, O! far more than words can express, +as I venerate the Last Judgment and the Prophets of Michel Angelo +Buonaroti,--yet the very pain which I repeatedly felt as I lost myself +in gazing upon them, the painful consideration that their having been +painted in 'fresco' was the sole cause that they had not been +abandoned to all the accidents of a dangerous transportation to a +distant capital, and that the same caprice, which made the Neapolitan +soldiery destroy all the exquisite master-pieces on the walls of the +church of the 'Trinitado Monte', after the retreat of their +antagonist barbarians, might as easily have made vanish the rooms and +open gallery of Raffael, and the yet more unapproachable wonders of the +sublime Florentine in the Sixtine Chapel, forced upon my mind the +reflection; How grateful the human race ought to be that the works of +Euclid, Newton, Plato, Milton, Shakspeare, are not subjected to similar +contingencies,--that they and their fellows, and the great, though +inferior, peerage of undying intellect, are secured;--secured even from +a second irruption of Goths and Vandals, in addition to many other +safeguards, by the vast empire of English language, laws, and religion +founded in America, through the overflow of the power and the virtue of +my country;-and that now the great and certain works of genuine fame can +only cease to act for mankind, when men themselves cease to be men, or +when the planet on which they exist, shall have altered its relations, +or have ceased to be. Lord Bacon, in the language of the gods, if I may +use an Homeric phrase, has expressed a similar thought:-- + + +Lastly, leaving the vulgar arguments, that by learning man excelleth man +in that wherein man excelleth beasts; that by learning man ascendeth to +the heavens and their motions, where in body he cannot come, and the +like; let us conclude with the dignity and excellency of knowledge and +learning in that whereunto man's nature doth most aspire, which is, +immortality or continuance: for to this tendeth generation, and raising +of houses and families; to this tend buildings, foundations, and +monuments; to this tendeth the desire of memory, fame, and celebration, +and in effect the strength of all other human desires. We see then how +far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the +monuments of power, or of the hands. For have not the verses of Homer +continued twenty-five hundred years, or more, without the loss of a +syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, +castles, cities, have been decayed and demolished? It is not possible to +have the true pictures or statues of Cyrus, Alexander, Caesar; no, nor +of the kings or great personages of much later years; for the originals +cannot last, and the copies cannot but lose of the life and truth. But +the images of men's wits and knowledges remain in books, exempted from +the wrong of time, and capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they +fitly to be called images, because they generate still, and cast their +seeds in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and +opinions in succeeding ages: so that, if the invention of the ship was +thought so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place to +place, and consociateth the most remote regions in participation of +their fruits; how much more are letters to be magnified, which, as ships +pass through the vast seas of time, and make ages so distant to +participate of the wisdom, illuminations, and inventions, the one of the +other? [1] + + +But let us now consider what the drama should be. And first, it is not a +copy, but an imitation, of nature. This is the universal principle of +the fine arts. In all well laid out grounds what delight do we feel from +that balance and antithesis of feelings and thoughts! How natural! we +say;--but the very wonder that caused the exclamation, implies that we +perceived art at the same moment. We catch the hint from nature itself. +Whenever in mountains or cataracts we discover a likeness to any thing +artificial which yet we know is not artificial--what pleasure! And so +it is in appearances known to be artificial, which appear to be natural. +This applies in due degrees, regulated by steady good sense, from a +clump of trees to the Paradise Lost or Othello. It would be easy to +apply it to painting and even, though with greater abstraction of +thought, and by more subtle yet equally just analogies--to music. But +this belongs to others;--suffice it that one great principle is common +to all the fine arts,--a principle which probably is the condition of +all consciousness, without which we should feel and imagine only by +discontinuous moments, and be plants or brute animals instead of men;--I +mean that ever-varying balance, or balancing, of images, notions, or +feelings, conceived as in opposition to each other;--in short, the +perception of identity and contrariety; the least degree of which +constitutes likeness, the greatest absolute difference; but the infinite +gradations between these two form all the play and all the interest of +our intellectual and moral being, till it leads us to a feeling and an +object more awful than it seems to me compatible with even the present +subject to utter aloud, though I am most desirous to suggest it. For +there alone are all things at once different and the same; there alone, +as the principle of all things, does distinction exist unaided by +division; there are will and reason, succession of time and unmoving +eternity, infinite change and ineffable rest!-- + + + Return Alpheus! the dread voice is past + Which shrunk thy streams!--Thou honour'd flood, + Smooth-'flowing' Avon, crown'd with vocal reeds, + That strain I heard, was of a higher mood!-- + But now my 'voice' proceeds. + + +We may divide a dramatic poet's characteristics before we enter into the +component merits of any one work, and with reference only to those +things which are to be the materials of all, into language, passion, and +character; always bearing in mind that these must act and react on each +other,--the language inspired by the passion, and the language and the +passion modified and differenced by the character. To the production of +the highest excellencies in these three, there are requisite in the mind +of the author;--good sense; talent; sensibility; imagination;--and to +the perfection of a work we should add two faculties of lesser +importance, yet necessary for the ornaments and foliage of the column +and the roof--fancy and a quick sense of beauty. + +As to language;--it cannot be supposed that the poet should make his +characters say all that they would, or that, his whole drama considered, +each scene, or paragraph should be such as, on cool examination, we can +conceive it likely that men in such situations would say, in that order, +or with that perfection. And yet, according to my feelings, it is a very +inferior kind of poetry, in which, as in the French tragedies, men are +made to talk in a style which few indeed even of the wittiest can be +supposed to converse in, and which both is, and on a moment's reflection +appears to be, the natural produce of the hot-bed of vanity, namely, the +closet of an author, who is actuated originally by a desire to excite +surprise and wonderment at his own superiority to other men,--instead of +having felt so deeply on certain subjects, or in consequence of certain +imaginations, as to make it almost a necessity of his nature to seek for +sympathy,--no doubt, with that honorable desire of permanent action +which distinguishes genius.--Where then is the difference?--In this that +each part should be proportionate, though the whole may be perhaps +impossible. At all events, it should be compatible with sound sense and +logic in the mind of the poet himself. + +It is to be lamented that we judge of books by books, instead of +referring what we read to our own experience. One great use of books is +to make their contents a motive for observation. The German tragedies +have in some respects been justly ridiculed. In them the dramatist often +becomes a novelist in his directions to the actors, and thus degrades +tragedy into pantomime. Yet still the consciousness of the poet's mind +must be diffused over that of the reader or spectator; but he himself, +according to his genius, elevates us, and by being always in keeping, +prevents us from perceiving any strangeness, though we feel great +exultation. Many different kinds of style may be admirable, both in +different men, and in different parts of the same poem. + +See the different language which strong feelings may justify in Shylock, +and learn from Shakspeare's conduct of that character the terrible force +of very plain and calm diction, when known to proceed from a resolved +and impassioned man. + +It is especially with reference to the drama, and its characteristics in +any given nation, or at any particular period, that the dependence of +genius on the public taste becomes a matter of the deepest importance. I +do not mean that taste which springs merely from caprice or fashionable +imitation, and which, in fact, genius can, and by degrees will, create +for itself; but that which arises out of wide-grasping and +heart-enrooted causes, which is epidemic, and in the very air that all +breathe. This it is which kills, or withers, or corrupts. Socrates, +indeed, might walk arm and arm with Hygeia, whilst pestilence, with a +thousand furies running to and fro, and clashing against each other in a +complexity and agglomeration of horrors, was shooting her darts of fire +and venom all around him. Even such was Milton; yea, and such, in spite +of all that has been babbled by his critics in pretended excuse for his +damning, because for them too profound, excellencies,--such was +Shakspeare. But alas! the exceptions prove the rule. For who will dare +to force his way out of the crowd,--not of the mere vulgar,--but of the +vain and banded aristocracy of intellect, and presume to join the almost +supernatural beings that stand by themselves aloof? + +Of this diseased epidemic influence there are two forms especially +preclusive of tragic worth. The first is the necessary growth of a sense +and love of the ludicrous, and a morbid sensibility of the assimilative +power,--an inflammation produced by cold and weakness,--which in the +boldest bursts of passion will lie in wait for a jeer at any phrase, +that may have an accidental coincidence in the mere words with something +base or trivial. For instance,--to express woods, not on a plain, but +clothing a hill, which overlooks a valley, or dell, or river, or the +sea,--the trees rising one above another, as the spectators in an +ancient theatre,--I know no other word in our language, (bookish and +pedantic terms out of the question,) but 'hanging' woods, the 'sylvae +superimpendentes' of Catullus [2]; yet let some wit call out in a slang +tone,--"the gallows!" and a peal of laughter would damn the play. Hence +it is that so many dull pieces have had a decent run, only because +nothing unusual above, or absurd below, mediocrity furnished an +occasion,--a spark for the explosive materials collected behind the +orchestra. But it would take a volume of no ordinary size, however +laconically the sense were expressed, if it were meant to instance the +effects, and unfold all the causes, of this disposition upon the moral, +intellectual, and even physical character of a people, with its +influences on domestic life and individual deportment. A good document +upon this subject would be the history of Paris society and of French, +that is, Parisian, literature from the commencement of the latter half +of the reign of Louis XIV. to that of Buonaparte, compared with the +preceding philosophy and poetry even of Frenchmen themselves. + +The second form, or more properly, perhaps, another distinct cause, of +this diseased disposition is matter of exultation to the philanthropist +and philosopher, and of regret to the poet, the painter, and the +statuary alone, and to them only as poets, painters, and +statuaries;--namely, the security, the comparative equability, and ever +increasing sameness of human life. Men are now so seldom thrown into +wild circumstances, and violences of excitement, that the language of +such states, the laws of association of feeling with thought, the starts +and strange far-flights of the assimilative power on the slightest and +least obvious likeness presented by thoughts, words, or objects,--these +are all judged of by authority, not by actual experience,--by what men +have been accustomed to regard as symbols of these states, and not the +natural symbols, or self-manifestations of them. + +Even so it is in the language of man, and in that of nature. The sound +'sun', or the figures 's', 'u', 'n', are purely arbitrary modes of +recalling the object, and for visual mere objects they are not only +sufficient, but have infinite advantages from their very nothingness +'per se'. But the language of nature is a subordinate 'Logos', that was +in the beginning, and was with the thing it represented, and was the +thing it represented. + +Now the language of Shakspeare, in his Lear for instance, is a something +intermediate between these two; or rather it is the former blended with +the latter,--the arbitrary, not merely recalling the cold notion of the +thing, but expressing the reality of it, and, as arbitrary language is +an heir-loom of the human race, being itself a part of that which it +manifests. What shall I deduce from the preceding positions? Even +this,--the appropriate, the never to be too much valued advantage of the +theatre, if only the actors were what we know they have been,--a +delightful, yet most effectual, remedy for this dead palsy of the public +mind. What would appear mad or ludicrous in a book, when presented to +the senses under the form of reality, and with the truth of nature, +supplies a species of actual experience. This is indeed the special +privilege of a great actor over a great poet. No part was ever played in +perfection, but nature justified herself in the hearts of all her +children, in what state soever they were, short of absolute moral +exhaustion, or downright stupidity. There is no time given to ask +questions or to pass judgments; we are taken by storm, and, though in +the histrionic art many a clumsy counterfeit, by caricature of one or +two features, may gain applause as a fine likeness, yet never was the +very thing rejected as a counterfeit. O! when I think of the +inexhaustible mine of virgin treasure in our Shakspeare, that I have +been almost daily reading him since I was ten years old,--that the +thirty intervening years have been unintermittingly and not fruitlessly +employed in the study of the Greek, Latin, English, Italian, Spanish and +German 'belle lettrists', and the last fifteen years in addition, far +more intensely in the analysis of the laws of life and reason as they +exist in man,--and that upon every step I have made forward in taste, in +acquisition of facts from history or my own observation, and in +knowledge of the different laws of being and their apparent exceptions, +from accidental collision of disturbing forces,--that at every new +accession of information, after every successful exercise of meditation, +and every fresh presentation of experience, I have unfailingly +discovered a proportionate increase of wisdom and intuition in +Shakspeare;--when I know this, and know too, that by a conceivable and +possible, though hardly to be expected, arrangement of the British +theatres, not all, indeed, but a large, a very large, proportion of this +indefinite all--(round which no comprehension has yet drawn the line of +circumscription, so as to say to itself, 'I have seen the whole')--might +be sent into the heads and hearts--into the very souls of the mass of +mankind, to whom, except by this living comment and interpretation, it +must remain for ever a sealed volume, a deep well without a wheel or a +windlass;--it seems to me a pardonable enthusiasm to steal away from +sober likelihood, and share in so rich a feast in the faery world of +possibility! Yet even in the grave cheerfulness of a circumspect hope, +much, very much, might be done; enough, assuredly, to furnish a kind and +strenuous nature with ample motives for the attempt to effect what may +be effected. + + +[Footnote: 'Advancement of Learning, book 1. 'sub fine.'] + +[Footnote 2: Confestim Peneos adest, viridantia Tempe, Tempe, quae +cingunt sylvae superimpendentes. 'Epith. Pel. et. Th.' 286.] + + + + + +SHAKSPEARE, A POET GENERALLY. + + +Clothed in radiant armour, and authorized by titles sure and manifold, +as a poet, Shakspeare came forward to demand the throne of fame, as the +dramatic poet of England. His excellencies compelled even his +contemporaries to seat him on that throne, although there were giants in +those days contending for the same honor. Hereafter I would fain +endeavour to make out the title of the English drama as created by, and +existing in, Shakspeare, and its right to the supremacy of dramatic +excellence in general. But he had shown himself a poet, previously to +his appearance as a dramatic poet; and had no Lear, no Othello, no Henry +IV., no Twelfth Night ever appeared, we must have admitted that +Shakspeare possessed the chief, if not every, requisite of a poet,--deep +feeling and exquisite sense of beauty, both as exhibited to the eye in +the combinations of form, and to the ear in sweet and appropriate +melody; that these feelings were under the command of his own will; that +in his very first productions he projected his mind out of his own +particular being, and felt, and made others feel, on subjects no way +connected with himself, except by force of contemplation and that +sublime faculty by which a great mind becomes that, on which it +meditates. To this must be added that affectionate love of nature and +natural objects, without which no man could have observed so steadily, +or painted so truly and passionately, the very minutest beauties of the +external world:-- + + + When them hast on foot the purblind hare, + Mark the poor wretch; to overshoot his troubles, + How he outruns the wind, and with what care, + He cranks and crosses with a thousand doubles; + The many musits through the which he goes + Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes. + + Sometimes he runs among the flock of sheep, + To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell; + And sometime where earth-delving conies keep, + To stop the loud pursuers in their yell; + And sometime sorteth with a herd of deer: + Danger deviseth shifts, wit waits on fear. + + For there his smell with others' being mingled, + The hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt, + Ceasing their clamorous cry, till they have singled, + With much ado, the cold fault cleanly out, + Then do they spend their mouths; echo replies, + As if another chase were in the skies. + + By this poor Wat far off, upon a hill, + Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear, + To hearken if his foes pursue him still: + Anon their loud alarums he doth hear, + And now his grief may be compared well + To one sore-sick, that hears the passing bell. + + Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch + Turn, and return, indenting with the way: + Each envious briar his weary legs doth scratch. + Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay. + For misery is trodden on by many, + And being low, never relieved by any. + + 'Venus and Adonis'. + + +And the preceding description:- + + + But, lo! from forth a copse that neighbours by, + A breeding jennet, lusty, young and proud, &c. + + +is much more admirable, but in parts less fitted for quotation. + +Moreover Shakspeare had shown that he possessed fancy, considered as the +faculty of bringing together images dissimilar in the main by some one +point or more of likeness, as in such a passage as this:- + + + Full gently now she takes him by the hand, + A lily prisoned in a jail of snow, + Or ivory in an alabaster band: + So white a friend ingirts so white a foe! + +'Ib.' + + +And still mounting the intellectual ladder, he had as unequivocally +proved the indwelling in his mind of imagination, or the power by which +one image or feeling is made to modify many others, and by a sort of +fusion to force many into one;--that which afterwards showed itself in +such might and energy in Lear, where the deep anguish of a father +spreads the feeling of ingratitude and cruelty over the very elements of +heaven;--and which, combining many circumstances into one moment of +consciousness, tends to produce that ultimate end of all human thought +and human feeling, unity, and thereby the reduction of the spirit to its +principle and fountain, who is alone truly one. Various are the workings +of this the greatest faculty of the human mind, both passionate and +tranquil. In its tranquil and purely pleasurable operation, it acts +chiefly by creating out of many things, as they would have appeared in +the description of an ordinary mind, detailed in unimpassioned +succession, a oneness, even as nature, the greatest of poets, acts upon +us, when we open our eyes upon an extended prospect. Thus the flight of +Adonis in the dusk of the evening:- + + + Look! how a bright star shooteth from the sky; + So glides he in the night from Venus' eye! + + +How many images and feelings are here brought together without effort +and without discord, in the beauty of Adonis, the rapidity of his +flight, the yearning, yet hopelessness, of the enamored gazer, while a +shadowy ideal character is thrown over the whole! Or this power acts by +impressing the stamp of humanity, and of human feelings, on inanimate or +mere natural objects:- + + + Lo! here the gentle lark, weary of rest, + From his moist cabinet mounts up on high, + And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast + The sun ariseth in his majesty, + Who doth the world so gloriously behold, + The cedar-tops and hills seem burnish'd gold. + + +Or again, it acts by so carrying on the eye of the reader as to make him +almost lose the consciousness of words,--to make him see every thing +flashed, as Wordsworth has grandly and appropriately said,- + + + _Flashed_ upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude;- + + +and this without exciting any painful or laborious attention, without +any anatomy of description, (a fault not uncommon in descriptive +poetry)-but with the sweetness and easy movement of nature. This energy +is an absolute essential of poetry, and of itself would constitute a +poet, though not one of the highest class;--it is, however, a most +hopeful symptom, and the Venus and Adonis is one continued specimen of +it. + +In this beautiful poem there is an endless activity of thought in all +the possible associations of thought with thought, thought with feeling, +or with words, of feelings with feelings, and of words with words. + + + Even as the sun, with purple-colour'd face, + Had ta'en his last leave of the weeping morn, + Rose-cheek'd Adonis hied him to the chase: + Hunting he loved, but love he laughed to scorn. + Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him, + And like a bold-faced suitor 'gins to woo him. + + +Remark the humanizing imagery and circumstances of the first two lines, +and the activity of thought in the play of words in the fourth line. The +whole stanza presents at once the time, the appearance of the morning, +and the two persons distinctly characterized, and in six simple verses +puts the reader in possession of the whole argument of the poem. + + + Over one arm the lusty courser's rein, + Under the other was the tender boy, + Who blush'd and pouted in a dull disdain, + With leaden appetite, unapt to toy, + She red and hot, as coals of glowing fire, + He red for shame, but frosty to desire:- + + +This stanza and the two following afford good instances of that poetic +power, which I mentioned above, of making every thing present to the +imagination--both the forms, and the passions which modify those forms, +either actually, as in the representations of love, or anger, or other +human affections; or imaginatively, by the different manner in which +inanimate objects, or objects unimpassioned themselves, are caused to be +seen by the mind in moments of strong excitement, and according to the +kind of the excitement,--whether of jealousy, or rage, or love, in the +only appropriate sense of the word, or of the lower impulses of our +nature, or finally of the poetic feeling itself. It is, perhaps, chiefly +in the power of producing and reproducing the latter that the poet +stands distinct. + +The subject of the Venus and Adonis is unpleasing; but the poem itself +is for that very reason the more illustrative of Shakspeare. There are +men who can write passages of deepest pathos and even sublimity on +circumstances personal to themselves and stimulative of their own +passions; but they are not, therefore, on this account poets. Read that +magnificent burst of woman's patriotism and exultation, Deborah's song +of victory; it is glorious, but nature is the poet there. It is quite +another matter to become all things and yet remain the same,--to make +the changeful god be felt in the river, the lion and the flame;--this it +is, that is the true imagination. Shakspeare writes in this poem, as if +he were of another planet, charming you to gaze on the movements of +Venus and Adonis, as you would on the twinkling dances of two vernal +butterflies. + +Finally, in this poem and the Rape of Lucrece, Shakspeare gave ample +proof of his possession of a most profound, energetic, and philosophical +mind, without which he might have pleased, but could not have been a +great dramatic poet. Chance and the necessity of his genius combined to +lead him to the drama his proper province; in his conquest of which we +should consider both the difficulties which opposed him, and the +advantages by which he was assisted. + + + + + +SHAKSPEARE'S JUDGMENT EQUAL TO HIS GENIUS. + +Thus then Shakspeare appears, from his Venus and Adonis and Rape of +Lucrece alone, apart from all his great works, to have possessed all the +conditions of the true poet. Let me now proceed to destroy, as far as +may be in my power, the popular notion that he was a great dramatist by +mere instinct, that he grew immortal in his own despite, and sank below +men of second or third-rate power, when he attempted aught beside the +drama--even as bees construct their cells and manufacture their honey +to admirable perfection; but would in vain attempt to build a nest. Now +this mode of reconciling a compelled sense of inferiority with a feeling +of pride, began in a few pedants, who having read that Sophocles was the +great model of tragedy, and Aristotle the infallible dictator of its +rules, and finding that the Lear, Hamlet, Othello and other +master-pieces were neither in imitation of Sophocles, nor in obedience +to Aristotle,--and not having (with one or two exceptions) the courage +to affirm, that the delight which their country received from generation +to generation, in defiance of the alterations of circumstances and +habits, was wholly groundless,--took upon them, as a happy medium and +refuge, to talk of Shakspeare as a sort of beautiful 'lusus naturae', a +delightful monster,--wild, indeed, and without taste or judgment, but +like the inspired idiots so much venerated in the East, uttering, amid +the strangest follies, the sublimest truths. In nine places out of ten +in which I find his awful name mentioned, it is with some epithet of +'wild', 'irregular,' 'pure child of nature,' &c. If all this be true, we +must submit to it; though to a thinking mind it cannot but be painful to +find any excellence, merely human, thrown out of all human analogy, and +thereby leaving us neither rules for imitation, nor motives to +imitate;--but if false, it is a dangerous falsehood;--for it affords a +refuge to secret self-conceit,--enables a vain man at once to escape his +reader's indignation by general swoln panegyrics, and merely by his +'ipse dixit' to treat, as contemptible, what he has not intellect enough +to comprehend, or soul to feel, without assigning any reason, or +referring his opinion to any demonstrative principle;--thus leaving +Shakspeare as a sort of grand Lama, adored indeed, arid his very +excrements prized as relics, but with no authority or real influence. I +grieve that every late voluminous edition of his works would enable me +to substantiate the present charge with a variety of facts one tenth of +which would of themselves exhaust the time allotted to me. Every critic, +who has or has not made a collection of black letter books--in itself a +useful and respectable amusement,--puts on the seven-league boots of +self-opinion, and strides at once from an illustrator into a supreme +judge, and blind and deaf, fills his three-ounce phial at the waters of +Niagara; and determines positively the greatness of the cataract to be +neither more nor less than his three-ounce phial has been able to +receive. + +I think this a very serious subject. It is my earnest desire--my +passionate endeavour,--to enforce at various times and by various +arguments and instances the close and reciprocal connexion of just taste +with pure morality. Without that acquaintance with the heart of man, or +that docility and childlike gladness to be made acquainted with it, +which those only can have, who dare look at their own hearts--and that +with a steadiness which religion only has the power of reconciling with +sincere humility;--without this, and the modesty produced by it, I am +deeply convinced that no man, however wide his erudition, however +patient his antiquarian researches, can possibly understand, or be +worthy of understanding, the writings of Shakspeare. + +Assuredly that criticism of Shakspeare will alone be genial which is +reverential. The Englishman, who without reverence, a proud and +affectionate reverence, can utter the name of William Shakspeare, stands +disqualified for the office of critic. He wants one at least of the very +senses, the language of which he is to employ, and will discourse at +best, but as a blind man, while the whole harmonious creation of light +and shade with all its subtle interchange of deepening and dissolving +colours rises in silence to the silent 'fiat' of the uprising Apollo. +However inferior in ability I may be to some who have followed me, I own +I am proud that I was the first in time who publicly demonstrated to the +full extent of the position, that the supposed irregularity and +extravagancies of Shakspeare were the mere dreams of a pedantry that +arraigned the eagle because it had not the dimensions of the swan. In +all the successive courses of lectures delivered by me, since my first +attempt at the Royal Institution, it has been, and it still remains, my +object, to prove that in all points from the most important to the most +minute, the judgment of Shakspeare is commensurate with his +genius,--nay, that his genius reveals itself in his judgment, as in its +most exalted form. And the more gladly do I recur to this subject from +the clear conviction, that to judge aright, and with distinct +consciousness of the grounds of our judgment, concerning the works of +Shakspeare, implies the power and the means of judging rightly of all +other works of intellect, those of abstract science alone excepted. + +It is a painful truth that not only individuals, but even whole nations, +are ofttimes so enslaved to the habits of their education and immediate +circumstances, as not to judge disinterestedly even on those subjects, +the very pleasure arising from which consists in its disinterestedness, +namely, on subjects of taste and polite literature. Instead of deciding +concerning their own modes and customs by any rule of reason, nothing +appears rational, becoming, or beautiful to them, but what coincides +with the peculiarities of their education. In this narrow circle, +individuals may attain to exquisite discrimination, as the French +critics have done in their own literature; but a true critic can no more +be such without placing himself on some central point, from which he may +command the whole, that is, some general rule, which, founded in reason, +or the faculties common to all men, must therefore apply to each,--than +an astronomer can explain the movements of the solar system without +taking his stand in the sun. And let me remark, that this will not tend +to produce despotism, but, on the contrary, true tolerance, in the +critic. He will, indeed, require, as the spirit and substance of a work, +something true in human nature itself, and independent of all +circumstances; but in the mode of applying it, he will estimate genius +and judgment according to the felicity with which the imperishable soul +of intellect shall have adapted itself to the age, the place, and the +existing manners. The error he will expose, lies in reversing this, and +holding up the mere circumstances as perpetual to the utter neglect of +the power which can alone animate them. For art cannot exist without, or +apart from, nature; and what has man of his own to give to his +fellow-man, but his own thoughts and feelings, and his observations so +far as they are modified by his own thoughts or feelings? + +Let me, then, once more submit this question to minds emancipated alike +from national, or party, or sectarian prejudice:--Are the plays of +Shakspeare works of rude uncultivated genius, in which the splendour of +the parts compensates, if aught can compensate, for the barbarous +shapelessness and irregularity of the whole?--Or is the form equally +admirable with the matter, and the judgment of the great poet, not less +deserving our wonder than his genius?--Or, again, to repeat the question +in other words:--Is Shakspeare a great dramatic poet on account only of +those beauties and excellencies which he possesses in common with the +ancients, but with diminished claims to our love and honour to the full +extent of his differences from them?--Or are these very differences +additional proofs of poetic wisdom, at once results and symbols of +living power as contrasted with lifeless mechanism--of free and rival +originality as contradistinguished from servile imitation, or, more +accurately, a blind copying of effects, instead of a true imitation of +the essential principles?--Imagine not that I am about to oppose genius +to rules. No! the comparative value of these rules is the very cause to +be tried. The spirit of poetry, like all other living powers, must of +necessity circumscribe itself by rules, were it only to unite power with +beauty. It must embody in order to reveal itself; but a living body is +of necessity an organized one; and what is organization but the +connection of parts in and for a whole, so that each part is at once end +and means?--This is no discovery of criticism;--it is a necessity of the +human mind; and all nations have felt and obeyed it, in the invention of +metre, and measured sounds, as the vehicle and 'involucrum' of +poetry--itself a fellow-growth from the same life,--even as the bark is +to the tree! + +No work of true genius dares want its appropriate form, neither indeed +is there any danger of this. As it must not, so genius cannot, be +lawless; for it is even this that constitutes it genius--the power of +acting creatively under laws of its own origination. How then comes it +that not only single 'Zoili', but whole nations have combined in +unhesitating condemnation of our great dramatist, as a sort of African +nature, rich in beautiful monsters,--as a wild heath where islands of +fertility look the greener from the surrounding waste, where the +loveliest plants now shine out among unsightly weeds, and now are choked +by their parasitic growth, so intertwined that we cannot disentangle the +weed without snapping the flower?--In this statement. I have had no +reference to the vulgar abuse of Voltaire [1], save as far as his +charges are coincident with the decisions of Shakspeare's own +commentators and (so they would tell you) almost idolatrous admirers. +The true ground of the mistake lies in the confounding mechanical +regularity with organic form. The form is mechanic, when on any given +material we impress a pre-determined form, not necessarily arising out +of the properties of the material;--as when to a mass of wet clay we +give whatever shape we wish it to retain when hardened. The organic +form, on the other hand, is innate; it shapes, as it developes, itself +from within, and the fulness of its development is one and the same with +the perfection of its outward form. Such as the life is, such is the +form. Nature, the prime genial artist, inexhaustible in diverse powers, +is equally inexhaustible in forms;--each exterior is the physiognomy of +the being within,--its true image reflected and thrown out from the +concave mirror;--and even such is the appropriate excellence of her +chosen poet, of our own Shakspeare,--himself a nature humanized, a +genial understanding directing self-consciously a power and an implicit +wisdom deeper even than our consciousness. + +I greatly dislike beauties and selections in general; but as proof +positive of his unrivalled excellence, I should like to try Shakspeare +by this criterion. Make out your amplest catalogue of all the human +faculties, as reason or the moral law, the will, the feeling of the +coincidence of the two (a feeling 'sui generis et demonstratio +clemontrationum') called the conscience, the understanding or prudence, +wit, fancy, imagination, judgment,--and then of the objects on which +these are to be employed, as the beauties, the terrors, and the seeming +caprices of nature, the realities and the capabilities, that is, the +actual and the ideal, of the human mind, conceived as an individual or +as a social being, as in innocence or in guilt, in a play-paradise, or +in a war-field of temptation;--and then compare with Shakspeare under +each of these heads all or any of the writers in prose and verse that +have ever lived! Who, that is competent to judge, doubts the +result?--And ask your own hearts,--ask your own common-sense--to +conceive the possibility of this man being--I say not, the drunken +savage of that wretched sciolist, whom Frenchmen, to their shame, have +honoured before their elder and better worthies,--but the anomalous, the +wild, the irregular, genius of our daily criticism! What! are we to have +miracles in sport?--Or, I speak reverently, does God choose idiots by +whom to convey divine truths to man? + + +[Footnote 1: Take a slight specimen of it. + + Je suis bien loin assurement de justifier en tout la tragedie + d'Hamlet; _c'est une piece grossiere et barbare, qui ne serait pas + supportee par la plus vile populace de la France et de l'Italie._ + Hamlet y devient fou au second acte, et sa maitresse folle au + troisieme; le prince tue le pere de sa maitresse, feignant de tuer un + rat, et I'heroeine se jette dans la riviere. On fait sa fosse sur le + theatre; des fossoyeurs disent des _quolibets_ dignes d'eux, en tenant + dans leurs mains des tetes de morts; le prince Hamlet repond a leurs + 'grossieretes abominables par des folies non moins degoutantes._ + Pendant ce temps-la, un des acteurs fait la conquete de la Pologne. + _Hamlet, sa mere, et son beau-pere boivent ensemble sur le theatre; on + chante a table, on s'y querelle, on se bat, on se tue: on croirait que + cet ouvrage est le fruit de I'imagination d'un sauvage ivre._ + +(Dissertation before Semiramis.) This is not, perhaps, very like Hamlet; +but nothing can be more like Voltaire. Ed.] + + + + + + +RECAPITULATION, AND SUMMARY OF THE CHARACTERISTICS OF SHAKSPEARE's +DRAMAS. [1] + +In lectures, of which amusement forms a large part of the object, there +are some peculiar difficulties. The architect places his foundation out +of sight, and the musician tunes his instrument before he makes his +appearance; but the lecturer has to try his chords in the presence of +the assembly; an operation not likely, indeed, to produce much pleasure, +but yet indispensably necessary to a right understanding of the subject +to be developed. + +Poetry in essence is as familiar to barbarous as to civilized nations. +The Laplander and the savage Indian are cheered by it as well as the +inhabitants of London and Paris;--its spirit takes up and incorporates +surrounding materials, as a plant clothes itself with soil and climate, +whilst it exhibits the working of a vital principle within independent +of all accidental circumstances. And to judge with fairness of an +author's works, we ought to distinguish what is inward and essential +from what is outward and circumstantial. It is essential to poetry that +it be "simple" and appeal to the elements and primary laws of our +nature; that it be "sensuous" and by its imagery elicit truth at a +flash; that it be "impassioned," and be able to move our feelings and +awaken our affections. In comparing different poets with each other, we +should inquire which have brought into the fullest play our imagination +and our reason, or have created the greatest excitement and produced the +completest harmony. If we consider great exquisiteness of language and +sweetness of metre alone, it is impossible to deny to Pope the character +of a delightful writer; but whether he be a poet, must depend upon our +definition of the word; and, doubtless, if every thing that pleases be +poetry, Pope's satires and epistles must be poetry. This, I must say, +that poetry, as distinguished from other modes of composition, does not +rest in metre, and that it is not poetry, if it make no appeal to our +passions or our imagination. One character belongs to all true poets, +that they write from a principle within, not originating in any thing +without; and that the true poet's work in its form, its shapings, and +its modifications, is distinguished from all other works that assume to +belong to the class of poetry, as a natural from an artificial flower, +or as the mimic garden of a child from an enamelled meadow. In the +former the flowers are broken from their stems and stuck into the +ground; they are beautiful to the eye and fragrant to the sense, but +their colours soon fade, and their odour is transient as the smile of +the planter;--while the meadow may be visited again and again with +renewed delight, its beauty is innate in the soil, and its bloom is of +the freshness of nature. + +The next ground of critical judgment, and point of comparison, will be +as to how far a given poet has been influenced by accidental +circumstances. As a living poet must surely write, not for the ages +past, but for that in which he lives, and those which are to follow, it +is, on the one hand, natural that he should not violate, and on the +other, necessary that he should not depend on, the mere manners and +modes of his day. See how little does Shakspeare leave us to regret that +he was born in his particular age! The great aera in modern times was +what is called the Restoration of Letters;-the ages preceding it are +called the dark ages; but it would be more wise, perhaps, to call them +the ages in which we were in the dark. It is usually overlooked that the +supposed dark period was not universal, but partial and successive, or +alternate; that the dark age of England was not the dark age of Italy, +but that one country was in its light and vigour, whilst another was in +its gloom and bondage. But no sooner had the Reformation sounded through +Europe like the blast of an archangel's trumpet, than from king to +peasant there arose an enthusiasm for knowledge; the discovery of a +manuscript became the subject of an embassy; Erasmus read by moonlight, +because he could not afford a torch, and begged a penny, not for the +love of charity, but for the love of learning. The three great points of +attention were religion, morals, and taste; men of genius as well as men +of learning, who in this age need to be so widely distinguished, then +alike became copyists of the ancients; and this, indeed, was the only +way by which the taste of mankind could be improved, or their +understandings informed. Whilst Dante imagined himself a humble follower +of Virgil, and Ariosto of Homer, they were both unconscious of that +greater power working within them, which in many points carried them +beyond their supposed originals. All great discoveries bear the stamp of +the age in which they are made;--hence we perceive the effects of the +purer religion of the moderns, visible for the most part in their lives; +and in reading their works we should not content ourselves with the mere +narratives of events long since passed, but should learn to apply their +maxims and conduct to ourselves. + +Having intimated that times and manners lend their form and pressure to +genius, let me once more draw a slight parallel between the ancient and +modern stage, the stages of Greece and of England. The Greeks were +polytheists; their religion was local; almost the only object of all +their knowledge, art and taste, was their gods; and, accordingly, their +productions were, if the expression may be allowed, statuesque, whilst +those of the moderns are picturesque. The Greeks reared a structure, +which in its parts, and as a whole, fitted the mind with the calm and +elevated impression of perfect beauty and symmetrical proportion. The +moderns also produced a whole, a more striking whole; but it was by +blending materials and fusing the parts together. And as the Pantheon is +to York Minster or Westminster Abbey, so is Sophocles compared with +Shakspeare; in the one a completeness, a satisfaction, an excellence, on +which the mind rests with complacency; in the other a multitude of +interlaced materials, great and little, magnificent and mean, +accompanied, indeed, with the sense of a falling short of perfection, +and yet, at the same time, so promising of our social and individual +progression, that we would not, if we could, exchange it for that repose +of the mind which dwells on the forms of symmetry in the acquiescent +admiration of grace. + +This general characteristic of the ancient and modern drama might be +illustrated by a parallel of the ancient and modern music;--the one +consisting of melody arising from a succession only of pleasing +sounds,--the modern embracing harmony also, the result of combination +and the effect of a whole. + +I have said, and I say it again, that great as was the genius of +Shakspeare, his judgment was at least equal to it. Of this any one will +be convinced, who attentively considers those points in which the dramas +of Greece and England differ, from the dissimilitude of circumstances by +which each was modified and influenced. The Greek stage had its origin +in the ceremonies of a sacrifice, such as of the goat to Bacchus, whom +we most erroneously regard as merely the jolly god of wine;--for among +the ancients he was venerable, as the symbol of that power which acts +without our consciousness in the vital energies of nature,--the 'vinum +mundi',--as Apollo was that of the conscious agency of our intellectual +being. The heroes of old under the influence of this Bacchic enthusiasm +performed more than human actions;--hence tales of the favorite +champions soon passed into dialogue. On the Greek stage the chorus was +always before the audience; the curtain was never dropped, as we should +say; and change of place being therefore, in general, impossible, the +absurd notion of condemning it merely as improbable in itself was never +entertained by any one. If we can believe ourselves at Thebes in one +act, we may believe ourselves at Athens in the next. If a story lasts +twenty-four hours or twenty-four years, it is equally improbable. There +seems to be no just boundary but what the feelings prescribe. But on the +Greek stage where the same persons were perpetually before the audience, +great judgment was necessary in venturing on any such change. The poets +never, therefore, attempted to impose on the senses by bringing places +to men, but they did bring men to places, as in the well known instance +in the 'Eumenides', where during an evident retirement of the chorus +from the orchestra, the scene is changed to Athens, and Orestes is first +introduced in the temple of Minerva, and the chorus of Furies come in +afterwards in pursuit of him. [2] + +In the Greek drama there were no formal divisions into scenes and acts; +there were no means, therefore, of allowing for the necessary lapse of +time between one part of the dialogue and another, and unity of time in +a strict sense was, of course, impossible. To overcome that difficulty +of accounting for time, which is effected on the modern stage by +dropping a curtain, the judgment and great genius of the ancients +supplied music and measured motion, and with the lyric ode filled up the +vacuity. In the story of the Agamemnon of AEschylus, the capture of Troy +is supposed to be announced by a fire lighted on the Asiatic shore, and +the transmission of the signal by successive beacons to Mycene. The +signal is first seen at the 2lst line, and the herald from Troy itself +enters at the 486th, and Agamemnon himself at the 783rd line. But the +practical absurdity of this was not felt by the audience, who, in +imagination stretched minutes into hours, while they listened to the +lofty narrative odes of the chorus which almost entirely fill up the +interspace. Another fact deserves attention here, namely, that regularly +on the Greek stage a drama, or acted story, consisted in reality of +three dramas, called together a trilogy, and performed consecutively in +the course of one day. Now you may conceive a tragedy of Shakspeare's as +a trilogy connected in one single representation. Divide Lear into three +parts, and each would be a play with the ancients; or take the three +AEschylean dramas of Agamemnon, and divide them into, or call them, as +many acts, and they together would be one play. The first act would +comprise the usurpation of AEgisthus, and the murder of Agamemnon; the +second, the revenge of Orestes, and the murder of his mother; and the +third, the penance and absolution of Orestes;--occupying a period of +twenty-two years. + +The stage in Shakspeare's time was a naked room with a blanket for a +curtain; but he made it a field for monarchs. That law of unity, which +has its foundations, not in the factitious necessity of custom, but in +nature itself, the unity of feeling, is every where and at all times +observed by Shakspeare in his plays. Read 'Romeo and Juliet';--all is +youth and spring;--youth with its follies, its virtues, its +precipitancies;--spring with its odours, its flowers, and its +transiency; it is one and the same feeling that commences, goes through, +and ends the play. The old men, the Capulets and the Montagues, are not +common old men; they have an eagerness, a heartiness, a vehemence, the +effect of spring; with Romeo, his change of passion, his sudden +marriage, and his rash death, are all the effects of youth;--whilst in +Juliet love has all that is tender and melancholy in the nightingale, +all that is voluptuous in the rose, with whatever is sweet in the +freshness of spring; but it ends with a long deep sigh like the last +breeze of the Italian evening. This unity of feeling and character +pervades every drama of Shakspeare. + +It seems to me that his plays are distinguished from those of all other +dramatic poets by the following characteristics: + +1. Expectation in preference to surprise. It is like the true reading of +the passage;--'God said, Let there be light, and there was +_light_;'--not there _was_ light. As the feeling with which we startle +at a shooting star, compared with that of watching the sunrise at the +pre-established moment, such and so low is surprise compared with +expectation. + +2. Signal adherence to the great law of nature, that all opposites tend +to attract and temper each other. Passion in Shakspeare generally +displays libertinism, but involves morality; and if there are exceptions +to this, they are, independently of their intrinsic value, all of them +indicative of individual character, and, like the farewell admonitions +of a parent, have an end beyond the parental relation. Thus the +Countess's beautiful precepts to Bertram, by elevating her character, +raise that of Helena her favorite, and soften down the point in her +which Shakspeare does not mean us not to see, but to see and to forgive, +and at length to justify. And so it is in Polonius, who is the +personified memory of wisdom no longer actually possessed. This +admirable character is always misrepresented on the stage. Shakspeare +never intended to exhibit him as a buffoon; for although it was natural +that Hamlet,--a young man of fire and genius, detesting formality, and +disliking Polonius on political grounds, as imagining that he had +assisted his uncle in his usurpation,--should express himself +satirically,--yet this must not be taken as exactly the poet's +conception of him. In Polonius a certain induration of character had +arisen from long habits of business; but take his advice to Laertes, and +Ophelia's reverence for his memory, and we shall see that he was meant +to be represented as a statesman somewhat past his faculties,--his +recollections of life all full of wisdom, and showing a knowledge of +human nature, whilst what immediately takes place before him, and +escapes from him, is indicative of weakness. + +But as in Homer all the deities are in armour, even Venus; so in +Shakspeare all the characters are strong. Hence real folly and dullness +are made by him the vehicles of wisdom. There is no difficulty for one +being a fool to imitate a fool; but to be, remain, and speak like a wise +man and a great wit, and yet so as to give a vivid representation of a +veritable fool,--'hic labor, hoc opus est'. A drunken constable is not +uncommon, nor hard to draw; but see and examine what goes to make up a +Dogberry. + +3. Keeping at all times in the high road of life. Shakspeare has no +innocent adulteries, no interesting incests, no virtuous vice;--he never +renders that amiable which religion and reason alike teach us to detest, +or clothes impurity in the garb of virtue, like Beaumont and Fletcher, +the Kotzebues of the day. Shakspeare's fathers are roused by +ingratitude, his husbands stung by unfaithfulness; in him, in short, the +affections are wounded in those points in which all may, nay, must, +feel. Let the morality of Shakspeare be contrasted with that of the +writers of his own, or the succeeding, age, or of those of the present +day, who boast their superiority in this respect. No one can dispute +that the result of such a comparison is altogether in favour of +Shakspeare;--even the letters of women of high rank in his age were +often coarser than his writings. If he occasionally disgusts a keen +sense of delicacy, he never injures the mind; he neither excites, nor +flatters, passion, in order to degrade the subject of it; he does not +use the faulty thing for a faulty purpose, nor carries on warfare +against virtue, by causing wickedness to appear as no wickedness, +through the medium of a morbid sympathy with the unfortunate. In +Shakspeare vice never walks as in twilight; nothing is purposely out of +its place;--he inverts not the order of nature and propriety,--does not +make every magistrate a drunkard or glutton, nor every poor man meek, +humane, and temperate; he has no benevolent butchers, nor any +sentimental rat-catchers. + +4. Independence of the dramatic interest on the plot. The interest in +the plot is always in fact on account of the characters, not 'vice +versa', as in almost all other writers; the plot is a mere canvass and +no more. Hence arises the true justification of the same stratagem being +used in regard to Benedict and Beatrice,--the vanity in each being +alike. Take away from the Much Ado About Nothing all that which is not +indispensable to the plot, either as having little to do with it, or, at +best, like Dogberry and his comrades, forced into the service, when any +other less ingeniously absurd watchmen and night-constables would have +answered the mere necessities of the action;--take away Benedict, +Beatrice, Dogberry, and the reaction of the former on the character of +Hero,--and what will remain? In other writers the main agent of the plot +is always the prominent character; in Shakspeare it is so, or is not so, +as the character is in itself calculated, or not calculated, to form the +plot. Don John is the main-spring of the plot of this play; but he is +merely shown and then withdrawn. + +5. Independence of the interest on the story as the ground-work of the +plot. Hence Shakspeare never took the trouble of inventing stories. It +was enough for him to select from those that had been already invented +or recorded such as had one or other, or both, of two recommendations, +namely, suitableness to his particular purpose, and their being parts of +popular tradition,--names of which we had often heard, and of their +fortunes, and as to which all we wanted was, to see the man himself. So +it is just the man himself, the Lear, the Shylock, the Richard, that +Shakspeare makes us for the first time acquainted with. Omit the first +scene in Lear, and yet every thing will remain; so the first and second +scenes in the Merchant of Venice. Indeed it is universally true. + +6. Interfusion of the lyrical--that which in its very essence is +poetical--not only with the dramatic, as in the plays of Metastasio, +where at the end of the scene comes the 'aria' as the 'exit' speech of +the character, but also in and through the dramatic. Songs in Shakspeare +are introduced as songs only, just as songs are in real life, +beautifully as some of them are characteristic of the person who has +sung or called for them, as Desdemona's 'Willow,' and Ophelia's wild +snatches, and the sweet carollings in As You Like It. But the whole of +the Midsummer Night's Dream is one continued specimen of the dramatized +lyrical. And observe how exquisitely the dramatic of Hotspur;-- + + Marry, and I'm glad on't with all my heart; + I had rather be a kitten and cry--mew, &c. + +melts away into the lyric of Mortimer;-- + + I understand thy looks: that pretty Welsh + Which thou pourest down from these swelling heavens, + I am too perfect in, &c. + + Henry IV. part i. act iii. sc. i. + + +7. The characters of the 'dramatis personae', like those in real life, +are to be inferred by the reader;--they are not told to him. And it is +well worth remarking that Shakspeare's characters, like those in real +life, are very commonly misunderstood, and almost always understood by +different persons in different ways. The causes are the same in either +case. If you take only what the friends of the character say, you may be +deceived, and still more so, if that which his enemies say; nay, even +the character himself sees himself through the medium of his character, +and not exactly as he is. Take all together, not omitting a shrewd hint +from the clown or the fool, and perhaps your impression will be right; +and you may know whether you have in fact discovered the poet's own +idea, by all the speeches receiving light from it, and attesting its +reality by reflecting it. + +Lastly, in Shakspeare the heterogeneous is united, as it is in nature. +You must not suppose a pressure or passion always acting on or in the +character;--passion in Shakspeare is that by which the individual is +distinguished from others, not that which makes a different kind of him. +Shakspeare followed the main march of the human affections. He entered +into no analysis of the passions or faiths of men, but assured himself +that such and such passions and faiths were grounded in our common +nature, and not in the mere accidents of ignorance or disease. This is +an important consideration, and constitutes our Shakspeare the morning +star, the guide and the pioneer, of true philosophy. + + +[Footnote 1: For the most part communicated by Mr. Justice Coleridge. +Ed.] + +[Footnote 2: AEsch. Eumen. v. 230-239. 'Notandum est, scenam jam Athenas +translatam sic institui, ut primo Orestes solus conspiciatur in templo +Minerva: supplex ejus simulacrum venerans; paulo post autem eum +consequantur Eumenides, &c.' Schiitz's note. The recessions of the +chorus were termed 'peravaoraneu'. There is another instance in the +Ajax, v. 814. Ed.] + + + + +ORDER OF SHAKSPEARE'S PLAYS. + +Various attempts have been made to arrange the plays of Shakspeare, each +according to its priority in time, by proofs derived from external +documents. How unsuccessful these attempts have been might easily be +shown, not only from the widely different results arrived at by men, all +deeply versed in the black-letter books, old plays, pamphlets, +manuscript records and catalogues of that age, but also from the +fallacious and unsatisfactory nature of the facts and assumptions on +which the evidence rests. In that age, when the press was chiefly +occupied with controversial or practical divinity,--when the law, the +church and the state engrossed all honour and respectability,--when a +degree of disgrace, 'levior quaedam infamiae macula', was attached to the +publication of poetry, and even to have sported with the Muse, as a +private relaxation, was supposed to be--a venial fault, indeed, +yet--something beneath the gravity of a wise man,--when the professed +poets were so poor, that the very expenses of the press demanded the +liberality of some wealthy individual, so that two thirds of Spenser's +poetic works, and those most highly praised by his learned admirers and +friends, remained for many years in manuscript, and in manuscript +perished,--when the amateurs of the stage were comparatively few, and +therefore for the greater part more or less known to each other,--when +we know that the plays of Shakspeare, both during and after his life, +were the property of the stage, and published by the players, doubtless +according to their notions of acceptability with the visitants of the +theatre,--in such an age, and under such circumstances, can an allusion +or reference to any drama or poem in the publication of a contemporary +be received as conclusive evidence, that such drama or poem had at that +time been published? Or, further, can the priority of publication itself +prove any thing in favour of actually prior composition. + +We are tolerably certain, indeed, that the Venus and Adonis, and the +Rape of Lucrece, were his two earliest poems, and though not printed +until 1593, in the twenty ninth year of his age, yet there can be little +doubt that they had remained by him in manuscript many years. For Mr. +Malone has made it highly probable, that he had commenced a writer for +the stage in 1591, when he was twenty seven years old, and Shakspeare +himself assures us that the Venus and Adonis was the first heir of his +invention.[1] + +Baffled, then, in the attempt to derive any satisfaction from outward +documents, we may easily stand excused if we turn our researches towards +the internal evidences furnished by the writings themselves, with no +other positive 'data' than the known facts, that the Venus and Adonis +was printed in 1593, the Rape of Lucrece in 1594, and that the Romeo and +Juliet had appeared in 1595,--and with no other presumptions than that +the poems, his very first productions, were written many years +earlier,--(for who can believe that Shakspeare could have remained to +his twenty-ninth or thirtieth year without attempting poetic composition +of any kind?)--and that between these and Romeo and Juliet there had +intervened one or two other dramas, or the chief materials, at least, of +them, although they may very possibly have appeared after the success of +the Romeo and Juliet and some other circumstances had given the poet an +authority with the proprietors, and created a prepossession in his +favour with the theatrical audiences. + +[Footnote 1: But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I +shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather, &c. + +Dedication of the V. and A. to Lord Southampton.] + + + + +CLASSIFICATION ATTEMPTED, 1802. + + +First Epoch. + + The London Prodigal. + Cromwell. + Henry VI., three parts, first edition. + The old King John. + Edward III. + The old Taming of the Shrew. + Pericles. + +All these are transition-works, 'Uebergangs-werke'; not his, yet of him. + + +Second Epoch. + + All's Well That Ends Well;--but afterwards worked up afresh, + (umgearbeitet) especially Parolles. + The Two Gentlemen of Verona; a sketch. + Romeo and Juliet; first draft of it. + + +Third Epoch + +rises into the full, although youthful, Shakspeare; it was the negative +period of his perfection. + + Love's Labour's Lost. + Twelfth Night. + As You Like It. + Midsummer Night's Dream. + Richard II. + Henry IV. and V. + Henry VIII.; 'Gelegenheitsgedicht'. + Romeo and Juliet, as at present. + Merchant of Venice. + + +Fourth Epoch. + + Much Ado About Nothing. + Merry Wives of Windsor; first edition. + Henry VI.; 'rifacimento'. + + +Fifth Epoch. + +The period of beauty was now past; and that of [GREEK (transliterated): +deinotaes] and grandeur succeeds. + + Lear. + Macbeth. + Hamlet. + Timon of Athens; an after vibration of Hamlet. + Troilus and Cressida; 'Uebergang in die Ironie'. + The Roman Plays. + King John, as at present. + Merry Wives of Windsor. }'umgearbeitet' + Taming of the Shrew. } + Measure for Measure. + Othello. + Tempest. + Winter's Tale. + Cymbeline. + + + +CLASSIFICATION ATTEMPTED, 1810. + + +Shakspeare's earliest dramas I take to be, + + Love's Labour's Lost. + All's Well That Ends Well. + Comedy of Errors. + Romeo and Juliet. + + +In the second class I reckon + + Midsummer Night's Dream. + As You Like It. + Tempest. + Twelfth Night. + + +In the third, as indicating a greater energy--not merely of poetry, +but--of all the world of thought, yet still with some of the growing +pains, and the awkwardness of growth, I place + + Troilus and Cressida. + Cymbeline. + Merchant of Venice. + Much Ado About Nothing. + Taming of the Shrew. + + +In the fourth, I place the plays containing the greatest characters; + + Macbeth. + Lear. + Hamlet. + Othello. + + +And lastly, the historic dramas, in order to be able to show my reasons +for rejecting some whole plays, and very many scenes in others. + + + + +CLASSIFICATION ATTEMPTED, 1819. + +I think Shakspeare's earliest dramatic attempt--perhaps even prior in +conception to the Venus and Adonis, and planned before he left +Stratford--was Love's Labour's Lost. Shortly afterwards I suppose +Pericles and certain scenes in Jeronymo to have been produced; and in +the same epoch, I place the Winter's Tale and Cymbeline, differing from +the Pericles by the entire 'rifacimento' of it, when Shakspeare's +celebrity as poet, and his interest, no less than his influence as +manager, enabled him to bring forward the laid-by labours of his youth. +The example of Titus Andronicus, which, as well as Jeronymo, was most +popular in Shakspeare's first epoch, had led the young dramatist to the +lawless mixture of dates and manners. In this same epoch I should place +the Comedy of Errors, remarkable as being the only specimen of poetical +farce in our language, that is, intentionally such; so that all the +distinct kinds of drama, which might be educed 'a priori', have their +representatives in Shakspeare's works. I say intentionally such; for +many of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays, and the greater part of Ben +Jonson's comedies are farce-plots. I add All's Well that Ends Well, +originally intended as the counterpart of Love's Labour's Lost, Taming +of the Shrew, Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, and Romeo +and Juliet. + +Second Epoch. + + Richard II. + King John. + Henry VI.,--'rifacimento' only. + Richard III. + + +Third Epoch. + + Henry IV. + Henry V. + Merry Wives of Windsor. + Henry VIII.,--a sort of historical masque, or show play. + + +Fourth Epoch + +gives all the graces and facilities of a genius in full possession and +habitual exercise of power, and peculiarly of the feminine, the _lady's_ +character. + + Tempest. + As You Like It. + Merchant of Venice. + Twelfth Night. + +and, finally, at its very point of culmination,-- + + Lear. + Hamlet. + Macbeth. + Othello. + + +Last Epoch, + +when the energies of intellect in the cycle of genius were, though in a +rich and more potentiated form, becoming predominant over passion and +creative self-manifestation. + + Measure for Measure. + Timon of Athens. + Coriolanus. + Julius Caesar. + Antony and Cleopatra. + Troilus and Cressida. + + +Merciful, wonder-making Heaven! what a man was this Shakspeare! +Myriad-minded, indeed, he was. + + + + + + +NOTES ON THE TEMPEST. + +There is a sort of improbability with which we are shocked in dramatic +representation, not less than in a narrative of real life. Consequently, +there must be rules respecting it; and as rules are nothing but means to +an end previously ascertained--(inattention to which simple truth has +been the occasion of all the pedantry of the French school),--we must +first determine what the immediate end or object of the drama is. And +here, as I have previously remarked, I find two extremes of critical +decision;--the French, which evidently presupposes that a perfect +delusion is to be aimed at,--an opinion which needs no fresh +confutation; and the exact opposite to it, brought forward by Dr. +Johnson, who supposes the auditors throughout in the full reflective +knowledge of the contrary. In evincing the impossibility of delusion, he +makes no sufficient allowance for an intermediate state, which I have +before distinguished by the term, illusion, and have attempted to +illustrate its quality and character by reference to our mental state, +when dreaming. In both cases we simply do not judge the imagery to be +unreal; there is a negative reality, and no more. Whatever, therefore, +tends to prevent the mind from placing itself, or being placed, +gradually in that state in which the images have such negative reality +for the auditor, destroys this illusion, and is dramatically improbable. + +Now the production of this effect--a sense of improbability--will depend +on the degree of excitement in which the mind is supposed to be. Many +things would be intolerable in the first scene of a play, that would not +at all interrupt our enjoyment in the height of the interest, when the +narrow cockpit may be made to hold + + The vasty field of France, or we may cram + Within its wooden O, the very casques, + That did affright the air at Agincourt. + +Again, on the other hand, many obvious improbabilities will be endured, +as belonging to the ground-work of the story rather than to the drama +itself, in the first scenes, which would disturb or disentrance us from +all illusion in the acme of our excitement; as for instance, Lear's +division of his kingdom, and the banishment of Cordelia. + +But, although the other excellencies of the drama besides this dramatic +probability, as unity of interest, with distinctness and subordination +of the characters, and appropriateness of style, are all, so far as they +tend to increase the inward excitement, means towards accomplishing the +chief end, that of producing and supporting this willing illusion,--yet +they do not on that account cease to be ends themselves; and we must +remember that, as such, they carry their own justification with them, as +long as they do not contravene or interrupt the total illusion. It is +not even always, or of necessity, an objection to them, that they +prevent the illusion from rising to as great a height as it might +otherwise have attained;--it is enough that they are simply compatible +with as high a degree of it as is requisite for the purpose. Nay, upon +particular occasions, a palpable improbability may be hazarded by a +great genius for the express purpose of keeping down the interest of a +merely instrumental scene, which would otherwise make too great an +impression for the harmony of the entire illusion. Had the panorama been +invented in the time of Pope Leo X., Raffael would still, I doubt not, +have smiled in contempt at the regret, that the broom-twigs and scrubby +bushes at the back of some of his grand pictures were not as probable +trees as those in the exhibition. + +The Tempest is a specimen of the purely romantic drama, in which the +interest is not historical, or dependent upon fidelity of portraiture, +or the natural connexion of events,--but is a birth of the imagination, +and rests only on the coaptation and union of the elements granted to, +or assumed by, the poet. It is a species of drama which owes no +allegiance to time or space, and in which, therefore, errors of +chronology and geography--no mortal sins in any species--are venial +faults, and count for nothing. It addresses itself entirely to the +imaginative faculty; and although the illusion may be assisted by the +effect on the senses of the complicated scenery and decorations of +modern times, yet this sort of assistance is dangerous. For the +principal and only genuine excitement ought to come from within,--from +the moved and sympathetic imagination; whereas, where so much is +addressed to the mere external senses of seeing and hearing, the +spiritual vision is apt to languish, and the attraction from without +will withdraw the mind from the proper and only legitimate interest +which is intended to spring from within. + +The romance opens with a busy scene admirably appropriate to the kind of +drama, and giving, as it were, the key-note to the whole harmony. It +prepares and initiates the excitement required for the entire piece, and +yet does not demand any thing from the spectators, which their previous +habits had not fitted them to understand. It is the bustle of a tempest, +from which the real horrors are abstracted;--therefore it is poetical, +though not in strictness natural--(the distinction to which I have so +often alluded)--and is purposely restrained from concentering the +interest on itself, but used merely as an induction or tuning for what +is to follow. + +In the second scene, Prospero's speeches, till the entrance of Ariel, +contain the finest example, I remember, of retrospective narration for +the purpose of exciting immediate interest, and putting the audience in +possession of all the information necessary for the understanding of the +plot.[1] Observe, too, the perfect probability of the moment chosen by +Prospero (the very Shakspeare himself, as it were, of the tempest) to +open out the truth to his daughter, his own romantic bearing, and how +completely any thing that might have been disagreeable to us in the +magician, is reconciled and shaded in the humanity and natural feelings +of the father. In the very first speech of Miranda the simplicity and +tenderness of her character are at once laid open;--it would have been +lost in direct contact with the agitation of the first scene. The +opinion once prevailed, but, happily, is now abandoned, that Fletcher +alone wrote for women;--the truth is, that with very few, and those +partial, exceptions, the female characters in the plays of Beaumont and +Fletcher are, when of the light kind, not decent; when heroic, complete +viragos. But in Shakspeare all the elements of womanhood are holy, and +there is the sweet, yet dignified feeling of all that 'continuates' +society, as sense of ancestry and of sex, with a purity unassailable by +sophistry, because it rests not in the analytic processes, but in that +sane equipoise of the faculties, during which the feelings are +representative of all past experience,--not of the individual only, but +of all those by whom she has been educated, and their predecessors even +up to the first mother that lived. Shakspeare saw that the want of +prominence, which Pope notices for sarcasm, was the blessed beauty of +the woman's character, and knew that it arose not from any deficiency, +but from the more exquisite harmony of all the parts of the moral being +constituting one living total of head and heart. He has drawn it, +indeed, in all its distinctive energies of faith, patience, constancy, +fortitude,--shown in all of them as following the heart, which gives its +results by a nice tact and happy intuition, without the intervention of +the discursive faculty,--sees all things in and by the light of the +affections, and errs, if it ever err, in the exaggerations of love +alone. In all the Shakspearian women there is essentially the same +foundation and principle; the distinct individuality and variety are +merely the result of the modification of circumstances, whether in +Miranda the maiden, in Imogen the wife, or in Katharine the queen. + +But to return. The appearance and characters of the super- or +ultra-natural servants are finely contrasted. Ariel has in every thing +the airy tint which gives the name; and it is worthy of remark that +Miranda is never directly brought into comparison with Ariel, lest the +natural and human of the one and the supernatural of the other should +tend to neutralize each other; Caliban, on the other hand, is all earth, +all condensed and gross in feelings and images; he has the dawnings of +understanding without reason or the moral sense, and in him, as in some +brute animals, this advance to the intellectual faculties, without the +moral sense, is marked by the appearance of vice. For it is in the +primacy of the moral being only that man is truly human; in his +intellectual powers he is certainly approached by the brutes, and, man's +whole system duly considered, those powers cannot be considered other +than means to an end, that is, to morality. + +In this scene, as it proceeds, is displayed the impression made by +Ferdinand and Miranda on each other; it is love at first sight;-- + + at the first sight They have chang'd eyes:-- + +and it appears to me, that in all cases of real love, it is at one +moment that it takes place. That moment may have been prepared by +previous esteem, admiration, or even affection,--yet love seems to +require a momentary act of volition, by which a tacit bond of devotion +is imposed,--a bond not to be thereafter broken without violating what +should be sacred in our nature. How finely is the true Shakspearian +scene contrasted with Dryden's vulgar alteration of it, in which a mere +ludicrous psychological experiment, as it were, is tried--displaying +nothing but indelicacy without passion. Prospero's interruption of the +courtship has often seemed to me to have no sufficient motive; still his +alleged reason-- + + lest too light winning Make the prize light-- + +is enough for the ethereal connexions of the romantic imagination, +although it would not be so for the historical. [2] The whole courting +scene, indeed, in the beginning of the third act, between the lovers is +a masterpiece; and the first dawn of disobedience in the mind of Miranda +to the command of her father is very finely drawn, so as to seem the +working of the Scriptural command, 'Thou shall leave father and mother', +&c. O! with what exquisite purity this scene is conceived and executed! +Shakspeare may sometimes be gross, but I boldly say that he is always +moral and modest. Alas! in this our day decency of manners is preserved +at the expense of morality of heart, and delicacies for vice are +allowed, whilst grossness against it is hypocritically, or at least +morbidly, condemned. + +In this play are admirably sketched the vices generally accompanying a +low degree of civilization; and in the first scene of the second act +Shakspeare has, as in many other places, shown the tendency in bad men +to indulge in scorn and contemptuous expressions, as a mode of getting +rid of their own uneasy feelings of inferiority to the good, and also, +by making the good ridiculous, of rendering the transition of others to +wickedness easy. Shakspeare never puts habitual scorn into the mouths of +other than bad men, as here in the instances of Antonio and Sebastian. +The scene of the intended assassination of Alonzo and Gonzalo is an +exact counterpart of the scene between Macbeth and his lady, only +pitched in a lower key throughout, as designed to be frustrated and +concealed, and exhibiting the same profound management in the manner of +familiarizing a mind, not immediately recipient, to the suggestion of +guilt, by associating the proposed crime with something ludicrous or out +of place,--something not habitually matter of reverence. By this kind of +sophistry the imagination and fancy are first bribed to contemplate the +suggested act, and at length to become acquainted with it. Observe how +the effect of this scene is heightened by contrast with another +counterpart of it in low life,--that between the conspirators Stephano, +Caliban, and Trinculo in the second scene of the third act, in which +there are the same essential characteristics. + +In this play and in this scene of it are also shown the springs of the +vulgar in politics,--of that kind of politics which is inwoven with +human nature. In his treatment of this subject, wherever it occurs, +Shakspeare is quite peculiar. In other writers we find the particular +opinions of the individual; in Massinger it is rank republicanism; in +Beaumont and Fletcher even 'jure divino' principles are carried to +excess;--but Shakspeare never promulgates any party tenets. He is always +the philosopher and the moralist, but at the same time with a profound +veneration for all the established institutions of society, and for +those classes which form the permanent elements of the state--especially +never introducing a professional character, as such, otherwise than as +respectable. If he must have any name, he should be styled a +philosophical aristocrat, delighting in those hereditary institutions +which have a tendency to bind one age to another, and in that +distinction of ranks, of which, although few may be in possession, all +enjoy the advantages. Hence, again, you will observe the good nature +with which he seems always to make sport with the passions and follies +of a mob, as with an irrational animal. He is never angry with it, but +hugely content with holding up its absurdities to its face; and +sometimes you may trace a tone of almost affectionate superiority, +something like that in which a father speaks of the rogueries of a +child. See the good-humoured way in which he describes Stephano passing +from the most licentious freedom to absolute despotism over Trinculo and +Caliban. The truth is, Shakspeare's characters are all 'genera' +intensely individualized; the results of meditation, of which +observation supplied the drapery and the colors necessary to combine +them with each other. He had virtually surveyed all the great component +powers and impulses of human nature,--had seen that their different +combinations and subordinations were in fact the individualizers of men, +and showed how their harmony was produced by reciprocal disproportions +of excess or deficiency. The language in which these truths are +expressed was not drawn from any set fashion, but from the profoundest +depths of his moral being, and is therefore for all ages. + +[Footnote 1: + + 'Pro'. Mark his condition, and th' event; then tell me, If this might + be a brother. + + 'Mira'. I should sin, To think but nobly of my grandmother; Good wombs + have bore bad sons. + + 'Pro'. Now the condition, &c. + +Theobald has a note upon this passage, and suggests that Shakspeare +placed it thus:-- + + 'Pro'. Good wombs have bore bad sons,--Now the condition. + +Mr. Coleridge writes in the margin: 'I cannot but believe that Theobald +is quite right.'--Ed.] + +[Footnote 2: + + 'Fer'. Yes, faith, and all his Lords, the duke of Milan, And his brave + son, being twain. + +Theobald remarks that no body was lost in the wreck; and yet that no +such character is introduced in the fable, as the Duke of Milan's son. +Mr. C. notes: 'Must not Ferdinand have believed he was lost in the fleet +that the tempest scattered?--Ed.] + + + + + +LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST. + +The characters in this play are either impersonated out of Shakspeare's +own multiformity by imaginative self-position, or out of such as a +country town and a schoolboy's observation might supply,--the curate, +the schoolmaster, the Armado, (who even in my time was not extinct in +the cheaper inns of North Wales) and so on. The satire is chiefly on +follies of words. Biron and Rosaline are evidently the pre-existent +state of Benedict and Beatrice, and so, perhaps, is Boyet of Lafeu, and +Costard of the Tapster in Measure for Measure; and the frequency of the +rhymes, the sweetness as well as the smoothness of the metre, and the +number of acute and fancifully illustrated aphorisms, are all as they +ought to be in a poet's youth. True genius begins by generalizing and +condensing; it ends in realizing and expanding. It first collects the +seeds. + +Yet if this juvenile drama had been the only one extant of our +Shakspeare, and we possessed the tradition only of his riper works, or +accounts of them in writers who had not even mentioned this play,--how +many of Shakspeare's characteristic features might we not still have +discovered in Love's Labour's Lost, though as in a portrait taken of him +in his boyhood. + +I can never sufficiently admire the wonderful activity of thought +throughout the whole of the first scene of the play, rendered natural, +as it is, by the choice of the characters, and the whimsical +determination on which the drama is founded. A whimsical determination +certainly;--yet not altogether so very improbable to those who are +conversant in the history of the middle ages, with their Courts of Love, +and all that lighter drapery of chivalry, which engaged even mighty +kings with a sort of serio-comic interest, and may well be supposed to +have occupied more completely the smaller princes, at a time when the +noble's or prince's court contained the only theatre of the domain or +principality. This sort of story, too, was admirably suited to +Shakspeare's times, when the English court was still the foster-mother +of the state and the muses; and when, in consequence, the courtiers, and +men of rank and fashion, affected a display of wit, point, and +sententious observation, that would be deemed intolerable at +present,--but in which a hundred years of controversy, involving every +great political, and every dear domestic, interest, had trained all but +the lowest classes to participate. Add to this the very style of the +sermons of the time, and the eagerness of the Protestants to distinguish +themselves by long and frequent preaching, and it will be found that, +from the reign of Henry VIII. to the abdication of James II. no country +ever received such a national education as England. + +Hence the comic matter chosen in the first instance is a ridiculous +imitation or apery of this constant striving after logical precision, +and subtle opposition of thoughts, together with a making the most of +every conception or image, by expressing it under the least expected +property belonging to it, and this, again, rendered specially absurd by +being applied to the most current subjects and occurrences. The phrases +and modes of combination in argument were caught by the most ignorant +from the custom of the age, and their ridiculous misapplication of them +is most amusingly exhibited in Costard; whilst examples suited only to +the gravest propositions and impersonations, or apostrophes to abstract +thoughts impersonated, which are in fact the natural language only of +the most vehement agitations of the mind, are adopted by the coxcombry +of Armado as mere artifices of ornament. + +The same kind of intellectual action is exhibited in a more serious and +elevated strain in many other parts of this play. Biron's speech at the +end of the fourth act is an excellent specimen of it. It is logic +clothed in rhetoric;--but observe how Shakspeare, in his two-fold being +of poet and philosopher, avails himself of it to convey profound truths +in the most lively images,--the whole remaining faithful to the +character supposed to utter the lines, and the expressions themselves +constituting a further developement of that character:-- + +Other slow arts entirely keep the brain: And therefore finding barren +practisers, Scarce shew a harvest of their heavy toil: But love, first +learned in a lady's eyes, Lives not alone immured in the brain; But, +with the motion of all elements, Courses as swift as thought in every +power; And gives to every power a double power, Above their functions +and their offices. It adds a precious seeing to the eye, A lover's eyes +will gaze an eagle blind; A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound, When +the suspicious tread of theft is stopp'd: Love's feeling is more soft +and sensible, Than are the tender horns of cockled snails; Love's tongue +proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste; For valour, is not love a +Hercules, Still climbing trees in the Hesperides? Subtle as Sphinx; as +sweet and musical, As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair; And +when love speaks, the voice of all the gods Makes heaven drowsy with the +harmony. Never durst poet touch a pen to write, Until his ink were +temper'd with love's sighs; O, then his lines would ravish savage ears, +And plant in tyrants mild humility. From women's eyes this doctrine I +derive: They sparkle still the right Promethean fire; They are the +books, the arts, the academes, That shew, contain, and nourish all the +world; Else, none at all in aught proves excellent; Then fools you were +these women to forswear; Or, keeping what is sworn, you will prove +fools. For wisdom's sake, a word that all men love; Or for love's sake, +a word that loves all men; Or for men's sake, the authors of these +women; Or women's sake, by whom we men are men; Let us once lose our +oaths, to find ourselves, Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths: +It is religion, to be thus forsworn: For charity itself fulfills the +law: And who can sever love from charity?-- + + +This is quite a study;--sometimes you see this youthful god of poetry +connecting disparate thoughts purely by means of resemblances in the +words expressing them,--a thing in character in lighter comedy, +especially of that kind in which Shakspeare delights, namely, the +purposed display of wit, though sometimes, too, disfiguring his graver +scenes;--but more often you may see him doubling the natural connection +or order of logical consequence in the thoughts by the introduction of +an artificial and sought for resemblance in the words, as, for instance, +in the third line of the play,-- + + And then grace us in the disgrace of death;-- + +this being a figure often having its force and propriety, as justified +by the law of passion, which, inducing in the mind an unusual activity, +seeks for means to waste its superfluity,--when in the highest +degree--in lyric repetitions and sublime tautology--'(at her feet he +bowed, he fell, he lay down; at her feet he bowed, he fell; where he +bowed, there he fell down dead)',--and, in lower degrees, in making the +words themselves the subjects and materials of that surplus action, and +for the same cause that agitates our limbs, and forces our very gestures +into a tempest in states of high excitement. + +The mere style of narration in Love's Labour's Lost, like that of AEgeon +in the first scene of the Comedy of Errors, and of the Captain in the +second scene of Macbeth, seems imitated with its defects and its +beauties from Sir Philip Sidney; whose Arcadia, though not then +published, was already well known in manuscript copies, and could hardly +have escaped the notice and admiration of Shakspeare as the friend and +client of the Earl of Southampton. The chief defect consists in the +parentheses and parenthetic thoughts and descriptions, suited neither to +the passion of the speaker, nor the purpose of the person to whom the +information is to be given, but manifestly betraying the author +himself,--not by way of continuous undersong, but--palpably, and so as +to show themselves addressed to the general reader. However, it is not +unimportant to notice how strong a presumption the diction and allusions +of this play afford, that, though Shakspeare's acquirements in the dead +languages might not be such as we suppose in a learned education, his +habits had, nevertheless, been scholastic, and those of a student. For a +young author's first work almost always bespeaks his recent pursuits, +and his first observations of life are either drawn from the immediate +employments of his youth, and from the characters and images most deeply +impressed on his mind in the situations in which those employments had +placed him;--or else they are fixed on such objects and occurrences in +the world, as are easily connected with, and seem to bear upon, his +studies and the hitherto exclusive subjects of his meditation. Just as +Ben Jonson, who applied himself to the drama after having served in +Flanders, fills his earliest plays with true or pretended soldiers, the +wrongs and neglects of the former, and the absurd boasts and knavery of +their counterfeits. So Lessing's first comedies are placed in the +universities, and consist of events and characters conceivable in an +academic life. + +I will only further remark the sweet and tempered gravity, with which +Shakspeare in the end draws the only fitting moral which such a drama +afforded. Here Rosaline rises up to the full height of Beatrice:-- + +'Ros'. Oft have I heard of you, my lord Biron, Before I saw you, and the +world's large tongue Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks; Full of +comparisons, and wounding flouts, Which you on all estates will execute +That lie within the mercy of your wit: To weed this wormwood from your +fruitful brain, And therewithal, to win me, if you please, (Without the +which I am not to be won,) You shall this twelvemonth term from day to +day Visit the speechless sick, and still converse With groaning +wretches; and your talk shall be, With all the fierce endeavour of your +wit, To enforce the pained impotent to smile. + + 'Biron'. To move wild laughter in the throat of death? + It cannot be; it is impossible; + Mirth cannot move a soul in agony. + + 'Ros'. Why, that's the way to choke a gibing spirit, + Whose influence is begot of that loose grace, + Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools: + A jest's prosperity lies in the ear + Of him that hears it, never in the tongue + Of him that makes it: then, if sickly ears, + Deaf'd with the clamors of their own dear groans, + Will hear your idle scorns, continue then, + And I will have you, and that fault withal; + But, if they will not, throw away that spirit, + And I shall find you empty of that fault, + Right joyful of your reformation. + + + +Act v. sc. 2. In Biron's speech to the Princess: + + --and, therefore, like the eye, + Full of _straying_ shapes, of habits, and of forms. + +Either read _stray_, which I prefer; or throw _full_ back to the +preceding lines,-- + + like the eye, full + Of straying shapes, &c. + +In the same scene: + + 'Biron'. And what to me, my love? and what to me? + + 'Ros'. You must be purged too, your sins are rank; + You are attaint with fault and perjury: + Therefore, if you my favour mean to get, + A twelvemonth shall you spend, and never rest, + But seek the weary beds of people sick. + +There can be no doubt, indeed, about the propriety of expunging this +speech of Rosaline's; it soils the very page that retains it. But I do +not agree with Warburton and others in striking out the preceding line +also. It is quite in Biron's character; and Rosaline not answering it +immediately, Dumain takes up the question for him, and, after he and +Longaville are answered, Biron, with evident propriety, says;-- + + _Studies_ my mistress? &c. + + + + + +MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. + +Act i. sc. 1. + + + 'Her'. O cross! too high to be enthrall'd to low-- + + 'Lys'. Or else misgraffed, in respect of years; + + 'Her'. O spite! too old to be engag'd to young-- + + 'Lys'. Or else it stood upon the choice of friends; + + 'Her'. O hell! to chuse love by another's eye! + + +There is no authority for any alteration;--but I never can help feeling +how great an improvement it would be, if the two former of Hermia's +exclamations were omitted;--the third and only appropriate one would +then become a beauty, and most natural. + +'Ib.' Helena's speech:-- + + I wilt go tell him of fair Hermia's flight, &c. + +I am convinced that Shakspeare availed himself of the title of this play +in his own mind, and worked upon it as a dream throughout, but +especially, and, perhaps, unpleasingly, in this broad determination of +ungrateful treachery in Helena, so undisguisedly avowed to herself, and +this, too, after the witty cool philosophizing that precedes. The act +itself is natural, and the resolve so to act is, I fear, likewise too +true a picture of the lax hold which principles have on a woman's heart, +when opposed to, or even separated from, passion and inclination. For +women are less hypocrites to their own minds than men are, because in +general they feel less proportionate abhorrence of moral evil in and for +itself, and more of its outward consequences, as detection, and loss of +character than men,--their natures being almost wholly extroitive. +Still, however just in itself, the representation of this is not +poetical; we shrink from it, and cannot harmonize it with the ideal. + + +Act ii. sc. 1. Theobald's edition. + + _Through_ bush, _through_ briar--... _Through_ flood, _through_ fire-- + +What a noble pair of ears this worthy Theobald must have had! The eight +amphimacers or cretics,-- + + Over hill, over dale, + Thoroe' bush, thoroe' briar, + Over park, over pale, + Thoroe' flood, thoroe' fire-- + +have a delightful effect on the ear in their sweet transition to the +trochaic,-- + + I do wander ev'ry where + Swifter than the moones sphere, &c.-- + +The last words as sustaining the rhyme, must be considered, as in fact +they are, trochees in time. + +It may be worth while to give some correct examples in English of the +principal metrical feet:-- + +Pyrrhic or Dibrach, u u =_body, spirit_. +Tribrach, u u u =_nobody_, (hastily pronounced). +Iambus u ' =_deli'ght_. +Trochee, ' u =_li'ghtly_. +Spondee, ' ' =_Go'd spa'ke_. + +The paucity of spondees in single words in English and, indeed, in the +modern languages in general, makes, perhaps, the greatest distinction, +metrically considered, between them and the Greek and Latin. + +Dactyl, ' u u = _me'rrily._ +Anapaest, u u ' = _a propo's,_ or the first three syllables + of _ceremo'ny_. +Amphibrachys, u ' u = _deli'ghtful_. +Amphimacer, ' u ' = _o'ver hi'll_. +Antibacchius, u ' ' = _the Lo'rd Go'd_. +Bacchius, ' ' u = _He'lve'llyn_. +Molossus, ' ' ' = _Jo'hn Ja'mes Jo'nes._ + + +These simple feet may suffice for understanding the metres of +Shakspeare, for the greater part at least;--but Milton cannot be made +harmoniously intelligible without the composite feet, the Ionics, Paeons, +and Epitrites. + +'Ib.' sc. 2. Titania's speech:--(Theobald adopting Warburton's reading.) + + Which she, with pretty and with swimming gate + _Follying_ (her womb then rich with my young squire) + Would imitate, &c. + +Oh! oh! Heaven have mercy on poor Shakspeare, and also on Mr. +Warburton's mind's eye! + +Act v. sc. 1. Theseus' speech:--(Theobald.) + + And what poor [_willing_] duty cannot do, + Noble respect takes it in might, not merit. + +To my ears it would read far more Shakspearian thus:-- + + And what poor duty cannot do, _yet would_, Noble respect, &c. + + +'Ib.' sc. 2. + + + 'Puck.' Now the hungry lion roars, + And the wolf behowls the moon; + Whilst the heavy ploughman snores + All with weary task foredone, &c. + + +Very Anacreon in perfectness, proportion, grace, and spontaneity! So far +it is Greek;--but then add, O! what wealth, what wild ranging, and yet +what compression and condensation of, English fancy! In truth, there is +nothing in Anacreon more perfect than these thirty lines, or half so +rich and imaginative. They form a speckless diamond. + + + + + + +COMEDY OF ERRORS. + +The myriad-minded man, our, and all men's, Shakspeare, has in this piece +presented us with a legitimate farce in exactest consonance with the +philosophical principles and character of farce, as distinguished from +comedy and from entertainments. A proper farce is mainly distinguished +from comedy by the license allowed, and even required, in the fable, in +order to produce strange and laughable situations. The story need not be +probable, it is enough that it is possible. A comedy would scarcely +allow even the two Antipholises; because, although there have been +instances of almost indistinguishable likeness in two persons, yet these +are mere individual accidents, 'casus ludentis naturae', and the 'verum' +will not excuse the 'inverisimile'. But farce dares add the two Dromios, +and is justified in so doing by the laws of its end and constitution. In +a word, farces commence in a postulate, which must be granted. + + + + + +AS YOU LIKE IT. + +Act I. sc. 1. + + + 'Oli'. What, boy! + + 'Orla'. Come, come, elder brother, you are too young in this. + + 'Oli'. Wilt thou lay hands on me, villain? + +There is a beauty here. The word 'boy' naturally provokes and awakens in +Orlando the sense of his manly powers; and with the retort of 'elder +brother,' he grasps him with firm hands, and makes him feel he is no +boy. + + +Ib. + + 'Oli'. Farewell, good Charles.--Now will I stir this gamester: I + hope, I shall see an end of him; for my soul, yet I know not why, + hates nothing more than him. Yet he's gentle; never school'd, and yet + learn'd; full of noble device; of all sorts enchantingly beloved! and, + indeed, so much in the heart of the world, and especially of my own + people, who best know him, that I am altogether misprized: but it + shall not he so long; this wrestler shall clear all. + + +This has always appeared to me one of the most un-Shakspearian speeches +in all the genuine works of our poet; yet I should be nothing surprized, +and greatly pleased, to find it hereafter a fresh beauty, as has so +often happened to me with other supposed defects of great men. (1810). + +It is too venturous to charge a passage in Shakspeare with want of truth +to nature; and yet at first sight this speech of Oliver's expresses +truths, which it seems almost impossible that any mind should so +distinctly, so livelily, and so voluntarily, have presented to itself, +in connection with feelings and intentions so malignant, and so contrary +to those which the qualities expressed would naturally have called +forth. But I dare not say that this seeming unnaturalness is not in the +nature of an abused wilfulness, when united with a strong intellect. In +such characters there is sometimes a gloomy self-gratification in making +the absoluteness of the will ('sit pro ratione voluntas!') evident to +themselves by setting the reason and the conscience in full array +against it. (1818). + +Ib. sc. 2. + + 'Celia'. If you saw yourself with _your_ eyes, or knew yourself with + _your_ judgment, the fear of your adventure would counsel you to a + more equal enterprise. + + +Surely it should be '_our_ eyes' and '_our_ judgment.' + +'Ib.' sc. 3. + + + 'Cel'. But is all this for your father? + + 'Ros'. No, some of it is for _my child's father_. + + +Theobald restores this as the reading of the older editions. It may be +so; but who can doubt that it is a mistake for 'my father's child,' +meaning herself? According to Theobald's note, a most indelicate +anticipation is put into the mouth of Rosalind without reason;--and +besides, what a strange thought, and how out of place, and +unintelligible! + +Act iv. sc. 2. + + + Take thou no scorn + To wear the horn, the lusty horn; + It was a crest ere thou wast born. + + +I question whether there exists a parallel instance of a phrase, that +like this of 'horns' is universal in all languages, and yet for which no +one has discovered even a plausible origin. + + + + + +TWELFTH NIGHT. + +Act I. sc. 1. Duke's speech:-- + + --so full of shapes _is_ fancy, That it alone is high fantastical. + +Warburton's alteration of _is_ into _in_ is needless. 'Fancy' may very +well be interpreted 'exclusive affection,' or 'passionate preference.' +Thus, bird-fanciers, gentlemen of the fancy, that is, amateurs of +boxing, &c. The play of assimilation,--the meaning one sense chiefly, +and yet keeping both senses in view, is perfectly Shakspearian. + +Act ii. sc. 3. Sir Andrew's speech:-- + +An explanatory note on _Pigrogromilus_ would have been more acceptable +than Theobald's grand discovery that 'lemon' ought to be 'leman.' + +Ib. Sir Toby's speech: (Warburton's note on the Peripatetic philosophy.) + + Shall we rouse the night-owl in a catch, that will draw three souls + out of one weaver? + + +O genuine, and inimitable (at least I hope so) Warburton! This note of +thine, if but one in five millions, would be half a one too much. + +'Ib.' sc. 4. + + 'Duke'. My life upon't, young though thou art, thine eye + Hath stay'd upon some favour that it loves; + Hath it not, boy? + + 'Vio'. A little, by your favour. + + 'Duke'. What kind of woman is't? + +And yet Viola was to have been presented to Orsino as a eunuch!--Act i. +sc. 2. Viola's speech. Either she forgot this, or else she had altered +her plan. + +Ib. + + 'Vio'. A blank, my lord: she never told her love!-- + But let concealment, &c. + + +After the first line, (of which the last five words should be spoken +with, and drop down in, a deep sigh) the actress ought to make a pause; +and then start afresh, from the activity of thought, born of suppressed +feelings, and which thought had accumulated during the brief interval, +as vital heat under the skin during a dip in cold water. + +Ib. sc. 5. + + 'Fabian'. Though our silence be drawn from us by _cars_, yet peace. + +Perhaps, 'cables.' + +Act iii. sc. 1. + + 'Clown'. A sentence is but a _cheveril_ glove to a good wit. + +(Theobald's note.) + +Theobald's etymology of 'cheveril' is, of course quite right;--but he is +mistaken in supposing that there were no such things as gloves of +chicken-skin. They were at one time a main article in chirocosmetics. + +Act v. sc. 1. Clown's speech:-- + + So that, _conclusions to be as kisses_, if your four negatives make + your two affirmatives, why, then, the worse for my friends, and the + better for my foes. + + +(Warburton reads 'conclusion to be asked, is.') + +Surely Warburton could never have wooed by kisses and won, or he would +not have flounder-flatted so just and humorous, nor less pleasing than +humorous, an image into so profound a nihility. In the name of love and +wonder, do not four kisses make a double affirmative? The humour lies in +the whispered 'No!' and the inviting 'Don't!' with which the maiden's +kisses are accompanied, and thence compared to negatives, which by +repetition constitute an affirmative. + + + + + + +ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. + +Act I. sc. 1. + + + 'Count'. If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess makes it soon + mortal. + + 'Bert'. Madam, I desire your holy wishes--. + + 'Laf'. How understand we that--? + +Bertram and Lafeu, I imagine, both speak together,--Lafeu referring to +the Countess's rather obscure remark. + +Act. ii. sc. 1. (Warburton's note.) + + + 'King'. --let _higher_ Italy + (Those _'bated_, that inherit but the fall + Of the last monarchy) see, that you come + Not to woo honor, but to wed it. + + +It would be, I own, an audacious and unjustifiable change of the text; +but yet, as a mere conjecture, I venture to suggest 'bastards,' for +''bated.' As it stands, in spite of Warburton's note I can make little +or nothing of it. Why should the king except the then most illustrious +states, which, as being republics, were the more truly inheritors of the +Roman grandeur?--With my conjecture, the sense would be;--'let higher, +or the more northern part of Italy--(unless 'higher' be a corruption +for 'hir'd,'--the metre seeming to demand a monosyllable) (those +bastards that inherit the infamy only of their fathers) see, &c.' The +following 'woo' and 'wed' are so far confirmative as they indicate +Shakspeare's manner of connexion by unmarked influences of association +from some preceding metaphor. This it is which makes his style so +peculiarly vital and organic. Likewise 'those girls of Italy' strengthen +the guess. The absurdity of Warburton's gloss, which represents the king +calling Italy superior, and then excepting the only part the lords were +going to visit, must strike every one. + +Ib. sc. 3. + + + 'Laf'. They say, miracles are past; and we have our philosophical + persons to make modern and familiar, things supernatural and + _causeless_. + + +Shakspeare, inspired, as it might seem, with all knowledge, here uses +the word 'causeless' in its strict philosophical sense;--cause being +truly predicable only of 'phenomena', that is, things natural, and not +of 'noumena', or things supernatural. + +Act iii. sc. 5. + + + 'Dia'. The Count Rousillon:--know you such a one? + + 'Hel'. But by the ear that hears most nobly of him; + His face I know not. + + +Shall we say here, that Shakspeare has unnecessarily made his loveliest +character utter a lie?--Or shall we dare think that, where to deceive +was necessary, he thought a pretended verbal verity a double crime, +equally with the other a lie to the hearer, and at the same time an +attempt to lie to one's own conscience? + + + + + +MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. + +Act I. sc. 1. + + + 'Shal'. The luce is the fresh fish, the salt fish is an old coat. + + +I cannot understand this. Perhaps there is a corruption both of words +and speakers. Shallow no sooner corrects one mistake of Sir Hugh's, +namely, 'louse' for 'luce,' a pike, but the honest Welchman falls into +another, namely, 'cod' ('baccala') 'Cambrice' 'cot' for coat. + + + 'Shal'. The luce is the fresh fish-- + + 'Evans'. The salt fish is an old cot. + + +'Luce is a fresh fish, and not a louse;' says Shallow. 'Aye, aye,' quoth +Sir Hugh; 'the _fresh_ fish is the luce; it is an old cod that is the +salt fish.' At all events, as the text stands, there is no sense at all +in the words. + +'Ib.' sc. 3. + + + 'Fal'. Now, the report goes, she has all the rule of her husband's + purse; she hath a legion of angels. + + 'Pist'. As many devils entertain; and 'To her, boy', say I. + + +Perhaps it is-- + + + As many devils enter (or enter'd) swine; and _to her, boy_, say I:-- + + +a somewhat profane, but not un-Shakspearian, allusion to the 'legion' in +St. Luke's 'gospel.' + + + + + +MEASURE FOR MEASURE. + +This play, which is Shakspeare's throughout, is to me the most +painful--say rather, the only painful--part of his genuine works. The +comic and tragic parts equally border on the [Greek (transliterated): +misaeteon],--the one being disgusting, the other horrible; and the +pardon and marriage of Angelo not merely baffles the strong indignant +claim of justice--(for cruelty, with lust and damnable baseness, cannot +be forgiven, because we cannot conceive them as being morally repented +of;) but it is likewise degrading to the character of woman. Beaumont +and Fletcher, who can follow Shakspeare in his errors only, have +presented a still worse, because more loathsome and contradictory, +instance of the same kind in the Night-Walker, in the marriage of Alathe +to Algripe. Of the counterbalancing beauties of Measure for Measure, I +need say nothing; for I have already remarked that the play is +Shakspeare's throughout. + +Act iii. sc. 1. + + + Ay, but to die, and go we know not where, &c. + + +This natural fear of Claudio, from the antipathy we have to death, seems +very little varied from that infamous wish of Maecenas, recorded in the +101st epistle of Seneca: + + + _Debilem facito manu, Debilem pede, coxa, &c._ + +Warburton's note. + + +I cannot but think this rather an heroic resolve, than an infamous wish. +It appears to me to be the grandest symptom of an immortal spirit, when +even that bedimmed and overwhelmed spirit recked not of its own +immortality, still to seek to be,--to be a mind, a will. + +As fame is to reputation, so heaven is to an estate, or immediate +advantage. The difference is, that the self-love of the former cannot +exist but by a complete suppression and habitual supplantation of +immediate selfishness. In one point of view, the miser is more estimable +than the spendthrift;--only that the miser's present feelings are as +much of the present as the spendthrift's. But 'caeteris paribus', that +is, upon the supposition that whatever is good or lovely in the one +coexists equally in the other, then, doubtless, the master of the +present is less a selfish being, an animal, than he who lives for the +moment with no inheritance in the future. Whatever can degrade man, is +supposed in the latter case, whatever can elevate him, in the former. +And as to self;--strange and generous self! that can only be such a self +by a complete divestment of all that men call self,--of all that can +make it either practically to others, or consciously to the individual +himself, different from the human race in its ideal. Such self is but a +perpetual religion, an inalienable acknowledgment of God, the sole basis +and ground of being. In this sense, how can I love God, and not love +myself, as far as it is of God? + +'Ib.' sc. 2. + + + Pattern in himself to know, Grace to stand, and virtue go. + + +Worse metre, indeed, but better English would be,-- + + + Grace to stand, virtue to go. + + + + + +CYMBELINE. + + +Act I. sc. 1. + + + You do not meet a man, but frowns: our bloods + No more obey the heavens, than our courtiers' + Still seem, as does the king's. + + +There can be little doubt of Mr. Tyrwhitt's emendations of 'courtiers' +and 'king,' as to the sense;--only it is not impossible that +Shakspeare's dramatic language may allow of the word, 'brows' or 'faces' +being understood after the word 'courtiers',' which might then remain in +the genitive case plural. But the nominative plural makes excellent +sense, and is sufficiently elegant, and sounds to my ear Shakspearian. +What, however, is meant by 'our bloods no more obey the heavens?'--Dr. +Johnson's assertion that 'bloods' signify 'countenances,' is, I think, +mistaken both in the thought conveyed--(for it was never a popular +belief that the stars governed men's countenances,) and in the usage, +which requires an antithesis of the blood,--or the temperament of the +four humours, choler, melancholy, phlegm, and the red globules, or the +sanguine portion, which was supposed not to be in our own power, but, to +be dependent on the influences of the heavenly bodies,--and the +countenances which are in our power really, though from flattery we +bring them into a no less apparent dependence on the sovereign, than the +former are in actual dependence on the constellations. + +I have sometimes thought that the word 'courtiers' was a misprint for +'countenances,' arising from an anticipation, by foreglance of the +compositor's eye, of the word 'courtier' a few lines below. The written +'r' is easily and often confounded with the written 'n'. The compositor +read the first syllable 'court', and--his eye at the same time catching +the word 'courtier' lower down--he completed the word without +reconsulting the copy. It is not unlikely that Shakspeare intended first +to express, generally the same thought, which a little afterwards he +repeats with a particular application to the persons meant;--a common +usage of the pronominal 'our,' where the speaker does not really mean to +include himself; and the word 'you' is an additional confirmation of the +'our' being used in this place, for men generally and indefinitely, just +as 'you do not meet,' is the same as, 'one does not meet.' + +Act i. sc. 2. Imogen's speech:-- + + --My dearest husband, + I something fear my father's wrath; but nothing + (Always reserv'd my holy duty) what + His rage can do on me. + +Place the emphasis on 'me;' for 'rage' is a mere repetition of 'wrath.' + + 'Cym'. O disloyal thing, + That should'st repair my youth, thou heapest + A year's age on me. + + +How is it that the commentators take no notice of the un-Shakspearian +defect in the metre of the second line, and what in Shakspeare is the +same, in the harmony with the sense and feeling? Some word or words must +have slipped out after 'youth,'--possibly 'and see':-- + + That should'st repair my youth!--and see, thou heap'st, &c. + +'Ib.' sc. 4. Pisanio's speech:-- + + --For so long + As he could make me with _this_ eye or ear + Distinguish him from others, &c. + + +But '_this_ eye,' in spite of the supposition of its being used [Greek +(transliterated): deiktik_os], is very awkward. I should think that +either 'or'--or 'the' was Shakspeare's word;-- + + + As he could make me or with eye or ear. + + +'Ib.' sc. 7. Iachimo's speech:-- + + Hath nature given them eyes + To see this vaulted arch, and the rich crop + Of sea and land, which can distinguish 'twixt + The fiery orbs above, and the twinn'd stones + Upon the number'd beach. + + +I would suggest 'cope' for 'crop.' As to 'twinn'd stones'--may it not be +a bold _catachresis_ for muscles, cockles, and other empty shells with +hinges, which are truly twinned? I would take Dr. Farmer's 'umber'd,' +which I had proposed before I ever heard of its having been already +offered by him: but I do not adopt his interpretation of the word, which +I think is not derived from _umbra_, a shade, but from _umber_, a dingy +yellow-brown soil, which most commonly forms the mass of the sludge on +the sea shore, and on the banks of tide-rivers at low water. One other +possible interpretation of this sentence has occurred to me, just barely +worth mentioning;--that the 'twinn'd stones' are the _augrim_ stones +upon the number'd beech, that is, the astronomical tables of beech-wood. + +Act v. sc. 5. + + + 'Sooth'. When as a lion's whelp, &c. + + +It is not easy to conjecture why Shakspeare should have introduced this +ludicrous scroll, which answers no one purpose, either propulsive, or +explicatory, unless as a joke on etymology. + + + + + + +TITUS ANDRONICUS. + +Act I. sc. 1. Theobald's note: + + +I never heard it so much as intimated, that he (Shakspeare) had turned +his genius to stage-writing, before he associated with the players, and +became one of their body. + + +That Shakspeare never 'turned his genius to stage writing,' as Theobald +most 'Theobaldice' phrases it, before he became an actor, is an +assertion of about as much authority, as the precious story that he left +Stratford for deerstealing, and that he lived by holding gentlemen's +horses at the doors of the theatre, and other trash of that arch-gossip, +old Aubrey. The metre is an argument against Titus Andronicus being +Shakspeare's, worth a score such chronological surmises. Yet I incline +to think that both in this play and in Jeronymo, Shakspeare wrote some +passages, and that they are the earliest of his compositions. + +Act v. sc. 2. + +I think it not improbable that the lines from-- + + + I am not mad; I know thee well enough;-- + ... + So thou destroy Rapine, and + Murder there. + + +were written by Shakspeare in his earliest period. But instead of the +text-- + + + Revenge, _which makes the foul offender quake. + + 'Tit.' Art thou_ Revenge? and art thou sent to me?-- + + +the words in italics [between underscores] ought to be omitted. + + + + + +TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. + + +Mr. Pope (after Dryden) informs us, that the story of Troilus and +Cressida was originally the work of one Lollius, a Lombard: but Dryden +goes yet further; he declares it to have been written in Latin verse, +and that Chaucer translated it.--_Lollius was a historiographer of +Urbino in Italy_. (Note in Stockdale's edition, 1807.) + + +'Lollius was a historiographer of Urbino in Italy.' So affirms the +notary, to whom the Sieur Stockdale committed the _disfacimento_ of +Ayscough's excellent edition of Shakspeare. Pity that the researchful +notary has not either told us in what century, and of what history, he +was a writer, or been simply content to depose, that Lollius, if a +writer of that name existed at all, was a somewhat somewhere. The notary +speaks of the _Troy Boke_ or Lydgate, printed in 1513. I have never seen +it; but I deeply regret that Chalmers did not substitute the whole of +Lydgate's works from the MSS. extant, for the almost worthless Gower. + +The Troilus and Cressida of Shakspeare can scarcely be classed with his +dramas of Greek and Roman history; but it forms an intermediate link +between the fictitious Greek and Roman histories, which we may call +legendary dramas, and the proper ancient histories; that is, between the +Pericles or Titus Andronicus, and the Coriolanus, or Julius Caesar. +Cymbeline is a _congener_ with Pericles, and distinguished from Lear by +not having any declared prominent object. But where shall we class the +Timon of Athens? Perhaps immediately below Lear. It is a Lear of the +satirical drama; a Lear of domestic or ordinary life;--a local eddy of +passion on the high road of society, while all around is the week-day +goings on of wind and weather; a Lear, therefore, without its +soul-searching flashes, its ear-cleaving thunderclaps, its meteoric +splendors,--without the contagion and the fearful sympathies of nature, +the fates, the furies, the frenzied elements, dancing in and out, now +breaking through, and scattering,--now hand in hand with,--the fierce or +fantastic group of human passions, crimes, and anguishes, reeling on the +unsteady ground, in a wild harmony to the shock and the swell of an +earthquake. But my present subject was Troilus and Cressida; and I +suppose that, scarcely knowing what to say of it, I by a cunning of +instinct ran off to subjects on which I should find it difficult not to +say too much, though certain after all that I should still leave the +better part unsaid, and the gleaning for others richer than my own +harvest. + +Indeed, there is no one of Shakspeare's plays harder to characterize. +The name and the remembrances connected with it, prepare us for the +representation of attachment no less faithful than fervent on the side +of the youth, and of sudden and shameless inconstancy on the part of the +lady. And this is, indeed, as the gold thread on which the scenes are +strung, though often kept out of sight and out of mind by gems of +greater value than itself. But as Shakspeare calls forth nothing from +the mausoleum of history, or the catacombs of tradition, without giving, +or eliciting, some permanent and general interest, and brings forward no +subject which he does not moralize or intellectualize,--so here he has +drawn in Cressida the portrait of a vehement passion, that, having its +true origin and proper cause in warmth of temperament, fastens on, +rather than fixes to, some one object by liking and temporary +preference. + + + There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, + Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out + At every joint and motive of her body. + + +This Shakspeare has contrasted with the profound affection represented +in Troilus, and alone worthy the name of love;--affection, passionate +indeed,--swoln with the confluence of youthful instincts and youthful +fancy, and growing in the radiance of hope newly risen, in short +enlarged by the collective sympathies of nature;--but still having a +depth of calmer element in a will stronger than desire, more entire than +choice, and which gives permanence to its own act by converting it into +faith and duty. Hence with excellent judgment, and with an excellence +higher than mere judgment can give, at the close of the play, when +Cressida has sunk into infamy below retrieval and beneath hope, the same +will, which had been the substance and the basis of his love, while the +restless pleasures and passionate longings, like sea-waves, had tossed +but on its surface,--this same moral energy is represented as snatching +him aloof from all neighbourhood with her dishonour, from all lingering +fondness and languishing regrets, whilst it rushes with him into other +and nobler duties, and deepens the channel, which his heroic brother's +death had left empty for its collected flood. Yet another secondary and +subordinate purpose Shakspeare has inwoven with his delineation of these +two characters,--that of opposing the inferior civilization, but purer +morals, of the Trojans to the refinements, deep policy, but duplicity +and sensual corruptions, of the Greeks. + +To all this, however, so little comparative projection is given,--nay, +the masterly group of Agamemnon, Nestor, and Ulysses, and, still more in +advance, that of Achilles, Ajax, and Thersites, so manifestly occupy the +foreground, that the subservience and vassalage of strength and animal +courage to intellect and policy seems to be the lesson most often in our +poet's view, and which he has taken little pains to connect with the +former more interesting moral impersonated in the titular hero and +heroine of the drama. But I am half inclined to believe, that +Shakspeare's main object, or shall I rather say, his ruling impulse, was +to translate the poetic heroes of paganism into the not less rude, but +more intellectually vigorous, and more _featurely_, warriors of +Christian chivalry,--and to substantiate the distinct and graceful +profiles or outlines of the Homeric epic into the flesh and blood of the +romantic drama,--in short, to give a grand history-piece in the robust +style of Albert Durer. + +The character of Thersites, in particular, well deserves a more careful +examination, as the Caliban of demagogic life;--the admirable portrait +of intellectual power deserted by all grace, all moral principle, all +not momentary impulse;--just wise enough to detect the weak head, and +fool enough to provoke the armed fist of his betters;--one whom +malcontent Achilles can inveigle from malcontent Ajax, under the one +condition, that he shall be called on to do nothing but abuse and +slander, and that he shall be allowed to abuse as much and as purulently +as he likes, that is, as he can;--in short, a mule,--quarrelsome by the +original discord of his nature,--a slave by tenure of his own +baseness,--made to bray and be brayed at, to despise and be despicable. +'Aye, Sir, but say what you will, he is a very clever fellow, though the +best friends will fall out. There was a time when Ajax thought he +deserved to have a statue of gold erected to him, and handsome Achilles, +at the head of the Myrmidons, gave no little credit to his _friend +Thersites_!' + +Act iv. sc. 5. Speech of Ulysses:-- + + + O, these encounterers, so glib of tongue, + That give a _coasting_ welcome ere it comes-- + + +Should it be 'accosting?' 'Accost her, knight, accost!' in the Twelfth +Night. Yet there sounds a something so Shakspearian in the phrase--'give +a coasting welcome,' ('coasting' being taken as the epithet and +adjective of 'welcome,') that had the following words been, 'ere _they +land_,' instead of 'ere it comes,' I should have preferred the +interpretation. The sense now is, 'that give welcome to a salute ere it +comes.' + + + + + +CORIOLANUS. + +This play illustrates the wonderfully philosophic impartiality of +Shakspeare's politics. His own country's history furnished him with no +matter, but what was too recent to be devoted to patriotism. Besides, he +knew that the instruction of ancient history would seem more +dispassionate. In Coriolanus and Julius Caesar, you see Shakspeare's +good-natured laugh at mobs. Compare this with Sir Thomas Brown's +aristocracy of spirit. + +Act i. sc. 1. Coriolanus' speech:-- + + + He that depends Upon your favours, swims with fins of lead, + And hews down oaks with rushes. Hang ye! Trust ye? + + +I suspect that Shakspeare wrote it transposed; + + + Trust ye? Hang ye! + + +Ib. sc. 10. Speech of Aufidius:-- + + + Mine emulation + Hath not that honor in't, it had; for where + I thought to crush him in an equal force, + True sword to sword; I'll potch at him some way, + Or wrath, or craft may get him.--My valor (poison'd + With only suffering stain by him) for him + Shall fly out of itself: not sleep, nor sanctuary, + Being naked, sick, nor fane, nor capitol, + The prayers of priests, nor times of sacrifices, + Embankments all of fury, shall lift up + Their rotten privilege and custom 'gainst + My hate to Marcius. + + +I have such deep faith in Shakspeare's heart-lore, that I take for +granted that this is in nature, and not as a mere anomaly; although I +cannot in myself discover any germ of possible feeling, which could wax +and unfold itself into such sentiment as this. However, I perceive that +in this speech is meant to be contained a prevention of shock at the +after-change in Aufidius' character. + +Act ii. sc, 1. Speech of Menenius:-- + + + The most sovereign prescription in _Galen_, &c. + + +Was it without, or in contempt of, historical information that +Shakspeare made the contemporaries of Coriolanus quote Cato and Galen? I +cannot decide to my own satisfaction. + +Ib. sc. 3. Speech of Coriolanus:-- + + + Why in this wolvish gown should I stand here-- + + +That the gown of the candidate was of whitened wool, we know. Does +'wolvish' or 'woolvish' mean 'made of wool?' If it means 'wolfish,' what +is the sense? + +Act iv. sc. 7. Speech of Aufidius:-- + + + All places yield to him ere he sits down, &c. + + +I have always thought this in itself so beautiful speech, the least +explicable from the mood and full intention of the speaker, of any in +the whole works of Shakspeare. I cherish the hope that I am mistaken, +and that, becoming wiser, I shall discover some profound excellence in +that, in which I now appear to detect an imperfection. + + + + + +JULIUS CAESAR. + + +Act I. sc. 1. + + + 'Mar.' What meanest _thou_ by that? Mend me, thou saucy fellow! + + +The speeches of Flavius and Marullus are in blank verse. Wherever +regular metre can be rendered truly imitative of character, passion, or +personal rank, Shakspeare seldom, if ever, neglects it. Hence this line +should be read:-- + + + What mean'st by that? mend me, thou saucy fellow! + + +I say regular metre: for even the prose has in the highest and lowest +dramatic personage, a Cobbler or a Hamlet, a rhythm so felicitous and so +severally appropriate, as to be a virtual metre. + +Ib. sc. 2. + + + 'Bru.' A soothsayer bids you beware the Ides of March. + + +If my ear does not deceive me, the metre of this line was meant to +express that sort of mild philosophic contempt, characterizing Brutus +even in his first casual speech. The line is a trimeter,--each _dipodia_ +containing two accented and two unaccented syllables, but variously +arranged, as thus;- + + +^ -- -- ^ | -- ^ ^ -- | ^ -- ^ -- +A soothsayer | bids you beware | the Ides of March. + + +Ib. Speech of Brutus: + + + Set honor in one eye, and death i' the other, + And I will look on _both_ indifferently. + + +Warburton would read 'death' for 'both;' but I prefer the old text. +There are here three things, the public good, the individual Brutus' +honor, and his death. The latter two so balanced each other, that he +could decide for the first by equipoise; nay--the thought growing--that +honor had more weight than death. That Cassius understood it as +Warburton, is the beauty of Cassius as contrasted with Brutus. + +Ib. Caesar's speech:-- + + He loves no plays, + As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music, &c. + +This is not a trivial observation, nor does our poet mean barely by it, +that Cassius was not a merry, sprightly man; but that he had not a due +temperament of harmony in his disposition. (Theobald's Note). + + +O Theobald! what a commentator wast thou, when thou would'st affect to +understand Shakspeare, instead of contenting thyself with collating the +text! The meaning here is too deep for a line ten-fold the length of +thine to fathom. + +Ib. sc. 3. Caesar's speech:-- + + + Be _factious_ for redress of all these griefs; + And I will set this foot of mine as far, + As who goes farthest. + + +I understand it thus: 'You have spoken as a conspirator; be so in +_fact_, and I will join you. Act on your principles, and realize them in +a fact.' + +Act ii. sc. 1. Speech of Brutus:-- + + + It must be by his death; and, for my part, + I know no personal cause to spurn at him, + But for the general. He would be crown'd:-- + How that might change his nature, there's the question. + --And, to speak truth of Caesar, + I have not known when his affections sway'd + More than his reason.--So Caesar may; + Then, lest he may, prevent. + + +This speech is singular;--at least, I do not at present see into +Shakspeare's motive, his _rationale_, or in what point of view he meant +Brutus' character to appear. For surely--(this I mean is what I say to +myself, with my present _quantum_ of insight, only modified by my +experience in how many instances I have ripened into a perception of +beauties, where I had before descried faults;) surely, nothing can seem +more discordant with our historical preconceptions of Brutus, or more +lowering to the intellect of the Stoico-Platonic tyrannicide, than the +tenets here attributed to him--to him, the stern Roman republican; +namely,--that he would have no objection to a king, or to Caesar, a +monarch in Rome, would Caesar but be as good a monarch as he now seems +disposed to be! How, too, could Brutus say that he found no personal +cause--none in Caesar's past conduct as a man? Had he not passed the +Rubicon? Had he not entered Rome as a conqueror? Had he not placed his +Gauls in the Senate?--Shakspeare, it may be said, has not brought these +things forwards.--True;--and this is just the ground of my perplexity. +What character did Shakspeare mean his Brutus to be? + +Ib. Speech of Brutus:-- + + + For if thou _path_, thy native semblance on-- + + +Surely, there need be no scruple in treating this 'path' as a mere +misprint or mis-script for 'put.' In what place does Shakspeare,--where +does any other writer of the same age--use 'path' as a verb for 'walk?' + +Ib. sc. 2. Caesar's speech:-- + + + She dreamt last night, she saw my _statue_-- + + +No doubt, it should be _statua_, as in the same age, they more often +pronounced 'heroes' as a trisyllable than dissyllable. A modern tragic +poet would have written,-- + + + Last night she dreamt, that she my statue saw-- + + +But Shakspeare never avails himself of the supposed license of +transposition, merely for the metre. There is always some logic either +of thought or passion to justify it. + +Act iii. sc. 1. Antony's speech:-- + + + Pardon me, Julius--here wast thou bay'd, brave hart; + Here didst thou fall, and here thy hunters stand + Sign'd in thy spoil, and crimson'd in thy death. + _O world! thou wast the forest to this hart, + And this, indeed, O world! the heart of thee._ + + +I doubt the genuineness of the last two lines;--not because they are +vile; but first, on account of the rhythm, which is not Shakspearian, +but just the very tune of some old play, from which the actor might have +interpolated them;--and secondly, because they interrupt, not only the +sense and connection, but likewise the flow both of the passion, and, +(what is with me still more decisive) of the Shakspearian link of +association. As with many another parenthesis or gloss slipt into the +text, we have only to read the passage without it, to see that it never +was in it. I venture to say there is no instance in Shakspeare fairly +like this. Conceits he has; but they not only rise out of some word in +the lines before, but also lead to the thought in the lines following. +Here the conceit is a mere alien: Antony forgets an image, when he is +even touching it, and then recollects it, when the thought last in his +mind must have led him away from it. + +Act iv. sc. 3. Speech of Brutus:-- + + ----What, shall one of us, + That struck the foremost man of all this world, + But for _supporting robbers_. + + +This seemingly strange assertion of Brutus is unhappily verified in the +present day. What is an immense army, in which the lust of plunder has +quenched all the duties of the citizen, other than a horde of robbers, +or differenced only as fiends are from ordinarily reprobate men? Caesar +supported, and was supported by, such as these;--and even so Buonaparte +in our days. + +I know no part of Shakspeare that more impresses on me the belief of his +genius being superhuman, than this scene between Brutus and Cassius. In +the Gnostic heresy, it might have been credited with less absurdity than +most of their dogmas, that the Supreme had employed him to create, +previously to his function of representing, characters. + + + + + +ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. + +Shakspeare can be complimented only by comparison with himself: all +other eulogies are either heterogeneous, as when they are in reference +to Spenser or Milton; or they are flat truisms, as when he is gravely +preferred to Corneille, Racine, or even his own immediate successors, +Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger and the rest. The highest praise, or +rather form of praise, of this play, which I can offer in my own mind, +is the doubt which the perusal always occasions in me, whether the +Antony and Cleopatra is not, in all exhibitions of a giant power in its +strength and vigour of maturity, a formidable rival of Macbeth, Lear, +Hamlet, and Othello. 'Feliciter audax' is the motto for its style +comparatively with that of Shakspeare's other works, even as it is the +general motto of all his works compared with those of other poets. Be it +remembered, too, that this happy valiancy of style is but the +representative and result of all the material excellencies so expressed. + +This play should be perused in mental contrast with Romeo and +Juliet;--as the love of passion and appetite opposed to the love of +affection and instinct. But the art displayed in the character of +Cleopatra is profound; in this, especially, that the sense of +criminality in her passion is lessened by our insight into its depth and +energy, at the very moment that we cannot but perceive that the passion +itself springs out of the habitual craving of a licentious nature, and +that it is supported and reinforced by voluntary stimulus and sought-for +associations, instead of blossoming out of spontaneous emotion. + +Of all Shakspeare's historical plays, Antony and Cleopatra is by far the +most wonderful. There is not one in which he has followed history so +minutely, and yet there are few in which he impresses the notion of +angelic strength so much;--perhaps none in which he impresses it more +strongly. This is greatly owing to the manner in which the fiery force +is sustained throughout, and to the numerous momentary flashes of nature +counteracting the historic abstraction. As a wonderful specimen of the +way in which Shakspeare lives up to the very end of this play, read the +last part of the concluding scene. And if you would feel the judgment as +well as the genius of Shakspeare in your heart's core, compare this +astonishing drama with Dryden's All For Love. + +Act i. sc. 1. Philo's speech:-- + + His captain's heart, + Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst + The buckles on his breast, _reneges_ all temper-- + +It should be 'reneagues,' or 'reniegues,' as 'fatigues,' &c. + +'Ib.' + + Take but good note, and you shall see in him + The triple pillar of the world transform'd + Into a strumpet's _fool_. + + +Warburton's conjecture of 'stool' is ingenious, and would be a probable +reading, if the scene opening had discovered Antony with Cleopatra on +his lap. But, represented as he is walking and jesting with her, 'fool' +must be the word. Warburton's objection is shallow, and implies that he +confounded the dramatic with the epic style. The 'pillar' of a state is +so common a metaphor as to have lost the image in the thing meant to be +imaged. + +Ib. sc. 2. + + Much is breeding; + Which, like the courser's hair, hath yet but life, + And not a serpent's poison. + + +This is so far true to appearance, that a horse-hair, 'laid,' as +Hollinshed says, 'in a pail of water' will become the supporter of +seemingly one worm, though probably of an immense number of small slimy +water-lice. The hair will twirl round a finger, and sensibly compress +it. It is a common experiment with school boys in Cumberland and +Westmorland. + +Act ii. sc. 2. Speech of Enobarbus:-- + + + Her gentlewomen, like the Nereids, + So many _mermaids_, tended her i' th' eyes, + And made their bends adornings. At the helm + A seeming mermaid steers. + + +I have the greatest difficulty in believing that Shakspeare wrote the +first 'mermaids.' He never, I think, would have so weakened by useless +anticipation the fine image immediately following. The epithet 'seeming' +becomes so extremely improper after the whole number had been positively +called 'so many mermaids.' + + + + + +TIMON OF ATHENS, + +Act I. sc. 1. + + + 'Tim'. _The man is honest. + + 'Old Ath.' Therefore he will be_, Timon. His honesty rewards him in + itself.-- + + +Warburton's comment--'If the man be honest, for that reason he will be +so in this, and not endeavour at the injustice of gaining my daughter +without my consent'--is, like almost all his comments, ingenious in +blunder: he can never see any other writer's thoughts for the +mist-working swarm of his own. The meaning of the first line the poet +himself explains, or rather unfolds, in the second. 'The man is +honest!'--'True;--and for that very cause, and with no additional or +extrinsic motive, he will be so. No man can be justly called honest, who +is not so for honesty's sake, itself including its own reward.' Note, +that 'honesty' in Shakspeare's age retained much of its old dignity, and +that contradistinction of the 'honestum' from the 'utile', in which its +very essence and definition consist. If it be 'honestum', it cannot +depend on the 'utile'. + +'Ib.' Speech of Apemantus, printed as prose in Theobald's edition:-- + + + So, so! aches contract, and starve your supple joints! + + +I may remark here the fineness of Shakspeare's sense of musical period, +which would almost by itself have suggested (if the hundred positive +proofs had not been extant,) that the word 'aches' was then 'ad +libitum', a dissyllable--'aitches'. For read it, 'aches,' in +this sentence, and I would challenge you to find any period in +Shakspeare's writings with the same musical or, rather dissonant, +notation. Try the one, and then the other, by your ear, reading the +sentence aloud, first with the word as a dissyllable and then as a +monosyllable, and you will feel what I mean. [1] + +Ib. sc. 2. Cupid's speech: Warburton's correction of- + + There taste, touch, all pleas'd from thy table rise-- + +into + + Th' ear, taste, touch, smell, etc. + +This is indeed an excellent emendation. + +Act ii. sc. 1. Senator's speech:-- + + --nor then silenc'd with + 'Commend me to your master'--and the cap + Plays in the right hand, thus:-- + + +Either, methinks, 'plays' should be 'play'd,' or 'and' should be changed +to 'while.' I can certainly understand it as a parenthesis, an +interadditive of scorn; but it does not sound to my ear as in +Shakspeare's manner. + +Ib. sc. 2. Timon's speech: (Theobald.) + + And that unaptness made _you_ minister, + Thus to excuse yourself. + +Read 'your';--at least I cannot otherwise understand the line. You made +my chance indisposition and occasional unaptness your minister--that is, +the ground on which you now excuse yourself. Or, perhaps, no correction +is necessary, if we construe 'made you' as 'did you make;' 'and that +unaptness did you make help you thus to excuse yourself.' But the former +seems more in Shakspeare's manner, and is less liable to be +misunderstood. [2] + + + +Act iii. sc. 3. Servant's speech:-- + + + How fairly this lord strives to appear foul!--takes virtuous copies to + be wicked; _like those that under hot, ardent, zeal would set whole + realms on fire. Of such a nature is his politic love._ + + +This latter clause I grievously suspect to have been an addition of the +players, which had hit, and, being constantly applauded, procured a +settled occupancy in the prompter's copy. Not that Shakspeare does not +elsewhere sneer at the Puritans; but here it is introduced so _nolenter +volenter_ (excuse the phrase) by the head and shoulders!--and is besides +so much more likely to have been conceived in the age of Charles I. + +Act iv. sc. 2. Timon's speech:-- + + + Raise me this beggar, and _deny't_ that lord.-- + + +Warburton reads 'denude.' + +I cannot see the necessity of this alteration. The editors and +commentators are, all of them, ready enough to cry out against +Shakspeare's laxities and licenses of style, forgetting that he is not +merely a poet, but a dramatic poet; that, when the head and the heart +are swelling with fullness, a man does not ask himself whether he has +grammatically arranged, but only whether (the context taken in) he has +conveyed, his meaning. 'Deny' is here clearly equal to 'withhold;' and +the 'it,' quite in the genius of vehement conversation, which a +syntaxist explains by ellipses and _subauditurs_ in a Greek or Latin +classic, yet triumphs over as ignorances in a contemporary, refers to +accidental and artificial rank or elevation, implied in the verb +'raise.' Besides, does the word 'denude' occur in any writer before, or +of, Shakspeare's age? + + +[Footnote 1: It is, of course, a verse,-- + + + Aches contract, and starve your supple joints,-- + + +and is so printed in all later editions. But Mr. C. was reading it in +prose in Theobald; and it is curious to see how his ear detected the +rhythmical necessity for pronouncing 'aches' as a dissyllable, although +the metrical necessity seems for the moment to have escaped him. Ed.] + +[Footnote 2: 'Your' is the received reading now. Ed.] + + + + + +ROMEO AND JULIET. + +I have previously had occasion to speak at large on the subject of the +three unities of time, place, and action, as applied to the drama in the +abstract, and to the particular stage for which Shakspeare wrote, as far +as he can be said to have written for any stage but that of the +universal mind. I hope I have in some measure succeeded in demonstrating +that the former two, instead of being rules, were mere inconveniences +attached to the local peculiarities of the Athenian drama; that the last +alone deserved the name of a principle, and that in the preservation of +this unity Shakspeare stood preeminent. Yet, instead of unity of action, +I should greatly prefer the more appropriate, though scholastic and +uncouth, words homogeneity, proportionateness, and totality of +interest,--expressions, which involve the distinction, or rather the +essential difference, betwixt the shaping skill of mechanical talent, +and the creative, productive, life-power of inspired genius. In the +former each part is separately conceived, and then by a succeeding act +put together;--not as watches are made for wholesale,--(for there each +part supposes a pre-conception of the whole in some mind)--but more like +pictures on a motley screen. Whence arises the harmony that strikes us +in the wildest natural landscapes,--in the relative shapes of rocks, the +harmony of colours in the heaths, ferns, and lichens, the leaves of the +beech and the oak, the stems and rich brown branches of the birch and +other mountain trees, varying from verging autumn to returning +spring,--compared with the visual effect from the greater number of +artificial plantations?--From this, that the natural landscape is +effected, as it were, by a single energy modified 'ab intra' in each +component part. And as this is the particular excellence of the +Shakspearian drama generally, so is it especially characteristic of the +Romeo and Juliet. + +The groundwork of the tale is altogether in family life, and the events +of the play have their first origin in family feuds. Filmy as are the +eyes of party-spirit, at once dim and truculent, still there is commonly +some real or supposed object in view, or principle to be maintained; and +though but the twisted wires on the plate of rosin in the preparation +for electrical pictures, it is still a guide in some degree, an +assimilation to an outline. But in family quarrels, which have proved +scarcely less injurious to states, wilfulness, and precipitancy, and +passion from mere habit and custom, can alone be expected. With his +accustomed judgment, Shakspeare has begun by placing before us a lively +picture of all the impulses of the play; and, as nature ever presents +two sides, one for Heraclitus, and one for Democritus, he has, by way of +prelude, shown the laughable absurdity of the evil by the contagion of +it reaching the servants, who have so little to do with it, but who are +under the necessity of letting the superfluity of sensoreal power fly +off through the escape-valve of wit-combats, and of quarrelling with +weapons of sharper edge, all in humble imitation of their masters. Yet +there is a sort of unhired fidelity, an 'ourishness' about all this that +makes it rest pleasant on one's feelings. All the first scene, down to +the conclusion of the Prince's speech, is a motley dance of all ranks +and ages to one tune, as if the horn of Huon had been playing behind the +scenes. + +Benvolio's speech-- + + + Madam, an hour before the worshipp'd sun + Peer'd forth the golden window of the east-- + + +and, far more strikingly, the following speech of old Montague-- + + + Many a morning hath he there been seen + With tears augmenting the fresh morning dew-- + + +prove that Shakspeare meant the Romeo and Juliet to approach to a poem, +which, and indeed its early date, may be also inferred from the +multitude of rhyming couplets throughout. And if we are right, from the +internal evidence, in pronouncing this one of Shakspeare's early dramas, +it affords a strong instance of the fineness of his insight into the +nature of the passions, that Romeo is introduced already +love-bewildered. The necessity of loving creates an object for itself in +man and woman; and yet there is a difference in this respect between the +sexes, though only to be known by a perception of it. It would have +displeased us if Juliet had been represented as already in love, or as +fancying herself so;--but no one, I believe, ever experiences any shock +at Romeo's forgetting his Rosaline, who had been a mere name for the +yearning of his youthful imagination, and rushing into his passion for +Juliet. Rosaline was a mere creation of his fancy; and we should remark +the boastful positiveness of Romeo in a love of his own making, which is +never shown where love is really near the heart. + + + When the devout religion of mine eye + Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires! + ... + One fairer than my love! the all-seeing sun + Ne'er saw her match, since first the world begun. + + +The character of the Nurse is the nearest of any thing in Shakspeare to +a direct borrowing from mere observation; and the reason is, that as in +infancy and childhood the individual in nature is a representative of a +class, just as in describing one larch tree, you generalize a grove of +them,--so it is nearly as much so in old age. The generalization is done +to the poet's hand. Here you have the garrulity of age strengthened by +the feelings of a long-trusted servant, whose sympathy with the mother's +affections gives her privileges and rank in the household; and observe +the mode of connection by accidents of time and place, and the childlike +fondness of repetition in a second childhood, and also that happy, +humble, ducking under, yet constant resurgence against, the check of her +superiors!-- + + Yes, madam!--Yet I cannot choose but laugh, &c. + + +In the fourth scene we have Mercutio introduced to us. O! how shall I +describe that exquisite ebullience and overflow of youthful life, wafted +on over the laughing waves of pleasure and prosperity, as a wanton +beauty that distorts the face on which she knows her lover is gazing +enraptured, and wrinkles her forehead in the triumph of its smoothness! +Wit ever wakeful, fancy busy and procreative as an insect, courage, an +easy mind that, without cares of its own, is at once disposed to laugh +away those of others, and yet to be interested in them,--these and all +congenial qualities, melting into the common 'copula' of them all, the +man of rank and the gentleman, with all its excellencies and all its +weaknesses, constitute the character of Mercutio! + + +Act i. sc. 5. + + 'Tyb'. It fits when such a villain is a guest; I'll not endure him. + + 'Cap'. He shall be endur'd. + What, goodman boy!--I say, he shall:--Go to;-- + Am I the master here, or you?--Go to. + You'll not endure him!--God shall mend my soul-- + You'll make a mutiny among my guests! + You will set cock-a-hoop! you'll be the man! + + 'Tyb'. Why, uncle, 'tis a shame. + + 'Cap'. Go to, go to, You are a saucy boy! &c.-- + + +How admirable is the old man's impetuosity at once contrasting, yet +harmonized, with young Tybalt's quarrelsome violence! But it would be +endless to repeat observations of this sort. Every leaf is different on +an oak tree; but still we can only say--our tongues defrauding our +eyes--'This is another oak-leaf!' + +Act ii. sc. 2. The garden scene: + +Take notice in this enchanting scene of the contrast of Romeo's love +with his former fancy; and weigh the skill shown in justifying him from +his inconstancy by making us feel the difference of his passion. Yet +this, too, is a love in, although not merely of, the imagination. + +Ib. + + 'Jul'. Well, do not swear; although I joy in thee, + I have no joy in this contract to-night: + It is too rash, too unadvis'd, too sudden, &c. + + +With love, pure love, there is always an anxiety for the safety of the +object, a disinterestedness, by which it is distinguished from the +counterfeits of its name. Compare this scene with Act iii. sc. 1. of the +Tempest. I do not know a more wonderful instance of Shakspeare's mastery +in playing a distinctly rememberable variety on the same remembered air, +than in the transporting love-confessions of Romeo and Juliet and +Ferdinand and Miranda. There seems more passion in the one, and more +dignity in the other; yet you feel that the sweet girlish lingering and +busy movement of Juliet, and the calmer and more maidenly fondness of +Miranda, might easily pass into each other. + +'Ib.' sc. 3. The Friar's speech:-- + +The reverend character of the Friar, like all Shakspeare's +representations of the great professions, is very delightful and +tranquillizing, yet it is no digression, but immediately necessary to +the carrying on of the plot. + +'Ib.' sc. 4. + + + 'Rom.' Good morrow to you both. What counterfeit did I give you? &c.-- + + +Compare again, Romeo's half-exerted, and half real, ease of mind with +his first manner when in love with Rosaline! His will had come to the +clenching point. + +'Ib.' sc. 6. + + + 'Rom.' Do thou but close our hands with holy words, + Then love-devouring death do what he dare, + It is enough I may but call her mine. + + +The precipitancy, which is the character of the play, is well marked in +this short scene of waiting for Juliet's arrival. + +Act iii. sc. 1. + + + 'Mer.' No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; + but 'tis enough: 'twill serve: ask for me to-morrow, and you shall + find me a grave man, &c. + + +How fine an effect the wit and raillery habitual to Mercutio, even +struggling with his pain, give to Romeo's following speech, and at the +same time so completely justifying his passionate revenge on Tybalt! + +'Ib.' Benvolio's speech: + + + But that he tilts + With piercing steel at bold Mercutio's breast.-- + + +This small portion of untruth in Benvolio's narrative is finely +conceived. + +'Ib.' sc. 2. Juliet's speech: + + + For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night + Whiter than new snow on a raven's back.-- + + +Indeed the whole of this speech is imagination strained to the highest; +and observe the blessed effect on the purity of the mind. What would +Dryden have made of it?-- + +'Ib.' + + + 'Nurse'. Shame come to Romeo. + + 'Jul'. Blister'd be thy tongue For such a wish! + + +Note the Nurse's mistake of the mind's audible struggles with itself for +its decision 'in toto'. + +'Ib.' sc. 3. Romeo's speech:-- + + + 'Tis torture, and not mercy: heaven's here, + Where Juliet lives, &c. + + +All deep passions are a sort of atheists, that believe no future. + +'Ib.' sc. 5. + + + 'Cap'. Soft, take me with you, take me with you, wife-- + How! will she none? &c. + + +A noble scene! Don't I see it with my own eyes?--Yes! but not with +Juliet's. And observe in Capulet's last speech in this scene his +mistake, as if love's causes were capable of being generalized. + +Act iv. sc. 3. Juliet's speech:-- + + + O, look! methinks I see my cousin's ghost + Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body + Upon a rapier's point:--Stay, Tybalt, stay!-- + Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee. + + +Shakspeare provides for the finest decencies. It would have been too +bold a thing for a girl of fifteen;--but she swallows the draught in a +fit of fright. + +Ib. sc. 5. + +As the audience know that Juliet is not dead, this scene is, perhaps, +excusable. But it is a strong warning to minor dramatists not to +introduce at one time many separate characters agitated by one and the +same circumstance. It is difficult to understand what effect, whether +that of pity or of laughter, Shakspeare meant to produce;--the occasion +and the characteristic speeches are so little in harmony! For example, +what the Nurse says is excellently suited to the Nurse's character, but +grotesquely unsuited to the occasion. + + +Act. v. sc. 1. Romeo's speech:-- + + + O mischief! thou are swift + To enter in the thoughts of desperate men! + I do remember an apothecary, &c. + + +This famous passage is so beautiful as to be self-justified; yet, in +addition, what a fine preparation it is for the tomb scene! + +'Ib.' sc. 3. Romeo's speech:-- + + + Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man, + Fly hence and leave me. + + +The gentleness of Romeo was shown before, as softened by love; and now +it is doubled by love and sorrow and awe of the place where he is. + +'Ib.' Romeo's speech:-- + + + How oft when men are at the point of death + Have they been merry! which their keepers call + A lightning before death. O, how may I + Call this a lightning?--O, my love, my wife! &c. + + +Here, here, is the master example how beauty can at once increase and +modify passion! + +'Ib.' Last scene. + +How beautiful is the close! The spring and the winter meet;--winter +assumes the character of spring, and spring the sadness of winter. + + + + + +SHAKSPEARE'S ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS. + +The first form of poetry is the epic, the essence of which may be stated +as the successive in events and characters. This must be distinguished +from narration, in which there must always be a narrator, from whom the +objects represented receive a coloring and a manner;--whereas in the +epic, as in the so called poems of Homer, the whole is completely +objective, and the representation is a pure reflection. The next form +into which poetry passed was the dramatic;--both forms having a common +basis with a certain difference, and that difference not consisting in +the dialogue alone. Both are founded on the relation of providence to +the human will; and this relation is the universal element, expressed +under different points of view according to the difference of religions, +and the moral and intellectual cultivation of different nations. In the +epic poem fate is represented as overruling the will, and making it +instrumental to the accomplishment of its designs:-- + + [Greek (transliterated):--------Dios de teleieto boulae.] + +In the drama, the will is exhibited as struggling with fate, a great and +beautiful instance and illustration of which is the Prometheus of +AEschylus; and the deepest effect is produced, when the fate is +represented as a higher and intelligent will, and the opposition of the +individual as springing from a defect. + +In order that a drama may be properly historical, it is necessary that +it should be the history of the people to whom it is addressed. In the +composition, care must be taken that there appear no dramatic +improbability, as the reality is taken for granted. It must, likewise, +be poetical;--that only, I mean, must be taken which is the permanent in +our nature, which is common, and therefore deeply interesting to all +ages. The events themselves are immaterial, otherwise than as the +clothing and manifestation of the spirit that is working within. In this +mode, the unity resulting from succession is destroyed, but is supplied +by a unity of a higher order, which connects the events by reference to +the workers, gives a reason for them in the motives, and presents men in +their causative character. It takes, therefore, that part of real +history which is the least known, and infuses a principle of life and +organization into the naked facts, and makes them all the framework of +an animated whole. + +In my happier days, while I had yet hope and onward-looking thoughts, I +planned an historical drama of King Stephen, in the manner of +Shakspeare. Indeed it would be desirable that some man of dramatic +genius should dramatize all those omitted by Shakspeare, as far down as +Henry VII. Perkin Warbeck would make a most interesting drama. A few +scenes of Marlow's Edward II. might be preserved. After Henry VIII., the +events are too well and distinctly known, to be, without plump +inverisimilitude, crowded together in one night's exhibition. Whereas, +the history of our ancient kings--the events of their reigns, I +mean,--are like stars in the sky;--whatever the real interspaces may be, +and however great, they seem close to each other. The stars--the +events--strike us and remain in our eye, little modified by the +difference of dates. An historic drama is, therefore, a collection of +events borrowed from history, but connected together in respect of cause +and time, poetically and by dramatic fiction. It would be a fine +national custom to act such a series of dramatic histories in orderly +succession, in the yearly Christmas holidays, and could not but tend to +counteract that mock cosmopolitism, which under a positive term really +implies nothing but a negation of, or indifference to, the particular +love of our country. By its nationality must every nation retain its +independence;--I mean a nationality 'quoad' the nation. Better +thus;--nationality in each individual, 'quoad' his country, is equal to +the sense of individuality 'quoad' himself; but himself as subsensuous, +and central. Patriotism is equal to the sense of individuality reflected +from every other individual. There may come a higher virtue in +both--just cosmopolitism. But this latter is not possible but by +antecedence of the former. + +Shakspeare has included the most important part of nine reigns in his +historical dramas--namely--King John, Richard II.--Henry IV. +(two)--Henry V.--Henry VI. (three) including Edward V. and Henry VIII., +in all ten plays. There remain, therefore, to be done, with exception of +a single scene or two that should be adopted from Marlow--eleven +reigns--of which the first two appear the only unpromising +subjects;--and those two dramas must be formed wholly or mainly of +invented private stories, which, however, could not have happened except +in consequence of the events and measures of these reigns, and which +should furnish opportunity both of exhibiting the manners and +oppressions of the times, and of narrating dramatically the great +events;--if possible--the death of the two sovereigns, at least of the +latter, should be made to have some influence on the finale of the +story. All the rest are glorious subjects; especially Henry 1st. (being +the struggle between the men of arms and of letters, in the persons of +Henry and Becket,) Stephen, Richard I., Edward II., and Henry VII. + + + + +KING JOHN. + +Act. I. sc. 1. + + + 'Bast'. James Gurney, wilt thou give us leave awhile? + + 'Gur'. Good leave, good Philip. + + 'Bast'. Philip? _sparrow_! James, &c. + + +Theobald adopts Warburton's conjecture of '_spare me_.' + +O true Warburton! and the 'sancta simplicitas' of honest dull Theobald's +faith in him! Nothing can be more lively or characteristic than 'Philip! +Sparrow!' Had Warburton read old Skelton's 'Philip Sparrow,' an +exquisite and original poem, and, no doubt, popular in Shakspeare's +time, even Warburton would scarcely have made so deep a plunge into the +_bathetic_ as to have deathified 'sparrow' into 'spare me!' + +Act iii. sc. 2. Speech of Faulconbridge:-- + + + Now, by my life, this day grows wondrous hot; + Some _airy_ devil hovers in the sky, &c. + +Theobald adopts Warburton's conjecture of 'fiery.' + +I prefer the old text; the word 'devil' implies 'fiery.' You need only +read the line, laying a full and strong emphasis on 'devil,' to perceive +the uselessness and tastelessness of Warburton's alteration. + + + + + +RICHARD II. + +I have stated that the transitional link between the epic poem and the +drama is the historic drama; that in the epic poem a pre-announced fate +gradually adjusts and employs the will and the events as its +instruments, whilst the drama, on the other hand, places fate and will +in opposition to each other, and is then most perfect, when the victory +of fate is obtained in consequence of imperfections in the opposing +will, so as to leave a final impression that the fate itself is but a +higher and a more intelligent will. + +From the length of the speeches, and the circumstance that, with one +exception, the events are all historical, and presented in their +results, not produced by acts seen by, or taking place before, the +audience, this tragedy is ill suited to our present large theatres. But +in itself, and for the closet, I feel no hesitation in placing it as the +first and most admirable of all Shakspeare's purely historical plays. +For the two parts of Henry IV. form a species of themselves, which may +be named the mixed drama. The distinction does not depend on the mere +quantity of historical events in the play compared with the fictions; +for there is as much history in Macbeth as in Richard, but in the +relation of the history to the plot. + +In the purely historical plays, the history forms the plot; in the +mixed, it directs it; in the rest, as Macbeth, Hamlet, Cymbeline, Lear, +it subserves it. But, however unsuited to the stage this drama may be, +God forbid that even there it should fall dead on the hearts of +Jacobinized Englishmen! Then, indeed, we might say--'praeteriit gloria +mundi'! For the spirit of patriotic reminiscence is the all-permeating +soul of this noble work. It is, perhaps, the most purely historical of +Shakspeare's dramas. There are not in it, as in the others, characters +introduced merely for the purpose of giving a greater individuality and +realness, as in the comic parts of Henry IV., by presenting, as it were, +our very selves. Shakspeare avails himself of every opportunity to +effect the great object of the historic drama, that, namely, of +familiarizing the people to the great names of their country, and +thereby of exciting a steady patriotism, a love of just liberty, and a +respect for all those fundamental institutions of social life, which +bind men to-gether:-- + + + This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle, + This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, + This other Eden, demi-paradise; + This fortress, built by nature for herself, + Against infection, and the hand of war; + This happy breed of men, this little world; + This precious stone set in the silver sea, + Which serves it in the office of a wall, + Or as a moat defensive to a home, + Against the envy of less happier lands; + This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, + This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, + Fear'd by their breed, and famous by their birth, &c. + + +Add the famous passage in King John:-- + + + This England never did, nor ever shall, + Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, + But when it first did help to wound itself. + Now these her princes are come home again, + Come the three corners of the world in arms, + And we shall shock them: nought shall make us rue, + If England to itself do rest but true. + + +And it certainly seems that Shakspeare's historic dramas produced a very +deep effect on the minds of the English people, and in earlier times +they were familiar even to the least informed of all ranks, according to +the relation of Bishop Corbett. Marlborough, we know, was not ashamed to +confess that his principal acquaintance with English history was derived +from them; and I believe that a large part of the information as to our +old names and achievements even now abroad is due, directly or +indirectly, to Shakspeare. + +Admirable is the judgment with which Shakspeare always in the first +scenes prepares, yet how naturally, and with what concealment of art, +for the catastrophe. Observe how he here presents the germ of all the +after events in Richard's insincerity, partiality, arbitrariness, and +favoritism, and in the proud, tempestuous, temperament of his barons. In +the very beginning, also, is displayed that feature in Richard's +character, which is never forgotten throughout the play--his attention +to decorum, and high feeling of the kingly dignity. These anticipations +show with what judgment Shakspeare wrote, and illustrate his care to +connect the past and future, and unify them with the present by forecast +and reminiscence. + +It is interesting to a critical ear to compare the six opening lines of +the play-- + + + Old John of Gaunt, time-honor'd Lancaster, + Hast thou, according to thy oath and band, &c. + + +each closing at the tenth syllable, with the rhythmless metre of the +verse in Henry VI. and Titus Andronicus, in order that the difference, +indeed, the heterogeneity, of the two may be felt 'etiam in simillimis +prima superficie'. Here the weight of the single words supplies all the +relief afforded by intercurrent verse, while the whole represents the +mood. And compare the apparently defective metre of Bolingbroke's first +line,-- + + + Many years of happy days befall-- + + +with Prospero's, + + + Twelve years since, Miranda! twelve years since-- + + +The actor should supply the time by emphasis, and pause on the first +syllable of each of these verses. + +Act i. sc. 1. Bolingbroke's speech:-- + + + First, (heaven be the record to my speech!) + In the devotion of a subject's love, &c. + + +I remember in the Sophoclean drama no more striking example of the +[Greek (transliterated): To prepon kai semnon] than this speech; and the +rhymes in the last six lines well express the preconcertedness of +Bolingbroke's scheme so beautifully contrasted with the vehemence and +sincere irritation of Mowbray. + +'Ib.' Bolingbroke's speech:-- + + + Which blood, like sacrificing Abel's, cries, + Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth, + To _me_, for justice and rough chastisement. + + +Note the [Greek (transliterated): deinhon] of this 'to me,' which is +evidently felt by Richard:-- + + + How high a pitch his resolution soars! + + +and the affected depreciation afterwards;-- + + + As he is but my father's brother's son. + + +'Ib.' Mowbray's speech:-- + + + In haste whereof, most heartily I pray + Your highness to assign our trial day. + + +The occasional interspersion of rhymes, and the more frequent winding up +of a speech therewith--what purpose was this designed to answer? In the +earnest drama, I mean. Deliberateness? An attempt, as in Mowbray, to +collect himself and be cool at the close?--I can see that in the +following speeches the rhyme answers the end of the Greek chorus, and +distinguishes the general truths from the passions of the dialogue; but +this does not exactly justify the practice, which is unfrequent in +proportion to the excellence of Shakspeare's plays. One thing, however, +is to be observed,--that the speakers are historical, known, and so far +formal, characters, and their reality is already a fact. This should be +borne in mind. The whole of this scene of the quarrel between Mowbray +and Bolingbroke seems introduced for the purpose of showing by +anticipation the characters of Richard and Bolingbroke. In the latter +there is observable a decorous and courtly checking of his anger in +subservience to a predetermined plan, especially in his calm speech +after receiving sentence of banishment compared with Mowbray's +unaffected lamentation. In the one, all is ambitious hope of something +yet to come; in the other it is desolation and a looking backward of the +heart. + +'Ib.' sc. 2. + + 'Gaunt'. Heaven's is the quarrel; for heaven's substitute, + His deputy anointed in his right, + Hath caus'd his death: the which, if wrongfully, + Let heaven revenge; for I may never lift + An angry arm against his minister. + + +Without the hollow extravagance of Beaumont and Fletcher's +ultra-royalism, how carefully does Shakspeare acknowledge and reverence +the eternal distinction between the mere individual, and the symbolic or +representative, on which all genial law, no less than patriotism, +depends. The whole of this second scene commences, and is anticipative +of, the tone and character of the play at large. + +'Ib.' sc. 3. In none of Shakspeare's fictitious dramas, or in those +founded on a history as unknown to his auditors generally as fiction, is +this violent rupture of the succession of time found:--a proof, I think, +that the pure historic drama, like Richard II. and King John, had its +own laws. + +'Ib.' Mowbray's speech:-- + + + A dearer _merit_ Have I deserved at your highness' hand. + + +O, the instinctive propriety of Shakspeare in the choice of words! + +'Ib.' Richard's speech: + + + Nor never by advised purpose meet, + To plot, contrive, or complot any ill, + 'Gainst us, our state, our subjects, or our land. + + +Already the selfish weakness of Richard's character opens. Nothing will +such minds so readily embrace, as indirect ways softened down to their +'quasi'-consciences by policy, expedience, &c. + +'Ib.' Mowbray's speech:-- + + + ...All the world's my way. + 'The world was all before him.'--'Milt'. + + +'Ib.' + + + 'Boling'. How long a time lies in one little word! + Four lagging winters, and four wanton springs, + End in a word: such is the breath of kings. + + +Admirable anticipation! + +'Ib.' sc. 4. This is a striking conclusion of a first act,--letting the +reader into the secret;--having before impressed us with the dignified +and kingly manners of Richard, yet by well managed anticipations leading +us on to the full gratification of pleasure in our own penetration. In +this scene a new light is thrown on Richard's character. Until now he +has appeared in all the beauty of royalty; but here, as soon as he is +left to himself, the inherent weakness of his character is immediately +shown. It is a weakness, however, of a peculiar kind, not arising from +want of personal courage, or any specific defect of faculty, but rather +an intellectual feminineness, which feels a necessity of ever leaning on +the breast of others, and of reclining on those who are all the while +known to be inferiors. To this must be attributed as its consequences +all Richard's vices, his tendency to concealment, and his cunning, the +whole operation of which is directed to the getting rid of present +difficulties. Richard is not meant to be a debauchee; but we see in him +that sophistry which is common to man, by which we can deceive our own +hearts, and at one and the same time apologize for, and yet commit, the +error. Shakspeare has represented this character in a very peculiar +manner. He has not made him amiable with counterbalancing faults; but +has openly and broadly drawn those faults without reserve, relying on +Richard's disproportionate sufferings and gradually emergent good +qualities for our sympathy; and this was possible, because his faults +are not positive vices, but spring entirely from defect of character. + +Act. ii. sc. 1. + + + 'K. Rich'. Can sick men play so nicely with their names? + + +Yes! on a death-bed there is a feeling which may make all things appear +but as puns and equivocations. And a passion there is that carries off +its own excess by plays on words as naturally, and, therefore, as +appropriately to drama, as by gesticulations, looks, or tones. This +belongs to human nature as such, independently of associations and +habits from any particular rank of life or mode of employment; and in +this consist Shakspeare's vulgarisms, as in Macbeth's-- + + + The devil damn thee black, thou cream-fac'd loon! &c. + + +This is (to equivocate on Dante's words) in truth the _nobile volgare +eloquenza_. Indeed it is profoundly true that there is a natural, an +almost irresistible, tendency in the mind, when immersed in one strong +feeling, to connect that feeling with every sight and object around it; +especially if there be opposition, and the words addressed to it are in +any way repugnant to the feeling itself, as here in the instance of +Richard's unkind language: + + + Misery makes sport to mock itself. + + +No doubt, something of Shakspeare's punning must be attributed to his +age, in which direct and formal combats of wit were a favourite pastime +of the courtly and accomplished. It was an age more favourable, upon the +whole, to vigour of intellect than the present, in which a dread of +being thought pedantic dispirits and flattens the energies of original +minds. But independently of this, I have no hesitation in saying that a +pun, if it be congruous with the feeling of the scene, is not only +allowable in the dramatic dialogue, but oftentimes one of the most +effectual intensives of passion. + +'Ib.' + + + 'K. Rich'. Right; you say true: as Hereford's love, so his; + As theirs, so mine; and all be as it is. + + +The depth of this compared with the first scene;-- + + + How high a pitch, &c. + + +There is scarcely anything in Shakspeare in its degree, more admirably +drawn than York's character;--his religious loyalty struggling with a +deep grief and indignation at the king's follies; his adherence to his +word and faith, once given in spite of all, even the most natural, +feelings. You see in him the weakness of old age, and the +overwhelmingness of circumstances, for a time surmounting his sense of +duty,--the junction of both exhibited in his boldness in words and +feebleness in immediate act; and then again his effort to retrieve +himself in abstract loyalty, even at the heavy price of the loss of his +son. This species of accidental and adventitious weakness is brought +into parallel with Richard's continually increasing energy of thought, +and as constantly diminishing power of acting;--and thus it is Richard +that breathes a harmony and a relation into all the characters of the +play. + +'Ib.' sc. 2. + + + 'Queen'. To please the king I did; to please myself + I cannot do it; yet I know no cause + Why I should welcome such a guest as grief, + Save bidding farewell to so sweet a guest + As my sweet Richard: yet again, methinks, + Some unborn sorrow, ripe in sorrow's womb, + Is coming toward me; and my inward soul + With nothing trembles: at something it grieves, + More than with parting from my lord the king. + + +It is clear that Shakspeare never meant to represent Richard as a vulgar +debauchee, but a man with a wantonness of spirit in external show, a +feminine _friendism_, an intensity of woman-like love of those +immediately about him, and a mistaking of the delight of being loved by +him for a love of him. And mark in this scene Shakspeare's gentleness in +touching the tender superstitions, the 'terrae incognitae' of +presentiments, in the human mind; and how sharp a line of distinction he +commonly draws between these obscure forecastings of general experience +in each individual, and the vulgar errors of mere tradition. Indeed, it +may be taken once for all as the truth, that Shakspeare, in the absolute +universality of his genius, always reverences whatever arises out of our +moral nature; he never profanes his muse with a contemptuous reasoning +away of the genuine and general, however unaccountable, feelings of +mankind. + +The amiable part of Richard's character is brought full upon us by his +queen's few words-- + + + ... so sweet a guest + As my sweet Richard;-- + + +and Shakspeare has carefully shown in him an intense love of his +country, well-knowing how that feeling would, in a pure historic drama, +redeem him in the hearts of the audience. Yet even in this love there is +something feminine and personal:-- + + + Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hand, + --As a long parted mother with her child + Plays fondly with her tears, and smiles in meeting; + So weeping, smiling, greet I thee, my earth, + And do thee favour with my royal hands. + + +With this is combined a constant overflow of emotions from a total +incapability of controlling them, and thence a waste of that energy, +which should have been reserved for actions, in the passion and effort +of mere resolves and menaces. The consequence is moral exhaustion, and +rapid alternations of unmanly despair and ungrounded hope,--every +feeling being abandoned for its direct opposite upon the pressure of +external accident. And yet when Richard's inward weakness appears to +seek refuge in his despair, and his exhaustion counterfeits repose, the +old habit of kingliness, the effect of flatterers from his infancy, is +ever and anon producing in him a sort of wordy courage which only serves +to betray more clearly his internal impotence. The second and third +scenes of the third act combine and illustrate all this:-- + + + 'Aumerle'. He means, my lord, that we are too remiss; + Whilst Bolingbroke, through our security, + Grows strong and great, in substance, and in friends. + + 'K. Rich'. Discomfortable cousin! know'st thou not, + That when the searching eye of heaven is hid + Behind the globe, and lights the lower world, + Then thieves and robbers range abroad unseen, + In murders and in outrage, bloody here; + But when, from under this terrestrial ball, + He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines, + And darts his light through every guilty hole, + Then murders, treasons, and detested sins, + The cloke of night being pluckt from off their backs, + Stand bare and naked, trembling at themselves? + So when this thief, this traitor, Bolingbroke, &c. ... + + 'Aumerle'. Where is the Duke my father with his power? + + 'K. Rich'. No matter where; of comfort no man speak: + Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs, + Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes + Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth, &c. + + ... + + 'Aumerle'. My father hath a power, enquire of him; + And learn to make a body of a limb. + + 'K. Rich'. Thou chid'st me well: proud Bolingbroke, I come + To change blows with thee for our day of doom. + This ague-fit of fear is over-blown; + An easy task it is to win our own. + + ... + + 'Scroop'. Your uncle York hath join'd with Bolingbroke.-- + + ... + + 'K. Rich'. Thou hast said enough, + Beshrew thee, cousin, which didst lead me forth + Of that sweet way I was in to despair! + What say you now? what comfort have we now? + By heaven, I'll hate him everlastingly, + That bids me be of comfort any more. ... + +Act iii. sc. 3. Bolingbroke's speech:-- + + + Noble lord, + Go to the rude ribs of that ancient castle, &c. + + +Observe the fine struggle of a haughty sense of power and ambition in +Bolingbroke with the necessity for dissimulation. + +'Ib.' sc. 4. See here the skill and judgment of our poet in giving +reality and individual life, by the introduction of accidents in his +historic plays, and thereby making them dramas, and not histories. How +beautiful an islet of repose--a melancholy repose, indeed--is this scene +with the Gardener and his Servant. And how truly affecting and realizing +is the incident of the very horse Barbary, in the scene with the Groom +in the last act!-- + + + 'Groom'. I was a poor groom of thy stable, King, + When thou wert King; who, travelling towards York, + With much ado, at length have gotten leave + To look upon my sometime master's face. + O, how it yearn'd my heart, when I beheld, + In London streets, that coronation day, + When Bolingbroke rode on roan Barbary! + That horse, that thou so often hast bestrid; + That horse, that I so carefully have dress'd! + + 'K. Rich'. Rode he on Barbary? + + +Bolingbroke's character, in general, is an instance how Shakspeare makes +one play introductory to another; for it is evidently a preparation for +Henry IV., as Gloster in the third part of Henry VI. is for Richard III. + +I would once more remark upon the exalted idea of the only true loyalty +developed in this noble and impressive play. We have neither the rants +of Beaumont and Fletcher, nor the sneers of Massinger;--the vast +importance of the personal character of the sovereign is distinctly +enounced, whilst, at the same time, the genuine sanctity which surrounds +him is attributed to, and grounded on, the position in which he stands +as the convergence and exponent of the life and power of the state. + +The great end of the body politic appears to be to humanize, and assist +in the progressiveness of, the animal man;--but the problem is so +complicated with contingencies as to render it nearly impossible to lay +down rules for the formation of a state. And should we be able to form a +system of government, which should so balance its different powers as to +form a check upon each, and so continually remedy and correct itself, it +would, nevertheless, defeat its own aim;--for man is destined to be +guided by higher principles, by universal views, which can never be +fulfilled in this state of existence,--by a spirit of progressiveness +which can never be accomplished, for then it would cease to be. Plato's +Republic is like Bunyan's Town of Man-Soul,--a description of an +individual, all of whose faculties are in their proper subordination and +inter-dependence; and this it is assumed may be the prototype of the +state as one great individual. But there is this sophism in it, that it +is forgotten that the human faculties, indeed, are parts and not +separate things; but that you could never get chiefs who were wholly +reason, ministers who were wholly understanding, soldiers all wrath, +labourers all concupiscence, and so on through the rest. Each of these +partakes of, and interferes with, all the others. + + + + + + +HENRY IV. PART I. + +Act I. sc. 1. King Henry's speech: + + + No more the thirsty entrance of this soil + Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood. + + +A most obscure passage: but I think Theobalds' interpretation right, +namely, that 'thirsty entrance' means the dry penetrability, or bibulous +drought, of the soil. The obscurity of this passage is of the +Shakspearian sort. + +'Ib.' sc. 2. In this, the first introduction of Falstaff, observe the +consciousness and the intentionality of his wit, so that when it does +not flow of its own accord, its absence is felt, and an effort visibly +made to recall it. Note also throughout how Falstaff's pride is +gratified in the power of influencing a prince of the blood, the heir +apparent, by means of it. Hence his dislike to Prince John of Lancaster, +and his mortification when he finds his wit fail on him:-- + + + 'P. John.' Fare you well, Falstaff: I, in my condition, + Shall better speak of you than you deserve. + + 'Fal.' I would you had but the wit; 'twere better than your + dukedom.--Good faith, this same young sober-blooded boy doth not love + me;--nor a man cannot make him laugh. + + +Act ii. sc. 1. Second Carrier's speech:-- + + + ... breeds fleas like a _loach_. + + +Perhaps it is a misprint, or a provincial pronunciation, for 'leach,' +that is, blood-suckers. Had it been gnats, instead of fleas, there might +have been some sense, though small probability, in Warburton's +suggestion of the Scottish 'loch.' Possibly 'loach,' or 'lutch,' may be +some lost word for dovecote, or poultry-lodge, notorious for breeding +fleas. In Stevens's or my reading, it should properly be 'loaches,' or +'leeches,' in the plural; except that I think I have heard anglers speak +of trouts like _a_ salmon. + +Act iii. sc. 1. + + + 'Glend.' Nay, if you melt, then will she run mad. + + +This 'nay' so to be dwelt on in speaking, as to be equivalent to a +dissyllable--[Symbol: written as a U-shape, below the line], is +characteristic of the solemn Glendower: but the imperfect line + + + _She bids you_ Upon the wanton rushes lay you down, &c. + + +is one of those fine hair-strokes of exquisite judgment peculiar to +Shakspeare;--thus detaching the Lady's speech, and giving it the +individuality and entireness of a little poem, while he draws attention +to it. + + + + + +HENRY IV. PART II. + +Act ii. sc. 2. + + + 'P. Hen'. Sup any women with him? + + 'Page'. None, my lord, but old mistress Quickly, and mistress Doll + Tear-sheet. + + 'P. Hen'. This Doll Tear-sheet should be some road. + + +I am sometimes disposed to think that this respectable young lady's name +is a very old corruption for Tear-street--street-walker, 'terere stratum +(viam.)' Does not the Prince's question rather show this?-- + + + 'This Doll Tear-street should be some road?' + + +Act iii. sc. 1. King Henry's speech: + + + ...Then, _happy low, lie down_; + Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. + + +I know no argument by which to persuade any one to be of my opinion, or +rather of my feeling; but yet I cannot help feeling that 'Happy +low-lie-down!' is either a proverbial expression, or the burthen of some +old song, and means, 'Happy the man, who lays himself down on his straw +bed or chaff pallet on the ground or floor!' + +'Ib.' sc. 2. Shallow's speech:-- + + + _Rah, tah, tah_, would 'a say; _bounce_, would 'a say, &c + + +That Beaumont and Fletcher have more than once been guilty of sneering +at their great master, cannot, I fear, be denied; but the passage quoted +by Theobald from the Knight of the Burning Pestle is an imitation. If it +be chargeable with any fault, it is with plagiarism, not with sarcasm. + + + + + +HENRY V. + +Act I. sc. 2. Westmoreland's speech:-- + + + They know your _grace_ hath cause, and means, and might; + So hath your _highness_; never King of England + Had nobles richer, &c. + + +Does 'grace' mean the king's own peculiar domains and legal revenue, and +'highness' his feudal rights in the military service of his nobles?--I +have sometimes thought it possible that the words 'grace' and 'cause' +may have been transposed in the copying or printing;-- + + + They know your cause hath grace, &c. + + +What Theobald meant, I cannot guess. To me his pointing makes the +passage still more obscure. Perhaps the lines ought to be recited +dramatically thus:-- + + + They know your Grace hath cause, and means, and might:-- + So _hath_ your Highness--never King of England + _Had_ nobles richer, &c. + + +He breaks off from the grammar and natural order from earnestness, and +in order to give the meaning more passionately. + +'Ib.' Exeter's speech:-- + + + Yet that is but a _crush'd_ necessity. + + +Perhaps it may be 'crash' for 'crass' from 'crassus', clumsy; or it may +be 'curt,' defective, imperfect: anything would be better than +Warburton's ''scus'd,' which honest Theobald, of course, adopts. By the +by, it seems clear to me that this speech of Exeter's properly belongs +to Canterbury, and was altered by the actors for convenience. + +Act iv. sc. 3. K. Henry's speech:-- + + + We would not _die_ in that man's company + That fears his fellowship to die with us. + + +Should it not be 'live' in the first line? + +'Ib.' sc. 5. + + + 'Const.' O diable! + + 'Orl.' O seigneur! le jour est perdu, tout est perdu! + + 'Dan.' Mort de ma vie!_ all is confounded, all! + Reproach and everlasting shame + Sit mocking in our plumes!--'O meschante fortune!' + Do not run away! + +Ludicrous as these introductory scraps of French appear, so instantly +followed by good, nervous mother-English, yet they are judicious, and +produce the impression which Shakspeare intended,--a sudden feeling +struck at once on the ears, as well as the eyes, of the audience, that +'here come the French, the baffled French braggards!'--And this will +appear still more judicious, when we reflect on the scanty apparatus of +distinguishing dresses in Shakspeare's tyring-room. + + + + + +HENRY VI. PART I. + +Act I. sc. 1. Bedford's speech:-- + + + Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night! + Comets, importing change of times and states, + Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky; + And with them scourge the bad revolting stars + That have consented unto Henry's death! + Henry the fifth, too famous to live long! + England ne'er lost a king of so much worth. + + +Read aloud any two or three passages in blank verse even from +Shakspeare's earliest dramas, as Love's Labour's Lost, or Romeo and +Juliet; and then read in the same way this speech, with especial +attention to the metre; and if you do not feel the impossibility of the +latter having been written by Shakspeare, all I dare suggest is, that +you may have ears,--for so has another animal,--but an ear you cannot +have, 'me judice'. + + + + + +RICHARD III. + +This play should be contrasted with Richard II. Pride of intellect is +the characteristic of Richard, carried to the extent of even boasting to +his own mind of his villany, whilst others are present to feed his pride +of superiority; as in his first speech, act II. sc. 1. Shakspeare here, +as in all his great parts, developes in a tone of sublime morality the +dreadful consequences of placing the moral, in subordination to the mere +intellectual, being. In Richard there is a predominance of irony, +accompanied with apparently blunt manners to those immediately about +him, but formalized into a more set hypocrisy towards the people as +represented by their magistrates. + + + + + +LEAR. + +Of all Shakspeare's plays Macbeth is the most rapid, Hamlet the slowest, +in movement. Lear combines length with rapidity,--like the hurricane and +the whirlpool, absorbing while it advances. It begins as a stormy day in +summer, with brightness; but that brightness is lurid, and anticipates +the tempest. + +It was not without forethought, nor is it without its due significance, +that the division of Lear's kingdom is in the first six lines of the +play stated as a thing already determined in all its particulars, +previously to the trial of professions, as the relative rewards of which +the daughters were to be made to consider their several portions. The +strange, yet by no means unnatural, mixture of selfishness, sensibility, +and habit of feeling derived from, and fostered by, the particular rank +and usages of the individual;--the intense desire of being intensely +beloved,--selfish, and yet characteristic of the selfishness of a loving +and kindly nature alone;--the self-supportless leaning for all pleasure +on another's breast;--the craving after sympathy with a prodigal +disinterestedness, frustrated by its own ostentation, and the mode and +nature of its claims;--the anxiety, the distrust, the jealousy, which +more or less accompany all selfish affections, and are amongst the +surest contradistinctions of mere fondness from true love, and which +originate Lear's eager wish to enjoy his daughter's violent professions, +whilst the inveterate habits of sovereignty convert the wish into claim +and positive right, and an incompliance with it into crime and +treason;--these facts, these passions, these moral verities, on which +the whole tragedy is founded, are all prepared for, and will to the +retrospect be found implied, in these first four or five lines of the +play. They let us know that the trial is but a trick; and that the +grossness of the old king's rage is in part the natural result of a +silly trick suddenly and most unexpectedly baffled and disappointed. + +It may here be worthy of notice, that Lear is the only serious +performance of Shakspeare, the interest and situations of which are +derived from the assumption of a gross improbability; whereas Beaumont +and Fletcher's tragedies are, almost all of them, founded on some out of +the way accident or exception to the general experience of mankind. But +observe the matchless judgment of our Shakspeare. First, improbable as +the conduct of Lear is in the first scene, yet it was an old story +rooted in the popular faith,--a thing taken for granted already, and +consequently without any of the effects of improbability. Secondly, it +is merely the canvass for the characters and passions,--a mere occasion +for,--and not, in the manner of Beaumont and Fletcher, perpetually +recurring as the cause, and 'sine qua non' of,--the incidents and +emotions. Let the first scene of this play have been lost, and let it +only be understood that a fond father had been duped by hypocritical +professions of love and duty on the part of two daughters to disinherit +the third, previously, and deservedly, more dear to him;--and all the +rest of the tragedy would retain its interest undiminished, and be +perfectly intelligible. The accidental is nowhere the groundwork of the +passions, but that which is catholic, which in all ages has been, and +ever will be, close and native to the heart of man,--parental anguish +from filial ingratitude, the genuineness of worth, though coffined in +bluntness, and the execrable vileness of a smooth iniquity. Perhaps I +ought to have added the Merchant of Venice; but here too the same +remarks apply. It was an old tale; and substitute any other danger than +that of the pound of flesh (the circumstance in which the improbability +lies), yet all the situations and the emotions appertaining to them +remain equally excellent and appropriate. Whereas take away from the Mad +Lover of Beaumont and Fletcher the fantastic hypothesis of his +engagement to cut out his own heart, and have it presented to his +mistress, and all the main scenes must go with it. + +Kotzebue is the German Beaumont and Fletcher, without their poetic +powers, and without their 'vis comica'. But, like them, he always +deduces his situations and passions from marvellous accidents, and the +trick of bringing one part of our moral nature to counteract another; as +our pity for misfortune and admiration of generosity and courage to +combat our condemnation of guilt, as in adultery, robbery, and other +heinous crimes;--and, like them too, he excels in his mode of telling a +story clearly and interestingly, in a series of dramatic dialogues. Only +the trick of making tragedy-heroes and heroines out of shopkeepers and +barmaids was too low for the age, and too unpoetic for the genius, of +Beaumont and Fletcher, inferior in every respect as they are to their +great predecessor and contemporary. How inferior would they have +appeared, had not Shakspeare existed for them to imitate;--which in +every play, more or less, they do, and in their tragedies most +glaringly:--and yet--(O shame! shame!)--they miss no opportunity of +sneering at the divine man, and sub-detracting from his merits! + +To return to Lear. Having thus in the fewest words, and in a natural +reply to as natural a question,--which yet answers the secondary purpose +of attracting our attention to the difference or diversity between the +characters of Cornwall and Albany,--provided the premisses and 'data', +as it were, for our after insight into the mind and mood of the person, +whose character, passions, and sufferings are the main subject-matter of +the play;--from Lear, the 'persona patiens' of his drama, Shakspeare +passes without delay to the second in importance, the chief agent and +prime mover, and introduces Edmund to our acquaintance, preparing us +with the same felicity of judgment, and in the same easy and natural +way, for his character in the seemingly casual communication of its +origin and occasion. From the first drawing up of the curtain Edmund has +stood before us in the united strength and beauty of earliest manhood. +Our eyes have been questioning him. Gifted as he is with high advantages +of person, and further endowed by nature with a powerful intellect and a +strong energetic will, even without any concurrence of circumstances and +accident, pride will necessarily be the sin that most easily besets him. +But Edmund is also the known and acknowledged son of the princely +Gloster: he, therefore, has both the germ of pride, and the conditions +best fitted to evolve and ripen it into a predominant feeling. Yet +hitherto no reason appears why it should be other than the not unusual +pride of person, talent, and birth,--a pride auxiliary, if not akin, to +many virtues, and the natural ally of honorable impulses. But alas! in +his own presence his own father takes shame to himself for the frank +avowal that he is his father,--he has 'blushed so often to acknowledge +him that he is now brazed to it!' Edmund hears the circumstances of his +birth spoken of with a most degrading and licentious levity,--his mother +described as a wanton by her own paramour, and the remembrance of the +animal sting, the low criminal gratifications connected with her +wantonness and prostituted beauty, assigned as the reason, why 'the +whoreson must be acknowledged!' This, and the consciousness of its +notoriety; the gnawing conviction that every show of respect is an +effort of courtesy, which recalls, while it represses, a contrary +feeling;--this is the ever trickling flow of wormwood and gall into the +wounds of pride,--the corrosive 'virus' which inoculates pride with a +venom not its own, with envy, hatred, and a lust for that power which in +its blaze of radiance would hide the dark spots on his disc,--with pangs +of shame personally undeserved, and therefore felt as wrongs, and with a +blind ferment of vindictive working towards the occasions and causes, +especially towards a brother, whose stainless birth and lawful honours +were the constant remembrancers of his own debasement, and were ever in +the way to prevent all chance of its being unknown, or overlooked and +forgotten. Add to this, that with excellent judgment, and provident for +the claims of the moral sense,--for that which, relatively to the drama, +is called poetic justice, and as the fittest means for reconciling the +feelings of the spectators to the horrors of Gloster's after +sufferings,--at least, of rendering them somewhat less unendurable; +--(for I will not disguise my conviction, that in this one point the +tragic in this play has been urged beyond the outermost mark and 'ne +plus ultra' of the dramatic)--Shakspeare has precluded all excuse and +palliation of the guilt incurred by both the parents of the base-born +Edmund, by Gloster's confession that he was at the time a married man, +and already blest with a lawful heir of his fortunes. The mournful +alienation of brotherly love, occasioned by the law of primogeniture in +noble families, or rather by the unnecessary distinctions engrafted +thereon, and this in children of the same stock, is still almost +proverbial on the continent,--especially, as I know from my own +observation, in the south of Europe,--and appears to have been scarcely +less common in our own island before the Revolution of 1688, if we may +judge from the characters and sentiments so frequent in our elder +comedies. There is the younger brother, for instance, in Beaumont and +Fletcher's play of the Scornful Lady, on the one side, and Oliver in +Shakspeare's As You Like It, on the other. Need it be said how heavy an +aggravation, in such a case, the stain of bastardy must have been, were +it only that the younger brother was liable to hear his own dishonour +and his mother's infamy related by his father with an excusing shrug of +the shoulders, and in a tone betwixt waggery and shame! + +By the circumstances here enumerated as so many predisposing causes, +Edmund's character might well be deemed already sufficiently explained; +and our minds prepared for it. But in this tragedy the story or fable +constrained Shakspeare to introduce wickedness in an outrageous form in +the persons of Regan and Goneril. He had read nature too heedfully not +to know, that courage, intellect, and strength of character, are the +most impressive forms of power, and that to power in itself, without +reference to any moral end, an inevitable admiration and complacency +appertains, whether it be displayed in the conquests of a Buonaparte or +Tamerlane, or in the foam and the thunder of a cataract. But in the +exhibition of such a character it was of the highest importance to +prevent the guilt from passing into utter monstrosity,--which again +depends on the presence or absence of causes and temptations sufficient +to account for the wickedness, without the necessity of recurring to a +thorough fiendishness of nature for its origination. For such are the +appointed relations of intellectual power to truth, and of truth to +goodness, that it becomes both morally and poetically unsafe to present +what is admirable,--what our nature compels us to admire--in the mind, +and what is most detestable in the heart, as co-existing in the same +individual without any apparent connection, or any modification of the +one by the other. That Shakspeare has in one instance, that of Iago, +approached to this, and that he has done it successfully, is, perhaps, +the most astonishing proof of his genius, and the opulence of its +resources. But in the present tragedy, in which he was compelled to +present a Goneril and a Regan, it was most carefully to be avoided;--and +therefore the only one conceivable addition to the inauspicious +influences on the preformation of Edmund's character is given, in the +information that all the kindly counteractions to the mischievous +feelings of shame, which might have been derived from co-domestication +with Edgar and their common father, had been cut off by his absence from +home, and foreign education from boyhood to the present time, and a +prospect of its continuance, as if to preclude all risk of his +interference with the father's views for the elder and legitimate son:-- + + +He hath been out nine years, and away he shall again. + + +Act i. sc. 1. + + + 'Cor.' Nothing, my lord. + + 'Lear.' Nothing? + + 'Cor.' Nothing. + + 'Lear.' Nothing can come of nothing: speak again. + + 'Cor.' Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave + My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty + According to my bond; nor more, nor less. + +There is something of disgust at the ruthless hypocrisy of her sisters, +and some little faulty admixture of pride and sullenness in Cordelia's +'Nothing;' and her tone is well contrived, indeed, to lessen the glaring +absurdity of Lear's conduct, but answers the yet more important purpose +of forcing away the attention from the nursery-tale, the moment it has +served its end, that of supplying the canvass for the picture. This is +also materially furthered by Kent's opposition, which displays Lear's +moral incapability of resigning the sovereign power in the very act of +disposing of it. Kent is, perhaps, the nearest to perfect goodness in +all Shakspeare's characters, and yet the most individualized. There is +an extraordinary charm in his bluntness, which is that only of a +nobleman arising from a contempt of overstrained courtesy; and combined +with easy placability where goodness of heart is apparent. His +passionate affection for, and fidelity to, Lear act on our feelings in +Lear's own favour: virtue itself seems to be in company with him. + +'Ib.' sc. 2. Edmund's speech:-- + + + Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take + More composition and fierce quality + Than doth, &c. + + +Warburton's note upon a quotation from Vanini. + +Poor Vanini!--Any one but Warburton would have thought this precious +passage more characteristic of Mr. Shandy than of atheism. If the fact +really were so, (which it is not, but almost the contrary,) I do not see +why the most confirmed theist might not very naturally utter the same +wish. But it is proverbial that the youngest son in a large family is +commonly the man of the greatest talents in it; and as good an authority +as Vanini has said--'incalescere in venerem ardentius, spei sobolis +injuriosum esse'. + +In this speech of Edmund you see, as soon as a man cannot reconcile +himself to reason, how his conscience flies off by way of appeal to +nature, who is sure upon such occasions never to find fault, and also +how shame sharpens a predisposition in the heart to evil. For it is a +profound moral, that shame will naturally generate guilt; the oppressed +will be vindictive, like Shylock, and in the anguish of undeserved +ignominy the delusion secretly springs up, of getting over the moral +quality of an action by fixing the mind on the mere physical act alone. + +'Ib.' Edmund's speech:-- + + + This is the excellent foppery of the world! that, when we are sick in + fortune, (often the surfeit of our own behaviour,) we make guilty of + our disasters, the sun, the moon, and the stars, &c. + + +Thus scorn and misanthropy are often the anticipations and mouth-pieces +of wisdom in the detection of superstitions. Both individuals and +nations may be free from such prejudices by being below them, as well as +by rising above them. + +'Ib.' sc. 3. The Steward should be placed in exact antithesis to Kent, +as the only character of utter irredeemable baseness in Shakspeare. Even +in this the judgment and invention of the poet are very observable;--for +what else could the willing tool of a Goneril be? Not a vice but this of +baseness was left open to him. + +'Ib.' sc. 4. In Lear old age is itself a character,--its natural +imperfections being increased by life-long habits of receiving a prompt +obedience. Any addition of individuality would have been unnecessary and +painful; for the relations of others to him, of wondrous fidelity and of +frightful ingratitude, alone sufficiently distinguish him. Thus Lear +becomes the open and ample play-room of nature's passions. + +Ib. + + + 'Knight'. Since my young lady's going into France, Sir; the fool hath + much pin'd away. + + +The Fool is no comic buffoon to make the groundlings laugh,--no forced +condescension of Shakspeare's genius to the taste of his audience. +Accordingly the poet prepares for his introduction, which he never does +with any of his common clowns and fools, by bringing him into living +connection with the pathos of the play. He is as wonderful a creation as +Caliban;--his wild babblings, and inspired idiocy, articulate and gauge +the horrors of the scene. + +The monster Goneril prepares what is necessary, while the character of +Albany renders a still more maddening grievance possible, namely, Regan +and Cornwall in perfect sympathy of monstrosity. Not a sentiment, not an +image, which can give pleasure on its own account, is admitted; whenever +these creatures are introduced, and they are brought forward as little +as possible, pure horror reigns throughout. In this scene and in all the +early speeches of Lear, the one general sentiment of filial ingratitude +prevails as the main spring of the feelings;--in this early stage the +outward object causing the pressure on the mind, which is not yet +sufficiently familiarized with the anguish for the imagination to work +upon it. + +Ib. + + 'Gon.' Do you mark that, my lord? + + 'Alb.' I cannot be so partial, Goneril, + To the great love I bear you. + + 'Gon'. Pray you content, &c. + + +Observe the baffled endeavour of Goneril to act on the fears of Albany, +and yet his passiveness, his 'inertia'; he is not convinced, and yet he +is afraid of looking into the thing. Such characters always yield to +those who will take the trouble of governing them, or for them. Perhaps, +the influence of a princess, whose choice of him had royalized his +state, may be some little excuse for Albany's weakness. 'Ib.' sc. 5. + + 'Lear'. O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven! + Keep me in temper! I would not be mad!-- + +The mind's own anticipation of madness! The deepest tragic notes are +often struck by a half sense of an impending blow. The Fool's conclusion +of this act by a grotesque prattling seems to indicate the dislocation +of feeling that has begun and is to be continued. Act ii. sc. 1. +Edmund's speech:- + + He replied, Thou unpossessing bastard! &c. + +Thus the secret poison in Edmund's own heart steals forth; and then +observe poor Gloster's-- + + Loyal and _natural_ boy! + +as if praising the crime of Edmund's birth! + +'Ib.' Compare Regan's-- + + What, did _my father's_ godson seek your life? + He whom _my father_ named? + +with the unfeminine violence of her-- + + All vengeance comes too short, &c. + +and yet no reference to the guilt, but only to the accident, which she +uses as an occasion for sneering at her father. Regan is not, in fact, a +greater monster than Goneril, but she has the power of casting more +venom. 'Ib.' sc. 2. Cornwall's speech:-- + + This is some fellow, + Who, having been praised for bluntness, doth affect + A saucy roughness, &c. + + +In thus placing these profound general truths in the mouths of such men +as Cornwall, Edmund, Iago, &c. Shakspeare at once gives them utterance, +and yet shews how indefinite their application is. + +'Ib.' sc. 3. Edgar's assumed madness serves the great purpose of taking +off part of the shock which would otherwise be caused by the true +madness of Lear, and further displays the profound difference between +the two. In every attempt at representing madness throughout the whole +range of dramatic literature, with the single exception of Lear, it is +mere light-headedness, as especially in Otway. In Edgar's ravings +Shakspeare all the while lets you see a fixed purpose, a practical end +in view;-- + +in Lear's, there is only the brooding of the one anguish, an eddy +without progression. 'Ib.' sc. 4. Lear's speech:-- + + The king would speak with Cornwall; the dear father + Would with his daughter speak, &c. + + ... + + No, but not yet: may be he is not well, &c. + +The strong interest now felt by Lear to try to find excuses for his +daughter is most pathetic. 'Ib.' Lear's speech:-- + + --Beloved Regan, + Thy sister's naught;--O Regan, she hath tied + Sharp-tooth'd unkindness, like a vulture, here. + I can scarce speak to thee;--thou'lt not believe + Of how deprav'd a quality--O Regan! + + 'Reg'. I pray you, Sir, take patience; I have hope, + You less know how to value her desert, + Than she to scant her duty. + + 'Lear' Say, how is that? + +Nothing is so heart-cutting as a cold unexpected defence or palliation +of a cruelty passionately complained of, or so expressive of thorough +hard-heartedness. And feel the excessive horror of Regan's 'O, Sir, you +are old!'--and then her drawing from that universal object of reverence +and indulgence the very reason for her frightful conclusion-- + + Say, you have wrong'd her! + + +All Lear's faults increase our pity for him. We refuse to know them +otherwise than as means of his sufferings, and aggravations of his +daughters' ingratitude. + +'Ib.' Lear's speech:-- + + + O, reason not the need: our basest beggars + Are in the poorest thing superfluous, &c. + + +Observe that the tranquillity which follows the first stunning of the +blow permits Lear to reason. + +Act iii. sc. 4. O, what a world's convention of agonies is here! All +external nature in a storm, all moral nature convulsed,--the real +madness of Lear, the feigned madness of Edgar, the babbling of the Fool, +the desperate fidelity of Kent--surely such a scene was never conceived +before or since! Take it but as a picture for the eye only, it is more +terrific than any which a Michel Angelo, inspired by a Dante, could have +conceived, and which none but a Michel Angelo could have executed. Or +let it have been uttered to the blind, the howlings of nature would seem +converted into the voice of conscious humanity. This scene ends with the +first symptoms of positive derangement; and the intervention of the +fifth scene is particularly judicious,--the interruption allowing an +interval for Lear to appear in full madness in the sixth scene. + +'Ib.' sc. 7. Gloster's blinding:-- + +What can I say of this scene?--There is my reluctance to think +Shakspeare wrong, and yet-- + +Act iv. sc. 6. Lear's speech:-- + + + Ha! Goneril!--with a white beard!--They flattered me like a dog; and + told me, I had white hairs in my beard, ere the black ones were there. + To say _Ay_ and _No_ to every thing I said!--Ay and No too was no good + divinity. When the rain came to wet me once, &c. + + +The thunder recurs, but still at a greater distance from our feelings. + +'Ib.' sc. 7. Lear's speech:-- + + + Where have I been? Where am I?--Fair daylight?-- + I am mightily abused.--I should even die with pity + To see another thus, &c. + + +How beautifully the affecting return of Lear to reason, and the mild +pathos of these speeches prepare the mind for the last sad, yet sweet, +consolation of the aged sufferer's death! + + + + + +HAMLET. + +Hamlet was the play, or rather Hamlet himself was the character, in the +intuition and exposition of which I first made my turn for philosophical +criticism, and especially for insight into the genius of Shakspeare, +noticed. This happened first amongst my acquaintances, as Sir George +Beaumont will bear witness; and subsequently, long before Schlegel had +delivered at Vienna the lectures on Shakspeare, which he afterwards +published, I had given on the same subject eighteen lectures +substantially the same, proceeding from the very same point of view, and +deducing the same conclusions, so far as I either then agreed, or now +agree, with him. I gave these lectures at the Royal Institution, before +six or seven hundred auditors of rank and eminence, in the spring of the +same year, in which Sir Humphry Davy, a fellow-lecturer, made his great +revolutionary discoveries in chemistry. Even in detail the coincidence +of Schlegel with my lectures was so extraordinary, that all who at a +later period heard the same words, taken by me from my notes of the +lectures at the Royal Institution, concluded a borrowing on my part from +Schlegel. Mr. Hazlitt, whose hatred of me is in such an inverse ratio to +my zealous kindness towards him, as to be defended by his warmest +admirer, Charles Lamb--(who, God bless him! besides his characteristic +obstinacy of adherence to old friends, as long at least as they are at +all down in the world, is linked as by a charm to Hazlitt's +conversation)--only as 'frantic;'--Mr. Hazlitt, I say, himself replied +to an assertion of my plagiarism from Schlegel in these words;--"That is +a lie; for I myself heard the very same character of Hamlet from +Coleridge before he went to Germany, and when he had neither read nor +could read a page of German!" Now Hazlitt was on a visit to me at my +cottage at Nether Stowey, Somerset, in the summer of the year 1798, in +the September of which year I first was out of sight of the shores of +Great Britain. Recorded by me, S. T. Coleridge, 7th January, 1819. + +The seeming inconsistencies in the conduct and character of Hamlet have +long exercised the conjectural ingenuity of critics; and, as we are +always both to suppose that the cause of defective apprehension is in +ourselves, the mystery has been too commonly explained by the very easy +process of setting it down as in fact inexplicable, and by resolving the +phenomenon into a misgrowth or 'lusus' of the capricious and irregular +genius of Shakspeare. The shallow and stupid arrogance of these vulgar +and indolent decisions I would fain do my best to expose. I believe the +character of Hamlet may be traced to Shakspeare's deep and accurate +science in mental philosophy. Indeed, that this character must have some +connection with the common fundamental laws of our nature may be assumed +from the fact, that Hamlet has been the darling of every country in +which the literature of England has been fostered. In order to +understand him, it is essential that we should reflect on the +constitution of our own minds. Man is distinguished from the brute +animals in proportion as thought prevails over sense: but in the healthy +processes of the mind, a balance is constantly maintained between the +impressions from outward objects and the inward operations of the +intellect;--for if there be an overbalance in the contemplative faculty, +man thereby becomes the creature of mere meditation, and loses his +natural power of action. Now one of Shakspeare's modes of creating +characters is, to conceive any one intellectual or moral faculty in +morbid excess, and then to place himself, Shakspeare, thus mutilated or +diseased, under given circumstances. In Hamlet he seems to have wished +to exemplify the moral necessity of a due balance between our attention +to the objects of our senses, and our meditation on the workings of our +minds,--an 'equilibrium' between the real and the imaginary worlds. In +Hamlet this balance is disturbed: his thoughts, and the images of his +fancy, are far more vivid than his actual perceptions, and his very +perceptions, instantly passing through the 'medium' of his +contemplations, acquire, as they pass, a form and a colour not naturally +their own. Hence we see a great, an almost enormous, intellectual +activity, and a proportionate aversion to real action consequent upon +it, with all its symptoms and accompanying qualities. This character +Shakspeare places in circumstances, under which it is obliged to act on +the spur of the moment:--Hamlet is brave and careless of death; but he +vacillates from sensibility, and procrastinates from thought, and loses +the power of action in the energy of resolve. Thus it is that this +tragedy presents a direct contrast to that of Macbeth; the one proceeds +with the utmost slowness, the other with a crowded and breathless +rapidity. + +The effect of this overbalance of the imaginative power is beautifully +illustrated in the everlasting broodings and superfluous activities of +Hamlet's mind, which, unseated from its healthy relation, is constantly +occupied with the world within, and abstracted from the world +without,--giving substance to shadows, and throwing a mist over all +common-place actualities. It is the nature of thought to be +indefinite;--definiteness belongs to external imagery alone. Hence it is +that the sense of sublimity arises, not from the sight of an outward +object, but from the beholder's reflection upon it;--not from the +sensuous impression, but from the imaginative reflex. Few have seen a +celebrated waterfall without feeling something akin to disappointment: +it is only subsequently that the image comes back full into the mind, +and brings with it a train of grand or beautiful associations. Hamlet +feels this; his senses are in a state of trance, and he looks upon +external things as hieroglyphics. His soliloquy-- + + + O! that this too too solid flesh would melt, &c. + + +springs from that craving after the indefinite--for that which is +not--which most easily besets men of genius; and the self-delusion +common to this temper of mind is finely exemplified in the character +which Hamlet gives of himself:-- + + + --It cannot be + But I am pigeon-livered, and lack gall + To make oppression bitter. + + +He mistakes the seeing his chains for the breaking them, delays action +till action is of no use, and dies the victim of mere circumstance and +accident. + +There is a great significancy in the names of Shakspeare's plays. In the +Twelfth Night, Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, and Winter's +Tale, the total effect is produced by a co-ordination of the characters +as in a wreath of flowers. But in Coriolanus, Lear, Romeo and Juliet, +Hamlet, Othello, &c. the effect arises from the subordination of all to +one, either as the prominent person, or the principal object. Cymbeline +is the only exception; and even that has its advantages in preparing the +audience for the chaos of time, place, and costume, by throwing the date +back into a fabulous king's reign. + +But as of more importance, so more striking, is the judgment displayed +by our truly dramatic poet, as well as poet of the drama, in the +management of his first scenes. With the single exception of Cymbeline, +they either place before us at one glance both the past and the future +in some effect, which implies the continuance and full agency of its +cause, as in the feuds and party-spirit of the servants of the two +houses in the first scene of Romeo and Juliet; or in the degrading +passion for shews and public spectacles, and the overwhelming attachment +for the newest successful war-chief in the Roman people, already become +a populace, contrasted with the jealousy of the nobles in Julius +Caesar;--or they at once commence the action so as to excite a curiosity +for the explanation in the following scenes, as in the storm of wind and +waves, and the boatswain in the Tempest, instead of anticipating our +curiosity, as in most other first scenes, and in too many other first +acts;--or they act, by contrast of diction suited to the characters, at +once to heighten the effect, and yet to give a naturalness to the +language and rhythm of the principal personages, either as that of +Prospero and Miranda by the appropriate lowness of the style,--or as in +King John, by the equally appropriate stateliness of official harangues +or narratives, so that the after blank verse seems to belong to the rank +and quality of the speakers, and not to the poet;--or they strike at +once the key-note, and give the predominant spirit of the play, as in +the Twelfth Night and in Macbeth;--or finally, the first scene comprises +all these advantages at once, as in Hamlet. + +Compare the easy language of common life, in which this drama commences, +with the direful music and wild wayward rhythm and abrupt lyrics of the +opening of Macbeth. The tone is quite familiar;--there is no poetic +description of night, no elaborate information conveyed by one speaker +to another of what both had immediately before their senses--(such as +the first distich in Addison's Cato, which is a translation into poetry +of 'Past four o'clock and a dark morning!');--and yet nothing bordering +on the comic on the one hand, nor any striving of the intellect on the +other. It is precisely the language of sensation among men who feared no +charge of effeminacy for feeling, what they had no want of resolution to +bear. Yet the armour, the dead silence, the watchfulness that first +interrupts it, the welcome relief of the guard, the cold, the broken +expressions of compelled attention to bodily feelings still under +control--all excellently accord with, and prepare for, the after gradual +rise into tragedy;--but, above all, into a tragedy, the interest of +which is as eminently 'ad et apud infra', as that of Macbeth is directly +'ad extra'. + +In all the best attested stories of ghosts and visions, as in that of +Brutus, of Archbishop Cranmer, that of Benvenuto Cellini recorded by +himself, and the vision of Galileo communicated by him to his favourite +pupil Torricelli, the ghost-seers were in a state of cold or chilling +damp from without, and of anxiety inwardly. It has been with all of them +as with Francisco on his guard,--alone, in the depth and silence of the +night;--''twas bitter cold, and they were sick at heart, and _not a +mouse stirring_.' The attention to minute sounds,--naturally associated +with the recollection of minute objects, and the more familiar and +trifling, the more impressive from the unusualness of their producing +any impression at all--gives a philosophic pertinency to this last +image; but it has likewise its dramatic use and purpose. For its +commonness in ordinary conversation tends to produce the sense of +reality, and at once hides the poet, and yet approximates the reader or +spectator to that state in which the highest poetry will appear, and in +its component parts, though not in the whole composition, really is, the +language of nature. If I should not speak it, I feel that I should be +thinking it;--the voice only is the poet's,--the words are my own. That +Shakspeare meant to put an effect in the actor's power in the very first +words--"Who's there?"--is evident from the impatience expressed by the +startled Francisco in the words that follow--"Nay, answer me: stand and +unfold yourself." A brave man is never so peremptory, as when he fears +that he is afraid. Observe the gradual transition from the silence and +the still recent habit of listening in Francisco's--"I think I hear +them"--to the more cheerful call out, which a good actor would observe, +in the--"Stand ho! Who is there?" Bernardo's inquiry after Horatio, and +the repetition of his name and in his own presence indicate a respect or +an eagerness that implies him as one of the persons who are in the +foreground; and the scepticism attributed to him,-- + + +Horatio says,'tis but our fantasy; And will not let belief take hold of +him-- + + +prepares us for Hamlet's after eulogy on him as one whose blood and +judgment were happily commingled. The actor should also be careful to +distinguish the expectation and gladness of Bernardo's 'Welcome, +Horatio!' from the mere courtesy of his 'Welcome, good Marcellus!' + +Now observe the admirable indefiniteness of the first opening out of the +occasion of all this anxiety. The preparation informative of the +audience is just as much as was precisely necessary, and no more;--it +begins with the uncertainty appertaining to a question:-- + + + 'Mar'. What, has _this thing_ appear'd again to-night?-- + + +Even the word 'again' has its 'credibilizing' effect. Then Horatio, the +representative of the ignorance of the audience, not himself, but by +Marcellus to Bernardo, anticipates the common solution--''tis but our +fantasy!' upon which Marcellus rises into + + + This dreaded sight, twice seen of us-- + + +which immediately afterwards becomes 'this apparition,' and that, too, +an intelligent spirit, that is, to be spoken to! Then comes the +confirmation of Horatio's disbelief;-- + + + Tush! tush! 'twill not appear!-- + + +and the silence, with which the scene opened, is again restored in the +shivering feeling of Horatio sitting down, at such a time, and with the +two eye-witnesses, to hear a story of a ghost, and that, too, of a ghost +which had appeared twice before at the very same hour. In the deep +feeling which Bernardo has of the solemn nature of what he is about to +relate, he makes an effort to master his own imaginative terrors by an +elevation of style,--itself a continuation of the effort,--and by +turning off from the apparition, as from something which would force him +too deeply into himself, to the outward objects, the realities of +nature, which had accompanied it:-- + + + 'Ber'. Last night of all, + When yon same star, that's westward from the pole, + Had made his course to illume that part of heaven + Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself, + The bell then beating one-- + + +This passage seems to contradict the critical law that what is told, +makes a faint impression compared with what is beholden; for it does +indeed convey to the mind more than the eye can see; whilst the +interruption of the narrative at the very moment, when we are most +intensely listening for the sequel, and have our thoughts diverted from +the dreaded sight in expectation of the desired, yet almost dreaded, +tale--this gives all the suddenness and surprise of the original +appearance;-- + + + 'Mar'. Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again!-- + + +Note the judgment displayed in having the two persons present, who, as +having seen the Ghost before, are naturally eager in confirming their +former opinions,--whilst the sceptic is silent, and after having been +twice addressed by his friends, answers with two hasty syllables--'Most +like,'--and a confession of horror: + + + --It harrows me with fear and wonder. + + +O heaven! words are wasted on those who feel, and to those who do not +feel the exquisite judgment of Shakspeare in this scene, what can be +said?--Hume himself could not but have had faith in this Ghost +dramatically, let his anti-ghostism have been as strong as Samson +against other ghosts less powerfully raised. + +Act i. sc. I. + + + 'Mar'. Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows, + Why this same strict and most observant watch, &c. + + +How delightfully natural is the transition to the retrospective +narrative! And observe, upon the Ghost's reappearance, how much +Horatio's courage is increased by having translated the late individual +spectator into general thought and past experience,--and the sympathy of +Marcellus and Bernardo with his patriotic surmises in daring to strike +at the Ghost; whilst in a moment, upon its vanishing, the former solemn +awe-stricken feeling returns upon them:-- + + + We do it wrong, being so majestical, + To offer it the show of violence.-- + + +'Ib.' Horatio's speech:-- + + + I have heard, + The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn, + Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat + Awake the god of day, &c. + + +No Addison could be more careful to be poetical in diction than +Shakspeare in providing the grounds and sources of its propriety. But +how to elevate a thing almost mean by its familiarity, young poets may +learn in this treatment of the cock-crow. + +'Ib.' Horatio's speech:-- + + + And, by my advice, + Let us impart what we have seen to-night + Unto young Hamlet; for, upon my life, + The spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him. + + +Note the inobtrusive and yet fully adequate mode of introducing the main +character, 'young Hamlet,' upon whom is transferred all the interest +excited for the acts and concerns of the king his father. + +'Ib.' sc. 2. The audience are now relieved by a change of scene to the +royal court, in order that Hamlet may not have to take up the leavings +of exhaustion. In the king's speech, observe the set and pedantically +antithetic form of the sentences when touching that which galled the +heels of conscience,--the strain of undignified rhetoric,--and yet in +what follows concerning the public weal, a certain appropriate majesty. +Indeed was he not a royal brother?-- + +'Ib.' King's speech:-- + + + And now, Laertes, what's the news with you? &c. + + +Thus with great art Shakspeare introduces a most important, but still +subordinate character first, Laertes, who is yet thus graciously treated +in consequence of the assistance given to the election of the late +king's brother instead of his son by Polonius. + +Ib. + + + 'Ham'. A little more than kin, and less than kind. + + 'King'. How is it that the clouds still hang on you? + + 'Ham'. Not so, my lord, I am too much i' the sun. + +Hamlet opens his mouth with a playing on words, the complete absence of +which throughout characterizes Macbeth. This playing on words may be +attributed to many causes or motives, as either to an exuberant activity +of mind, as in the higher comedy of Shakspeare generally;--or to an +imitation of it as a mere fashion, as if it were said--'Is not this +better than groaning?'--or to a contemptuous exultation in minds +vulgarized and overset by their success, as in the poetic instance of +Milton's Devils in the battle;--or it is the language of resentment, as +is familiar to every one who has witnessed the quarrels of the lower +orders, where there is invariably a profusion of punning invective, +whence, perhaps, nicknames have in a considerable degree sprung up;--or +it is the language of suppressed passion, and especially of a hardly +smothered personal dislike. The first, and last of these combine in +Hamlet's case; and I have little doubt that Farmer is right in supposing +the equivocation carried on in the expression 'too much i' the sun,' or +son. + +Ib. + + + 'Ham'. Ay, madam, it is common. + + +Here observe Hamlet's delicacy to his mother, and how the suppression +prepares him for the overflow in the next speech, in which his character +is more developed by bringing forward his aversion to externals, and +which betrays his habit of brooding over the world within him, coupled +with a prodigality of beautiful words, which are the half embodyings of +thought, and are more than thought, and have an outness, a reality 'sui +generis', and yet retain their correspondence and shadowy affinity to +the images and movements within. Note also Hamlet's silence to the long +speech of the king which follows, and his respectful, but general, +answer to his mother. + +'Ib.' Hamlet's first soliloquy:-- + + + O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, + Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew! &c. + + +This 'taedium vitae'; is a common oppression on minds cast in the Hamlet +mould, and is caused by disproportionate mental exertion, which +necessitates exhaustion of bodily feeling. Where there is a just +coincidence of external and internal action, pleasure is always the +result; but where the former is deficient, and the mind's appetency of +the ideal is unchecked, realities will seem cold and unmoving. In such +cases, passion combines itself with the indefinite alone. In this mood +of his mind the relation of the appearance of his father's spirit in +arms is made all at once to Hamlet:--it is--Horatio's speech, in +particular--a perfect model of the true style of dramatic +narrative;--the purest poetry, and yet in the most natural language, +equally remote from the ink-horn and the plough. + +'Ib.' sc. 3. This scene must be regarded as one of Shakspeare's lyric +movements in the play, and the skill with which it is interwoven with +the dramatic parts is peculiarly an excellence of our poet. You +experience the sensation of a pause without the sense of a stop. You +will observe in Ophelia's short and general answer to the long speech of +Laertes the natural carelessness of innocence, which cannot think such a +code of cautions and prudences necessary to its own preservation. + +'Ib.' Speech of Polonius:--(in Stockdale's edition.) + + + Or (not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,) + Wronging it thus, you'll tender me a fool. + + +I suspect this 'wronging' is here used much in the same sense as +'wringing' or 'wrenching;' and that the parenthesis should be extended +to 'thus.' [1] + +'Ib.' Speech of Polonius:-- + + + --How prodigal the soul + Lends the tongue vows:--these blazes, daughter, &c. + + +A spondee has, I doubt not, dropped out of the text. Either insert 'Go +to' after 'vows;'-- + + + Lends the tongue vows:--Go to, these blazes, daughter-- + + +or read + + + Lends the tongue vows:--These blazes, daughter, mark you-- + + +Shakspeare never introduces a catalectic line without intending an +equivalent to the foot omitted in the pauses, or the dwelling emphasis, +or the diffused retardation. I do not, however, deny that a good actor +might by employing the last mentioned means, namely, the retardation, or +solemn knowing drawl, supply the missing spondee with good effect. But I +do not believe that in this or any other of the foregoing speeches of +Polonius, Shakspeare meant to bring out the senility or weakness of that +personage's mind. In the great ever-recurring dangers and duties of +life, where to distinguish the fit objects for the application of the +maxims collected by the experience of a long life, requires no fineness +of tact, as in the admonitions to his son and daughter, Polonius is +uniformly made respectable. But if an actor were even capable of +catching these shades in the character, the pit and the gallery would be +malcontent at their exhibition. It is to Hamlet that Polonius is, and is +meant to be, contemptible, because in inwardness and uncontrollable +activity of movement, Hamlet's mind is the logical contrary to that of +Polonius, and besides, as I have observed before, Hamlet dislikes the +man as false to his true allegiance in the matter of the succession to +the crown. + +'Ib.' sc. 4. The unimportant conversation with which this scene opens is +a proof of Shakspeare's minute knowledge of human nature. It is a well +established fact, that on the brink of any serious enterprise, or event +of moment, men almost invariably endeavour to elude the pressure of +their own thoughts by turning aside to trivial objects and familiar +circumstances: thus this dialogue on the platform begins with remarks on +the coldness of the air, and inquiries, obliquely connected, indeed, +with the expected hour of the visitation, but thrown out in a seeming +vacuity of topics, as to the striking of the clock and so forth. The +same desire to escape from the impending thought is carried on in +Hamlet's account of, and moralizing on, the Danish custom of wassailing: +he runs off from the particular to the universal, and, in his repugnance +to personal and individual concerns, escapes, as it were, from himself +in generalizations, and smothers the impatience and uneasy feelings of +the moment in abstract reasoning. Besides this, another purpose is +answered;--for by thus entangling the attention of the audience in the +nice distinctions and parenthetical sentences of this speech of +Hamlet's, Shakspeare takes them completely by surprise on the appearance +of the Ghost, which comes upon them in all the suddenness of its +visionary character. Indeed, no modern writer would have dared, like +Shakspeare, to have preceded this last visitation by two distinct +appearances,--or could have contrived that the third should rise upon +the former two in impressiveness and solemnity of interest. + +But in addition to all the other excellencies of Hamlet's speech +concerning the wassel-music--so finely revealing the predominant +idealism, the ratiocinative meditativeness, of his character--it has the +advantage of giving nature and probability to the impassioned continuity +of the speech instantly directed to the Ghost. The 'momentum' had been +given to his mental activity; the full current of the thoughts and words +had set in, and the very forgetfulness, in the fervour of his +argumentation, of the purpose for which he was there, aided in +preventing the appearance from benumbing the mind. Consequently, it +acted as a new impulse,--a sudden stroke which increased the velocity of +the body already in motion, whilst it altered the direction. The +co-presence of Horatio, Marcellus, and Bernardo is most judiciously +contrived; for it renders the courage of Hamlet and his impetuous +eloquence perfectly intelligible. The knowledge,--the unthought of +consciousness,--the sensation,--of human auditors,--of flesh and blood +sympathists--acts as a support and a stimulation 'a tergo', while the +front of the mind, the whole consciousness of the speaker, is filled, +yea, absorbed, by the apparition. Add too, that the apparition itself +has by its previous appearances been brought nearer to a thing of this +world. This accrescence of objectivity in a Ghost that yet retains all +its ghostly attributes and fearful subjectivity, is truly wonderful. + +'Ib.' sc. 5. Hamlet's speech:-- + + + O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else? + And shall I couple hell?-- + + +I remember nothing equal to this burst unless it be the first speech of +Prometheus in the Greek drama, after the exit of Vulcan and the two +Afrites. But Shakspeare alone could have produced the vow of Hamlet to +make his memory a blank of all maxims and generalized truths, that +'observation had copied there,'--followed immediately by the speaker +noting down the generalized fact, + + + That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain! + + +Ib. + + + 'Mar'. Hillo, ho, ho, my lord! + + 'Ham'. Hillo, ho, ho, boy! come bird, come, &c. + + +This part of the scene after Hamlet's interview with the Ghost has been +charged with an improbable eccentricity. But the truth is, that after +the mind has been stretched beyond its usual pitch and tone, it must +either sink into exhaustion and inanity, or seek relief by change. It is +thus, well known that persons conversant in deeds of cruelty, contrive +to escape from conscience, by connecting something of the ludicrous with +them, and by inventing grotesque terms and a certain technical +phraseology to disguise the horror of their practices. Indeed, +paradoxical as it may appear, the terrible by a law of the human mind +always touches on the verge of the ludicrous. Both arise from the +perception of something out of the common order of things--something, in +fact, out of its place; and if from this we can abstract danger, the +uncommonness will alone remain, and the sense of the ridiculous be +excited. The close alliance of these opposites--they are not +contraries--appears from the circumstance, that laughter is equally the +expression of extreme anguish and horror as of joy: as there are tears +of sorrow and tears of joy, so is there a laugh of terror and a laugh of +merriment. These complex causes will naturally have produced in Hamlet +the disposition to escape from his own feelings of the overwhelming and +supernatural by a wild transition to the ludicrous,--a sort of cunning +bravado, bordering on the flights of delirium. For you may, perhaps, +observe that Hamlet's wildness is but half false; he plays that subtle +trick of pretending to act only when he is very near really being what +he acts. + +The subterraneous speeches of the Ghost are hardly defensible:--but I +would call your attention to the characteristic difference between this +Ghost, as a superstition connected with the most mysterious truths of +revealed religion,--and Shakspeare's consequent reverence in his +treatment of it,--and the foul earthly witcheries and wild language in +Macbeth. + +Act ii. sc. 1. Polonius and Reynaldo. + +In all things dependent on, or rather made up of, fine address, the +manner is no more or otherwise rememberable than the light motions, +steps, and gestures of youth and health. But this is almost every +thing:--no wonder, therefore, if that which can be put down by rule in +the memory should appear to us as mere poring, maudlin, +cunning,--slyness blinking through the watery eye of superannuation. So +in this admirable scene, Polonius, who is throughout the skeleton of his +own former skill and statecraft, hunts the trail of policy at a dead +scent, supplied by the weak fever-smell in his own nostrils. + +'Ib.' sc. 2. Speech of Polonius:-- + + + My liege, and madam, to expostulate, &c. + + +Warburton's note: + + + Then as to the jingles, and play on words, let us but look into the + sermons of Dr. Donne, (the wittiest man of that age) and we shall find + them full of this vein. + + +I have, and that most carefully, read Dr. Donne's sermons, and find none +of these jingles. The great art of an orator--to make whatever he talks +of appear of importance--this, indeed, Donne has effected with +consummate skill. + +Ib. + + + 'Ham'. Excellent well; You are a fishmonger. + + +That is, you are sent to fish out this secret. This is Hamlet's own +meaning. + +Ib. + + + 'Ham'. For if the sun breeds maggots in a dead dog, + Being a god, kissing carrion-- + + +These purposely obscure lines, I rather think, refer to some thought in +Hamlet's mind, contrasting the lovely daughter with such a tedious old +fool, her father, as he, Hamlet, represents Polonius to himself:--'Why, +fool as he is, he is some degrees in rank above a dead dog's carcase; +and if the sun, being a god that kisses carrion, can raise life out of a +dead dog,--why may not good fortune, that favours fools, have raised a +lovely girl out of this dead-alive old fool?' Warburton is often led +astray, in his interpretations, by his attention to general positions +without the due Shakspearian reference to what is probably passing in +the mind of his speaker, characteristic, and expository of his +particular character and present mood. The subsequent passage,-- + + + O Jephtha, judge of Israel! what a treasure hadst thou! + + +is confirmatory of my view of these lines. + +Ib. + + + 'Ham'. You cannot, Sir, take from me any thing that I will more + willingly part withal; except my life, except my life, except my life. + + +This repetition strikes me as most admirable. + +Ib. + + + 'Ham'. Then are our beggars, bodies; and our monarchs, and + out-stretched heroes, the beggars' shadows. + + +I do not understand this; and Shakspeare seems to have intended the +meaning not to be more than snatched at:--'By my fay, I cannot reason!' + +Ib. + + + The rugged Pyrrhus--he whose sable arms, &c. + + +This admirable substitution of the epic for the dramatic, giving such a +reality to the impassioned dramatic diction of Shakspeare's own +dialogue, and authorized, too, by the actual style of the tragedies +before his time (Porrex and Ferrex, Titus Andronicus, &c.)--is well +worthy of notice. The fancy, that a burlesque was intended, sinks below +criticism: the lines, as epic narrative, are superb. + +In the thoughts, and even in the separate parts of the diction, this +description is highly poetical: in truth, taken by itself, this is its +fault that it is too poetical!--the language of lyric vehemence and epic +pomp, and not of the drama. But if Shakspeare had made the diction truly +dramatic, where would have been the contrast between Hamlet and the play +in Hamlet? + +Ib. + + +--had seen the _mobled_ queen, &c. + + +A mob-cap is still a word in common use for a morning cap, which +conceals the whole head of hair, and passes under the chin. It is nearly +the same as the night-cap, that is, it is an imitation of it, so as to +answer the purpose ('I am not drest for company'), and yet reconciling +it with neatness and perfect purity. + +'Ib.' Hamlet's soliloquy: + + + O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! &c. + + +This is Shakspeare's own attestation to the truth of the idea of Hamlet +which I have before put forth. + +Ib. + + +The spirit that I have seen, May be a devil: and the devil hath power To +assume a pleasing shape; yea, and, perhaps Out of my weakness, and my +melancholy, (As he is very potent with such spirits) Abuses me to damn +me. + + +See Sir Thomas Brown: + + + I believe----that those apparitions and ghosts of departed persons are + not the wandering souls of men, but the unquiet walks of devils, + prompting and suggesting us unto mischief, blood and villany, + instilling and stealing into our hearts, that the blessed spirits are + not at rest in their graves, but wander solicitous of the affairs of + the world. + 'Relig. Med'. Pt. I. Sect. 37. + + +Act iii. sc. 1. Hamlet's soliloquy: + + + To be, or not to be, that is the question, &c. + + +This speech is of absolutely universal interest,--and yet to which of +all Shakspeare's characters could it have been appropriately given but +to Hamlet? For Jaques it would have been too deep, and for Iago too +habitual a communion with the heart; which in every man belongs, or +ought to belong, to all mankind. + +Ib. + + + That undiscover'd country, from whose bourne + No traveller returns.-- + + +Theobald's note in defence of the supposed contradiction of this in the +apparition of the Ghost. + +O miserable defender! If it be necessary to remove the apparent +contradiction,--if it be not rather a great beauty,--surely, it were +easy to say, that no traveller returns to this world, as to his home, or +abiding-place. + +Ib. + + + 'Ham'. Ha, ha! are you honest? + + 'Oph'. My lord? + + 'Ham'. Are you fair? + + +Here it is evident that the penetrating Hamlet perceives, from the +strange and forced manner of Ophelia, that the sweet girl was not acting +a part of her own, but was a decoy; and his after speeches are not so +much directed to her as to the listeners and spies. Such a discovery in +a mood so anxious and irritable accounts for a certain harshness in +him;--and yet a wild up-working of love, sporting with opposites in a +wilful self-tormenting strain of irony, is perceptible throughout. 'I +did love you once:'--'I lov'd you not:'--and particularly in his +enumeration of the faults of the sex from which Ophelia is so free, that +the mere freedom therefrom constitutes her character. Note Shakspeare's +charm of composing the female character by the absence of characters, +that is, marks and out-juttings. + +'Ib.' Hamlet's speech:-- + + + I say, we will have no more marriages: those that are married already, + all but one, shall live: the rest shall keep as they are. + + +Observe this dallying with the inward purpose, characteristic of one who +had not brought his mind to the steady acting point. He would fain sting +the uncle's mind;--but to stab his body!--The soliloquy of Ophelia, +which follows, is the perfection of love--so exquisitely unselfish! + +'Ib.' sc. 2. This dialogue of Hamlet with the players is one of the +happiest instances of Shakspeare's power of diversifying the scene while +he is carrying on the plot. + +Ib. + + + 'Ham'. My lord, you play'd once i' the university, you say? + (_To Polonius_.) + + +To have kept Hamlet's love for Ophelia before the audience in any direct +form, would have made a breach in the unity of the interest;--but yet to +the thoughtful reader it is suggested by his spite to poor Polonius, +whom he cannot let rest. + +'Ib.' The style of the interlude here is distinguished from the real +dialogue by rhyme, as in the first interview with the players by epic +verse. + +Ib. + + + 'Ros'. My lord, you once did love me. + + 'Ham'. So I do still, by these pickers and stealers. + + +I never heard an actor give this word 'so' its proper emphasis. +Shakspeare's meaning is--'lov'd you? Hum!--_so_ I do still, &c.' There +has been no change in my opinion:--I think as ill of you as I did. Else +Hamlet tells an ignoble falsehood, and a useless one, as the last speech +to Guildenstern--'Why, look you now,' &c.--proves. + +'Ib.' Hamlet's soliloquy:-- + + + Now could I drink hot blood, + And do such business as the bitter day + Would quake to look on. + + +The utmost at which Hamlet arrives, is a disposition, a mood, to do +something:--but what to do, is still left undecided, while every word he +utters tends to betray his disguise. Yet observe how perfectly equal to +any call of the moment is Hamlet, let it only not be for the future. + +'Ib.' sc. 4. Speech of Polonius. Polonius's volunteer obtrusion of +himself into this business, while it is appropriate to his character, +still itching after former importance, removes all likelihood that +Hamlet should suspect his presence, and prevents us from making his +death injure Hamlet in our opinion. + +'Ib.' The king's speech:-- + + + O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven, &c. + + +This speech well marks the difference between crime and guilt of habit. +The conscience here is still admitted to audience. Nay, even as an +audible soliloquy, it is far less improbable than is supposed by such as +have watched men only in the beaten road of their feelings. But the +final--'all may be well!' is remarkable;--the degree of merit attributed +by the self-flattering soul to its own struggle, though baffled, and to +the indefinite half-promise, half-command, to persevere in religious +duties. The solution is in the divine 'medium' of the Christian doctrine +of expiation:--not what you have done, but what you are, must determine. + +'Ib.' Hamlet's speech:-- + + + Now might I do it, pat, now he is praying: + And now I'll do it:--And so he goes to heaven: + And so am I revenged? That would be scann'd, &c. + + +Dr. Johnson's mistaking of the marks of reluctance and procrastination +for impetuous, horror-striking, fiendishness!--Of such importance is it +to understand the germ of a character. But the interval taken by +Hamlet's speech is truly awful! And then-- + + + My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: + Words, without thoughts, never to heaven go,-- + + +O what a lesson concerning the essential difference between wishing and +willing, and the folly of all motive-mongering, while the individual +self remains! + +'Ib.' sc. 4. + + + 'Ham'. A bloody deed;--almost as bad, good mother, + As kill a king, and marry with his brother. + + 'Queen'. As kill a king? + + +I confess that Shakspeare has left the character of the Queen in an +unpleasant perplexity. Was she, or was she not, conscious of the +fratricide? + +Act iv. sc. 2. + + + 'Ros'. Take you me for a spunge, my lord? + + 'Ham'. Ay, Sir; that soaks up the King's countenance, his rewards, his + authorities, &c. + + +Hamlet's madness is made to consist in the free utterance of all the +thoughts that had passed through his mind before;--in fact, in telling +home-truths. + +Act. iv. sc. 5. Ophelia's singing. O, note the conjunction here of these +two thoughts that had never subsisted in disjunction, the love for +Hamlet, and her filial love, with the guileless floating on the surface +of her pure imagination of the cautions so lately expressed, and the +fears not too delicately avowed, by her father and brother concerning +the dangers to which her honour lay exposed. Thought, affliction, +passion, murder itself--she turns to favour and prettiness. This play of +association is instanced in the close:-- + + + My brother shall know of it, and I thank you for your good counsel. + + +'Ib.' Gentleman's speech:-- + + + And as the world were now but to begin, + Antiquity forgot, custom not known, + The ratifiers and props of every ward-- + They cry, &c. + + +Fearful and self-suspicious as I always feel, when I seem to see an +error of judgment in Shakspeare, yet I cannot reconcile the cool, and, +as Warburton calls it, 'rational and consequential,' reflection in these +lines with the anonymousness, or the alarm, of this Gentleman or +Messenger, as he is called in other editions. + +'Ib.' King's speech:-- + + + There's such divinity doth hedge a king, + That treason can but peep to what it would, + Acts little of his will. + + +Proof, as indeed all else is, that Shakspeare never intended us to see +the King with Hamlet's eyes; though, I suspect, the managers have long +done so. + +'Ib.' Speech of Laertes:-- + + + To hell, allegiance! vows, to the blackest devil! + + Laertes is a 'good' character, but, &c. (WARBURTON.) + + +Mercy on Warburton's notion of goodness! Please to refer to the seventh +scene of this act;-- + + + I will do it; + And for this purpose I'll anoint my sword, &c. + + +uttered by Laertes after the King's description of Hamlet;-- + + + He being remiss, + Most generous, and free from all contriving, + Will not peruse the foils. + + +Yet I acknowledge that Shakspeare evidently wishes, as much as possible, +to spare the character of Laertes,--to break the extreme turpitude of +his consent to become an agent and accomplice of the King's +treachery;--and to this end he re-introduces Ophelia at the close of +this scene to afford a probable stimulus of passion in her brother. + +'Ib.' sc. 6. Hamlet's capture by the pirates. This is almost the only +play of Shakspeare, in which mere accidents, independent of all will, +form an essential part of the plot;--but here how judiciously in keeping +with the character of the over-meditative Hamlet, ever at last +determined by accident or by a fit of passion! + +'Ib.' sc. 7. Note how the King first awakens Laertes's vanity by +praising the reporter, and then gratifies it by the report itself, and +finally points it by-- + + + Sir, this report of his + Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy!-- + + +'Ib.' King's speech: + + + For goodness, growing to a _pleurisy_, + Dies in his own too much. + + +Theobald's note from Warburton, who conjectures 'plethory.' + +I rather think that Shakspeare meant 'pleurisy,' but involved in it the +thought of _plethora_, as supposing pleurisy to arise from too much +blood; otherwise I cannot explain the following line-- + + + And then this _should_ is like a spendthrift sigh, + That hurts by easing. + + +In a stitch in the side every one must have heaved a sigh that 'hurt by +easing.' + +Since writing the above I feel confirmed that 'pleurisy' is the right +word; for I find that in the old medical dictionaries the pleurisy is +often called the 'plethory.' + +Ib. + + + 'Queen'. Your sister's drown'd, Laertes. + + 'Laer'. Drown'd! O, where? + + +That Laertes might be excused in some degree for not cooling, the Act +concludes with the affecting death of Ophelia,--who in the beginning lay +like a little projection of land into a lake or stream, covered with +spray-flowers quietly reflected in the quiet waters, but at length is +undermined or loosened, and becomes a faery isle, and after a brief +vagrancy sinks almost without an eddy! + +Act v. sc. 1. O, the rich contrast between the Clowns and Hamlet, as two +extremes! You see in the former the mockery of logic, and a traditional +wit valued, like truth, for its antiquity, and treasured up, like a +tune, for use. + +'Ib.' sc. 1 and 2. Shakspeare seems to mean all Hamlet's character to be +brought together before his final disappearance from the scene;--his +meditative excess in the grave-digging, his yielding to passion with +Laertes, his love for Ophelia blazing out, his tendency to generalize on +all occasions in the dialogue with Horatio, his fine gentlemanly manners +with Osrick, and his and Shakspeare's own fondness for presentiment: + + + But thou would'st not think, how ill all's here about my heart: but it + is no matter. + + +[Footnote 1: It is so pointed in the modern editions.--Ed.] + + + + + +NOTES ON MACBETH. + +Macbeth stands in contrast throughout with Hamlet; in the manner of +opening more especially. In the latter, there is a gradual ascent from +the simplest forms of conversation to the language of impassioned +intellect,--yet the intellect still remaining the seat of passion: in +the former, the invocation is at once made to the imagination and the +emotions connected therewith. Hence the movement throughout is the most +rapid of all Shakspeare's plays; and hence also, with the exception of +the disgusting passage of the Porter (Act ii. sc. 3.), which I dare +pledge myself to demonstrate to be an interpolation of the actors, there +is not, to the best of my remembrance, a single pun or play on words in +the whole drama. I have previously given an answer to the thousand times +repeated charge against Shakspeare upon the subject of his punning, and +I here merely mention the fact of the absence of any puns in Macbeth, as +justifying a candid doubt at least, whether even in these figures of +speech and fanciful modifications of language, Shakspeare may not have +followed rules and principles that merit and would stand the test of +philosophic examination. And hence, also, there is an entire absence of +comedy, nay, even of irony and philosophic contemplation in +Macbeth,--the play being wholly and purely tragic. For the same cause, +there are no reasonings of equivocal morality, which would have required +a more leisurely state and a consequently greater activity of mind;--no +sophistry of self-delusion,--except only that previously to the dreadful +act, Macbeth mistranslates the recoilings and ominous whispers of +conscience into prudential and selfish reasonings, and, after the deed +done, the terrors of remorse into fear from external dangers,--like +delirious men who run away from the phantoms of their own brains, or, +raised by terror to rage, stab the real object that is within their +reach:--whilst Lady Macbeth merely endeavours to reconcile his and her +own sinkings of heart by anticipations of the worst, and an affected +bravado in confronting them. In all the rest, Macbeth's language is the +grave utterance of the very heart, conscience-sick, even to the last +faintings of moral death. It is the same in all the other characters. +The variety arises from rage, caused ever and anon by disruption of +anxious thought, and the quick transition of fear into it. + +In Hamlet and Macbeth the scene opens with superstition; but, in each it +is not merely different, but opposite. In the first it is connected with +the best and holiest feelings; in the second with the shadowy, +turbulent, and unsanctified cravings of the individual will. Nor is the +purpose the same; in the one the object is to excite, whilst in the +other it is to mark a mind already excited. Superstition, of one sort or +another, is natural to victorious generals; the instances are too +notorious to need mentioning. There is so much of chance in warfare, and +such vast events are connected with the acts of a single +individual,--the representative, in truth, of the efforts of myriads, +and yet to the public and, doubtless, to his own feelings, the aggregate +of all,--that the proper temperament for generating or receiving +superstitious impressions is naturally produced. Hope, the master +element of a commanding genius, meeting with an active and combining +intellect, and an imagination of just that degree of vividness which +disquiets and impels the soul to try to realize its images, greatly +increases the creative power of the mind; and hence the images become a +satisfying world of themselves, as is the case in every poet and +original philosopher:--but hope fully gratified, and yet the elementary +basis of the passion remaining, becomes fear; and, indeed, the general, +who must often feel, even though he may hide it from his own +consciousness, how large a share chance had in his successes, may very +naturally be irresolute in a new scene, where he knows that all will +depend on his own act and election. + +The Wierd Sisters are as true a creation of Shakspeare's, as his Ariel +and Caliban,--fates, furies, and materializing witches being the +elements. They are wholly different from any representation of witches +in the contemporary writers, and yet presented a sufficient external +resemblance to the creatures of vulgar prejudice to act immediately on +the audience. Their character consists in the imaginative disconnected +from the good; they are the shadowy obscure and fearfully anomalous of +physical nature, the lawless of human nature,--elemental avengers +without sex or kin: + + + Fair is foul, and foul is fair; Hover thro' the fog and filthy air. + + +How much it were to be wished in playing Macbeth, that an attempt should +be made to introduce the flexile character-mask of the ancient +pantomime;--that Flaxman would contribute his genius to the embodying +and making sensuously perceptible that of Shakspeare! + +The style and rhythm of the Captain's speeches in the second scene +should be illustrated by reference to the interlude in Hamlet, in which +the epic is substituted for the tragic, in order to make the latter be +felt as the real-life diction. In Macbeth, the poet's object was to +raise the mind at once to the high tragic tone, that the audience might +be ready for the precipitate consummation of guilt in the early part of +the play. The true reason for the first appearance of the Witches is to +strike the key-note of the character of the whole drama, as is proved by +their re-appearance in the third scene, after such an order of the +king's as establishes their supernatural power of information. I say +information,--for so it only is as to Glamis and Cawdor; the 'king +hereafter' was still contingent,--still in Macbeth's moral will; +although, if he should yield to the temptation, and thus forfeit his +free agency, the link of cause and effect 'more physico' would then +commence. I need not say, that the general idea is all that can be +required from the poet,--not a scholastic logical consistency in all the +parts so as to meet metaphysical objectors. But O! how truly +Shakspearian is the opening of Macbeth's character given in the +'unpossessedness' of Banquo's mind, wholly present to the present +object,--an unsullied, unscarified mirror!--And how strictly true to +nature it is, that Banquo, and not Macbeth himself, directs our notice +to the effect produced on Macbeth's mind, rendered temptible by previous +dalliance of the fancy with ambitious thoughts: + + + Good Sir, why do you start; and seem to fear + Things that do sound so fair? + + +And then, again, still unintroitive, addresses the Witches:-- + + + I' the name of truth, + Are ye fantastical, or that indeed + Which outwardly ye show? + + +Banquo's questions are those of natural curiosity,--such as a girl would +put after hearing a gipsy tell her schoolfellow's fortune;--all +perfectly general, or rather planless. But Macbeth, lost in thought, +raises himself to speech only by the Witches being about to depart:- + + + Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more:- + + +and all that follows is reasoning on a problem already discussed in his +mind,--on a hope which he welcomes, and the doubts concerning the +attainment of which he wishes to have cleared up. Compare his +eagerness,--the keen eye with which he has pursued the Witches' +evanishing-- + + + Speak, I charge you! + + +with the easily satisfied mind of the self-uninterested Banquo:-- + + + The air hath bubbles, as the water has, + And these are of them:--Whither are they vanish'd? + + +and then Macbeth's earnest reply,-- + + + Into the air; and what seem'd corporal, melted + As breath into the wind.--_'Would they had staid!_ + + +Is it too minute to notice the appropriateness of the simile 'as +breath,' &c. in a cold climate? + +Still again Banquo goes on wondering like any common spectator: + + + Were such things here as we do speak about? + + +whilst Macbeth persists in recurring to the self-concerning:-- + + + Your children shall be kings. + + 'Ban'. You shall be king. + + 'Macb'. And thane of Cawdor too: went it not so? + + +So surely is the guilt in its germ anterior to the supposed cause, and +immediate temptation! Before he can cool, the confirmation of the +tempting half of the prophecy arrives, and the concatenating tendency of +the imagination is fostered by the sudden coincidence:-- + + + Glamis, and thane of Cawdor: The greatest is behind. + + +Oppose this to Banquo's simple surprise:-- + + + What, can the devil speak true? + + +'Ib.' Banquo's speech:-- + + + That, trusted home, + Might yet enkindle you unto the crown, + Besides the thane of Cawdor. + + +I doubt whether 'enkindle' has not another sense than that of +'stimulating;' I mean of 'kind' and 'kin,' as when rabbits are said to +'kindle.' However Macbeth no longer hears any thing 'ab extra':-- + + + Two truths are told, + As happy prologues to the swelling act + Of the imperial theme. + + +Then in the necessity of recollecting himself-- + + + I thank you, gentlemen. + + +Then he relapses into himself again, and every word of his soliloquy +shows the early birthdate of his guilt. He is all-powerful without +strength; he wishes the end, but is irresolute as to the means; +conscience distinctly warns him, and he lulls it imperfectly:-- + + + If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me + Without my stir. + + +Lost in the prospective of his guilt, he turns round alarmed lest others +may suspect what is passing in his own mind, and instantly vents the lie +of ambition: + + + My dull brain was wrought + With things _forgotten_;-- + + +And immediately after pours forth the promising courtesies of a usurper +in intention:-- + + + Kind gentlemen, your pains + Are register'd where every day I turn + The leaf to read them. + + +'Ib.' Macbeth's speech: + + + Presents _fears_ Are less than horrible imaginings. + + +Warburton's note, and substitution of 'feats' for 'fears.' + +Mercy on this most wilful ingenuity of blundering, which, nevertheless, +was the very Warburton of Warburton--his inmost being! 'Fears,' here, +are present fear-striking objects, 'terribilia adstantia'. + +'Ib.' sc. 4. O! the affecting beauty of the death of Cawdor, and the +presentimental speech of the king: + + + There's no art + To find the mind's construction in the face: + He was a gentleman on whom I built + An absolute trust-- + + +Interrupted by-- + + + O worthiest cousin! + + +on the entrance of the deeper traitor for whom Cawdor had made way! And +here in contrast with Duncan's 'plenteous joys,' Macbeth has nothing but +the common-places of loyalty, in which he hides himself with 'our +duties.' Note the exceeding effort of Macbeth's addresses to the king, +his reasoning on his allegiance, and then especially when a new +difficulty, the designation of a successor, suggests a new crime. This, +however, seems the first distinct notion, as to the plan of realizing +his wishes; and here, therefore, with great propriety, Macbeth's +cowardice of his own conscience discloses itself. I always think there +is something especially Shakspearian in Duncan's speeches throughout +this scene, such pourings forth, such abandonments, compared with the +language of vulgar dramatists, whose characters seem to have made their +speeches as the actors learn them. + +'Ib.' Duncan's speech:-- + + + Sons, kinsmen, thanes, + And you whose places are the nearest, know, + We will establish our estate upon + Our eldest Malcolm, whom we name hereafter + The Prince of Cumberland: which honour must + Not unaccompanied, invest him only; + But signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine + On all deservers. + + +It is a fancy;--but I can never read this and the following speeches of +Macbeth, without involuntarily thinking of the Miltonic Messiah and +Satan. + +'Ib.' sc. 5. Macbeth is described by Lady Macbeth so as at the same time +to reveal her own character. Could he have everything he wanted, he +would rather have it innocently;--ignorant, as alas! how many of us are, +that he who wishes a temporal end for itself, does in truth will the +means; and hence the danger of indulging fancies. Lady Macbeth, like all +in Shakspeare, is a class individualized:--of high rank, left much +alone, and feeding herself with day-dreams of ambition, she mistakes the +courage of fantasy for the power of bearing the consequences of the +realities of guilt. Hers is the mock fortitude of a mind deluded by +ambition; she shames her husband with a superhuman audacity of fancy +which she cannot support, but sinks in the season of remorse, and dies +in suicidal agony. Her speech: + + + Come, all you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, &c. + + +is that of one who had habitually familiarized her imagination to +dreadful conceptions, and was trying to do so still more. Her +invocations and requisitions are all the false efforts of a mind +accustomed only hitherto to the shadows of the imagination, vivid enough +to throw the every-day substances of life into shadow, but never as yet +brought into direct contact with their own correspondent realities. She +evinces no womanly life, no wifely joy, at the return of her husband, no +pleased terror at the thought of his past dangers; whilst Macbeth bursts +forth naturally-- + + + My dearest love-- + + +and shrinks from the boldness with which she presents his own thoughts +to him. With consummate art she at first uses as incentives the very +circumstances, Duncan's coming to their house, &c. which Macbeth's +conscience would most probably have adduced to her as motives of +abhorrence or repulsion. Yet Macbeth is not prepared: + + + We will speak further. + + +'Ib.' sc. 6. The lyrical movement with which this scene opens, and the +free and unengaged mind of Banquo, loving nature, and rewarded in the +love itself, form a highly dramatic contrast with the laboured rhythm +and hypocritical over-much of Lady Macbeth's welcome, in which you +cannot detect a ray of personal feeling, but all is thrown upon the +'dignities,' the general duty. + +'Ib.' sc. 7. Macbeth's speech: + + + We will proceed no further in this business: + He hath honor'd me of late; and I have bought + Golden opinions from all sorts of people, + Which would be worn now in their newest gloss, + Not cast aside so soon. + + +Note the inward pangs and warnings of conscience interpreted into +prudential reasonings. + +Act ii. sc. 1. Banquo's speech: + + + A heavy summons lies like lead upon me, + And yet I would not sleep. Merciful powers! + Restrain in me the cursed thoughts, that nature + Gives way to in repose. + + +The disturbance of an innocent soul by painful suspicions of another's +guilty intentions and wishes, and fear of the cursed thoughts of sensual +nature. + +'Ib.' sc. 2. Now that the deed is done or doing--now that the first +reality commences, Lady Macbeth shrinks. The most simple sound strikes +terror, the most natural consequences are horrible, whilst previously +every thing, however awful, appeared a mere trifle; conscience, which +before had been hidden to Macbeth in selfish and prudential fears, now +rushes in upon him in her own veritable person: + + + Methought I heard a voice cry-- + Sleep no more! I could not say Amen, + When they did say, God bless us! + + +And see the novelty given to the most familiar images by a new state of +feeling. + +'Ib.' sc. 3. This low soliloquy of the Porter and his few speeches +afterwards, I believe to have been written for the mob by some other +hand, perhaps with Shakspeare's consent; and that finding it take, he +with the remaining ink of a pen otherwise employed, just interpolated +the words-- + + + I'll devil-porter it no further: I had thought to have let in some of + all professions, that go the primrose way to th' everlasting bonfire. + + +Of the rest not one syllable has the ever-present being of Shakspeare. + +Act iii. sc. 1. Compare Macbeth's mode of working on the murderers in +this place with Schiller's mistaken scene between Butler, Devereux, and +Macdonald in Wallenstein. (Part II. act iv. sc. 2.) The comic was wholly +out of season. Shakspeare never introduces it, but when it may react on +the tragedy by harmonious contrast. + +'Ib.' sc. 2. Macbeth's speech: + + + But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer, + Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep + In the affliction of these terrible dreams + That shake us nightly. + + +Ever and ever mistaking the anguish of conscience for fears of +selfishness, and thus as a punishment of that selfishness, plunging +still deeper in guilt and ruin. + +'Ib.' Macbeth's speech: + + + Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, + Till thou applaud the deed. + + +This is Macbeth's sympathy with his own feelings, and his mistaking his +wife's opposite state. + +'Ib.' sc. 4. + + + 'Macb'. It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood: + Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak; + Augurs, and understood relations, have + By magot-pies, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth + The secret'st man of blood. + + +The deed is done; but Macbeth receives no comfort,--no additional +security. He has by guilt torn himself live-asunder from nature, and is, +therefore, himself in a preter-natural state: no wonder, then, that he +is inclined to superstition, and faith in the unknown of signs and +tokens, and super-human agencies. + +Act iv. sc. 1. + + + 'Len'. 'Tis two or three, my lord, that bring you word, + Macduff is fled to England. + + 'Macb'. Fled to England? + + +The acme of the avenging conscience. + +'Ib.' sc. 2. This scene, dreadful as it is, is still a relief, because a +variety, because domestic, and therefore soothing, as associated with +the only real pleasures of life. The conversation between Lady Macduff +and her child heightens the pathos, and is preparatory for the deep +tragedy of their assassination. Shakspeare's fondness for children is +every where shown;--in Prince Arthur, in King John; in the sweet scene +in the Winter's Tale between Hermione and her son; nay, even in honest +Evans's examination of Mrs. Page's schoolboy. To the objection that +Shakspeare wounds the moral sense by the unsubdued, undisguised +description of the most hateful atrocity--that he tears the feelings +without mercy, and even outrages the eye itself with scenes of +insupportable horror--I, omitting Titus Andronicus, as not genuine, and +excepting the scene of Gloster's blinding in Lear, answer boldly in the +name of Shakspeare, not guilty. + +'Ib.' sc. 3. Malcolm's speech: + + + Better Macbeth, + Than such a one to reign. + + +The moral is--the dreadful effects even on the best minds of the +soul--sickening sense of insecurity. + +'Ib.' How admirably Macduff's grief is in harmony with the whole play! +It rends, not dissolves, the heart. 'The tune of it goes manly.' Thus is +Shakspeare always master of himself and of his subject,--a genuine +Proteus:--we see all things in him, as images in a calm lake, most +distinct, most accurate,--only more splendid, more glorified. This is +correctness in the only philosophical sense. But he requires your +sympathy and your submission; you must have that recipiency of moral +impression without which the purposes and ends of the drama would be +frustrated, and the absence of which demonstrates an utter want of all +imagination, a deadness to that necessary pleasure of being +innocently--shall I say, deluded?--or rather, drawn away from ourselves +to the music of noblest thought in harmonious sounds. Happy he, who not +only in the public theatre, but in the labours of a profession, and +round the light of his own hearth, still carries a heart so +pleasure-fraught! + +Alas for Macbeth! Now all is inward with him; he has no more prudential +prospective reasonings. His wife, the only being who could have had any +seat in his affections, dies; he puts on despondency, the final +heart-armour of the wretched, and would fain think every thing shadowy +and unsubstantial, as indeed all things are to those who cannot regard +them as symbols of goodness:-- + + + Out, out, brief candle! + Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, + That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, + And then is heard no more: it is a tale + Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, + Signifying nothing. + + + + + +NOTES ON THE WINTER'S TALE. + + +Although, on the whole, this play is exquisitely respondent to its +title, and even in the fault I am about to mention, still a winter's +tale; yet it seems a mere indolence of the great bard not to have +provided in the oracular response (Act ii. sc. 2.) some ground for +Hermione's seeming death and fifteen years voluntary concealment. This +might have been easily effected by some obscure sentence of the oracle, +as for example:-- + + + 'Nor shall he ever recover an heir, if he have a wife before that + recovery.' + + +The idea of this delightful drama is a genuine jealousy of disposition, +and it should be immediately followed by the perusal of Othello, which +is the direct contrast of it in every particular. For jealousy is a vice +of the mind, a culpable tendency of the temper, having certain well +known and well defined effects and concomitants, all of which are +visible in Leontes, and, I boldly say, not one of which marks its +presence in Othello;--such as, first, an excitability by the most +inadequate causes, and an eagerness to snatch at proofs; secondly, a +grossness of conception, and a disposition to degrade the object of the +passion by sensual fancies and images; thirdly, a sense of shame of his +own feelings exhibited in a solitary moodiness of humour, and yet from +the violence of the passion forced to utter itself, and therefore +catching occasions to ease the mind by ambiguities, equivoques, by +talking to those who cannot, and who are known not to be able to, +understand what is said to them,--in short, by soliloquy in the form of +dialogue, and hence a confused, broken, and fragmentary, manner; +fourthly, a dread of vulgar ridicule, as distinct from a high sense of +honour, or a mistaken sense of duty; and lastly, and immediately, +consequent on this, a spirit of selfish vindictiveness. + +Act i. sc. 1--2. + +Observe the easy style of chitchat between Camillo and Archidamus as +contrasted with the elevated diction on the introduction of the kings +and Hermione in the second scene: and how admirably Polixenes' obstinate +refusal to Leontes to stay-- + + + There is no tongue that moves; none, none i' the world + So soon as yours, could win me;-- + + +prepares for the effect produced by his afterwards yielding to +Hermione;--which is, nevertheless, perfectly natural from mere courtesy +of sex, and the exhaustion of the will by former efforts of denial, and +well calculated to set in nascent action the jealousy of Leontes. This, +when once excited, is unconsciously increased by Hermione:-- + + + Yet, good deed, Leontes, I love thee not a jar o' the clock behind + What lady she her lord;-- + + +accompanied, as a good actress ought to represent it, by an expression +and recoil of apprehension that she had gone too far. + + + At my request, he would not:-- + + +The first working of the jealous fit;-- + + + Too hot, too hot:-- + + +The morbid tendency of Leontes to lay hold of the merest trifles, and +his grossness immediately afterwards-- + + + Padling palms and pinching fingers:-- + + +followed by his strange loss of self-control in his dialogue with the +little boy. + +Act iii. sc. 2. Paulina's speech: + + + That thou betray'dst Polixenes,'twas nothing; + That did but show thee, of a _fool_, inconstant, + And damnable ingrateful.-- + + +Theobald reads 'soul.' + +I think the original word is Shakspeare's. + +1. My ear feels it to be Shakspearian; + +2. The involved grammar is Shakspearian;--'show thee, being a fool +naturally, to have improved thy folly by inconstancy;' + +3. The alteration is most flat, and un-Shakspearian. As to the grossness +of the abuse--she calls him 'gross and foolish' a few lines below. + +Act iv. sc. 2. Speech of Autolycus:-- + + + For the life to come, I sleep out the thought of it. + + +Fine as this is, and delicately characteristic of one who had lived and +been reared in the best society, and had been precipitated from it by +dice and drabbing; yet still it strikes against my feelings as a note +out of tune, and as not coalescing with that pastoral tint which gives +such a charm to this act. It is too Macbeth-like in the 'snapper up of +unconsidered trifles.' + +'Ib.' sc. 3. Perdita's speech:-- + + + From Dis's waggon! daffodils. + + +An epithet is wanted here, not merely or chiefly for the metre, but for +the balance, for the aesthetic logic. Perhaps, 'golden' was the word +which would set off the 'violets dim.' + +Ib. + + + Pale primroses + That die unmarried.-- + + +Milton's-- + + + And the rathe primrose that forsaken dies. + + +'Ib.' Perdita's speech:-- + + + Even here undone: + I was not much afraid; for once or twice + I was about to speak, and tell him plainly, + The self-same sun, that shines upon his court, + Hides not his visage from our cottage, but + Looks on alike. Wilt please you, Sir, be gone! + (_To Florizel._) + I told you, what would come of this. Beseech you, + Of your own state take care: this dream of mine, + Being awake, I'll queen it no inch farther, + But milk my ewes, and weep. + + +O how more than exquisite is this whole speech!--And that profound +nature of noble pride and grief venting themselves in a momentary +peevishness of resentment toward Florizel:-- + + + --Wilt please you, Sir, be gone! + + +'Ib.' Speech of Autolycus:-- + + + Let me have no lying; it becomes none but tradesmen, and they often + give us soldiers the lie; but we pay them for it in stamped coin, not + stabbing steel;--therefore they do not _give_ us the lie. + + +As we _pay_ them, they, therefore, do not _give_ it us. + + + + + +NOTES ON OTHELLO + +Act I. sc. 1. Admirable is the preparation, so truly and peculiarly +Shakspearian, in the introduction of Roderigo, as the dupe on whom Iago +shall first exercise his art, and in so doing display his own character. +Roderigo, without any fixed principle, but not without the moral notions +and sympathies with honor, which his rank and connections had hung upon +him, is already well fitted and predisposed for the purpose; for very +want of character and strength of passion, like wind loudest in an empty +house, constitute his character. The first three lines happily state the +nature and foundation of the friendship between him and Iago,--the +purse,--as also the contrast of Roderigo's intemperance of mind with +Iago's coolness,--the coolness of a preconceiving experimenter. The mere +language of protestation-- + + + If ever I did dream of such a matter, abhor me,-- + + +which falling in with the associative link, determines Roderigo's +continuation of complaint-- + + + Thou told'st me, thou didst hold him in thy hate-- + + +elicits at length a true feeling of Iago's mind, the dread of contempt +habitual to those, who encourage in themselves, and have their keenest +pleasure in, the expression of contempt for others. Observe Iago's high +self-opinion, and the moral, that a wicked man will employ real +feelings, as well as assume those most alien from his own, as +instruments of his purposes:-- + + + --And, by the faith of man, I know my place, + I am worth no worse a place. + + +I think Tyrwhitt's reading of 'life' for 'wife'-- + + + A fellow almost damn'd in a fair _wife_-- + + +the true one, as fitting to Iago's contempt for whatever did not display +power, and that intellectual power. In what follows, let the reader feel +how by and through the glass of two passions, disappointed vanity and +envy, the very vices of which he is complaining, are made to act upon +him as if they were so many excellences, and the more appropriately, +because cunning is always admired and wished for by minds conscious of +inward weakness;--but they act only by half, like music on an +inattentive auditor, swelling the thoughts which prevent him from +listening to it. + +Ib. + + + 'Rod'. What a full fortune does the 'thick-lips' owe, + If he can carry't thus. + + +Roderigo turns off to Othello; and here comes one, if not the only, +seeming justification of our blackamoor or negro Othello. Even if we +supposed this an uninterrupted tradition of the theatre, and that +Shakspeare himself, from want of scenes, and the experience that nothing +could be made too marked for the senses of his audience, had practically +sanctioned it,--would this prove aught concerning his own intention as a +poet for all ages? Can we imagine him so utterly ignorant as to make a +barbarous negro plead royal birth,--at a time, too, when negros were not +known except as slaves?--As for Iago's language to Brabantio, it implies +merely that Othello was a Moor, that is, black. Though I think the +rivalry of Roderigo sufficient to account for his wilful confusion of +Moor and Negro,--yet, even if compelled to give this up, I should think +it only adapted for the acting of the day, and should complain of an +enormity built on a single word, in direct contradiction to Iago's +'Barbary horse.' Besides, if we could in good earnest believe Shakspeare +ignorant of the distinction, still why should we adopt one disagreeable +possibility instead of a ten times greater and more pleasing +probability? It is a common error to mistake the epithets applied by the +'dramatis personae' to each other, as truly descriptive of what the +audience ought to see or know. No doubt Desdemona saw Othello's visage +in his mind; yet, as we are constituted, and most surely as an English +audience was disposed in the beginning of the seventeenth century, it +would be something monstrous to conceive this beautiful Venetian girl +falling in love with a veritable negro. It would argue a +disproportionateness, a want of balance, in Desdemona, which Shakspeare +does not appear to have in the least contemplated. + +'Ib.' Brabantio's speech:-- + + + This accident is not unlike my dream:-- + + +The old careful senator, being caught careless, transfers his caution to +his dreaming power at least. + +'Ib.' Iago's speech:-- + + + --For their souls, + Another of his fathom they have not, + To lead their business:-- + + +The forced praise of Othello followed by the bitter hatred of him in +this speech! And observe how Brabantio's dream prepares for his +recurrence to the notion of philtres, and how both prepare for carrying +on the plot of the arraignment of Othello on this ground. + +'Ib.' sc. 2. + + + 'Oth'. 'Tis better as it is. + + +How well these few words impress at the outset the truth of Othello's +own character of himself at the end--'that he was not easily wrought!' +His self-government contradistinguishes him throughout from Leontes. + +'Ib.' Othello's speech:-- + + + --And my demerits + May speak, _unbonnetted_-- + + +The argument in Theobald's note, where 'and bonnetted' is suggested, +goes on the assumption that Shakspeare could not use the same word +differently in different places; whereas I should conclude, that as in +the passage in Lear the word is employed in its direct meaning, so here +it is used metaphorically; and this is confirmed by what has escaped the +editors, that it is not 'I,' but 'my demerits' that may speak +unbonnetted,--without the symbol of a petitioning inferior. + +'Ib.' Othello's speech:-- + + + Please your grace, my ancient; + A man he is of honesty and trust: + To his conveyance I assign my wife. + + +Compare this with the behaviour of Leontes to his true friend Camillo. + +'Ib.' sc. 3. + + + 'Bra'. Look to her, Moor; have a quick eye to see; + She has deceiv'd her father, and may thee. + + 'Oth'. My life upon her faith. + + +In real life, how do we look back to little speeches as presentimental +of, or contrasted with, an affecting event! Even so, Shakspeare, as +secure of being read over and over, of becoming a family friend, +provides this passage for his readers, and leaves it to them. + +'Ib.' Iago's speech:-- + + + Virtue? a fig! 'tis in ourselves, that we are thus, or thus, &c. + + +This speech comprises the passionless character of Iago. It is all will +in intellect; and therefore he is here a bold partizan of a truth, but +yet of a truth converted into a falsehood by the absence of all the +necessary modifications caused by the frail nature of man. And then +comes the last sentiment,-- + + + Our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts, whereof I + take this, that you call--love, to be a sect or scion! + + +Here is the true Iagoism of, alas! how many! Note Iago's pride of +mastery in the repetition of 'Go, make money!' to his anticipated dupe, +even stronger than his love of lucre: and when Roderigo is completely +won-- + + + I am chang'd. I'll go sell all my land-- + + +when the effect has been fully produced, the repetition of triumph-- + + + Go to; farewell; put money enough in your purse! + + +The remainder--Iago's soliloquy--the motive-hunting of a motiveless +malignity--how awful it is! Yea, whilst he is still allowed to bear the +divine image, it is too fiendish for his own steady view,--for the +lonely gaze of a being next to devil, and only not quite devil,--and yet +a character which Shakspeare has attempted and executed, without disgust +and without scandal! + +Dr. Johnson has remarked that little or nothing is wanting to render the +Othello a regular tragedy, but to have opened the play with the arrival +of Othello in Cyprus, and to have thrown the preceding act into the form +of narration. Here then is the place to determine, whether such a change +would or would not be an improvement;--nay, (to throw down the glove +with a full challenge) whether the tragedy would or not by such an +arrangement become more regular,--that is, more consonant with the rules +dictated by universal reason, on the true common-sense of mankind, in +its application to the particular case. For in all acts of judgment, it +can never be too often recollected, and scarcely too often repeated, +that rules are means to ends, and, consequently, that the end must be +determined and understood before it can be known what the rules are or +ought to be. Now, from a certain species of drama, proposing to itself +the accomplishment of certain ends,--these partly arising from the idea +of the species itself, but in part, likewise, forced upon the dramatist +by accidental circumstances beyond his power to remove or +control,--three rules have been abstracted;--in other words, the means +most conducive to the attainment of the proposed ends have been +generalized, and prescribed under the names of the three unities,--the +unity of time, the unity of place, and the unity of action,--which last +would, perhaps, have been as appropriately, as well as more +intelligibly, entitled the unity of interest. With this last the present +question has no immediate concern: in fact, its conjunction with the +former two is a mere delusion of words. It is not properly a rule, but +in itself the great end not only of the drama, but of the epic poem, the +lyric ode, of all poetry, down to the candle-flame cone of an +epigram,--nay of poesy in general, as the proper generic term inclusive +of all the fine arts as its species. But of the unities of time and +place, which alone are entitled to the name of rules, the history of +their origin will be their best criterion. You might take the Greek +chorus to a place, but you could not bring a place to them without as +palpable an equivoque as bringing Birnam wood to Macbeth at Dunsinane. +It was the same, though in a less degree, with regard to the unity of +time:--the positive fact, not for a moment removed from the senses, the +presence, I mean, of the same identical chorus, was a continued measure +of time;--and although the imagination may supersede perception, yet it +must be granted to be an imperfection--however easily tolerated--to +place the two in broad contradiction to each other. In truth, it is a +mere accident of terms; for the Trilogy of the Greek theatre was a drama +in three acts, and notwithstanding this, what strange contrivances as to +place there are in the Aristophanic Frogs. Besides, if the law of mere +actual perception is once violated--as it repeatedly is even in the +Greek tragedies--why is it more difficult to imagine three hours to be +three years than to be a whole day and night? Observe in how many ways +Othello is made, first, our acquaintance, then our friend, then the +object of our anxiety, before the deeper interest is to be approached! + +Ib. + + + 'Mont'. But, good lieutenant, is your general wiv'd? + + 'Cas'. Most fortunately: he hath achiev'd a maid + That paragons description, and wild fame; + One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens, + And, in the essential vesture of creation, + Does bear all excellency. + + +Here is Cassio's warm-hearted, yet perfectly disengaged, praise of +Desdemona, and sympathy with the 'most fortunately' wived Othello;--and +yet Cassio is an enthusiastic admirer, almost a worshipper, of +Desdemona. O, that detestable code that excellence cannot be loved in +any form that is female, but it must needs be selfish! Observe Othello's +'honest,' and Cassio's 'bold' Iago, and Cassio's full guileless-hearted +wishes for the safety and love-raptures of Othello and 'the divine +Desdemona.' And also note the exquisite circumstance of Cassio's kissing +Iago's wife, as if it ought to be impossible that the dullest auditor +should not feel Cassio's religious love of Desdemona's purity. Iago's +answers are the sneers which a proud bad intellect feels towards woman, +and expresses to a wife. Surely it ought to be considered a very exalted +compliment to women, that all the sarcasms on them in Shakspeare are put +in the mouths of villains. + +Ib. + + + 'Des'. I am not merry; but I do beguile, &c. + + +The struggle of courtesy in Desdemona to abstract her attention. + +Ib. + + + ('Iago aside'). He takes her by the palm: Ay, well said, whisper; with + as little a web as this, will I ensnare as great a fly as Cassio. Ay, + smile upon her, do, &c. + + +The importance given to trifles, and made fertile by the villainy of the +observer. + +'Ib.' Iago's dialogue with Roderigo: + +This is the rehearsal on the dupe of the traitor's intentions on +Othello. + +'Ib.' Iago's soliloquy: + + + But partly led to diet my revenge, + For that I do suspect the lusty Moor + Hath leap'd into my seat. + + +This thought, originally by Iago's own confession a mere suspicion, is +now ripening, and gnaws his base nature as his own 'poisonous mineral' +is about to gnaw the noble heart of his general. + +'Ib.' sc. 3. Othello's speech: + + + I know, Iago, + Thy honesty and love doth mince this matter, + Making it light to Cassio. + + +Honesty and love! Ay, and who but the reader of the play could think +otherwise? + +'Ib.' Iago's soliloquy: + + + And what's he then that says--I play the villain? + When this advice is free I give, and honest, + Probable to thinking, and, indeed, the course + To win the Moor again. + + +He is not, you see, an absolute fiend; or, at least, he wishes to think +himself not so. + +Act iii. sc. 3. + + + 'Des.' Before AEmilia here, I give thee warrant of this place. + + +The over-zeal of innocence in Desdemona. + +Ib. + + +'Enter Desdemona and AEmilia.' + + 'Oth.' If she be false, O, then, heaven mocks itself! + I'll not believe it. + + +Divine! The effect of innocence and the better genius! + +Act iv. sc. 3. + + + 'AEmil.' Why, the wrong is but a wrong i' the world; and having the + world for your labour,'tis a wrong in your own world, and you might + quickly make it right. + + + Warburton's note. + +What any other man, who had learning enough, might have quoted as a +playful and witty illustration of his remarks against the Calvinistic +'thesis', Warburton gravely attributes to Shakspeare as intentional; and +this, too, in the mouth of a lady's woman! + +Act v. last scene. Othello's speech:-- + + + --Of one, whose hand, + Like the base _Indian_, threw a pearl away + Richer than all his tribe, &c. + + +Theobald's note from Warburton. + +Thus it is for no-poets to comment on the greatest of poets! To make +Othello say that he, who had killed his wife, was like Herod who killed +Mariamne!--O, how many beauties, in this one line, were impenetrable to +the ever thought-swarming, but idealess, Warburton! Othello wishes to +excuse himself on the score of ignorance, and yet not to excuse +himself,--to excuse himself by accusing. This struggle of feeling is +finely conveyed in the word 'base,' which is applied to the rude Indian, +not in his own character, but as the momentary representative of +Othello's. 'Indian'--for I retain the old reading--means American, a +savage 'in genere'. + +Finally, let me repeat that Othello does not kill Desdemona in jealousy, +but in a conviction forced upon him by the almost superhuman art of +Iago, such a conviction as any man would and must have entertained who +had believed Iago's honesty as Othello did. We, the audience, know that +Iago is a villain from the beginning; but in considering the essence of +the Shakspearian Othello, we must perseveringly place ourselves in his +situation, and under his circumstances. Then we shall immediately feel +the fundamental difference between the solemn agony of the noble Moor, +and the wretched fishing jealousies of Leontes, and the morbid +suspiciousness of Leonatus, who is, in other respects, a fine character. + +Othello had no life but in Desdemona:--the belief that she, his angel, +had fallen from the heaven of her native innocence, wrought a civil war +in his heart. She is his counterpart; and, like him, is almost +sanctified in our eyes by her absolute unsuspiciousness, and holy +entireness of love. As the curtain drops, which do we pity the most? + +... + +'Extremum hunc'--.There are three powers:-- + +Wit, which discovers partial likeness hidden in general diversity; + +subtlety, which discovers the diversity concealed in general apparent +sameness;-- + +and profundity, which discovers an essential unity under all the +semblances of difference. + +Give to a subtle man fancy, and he is a wit; to a deep man imagination, +and he is a philosopher. Add, again, pleasurable sensibility in the +threefold form of sympathy with the interesting in morals, the +impressive in form, and the harmonious in sound,--and you have the poet. + +But combine all,--wit, subtlety, and fancy, with profundity, +imagination, and moral and physical susceptibility of the pleasurable,-- +and let the object of action be man universal; and we shall have--O, +rash prophecy! say, rather, we have--a SHAKSPEARE! + + + + + +NOTES ON BEN JONSON. + +It would be amusing to collect out of our dramatists from Elizabeth to +Charles I proofs of the manners of the times. One striking symptom of +general coarseness of manners, which may co-exist with great refinement +of morals, as, alas! 'vice versa', is to be seen in the very frequent +allusions to the olfactories with their most disgusting stimulants, and +these, too, in the conversation of virtuous ladies. This would not +appear so strange to one who had been on terms of familiarity with +Sicilian and Italian women of rank; and bad as they may, too many of +them, actually be, yet I doubt not that the extreme grossness of their +language has impressed many an Englishman of the present era with far +darker notions than the same language would have produced in the mind of +one of Elizabeth's, or James's courtiers. Those who have read Shakspeare +only, complain of occasional grossness in his plays; but compare him +with his contemporaries, and the inevitable conviction is, that of the +exquisite purity of his imagination. + +The observation I have prefixed to the Volpone is the key to the faint +interest which these noble efforts of intellectual power excite, with +the exception of the fragment of the Sad Shepherd; because in that piece +only is there any character with whom you can morally sympathize. On the +other hand, Measure for Measure is the only play of Shakspeare's in +which there are not some one or more characters, generally many, whom +you follow with affectionate feeling. For I confess that Isabella, of +all Shakspeare's female characters, pleases me the least; and Measure +for Measure is, indeed, the only one of his genuine works, which is +painful to me. + +Let me not conclude this remark, however, without a thankful +acknowledgment to the 'manes' of Ben Jonson, that the more I study his +writings, I the more admire them; and the more my study of him resembles +that of an ancient classic, in the 'minutiae' of his rhythm, metre, +choice of words, forms of connection, and so forth, the more numerous +have the points of my admiration become. I may add, too, that both the +study and the admiration cannot but be disinterested, for to expect +therefrom any advantage to the present drama would be ignorance. The +latter is utterly heterogeneous from the drama of the Shakspearian age, +with a diverse object and contrary principle. The one was to present a +model by imitation of real life, taking from real life all that in it +which it ought to be, and supplying the rest;--the other is to copy what +is, and as it is,--at best a tolerable, but most frequently a +blundering, copy. In the former the difference was an essential element; +in the latter an involuntary defect. We should think it strange, if a +tale in dance were announced, and the actors did not dance at all;--and +yet such is modern comedy. + + + + +WHALLEY'S PREFACE. + + +But Jonson was soon sensible, how inconsistent this medley of names and +manners was in reason and nature; and with how little propriety it could +ever have a place in a legitimate and just picture of real life. + + +But did Jonson reflect that the very essence of a play, the very +language in which it is written, is a fiction to which all the parts +must conform? Surely, Greek manners in English should be a still grosser +improbability than a Greek name transferred to English manners. Ben's +'personae' are too often not characters, but derangements;--the hopeless +patients of a mad-doctor rather,--exhibitions of folly betraying itself +in spite of existing reason and prudence. He not poetically, but +painfully exaggerates every trait; that is, not by the drollery of the +circumstance, but by the excess of the originating feeling. + +But to this we might reply, that far from being thought to build his +characters upon abstract ideas, he was really accused of representing +particular persons then existing; and that even those characters which +appear to be the most exaggerated, are said to have had their respective +archetypes in nature and life. + +This degrades Jonson into a libeller, instead of justifying him as a +dramatic poet. 'Non quod verum est, sed quod verisimile', is the +dramatist's rule. At all events, the poet who chooses transitory +manners, ought to content himself with transitory praise. If his object +be reputation, he ought not to expect fame. The utmost he can look +forwards to, is to be quoted by, and to enliven the writings of, an +antiquarian. Pistol, Nym and 'id genus omne', do not please us as +characters, but are endured as fantastic creations, foils to the native +wit of Falstaff.--I say wit emphatically; for this character so often +extolled as the masterpiece of humor, neither contains, nor was meant to +contain, any humor at all. + + + + +WHALLEY'S LIFE OF JONSON. + + +It is to the honor of Jonson's judgment, that 'the greatest poet of our +nation' had the same opinion of Donne's genius and wit; and hath +preserved part of him from perishing, by putting his thoughts and satire +into modern verse. + +'Videlicet' Pope! + +He said further to Drummond, Shakspeare wanted art, and sometimes sense; +for in one of his plays he brought in a number of men, saying they had +suffered shipwreck in Bohemia, where is no sea near by a hundred miles. + +I have often thought Shakspeare justified in this seeming anachronism. +In Pagan times a single name of a German kingdom might well be supposed +to comprise a hundred miles more than at present. The truth is, these +notes of Drummond's are more disgraceful to himself than to Jonson. It +would be easy to conjecture how grossly Jonson must have been +misunderstood, and what he had said in jest, as of Hippocrates, +interpreted in earnest. But this is characteristic of a Scotchman; he +has no notion of a jest, unless you tell him--'This is a joke!'--and +still less of that finer shade of feeling, the half-and-half, in which +Englishmen naturally delight. + + + + + +EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR. + +Epilogue. + + The throat of war be stopt within her land, + And _turtle-footed_ peace dance fairie rings + About her court. + + +'Turtle-footed' is a pretty word, a very pretty word: pray, what does it +mean? Doves, I presume, are not dancers; and the other sort of turtle, +land or sea, green-fat or hawksbill, would, I should suppose, succeed +better in slow minuets than in the brisk rondillo. In one sense, to be +sure, pigeons and ring-doves could not dance but with 'eclat'--'a claw?' + + + + + +POETASTER. + +Introduction. + + + Light! I salute thee, but with wounded nerves, + Wishing thy golden splendor pitchy darkness. + + +There is no reason to suppose Satan's address to the sun in the Paradise +Lost, more than a mere coincidence with these lines; but were it +otherwise, it would be a fine instance, what usurious interest a great +genius pays in borrowing. It would not be difficult to give a detailed +psychological proof from these constant outbursts of anxious +self-assertion, that Jonson was not a genius, a creative power. Subtract +that one thing, and you may safely accumulate on his name all other +excellencies of a capacious, vigorous, agile, and richly-stored +intellect. + +Act i. sc. 1. + + + 'Ovid'. While slaves be false, fathers hard, and bawds be whorish-- + + +The roughness noticed by Theobald and Whalley, may be cured by a simple +transposition:- + + + While fathers hard, slaves false, and bawds be whorish. + + +Act iv. sc. 3. + + + 'Crisp'. O--oblatrant--furibund--fatuate--strenuous. O--conscious. + + +It would form an interesting essay, or rather series of essays, in a +periodical work, were all the attempts to ridicule new phrases brought +together, the proportion observed of words ridiculed which have been +adopted, and are now common, such as 'strenuous', 'conscious', &c., and +a trial made how far any grounds can be detected, so that one might +determine beforehand whether a word was invented under the conditions of +assimilability to our language or not. Thus much is certain, that the +ridiculers were as often wrong as right; and Shakspeare himself could +not prevent the naturalization of 'accommodation', 'remuneration', &c.; +or Swift the gross abuse even of the word 'idea'. + + + + + + +FALL OF SEJANUS. + +Act I. + + + 'Arruntius'. The name Tiberius, I hope, will keep, howe'er he hath + foregone The dignity and power. + + 'Silius'. Sure, while he lives. + + 'Arr'. And dead, it comes to Drusus. Should he fail, + To the brave issue of Germanicus; + And they are three: too many (ha?) for him + To have a plot upon? + + 'Sil'. I do not know + The heart of his designs; but, sure, their face + Looks farther than the present. + + 'Arr'. By the gods, + If I could guess he had but such a thought, + My sword should cleave him down, &c. + + +The anachronic mixture in this Arruntius of the Roman republican, to +whom Tiberius must have appeared as much a tyrant as Sejanus, with his +James-and-Charles-the-First zeal for legitimacy of descent in this +passage, is amusing. Of our great names Milton was, I think, the first +who could properly be called a republican. My recollections of +Buchanan's works are too faint to enable me to judge whether the +historian is not a fair exception. + +Act ii. Speech of Sejanus:-- + + + Adultery! it is the lightest ill + I will commit. A race of wicked acts + Shall flow out of my anger, and o'erspread + The world's wide face, which no posterity + Shall e'er approve, nor yet keep silent, &c. + + +The more we reflect and examine, examine and reflect, the more +astonished shall we be at the immense superiority of Shakspeare over his +contemporaries:--and yet what contemporaries!--giant minds indeed! Think +of Jonson's erudition, and the force of learned authority in that age; +and yet in no genuine part of Shakspeare's works is there to be found +such an absurd rant and ventriloquism as this, and too, too many other +passages ferruminated by Jonson from Seneca's tragedies and the writings +of the later Romans. I call it ventriloquism, because Sejanus is a +puppet, out of which the poet makes his own voice appear to come. + +Act v. Scene of the sacrifice to Fortune. This scene is unspeakably +irrational. To believe, and yet to scoff at, a present miracle is little +less than impossible. Sejanus should have been made to suspect +priestcraft and a secret conspiracy against him. + + + + +VOLPONE. + +This admirable, indeed, but yet more wonderful than admirable, play is +from the fertility and vigour of invention, character, language, and +sentiment the strongest proof, how impossible it is to keep up any +pleasurable interest in a tale, in which there is no goodness of heart +in any of the prominent characters. After the third act, this play +becomes not a dead, but a painful, weight on the feelings. Zeluco is an +instance of the same truth. Bonario and Celia should have been made in +some way or other principals in the plot; which they might have been, +and the objects of interest, without having been made characters. In +novels, the person, in whose fate you are most interested, is often the +least marked character of the whole. If it were possible to lessen the +paramountcy of Volpone himself, a most delightful comedy might be +produced, by making Celia the ward or niece of Corvino, instead of his +wife, and Bonario her lover. + + + + +EPICAENE. + +This is to my feelings the most entertaining of old Ben's comedies, and, +more than any other, would admit of being brought out anew, if under the +management of a judicious and stage-understanding playwright; and an +actor, who had studied Morose, might make his fortune. + +Act i. sc. 1. Clerimont's speech:-- + + + He would have hanged a pewterer's 'prentice once on a Shrove Tuesday's + riot, for being 'o that trade, when the rest were _quiet_. + + The old copies read 'quit', i. e. discharged from working, and gone to + divert themselves. (Whalley's note.) + + +It should be 'quit', no doubt; but not meaning 'discharged from +working,' &c.--but quit, that is, acquitted. The pewterer was at his +holiday diversion as well as the other apprentices, and they as forward +in the riot as he. But he alone was punished under pretext of the riot, +but in fact for his trade. + +Act ii. sc. 1. + + + 'Morose'. Cannot I, yet, find out a more compendious method, than by + this _trunk_, to save my servants the labour of speech, and mine ears + the discord of sounds? + + +What does 'trunk' mean here and in the 1st scene of the 1st act? Is it a +large ear-trumpet?--or rather a tube, such as passes from parlour to +kitchen, instead of a bell? + +Whalley's note at the end. + + +Some critics of the last age imagined the character of Morose to be +wholly out of nature. But to vindicate our poet, Mr. Dryden tells us +from tradition, and we may venture to take his word, that Jonson was +really acquainted with a person of this whimsical turn of mind: and as +humor is a personal quality, the poet is acquitted from the charge of +exhibiting a monster, or an extravagant unnatural caricatura. + + +If Dryden had not made all additional proof superfluous by his own +plays, this very vindication would evince that he had formed a false and +vulgar conception of the nature and conditions of the drama and dramatic +personation. Ben Jonson would himself have rejected such a plea:-- + + + For he knew, poet never credit gain'd + By writing _truths_, but things, like truths, well feign'd. + + +By 'truths' he means 'facts.' Caricatures are not less so, because they +are found existing in real life. Comedy demands characters, and leaves +caricatures to farce. The safest and truest defence of old Ben would be +to call the Epicaene the best of farces. The defect in Morose, as in +other of Jonson's 'dramatis personae', lies in this;--that the accident +is not a prominence growing out of, and nourished by, the character +which still circulates in it, but that the character, such as it is, +rises out of, or, rather, consists in, the accident. Shakspeare's comic +personages have exquisitely characteristic features; however awry, +disproportionate, and laughable they may be, still, like Bardolph's +nose, they are features. But Jonson's are either a man with a huge wen, +having a circulation of its own, and which we might conceive amputated, +and the patient thereby losing all his character; or they are mere wens +themselves instead of men,--wens personified, or with eyes, nose, and +mouth cut out, mandrake-fashion. + +'Nota bene'. All the above, and much more, will have been justly said, +if, and whenever, the drama of Jonson is brought into comparisons of +rivalry with the Shakspearian. But this should not be. Let its +inferiority to the Shakspearian be at once fairly owned,--but at the +same time as the inferiority of an altogether different 'genus' of the +drama. On this ground, old Ben would still maintain his proud height. +He, no less than Shakspeare, stands on the summit of his hill, and looks +round him like a master,--though his be Lattrig and Shakspeare's +Skiddaw. + + + + + +THE ALCHEMIST. + +Act I. sc. 2. Face's speech:-- + + + Will take his oath o' the Greek _Xenophon_, + If need be, in his pocket. + + +Another reading is 'Testament.' Probably, the meaning is,--that +intending to give false evidence, he carried a Greek Xenophon to pass it +off for a Greek Testament, and so avoid perjury--as the Irish do, by +contriving to kiss their thumb-nails instead of the book. + +Act ii. sc. 2. Mammon's speech:-- + + + I will have all my beds blown up; not stuft: + Down is too hard. + + +Thus the air-cushions, though perhaps only lately brought into use, were +invented in idea in the seventeenth century! + + + + + +CATILINE'S CONSPIRACY. + +A fondness for judging one work by comparison with others, perhaps +altogether of a different class, argues a vulgar taste. Yet it is +chiefly on this principle that the Catiline has been rated so low. Take +it and Sejanus, as compositions of a particular kind, namely, as a mode +of relating great historical events in the liveliest and most +interesting manner, and I cannot help wishing that we had whole volumes +of such plays. We might as rationally expect the excitement of the Vicar +of Wakefield from Goldsmith's History of England, as that of Lear, +Othello, &c. from the Sejanus or Catiline. + +Act i. sc. 4. + + + 'Cat'. Sirrah, what ail you? + + ('He spies one of his boys not answer'.) + + 'Pag'. Nothing. + + 'Best'. Somewhat modest. + + 'Cat'. Slave, I will strike your soul out with my foot, &c. + + +This is either an unintelligible, or, in every sense, a most unnatural, +passage,--improbable, if not impossible, at the moment of signing and +swearing such a conspiracy, to the most libidinous satyr. The very +presence of the boys is an outrage to probability. I suspect that these +lines down to the words 'throat opens,' should be removed back so as to +follow the words 'on this part of the house,' in the speech of Catiline +soon after the entry of the conspirators. A total erasure, however, +would be the best, or, rather, the only possible, amendment. + +Act ii. sc. 2. Sempronia's speech:-- + + + --He is but a new fellow, + An _inmate_ here in Rome, as Catiline calls him-- + + +A 'lodger' would have been a happier imitation of the 'inquilinus' of +Sallust. + +Act iv. sc. 6. Speech of Cethegus:-- + + + Can these or such be any aids to us, &c. + + +What a strange notion Ben must have formed of a determined, remorseless, +all-daring, fool-hardiness, to have represented it in such a mouthing +Tamburlane, and bombastic tongue-bully as this Cethegus of his! + + + + + +BARTHOLOMEW FAIR. + +Induction. Scrivener's speech:-- + + + If there be never a _servant-monster_ i' the Fair, who can help it, he + says, nor a nest of antiques? + + +The best excuse that can be made for Jonson, and in a somewhat less +degree for Beaumont and Fletcher, in respect of these base and silly +sneers at Shakspeare, is, that his plays were present to men's minds +chiefly as acted. They had not a neat edition of them, as we have, so +as, by comparing the one with the other, to form a just notion of the +mighty mind that produced the whole. At all events, and in every point +of view, Jonson stands far higher in a moral light than Beaumont and +Fletcher. He was a fair contemporary, and in his way, and as far as +Shakspeare is concerned, an original. But Beaumont and Fletcher were +always imitators of, and often borrowers from, him, and yet sneer at him +with a spite far more malignant than Jonson, who, besides, has made +noble compensation by his praises. + +Act ii. sc. 3. + + + 'Just'. I mean a child of the horn-thumb, a babe _of booty_, boy, a + cutpurse. + + +Does not this confirm, what the passage itself cannot but suggest, the +propriety of substituting 'booty' for 'beauty' in Falstaff's speech, +Henry IV. Pt. I. act i. sc. 2. 'Let not us, &c.?' + +It is not often that old Ben condescends to imitate a modern author; but +master Dan. Knockhum Jordan and his vapours are manifest reflexes of Nym +and Pistol. + +Ib. sc. 5. + + + 'Quarl'. She'll make excellent geer for the coachmakers here in + Smithfield, to anoint wheels and axletrees with. + + +Good! but yet it falls short of the speech of a Mr. Johnes, M. P., in +the Common Council, on the invasion intended by Buonaparte: 'Houses +plundered--then burnt;--sons conscribed--wives and daughters ravished, +&c. &c.--"But as for you, you luxurious Aldermen! with your fat will he +grease the wheels of his triumphal chariot!" + +Ib. sc. 6. + + + 'Cok'. Avoid i' your satin doublet, Numps. + + +This reminds me of Shakspeare's 'Aroint thee, witch!' I find in several +books of that age the words _aloigne_ and _eloigne_--that is,--'keep +your distance!' or 'off with you!' Perhaps 'aroint' was a corruption of +'aloigne' by the vulgar. The common etymology from _ronger_ to gnaw +seems unsatisfactory. + +Act iii. sc. 4. + + + 'Quarl', How now, Numps! almost tired i' your protectorship? + overparted, overparted? + + +An odd sort of prophetic ality in this Numps and old Noll! + +Ib. sc. 6. Knockhum's speech:-- + + + He eats with his eyes, as well as his teeth. + + +A good motto for the Parson in Hogarth's Election Dinner,--who shows how +easily he might be reconciled to the Church of Rome, for he worships +what he eats. + +Act v. sc. 5. + + + 'Pup. Di'. It is not prophane. + + 'Lan'. It is not prophane, he says. + + 'Boy'. It is prophane. + + 'Pup'. It is not prophane. + + 'Boy'. It is prophane. + + 'Pup'. It is not prophane. + + 'Lan'. Well said, confute him with Not, still. + + +An imitation of the quarrel between Bacchus and the Frogs in +Aristophanes:-- + + +[Greek (transliterated): + + Choros. alla maen kekraxomestha g', hoposon hae pharugx an aem_on + chandanae, di' aemeras, brekekekex, koax, koax. + + Dionusos. touto gar ou nikaesete. + + Choros. oude maen haemas su pant_os. + + Dionusos. oude maen humeis ge dae m' oudepote.] + + + + + +THE DEVIL IS AN ASS. + +Act I. sc. 1. + + + 'Pug'. Why any: Fraud, Or Covetousness, or lady Vanity, + Or old Iniquity, _I'll call him hither_. + + The words in italics [between undescores] should probably be given to + the master-devil, Satan. (Whalley's note.) + + +That is, against all probability, and with a (for Jonson) impossible +violation of character. The words plainly belong to Pug, and mark at +once his simpleness and his impatience. + +Ib. sc. 4. Fitz-dottrel's soliloquy:- + +Compare this exquisite piece of sense, satire, and sound philosophy in +1616 with Sir M. Hale's speech from the bench in a trial of a witch many +years afterwards. [1] + +Act ii. sc. 1. Meercraft's speech:-- + + + Sir, money's a whore, a bawd, a drudge.-- + + +I doubt not that 'money' was the first word of the line, and has dropped +out:-- + + + Money! Sir, money's a, &c. + + +[Footnote 1: In 1664, at Bury St. Edmonds on the trial of Rose Cullender +and Amy Duny. Ed.] + + + + + +THE STAPLE OF NEWS. + +Act IV. sc. 3. Pecunia's speech:-- + + + No, he would ha' done, + That lay not in his power: he had the use + Of your bodies, Band and Wax, and sometimes Statute's. + + +Read (1815), + + + --he had the use of + Your bodies, &c. + + +Now, however, I doubt the legitimacy of my transposition of the 'of' +from the beginning of this latter line to the end of the one +preceding;--for though it facilitates the metre and reading of the +latter line, and is frequent in Massinger, this disjunction of the +preposition from its case seems to have been disallowed by Jonson. +Perhaps the better reading is-- + + + O' your bodies, &c.-- + + +the two syllables being slurred into one, or rather snatched, or sucked, +up into the emphasized 'your.' In all points of view, therefore, Ben's +judgment is just; for in this way, the line cannot be read, as metre, +without that strong and quick emphasis on 'your' which the sense +requires;--and had not the sense required an emphasis on 'your,' the +_tmesis_ of the sign of its cases 'of,' 'to,' &c. would destroy almost +all boundary between the dramatic verse and prose in comedy:--a lesson +not to be rash in conjectural amendments. 1818. + +Ib. sc. 4. + + + 'P. jun.' I love all men of virtue, _frommy_ Princess.-- + + +'Frommy,' 'fromme', pious, dutiful, &c. + +Act v. sc. 4. Penny-boy sen. and Porter:-- + +I dare not, will not, think that honest Ben had Lear in his mind in this +mock mad scene. + + + + + + +THE NEW INN. + +Act I. sc. 1. Host's speech:-- + + A heavy purse, and then two turtles, _makes_.-- + + +'Makes', frequent in old books, and even now used in some counties for +mates, or pairs. + +Ib. sc. 3. Host's speech:-- + + + --And for a leap + O' the vaulting horse, to _play_ the vaulting _house_.-- + + +Instead of reading with Whalley 'ply' for 'play,' I would suggest +'horse' for 'house.' The meaning would then be obvious and pertinent. +The punlet, or pun-maggot, or pun intentional, 'horse and house,' is +below Jonson. The 'jeu-de-mots' just below-- + + + Read a lecture + Upon _Aquinas_ at St. Thomas a _Water_ings-- + +had a learned smack in it to season its insipidity. + +Ib. sc. 6. Lovel's speech:-- + + + Then shower'd his bounties on me, like the Hours, + That open-handed sit upon the clouds, + And press the liberality of heaven + Down to the laps of thankful men! + + +Like many other similar passages in Jonson, this is [Greek +(transliterated): eidos chalepon idein]--a sight which it is difficult +to make one's self see,--a picture my fancy cannot copy detached from +the words. + +Act ii. sc. 5. Though it was hard upon old Ben, yet Felton, it must be +confessed, was in the right in considering the Fly, Tipto, Bat Burst, +&c. of this play mere dotages. Such a scene as this was enough to damn a +new play; and Nick Stuff is worse still,--most abominable stuff indeed! + +Act in. sc. 2. Lovel's speech:-- + + + So knowledge first begets benevolence, + Benevolence breeds friendship, friendship love.-- + + +Jonson has elsewhere proceeded thus far; but the part most difficult and +delicate, yet, perhaps, not the least capable of being both morally and +poetically treated, is the union itself, and what, even in this life, it +can be. + + + + + +NOTES ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. + +Seward's Preface. 1750. + + +The King And No King, too, is extremely spirited in all its characters; +Arbaces holds up a mirror to all men of virtuous principles but violent +passions. Hence he is, as it were, at once magnanimity and pride, +patience and fury, gentleness and rigor, chastity and incest, and is one +of the finest mixtures of virtues and vices that any poet has drawn, &c. + + +These are among the endless instances of the abject state to which +psychology had sunk from the reign of Charles I. to the middle of the +present reign of George III.; and even now it is but just awaking. + +Ib. Seward's comparison of Julia's speech in the Two Gentlemen of +Verona, act iv. last scene-- + + + Madam, 'twas Ariadne passioning, &c.-- + + +with Aspatia's speech in the Maid's Tragedy-- + + + I stand upon the sea-beach now, &c. (Act ii.) + + +and preference of the latter. + +It is strange to take an incidental passage of one writer, intended only +for a subordinate part, and compare it with the same thought in another +writer, who had chosen it for a prominent and principal figure. + +Ib. Seward's preference of Alphonso's poisoning in A Wife for a Month, +act i. sc. 1, to the passage in King John, act v. sc. 7,-- + + + Poison'd, ill fare! dead, forsook, cast off! + + +Mr. Seward! Mr. Seward! you may be, and I trust you are, an angel; but +you were an ass. + +Ib. + + Every reader of _taste_ will see how superior this is to the quotation + from Shakspeare. + + +Of what taste? + +Ib. Seward's classification of the Plays:-- + +Surely Monsieur Thomas, The Chances, Beggar's Bush, and the Pilgrim, +should have been placed in the very first class! But the whole attempt +ends in a woeful failure. + + + + + +HARRIS'S COMMENDATORY POEM ON FLETCHER. + + + I'd have a state of wit convok'd, which hath + A _power_ to take up on common faith:-- + + +This is an instance of that modifying of quantity by emphasis, without +which our elder poets cannot be scanned. 'Power,' here, instead of being +one long syllable--pow'r--must be sounded, not indeed as a spondee, nor +yet as a trochee; but as--[Symbol: u-shape beneath line];--the first +syllable is 1 1/4. + +We can, indeed, never expect an authentic edition of our elder dramatic +poets (for in those times a drama was a poem), until some man undertakes +the work, who has studied the philosophy of metre. This has been found +the main torch of sound restoration in the Greek dramatists by Bentley, +Porson, and their followers;--how much more, then, in writers in our own +language! It is true that quantity, an almost iron law with the Greek, +is in English rather a subject for a peculiarly fine ear, than any law +or even rule; but, then, instead of it, we have, first, accent; +secondly, emphasis; and lastly, retardation, and acceleration of the +times of syllables according to the meaning of the words, the passion +that accompanies them, and even the character of the person that uses +them. With due attention to these,--above all, to that, which requires +the most attention and the finest taste, the character, Massinger, for +example, might be reduced to a rich and yet regular metre. But then the +'regulae' must be first known;--though I will venture to say, that he who +does not find a line (not corrupted) of Massinger's flow to the time +total of a trimeter catalectic iambic verse, has not read it aright. But +by virtue of the last principle--the retardation or acceleration of +time--we have the proceleusmatic foot * * * *, and the 'dispondaeus' -- + -- -- --, not to mention the 'choriambus', the ionics, paeons, and +epitrites. Since Dryden, the metre of our poets leads to the sense: in +our elder and more genuine bards, the sense, including the passion, +leads to the metre. Read even Donne's satires as he meant them to be +read, and as the sense and passion demand, and you will find in the +lines a manly harmony. + + + + + +LIFE OF FLETCHER IN STOCKDALE'S EDITION. 1811. + + +In general their plots are more regular than Shakspeare's.-- + + +This is true, if true at all, only before a court of criticism, which +judges one scheme by the laws of another and a diverse one. Shakspeare's +plots have their own laws or regulae, and according to these they are +regular. + + + + + +MAID'S TRAGEDY. + +Act I. The metrical arrangement is most slovenly throughout. + + + 'Strat'. As well as masque can be, &c. + + +and all that follows to 'who is return'd'--is plainly blank verse, and +falls easily into it. + +Ib. Speech of Melantius:-- + + + These soft and silken wars are not for me: + The music must be shrill, and all confus'd, + That stirs my blood; and then I dance with arms. + + +What strange self-trumpeters and tongue-bullies all the brave soldiers +of Beaumont and Fletcher are! Yet I am inclined to think it was the +fashion of the age from the Soldier's speech in the Counter Scuffle; and +deeper than the fashion B. and F. did not fathom. + +Ib. Speech of Lysippus:-- + + + Yes, but this lady + Walks discontented, with her wat'ry eyes + Bent on the earth, &c. + + +Opulent as Shakspeare was, and of his opulence prodigal, he yet would +not have put this exquisite piece of poetry in the mouth of a +no-character, or as addressed to a Melantius. I wish that B. and F. had +written poems instead of tragedies. + +Ib. + + + 'Mel'. I might run fiercely, not more hastily, Upon my foe. + + +Read + + + I might run more fiercely, not more hastily.-- + + +Ib. Speech of Calianax:-- + + + Office! I would I could put it off! I am sure I sweat quite through my + office! + + +The syllable _off_ reminds the testy statesman of his robe, and he +carries on the image. + +Ib. Speech of Melantius:-- + + + --Would that blood, + That sea of blood, that I have lost in fight, &c. + + +All B. and F.'s generals are pugilists, or cudgel-fighters, that boast +of their bottom and of the _claret_ they have shed. + +Ib. The Masque;--Cinthia's speech:-- + + + But I will give a greater state and glory, + And raise to time a _noble_ memory + Of what these lovers are. + + +I suspect that 'nobler,' pronounced as 'nobiler'--[Symbol (metrical): +U-=shape below the line]--, was the poet's word, and that the accent is +to be placed on the penultimate of 'memory.' As to the passage-- + + + Yet, while our reign lasts, let us stretch our power, &c. + + +removed from the text of Cinthia's speech by these foolish editors as +unworthy of B. and F.--the first eight lines are not worse, and the last +couplet incomparably better, than the stanza retained. + +Act ii. Amintor's speech:-- + + + Oh, thou hast nam'd a word, that wipes away + All thoughts revengeful! In that sacred name, + 'The king,' there lies a terror. + + +It is worth noticing that of the three greatest tragedians, Massinger +was a democrat, Beaumont and Fletcher the most servile _jure divino_ +royalist, and Shakspeare a philosopher;--if aught personal, an +aristocrat. + + + + + +A KING AND NO KING. + +Act IV. Speech of Tigranes:-- + + + She, that forgat the greatness of her grief + And miseries, that must follow such mad passions, + Endless and wild _as_ women! &c. + + +Seward's note and suggestion of 'in.' + +It would be amusing to learn from some existing friend of Mr. Seward +what he meant, or rather dreamed, in this note. It is certainly a +difficult passage, of which there are two solutions;--one, that the +writer was somewhat more injudicious than usual;--the other, that he was +very, very much more profound and Shakspearian than usual. Seward's +emendation, at all events, is right and obvious. Were it a passage of +Shakspeare, I should not hesitate to interpret it as characteristic of +Tigranes' state of mind,--disliking the very virtues, and therefore +half-consciously representing them as mere products of the violence, of +the sex in general in all their whims, and yet forced to admire, and to +feel and to express gratitude for, the exertion in his own instance. The +inconsistency of the passage would be the consistency of the author. But +this is above Beaumont and Fletcher. + + + + + +THE SCORNFUL LADY. + +Act II. Sir Roger's speech:-- + + + Did I for this consume my _quarters_ in meditations, vows, and woo'd + her in heroical epistles? Did I expound the Owl, and undertake, with + labor and expense, the recollection of those thousand pieces, consum'd + in cellars and tobacco-shops, of that our honor'd Englishman, Nic. + Broughton? &c. + + +Strange, that neither Mr. Theobald, nor Mr. Seward, should have seen +that this mock heroic speech is in full-mouthed blank verse! Had they +seen this, they would have seen that 'quarters' is a substitution of the +players for 'quires' or 'squares,' (that is) of paper:-- + + + Consume my quires in meditations, vows, + And woo'd her in heroical epistles. + + +They ought, likewise, to have seen that the abbreviated 'Ni. Br.' of the +text was properly 'Mi. Dr.'--and that Michael Drayton, not Nicholas +Broughton, is here ridiculed for his poem The Owl and his Heroical +Epistles. + +Ib. Speech of Younger Loveless:-- + + + Fill him some wine. Thou dost not see me mov'd, &c. + + +These Editors ought to have learnt, that scarce an instance occurs in B. +and F. of a long speech not in metre. This is plain staring blank verse. + + + + + + +THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY. + +I cannot but think that in a country conquered by a nobler race than the +natives, and in which the latter became villeins and bondsmen, this +custom, 'lex merchetae', may have been introduced for wise purposes,--as +of improving the breed, lessening the antipathy of different races, and +producing a new bond of relationship between the lord and the tenant, +who, as the eldest born, would, at least, have a chance of being, and a +probability of being thought, the lord's child. In the West Indies it +cannot have these effects, because the mulatto is marked by nature +different from the father, and because there is no bond, no law, no +custom, but of mere debauchery. 1815. + +Act i. sc. 1. Rutilio's speech:-- + + + Yet if you play not fair play, &c. + + +Evidently to be transposed and read thus:-- + + + Yet if you play not fair, above-board too, I'll tell you what--I've a + foolish engine here:--I say no more--But if your Honor's guts are not + enchanted-- + + +Licentious as the comic metre of B. and F. is,--a far more lawless, and +yet far less happy, imitation of the rhythm of animated talk in real +life than Massinger's--still it is made worse than it really is by +ignorance of the halves, thirds, and two-thirds of a line which B. and +F. adopted from the Italian and Spanish dramatists. Thus in Rutilio's +speech:-- + + + Though I confess + Any man would desire to have her, and by any means, &c. + + +Correct the whole passage-- + + + Though I confess + Any man would Desire to have her, and by any means, + At any rate too, yet this common hangman + That hath whipt off a /THOUsand maids' HEADS/ already-- + That he should glean the harvest, sticks in my stomach! + +[Between the two /, upper-case syllables have the stress, written as a +horizontal line above them in the original text, and lower-case +syllables are unstressed, written as a u-shape (the u-symbol previously +described) above them. text Ed.] + + +In all comic metres the gulping of short syllables, and the abbreviation +of syllables ordinarily long by the rapid pronunciation of eagerness and +vehemence, are not so much a license, as a law,--a faithful copy of +nature, and let them be read characteristically, the times will be found +nearly equal. Thus the three words marked above make a 'choriambus'--u u +--, or perhaps a 'paeon primus'--u u u; a dactyl, by virtue of comic +rapidity, being only equal to an iambus when distinctly pronounced. I +have no doubt that all B. and F.'s works might be safely corrected by +attention to this rule, and that the editor is entitled to +transpositions of all kinds, and to not a few omissions. For the rule of +the metre once lost--what was to restrain the actors from interpolation? + + + + + +THE ELDER BROTHER + +Act I. sc. 2. Charles's speech:-- + + + --For what concerns tillage, + Who better can deliver it than Virgil + In his Georgicks? and to cure your herds, + His Bucolicks is a master-piece. + + +Fletcher was too good a scholar to fall into so gross a blunder, as +Messrs. Sympson and Colman suppose. I read the passage thus:- + + + --For what concerns tillage, + Who better can deliver it than Virgil, + In his /GeORGicks/, _or_ to cure your herds; + (His Bucolicks are a master-piece.) + But when, &c. + + +Jealous of Virgil's honor, he is afraid lest, by referring to the +Georgics alone, he might be understood as undervaluing the preceding +work. 'Not that I do not admire the Bucolics, too, in their way:--But +when, &c.' + +Act iii. sc. 3. Charles's speech:-- + + + --She has a face looks like a _story_; + The _story_ of the heavens looks very like her. + + +Seward reads 'glory;' and Theobald quotes from Philaster-- + + + That reads the story of a woman's face.-- + + +I can make sense of this passage as little as Mr. Seward;--the passage +from Philaster is nothing to the purpose. Instead of 'a story,' I have +sometimes thought of proposing 'Astraea.' + +Ib. Angellina's speech:-- + + + --You're old and dim, Sir, + And the shadow of the earth eclips'd your judgment. + + +Inappropriate to Angellina, but one of the finest lines in our language. + +Act iv. sc. 3. Charles's speech:-- + + + And lets the serious part of life run by + As thin neglected sand, whiteness of name. + You must be mine, &c. + + +Seward's note, and reading-- + + + --Whiteness of name, + You must be mine! + + +Nonsense! 'Whiteness of name,' is in apposition to 'the serious part of +life,' and means a deservedly pure reputation. The following line--'You +_must_ be mine!' means--'Though I do not enjoy you to-day, I shall +hereafter, and without reproach.' + + + + + + +THE SPANISH CURATE. + +Act IV. sc. 7. Amaranta's speech:-- + + + And still I push'd him on, as he had been _coming_. + + +Perhaps the true word is 'conning,' that is, learning, or reading, and +therefore inattentive. + + + + + +WIT WITHOUT MONEY. + +Act I. Valentine's speech:-- + + + One without substance, &c. + + +The present text, and that proposed by Seward, are equally vile. I have +endeavoured to make the lines sense, though the whole is, I suspect, +incurable except by bold conjectural reformation. I would read thus:-- + + + One without substance of herself, that's woman; + Without the pleasure of her life, that's wanton; + Tho' she be young, forgetting it; tho' fair, + Making her glass the eyes of honest men, + Not her own admiration. + + +'That's wanton,' or, 'that is to say, wantonness.' + +Act ii. Valentine's speech:-- + + + Of half-a-crown a week for pins and puppets-- + + As there is a syllable wanting in the measure here. (Seward.) + + +A syllable wanting! Had this Seward neither ears nor fingers? The line +is a more than usually regular iambic hendecasyllable. + +Ib. + + + With one man satisfied, with one rein guided; + With one faith, one content, one bed; + _Aged_, she makes the wife, preserves the fame and issue; + A widow is, &c. + + +Is 'apaid'--contented--too obsolete for B. and F.? If not, we might read +it thus:- + + + Content with one faith, with one bed apaid, + She makes the wife, preserves the fame and issue;-- + + +Or it may be-- + + + --with one breed apaid-- + + +that is, satisfied with one set of children, in opposition to-- + + + A widow is a Christmas-box, &c. + + +Colman's note on Seward's attempt to put this play into metre. + +The editors, and their contemporaries in general, were ignorant of any +but the regular iambic verse. A study of the Aristophanic and Plautine +metres would have enabled them to reduce B. and F. throughout into +metre, except where prose is really intended. + + + + + + +THE HUMOROUS LIEUTENANT. + +Act I. sc. 1. Second Ambassador's speech:-- + + + --When your angers, _Like_ so many brother billows, rose together, + And, curling up _your_ foaming crests, defied, &c. + + +This worse than superfluous 'like' is very like an interpolation of some +matter of fact critic--all 'pus, prose atque venenum'. The 'your' in the +next line, instead of 'their,' is likewise yours, Mr. Critic! + +Act ii: sc. 1. Timon's speech:-- + + + Another of a new _way_ will be look'd at.-- + +We much suspect the poets wrote, 'of a new _day_.' So, immediately +after, + + --Time may For all his wisdom, yet give us a day. + + (SEWARD'S NOTE.) + + +For this very reason I more than suspect the contrary. + +Ib. sc. 3. Speech of Leucippe:-- + + + I'll put her into action for a _wastcoat_.-- + + +What we call a riding-habit,--some mannish dress. + + + + + +THE MAD LOVER. + +Act IV. Masque of beasts:-- + + + --This goodly tree, + An usher that still grew before his lady, + Wither'd at root: this, for he could not wooe, + A grumbling lawyer: &c. + + +Here must have been omitted a line rhyming to 'tree;' and the words of +the next line have been transposed:-- + + + --This goodly tree, + _Which leafless, and obscur'd with moss you see_, + An usher this, that 'fore his lady grew, + Wither'd at root: this, for he could not wooe, &c. + + + + +THE LOYAL SUBJECT. + +It is well worthy of notice, and yet has not been, I believe, noticed +hitherto, what a marked difference there exists in the dramatic writers +of the Elizabetho-Jacobaean age--(Mercy on me! what a phrase for 'the +writers during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I.!')--in respect of +their political opinions. Shakspeare, in this as in all other things, +himself and alone, gives the permanent politics of human nature, and the +only predilection, which appears, shews itself in his contempt of mobs +and the populacy. Massinger is a decided Whig;--Beaumont and Fletcher +high-flying, passive-obedience, Tories. The Spanish dramatists furnished +them with this, as with many other ingredients. By the by, an accurate +and familiar acquaintance with all the productions of the Spanish stage +previously to 1620, is an indispensable qualification for an editor of +B. and F.;--and with this qualification a most interesting and +instructive edition might be given. This edition of Colman's Stockdale, +(1811,) is below criticism. + +In metre, B. and F. are inferior to Shakspeare, on the one hand, as +expressing the poetic part of the drama, and to Massinger, on the other, +in the art of reconciling metre with the natural rhythm of +conversation,--in which, indeed, Massinger is unrivalled. Read him +aright, and measure by time, not syllables, and no lines can be more +legitimate,--none in which the substitution of equipollent feet, and the +modifications by emphasis, are managed with such exquisite judgment. B. +and F. are fond of the twelve syllable (not Alexandrine) line, as-- + + + Too many fears' tis thought too: and to nourish those-- + + +This has, often, a good effect, and is one of the varieties most common +in Shakspeare. + + + + +RULE A WIFE AND HAVE A WIFE. + +Act III. Old Woman's speech:-- + + + --I fear he will knock my Brains out for lying. + + +Mr. Seward discards the words 'for lying', because 'most of the things +spoke of Estifania are true, with only a little exaggeration, and +because they destroy all appearance of measure.' (Colman's note.) + +Mr. Seward had his brains out. The humor lies in Estifania's having +ordered the Old Woman to tell these tales of her; for though an +intriguer, she is not represented as other than chaste; and as to the +metre, it is perfectly correct. + +Ib. + + 'Marg'. As you love me, give way. + + 'Leon'. It shall be better, I will give none, madam, &c. + + +The meaning is: 'It shall be a better way, first;--as it is, I will not +give it, or any that you in your present mood would wish.' + + + + + +THE LAWS OF CANDY. + +Act I. Speech of Melitus:-- + + Whose insolence and never yet match'd pride + Can by no character be well express'd, + But in her only name, the proud Erota. + +Colman's note. + +The poet intended no allusion to the word 'Erota' itself; but says that +her very name, 'the proud Erota,' became a character and adage; as we +say, a Quixote or a Brutus: so to say an 'Erota,' expressed female pride +and insolence of beauty. + +Ib. Speech of Antinous:- + + Of my peculiar honors, not deriv'd + From 'successary', but purchas'd with my blood.-- + + +The poet doubtless wrote 'successry,' which, though not adopted in our +language, would be, on many occasions, as here, a much more significant +phrase than ancestry. + + + + +THE LITTLE FRENCH LAWYER. + +Act I. sc. 1. Dinant's speech:-- + + Are you become a patron too? 'Tis a new one, + No more on't, &c. + +Seward reads:-- + + Are you become a patron too? + _How long Have you been conning this speech?_ 'Tis a new one, &c. + +If conjectural emendation, like this, be allowed, we might venture to +read:-- + + Are you become a patron _to a new tune_? + +or, + + Are you become a patron? 'Tis a new _tune_. + + +Ib. + + 'Din'. Thou wouldst not willingly Live a protested coward, or be call'd + one? + + 'Cler'. Words are but words. + + 'Din'. Nor wouldst thou take a blow? + +Seward's note. + +O miserable! Dinant sees through Cleremont's gravity, and the actor is +to explain it. 'Words are but words,' is the last struggle of affected +morality. + + + + +VALENTINIAN. + +Act I. sc. 3. It is a real trial of charity to read this scene with +tolerable temper towards Fletcher. So very slavish--so reptile--are the +feelings and sentiments represented as duties. And yet remember he was a +bishop's son, and the duty to God was the supposed basis. + +Personals, including body, house, home, and religion;--property, +subordination, and inter-community;--these are the fundamentals of +society. I mean here, religion negatively taken,--so that the person be +not compelled to do or utter, in relation of the soul to God, what would +be, in that person, a lie;--such as to force a man to go to church, or +to swear that he believes what he does not believe. Religion, positively +taken, may be a great and useful privilege, but cannot be a right,--were +it for this only that it cannot be pre-defined. The ground of this +distinction between negative and positive religion, as a social right, +is plain. No one of my fellow-citizens is encroached on by my not +declaring to him what I believe respecting the super-sensual; but should +every man be entitled to preach against the preacher, who could hear any +preacher? Now it is different in respect of loyalty. There we have +positive rights, but not negative rights;--for every pretended negative +would be in effect a positive;--as if a soldier had a right to keep to +himself, whether he would, or would not, fight. Now, no one of these +fundamentals can be rightfully attacked, except when the guardian of it +has abused it to subvert one or more of the rest. The reason is, that +the guardian, as a fluent, is less than the permanent which he is to +guard. He is the temporary and mutable mean, and derives his whole value +from the end. In short, as robbery is not high treason, so neither is +every unjust act of a king the converse. All must be attacked and +endangered. Why? Because the king, as 'a' to A., is a mean to A. or +subordination, in a far higher sense than a proprietor, as 'b'. to B. is +a mean to B. or property. + +Act ii. sc. 2. Claudia's speech:- + + Chimney-pieces! &c. + +The whole of this speech seems corrupt; and if accurately printed,--that +is, if the same in all the prior editions, irremediable but by bold +conjecture. ''Till' my tackle,' should be, I think, 'while,' &c. + +Act iii. sc. 1. B. and F. always write as if virtue or goodness were a +sort of talisman, or strange something, that might be lost without the +least fault on the part of the owner. In short, their chaste ladies +value their chastity as a material thing--not as an act or state of +being; and this mere thing being imaginary, no wonder that all their +women are represented with the minds of strumpets, except a few +irrational humorists, far less capable of exciting our sympathy than a +Hindoo, who has had a bason of cow-broth thrown over him;--for this, +though a debasing superstition, is still real, and we might pity the +poor wretch, though we cannot help despising him. But B. and F.'s +Lucinas are clumsy fictions. It is too plain that the authors had no one +idea of chastity as a virtue, but only such a conception as a blind man +might have of the power of seeing, by handling an ox's eye. In The Queen +of Corinth, indeed, they talk differently; but it is all talk, and +nothing is real in it but the dread of losing a reputation. Hence the +frightful contrast between their women (even those who are meant for +virtuous) and Shakspeare's. So, for instance, The Maid in the Mill:--a +woman must not merely have grown old in brothels, but have chuckled over +every abomination committed in them with a rampant sympathy of +imagination, to have had her fancy so drunk with the 'minutiae' of +lechery as this icy chaste virgin evinces hers to have been. + +It would be worth while to note how many of these plays are founded on +rapes,--how many on incestuous passions, and how many on mere lunacies. +Then their virtuous women are either crazy superstitions of a merely +bodily negation of having been acted on, or strumpets in their +imaginations and wishes, or, as in this Maid in the Mill, both at the same +time. In the men, the love is merely lust in one direction,--exclusive +preference of one object. The tyrant's speeches are mostly taken from the +mouths of indignant denouncers of the tyrant's character, with the +substitution of 'I' for 'he,' and the omission of the prefatory 'he acts +as if he thought' so and so. The only feelings they can possibly excite +are disgust at the Aeciuses, if regarded as sane loyalists, or compassion, +if considered as Bedlamites. So much for their tragedies. But even their +comedies are, most of them, disturbed by the fantasticalness, or gross +caricature, of the persons or incidents. There are few characters that you +can really like,--(even though you should have had erased from your mind +all the filth, which bespatters the most likeable of them, as Piniero in +The Island Princess for instance,)--scarcely one whom you can love. How +different this from Shakspeare, who makes one have a sort of sneaking +affection even for his Barnardines;--whose very Iagos and Richards are +awful, and, by the counteracting power of profound intellects, rendered +fearful rather than hateful;--and even the exceptions, as Goneril and +Regan, are proofs of superlative judgment and the finest moral tact, in +being left utter monsters, 'nulla virtute redemptae,' and in being kept out +of sight as much as possible,--they being, indeed, only means for the +excitement and deepening of noblest emotions towards the Lear, Cordelia, +&c. and employed with the severest economy! But even Shakspeare's +grossness--that which is really so, independently of the increase in +modern times of vicious associations with things indifferent,--(for there +is a state of manners conceivable so pure, that the language of Hamlet at +Ophelia's feet might be a harmless rallying, or playful teazing, of a +shame that would exist in Paradise)--at the worst, how diverse in kind is +it from Beaumont and Fletcher's! In Shakspeare it is the mere generalities +of sex, mere words for the most part, seldom or never distinct images, all +head-work, and fancy-drolleries; there is no sensation supposed in the +speaker. I need not proceed to contrast this with B. and F. + + + +ROLLO. + +This is, perhaps, the most energetic of Fletcher's tragedies. He +evidently aimed at a new Richard III. in Rollo;--but as in all his other +imitations of Shakspeare, he was not philosopher enough to bottom his +original. Thus, in Rollo, he has produced a mere personification of +outrageous wickedness, with no fundamental characteristic impulses to +make either the tyrant's words or actions philosophically intelligible. +Hence, the most pathetic situations border on the horrible, and what he +meant for the terrible, is either hateful, [Greek (transliterated): to +misaeton], or ludicrous. The scene of Baldwin's sentence in the third +act is probably the grandest working of passion in all B. and F.'s +dramas;--but the very magnificence of filial affection given to Edith, +in this noble scene, renders the after scene--(in imitation of one of +the least Shakspearian of all Shakspeare's works, if it be his, the +scene between Richard and Lady Anne,)--in which Edith is yielding to a +few words and tears, not only unnatural, but disgusting. In Shakspeare, +Lady Anne is described as a weak, vain, very woman throughout. + +Act i. sc. I. + + 'Gis'. He is indeed the perfect character + Of a good man, and so his actions speak him. + +This character of Aubrey, and the whole spirit of this and several other +plays of the same authors, are interesting as traits of the morals which +it was fashionable to teach in the reigns of James I. and his successor, +who died a martyr to them. Stage, pulpit, law, fashion,--all conspired +to enslave the realm. Massinger's plays breathe the opposite spirit; +Shakspeare's the spirit of wisdom which is for all ages. By the by, the +Spanish dramatists--Calderon, in particular,--had some influence in this +respect, of romantic loyalty to the greatest monsters, as well as in the +busy intrigues of B. and F.'s plays. + + + + +THE WILD GOOSE CHASE. + +Act II. sc. 1. Belleur's speech:-- + + --that wench, methinks, + If I were but well set on, for she is _a fable_, + If I were but hounded right, and one to teach me. + +Sympson reads 'affable,' which Colman rejects, and says, 'the next line +seems to enforce' the reading in the text. + +Pity, that the editor did not explain wherein the sense, 'seemingly +enforced by the next line,' consists. May the true word be 'a sable,' +that is, a black fox, hunted for its precious fur? Or 'at-able,'--as we +now say,--'she is come-at-able?' + + + + +A WIFE FOR A MONTH. + +Act IV. sc. 1. Alphonso's speech:- + + Betwixt the cold bear and the raging lion + Lies my safe way. + +Seward's note and alteration to-- + + 'Twixt the cold bears, far from the raging lion-- + +This Mr. Seward is a blockhead of the provoking species. In his itch for +correction, he forgot the words--'lies my safe way!' The Bear is the +extreme pole, and thither he would travel over the space contained +between it and 'the raging lion.' + + + + +THE PILGRIM. + +Act IV. sc. 2. Alinda's interview with her father is lively, and happily +hit off; but this scene with Roderigo is truly excellent. Altogether, +indeed, this play holds the first place in B. and F.'s romantic +entertainments, 'Lustspiele', which collectively are their happiest +performances, and are only inferior to the romance of Shakspeare in the +As you Like It, Twelfth Night, &c. + +Ib. + + 'Alin'. To-day you shall wed Sorrow, + And Repentance will come to-morrow. + +Read 'Penitence,' or else-- + + Repentance, she will come to-morrow. + + + +THE QUEEN OF CORINTH. + +Act II. sc. 1. Merione's speech. Had the scene of this tragi-comedy been +laid in Hindostan instead of Corinth, and the gods here addressed been +the Veeshnoo and Co. of the Indian Pantheon, this rant would not have +been much amiss. + +In respect of style and versification, this play and the following of +Bonduca may be taken as the best, and yet as characteristic, specimens +of Beaumont and Fletcher's dramas. I particularly instance the first +scene of the Bonduca. Take Shakspeare's Richard II., and having selected +some one scene of about the same number of lines, and consisting mostly +of long speeches, compare it with the first scene in Bonduca,--not for +the idle purpose of finding out which is the better, but in order to see +and understand the difference. The latter, that of B. and F., you will +find a Avell arranged bed of flowers, each having its separate root, and +its position determined aforehand by the will of the gardener,--each +fresh plant a fresh volition. In the former you see an Indian fig-tree, +as described by Milton;--all is growth, evolution, [Greek +(transliterated): genesis];--each line, each word almost, begets the +following, and the will of the writer is an interfusion, a continuous +agency, and not a series of separate acts. Shakspeare is the height, +breadth, and depth of genius: Beaumont and Fletcher the excellent +mechanism, in juxta-position and succession, of talent. + + + + +THE NOBLE GENTLEMAN. + + +Why have the dramatists of the times of Elizabeth, James I. and the +first Charles become almost obsolete, with the exception of Shakspeare? +Why do they no longer belong to the English, being once so popular? And +why is Shakspeare an exception?--One thing, among fifty, necessary to +the full solution is, that they all employed poetry and poetic diction +on unpoetic subjects, both characters and situations, especially in +their comedy. Now Shakspeare is all, all ideal,--of no time, and +therefore for all times. Read, for instance, Marine's panegyric in the +first scene of this play:-- + + + Know The eminent court, to them that can be wise, + And fasten on her blessings, is a sun, &c. + + +What can be more unnatural and inappropriate--(not only is, but must be +felt as such)--than such poetry in the mouth of a silly dupe? In short, +the scenes are mock dialogues, in which the poet _solus_ plays the +ventriloquist, but cannot keep down his own way of expressing himself. +Heavy complaints have been made respecting the transprosing of the old +plays by Cibber; but it never occurred to these critics to ask, how it +came that no one ever attempted to transprose a comedy of Shakspeare's. + + + + +THE CORONATION. + +Act I. Speech of Seleucus:-- + + + Altho' he be my enemy, should any + Of the gay flies that buz about the court, + _Sit_ to catch trouts i' the summer, tell me so, + I durst, &c. + + + Colman's note. + +Pshaw! 'Sit' is either a misprint for 'set,' or the old and still +provincial word for 'set,' as the participle passive of 'seat' or 'set.' +I have heard an old Somersetshire gardener say:--"Look, Sir! I set these +plants here; those yonder I 'sit' yesterday." + +Act ii. Speech of Arcadius:-- + + + Nay, some will swear they love their mistress, + Would hazard lives and fortunes, &c. + + +Read thus:-- + + + Nay, some will swear they love their mistress so, + They would hazard lives and fortunes to preserve + One of her hairs brighter than Berenice's, + Or young Apollo's; and yet, after this, &c. + + +'/They would HAzard/' [1]--furnishes an anapaest for an 'iambus'. 'And +yet,' which must be read, /'ANyet'/, is an instance of the enclitic +force in an accented monosyllable. /'And YET'/ is a complete 'iambus'; +but 'anyet' is, like 'spirit', a dibrach u u, trocheized, however, by +the 'arsis' or first accent damping, though not extinguishing, the +second. + +[Footnote 1: As noted earlier in this text, the words between / marks +are pronounced with stress on the upper-case syllables, and none on the +lower-case syllables. In the original text, stress is indicated by a +horizontal line over the syllable, and lack of stress by a u-shape, as +the u u later in this paragraph. text Ed.] + + + + +WIT AT SEVERAL WEAPONS. + +Act I. Oldcraft's speech: + + + I'm arm'd at all points, &c. + + +It would be very easy to restore all this passage to metre, by supplying +a sentence of four syllables, which the reasoning almost demands, and by +correcting the grammar. Read thus:-- + + + Arm'd at all points 'gainst treachery, I hold + My humor firm. If, living, I can see thee + Thrive by thy wits, I shall have the more courage, + Dying, to trust thee with my lands. If not, + The best wit, I can hear of, carries them. + For since so many in my time and knowledge, + Rich children of the city, have concluded + _For lack of wit_ in beggary, I'd rather + Make a wise stranger my executor, + Than a fool son my heir, and have my lands call'd + After my wit than name: and that's my nature! + + +Ib. Oldcraft's speech:-- + + + To prevent which I have sought out a match for her.-- + + +Read + + + Which to prevent I've sought a match out for her. + + +Ib. Sir Gregory's speech:-- + + + --Do you think I'll have any of the wits hang upon me after I am + married once? + + +Read it thus:-- + + + Do you think + That I'll have any of the wits to hang + Upon me after I am married once? + + +and afterwards-- + + + Is it a fashion in London, + To marry a woman, and to never see her? + + +The superfluous 'to' gives it the Sir Andrew Ague-cheek character. + + + + +THE FAIR MAID OF THE INN. + +Act II. Speech of Albertus:-- + + + But, Sir, + By my life, I vow to take assurance from you, + That right-hand never more shall strike my son, + ... + Chop his hand off! + + +In this (as, indeed, in all other respects; but most in this) it is that +Shakspeare is so incomparably superior to Fletcher and his friend,--in +judgment! What can be conceived more unnatural and motiveless than this +brutal resolve? How is it possible to feel the least interest in +Albertus afterwards? or in Cesario after his conduct? + + + + + +THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN. + +On comparing the prison scene of Palamon and Arcite, Act ii. sc. 2, with +the dialogue between the same speakers, Act i. sc. 2, I can scarcely +retain a doubt as to the first act's having been written by Shakspeare. +Assuredly it was not written by B. and F. I hold Jonson more probable +than either of these two. + +The main presumption, however, for Shakspeare's share in this play rests +on a point, to which the sturdy critics of this edition (and indeed all +before them) were blind,--that is, the construction of the blank verse, +which proves beyond all doubt an intentional imitation, if not the +proper hand, of Shakspeare. Now, whatever improbability there is in the +former, (which supposes Fletcher conscious of the inferiority, the too +poematic _minus_-dramatic nature, of his versification, and of which +there is neither proof, nor likelihood,) adds so much to the probability +of the latter. On the other hand, the harshness of many of these very +passages, a harshness unrelieved by any lyrical inter-breathings, and +still more the want of profundity in the thoughts, keep me from an +absolute decision. + +Act i. sc. 3. Emilia's speech:-- + + + --Since his depart, his _sports_, + Tho' craving seriousness and skill, &c. + + +I conjecture 'imports,' that is, duties or offices of importance. The +flow of the versification in this speech seems to demand the trochaic +ending--/u/; while the text blends jingle and _hisses_ to the annoyance +of less sensitive ears than Fletcher's--not to say, Shakspeare's. + + + + + +THE WOMAN HATER. + +Act. I. sc. 2. This scene from the beginning is prose printed as blank +verse, down to the line-- + + + E'en all the valiant stomachs in the court-- + + +where the verse recommences. This transition from the prose to the verse +enhances, and indeed forms, the comic effect. Lazarillo concludes his +soliloquy with a hymn to the goddess of plenty. + + + + +ON THE PROMETHEUS OF AESCHYLUS: + + +An Essay, preparatory to a series of disquisitions respecting the +Egyptian, in connection with the sacerdotal, theology, and in contrast +with the mysteries of ancient Greece. Read at the Royal Society of +Literature, May 18, 1825. + + +The French 'savans' who went to Egypt in the train of Buonaparte, Denon, +Fourrier, and Dupuis, (it has been asserted), triumphantly vindicated +the chronology of Herodotus, on the authority of documents that cannot +lie;--namely, the inscriptions and sculptures on those enormous masses +of architecture, that might seem to have been built in the wish of +rivalling the mountains, and at some unknown future to answer the same +purpose, that is, to stand the gigantic tombstones of an elder world. It +is decided, say the critics, whose words I have before cited, that the +present division of the zodiac had been already arranged by the +Egyptians fifteen thousand years before the Christian era, and according +to an inscription 'which cannot lie' the temple of Esne is of eight +thousand years standing. + +Now, in the first place, among a people who had placed their national +pride in their antiquity, I do not see the impossibility of an +inscription lying; and, secondly, as little can I see the improbability +of a modern interpreter misunderstanding it; and lastly, the +incredibility of a French infidel's partaking of both defects, is still +less evident to my understanding. The inscriptions may be, and in some +instances, very probably are, of later date than the temples +themselves,--the offspring of vanity or priestly rivalry, or of certain +astrological theories; or the temples themselves may have been built in +the place of former and ruder structures, of an earlier and ruder +period, and not impossibly under a different scheme of hieroglyphic or +significant characters; and these may have been intentionally, or +ignorantly, miscopied or mistranslated. + +But more than all the preceding,--I cannot but persuade myself, that for +a man of sound judgment and enlightened common sense--a man with whom +the demonstrable laws of the human mind, and the rules generalized from +the great mass of facts respecting human nature, weigh more than any two +or three detached documents or narrations, of whatever authority the +narrator may be, and however difficult it may be to bring positive +proofs against the antiquity of the documents--I cannot but persuade +myself, I say, that for such a man, the relation preserved in the first +book of the Pentateuch,--and which, in perfect accordance with all +analogous experience, with all the facts of history, and all that the +principles of political economy would lead us to anticipate, conveys to +us the rapid progress in civilization and splendour from Abraham and +Abimelech to Joseph and Pharaoh,--will be worth a whole library of such +inferences. + +I am aware that it is almost universal to speak of the gross idolatry of +Egypt; nay, that arguments have been grounded on this assumption in proof +of the divine origin of the Mosaic monotheism. But first, if by this we +are to understand that the great doctrine of the one Supreme Being was +first revealed to the Hebrew legislator, his own inspired writings supply +abundant and direct confutation of the position. Of certain astrological +superstitions,--of certain talismans connected with star-magic,--plates +and images constructed in supposed harmony with the movements and +influences of celestial bodies,--there doubtless exist hints, if not +direct proofs, both in the Mosaic writings, and those next to these in +antiquity. But of plain idolatry in Egypt, or the existence of a +polytheistic religion, represented by various idols, each signifying a +several deity, I can find no decisive proof in the Pentateuch; and when I +collate these with the books of the prophets, and the other inspired +writings subsequent to the Mosaic, I cannot but regard the absence of any +such proof in the latter, compared with the numerous and powerful +assertions, or evident implications, of Egyptian idolatry in the former, +both as an argument of incomparably greater value in support of the age +and authenticity of the Pentateuch; and as a strong presumption in favour +of the hypothesis on which I shall in part ground the theory which will +pervade this series of disquisitions;--namely, that the sacerdotal +religion of Egypt had, during the interval from Abimelech to Moses, +degenerated from the patriarchal monotheism into a pantheism, cosmotheism, +or worship of the world as God. + +The reason, or pretext, assigned by the Hebrew legislator to Pharaoh for +leading his countrymen into the wilderness to join with their brethren, +the tribes who still sojourned in the nomadic state, namely, that their +sacrifices would be an abomination to the Egyptians, may be urged as +inconsistent with, nay, as confuting this hypothesis. But to this I +reply, first, that the worship of the ox and cow was not, in and of +itself, and necessarily, a contravention of the first commandment, +though a very gross breach of the second;--for it is most certain that +the ten tribes worshipped the Jehovah, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and +Jacob, under the same or similar symbols:--secondly, that the cow, or +Isis, and the Io of the Greeks, truly represented, in the first +instance, the earth or productive nature, and afterwards the mundane +religion grounded on the worship of nature, or the [Greek +(transliterated): to pan], as God. In after times, the ox or bull was +added, representing the sun, or generative force of nature, according to +the habit of male and female deities, which spread almost over the whole +world,--the positive and negative forces in the science of +superstition;--for the pantheism of the sage necessarily engenders +polytheism as the popular creed. But lastly, a very sufficient reason +may, I think, be assigned for the choice of the ox or cow, as +representing the very life of nature, by the first legislators of Egypt, +and for the similar sacred character in the Brachmanic tribes of +Hindostan. The progress from savagery to civilization is evidently first +from the hunting to the pastoral state, a process which even now is +going on, within our own times, among the South American Indians in the +vast tracts between Buenos Ayres and the Andes: but the second and the +most important step, is from the pastoral, or wandering, to the +agricultural, or fixed, state. Now, if even for men born and reared +under European civilization, the charms of a wandering life have been +found so great a temptation, that few who have taken to it have been +induced to return, (see the confession in the preamble to the statute +respecting the gipsies); [1]--how much greater must have been the danger +of relapse in the first formation of fixed states with a condensed +population? And what stronger prevention could the ingenuity of the +priestly kings--(for the priestly is ever the first form of +government)--devise, than to have made the ox or cow the representatives +of the divine principle in the world, and, as such, an object of +adoration, the wilful destruction of which was sacrilege?--For this +rendered a return to the pastoral state impossible; in which the flesh +of these animals and the milk formed almost the exclusive food of +mankind; while, in the meantime, by once compelling and habituating men +to the use of a vegetable diet, it enforced the laborious cultivation of +the soil, and both produced and permitted a vast and condensed +population. In the process and continued subdivisions of polytheism, +this great sacred Word,--for so the consecrated animals were called, +[Greek (transliterated): ieroi logoi,]--became multiplied, till almost +every power and supposed attribute of nature had its symbol in some +consecrated animal from the beetle to the hawk. Wherever the powers of +nature had found a cycle for themselves, in which the powers still +produced the same phenomenon during a given period, whether in the +motions of the heavenly orbs, or in the smallest living organic body, +there the Egyptian sages predicated life and mind. Time, cyclical time, +was their abstraction of the deity, and their holidays were their gods. + +The diversity between theism and pantheism may be most simply and +generally expressed in the following 'formula', in which the material +universe is expressed by W, and the deity by G. + + W-G=O; + +or the World without God is an impossible conception. This position is +common to theist and pantheist. But the pantheist adds the converse-- + + G-W=O; + +for which the theist substitutes-- + + G-W=G; + +or that-- + + G=G, anterior and irrelative to the existence of the world, is equal to + G+W. [2] + +'Before the mountains were, Thou art.'--I am not about to lead the +society beyond the bounds of my subject into divinity or theology in the +professional sense. But without a precise definition of pantheism, +without a clear insight into the essential distinction between it and +the theism of the Scriptures, it appears to me impossible to understand +either the import or the history of the polytheism of the great +historical nations. I beg leave, therefore, to repeat, and to carry on +my former position, that the religion of Egypt, at the time of the +Exodus of the Hebrews, was a pantheism, on the point of passing into +that polytheism, of which it afterwards afforded a specimen, gross and +distasteful even to polytheists themselves of other nations. + +The objects which, on my appointment as Royal Associate of the Royal +Society of Literature, I proposed to myself were, + +1st. The elucidation of the purpose of the Greek drama, and the +relations in which it stood to the mysteries on the one hand, and to the +state or sacerdotal religion on the other:-- + +2nd. The connection of the Greek tragic poets with philosophy as the +peculiar offspring of Greek genius:-- + +3rd. The connection of the Homeric and cyclical poets with the popular +religion of the Greeks: and, + +lastly from all these,--namely, the mysteries, the sacerdotal religion, +their philosophy before and after Socrates, the stage, the Homeric +poetry and the legendary belief of the people, and from the sources and +productive causes in the derivation and confluence of the tribes that +finally shaped themselves into a nation of Greeks--to give a juster and +more distinct view of this singular people, and of the place which they +occupied in the history of the world, and the great scheme of divine +providence, than I have hitherto seen,--or rather let me say, than it +appears to me possible to give by any other process. + +The present Essay, however, I devote to the purpose of removing, or at +least invalidating, one objection that I may reasonably anticipate, and +which may be conveyed in the following question:--What proof have you of +the fact of any connection between the Greek drama, and either the +mysteries, or the philosophy, of Greece? What proof that it was the +office of the tragic poet, under a disguise of the sacerdotal religion, +mixed with the legendary or popular belief, to reveal as much of the +mysteries interpreted by philosophy, as would counteract the +demoralizing effects of the state religion, without compromising the +tranquillity of the state itself, or weakening that paramount reverence, +without which a republic, (such I mean, as the republics of ancient +Greece were) could not exist? + +I know no better way in which I can reply to this objection, than by +giving, as my proof and instance, the Prometheus of AEschylus, +accompanied with an exposition of what I believe to be the intention of +the poet, and the mythic import of the work; of which it may be truly +said, that it is more properly tragedy itself in the plenitude of the +idea, than a particular tragic poem; and as a preface to this +exposition, and for the twin purpose of rendering it intelligible, and +of explaining its connexion with the whole scheme of my Essays, I +entreat permission to insert a quotation from a work of my own, which +has indeed been in print for many years, but which few of my auditors +will probably have heard of, and still fewer, if any, have read. + + "As the representative of the youth and approaching manhood of the + human intellect we have ancient Greece, from Orpheus, Linus, Musaeus, + and the other mythological bards, or, perhaps, the brotherhoods + impersonated under those names, to the time when the republics lost + their independence, and their learned men sank into copyists of, and + commentators on, the works of their forefathers. That we include these + as educated under a distinct providential, though not miraculous, + dispensation, will surprise no one, who reflects, that in whatever has + a permanent operation on the destinies and intellectual condition of + mankind at large,--that in all which has been manifestly employed as a + co-agent in the mightiest revolution of the moral world, the + propagation of the Gospel, and in the intellectual progress of mankind + in the restoration of philosophy, science, and the ingenuous arts--it + were irreligion not to acknowledge the hand of divine providence. The + periods, too, join on to each other. The earliest Greeks took up the + religious and lyrical poetry of the Hebrews; and the schools of the + prophets were, however partially and imperfectly, represented by the + mysteries derived through the corrupt channel of the Phoenicians. With + these secret schools of physiological theology, the mythical poets + were doubtless in connexion, and it was these schools which prevented + polytheism from producing all its natural barbarizing effects. The + mysteries and the mythical hymns and paeans shaped themselves gradually + into epic poetry and history on the one hand, and into the ethical + tragedy and philosophy on the other. Under their protection, and that + of a youthful liberty, secretly controlled by a species of internal + theocracy, the sciences, and the sterner kinds of the fine arts, that + is, architecture and statuary, grew up together, followed, indeed, by + painting, but a statuesque, and austerely idealized, painting, which + did not degenerate into mere copies of the sense, till the process for + which Greece existed had been completed."[3] + +The Greeks alone brought forth philosophy in the proper and +contra-distinguishable sense of the term, which we may compare to the +coronation medal with its symbolic characters, as contrasted with the +coins, issued under the same sovereign, current in the market. In the +primary sense, philosophy had for its aim and proper subject the [Greek +(transliterated): ta peri arch_on], 'de originibus rerum', as far as man +proposes to discover the same in and by the pure reason alone. This, I +say, was the offspring of Greece, and elsewhere adopted only. The +predisposition appears in their earliest poetry. + +The first object, (or subject matter) of Greek philosophizing was in +some measure philosophy itself;--not, indeed, as the product, but as the +producing power--the productivity. Great minds turned inward on the fact +of the diversity between man and beast; a superiority of kind in +addition to that of degree; the latter, that is, the difference in +degree comprehending the more enlarged sphere and the multifold +application of faculties common to man and brute animals;--even this +being in great measure a transfusion from the former, namely, from the +superiority in kind;--for only by its co-existence with reason, free +will, self-consciousness, the contra-distinguishing attributes of man, +does the instinctive intelligence manifested in the ant, the dog, the +elephant, &c. become human understanding. It is a truth with which +Heraclitus, the senior, but yet contemporary, of AEschylus, appears, from +the few genuine fragments of his writings that are yet extant, to have +been deeply impressed,--that the mere understanding in man, considered +as the power of adapting means to immediate purposes, differs, indeed, +from the intelligence displayed by other animals, and not in degree +only; but yet does not differ by any excellence which it derives from +itself, or by any inherent diversity, but solely in consequence of a +combination with far higher powers of a diverse kind in one and the same +subject. + +Long before the entire separation of metaphysics from poetry, that is, +while yet poesy, in all its several species of verse, music, statuary, +&c. continued mythic;--while yet poetry remained the union of the +sensuous and the philosophic mind;--the efficient presence of the latter +in the 'synthesis' of the two, had manifested itself in the sublime +'mythus peri geneseos tou nou en anthropois' concerning the 'genesis', +or birth of the 'nous' or reason in man. This the most venerable, and +perhaps the most ancient, of Grecian 'myth', is a philosopheme, the very +same in subject matter with the earliest record of the Hebrews, but most +characteristically different in tone and conception;--for the +patriarchal religion, as the antithesis of pantheism, was necessarily +personal; and the doctrines of a faith, the first ground of which and +the primary enunciation, is the eternal I AM, must be in part historic +and must assume the historic form. Hence the Hebrew record is a +narrative, and the first instance of the fact is given as the origin of +the fact. + +That a profound truth--a truth that is, indeed, the grand and +indispensable condition of all moral responsibility--is involved in this +characteristic of the sacred narrative, I am not alone persuaded, but +distinctly aware. This, hovever, does not preclude us from seeing, nay, +as an additional mark of the wisdom that inspired the sacred historian, +it rather supplies a motive to us, impels and authorizes us, to see, in +the form of the vehicle of the truth, an accommodation to the then +childhood of the human race. Under this impression we may, I trust, +safely consider the narration,--introduced, as it is here introduced, +for the purpose of explaining a mere work of the unaided mind of man by +comparison,--as an [Greek (transliterated): eros hierogluphikon],--and +as such (apparently, I mean, not actually) a 'synthesis' of poesy and +philosophy, characteristic of the childhood of nations. + +In the Greek we see already the dawn of approaching manhood. The +substance, the stuff, is philosophy; the form only is poetry. The +Prometheus is a _philosophema_ [Greek (transliterated): tautaegorikon], +--the tree of knowledge of good and evil,--an allegory, a [Greek +(transliterated): propaideuma], though the noblest and the most pregnant +of its kind. + +The generation of the [Greek (transliterated): nous], or pure reason in +man. + +1. It was superadded or infused, 'a supra' to mark that it was no mere +evolution of the animal basis;--that it could not have grown out of the +other faculties of man, his life, sense, understanding, as the flower +grows out of the stem, having pre-existed potentially in the seed: + +2. The [Greek: nous], or fire, was 'stolen,'--to mark its 'helero'--or +rather its 'allo'-geneity, that is, its diversity, its difference in +kind, from the faculties which are common to man with the nobler +animals: + +3. And stolen 'from Heaven,'--to mark its superiority in kind, as well +as its essential diversity: + +4. And it was a 'spark,'--to mark that it is not subject to any +modifying reaction from that on which it immediately acts; that it +suffers no change, and receives no accession, from the inferior, but +multiplies it-self by conversion, without being alloyed by, or +amalgamated with, that which it potentiates, ennobles, and transmutes: + +5. And lastly, (in order to imply the homogeneity of the donor and of +the gift) it was stolen by a 'god,' and a god of the race before the +dynasty of Jove,--Jove the binder of reluctant powers, the coercer arid +entrancer of free spirits under the fetters of shape, and mass, and +passive mobility; but likewise by a god of the same race and essence +with Jove, and linked of yore in closest and friendliest intimacy with +him. This, to mark the pre-existence, in order of thought, of the +'nous', as spiritual, both to the objects of sense, and to their +products, formed as it were, by the precipitation, or, if I may dare +adopt the bold language of Leibnitz, by a coagulation of spirit. In +other words this derivation of the spark from above, and from a god +anterior to the Jovial dynasty--(that is, to the submersion of spirits +in material forms),--was intended to mark the transcendancy of the +'nous', the contra-distinctive faculty of man, as timeless, [Greek +(transliterated): achronon ti,] and, in this negative sense, eternal. It +signified, I say, its superiority to, and its diversity from, all things +that subsist in space and time, nay, even those which, though spaceless, +yet partake of time, namely, souls or understandings. For the soul, or +understanding, if it be defined physiologically as the principle of +sensibility, irritability, and growth, together with the functions of +the organs, which are at once the representatives and the instruments of +these, must be considered 'in genere', though not in degree or dignity, +common to man and the inferior animals. It was the spirit, the 'nous', +which man alone possessed. And I must be permitted to suggest that this +notion deserves some respect, were it only that it can shew a semblance, +at least, of sanction from a far higher authority. + +The Greeks agreed with the cosmogonies of the East in deriving all +sensible forms from the indistinguishable. The latter we find designated +as the [Greek: to amorphon], the [Greek: hudor prokosmikon], the [Greek: +chaos], as the essentially unintelligible, yet necessarily presumed, +basis or sub-position of all positions. That it is, scientifically +considered, an indispensable idea for the human mind, just as the +mathematical point, &c. for the geometrician;--of this the various +systems of our geologists and cosmogonists, from Burnet to La Place, +afford strong presumption. As an idea, it must be interpreted as a +striving of the mind to distinguish being from existence,--or potential +being, the ground of being containing the possibility of existence, from +being actualized. In the language of the mysteries, it was the +'esurience', the [Greek: pothos] or 'desideratum', the unfuelled fire, +the Ceres, the ever-seeking maternal goddess, the origin and +interpretation of whose name is found in the Hebrew root signifying +hunger, and thence capacity. It was, in short, an effort to represent +the universal ground of all differences distinct or opposite, but in +relation to which all 'antithesis' as well as all 'antitheta', existed +only potentially. This was the container and withholder, (such is the +primitive sense of the Hebrew word rendered darkness (Gen. 1. 2.)) out +of which light, that is, the 'lux lucifica', as distinguished from +'lumen seu lux phaenomenalis', was produced;--say, rather, that which, +producing itself into light as the one pole or antagonist power, +remained in the other pole as darkness, that is, gravity, or the +principle of mass, or wholeness without distinction of parts. + +And here the peculiar, the philosophic, genius of Greece began its f|tal +throb. Here it individualized itself in contra-distinction from the +Hebrew archology, on the one side, and from the Ph|nician, on the +other. The Ph|nician confounded the indistinguishable with the +absolute, the 'Alpha' and 'Omega', the ineffable 'causa sui'. It +confounded, I say, the multeity below intellect, that is, unintelligible +from defect of the subject, with the absolute identity above all +intellect, that is, transcending comprehension by the plenitude of its +excellence. With the Phoenician sages the cosmogony was their theogony +and 'vice versa'. Hence, too, flowed their theurgic rites, their magic, +their worship ('cultus et apotheosis') of the plastic forces, chemical +and vital, and these, or their notions respecting these, formed the +hidden meaning, the soul, as it were, of which the popular and civil +worship was the body with its drapery. + +The Hebrew wisdom imperatively asserts an unbeginning creative One, who +neither became the world; nor is the world eternally; nor made the world +out of himself by emanation, or evolution;--but who willed it, and it +was! [Greek: Ta athea egeneto, kai egeneto chaos,]--and this chaos, the +eternal will, by the spirit and the word, or express 'fiat',--again +acting as the impregnant, distinctive, and ordonnant power,--enabled to +become a world--[Greek: kosmeisthai.] So must it be when a religion, +that shall preclude superstition on the one hand, and brute indifference +on the other, is to be true for the meditative sage, yet intelligible, +or at least apprehensible, for all but the fools in heart. + +The Greek philosopheme, preserved for us in the AEschylean Prometheus, +stands midway betwixt both, yet is distinct in kind from either. With +the Hebrew or purer Semitic, it assumes an X Y Z,--(I take these letters +in their algebraic application)--an indeterminate 'Elohim', antecedent +to the matter of the world, [Greek: hulae akosmos]--no less than to the +[Greek: hulae kekosmaemenae.] In this point, likewise, the Greek +accorded with the Semitic, and differed from the Phoenician--that it +held the antecedent X Y Z to be super-sensuous and divine. But on the +other hand, it coincides with the Ph|nician in considering this +antecedent ground of corporeal matter,--[Greek: t_on s_omat_on kai tou +s_omatikou,]--not so properly the cause of the latter, as the occasion +and the still continuing substance. 'Maleria substat adliuc'. The +corporeal was supposed co-essential with the antecedent of its +corporeity. Matter, as distinguished from body, was a 'non ens', a simple +apparition, 'id quod mere videtur'; but to body the elder +physico-theology of the Greeks allowed a participation in entity. It was +'spiritus ipse, oppressus, dormiens, et diversis modis somnians'. In +short, body was the productive power suspended, and as it were, quenched +in the product. This may be rendered plainer by reflecting, that, in the +pure Semitic scheme there are four terms introduced in the solution of +the problem, + +1. the beginning, self-sufficing, and immutable Creator; + +2. the antecedent night as the identity, or including germ, of the light +and darkness, that is, gravity; + +3. the chaos; and + +4. the material world resulting from the powers communicated by the +divine 'fiat'. In the Phoenician scheme there are in fact but two--a +self-organizing chaos, and the omniforrn nature as the result. In the +Greek scheme we have three terms, 1. the 'hyle', [Greek: hulae], which +holds the place of the chaos, or the waters, in the true system; 2. +[Greek: ta s_omata], answering to the Mosaic heaven and earth; and 3. the +Saturnian [Greek: chronoi huperchonioi],--which answer to the antecedent +darkness of the Mosaic scheme, but to which the elder +physico-theologists attributed a self-polarizing power--a 'natura gemina +quae fit et facit, agit et patitur'. In other words, the 'Elohim' of the +Greeks were still but a 'natura deorum', [Greek: to theion], in which a +vague plurality adhered; or if any unity was imagined, it was not +personal--not a unity of excellence, but simply an expression of the +negative--that which was to pass, but which had not yet passed, into +distinct form. + +All this will seem strange and obscure at first reading,--perhaps +fantastic. But it will only seem so. Dry and prolix, indeed, it is to me +in the writing, full as much as it can be to others in the attempt to +understand it. But I know that, once mastered, the idea will be the key +to the whole cypher of the AEschylean mythology. The sum stated in the +terms of philosophic logic is this: First, what Moses appropriated to +the chaos itself: what Moses made passive and a 'materia subjecta et +lucis et tenebrarum', the containing [Greek: prothemenon] of the +'thesis' and 'antithesis';--this the Greek placed anterior to the +chaos;--the chaos itself being the struggle between the 'hyperchronia', +the [Greek: ideai pronomoi], as the unevolved, unproduced, 'prothesis', +of which [Greek: idea kai nomos]--(idea and law)--are the 'thesis' and +'antithesis'. (I use the word 'produced' in the mathematical sense, as a +point elongating itself to a bipolar line.) Secondly, what Moses +establishes, not merely as a transcendant 'Monas', but as an individual +[Greek: Henas] likewise;--this the Greek took as a harmony, [Greek: +Theoi hathanatoi, to theion], as distinguished from [Greek: o +Theos]--or, to adopt the more expressive language of the Pythagoreans +and cabalists 'numen numerantis'; and these are to be contemplated as +the identity. + +Now according to the Greek philosopheme or 'mythus', in these, or in +this identity, there arose a war, schism, or division, that is, a +polarization into thesis and antithesis. In consequence of this schism +in the [Greek: to theion], the 'thesis' becomes 'nomos', or law, and the +'antithesis' becomes 'idea', but so that the 'nomos' is 'nomos', +because, and only because, the 'idea' is 'idea': the 'nomos' is not +idea, only because the idea has not become 'nomos'. And this 'not' must +be heedfully borne in mind through the whole interpretation of this most +profound and pregnant philosopheme. The 'nomos' is essentially idea, but +existentially it is idea 'substans', that is, 'id quod stat subtus', +understanding 'sensu generalissimo'. The 'idea', which now is no longer +idea, has substantiated itself, become real as opposed to idea, and is +henceforward, therefore, 'substans in substantiato'. The first product +of its energy is the thing itself: 'ipsa se posuit et jam facta est ens +positum'. Still, however, its productive energy is not exhausted in this +product, but overflows, or is effluent, as the specific forces, +properties, faculties, of the product. It reappears, in short, in the +body, as the function of the body. As a sufficient illustration, though +it cannot be offered as a perfect instance, take the following. + + 'In the world we see every where evidences of a unity, which the + component parts are so far from explaining, that they necessarily + presuppose it as the cause and condition of their existing as those + parts, or even of their existing at all. This antecedent unity, or + cause and principle of each union, it has since the time of Bacon and + Kepler, been customary to call a law. This crocus, for instance, or + any flower the reader may have in sight or choose to bring before his + fancy;--that the root, stem, leaves, petals, &c. cohere as one plant, + is owing to an antecedent power or principle in the seed, which + existed before a single particle of the matters that constitute the + size and visibility of the crocus had been attracted from the + surrounding soil, air, and moisture. Shall we turn to the seed? Here + too the same necessity meets us, an antecedent unity (I speak not of + the parent plant, but of an agency antecedent in order of operance, + yet remaining present as the conservative and reproductive power,) + must here too be supposed. Analyze the seed with the finest tools, and + let the solar microscope come in aid of your senses,--what do you + find?--means and instruments, a wondrous fairy-tale of nature, + magazines of food, stores of various sorts, pipes, spiracles, + defences,--a house of many chambers, and the owner and inhabitant + invisible.'[4] + +Now, compare a plant, thus contemplated, with an animal. In the former, +the productive energy exhausts itself, and as it were, sleeps in the +product or 'organismus'--in its root, stem, foliage, blossoms, seed. Its +balsams, gums, resins, 'aromata', and all other bases of its sensible +qualities, are, it is well known, mere excretions from the vegetable, +eliminated, as lifeless, from the actual plant. The qualities are not +its properties, but the properties, or far rather, the dispersion and +volatilization of these extruded and rejected bases. But in the animal +it is otherwise. Here the antecedent unity--the productive and +self-realizing idea--strives, with partial success to re-emancipate +itself from its product, and seeks once again to become 'idea': vainly +indeed: for in order to this, it must be retrogressive, and it hath +subjected itself to the fates, the evolvers of the endless thread--to +the stern necessity of progression. 'Idea' itself it cannot become, but +it may in long and graduated process, become an image, an ANALOGON, an +anti-type of IDEA. And this [Greek: eid_olon] may approximate to a +perfect likeness. 'Quod est simile, nequit esse idem'. Thus, in the +lower animals, we see this process of emancipation commence with the +intermediate link, or that which forms the transition from properties to +faculties, namely, with sensation. Then the faculties of sense, +locomotion, construction, as, for instance, webs, hives, nests, &c. Then +the functions; as of instinct, memory, fancy, instinctive intelligence, +or understanding, as it exists in the most intelligent animals. Thus the +idea (henceforward no more idea, but irrecoverable by its own fatal act) +commences the process of its own transmutation, as 'substans in +substantiato', as the 'enteleche', or the 'vis formatrix', and it +finishes the process as 'substans e substantiato', that is, as the +understanding. + +If, for the purpose of elucidating this process, I might be allowed to +imitate the symbolic language of the algebraists, and thus to regard the +successive steps of the process as so many powers and dignities of the +'nomos' or law, the scheme would be represented thus [N^1 represents N +superscript 1, i.e. N to the power of 1. text Ed.]:-- + + Nomos^1 = Product: + N^2 = Property: + N^3 = Faculty: + N^4 = Function: + N^5 = Understanding;-- + +which is, indeed, in one sense, itself a 'nomos', inasmuch as it is the +index of the 'nomos', as well as its highest function; but, like the +hand of a watch, it is likewise a 'nomizomenon'. It is a verb, but still +a verb passive. + +On the other hand, idea is so far co-essential with 'nomos', that by its +co-existence--(not confluence)--with the 'nomos' [Greek: hen +nomizomenois] (with the 'organismus' and its faculties and functions in +the man,) it becomes itself a 'nomos'. But, observe, a 'nomos +autonomos', or containing its law in itself likewise;--even as the +'nomos' produces for its highest product the understanding, so the idea, +in its opposition and, of course, its correspondence to the 'nomos', +begets in itself an 'analogon' to product; and this is +self-consciousness. But as the product can never become idea, so neither +can the idea (if it is to remain idea) become or generate a distinct +product. This 'analogon' of product is to be itself; but were it indeed +and substantially a product, it would cease to be self. It would be an +object for a subject, not (as it is and must be) an object that is its +own subject, and 'vice versa'; a conception which, if the uncombining +and infusile genius of our language allowed it, might be expressed by +the term subject-object. Now, idea, taken in indissoluble connection +with this 'analogon' of product is mind, that which knows itself, and +the existence of which may be inferred, but cannot appear or become a +'phaenomenon'. + +By the benignity of Providence, the truths of most importance in +themselves, and which it most concerns us to know, are familiar to us, +even from childhood. Well for us if we do not abuse this privilege, and +mistake the familiarity of words which convey these truths for a clear +understanding of the truths themselves! If the preceding disquisition, +with all its subtlety and all its obscurity, should answer no other +purpose, it will still have been neither purposeless, nor devoid of +utility, should it only lead us to sympathize with the strivings of the +human intellect, awakened to the infinite importance of the inward +oracle [Greek: gn_othi seauton]--and almost instinctively shaping its +course of search in conformity with the Platonic intimation:--[Greek: +psuchaes phusin haxi_os logou katanoaesai oiei dunaton einai, haneu aes +tou holou phuse_os]; but be this as it may, the ground work of the +AEschylean 'mythus' is laid in the definition of idea and law, as +correlatives that mutually interpret each the other;--an idea, with the +adequate power of realizing itself being a law, and a law considered +abstractedly from, or in the absence of, the power of manifesting itself +in its appropriate product being an idea. Whether this be true +philosophy, is not the question. The school of Aristotle would, of +course, deny, the Platonic affirm it; for in this consists the +difference of the two schools. Both acknowledge ideas as distinct from +the mere generalizations from objects of sense: both would define an +idea as an 'ens rationale', to which there can be no adequate +correspondent in sensible experience. But, according to Aristotle, ideas +are regulative only, and exist only as functions of the mind:--according +to Plato, they are constitutive likewise, and one in essence with the +power and life of nature;--[Greek: hen log'o z'oae aen, kai hae z'oae +haen to ph'os t'on anthr'op'on]. And this I assert, was the philosophy +of the mythic poets, who, like AEschylus, adapted the secret doctrines of +the mysteries as the (not always safely disguised) antidote to the +debasing influences of the religion of the state. + +But to return and conclude this preliminary explanation. We have only to +substitute the term will, and the term constitutive power, for _nomos_ +or law, and the process is the same. Permit me to represent the identity +or 'prothesis' by the letter Z and the 'thesis' and 'antithesis' by X +and Y respectively. Then I say X by not being Y, but in consequence of +being the correlative opposite of Y, is will; and Y, by not being X, but +the correlative and opposite of X, is nature,--'natura naturans', +[Greek: no_mos physiko_s]. Hence we may see the necessity of +contemplating the idea now as identical with the reason, and now as one +with the will, and now as both in one, in which last case I shall, for +convenience sake, employ the term 'Nous', the rational will, the +practical reason. + +We are now out of the holy jungle of transcendental mataphysics; if +indeed, the reader's patience shall have had strength and persistency +enough to allow me to exclaim-- + + Ivimus ambo + Per densas umbras: at tenet umbra Deum. + + +Not that I regard the foregoing as articles of faith, or as all true;--I +have implied the contrary by contrasting it with, at least, by shewing +its disparateness from, the Mosaic, which, 'bona fide', I do regard as +the truth. But I believe there is much, and profound, truth in it, +'supra captum [Greek: psilosoph'on], qui non agnoscunt divinum, ideoque +nec naturam, nisi nomine, agnoscunt; sed res cunctas ex sensuali +corporeo cogitant, quibus hac ex causa interiora clausa manent, et simul +cum illis exteriora quae proxima interioribus sunt'! And with no less +confidence do I believe that the positions above given, true or false, +are contained in the Promethean 'mythus'. + +In this 'mythus', Jove is the impersonated representation or symbol of +the 'nomos'--'Jupiter est quodcunque vides'. He is the 'mens agitans +molem', but at the same time, the 'molem corpoream ponens et +constituens'. And so far the Greek philosopheme does not differ +essentially from the cosmotheism, or identification of God with the +universe, in which consisted the first apostacy of mankind after the +flood, when they combined to raise a temple to the heavens, and which is +still the favored religion of the Chinese. Prometheus, in like manner, +is the impersonated representative of Idea, or of the same power as +Jove, but contemplated as independent and not immersed in the +product,--as law 'minus' the productive energy. As such it is next to be +seen what the several significances of each must or may be according to +the philosophic conception; and of which significances, therefore, +should we find in the philosopheme a correspondent to each, we shall be +entitled to assert that such are the meanings of the fable. And first of +Jove:-- + +Jove represents + +1. 'Nomos' generally, as opposed to Idea or 'Nous': + +2. 'Nomos archinomos', now as the father, now as the sovereign, and now +as the includer and representative of the 'nomoi ouoanioi kosmikoi', or +'dii majores', who, had joined or come over to Jove in the first schism: + +3. 'Nomos damnaetaes'--the subjugator of the spirits, of the [Greek: +ideai pronomoi], who, thus subjugated, became '[Greek: nomoi huponomioi +hupospondoi], Titanes pacati, dii minores', that is, the elements +considered as powers reduced to obedience under yet higher powers than +themselves: + +4. 'Nomos [Greek: politikos]', law in the Pauline sense, '[Greek: nomos +allotrionomos]' in antithesis to '[Greek: nomos autonomos]'. + + +[Footnote 1: The Act meant is probably the 5. Eliz. c. 20, enforcing the +two previous Acts of Henry VIII. and Philip and Mary, and reciting that +natural born Englishmen had 'become of the fellowship of the said +vagabonds, by transforming or disguising themselves in their apparel,' +&c.--Ed.] + +[Footnote 2: Mr. Coleridge was in the constant habit of expressing +himself on paper by the algebraic symbols. They have an uncouth look in +the text of an ordinary essay, and I have sometimes ventured to render +them by the equivalent words. But most of the readers of these volumes +will know that--means 'less by', or,' without'; + 'more by', or,' in +addition to'; = 'equal to', or, 'the same as'.--Ed]. + +[Footnote 3: Friend, III. Essay, 9.] + +[Footnote 4: Aids to Reflection. Moral and Religious Aphorisms. Aphorism +VI. Ed.] + + + +COROLLARY. + +It is in this sense that Jove's jealous, ever-quarrelsome, spouse +represents the political sacerdotal 'cultus', the church, in short, of +republican paganism;--a church by law established for the mere purposes +of the particular state, unennobled by the consciousness of +instrumentality to higher purposes;--at once unenlightened and unchecked +by revelation. Most gratefully ought we to acknowledge that since the +completion of our constitution in 1688, we may, with unflattering truth, +elucidate the spirit and character of such a church by the contrast of +the institution, to which England owes the larger portion of its +superiority in that, in which alone superiority is an unmixed +blessing,--the diffused cultivation of its inhabitants. But previously +to this period, I shall offend no enlightened man if I say without +distinction of parties--'intra muros peccatur et extra';--that the +history of Christendom presents us with too many illustrations of this +Junonian jealousy, this factious harrassing of the sovereign power as +soon as the latter betrayed any symptoms of a disposition to its true +policy, namely, to privilege and perpetuate that which is best,--to +tolerate the tolerable,--and to restrain none but those who would +restrain all, and subjugate even the state itself. But while truth +extorts this confession, it, at the same time, requires that it should +be accompanied by an avowal of the fact, that the spirit is a relic of +Paganism; and with a bitter smile would an AEschylus or a Plato in the +shades, listen to a Gibbon or a Hume vaunting the mild and tolerant +spirit of the state religions of ancient Greece or Rome. Here we have +the sense of Jove's intrigues with Europa, Io, &c. whom the god, in his +own nature a general lover, had successively taken under his protection. +And here, too, see the full appropriateness of this part of the +'mythus', in which symbol fades away into allegory, but yet in reference +to the working cause, as grounded in humanity, and always existing +either actually or potentially, and thus never ceases wholly to be a +symbol or tautegory. + +Prometheus represents, + +1. 'sensu generali', Idea [Greek: pronomos,] and in this sense he is a +[Greek: 'theos homophulos'], a fellow-tribesman both of the 'dii +majores', with Jove at their head, and of the Titans or 'dii pacati': + +2. He represents Idea [Greek: 'philonomos, nomodeiktaes';] and in this +sense the former friend and counsellor of Jove or 'Nous uranius': + +3. [Greek: 'Logos philanthr'opos',] the divine humanity, the humane God, +who retained unseen, kept back, or (in the 'catachresis' characteristic +of the Phoenicio-Grecian mythology) stole, a portion or 'ignicula from +the living spirit of law, which remained with the celestial gods +unexpended [Greek: en t_o nomizesthai.] He gave that which, according to +the whole analogy of things, should have existed either as pure +divinity, the sole property and birth-right of the 'Dii Joviales', the +'Uranions', or was conceded to inferior beings as a 'substans in +substantiato'. This spark divine Prometheus gave to an elect, a favored +animal, not as a 'substans' or understanding, commensurate with, and +confined by, the constitution and conditions of this particular +organism, but as 'aliquid superstans, liberum, non subactum, invictum, +impacatum, [Greek: mae nouizomenon.] This gift, by which we are to +understand reason theoretical and practical, was therefore a [Greek: +'nomos autonomus']--unapproachable and unmodifiable by the animal +basis--that is, by the pre-existing 'substans' with its products, the +animal 'organismus' with its faculties and functions; but yet endowed +with the power of potentiating, ennobling, and prescribing to, the +substance; and hence, therefore, a [Greek: nomos nomopeithaes,] lex +legisuada': + +4. By a transition, ordinary even in allegory, and appropriate to mythic +symbol, but especially significant in the present case--the transition, +I mean, from the giver to the gift--the giver, in very truth, being the +gift, 'whence the soul receives reason; and reason is her being,' says +our Milton. Reason is from God, and God is reason, 'mens ipsissima'. + +5. Prometheus represents, [Greek: nous en anthr'op'o--nous ag'onistaes]'. +Thus contemplated, the 'Nous' is of necessity, powerless; for, all +power, that is, productivity, or productive energy, is in Law, that is, +[Greek: nomos allotrionomos]:[1] still, however, the Idea in the Law, +the 'numerus numerans' become [Greek: nomos], is the principle of the +Law; and if with Law dwells power, so with the knowledge or the Idea +'scientialis' of the Law, dwells prophecy and foresight. A perfect +astronomical time-piece in relation to the motions of the heavenly +bodies, or the magnet in the mariner's compass in relation to the +magnetism of the earth, is a sufficient illustration. + +6. Both [Greek: nomos] and Idea (or 'Nous') are the 'verbum'; but, as in +the former, it is 'verbum fiat' 'the Word of the Lord,'--in the latter +it must be the 'verbum fiet', or, 'the Word of the Lord in the mouth of +the prophet.' 'Pari argumento', as the knowledge is therefore not power, +the power is not knowledge. The [Greek: nomos], the [Greek: Zeus +pantokrat'or], seeks to learn, and, as it were, to wrest the secret, the +hateful secret, of his own fate, namely, the transitoriness adherent to +all antithesis; for the identity or the absolute is alone eternal. This +secret Jove would extort from the 'Nous', or Prometheus, which is the +sixth representment of Prometheus. + +7. Introduce but the least of real as opposed to 'ideal', the least +speck of positive existence, even though it were but the mote in a sun +beam, into the sciential 'contemplamen' or theorem, and it ceases to be +science. 'Ratio desinit esse pura ratio et fit discursus, stat subter et +fit [Greek: hypothetikon]:--non superstat'. The 'Nous' is bound to a +rock, the immovable firmness of which is indissolubly connected with its +barrenness, its non-productivity. Were it productive it would be +'Nomos'; but it is 'Nous', because it is not 'Nomos'. + +8. Solitary [Greek: abat_o en eraemia]. Now I say that the 'Nous', +notwithstanding its diversity from the 'Nomizomeni', is yet, relatively +to their supposed original essence, [Greek: pasi tois nomizomenois +tantogenaes], of the same race or 'radix': though in another sense, +namely, in relation to the [Greek: pan theion]--the pantheistic +'Elohim', it is conceived anterior to the schism, and to the conquest +and enthronization of Jove who succeeded. Hence the Prometheus of the +great tragedian is [Greek: theos suggenaes]. The kindred deities come to +him, some to soothe, to condole; others to give weak, yet friendly, +counsels of submission; others to tempt, or insult. The most prominent +of the latter, and the most odious to the imprisoned and insulated +'Nous', is Hermes, the impersonation of interest with the entrancing and +serpentine 'Caduceus', and, as interest or motives intervening between +the reason and its immediate self-determinations, with the antipathies +to the [Greek: nomos autonomos]. The Hermes impersonates the eloquence +of cupidity, the cajolement of power regnant; and in a larger sense, +custom, the irrational in language, [Greek: rhaemata ta rhaetorika], the +fluent, from [Greek: rheo]--the rhetorical in opposition to [Greek: +logoi, ta noaeta]. But, primarily, the Hermes is the symbol of interest. +He is the messenger, the inter-nuncio, in the low but expressive phrase, +the go-between, to beguile or insult. And for the other visitors of +Prometheus, the elementary powers, or spirits of the elements, 'Titanes +pacati', [Greek: theoi huponomioi], vassal potentates, and their +solicitations, the noblest interpretation will be given, if I repeat the +lines of our great contemporary poet:-- + + Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own: + Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, + And e'en with something of a mother's mind, + And no unworthy aim, The homely nurse doth all she can + To make her foster-child, her inmate, Man + Forget the glories he hath known + And that imperial palace whence he came:-- + + WORDSWORTH. + +which exquisite passage is prefigured in coarser clay, indeed, and with +a less lofty spirit, but yet excellently in their kind, and even more +fortunately for the illustration and ornament of the present commentary, +in the fifth, sixth, and seventh stanzas of Dr. Henry More's poem on the +Pre-existence of the Soul:-- + + Thus groping after our own center's near + And proper substance, we grew dark, contract, + Swallow'd up of earthly life! Ne what we were + Of old, thro' ignorance can we detect. + Like noble babe, by fate or friends' neglect + Left to the care of sorry salvage wight, + Grown up to manly years cannot conject + His own true parentage, nor read aright + What father him begot, what womb him brought to light. + + So we, as stranger infants elsewhere born, + Cannot divine from what spring we did flow; + Ne dare these base alliances to scorn, + Nor lift ourselves a whit from hence below; + Ne strive our parentage again to know, + Ne dream we once of any other stock, + Since foster'd upon Rhea's [1] knees we grow, + In Satyrs' arms with many a mow and mock + Oft danced; and hairy Pan our cradle oft hath rock'd! + + But Pan nor Rhea be our parentage! + We been the offspring of the all seeing Nous, &c. + + +To express the supersensual character of the reason, its abstraction +from sensation, we find the Prometheus [Greek: aterpae]--while in the +yearnings accompanied with the remorse incident to, and only possible in +consequence of the Nous being, the rational, self-conscious, and +therefore responsible will, he is [Greek: gupi diaknaiomenos] + +If to these contemplations we add the control and despotism exercised on +the free reason by Jupiter in his symbolical character, as [Greek: nomos +politikos];--by custom (Hermes); by necessity, [Greek: bia kai +kratos];--by the mechanic arts and powers, [Greek: suggeneis t_o No_o] +though they are, and which are symbolized in Hephaistos,--we shall see +at once the propriety of the title, Prometheus, [Greek: desmotaes]. + +9. Nature, or 'Zeus' as the [Greek: nomos en nomizomenois], knows +herself only, can only come to a knowledge of herself, in man! And even +in man, only as man is supernatural, above nature, noetic. But this +knowledge man refuses to communicate; that is, the human understanding +alone is at once self-conscious and conscious of nature. And this high +prerogative it owes exclusively to its being an assessor of the reason. +Yet even the human understanding in its height of place seeks vainly to +appropriate the ideas of the pure reason, which it can only represent by +'idola'. Here, then, the 'Nous' stands as Prometheus [Greek: antipalos], +'renuens'--in hostile opposition to Jupitor 'Inquisitor'. + +10. Yet finally, against the obstacles and even under the fostering +influences of the 'Nomos', [Greek: tou nomimou], a son of Jove himself, +but a descendant from Io, the mundane religion, as contra-distinguished +from the sacerdotal 'cultus', or religion of the state, an Alcides +'Liberator' will arise, and the 'Nous', or divine principle in man, will +be Prometheus [Greek: heleutheromenos]. + +Did my limits or time permit me to trace the persecutions, wanderings, +and migrations of the Io, the mundane religion, through the whole map +marked out by the tragic poet, the coincidences would bring the truth, +the unarbitrariness, of the preceding exposition as near to +demonstration as can rationally be required on a question of history, +that must, for the greater part, be answered by combination of scattered +facts. But this part of my subject, together with a particular +exemplification of the light which my theory throws both on the sense +and the beauty of numerous passages of this stupendous poem, I must +reserve for a future communication. + +NOTES. [3] + +v. 15. [Greek: pharaggi]:--'in a coomb, or combe.' v. 17. [Greek: +ex'oriazein gar patros logous baru]. [Greek: euoriazein], as the editor +confesses, is a word introduced into the text against the authority of +all editions and manuscripts. I should prefer [Greek: ex'oriazein], +notwithstanding its being a [Greek: hapax legomenon]. The [Greek: +eu]--seems to my tact too free and easy a word;--and yet our 'to trifle +with' appears the exact meaning. + + +[Footnote 1: I scarcely need say, that I use the word [Greek: +allotrionomos] as a participle active, as exercising law on another, not +as receiving law from another, though the latter is the classical force +(I suppose) of the word.] + +[Footnote 2: Rhea (from [Greek: rheo], 'fluo'), that is, the earth as +the transitory, the ever-flowing nature, the flux and sum of +'phenomena', or objects of the outward sense, in contradistinction from +the earth as Vesta, as the firmamental law that sustains and disposes +the apparent world! The Satyrs represent the sports and appetences of +the sensuous nature ([Greek: phronaema sarkos])--Pan, or the total life +of the earth, the presence of all in each, the universal 'organismus' of +bodies and bodily energy.] + +[Footnote 3: Written in Bp. Blomfield's edition, and communicated by Mr. +Cary. Ed.] + + + + +NOTE ON CHALMERS'S LIFE OF DANIEL. + + + The justice of these remarks cannot be disputed, though some of them + are rather too figurative for sober criticism. + +Most genuine! A figurative remark! If this strange writer had any +meaning, it must be:--Headly's criticism is just throughout, but +conveyed in a style too figurative for prose composition. Chalmers's own +remarks are wholly mistaken;--too silly for any criticism, drunk or +sober, and in language too flat for any thing. In Daniel's Sonnets there +is scarcely one good line; while his Hymen's Triumph, of which Chalmers +says not one word, exhibits a continued series of first-rate beauties in +thought, passion, and imagery, and in language and metre is so +faultless, that the style of that poem may without extravagance be +declared to be imperishable English. + +1820. + + + + + +BISHOP CORBET. + + +I almost wonder that the inimitable humour, and the rich sound and +propulsive movement of the verse, have not rendered Corbet a popular +poet. I am convinced that a reprint of his poems, with illustrative and +chit-chat biographical notes, and cuts by Cruikshank, would take with +the public uncommonly well. September, 1823. + + + +NOTES ON SELDEN'S TABLE TALK. [1] + +There is more weighty bullion sense in this book, than I ever found in +the same number of pages of any uninspired writer. + + OPINION. + + Opinion and affection extremely differ. I may affect a woman best, but + it does not follow I must think her the handsomest woman in the world. + ... Opinion is something wherein I go about to give reason why all the + world should think as I think. Affection is a thing wherein I look + after the pleasing of myself. + +Good! This is the true difference betwixt the beautiful and the +agreeable, which Knight and the rest of that [Greek: plaethos atheon] +have so beneficially confounded, 'meretricibus scilicet et Plutoni'. + +O what an insight the whole of this article gives into a wise man's +heart, who has been compelled to act with the many, as one of the many! +It explains Sir Thomas More's zealous Romanism, &c. + + + PARLIAMENT. + +Excellent! O! to have been with Selden over his glass of wine, making +every accident an outlet and a vehicle of wisdom! + + + POETRY. + + The old poets had no other reason but this, their verse was, sung to + music; otherwise it had been a senseless thing to have fettered up + themselves. + +No one man can know all things: even Selden here talks ignorantly. Verse +is in itself a music, and the natural symbol of that union of passion +with thought and pleasure, which constitutes the essence of all poetry, +as contradistinguished from science, and distinguished from history +civil or natural. To Pope's Essay on Man,--in short, to whatever is mere +metrical good sense and wit, the remark applies. + +Ib. + + Verse proves nothing but the quantity of syllables; they are not meant + for logic. + +True; they, that is, verses, are not logic; but they are, or ought to +be, the envoys and representatives of that vital passion, which is the +practical cement of logic; and without which logic must remain inert. + + +[Footnote 1: These remarks on Selden, Wheeler, and Birch, were +communicated by Mr. Gary. Ed.] + + + + + +NOTE ON THEOLOGICAL LECTURES OF BENJAMIN WHEELER, D. D. + + (Vol. I. p. 77.) + + A miracle, usually so termed, is the exertion of a supernatural power + in some act, and contrary to the regular course of nature, &c. + +Where is the proof of this as drawn from Scripture, from fact recorded, +or from doctrine affirmed? Where the proof of its logical +possibility,--that is, that the word has any representable sense? +Contrary to 2x2=4 is 2x2=5, or that the same fire acting at the same +moment on the same subject should burn it and not burn it. + +The course of nature is either one with, or a reverential synonyme of, +the ever present divine agency; or it is a self-subsisting derivative +from, and dependent on, the divine will. In either case this author's +assertion would amount to a charge of self-contradiction on the Author +of all things. Before the spread of Grotianism, or the Old Bailey +'nolens volens' Christianity, such language was unexampled. A miracle is +either 'super naturam', or it is simply 'praeter experientiam.' If +nature be a collective term for the sum total of the mechanic +powers,--that is, of the act first manifested to the senses in the +conductor A, arriving at Z by the sensible chain of intermediate +conductors, B, C, D, &c.;--then every motion of my arm is 'super +naturam'. If this be not the sense, then nature is but a wilful synonyme +of experience, and then the first noticed aerolithes, Sulzer's first +observation of the galvanic arch, &c. must have been miracles. + +As erroneous as the author's assertions are logically, so false are they +historically, in the effect, which the miracles in and by themselves did +produce on those, who, rejecting the doctrine, were eye-witnesses of the +miracles;--and psychologically, in the effect which miracles, as +miracles, are calculated to produce on the human mind. Is it possible +that the author can have attentively studied the first two or three +chapters of St. John's gospel? + +There is but one possible tenable definition of a miracle,--namely, an +immediate consequent from a heterogeneous antecedent. This is its +essence. Add the words, 'praeter experientiam adhuc', or 'id temporis', +and you have the full and popular or practical sense of the term +miracle. [1] + +[Footnote A: See The Friend, Vol. III. Essay 2. Ed.] + + + + +NOTE ON A SERMON + +ON THE PREVALENCE OF INFIDELITY AND ENTHUSIASM, BY WALTER BIRCH, B. D. + + +In the description of enthusiasm, the author has plainly had in view +individual characters, and those too in a light, in which they appeared +to him; not clear and discriminate ideas. Hence a mixture of truth and +error, of appropriate and inappropriate terms, which it is scarcely +possible to disentangle. Part applies to fanaticism; part to enthusiasm; +and no small portion of this latter to enthusiasm not pure, but as it +exists in particular men, modified by their imperfections--and bad +because not wholly enthusiasm. I regret this, because it is evidently +the discourse of a very powerful mind;--and because I am convinced that +the disease of the age is want of enthusiasm, and a tending to +fanaticism. You may very naturally object that the senses, in which I +use the two terms, fanaticism and enthusiasm, are private +interpretations equally as, if not more than, Mr. Birch's. They are so; +but the difference between us is, that without reference to either term, +I have attempted to ascertain the existence and diversity of two states +of moral being; and then having found in our language two words of very +fluctuating and indeterminate use, indeed, but the one word more +frequently bordering on the one state, the other on the other, I try to +fix each to that state exclusively. And herein I follow the practice of +all scientific men, whether naturalists or metaphysicians, and the +dictate of common sense, that one word ought to have but one meaning. +Thus by Hobbes and others of the materialists, compulsion and obligation +were used indiscriminately; but the distinction of the two senses is the +condition of all moral responsibility. Now the effect of Mr. Birch's use +of the words is to continue the confusion. Remember we could not reason +at all, if our conceptions and terms were not more single and definite +than the things designated. Enthusiasm is the absorption of the +individual in the object contemplated from the vividness or intensity of +his conceptions and convictions: fanaticism is heat, or accumulation and +direction, of feeling acquired by contagion, and relying on the sympathy +of sect or confederacy; intense sensation with confused or dim +conceptions. Hence the fanatic can exist only in a crowd, from inward +weakness anxious for outward confirmation; and, therefore, an eager +proselyter and intolerant. The enthusiast, on the contrary, is a +solitary, who lives in a world of his own peopling, and for that cause +is disinclined to outward action. Lastly, enthusiasm is susceptible of +many degrees, (according to the proportionateness of the objects +contemplated,) from the highest grandeur of moral and intellectual +being, even to madness; but fanaticism is one and the same, and appears +different only from the manners and original temperament of the +individual. There is a white and a red heat; a sullen glow as well as a +crackling flame; cold-blooded as well as hot-blooded fanaticism. +Enthusiasts, [Greek: enthousiastai] from [Greek: entheos, ois ho theos +enesi], or possibly from [Greek: en thusiais], those who, in sacrifice +to, or at, the altar of truth or falsehood, are possessed by a spirit or +influence mightier than their own individuality. 'Fanatici-qui circum +fana favorem mutuo contrahunt el afflant'--those who in the same +conventicle, or before the same shrine, relique or image, heat and +ferment by co-acervation. + +I am fully aware that the words are used by the best writers +indifferently, but such must be the case in very many words in a +composite language, such as the English, before they are desynonymized. +Thus imagination and fancy; chronical and temporal, and many others. + + + + + +FENELON ON CHARITY.[1] + +Note to pages 196,197. + +This chapter is plausible, shewy, insinuating, and (as indeed is the +character of the whole work) 'makes the amiable.' To many,--to myself +formerly,--it has appeared a mere dispute about words: but it is by no +means of so harmless a character, for it tends to give a false direction +to our thoughts, by diverting the conscience from the ruined and +corrupted state, in which we are without Christ. Sin is the disease. +What is the remedy? What is the antidote?--Charity?--Pshaw! Charity in +the large apostolic sense of the term is the health, the state to be +obtained by the use of the remedy, not the sovereign balm itself,--faith +of grace,--faith in the God-manhood, the cross, the mediation, and +perfected righteousness, of Jesus, to the utter rejection and abjuration +of all righteousness of our own! Faith alone is the restorative. The +Romish scheme is preposterous;--it puts the rill before the spring. +Faith is the source,--charity, that is, the whole Christian life, is the +stream from it. It is quite childish to talk of faith being imperfect +without charity. As wisely might you say that a fire, however bright and +strong, was imperfect without heat, or that the sun, however cloudless, +was imperfect without beams. The true answer would be:--it is not +faith,--but utter reprobate faithlessness, which may indeed very +possibly coexist with a mere acquiescence of the understanding in +certain facts recorded by the Evangelists. But did John, or Paul, or +Martin Luther, ever flatter this barren belief with the name of saving +faith? No. Little ones! Be not deceived. Wear at your bosoms that +precious amulet against all the spells of antichrist, the 20th verse of +the 2nd chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Galatians:--'I am crucified +with Christ, nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: +and the life, which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the +Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me'. + +Thus we see even our faith is not ours in its origin: but is the faith +of the Son of God graciously communicated to us. Beware, therefore, that +you do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the +Law, then Christ is dead in vain. If, therefore, we are saved by +charity, we are saved by the keeping of the Law, which doctrine St. Paul +declared to be an apostacy from Christ, and a bewitching of the soul +from the truth. But, you will perhaps say, can a man be saved without +charity?--The answer is, a man without charity cannot be saved: the +faith of the Son of God is not in him. + +[Footnote 1: Communicated by Mr. Gillman. Ed.] + + + + + +CHANGE OF THE CLIMATES. + +The character and circumstances of the animal and vegetable remains +discovered in the northern zone, in Siberia and other parts of +Russia,--all with scarcely an exception belonging to 'genera' that are +now only found in, and require, a tropical climate,--are such as receive +no adequate solution from the hypothesis of their having been casually +floated thither, and deposited, by the waters of a deluge, still less of +the Noachian deluge, as related and described by the great Hebrew +historian and legislator. In order to a full solution of this problem, +two 'data' are requisite: + +1. A total change of climate: + +2. That this change shall have been, not gradual, but sudden, +instantaneous, and incompatible with the life and subsistency of the +animals and vegetables in these high latitudes, at that period, and +previously, existing. + +Now these 'data' or conditions will be afforded, if we assume a total +submersion of the surface of this planet, even of its highest mountains +then and now existing, by a sudden contemporaneous mass of waters, and +that the evaporation of these waters was aided by a steady wind, +especially adapted to this purpose in a peculiarly dry atmosphere, and +was (as it must of necessity have been) most rapid and intense at the +equator and within the tropics proportionally. For--as it has been +demonstrated by Dr. Wollaston's experiment, in which the evaporation, +occasioned by boiling water at the mid point of a line of water, froze +the fluid at the two ends, that is, at a given distance from the +greatest intensity of the evaporative process,--the effect of an +evaporation of the supposed power and rapidity would be to produce at +certain distances from the 'maximum' point, north and south, a vast +barrier of ice,--such as having once taken place, and being of such mass +and magnitude as to be only in a small degree diminishable by the +ensuing summer, must have become permanent, and beyond the power of all +the known and ordinary dissolving agents of nature. That the situation +of the magnetic poles of the earth, and the almost certain connection of +magnetism with cold, no less than with metallic cohesion, co-operated in +determining the distance of the barriers, or two poles, of evaporation, +from its centre or the 'maximum' of its activity, is highly probable, +and receives a strong confirmation from the open sea and diminished +cold, both at the north and south zones, on the ulterior of the barrier, +and towards the true or physical poles of the earth. + +Now the action of a powerful co-agent in the evaporative process, such +as is assumed in this hypothesis, is a fact of history. 'And God +remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was +with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the +waters assuaged'. Gen. viii. 1. I do not recollect the Hebrew word +rendered 'assuaged;' but I will consult my learned friend Hyman Hurwitz +on its radical, and its primary sense. At all events, the note by Pyle +in Drs. Mant and D'Oyly's Bible is arbitrary, though excusable by the +state of chemical science in his time. + +The problem of the multitude of 'genera' of animals, and their several +exclusive acclimatements at the present period may, likewise, I persuade +myself, receive a probable solution by an hypothesis legitimated by +known laws and fair analogies. But of this hereafter. + +1823. + + + + + +WONDERFULNESS OF PROSE. + +It has just struck my feelings that the Pherecydean origin of prose +being granted, prose must have struck men with greater admiration than +poetry. In the latter, it was the language of passion and emotion: it is +what they themselves spoke and heard in moments of exultation, +indignation, &c. But to hear an evolving roll, or a succession of +leaves, talk continually the language of deliberate reason in a form of +continued preconception, of a 'Z' already possessed when 'A' was being +uttered,--this must have appeared godlike. I feel myself in the same +state, when in the perusal of a sober, yet elevated and harmonious, +succession of sentences and periods, I abstract my mind from the +particular passage, and sympathize with the wonder of the common people +who say of an eloquent man:--'He talks like a book!' + + + + + +NOTES ON TOM JONES. [1] + +Manners change from generation to generation, and with manners morals +appear to change,--actually change with some, but appear to change with +all but the abandoned. A young man of the present day who should act as +Tom Jones is supposed to act at Upton, with Lady Bellaston, &c. would +not be a Tom Jones; and a Tom Jones of the present day, without perhaps +being in the ground a better man, would have perished rather than submit +to be kept by a harridan of fortune. Therefore this novel is, and, +indeed, pretends to be, no exemplar of conduct. But, notwithstanding all +this, I do loathe the cant which can recommend Pamela and Clarissa +Harlowe as strictly moral, though they poison the imagination of the +young with continued doses of 'tinct. lyttae', while Tom Jones is +prohibited as loose. I do not speak of young women;--but a young man +whose heart or feelings can be injured, or even his passions excited, by +aught in this novel, is already thoroughly corrupt. There is a cheerful, +sun-shiny, breezy spirit that prevails everywhere, strongly contrasted +with the close, hot, day-dreamy continuity of Richardson. Every +indiscretion, every immoral act, of Tom Jones, (and it must be +remembered that he is in every one taken by surprise--his inward +principles remaining firm--) is so instantly punished by embarrassment +and unanticipated evil consequences of his folly, that the reader's mind +is not left for a moment to dwell or run riot on the criminal indulgence +itself. In short, let the requisite allowance be made for the increased +refinement of our manners,--and then I dare believe that no young man +who consulted his heart and conscience only, without adverting to what +the world would say--could rise from the perusal of Fielding's Tom +Jones, Joseph Andrews, or Amelia, without feeling himself a better +man;--at least, without an intense conviction that he could not be +guilty of a base act. + +If I want a servant or mechanic, I wish to know what he does:--but of a +friend, I must know what he is. And in no writer is this momentous +distinction so finely brought forward as by Fielding. We do not care +what Blifil does;--the deed, as separate from the agent, may be good or +ill;--but Blifil is a villain;--and we feel him to be so from the very +moment he, the boy Blifil, restores Sophia's poor captive bird to its +native and rightful liberty. + +Book xiv. ch. 8. + + Notwithstanding the sentiment of the Roman satirist, which denies the + divinity of fortune; and the opinion of Seneca to the same purpose; + Cicero, who was, I believe, a wiser man than either of them, expressly + holds the contrary; and certain it is there are some incidents in life + so very strange and unaccountable, that it seems to require more than + human skill and foresight in producing them. + +Surely Juvenal, Seneca, and Cicero, all meant the same thing, namely, +that there was no chance, but instead of it providence, either human or +divine. + +Book xv. ch. 9. + + The rupture with Lady Bellaston. + +Even in the most questionable part of Tom Jones, I cannot but think, +after frequent reflection, that an additional paragraph, more fully and +forcibly unfolding Tom Jones's sense of self-degradation on the +discovery of the true character of the relation in which he had stood to +Lady Bellaston, and his awakened feeling of the dignity of manly +chastity, would have removed in great measure any just objections, at +all events relatively to Fielding himself, and with regard to the state +of manners in his time. + +Book xvi. ch. 5. + + That refined degree of Platonic affection which is absolutely detached + from the flesh, and is indeed entirely and purely spiritual, is a gift + confined to the female part of the creation; many of whom I have heard + declare (and doubtless with great truth) that they would, with the + utmost readiness, resign a lover to a rival, when such resignation was + proved to be necessary for the temporal interest of such lover. + +I firmly believe that there are men capable of such a sacrifice, and +this, without pretending to, or even admiring or seeing any virtue in, +this absolute detachment from the flesh. + + +[Footnote 1: Communicated by Mr. Gillman, Ed.] + + + + +JONATHAN WILD. [1] + +Jonathan Wild is assuredly the best of all the fictions in which a +villain is throughout the prominent character. But how impossible it is +by any force of genius to create a sustained attractive interest for +such a groundwork, and how the mind wearies of, and shrinks from, the +more than painful interest, the [Greek: mis_eton], of utter +depravity,--Fielding himself felt and endeavoured to mitigate and remedy +by the (on all other principles) far too large a proportion, and too +quick recurrence, of the interposed chapters of moral reflection, like +the chorus in the Greek tragedy,--admirable specimens as these chapters +are of profound irony and philosophic satire. Chap. VI. Book 2, on +Hats,[Footnote 1]--brief as it is, exceeds any thing even in Swift's +Lilliput, or Tale of the Tub. How forcibly it applies to the Whigs, +Tories, and Radicals of our own times. + +Whether the transposition of Fielding's scorching wit (as B. III. c. +xiv.) to the mouth of his hero be objectionable on the ground of +incredulus odi', or is to be admired as answering the author's purpose +by unrealizing the story, in order to give a deeper reality to the +truths intended,--I must leave doubtful, yet myself inclining to the +latter judgment. 27th Feb. 1832. + + +[Footnote 1: Communicated by Mr. Gillman. Ed.] + +[Footnote 2: 'In which our hero makes a speech well worthy to be +celebrated; and the behaviour of one of the gang, perhaps more unnatural +than any other part of this history.'] + + + + + + +BARRY CORNWALL.[1] + + +Barry Cornwall is a poet, 'me saltem judice'; and in that sense of the +term, in which I apply it to C. Lamb and W. Wordsworth. There are poems +of great merit, the authors of which I should yet not feel impelled so +to designate. + +The faults of these poems are no less things of hope, than the beauties; +both are just what they ought to be,--that is, now. + +If B.C. be faithful to his genius, it in due time will warn him, that as +poetry is the identity of all other knowledges, so a poet cannot be a +great poet, but as being likewise inclusively an historian and +naturalist, in the light, as well as the life, of philosophy: all other +men's worlds are his chaos. + +Hints 'obiter' are:-- + + not to permit delicacy and exquisiteness to seduce into effeminacy. + + Not to permit beauties by repetition to become mannerisms. + + To be jealous of fragmentary composition,--as epicurism of genius, and + apple-pie made all of quinces. + + 'Item', that dramatic poetry must be poetry hid in thought and + passion,--not thought or passion disguised in the dress of poetry. + + Lastly, to be economic and withholding in similies, figures, &c. They + will all find their place, sooner or later, each as the luminary of a + sphere of its own. There can be no galaxy in poetry, because it is + language,--'ergo' processive,--'ergo' every the smallest star must be + seen singly. + +There are not five metrists in the kingdom, whose works are known by me, +to whom I could have held myself allowed to have spoken so plainly. But +B.C. is a man of genius, and it depends on himself--(competence +protecting him from gnawing or distracting cares)--to become a rightful +poet,--that is, a great man. + +Oh! for such a man worldly prudence is transfigured into the highest +spiritual duty! How generous is self-interest in him, whose true self is +all that is good and hopeful in all ages, as far as the language of +Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton shall become the mother-tongue! + +A map of the road to Paradise, drawn in Purgatory, on the confines of +Hell, by S.T.C. July 30, 1819. + +[Footnote 1: Written in Mr. Lamb's copy of the 'Dramatic Scenes'. Ed.] + + + +THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN'S ADDRESS TO THE CROSS. [1] + + O! That it were as it was wont to be, + When thy old friends of fire, all full of thee, + Fought against frowns with smiles; gave glorius chace + To persecutions; and against the face + Of death and fiercest dangers durst with brave + And sober pace march on to meet a grave! + On their bold breast about the world they bore thee, + And to the teeth of hell stood up to teach thee, + In centre of their inmost souls they wore thee, + Where racks and torments strove in vain to reach thee! + Powers of my soul, be proud, And speak aloud + To the dear-bought nations this redeeming name, + And in the wealth of one rich word proclaim + New smiles to nature! May it be no wrong, + Blest heavens! to you and your superior song, + That we, dark sons of dust and sorrow, Awhile dare borrow + The name of your delights and your desires, + And fit it to so far inferior lyres!--Our lispings have their music too, + Ye mighty orbs! as well as you; Nor yields the noblest nest + Of warbling cherubs to the ear of love, A melody above + The low fond murmurs from the loyal breast + Of a poor panting turtle dove. + We mortals too + Have leave to do + The same bright business, ye third heavens with you. + +[Footnote 1: This poem was found in Mr. Coleridge's hand-writing on a +sheet of paper with other passages undoubtedly of his own composition. +There is something, however, in it which leads me to think it +transcribed or translated from some other writer, though I have been +unable from recollection or inquiry to ascertain the fact. It is +published here, therefore, expressly under caution. Ed.] + + + + + +FULLER'S HOLY STATE. + +B.I.c.9. Life of Eliezer. + + He will not truant it now in the afternoon, but with convenient speed + returns to Abraham, who onely was worthy of such a servant, who onely + was worthy of such a master. + +On my word, Eliezer did his business in an orderly and sensible manner; +but what there is to call forth this hyper-encomiastic--'who only'--I +cannot see. + +B.II.c.3. Life of Paracelsus. It is matter of regret with me, that +Fuller, (whose wit, alike in quantity, quality, and perpetuity, +surpassing that of the wittiest in a witty age, robbed him of the praise +not less due to him for an equal superiority in sound, shrewd, good +sense, and freedom of intellect,) had not looked through the two Latin +folios of Paracelsus's Works. It is not to be doubted that a rich and +delightful article would have been the result. For who like Fuller could +have brought out and set forth, this singular compound of true +philosophic genius with the morals of a quack and the manners of a king +of the gypsies! Nevertheless, Paracelsus belonged to his age--the dawn +of experimental science: and a well written critique on his life and +writings would present, through the magnifying glass of a caricature, +the distinguishing features of the Helmonts, Kirchers, &c. in short, of +the host of naturalists of the sixteenth century. The period might begin +with Paracelsus and end with Sir Kenelm Digby. + +N. B. The potential, ([Greek: Logos theanthropos]) the ground of the +prophetic, directed the first thinkers, (the 'Mystae') to the metallic +bodies, as the key of all natural science. The then actual blended with +this instinct all the fancies and fond desires, and false perspective of +the childhood of intellect. The essence was truth, the form was folly: +and this is the definition of alchemy. Nevertheless the very terms bear +witness to the veracity of the original instinct. The world of sensible +experience cannot be more luminously divided than into the modifying +powers, [Greek: to allo],--that which differences, makes this other than +that; and the [Greek: met allo]--that which is beyond, or deeper than +the modification. 'Metallon' is strictly the base of the mode; and such +have the metals been determined to be by modern chemistry. And what are +now the great problems of chemistry? The difference of the metals +themselves, their origin, the causes of their locations, of their +co-existence in the same ore--as, for instance, iridium, osmium, +palladium, rhodium, and iron with platinum. Were these problems solved, +the results who dare limit? In addition to the 'mechanique celeste', we +might have a new department of astronomy, the 'chymie celeste', that is, +a philosophic astrology. And to this I do not hesitate to refer the +whole connection between alchemy and astrology, the same divinity in the +idea, the same childishness in the attempt to realize it. Nay, the very +invocations of spirits were not without a ground of truth. The light was +for the greater part suffocated and the rest fantastically refracted, +but still it was light struggling in the darkness. And I am persuaded, +that to the full triumph of science, it will be necessary that nature +should be commanded more spiritually than hitherto, that is, more +directly in the power of the will. + +B. IV. c. 19. The Prince. + + He sympathizeth with him that by a proxy is corrected for his offence. + +See Sir W. Scott's Fortunes of Nigel. In an oriental despotism one would +not have been surprised at finding such a custom, but in a Christian +court, and under the light of Protestantism, it is marvellous. It would +be well to ascertain, if possible, the earliest date of this +contrivance; whether it existed under the Plantagenets, or whether first +under the Tudors, or lastly, whether it was a precious import from +Scotland with gentle King Jamie. + +Ib. c. 21. The King. + + He is a mortal god. + +Compare the fulsome flattery of these and other passages in this volume +(though modest to the common language of James's priestly courtiers) +with the loyal but free and manly tone of Fuller's later works, towards +the close of Charles the First's reign and under the Commonwealth and +Protectorate. And doubtless this was not peculiar to Fuller: but a great +and lasting change was effected in the mind of the country generally. +The bishops and other church dignitaries tried for a while to renew the +old king-godding 'mumpsimus'; but the second Charles laughed at them, +and they quarrelled with his successor, and hated the hero who delivered +them from him too thoroughly to have flattered him with any unction, +even if William's Dutch phlegm had not precluded the attempt by making +its failure certain. + + + + + +FULLER'S PROFANE STATE. + +B. V. c. 2. + + God gave magistrates power to punish them, else they bear the sword in + vain. They may command people to serve God, who herein have no cause + to complain. + +And elsewhere. The only serious 'macula' in Fuller's mind is his uniform +support of the right and duty of the civil magistrate to punish errors +in belief. Fuller would, indeed, recommend moderation in the practice; +but of 'upas', 'woorara', and persecution, there are no moderate doses +possible. + + + + +FULLER'S APPEAL OF INJURED INNOCENCE. + +Part I. c. 5. + + Yet there want not learned writers (whom I need not name) of the + opinion that even the instrumental penmen of the Scripture might + commit [Greek: hamartaemata mnaemonika]: though open that window to + profaneness, and it will be in vain to shut any dores; 'Let God be + true, and every man a lyer'. + +It has been matter of complaint with hundreds, yea, it is an old cuckoo +song of grim saints, that the Reformation came to its close long before +it came to its completion. But the cause of this imperfection has been +fully laid open by no party,--'scilicet', that in divines of both +parties of the Reformers, the Protestants and the Detestants, there was +the same relic of the Roman 'lues',--the habit of deciding for or +against the orthodoxy of a position, not according to its truth or +falsehood, not on grounds of reason or of history, but by the imagined +consequences of the position. The very same principles on which the +pontifical polemics vindicate the Papal infallibility, Fuller 'et centum +alii' apply to the (if possible) still more extravagant notion of the +absolute truth and divinity of every syllable of the text of the books +of the Old and New Testament as we have it. + +Ib. + + Sure I am, that one of as much meekness, as some are of moroseness, + even upright Moses himself, in his service of the essential and + increated truth (of higher consequence than the historical truth + controverted betwixt us) had notwithstanding 'a respect to the + reward'. Heb. xi. 26. + +In religion the faith pre-supposed in the respect, and as its condition, +gives to the motive a purity and an elevation which of itself, and where +the recompense is looked for in temporal and carnal pleasures or +profits, it would not have. + + + + +FULLER'S CHURCH HISTORY. + +B. I. cent. 5. + + PELAGIUS:--Let no foreiner insult on the infelicity of our land in + bearing this monster. + +It raises, or ought to raise, our estimation of Fuller's good sense and +the general temperance of his mind, when we see the heavy weight of +prejudices, the universal code of his age, incumbent on his judgment, +and which nevertheless left sanity of opinion, the general character of +his writings: this remark was suggested by the term 'monster' attached +to the worthy Cambrian Pelagius--the teacher _Arminianismi ante +Arminium_. + +B. II. cent. 6. s. 8. + + Whereas in Holy Writ, when the Apostles (and the Papists commonly call + Augustine the English apostle, how properly we shall see hereafter,) + went to a foreign nation, 'God gave them the language thereof, &c.' + +What a loss that Fuller has not made a reference to his authorities for +this assertion! I am sure he could have found none in the New Testament, +but facts that imply, and, in the absence of all such proof, prove the +contrary. + +Ib. s. 6. + + Thus we see the whole week bescattered with Saxon idols, whose pagan + gods were the godfathers of the days, and gave them their names. 'This + some zealot may behold as the object of a necessary reformation, + desiring to have the days of the week new dipt, and called after other + names'. Though indeed this supposed scandal will not offend the wise, + as beneath their notice, and cannot offend the ignorant, as above + their knowledge. + +A curious prediction fulfilled a few years after in the Quakers, and +well worthy of being extracted and addressed to the present Friends. + +Memorandum.--It is the error of the Friends, but natural and common to +almost all sects,--the perversion of the wisdom of the first +establishers of their sect into their own folly, by not distinguishing +between the conditionally right and the permanently and essentially so. +For example: It was right conditionally in the Apostles to forbid black +puddings even to the Gentile Christians, and it was wisdom in them; but +to continue the prohibition would be folly and Judaism in us. The elder +church very sensibly distinguished episcopal from apostolic inspiration; +the episcopal spirit, that which dictated what was fit and profitable +for a particular community or church at a particular period,--from the +apostolic and catholic spirit which dictated truth and duties of +permanent and universal obligation. + +Ib. cent. 7. + +This Latin dedication is remarkably pleasing and elegant. Milton in his +classical youth, the aera of Lycidas, might have written it--only he +would have given it in Latin verse. + +B. x. cent. 17. + + Bp. of London. May your Majesty be pleased, that the ancient canon may + be remembered, 'Schismatici contra episcopos non sunt audiendi'. And + there is another decree of a very ancient council, that no man should + be admitted to speak against that whereunto he hath formerly + subscribed. + + And as for you, Doctor Reynolds, and your sociates, how much are you + bound to his Majestie's clemencye, permitting you contrary to the + statute 'primo Elizabethae', so freely to speak against the liturgie + and discipline established. Faine would I know the end you aime at, + and whether you be not of Mr. Cartwright's minde, who affirmed, that + we ought in ceremonies rather to conforme to the Turks than to the + Papists. I doubt you approve his position, because here appearing + before his Majesty in Turkey-gownes, not in your scholastic habits, + according to the order of the Universities. + +If any man, who like myself hath attentively read the Church history of +the reign of Elizabeth, and the conference before, and with, her pedant +successor, can shew me any essential difference between Whitgift and +Bancroft during their rule, and Bonner and Gardiner in the reign of +Mary, I will be thankful to him in my heart and for him in my prayers. +One difference I see, namely, that the former professing the New +Testament to be their rule and guide, and making the fallibility of all +churches and individuals an article of faith, were more inconsistent, +and therefore less excusable, than the Popish persecutors. 30 Aug. 1824. + +N.B. The crimes, murderous as they were, were the vice and delusion of +the age, and it is ignorance to lack charity towards the persons, Papist +or Protestant; but the tone, the spirit, characterizes, and belongs to, +the individual: for example, the bursting spleen of this Bancroft, not +so satisfied with this precious arbitrator for having pre-condemned his +opponents, as fierce and surly with him for not hanging them up unheard. + +At the end. Next to Shakspeare, I am not certain whether Thomas Fuller, +beyond all other writers, does not excite in me the sense and emotion of +the marvellous;--the degree in which any given faculty or combination of +faculties is possessed and manifested, so far surpassing what one would +have thought possible in a single mind, as to give one's admiration the +flavour and quality of wonder! Wit was the stuff and substance of +Fuller's intellect. It was the element, the earthen base, the material +which he worked in, and this very circumstance has defrauded him of his +due praise for the practical wisdom of the thoughts, for the beauty and +variety of the truths, into which he shaped the stuff. Fuller was +incomparably the most sensible, the least prejudiced, great man of an +age that boasted a galaxy of great men. He is a very voluminous writer, +and yet in all his numerous volumes on so many different subjects, it is +scarcely too much to say, that you will hardly find a page in which some +one sentence out of every three does not deserve to be quoted for +itself--as motto or as maxim. God bless thee, dear old man! may I meet +with thee!--which is tantamount to--may I go to heaven! + +July, 1829. + + + + + +ASGILL'S ARGUMENT. + + 'That according to the covenant of eternal life revealed in the + Scriptures, man may be translated from hence into that eternal life, + without passing through death, although the human nature of Christ + himself could not be thus translated till he had passed through + death.' Edit. 1715. + +If I needed an illustrative example of the distinction between the +reason and the understanding, between spiritual sense and logic, this +treatise of Asgill's would supply it. Excuse the defect of all idea, or +spiritual intuition of God, and allow yourself to bring Him as plaintiff +or defendant into a common-law court,--and then I cannot conceive a +clearer or cleverer piece of special pleading than Asgill has here +given. The language is excellent--idiomatic, simple, perspicuous, at +once significant and lively, that is, expressive of the thought, and +also of a manly proportion of feeling appropriate to it. In short, it is +the ablest attempt to exhibit a scheme of religion without ideas, that +the inherent contradiction in the thought renders possible. + +It is of minor importance how a man represents to himself his redemption +by the Word Incarnate,--within what scheme of his understanding he +concludes it, or by what supposed analogies (though actually no better +than metaphors) he tries to conceive it, provided he has a lively faith +in Christ, the Son of the living God, and his Redeemer. The faith may +and must be the same in all who are thereby saved; but every man, more +or less, construes it into an intelligible belief through the shaping +and coloring optical glass of his own individual understanding. Mr. +Asgill has given a very ingenious common-law scheme. 'Valeat quantum +valere potest'! It would make a figure before the Benchers of the Middle +Temple. For myself, I prefer the belief that man was made to know that a +finite free agent could not stand but by the coincidence, and +independent harmony, of a separate will with the will of God. For only +by the will of God can he obey God's will. Man fell as a soul to rise a +spirit. The first Adam was a living soul; the last a life-making spirit. + +In the Word was life, and that life is the light of men. And as long as +the light abides within its own sphere, that is, appears as reason,--so +long it is commensurate with the life, and is its adequate +representative. But not so, when this light shines downward into the +understanding; for there it is always, more or less, refracted, and +differently in every different individual; and it must be re-converted +into life to rectify itself, and regain its universality, or +'all-commonness, Allgemeinheit', as the German more expressively says. +Hence in faith and charity the church is catholic: so likewise in the +fundamental articles of belief, which constitute the right reason of +faith. But in the minor 'dogmata', in modes of exposition, and the +vehicles of faith and reason to the understandings, imaginations, and +affections of men, the churches may differ, and in this difference +supply one object for charity to exercise itself on by mutual +forbearance. + +O! there is a deep philosophy in the proverbial phrase,--'his heart sets +his head right!' In our commerce with heaven, we must cast our local +coins and tokens into the melting pot of love, to pass by weight and +bullion. And where the balance of trade is so immensely in our favour, +we have little right to complain, though they should not pass for half +the nominal value they go for in our own market. + +P. 46. + + And I am so far from thinking this covenant of eternal life to be an + allusion to the forms of title amongst men, that I rather adore it as + the precedent for them all, from which our imperfect forms are taken: + believing with that great Apostle, that 'the things on earth are but + the patterns of things in the heavens, where the originals are kept'. + +Aye! this, this is the pinch of the argument, which Asgill should have +proved, not merely asserted. Are these human laws, and these forms of +law, absolutely good and wise, or only conditionally so--the limited +powers and intellect, and the corrupt will of men being considered? + +P. 64. + + And hence, though the dead shall not arise with the same identity of + matter with which they died, yet being in the same form, they will not + know themselves from themselves, being the same to all uses, intents, + and purposes.... But then as God, in the resurrection, is not bound to + use the same matter, neither is he obliged to use a different matter. + +The great objection to this part of Asgill's scheme, which has had, and +still, I am told, has, many advocates among the chief dignitaries of our +church, is--that it either takes death as the utter extinction of +being,--or it supposes a continuance, or at least a renewal, of +consciousness after death. The former involves all the irrational, and +all the immoral, consequences of materialism. But if the latter be +granted, the proportionality, adhesion, and symmetry, of the whole +scheme are gone, and the infinite quantity,--that is, immortality under +the curse of estrangement from God,--is rendered a mere supplement +tacked on to the finite, and comparatively insignificant, if not +doubtful, evil, namely, the dissolution of the organic body. See what a +poor hand Asgill makes of it, p. 26:-- + + And therefore to signify the height of this resentment, God raises man + from the dead to demand further satisfaction of him. + + Death is a commitment to the prison of the grave till the judgment of + the great day; and then the grand 'Habeas corpus' will issue 'to the + earth and to the sea', to give up their dead; to remove the bodies, + with the cause of their commitment: and as these causes shall appear, + they shall either be released, or else sentenced to the common goal of + hell, there to remain until satisfaction. + +P. 66. + + Thou wilt not leave my 'soul' in the grave.... + + And that it is translated 'soul', is an Anglicism, not understood in + other languages, which have no other word for 'soul' but the same + which is for life. + +How so? 'Seele', the soul, 'Leben', life, in German; [Greek: psychae] +and [Greek: zo_ae], in Greek, and so on. + +P. 67. + + Then to this figure God added 'life', by breathing it into him from + himself, whereby this inanimate body became a living one. + +And what was this life? Something, or nothing? And had not, first, the +Spirit, and next the Word, of God infused life into the earth, of which +man as an animal and all other animals were made,--and then, in addition +to this, breathed into man a living soul, which he did not breathe into +the other animals? + +P. 75.-78-81. 'ad finem': + + I have a great deal of business yet in this world, without doing of + which heaven itself would be uneasy to me. + + And therefore do depend, that I shall not be taken hence in the midst + of my days, before I have done all my heart's desire. + + But when that is done, I know no business I have with the dead, and + therefore do as much depend that I shall not go hence by 'returning to + the dust', which is the sentence of that law from which I claim a + discharge: but that I shall make my 'exit' by way of translation, + which I claim as a dignity belonging to that degree in the science of + eternal life, of which I profess myself a graduate, according to the + true intent and meaning of the covenant of eternal life revealed in + the Scriptures. + + +A man so [Greek: kat exochaen] clear-headed, so remarkable for the +perspicuity of his sentences, and the luminous orderliness of his +arrangement,--in short, so consummate an artist in the statement of his +case, and in the inferences from his 'data', as John Asgill must be +allowed by all competent judges to have been,--was he in earnest or in +jest from p. 75 to the end of this treatise?--My belief is, that he +himself did not know. He was a thorough humorist: and so much of will, +with a spice of the wilful, goes to the making up of a humorist's creed, +that it is no easy matter to determine, how far such a man might not +have a pleasure in 'humming' his own mind, and believing, in order to +enjoy a dry laugh at himself for the belief. + +But let us look at it in another way. That Asgill's belief, professed +and maintained in this tract, is unwise and odd, I can more readily +grant, than that it is altogether irrational and absurd. I am even +strongly inclined to conjecture, that so early as St. Paul's apostolate +there were persons (whether sufficiently numerous to form a sect or +party, I cannot say), who held the same tenet as Asgill's, and in a more +intolerant and exclusive sense; and that it is to such persons that St. +Paul refers in the justly admired fifteenth chapter of the first epistle +to the Corinthians; and that the inadvertence to this has led a numerous +class of divines to a misconception of the Apostle's reasoning, and a +misinterpretation of his words, in behoof of the Socinian notion, that +the resurrection of Christ is the only argument of proof for the belief +of a future state, and that this was the great end and purpose of this +event. Now this assumption is so destitute of support from the other +writers of the New Testament, and so discordant with the whole spirit +and gist of St. Paul's views and reasoning every where else, that it is +'a priori' probable, that the apparent exception in this chapter is only +apparent. And this the hypothesis, I have here advanced, would enable +one to shew, and to exhibit the true bearing of the texts. Asgill +contents himself with maintaining that translation without death is one, +and the best, mode of passing to the heavenly state. 'Hinc itur ad +astra'. But his earliest predecessors contended that it was the only +mode, and to this St. Paul justly replies:'--If in this life only we +have hope, we are of all men most miserable.' + +1827. + + + + +INTRODUCTION TO ASGILL'S DEFENCE + +UPON HIS EXPULSION FROM THE HOUSE OP COMMONS. + +EDIT. 1712. + +P. 28. + + For as every faith, or credit, that a man hath attained to, is the + result of some knowledge or other; so that whoever hath attained that + knowledge, hath that faith, (for whatever a man knows, he cannot but + believe:) + + So this 'all faith' being the result of all knowledge,'tis easy to + conceive that whoever had once attained to all that knowledge, nothing + could be difficult to him. + +This whole discussion on faith is one of the very few instances, in +which Asgill has got out of his depth. According to all usage of words, +science and faith are incompatible in relation to the same object; +while, according to Asgill, faith is merely the power which science +confers on the will. Asgill says,--What we know, we must believe. I +retort,--What we only believe, we do not know. The 'minor' here is +excluded by, not included in, the 'major'. Minors by difference of +quantity are included in their majors; but minors by difference of +quality are excluded by them, or superseded. Apply this to belief and +science, or certain knowledge. On the confusion of the second, that is, +minors by difference of quality, with the first, or minors by difference +of quantity, rests Asgill's erroneous exposition of faith. + + + + + +NOTES ON SIR THOMAS BROWN'S RELIGIO MEDICI, + +MADE DURING A SECOND PERUSAL. 1808. [1] + +Part I. S.1. + + For my religion, though there be several circumstances that might + perswade the world I have none at all, 'as the generall scandall of my + profession', &c. + +The historical origin of this scandal, which in nine cases out of ten is +the honour of the medical profession, may, perhaps, be found in the +fact, that AEnesidemus and Sextus Empiricus, the sceptics, were both +physicians, about the close of the second century. [2] A fragment from +the writings of the former has been preserved by Photius, and such as +would leave a painful regret for the loss of the work, had not the +invaluable work of Sextus Empiricus been still extant. + +S. 7. + + A third there is which I did never positively maintaine or practise, + but have often wished it had been consonant to truth, and not + offensive to my religion, and that is, the prayer for the dead, &c. + +Our church with her characteristic Christian prudence does not enjoin +prayer for the dead, but neither does she prohibit it. In its own nature +it belongs to a private aspiration; and being conditional, like all +religious acts not expressed in Scripture, and therefore not combinable +with a perfect faith, it is something between prayer and wish,--an act +of natural piety sublimed by Christian hope, that shares in the light, +and meets the diverging rays, of faith, though it be not contained in +the focus. + +S. 13. + + He holds no counsell, but that mysticall one of the Trinity, wherein, + though there be three persons, there is but one mind that decrees + without contradiction, &c. + +Sir T.B. is very amusing. He confesses his part heresies, which are mere +opinions, while his orthodoxy is full of heretical errors. His Trinity +is a mere trefoil, a 3=1, which is no mystery at all, but a common +object of the senses. The mystery is, that one is three, that is, each +being the whole God. + +S. 18. + + 'Tis not a ridiculous devotion to say a prayer before a game at + tables, &c. + +But a great profanation, methinks, and a no less absurdity. Would Sir T. +Brown, before weighing two pigs of lead, A. and B., pray to God that A. +might weigh the heavier? Yet if the result of the dice be at the time +equally believed to be a settled and predetermined effect, where lies +the difference? Would not this apply against all petitionary +prayer?--St. Paul's injunction involves the answer:--'Pray always'. + +S. 22. + + They who to salve this would make the deluge particular, proceed upon + a principle that I can no way grant, &c. + +But according to the Scripture, the deluge was so gentle as to leave +uncrushed the green leaves on the olive tree. If then it was universal, +and if (as with the longevity of the antediluvians it must have been) +the earth was fully peopled, is it not strange that no buildings remain +in the since then uninhabited parts--in America for instance? That no +human skeletons are found may be solved from the circumstance of the +large proportion of phosphoric acid in human bones. But cities and +traces of civilization?--I do not know what to think, unless we might be +allowed to consider Noah a 'homo repraesentativus', or the last and +nearest of a series taken for the whole. + +S. 33. + + They that to refute the invocation of saints, have denied that they + have any knowledge of our affairs below, have proceeded too farre, and + must pardon my opinion, till I can throughly answer that piece of + Scripture, 'At the conversion of a sinner the angels of Heaven + rejoyce'. + + +Take any moral or religious book, and, instead of understanding each +sentence according to the main purpose and intention, interpret every +phrase in its literal sense as conveying, and designed to convey, a +metaphysical verity, or historical fact:--what a strange medley of +doctrines should we not educe? And yet this is the way in which we are +constantly in the habit of treating the books of the New Testament. + +S. 34. + + And, truely, for the first chapters of 'Genesis' I must confesse a + great deal of obscurity; though divines have to the power of humane + reason endeavored to make all go in a literall meaning, yet those + allegoricall interpretations are also probable, and perhaps, the + mysticall method of Moses bred up in the hieroglyphicall schooles of + the Egyptians. + +The second chapter of Genesis from v. 4, and the third chapter are to my +mind, as evidently symbolical, as the first chapter is literal. The +first chapter is manifestly by Moses himself; but the second and third +seem to me of far higher antiquity, and have the air of being translated +into words from graven stones. + +S. 48. This section is a series of ingenious paralogisms. + +S. 49. + + Moses, that was bred up in all the learning of the Egyptians, + committed a grosse absurdity in philosophy, when with these eyes of + flesh he desired to see God, and petitioned his maker, that is, truth + itself, to a contradiction. + +Bear in mind the Jehovah 'Logos', the [Symbol: 'O "omega N] [Greek: en +kolp_o patros]--the person 'ad extra',--and few passages in the Old +Testament are more instructive, or of profounder import. Overlook this, +or deny it,--and none so perplexing or so irreconcilable with the known +character of the inspired writer. + +S. 50. + + For that mysticall metall of gold, whose solary and celestiall nature + I admire, &c. + + +Rather anti-solar and terrene nature! For gold, most of all metals, +repelleth light, and resisteth that power and portion of the common air, +which of all ponderable bodies is most akin to light, and its surrogate +in the realm of [Greek: antiph'os]; or gravity, namely, oxygen. Gold is +'tellurian' [Greek: kat exochaen] and if solar, yet as in the solidity +and dark 'nucleus' of the sun. + +S. 52. + + I thank God that with joy I mention it, I was never afraid of hell, + nor never grew pale at the description of that place; I have so fixed + my contemplations on heaven, that I have almost forgot the idea of + hell, &c. + +Excellent throughout. The fear of hell may, indeed, in some desperate +cases, like the _moxa_, give the first rouse from a moral lethargy, or +like the green venom of copper, by evacuating poison or a dead load from +the inner man, prepare it for nobler ministrations and medicines from +the realm of light and life, that nourish while they stimulate. + +S. 54. + + There is no salvation to those that believe not in Christ, &c. + + +This is plainly confined to such as have had Christ preached to +them;--but the doctrine, that salvation is in and by Christ only, is a +most essential verity, and an article of unspeakable grandeur and +consolation. Name--_nomen_, that is, [Greek: noumenon], in its spiritual +interpretation, is the same as power, or intrinsic cause. What? Is it a +few letters of the alphabet, the hearing of which in a given succession, +that saves? + +S. 59. + + 'Before Abraham was, I am,' is the saying of Christ; yet is it true in + some sense if I say it of myself, for I was not only before myself, + but Adam, that is, in the idea of God, and the decree of that synod + held from all eternity. And in this sense, I say, the world was before + the creation, and at an end before it had a beginning; and thus was I + dead before I was alive;--though my grave be England, my dying-place + was Paradise, and Eve miscarried of me before she conceived of Cain. + +Compare this with s. 11, and the judicious remark there on the mere +accommodation in the 'prae' of predestination. But the subject was too +tempting for the rhetorician. + +Part II. s. 1. + + But as in casting account, three or four men together come short in + account of one man placed by himself below them, &c. + +Thus 1,965. But why is the 1, said to be placed below the 965? + +S. 7. + + Let me be nothing, if within the compass of myself, I do not finde the + battaile of Lepanto, passion against reason, 'reason against faith', + faith against the devil, and my conscience against all. + +It may appear whimsical, but I really feel an impatient regret, that +this good man had so misconceived the nature both of faith and reason as +to affirm their contrariety to each other. + +Ib. + + For my originale sin, I hold it to bee washed away in my baptisme; for + my actual transgressions, I compute and reckon with God, but from my + last repentance, &c. + +This is most true as far as the imputation of the same is concerned. For +where the means of avoiding its consequences have been afforded, each +after transgression is actual, by a neglect of those means. + +S. 14. + + God, being all goodnesse, can love nothing but himself; he loves us + but for that part which is, as it were, himselfe, and the traduction + of his Holy Spirit. + +This recalls a sublime thought of Spinosa. Every true virtue is a part +of that love, with which God loveth himself. + + +[Footnote 1: Communicated by Mr. Wordsworth.--Ed.] + +[Footnote 2: A mistake as to AEnesidemus, who lived in the age of +Augustus--Ed.] + + + + + + +NOTES ON SIR THOMAS BROWNE'S GARDEN OF CYRUS, + +OR THE QUINCUNCIAL, ETC. PLANTATIONS OF THE ANCIENTS, ETC. + +Ch. III. + + That bodies are first spirits, Paracelsus could affirm, &c. + +Effects purely relative from properties merely comparative, such as +edge, point, grater, &c. are not proper qualities: for they are +indifferently producible 'ab extra', by grinding, &c., and 'ab intra', +from growth. In the latter instance, they suppose qualities as their +antecedents. Now, therefore, since qualities cannot proceed from +quantity, but quantity from quality,--and as matter opposed to spirit is +shape by modification of extension, or pure quantity,--Paracelsus's +'dictum' is defensible. + +Ib. + + The aequivocall production of things, under undiscerned principles, + makes a large part of generation, &c. + +Written before Harvey's 'ab ovo omnia'. Since his work, and Lewenhock's +'Microscopium', the question is settled in physics; but whether in +metaphysics, is not quite so clear. + +Ch. IV. + + And mint growing in glasses of water, until it arriveth at the weight + of an ounce, in a shady place, will sometimes exhaust a pound of + water. + +How much did Brown allow for evaporation? + +Ib. + + Things entering upon the intellect by a pyramid from without, and + thence into the memory by another from within, the common decussation + being in the understanding, &c. + +This nearly resembles Kant's intellectual 'mechanique'. + +The Platonists held three knowledges of God;--first, [Greek: parousia], +his own incommunicable self-comprehension;--second, [Greek: kata +noaesin]--by pure mind, unmixed with the sensuous;--third, [Greek: kat +epistaemaen]--by discursive intelligential act. Thus a Greek +philosopher:--[Greek: tous epistaemonikous logous muthous haegaesetai +sunousa t'o patri kai sunesti'omenae hae psuchae en tae alaetheia tou +ontos, kai en augae kathara].--Those notions of God which we attain by +processes of intellect, the soul will consider as mythological +allegories, when it exists in union with the Father, and is feasting +with him in the truth of very being, and in the pure, unmixed, +absolutely simple and elementary, splendor. Thus expound Exod. c. +xxxiii. v. 10. 'And he said, thou canst not see my face: for there +shall no man see me, and live'. By the 'face of God,' Moses meant the +[Greek: idea noaetikae] which God declared incompatible with human life, +it implying [Greek: epaphae tou noaetou], or contact with the pure +spirit. + + + + + +NOTES ON SIR THOMAS BROWNE'S VULGAR ERRORS. + +ADDRESS TO THE READER. + + Dr. Primrose, + +Is not this the same person as the physician mentioned by Mrs. +Hutchinson in her Memoirs of her husband? + +Book I. c. 8. s. 1. The veracity and credibility of Herodotus have +increased and increase with the increase of our discoveries. Several of +his relations deemed fabulous, have been authenticated within the last +thirty years from this present 1808. + +Ib. s. 2. + + Sir John Mandevill left a book of travels:--herein he often attesteth + the fabulous relations of Ctesias. + +Many, if not most, of these Ctesian fables in Sir J. Mandevill were +monkish interpolations. + +Ib. s. 13. + + Cardanus--is of singular use unto a prudent reader; but unto him that + only desireth 'hoties', or to replenish his head with varieties,--he + may become no small occasion of error. + + +'Hoties'--[Greek: hoti s]--'whatevers,' that is, whatever is +written, no matter what, true or false,--'omniana'; 'all sorts of +varieties,' as a dear young lady once said to me. + +Ib. c. ix. + + If Heraclitus with his adherents will hold the sun is no bigger than + it appeareth. + +It is not improbable that Heraclitus meant merely to imply that we +perceive only our own sensations, and they of course are what they +are;--that the image of the sun is an appearance, or sensation in our +eyes, and, of course, an appearance can be neither more nor less than +what it appears to be;--that the notion of the true size of the sun is +not an image, or belonging either to the sense, or to the sensuous +fancy, but is an imageless truth of the understanding obtained by +intellectual deductions. He could not possibly mean what Sir T. B. +supposes him to have meant; for if he had believed the sun to be no more +than a mile distant from us, every tree and house must have shown its +absurdity. + +... + +In the following books I have endeavoured, wherever the author himself +is in a vulgar error, as far as my knowledge extends, to give in the +margin, either the demonstrated discoveries, or more probable opinions, +of the present natural philosophy;--so that, independently of the +entertainingness of the thoughts and tales, and the force and splendor +of Sir Thomas Browne's diction and manner, you may at once learn from +him the history of human fancies and superstitions, both when he detects +them, and when he himself falls into them,--and from my notes, the real +truth of things, or, at least, the highest degree of probability, at +which human research has hitherto arrived. + +... + +Book II. c. i. Production of crystal. Cold is the attractive or +astringent power, comparatively uncounteracted by the dilative, the +diminution of which is the proportional increase of the contractive. +Hence the astringent, or power of negative magnetism, is the proper +agent in cold, and the contractive, or oxygen, an allied and +consequential power. 'Crystallum, non ex aqua, sed ex substantia +metallorum communi confrigeratum dico'. As the equator, or mid point of +the equatorial hemispherical line, is to the centre, so water is to +gold. Hydrogen is to the electrical azote, as azote to the magnetic +hydrogen. + +Ib. + + Crystal--will strike fire--and upon collision with steel send forth + its sparks, not much inferiourly to a flint. + +It being, indeed, nothing else but pure flint. + +C. iii. + + And the magick thereof (the lodestone) is not safely to be believed, + which was delivered by Orpheus, that sprinkled with water it will upon + a question emit a voice not much unlike an infant. + +That is:--to the twin counterforces of the magnetic power, the +equilibrium of which is revealed in magnetic iron, as the substantial, +add the twin counterforces or positive and negative poles of the +electrical power, the indifference of which is realized in water, as the +superficial--(whence Orpheus employed the term 'sprinkled,' or rather +affused or superfused)--and you will hear the voice of infant +nature;--that is, you will understand the rudimental products and +elementary powers and constructions of the phenomenal world. An enigma +this not unworthy of Orpheus, 'quicunque fuit', and therefore not +improbably ascribed to him. + +N. B. Negative and positive magnetism are to attraction and repulsion, +or cohesion and dispersion, as negative and positive electricity are to +contraction and dilation. + +C. vii. s. 4. + + That camphire begets in men [Greek: taen anaphrodisian], observation + will hardly confirm, &c. + +There is no doubt of the fact as to a temporary effect; and camphire is +therefore a strong and immediate antidote to an overdose of +'cantharides'. Yet there are, doubtless, sorts and cases of [Greek: +anaphrodisia], which camphire might relieve. Opium is occasionally an +aphrodisiac, but far oftener the contrary. The same is true of 'bang', +or powdered hemp leaves, and, I suppose, of the whole tribe of narcotic +stimulants. + +Ib. s. 8. + + The yew and the berries thereof are harmless, we know. + + +The berries are harmless, but the leaves of the yew are undoubtedly +poisonous. See Withering's British Plants. Taxus. + +Book III. c. xiii. + + For although lapidaries and 'questuary' enquirers affirm it, &c. + +'Questuary'--having gain or money for their object. + +B. VI. c. viii. + + The river Gihon, a branch of Euphrates and river of Paradise. + +The rivers from Eden were, perhaps, meant to symbolize, or rather +expressed only, the great primary races of mankind. Sir T.B. was the +very man to have seen this; but the superstition of the letter was then +culminant. + +Ib. c. x. + + The chymists have laudably reduced their causes--(of colors)--unto + 'sal', 'sulphur', and 'mercury', &c. + +Even now, after all the brilliant discoveries from Scheele, Priestley, +and Cavendish, to Berzelius and Davy, no improvement has been made in +this division,--not of primary bodies (those idols of the modern atomic +chemistry), but of causes, as Sir T.B. rightly expresses them,--that is, +of elementary powers manifested in bodies. Let mercury stand for the +bi-polar metallic principle, best imaged as a line or 'axis' from north +to south,--the north or negative pole being the cohesive or coherentific +force, and the south or positive pole being the dispersive or +incoherentific force: the first is predominant in, and therefore +represented by, carbon,--the second by nitrogen; and the series of +metals are the primary and, hence, indecomponible 'syntheta' and +proportions of both. In like manner, sulphur represents the active and +passive principle of fire: the contractive force, or negative +electricity--oxygen--produces flame; and the dilative force, or positive +electricity--hydrogen--produces warmth. And lastly, salt is the +equilibrium or compound of the two former. So taken, salt, sulphur, and +mercury are equivalent to the combustive, the combustible, and the +combust, under one or other of which all known bodies, or ponderable +substances, may be classed and distinguished. + +The difference between a great mind's and a little mind's use of history +is this. The latter would consider, for instance, what Luther did, +taught, or sanctioned: the former, what Luther,--a Luther,--would now +do, teach, and sanction. This thought occurred to me at midnight, +Tuesday, the 16th of March, 1824, as I was stepping into bed,--my eye +having glanced on Luther's Table Talk. + +If you would be well with a great mind, leave him with a favorable +impression of you;--if with a little mind, leave him with a favorable +opinion of himself. + +It is not common to find a book of so early date as this (1658), at +least among those of equal neatness of printing, that contains so many +gross typographical errors;--with the exception of our earliest dramatic +writers, some of which appear to have been never corrected, but worked +off at once as the types were first arranged by the compositors. But the +grave and doctrinal works are, in general, exceedingly correct, and form +a striking contrast to modern publications, of which the late edition of +Bacon's Works would be paramount in the infamy of multiplied unnoticed +'errata', were it not for the unrivalled slovenliness of Anderson's +British Poets, in which the blunders are, at least, as numerous as the +pages, and many of them perverting the sense, or killing the whole +beauty, and yet giving or affording a meaning, however low, instead. +These are the most execrable of all typographical errors. 1808. + + + +[The volume from which the foregoing notes have been taken, is inscribed +in Mr. Lamb's writing-- + +'C. Lamb, 9th March, 1804. Bought for S.T. Coleridge.' Under which in +Mr. Coleridge's hand is written-- + +'N.B. It was on the 10th; on which day I dined and punched at Lamb's, +and exulted in the having procured the 'Hydriotaphia', and all the rest +'lucro apposita'. S.T.C.' + +That same night, the volume was devoted as a gift to a dear friend in +the following letter.-Ed.] + + + +10th, 1804, + +Sat. night, 12 o'clock. + + +My dear--, + +Sir Thomas Brown is among my first favorites, rich in various knowledge, +exuberant in conceptions and conceits, contemplative, imaginative; often +truly great and magnificent in his style and diction, though doubtless +too often big, stiff, and hyperlatinistic: thus I might without +admixture of falsehood, describe Sir T. Brown, and my description would +have only this fault, that it would be equally, or almost equally, +applicable to half a dozen other writers, from the beginning of the +reign of Elizabeth to the end of Charles II. He is indeed all this; and +what he has more than all this peculiar to himself, I seem to convey to +my own mind in some measure by saying,--that he is a quiet and sublime +enthusiast with a strong tinge of the fantast,--the humourist constantly +mingling with, and flashing across, the philosopher, as the darting +colours in shot silk play upon the main dye. In short, he has brains in +his head which is all the more interesting for a little twist in the +brains. He sometimes reminds the reader of Montaigne, but from no other +than the general circumstances of an egotism common to both; which in +Montaigne is too often a mere amusing gossip, a chit-chat story of whims +and peculiarities that lead to nothing,--but which in Sir Thomas Brown +is always the result of a feeling heart conjoined with a mind of active +curiosity,--the natural and becoming egotism of a man, who, loving other +men as himself, gains the habit, and the privilege of talking about +himself as familiarly as about other men. Fond of the curious, and a +hunter of oddities and strangenesses, while he conceived himself, with +quaint and humourous gravity a useful inquirer into physical truth and +fundamental science,--he loved to contemplate and discuss his own +thoughts and feelings, because he found by comparison with other men's, +that they too were curiosities, and so with a perfectly graceful and +interesting ease he put them too into his museum and cabinet of +varieties. In very truth he was not mistaken:--so completely does he see +every thing in a light of his own, reading nature neither by sun, moon, +nor candle light, but by the light of the faery glory around his own +head; so that you might say that nature had granted to him in perpetuity +a patent and monopoly for all his thoughts. Read his 'Hydriotaphia' +above all:--and in addition to the peculiarity, the exclusive Sir- +Thomas-Brown-ness of all the fancies and modes of illustration, wonder +at and admire his entireness in every subject, which is before him--he +is 'totus in illo'; he follows it; he never wanders from it,--and he has +no occasion to wander;--for whatever happens to be his subject, he +metamorphoses all nature into it. In that 'Hydriotaphia' or Treatise on +some Urns dug up in Norfolk--how earthy, how redolent of graves and +sepulchres is every line! You have now dark mould, now a thigh-bone, now +a scull, then a bit of mouldered coffin! a fragment of an old tombstone +with moss in its 'hic jacet';--a ghost or a winding-sheet--or the echo +of a funeral psalm wafted on a November wind! and the gayest thing you +shall meet with shall be a silver nail or gilt 'Anno Domini' from a +perished coffin top. The very same remark applies in the same force to +the interesting, through the far less interesting, Treatise on the +Quincuncial Plantations of the Ancients. There is the same attention to +oddities, to the remotenesses and 'minutiae' of vegetable terms,--the +same entireness of subject. You have quincunxes in heaven above, +quincunxes in earth below, and quincunxes in the water beneath the +earth; quincunxes in deity, quincunxes in the mind of man, quincunxes in +bones, in the optic nerves, in roots of trees, in leaves, in petals, in +every thing. In short, first turn to the last leaf of this volume, and +read out aloud to yourself the last seven paragraphs of Chap. v. +beginning with the words 'More considerables,' &c. But it is time for me +to be in bed, in the words of Sir Thomas, which will serve you, my dear, +as a fair specimen of his manner.--'But the quincunx of heaven--(the +Hyades or five stars about the horizon at midnight at that time)--runs +low, and 'tis time we close the five ports of knowledge: we are +unwilling to spin out our waking thoughts into the phantasmes of sleep, +which often continueth praecogitations,--making tables of cobwebbes, and +wildernesses of handsome groves. To keep our eyes open longer were but +to act our Antipodes. The huntsmen are up in America, and they are +already past their first sleep in Persia.' Think you, my dear Friend, +that there ever was such a reason given before for going to bed at +midnight;--to wit, that if we did not, we should be acting the part of +our Antipodes! And then 'the huntsmen are up in America.'--What life, +what fancy!--Does the whimsical knight give us thus a dish of strong +green tea, and call it an opiate! I trust that you are quietly asleep-- + +And that all the stars hang bright above your dwelling, Silent as tho' +they watched the sleeping earth! + +S. T. COLERIDGE. + + +FINIS. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Literary Remains, Vol. 2, by Coleridge + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERARY REMAINS, VOL. 2 *** + +This file should be named 7rem210.txt or 7rem210.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 7rem211.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 7rem210a.txt + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Clytie Siddall +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Literary Remains, Vol. 2 + +Author: Coleridge + +Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8533] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on July 20, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERARY REMAINS, VOL. 2 *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Clytie Siddall +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + +THE LITERARY REMAINS + +OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE + + + +COLLECTED AND EDITED BY + +HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE, ESQ. M.A. + + +VOLUME THE SECOND + + + + + +CONTENTS + + +VOL. II. + + + +LITERARY REMAINS. + + + +Extract from a Letter written by Mr. Coleridge, in February, 1818, to a +Gentleman who attended the Course of Lectures given in the Spring of +that Year. + +Extract from a Letter to J. Britton, Esq. + + +SHAKSPEARE, WITH INTRODUCTORY MATTER ON POETRY, THE DRAMA, AND THE STAGE + Definition of Poetry + Greek Drama + Progress of the Drama + The Drama generally, and Public Taste + Shakspeare, a Poet generally + Shakspeare's Judgment equal to his Genius + Recapitulation, and Summary of the Characteristics of Shakspeare's Dramas + Order of Shakspeare's Plays + Notes on the Tempest + Love's Labour's Lost + Midsummer Night's Dream + Comedy of Errors + As You Like It + Twelfth Night + All's Well that Ends Well + Merry Wives of Windsor + Measure for Measure + Cymbeline + Titus Andronicus + Troilus and Cressida + Coriolanus + Julius Cæsar + Antony and Cleopatra + Timon of Athens + Romeo and Juliet + Shakspeare's English Historical Plays + King John + Richard II. + Henry IV. Part I. + Henry IV. Part II. + Henry V. + Henry VI. Part I. + Richard III. + Lear + Hamlet + Notes on Macbeth + Notes on the Winter's Tale + Notes on Othello + +NOTES ON BEN JONSON + Whalley's Preface + Whalley's Life of Jonson + Every Man out of His Humour + Poetaster + Fall of Sejanus + Volpone + Epicène + The Alchemist + Catiline's Conspiracy + Bartholomew Fair + The Devil is an Ass + The Staple of News + The New Inn + +NOTES ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER + Harris's Commendatory Poem on Fletcher + Life of Fletcher in Stockdale's Edition. 1811 + Maid's Tragedy + A King and no King + The Scornful Lady + The Custom of the Country + The Elder Brother + The Spanish Curate + Wit Without Money + The Humorous Lieutenant + The Mad Lover + The Loyal Subject + Rule a Wife and have a Wife + The Laws of Candy + The Little French Lawyer + Valentinian + Rollo + The Wildgoose Chase + A Wife for a Month + The Pilgrim + The Queen of Corinth + The Noble Gentleman + The Coronation + Wit at Several Weapons + The Fair Maid of the Inn + The Two Noble Kinsmen + The Woman Hater + +On the 'Prometheus' of Æschylus + +Note on Chalmers's 'Life of Daniel' + +Bishop Corbet Notes on Selden's 'Table Talk' + +Note on Theological Lectures of Benjamin Wheeler, D.D. + +Note on a Sermon on the Prevalence of Infidelity and Enthusiasm, by +Walter Birch, B. D. + +Fénélon on Charity + +Change of the Climates + +Wonderfulness of Prose + +Notes on Tom Jones + +Jonathan Wild + +Barry Cornwall + +The Primitive Christian's Address to the Cross + +Fuller's Holy State + +Fuller's Profane State + +Fuller's Appeal of Injured Innocence + +Fuller's Church History + +Asgill's Argument + +Introduction to Asgill's Defence upon his Expulsion from the House of +Commons. + +Notes on Sir Thomas Browne's 'Religio Medici' + +Notes on Sir Thomas Browne's Garden of Cyrus + +Notes on Sir Thomas Browne's Vulgar Errors + + + + + +LITERARY REMAINS + + + + + +Extract from a Letter written by Mr. Coleridge, in February, 1818, to a +gentleman who attended the course of Lectures given in the spring of +that year. + +See the 'Canterbury Magazine', September, 1834. Ed. + + +My next Friday's lecture will, if I do not grossly flatter-blind myself, +be interesting, and the points of view not only original, but new to the +audience. I make this distinction, because sixteen or rather seventeen +years ago, I delivered eighteen lectures on Shakspeare, at the Royal +Institution; three-fourths of which appeared at that time startling +paradoxes, although they have since been adopted even by men, who then +made use of them as proofs of my flighty and paradoxical turn of mind; +all tending to prove that Shakspeare's judgment was, if possible, still +more wonderful than his genius; or rather, that the contradistinction +itself between judgment and genius rested on an utterly false theory. +This, and its proofs and grounds have been--I should not have said +adopted, but produced as their own legitimate children by some, and by +others the merit of them attributed to a foreign writer, whose lectures +were not given orally till two years after mine, rather than to their +countryman; though I dare appeal to the most adequate judges, as Sir +George Beaumont, the Bishop of Durham, Mr. Sotheby, and afterwards to +Mr. Rogers and Lord Byron, whether there is one single principle in +Schlegel's work (which is not an admitted drawback from its merits), +that was not established and applied in detail by me. Plutarch tells us, +that egotism is a venial fault in the unfortunate, and justifiable in +the calumniated, &c. ... + + + + + + +Extract from a Letter to J. Britton, Esq. + + +28th Feb., 1819, Highgate. + +Dear Sir, + +--First permit me to remove a very natural, indeed almost inevitable, +mistake, relative to my lectures; namely, that I 'have' them, or that +the lectures of one place or season are in any way repeated in another. +So far from it, that on any point that I had ever studied (and on no +other should I dare discourse--I mean, that I would not lecture on any +subject for which I had to 'acquire' the main knowledge, even though a +month's or three months' previous time were allowed me; on no subject +that had not employed my thoughts for a large portion of my life since +earliest manhood, free of all outward and particular purpose)--on any +point within my habit of thought, I should greatly prefer a subject I +had never lectured on, to one which I had repeatedly given; and those +who have attended me for any two seasons successively will bear witness, +that the lecture given at the London Philosophical Society, on the +'Romeo and Juliet', for instance, was as different from that given at +the Crown and Anchor, as if they had been by two individuals who, +without any communication with each other, had only mastered the same +principles of philosophic criticism. This was most strikingly evidenced +in the coincidence between my lectures and those of Schlegel; such, and +so close, that it was fortunate for my moral reputation that I had not +only from five to seven hundred ear witnesses that the passages had been +given by me at the Royal Institution two years before Schlegel commenced +his lectures at Vienna, but that notes had been taken of these by +several men and ladies of high rank. The fact is this; during a course +of lectures, I faithfully employ all the intervening days in collecting +and digesting the materials, whether I have or have not lectured on the +same subject before, making no difference. The day of the lecture, till +the hour of commencement, I devote to the consideration, what of the +mass before me is best fitted to answer the purposes of a lecture, that +is, to keep the audience awake and interested during the delivery, and +to leave a sting behind, that is, a disposition to study the subject +anew, under the light of a new principle. Several times, however, partly +from apprehension respecting my health and animal spirits, partly from +the wish to possess copies that might afterwards be marketable among the +publishers, I have previously written the lecture; but before I had +proceeded twenty minutes, I have been obliged to push the MS. away, and +give the subject a new turn. Nay, this was so notorious, that many of my +auditors used to threaten me, when they saw any number of written papers +on my desk, to steal them away; declaring they never felt so secure of a +good lecture as when they perceived that I had not a single scrap of +writing before me. I take far, far more pains than would go to the set +composition of a lecture, both by varied reading and by meditation; but +for the words, illustrations, &c., I know almost as little as any one of +the audience (that is, those of anything like the same education with +myself) what they will be five minutes before the lecture begins. Such +is my way, for such is my nature; and in attempting any other, I should +only torment myself in order to disappoint my auditors--torment myself +during the delivery, I mean; for in all other respects it would be a +much shorter and easier task to deliver them from writing. I am anxious +to preclude any semblance of affectation; and have therefore troubled +you with this lengthy preface before I have the hardihood to assure you, +that you might as well ask me what my dreams were in the year 1814, as +what my course of lectures was at the Surrey Institution. + +'Fuimus Troes.' + + + + + + +SHAKSPEARE, + +WITH INTRODUCTORY MATTER ON POETRY, THE DRAMA, AND THE STAGE. + + +DEFINITION OF POETRY. + +Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is +opposed to science, and prose to metre. The proper and immediate object +of science is the acquirement, or communication, of truth; the proper +and immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate +pleasure. This definition is useful; but as it would include novels and +other works of fiction, which yet we do not call poems, there must be +some additional character by which poetry is not only divided from +opposites, but likewise distinguished from disparate, though similar, +modes of composition. Now how is this to be effected? In animated prose, +the beauties of nature, and the passions and accidents of human nature, +are often expressed in that natural language which the contemplation of +them would suggest to a pure and benevolent mind; yet still neither we +nor the writers call such a work a poem, though no work could deserve +that name which did not include all this, together with something else. +What is this? It is that pleasurable emotion, that peculiar state and +degree of excitement, which arises in the poet himself in the act of +composition;--and in order to understand this, we must combine a more +than ordinary sympathy with the objects, emotions, or incidents +contemplated by the poet, consequent on a more than common sensibility, +with a more than ordinary activity of the mind in respect of the fancy +and the imagination. Hence is produced a more vivid reflection of the +truths of nature and of the human heart, united with a constant activity +modifying and correcting these truths by that sort of pleasurable +emotion, which the exertion of all our faculties gives in a certain +degree; but which can only be felt in perfection under the full play of +those powers of mind, which are spontaneous rather than voluntary, and +in which the effort required bears no proportion to the activity +enjoyed. This is the state which permits the production of a highly +pleasurable whole, of which each part shall also communicate for itself +a distinct and conscious pleasure; and hence arises the definition, +which I trust is now intelligible, that poetry, or rather a poem, is a +species of composition, opposed to science, as having intellectual +pleasure for its object, and as attaining its end by the use of language +natural to us in a state of excitement,--but distinguished from other +species of composition, not excluded by the former criterion, by +permitting a pleasure from the whole consistent with a consciousness of +pleasure from the component parts;--and the perfection of which is, to +communicate from each part the greatest immediate pleasure compatible +with the largest sum of pleasure on the whole. This, of course, will +vary with the different modes of poetry;--and that splendour of +particular lines, which would be worthy of admiration in an impassioned +elegy, or a short indignant satire, would be a blemish and proof of vile +taste in a tragedy or an epic poem. + +It is remarkable, by the way, that Milton in three incidental words has +implied all which for the purposes of more distinct apprehension, which +at first must be slow-paced in order to be distinct, I have endeavoured +to develope in a precise and strictly adequate definition. Speaking of +poetry, he says, as in a parenthesis, "which is simple, sensuous, +passionate." How awful is the power of words!--fearful often in their +consequences when merely felt, not understood; but most awful when both +felt and understood!--Had these three words only been properly +understood by, and present in the minds of, general readers, not only +almost a library of false poetry would have been either precluded or +still-born, but, what is of more consequence, works truly excellent and +capable of enlarging the understanding, warming and purifying the heart, +and placing in the centre of the whole being the germs of noble and +manlike actions, would have been the common diet of the intellect +instead. For the first condition, simplicity,--while, on the one hand, +it distinguishes poetry from the arduous processes of science, labouring +towards an end not yet arrived at, and supposes a smooth and finished +road, on which the reader is to walk onward easily, with streams +murmuring by his side, and trees and flowers and human dwellings to make +his journey as delightful as the object of it is desirable, instead of +having to toil, with the pioneers and painfully make the road on which +others are to travel,--precludes, on the other hand, every affectation +and morbid peculiarity;--the second condition, sensuousness, insures +that framework of objectivity, that definiteness and articulation of +imagery, and that modification of the images themselves, without which +poetry becomes flattened into mere didactics of practice, or evaporated +into a hazy, unthoughtful, daydreaming; and the third condition, +passion, provides that neither thought nor imagery shall be simply +objective, but that the _passio vera_ of humanity shall warm and animate +both. + +To return, however, to the previous definition, this most general and +distinctive character of a poem originates in the poetic genius itself; +and though it comprises whatever can with any propriety be called a +poem, (unless that word be a mere lazy synonyme for a composition in +metre,) it yet becomes a just, and not merely discriminative, but full +and adequate, definition of poetry in its highest and most peculiar +sense, only so far as the distinction still results from the poetic +genius, which sustains and modifies the emotions, thoughts, and vivid +representations of the poem by the energy without effort of the poet's +own mind,--by the spontaneous activity of his imagination and fancy, and +by whatever else with these reveals itself in the balancing and +reconciling of opposite or discordant qualities, sameness with +difference, a sense of novelty and freshness with old or customary +objects, a more than usual state of emotion with more than usual order, +self-possession and judgment with enthusiasm and vehement feeling,--and +which, while it blends and harmonizes the natural and the artificial, +still subordinates art to nature, the manner to the matter, and our +admiration of the poet to our sympathy with the images, passions, +characters, and incidents of the poem:- + + + Doubtless, this could not be, but that she turns + Bodies to _spirit_ by sublimation strange, + As fire converts to fire the things it burns-- + As we our food into our nature change! + + From their gross matter she abstracts _their_ forms, + And draws a kind of quintessence from things, + Which to her proper nature she transforms + To bear them light on her celestial wings! + + _Thus_ doth she, when from _individual states_ + She doth abstract the universal kinds, + _Which then reclothed in diverse names and fates + Steal access thro' our senses to our minds._ [1] + + +[Footnote 1: Sir John Davies on the Immortality of the Soul, sect. iv. +The words and lines in italics (_between_) are substituted to apply +these verses to the poetic genius. The greater part of this latter +paragraph may be found adopted, with some alterations, in the 'Biographia +Literaria', vol. ii. c. 14; but I have thought it better in this +instance and some others, to run the chance of bringing a few passages +twice over to the recollection of the reader, than to weaken the force +of the original argument by breaking the connection. Ed.] + + + + + +GREEK DRAMA. + +It is truly singular that Plato,--whose philosophy and religion were but +exotic at home, and a mere opposition to the finite in all things, +genuine prophet and anticipator as he was of the Protestant Christian +aera,--should have given in his Dialogue of the Banquet, a justification +of our Shakspeare. For he relates that, when all the other guests had +either dispersed or fallen asleep, Socrates only, together with +Aristophanes and Agathon, remained awake, and that, while he continued +to drink with them out of a large goblet, he compelled them, though most +reluctantly, to admit that it was the business of one and the same +genius to excel in tragic and comic poetry, or that the tragic poet +ought, at the same time, to contain within himself the powers of comedy. +[1] Now, as this was directly repugnant to the entire theory of the +ancient critics, and contrary to all their experience, it is evident +that Plato must have fixed the eye of his contemplation on the innermost +essentials of the drama, abstracted from the forms of age or country. In +another passage he even adds the reason, namely, that opposites +illustrate each other's nature, and in their struggle draw forth the +strength of the combatants, and display the conqueror as sovereign even +on the territories of the rival power. + +Nothing can more forcibly exemplify the separative spirit of the Greek +arts than their comedy as opposed to their tragedy. But as the immediate +struggle of contraries supposes an arena common to both, so both were +alike ideal; that is, the comedy of Aristophanes rose to as great a +distance above the ludicrous of real life, as the tragedy of Sophocles +above its tragic events and passions;--and it is in this one point, of +absolute ideality, that the comedy of Shakspeare and the old comedy of +Athens coincide. In this also alone did the Greek tragedy and comedy +unite; in every thing else they were exactly opposed to each other. +Tragedy is poetry in its deepest earnest; comedy is poetry in unlimited +jest. Earnestness consists in the direction and convergence of all the +powers of the soul to one aim, and in the voluntary restraint of its +activity in consequence; the opposite, therefore, lies in the apparent +abandonment of all definite aim or end, and in the removal of all bounds +in the exercise of the mind,--attaining its real end, as an entire +contrast, most perfectly, the greater the display is of intellectual +wealth squandered in the wantonness of sport without an object, and the +more abundant the life and vivacity in the creations of the arbitrary +will. + +The later comedy, even where it was really comic, was doubtless likewise +more comic, the more free it appeared from any fixed aim. +Misunderstandings of intention, fruitless struggles of absurd passion, +contradictions of temper, and laughable situations there were; but still +the form of the representation itself was serious; it proceeded as much +according to settled laws, and used as much the same means of art, +though to a different purpose, as the regular tragedy itself. But in the +old comedy the very form itself is whimsical; the whole work is one +great jest, comprehending a world of jests within it, among which each +maintains its own place without seeming to concern itself as to the +relation in which it may stand to its fellows. In short, in Sophocles, +the constitution of tragedy is monarchical, but such as it existed in +elder Greece, limited by laws, and therefore the more venerable,--all +the parts adapting and submitting themselves to the majesty of the +heroic sceptre:--in Aristophanes, comedy, on the contrary, is poetry in +its most democratic form, and it is a fundamental principle with it, +rather to risk all the confusion of anarchy, than to destroy the +independence and privileges of its individual constituents,--place, +verse, characters, even single thoughts, conceits, and allusions, each +turning on the pivot of its own free will. + +The tragic poet idealizes his characters by giving to the spiritual part +of our nature a more decided preponderance over the animal cravings and +impulses, than is met with in real life: the comic poet idealizes his +characters by making the animal the governing power, and the +intellectual the mere instrument. But as tragedy is not a collection of +virtues and perfections, but takes care only that the vices and +imperfections shall spring from the passions, errors, and prejudices +which arise out of the soul;--so neither is comedy a mere crowd of vices +and follies, but whatever qualities it represents, even though they are +in a certain sense amiable, it still displays them as having their +origin in some dependence on our lower nature, accompanied with a defect +in true freedom of spirit and self-subsistence, and subject to that +unconnection by contradictions of the inward being, to which all folly +is owing. + +The ideal of earnest poetry consists in the union and harmonious melting +down, and fusion of the sensual into the spiritual,--of man as an animal +into man as a power of reason and self-government. And this we have +represented to us most clearly in the plastic art, or statuary; where +the perfection of outward form is a symbol of the perfection of an +inward idea; where the body is wholly penetrated by the soul, and +spiritualized even to a state of glory, and like a transparent +substance, the matter, in its own nature darkness, becomes altogether a +vehicle and fixure of light, a mean of developing its beauties, and +unfolding its wealth of various colors without disturbing its unity, or +causing a division of the parts. The sportive ideal, on the contrary, +consists in the perfect harmony and concord of the higher nature with +the animal, as with its ruling principle and its acknowledged regent. +The understanding and practical reason are represented as the willing +slaves of the senses and appetites, and of the passions arising out of +them. Hence we may admit the appropriateness to the old comedy, as a +work of defined art, of allusions and descriptions, which morality can +never justify, and, only with reference to the author himself, and only +as being the effect or rather the cause of the circumstances in which he +wrote, can consent even to palliate. + +The old comedy rose to its perfection in Aristophanes, and in him also +it died with the freedom of Greece. Then arose a species of drama, more +fitly called, dramatic entertainment than comedy, but of which, +nevertheless, our modern comedy (Shakspeare's altogether excepted) is +the genuine descendant. Euripides had already brought tragedy lower down +and by many steps nearer to the real world than his predecessors had +ever done, and the passionate admiration which Menander and Philemon +expressed for him, and their open avowals that he was their great +master, entitle us to consider their dramas as of a middle species, +between tragedy and comedy,--not the tragi-comedy, or thing of +heterogeneous parts, but a complete whole, founded on principles of its +own. Throughout we find the drama of Menander distinguishing itself from +tragedy, but not, as the genuine old comedy, contrasting with, and +opposing, it. Tragedy, indeed, carried the thoughts into the mythologic +world, in order to raise the emotions, the fears, and the hopes, which +convince the inmost heart that their final cause is not to be discovered +in the limits of mere mortal life, and force us into a presentiment, +however dim, of a state in which those struggles of inward free will +with outward necessity, which form the true subject of the tragedian, +shall be reconciled and solved;--the entertainment or new comedy, on the +other hand, remained within the circle of experience. Instead of the +tragic destiny, it introduced the power of chance; even in the few +fragments of Menander and Philemon now remaining to us, we find many +exclamations and reflections concerning chance and fortune, as in the +tragic poets concerning destiny. In tragedy, the moral law, either as +obeyed or violated, above all consequences--its own maintenance or +violation constituting the most important of all consequences--forms the +ground; the new comedy, and our modern comedy in general, (Shakspeare +excepted as before) lies in prudence or imprudence, enlightened or +misled self-love. The whole moral system of the entertainment exactly +like that of fable, consists in rules of prudence, with an exquisite +conciseness, and at the same time an exhaustive fulness of sense. An old +critic said that tragedy was the flight or elevation of life, comedy +(that of Menander) its arrangement or ordonnance. + +Add to these features a portrait-like truth of character,--not so far +indeed as that a 'bona fide' individual should be described or imagined, +but yet so that the features which give interest and permanence to the +class should be individualized. The old tragedy moved in an ideal +world,--the old comedy in a fantastic world. As the entertainment, or +new comedy, restrained the creative activity both of the fancy and the +imagination, it indemnified the understanding in appealing to the +judgment for the probability of the scenes represented. The ancients +themselves acknowledged the new comedy as an exact copy of real life. +The grammarian, Aristophanes, somewhat affectedly exclaimed:--"O Life +and Menander! which of you two imitated the other?" In short the form of +this species of drama was poetry; the stuff or matter was prose. It was +prose rendered delightful by the blandishments and measured motions of +the muse. Yet even this was not universal. The mimes of Sophron, so +passionately admired by Plato, were written in prose, and were scenes +out of real life conducted in dialogue. The exquisite Feast of Adonis +([Greek (transliterated): Surakousiai ae Ad'oniazousai]) in Theocritus, +we are told, with some others of his eclogues, were close imitations of +certain mimes of Sophron--free translations of the prose into +hexameters. + +It will not be improper, in this place, to make a few remarks on the +remarkable character and functions of the chorus in the Greek tragic +drama. + +The chorus entered from below, close by the orchestra, and there, pacing +to and fro during the choral odes, performed their solemn measured +dance. In the centre of the 'orchestra', directly over against the +middle of the 'scene', there stood an elevation with steps in the shape +of a large altar, as high as the boards of the 'logeion' or moveable +stage. This elevation was named the 'thymele', ([Greek (transliterated): +thumelae]) and served to recall the origin and original purpose of the +chorus, as an altar-song in honour of the presiding deity. Here, and on +these steps, the persons of the chorus sate collectively, when they were +not singing; attending to the dialogue as spectators, and acting as +(what in truth they were) the ideal representatives of the real +audience, and of the poet himself in his own character, assuming the +supposed impressions made by the drama, in order to direct and rule +them. But when the chorus itself formed part of the dialogue, then the +leader of the band, the foreman or 'coryphaeus', ascended, as some +think, the level summit of the 'thymele' in order to command the stage, +or, perhaps, the whole chorus advanced to the front of the orchestra, +and thus put themselves in ideal connection, as it were, with the +'dramatis personæ' there acting. This 'thymele' was in the centre of the +whole edifice, all the measurements were calculated, and the semi-circle +of the amphitheatre was drawn, from this point. It had a double use, a +twofold purpose; it constantly reminded the spectators of the origin of +tragedy as a religious service, and declared itself as the ideal +representative of the audience by having its place exactly in the point, +to which all the radii from the different seats or benches converged. In +this double character, as constituent parts, and yet at the same time as +spectators, of the drama, the chorus could not but tend to enforce the +unity of place;--not on the score of any supposed improbability, which +the understanding or common sense might detect in a change of +place;--but because the senses themselves put it out of the power of any +imagination to conceive a place coming to, and going away from the +persons, instead of the persons changing their place. Yet there are +instances, in which, during the silence of the chorus, the poets have +hazarded this by a change in that part of the scenery which represented +the more distant objects to the eye of the spectator--a demonstrative +proof, that this alternately extolled and ridiculed unity (as ignorantly +ridiculed as extolled) was grounded on no essential principle of reason, +but arose out of circumstances which the poet could not remove, and +therefore took up into the form of the drama, and co-organized it with +all the other parts into a living whole. + +The Greek tragedy may rather be compared to our serious opera than to +the tragedies of Shakspeare; nevertheless, the difference is far greater +than the likeness. In the opera all is subordinated to the music, the +dresses and the scenery;--the poetry is a mere vehicle for articulation, +and as little pleasure is lost by ignorance of the Italian language, so +is little gained by the knowledge of it. But in the Greek drama all was +but as instruments and accessaries to the poetry; and hence we should +form a better notion of the choral music from the solemn hymns and +psalms of austere church music than from any species of theatrical +singing. A single flute or pipe was the ordinary accompaniment; and it +is not to be supposed, that any display of musical power was allowed to +obscure the distinct hearing of the words. On the contrary, the evident +purpose was to render the words more audible, and to secure by the +elevations and pauses greater facility of understanding the poetry. For +the choral songs are, and ever must have been, the most difficult part +of the tragedy; there occur in them the most involved verbal compounds, +the newest expressions, the boldest images, the most recondite +allusions. Is it credible that the poets would, one and all, have been +thus prodigal of the stores of art and genius, if they had known that in +the representation the whole must have been lost to the audience,--at a +time too, when the means of after publication were so difficult, and +expensive, and the copies of their works so slowly and narrowly +circulated? + +The masks also must be considered--their vast variety and admirable +workmanship. Of this we retain proof by the marble masks which +represented them; but to this in the real mask we must add the thinness +of the substance and the exquisite fitting on to the head of the actor; +so that not only were the very eyes painted with a single opening left +for the pupil of the actor's eye, but in some instances, even the iris +itself was painted, when the colour was a known characteristic of the +divine or heroic personage represented. + +Finally, I will note down those fundamental characteristics which +contradistinguish the ancient literature from the modern generally, but +which more especially appear in prominence in the tragic drama. The +ancient was allied to statuary, the modern refers to painting. In the +first there is a predominance of rhythm and melody, in the second of +harmony and counterpoint. The Greeks idolized the finite, and therefore +were the masters of all grace, elegance, proportion, fancy, dignity, +majesty--of whatever, in short, is capable of being definitely conveyed +by defined forms or thoughts: the moderns revere the infinite, and +affect the indefinite as a vehicle of the infinite;--hence their +passions, their obscure hopes and fears, their wandering through the +unknown, their grander moral feelings, their more august conception of +man as man, their future rather than their past--in a word, their +sublimity. + + +[Footnote 1: Greek (transliterated): exegromenos de idein tous men +allous katheudontas kai oichomenous, Agath'ona de kai Aristophanaen kai +S'okratae eti monous egraegorenai, kai pinein ek phialaes megalaes +epidexia ton oun S'okratae autois dialegesthai kai ta men alla ho +Aristodaemos ouk ephae memnaesthai ton logon (oute gar ex archaes +paragenesthai, uponustazein te) to mentoi kethalaion ethae, +prosanagkazein ton S'okratae omologein autous tou autou andros einai +k'om'odian kai trag'odian epistasthai poiein, kai ton technae +trag'odopoion onta, kai k'om'odopoion einai. Symp. sub fine.] + + + + + +PROGRESS OF THE DRAMA. + +Let two persons join in the same scheme to ridicule a third, and either +take advantage of, or invent, some story for that purpose, and mimicry +will have already produced a sort of rude comedy. It becomes an inviting +treat to the populace, and gains an additional zest and burlesque by +following the already established plan of tragedy; and the first man of +genius who seizes the idea, and reduces it into form,--into a work of +art,--by metre and music, is the Aristophanes of the country. + +How just this account is will appear from the fact that in the first or +old comedy of the Athenians, most of the 'dramatis personæ' were living +characters introduced under their own names; and no doubt, their +ordinary dress, manner, person and voice were closely mimicked. In less +favourable states of society, as that of England in the middle ages, the +beginnings of comedy would be constantly taking place from the mimics +and satirical minstrels; but from want of fixed abode, popular +government, and the successive attendance of the same auditors, it would +still remain in embryo. I shall, perhaps, have occasion to observe that +this remark is not without importance in explaining the essential +differences of the modern and ancient theatres. + +Phænomena, similar to those which accompanied the origin of tragedy and +comedy among the Greeks, would take place among the Romans much more +slowly, and the drama would, in any case, have much longer remained in +its first irregular form from the character of the people, their +continual engagements in wars of conquest, the nature of their +government, and their rapidly increasing empire. But, however this might +have been, the conquest of Greece precluded both the process and the +necessity of it; and the Roman stage at once presented imitations or +translations of the Greek drama. This continued till the perfect +establishment of Christianity. Some attempts, indeed, were made to adapt +the persons of Scriptural or ecclesiastical history to the drama; and +sacred plays, it is probable, were not unknown in Constantinople under +the emperors of the East. The first of the kind is, I believe, the only +one preserved,--namely, the [Greek (transliterated): Christos Paschon], +or "Christ in his sufferings," by Gregory Nazianzen,--possibly written +in consequence of the prohibition of profane literature to the +Christians by the apostate Julian. [1] In the West, however, the +enslaved and debauched Roman world became too barbarous for any +theatrical exhibitions more refined than those of pageants and +chariot-races; while the spirit of Christianity, which in its most +corrupt form still breathed general humanity, whenever controversies of +faith were not concerned, had done away the cruel combats of the +gladiators, and the loss of the distant provinces prevented the +possibility of exhibiting the engagements of wild beasts. + +I pass, therefore, at once to the feudal ages which soon succeeded, +confining my observation to this country; though, indeed, the same +remark with very few alterations will apply to all the other states, +into which the great empire was broken. Ages of darkness +succeeded;--not, indeed, the darkness of Russia or of the barbarous +lands unconquered by Rome; for from the time of Honorius to the +destruction of Constantinople and the consequent introduction of ancient +literature into Europe, there was a continued succession of individual +intellects;--the golden chain was never wholly broken, though the +connecting links were often of baser metal. A dark cloud, like another +sky, covered the entire cope of heaven,--but in this place it thinned +away, and white stains of light showed a half eclipsed star behind +it,--in that place it was rent asunder, and a star passed across the +opening in all its brightness, and then vanished. Such stars exhibited +themselves only; surrounding objects did not partake of their light. +There were deep wells of knowledge, but no fertilizing rills and +rivulets. For the drama, society was altogether a state of chaos, out of +which it was, for a while at least, to proceed anew, as if there had +been none before it. + +And yet it is not undelightful to contemplate the eduction of good from +evil. The ignorance of the great mass of our countrymen, was the +efficient cause of the reproduction of the drama; and the preceding +darkness and the returning light were alike necessary in order to the +creation of a Shakspeare. + +The drama re-commenced in England, as it first began in Greece, in +religion. The people were not able to read,--the priesthood were +unwilling that they should read; and yet their own interest compelled +them not to leave the people wholly ignorant of the great events of +sacred history. They did that, therefore, by scenic representations, +which in after ages it has been attempted to do in Roman Catholic +countries by pictures. They presented Mysteries, and often at great +expense; and reliques of this system still remain in the south of +Europe, and indeed throughout Italy, where at Christmas the convents and +the great nobles rival each other in the scenic representation of the +birth of Christ and its circumstances. I heard two instances mentioned +to me at different times, one in Sicily and the other in Rome, of noble +devotees, the ruin of whose fortunes was said to have commenced in the +extravagant expense which had been incurred in presenting the 'præsepe' +or manger. But these Mysteries, in order to answer their design, must +not only be instructive, but entertaining; and as, when they became so, +the people began to take pleasure in acting them themselves--in +interloping,--(against which the priests seem to have fought hard and +yet in vain) the most ludicrous images were mixed with the most awful +personations; and whatever the subject might be, however sublime, +however pathetic, yet the Vice and the Devil, who are the genuine +antecessors of Harlequin and the Clown, were necessary component parts. +I have myself a piece of this kind, which I transcribed a few years ago +at Helmstadt, in Germany, on the education of Eve's children, in which +after the fall and repentance of Adam, the offended Maker, as in proof +of his reconciliation, condescends to visit them, and to catechise the +children,--who with a noble contempt of chronology are all brought +together from Abel to Noah. The good children say the ten Commandments, +the Belief and the Lord's Prayer; but Cain and his rout, after he had +received a box on the ear for not taking off his hat, and afterwards +offering his left hand, is prompted by the devil so to blunder in the +Lord's Prayer as to reverse the petitions and say it backward! [2] + +Unaffectedly I declare I feel pain at repetitions like these, however +innocent. As historical documents they are valuable; but I am sensible +that what I can read with my eye with perfect innocence, I cannot +without inward fear and misgivings pronounce with my tongue. + +Let me, however, be acquitted of presumption if I say that I cannot +agree with Mr. Malone, that our ancestors did not perceive the ludicrous +in these things, or that they paid no separate attention to the serious +and comic parts. Indeed his own statement contradicts it. For what +purpose should the Vice leap upon the Devil's back and belabour him, but +to produce this separate attention? The people laughed heartily, no +doubt. Nor can I conceive any meaning attached to the words "separate +attention," that is not fully answered by one part of an exhibition +exciting seriousness or pity, and the other raising mirth and loud +laughter. That they felt no impiety in the affair is most true. For it +is the very essence of that system of Christian polytheism, which in all +its essentials is now fully as gross in Spain, in Sicily and the south +of Italy, as it ever was in England in the days of Henry VI.--(nay, more +so; for a Wicliffe had then not appeared only, but scattered the good +seed widely,) it is an essential part, I say, of that system to draw the +mind wholly from its own inward whispers and quiet discriminations, and +to habituate the conscience to pronounce sentence in every case +according to the established verdicts of the church and the casuists. I +have looked through volume after volume of the most approved +casuists,--and still I find disquisitions whether this or that act is +right, and under what circumstances, to a minuteness that makes +reasoning ridiculous, and of a callous and unnatural immodesty, to which +none but a monk could harden himself, who has been stripped of all the +tender charities of life, yet is goaded on to make war against them by +the unsubdued hauntings of our meaner nature, even as dogs are said to +get the 'hydrophobia' from excessive thirst. I fully believe that our +ancestors laughed as heartily, as their posterity do at Grimaldi;--and +not having been told that they would be punished for laughing, they +thought it very innocent;--and if their priests had left out murder in +the catalogue of their prohibitions (as indeed they did under certain +circumstances of heresy,) the greater part of them,--the moral instincts +common to all men having been smothered and kept from +development,--would have thought as little of murder. However this may +be, the necessity of at once instructing and gratifying the people +produced the great distinction between the Greek and the English +theatres;--for to this we must attribute the origin of tragi-comedy, or +a representation of human events more lively, nearer the truth, and +permitting a larger field of moral instruction, a more ample exhibition +of the recesses of the human heart, under all the trials and +circumstances that most concern us, than was known or guessed at by +Æschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides;--and at the same time we learn to +account for, and--relatively to the author--perceive the necessity of, +the Fool or Clown or both, as the substitutes of the Vice and the Devil, +which our ancestors had been so accustomed to see in every exhibition of +the stage, that they could not feel any performance perfect without +them. Even to this day in Italy, every opera--(even Metastasio obeyed +the claim throughout)--must have six characters, generally two pairs of +cross lovers, a tyrant and a confidant, or a father and two confidants, +themselves lovers;--and when a new opera appears, it is the universal +fashion to ask--which is the tyrant, which the lover? &c. + +It is the especial honour of Christianity, that in its worst and most +corrupted form it cannot wholly separate itself from morality;--whereas +the other religions in their best form (I do not include Mohammedanism, +which is only an anomalous corruption of Christianity, like +Swedenborgianism,) have no connection with it. The very impersonation of +moral evil under the name of Vice, facilitated all other impersonations; +and hence we see that the Mysteries were succeeded by Moralities, or +dialogues and plots of allegorical personages. Again, some character in +real history had become so famous, so proverbial, as Nero for instance, +that they were introduced instead of the moral quality, for which they +were so noted;--and in this manner the stage was moving on to the +absolute production of heroic and comic real characters, when the +restoration of literature, followed by the ever-blessed Reformation, let +in upon the kingdom not only new knowledge, but new motive. A useful +rivalry commenced between the metropolis on the one hand, the residence, +independently of the court and nobles, of the most active and stirring +spirits who had not been regularly educated, or who, from mischance or +otherwise, had forsaken the beaten track of preferment,--and the +universities on the other. The latter prided themselves on their closer +approximation to the ancient rules and ancient regularity--taking the +theatre of Greece, or rather its dim reflection, the rhetorical +tragedies of the poet Seneca, as a perfect ideal, without any critical +collation of the times, origin, or circumstances;--whilst, in the mean +time, the popular writers, who could not and would not abandon what they +had found to delight their countrymen sincerely, and not merely from +inquiries first put to the recollection of rules, and answered in the +affirmative, as if it had been an arithmetical sum, did yet borrow from +the scholars whatever they advantageously could, consistently with their +own peculiar means of pleasing. + +And here let me pause for a moment's contemplation of this interesting +subject. + +We call, for we see and feel, the swan and the dove both transcendantly +beautiful. As absurd as it would be to institute a comparison between +their separate claims to beauty from any abstract rule common to both, +without reference to the life and being of the animals themselves,--or +as if, having first seen the dove, we abstracted its outlines, gave them +a false generalization, called them the principles or ideal of +bird-beauty, and then proceeded to criticise the swan or the eagle;--not +less absurd is it to pass judgment on the works of a poet on the mere +ground that they have been called by the same class-name with the works +of other poets in other times and circumstances, or on any ground, +indeed, save that of their inappropriateness to their own end and being, +their want of significance, as symbols or physiognomy. + +O! few have there been among critics, who have followed with the eye of +the imagination the imperishable yet ever wandering spirit of poetry +through its various metempsychoses, and consequent metamorphoses;--or +who have rejoiced in the light of clear perception at beholding with +each new birth, with each rare 'avatar', the human race frame to itself +a new body, by assimilating materials of nourishment out of its new +circumstances, and work for itself new organs of power appropriate to +the new sphere of its motion and activity! + +I have before spoken of the Romance, or the language formed out of the +decayed Roman and the Northern tongues; and comparing it with the Latin, +we find it less perfect in simplicity and relation--the privileges of a +language formed by the mere attraction of homogeneous parts;--but yet +more rich, more expressive and various, as one formed by more obscure +affinities out of a chaos of apparently heterogeneous atoms. As more +than a metaphor,--as an analogy of this, I have named the true genuine +modern poetry the romantic; and the works of Shakspeare are romantic +poetry revealing itself in the drama. If the tragedies of Sophocles are +in the strict sense of the word tragedies, and the comedies of +Aristophanes comedies, we must emancipate ourselves from a false +association arising from misapplied names, and find a new word for the +plays of Shakspeare. For they are, in the ancient sense, neither +tragedies nor comedies, nor both in one,--but a different 'genus', +diverse in kind, and not merely different in degree. They may be called +romantic dramas, or dramatic romances. + +A deviation from the simple forms and unities of the ancient stage is an +essential principle, and, of course, an appropriate excellence, of the +romantic drama. For these unities were to a great extent the natural +form of that which in its elements was homogeneous, and the +representation of which was addressed pre-eminently to the outward +senses;--and though the fable, the language and the characters appealed +to the reason rather than to the mere understanding, inasmuch as they +supposed an ideal state rather than referred to an existing +reality,--yet it was a reason which was obliged to accommodate itself to +the senses, and so far became a sort of more elevated understanding. On +the other hand, the romantic poetry--the Shakspearian drama--appealed to +the imagination rather than to the senses, and to the reason as +contemplating our inward nature, and the workings of the passions in +their most retired recesses. But the reason, as reason, is independent +of time and space; it has nothing to do with them; and hence the +certainties of reason have been called eternal truths. As for +example--the endless properties of the circle:--what connection have +they with this or that age, with this or that country?--The reason is +aloof from time and space;--the imagination is an arbitrary controller +over both;--and if only the poet have such power of exciting our +internal emotions as to make us present to the scene in imagination +chiefly, he acquires the right and privilege of using time and space as +they exist in imagination, and obedient only to the laws by which the +imagination itself acts. These laws it will be my object and aim to +point out as the examples occur, which illustrate them. But here let me +remark what can never be too often reflected on by all who would +intelligently study the works either of the Athenian dramatists, or of +Shakspeare, that the very essence of the former consists in the sternest +separation of the diverse in kind and the disparate in the degree, +whilst the latter delights in interlacing by a rainbow-like transfusion +of hues the one with the other. + +And here it will be necessary to say a few words on the stage and on +stage-illusion. + +A theatre, in the widest sense of the word, is the general term for all +places of amusement through the ear or eye, in which men assemble in +order to be amused by some entertainment presented to all at the same +time and in common. Thus, an old Puritan divine says:--"Those who attend +public worship and sermons only to amuse themselves, make a theatre of +the church, and turn God's house into the devil's. 'Theatra ædes +diabololatricæ'." The most important and dignified species of this genus +is, doubtless, the stage, ('res theatralis histrionica'), which, in +addition to the generic definition above given, may be characterized in +its idea, or according to what it does, or ought to, aim at, as a +combination of several or of all the fine arts in an harmonious whole, +having a distinct end of its own, to which the peculiar end of each of +the component arts, taken separately, is made subordinate and +subservient,--that, namely, of imitating reality--whether external +things, actions, or passions--under a semblance of reality. Thus, Claude +imitates a landscape at sunset, but only as a picture; while a +forest-scene is not presented to the spectators as a picture, but as a +forest; and though, in the full sense of the word, we are no more +deceived by the one than by the other, yet are our feelings very +differently affected; and the pleasure derived from the one is not +composed of the same elements as that afforded by the other, even on the +supposition that the 'quantum' of both were equal. In the former, a +picture, it is a condition of all genuine delight that we should not be +deceived; in the latter, stage-scenery, (inasmuch as its principal end +is not in or for itself, as is the case in a picture, but to be an +assistance and means to an end out of itself) its very purpose is to +produce as much illusion as its nature permits. These, and all other +stage presentations, are to produce a sort of temporary half-faith, +which the spectator encourages in himself and supports by a voluntary +contribution on his own part, because he knows that it is at all times +in his power to see the thing as it really is. I have often observed +that little children are actually deceived by stage-scenery, never by +pictures; though even these produce an effect on their impressible +minds, which they do not on the minds of adults. The child, if strongly +impressed, does not indeed positively think the picture to be the +reality; but yet he does not think the contrary. As Sir George Beaumont +was shewing me a very fine engraving from Rubens, representing a storm +at sea without any vessel or boat introduced, my litte boy, then about +five years old, came dancing and singing into the room, and all at once +(if I may so say) 'tumbled in' upon the print. He instantly started, +stood silent and motionless, with the strongest expression, first of +wonder and then of grief in his eyes and countenance, and at length +said, "And where is the ship? But that is sunk, and the men are all +drowned!" still keeping his eyes fixed on the print. Now what pictures +are to little children, stage-illusion is to men, provided they retain +any part of the child's sensibility; except, that in the latter +instance, the suspension of the act of comparison, which permits this +sort of negative belief, is somewhat more assisted by the will, than in +that of a child respecting a picture. + +The true stage-illusion in this and in all other things consists--not in +the mind's judging it to be a forest, but, in its remission of the +judgment that it is not a forest. And this subject of stage-illusion is +so important, and so many practical errors and false criticisms may +arise, and indeed have arisen, either from reasoning on it as actual +delusion, (the strange notion, on which the French critics built up +their theory, and on which the French poets justify the construction of +their tragedies), or from denying it altogether, (which seems the end of +Dr. Johnson's reasoning, and which, as extremes meet, would lead to the +very same consequences, by excluding whatever would not be judged +probable by us in our coolest state of feeling, with all our faculties +in even balance), that these few remarks will, I hope, be pardoned, if +they should serve either to explain or to illustrate the point. For not +only are we never absolutely deluded--or any thing like it, but the +attempt to cause the highest delusion possible to beings in their senses +sitting in a theatre, is a gross fault, incident only to low minds, +which, feeling that they cannot affect the heart or head permanently, +endeavour to call forth the momentary affections. There ought never to +be more pain than is compatible with co-existing pleasure, and to be +amply repaid by thought. + +Shakspeare found the infant stage demanding an intermixture of ludicrous +character as imperiously as that of Greece did the chorus, and high +language accordant. And there are many advantages in this;--a greater +assimilation to nature, a greater scope of power, more truths, and more +feelings;-the effects of contrast, as in Lear and the Fool; and +especially this, that the true language of passion becomes sufficiently +elevated by your having previously heard, in the same piece, the lighter +conversation of men under no strong emotion. The very nakedness of the +stage, too, was advantageous,--for the drama thence became something +between recitation and a re-presentation; and the absence or paucity of +scenes allowed a freedom from the laws of unity of place and unity of +time, the observance of which must either confine the drama to as few +subjects as may be counted on the fingers, or involve gross +improbabilities, far more striking than the violation would have caused. +Thence, also, was precluded the danger of a false ideal,--of aiming at +more than what is possible on the whole. What play of the ancients, with +reference to their ideal, does not hold out more glaring absurdities +than any in Shakspeare? On the Greek plan a man could more easily be a +poet than a dramatist; upon our plan more easily a dramatist than a +poet. + + +[Footnote 1: A. D. 363. But I believe the prevailing opinion amongst +scholars now is, that the [Greek: Christos Paschon] is not genuine. Ed.] + +[Footnote 2: See vol. i. p. 76, where this is told more at length and +attributed to Hans Sachs. Ed.] + + + + + +THE DRAMA GENERALLY, AND PUBLIC TASTE. + +Unaccustomed to address such an audience, and having lost by a long +interval of confinement the advantages of my former short schooling, I +had miscalculated in my last Lecture the proportion of my matter to my +time, and by bad economy and unskilful management, the several heads of +my discourse failed in making the entire performance correspond with the +promise publicly circulated in the weekly annunciation of the subjects, +to be treated. It would indeed have been wiser in me, and perhaps better +on the whole, if I had caused my Lectures to be announced only as +continuations of the main subject. But if I be, as perforce I must be, +gratified by the recollection of whatever has appeared to give you +pleasure, I am conscious of something better, though less flattering, a +sense of unfeigned gratitude for your forbearance with my defects. Like +affectionate guardians, you see without disgust the awkwardness, and +witness with sympathy the growing pains, of a youthful endeavour, and +look forward with a hope, which is its own reward, to the contingent +results of practice--to its intellectual maturity. + +In my last address I defined poetry to be the art, or whatever better +term our language may afford, of representing external nature and human +thoughts, both relatively to human affections, so as to cause the +production of as great immediate pleasure in each part, as is compatible +with the largest possible sum of pleasure on the whole. Now this +definition applies equally to painting and music as to poetry; and in +truth the term poetry is alike applicable to all three. The vehicle +alone constitutes the difference; and the term 'poetry' is rightly +applied by eminence to measured words, only because the sphere of their +action is far wider, the power of giving permanence to them much more +certain, and incomparably greater the facility, by which men, not +defective by nature or disease, may be enabled to derive habitual +pleasure and instruction from them. On my mentioning these +considerations to a painter of great genius, who had been, from a most +honourable enthusiasm, extolling his own art, he was so struck with +their truth, that he exclaimed, "I want no other arguments;--poetry, +that is, verbal poetry, must be the greatest; all that proves final +causes in the world, proves this; it would be shocking to think +otherwise!"--And in truth, deeply, O! far more than words can express, +as I venerate the Last Judgment and the Prophets of Michel Angelo +Buonaroti,--yet the very pain which I repeatedly felt as I lost myself +in gazing upon them, the painful consideration that their having been +painted in 'fresco' was the sole cause that they had not been +abandoned to all the accidents of a dangerous transportation to a +distant capital, and that the same caprice, which made the Neapolitan +soldiery destroy all the exquisite master-pieces on the walls of the +church of the 'Trinitado Monte', after the retreat of their +antagonist barbarians, might as easily have made vanish the rooms and +open gallery of Raffael, and the yet more unapproachable wonders of the +sublime Florentine in the Sixtine Chapel, forced upon my mind the +reflection; How grateful the human race ought to be that the works of +Euclid, Newton, Plato, Milton, Shakspeare, are not subjected to similar +contingencies,--that they and their fellows, and the great, though +inferior, peerage of undying intellect, are secured;--secured even from +a second irruption of Goths and Vandals, in addition to many other +safeguards, by the vast empire of English language, laws, and religion +founded in America, through the overflow of the power and the virtue of +my country;-and that now the great and certain works of genuine fame can +only cease to act for mankind, when men themselves cease to be men, or +when the planet on which they exist, shall have altered its relations, +or have ceased to be. Lord Bacon, in the language of the gods, if I may +use an Homeric phrase, has expressed a similar thought:-- + + +Lastly, leaving the vulgar arguments, that by learning man excelleth man +in that wherein man excelleth beasts; that by learning man ascendeth to +the heavens and their motions, where in body he cannot come, and the +like; let us conclude with the dignity and excellency of knowledge and +learning in that whereunto man's nature doth most aspire, which is, +immortality or continuance: for to this tendeth generation, and raising +of houses and families; to this tend buildings, foundations, and +monuments; to this tendeth the desire of memory, fame, and celebration, +and in effect the strength of all other human desires. We see then how +far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the +monuments of power, or of the hands. For have not the verses of Homer +continued twenty-five hundred years, or more, without the loss of a +syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, +castles, cities, have been decayed and demolished? It is not possible to +have the true pictures or statues of Cyrus, Alexander, Caesar; no, nor +of the kings or great personages of much later years; for the originals +cannot last, and the copies cannot but lose of the life and truth. But +the images of men's wits and knowledges remain in books, exempted from +the wrong of time, and capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they +fitly to be called images, because they generate still, and cast their +seeds in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and +opinions in succeeding ages: so that, if the invention of the ship was +thought so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place to +place, and consociateth the most remote regions in participation of +their fruits; how much more are letters to be magnified, which, as ships +pass through the vast seas of time, and make ages so distant to +participate of the wisdom, illuminations, and inventions, the one of the +other? [1] + + +But let us now consider what the drama should be. And first, it is not a +copy, but an imitation, of nature. This is the universal principle of +the fine arts. In all well laid out grounds what delight do we feel from +that balance and antithesis of feelings and thoughts! How natural! we +say;--but the very wonder that caused the exclamation, implies that we +perceived art at the same moment. We catch the hint from nature itself. +Whenever in mountains or cataracts we discover a likeness to any thing +artificial which yet we know is not artificial--what pleasure! And so +it is in appearances known to be artificial, which appear to be natural. +This applies in due degrees, regulated by steady good sense, from a +clump of trees to the Paradise Lost or Othello. It would be easy to +apply it to painting and even, though with greater abstraction of +thought, and by more subtle yet equally just analogies--to music. But +this belongs to others;--suffice it that one great principle is common +to all the fine arts,--a principle which probably is the condition of +all consciousness, without which we should feel and imagine only by +discontinuous moments, and be plants or brute animals instead of men;--I +mean that ever-varying balance, or balancing, of images, notions, or +feelings, conceived as in opposition to each other;--in short, the +perception of identity and contrariety; the least degree of which +constitutes likeness, the greatest absolute difference; but the infinite +gradations between these two form all the play and all the interest of +our intellectual and moral being, till it leads us to a feeling and an +object more awful than it seems to me compatible with even the present +subject to utter aloud, though I am most desirous to suggest it. For +there alone are all things at once different and the same; there alone, +as the principle of all things, does distinction exist unaided by +division; there are will and reason, succession of time and unmoving +eternity, infinite change and ineffable rest!-- + + + Return Alpheus! the dread voice is past + Which shrunk thy streams!--Thou honour'd flood, + Smooth-'flowing' Avon, crown'd with vocal reeds, + That strain I heard, was of a higher mood!-- + But now my 'voice' proceeds. + + +We may divide a dramatic poet's characteristics before we enter into the +component merits of any one work, and with reference only to those +things which are to be the materials of all, into language, passion, and +character; always bearing in mind that these must act and react on each +other,--the language inspired by the passion, and the language and the +passion modified and differenced by the character. To the production of +the highest excellencies in these three, there are requisite in the mind +of the author;--good sense; talent; sensibility; imagination;--and to +the perfection of a work we should add two faculties of lesser +importance, yet necessary for the ornaments and foliage of the column +and the roof--fancy and a quick sense of beauty. + +As to language;--it cannot be supposed that the poet should make his +characters say all that they would, or that, his whole drama considered, +each scene, or paragraph should be such as, on cool examination, we can +conceive it likely that men in such situations would say, in that order, +or with that perfection. And yet, according to my feelings, it is a very +inferior kind of poetry, in which, as in the French tragedies, men are +made to talk in a style which few indeed even of the wittiest can be +supposed to converse in, and which both is, and on a moment's reflection +appears to be, the natural produce of the hot-bed of vanity, namely, the +closet of an author, who is actuated originally by a desire to excite +surprise and wonderment at his own superiority to other men,--instead of +having felt so deeply on certain subjects, or in consequence of certain +imaginations, as to make it almost a necessity of his nature to seek for +sympathy,--no doubt, with that honorable desire of permanent action +which distinguishes genius.--Where then is the difference?--In this that +each part should be proportionate, though the whole may be perhaps +impossible. At all events, it should be compatible with sound sense and +logic in the mind of the poet himself. + +It is to be lamented that we judge of books by books, instead of +referring what we read to our own experience. One great use of books is +to make their contents a motive for observation. The German tragedies +have in some respects been justly ridiculed. In them the dramatist often +becomes a novelist in his directions to the actors, and thus degrades +tragedy into pantomime. Yet still the consciousness of the poet's mind +must be diffused over that of the reader or spectator; but he himself, +according to his genius, elevates us, and by being always in keeping, +prevents us from perceiving any strangeness, though we feel great +exultation. Many different kinds of style may be admirable, both in +different men, and in different parts of the same poem. + +See the different language which strong feelings may justify in Shylock, +and learn from Shakspeare's conduct of that character the terrible force +of very plain and calm diction, when known to proceed from a resolved +and impassioned man. + +It is especially with reference to the drama, and its characteristics in +any given nation, or at any particular period, that the dependence of +genius on the public taste becomes a matter of the deepest importance. I +do not mean that taste which springs merely from caprice or fashionable +imitation, and which, in fact, genius can, and by degrees will, create +for itself; but that which arises out of wide-grasping and +heart-enrooted causes, which is epidemic, and in the very air that all +breathe. This it is which kills, or withers, or corrupts. Socrates, +indeed, might walk arm and arm with Hygeia, whilst pestilence, with a +thousand furies running to and fro, and clashing against each other in a +complexity and agglomeration of horrors, was shooting her darts of fire +and venom all around him. Even such was Milton; yea, and such, in spite +of all that has been babbled by his critics in pretended excuse for his +damning, because for them too profound, excellencies,--such was +Shakspeare. But alas! the exceptions prove the rule. For who will dare +to force his way out of the crowd,--not of the mere vulgar,--but of the +vain and banded aristocracy of intellect, and presume to join the almost +supernatural beings that stand by themselves aloof? + +Of this diseased epidemic influence there are two forms especially +preclusive of tragic worth. The first is the necessary growth of a sense +and love of the ludicrous, and a morbid sensibility of the assimilative +power,--an inflammation produced by cold and weakness,--which in the +boldest bursts of passion will lie in wait for a jeer at any phrase, +that may have an accidental coincidence in the mere words with something +base or trivial. For instance,--to express woods, not on a plain, but +clothing a hill, which overlooks a valley, or dell, or river, or the +sea,--the trees rising one above another, as the spectators in an +ancient theatre,--I know no other word in our language, (bookish and +pedantic terms out of the question,) but 'hanging' woods, the 'sylvæ +superimpendentes' of Catullus [2]; yet let some wit call out in a slang +tone,--"the gallows!" and a peal of laughter would damn the play. Hence +it is that so many dull pieces have had a decent run, only because +nothing unusual above, or absurd below, mediocrity furnished an +occasion,--a spark for the explosive materials collected behind the +orchestra. But it would take a volume of no ordinary size, however +laconically the sense were expressed, if it were meant to instance the +effects, and unfold all the causes, of this disposition upon the moral, +intellectual, and even physical character of a people, with its +influences on domestic life and individual deportment. A good document +upon this subject would be the history of Paris society and of French, +that is, Parisian, literature from the commencement of the latter half +of the reign of Louis XIV. to that of Buonaparte, compared with the +preceding philosophy and poetry even of Frenchmen themselves. + +The second form, or more properly, perhaps, another distinct cause, of +this diseased disposition is matter of exultation to the philanthropist +and philosopher, and of regret to the poet, the painter, and the +statuary alone, and to them only as poets, painters, and +statuaries;--namely, the security, the comparative equability, and ever +increasing sameness of human life. Men are now so seldom thrown into +wild circumstances, and violences of excitement, that the language of +such states, the laws of association of feeling with thought, the starts +and strange far-flights of the assimilative power on the slightest and +least obvious likeness presented by thoughts, words, or objects,--these +are all judged of by authority, not by actual experience,--by what men +have been accustomed to regard as symbols of these states, and not the +natural symbols, or self-manifestations of them. + +Even so it is in the language of man, and in that of nature. The sound +'sun', or the figures 's', 'u', 'n', are purely arbitrary modes of +recalling the object, and for visual mere objects they are not only +sufficient, but have infinite advantages from their very nothingness +'per se'. But the language of nature is a subordinate 'Logos', that was +in the beginning, and was with the thing it represented, and was the +thing it represented. + +Now the language of Shakspeare, in his Lear for instance, is a something +intermediate between these two; or rather it is the former blended with +the latter,--the arbitrary, not merely recalling the cold notion of the +thing, but expressing the reality of it, and, as arbitrary language is +an heir-loom of the human race, being itself a part of that which it +manifests. What shall I deduce from the preceding positions? Even +this,--the appropriate, the never to be too much valued advantage of the +theatre, if only the actors were what we know they have been,--a +delightful, yet most effectual, remedy for this dead palsy of the public +mind. What would appear mad or ludicrous in a book, when presented to +the senses under the form of reality, and with the truth of nature, +supplies a species of actual experience. This is indeed the special +privilege of a great actor over a great poet. No part was ever played in +perfection, but nature justified herself in the hearts of all her +children, in what state soever they were, short of absolute moral +exhaustion, or downright stupidity. There is no time given to ask +questions or to pass judgments; we are taken by storm, and, though in +the histrionic art many a clumsy counterfeit, by caricature of one or +two features, may gain applause as a fine likeness, yet never was the +very thing rejected as a counterfeit. O! when I think of the +inexhaustible mine of virgin treasure in our Shakspeare, that I have +been almost daily reading him since I was ten years old,--that the +thirty intervening years have been unintermittingly and not fruitlessly +employed in the study of the Greek, Latin, English, Italian, Spanish and +German 'belle lettrists', and the last fifteen years in addition, far +more intensely in the analysis of the laws of life and reason as they +exist in man,--and that upon every step I have made forward in taste, in +acquisition of facts from history or my own observation, and in +knowledge of the different laws of being and their apparent exceptions, +from accidental collision of disturbing forces,--that at every new +accession of information, after every successful exercise of meditation, +and every fresh presentation of experience, I have unfailingly +discovered a proportionate increase of wisdom and intuition in +Shakspeare;--when I know this, and know too, that by a conceivable and +possible, though hardly to be expected, arrangement of the British +theatres, not all, indeed, but a large, a very large, proportion of this +indefinite all--(round which no comprehension has yet drawn the line of +circumscription, so as to say to itself, 'I have seen the whole')--might +be sent into the heads and hearts--into the very souls of the mass of +mankind, to whom, except by this living comment and interpretation, it +must remain for ever a sealed volume, a deep well without a wheel or a +windlass;--it seems to me a pardonable enthusiasm to steal away from +sober likelihood, and share in so rich a feast in the faery world of +possibility! Yet even in the grave cheerfulness of a circumspect hope, +much, very much, might be done; enough, assuredly, to furnish a kind and +strenuous nature with ample motives for the attempt to effect what may +be effected. + + +[Footnote: 'Advancement of Learning, book 1. 'sub fine.'] + +[Footnote 2: Confestim Peneos adest, viridantia Tempe, Tempe, quae +cingunt sylvae superimpendentes. 'Epith. Pel. et. Th.' 286.] + + + + + +SHAKSPEARE, A POET GENERALLY. + + +Clothed in radiant armour, and authorized by titles sure and manifold, +as a poet, Shakspeare came forward to demand the throne of fame, as the +dramatic poet of England. His excellencies compelled even his +contemporaries to seat him on that throne, although there were giants in +those days contending for the same honor. Hereafter I would fain +endeavour to make out the title of the English drama as created by, and +existing in, Shakspeare, and its right to the supremacy of dramatic +excellence in general. But he had shown himself a poet, previously to +his appearance as a dramatic poet; and had no Lear, no Othello, no Henry +IV., no Twelfth Night ever appeared, we must have admitted that +Shakspeare possessed the chief, if not every, requisite of a poet,--deep +feeling and exquisite sense of beauty, both as exhibited to the eye in +the combinations of form, and to the ear in sweet and appropriate +melody; that these feelings were under the command of his own will; that +in his very first productions he projected his mind out of his own +particular being, and felt, and made others feel, on subjects no way +connected with himself, except by force of contemplation and that +sublime faculty by which a great mind becomes that, on which it +meditates. To this must be added that affectionate love of nature and +natural objects, without which no man could have observed so steadily, +or painted so truly and passionately, the very minutest beauties of the +external world:-- + + + When them hast on foot the purblind hare, + Mark the poor wretch; to overshoot his troubles, + How he outruns the wind, and with what care, + He cranks and crosses with a thousand doubles; + The many musits through the which he goes + Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes. + + Sometimes he runs among the flock of sheep, + To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell; + And sometime where earth-delving conies keep, + To stop the loud pursuers in their yell; + And sometime sorteth with a herd of deer: + Danger deviseth shifts, wit waits on fear. + + For there his smell with others' being mingled, + The hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt, + Ceasing their clamorous cry, till they have singled, + With much ado, the cold fault cleanly out, + Then do they spend their mouths; echo replies, + As if another chase were in the skies. + + By this poor Wat far off, upon a hill, + Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear, + To hearken if his foes pursue him still: + Anon their loud alarums he doth hear, + And now his grief may be compared well + To one sore-sick, that hears the passing bell. + + Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch + Turn, and return, indenting with the way: + Each envious briar his weary legs doth scratch. + Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay. + For misery is trodden on by many, + And being low, never relieved by any. + + 'Venus and Adonis'. + + +And the preceding description:- + + + But, lo! from forth a copse that neighbours by, + A breeding jennet, lusty, young and proud, &c. + + +is much more admirable, but in parts less fitted for quotation. + +Moreover Shakspeare had shown that he possessed fancy, considered as the +faculty of bringing together images dissimilar in the main by some one +point or more of likeness, as in such a passage as this:- + + + Full gently now she takes him by the hand, + A lily prisoned in a jail of snow, + Or ivory in an alabaster band: + So white a friend ingirts so white a foe! + +'Ib.' + + +And still mounting the intellectual ladder, he had as unequivocally +proved the indwelling in his mind of imagination, or the power by which +one image or feeling is made to modify many others, and by a sort of +fusion to force many into one;--that which afterwards showed itself in +such might and energy in Lear, where the deep anguish of a father +spreads the feeling of ingratitude and cruelty over the very elements of +heaven;--and which, combining many circumstances into one moment of +consciousness, tends to produce that ultimate end of all human thought +and human feeling, unity, and thereby the reduction of the spirit to its +principle and fountain, who is alone truly one. Various are the workings +of this the greatest faculty of the human mind, both passionate and +tranquil. In its tranquil and purely pleasurable operation, it acts +chiefly by creating out of many things, as they would have appeared in +the description of an ordinary mind, detailed in unimpassioned +succession, a oneness, even as nature, the greatest of poets, acts upon +us, when we open our eyes upon an extended prospect. Thus the flight of +Adonis in the dusk of the evening:- + + + Look! how a bright star shooteth from the sky; + So glides he in the night from Venus' eye! + + +How many images and feelings are here brought together without effort +and without discord, in the beauty of Adonis, the rapidity of his +flight, the yearning, yet hopelessness, of the enamored gazer, while a +shadowy ideal character is thrown over the whole! Or this power acts by +impressing the stamp of humanity, and of human feelings, on inanimate or +mere natural objects:- + + + Lo! here the gentle lark, weary of rest, + From his moist cabinet mounts up on high, + And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast + The sun ariseth in his majesty, + Who doth the world so gloriously behold, + The cedar-tops and hills seem burnish'd gold. + + +Or again, it acts by so carrying on the eye of the reader as to make him +almost lose the consciousness of words,--to make him see every thing +flashed, as Wordsworth has grandly and appropriately said,- + + + _Flashed_ upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude;- + + +and this without exciting any painful or laborious attention, without +any anatomy of description, (a fault not uncommon in descriptive +poetry)-but with the sweetness and easy movement of nature. This energy +is an absolute essential of poetry, and of itself would constitute a +poet, though not one of the highest class;--it is, however, a most +hopeful symptom, and the Venus and Adonis is one continued specimen of +it. + +In this beautiful poem there is an endless activity of thought in all +the possible associations of thought with thought, thought with feeling, +or with words, of feelings with feelings, and of words with words. + + + Even as the sun, with purple-colour'd face, + Had ta'en his last leave of the weeping morn, + Rose-cheek'd Adonis hied him to the chase: + Hunting he loved, but love he laughed to scorn. + Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him, + And like a bold-faced suitor 'gins to woo him. + + +Remark the humanizing imagery and circumstances of the first two lines, +and the activity of thought in the play of words in the fourth line. The +whole stanza presents at once the time, the appearance of the morning, +and the two persons distinctly characterized, and in six simple verses +puts the reader in possession of the whole argument of the poem. + + + Over one arm the lusty courser's rein, + Under the other was the tender boy, + Who blush'd and pouted in a dull disdain, + With leaden appetite, unapt to toy, + She red and hot, as coals of glowing fire, + He red for shame, but frosty to desire:- + + +This stanza and the two following afford good instances of that poetic +power, which I mentioned above, of making every thing present to the +imagination--both the forms, and the passions which modify those forms, +either actually, as in the representations of love, or anger, or other +human affections; or imaginatively, by the different manner in which +inanimate objects, or objects unimpassioned themselves, are caused to be +seen by the mind in moments of strong excitement, and according to the +kind of the excitement,--whether of jealousy, or rage, or love, in the +only appropriate sense of the word, or of the lower impulses of our +nature, or finally of the poetic feeling itself. It is, perhaps, chiefly +in the power of producing and reproducing the latter that the poet +stands distinct. + +The subject of the Venus and Adonis is unpleasing; but the poem itself +is for that very reason the more illustrative of Shakspeare. There are +men who can write passages of deepest pathos and even sublimity on +circumstances personal to themselves and stimulative of their own +passions; but they are not, therefore, on this account poets. Read that +magnificent burst of woman's patriotism and exultation, Deborah's song +of victory; it is glorious, but nature is the poet there. It is quite +another matter to become all things and yet remain the same,--to make +the changeful god be felt in the river, the lion and the flame;--this it +is, that is the true imagination. Shakspeare writes in this poem, as if +he were of another planet, charming you to gaze on the movements of +Venus and Adonis, as you would on the twinkling dances of two vernal +butterflies. + +Finally, in this poem and the Rape of Lucrece, Shakspeare gave ample +proof of his possession of a most profound, energetic, and philosophical +mind, without which he might have pleased, but could not have been a +great dramatic poet. Chance and the necessity of his genius combined to +lead him to the drama his proper province; in his conquest of which we +should consider both the difficulties which opposed him, and the +advantages by which he was assisted. + + + + + +SHAKSPEARE'S JUDGMENT EQUAL TO HIS GENIUS. + +Thus then Shakspeare appears, from his Venus and Adonis and Rape of +Lucrece alone, apart from all his great works, to have possessed all the +conditions of the true poet. Let me now proceed to destroy, as far as +may be in my power, the popular notion that he was a great dramatist by +mere instinct, that he grew immortal in his own despite, and sank below +men of second or third-rate power, when he attempted aught beside the +drama--even as bees construct their cells and manufacture their honey +to admirable perfection; but would in vain attempt to build a nest. Now +this mode of reconciling a compelled sense of inferiority with a feeling +of pride, began in a few pedants, who having read that Sophocles was the +great model of tragedy, and Aristotle the infallible dictator of its +rules, and finding that the Lear, Hamlet, Othello and other +master-pieces were neither in imitation of Sophocles, nor in obedience +to Aristotle,--and not having (with one or two exceptions) the courage +to affirm, that the delight which their country received from generation +to generation, in defiance of the alterations of circumstances and +habits, was wholly groundless,--took upon them, as a happy medium and +refuge, to talk of Shakspeare as a sort of beautiful 'lusus naturæ', a +delightful monster,--wild, indeed, and without taste or judgment, but +like the inspired idiots so much venerated in the East, uttering, amid +the strangest follies, the sublimest truths. In nine places out of ten +in which I find his awful name mentioned, it is with some epithet of +'wild', 'irregular,' 'pure child of nature,' &c. If all this be true, we +must submit to it; though to a thinking mind it cannot but be painful to +find any excellence, merely human, thrown out of all human analogy, and +thereby leaving us neither rules for imitation, nor motives to +imitate;--but if false, it is a dangerous falsehood;--for it affords a +refuge to secret self-conceit,--enables a vain man at once to escape his +reader's indignation by general swoln panegyrics, and merely by his +'ipse dixit' to treat, as contemptible, what he has not intellect enough +to comprehend, or soul to feel, without assigning any reason, or +referring his opinion to any demonstrative principle;--thus leaving +Shakspeare as a sort of grand Lama, adored indeed, arid his very +excrements prized as relics, but with no authority or real influence. I +grieve that every late voluminous edition of his works would enable me +to substantiate the present charge with a variety of facts one tenth of +which would of themselves exhaust the time allotted to me. Every critic, +who has or has not made a collection of black letter books--in itself a +useful and respectable amusement,--puts on the seven-league boots of +self-opinion, and strides at once from an illustrator into a supreme +judge, and blind and deaf, fills his three-ounce phial at the waters of +Niagara; and determines positively the greatness of the cataract to be +neither more nor less than his three-ounce phial has been able to +receive. + +I think this a very serious subject. It is my earnest desire--my +passionate endeavour,--to enforce at various times and by various +arguments and instances the close and reciprocal connexion of just taste +with pure morality. Without that acquaintance with the heart of man, or +that docility and childlike gladness to be made acquainted with it, +which those only can have, who dare look at their own hearts--and that +with a steadiness which religion only has the power of reconciling with +sincere humility;--without this, and the modesty produced by it, I am +deeply convinced that no man, however wide his erudition, however +patient his antiquarian researches, can possibly understand, or be +worthy of understanding, the writings of Shakspeare. + +Assuredly that criticism of Shakspeare will alone be genial which is +reverential. The Englishman, who without reverence, a proud and +affectionate reverence, can utter the name of William Shakspeare, stands +disqualified for the office of critic. He wants one at least of the very +senses, the language of which he is to employ, and will discourse at +best, but as a blind man, while the whole harmonious creation of light +and shade with all its subtle interchange of deepening and dissolving +colours rises in silence to the silent 'fiat' of the uprising Apollo. +However inferior in ability I may be to some who have followed me, I own +I am proud that I was the first in time who publicly demonstrated to the +full extent of the position, that the supposed irregularity and +extravagancies of Shakspeare were the mere dreams of a pedantry that +arraigned the eagle because it had not the dimensions of the swan. In +all the successive courses of lectures delivered by me, since my first +attempt at the Royal Institution, it has been, and it still remains, my +object, to prove that in all points from the most important to the most +minute, the judgment of Shakspeare is commensurate with his +genius,--nay, that his genius reveals itself in his judgment, as in its +most exalted form. And the more gladly do I recur to this subject from +the clear conviction, that to judge aright, and with distinct +consciousness of the grounds of our judgment, concerning the works of +Shakspeare, implies the power and the means of judging rightly of all +other works of intellect, those of abstract science alone excepted. + +It is a painful truth that not only individuals, but even whole nations, +are ofttimes so enslaved to the habits of their education and immediate +circumstances, as not to judge disinterestedly even on those subjects, +the very pleasure arising from which consists in its disinterestedness, +namely, on subjects of taste and polite literature. Instead of deciding +concerning their own modes and customs by any rule of reason, nothing +appears rational, becoming, or beautiful to them, but what coincides +with the peculiarities of their education. In this narrow circle, +individuals may attain to exquisite discrimination, as the French +critics have done in their own literature; but a true critic can no more +be such without placing himself on some central point, from which he may +command the whole, that is, some general rule, which, founded in reason, +or the faculties common to all men, must therefore apply to each,--than +an astronomer can explain the movements of the solar system without +taking his stand in the sun. And let me remark, that this will not tend +to produce despotism, but, on the contrary, true tolerance, in the +critic. He will, indeed, require, as the spirit and substance of a work, +something true in human nature itself, and independent of all +circumstances; but in the mode of applying it, he will estimate genius +and judgment according to the felicity with which the imperishable soul +of intellect shall have adapted itself to the age, the place, and the +existing manners. The error he will expose, lies in reversing this, and +holding up the mere circumstances as perpetual to the utter neglect of +the power which can alone animate them. For art cannot exist without, or +apart from, nature; and what has man of his own to give to his +fellow-man, but his own thoughts and feelings, and his observations so +far as they are modified by his own thoughts or feelings? + +Let me, then, once more submit this question to minds emancipated alike +from national, or party, or sectarian prejudice:--Are the plays of +Shakspeare works of rude uncultivated genius, in which the splendour of +the parts compensates, if aught can compensate, for the barbarous +shapelessness and irregularity of the whole?--Or is the form equally +admirable with the matter, and the judgment of the great poet, not less +deserving our wonder than his genius?--Or, again, to repeat the question +in other words:--Is Shakspeare a great dramatic poet on account only of +those beauties and excellencies which he possesses in common with the +ancients, but with diminished claims to our love and honour to the full +extent of his differences from them?--Or are these very differences +additional proofs of poetic wisdom, at once results and symbols of +living power as contrasted with lifeless mechanism--of free and rival +originality as contradistinguished from servile imitation, or, more +accurately, a blind copying of effects, instead of a true imitation of +the essential principles?--Imagine not that I am about to oppose genius +to rules. No! the comparative value of these rules is the very cause to +be tried. The spirit of poetry, like all other living powers, must of +necessity circumscribe itself by rules, were it only to unite power with +beauty. It must embody in order to reveal itself; but a living body is +of necessity an organized one; and what is organization but the +connection of parts in and for a whole, so that each part is at once end +and means?--This is no discovery of criticism;--it is a necessity of the +human mind; and all nations have felt and obeyed it, in the invention of +metre, and measured sounds, as the vehicle and 'involucrum' of +poetry--itself a fellow-growth from the same life,--even as the bark is +to the tree! + +No work of true genius dares want its appropriate form, neither indeed +is there any danger of this. As it must not, so genius cannot, be +lawless; for it is even this that constitutes it genius--the power of +acting creatively under laws of its own origination. How then comes it +that not only single 'Zoili', but whole nations have combined in +unhesitating condemnation of our great dramatist, as a sort of African +nature, rich in beautiful monsters,--as a wild heath where islands of +fertility look the greener from the surrounding waste, where the +loveliest plants now shine out among unsightly weeds, and now are choked +by their parasitic growth, so intertwined that we cannot disentangle the +weed without snapping the flower?--In this statement. I have had no +reference to the vulgar abuse of Voltaire [1], save as far as his +charges are coincident with the decisions of Shakspeare's own +commentators and (so they would tell you) almost idolatrous admirers. +The true ground of the mistake lies in the confounding mechanical +regularity with organic form. The form is mechanic, when on any given +material we impress a pre-determined form, not necessarily arising out +of the properties of the material;--as when to a mass of wet clay we +give whatever shape we wish it to retain when hardened. The organic +form, on the other hand, is innate; it shapes, as it developes, itself +from within, and the fulness of its development is one and the same with +the perfection of its outward form. Such as the life is, such is the +form. Nature, the prime genial artist, inexhaustible in diverse powers, +is equally inexhaustible in forms;--each exterior is the physiognomy of +the being within,--its true image reflected and thrown out from the +concave mirror;--and even such is the appropriate excellence of her +chosen poet, of our own Shakspeare,--himself a nature humanized, a +genial understanding directing self-consciously a power and an implicit +wisdom deeper even than our consciousness. + +I greatly dislike beauties and selections in general; but as proof +positive of his unrivalled excellence, I should like to try Shakspeare +by this criterion. Make out your amplest catalogue of all the human +faculties, as reason or the moral law, the will, the feeling of the +coincidence of the two (a feeling 'sui generis et demonstratio +clemontrationum') called the conscience, the understanding or prudence, +wit, fancy, imagination, judgment,--and then of the objects on which +these are to be employed, as the beauties, the terrors, and the seeming +caprices of nature, the realities and the capabilities, that is, the +actual and the ideal, of the human mind, conceived as an individual or +as a social being, as in innocence or in guilt, in a play-paradise, or +in a war-field of temptation;--and then compare with Shakspeare under +each of these heads all or any of the writers in prose and verse that +have ever lived! Who, that is competent to judge, doubts the +result?--And ask your own hearts,--ask your own common-sense--to +conceive the possibility of this man being--I say not, the drunken +savage of that wretched sciolist, whom Frenchmen, to their shame, have +honoured before their elder and better worthies,--but the anomalous, the +wild, the irregular, genius of our daily criticism! What! are we to have +miracles in sport?--Or, I speak reverently, does God choose idiots by +whom to convey divine truths to man? + + +[Footnote 1: Take a slight specimen of it. + + Je suis bien loin assurément de justifier en tout la tragédie + d'Hamlet; _c'est une pièce grossière et barbare, qui ne serait pas + supportée par la plus vile populace de la France et de l'Italie._ + Hamlet y devient fou au second acte, et sa maîtresse folle au + troisième; le prince tue le père de sa maîtresse, feignant de tuer un + rat, et I'heröine se jette dans la rivière. On fait sa fosse sur le + théâtre; des fossoyeurs disent des _quolibets_ dignes d'eux, en tenant + dans leurs mains des têtes de morts; le prince Hamlet répond à leurs + 'grossièretés abominables par des folies non moins dégoûtantes._ + Pendant ce temps-là, un des acteurs fait la conquête de la Pologne. + _Hamlet, sa mère, et son beau-père boivent ensemble sur le théâtre; on + chante à table, on s'y querelle, on se bat, on se tue: on croirait que + cet ouvrage est le fruit de I'imagination d'un sauvage ivre._ + +(Dissertation before Semiramis.) This is not, perhaps, very like Hamlet; +but nothing can be more like Voltaire. Ed.] + + + + + + +RECAPITULATION, AND SUMMARY OF THE CHARACTERISTICS OF SHAKSPEARE's +DRAMAS. [1] + +In lectures, of which amusement forms a large part of the object, there +are some peculiar difficulties. The architect places his foundation out +of sight, and the musician tunes his instrument before he makes his +appearance; but the lecturer has to try his chords in the presence of +the assembly; an operation not likely, indeed, to produce much pleasure, +but yet indispensably necessary to a right understanding of the subject +to be developed. + +Poetry in essence is as familiar to barbarous as to civilized nations. +The Laplander and the savage Indian are cheered by it as well as the +inhabitants of London and Paris;--its spirit takes up and incorporates +surrounding materials, as a plant clothes itself with soil and climate, +whilst it exhibits the working of a vital principle within independent +of all accidental circumstances. And to judge with fairness of an +author's works, we ought to distinguish what is inward and essential +from what is outward and circumstantial. It is essential to poetry that +it be "simple" and appeal to the elements and primary laws of our +nature; that it be "sensuous" and by its imagery elicit truth at a +flash; that it be "impassioned," and be able to move our feelings and +awaken our affections. In comparing different poets with each other, we +should inquire which have brought into the fullest play our imagination +and our reason, or have created the greatest excitement and produced the +completest harmony. If we consider great exquisiteness of language and +sweetness of metre alone, it is impossible to deny to Pope the character +of a delightful writer; but whether he be a poet, must depend upon our +definition of the word; and, doubtless, if every thing that pleases be +poetry, Pope's satires and epistles must be poetry. This, I must say, +that poetry, as distinguished from other modes of composition, does not +rest in metre, and that it is not poetry, if it make no appeal to our +passions or our imagination. One character belongs to all true poets, +that they write from a principle within, not originating in any thing +without; and that the true poet's work in its form, its shapings, and +its modifications, is distinguished from all other works that assume to +belong to the class of poetry, as a natural from an artificial flower, +or as the mimic garden of a child from an enamelled meadow. In the +former the flowers are broken from their stems and stuck into the +ground; they are beautiful to the eye and fragrant to the sense, but +their colours soon fade, and their odour is transient as the smile of +the planter;--while the meadow may be visited again and again with +renewed delight, its beauty is innate in the soil, and its bloom is of +the freshness of nature. + +The next ground of critical judgment, and point of comparison, will be +as to how far a given poet has been influenced by accidental +circumstances. As a living poet must surely write, not for the ages +past, but for that in which he lives, and those which are to follow, it +is, on the one hand, natural that he should not violate, and on the +other, necessary that he should not depend on, the mere manners and +modes of his day. See how little does Shakspeare leave us to regret that +he was born in his particular age! The great aera in modern times was +what is called the Restoration of Letters;-the ages preceding it are +called the dark ages; but it would be more wise, perhaps, to call them +the ages in which we were in the dark. It is usually overlooked that the +supposed dark period was not universal, but partial and successive, or +alternate; that the dark age of England was not the dark age of Italy, +but that one country was in its light and vigour, whilst another was in +its gloom and bondage. But no sooner had the Reformation sounded through +Europe like the blast of an archangel's trumpet, than from king to +peasant there arose an enthusiasm for knowledge; the discovery of a +manuscript became the subject of an embassy; Erasmus read by moonlight, +because he could not afford a torch, and begged a penny, not for the +love of charity, but for the love of learning. The three great points of +attention were religion, morals, and taste; men of genius as well as men +of learning, who in this age need to be so widely distinguished, then +alike became copyists of the ancients; and this, indeed, was the only +way by which the taste of mankind could be improved, or their +understandings informed. Whilst Dante imagined himself a humble follower +of Virgil, and Ariosto of Homer, they were both unconscious of that +greater power working within them, which in many points carried them +beyond their supposed originals. All great discoveries bear the stamp of +the age in which they are made;--hence we perceive the effects of the +purer religion of the moderns, visible for the most part in their lives; +and in reading their works we should not content ourselves with the mere +narratives of events long since passed, but should learn to apply their +maxims and conduct to ourselves. + +Having intimated that times and manners lend their form and pressure to +genius, let me once more draw a slight parallel between the ancient and +modern stage, the stages of Greece and of England. The Greeks were +polytheists; their religion was local; almost the only object of all +their knowledge, art and taste, was their gods; and, accordingly, their +productions were, if the expression may be allowed, statuesque, whilst +those of the moderns are picturesque. The Greeks reared a structure, +which in its parts, and as a whole, fitted the mind with the calm and +elevated impression of perfect beauty and symmetrical proportion. The +moderns also produced a whole, a more striking whole; but it was by +blending materials and fusing the parts together. And as the Pantheon is +to York Minster or Westminster Abbey, so is Sophocles compared with +Shakspeare; in the one a completeness, a satisfaction, an excellence, on +which the mind rests with complacency; in the other a multitude of +interlaced materials, great and little, magnificent and mean, +accompanied, indeed, with the sense of a falling short of perfection, +and yet, at the same time, so promising of our social and individual +progression, that we would not, if we could, exchange it for that repose +of the mind which dwells on the forms of symmetry in the acquiescent +admiration of grace. + +This general characteristic of the ancient and modern drama might be +illustrated by a parallel of the ancient and modern music;--the one +consisting of melody arising from a succession only of pleasing +sounds,--the modern embracing harmony also, the result of combination +and the effect of a whole. + +I have said, and I say it again, that great as was the genius of +Shakspeare, his judgment was at least equal to it. Of this any one will +be convinced, who attentively considers those points in which the dramas +of Greece and England differ, from the dissimilitude of circumstances by +which each was modified and influenced. The Greek stage had its origin +in the ceremonies of a sacrifice, such as of the goat to Bacchus, whom +we most erroneously regard as merely the jolly god of wine;--for among +the ancients he was venerable, as the symbol of that power which acts +without our consciousness in the vital energies of nature,--the 'vinum +mundi',--as Apollo was that of the conscious agency of our intellectual +being. The heroes of old under the influence of this Bacchic enthusiasm +performed more than human actions;--hence tales of the favorite +champions soon passed into dialogue. On the Greek stage the chorus was +always before the audience; the curtain was never dropped, as we should +say; and change of place being therefore, in general, impossible, the +absurd notion of condemning it merely as improbable in itself was never +entertained by any one. If we can believe ourselves at Thebes in one +act, we may believe ourselves at Athens in the next. If a story lasts +twenty-four hours or twenty-four years, it is equally improbable. There +seems to be no just boundary but what the feelings prescribe. But on the +Greek stage where the same persons were perpetually before the audience, +great judgment was necessary in venturing on any such change. The poets +never, therefore, attempted to impose on the senses by bringing places +to men, but they did bring men to places, as in the well known instance +in the 'Eumenides', where during an evident retirement of the chorus +from the orchestra, the scene is changed to Athens, and Orestes is first +introduced in the temple of Minerva, and the chorus of Furies come in +afterwards in pursuit of him. [2] + +In the Greek drama there were no formal divisions into scenes and acts; +there were no means, therefore, of allowing for the necessary lapse of +time between one part of the dialogue and another, and unity of time in +a strict sense was, of course, impossible. To overcome that difficulty +of accounting for time, which is effected on the modern stage by +dropping a curtain, the judgment and great genius of the ancients +supplied music and measured motion, and with the lyric ode filled up the +vacuity. In the story of the Agamemnon of Æschylus, the capture of Troy +is supposed to be announced by a fire lighted on the Asiatic shore, and +the transmission of the signal by successive beacons to Mycené. The +signal is first seen at the 2lst line, and the herald from Troy itself +enters at the 486th, and Agamemnon himself at the 783rd line. But the +practical absurdity of this was not felt by the audience, who, in +imagination stretched minutes into hours, while they listened to the +lofty narrative odes of the chorus which almost entirely fill up the +interspace. Another fact deserves attention here, namely, that regularly +on the Greek stage a drama, or acted story, consisted in reality of +three dramas, called together a trilogy, and performed consecutively in +the course of one day. Now you may conceive a tragedy of Shakspeare's as +a trilogy connected in one single representation. Divide Lear into three +parts, and each would be a play with the ancients; or take the three +Æschylean dramas of Agamemnon, and divide them into, or call them, as +many acts, and they together would be one play. The first act would +comprise the usurpation of Ægisthus, and the murder of Agamemnon; the +second, the revenge of Orestes, and the murder of his mother; and the +third, the penance and absolution of Orestes;--occupying a period of +twenty-two years. + +The stage in Shakspeare's time was a naked room with a blanket for a +curtain; but he made it a field for monarchs. That law of unity, which +has its foundations, not in the factitious necessity of custom, but in +nature itself, the unity of feeling, is every where and at all times +observed by Shakspeare in his plays. Read 'Romeo and Juliet';--all is +youth and spring;--youth with its follies, its virtues, its +precipitancies;--spring with its odours, its flowers, and its +transiency; it is one and the same feeling that commences, goes through, +and ends the play. The old men, the Capulets and the Montagues, are not +common old men; they have an eagerness, a heartiness, a vehemence, the +effect of spring; with Romeo, his change of passion, his sudden +marriage, and his rash death, are all the effects of youth;--whilst in +Juliet love has all that is tender and melancholy in the nightingale, +all that is voluptuous in the rose, with whatever is sweet in the +freshness of spring; but it ends with a long deep sigh like the last +breeze of the Italian evening. This unity of feeling and character +pervades every drama of Shakspeare. + +It seems to me that his plays are distinguished from those of all other +dramatic poets by the following characteristics: + +1. Expectation in preference to surprise. It is like the true reading of +the passage;--'God said, Let there be light, and there was +_light_;'--not there _was_ light. As the feeling with which we startle +at a shooting star, compared with that of watching the sunrise at the +pre-established moment, such and so low is surprise compared with +expectation. + +2. Signal adherence to the great law of nature, that all opposites tend +to attract and temper each other. Passion in Shakspeare generally +displays libertinism, but involves morality; and if there are exceptions +to this, they are, independently of their intrinsic value, all of them +indicative of individual character, and, like the farewell admonitions +of a parent, have an end beyond the parental relation. Thus the +Countess's beautiful precepts to Bertram, by elevating her character, +raise that of Helena her favorite, and soften down the point in her +which Shakspeare does not mean us not to see, but to see and to forgive, +and at length to justify. And so it is in Polonius, who is the +personified memory of wisdom no longer actually possessed. This +admirable character is always misrepresented on the stage. Shakspeare +never intended to exhibit him as a buffoon; for although it was natural +that Hamlet,--a young man of fire and genius, detesting formality, and +disliking Polonius on political grounds, as imagining that he had +assisted his uncle in his usurpation,--should express himself +satirically,--yet this must not be taken as exactly the poet's +conception of him. In Polonius a certain induration of character had +arisen from long habits of business; but take his advice to Laertes, and +Ophelia's reverence for his memory, and we shall see that he was meant +to be represented as a statesman somewhat past his faculties,--his +recollections of life all full of wisdom, and showing a knowledge of +human nature, whilst what immediately takes place before him, and +escapes from him, is indicative of weakness. + +But as in Homer all the deities are in armour, even Venus; so in +Shakspeare all the characters are strong. Hence real folly and dullness +are made by him the vehicles of wisdom. There is no difficulty for one +being a fool to imitate a fool; but to be, remain, and speak like a wise +man and a great wit, and yet so as to give a vivid representation of a +veritable fool,--'hic labor, hoc opus est'. A drunken constable is not +uncommon, nor hard to draw; but see and examine what goes to make up a +Dogberry. + +3. Keeping at all times in the high road of life. Shakspeare has no +innocent adulteries, no interesting incests, no virtuous vice;--he never +renders that amiable which religion and reason alike teach us to detest, +or clothes impurity in the garb of virtue, like Beaumont and Fletcher, +the Kotzebues of the day. Shakspeare's fathers are roused by +ingratitude, his husbands stung by unfaithfulness; in him, in short, the +affections are wounded in those points in which all may, nay, must, +feel. Let the morality of Shakspeare be contrasted with that of the +writers of his own, or the succeeding, age, or of those of the present +day, who boast their superiority in this respect. No one can dispute +that the result of such a comparison is altogether in favour of +Shakspeare;--even the letters of women of high rank in his age were +often coarser than his writings. If he occasionally disgusts a keen +sense of delicacy, he never injures the mind; he neither excites, nor +flatters, passion, in order to degrade the subject of it; he does not +use the faulty thing for a faulty purpose, nor carries on warfare +against virtue, by causing wickedness to appear as no wickedness, +through the medium of a morbid sympathy with the unfortunate. In +Shakspeare vice never walks as in twilight; nothing is purposely out of +its place;--he inverts not the order of nature and propriety,--does not +make every magistrate a drunkard or glutton, nor every poor man meek, +humane, and temperate; he has no benevolent butchers, nor any +sentimental rat-catchers. + +4. Independence of the dramatic interest on the plot. The interest in +the plot is always in fact on account of the characters, not 'vice +versa', as in almost all other writers; the plot is a mere canvass and +no more. Hence arises the true justification of the same stratagem being +used in regard to Benedict and Beatrice,--the vanity in each being +alike. Take away from the Much Ado About Nothing all that which is not +indispensable to the plot, either as having little to do with it, or, at +best, like Dogberry and his comrades, forced into the service, when any +other less ingeniously absurd watchmen and night-constables would have +answered the mere necessities of the action;--take away Benedict, +Beatrice, Dogberry, and the reaction of the former on the character of +Hero,--and what will remain? In other writers the main agent of the plot +is always the prominent character; in Shakspeare it is so, or is not so, +as the character is in itself calculated, or not calculated, to form the +plot. Don John is the main-spring of the plot of this play; but he is +merely shown and then withdrawn. + +5. Independence of the interest on the story as the ground-work of the +plot. Hence Shakspeare never took the trouble of inventing stories. It +was enough for him to select from those that had been already invented +or recorded such as had one or other, or both, of two recommendations, +namely, suitableness to his particular purpose, and their being parts of +popular tradition,--names of which we had often heard, and of their +fortunes, and as to which all we wanted was, to see the man himself. So +it is just the man himself, the Lear, the Shylock, the Richard, that +Shakspeare makes us for the first time acquainted with. Omit the first +scene in Lear, and yet every thing will remain; so the first and second +scenes in the Merchant of Venice. Indeed it is universally true. + +6. Interfusion of the lyrical--that which in its very essence is +poetical--not only with the dramatic, as in the plays of Metastasio, +where at the end of the scene comes the 'aria' as the 'exit' speech of +the character, but also in and through the dramatic. Songs in Shakspeare +are introduced as songs only, just as songs are in real life, +beautifully as some of them are characteristic of the person who has +sung or called for them, as Desdemona's 'Willow,' and Ophelia's wild +snatches, and the sweet carollings in As You Like It. But the whole of +the Midsummer Night's Dream is one continued specimen of the dramatized +lyrical. And observe how exquisitely the dramatic of Hotspur;-- + + Marry, and I'm glad on't with all my heart; + I had rather be a kitten and cry--mew, &c. + +melts away into the lyric of Mortimer;-- + + I understand thy looks: that pretty Welsh + Which thou pourest down from these swelling heavens, + I am too perfect in, &c. + + Henry IV. part i. act iii. sc. i. + + +7. The characters of the 'dramatis personæ', like those in real life, +are to be inferred by the reader;--they are not told to him. And it is +well worth remarking that Shakspeare's characters, like those in real +life, are very commonly misunderstood, and almost always understood by +different persons in different ways. The causes are the same in either +case. If you take only what the friends of the character say, you may be +deceived, and still more so, if that which his enemies say; nay, even +the character himself sees himself through the medium of his character, +and not exactly as he is. Take all together, not omitting a shrewd hint +from the clown or the fool, and perhaps your impression will be right; +and you may know whether you have in fact discovered the poet's own +idea, by all the speeches receiving light from it, and attesting its +reality by reflecting it. + +Lastly, in Shakspeare the heterogeneous is united, as it is in nature. +You must not suppose a pressure or passion always acting on or in the +character;--passion in Shakspeare is that by which the individual is +distinguished from others, not that which makes a different kind of him. +Shakspeare followed the main march of the human affections. He entered +into no analysis of the passions or faiths of men, but assured himself +that such and such passions and faiths were grounded in our common +nature, and not in the mere accidents of ignorance or disease. This is +an important consideration, and constitutes our Shakspeare the morning +star, the guide and the pioneer, of true philosophy. + + +[Footnote 1: For the most part communicated by Mr. Justice Coleridge. +Ed.] + +[Footnote 2: Æsch. Eumen. v. 230-239. 'Notandum est, scenam jam Athenas +translatam sic institui, ut primo Orestes solus conspiciatur in templo +Minerva: supplex ejus simulacrum venerans; paulo post autem eum +consequantur Eumenides, &c.' Schiitz's note. The recessions of the +chorus were termed 'peravaoraneu'. There is another instance in the +Ajax, v. 814. Ed.] + + + + +ORDER OF SHAKSPEARE'S PLAYS. + +Various attempts have been made to arrange the plays of Shakspeare, each +according to its priority in time, by proofs derived from external +documents. How unsuccessful these attempts have been might easily be +shown, not only from the widely different results arrived at by men, all +deeply versed in the black-letter books, old plays, pamphlets, +manuscript records and catalogues of that age, but also from the +fallacious and unsatisfactory nature of the facts and assumptions on +which the evidence rests. In that age, when the press was chiefly +occupied with controversial or practical divinity,--when the law, the +church and the state engrossed all honour and respectability,--when a +degree of disgrace, 'levior quædam infamiæ macula', was attached to the +publication of poetry, and even to have sported with the Muse, as a +private relaxation, was supposed to be--a venial fault, indeed, +yet--something beneath the gravity of a wise man,--when the professed +poets were so poor, that the very expenses of the press demanded the +liberality of some wealthy individual, so that two thirds of Spenser's +poetic works, and those most highly praised by his learned admirers and +friends, remained for many years in manuscript, and in manuscript +perished,--when the amateurs of the stage were comparatively few, and +therefore for the greater part more or less known to each other,--when +we know that the plays of Shakspeare, both during and after his life, +were the property of the stage, and published by the players, doubtless +according to their notions of acceptability with the visitants of the +theatre,--in such an age, and under such circumstances, can an allusion +or reference to any drama or poem in the publication of a contemporary +be received as conclusive evidence, that such drama or poem had at that +time been published? Or, further, can the priority of publication itself +prove any thing in favour of actually prior composition. + +We are tolerably certain, indeed, that the Venus and Adonis, and the +Rape of Lucrece, were his two earliest poems, and though not printed +until 1593, in the twenty ninth year of his age, yet there can be little +doubt that they had remained by him in manuscript many years. For Mr. +Malone has made it highly probable, that he had commenced a writer for +the stage in 1591, when he was twenty seven years old, and Shakspeare +himself assures us that the Venus and Adonis was the first heir of his +invention.[1] + +Baffled, then, in the attempt to derive any satisfaction from outward +documents, we may easily stand excused if we turn our researches towards +the internal evidences furnished by the writings themselves, with no +other positive 'data' than the known facts, that the Venus and Adonis +was printed in 1593, the Rape of Lucrece in 1594, and that the Romeo and +Juliet had appeared in 1595,--and with no other presumptions than that +the poems, his very first productions, were written many years +earlier,--(for who can believe that Shakspeare could have remained to +his twenty-ninth or thirtieth year without attempting poetic composition +of any kind?)--and that between these and Romeo and Juliet there had +intervened one or two other dramas, or the chief materials, at least, of +them, although they may very possibly have appeared after the success of +the Romeo and Juliet and some other circumstances had given the poet an +authority with the proprietors, and created a prepossession in his +favour with the theatrical audiences. + +[Footnote 1: But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I +shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather, &c. + +Dedication of the V. and A. to Lord Southampton.] + + + + +CLASSIFICATION ATTEMPTED, 1802. + + +First Epoch. + + The London Prodigal. + Cromwell. + Henry VI., three parts, first edition. + The old King John. + Edward III. + The old Taming of the Shrew. + Pericles. + +All these are transition-works, 'Uebergangs-werke'; not his, yet of him. + + +Second Epoch. + + All's Well That Ends Well;--but afterwards worked up afresh, + (umgearbeitet) especially Parolles. + The Two Gentlemen of Verona; a sketch. + Romeo and Juliet; first draft of it. + + +Third Epoch + +rises into the full, although youthful, Shakspeare; it was the negative +period of his perfection. + + Love's Labour's Lost. + Twelfth Night. + As You Like It. + Midsummer Night's Dream. + Richard II. + Henry IV. and V. + Henry VIII.; 'Gelegenheitsgedicht'. + Romeo and Juliet, as at present. + Merchant of Venice. + + +Fourth Epoch. + + Much Ado About Nothing. + Merry Wives of Windsor; first edition. + Henry VI.; 'rifacimento'. + + +Fifth Epoch. + +The period of beauty was now past; and that of [GREEK (transliterated): +deinotaes] and grandeur succeeds. + + Lear. + Macbeth. + Hamlet. + Timon of Athens; an after vibration of Hamlet. + Troilus and Cressida; 'Uebergang in die Ironie'. + The Roman Plays. + King John, as at present. + Merry Wives of Windsor. }'umgearbeitet' + Taming of the Shrew. } + Measure for Measure. + Othello. + Tempest. + Winter's Tale. + Cymbeline. + + + +CLASSIFICATION ATTEMPTED, 1810. + + +Shakspeare's earliest dramas I take to be, + + Love's Labour's Lost. + All's Well That Ends Well. + Comedy of Errors. + Romeo and Juliet. + + +In the second class I reckon + + Midsummer Night's Dream. + As You Like It. + Tempest. + Twelfth Night. + + +In the third, as indicating a greater energy--not merely of poetry, +but--of all the world of thought, yet still with some of the growing +pains, and the awkwardness of growth, I place + + Troilus and Cressida. + Cymbeline. + Merchant of Venice. + Much Ado About Nothing. + Taming of the Shrew. + + +In the fourth, I place the plays containing the greatest characters; + + Macbeth. + Lear. + Hamlet. + Othello. + + +And lastly, the historic dramas, in order to be able to show my reasons +for rejecting some whole plays, and very many scenes in others. + + + + +CLASSIFICATION ATTEMPTED, 1819. + +I think Shakspeare's earliest dramatic attempt--perhaps even prior in +conception to the Venus and Adonis, and planned before he left +Stratford--was Love's Labour's Lost. Shortly afterwards I suppose +Pericles and certain scenes in Jeronymo to have been produced; and in +the same epoch, I place the Winter's Tale and Cymbeline, differing from +the Pericles by the entire 'rifacimento' of it, when Shakspeare's +celebrity as poet, and his interest, no less than his influence as +manager, enabled him to bring forward the laid-by labours of his youth. +The example of Titus Andronicus, which, as well as Jeronymo, was most +popular in Shakspeare's first epoch, had led the young dramatist to the +lawless mixture of dates and manners. In this same epoch I should place +the Comedy of Errors, remarkable as being the only specimen of poetical +farce in our language, that is, intentionally such; so that all the +distinct kinds of drama, which might be educed 'a priori', have their +representatives in Shakspeare's works. I say intentionally such; for +many of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays, and the greater part of Ben +Jonson's comedies are farce-plots. I add All's Well that Ends Well, +originally intended as the counterpart of Love's Labour's Lost, Taming +of the Shrew, Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, and Romeo +and Juliet. + +Second Epoch. + + Richard II. + King John. + Henry VI.,--'rifacimento' only. + Richard III. + + +Third Epoch. + + Henry IV. + Henry V. + Merry Wives of Windsor. + Henry VIII.,--a sort of historical masque, or show play. + + +Fourth Epoch + +gives all the graces and facilities of a genius in full possession and +habitual exercise of power, and peculiarly of the feminine, the _lady's_ +character. + + Tempest. + As You Like It. + Merchant of Venice. + Twelfth Night. + +and, finally, at its very point of culmination,-- + + Lear. + Hamlet. + Macbeth. + Othello. + + +Last Epoch, + +when the energies of intellect in the cycle of genius were, though in a +rich and more potentiated form, becoming predominant over passion and +creative self-manifestation. + + Measure for Measure. + Timon of Athens. + Coriolanus. + Julius Cæsar. + Antony and Cleopatra. + Troilus and Cressida. + + +Merciful, wonder-making Heaven! what a man was this Shakspeare! +Myriad-minded, indeed, he was. + + + + + + +NOTES ON THE TEMPEST. + +There is a sort of improbability with which we are shocked in dramatic +representation, not less than in a narrative of real life. Consequently, +there must be rules respecting it; and as rules are nothing but means to +an end previously ascertained--(inattention to which simple truth has +been the occasion of all the pedantry of the French school),--we must +first determine what the immediate end or object of the drama is. And +here, as I have previously remarked, I find two extremes of critical +decision;--the French, which evidently presupposes that a perfect +delusion is to be aimed at,--an opinion which needs no fresh +confutation; and the exact opposite to it, brought forward by Dr. +Johnson, who supposes the auditors throughout in the full reflective +knowledge of the contrary. In evincing the impossibility of delusion, he +makes no sufficient allowance for an intermediate state, which I have +before distinguished by the term, illusion, and have attempted to +illustrate its quality and character by reference to our mental state, +when dreaming. In both cases we simply do not judge the imagery to be +unreal; there is a negative reality, and no more. Whatever, therefore, +tends to prevent the mind from placing itself, or being placed, +gradually in that state in which the images have such negative reality +for the auditor, destroys this illusion, and is dramatically improbable. + +Now the production of this effect--a sense of improbability--will depend +on the degree of excitement in which the mind is supposed to be. Many +things would be intolerable in the first scene of a play, that would not +at all interrupt our enjoyment in the height of the interest, when the +narrow cockpit may be made to hold + + The vasty field of France, or we may cram + Within its wooden O, the very casques, + That did affright the air at Agincourt. + +Again, on the other hand, many obvious improbabilities will be endured, +as belonging to the ground-work of the story rather than to the drama +itself, in the first scenes, which would disturb or disentrance us from +all illusion in the acme of our excitement; as for instance, Lear's +division of his kingdom, and the banishment of Cordelia. + +But, although the other excellencies of the drama besides this dramatic +probability, as unity of interest, with distinctness and subordination +of the characters, and appropriateness of style, are all, so far as they +tend to increase the inward excitement, means towards accomplishing the +chief end, that of producing and supporting this willing illusion,--yet +they do not on that account cease to be ends themselves; and we must +remember that, as such, they carry their own justification with them, as +long as they do not contravene or interrupt the total illusion. It is +not even always, or of necessity, an objection to them, that they +prevent the illusion from rising to as great a height as it might +otherwise have attained;--it is enough that they are simply compatible +with as high a degree of it as is requisite for the purpose. Nay, upon +particular occasions, a palpable improbability may be hazarded by a +great genius for the express purpose of keeping down the interest of a +merely instrumental scene, which would otherwise make too great an +impression for the harmony of the entire illusion. Had the panorama been +invented in the time of Pope Leo X., Raffael would still, I doubt not, +have smiled in contempt at the regret, that the broom-twigs and scrubby +bushes at the back of some of his grand pictures were not as probable +trees as those in the exhibition. + +The Tempest is a specimen of the purely romantic drama, in which the +interest is not historical, or dependent upon fidelity of portraiture, +or the natural connexion of events,--but is a birth of the imagination, +and rests only on the coaptation and union of the elements granted to, +or assumed by, the poet. It is a species of drama which owes no +allegiance to time or space, and in which, therefore, errors of +chronology and geography--no mortal sins in any species--are venial +faults, and count for nothing. It addresses itself entirely to the +imaginative faculty; and although the illusion may be assisted by the +effect on the senses of the complicated scenery and decorations of +modern times, yet this sort of assistance is dangerous. For the +principal and only genuine excitement ought to come from within,--from +the moved and sympathetic imagination; whereas, where so much is +addressed to the mere external senses of seeing and hearing, the +spiritual vision is apt to languish, and the attraction from without +will withdraw the mind from the proper and only legitimate interest +which is intended to spring from within. + +The romance opens with a busy scene admirably appropriate to the kind of +drama, and giving, as it were, the key-note to the whole harmony. It +prepares and initiates the excitement required for the entire piece, and +yet does not demand any thing from the spectators, which their previous +habits had not fitted them to understand. It is the bustle of a tempest, +from which the real horrors are abstracted;--therefore it is poetical, +though not in strictness natural--(the distinction to which I have so +often alluded)--and is purposely restrained from concentering the +interest on itself, but used merely as an induction or tuning for what +is to follow. + +In the second scene, Prospero's speeches, till the entrance of Ariel, +contain the finest example, I remember, of retrospective narration for +the purpose of exciting immediate interest, and putting the audience in +possession of all the information necessary for the understanding of the +plot.[1] Observe, too, the perfect probability of the moment chosen by +Prospero (the very Shakspeare himself, as it were, of the tempest) to +open out the truth to his daughter, his own romantic bearing, and how +completely any thing that might have been disagreeable to us in the +magician, is reconciled and shaded in the humanity and natural feelings +of the father. In the very first speech of Miranda the simplicity and +tenderness of her character are at once laid open;--it would have been +lost in direct contact with the agitation of the first scene. The +opinion once prevailed, but, happily, is now abandoned, that Fletcher +alone wrote for women;--the truth is, that with very few, and those +partial, exceptions, the female characters in the plays of Beaumont and +Fletcher are, when of the light kind, not decent; when heroic, complete +viragos. But in Shakspeare all the elements of womanhood are holy, and +there is the sweet, yet dignified feeling of all that 'continuates' +society, as sense of ancestry and of sex, with a purity unassailable by +sophistry, because it rests not in the analytic processes, but in that +sane equipoise of the faculties, during which the feelings are +representative of all past experience,--not of the individual only, but +of all those by whom she has been educated, and their predecessors even +up to the first mother that lived. Shakspeare saw that the want of +prominence, which Pope notices for sarcasm, was the blessed beauty of +the woman's character, and knew that it arose not from any deficiency, +but from the more exquisite harmony of all the parts of the moral being +constituting one living total of head and heart. He has drawn it, +indeed, in all its distinctive energies of faith, patience, constancy, +fortitude,--shown in all of them as following the heart, which gives its +results by a nice tact and happy intuition, without the intervention of +the discursive faculty,--sees all things in and by the light of the +affections, and errs, if it ever err, in the exaggerations of love +alone. In all the Shakspearian women there is essentially the same +foundation and principle; the distinct individuality and variety are +merely the result of the modification of circumstances, whether in +Miranda the maiden, in Imogen the wife, or in Katharine the queen. + +But to return. The appearance and characters of the super- or +ultra-natural servants are finely contrasted. Ariel has in every thing +the airy tint which gives the name; and it is worthy of remark that +Miranda is never directly brought into comparison with Ariel, lest the +natural and human of the one and the supernatural of the other should +tend to neutralize each other; Caliban, on the other hand, is all earth, +all condensed and gross in feelings and images; he has the dawnings of +understanding without reason or the moral sense, and in him, as in some +brute animals, this advance to the intellectual faculties, without the +moral sense, is marked by the appearance of vice. For it is in the +primacy of the moral being only that man is truly human; in his +intellectual powers he is certainly approached by the brutes, and, man's +whole system duly considered, those powers cannot be considered other +than means to an end, that is, to morality. + +In this scene, as it proceeds, is displayed the impression made by +Ferdinand and Miranda on each other; it is love at first sight;-- + + at the first sight They have chang'd eyes:-- + +and it appears to me, that in all cases of real love, it is at one +moment that it takes place. That moment may have been prepared by +previous esteem, admiration, or even affection,--yet love seems to +require a momentary act of volition, by which a tacit bond of devotion +is imposed,--a bond not to be thereafter broken without violating what +should be sacred in our nature. How finely is the true Shakspearian +scene contrasted with Dryden's vulgar alteration of it, in which a mere +ludicrous psychological experiment, as it were, is tried--displaying +nothing but indelicacy without passion. Prospero's interruption of the +courtship has often seemed to me to have no sufficient motive; still his +alleged reason-- + + lest too light winning Make the prize light-- + +is enough for the ethereal connexions of the romantic imagination, +although it would not be so for the historical. [2] The whole courting +scene, indeed, in the beginning of the third act, between the lovers is +a masterpiece; and the first dawn of disobedience in the mind of Miranda +to the command of her father is very finely drawn, so as to seem the +working of the Scriptural command, 'Thou shall leave father and mother', +&c. O! with what exquisite purity this scene is conceived and executed! +Shakspeare may sometimes be gross, but I boldly say that he is always +moral and modest. Alas! in this our day decency of manners is preserved +at the expense of morality of heart, and delicacies for vice are +allowed, whilst grossness against it is hypocritically, or at least +morbidly, condemned. + +In this play are admirably sketched the vices generally accompanying a +low degree of civilization; and in the first scene of the second act +Shakspeare has, as in many other places, shown the tendency in bad men +to indulge in scorn and contemptuous expressions, as a mode of getting +rid of their own uneasy feelings of inferiority to the good, and also, +by making the good ridiculous, of rendering the transition of others to +wickedness easy. Shakspeare never puts habitual scorn into the mouths of +other than bad men, as here in the instances of Antonio and Sebastian. +The scene of the intended assassination of Alonzo and Gonzalo is an +exact counterpart of the scene between Macbeth and his lady, only +pitched in a lower key throughout, as designed to be frustrated and +concealed, and exhibiting the same profound management in the manner of +familiarizing a mind, not immediately recipient, to the suggestion of +guilt, by associating the proposed crime with something ludicrous or out +of place,--something not habitually matter of reverence. By this kind of +sophistry the imagination and fancy are first bribed to contemplate the +suggested act, and at length to become acquainted with it. Observe how +the effect of this scene is heightened by contrast with another +counterpart of it in low life,--that between the conspirators Stephano, +Caliban, and Trinculo in the second scene of the third act, in which +there are the same essential characteristics. + +In this play and in this scene of it are also shown the springs of the +vulgar in politics,--of that kind of politics which is inwoven with +human nature. In his treatment of this subject, wherever it occurs, +Shakspeare is quite peculiar. In other writers we find the particular +opinions of the individual; in Massinger it is rank republicanism; in +Beaumont and Fletcher even 'jure divino' principles are carried to +excess;--but Shakspeare never promulgates any party tenets. He is always +the philosopher and the moralist, but at the same time with a profound +veneration for all the established institutions of society, and for +those classes which form the permanent elements of the state--especially +never introducing a professional character, as such, otherwise than as +respectable. If he must have any name, he should be styled a +philosophical aristocrat, delighting in those hereditary institutions +which have a tendency to bind one age to another, and in that +distinction of ranks, of which, although few may be in possession, all +enjoy the advantages. Hence, again, you will observe the good nature +with which he seems always to make sport with the passions and follies +of a mob, as with an irrational animal. He is never angry with it, but +hugely content with holding up its absurdities to its face; and +sometimes you may trace a tone of almost affectionate superiority, +something like that in which a father speaks of the rogueries of a +child. See the good-humoured way in which he describes Stephano passing +from the most licentious freedom to absolute despotism over Trinculo and +Caliban. The truth is, Shakspeare's characters are all 'genera' +intensely individualized; the results of meditation, of which +observation supplied the drapery and the colors necessary to combine +them with each other. He had virtually surveyed all the great component +powers and impulses of human nature,--had seen that their different +combinations and subordinations were in fact the individualizers of men, +and showed how their harmony was produced by reciprocal disproportions +of excess or deficiency. The language in which these truths are +expressed was not drawn from any set fashion, but from the profoundest +depths of his moral being, and is therefore for all ages. + +[Footnote 1: + + 'Pro'. Mark his condition, and th' event; then tell me, If this might + be a brother. + + 'Mira'. I should sin, To think but nobly of my grandmother; Good wombs + have bore bad sons. + + 'Pro'. Now the condition, &c. + +Theobald has a note upon this passage, and suggests that Shakspeare +placed it thus:-- + + 'Pro'. Good wombs have bore bad sons,--Now the condition. + +Mr. Coleridge writes in the margin: 'I cannot but believe that Theobald +is quite right.'--Ed.] + +[Footnote 2: + + 'Fer'. Yes, faith, and all his Lords, the duke of Milan, And his brave + son, being twain. + +Theobald remarks that no body was lost in the wreck; and yet that no +such character is introduced in the fable, as the Duke of Milan's son. +Mr. C. notes: 'Must not Ferdinand have believed he was lost in the fleet +that the tempest scattered?--Ed.] + + + + + +LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST. + +The characters in this play are either impersonated out of Shakspeare's +own multiformity by imaginative self-position, or out of such as a +country town and a schoolboy's observation might supply,--the curate, +the schoolmaster, the Armado, (who even in my time was not extinct in +the cheaper inns of North Wales) and so on. The satire is chiefly on +follies of words. Biron and Rosaline are evidently the pre-existent +state of Benedict and Beatrice, and so, perhaps, is Boyet of Lafeu, and +Costard of the Tapster in Measure for Measure; and the frequency of the +rhymes, the sweetness as well as the smoothness of the metre, and the +number of acute and fancifully illustrated aphorisms, are all as they +ought to be in a poet's youth. True genius begins by generalizing and +condensing; it ends in realizing and expanding. It first collects the +seeds. + +Yet if this juvenile drama had been the only one extant of our +Shakspeare, and we possessed the tradition only of his riper works, or +accounts of them in writers who had not even mentioned this play,--how +many of Shakspeare's characteristic features might we not still have +discovered in Love's Labour's Lost, though as in a portrait taken of him +in his boyhood. + +I can never sufficiently admire the wonderful activity of thought +throughout the whole of the first scene of the play, rendered natural, +as it is, by the choice of the characters, and the whimsical +determination on which the drama is founded. A whimsical determination +certainly;--yet not altogether so very improbable to those who are +conversant in the history of the middle ages, with their Courts of Love, +and all that lighter drapery of chivalry, which engaged even mighty +kings with a sort of serio-comic interest, and may well be supposed to +have occupied more completely the smaller princes, at a time when the +noble's or prince's court contained the only theatre of the domain or +principality. This sort of story, too, was admirably suited to +Shakspeare's times, when the English court was still the foster-mother +of the state and the muses; and when, in consequence, the courtiers, and +men of rank and fashion, affected a display of wit, point, and +sententious observation, that would be deemed intolerable at +present,--but in which a hundred years of controversy, involving every +great political, and every dear domestic, interest, had trained all but +the lowest classes to participate. Add to this the very style of the +sermons of the time, and the eagerness of the Protestants to distinguish +themselves by long and frequent preaching, and it will be found that, +from the reign of Henry VIII. to the abdication of James II. no country +ever received such a national education as England. + +Hence the comic matter chosen in the first instance is a ridiculous +imitation or apery of this constant striving after logical precision, +and subtle opposition of thoughts, together with a making the most of +every conception or image, by expressing it under the least expected +property belonging to it, and this, again, rendered specially absurd by +being applied to the most current subjects and occurrences. The phrases +and modes of combination in argument were caught by the most ignorant +from the custom of the age, and their ridiculous misapplication of them +is most amusingly exhibited in Costard; whilst examples suited only to +the gravest propositions and impersonations, or apostrophes to abstract +thoughts impersonated, which are in fact the natural language only of +the most vehement agitations of the mind, are adopted by the coxcombry +of Armado as mere artifices of ornament. + +The same kind of intellectual action is exhibited in a more serious and +elevated strain in many other parts of this play. Biron's speech at the +end of the fourth act is an excellent specimen of it. It is logic +clothed in rhetoric;--but observe how Shakspeare, in his two-fold being +of poet and philosopher, avails himself of it to convey profound truths +in the most lively images,--the whole remaining faithful to the +character supposed to utter the lines, and the expressions themselves +constituting a further developement of that character:-- + +Other slow arts entirely keep the brain: And therefore finding barren +practisers, Scarce shew a harvest of their heavy toil: But love, first +learned in a lady's eyes, Lives not alone immured in the brain; But, +with the motion of all elements, Courses as swift as thought in every +power; And gives to every power a double power, Above their functions +and their offices. It adds a precious seeing to the eye, A lover's eyes +will gaze an eagle blind; A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound, When +the suspicious tread of theft is stopp'd: Love's feeling is more soft +and sensible, Than are the tender horns of cockled snails; Love's tongue +proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste; For valour, is not love a +Hercules, Still climbing trees in the Hesperides? Subtle as Sphinx; as +sweet and musical, As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair; And +when love speaks, the voice of all the gods Makes heaven drowsy with the +harmony. Never durst poet touch a pen to write, Until his ink were +temper'd with love's sighs; O, then his lines would ravish savage ears, +And plant in tyrants mild humility. From women's eyes this doctrine I +derive: They sparkle still the right Promethean fire; They are the +books, the arts, the academes, That shew, contain, and nourish all the +world; Else, none at all in aught proves excellent; Then fools you were +these women to forswear; Or, keeping what is sworn, you will prove +fools. For wisdom's sake, a word that all men love; Or for love's sake, +a word that loves all men; Or for men's sake, the authors of these +women; Or women's sake, by whom we men are men; Let us once lose our +oaths, to find ourselves, Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths: +It is religion, to be thus forsworn: For charity itself fulfills the +law: And who can sever love from charity?-- + + +This is quite a study;--sometimes you see this youthful god of poetry +connecting disparate thoughts purely by means of resemblances in the +words expressing them,--a thing in character in lighter comedy, +especially of that kind in which Shakspeare delights, namely, the +purposed display of wit, though sometimes, too, disfiguring his graver +scenes;--but more often you may see him doubling the natural connection +or order of logical consequence in the thoughts by the introduction of +an artificial and sought for resemblance in the words, as, for instance, +in the third line of the play,-- + + And then grace us in the disgrace of death;-- + +this being a figure often having its force and propriety, as justified +by the law of passion, which, inducing in the mind an unusual activity, +seeks for means to waste its superfluity,--when in the highest +degree--in lyric repetitions and sublime tautology--'(at her feet he +bowed, he fell, he lay down; at her feet he bowed, he fell; where he +bowed, there he fell down dead)',--and, in lower degrees, in making the +words themselves the subjects and materials of that surplus action, and +for the same cause that agitates our limbs, and forces our very gestures +into a tempest in states of high excitement. + +The mere style of narration in Love's Labour's Lost, like that of Ægeon +in the first scene of the Comedy of Errors, and of the Captain in the +second scene of Macbeth, seems imitated with its defects and its +beauties from Sir Philip Sidney; whose Arcadia, though not then +published, was already well known in manuscript copies, and could hardly +have escaped the notice and admiration of Shakspeare as the friend and +client of the Earl of Southampton. The chief defect consists in the +parentheses and parenthetic thoughts and descriptions, suited neither to +the passion of the speaker, nor the purpose of the person to whom the +information is to be given, but manifestly betraying the author +himself,--not by way of continuous undersong, but--palpably, and so as +to show themselves addressed to the general reader. However, it is not +unimportant to notice how strong a presumption the diction and allusions +of this play afford, that, though Shakspeare's acquirements in the dead +languages might not be such as we suppose in a learned education, his +habits had, nevertheless, been scholastic, and those of a student. For a +young author's first work almost always bespeaks his recent pursuits, +and his first observations of life are either drawn from the immediate +employments of his youth, and from the characters and images most deeply +impressed on his mind in the situations in which those employments had +placed him;--or else they are fixed on such objects and occurrences in +the world, as are easily connected with, and seem to bear upon, his +studies and the hitherto exclusive subjects of his meditation. Just as +Ben Jonson, who applied himself to the drama after having served in +Flanders, fills his earliest plays with true or pretended soldiers, the +wrongs and neglects of the former, and the absurd boasts and knavery of +their counterfeits. So Lessing's first comedies are placed in the +universities, and consist of events and characters conceivable in an +academic life. + +I will only further remark the sweet and tempered gravity, with which +Shakspeare in the end draws the only fitting moral which such a drama +afforded. Here Rosaline rises up to the full height of Beatrice:-- + +'Ros'. Oft have I heard of you, my lord Biron, Before I saw you, and the +world's large tongue Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks; Full of +comparisons, and wounding flouts, Which you on all estates will execute +That lie within the mercy of your wit: To weed this wormwood from your +fruitful brain, And therewithal, to win me, if you please, (Without the +which I am not to be won,) You shall this twelvemonth term from day to +day Visit the speechless sick, and still converse With groaning +wretches; and your talk shall be, With all the fierce endeavour of your +wit, To enforce the pained impotent to smile. + + 'Biron'. To move wild laughter in the throat of death? + It cannot be; it is impossible; + Mirth cannot move a soul in agony. + + 'Ros'. Why, that's the way to choke a gibing spirit, + Whose influence is begot of that loose grace, + Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools: + A jest's prosperity lies in the ear + Of him that hears it, never in the tongue + Of him that makes it: then, if sickly ears, + Deaf'd with the clamors of their own dear groans, + Will hear your idle scorns, continue then, + And I will have you, and that fault withal; + But, if they will not, throw away that spirit, + And I shall find you empty of that fault, + Right joyful of your reformation. + + + +Act v. sc. 2. In Biron's speech to the Princess: + + --and, therefore, like the eye, + Full of _straying_ shapes, of habits, and of forms. + +Either read _stray_, which I prefer; or throw _full_ back to the +preceding lines,-- + + like the eye, full + Of straying shapes, &c. + +In the same scene: + + 'Biron'. And what to me, my love? and what to me? + + 'Ros'. You must be purged too, your sins are rank; + You are attaint with fault and perjury: + Therefore, if you my favour mean to get, + A twelvemonth shall you spend, and never rest, + But seek the weary beds of people sick. + +There can be no doubt, indeed, about the propriety of expunging this +speech of Rosaline's; it soils the very page that retains it. But I do +not agree with Warburton and others in striking out the preceding line +also. It is quite in Biron's character; and Rosaline not answering it +immediately, Dumain takes up the question for him, and, after he and +Longaville are answered, Biron, with evident propriety, says;-- + + _Studies_ my mistress? &c. + + + + + +MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. + +Act i. sc. 1. + + + 'Her'. O cross! too high to be enthrall'd to low-- + + 'Lys'. Or else misgraffed, in respect of years; + + 'Her'. O spite! too old to be engag'd to young-- + + 'Lys'. Or else it stood upon the choice of friends; + + 'Her'. O hell! to chuse love by another's eye! + + +There is no authority for any alteration;--but I never can help feeling +how great an improvement it would be, if the two former of Hermia's +exclamations were omitted;--the third and only appropriate one would +then become a beauty, and most natural. + +'Ib.' Helena's speech:-- + + I wilt go tell him of fair Hermia's flight, &c. + +I am convinced that Shakspeare availed himself of the title of this play +in his own mind, and worked upon it as a dream throughout, but +especially, and, perhaps, unpleasingly, in this broad determination of +ungrateful treachery in Helena, so undisguisedly avowed to herself, and +this, too, after the witty cool philosophizing that precedes. The act +itself is natural, and the resolve so to act is, I fear, likewise too +true a picture of the lax hold which principles have on a woman's heart, +when opposed to, or even separated from, passion and inclination. For +women are less hypocrites to their own minds than men are, because in +general they feel less proportionate abhorrence of moral evil in and for +itself, and more of its outward consequences, as detection, and loss of +character than men,--their natures being almost wholly extroitive. +Still, however just in itself, the representation of this is not +poetical; we shrink from it, and cannot harmonize it with the ideal. + + +Act ii. sc. 1. Theobald's edition. + + _Through_ bush, _through_ briar--... _Through_ flood, _through_ fire-- + +What a noble pair of ears this worthy Theobald must have had! The eight +amphimacers or cretics,-- + + Ovër hîll, ôvër dâle, + Thôrö' bûsh, thôrö' brîar, + Ovër pârk, ôvër pâle, + Thôrö' flôôd, thôrö' fîre-- + +have a delightful effect on the ear in their sweet transition to the +trochaic,-- + + Î dô wândër êv'ry whêrë + Swîftër thân thë môônës sphêrë, &c.-- + +The last words as sustaining the rhyme, must be considered, as in fact +they are, trochees in time. + +It may be worth while to give some correct examples in English of the +principal metrical feet:-- + +Pyrrhic or Dibrach, u u =_body, spirit_. +Tribrach, u u u =_nobody_, (hastily pronounced). +Iambus u ' =_deli'ght_. +Trochee, ' u =_li'ghtly_. +Spondee, ' ' =_Go'd spa'ke_. + +The paucity of spondees in single words in English and, indeed, in the +modern languages in general, makes, perhaps, the greatest distinction, +metrically considered, between them and the Greek and Latin. + +Dactyl, ' u u = _me'rrily._ +Anapæst, u u ' = _a propo's,_ or the first three syllables + of _ceremo'ny_. +Amphibrachys, u ' u = _deli'ghtful_. +Amphimacer, ' u ' = _o'ver hi'll_. +Antibacchius, u ' ' = _the Lo'rd Go'd_. +Bacchius, ' ' u = _He'lve'llyn_. +Molossus, ' ' ' = _Jo'hn Ja'mes Jo'nes._ + + +These simple feet may suffice for understanding the metres of +Shakspeare, for the greater part at least;--but Milton cannot be made +harmoniously intelligible without the composite feet, the Ionics, Pæons, +and Epitrites. + +'Ib.' sc. 2. Titania's speech:--(Theobald adopting Warburton's reading.) + + Which she, with pretty and with swimming gate + _Follying_ (her womb then rich with my young squire) + Would imitate, &c. + +Oh! oh! Heaven have mercy on poor Shakspeare, and also on Mr. +Warburton's mind's eye! + +Act v. sc. 1. Theseus' speech:--(Theobald.) + + And what poor [_willing_] duty cannot do, + Noble respect takes it in might, not merit. + +To my ears it would read far more Shakspearian thus:-- + + And what poor duty cannot do, _yet would_, Noble respect, &c. + + +'Ib.' sc. 2. + + + 'Puck.' Now the hungry lion roars, + And the wolf behowls the moon; + Whilst the heavy ploughman snores + All with weary task foredone, &c. + + +Very Anacreon in perfectness, proportion, grace, and spontaneity! So far +it is Greek;--but then add, O! what wealth, what wild ranging, and yet +what compression and condensation of, English fancy! In truth, there is +nothing in Anacreon more perfect than these thirty lines, or half so +rich and imaginative. They form a speckless diamond. + + + + + + +COMEDY OF ERRORS. + +The myriad-minded man, our, and all men's, Shakspeare, has in this piece +presented us with a legitimate farce in exactest consonance with the +philosophical principles and character of farce, as distinguished from +comedy and from entertainments. A proper farce is mainly distinguished +from comedy by the license allowed, and even required, in the fable, in +order to produce strange and laughable situations. The story need not be +probable, it is enough that it is possible. A comedy would scarcely +allow even the two Antipholises; because, although there have been +instances of almost indistinguishable likeness in two persons, yet these +are mere individual accidents, 'casus ludentis naturæ', and the 'verum' +will not excuse the 'inverisimile'. But farce dares add the two Dromios, +and is justified in so doing by the laws of its end and constitution. In +a word, farces commence in a postulate, which must be granted. + + + + + +AS YOU LIKE IT. + +Act I. sc. 1. + + + 'Oli'. What, boy! + + 'Orla'. Come, come, elder brother, you are too young in this. + + 'Oli'. Wilt thou lay hands on me, villain? + +There is a beauty here. The word 'boy' naturally provokes and awakens in +Orlando the sense of his manly powers; and with the retort of 'elder +brother,' he grasps him with firm hands, and makes him feel he is no +boy. + + +Ib. + + 'Oli'. Farewell, good Charles.--Now will I stir this gamester: I + hope, I shall see an end of him; for my soul, yet I know not why, + hates nothing more than him. Yet he's gentle; never school'd, and yet + learn'd; full of noble device; of all sorts enchantingly beloved! and, + indeed, so much in the heart of the world, and especially of my own + people, who best know him, that I am altogether misprized: but it + shall not he so long; this wrestler shall clear all. + + +This has always appeared to me one of the most un-Shakspearian speeches +in all the genuine works of our poet; yet I should be nothing surprized, +and greatly pleased, to find it hereafter a fresh beauty, as has so +often happened to me with other supposed defects of great men. (1810). + +It is too venturous to charge a passage in Shakspeare with want of truth +to nature; and yet at first sight this speech of Oliver's expresses +truths, which it seems almost impossible that any mind should so +distinctly, so livelily, and so voluntarily, have presented to itself, +in connection with feelings and intentions so malignant, and so contrary +to those which the qualities expressed would naturally have called +forth. But I dare not say that this seeming unnaturalness is not in the +nature of an abused wilfulness, when united with a strong intellect. In +such characters there is sometimes a gloomy self-gratification in making +the absoluteness of the will ('sit pro ratione voluntas!') evident to +themselves by setting the reason and the conscience in full array +against it. (1818). + +Ib. sc. 2. + + 'Celia'. If you saw yourself with _your_ eyes, or knew yourself with + _your_ judgment, the fear of your adventure would counsel you to a + more equal enterprise. + + +Surely it should be '_our_ eyes' and '_our_ judgment.' + +'Ib.' sc. 3. + + + 'Cel'. But is all this for your father? + + 'Ros'. No, some of it is for _my child's father_. + + +Theobald restores this as the reading of the older editions. It may be +so; but who can doubt that it is a mistake for 'my father's child,' +meaning herself? According to Theobald's note, a most indelicate +anticipation is put into the mouth of Rosalind without reason;--and +besides, what a strange thought, and how out of place, and +unintelligible! + +Act iv. sc. 2. + + + Take thou no scorn + To wear the horn, the lusty horn; + It was a crest ere thou wast born. + + +I question whether there exists a parallel instance of a phrase, that +like this of 'horns' is universal in all languages, and yet for which no +one has discovered even a plausible origin. + + + + + +TWELFTH NIGHT. + +Act I. sc. 1. Duke's speech:-- + + --so full of shapes _is_ fancy, That it alone is high fantastical. + +Warburton's alteration of _is_ into _in_ is needless. 'Fancy' may very +well be interpreted 'exclusive affection,' or 'passionate preference.' +Thus, bird-fanciers, gentlemen of the fancy, that is, amateurs of +boxing, &c. The play of assimilation,--the meaning one sense chiefly, +and yet keeping both senses in view, is perfectly Shakspearian. + +Act ii. sc. 3. Sir Andrew's speech:-- + +An explanatory note on _Pigrogromilus_ would have been more acceptable +than Theobald's grand discovery that 'lemon' ought to be 'leman.' + +Ib. Sir Toby's speech: (Warburton's note on the Peripatetic philosophy.) + + Shall we rouse the night-owl in a catch, that will draw three souls + out of one weaver? + + +O genuine, and inimitable (at least I hope so) Warburton! This note of +thine, if but one in five millions, would be half a one too much. + +'Ib.' sc. 4. + + 'Duke'. My life upon't, young though thou art, thine eye + Hath stay'd upon some favour that it loves; + Hath it not, boy? + + 'Vio'. A little, by your favour. + + 'Duke'. What kind of woman is't? + +And yet Viola was to have been presented to Orsino as a eunuch!--Act i. +sc. 2. Viola's speech. Either she forgot this, or else she had altered +her plan. + +Ib. + + 'Vio'. A blank, my lord: she never told her love!-- + But let concealment, &c. + + +After the first line, (of which the last five words should be spoken +with, and drop down in, a deep sigh) the actress ought to make a pause; +and then start afresh, from the activity of thought, born of suppressed +feelings, and which thought had accumulated during the brief interval, +as vital heat under the skin during a dip in cold water. + +Ib. sc. 5. + + 'Fabian'. Though our silence be drawn from us by _cars_, yet peace. + +Perhaps, 'cables.' + +Act iii. sc. 1. + + 'Clown'. A sentence is but a _cheveril_ glove to a good wit. + +(Theobald's note.) + +Theobald's etymology of 'cheveril' is, of course quite right;--but he is +mistaken in supposing that there were no such things as gloves of +chicken-skin. They were at one time a main article in chirocosmetics. + +Act v. sc. 1. Clown's speech:-- + + So that, _conclusions to be as kisses_, if your four negatives make + your two affirmatives, why, then, the worse for my friends, and the + better for my foes. + + +(Warburton reads 'conclusion to be asked, is.') + +Surely Warburton could never have wooed by kisses and won, or he would +not have flounder-flatted so just and humorous, nor less pleasing than +humorous, an image into so profound a nihility. In the name of love and +wonder, do not four kisses make a double affirmative? The humour lies in +the whispered 'No!' and the inviting 'Don't!' with which the maiden's +kisses are accompanied, and thence compared to negatives, which by +repetition constitute an affirmative. + + + + + + +ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. + +Act I. sc. 1. + + + 'Count'. If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess makes it soon + mortal. + + 'Bert'. Madam, I desire your holy wishes--. + + 'Laf'. How understand we that--? + +Bertram and Lafeu, I imagine, both speak together,--Lafeu referring to +the Countess's rather obscure remark. + +Act. ii. sc. 1. (Warburton's note.) + + + 'King'. --let _higher_ Italy + (Those _'bated_, that inherit but the fall + Of the last monarchy) see, that you come + Not to woo honor, but to wed it. + + +It would be, I own, an audacious and unjustifiable change of the text; +but yet, as a mere conjecture, I venture to suggest 'bastards,' for +''bated.' As it stands, in spite of Warburton's note I can make little +or nothing of it. Why should the king except the then most illustrious +states, which, as being republics, were the more truly inheritors of the +Roman grandeur?--With my conjecture, the sense would be;--'let higher, +or the more northern part of Italy--(unless 'higher' be a corruption +for 'hir'd,'--the metre seeming to demand a monosyllable) (those +bastards that inherit the infamy only of their fathers) see, &c.' The +following 'woo' and 'wed' are so far confirmative as they indicate +Shakspeare's manner of connexion by unmarked influences of association +from some preceding metaphor. This it is which makes his style so +peculiarly vital and organic. Likewise 'those girls of Italy' strengthen +the guess. The absurdity of Warburton's gloss, which represents the king +calling Italy superior, and then excepting the only part the lords were +going to visit, must strike every one. + +Ib. sc. 3. + + + 'Laf'. They say, miracles are past; and we have our philosophical + persons to make modern and familiar, things supernatural and + _causeless_. + + +Shakspeare, inspired, as it might seem, with all knowledge, here uses +the word 'causeless' in its strict philosophical sense;--cause being +truly predicable only of 'phenomena', that is, things natural, and not +of 'noumena', or things supernatural. + +Act iii. sc. 5. + + + 'Dia'. The Count Rousillon:--know you such a one? + + 'Hel'. But by the ear that hears most nobly of him; + His face I know not. + + +Shall we say here, that Shakspeare has unnecessarily made his loveliest +character utter a lie?--Or shall we dare think that, where to deceive +was necessary, he thought a pretended verbal verity a double crime, +equally with the other a lie to the hearer, and at the same time an +attempt to lie to one's own conscience? + + + + + +MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. + +Act I. sc. 1. + + + 'Shal'. The luce is the fresh fish, the salt fish is an old coat. + + +I cannot understand this. Perhaps there is a corruption both of words +and speakers. Shallow no sooner corrects one mistake of Sir Hugh's, +namely, 'louse' for 'luce,' a pike, but the honest Welchman falls into +another, namely, 'cod' ('baccalà') 'Cambrice' 'cot' for coat. + + + 'Shal'. The luce is the fresh fish-- + + 'Evans'. The salt fish is an old cot. + + +'Luce is a fresh fish, and not a louse;' says Shallow. 'Aye, aye,' quoth +Sir Hugh; 'the _fresh_ fish is the luce; it is an old cod that is the +salt fish.' At all events, as the text stands, there is no sense at all +in the words. + +'Ib.' sc. 3. + + + 'Fal'. Now, the report goes, she has all the rule of her husband's + purse; she hath a legion of angels. + + 'Pist'. As many devils entertain; and 'To her, boy', say I. + + +Perhaps it is-- + + + As many devils enter (or enter'd) swine; and _to her, boy_, say I:-- + + +a somewhat profane, but not un-Shakspearian, allusion to the 'legion' in +St. Luke's 'gospel.' + + + + + +MEASURE FOR MEASURE. + +This play, which is Shakspeare's throughout, is to me the most +painful--say rather, the only painful--part of his genuine works. The +comic and tragic parts equally border on the [Greek (transliterated): +misaeteon],--the one being disgusting, the other horrible; and the +pardon and marriage of Angelo not merely baffles the strong indignant +claim of justice--(for cruelty, with lust and damnable baseness, cannot +be forgiven, because we cannot conceive them as being morally repented +of;) but it is likewise degrading to the character of woman. Beaumont +and Fletcher, who can follow Shakspeare in his errors only, have +presented a still worse, because more loathsome and contradictory, +instance of the same kind in the Night-Walker, in the marriage of Alathe +to Algripe. Of the counterbalancing beauties of Measure for Measure, I +need say nothing; for I have already remarked that the play is +Shakspeare's throughout. + +Act iii. sc. 1. + + + Ay, but to die, and go we know not where, &c. + + +This natural fear of Claudio, from the antipathy we have to death, seems +very little varied from that infamous wish of Mæcenas, recorded in the +101st epistle of Seneca: + + + _Debilem facito manu, Debilem pede, coxa, &c._ + +Warburton's note. + + +I cannot but think this rather an heroic resolve, than an infamous wish. +It appears to me to be the grandest symptom of an immortal spirit, when +even that bedimmed and overwhelmed spirit recked not of its own +immortality, still to seek to be,--to be a mind, a will. + +As fame is to reputation, so heaven is to an estate, or immediate +advantage. The difference is, that the self-love of the former cannot +exist but by a complete suppression and habitual supplantation of +immediate selfishness. In one point of view, the miser is more estimable +than the spendthrift;--only that the miser's present feelings are as +much of the present as the spendthrift's. But 'caeteris paribus', that +is, upon the supposition that whatever is good or lovely in the one +coexists equally in the other, then, doubtless, the master of the +present is less a selfish being, an animal, than he who lives for the +moment with no inheritance in the future. Whatever can degrade man, is +supposed in the latter case, whatever can elevate him, in the former. +And as to self;--strange and generous self! that can only be such a self +by a complete divestment of all that men call self,--of all that can +make it either practically to others, or consciously to the individual +himself, different from the human race in its ideal. Such self is but a +perpetual religion, an inalienable acknowledgment of God, the sole basis +and ground of being. In this sense, how can I love God, and not love +myself, as far as it is of God? + +'Ib.' sc. 2. + + + Pattern in himself to know, Grace to stand, and virtue go. + + +Worse metre, indeed, but better English would be,-- + + + Grace to stand, virtue to go. + + + + + +CYMBELINE. + + +Act I. sc. 1. + + + You do not meet a man, but frowns: our bloods + No more obey the heavens, than our courtiers' + Still seem, as does the king's. + + +There can be little doubt of Mr. Tyrwhitt's emendations of 'courtiers' +and 'king,' as to the sense;--only it is not impossible that +Shakspeare's dramatic language may allow of the word, 'brows' or 'faces' +being understood after the word 'courtiers',' which might then remain in +the genitive case plural. But the nominative plural makes excellent +sense, and is sufficiently elegant, and sounds to my ear Shakspearian. +What, however, is meant by 'our bloods no more obey the heavens?'--Dr. +Johnson's assertion that 'bloods' signify 'countenances,' is, I think, +mistaken both in the thought conveyed--(for it was never a popular +belief that the stars governed men's countenances,) and in the usage, +which requires an antithesis of the blood,--or the temperament of the +four humours, choler, melancholy, phlegm, and the red globules, or the +sanguine portion, which was supposed not to be in our own power, but, to +be dependent on the influences of the heavenly bodies,--and the +countenances which are in our power really, though from flattery we +bring them into a no less apparent dependence on the sovereign, than the +former are in actual dependence on the constellations. + +I have sometimes thought that the word 'courtiers' was a misprint for +'countenances,' arising from an anticipation, by foreglance of the +compositor's eye, of the word 'courtier' a few lines below. The written +'r' is easily and often confounded with the written 'n'. The compositor +read the first syllable 'court', and--his eye at the same time catching +the word 'courtier' lower down--he completed the word without +reconsulting the copy. It is not unlikely that Shakspeare intended first +to express, generally the same thought, which a little afterwards he +repeats with a particular application to the persons meant;--a common +usage of the pronominal 'our,' where the speaker does not really mean to +include himself; and the word 'you' is an additional confirmation of the +'our' being used in this place, for men generally and indefinitely, just +as 'you do not meet,' is the same as, 'one does not meet.' + +Act i. sc. 2. Imogen's speech:-- + + --My dearest husband, + I something fear my father's wrath; but nothing + (Always reserv'd my holy duty) what + His rage can do on me. + +Place the emphasis on 'me;' for 'rage' is a mere repetition of 'wrath.' + + 'Cym'. O disloyal thing, + That should'st repair my youth, thou heapest + A year's age on me. + + +How is it that the commentators take no notice of the un-Shakspearian +defect in the metre of the second line, and what in Shakspeare is the +same, in the harmony with the sense and feeling? Some word or words must +have slipped out after 'youth,'--possibly 'and see':-- + + That should'st repair my youth!--and see, thou heap'st, &c. + +'Ib.' sc. 4. Pisanio's speech:-- + + --For so long + As he could make me with _this_ eye or ear + Distinguish him from others, &c. + + +But '_this_ eye,' in spite of the supposition of its being used [Greek +(transliterated): deiktik_os], is very awkward. I should think that +either 'or'--or 'the' was Shakspeare's word;-- + + + As he could make me or with eye or ear. + + +'Ib.' sc. 7. Iachimo's speech:-- + + Hath nature given them eyes + To see this vaulted arch, and the rich crop + Of sea and land, which can distinguish 'twixt + The fiery orbs above, and the twinn'd stones + Upon the number'd beach. + + +I would suggest 'cope' for 'crop.' As to 'twinn'd stones'--may it not be +a bold _catachresis_ for muscles, cockles, and other empty shells with +hinges, which are truly twinned? I would take Dr. Farmer's 'umber'd,' +which I had proposed before I ever heard of its having been already +offered by him: but I do not adopt his interpretation of the word, which +I think is not derived from _umbra_, a shade, but from _umber_, a dingy +yellow-brown soil, which most commonly forms the mass of the sludge on +the sea shore, and on the banks of tide-rivers at low water. One other +possible interpretation of this sentence has occurred to me, just barely +worth mentioning;--that the 'twinn'd stones' are the _augrim_ stones +upon the number'd beech, that is, the astronomical tables of beech-wood. + +Act v. sc. 5. + + + 'Sooth'. When as a lion's whelp, &c. + + +It is not easy to conjecture why Shakspeare should have introduced this +ludicrous scroll, which answers no one purpose, either propulsive, or +explicatory, unless as a joke on etymology. + + + + + + +TITUS ANDRONICUS. + +Act I. sc. 1. Theobald's note: + + +I never heard it so much as intimated, that he (Shakspeare) had turned +his genius to stage-writing, before he associated with the players, and +became one of their body. + + +That Shakspeare never 'turned his genius to stage writing,' as Theobald +most 'Theobaldice' phrases it, before he became an actor, is an +assertion of about as much authority, as the precious story that he left +Stratford for deerstealing, and that he lived by holding gentlemen's +horses at the doors of the theatre, and other trash of that arch-gossip, +old Aubrey. The metre is an argument against Titus Andronicus being +Shakspeare's, worth a score such chronological surmises. Yet I incline +to think that both in this play and in Jeronymo, Shakspeare wrote some +passages, and that they are the earliest of his compositions. + +Act v. sc. 2. + +I think it not improbable that the lines from-- + + + I am not mad; I know thee well enough;-- + ... + So thou destroy Rapine, and + Murder there. + + +were written by Shakspeare in his earliest period. But instead of the +text-- + + + Revenge, _which makes the foul offender quake. + + 'Tit.' Art thou_ Revenge? and art thou sent to me?-- + + +the words in italics [between underscores] ought to be omitted. + + + + + +TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. + + +Mr. Pope (after Dryden) informs us, that the story of Troilus and +Cressida was originally the work of one Lollius, a Lombard: but Dryden +goes yet further; he declares it to have been written in Latin verse, +and that Chaucer translated it.--_Lollius was a historiographer of +Urbino in Italy_. (Note in Stockdale's edition, 1807.) + + +'Lollius was a historiographer of Urbino in Italy.' So affirms the +notary, to whom the Sieur Stockdale committed the _disfacimento_ of +Ayscough's excellent edition of Shakspeare. Pity that the researchful +notary has not either told us in what century, and of what history, he +was a writer, or been simply content to depose, that Lollius, if a +writer of that name existed at all, was a somewhat somewhere. The notary +speaks of the _Troy Boke_ or Lydgate, printed in 1513. I have never seen +it; but I deeply regret that Chalmers did not substitute the whole of +Lydgate's works from the MSS. extant, for the almost worthless Gower. + +The Troilus and Cressida of Shakspeare can scarcely be classed with his +dramas of Greek and Roman history; but it forms an intermediate link +between the fictitious Greek and Roman histories, which we may call +legendary dramas, and the proper ancient histories; that is, between the +Pericles or Titus Andronicus, and the Coriolanus, or Julius Caesar. +Cymbeline is a _congener_ with Pericles, and distinguished from Lear by +not having any declared prominent object. But where shall we class the +Timon of Athens? Perhaps immediately below Lear. It is a Lear of the +satirical drama; a Lear of domestic or ordinary life;--a local eddy of +passion on the high road of society, while all around is the week-day +goings on of wind and weather; a Lear, therefore, without its +soul-searching flashes, its ear-cleaving thunderclaps, its meteoric +splendors,--without the contagion and the fearful sympathies of nature, +the fates, the furies, the frenzied elements, dancing in and out, now +breaking through, and scattering,--now hand in hand with,--the fierce or +fantastic group of human passions, crimes, and anguishes, reeling on the +unsteady ground, in a wild harmony to the shock and the swell of an +earthquake. But my present subject was Troilus and Cressida; and I +suppose that, scarcely knowing what to say of it, I by a cunning of +instinct ran off to subjects on which I should find it difficult not to +say too much, though certain after all that I should still leave the +better part unsaid, and the gleaning for others richer than my own +harvest. + +Indeed, there is no one of Shakspeare's plays harder to characterize. +The name and the remembrances connected with it, prepare us for the +representation of attachment no less faithful than fervent on the side +of the youth, and of sudden and shameless inconstancy on the part of the +lady. And this is, indeed, as the gold thread on which the scenes are +strung, though often kept out of sight and out of mind by gems of +greater value than itself. But as Shakspeare calls forth nothing from +the mausoleum of history, or the catacombs of tradition, without giving, +or eliciting, some permanent and general interest, and brings forward no +subject which he does not moralize or intellectualize,--so here he has +drawn in Cressida the portrait of a vehement passion, that, having its +true origin and proper cause in warmth of temperament, fastens on, +rather than fixes to, some one object by liking and temporary +preference. + + + There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, + Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out + At every joint and motive of her body. + + +This Shakspeare has contrasted with the profound affection represented +in Troilus, and alone worthy the name of love;--affection, passionate +indeed,--swoln with the confluence of youthful instincts and youthful +fancy, and growing in the radiance of hope newly risen, in short +enlarged by the collective sympathies of nature;--but still having a +depth of calmer element in a will stronger than desire, more entire than +choice, and which gives permanence to its own act by converting it into +faith and duty. Hence with excellent judgment, and with an excellence +higher than mere judgment can give, at the close of the play, when +Cressida has sunk into infamy below retrieval and beneath hope, the same +will, which had been the substance and the basis of his love, while the +restless pleasures and passionate longings, like sea-waves, had tossed +but on its surface,--this same moral energy is represented as snatching +him aloof from all neighbourhood with her dishonour, from all lingering +fondness and languishing regrets, whilst it rushes with him into other +and nobler duties, and deepens the channel, which his heroic brother's +death had left empty for its collected flood. Yet another secondary and +subordinate purpose Shakspeare has inwoven with his delineation of these +two characters,--that of opposing the inferior civilization, but purer +morals, of the Trojans to the refinements, deep policy, but duplicity +and sensual corruptions, of the Greeks. + +To all this, however, so little comparative projection is given,--nay, +the masterly group of Agamemnon, Nestor, and Ulysses, and, still more in +advance, that of Achilles, Ajax, and Thersites, so manifestly occupy the +foreground, that the subservience and vassalage of strength and animal +courage to intellect and policy seems to be the lesson most often in our +poet's view, and which he has taken little pains to connect with the +former more interesting moral impersonated in the titular hero and +heroine of the drama. But I am half inclined to believe, that +Shakspeare's main object, or shall I rather say, his ruling impulse, was +to translate the poetic heroes of paganism into the not less rude, but +more intellectually vigorous, and more _featurely_, warriors of +Christian chivalry,--and to substantiate the distinct and graceful +profiles or outlines of the Homeric epic into the flesh and blood of the +romantic drama,--in short, to give a grand history-piece in the robust +style of Albert Durer. + +The character of Thersites, in particular, well deserves a more careful +examination, as the Caliban of demagogic life;--the admirable portrait +of intellectual power deserted by all grace, all moral principle, all +not momentary impulse;--just wise enough to detect the weak head, and +fool enough to provoke the armed fist of his betters;--one whom +malcontent Achilles can inveigle from malcontent Ajax, under the one +condition, that he shall be called on to do nothing but abuse and +slander, and that he shall be allowed to abuse as much and as purulently +as he likes, that is, as he can;--in short, a mule,--quarrelsome by the +original discord of his nature,--a slave by tenure of his own +baseness,--made to bray and be brayed at, to despise and be despicable. +'Aye, Sir, but say what you will, he is a very clever fellow, though the +best friends will fall out. There was a time when Ajax thought he +deserved to have a statue of gold erected to him, and handsome Achilles, +at the head of the Myrmidons, gave no little credit to his _friend +Thersites_!' + +Act iv. sc. 5. Speech of Ulysses:-- + + + O, these encounterers, so glib of tongue, + That give a _coasting_ welcome ere it comes-- + + +Should it be 'accosting?' 'Accost her, knight, accost!' in the Twelfth +Night. Yet there sounds a something so Shakspearian in the phrase--'give +a coasting welcome,' ('coasting' being taken as the epithet and +adjective of 'welcome,') that had the following words been, 'ere _they +land_,' instead of 'ere it comes,' I should have preferred the +interpretation. The sense now is, 'that give welcome to a salute ere it +comes.' + + + + + +CORIOLANUS. + +This play illustrates the wonderfully philosophic impartiality of +Shakspeare's politics. His own country's history furnished him with no +matter, but what was too recent to be devoted to patriotism. Besides, he +knew that the instruction of ancient history would seem more +dispassionate. In Coriolanus and Julius Caesar, you see Shakspeare's +good-natured laugh at mobs. Compare this with Sir Thomas Brown's +aristocracy of spirit. + +Act i. sc. 1. Coriolanus' speech:-- + + + He that depends Upon your favours, swims with fins of lead, + And hews down oaks with rushes. Hang ye! Trust ye? + + +I suspect that Shakspeare wrote it transposed; + + + Trust ye? Hang ye! + + +Ib. sc. 10. Speech of Aufidius:-- + + + Mine emulation + Hath not that honor in't, it had; for where + I thought to crush him in an equal force, + True sword to sword; I'll potch at him some way, + Or wrath, or craft may get him.--My valor (poison'd + With only suffering stain by him) for him + Shall fly out of itself: not sleep, nor sanctuary, + Being naked, sick, nor fane, nor capitol, + The prayers of priests, nor times of sacrifices, + Embankments all of fury, shall lift up + Their rotten privilege and custom 'gainst + My hate to Marcius. + + +I have such deep faith in Shakspeare's heart-lore, that I take for +granted that this is in nature, and not as a mere anomaly; although I +cannot in myself discover any germ of possible feeling, which could wax +and unfold itself into such sentiment as this. However, I perceive that +in this speech is meant to be contained a prevention of shock at the +after-change in Aufidius' character. + +Act ii. sc, 1. Speech of Menenius:-- + + + The most sovereign prescription in _Galen_, &c. + + +Was it without, or in contempt of, historical information that +Shakspeare made the contemporaries of Coriolanus quote Cato and Galen? I +cannot decide to my own satisfaction. + +Ib. sc. 3. Speech of Coriolanus:-- + + + Why in this wolvish gown should I stand here-- + + +That the gown of the candidate was of whitened wool, we know. Does +'wolvish' or 'woolvish' mean 'made of wool?' If it means 'wolfish,' what +is the sense? + +Act iv. sc. 7. Speech of Aufidius:-- + + + All places yield to him ere he sits down, &c. + + +I have always thought this in itself so beautiful speech, the least +explicable from the mood and full intention of the speaker, of any in +the whole works of Shakspeare. I cherish the hope that I am mistaken, +and that, becoming wiser, I shall discover some profound excellence in +that, in which I now appear to detect an imperfection. + + + + + +JULIUS CÆSAR. + + +Act I. sc. 1. + + + 'Mar.' What meanest _thou_ by that? Mend me, thou saucy fellow! + + +The speeches of Flavius and Marullus are in blank verse. Wherever +regular metre can be rendered truly imitative of character, passion, or +personal rank, Shakspeare seldom, if ever, neglects it. Hence this line +should be read:-- + + + What mean'st by that? mend me, thou saucy fellow! + + +I say regular metre: for even the prose has in the highest and lowest +dramatic personage, a Cobbler or a Hamlet, a rhythm so felicitous and so +severally appropriate, as to be a virtual metre. + +Ib. sc. 2. + + + 'Bru.' A soothsayer bids you beware the Ides of March. + + +If my ear does not deceive me, the metre of this line was meant to +express that sort of mild philosophic contempt, characterizing Brutus +even in his first casual speech. The line is a trimeter,--each _dipodia_ +containing two accented and two unaccented syllables, but variously +arranged, as thus;- + + +^ -- -- ^ | -- ^ ^ -- | ^ -- ^ -- +A soothsayer | bids you beware | the Ides of March. + + +Ib. Speech of Brutus: + + + Set honor in one eye, and death i' the other, + And I will look on _both_ indifferently. + + +Warburton would read 'death' for 'both;' but I prefer the old text. +There are here three things, the public good, the individual Brutus' +honor, and his death. The latter two so balanced each other, that he +could decide for the first by equipoise; nay--the thought growing--that +honor had more weight than death. That Cassius understood it as +Warburton, is the beauty of Cassius as contrasted with Brutus. + +Ib. Caesar's speech:-- + + He loves no plays, + As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music, &c. + +This is not a trivial observation, nor does our poet mean barely by it, +that Cassius was not a merry, sprightly man; but that he had not a due +temperament of harmony in his disposition. (Theobald's Note). + + +O Theobald! what a commentator wast thou, when thou would'st affect to +understand Shakspeare, instead of contenting thyself with collating the +text! The meaning here is too deep for a line ten-fold the length of +thine to fathom. + +Ib. sc. 3. Caesar's speech:-- + + + Be _factious_ for redress of all these griefs; + And I will set this foot of mine as far, + As who goes farthest. + + +I understand it thus: 'You have spoken as a conspirator; be so in +_fact_, and I will join you. Act on your principles, and realize them in +a fact.' + +Act ii. sc. 1. Speech of Brutus:-- + + + It must be by his death; and, for my part, + I know no personal cause to spurn at him, + But for the general. He would be crown'd:-- + How that might change his nature, there's the question. + --And, to speak truth of Cæsar, + I have not known when his affections sway'd + More than his reason.--So Cæsar may; + Then, lest he may, prevent. + + +This speech is singular;--at least, I do not at present see into +Shakspeare's motive, his _rationale_, or in what point of view he meant +Brutus' character to appear. For surely--(this I mean is what I say to +myself, with my present _quantum_ of insight, only modified by my +experience in how many instances I have ripened into a perception of +beauties, where I had before descried faults;) surely, nothing can seem +more discordant with our historical preconceptions of Brutus, or more +lowering to the intellect of the Stoico-Platonic tyrannicide, than the +tenets here attributed to him--to him, the stern Roman republican; +namely,--that he would have no objection to a king, or to Cæsar, a +monarch in Rome, would Cæsar but be as good a monarch as he now seems +disposed to be! How, too, could Brutus say that he found no personal +cause--none in Cæsar's past conduct as a man? Had he not passed the +Rubicon? Had he not entered Rome as a conqueror? Had he not placed his +Gauls in the Senate?--Shakspeare, it may be said, has not brought these +things forwards.--True;--and this is just the ground of my perplexity. +What character did Shakspeare mean his Brutus to be? + +Ib. Speech of Brutus:-- + + + For if thou _path_, thy native semblance on-- + + +Surely, there need be no scruple in treating this 'path' as a mere +misprint or mis-script for 'put.' In what place does Shakspeare,--where +does any other writer of the same age--use 'path' as a verb for 'walk?' + +Ib. sc. 2. Caesar's speech:-- + + + She dreamt last night, she saw my _statue_-- + + +No doubt, it should be _statua_, as in the same age, they more often +pronounced 'heroes' as a trisyllable than dissyllable. A modern tragic +poet would have written,-- + + + Last night she dreamt, that she my statue saw-- + + +But Shakspeare never avails himself of the supposed license of +transposition, merely for the metre. There is always some logic either +of thought or passion to justify it. + +Act iii. sc. 1. Antony's speech:-- + + + Pardon me, Julius--here wast thou bay'd, brave hart; + Here didst thou fall, and here thy hunters stand + Sign'd in thy spoil, and crimson'd in thy death. + _O world! thou wast the forest to this hart, + And this, indeed, O world! the heart of thee._ + + +I doubt the genuineness of the last two lines;--not because they are +vile; but first, on account of the rhythm, which is not Shakspearian, +but just the very tune of some old play, from which the actor might have +interpolated them;--and secondly, because they interrupt, not only the +sense and connection, but likewise the flow both of the passion, and, +(what is with me still more decisive) of the Shakspearian link of +association. As with many another parenthesis or gloss slipt into the +text, we have only to read the passage without it, to see that it never +was in it. I venture to say there is no instance in Shakspeare fairly +like this. Conceits he has; but they not only rise out of some word in +the lines before, but also lead to the thought in the lines following. +Here the conceit is a mere alien: Antony forgets an image, when he is +even touching it, and then recollects it, when the thought last in his +mind must have led him away from it. + +Act iv. sc. 3. Speech of Brutus:-- + + ----What, shall one of us, + That struck the foremost man of all this world, + But for _supporting robbers_. + + +This seemingly strange assertion of Brutus is unhappily verified in the +present day. What is an immense army, in which the lust of plunder has +quenched all the duties of the citizen, other than a horde of robbers, +or differenced only as fiends are from ordinarily reprobate men? Caesar +supported, and was supported by, such as these;--and even so Buonaparte +in our days. + +I know no part of Shakspeare that more impresses on me the belief of his +genius being superhuman, than this scene between Brutus and Cassius. In +the Gnostic heresy, it might have been credited with less absurdity than +most of their dogmas, that the Supreme had employed him to create, +previously to his function of representing, characters. + + + + + +ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. + +Shakspeare can be complimented only by comparison with himself: all +other eulogies are either heterogeneous, as when they are in reference +to Spenser or Milton; or they are flat truisms, as when he is gravely +preferred to Corneille, Racine, or even his own immediate successors, +Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger and the rest. The highest praise, or +rather form of praise, of this play, which I can offer in my own mind, +is the doubt which the perusal always occasions in me, whether the +Antony and Cleopatra is not, in all exhibitions of a giant power in its +strength and vigour of maturity, a formidable rival of Macbeth, Lear, +Hamlet, and Othello. 'Feliciter audax' is the motto for its style +comparatively with that of Shakspeare's other works, even as it is the +general motto of all his works compared with those of other poets. Be it +remembered, too, that this happy valiancy of style is but the +representative and result of all the material excellencies so expressed. + +This play should be perused in mental contrast with Romeo and +Juliet;--as the love of passion and appetite opposed to the love of +affection and instinct. But the art displayed in the character of +Cleopatra is profound; in this, especially, that the sense of +criminality in her passion is lessened by our insight into its depth and +energy, at the very moment that we cannot but perceive that the passion +itself springs out of the habitual craving of a licentious nature, and +that it is supported and reinforced by voluntary stimulus and sought-for +associations, instead of blossoming out of spontaneous emotion. + +Of all Shakspeare's historical plays, Antony and Cleopatra is by far the +most wonderful. There is not one in which he has followed history so +minutely, and yet there are few in which he impresses the notion of +angelic strength so much;--perhaps none in which he impresses it more +strongly. This is greatly owing to the manner in which the fiery force +is sustained throughout, and to the numerous momentary flashes of nature +counteracting the historic abstraction. As a wonderful specimen of the +way in which Shakspeare lives up to the very end of this play, read the +last part of the concluding scene. And if you would feel the judgment as +well as the genius of Shakspeare in your heart's core, compare this +astonishing drama with Dryden's All For Love. + +Act i. sc. 1. Philo's speech:-- + + His captain's heart, + Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst + The buckles on his breast, _reneges_ all temper-- + +It should be 'reneagues,' or 'reniegues,' as 'fatigues,' &c. + +'Ib.' + + Take but good note, and you shall see in him + The triple pillar of the world transform'd + Into a strumpet's _fool_. + + +Warburton's conjecture of 'stool' is ingenious, and would be a probable +reading, if the scene opening had discovered Antony with Cleopatra on +his lap. But, represented as he is walking and jesting with her, 'fool' +must be the word. Warburton's objection is shallow, and implies that he +confounded the dramatic with the epic style. The 'pillar' of a state is +so common a metaphor as to have lost the image in the thing meant to be +imaged. + +Ib. sc. 2. + + Much is breeding; + Which, like the courser's hair, hath yet but life, + And not a serpent's poison. + + +This is so far true to appearance, that a horse-hair, 'laid,' as +Hollinshed says, 'in a pail of water' will become the supporter of +seemingly one worm, though probably of an immense number of small slimy +water-lice. The hair will twirl round a finger, and sensibly compress +it. It is a common experiment with school boys in Cumberland and +Westmorland. + +Act ii. sc. 2. Speech of Enobarbus:-- + + + Her gentlewomen, like the Nereids, + So many _mermaids_, tended her i' th' eyes, + And made their bends adornings. At the helm + A seeming mermaid steers. + + +I have the greatest difficulty in believing that Shakspeare wrote the +first 'mermaids.' He never, I think, would have so weakened by useless +anticipation the fine image immediately following. The epithet 'seeming' +becomes so extremely improper after the whole number had been positively +called 'so many mermaids.' + + + + + +TIMON OF ATHENS, + +Act I. sc. 1. + + + 'Tim'. _The man is honest. + + 'Old Ath.' Therefore he will be_, Timon. His honesty rewards him in + itself.-- + + +Warburton's comment--'If the man be honest, for that reason he will be +so in this, and not endeavour at the injustice of gaining my daughter +without my consent'--is, like almost all his comments, ingenious in +blunder: he can never see any other writer's thoughts for the +mist-working swarm of his own. The meaning of the first line the poet +himself explains, or rather unfolds, in the second. 'The man is +honest!'--'True;--and for that very cause, and with no additional or +extrinsic motive, he will be so. No man can be justly called honest, who +is not so for honesty's sake, itself including its own reward.' Note, +that 'honesty' in Shakspeare's age retained much of its old dignity, and +that contradistinction of the 'honestum' from the 'utile', in which its +very essence and definition consist. If it be 'honestum', it cannot +depend on the 'utile'. + +'Ib.' Speech of Apemantus, printed as prose in Theobald's edition:-- + + + So, so! aches contract, and starve your supple joints! + + +I may remark here the fineness of Shakspeare's sense of musical period, +which would almost by itself have suggested (if the hundred positive +proofs had not been extant,) that the word 'aches' was then 'ad +libitum', a dissyllable--'aitches'. For read it, 'aches,' in +this sentence, and I would challenge you to find any period in +Shakspeare's writings with the same musical or, rather dissonant, +notation. Try the one, and then the other, by your ear, reading the +sentence aloud, first with the word as a dissyllable and then as a +monosyllable, and you will feel what I mean. [1] + +Ib. sc. 2. Cupid's speech: Warburton's correction of- + + There taste, touch, all pleas'd from thy table rise-- + +into + + Th' ear, taste, touch, smell, etc. + +This is indeed an excellent emendation. + +Act ii. sc. 1. Senator's speech:-- + + --nor then silenc'd with + 'Commend me to your master'--and the cap + Plays in the right hand, thus:-- + + +Either, methinks, 'plays' should be 'play'd,' or 'and' should be changed +to 'while.' I can certainly understand it as a parenthesis, an +interadditive of scorn; but it does not sound to my ear as in +Shakspeare's manner. + +Ib. sc. 2. Timon's speech: (Theobald.) + + And that unaptness made _you_ minister, + Thus to excuse yourself. + +Read 'your';--at least I cannot otherwise understand the line. You made +my chance indisposition and occasional unaptness your minister--that is, +the ground on which you now excuse yourself. Or, perhaps, no correction +is necessary, if we construe 'made you' as 'did you make;' 'and that +unaptness did you make help you thus to excuse yourself.' But the former +seems more in Shakspeare's manner, and is less liable to be +misunderstood. [2] + + + +Act iii. sc. 3. Servant's speech:-- + + + How fairly this lord strives to appear foul!--takes virtuous copies to + be wicked; _like those that under hot, ardent, zeal would set whole + realms on fire. Of such a nature is his politic love._ + + +This latter clause I grievously suspect to have been an addition of the +players, which had hit, and, being constantly applauded, procured a +settled occupancy in the prompter's copy. Not that Shakspeare does not +elsewhere sneer at the Puritans; but here it is introduced so _nolenter +volenter_ (excuse the phrase) by the head and shoulders!--and is besides +so much more likely to have been conceived in the age of Charles I. + +Act iv. sc. 2. Timon's speech:-- + + + Raise me this beggar, and _deny't_ that lord.-- + + +Warburton reads 'denude.' + +I cannot see the necessity of this alteration. The editors and +commentators are, all of them, ready enough to cry out against +Shakspeare's laxities and licenses of style, forgetting that he is not +merely a poet, but a dramatic poet; that, when the head and the heart +are swelling with fullness, a man does not ask himself whether he has +grammatically arranged, but only whether (the context taken in) he has +conveyed, his meaning. 'Deny' is here clearly equal to 'withhold;' and +the 'it,' quite in the genius of vehement conversation, which a +syntaxist explains by ellipses and _subauditurs_ in a Greek or Latin +classic, yet triumphs over as ignorances in a contemporary, refers to +accidental and artificial rank or elevation, implied in the verb +'raise.' Besides, does the word 'denude' occur in any writer before, or +of, Shakspeare's age? + + +[Footnote 1: It is, of course, a verse,-- + + + Achès contract, and starve your supple joints,-- + + +and is so printed in all later editions. But Mr. C. was reading it in +prose in Theobald; and it is curious to see how his ear detected the +rhythmical necessity for pronouncing 'aches' as a dissyllable, although +the metrical necessity seems for the moment to have escaped him. Ed.] + +[Footnote 2: 'Your' is the received reading now. Ed.] + + + + + +ROMEO AND JULIET. + +I have previously had occasion to speak at large on the subject of the +three unities of time, place, and action, as applied to the drama in the +abstract, and to the particular stage for which Shakspeare wrote, as far +as he can be said to have written for any stage but that of the +universal mind. I hope I have in some measure succeeded in demonstrating +that the former two, instead of being rules, were mere inconveniences +attached to the local peculiarities of the Athenian drama; that the last +alone deserved the name of a principle, and that in the preservation of +this unity Shakspeare stood preeminent. Yet, instead of unity of action, +I should greatly prefer the more appropriate, though scholastic and +uncouth, words homogeneity, proportionateness, and totality of +interest,--expressions, which involve the distinction, or rather the +essential difference, betwixt the shaping skill of mechanical talent, +and the creative, productive, life-power of inspired genius. In the +former each part is separately conceived, and then by a succeeding act +put together;--not as watches are made for wholesale,--(for there each +part supposes a pre-conception of the whole in some mind)--but more like +pictures on a motley screen. Whence arises the harmony that strikes us +in the wildest natural landscapes,--in the relative shapes of rocks, the +harmony of colours in the heaths, ferns, and lichens, the leaves of the +beech and the oak, the stems and rich brown branches of the birch and +other mountain trees, varying from verging autumn to returning +spring,--compared with the visual effect from the greater number of +artificial plantations?--From this, that the natural landscape is +effected, as it were, by a single energy modified 'ab intra' in each +component part. And as this is the particular excellence of the +Shakspearian drama generally, so is it especially characteristic of the +Romeo and Juliet. + +The groundwork of the tale is altogether in family life, and the events +of the play have their first origin in family feuds. Filmy as are the +eyes of party-spirit, at once dim and truculent, still there is commonly +some real or supposed object in view, or principle to be maintained; and +though but the twisted wires on the plate of rosin in the preparation +for electrical pictures, it is still a guide in some degree, an +assimilation to an outline. But in family quarrels, which have proved +scarcely less injurious to states, wilfulness, and precipitancy, and +passion from mere habit and custom, can alone be expected. With his +accustomed judgment, Shakspeare has begun by placing before us a lively +picture of all the impulses of the play; and, as nature ever presents +two sides, one for Heraclitus, and one for Democritus, he has, by way of +prelude, shown the laughable absurdity of the evil by the contagion of +it reaching the servants, who have so little to do with it, but who are +under the necessity of letting the superfluity of sensoreal power fly +off through the escape-valve of wit-combats, and of quarrelling with +weapons of sharper edge, all in humble imitation of their masters. Yet +there is a sort of unhired fidelity, an 'ourishness' about all this that +makes it rest pleasant on one's feelings. All the first scene, down to +the conclusion of the Prince's speech, is a motley dance of all ranks +and ages to one tune, as if the horn of Huon had been playing behind the +scenes. + +Benvolio's speech-- + + + Madam, an hour before the worshipp'd sun + Peer'd forth the golden window of the east-- + + +and, far more strikingly, the following speech of old Montague-- + + + Many a morning hath he there been seen + With tears augmenting the fresh morning dew-- + + +prove that Shakspeare meant the Romeo and Juliet to approach to a poem, +which, and indeed its early date, may be also inferred from the +multitude of rhyming couplets throughout. And if we are right, from the +internal evidence, in pronouncing this one of Shakspeare's early dramas, +it affords a strong instance of the fineness of his insight into the +nature of the passions, that Romeo is introduced already +love-bewildered. The necessity of loving creates an object for itself in +man and woman; and yet there is a difference in this respect between the +sexes, though only to be known by a perception of it. It would have +displeased us if Juliet had been represented as already in love, or as +fancying herself so;--but no one, I believe, ever experiences any shock +at Romeo's forgetting his Rosaline, who had been a mere name for the +yearning of his youthful imagination, and rushing into his passion for +Juliet. Rosaline was a mere creation of his fancy; and we should remark +the boastful positiveness of Romeo in a love of his own making, which is +never shown where love is really near the heart. + + + When the devout religion of mine eye + Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires! + ... + One fairer than my love! the all-seeing sun + Ne'er saw her match, since first the world begun. + + +The character of the Nurse is the nearest of any thing in Shakspeare to +a direct borrowing from mere observation; and the reason is, that as in +infancy and childhood the individual in nature is a representative of a +class, just as in describing one larch tree, you generalize a grove of +them,--so it is nearly as much so in old age. The generalization is done +to the poet's hand. Here you have the garrulity of age strengthened by +the feelings of a long-trusted servant, whose sympathy with the mother's +affections gives her privileges and rank in the household; and observe +the mode of connection by accidents of time and place, and the childlike +fondness of repetition in a second childhood, and also that happy, +humble, ducking under, yet constant resurgence against, the check of her +superiors!-- + + Yes, madam!--Yet I cannot choose but laugh, &c. + + +In the fourth scene we have Mercutio introduced to us. O! how shall I +describe that exquisite ebullience and overflow of youthful life, wafted +on over the laughing waves of pleasure and prosperity, as a wanton +beauty that distorts the face on which she knows her lover is gazing +enraptured, and wrinkles her forehead in the triumph of its smoothness! +Wit ever wakeful, fancy busy and procreative as an insect, courage, an +easy mind that, without cares of its own, is at once disposed to laugh +away those of others, and yet to be interested in them,--these and all +congenial qualities, melting into the common 'copula' of them all, the +man of rank and the gentleman, with all its excellencies and all its +weaknesses, constitute the character of Mercutio! + + +Act i. sc. 5. + + 'Tyb'. It fits when such a villain is a guest; I'll not endure him. + + 'Cap'. He shall be endur'd. + What, goodman boy!--I say, he shall:--Go to;-- + Am I the master here, or you?--Go to. + You'll not endure him!--God shall mend my soul-- + You'll make a mutiny among my guests! + You will set cock-a-hoop! you'll be the man! + + 'Tyb'. Why, uncle, 'tis a shame. + + 'Cap'. Go to, go to, You are a saucy boy! &c.-- + + +How admirable is the old man's impetuosity at once contrasting, yet +harmonized, with young Tybalt's quarrelsome violence! But it would be +endless to repeat observations of this sort. Every leaf is different on +an oak tree; but still we can only say--our tongues defrauding our +eyes--'This is another oak-leaf!' + +Act ii. sc. 2. The garden scene: + +Take notice in this enchanting scene of the contrast of Romeo's love +with his former fancy; and weigh the skill shown in justifying him from +his inconstancy by making us feel the difference of his passion. Yet +this, too, is a love in, although not merely of, the imagination. + +Ib. + + 'Jul'. Well, do not swear; although I joy in thee, + I have no joy in this contract to-night: + It is too rash, too unadvis'd, too sudden, &c. + + +With love, pure love, there is always an anxiety for the safety of the +object, a disinterestedness, by which it is distinguished from the +counterfeits of its name. Compare this scene with Act iii. sc. 1. of the +Tempest. I do not know a more wonderful instance of Shakspeare's mastery +in playing a distinctly rememberable variety on the same remembered air, +than in the transporting love-confessions of Romeo and Juliet and +Ferdinand and Miranda. There seems more passion in the one, and more +dignity in the other; yet you feel that the sweet girlish lingering and +busy movement of Juliet, and the calmer and more maidenly fondness of +Miranda, might easily pass into each other. + +'Ib.' sc. 3. The Friar's speech:-- + +The reverend character of the Friar, like all Shakspeare's +representations of the great professions, is very delightful and +tranquillizing, yet it is no digression, but immediately necessary to +the carrying on of the plot. + +'Ib.' sc. 4. + + + 'Rom.' Good morrow to you both. What counterfeit did I give you? &c.-- + + +Compare again, Romeo's half-exerted, and half real, ease of mind with +his first manner when in love with Rosaline! His will had come to the +clenching point. + +'Ib.' sc. 6. + + + 'Rom.' Do thou but close our hands with holy words, + Then love-devouring death do what he dare, + It is enough I may but call her mine. + + +The precipitancy, which is the character of the play, is well marked in +this short scene of waiting for Juliet's arrival. + +Act iii. sc. 1. + + + 'Mer.' No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; + but 'tis enough: 'twill serve: ask for me to-morrow, and you shall + find me a grave man, &c. + + +How fine an effect the wit and raillery habitual to Mercutio, even +struggling with his pain, give to Romeo's following speech, and at the +same time so completely justifying his passionate revenge on Tybalt! + +'Ib.' Benvolio's speech: + + + But that he tilts + With piercing steel at bold Mercutio's breast.-- + + +This small portion of untruth in Benvolio's narrative is finely +conceived. + +'Ib.' sc. 2. Juliet's speech: + + + For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night + Whiter than new snow on a raven's back.-- + + +Indeed the whole of this speech is imagination strained to the highest; +and observe the blessed effect on the purity of the mind. What would +Dryden have made of it?-- + +'Ib.' + + + 'Nurse'. Shame come to Romeo. + + 'Jul'. Blister'd be thy tongue For such a wish! + + +Note the Nurse's mistake of the mind's audible struggles with itself for +its decision 'in toto'. + +'Ib.' sc. 3. Romeo's speech:-- + + + 'Tis torture, and not mercy: heaven's here, + Where Juliet lives, &c. + + +All deep passions are a sort of atheists, that believe no future. + +'Ib.' sc. 5. + + + 'Cap'. Soft, take me with you, take me with you, wife-- + How! will she none? &c. + + +A noble scene! Don't I see it with my own eyes?--Yes! but not with +Juliet's. And observe in Capulet's last speech in this scene his +mistake, as if love's causes were capable of being generalized. + +Act iv. sc. 3. Juliet's speech:-- + + + O, look! methinks I see my cousin's ghost + Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body + Upon a rapier's point:--Stay, Tybalt, stay!-- + Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee. + + +Shakspeare provides for the finest decencies. It would have been too +bold a thing for a girl of fifteen;--but she swallows the draught in a +fit of fright. + +Ib. sc. 5. + +As the audience know that Juliet is not dead, this scene is, perhaps, +excusable. But it is a strong warning to minor dramatists not to +introduce at one time many separate characters agitated by one and the +same circumstance. It is difficult to understand what effect, whether +that of pity or of laughter, Shakspeare meant to produce;--the occasion +and the characteristic speeches are so little in harmony! For example, +what the Nurse says is excellently suited to the Nurse's character, but +grotesquely unsuited to the occasion. + + +Act. v. sc. 1. Romeo's speech:-- + + + O mischief! thou are swift + To enter in the thoughts of desperate men! + I do remember an apothecary, &c. + + +This famous passage is so beautiful as to be self-justified; yet, in +addition, what a fine preparation it is for the tomb scene! + +'Ib.' sc. 3. Romeo's speech:-- + + + Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man, + Fly hence and leave me. + + +The gentleness of Romeo was shown before, as softened by love; and now +it is doubled by love and sorrow and awe of the place where he is. + +'Ib.' Romeo's speech:-- + + + How oft when men are at the point of death + Have they been merry! which their keepers call + A lightning before death. O, how may I + Call this a lightning?--O, my love, my wife! &c. + + +Here, here, is the master example how beauty can at once increase and +modify passion! + +'Ib.' Last scene. + +How beautiful is the close! The spring and the winter meet;--winter +assumes the character of spring, and spring the sadness of winter. + + + + + +SHAKSPEARE'S ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS. + +The first form of poetry is the epic, the essence of which may be stated +as the successive in events and characters. This must be distinguished +from narration, in which there must always be a narrator, from whom the +objects represented receive a coloring and a manner;--whereas in the +epic, as in the so called poems of Homer, the whole is completely +objective, and the representation is a pure reflection. The next form +into which poetry passed was the dramatic;--both forms having a common +basis with a certain difference, and that difference not consisting in +the dialogue alone. Both are founded on the relation of providence to +the human will; and this relation is the universal element, expressed +under different points of view according to the difference of religions, +and the moral and intellectual cultivation of different nations. In the +epic poem fate is represented as overruling the will, and making it +instrumental to the accomplishment of its designs:-- + + [Greek (transliterated):--------Dios de teleieto boulae.] + +In the drama, the will is exhibited as struggling with fate, a great and +beautiful instance and illustration of which is the Prometheus of +Æschylus; and the deepest effect is produced, when the fate is +represented as a higher and intelligent will, and the opposition of the +individual as springing from a defect. + +In order that a drama may be properly historical, it is necessary that +it should be the history of the people to whom it is addressed. In the +composition, care must be taken that there appear no dramatic +improbability, as the reality is taken for granted. It must, likewise, +be poetical;--that only, I mean, must be taken which is the permanent in +our nature, which is common, and therefore deeply interesting to all +ages. The events themselves are immaterial, otherwise than as the +clothing and manifestation of the spirit that is working within. In this +mode, the unity resulting from succession is destroyed, but is supplied +by a unity of a higher order, which connects the events by reference to +the workers, gives a reason for them in the motives, and presents men in +their causative character. It takes, therefore, that part of real +history which is the least known, and infuses a principle of life and +organization into the naked facts, and makes them all the framework of +an animated whole. + +In my happier days, while I had yet hope and onward-looking thoughts, I +planned an historical drama of King Stephen, in the manner of +Shakspeare. Indeed it would be desirable that some man of dramatic +genius should dramatize all those omitted by Shakspeare, as far down as +Henry VII. Perkin Warbeck would make a most interesting drama. A few +scenes of Marlow's Edward II. might be preserved. After Henry VIII., the +events are too well and distinctly known, to be, without plump +inverisimilitude, crowded together in one night's exhibition. Whereas, +the history of our ancient kings--the events of their reigns, I +mean,--are like stars in the sky;--whatever the real interspaces may be, +and however great, they seem close to each other. The stars--the +events--strike us and remain in our eye, little modified by the +difference of dates. An historic drama is, therefore, a collection of +events borrowed from history, but connected together in respect of cause +and time, poetically and by dramatic fiction. It would be a fine +national custom to act such a series of dramatic histories in orderly +succession, in the yearly Christmas holidays, and could not but tend to +counteract that mock cosmopolitism, which under a positive term really +implies nothing but a negation of, or indifference to, the particular +love of our country. By its nationality must every nation retain its +independence;--I mean a nationality 'quoad' the nation. Better +thus;--nationality in each individual, 'quoad' his country, is equal to +the sense of individuality 'quoad' himself; but himself as subsensuous, +and central. Patriotism is equal to the sense of individuality reflected +from every other individual. There may come a higher virtue in +both--just cosmopolitism. But this latter is not possible but by +antecedence of the former. + +Shakspeare has included the most important part of nine reigns in his +historical dramas--namely--King John, Richard II.--Henry IV. +(two)--Henry V.--Henry VI. (three) including Edward V. and Henry VIII., +in all ten plays. There remain, therefore, to be done, with exception of +a single scene or two that should be adopted from Marlow--eleven +reigns--of which the first two appear the only unpromising +subjects;--and those two dramas must be formed wholly or mainly of +invented private stories, which, however, could not have happened except +in consequence of the events and measures of these reigns, and which +should furnish opportunity both of exhibiting the manners and +oppressions of the times, and of narrating dramatically the great +events;--if possible--the death of the two sovereigns, at least of the +latter, should be made to have some influence on the finale of the +story. All the rest are glorious subjects; especially Henry 1st. (being +the struggle between the men of arms and of letters, in the persons of +Henry and Becket,) Stephen, Richard I., Edward II., and Henry VII. + + + + +KING JOHN. + +Act. I. sc. 1. + + + 'Bast'. James Gurney, wilt thou give us leave awhile? + + 'Gur'. Good leave, good Philip. + + 'Bast'. Philip? _sparrow_! James, &c. + + +Theobald adopts Warburton's conjecture of '_spare me_.' + +O true Warburton! and the 'sancta simplicitas' of honest dull Theobald's +faith in him! Nothing can be more lively or characteristic than 'Philip! +Sparrow!' Had Warburton read old Skelton's 'Philip Sparrow,' an +exquisite and original poem, and, no doubt, popular in Shakspeare's +time, even Warburton would scarcely have made so deep a plunge into the +_bathetic_ as to have deathified 'sparrow' into 'spare me!' + +Act iii. sc. 2. Speech of Faulconbridge:-- + + + Now, by my life, this day grows wondrous hot; + Some _airy_ devil hovers in the sky, &c. + +Theobald adopts Warburton's conjecture of 'fiery.' + +I prefer the old text; the word 'devil' implies 'fiery.' You need only +read the line, laying a full and strong emphasis on 'devil,' to perceive +the uselessness and tastelessness of Warburton's alteration. + + + + + +RICHARD II. + +I have stated that the transitional link between the epic poem and the +drama is the historic drama; that in the epic poem a pre-announced fate +gradually adjusts and employs the will and the events as its +instruments, whilst the drama, on the other hand, places fate and will +in opposition to each other, and is then most perfect, when the victory +of fate is obtained in consequence of imperfections in the opposing +will, so as to leave a final impression that the fate itself is but a +higher and a more intelligent will. + +From the length of the speeches, and the circumstance that, with one +exception, the events are all historical, and presented in their +results, not produced by acts seen by, or taking place before, the +audience, this tragedy is ill suited to our present large theatres. But +in itself, and for the closet, I feel no hesitation in placing it as the +first and most admirable of all Shakspeare's purely historical plays. +For the two parts of Henry IV. form a species of themselves, which may +be named the mixed drama. The distinction does not depend on the mere +quantity of historical events in the play compared with the fictions; +for there is as much history in Macbeth as in Richard, but in the +relation of the history to the plot. + +In the purely historical plays, the history forms the plot; in the +mixed, it directs it; in the rest, as Macbeth, Hamlet, Cymbeline, Lear, +it subserves it. But, however unsuited to the stage this drama may be, +God forbid that even there it should fall dead on the hearts of +Jacobinized Englishmen! Then, indeed, we might say--'præteriit gloria +mundi'! For the spirit of patriotic reminiscence is the all-permeating +soul of this noble work. It is, perhaps, the most purely historical of +Shakspeare's dramas. There are not in it, as in the others, characters +introduced merely for the purpose of giving a greater individuality and +realness, as in the comic parts of Henry IV., by presenting, as it were, +our very selves. Shakspeare avails himself of every opportunity to +effect the great object of the historic drama, that, namely, of +familiarizing the people to the great names of their country, and +thereby of exciting a steady patriotism, a love of just liberty, and a +respect for all those fundamental institutions of social life, which +bind men to-gether:-- + + + This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle, + This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, + This other Eden, demi-paradise; + This fortress, built by nature for herself, + Against infection, and the hand of war; + This happy breed of men, this little world; + This precious stone set in the silver sea, + Which serves it in the office of a wall, + Or as a moat defensive to a home, + Against the envy of less happier lands; + This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, + This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, + Fear'd by their breed, and famous by their birth, &c. + + +Add the famous passage in King John:-- + + + This England never did, nor ever shall, + Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, + But when it first did help to wound itself. + Now these her princes are come home again, + Come the three corners of the world in arms, + And we shall shock them: nought shall make us rue, + If England to itself do rest but true. + + +And it certainly seems that Shakspeare's historic dramas produced a very +deep effect on the minds of the English people, and in earlier times +they were familiar even to the least informed of all ranks, according to +the relation of Bishop Corbett. Marlborough, we know, was not ashamed to +confess that his principal acquaintance with English history was derived +from them; and I believe that a large part of the information as to our +old names and achievements even now abroad is due, directly or +indirectly, to Shakspeare. + +Admirable is the judgment with which Shakspeare always in the first +scenes prepares, yet how naturally, and with what concealment of art, +for the catastrophe. Observe how he here presents the germ of all the +after events in Richard's insincerity, partiality, arbitrariness, and +favoritism, and in the proud, tempestuous, temperament of his barons. In +the very beginning, also, is displayed that feature in Richard's +character, which is never forgotten throughout the play--his attention +to decorum, and high feeling of the kingly dignity. These anticipations +show with what judgment Shakspeare wrote, and illustrate his care to +connect the past and future, and unify them with the present by forecast +and reminiscence. + +It is interesting to a critical ear to compare the six opening lines of +the play-- + + + Old John of Gaunt, time-honor'd Lancaster, + Hast thou, according to thy oath and band, &c. + + +each closing at the tenth syllable, with the rhythmless metre of the +verse in Henry VI. and Titus Andronicus, in order that the difference, +indeed, the heterogeneity, of the two may be felt 'etiam in simillimis +prima superficie'. Here the weight of the single words supplies all the +relief afforded by intercurrent verse, while the whole represents the +mood. And compare the apparently defective metre of Bolingbroke's first +line,-- + + + Many years of happy days befall-- + + +with Prospero's, + + + Twelve years since, Miranda! twelve years since-- + + +The actor should supply the time by emphasis, and pause on the first +syllable of each of these verses. + +Act i. sc. 1. Bolingbroke's speech:-- + + + First, (heaven be the record to my speech!) + In the devotion of a subject's love, &c. + + +I remember in the Sophoclean drama no more striking example of the +[Greek (transliterated): To prepon kai semnon] than this speech; and the +rhymes in the last six lines well express the preconcertedness of +Bolingbroke's scheme so beautifully contrasted with the vehemence and +sincere irritation of Mowbray. + +'Ib.' Bolingbroke's speech:-- + + + Which blood, like sacrificing Abel's, cries, + Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth, + To _me_, for justice and rough chastisement. + + +Note the [Greek (transliterated): deinhon] of this 'to me,' which is +evidently felt by Richard:-- + + + How high a pitch his resolution soars! + + +and the affected depreciation afterwards;-- + + + As he is but my father's brother's son. + + +'Ib.' Mowbray's speech:-- + + + In haste whereof, most heartily I pray + Your highness to assign our trial day. + + +The occasional interspersion of rhymes, and the more frequent winding up +of a speech therewith--what purpose was this designed to answer? In the +earnest drama, I mean. Deliberateness? An attempt, as in Mowbray, to +collect himself and be cool at the close?--I can see that in the +following speeches the rhyme answers the end of the Greek chorus, and +distinguishes the general truths from the passions of the dialogue; but +this does not exactly justify the practice, which is unfrequent in +proportion to the excellence of Shakspeare's plays. One thing, however, +is to be observed,--that the speakers are historical, known, and so far +formal, characters, and their reality is already a fact. This should be +borne in mind. The whole of this scene of the quarrel between Mowbray +and Bolingbroke seems introduced for the purpose of showing by +anticipation the characters of Richard and Bolingbroke. In the latter +there is observable a decorous and courtly checking of his anger in +subservience to a predetermined plan, especially in his calm speech +after receiving sentence of banishment compared with Mowbray's +unaffected lamentation. In the one, all is ambitious hope of something +yet to come; in the other it is desolation and a looking backward of the +heart. + +'Ib.' sc. 2. + + 'Gaunt'. Heaven's is the quarrel; for heaven's substitute, + His deputy anointed in his right, + Hath caus'd his death: the which, if wrongfully, + Let heaven revenge; for I may never lift + An angry arm against his minister. + + +Without the hollow extravagance of Beaumont and Fletcher's +ultra-royalism, how carefully does Shakspeare acknowledge and reverence +the eternal distinction between the mere individual, and the symbolic or +representative, on which all genial law, no less than patriotism, +depends. The whole of this second scene commences, and is anticipative +of, the tone and character of the play at large. + +'Ib.' sc. 3. In none of Shakspeare's fictitious dramas, or in those +founded on a history as unknown to his auditors generally as fiction, is +this violent rupture of the succession of time found:--a proof, I think, +that the pure historic drama, like Richard II. and King John, had its +own laws. + +'Ib.' Mowbray's speech:-- + + + A dearer _merit_ Have I deserved at your highness' hand. + + +O, the instinctive propriety of Shakspeare in the choice of words! + +'Ib.' Richard's speech: + + + Nor never by advised purpose meet, + To plot, contrive, or complot any ill, + 'Gainst us, our state, our subjects, or our land. + + +Already the selfish weakness of Richard's character opens. Nothing will +such minds so readily embrace, as indirect ways softened down to their +'quasi'-consciences by policy, expedience, &c. + +'Ib.' Mowbray's speech:-- + + + ...All the world's my way. + 'The world was all before him.'--'Milt'. + + +'Ib.' + + + 'Boling'. How long a time lies in one little word! + Four lagging winters, and four wanton springs, + End in a word: such is the breath of kings. + + +Admirable anticipation! + +'Ib.' sc. 4. This is a striking conclusion of a first act,--letting the +reader into the secret;--having before impressed us with the dignified +and kingly manners of Richard, yet by well managed anticipations leading +us on to the full gratification of pleasure in our own penetration. In +this scene a new light is thrown on Richard's character. Until now he +has appeared in all the beauty of royalty; but here, as soon as he is +left to himself, the inherent weakness of his character is immediately +shown. It is a weakness, however, of a peculiar kind, not arising from +want of personal courage, or any specific defect of faculty, but rather +an intellectual feminineness, which feels a necessity of ever leaning on +the breast of others, and of reclining on those who are all the while +known to be inferiors. To this must be attributed as its consequences +all Richard's vices, his tendency to concealment, and his cunning, the +whole operation of which is directed to the getting rid of present +difficulties. Richard is not meant to be a debauchee; but we see in him +that sophistry which is common to man, by which we can deceive our own +hearts, and at one and the same time apologize for, and yet commit, the +error. Shakspeare has represented this character in a very peculiar +manner. He has not made him amiable with counterbalancing faults; but +has openly and broadly drawn those faults without reserve, relying on +Richard's disproportionate sufferings and gradually emergent good +qualities for our sympathy; and this was possible, because his faults +are not positive vices, but spring entirely from defect of character. + +Act. ii. sc. 1. + + + 'K. Rich'. Can sick men play so nicely with their names? + + +Yes! on a death-bed there is a feeling which may make all things appear +but as puns and equivocations. And a passion there is that carries off +its own excess by plays on words as naturally, and, therefore, as +appropriately to drama, as by gesticulations, looks, or tones. This +belongs to human nature as such, independently of associations and +habits from any particular rank of life or mode of employment; and in +this consist Shakspeare's vulgarisms, as in Macbeth's-- + + + The devil damn thee black, thou cream-fac'd loon! &c. + + +This is (to equivocate on Dante's words) in truth the _nobile volgare +eloquenza_. Indeed it is profoundly true that there is a natural, an +almost irresistible, tendency in the mind, when immersed in one strong +feeling, to connect that feeling with every sight and object around it; +especially if there be opposition, and the words addressed to it are in +any way repugnant to the feeling itself, as here in the instance of +Richard's unkind language: + + + Misery makes sport to mock itself. + + +No doubt, something of Shakspeare's punning must be attributed to his +age, in which direct and formal combats of wit were a favourite pastime +of the courtly and accomplished. It was an age more favourable, upon the +whole, to vigour of intellect than the present, in which a dread of +being thought pedantic dispirits and flattens the energies of original +minds. But independently of this, I have no hesitation in saying that a +pun, if it be congruous with the feeling of the scene, is not only +allowable in the dramatic dialogue, but oftentimes one of the most +effectual intensives of passion. + +'Ib.' + + + 'K. Rich'. Right; you say true: as Hereford's love, so his; + As theirs, so mine; and all be as it is. + + +The depth of this compared with the first scene;-- + + + How high a pitch, &c. + + +There is scarcely anything in Shakspeare in its degree, more admirably +drawn than York's character;--his religious loyalty struggling with a +deep grief and indignation at the king's follies; his adherence to his +word and faith, once given in spite of all, even the most natural, +feelings. You see in him the weakness of old age, and the +overwhelmingness of circumstances, for a time surmounting his sense of +duty,--the junction of both exhibited in his boldness in words and +feebleness in immediate act; and then again his effort to retrieve +himself in abstract loyalty, even at the heavy price of the loss of his +son. This species of accidental and adventitious weakness is brought +into parallel with Richard's continually increasing energy of thought, +and as constantly diminishing power of acting;--and thus it is Richard +that breathes a harmony and a relation into all the characters of the +play. + +'Ib.' sc. 2. + + + 'Queen'. To please the king I did; to please myself + I cannot do it; yet I know no cause + Why I should welcome such a guest as grief, + Save bidding farewell to so sweet a guest + As my sweet Richard: yet again, methinks, + Some unborn sorrow, ripe in sorrow's womb, + Is coming toward me; and my inward soul + With nothing trembles: at something it grieves, + More than with parting from my lord the king. + + +It is clear that Shakspeare never meant to represent Richard as a vulgar +debauchee, but a man with a wantonness of spirit in external show, a +feminine _friendism_, an intensity of woman-like love of those +immediately about him, and a mistaking of the delight of being loved by +him for a love of him. And mark in this scene Shakspeare's gentleness in +touching the tender superstitions, the 'terræ incognitæ' of +presentiments, in the human mind; and how sharp a line of distinction he +commonly draws between these obscure forecastings of general experience +in each individual, and the vulgar errors of mere tradition. Indeed, it +may be taken once for all as the truth, that Shakspeare, in the absolute +universality of his genius, always reverences whatever arises out of our +moral nature; he never profanes his muse with a contemptuous reasoning +away of the genuine and general, however unaccountable, feelings of +mankind. + +The amiable part of Richard's character is brought full upon us by his +queen's few words-- + + + ... so sweet a guest + As my sweet Richard;-- + + +and Shakspeare has carefully shown in him an intense love of his +country, well-knowing how that feeling would, in a pure historic drama, +redeem him in the hearts of the audience. Yet even in this love there is +something feminine and personal:-- + + + Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hand, + --As a long parted mother with her child + Plays fondly with her tears, and smiles in meeting; + So weeping, smiling, greet I thee, my earth, + And do thee favour with my royal hands. + + +With this is combined a constant overflow of emotions from a total +incapability of controlling them, and thence a waste of that energy, +which should have been reserved for actions, in the passion and effort +of mere resolves and menaces. The consequence is moral exhaustion, and +rapid alternations of unmanly despair and ungrounded hope,--every +feeling being abandoned for its direct opposite upon the pressure of +external accident. And yet when Richard's inward weakness appears to +seek refuge in his despair, and his exhaustion counterfeits repose, the +old habit of kingliness, the effect of flatterers from his infancy, is +ever and anon producing in him a sort of wordy courage which only serves +to betray more clearly his internal impotence. The second and third +scenes of the third act combine and illustrate all this:-- + + + 'Aumerle'. He means, my lord, that we are too remiss; + Whilst Bolingbroke, through our security, + Grows strong and great, in substance, and in friends. + + 'K. Rich'. Discomfortable cousin! know'st thou not, + That when the searching eye of heaven is hid + Behind the globe, and lights the lower world, + Then thieves and robbers range abroad unseen, + In murders and in outrage, bloody here; + But when, from under this terrestrial ball, + He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines, + And darts his light through every guilty hole, + Then murders, treasons, and detested sins, + The cloke of night being pluckt from off their backs, + Stand bare and naked, trembling at themselves? + So when this thief, this traitor, Bolingbroke, &c. ... + + 'Aumerle'. Where is the Duke my father with his power? + + 'K. Rich'. No matter where; of comfort no man speak: + Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs, + Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes + Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth, &c. + + ... + + 'Aumerle'. My father hath a power, enquire of him; + And learn to make a body of a limb. + + 'K. Rich'. Thou chid'st me well: proud Bolingbroke, I come + To change blows with thee for our day of doom. + This ague-fit of fear is over-blown; + An easy task it is to win our own. + + ... + + 'Scroop'. Your uncle York hath join'd with Bolingbroke.-- + + ... + + 'K. Rich'. Thou hast said enough, + Beshrew thee, cousin, which didst lead me forth + Of that sweet way I was in to despair! + What say you now? what comfort have we now? + By heaven, I'll hate him everlastingly, + That bids me be of comfort any more. ... + +Act iii. sc. 3. Bolingbroke's speech:-- + + + Noble lord, + Go to the rude ribs of that ancient castle, &c. + + +Observe the fine struggle of a haughty sense of power and ambition in +Bolingbroke with the necessity for dissimulation. + +'Ib.' sc. 4. See here the skill and judgment of our poet in giving +reality and individual life, by the introduction of accidents in his +historic plays, and thereby making them dramas, and not histories. How +beautiful an islet of repose--a melancholy repose, indeed--is this scene +with the Gardener and his Servant. And how truly affecting and realizing +is the incident of the very horse Barbary, in the scene with the Groom +in the last act!-- + + + 'Groom'. I was a poor groom of thy stable, King, + When thou wert King; who, travelling towards York, + With much ado, at length have gotten leave + To look upon my sometime master's face. + O, how it yearn'd my heart, when I beheld, + In London streets, that coronation day, + When Bolingbroke rode on roan Barbary! + That horse, that thou so often hast bestrid; + That horse, that I so carefully have dress'd! + + 'K. Rich'. Rode he on Barbary? + + +Bolingbroke's character, in general, is an instance how Shakspeare makes +one play introductory to another; for it is evidently a preparation for +Henry IV., as Gloster in the third part of Henry VI. is for Richard III. + +I would once more remark upon the exalted idea of the only true loyalty +developed in this noble and impressive play. We have neither the rants +of Beaumont and Fletcher, nor the sneers of Massinger;--the vast +importance of the personal character of the sovereign is distinctly +enounced, whilst, at the same time, the genuine sanctity which surrounds +him is attributed to, and grounded on, the position in which he stands +as the convergence and exponent of the life and power of the state. + +The great end of the body politic appears to be to humanize, and assist +in the progressiveness of, the animal man;--but the problem is so +complicated with contingencies as to render it nearly impossible to lay +down rules for the formation of a state. And should we be able to form a +system of government, which should so balance its different powers as to +form a check upon each, and so continually remedy and correct itself, it +would, nevertheless, defeat its own aim;--for man is destined to be +guided by higher principles, by universal views, which can never be +fulfilled in this state of existence,--by a spirit of progressiveness +which can never be accomplished, for then it would cease to be. Plato's +Republic is like Bunyan's Town of Man-Soul,--a description of an +individual, all of whose faculties are in their proper subordination and +inter-dependence; and this it is assumed may be the prototype of the +state as one great individual. But there is this sophism in it, that it +is forgotten that the human faculties, indeed, are parts and not +separate things; but that you could never get chiefs who were wholly +reason, ministers who were wholly understanding, soldiers all wrath, +labourers all concupiscence, and so on through the rest. Each of these +partakes of, and interferes with, all the others. + + + + + + +HENRY IV. PART I. + +Act I. sc. 1. King Henry's speech: + + + No more the thirsty entrance of this soil + Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood. + + +A most obscure passage: but I think Theobalds' interpretation right, +namely, that 'thirsty entrance' means the dry penetrability, or bibulous +drought, of the soil. The obscurity of this passage is of the +Shakspearian sort. + +'Ib.' sc. 2. In this, the first introduction of Falstaff, observe the +consciousness and the intentionality of his wit, so that when it does +not flow of its own accord, its absence is felt, and an effort visibly +made to recall it. Note also throughout how Falstaff's pride is +gratified in the power of influencing a prince of the blood, the heir +apparent, by means of it. Hence his dislike to Prince John of Lancaster, +and his mortification when he finds his wit fail on him:-- + + + 'P. John.' Fare you well, Falstaff: I, in my condition, + Shall better speak of you than you deserve. + + 'Fal.' I would you had but the wit; 'twere better than your + dukedom.--Good faith, this same young sober-blooded boy doth not love + me;--nor a man cannot make him laugh. + + +Act ii. sc. 1. Second Carrier's speech:-- + + + ... breeds fleas like a _loach_. + + +Perhaps it is a misprint, or a provincial pronunciation, for 'leach,' +that is, blood-suckers. Had it been gnats, instead of fleas, there might +have been some sense, though small probability, in Warburton's +suggestion of the Scottish 'loch.' Possibly 'loach,' or 'lutch,' may be +some lost word for dovecote, or poultry-lodge, notorious for breeding +fleas. In Stevens's or my reading, it should properly be 'loaches,' or +'leeches,' in the plural; except that I think I have heard anglers speak +of trouts like _a_ salmon. + +Act iii. sc. 1. + + + 'Glend.' Nay, if you melt, then will she run mad. + + +This 'nay' so to be dwelt on in speaking, as to be equivalent to a +dissyllable--[Symbol: written as a U-shape, below the line], is +characteristic of the solemn Glendower: but the imperfect line + + + _She bids you_ Upon the wanton rushes lay you down, &c. + + +is one of those fine hair-strokes of exquisite judgment peculiar to +Shakspeare;--thus detaching the Lady's speech, and giving it the +individuality and entireness of a little poem, while he draws attention +to it. + + + + + +HENRY IV. PART II. + +Act ii. sc. 2. + + + 'P. Hen'. Sup any women with him? + + 'Page'. None, my lord, but old mistress Quickly, and mistress Doll + Tear-sheet. + + 'P. Hen'. This Doll Tear-sheet should be some road. + + +I am sometimes disposed to think that this respectable young lady's name +is a very old corruption for Tear-street--street-walker, 'terere stratum +(viam.)' Does not the Prince's question rather show this?-- + + + 'This Doll Tear-street should be some road?' + + +Act iii. sc. 1. King Henry's speech: + + + ...Then, _happy low, lie down_; + Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. + + +I know no argument by which to persuade any one to be of my opinion, or +rather of my feeling; but yet I cannot help feeling that 'Happy +low-lie-down!' is either a proverbial expression, or the burthen of some +old song, and means, 'Happy the man, who lays himself down on his straw +bed or chaff pallet on the ground or floor!' + +'Ib.' sc. 2. Shallow's speech:-- + + + _Rah, tah, tah_, would 'a say; _bounce_, would 'a say, &c + + +That Beaumont and Fletcher have more than once been guilty of sneering +at their great master, cannot, I fear, be denied; but the passage quoted +by Theobald from the Knight of the Burning Pestle is an imitation. If it +be chargeable with any fault, it is with plagiarism, not with sarcasm. + + + + + +HENRY V. + +Act I. sc. 2. Westmoreland's speech:-- + + + They know your _grace_ hath cause, and means, and might; + So hath your _highness_; never King of England + Had nobles richer, &c. + + +Does 'grace' mean the king's own peculiar domains and legal revenue, and +'highness' his feudal rights in the military service of his nobles?--I +have sometimes thought it possible that the words 'grace' and 'cause' +may have been transposed in the copying or printing;-- + + + They know your cause hath grace, &c. + + +What Theobald meant, I cannot guess. To me his pointing makes the +passage still more obscure. Perhaps the lines ought to be recited +dramatically thus:-- + + + They know your Grace hath cause, and means, and might:-- + So _hath_ your Highness--never King of England + _Had_ nobles richer, &c. + + +He breaks off from the grammar and natural order from earnestness, and +in order to give the meaning more passionately. + +'Ib.' Exeter's speech:-- + + + Yet that is but a _crush'd_ necessity. + + +Perhaps it may be 'crash' for 'crass' from 'crassus', clumsy; or it may +be 'curt,' defective, imperfect: anything would be better than +Warburton's ''scus'd,' which honest Theobald, of course, adopts. By the +by, it seems clear to me that this speech of Exeter's properly belongs +to Canterbury, and was altered by the actors for convenience. + +Act iv. sc. 3. K. Henry's speech:-- + + + We would not _die_ in that man's company + That fears his fellowship to die with us. + + +Should it not be 'live' in the first line? + +'Ib.' sc. 5. + + + 'Const.' O diable! + + 'Orl.' O seigneur! le jour est perdu, tout est perdu! + + 'Dan.' Mort de ma vie!_ all is confounded, all! + Reproach and everlasting shame + Sit mocking in our plumes!--'O meschante fortune!' + Do not run away! + +Ludicrous as these introductory scraps of French appear, so instantly +followed by good, nervous mother-English, yet they are judicious, and +produce the impression which Shakspeare intended,--a sudden feeling +struck at once on the ears, as well as the eyes, of the audience, that +'here come the French, the baffled French braggards!'--And this will +appear still more judicious, when we reflect on the scanty apparatus of +distinguishing dresses in Shakspeare's tyring-room. + + + + + +HENRY VI. PART I. + +Act I. sc. 1. Bedford's speech:-- + + + Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night! + Comets, importing change of times and states, + Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky; + And with them scourge the bad revolting stars + That have consented unto Henry's death! + Henry the fifth, too famous to live long! + England ne'er lost a king of so much worth. + + +Read aloud any two or three passages in blank verse even from +Shakspeare's earliest dramas, as Love's Labour's Lost, or Romeo and +Juliet; and then read in the same way this speech, with especial +attention to the metre; and if you do not feel the impossibility of the +latter having been written by Shakspeare, all I dare suggest is, that +you may have ears,--for so has another animal,--but an ear you cannot +have, 'me judice'. + + + + + +RICHARD III. + +This play should be contrasted with Richard II. Pride of intellect is +the characteristic of Richard, carried to the extent of even boasting to +his own mind of his villany, whilst others are present to feed his pride +of superiority; as in his first speech, act II. sc. 1. Shakspeare here, +as in all his great parts, developes in a tone of sublime morality the +dreadful consequences of placing the moral, in subordination to the mere +intellectual, being. In Richard there is a predominance of irony, +accompanied with apparently blunt manners to those immediately about +him, but formalized into a more set hypocrisy towards the people as +represented by their magistrates. + + + + + +LEAR. + +Of all Shakspeare's plays Macbeth is the most rapid, Hamlet the slowest, +in movement. Lear combines length with rapidity,--like the hurricane and +the whirlpool, absorbing while it advances. It begins as a stormy day in +summer, with brightness; but that brightness is lurid, and anticipates +the tempest. + +It was not without forethought, nor is it without its due significance, +that the division of Lear's kingdom is in the first six lines of the +play stated as a thing already determined in all its particulars, +previously to the trial of professions, as the relative rewards of which +the daughters were to be made to consider their several portions. The +strange, yet by no means unnatural, mixture of selfishness, sensibility, +and habit of feeling derived from, and fostered by, the particular rank +and usages of the individual;--the intense desire of being intensely +beloved,--selfish, and yet characteristic of the selfishness of a loving +and kindly nature alone;--the self-supportless leaning for all pleasure +on another's breast;--the craving after sympathy with a prodigal +disinterestedness, frustrated by its own ostentation, and the mode and +nature of its claims;--the anxiety, the distrust, the jealousy, which +more or less accompany all selfish affections, and are amongst the +surest contradistinctions of mere fondness from true love, and which +originate Lear's eager wish to enjoy his daughter's violent professions, +whilst the inveterate habits of sovereignty convert the wish into claim +and positive right, and an incompliance with it into crime and +treason;--these facts, these passions, these moral verities, on which +the whole tragedy is founded, are all prepared for, and will to the +retrospect be found implied, in these first four or five lines of the +play. They let us know that the trial is but a trick; and that the +grossness of the old king's rage is in part the natural result of a +silly trick suddenly and most unexpectedly baffled and disappointed. + +It may here be worthy of notice, that Lear is the only serious +performance of Shakspeare, the interest and situations of which are +derived from the assumption of a gross improbability; whereas Beaumont +and Fletcher's tragedies are, almost all of them, founded on some out of +the way accident or exception to the general experience of mankind. But +observe the matchless judgment of our Shakspeare. First, improbable as +the conduct of Lear is in the first scene, yet it was an old story +rooted in the popular faith,--a thing taken for granted already, and +consequently without any of the effects of improbability. Secondly, it +is merely the canvass for the characters and passions,--a mere occasion +for,--and not, in the manner of Beaumont and Fletcher, perpetually +recurring as the cause, and 'sine qua non' of,--the incidents and +emotions. Let the first scene of this play have been lost, and let it +only be understood that a fond father had been duped by hypocritical +professions of love and duty on the part of two daughters to disinherit +the third, previously, and deservedly, more dear to him;--and all the +rest of the tragedy would retain its interest undiminished, and be +perfectly intelligible. The accidental is nowhere the groundwork of the +passions, but that which is catholic, which in all ages has been, and +ever will be, close and native to the heart of man,--parental anguish +from filial ingratitude, the genuineness of worth, though coffined in +bluntness, and the execrable vileness of a smooth iniquity. Perhaps I +ought to have added the Merchant of Venice; but here too the same +remarks apply. It was an old tale; and substitute any other danger than +that of the pound of flesh (the circumstance in which the improbability +lies), yet all the situations and the emotions appertaining to them +remain equally excellent and appropriate. Whereas take away from the Mad +Lover of Beaumont and Fletcher the fantastic hypothesis of his +engagement to cut out his own heart, and have it presented to his +mistress, and all the main scenes must go with it. + +Kotzebue is the German Beaumont and Fletcher, without their poetic +powers, and without their 'vis comica'. But, like them, he always +deduces his situations and passions from marvellous accidents, and the +trick of bringing one part of our moral nature to counteract another; as +our pity for misfortune and admiration of generosity and courage to +combat our condemnation of guilt, as in adultery, robbery, and other +heinous crimes;--and, like them too, he excels in his mode of telling a +story clearly and interestingly, in a series of dramatic dialogues. Only +the trick of making tragedy-heroes and heroines out of shopkeepers and +barmaids was too low for the age, and too unpoetic for the genius, of +Beaumont and Fletcher, inferior in every respect as they are to their +great predecessor and contemporary. How inferior would they have +appeared, had not Shakspeare existed for them to imitate;--which in +every play, more or less, they do, and in their tragedies most +glaringly:--and yet--(O shame! shame!)--they miss no opportunity of +sneering at the divine man, and sub-detracting from his merits! + +To return to Lear. Having thus in the fewest words, and in a natural +reply to as natural a question,--which yet answers the secondary purpose +of attracting our attention to the difference or diversity between the +characters of Cornwall and Albany,--provided the premisses and 'data', +as it were, for our after insight into the mind and mood of the person, +whose character, passions, and sufferings are the main subject-matter of +the play;--from Lear, the 'persona patiens' of his drama, Shakspeare +passes without delay to the second in importance, the chief agent and +prime mover, and introduces Edmund to our acquaintance, preparing us +with the same felicity of judgment, and in the same easy and natural +way, for his character in the seemingly casual communication of its +origin and occasion. From the first drawing up of the curtain Edmund has +stood before us in the united strength and beauty of earliest manhood. +Our eyes have been questioning him. Gifted as he is with high advantages +of person, and further endowed by nature with a powerful intellect and a +strong energetic will, even without any concurrence of circumstances and +accident, pride will necessarily be the sin that most easily besets him. +But Edmund is also the known and acknowledged son of the princely +Gloster: he, therefore, has both the germ of pride, and the conditions +best fitted to evolve and ripen it into a predominant feeling. Yet +hitherto no reason appears why it should be other than the not unusual +pride of person, talent, and birth,--a pride auxiliary, if not akin, to +many virtues, and the natural ally of honorable impulses. But alas! in +his own presence his own father takes shame to himself for the frank +avowal that he is his father,--he has 'blushed so often to acknowledge +him that he is now brazed to it!' Edmund hears the circumstances of his +birth spoken of with a most degrading and licentious levity,--his mother +described as a wanton by her own paramour, and the remembrance of the +animal sting, the low criminal gratifications connected with her +wantonness and prostituted beauty, assigned as the reason, why 'the +whoreson must be acknowledged!' This, and the consciousness of its +notoriety; the gnawing conviction that every show of respect is an +effort of courtesy, which recalls, while it represses, a contrary +feeling;--this is the ever trickling flow of wormwood and gall into the +wounds of pride,--the corrosive 'virus' which inoculates pride with a +venom not its own, with envy, hatred, and a lust for that power which in +its blaze of radiance would hide the dark spots on his disc,--with pangs +of shame personally undeserved, and therefore felt as wrongs, and with a +blind ferment of vindictive working towards the occasions and causes, +especially towards a brother, whose stainless birth and lawful honours +were the constant remembrancers of his own debasement, and were ever in +the way to prevent all chance of its being unknown, or overlooked and +forgotten. Add to this, that with excellent judgment, and provident for +the claims of the moral sense,--for that which, relatively to the drama, +is called poetic justice, and as the fittest means for reconciling the +feelings of the spectators to the horrors of Gloster's after +sufferings,--at least, of rendering them somewhat less unendurable; +--(for I will not disguise my conviction, that in this one point the +tragic in this play has been urged beyond the outermost mark and 'ne +plus ultra' of the dramatic)--Shakspeare has precluded all excuse and +palliation of the guilt incurred by both the parents of the base-born +Edmund, by Gloster's confession that he was at the time a married man, +and already blest with a lawful heir of his fortunes. The mournful +alienation of brotherly love, occasioned by the law of primogeniture in +noble families, or rather by the unnecessary distinctions engrafted +thereon, and this in children of the same stock, is still almost +proverbial on the continent,--especially, as I know from my own +observation, in the south of Europe,--and appears to have been scarcely +less common in our own island before the Revolution of 1688, if we may +judge from the characters and sentiments so frequent in our elder +comedies. There is the younger brother, for instance, in Beaumont and +Fletcher's play of the Scornful Lady, on the one side, and Oliver in +Shakspeare's As You Like It, on the other. Need it be said how heavy an +aggravation, in such a case, the stain of bastardy must have been, were +it only that the younger brother was liable to hear his own dishonour +and his mother's infamy related by his father with an excusing shrug of +the shoulders, and in a tone betwixt waggery and shame! + +By the circumstances here enumerated as so many predisposing causes, +Edmund's character might well be deemed already sufficiently explained; +and our minds prepared for it. But in this tragedy the story or fable +constrained Shakspeare to introduce wickedness in an outrageous form in +the persons of Regan and Goneril. He had read nature too heedfully not +to know, that courage, intellect, and strength of character, are the +most impressive forms of power, and that to power in itself, without +reference to any moral end, an inevitable admiration and complacency +appertains, whether it be displayed in the conquests of a Buonaparte or +Tamerlane, or in the foam and the thunder of a cataract. But in the +exhibition of such a character it was of the highest importance to +prevent the guilt from passing into utter monstrosity,--which again +depends on the presence or absence of causes and temptations sufficient +to account for the wickedness, without the necessity of recurring to a +thorough fiendishness of nature for its origination. For such are the +appointed relations of intellectual power to truth, and of truth to +goodness, that it becomes both morally and poetically unsafe to present +what is admirable,--what our nature compels us to admire--in the mind, +and what is most detestable in the heart, as co-existing in the same +individual without any apparent connection, or any modification of the +one by the other. That Shakspeare has in one instance, that of Iago, +approached to this, and that he has done it successfully, is, perhaps, +the most astonishing proof of his genius, and the opulence of its +resources. But in the present tragedy, in which he was compelled to +present a Goneril and a Regan, it was most carefully to be avoided;--and +therefore the only one conceivable addition to the inauspicious +influences on the preformation of Edmund's character is given, in the +information that all the kindly counteractions to the mischievous +feelings of shame, which might have been derived from co-domestication +with Edgar and their common father, had been cut off by his absence from +home, and foreign education from boyhood to the present time, and a +prospect of its continuance, as if to preclude all risk of his +interference with the father's views for the elder and legitimate son:-- + + +He hath been out nine years, and away he shall again. + + +Act i. sc. 1. + + + 'Cor.' Nothing, my lord. + + 'Lear.' Nothing? + + 'Cor.' Nothing. + + 'Lear.' Nothing can come of nothing: speak again. + + 'Cor.' Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave + My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty + According to my bond; nor more, nor less. + +There is something of disgust at the ruthless hypocrisy of her sisters, +and some little faulty admixture of pride and sullenness in Cordelia's +'Nothing;' and her tone is well contrived, indeed, to lessen the glaring +absurdity of Lear's conduct, but answers the yet more important purpose +of forcing away the attention from the nursery-tale, the moment it has +served its end, that of supplying the canvass for the picture. This is +also materially furthered by Kent's opposition, which displays Lear's +moral incapability of resigning the sovereign power in the very act of +disposing of it. Kent is, perhaps, the nearest to perfect goodness in +all Shakspeare's characters, and yet the most individualized. There is +an extraordinary charm in his bluntness, which is that only of a +nobleman arising from a contempt of overstrained courtesy; and combined +with easy placability where goodness of heart is apparent. His +passionate affection for, and fidelity to, Lear act on our feelings in +Lear's own favour: virtue itself seems to be in company with him. + +'Ib.' sc. 2. Edmund's speech:-- + + + Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take + More composition and fierce quality + Than doth, &c. + + +Warburton's note upon a quotation from Vanini. + +Poor Vanini!--Any one but Warburton would have thought this precious +passage more characteristic of Mr. Shandy than of atheism. If the fact +really were so, (which it is not, but almost the contrary,) I do not see +why the most confirmed theist might not very naturally utter the same +wish. But it is proverbial that the youngest son in a large family is +commonly the man of the greatest talents in it; and as good an authority +as Vanini has said--'incalescere in venerem ardentius, spei sobolis +injuriosum esse'. + +In this speech of Edmund you see, as soon as a man cannot reconcile +himself to reason, how his conscience flies off by way of appeal to +nature, who is sure upon such occasions never to find fault, and also +how shame sharpens a predisposition in the heart to evil. For it is a +profound moral, that shame will naturally generate guilt; the oppressed +will be vindictive, like Shylock, and in the anguish of undeserved +ignominy the delusion secretly springs up, of getting over the moral +quality of an action by fixing the mind on the mere physical act alone. + +'Ib.' Edmund's speech:-- + + + This is the excellent foppery of the world! that, when we are sick in + fortune, (often the surfeit of our own behaviour,) we make guilty of + our disasters, the sun, the moon, and the stars, &c. + + +Thus scorn and misanthropy are often the anticipations and mouth-pieces +of wisdom in the detection of superstitions. Both individuals and +nations may be free from such prejudices by being below them, as well as +by rising above them. + +'Ib.' sc. 3. The Steward should be placed in exact antithesis to Kent, +as the only character of utter irredeemable baseness in Shakspeare. Even +in this the judgment and invention of the poet are very observable;--for +what else could the willing tool of a Goneril be? Not a vice but this of +baseness was left open to him. + +'Ib.' sc. 4. In Lear old age is itself a character,--its natural +imperfections being increased by life-long habits of receiving a prompt +obedience. Any addition of individuality would have been unnecessary and +painful; for the relations of others to him, of wondrous fidelity and of +frightful ingratitude, alone sufficiently distinguish him. Thus Lear +becomes the open and ample play-room of nature's passions. + +Ib. + + + 'Knight'. Since my young lady's going into France, Sir; the fool hath + much pin'd away. + + +The Fool is no comic buffoon to make the groundlings laugh,--no forced +condescension of Shakspeare's genius to the taste of his audience. +Accordingly the poet prepares for his introduction, which he never does +with any of his common clowns and fools, by bringing him into living +connection with the pathos of the play. He is as wonderful a creation as +Caliban;--his wild babblings, and inspired idiocy, articulate and gauge +the horrors of the scene. + +The monster Goneril prepares what is necessary, while the character of +Albany renders a still more maddening grievance possible, namely, Regan +and Cornwall in perfect sympathy of monstrosity. Not a sentiment, not an +image, which can give pleasure on its own account, is admitted; whenever +these creatures are introduced, and they are brought forward as little +as possible, pure horror reigns throughout. In this scene and in all the +early speeches of Lear, the one general sentiment of filial ingratitude +prevails as the main spring of the feelings;--in this early stage the +outward object causing the pressure on the mind, which is not yet +sufficiently familiarized with the anguish for the imagination to work +upon it. + +Ib. + + 'Gon.' Do you mark that, my lord? + + 'Alb.' I cannot be so partial, Goneril, + To the great love I bear you. + + 'Gon'. Pray you content, &c. + + +Observe the baffled endeavour of Goneril to act on the fears of Albany, +and yet his passiveness, his 'inertia'; he is not convinced, and yet he +is afraid of looking into the thing. Such characters always yield to +those who will take the trouble of governing them, or for them. Perhaps, +the influence of a princess, whose choice of him had royalized his +state, may be some little excuse for Albany's weakness. 'Ib.' sc. 5. + + 'Lear'. O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven! + Keep me in temper! I would not be mad!-- + +The mind's own anticipation of madness! The deepest tragic notes are +often struck by a half sense of an impending blow. The Fool's conclusion +of this act by a grotesque prattling seems to indicate the dislocation +of feeling that has begun and is to be continued. Act ii. sc. 1. +Edmund's speech:- + + He replied, Thou unpossessing bastard! &c. + +Thus the secret poison in Edmund's own heart steals forth; and then +observe poor Gloster's-- + + Loyal and _natural_ boy! + +as if praising the crime of Edmund's birth! + +'Ib.' Compare Regan's-- + + What, did _my father's_ godson seek your life? + He whom _my father_ named? + +with the unfeminine violence of her-- + + All vengeance comes too short, &c. + +and yet no reference to the guilt, but only to the accident, which she +uses as an occasion for sneering at her father. Regan is not, in fact, a +greater monster than Goneril, but she has the power of casting more +venom. 'Ib.' sc. 2. Cornwall's speech:-- + + This is some fellow, + Who, having been praised for bluntness, doth affect + A saucy roughness, &c. + + +In thus placing these profound general truths in the mouths of such men +as Cornwall, Edmund, Iago, &c. Shakspeare at once gives them utterance, +and yet shews how indefinite their application is. + +'Ib.' sc. 3. Edgar's assumed madness serves the great purpose of taking +off part of the shock which would otherwise be caused by the true +madness of Lear, and further displays the profound difference between +the two. In every attempt at representing madness throughout the whole +range of dramatic literature, with the single exception of Lear, it is +mere light-headedness, as especially in Otway. In Edgar's ravings +Shakspeare all the while lets you see a fixed purpose, a practical end +in view;-- + +in Lear's, there is only the brooding of the one anguish, an eddy +without progression. 'Ib.' sc. 4. Lear's speech:-- + + The king would speak with Cornwall; the dear father + Would with his daughter speak, &c. + + ... + + No, but not yet: may be he is not well, &c. + +The strong interest now felt by Lear to try to find excuses for his +daughter is most pathetic. 'Ib.' Lear's speech:-- + + --Beloved Regan, + Thy sister's naught;--O Regan, she hath tied + Sharp-tooth'd unkindness, like a vulture, here. + I can scarce speak to thee;--thou'lt not believe + Of how deprav'd a quality--O Regan! + + 'Reg'. I pray you, Sir, take patience; I have hope, + You less know how to value her desert, + Than she to scant her duty. + + 'Lear' Say, how is that? + +Nothing is so heart-cutting as a cold unexpected defence or palliation +of a cruelty passionately complained of, or so expressive of thorough +hard-heartedness. And feel the excessive horror of Regan's 'O, Sir, you +are old!'--and then her drawing from that universal object of reverence +and indulgence the very reason for her frightful conclusion-- + + Say, you have wrong'd her! + + +All Lear's faults increase our pity for him. We refuse to know them +otherwise than as means of his sufferings, and aggravations of his +daughters' ingratitude. + +'Ib.' Lear's speech:-- + + + O, reason not the need: our basest beggars + Are in the poorest thing superfluous, &c. + + +Observe that the tranquillity which follows the first stunning of the +blow permits Lear to reason. + +Act iii. sc. 4. O, what a world's convention of agonies is here! All +external nature in a storm, all moral nature convulsed,--the real +madness of Lear, the feigned madness of Edgar, the babbling of the Fool, +the desperate fidelity of Kent--surely such a scene was never conceived +before or since! Take it but as a picture for the eye only, it is more +terrific than any which a Michel Angelo, inspired by a Dante, could have +conceived, and which none but a Michel Angelo could have executed. Or +let it have been uttered to the blind, the howlings of nature would seem +converted into the voice of conscious humanity. This scene ends with the +first symptoms of positive derangement; and the intervention of the +fifth scene is particularly judicious,--the interruption allowing an +interval for Lear to appear in full madness in the sixth scene. + +'Ib.' sc. 7. Gloster's blinding:-- + +What can I say of this scene?--There is my reluctance to think +Shakspeare wrong, and yet-- + +Act iv. sc. 6. Lear's speech:-- + + + Ha! Goneril!--with a white beard!--They flattered me like a dog; and + told me, I had white hairs in my beard, ere the black ones were there. + To say _Ay_ and _No_ to every thing I said!--Ay and No too was no good + divinity. When the rain came to wet me once, &c. + + +The thunder recurs, but still at a greater distance from our feelings. + +'Ib.' sc. 7. Lear's speech:-- + + + Where have I been? Where am I?--Fair daylight?-- + I am mightily abused.--I should even die with pity + To see another thus, &c. + + +How beautifully the affecting return of Lear to reason, and the mild +pathos of these speeches prepare the mind for the last sad, yet sweet, +consolation of the aged sufferer's death! + + + + + +HAMLET. + +Hamlet was the play, or rather Hamlet himself was the character, in the +intuition and exposition of which I first made my turn for philosophical +criticism, and especially for insight into the genius of Shakspeare, +noticed. This happened first amongst my acquaintances, as Sir George +Beaumont will bear witness; and subsequently, long before Schlegel had +delivered at Vienna the lectures on Shakspeare, which he afterwards +published, I had given on the same subject eighteen lectures +substantially the same, proceeding from the very same point of view, and +deducing the same conclusions, so far as I either then agreed, or now +agree, with him. I gave these lectures at the Royal Institution, before +six or seven hundred auditors of rank and eminence, in the spring of the +same year, in which Sir Humphry Davy, a fellow-lecturer, made his great +revolutionary discoveries in chemistry. Even in detail the coincidence +of Schlegel with my lectures was so extraordinary, that all who at a +later period heard the same words, taken by me from my notes of the +lectures at the Royal Institution, concluded a borrowing on my part from +Schlegel. Mr. Hazlitt, whose hatred of me is in such an inverse ratio to +my zealous kindness towards him, as to be defended by his warmest +admirer, Charles Lamb--(who, God bless him! besides his characteristic +obstinacy of adherence to old friends, as long at least as they are at +all down in the world, is linked as by a charm to Hazlitt's +conversation)--only as 'frantic;'--Mr. Hazlitt, I say, himself replied +to an assertion of my plagiarism from Schlegel in these words;--"That is +a lie; for I myself heard the very same character of Hamlet from +Coleridge before he went to Germany, and when he had neither read nor +could read a page of German!" Now Hazlitt was on a visit to me at my +cottage at Nether Stowey, Somerset, in the summer of the year 1798, in +the September of which year I first was out of sight of the shores of +Great Britain. Recorded by me, S. T. Coleridge, 7th January, 1819. + +The seeming inconsistencies in the conduct and character of Hamlet have +long exercised the conjectural ingenuity of critics; and, as we are +always both to suppose that the cause of defective apprehension is in +ourselves, the mystery has been too commonly explained by the very easy +process of setting it down as in fact inexplicable, and by resolving the +phenomenon into a misgrowth or 'lusus' of the capricious and irregular +genius of Shakspeare. The shallow and stupid arrogance of these vulgar +and indolent decisions I would fain do my best to expose. I believe the +character of Hamlet may be traced to Shakspeare's deep and accurate +science in mental philosophy. Indeed, that this character must have some +connection with the common fundamental laws of our nature may be assumed +from the fact, that Hamlet has been the darling of every country in +which the literature of England has been fostered. In order to +understand him, it is essential that we should reflect on the +constitution of our own minds. Man is distinguished from the brute +animals in proportion as thought prevails over sense: but in the healthy +processes of the mind, a balance is constantly maintained between the +impressions from outward objects and the inward operations of the +intellect;--for if there be an overbalance in the contemplative faculty, +man thereby becomes the creature of mere meditation, and loses his +natural power of action. Now one of Shakspeare's modes of creating +characters is, to conceive any one intellectual or moral faculty in +morbid excess, and then to place himself, Shakspeare, thus mutilated or +diseased, under given circumstances. In Hamlet he seems to have wished +to exemplify the moral necessity of a due balance between our attention +to the objects of our senses, and our meditation on the workings of our +minds,--an 'equilibrium' between the real and the imaginary worlds. In +Hamlet this balance is disturbed: his thoughts, and the images of his +fancy, are far more vivid than his actual perceptions, and his very +perceptions, instantly passing through the 'medium' of his +contemplations, acquire, as they pass, a form and a colour not naturally +their own. Hence we see a great, an almost enormous, intellectual +activity, and a proportionate aversion to real action consequent upon +it, with all its symptoms and accompanying qualities. This character +Shakspeare places in circumstances, under which it is obliged to act on +the spur of the moment:--Hamlet is brave and careless of death; but he +vacillates from sensibility, and procrastinates from thought, and loses +the power of action in the energy of resolve. Thus it is that this +tragedy presents a direct contrast to that of Macbeth; the one proceeds +with the utmost slowness, the other with a crowded and breathless +rapidity. + +The effect of this overbalance of the imaginative power is beautifully +illustrated in the everlasting broodings and superfluous activities of +Hamlet's mind, which, unseated from its healthy relation, is constantly +occupied with the world within, and abstracted from the world +without,--giving substance to shadows, and throwing a mist over all +common-place actualities. It is the nature of thought to be +indefinite;--definiteness belongs to external imagery alone. Hence it is +that the sense of sublimity arises, not from the sight of an outward +object, but from the beholder's reflection upon it;--not from the +sensuous impression, but from the imaginative reflex. Few have seen a +celebrated waterfall without feeling something akin to disappointment: +it is only subsequently that the image comes back full into the mind, +and brings with it a train of grand or beautiful associations. Hamlet +feels this; his senses are in a state of trance, and he looks upon +external things as hieroglyphics. His soliloquy-- + + + O! that this too too solid flesh would melt, &c. + + +springs from that craving after the indefinite--for that which is +not--which most easily besets men of genius; and the self-delusion +common to this temper of mind is finely exemplified in the character +which Hamlet gives of himself:-- + + + --It cannot be + But I am pigeon-livered, and lack gall + To make oppression bitter. + + +He mistakes the seeing his chains for the breaking them, delays action +till action is of no use, and dies the victim of mere circumstance and +accident. + +There is a great significancy in the names of Shakspeare's plays. In the +Twelfth Night, Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, and Winter's +Tale, the total effect is produced by a co-ordination of the characters +as in a wreath of flowers. But in Coriolanus, Lear, Romeo and Juliet, +Hamlet, Othello, &c. the effect arises from the subordination of all to +one, either as the prominent person, or the principal object. Cymbeline +is the only exception; and even that has its advantages in preparing the +audience for the chaos of time, place, and costume, by throwing the date +back into a fabulous king's reign. + +But as of more importance, so more striking, is the judgment displayed +by our truly dramatic poet, as well as poet of the drama, in the +management of his first scenes. With the single exception of Cymbeline, +they either place before us at one glance both the past and the future +in some effect, which implies the continuance and full agency of its +cause, as in the feuds and party-spirit of the servants of the two +houses in the first scene of Romeo and Juliet; or in the degrading +passion for shews and public spectacles, and the overwhelming attachment +for the newest successful war-chief in the Roman people, already become +a populace, contrasted with the jealousy of the nobles in Julius +Caesar;--or they at once commence the action so as to excite a curiosity +for the explanation in the following scenes, as in the storm of wind and +waves, and the boatswain in the Tempest, instead of anticipating our +curiosity, as in most other first scenes, and in too many other first +acts;--or they act, by contrast of diction suited to the characters, at +once to heighten the effect, and yet to give a naturalness to the +language and rhythm of the principal personages, either as that of +Prospero and Miranda by the appropriate lowness of the style,--or as in +King John, by the equally appropriate stateliness of official harangues +or narratives, so that the after blank verse seems to belong to the rank +and quality of the speakers, and not to the poet;--or they strike at +once the key-note, and give the predominant spirit of the play, as in +the Twelfth Night and in Macbeth;--or finally, the first scene comprises +all these advantages at once, as in Hamlet. + +Compare the easy language of common life, in which this drama commences, +with the direful music and wild wayward rhythm and abrupt lyrics of the +opening of Macbeth. The tone is quite familiar;--there is no poetic +description of night, no elaborate information conveyed by one speaker +to another of what both had immediately before their senses--(such as +the first distich in Addison's Cato, which is a translation into poetry +of 'Past four o'clock and a dark morning!');--and yet nothing bordering +on the comic on the one hand, nor any striving of the intellect on the +other. It is precisely the language of sensation among men who feared no +charge of effeminacy for feeling, what they had no want of resolution to +bear. Yet the armour, the dead silence, the watchfulness that first +interrupts it, the welcome relief of the guard, the cold, the broken +expressions of compelled attention to bodily feelings still under +control--all excellently accord with, and prepare for, the after gradual +rise into tragedy;--but, above all, into a tragedy, the interest of +which is as eminently 'ad et apud infra', as that of Macbeth is directly +'ad extra'. + +In all the best attested stories of ghosts and visions, as in that of +Brutus, of Archbishop Cranmer, that of Benvenuto Cellini recorded by +himself, and the vision of Galileo communicated by him to his favourite +pupil Torricelli, the ghost-seers were in a state of cold or chilling +damp from without, and of anxiety inwardly. It has been with all of them +as with Francisco on his guard,--alone, in the depth and silence of the +night;--''twas bitter cold, and they were sick at heart, and _not a +mouse stirring_.' The attention to minute sounds,--naturally associated +with the recollection of minute objects, and the more familiar and +trifling, the more impressive from the unusualness of their producing +any impression at all--gives a philosophic pertinency to this last +image; but it has likewise its dramatic use and purpose. For its +commonness in ordinary conversation tends to produce the sense of +reality, and at once hides the poet, and yet approximates the reader or +spectator to that state in which the highest poetry will appear, and in +its component parts, though not in the whole composition, really is, the +language of nature. If I should not speak it, I feel that I should be +thinking it;--the voice only is the poet's,--the words are my own. That +Shakspeare meant to put an effect in the actor's power in the very first +words--"Who's there?"--is evident from the impatience expressed by the +startled Francisco in the words that follow--"Nay, answer me: stand and +unfold yourself." A brave man is never so peremptory, as when he fears +that he is afraid. Observe the gradual transition from the silence and +the still recent habit of listening in Francisco's--"I think I hear +them"--to the more cheerful call out, which a good actor would observe, +in the--"Stand ho! Who is there?" Bernardo's inquiry after Horatio, and +the repetition of his name and in his own presence indicate a respect or +an eagerness that implies him as one of the persons who are in the +foreground; and the scepticism attributed to him,-- + + +Horatio says,'tis but our fantasy; And will not let belief take hold of +him-- + + +prepares us for Hamlet's after eulogy on him as one whose blood and +judgment were happily commingled. The actor should also be careful to +distinguish the expectation and gladness of Bernardo's 'Welcome, +Horatio!' from the mere courtesy of his 'Welcome, good Marcellus!' + +Now observe the admirable indefiniteness of the first opening out of the +occasion of all this anxiety. The preparation informative of the +audience is just as much as was precisely necessary, and no more;--it +begins with the uncertainty appertaining to a question:-- + + + 'Mar'. What, has _this thing_ appear'd again to-night?-- + + +Even the word 'again' has its 'credibilizing' effect. Then Horatio, the +representative of the ignorance of the audience, not himself, but by +Marcellus to Bernardo, anticipates the common solution--''tis but our +fantasy!' upon which Marcellus rises into + + + This dreaded sight, twice seen of us-- + + +which immediately afterwards becomes 'this apparition,' and that, too, +an intelligent spirit, that is, to be spoken to! Then comes the +confirmation of Horatio's disbelief;-- + + + Tush! tush! 'twill not appear!-- + + +and the silence, with which the scene opened, is again restored in the +shivering feeling of Horatio sitting down, at such a time, and with the +two eye-witnesses, to hear a story of a ghost, and that, too, of a ghost +which had appeared twice before at the very same hour. In the deep +feeling which Bernardo has of the solemn nature of what he is about to +relate, he makes an effort to master his own imaginative terrors by an +elevation of style,--itself a continuation of the effort,--and by +turning off from the apparition, as from something which would force him +too deeply into himself, to the outward objects, the realities of +nature, which had accompanied it:-- + + + 'Ber'. Last night of all, + When yon same star, that's westward from the pole, + Had made his course to illume that part of heaven + Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself, + The bell then beating one-- + + +This passage seems to contradict the critical law that what is told, +makes a faint impression compared with what is beholden; for it does +indeed convey to the mind more than the eye can see; whilst the +interruption of the narrative at the very moment, when we are most +intensely listening for the sequel, and have our thoughts diverted from +the dreaded sight in expectation of the desired, yet almost dreaded, +tale--this gives all the suddenness and surprise of the original +appearance;-- + + + 'Mar'. Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again!-- + + +Note the judgment displayed in having the two persons present, who, as +having seen the Ghost before, are naturally eager in confirming their +former opinions,--whilst the sceptic is silent, and after having been +twice addressed by his friends, answers with two hasty syllables--'Most +like,'--and a confession of horror: + + + --It harrows me with fear and wonder. + + +O heaven! words are wasted on those who feel, and to those who do not +feel the exquisite judgment of Shakspeare in this scene, what can be +said?--Hume himself could not but have had faith in this Ghost +dramatically, let his anti-ghostism have been as strong as Samson +against other ghosts less powerfully raised. + +Act i. sc. I. + + + 'Mar'. Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows, + Why this same strict and most observant watch, &c. + + +How delightfully natural is the transition to the retrospective +narrative! And observe, upon the Ghost's reappearance, how much +Horatio's courage is increased by having translated the late individual +spectator into general thought and past experience,--and the sympathy of +Marcellus and Bernardo with his patriotic surmises in daring to strike +at the Ghost; whilst in a moment, upon its vanishing, the former solemn +awe-stricken feeling returns upon them:-- + + + We do it wrong, being so majestical, + To offer it the show of violence.-- + + +'Ib.' Horatio's speech:-- + + + I have heard, + The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn, + Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat + Awake the god of day, &c. + + +No Addison could be more careful to be poetical in diction than +Shakspeare in providing the grounds and sources of its propriety. But +how to elevate a thing almost mean by its familiarity, young poets may +learn in this treatment of the cock-crow. + +'Ib.' Horatio's speech:-- + + + And, by my advice, + Let us impart what we have seen to-night + Unto young Hamlet; for, upon my life, + The spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him. + + +Note the inobtrusive and yet fully adequate mode of introducing the main +character, 'young Hamlet,' upon whom is transferred all the interest +excited for the acts and concerns of the king his father. + +'Ib.' sc. 2. The audience are now relieved by a change of scene to the +royal court, in order that Hamlet may not have to take up the leavings +of exhaustion. In the king's speech, observe the set and pedantically +antithetic form of the sentences when touching that which galled the +heels of conscience,--the strain of undignified rhetoric,--and yet in +what follows concerning the public weal, a certain appropriate majesty. +Indeed was he not a royal brother?-- + +'Ib.' King's speech:-- + + + And now, Laertes, what's the news with you? &c. + + +Thus with great art Shakspeare introduces a most important, but still +subordinate character first, Laertes, who is yet thus graciously treated +in consequence of the assistance given to the election of the late +king's brother instead of his son by Polonius. + +Ib. + + + 'Ham'. A little more than kin, and less than kind. + + 'King'. How is it that the clouds still hang on you? + + 'Ham'. Not so, my lord, I am too much i' the sun. + +Hamlet opens his mouth with a playing on words, the complete absence of +which throughout characterizes Macbeth. This playing on words may be +attributed to many causes or motives, as either to an exuberant activity +of mind, as in the higher comedy of Shakspeare generally;--or to an +imitation of it as a mere fashion, as if it were said--'Is not this +better than groaning?'--or to a contemptuous exultation in minds +vulgarized and overset by their success, as in the poetic instance of +Milton's Devils in the battle;--or it is the language of resentment, as +is familiar to every one who has witnessed the quarrels of the lower +orders, where there is invariably a profusion of punning invective, +whence, perhaps, nicknames have in a considerable degree sprung up;--or +it is the language of suppressed passion, and especially of a hardly +smothered personal dislike. The first, and last of these combine in +Hamlet's case; and I have little doubt that Farmer is right in supposing +the equivocation carried on in the expression 'too much i' the sun,' or +son. + +Ib. + + + 'Ham'. Ay, madam, it is common. + + +Here observe Hamlet's delicacy to his mother, and how the suppression +prepares him for the overflow in the next speech, in which his character +is more developed by bringing forward his aversion to externals, and +which betrays his habit of brooding over the world within him, coupled +with a prodigality of beautiful words, which are the half embodyings of +thought, and are more than thought, and have an outness, a reality 'sui +generis', and yet retain their correspondence and shadowy affinity to +the images and movements within. Note also Hamlet's silence to the long +speech of the king which follows, and his respectful, but general, +answer to his mother. + +'Ib.' Hamlet's first soliloquy:-- + + + O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, + Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew! &c. + + +This 'tædium vitæ'; is a common oppression on minds cast in the Hamlet +mould, and is caused by disproportionate mental exertion, which +necessitates exhaustion of bodily feeling. Where there is a just +coincidence of external and internal action, pleasure is always the +result; but where the former is deficient, and the mind's appetency of +the ideal is unchecked, realities will seem cold and unmoving. In such +cases, passion combines itself with the indefinite alone. In this mood +of his mind the relation of the appearance of his father's spirit in +arms is made all at once to Hamlet:--it is--Horatio's speech, in +particular--a perfect model of the true style of dramatic +narrative;--the purest poetry, and yet in the most natural language, +equally remote from the ink-horn and the plough. + +'Ib.' sc. 3. This scene must be regarded as one of Shakspeare's lyric +movements in the play, and the skill with which it is interwoven with +the dramatic parts is peculiarly an excellence of our poet. You +experience the sensation of a pause without the sense of a stop. You +will observe in Ophelia's short and general answer to the long speech of +Laertes the natural carelessness of innocence, which cannot think such a +code of cautions and prudences necessary to its own preservation. + +'Ib.' Speech of Polonius:--(in Stockdale's edition.) + + + Or (not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,) + Wronging it thus, you'll tender me a fool. + + +I suspect this 'wronging' is here used much in the same sense as +'wringing' or 'wrenching;' and that the parenthesis should be extended +to 'thus.' [1] + +'Ib.' Speech of Polonius:-- + + + --How prodigal the soul + Lends the tongue vows:--these blazes, daughter, &c. + + +A spondee has, I doubt not, dropped out of the text. Either insert 'Go +to' after 'vows;'-- + + + Lends the tongue vows:--Go to, these blazes, daughter-- + + +or read + + + Lends the tongue vows:--These blazes, daughter, mark you-- + + +Shakspeare never introduces a catalectic line without intending an +equivalent to the foot omitted in the pauses, or the dwelling emphasis, +or the diffused retardation. I do not, however, deny that a good actor +might by employing the last mentioned means, namely, the retardation, or +solemn knowing drawl, supply the missing spondee with good effect. But I +do not believe that in this or any other of the foregoing speeches of +Polonius, Shakspeare meant to bring out the senility or weakness of that +personage's mind. In the great ever-recurring dangers and duties of +life, where to distinguish the fit objects for the application of the +maxims collected by the experience of a long life, requires no fineness +of tact, as in the admonitions to his son and daughter, Polonius is +uniformly made respectable. But if an actor were even capable of +catching these shades in the character, the pit and the gallery would be +malcontent at their exhibition. It is to Hamlet that Polonius is, and is +meant to be, contemptible, because in inwardness and uncontrollable +activity of movement, Hamlet's mind is the logical contrary to that of +Polonius, and besides, as I have observed before, Hamlet dislikes the +man as false to his true allegiance in the matter of the succession to +the crown. + +'Ib.' sc. 4. The unimportant conversation with which this scene opens is +a proof of Shakspeare's minute knowledge of human nature. It is a well +established fact, that on the brink of any serious enterprise, or event +of moment, men almost invariably endeavour to elude the pressure of +their own thoughts by turning aside to trivial objects and familiar +circumstances: thus this dialogue on the platform begins with remarks on +the coldness of the air, and inquiries, obliquely connected, indeed, +with the expected hour of the visitation, but thrown out in a seeming +vacuity of topics, as to the striking of the clock and so forth. The +same desire to escape from the impending thought is carried on in +Hamlet's account of, and moralizing on, the Danish custom of wassailing: +he runs off from the particular to the universal, and, in his repugnance +to personal and individual concerns, escapes, as it were, from himself +in generalizations, and smothers the impatience and uneasy feelings of +the moment in abstract reasoning. Besides this, another purpose is +answered;--for by thus entangling the attention of the audience in the +nice distinctions and parenthetical sentences of this speech of +Hamlet's, Shakspeare takes them completely by surprise on the appearance +of the Ghost, which comes upon them in all the suddenness of its +visionary character. Indeed, no modern writer would have dared, like +Shakspeare, to have preceded this last visitation by two distinct +appearances,--or could have contrived that the third should rise upon +the former two in impressiveness and solemnity of interest. + +But in addition to all the other excellencies of Hamlet's speech +concerning the wassel-music--so finely revealing the predominant +idealism, the ratiocinative meditativeness, of his character--it has the +advantage of giving nature and probability to the impassioned continuity +of the speech instantly directed to the Ghost. The 'momentum' had been +given to his mental activity; the full current of the thoughts and words +had set in, and the very forgetfulness, in the fervour of his +argumentation, of the purpose for which he was there, aided in +preventing the appearance from benumbing the mind. Consequently, it +acted as a new impulse,--a sudden stroke which increased the velocity of +the body already in motion, whilst it altered the direction. The +co-presence of Horatio, Marcellus, and Bernardo is most judiciously +contrived; for it renders the courage of Hamlet and his impetuous +eloquence perfectly intelligible. The knowledge,--the unthought of +consciousness,--the sensation,--of human auditors,--of flesh and blood +sympathists--acts as a support and a stimulation 'a tergo', while the +front of the mind, the whole consciousness of the speaker, is filled, +yea, absorbed, by the apparition. Add too, that the apparition itself +has by its previous appearances been brought nearer to a thing of this +world. This accrescence of objectivity in a Ghost that yet retains all +its ghostly attributes and fearful subjectivity, is truly wonderful. + +'Ib.' sc. 5. Hamlet's speech:-- + + + O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else? + And shall I couple hell?-- + + +I remember nothing equal to this burst unless it be the first speech of +Prometheus in the Greek drama, after the exit of Vulcan and the two +Afrites. But Shakspeare alone could have produced the vow of Hamlet to +make his memory a blank of all maxims and generalized truths, that +'observation had copied there,'--followed immediately by the speaker +noting down the generalized fact, + + + That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain! + + +Ib. + + + 'Mar'. Hillo, ho, ho, my lord! + + 'Ham'. Hillo, ho, ho, boy! come bird, come, &c. + + +This part of the scene after Hamlet's interview with the Ghost has been +charged with an improbable eccentricity. But the truth is, that after +the mind has been stretched beyond its usual pitch and tone, it must +either sink into exhaustion and inanity, or seek relief by change. It is +thus, well known that persons conversant in deeds of cruelty, contrive +to escape from conscience, by connecting something of the ludicrous with +them, and by inventing grotesque terms and a certain technical +phraseology to disguise the horror of their practices. Indeed, +paradoxical as it may appear, the terrible by a law of the human mind +always touches on the verge of the ludicrous. Both arise from the +perception of something out of the common order of things--something, in +fact, out of its place; and if from this we can abstract danger, the +uncommonness will alone remain, and the sense of the ridiculous be +excited. The close alliance of these opposites--they are not +contraries--appears from the circumstance, that laughter is equally the +expression of extreme anguish and horror as of joy: as there are tears +of sorrow and tears of joy, so is there a laugh of terror and a laugh of +merriment. These complex causes will naturally have produced in Hamlet +the disposition to escape from his own feelings of the overwhelming and +supernatural by a wild transition to the ludicrous,--a sort of cunning +bravado, bordering on the flights of delirium. For you may, perhaps, +observe that Hamlet's wildness is but half false; he plays that subtle +trick of pretending to act only when he is very near really being what +he acts. + +The subterraneous speeches of the Ghost are hardly defensible:--but I +would call your attention to the characteristic difference between this +Ghost, as a superstition connected with the most mysterious truths of +revealed religion,--and Shakspeare's consequent reverence in his +treatment of it,--and the foul earthly witcheries and wild language in +Macbeth. + +Act ii. sc. 1. Polonius and Reynaldo. + +In all things dependent on, or rather made up of, fine address, the +manner is no more or otherwise rememberable than the light motions, +steps, and gestures of youth and health. But this is almost every +thing:--no wonder, therefore, if that which can be put down by rule in +the memory should appear to us as mere poring, maudlin, +cunning,--slyness blinking through the watery eye of superannuation. So +in this admirable scene, Polonius, who is throughout the skeleton of his +own former skill and statecraft, hunts the trail of policy at a dead +scent, supplied by the weak fever-smell in his own nostrils. + +'Ib.' sc. 2. Speech of Polonius:-- + + + My liege, and madam, to expostulate, &c. + + +Warburton's note: + + + Then as to the jingles, and play on words, let us but look into the + sermons of Dr. Donne, (the wittiest man of that age) and we shall find + them full of this vein. + + +I have, and that most carefully, read Dr. Donne's sermons, and find none +of these jingles. The great art of an orator--to make whatever he talks +of appear of importance--this, indeed, Donne has effected with +consummate skill. + +Ib. + + + 'Ham'. Excellent well; You are a fishmonger. + + +That is, you are sent to fish out this secret. This is Hamlet's own +meaning. + +Ib. + + + 'Ham'. For if the sun breeds maggots in a dead dog, + Being a god, kissing carrion-- + + +These purposely obscure lines, I rather think, refer to some thought in +Hamlet's mind, contrasting the lovely daughter with such a tedious old +fool, her father, as he, Hamlet, represents Polonius to himself:--'Why, +fool as he is, he is some degrees in rank above a dead dog's carcase; +and if the sun, being a god that kisses carrion, can raise life out of a +dead dog,--why may not good fortune, that favours fools, have raised a +lovely girl out of this dead-alive old fool?' Warburton is often led +astray, in his interpretations, by his attention to general positions +without the due Shakspearian reference to what is probably passing in +the mind of his speaker, characteristic, and expository of his +particular character and present mood. The subsequent passage,-- + + + O Jephtha, judge of Israel! what a treasure hadst thou! + + +is confirmatory of my view of these lines. + +Ib. + + + 'Ham'. You cannot, Sir, take from me any thing that I will more + willingly part withal; except my life, except my life, except my life. + + +This repetition strikes me as most admirable. + +Ib. + + + 'Ham'. Then are our beggars, bodies; and our monarchs, and + out-stretched heroes, the beggars' shadows. + + +I do not understand this; and Shakspeare seems to have intended the +meaning not to be more than snatched at:--'By my fay, I cannot reason!' + +Ib. + + + The rugged Pyrrhus--he whose sable arms, &c. + + +This admirable substitution of the epic for the dramatic, giving such a +reality to the impassioned dramatic diction of Shakspeare's own +dialogue, and authorized, too, by the actual style of the tragedies +before his time (Porrex and Ferrex, Titus Andronicus, &c.)--is well +worthy of notice. The fancy, that a burlesque was intended, sinks below +criticism: the lines, as epic narrative, are superb. + +In the thoughts, and even in the separate parts of the diction, this +description is highly poetical: in truth, taken by itself, this is its +fault that it is too poetical!--the language of lyric vehemence and epic +pomp, and not of the drama. But if Shakspeare had made the diction truly +dramatic, where would have been the contrast between Hamlet and the play +in Hamlet? + +Ib. + + +--had seen the _mobled_ queen, &c. + + +A mob-cap is still a word in common use for a morning cap, which +conceals the whole head of hair, and passes under the chin. It is nearly +the same as the night-cap, that is, it is an imitation of it, so as to +answer the purpose ('I am not drest for company'), and yet reconciling +it with neatness and perfect purity. + +'Ib.' Hamlet's soliloquy: + + + O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! &c. + + +This is Shakspeare's own attestation to the truth of the idea of Hamlet +which I have before put forth. + +Ib. + + +The spirit that I have seen, May be a devil: and the devil hath power To +assume a pleasing shape; yea, and, perhaps Out of my weakness, and my +melancholy, (As he is very potent with such spirits) Abuses me to damn +me. + + +See Sir Thomas Brown: + + + I believe----that those apparitions and ghosts of departed persons are + not the wandering souls of men, but the unquiet walks of devils, + prompting and suggesting us unto mischief, blood and villany, + instilling and stealing into our hearts, that the blessed spirits are + not at rest in their graves, but wander solicitous of the affairs of + the world. + 'Relig. Med'. Pt. I. Sect. 37. + + +Act iii. sc. 1. Hamlet's soliloquy: + + + To be, or not to be, that is the question, &c. + + +This speech is of absolutely universal interest,--and yet to which of +all Shakspeare's characters could it have been appropriately given but +to Hamlet? For Jaques it would have been too deep, and for Iago too +habitual a communion with the heart; which in every man belongs, or +ought to belong, to all mankind. + +Ib. + + + That undiscover'd country, from whose bourne + No traveller returns.-- + + +Theobald's note in defence of the supposed contradiction of this in the +apparition of the Ghost. + +O miserable defender! If it be necessary to remove the apparent +contradiction,--if it be not rather a great beauty,--surely, it were +easy to say, that no traveller returns to this world, as to his home, or +abiding-place. + +Ib. + + + 'Ham'. Ha, ha! are you honest? + + 'Oph'. My lord? + + 'Ham'. Are you fair? + + +Here it is evident that the penetrating Hamlet perceives, from the +strange and forced manner of Ophelia, that the sweet girl was not acting +a part of her own, but was a decoy; and his after speeches are not so +much directed to her as to the listeners and spies. Such a discovery in +a mood so anxious and irritable accounts for a certain harshness in +him;--and yet a wild up-working of love, sporting with opposites in a +wilful self-tormenting strain of irony, is perceptible throughout. 'I +did love you once:'--'I lov'd you not:'--and particularly in his +enumeration of the faults of the sex from which Ophelia is so free, that +the mere freedom therefrom constitutes her character. Note Shakspeare's +charm of composing the female character by the absence of characters, +that is, marks and out-juttings. + +'Ib.' Hamlet's speech:-- + + + I say, we will have no more marriages: those that are married already, + all but one, shall live: the rest shall keep as they are. + + +Observe this dallying with the inward purpose, characteristic of one who +had not brought his mind to the steady acting point. He would fain sting +the uncle's mind;--but to stab his body!--The soliloquy of Ophelia, +which follows, is the perfection of love--so exquisitely unselfish! + +'Ib.' sc. 2. This dialogue of Hamlet with the players is one of the +happiest instances of Shakspeare's power of diversifying the scene while +he is carrying on the plot. + +Ib. + + + 'Ham'. My lord, you play'd once i' the university, you say? + (_To Polonius_.) + + +To have kept Hamlet's love for Ophelia before the audience in any direct +form, would have made a breach in the unity of the interest;--but yet to +the thoughtful reader it is suggested by his spite to poor Polonius, +whom he cannot let rest. + +'Ib.' The style of the interlude here is distinguished from the real +dialogue by rhyme, as in the first interview with the players by epic +verse. + +Ib. + + + 'Ros'. My lord, you once did love me. + + 'Ham'. So I do still, by these pickers and stealers. + + +I never heard an actor give this word 'so' its proper emphasis. +Shakspeare's meaning is--'lov'd you? Hum!--_so_ I do still, &c.' There +has been no change in my opinion:--I think as ill of you as I did. Else +Hamlet tells an ignoble falsehood, and a useless one, as the last speech +to Guildenstern--'Why, look you now,' &c.--proves. + +'Ib.' Hamlet's soliloquy:-- + + + Now could I drink hot blood, + And do such business as the bitter day + Would quake to look on. + + +The utmost at which Hamlet arrives, is a disposition, a mood, to do +something:--but what to do, is still left undecided, while every word he +utters tends to betray his disguise. Yet observe how perfectly equal to +any call of the moment is Hamlet, let it only not be for the future. + +'Ib.' sc. 4. Speech of Polonius. Polonius's volunteer obtrusion of +himself into this business, while it is appropriate to his character, +still itching after former importance, removes all likelihood that +Hamlet should suspect his presence, and prevents us from making his +death injure Hamlet in our opinion. + +'Ib.' The king's speech:-- + + + O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven, &c. + + +This speech well marks the difference between crime and guilt of habit. +The conscience here is still admitted to audience. Nay, even as an +audible soliloquy, it is far less improbable than is supposed by such as +have watched men only in the beaten road of their feelings. But the +final--'all may be well!' is remarkable;--the degree of merit attributed +by the self-flattering soul to its own struggle, though baffled, and to +the indefinite half-promise, half-command, to persevere in religious +duties. The solution is in the divine 'medium' of the Christian doctrine +of expiation:--not what you have done, but what you are, must determine. + +'Ib.' Hamlet's speech:-- + + + Now might I do it, pat, now he is praying: + And now I'll do it:--And so he goes to heaven: + And so am I revenged? That would be scann'd, &c. + + +Dr. Johnson's mistaking of the marks of reluctance and procrastination +for impetuous, horror-striking, fiendishness!--Of such importance is it +to understand the germ of a character. But the interval taken by +Hamlet's speech is truly awful! And then-- + + + My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: + Words, without thoughts, never to heaven go,-- + + +O what a lesson concerning the essential difference between wishing and +willing, and the folly of all motive-mongering, while the individual +self remains! + +'Ib.' sc. 4. + + + 'Ham'. A bloody deed;--almost as bad, good mother, + As kill a king, and marry with his brother. + + 'Queen'. As kill a king? + + +I confess that Shakspeare has left the character of the Queen in an +unpleasant perplexity. Was she, or was she not, conscious of the +fratricide? + +Act iv. sc. 2. + + + 'Ros'. Take you me for a spunge, my lord? + + 'Ham'. Ay, Sir; that soaks up the King's countenance, his rewards, his + authorities, &c. + + +Hamlet's madness is made to consist in the free utterance of all the +thoughts that had passed through his mind before;--in fact, in telling +home-truths. + +Act. iv. sc. 5. Ophelia's singing. O, note the conjunction here of these +two thoughts that had never subsisted in disjunction, the love for +Hamlet, and her filial love, with the guileless floating on the surface +of her pure imagination of the cautions so lately expressed, and the +fears not too delicately avowed, by her father and brother concerning +the dangers to which her honour lay exposed. Thought, affliction, +passion, murder itself--she turns to favour and prettiness. This play of +association is instanced in the close:-- + + + My brother shall know of it, and I thank you for your good counsel. + + +'Ib.' Gentleman's speech:-- + + + And as the world were now but to begin, + Antiquity forgot, custom not known, + The ratifiers and props of every ward-- + They cry, &c. + + +Fearful and self-suspicious as I always feel, when I seem to see an +error of judgment in Shakspeare, yet I cannot reconcile the cool, and, +as Warburton calls it, 'rational and consequential,' reflection in these +lines with the anonymousness, or the alarm, of this Gentleman or +Messenger, as he is called in other editions. + +'Ib.' King's speech:-- + + + There's such divinity doth hedge a king, + That treason can but peep to what it would, + Acts little of his will. + + +Proof, as indeed all else is, that Shakspeare never intended us to see +the King with Hamlet's eyes; though, I suspect, the managers have long +done so. + +'Ib.' Speech of Laertes:-- + + + To hell, allegiance! vows, to the blackest devil! + + Laertes is a 'good' character, but, &c. (WARBURTON.) + + +Mercy on Warburton's notion of goodness! Please to refer to the seventh +scene of this act;-- + + + I will do it; + And for this purpose I'll anoint my sword, &c. + + +uttered by Laertes after the King's description of Hamlet;-- + + + He being remiss, + Most generous, and free from all contriving, + Will not peruse the foils. + + +Yet I acknowledge that Shakspeare evidently wishes, as much as possible, +to spare the character of Laertes,--to break the extreme turpitude of +his consent to become an agent and accomplice of the King's +treachery;--and to this end he re-introduces Ophelia at the close of +this scene to afford a probable stimulus of passion in her brother. + +'Ib.' sc. 6. Hamlet's capture by the pirates. This is almost the only +play of Shakspeare, in which mere accidents, independent of all will, +form an essential part of the plot;--but here how judiciously in keeping +with the character of the over-meditative Hamlet, ever at last +determined by accident or by a fit of passion! + +'Ib.' sc. 7. Note how the King first awakens Laertes's vanity by +praising the reporter, and then gratifies it by the report itself, and +finally points it by-- + + + Sir, this report of his + Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy!-- + + +'Ib.' King's speech: + + + For goodness, growing to a _pleurisy_, + Dies in his own too much. + + +Theobald's note from Warburton, who conjectures 'plethory.' + +I rather think that Shakspeare meant 'pleurisy,' but involved in it the +thought of _plethora_, as supposing pleurisy to arise from too much +blood; otherwise I cannot explain the following line-- + + + And then this _should_ is like a spendthrift sigh, + That hurts by easing. + + +In a stitch in the side every one must have heaved a sigh that 'hurt by +easing.' + +Since writing the above I feel confirmed that 'pleurisy' is the right +word; for I find that in the old medical dictionaries the pleurisy is +often called the 'plethory.' + +Ib. + + + 'Queen'. Your sister's drown'd, Laertes. + + 'Laer'. Drown'd! O, where? + + +That Laertes might be excused in some degree for not cooling, the Act +concludes with the affecting death of Ophelia,--who in the beginning lay +like a little projection of land into a lake or stream, covered with +spray-flowers quietly reflected in the quiet waters, but at length is +undermined or loosened, and becomes a faery isle, and after a brief +vagrancy sinks almost without an eddy! + +Act v. sc. 1. O, the rich contrast between the Clowns and Hamlet, as two +extremes! You see in the former the mockery of logic, and a traditional +wit valued, like truth, for its antiquity, and treasured up, like a +tune, for use. + +'Ib.' sc. 1 and 2. Shakspeare seems to mean all Hamlet's character to be +brought together before his final disappearance from the scene;--his +meditative excess in the grave-digging, his yielding to passion with +Laertes, his love for Ophelia blazing out, his tendency to generalize on +all occasions in the dialogue with Horatio, his fine gentlemanly manners +with Osrick, and his and Shakspeare's own fondness for presentiment: + + + But thou would'st not think, how ill all's here about my heart: but it + is no matter. + + +[Footnote 1: It is so pointed in the modern editions.--Ed.] + + + + + +NOTES ON MACBETH. + +Macbeth stands in contrast throughout with Hamlet; in the manner of +opening more especially. In the latter, there is a gradual ascent from +the simplest forms of conversation to the language of impassioned +intellect,--yet the intellect still remaining the seat of passion: in +the former, the invocation is at once made to the imagination and the +emotions connected therewith. Hence the movement throughout is the most +rapid of all Shakspeare's plays; and hence also, with the exception of +the disgusting passage of the Porter (Act ii. sc. 3.), which I dare +pledge myself to demonstrate to be an interpolation of the actors, there +is not, to the best of my remembrance, a single pun or play on words in +the whole drama. I have previously given an answer to the thousand times +repeated charge against Shakspeare upon the subject of his punning, and +I here merely mention the fact of the absence of any puns in Macbeth, as +justifying a candid doubt at least, whether even in these figures of +speech and fanciful modifications of language, Shakspeare may not have +followed rules and principles that merit and would stand the test of +philosophic examination. And hence, also, there is an entire absence of +comedy, nay, even of irony and philosophic contemplation in +Macbeth,--the play being wholly and purely tragic. For the same cause, +there are no reasonings of equivocal morality, which would have required +a more leisurely state and a consequently greater activity of mind;--no +sophistry of self-delusion,--except only that previously to the dreadful +act, Macbeth mistranslates the recoilings and ominous whispers of +conscience into prudential and selfish reasonings, and, after the deed +done, the terrors of remorse into fear from external dangers,--like +delirious men who run away from the phantoms of their own brains, or, +raised by terror to rage, stab the real object that is within their +reach:--whilst Lady Macbeth merely endeavours to reconcile his and her +own sinkings of heart by anticipations of the worst, and an affected +bravado in confronting them. In all the rest, Macbeth's language is the +grave utterance of the very heart, conscience-sick, even to the last +faintings of moral death. It is the same in all the other characters. +The variety arises from rage, caused ever and anon by disruption of +anxious thought, and the quick transition of fear into it. + +In Hamlet and Macbeth the scene opens with superstition; but, in each it +is not merely different, but opposite. In the first it is connected with +the best and holiest feelings; in the second with the shadowy, +turbulent, and unsanctified cravings of the individual will. Nor is the +purpose the same; in the one the object is to excite, whilst in the +other it is to mark a mind already excited. Superstition, of one sort or +another, is natural to victorious generals; the instances are too +notorious to need mentioning. There is so much of chance in warfare, and +such vast events are connected with the acts of a single +individual,--the representative, in truth, of the efforts of myriads, +and yet to the public and, doubtless, to his own feelings, the aggregate +of all,--that the proper temperament for generating or receiving +superstitious impressions is naturally produced. Hope, the master +element of a commanding genius, meeting with an active and combining +intellect, and an imagination of just that degree of vividness which +disquiets and impels the soul to try to realize its images, greatly +increases the creative power of the mind; and hence the images become a +satisfying world of themselves, as is the case in every poet and +original philosopher:--but hope fully gratified, and yet the elementary +basis of the passion remaining, becomes fear; and, indeed, the general, +who must often feel, even though he may hide it from his own +consciousness, how large a share chance had in his successes, may very +naturally be irresolute in a new scene, where he knows that all will +depend on his own act and election. + +The Wierd Sisters are as true a creation of Shakspeare's, as his Ariel +and Caliban,--fates, furies, and materializing witches being the +elements. They are wholly different from any representation of witches +in the contemporary writers, and yet presented a sufficient external +resemblance to the creatures of vulgar prejudice to act immediately on +the audience. Their character consists in the imaginative disconnected +from the good; they are the shadowy obscure and fearfully anomalous of +physical nature, the lawless of human nature,--elemental avengers +without sex or kin: + + + Fair is foul, and foul is fair; Hover thro' the fog and filthy air. + + +How much it were to be wished in playing Macbeth, that an attempt should +be made to introduce the flexile character-mask of the ancient +pantomime;--that Flaxman would contribute his genius to the embodying +and making sensuously perceptible that of Shakspeare! + +The style and rhythm of the Captain's speeches in the second scene +should be illustrated by reference to the interlude in Hamlet, in which +the epic is substituted for the tragic, in order to make the latter be +felt as the real-life diction. In Macbeth, the poet's object was to +raise the mind at once to the high tragic tone, that the audience might +be ready for the precipitate consummation of guilt in the early part of +the play. The true reason for the first appearance of the Witches is to +strike the key-note of the character of the whole drama, as is proved by +their re-appearance in the third scene, after such an order of the +king's as establishes their supernatural power of information. I say +information,--for so it only is as to Glamis and Cawdor; the 'king +hereafter' was still contingent,--still in Macbeth's moral will; +although, if he should yield to the temptation, and thus forfeit his +free agency, the link of cause and effect 'more physico' would then +commence. I need not say, that the general idea is all that can be +required from the poet,--not a scholastic logical consistency in all the +parts so as to meet metaphysical objectors. But O! how truly +Shakspearian is the opening of Macbeth's character given in the +'unpossessedness' of Banquo's mind, wholly present to the present +object,--an unsullied, unscarified mirror!--And how strictly true to +nature it is, that Banquo, and not Macbeth himself, directs our notice +to the effect produced on Macbeth's mind, rendered temptible by previous +dalliance of the fancy with ambitious thoughts: + + + Good Sir, why do you start; and seem to fear + Things that do sound so fair? + + +And then, again, still unintroitive, addresses the Witches:-- + + + I' the name of truth, + Are ye fantastical, or that indeed + Which outwardly ye show? + + +Banquo's questions are those of natural curiosity,--such as a girl would +put after hearing a gipsy tell her schoolfellow's fortune;--all +perfectly general, or rather planless. But Macbeth, lost in thought, +raises himself to speech only by the Witches being about to depart:- + + + Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more:- + + +and all that follows is reasoning on a problem already discussed in his +mind,--on a hope which he welcomes, and the doubts concerning the +attainment of which he wishes to have cleared up. Compare his +eagerness,--the keen eye with which he has pursued the Witches' +evanishing-- + + + Speak, I charge you! + + +with the easily satisfied mind of the self-uninterested Banquo:-- + + + The air hath bubbles, as the water has, + And these are of them:--Whither are they vanish'd? + + +and then Macbeth's earnest reply,-- + + + Into the air; and what seem'd corporal, melted + As breath into the wind.--_'Would they had staid!_ + + +Is it too minute to notice the appropriateness of the simile 'as +breath,' &c. in a cold climate? + +Still again Banquo goes on wondering like any common spectator: + + + Were such things here as we do speak about? + + +whilst Macbeth persists in recurring to the self-concerning:-- + + + Your children shall be kings. + + 'Ban'. You shall be king. + + 'Macb'. And thane of Cawdor too: went it not so? + + +So surely is the guilt in its germ anterior to the supposed cause, and +immediate temptation! Before he can cool, the confirmation of the +tempting half of the prophecy arrives, and the concatenating tendency of +the imagination is fostered by the sudden coincidence:-- + + + Glamis, and thane of Cawdor: The greatest is behind. + + +Oppose this to Banquo's simple surprise:-- + + + What, can the devil speak true? + + +'Ib.' Banquo's speech:-- + + + That, trusted home, + Might yet enkindle you unto the crown, + Besides the thane of Cawdor. + + +I doubt whether 'enkindle' has not another sense than that of +'stimulating;' I mean of 'kind' and 'kin,' as when rabbits are said to +'kindle.' However Macbeth no longer hears any thing 'ab extra':-- + + + Two truths are told, + As happy prologues to the swelling act + Of the imperial theme. + + +Then in the necessity of recollecting himself-- + + + I thank you, gentlemen. + + +Then he relapses into himself again, and every word of his soliloquy +shows the early birthdate of his guilt. He is all-powerful without +strength; he wishes the end, but is irresolute as to the means; +conscience distinctly warns him, and he lulls it imperfectly:-- + + + If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me + Without my stir. + + +Lost in the prospective of his guilt, he turns round alarmed lest others +may suspect what is passing in his own mind, and instantly vents the lie +of ambition: + + + My dull brain was wrought + With things _forgotten_;-- + + +And immediately after pours forth the promising courtesies of a usurper +in intention:-- + + + Kind gentlemen, your pains + Are register'd where every day I turn + The leaf to read them. + + +'Ib.' Macbeth's speech: + + + Presents _fears_ Are less than horrible imaginings. + + +Warburton's note, and substitution of 'feats' for 'fears.' + +Mercy on this most wilful ingenuity of blundering, which, nevertheless, +was the very Warburton of Warburton--his inmost being! 'Fears,' here, +are present fear-striking objects, 'terribilia adstantia'. + +'Ib.' sc. 4. O! the affecting beauty of the death of Cawdor, and the +presentimental speech of the king: + + + There's no art + To find the mind's construction in the face: + He was a gentleman on whom I built + An absolute trust-- + + +Interrupted by-- + + + O worthiest cousin! + + +on the entrance of the deeper traitor for whom Cawdor had made way! And +here in contrast with Duncan's 'plenteous joys,' Macbeth has nothing but +the common-places of loyalty, in which he hides himself with 'our +duties.' Note the exceeding effort of Macbeth's addresses to the king, +his reasoning on his allegiance, and then especially when a new +difficulty, the designation of a successor, suggests a new crime. This, +however, seems the first distinct notion, as to the plan of realizing +his wishes; and here, therefore, with great propriety, Macbeth's +cowardice of his own conscience discloses itself. I always think there +is something especially Shakspearian in Duncan's speeches throughout +this scene, such pourings forth, such abandonments, compared with the +language of vulgar dramatists, whose characters seem to have made their +speeches as the actors learn them. + +'Ib.' Duncan's speech:-- + + + Sons, kinsmen, thanes, + And you whose places are the nearest, know, + We will establish our estate upon + Our eldest Malcolm, whom we name hereafter + The Prince of Cumberland: which honour must + Not unaccompanied, invest him only; + But signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine + On all deservers. + + +It is a fancy;--but I can never read this and the following speeches of +Macbeth, without involuntarily thinking of the Miltonic Messiah and +Satan. + +'Ib.' sc. 5. Macbeth is described by Lady Macbeth so as at the same time +to reveal her own character. Could he have everything he wanted, he +would rather have it innocently;--ignorant, as alas! how many of us are, +that he who wishes a temporal end for itself, does in truth will the +means; and hence the danger of indulging fancies. Lady Macbeth, like all +in Shakspeare, is a class individualized:--of high rank, left much +alone, and feeding herself with day-dreams of ambition, she mistakes the +courage of fantasy for the power of bearing the consequences of the +realities of guilt. Hers is the mock fortitude of a mind deluded by +ambition; she shames her husband with a superhuman audacity of fancy +which she cannot support, but sinks in the season of remorse, and dies +in suicidal agony. Her speech: + + + Come, all you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, &c. + + +is that of one who had habitually familiarized her imagination to +dreadful conceptions, and was trying to do so still more. Her +invocations and requisitions are all the false efforts of a mind +accustomed only hitherto to the shadows of the imagination, vivid enough +to throw the every-day substances of life into shadow, but never as yet +brought into direct contact with their own correspondent realities. She +evinces no womanly life, no wifely joy, at the return of her husband, no +pleased terror at the thought of his past dangers; whilst Macbeth bursts +forth naturally-- + + + My dearest love-- + + +and shrinks from the boldness with which she presents his own thoughts +to him. With consummate art she at first uses as incentives the very +circumstances, Duncan's coming to their house, &c. which Macbeth's +conscience would most probably have adduced to her as motives of +abhorrence or repulsion. Yet Macbeth is not prepared: + + + We will speak further. + + +'Ib.' sc. 6. The lyrical movement with which this scene opens, and the +free and unengaged mind of Banquo, loving nature, and rewarded in the +love itself, form a highly dramatic contrast with the laboured rhythm +and hypocritical over-much of Lady Macbeth's welcome, in which you +cannot detect a ray of personal feeling, but all is thrown upon the +'dignities,' the general duty. + +'Ib.' sc. 7. Macbeth's speech: + + + We will proceed no further in this business: + He hath honor'd me of late; and I have bought + Golden opinions from all sorts of people, + Which would be worn now in their newest gloss, + Not cast aside so soon. + + +Note the inward pangs and warnings of conscience interpreted into +prudential reasonings. + +Act ii. sc. 1. Banquo's speech: + + + A heavy summons lies like lead upon me, + And yet I would not sleep. Merciful powers! + Restrain in me the cursed thoughts, that nature + Gives way to in repose. + + +The disturbance of an innocent soul by painful suspicions of another's +guilty intentions and wishes, and fear of the cursed thoughts of sensual +nature. + +'Ib.' sc. 2. Now that the deed is done or doing--now that the first +reality commences, Lady Macbeth shrinks. The most simple sound strikes +terror, the most natural consequences are horrible, whilst previously +every thing, however awful, appeared a mere trifle; conscience, which +before had been hidden to Macbeth in selfish and prudential fears, now +rushes in upon him in her own veritable person: + + + Methought I heard a voice cry-- + Sleep no more! I could not say Amen, + When they did say, God bless us! + + +And see the novelty given to the most familiar images by a new state of +feeling. + +'Ib.' sc. 3. This low soliloquy of the Porter and his few speeches +afterwards, I believe to have been written for the mob by some other +hand, perhaps with Shakspeare's consent; and that finding it take, he +with the remaining ink of a pen otherwise employed, just interpolated +the words-- + + + I'll devil-porter it no further: I had thought to have let in some of + all professions, that go the primrose way to th' everlasting bonfire. + + +Of the rest not one syllable has the ever-present being of Shakspeare. + +Act iii. sc. 1. Compare Macbeth's mode of working on the murderers in +this place with Schiller's mistaken scene between Butler, Devereux, and +Macdonald in Wallenstein. (Part II. act iv. sc. 2.) The comic was wholly +out of season. Shakspeare never introduces it, but when it may react on +the tragedy by harmonious contrast. + +'Ib.' sc. 2. Macbeth's speech: + + + But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer, + Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep + In the affliction of these terrible dreams + That shake us nightly. + + +Ever and ever mistaking the anguish of conscience for fears of +selfishness, and thus as a punishment of that selfishness, plunging +still deeper in guilt and ruin. + +'Ib.' Macbeth's speech: + + + Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, + Till thou applaud the deed. + + +This is Macbeth's sympathy with his own feelings, and his mistaking his +wife's opposite state. + +'Ib.' sc. 4. + + + 'Macb'. It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood: + Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak; + Augurs, and understood relations, have + By magot-pies, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth + The secret'st man of blood. + + +The deed is done; but Macbeth receives no comfort,--no additional +security. He has by guilt torn himself live-asunder from nature, and is, +therefore, himself in a preter-natural state: no wonder, then, that he +is inclined to superstition, and faith in the unknown of signs and +tokens, and super-human agencies. + +Act iv. sc. 1. + + + 'Len'. 'Tis two or three, my lord, that bring you word, + Macduff is fled to England. + + 'Macb'. Fled to England? + + +The acme of the avenging conscience. + +'Ib.' sc. 2. This scene, dreadful as it is, is still a relief, because a +variety, because domestic, and therefore soothing, as associated with +the only real pleasures of life. The conversation between Lady Macduff +and her child heightens the pathos, and is preparatory for the deep +tragedy of their assassination. Shakspeare's fondness for children is +every where shown;--in Prince Arthur, in King John; in the sweet scene +in the Winter's Tale between Hermione and her son; nay, even in honest +Evans's examination of Mrs. Page's schoolboy. To the objection that +Shakspeare wounds the moral sense by the unsubdued, undisguised +description of the most hateful atrocity--that he tears the feelings +without mercy, and even outrages the eye itself with scenes of +insupportable horror--I, omitting Titus Andronicus, as not genuine, and +excepting the scene of Gloster's blinding in Lear, answer boldly in the +name of Shakspeare, not guilty. + +'Ib.' sc. 3. Malcolm's speech: + + + Better Macbeth, + Than such a one to reign. + + +The moral is--the dreadful effects even on the best minds of the +soul--sickening sense of insecurity. + +'Ib.' How admirably Macduff's grief is in harmony with the whole play! +It rends, not dissolves, the heart. 'The tune of it goes manly.' Thus is +Shakspeare always master of himself and of his subject,--a genuine +Proteus:--we see all things in him, as images in a calm lake, most +distinct, most accurate,--only more splendid, more glorified. This is +correctness in the only philosophical sense. But he requires your +sympathy and your submission; you must have that recipiency of moral +impression without which the purposes and ends of the drama would be +frustrated, and the absence of which demonstrates an utter want of all +imagination, a deadness to that necessary pleasure of being +innocently--shall I say, deluded?--or rather, drawn away from ourselves +to the music of noblest thought in harmonious sounds. Happy he, who not +only in the public theatre, but in the labours of a profession, and +round the light of his own hearth, still carries a heart so +pleasure-fraught! + +Alas for Macbeth! Now all is inward with him; he has no more prudential +prospective reasonings. His wife, the only being who could have had any +seat in his affections, dies; he puts on despondency, the final +heart-armour of the wretched, and would fain think every thing shadowy +and unsubstantial, as indeed all things are to those who cannot regard +them as symbols of goodness:-- + + + Out, out, brief candle! + Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, + That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, + And then is heard no more: it is a tale + Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, + Signifying nothing. + + + + + +NOTES ON THE WINTER'S TALE. + + +Although, on the whole, this play is exquisitely respondent to its +title, and even in the fault I am about to mention, still a winter's +tale; yet it seems a mere indolence of the great bard not to have +provided in the oracular response (Act ii. sc. 2.) some ground for +Hermione's seeming death and fifteen years voluntary concealment. This +might have been easily effected by some obscure sentence of the oracle, +as for example:-- + + + 'Nor shall he ever recover an heir, if he have a wife before that + recovery.' + + +The idea of this delightful drama is a genuine jealousy of disposition, +and it should be immediately followed by the perusal of Othello, which +is the direct contrast of it in every particular. For jealousy is a vice +of the mind, a culpable tendency of the temper, having certain well +known and well defined effects and concomitants, all of which are +visible in Leontes, and, I boldly say, not one of which marks its +presence in Othello;--such as, first, an excitability by the most +inadequate causes, and an eagerness to snatch at proofs; secondly, a +grossness of conception, and a disposition to degrade the object of the +passion by sensual fancies and images; thirdly, a sense of shame of his +own feelings exhibited in a solitary moodiness of humour, and yet from +the violence of the passion forced to utter itself, and therefore +catching occasions to ease the mind by ambiguities, equivoques, by +talking to those who cannot, and who are known not to be able to, +understand what is said to them,--in short, by soliloquy in the form of +dialogue, and hence a confused, broken, and fragmentary, manner; +fourthly, a dread of vulgar ridicule, as distinct from a high sense of +honour, or a mistaken sense of duty; and lastly, and immediately, +consequent on this, a spirit of selfish vindictiveness. + +Act i. sc. 1--2. + +Observe the easy style of chitchat between Camillo and Archidamus as +contrasted with the elevated diction on the introduction of the kings +and Hermione in the second scene: and how admirably Polixenes' obstinate +refusal to Leontes to stay-- + + + There is no tongue that moves; none, none i' the world + So soon as yours, could win me;-- + + +prepares for the effect produced by his afterwards yielding to +Hermione;--which is, nevertheless, perfectly natural from mere courtesy +of sex, and the exhaustion of the will by former efforts of denial, and +well calculated to set in nascent action the jealousy of Leontes. This, +when once excited, is unconsciously increased by Hermione:-- + + + Yet, good deed, Leontes, I love thee not a jar o' the clock behind + What lady she her lord;-- + + +accompanied, as a good actress ought to represent it, by an expression +and recoil of apprehension that she had gone too far. + + + At my request, he would not:-- + + +The first working of the jealous fit;-- + + + Too hot, too hot:-- + + +The morbid tendency of Leontes to lay hold of the merest trifles, and +his grossness immediately afterwards-- + + + Padling palms and pinching fingers:-- + + +followed by his strange loss of self-control in his dialogue with the +little boy. + +Act iii. sc. 2. Paulina's speech: + + + That thou betray'dst Polixenes,'twas nothing; + That did but show thee, of a _fool_, inconstant, + And damnable ingrateful.-- + + +Theobald reads 'soul.' + +I think the original word is Shakspeare's. + +1. My ear feels it to be Shakspearian; + +2. The involved grammar is Shakspearian;--'show thee, being a fool +naturally, to have improved thy folly by inconstancy;' + +3. The alteration is most flat, and un-Shakspearian. As to the grossness +of the abuse--she calls him 'gross and foolish' a few lines below. + +Act iv. sc. 2. Speech of Autolycus:-- + + + For the life to come, I sleep out the thought of it. + + +Fine as this is, and delicately characteristic of one who had lived and +been reared in the best society, and had been precipitated from it by +dice and drabbing; yet still it strikes against my feelings as a note +out of tune, and as not coalescing with that pastoral tint which gives +such a charm to this act. It is too Macbeth-like in the 'snapper up of +unconsidered trifles.' + +'Ib.' sc. 3. Perdita's speech:-- + + + From Dis's waggon! daffodils. + + +An epithet is wanted here, not merely or chiefly for the metre, but for +the balance, for the aesthetic logic. Perhaps, 'golden' was the word +which would set off the 'violets dim.' + +Ib. + + + Pale primroses + That die unmarried.-- + + +Milton's-- + + + And the rathe primrose that forsaken dies. + + +'Ib.' Perdita's speech:-- + + + Even here undone: + I was not much afraid; for once or twice + I was about to speak, and tell him plainly, + The self-same sun, that shines upon his court, + Hides not his visage from our cottage, but + Looks on alike. Wilt please you, Sir, be gone! + (_To Florizel._) + I told you, what would come of this. Beseech you, + Of your own state take care: this dream of mine, + Being awake, I'll queen it no inch farther, + But milk my ewes, and weep. + + +O how more than exquisite is this whole speech!--And that profound +nature of noble pride and grief venting themselves in a momentary +peevishness of resentment toward Florizel:-- + + + --Wilt please you, Sir, be gone! + + +'Ib.' Speech of Autolycus:-- + + + Let me have no lying; it becomes none but tradesmen, and they often + give us soldiers the lie; but we pay them for it in stamped coin, not + stabbing steel;--therefore they do not _give_ us the lie. + + +As we _pay_ them, they, therefore, do not _give_ it us. + + + + + +NOTES ON OTHELLO + +Act I. sc. 1. Admirable is the preparation, so truly and peculiarly +Shakspearian, in the introduction of Roderigo, as the dupe on whom Iago +shall first exercise his art, and in so doing display his own character. +Roderigo, without any fixed principle, but not without the moral notions +and sympathies with honor, which his rank and connections had hung upon +him, is already well fitted and predisposed for the purpose; for very +want of character and strength of passion, like wind loudest in an empty +house, constitute his character. The first three lines happily state the +nature and foundation of the friendship between him and Iago,--the +purse,--as also the contrast of Roderigo's intemperance of mind with +Iago's coolness,--the coolness of a preconceiving experimenter. The mere +language of protestation-- + + + If ever I did dream of such a matter, abhor me,-- + + +which falling in with the associative link, determines Roderigo's +continuation of complaint-- + + + Thou told'st me, thou didst hold him in thy hate-- + + +elicits at length a true feeling of Iago's mind, the dread of contempt +habitual to those, who encourage in themselves, and have their keenest +pleasure in, the expression of contempt for others. Observe Iago's high +self-opinion, and the moral, that a wicked man will employ real +feelings, as well as assume those most alien from his own, as +instruments of his purposes:-- + + + --And, by the faith of man, I know my place, + I am worth no worse a place. + + +I think Tyrwhitt's reading of 'life' for 'wife'-- + + + A fellow almost damn'd in a fair _wife_-- + + +the true one, as fitting to Iago's contempt for whatever did not display +power, and that intellectual power. In what follows, let the reader feel +how by and through the glass of two passions, disappointed vanity and +envy, the very vices of which he is complaining, are made to act upon +him as if they were so many excellences, and the more appropriately, +because cunning is always admired and wished for by minds conscious of +inward weakness;--but they act only by half, like music on an +inattentive auditor, swelling the thoughts which prevent him from +listening to it. + +Ib. + + + 'Rod'. What a full fortune does the 'thick-lips' owe, + If he can carry't thus. + + +Roderigo turns off to Othello; and here comes one, if not the only, +seeming justification of our blackamoor or negro Othello. Even if we +supposed this an uninterrupted tradition of the theatre, and that +Shakspeare himself, from want of scenes, and the experience that nothing +could be made too marked for the senses of his audience, had practically +sanctioned it,--would this prove aught concerning his own intention as a +poet for all ages? Can we imagine him so utterly ignorant as to make a +barbarous negro plead royal birth,--at a time, too, when negros were not +known except as slaves?--As for Iago's language to Brabantio, it implies +merely that Othello was a Moor, that is, black. Though I think the +rivalry of Roderigo sufficient to account for his wilful confusion of +Moor and Negro,--yet, even if compelled to give this up, I should think +it only adapted for the acting of the day, and should complain of an +enormity built on a single word, in direct contradiction to Iago's +'Barbary horse.' Besides, if we could in good earnest believe Shakspeare +ignorant of the distinction, still why should we adopt one disagreeable +possibility instead of a ten times greater and more pleasing +probability? It is a common error to mistake the epithets applied by the +'dramatis personae' to each other, as truly descriptive of what the +audience ought to see or know. No doubt Desdemona saw Othello's visage +in his mind; yet, as we are constituted, and most surely as an English +audience was disposed in the beginning of the seventeenth century, it +would be something monstrous to conceive this beautiful Venetian girl +falling in love with a veritable negro. It would argue a +disproportionateness, a want of balance, in Desdemona, which Shakspeare +does not appear to have in the least contemplated. + +'Ib.' Brabantio's speech:-- + + + This accident is not unlike my dream:-- + + +The old careful senator, being caught careless, transfers his caution to +his dreaming power at least. + +'Ib.' Iago's speech:-- + + + --For their souls, + Another of his fathom they have not, + To lead their business:-- + + +The forced praise of Othello followed by the bitter hatred of him in +this speech! And observe how Brabantio's dream prepares for his +recurrence to the notion of philtres, and how both prepare for carrying +on the plot of the arraignment of Othello on this ground. + +'Ib.' sc. 2. + + + 'Oth'. 'Tis better as it is. + + +How well these few words impress at the outset the truth of Othello's +own character of himself at the end--'that he was not easily wrought!' +His self-government contradistinguishes him throughout from Leontes. + +'Ib.' Othello's speech:-- + + + --And my demerits + May speak, _unbonnetted_-- + + +The argument in Theobald's note, where 'and bonnetted' is suggested, +goes on the assumption that Shakspeare could not use the same word +differently in different places; whereas I should conclude, that as in +the passage in Lear the word is employed in its direct meaning, so here +it is used metaphorically; and this is confirmed by what has escaped the +editors, that it is not 'I,' but 'my demerits' that may speak +unbonnetted,--without the symbol of a petitioning inferior. + +'Ib.' Othello's speech:-- + + + Please your grace, my ancient; + A man he is of honesty and trust: + To his conveyance I assign my wife. + + +Compare this with the behaviour of Leontes to his true friend Camillo. + +'Ib.' sc. 3. + + + 'Bra'. Look to her, Moor; have a quick eye to see; + She has deceiv'd her father, and may thee. + + 'Oth'. My life upon her faith. + + +In real life, how do we look back to little speeches as presentimental +of, or contrasted with, an affecting event! Even so, Shakspeare, as +secure of being read over and over, of becoming a family friend, +provides this passage for his readers, and leaves it to them. + +'Ib.' Iago's speech:-- + + + Virtue? a fig! 'tis in ourselves, that we are thus, or thus, &c. + + +This speech comprises the passionless character of Iago. It is all will +in intellect; and therefore he is here a bold partizan of a truth, but +yet of a truth converted into a falsehood by the absence of all the +necessary modifications caused by the frail nature of man. And then +comes the last sentiment,-- + + + Our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts, whereof I + take this, that you call--love, to be a sect or scion! + + +Here is the true Iagoism of, alas! how many! Note Iago's pride of +mastery in the repetition of 'Go, make money!' to his anticipated dupe, +even stronger than his love of lucre: and when Roderigo is completely +won-- + + + I am chang'd. I'll go sell all my land-- + + +when the effect has been fully produced, the repetition of triumph-- + + + Go to; farewell; put money enough in your purse! + + +The remainder--Iago's soliloquy--the motive-hunting of a motiveless +malignity--how awful it is! Yea, whilst he is still allowed to bear the +divine image, it is too fiendish for his own steady view,--for the +lonely gaze of a being next to devil, and only not quite devil,--and yet +a character which Shakspeare has attempted and executed, without disgust +and without scandal! + +Dr. Johnson has remarked that little or nothing is wanting to render the +Othello a regular tragedy, but to have opened the play with the arrival +of Othello in Cyprus, and to have thrown the preceding act into the form +of narration. Here then is the place to determine, whether such a change +would or would not be an improvement;--nay, (to throw down the glove +with a full challenge) whether the tragedy would or not by such an +arrangement become more regular,--that is, more consonant with the rules +dictated by universal reason, on the true common-sense of mankind, in +its application to the particular case. For in all acts of judgment, it +can never be too often recollected, and scarcely too often repeated, +that rules are means to ends, and, consequently, that the end must be +determined and understood before it can be known what the rules are or +ought to be. Now, from a certain species of drama, proposing to itself +the accomplishment of certain ends,--these partly arising from the idea +of the species itself, but in part, likewise, forced upon the dramatist +by accidental circumstances beyond his power to remove or +control,--three rules have been abstracted;--in other words, the means +most conducive to the attainment of the proposed ends have been +generalized, and prescribed under the names of the three unities,--the +unity of time, the unity of place, and the unity of action,--which last +would, perhaps, have been as appropriately, as well as more +intelligibly, entitled the unity of interest. With this last the present +question has no immediate concern: in fact, its conjunction with the +former two is a mere delusion of words. It is not properly a rule, but +in itself the great end not only of the drama, but of the epic poem, the +lyric ode, of all poetry, down to the candle-flame cone of an +epigram,--nay of poesy in general, as the proper generic term inclusive +of all the fine arts as its species. But of the unities of time and +place, which alone are entitled to the name of rules, the history of +their origin will be their best criterion. You might take the Greek +chorus to a place, but you could not bring a place to them without as +palpable an equivoque as bringing Birnam wood to Macbeth at Dunsinane. +It was the same, though in a less degree, with regard to the unity of +time:--the positive fact, not for a moment removed from the senses, the +presence, I mean, of the same identical chorus, was a continued measure +of time;--and although the imagination may supersede perception, yet it +must be granted to be an imperfection--however easily tolerated--to +place the two in broad contradiction to each other. In truth, it is a +mere accident of terms; for the Trilogy of the Greek theatre was a drama +in three acts, and notwithstanding this, what strange contrivances as to +place there are in the Aristophanic Frogs. Besides, if the law of mere +actual perception is once violated--as it repeatedly is even in the +Greek tragedies--why is it more difficult to imagine three hours to be +three years than to be a whole day and night? Observe in how many ways +Othello is made, first, our acquaintance, then our friend, then the +object of our anxiety, before the deeper interest is to be approached! + +Ib. + + + 'Mont'. But, good lieutenant, is your general wiv'd? + + 'Cas'. Most fortunately: he hath achiev'd a maid + That paragons description, and wild fame; + One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens, + And, in the essential vesture of creation, + Does bear all excellency. + + +Here is Cassio's warm-hearted, yet perfectly disengaged, praise of +Desdemona, and sympathy with the 'most fortunately' wived Othello;--and +yet Cassio is an enthusiastic admirer, almost a worshipper, of +Desdemona. O, that detestable code that excellence cannot be loved in +any form that is female, but it must needs be selfish! Observe Othello's +'honest,' and Cassio's 'bold' Iago, and Cassio's full guileless-hearted +wishes for the safety and love-raptures of Othello and 'the divine +Desdemona.' And also note the exquisite circumstance of Cassio's kissing +Iago's wife, as if it ought to be impossible that the dullest auditor +should not feel Cassio's religious love of Desdemona's purity. Iago's +answers are the sneers which a proud bad intellect feels towards woman, +and expresses to a wife. Surely it ought to be considered a very exalted +compliment to women, that all the sarcasms on them in Shakspeare are put +in the mouths of villains. + +Ib. + + + 'Des'. I am not merry; but I do beguile, &c. + + +The struggle of courtesy in Desdemona to abstract her attention. + +Ib. + + + ('Iago aside'). He takes her by the palm: Ay, well said, whisper; with + as little a web as this, will I ensnare as great a fly as Cassio. Ay, + smile upon her, do, &c. + + +The importance given to trifles, and made fertile by the villainy of the +observer. + +'Ib.' Iago's dialogue with Roderigo: + +This is the rehearsal on the dupe of the traitor's intentions on +Othello. + +'Ib.' Iago's soliloquy: + + + But partly led to diet my revenge, + For that I do suspect the lusty Moor + Hath leap'd into my seat. + + +This thought, originally by Iago's own confession a mere suspicion, is +now ripening, and gnaws his base nature as his own 'poisonous mineral' +is about to gnaw the noble heart of his general. + +'Ib.' sc. 3. Othello's speech: + + + I know, Iago, + Thy honesty and love doth mince this matter, + Making it light to Cassio. + + +Honesty and love! Ay, and who but the reader of the play could think +otherwise? + +'Ib.' Iago's soliloquy: + + + And what's he then that says--I play the villain? + When this advice is free I give, and honest, + Probable to thinking, and, indeed, the course + To win the Moor again. + + +He is not, you see, an absolute fiend; or, at least, he wishes to think +himself not so. + +Act iii. sc. 3. + + + 'Des.' Before Æmilia here, I give thee warrant of this place. + + +The over-zeal of innocence in Desdemona. + +Ib. + + +'Enter Desdemona and Æmilia.' + + 'Oth.' If she be false, O, then, heaven mocks itself! + I'll not believe it. + + +Divine! The effect of innocence and the better genius! + +Act iv. sc. 3. + + + 'Æmil.' Why, the wrong is but a wrong i' the world; and having the + world for your labour,'tis a wrong in your own world, and you might + quickly make it right. + + + Warburton's note. + +What any other man, who had learning enough, might have quoted as a +playful and witty illustration of his remarks against the Calvinistic +'thesis', Warburton gravely attributes to Shakspeare as intentional; and +this, too, in the mouth of a lady's woman! + +Act v. last scene. Othello's speech:-- + + + --Of one, whose hand, + Like the base _Indian_, threw a pearl away + Richer than all his tribe, &c. + + +Theobald's note from Warburton. + +Thus it is for no-poets to comment on the greatest of poets! To make +Othello say that he, who had killed his wife, was like Herod who killed +Mariamne!--O, how many beauties, in this one line, were impenetrable to +the ever thought-swarming, but idealess, Warburton! Othello wishes to +excuse himself on the score of ignorance, and yet not to excuse +himself,--to excuse himself by accusing. This struggle of feeling is +finely conveyed in the word 'base,' which is applied to the rude Indian, +not in his own character, but as the momentary representative of +Othello's. 'Indian'--for I retain the old reading--means American, a +savage 'in genere'. + +Finally, let me repeat that Othello does not kill Desdemona in jealousy, +but in a conviction forced upon him by the almost superhuman art of +Iago, such a conviction as any man would and must have entertained who +had believed Iago's honesty as Othello did. We, the audience, know that +Iago is a villain from the beginning; but in considering the essence of +the Shakspearian Othello, we must perseveringly place ourselves in his +situation, and under his circumstances. Then we shall immediately feel +the fundamental difference between the solemn agony of the noble Moor, +and the wretched fishing jealousies of Leontes, and the morbid +suspiciousness of Leonatus, who is, in other respects, a fine character. + +Othello had no life but in Desdemona:--the belief that she, his angel, +had fallen from the heaven of her native innocence, wrought a civil war +in his heart. She is his counterpart; and, like him, is almost +sanctified in our eyes by her absolute unsuspiciousness, and holy +entireness of love. As the curtain drops, which do we pity the most? + +... + +'Extremum hunc'--.There are three powers:-- + +Wit, which discovers partial likeness hidden in general diversity; + +subtlety, which discovers the diversity concealed in general apparent +sameness;-- + +and profundity, which discovers an essential unity under all the +semblances of difference. + +Give to a subtle man fancy, and he is a wit; to a deep man imagination, +and he is a philosopher. Add, again, pleasurable sensibility in the +threefold form of sympathy with the interesting in morals, the +impressive in form, and the harmonious in sound,--and you have the poet. + +But combine all,--wit, subtlety, and fancy, with profundity, +imagination, and moral and physical susceptibility of the pleasurable,-- +and let the object of action be man universal; and we shall have--O, +rash prophecy! say, rather, we have--a SHAKSPEARE! + + + + + +NOTES ON BEN JONSON. + +It would be amusing to collect out of our dramatists from Elizabeth to +Charles I proofs of the manners of the times. One striking symptom of +general coarseness of manners, which may co-exist with great refinement +of morals, as, alas! 'vice versa', is to be seen in the very frequent +allusions to the olfactories with their most disgusting stimulants, and +these, too, in the conversation of virtuous ladies. This would not +appear so strange to one who had been on terms of familiarity with +Sicilian and Italian women of rank; and bad as they may, too many of +them, actually be, yet I doubt not that the extreme grossness of their +language has impressed many an Englishman of the present era with far +darker notions than the same language would have produced in the mind of +one of Elizabeth's, or James's courtiers. Those who have read Shakspeare +only, complain of occasional grossness in his plays; but compare him +with his contemporaries, and the inevitable conviction is, that of the +exquisite purity of his imagination. + +The observation I have prefixed to the Volpone is the key to the faint +interest which these noble efforts of intellectual power excite, with +the exception of the fragment of the Sad Shepherd; because in that piece +only is there any character with whom you can morally sympathize. On the +other hand, Measure for Measure is the only play of Shakspeare's in +which there are not some one or more characters, generally many, whom +you follow with affectionate feeling. For I confess that Isabella, of +all Shakspeare's female characters, pleases me the least; and Measure +for Measure is, indeed, the only one of his genuine works, which is +painful to me. + +Let me not conclude this remark, however, without a thankful +acknowledgment to the 'manes' of Ben Jonson, that the more I study his +writings, I the more admire them; and the more my study of him resembles +that of an ancient classic, in the 'minutiæ' of his rhythm, metre, +choice of words, forms of connection, and so forth, the more numerous +have the points of my admiration become. I may add, too, that both the +study and the admiration cannot but be disinterested, for to expect +therefrom any advantage to the present drama would be ignorance. The +latter is utterly heterogeneous from the drama of the Shakspearian age, +with a diverse object and contrary principle. The one was to present a +model by imitation of real life, taking from real life all that in it +which it ought to be, and supplying the rest;--the other is to copy what +is, and as it is,--at best a tolerable, but most frequently a +blundering, copy. In the former the difference was an essential element; +in the latter an involuntary defect. We should think it strange, if a +tale in dance were announced, and the actors did not dance at all;--and +yet such is modern comedy. + + + + +WHALLEY'S PREFACE. + + +But Jonson was soon sensible, how inconsistent this medley of names and +manners was in reason and nature; and with how little propriety it could +ever have a place in a legitimate and just picture of real life. + + +But did Jonson reflect that the very essence of a play, the very +language in which it is written, is a fiction to which all the parts +must conform? Surely, Greek manners in English should be a still grosser +improbability than a Greek name transferred to English manners. Ben's +'personæ' are too often not characters, but derangements;--the hopeless +patients of a mad-doctor rather,--exhibitions of folly betraying itself +in spite of existing reason and prudence. He not poetically, but +painfully exaggerates every trait; that is, not by the drollery of the +circumstance, but by the excess of the originating feeling. + +But to this we might reply, that far from being thought to build his +characters upon abstract ideas, he was really accused of representing +particular persons then existing; and that even those characters which +appear to be the most exaggerated, are said to have had their respective +archetypes in nature and life. + +This degrades Jonson into a libeller, instead of justifying him as a +dramatic poet. 'Non quod verum est, sed quod verisimile', is the +dramatist's rule. At all events, the poet who chooses transitory +manners, ought to content himself with transitory praise. If his object +be reputation, he ought not to expect fame. The utmost he can look +forwards to, is to be quoted by, and to enliven the writings of, an +antiquarian. Pistol, Nym and 'id genus omne', do not please us as +characters, but are endured as fantastic creations, foils to the native +wit of Falstaff.--I say wit emphatically; for this character so often +extolled as the masterpiece of humor, neither contains, nor was meant to +contain, any humor at all. + + + + +WHALLEY'S LIFE OF JONSON. + + +It is to the honor of Jonson's judgment, that 'the greatest poet of our +nation' had the same opinion of Donne's genius and wit; and hath +preserved part of him from perishing, by putting his thoughts and satire +into modern verse. + +'Videlicet' Pope! + +He said further to Drummond, Shakspeare wanted art, and sometimes sense; +for in one of his plays he brought in a number of men, saying they had +suffered shipwreck in Bohemia, where is no sea near by a hundred miles. + +I have often thought Shakspeare justified in this seeming anachronism. +In Pagan times a single name of a German kingdom might well be supposed +to comprise a hundred miles more than at present. The truth is, these +notes of Drummond's are more disgraceful to himself than to Jonson. It +would be easy to conjecture how grossly Jonson must have been +misunderstood, and what he had said in jest, as of Hippocrates, +interpreted in earnest. But this is characteristic of a Scotchman; he +has no notion of a jest, unless you tell him--'This is a joke!'--and +still less of that finer shade of feeling, the half-and-half, in which +Englishmen naturally delight. + + + + + +EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR. + +Epilogue. + + The throat of war be stopt within her land, + And _turtle-footed_ peace dance fairie rings + About her court. + + +'Turtle-footed' is a pretty word, a very pretty word: pray, what does it +mean? Doves, I presume, are not dancers; and the other sort of turtle, +land or sea, green-fat or hawksbill, would, I should suppose, succeed +better in slow minuets than in the brisk rondillo. In one sense, to be +sure, pigeons and ring-doves could not dance but with 'eclat'--'a claw?' + + + + + +POETASTER. + +Introduction. + + + Light! I salute thee, but with wounded nerves, + Wishing thy golden splendor pitchy darkness. + + +There is no reason to suppose Satan's address to the sun in the Paradise +Lost, more than a mere coincidence with these lines; but were it +otherwise, it would be a fine instance, what usurious interest a great +genius pays in borrowing. It would not be difficult to give a detailed +psychological proof from these constant outbursts of anxious +self-assertion, that Jonson was not a genius, a creative power. Subtract +that one thing, and you may safely accumulate on his name all other +excellencies of a capacious, vigorous, agile, and richly-stored +intellect. + +Act i. sc. 1. + + + 'Ovid'. While slaves be false, fathers hard, and bawds be whorish-- + + +The roughness noticed by Theobald and Whalley, may be cured by a simple +transposition:- + + + While fathers hard, slaves false, and bawds be whorish. + + +Act iv. sc. 3. + + + 'Crisp'. O--oblatrant--furibund--fatuate--strenuous. O--conscious. + + +It would form an interesting essay, or rather series of essays, in a +periodical work, were all the attempts to ridicule new phrases brought +together, the proportion observed of words ridiculed which have been +adopted, and are now common, such as 'strenuous', 'conscious', &c., and +a trial made how far any grounds can be detected, so that one might +determine beforehand whether a word was invented under the conditions of +assimilability to our language or not. Thus much is certain, that the +ridiculers were as often wrong as right; and Shakspeare himself could +not prevent the naturalization of 'accommodation', 'remuneration', &c.; +or Swift the gross abuse even of the word 'idea'. + + + + + + +FALL OF SEJANUS. + +Act I. + + + 'Arruntius'. The name Tiberius, I hope, will keep, howe'er he hath + foregone The dignity and power. + + 'Silius'. Sure, while he lives. + + 'Arr'. And dead, it comes to Drusus. Should he fail, + To the brave issue of Germanicus; + And they are three: too many (ha?) for him + To have a plot upon? + + 'Sil'. I do not know + The heart of his designs; but, sure, their face + Looks farther than the present. + + 'Arr'. By the gods, + If I could guess he had but such a thought, + My sword should cleave him down, &c. + + +The anachronic mixture in this Arruntius of the Roman republican, to +whom Tiberius must have appeared as much a tyrant as Sejanus, with his +James-and-Charles-the-First zeal for legitimacy of descent in this +passage, is amusing. Of our great names Milton was, I think, the first +who could properly be called a republican. My recollections of +Buchanan's works are too faint to enable me to judge whether the +historian is not a fair exception. + +Act ii. Speech of Sejanus:-- + + + Adultery! it is the lightest ill + I will commit. A race of wicked acts + Shall flow out of my anger, and o'erspread + The world's wide face, which no posterity + Shall e'er approve, nor yet keep silent, &c. + + +The more we reflect and examine, examine and reflect, the more +astonished shall we be at the immense superiority of Shakspeare over his +contemporaries:--and yet what contemporaries!--giant minds indeed! Think +of Jonson's erudition, and the force of learned authority in that age; +and yet in no genuine part of Shakspeare's works is there to be found +such an absurd rant and ventriloquism as this, and too, too many other +passages ferruminated by Jonson from Seneca's tragedies and the writings +of the later Romans. I call it ventriloquism, because Sejanus is a +puppet, out of which the poet makes his own voice appear to come. + +Act v. Scene of the sacrifice to Fortune. This scene is unspeakably +irrational. To believe, and yet to scoff at, a present miracle is little +less than impossible. Sejanus should have been made to suspect +priestcraft and a secret conspiracy against him. + + + + +VOLPONE. + +This admirable, indeed, but yet more wonderful than admirable, play is +from the fertility and vigour of invention, character, language, and +sentiment the strongest proof, how impossible it is to keep up any +pleasurable interest in a tale, in which there is no goodness of heart +in any of the prominent characters. After the third act, this play +becomes not a dead, but a painful, weight on the feelings. Zeluco is an +instance of the same truth. Bonario and Celia should have been made in +some way or other principals in the plot; which they might have been, +and the objects of interest, without having been made characters. In +novels, the person, in whose fate you are most interested, is often the +least marked character of the whole. If it were possible to lessen the +paramountcy of Volpone himself, a most delightful comedy might be +produced, by making Celia the ward or niece of Corvino, instead of his +wife, and Bonario her lover. + + + + +EPICÆNE. + +This is to my feelings the most entertaining of old Ben's comedies, and, +more than any other, would admit of being brought out anew, if under the +management of a judicious and stage-understanding playwright; and an +actor, who had studied Morose, might make his fortune. + +Act i. sc. 1. Clerimont's speech:-- + + + He would have hanged a pewterer's 'prentice once on a Shrove Tuesday's + riot, for being 'o that trade, when the rest were _quiet_. + + The old copies read 'quit', i. e. discharged from working, and gone to + divert themselves. (Whalley's note.) + + +It should be 'quit', no doubt; but not meaning 'discharged from +working,' &c.--but quit, that is, acquitted. The pewterer was at his +holiday diversion as well as the other apprentices, and they as forward +in the riot as he. But he alone was punished under pretext of the riot, +but in fact for his trade. + +Act ii. sc. 1. + + + 'Morose'. Cannot I, yet, find out a more compendious method, than by + this _trunk_, to save my servants the labour of speech, and mine ears + the discord of sounds? + + +What does 'trunk' mean here and in the 1st scene of the 1st act? Is it a +large ear-trumpet?--or rather a tube, such as passes from parlour to +kitchen, instead of a bell? + +Whalley's note at the end. + + +Some critics of the last age imagined the character of Morose to be +wholly out of nature. But to vindicate our poet, Mr. Dryden tells us +from tradition, and we may venture to take his word, that Jonson was +really acquainted with a person of this whimsical turn of mind: and as +humor is a personal quality, the poet is acquitted from the charge of +exhibiting a monster, or an extravagant unnatural caricatura. + + +If Dryden had not made all additional proof superfluous by his own +plays, this very vindication would evince that he had formed a false and +vulgar conception of the nature and conditions of the drama and dramatic +personation. Ben Jonson would himself have rejected such a plea:-- + + + For he knew, poet never credit gain'd + By writing _truths_, but things, like truths, well feign'd. + + +By 'truths' he means 'facts.' Caricatures are not less so, because they +are found existing in real life. Comedy demands characters, and leaves +caricatures to farce. The safest and truest defence of old Ben would be +to call the Epicæne the best of farces. The defect in Morose, as in +other of Jonson's 'dramatis personæ', lies in this;--that the accident +is not a prominence growing out of, and nourished by, the character +which still circulates in it, but that the character, such as it is, +rises out of, or, rather, consists in, the accident. Shakspeare's comic +personages have exquisitely characteristic features; however awry, +disproportionate, and laughable they may be, still, like Bardolph's +nose, they are features. But Jonson's are either a man with a huge wen, +having a circulation of its own, and which we might conceive amputated, +and the patient thereby losing all his character; or they are mere wens +themselves instead of men,--wens personified, or with eyes, nose, and +mouth cut out, mandrake-fashion. + +'Nota bene'. All the above, and much more, will have been justly said, +if, and whenever, the drama of Jonson is brought into comparisons of +rivalry with the Shakspearian. But this should not be. Let its +inferiority to the Shakspearian be at once fairly owned,--but at the +same time as the inferiority of an altogether different 'genus' of the +drama. On this ground, old Ben would still maintain his proud height. +He, no less than Shakspeare, stands on the summit of his hill, and looks +round him like a master,--though his be Lattrig and Shakspeare's +Skiddaw. + + + + + +THE ALCHEMIST. + +Act I. sc. 2. Face's speech:-- + + + Will take his oath o' the Greek _Xenophon_, + If need be, in his pocket. + + +Another reading is 'Testament.' Probably, the meaning is,--that +intending to give false evidence, he carried a Greek Xenophon to pass it +off for a Greek Testament, and so avoid perjury--as the Irish do, by +contriving to kiss their thumb-nails instead of the book. + +Act ii. sc. 2. Mammon's speech:-- + + + I will have all my beds blown up; not stuft: + Down is too hard. + + +Thus the air-cushions, though perhaps only lately brought into use, were +invented in idea in the seventeenth century! + + + + + +CATILINE'S CONSPIRACY. + +A fondness for judging one work by comparison with others, perhaps +altogether of a different class, argues a vulgar taste. Yet it is +chiefly on this principle that the Catiline has been rated so low. Take +it and Sejanus, as compositions of a particular kind, namely, as a mode +of relating great historical events in the liveliest and most +interesting manner, and I cannot help wishing that we had whole volumes +of such plays. We might as rationally expect the excitement of the Vicar +of Wakefield from Goldsmith's History of England, as that of Lear, +Othello, &c. from the Sejanus or Catiline. + +Act i. sc. 4. + + + 'Cat'. Sirrah, what ail you? + + ('He spies one of his boys not answer'.) + + 'Pag'. Nothing. + + 'Best'. Somewhat modest. + + 'Cat'. Slave, I will strike your soul out with my foot, &c. + + +This is either an unintelligible, or, in every sense, a most unnatural, +passage,--improbable, if not impossible, at the moment of signing and +swearing such a conspiracy, to the most libidinous satyr. The very +presence of the boys is an outrage to probability. I suspect that these +lines down to the words 'throat opens,' should be removed back so as to +follow the words 'on this part of the house,' in the speech of Catiline +soon after the entry of the conspirators. A total erasure, however, +would be the best, or, rather, the only possible, amendment. + +Act ii. sc. 2. Sempronia's speech:-- + + + --He is but a new fellow, + An _inmate_ here in Rome, as Catiline calls him-- + + +A 'lodger' would have been a happier imitation of the 'inquilinus' of +Sallust. + +Act iv. sc. 6. Speech of Cethegus:-- + + + Can these or such be any aids to us, &c. + + +What a strange notion Ben must have formed of a determined, remorseless, +all-daring, fool-hardiness, to have represented it in such a mouthing +Tamburlane, and bombastic tongue-bully as this Cethegus of his! + + + + + +BARTHOLOMEW FAIR. + +Induction. Scrivener's speech:-- + + + If there be never a _servant-monster_ i' the Fair, who can help it, he + says, nor a nest of antiques? + + +The best excuse that can be made for Jonson, and in a somewhat less +degree for Beaumont and Fletcher, in respect of these base and silly +sneers at Shakspeare, is, that his plays were present to men's minds +chiefly as acted. They had not a neat edition of them, as we have, so +as, by comparing the one with the other, to form a just notion of the +mighty mind that produced the whole. At all events, and in every point +of view, Jonson stands far higher in a moral light than Beaumont and +Fletcher. He was a fair contemporary, and in his way, and as far as +Shakspeare is concerned, an original. But Beaumont and Fletcher were +always imitators of, and often borrowers from, him, and yet sneer at him +with a spite far more malignant than Jonson, who, besides, has made +noble compensation by his praises. + +Act ii. sc. 3. + + + 'Just'. I mean a child of the horn-thumb, a babe _of booty_, boy, a + cutpurse. + + +Does not this confirm, what the passage itself cannot but suggest, the +propriety of substituting 'booty' for 'beauty' in Falstaff's speech, +Henry IV. Pt. I. act i. sc. 2. 'Let not us, &c.?' + +It is not often that old Ben condescends to imitate a modern author; but +master Dan. Knockhum Jordan and his vapours are manifest reflexes of Nym +and Pistol. + +Ib. sc. 5. + + + 'Quarl'. She'll make excellent geer for the coachmakers here in + Smithfield, to anoint wheels and axletrees with. + + +Good! but yet it falls short of the speech of a Mr. Johnes, M. P., in +the Common Council, on the invasion intended by Buonaparte: 'Houses +plundered--then burnt;--sons conscribed--wives and daughters ravished, +&c. &c.--"But as for you, you luxurious Aldermen! with your fat will he +grease the wheels of his triumphal chariot!" + +Ib. sc. 6. + + + 'Cok'. Avoid i' your satin doublet, Numps. + + +This reminds me of Shakspeare's 'Aroint thee, witch!' I find in several +books of that age the words _aloigne_ and _eloigne_--that is,--'keep +your distance!' or 'off with you!' Perhaps 'aroint' was a corruption of +'aloigne' by the vulgar. The common etymology from _ronger_ to gnaw +seems unsatisfactory. + +Act iii. sc. 4. + + + 'Quarl', How now, Numps! almost tired i' your protectorship? + overparted, overparted? + + +An odd sort of prophetic ality in this Numps and old Noll! + +Ib. sc. 6. Knockhum's speech:-- + + + He eats with his eyes, as well as his teeth. + + +A good motto for the Parson in Hogarth's Election Dinner,--who shows how +easily he might be reconciled to the Church of Rome, for he worships +what he eats. + +Act v. sc. 5. + + + 'Pup. Di'. It is not prophane. + + 'Lan'. It is not prophane, he says. + + 'Boy'. It is prophane. + + 'Pup'. It is not prophane. + + 'Boy'. It is prophane. + + 'Pup'. It is not prophane. + + 'Lan'. Well said, confute him with Not, still. + + +An imitation of the quarrel between Bacchus and the Frogs in +Aristophanes:-- + + +[Greek (transliterated): + + Choros. alla maen kekraxomestha g', hoposon hae pharugx an aem_on + chandanae, di' aemeras, brekekekex, koax, koax. + + Dionusos. touto gar ou nikaesete. + + Choros. oude maen haemas su pant_os. + + Dionusos. oude maen humeis ge dae m' oudepote.] + + + + + +THE DEVIL IS AN ASS. + +Act I. sc. 1. + + + 'Pug'. Why any: Fraud, Or Covetousness, or lady Vanity, + Or old Iniquity, _I'll call him hither_. + + The words in italics [between undescores] should probably be given to + the master-devil, Satan. (Whalley's note.) + + +That is, against all probability, and with a (for Jonson) impossible +violation of character. The words plainly belong to Pug, and mark at +once his simpleness and his impatience. + +Ib. sc. 4. Fitz-dottrel's soliloquy:- + +Compare this exquisite piece of sense, satire, and sound philosophy in +1616 with Sir M. Hale's speech from the bench in a trial of a witch many +years afterwards. [1] + +Act ii. sc. 1. Meercraft's speech:-- + + + Sir, money's a whore, a bawd, a drudge.-- + + +I doubt not that 'money' was the first word of the line, and has dropped +out:-- + + + Money! Sir, money's a, &c. + + +[Footnote 1: In 1664, at Bury St. Edmonds on the trial of Rose Cullender +and Amy Duny. Ed.] + + + + + +THE STAPLE OF NEWS. + +Act IV. sc. 3. Pecunia's speech:-- + + + No, he would ha' done, + That lay not in his power: he had the use + Of your bodies, Band and Wax, and sometimes Statute's. + + +Read (1815), + + + --he had the use of + Your bodies, &c. + + +Now, however, I doubt the legitimacy of my transposition of the 'of' +from the beginning of this latter line to the end of the one +preceding;--for though it facilitates the metre and reading of the +latter line, and is frequent in Massinger, this disjunction of the +preposition from its case seems to have been disallowed by Jonson. +Perhaps the better reading is-- + + + O' your bodies, &c.-- + + +the two syllables being slurred into one, or rather snatched, or sucked, +up into the emphasized 'your.' In all points of view, therefore, Ben's +judgment is just; for in this way, the line cannot be read, as metre, +without that strong and quick emphasis on 'your' which the sense +requires;--and had not the sense required an emphasis on 'your,' the +_tmesis_ of the sign of its cases 'of,' 'to,' &c. would destroy almost +all boundary between the dramatic verse and prose in comedy:--a lesson +not to be rash in conjectural amendments. 1818. + +Ib. sc. 4. + + + 'P. jun.' I love all men of virtue, _frommy_ Princess.-- + + +'Frommy,' 'fromme', pious, dutiful, &c. + +Act v. sc. 4. Penny-boy sen. and Porter:-- + +I dare not, will not, think that honest Ben had Lear in his mind in this +mock mad scene. + + + + + + +THE NEW INN. + +Act I. sc. 1. Host's speech:-- + + A heavy purse, and then two turtles, _makes_.-- + + +'Makes', frequent in old books, and even now used in some counties for +mates, or pairs. + +Ib. sc. 3. Host's speech:-- + + + --And for a leap + O' the vaulting horse, to _play_ the vaulting _house_.-- + + +Instead of reading with Whalley 'ply' for 'play,' I would suggest +'horse' for 'house.' The meaning would then be obvious and pertinent. +The punlet, or pun-maggot, or pun intentional, 'horse and house,' is +below Jonson. The 'jeu-de-mots' just below-- + + + Read a lecture + Upon _Aquinas_ at St. Thomas à _Water_ings-- + +had a learned smack in it to season its insipidity. + +Ib. sc. 6. Lovel's speech:-- + + + Then shower'd his bounties on me, like the Hours, + That open-handed sit upon the clouds, + And press the liberality of heaven + Down to the laps of thankful men! + + +Like many other similar passages in Jonson, this is [Greek +(transliterated): eidos chalepon idein]--a sight which it is difficult +to make one's self see,--a picture my fancy cannot copy detached from +the words. + +Act ii. sc. 5. Though it was hard upon old Ben, yet Felton, it must be +confessed, was in the right in considering the Fly, Tipto, Bat Burst, +&c. of this play mere dotages. Such a scene as this was enough to damn a +new play; and Nick Stuff is worse still,--most abominable stuff indeed! + +Act in. sc. 2. Lovel's speech:-- + + + So knowledge first begets benevolence, + Benevolence breeds friendship, friendship love.-- + + +Jonson has elsewhere proceeded thus far; but the part most difficult and +delicate, yet, perhaps, not the least capable of being both morally and +poetically treated, is the union itself, and what, even in this life, it +can be. + + + + + +NOTES ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. + +Seward's Preface. 1750. + + +The King And No King, too, is extremely spirited in all its characters; +Arbaces holds up a mirror to all men of virtuous principles but violent +passions. Hence he is, as it were, at once magnanimity and pride, +patience and fury, gentleness and rigor, chastity and incest, and is one +of the finest mixtures of virtues and vices that any poet has drawn, &c. + + +These are among the endless instances of the abject state to which +psychology had sunk from the reign of Charles I. to the middle of the +present reign of George III.; and even now it is but just awaking. + +Ib. Seward's comparison of Julia's speech in the Two Gentlemen of +Verona, act iv. last scene-- + + + Madam, 'twas Ariadne passioning, &c.-- + + +with Aspatia's speech in the Maid's Tragedy-- + + + I stand upon the sea-beach now, &c. (Act ii.) + + +and preference of the latter. + +It is strange to take an incidental passage of one writer, intended only +for a subordinate part, and compare it with the same thought in another +writer, who had chosen it for a prominent and principal figure. + +Ib. Seward's preference of Alphonso's poisoning in A Wife for a Month, +act i. sc. 1, to the passage in King John, act v. sc. 7,-- + + + Poison'd, ill fare! dead, forsook, cast off! + + +Mr. Seward! Mr. Seward! you may be, and I trust you are, an angel; but +you were an ass. + +Ib. + + Every reader of _taste_ will see how superior this is to the quotation + from Shakspeare. + + +Of what taste? + +Ib. Seward's classification of the Plays:-- + +Surely Monsieur Thomas, The Chances, Beggar's Bush, and the Pilgrim, +should have been placed in the very first class! But the whole attempt +ends in a woeful failure. + + + + + +HARRIS'S COMMENDATORY POEM ON FLETCHER. + + + I'd have a state of wit convok'd, which hath + A _power_ to take up on common faith:-- + + +This is an instance of that modifying of quantity by emphasis, without +which our elder poets cannot be scanned. 'Power,' here, instead of being +one long syllable--pow'r--must be sounded, not indeed as a spondee, nor +yet as a trochee; but as--[Symbol: u-shape beneath line];--the first +syllable is 1 1/4. + +We can, indeed, never expect an authentic edition of our elder dramatic +poets (for in those times a drama was a poem), until some man undertakes +the work, who has studied the philosophy of metre. This has been found +the main torch of sound restoration in the Greek dramatists by Bentley, +Porson, and their followers;--how much more, then, in writers in our own +language! It is true that quantity, an almost iron law with the Greek, +is in English rather a subject for a peculiarly fine ear, than any law +or even rule; but, then, instead of it, we have, first, accent; +secondly, emphasis; and lastly, retardation, and acceleration of the +times of syllables according to the meaning of the words, the passion +that accompanies them, and even the character of the person that uses +them. With due attention to these,--above all, to that, which requires +the most attention and the finest taste, the character, Massinger, for +example, might be reduced to a rich and yet regular metre. But then the +'regulæ' must be first known;--though I will venture to say, that he who +does not find a line (not corrupted) of Massinger's flow to the time +total of a trimeter catalectic iambic verse, has not read it aright. But +by virtue of the last principle--the retardation or acceleration of +time--we have the proceleusmatic foot * * * *, and the 'dispondaeus' -- + -- -- --, not to mention the 'choriambus', the ionics, paeons, and +epitrites. Since Dryden, the metre of our poets leads to the sense: in +our elder and more genuine bards, the sense, including the passion, +leads to the metre. Read even Donne's satires as he meant them to be +read, and as the sense and passion demand, and you will find in the +lines a manly harmony. + + + + + +LIFE OF FLETCHER IN STOCKDALE'S EDITION. 1811. + + +In general their plots are more regular than Shakspeare's.-- + + +This is true, if true at all, only before a court of criticism, which +judges one scheme by the laws of another and a diverse one. Shakspeare's +plots have their own laws or regulæ, and according to these they are +regular. + + + + + +MAID'S TRAGEDY. + +Act I. The metrical arrangement is most slovenly throughout. + + + 'Strat'. As well as masque can be, &c. + + +and all that follows to 'who is return'd'--is plainly blank verse, and +falls easily into it. + +Ib. Speech of Melantius:-- + + + These soft and silken wars are not for me: + The music must be shrill, and all confus'd, + That stirs my blood; and then I dance with arms. + + +What strange self-trumpeters and tongue-bullies all the brave soldiers +of Beaumont and Fletcher are! Yet I am inclined to think it was the +fashion of the age from the Soldier's speech in the Counter Scuffle; and +deeper than the fashion B. and F. did not fathom. + +Ib. Speech of Lysippus:-- + + + Yes, but this lady + Walks discontented, with her wat'ry eyes + Bent on the earth, &c. + + +Opulent as Shakspeare was, and of his opulence prodigal, he yet would +not have put this exquisite piece of poetry in the mouth of a +no-character, or as addressed to a Melantius. I wish that B. and F. had +written poems instead of tragedies. + +Ib. + + + 'Mel'. I might run fiercely, not more hastily, Upon my foe. + + +Read + + + I might run more fiercely, not more hastily.-- + + +Ib. Speech of Calianax:-- + + + Office! I would I could put it off! I am sure I sweat quite through my + office! + + +The syllable _off_ reminds the testy statesman of his robe, and he +carries on the image. + +Ib. Speech of Melantius:-- + + + --Would that blood, + That sea of blood, that I have lost in fight, &c. + + +All B. and F.'s generals are pugilists, or cudgel-fighters, that boast +of their bottom and of the _claret_ they have shed. + +Ib. The Masque;--Cinthia's speech:-- + + + But I will give a greater state and glory, + And raise to time a _noble_ memory + Of what these lovers are. + + +I suspect that 'nobler,' pronounced as 'nobiler'--[Symbol (metrical): +U-=shape below the line]--, was the poet's word, and that the accent is +to be placed on the penultimate of 'memory.' As to the passage-- + + + Yet, while our reign lasts, let us stretch our power, &c. + + +removed from the text of Cinthia's speech by these foolish editors as +unworthy of B. and F.--the first eight lines are not worse, and the last +couplet incomparably better, than the stanza retained. + +Act ii. Amintor's speech:-- + + + Oh, thou hast nam'd a word, that wipes away + All thoughts revengeful! In that sacred name, + 'The king,' there lies a terror. + + +It is worth noticing that of the three greatest tragedians, Massinger +was a democrat, Beaumont and Fletcher the most servile _jure divino_ +royalist, and Shakspeare a philosopher;--if aught personal, an +aristocrat. + + + + + +A KING AND NO KING. + +Act IV. Speech of Tigranes:-- + + + She, that forgat the greatness of her grief + And miseries, that must follow such mad passions, + Endless and wild _as_ women! &c. + + +Seward's note and suggestion of 'in.' + +It would be amusing to learn from some existing friend of Mr. Seward +what he meant, or rather dreamed, in this note. It is certainly a +difficult passage, of which there are two solutions;--one, that the +writer was somewhat more injudicious than usual;--the other, that he was +very, very much more profound and Shakspearian than usual. Seward's +emendation, at all events, is right and obvious. Were it a passage of +Shakspeare, I should not hesitate to interpret it as characteristic of +Tigranes' state of mind,--disliking the very virtues, and therefore +half-consciously representing them as mere products of the violence, of +the sex in general in all their whims, and yet forced to admire, and to +feel and to express gratitude for, the exertion in his own instance. The +inconsistency of the passage would be the consistency of the author. But +this is above Beaumont and Fletcher. + + + + + +THE SCORNFUL LADY. + +Act II. Sir Roger's speech:-- + + + Did I for this consume my _quarters_ in meditations, vows, and woo'd + her in heroical epistles? Did I expound the Owl, and undertake, with + labor and expense, the recollection of those thousand pieces, consum'd + in cellars and tobacco-shops, of that our honor'd Englishman, Nic. + Broughton? &c. + + +Strange, that neither Mr. Theobald, nor Mr. Seward, should have seen +that this mock heroic speech is in full-mouthed blank verse! Had they +seen this, they would have seen that 'quarters' is a substitution of the +players for 'quires' or 'squares,' (that is) of paper:-- + + + Consume my quires in meditations, vows, + And woo'd her in heroical epistles. + + +They ought, likewise, to have seen that the abbreviated 'Ni. Br.' of the +text was properly 'Mi. Dr.'--and that Michael Drayton, not Nicholas +Broughton, is here ridiculed for his poem The Owl and his Heroical +Epistles. + +Ib. Speech of Younger Loveless:-- + + + Fill him some wine. Thou dost not see me mov'd, &c. + + +These Editors ought to have learnt, that scarce an instance occurs in B. +and F. of a long speech not in metre. This is plain staring blank verse. + + + + + + +THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY. + +I cannot but think that in a country conquered by a nobler race than the +natives, and in which the latter became villeins and bondsmen, this +custom, 'lex merchetae', may have been introduced for wise purposes,--as +of improving the breed, lessening the antipathy of different races, and +producing a new bond of relationship between the lord and the tenant, +who, as the eldest born, would, at least, have a chance of being, and a +probability of being thought, the lord's child. In the West Indies it +cannot have these effects, because the mulatto is marked by nature +different from the father, and because there is no bond, no law, no +custom, but of mere debauchery. 1815. + +Act i. sc. 1. Rutilio's speech:-- + + + Yet if you play not fair play, &c. + + +Evidently to be transposed and read thus:-- + + + Yet if you play not fair, above-board too, I'll tell you what--I've a + foolish engine here:--I say no more--But if your Honor's guts are not + enchanted-- + + +Licentious as the comic metre of B. and F. is,--a far more lawless, and +yet far less happy, imitation of the rhythm of animated talk in real +life than Massinger's--still it is made worse than it really is by +ignorance of the halves, thirds, and two-thirds of a line which B. and +F. adopted from the Italian and Spanish dramatists. Thus in Rutilio's +speech:-- + + + Though I confess + Any man would desire to have her, and by any means, &c. + + +Correct the whole passage-- + + + Though I confess + Any man would Desire to have her, and by any means, + At any rate too, yet this common hangman + That hath whipt off a /THOUsand maids' HEADS/ already-- + That he should glean the harvest, sticks in my stomach! + +[Between the two /, upper-case syllables have the stress, written as a +horizontal line above them in the original text, and lower-case +syllables are unstressed, written as a u-shape (the u-symbol previously +described) above them. text Ed.] + + +In all comic metres the gulping of short syllables, and the abbreviation +of syllables ordinarily long by the rapid pronunciation of eagerness and +vehemence, are not so much a license, as a law,--a faithful copy of +nature, and let them be read characteristically, the times will be found +nearly equal. Thus the three words marked above make a 'choriambus'--u u +--, or perhaps a 'paeon primus'--u u u; a dactyl, by virtue of comic +rapidity, being only equal to an iambus when distinctly pronounced. I +have no doubt that all B. and F.'s works might be safely corrected by +attention to this rule, and that the editor is entitled to +transpositions of all kinds, and to not a few omissions. For the rule of +the metre once lost--what was to restrain the actors from interpolation? + + + + + +THE ELDER BROTHER + +Act I. sc. 2. Charles's speech:-- + + + --For what concerns tillage, + Who better can deliver it than Virgil + In his Georgicks? and to cure your herds, + His Bucolicks is a master-piece. + + +Fletcher was too good a scholar to fall into so gross a blunder, as +Messrs. Sympson and Colman suppose. I read the passage thus:- + + + --For what concerns tillage, + Who better can deliver it than Virgil, + In his /GeORGicks/, _or_ to cure your herds; + (His Bucolicks are a master-piece.) + But when, &c. + + +Jealous of Virgil's honor, he is afraid lest, by referring to the +Georgics alone, he might be understood as undervaluing the preceding +work. 'Not that I do not admire the Bucolics, too, in their way:--But +when, &c.' + +Act iii. sc. 3. Charles's speech:-- + + + --She has a face looks like a _story_; + The _story_ of the heavens looks very like her. + + +Seward reads 'glory;' and Theobald quotes from Philaster-- + + + That reads the story of a woman's face.-- + + +I can make sense of this passage as little as Mr. Seward;--the passage +from Philaster is nothing to the purpose. Instead of 'a story,' I have +sometimes thought of proposing 'Astræa.' + +Ib. Angellina's speech:-- + + + --You're old and dim, Sir, + And the shadow of the earth eclips'd your judgment. + + +Inappropriate to Angellina, but one of the finest lines in our language. + +Act iv. sc. 3. Charles's speech:-- + + + And lets the serious part of life run by + As thin neglected sand, whiteness of name. + You must be mine, &c. + + +Seward's note, and reading-- + + + --Whiteness of name, + You must be mine! + + +Nonsense! 'Whiteness of name,' is in apposition to 'the serious part of +life,' and means a deservedly pure reputation. The following line--'You +_must_ be mine!' means--'Though I do not enjoy you to-day, I shall +hereafter, and without reproach.' + + + + + + +THE SPANISH CURATE. + +Act IV. sc. 7. Amaranta's speech:-- + + + And still I push'd him on, as he had been _coming_. + + +Perhaps the true word is 'conning,' that is, learning, or reading, and +therefore inattentive. + + + + + +WIT WITHOUT MONEY. + +Act I. Valentine's speech:-- + + + One without substance, &c. + + +The present text, and that proposed by Seward, are equally vile. I have +endeavoured to make the lines sense, though the whole is, I suspect, +incurable except by bold conjectural reformation. I would read thus:-- + + + One without substance of herself, that's woman; + Without the pleasure of her life, that's wanton; + Tho' she be young, forgetting it; tho' fair, + Making her glass the eyes of honest men, + Not her own admiration. + + +'That's wanton,' or, 'that is to say, wantonness.' + +Act ii. Valentine's speech:-- + + + Of half-a-crown a week for pins and puppets-- + + As there is a syllable wanting in the measure here. (Seward.) + + +A syllable wanting! Had this Seward neither ears nor fingers? The line +is a more than usually regular iambic hendecasyllable. + +Ib. + + + With one man satisfied, with one rein guided; + With one faith, one content, one bed; + _Aged_, she makes the wife, preserves the fame and issue; + A widow is, &c. + + +Is 'apaid'--contented--too obsolete for B. and F.? If not, we might read +it thus:- + + + Content with one faith, with one bed apaid, + She makes the wife, preserves the fame and issue;-- + + +Or it may be-- + + + --with one breed apaid-- + + +that is, satisfied with one set of children, in opposition to-- + + + A widow is a Christmas-box, &c. + + +Colman's note on Seward's attempt to put this play into metre. + +The editors, and their contemporaries in general, were ignorant of any +but the regular iambic verse. A study of the Aristophanic and Plautine +metres would have enabled them to reduce B. and F. throughout into +metre, except where prose is really intended. + + + + + + +THE HUMOROUS LIEUTENANT. + +Act I. sc. 1. Second Ambassador's speech:-- + + + --When your angers, _Like_ so many brother billows, rose together, + And, curling up _your_ foaming crests, defied, &c. + + +This worse than superfluous 'like' is very like an interpolation of some +matter of fact critic--all 'pus, prose atque venenum'. The 'your' in the +next line, instead of 'their,' is likewise yours, Mr. Critic! + +Act ii: sc. 1. Timon's speech:-- + + + Another of a new _way_ will be look'd at.-- + +We much suspect the poets wrote, 'of a new _day_.' So, immediately +after, + + --Time may For all his wisdom, yet give us a day. + + (SEWARD'S NOTE.) + + +For this very reason I more than suspect the contrary. + +Ib. sc. 3. Speech of Leucippe:-- + + + I'll put her into action for a _wastcoat_.-- + + +What we call a riding-habit,--some mannish dress. + + + + + +THE MAD LOVER. + +Act IV. Masque of beasts:-- + + + --This goodly tree, + An usher that still grew before his lady, + Wither'd at root: this, for he could not wooe, + A grumbling lawyer: &c. + + +Here must have been omitted a line rhyming to 'tree;' and the words of +the next line have been transposed:-- + + + --This goodly tree, + _Which leafless, and obscur'd with moss you see_, + An usher this, that 'fore his lady grew, + Wither'd at root: this, for he could not wooe, &c. + + + + +THE LOYAL SUBJECT. + +It is well worthy of notice, and yet has not been, I believe, noticed +hitherto, what a marked difference there exists in the dramatic writers +of the Elizabetho-Jacobæan age--(Mercy on me! what a phrase for 'the +writers during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I.!')--in respect of +their political opinions. Shakspeare, in this as in all other things, +himself and alone, gives the permanent politics of human nature, and the +only predilection, which appears, shews itself in his contempt of mobs +and the populacy. Massinger is a decided Whig;--Beaumont and Fletcher +high-flying, passive-obedience, Tories. The Spanish dramatists furnished +them with this, as with many other ingredients. By the by, an accurate +and familiar acquaintance with all the productions of the Spanish stage +previously to 1620, is an indispensable qualification for an editor of +B. and F.;--and with this qualification a most interesting and +instructive edition might be given. This edition of Colman's Stockdale, +(1811,) is below criticism. + +In metre, B. and F. are inferior to Shakspeare, on the one hand, as +expressing the poetic part of the drama, and to Massinger, on the other, +in the art of reconciling metre with the natural rhythm of +conversation,--in which, indeed, Massinger is unrivalled. Read him +aright, and measure by time, not syllables, and no lines can be more +legitimate,--none in which the substitution of equipollent feet, and the +modifications by emphasis, are managed with such exquisite judgment. B. +and F. are fond of the twelve syllable (not Alexandrine) line, as-- + + + Too many fears' tis thought too: and to nourish those-- + + +This has, often, a good effect, and is one of the varieties most common +in Shakspeare. + + + + +RULE A WIFE AND HAVE A WIFE. + +Act III. Old Woman's speech:-- + + + --I fear he will knock my Brains out for lying. + + +Mr. Seward discards the words 'for lying', because 'most of the things +spoke of Estifania are true, with only a little exaggeration, and +because they destroy all appearance of measure.' (Colman's note.) + +Mr. Seward had his brains out. The humor lies in Estifania's having +ordered the Old Woman to tell these tales of her; for though an +intriguer, she is not represented as other than chaste; and as to the +metre, it is perfectly correct. + +Ib. + + 'Marg'. As you love me, give way. + + 'Leon'. It shall be better, I will give none, madam, &c. + + +The meaning is: 'It shall be a better way, first;--as it is, I will not +give it, or any that you in your present mood would wish.' + + + + + +THE LAWS OF CANDY. + +Act I. Speech of Melitus:-- + + Whose insolence and never yet match'd pride + Can by no character be well express'd, + But in her only name, the proud Erota. + +Colman's note. + +The poet intended no allusion to the word 'Erota' itself; but says that +her very name, 'the proud Erota,' became a character and adage; as we +say, a Quixote or a Brutus: so to say an 'Erota,' expressed female pride +and insolence of beauty. + +Ib. Speech of Antinous:- + + Of my peculiar honors, not deriv'd + From 'successary', but purchas'd with my blood.-- + + +The poet doubtless wrote 'successry,' which, though not adopted in our +language, would be, on many occasions, as here, a much more significant +phrase than ancestry. + + + + +THE LITTLE FRENCH LAWYER. + +Act I. sc. 1. Dinant's speech:-- + + Are you become a patron too? 'Tis a new one, + No more on't, &c. + +Seward reads:-- + + Are you become a patron too? + _How long Have you been conning this speech?_ 'Tis a new one, &c. + +If conjectural emendation, like this, be allowed, we might venture to +read:-- + + Are you become a patron _to a new tune_? + +or, + + Are you become a patron? 'Tis a new _tune_. + + +Ib. + + 'Din'. Thou wouldst not willingly Live a protested coward, or be call'd + one? + + 'Cler'. Words are but words. + + 'Din'. Nor wouldst thou take a blow? + +Seward's note. + +O miserable! Dinant sees through Cleremont's gravity, and the actor is +to explain it. 'Words are but words,' is the last struggle of affected +morality. + + + + +VALENTINIAN. + +Act I. sc. 3. It is a real trial of charity to read this scene with +tolerable temper towards Fletcher. So very slavish--so reptile--are the +feelings and sentiments represented as duties. And yet remember he was a +bishop's son, and the duty to God was the supposed basis. + +Personals, including body, house, home, and religion;--property, +subordination, and inter-community;--these are the fundamentals of +society. I mean here, religion negatively taken,--so that the person be +not compelled to do or utter, in relation of the soul to God, what would +be, in that person, a lie;--such as to force a man to go to church, or +to swear that he believes what he does not believe. Religion, positively +taken, may be a great and useful privilege, but cannot be a right,--were +it for this only that it cannot be pre-defined. The ground of this +distinction between negative and positive religion, as a social right, +is plain. No one of my fellow-citizens is encroached on by my not +declaring to him what I believe respecting the super-sensual; but should +every man be entitled to preach against the preacher, who could hear any +preacher? Now it is different in respect of loyalty. There we have +positive rights, but not negative rights;--for every pretended negative +would be in effect a positive;--as if a soldier had a right to keep to +himself, whether he would, or would not, fight. Now, no one of these +fundamentals can be rightfully attacked, except when the guardian of it +has abused it to subvert one or more of the rest. The reason is, that +the guardian, as a fluent, is less than the permanent which he is to +guard. He is the temporary and mutable mean, and derives his whole value +from the end. In short, as robbery is not high treason, so neither is +every unjust act of a king the converse. All must be attacked and +endangered. Why? Because the king, as 'a' to A., is a mean to A. or +subordination, in a far higher sense than a proprietor, as 'b'. to B. is +a mean to B. or property. + +Act ii. sc. 2. Claudia's speech:- + + Chimney-pieces! &c. + +The whole of this speech seems corrupt; and if accurately printed,--that +is, if the same in all the prior editions, irremediable but by bold +conjecture. ''Till' my tackle,' should be, I think, 'while,' &c. + +Act iii. sc. 1. B. and F. always write as if virtue or goodness were a +sort of talisman, or strange something, that might be lost without the +least fault on the part of the owner. In short, their chaste ladies +value their chastity as a material thing--not as an act or state of +being; and this mere thing being imaginary, no wonder that all their +women are represented with the minds of strumpets, except a few +irrational humorists, far less capable of exciting our sympathy than a +Hindoo, who has had a bason of cow-broth thrown over him;--for this, +though a debasing superstition, is still real, and we might pity the +poor wretch, though we cannot help despising him. But B. and F.'s +Lucinas are clumsy fictions. It is too plain that the authors had no one +idea of chastity as a virtue, but only such a conception as a blind man +might have of the power of seeing, by handling an ox's eye. In The Queen +of Corinth, indeed, they talk differently; but it is all talk, and +nothing is real in it but the dread of losing a reputation. Hence the +frightful contrast between their women (even those who are meant for +virtuous) and Shakspeare's. So, for instance, The Maid in the Mill:--a +woman must not merely have grown old in brothels, but have chuckled over +every abomination committed in them with a rampant sympathy of +imagination, to have had her fancy so drunk with the 'minutiæ' of +lechery as this icy chaste virgin evinces hers to have been. + +It would be worth while to note how many of these plays are founded on +rapes,--how many on incestuous passions, and how many on mere lunacies. +Then their virtuous women are either crazy superstitions of a merely +bodily negation of having been acted on, or strumpets in their +imaginations and wishes, or, as in this Maid in the Mill, both at the same +time. In the men, the love is merely lust in one direction,--exclusive +preference of one object. The tyrant's speeches are mostly taken from the +mouths of indignant denouncers of the tyrant's character, with the +substitution of 'I' for 'he,' and the omission of the prefatory 'he acts +as if he thought' so and so. The only feelings they can possibly excite +are disgust at the Aeciuses, if regarded as sane loyalists, or compassion, +if considered as Bedlamites. So much for their tragedies. But even their +comedies are, most of them, disturbed by the fantasticalness, or gross +caricature, of the persons or incidents. There are few characters that you +can really like,--(even though you should have had erased from your mind +all the filth, which bespatters the most likeable of them, as Piniero in +The Island Princess for instance,)--scarcely one whom you can love. How +different this from Shakspeare, who makes one have a sort of sneaking +affection even for his Barnardines;--whose very Iagos and Richards are +awful, and, by the counteracting power of profound intellects, rendered +fearful rather than hateful;--and even the exceptions, as Goneril and +Regan, are proofs of superlative judgment and the finest moral tact, in +being left utter monsters, 'nulla virtute redemptæ,' and in being kept out +of sight as much as possible,--they being, indeed, only means for the +excitement and deepening of noblest emotions towards the Lear, Cordelia, +&c. and employed with the severest economy! But even Shakspeare's +grossness--that which is really so, independently of the increase in +modern times of vicious associations with things indifferent,--(for there +is a state of manners conceivable so pure, that the language of Hamlet at +Ophelia's feet might be a harmless rallying, or playful teazing, of a +shame that would exist in Paradise)--at the worst, how diverse in kind is +it from Beaumont and Fletcher's! In Shakspeare it is the mere generalities +of sex, mere words for the most part, seldom or never distinct images, all +head-work, and fancy-drolleries; there is no sensation supposed in the +speaker. I need not proceed to contrast this with B. and F. + + + +ROLLO. + +This is, perhaps, the most energetic of Fletcher's tragedies. He +evidently aimed at a new Richard III. in Rollo;--but as in all his other +imitations of Shakspeare, he was not philosopher enough to bottom his +original. Thus, in Rollo, he has produced a mere personification of +outrageous wickedness, with no fundamental characteristic impulses to +make either the tyrant's words or actions philosophically intelligible. +Hence, the most pathetic situations border on the horrible, and what he +meant for the terrible, is either hateful, [Greek (transliterated): to +misaeton], or ludicrous. The scene of Baldwin's sentence in the third +act is probably the grandest working of passion in all B. and F.'s +dramas;--but the very magnificence of filial affection given to Edith, +in this noble scene, renders the after scene--(in imitation of one of +the least Shakspearian of all Shakspeare's works, if it be his, the +scene between Richard and Lady Anne,)--in which Edith is yielding to a +few words and tears, not only unnatural, but disgusting. In Shakspeare, +Lady Anne is described as a weak, vain, very woman throughout. + +Act i. sc. I. + + 'Gis'. He is indeed the perfect character + Of a good man, and so his actions speak him. + +This character of Aubrey, and the whole spirit of this and several other +plays of the same authors, are interesting as traits of the morals which +it was fashionable to teach in the reigns of James I. and his successor, +who died a martyr to them. Stage, pulpit, law, fashion,--all conspired +to enslave the realm. Massinger's plays breathe the opposite spirit; +Shakspeare's the spirit of wisdom which is for all ages. By the by, the +Spanish dramatists--Calderon, in particular,--had some influence in this +respect, of romantic loyalty to the greatest monsters, as well as in the +busy intrigues of B. and F.'s plays. + + + + +THE WILD GOOSE CHASE. + +Act II. sc. 1. Belleur's speech:-- + + --that wench, methinks, + If I were but well set on, for she is _a fable_, + If I were but hounded right, and one to teach me. + +Sympson reads 'affable,' which Colman rejects, and says, 'the next line +seems to enforce' the reading in the text. + +Pity, that the editor did not explain wherein the sense, 'seemingly +enforced by the next line,' consists. May the true word be 'a sable,' +that is, a black fox, hunted for its precious fur? Or 'at-able,'--as we +now say,--'she is come-at-able?' + + + + +A WIFE FOR A MONTH. + +Act IV. sc. 1. Alphonso's speech:- + + Betwixt the cold bear and the raging lion + Lies my safe way. + +Seward's note and alteration to-- + + 'Twixt the cold bears, far from the raging lion-- + +This Mr. Seward is a blockhead of the provoking species. In his itch for +correction, he forgot the words--'lies my safe way!' The Bear is the +extreme pole, and thither he would travel over the space contained +between it and 'the raging lion.' + + + + +THE PILGRIM. + +Act IV. sc. 2. Alinda's interview with her father is lively, and happily +hit off; but this scene with Roderigo is truly excellent. Altogether, +indeed, this play holds the first place in B. and F.'s romantic +entertainments, 'Lustspiele', which collectively are their happiest +performances, and are only inferior to the romance of Shakspeare in the +As you Like It, Twelfth Night, &c. + +Ib. + + 'Alin'. To-day you shall wed Sorrow, + And Repentance will come to-morrow. + +Read 'Penitence,' or else-- + + Repentance, she will come to-morrow. + + + +THE QUEEN OF CORINTH. + +Act II. sc. 1. Merione's speech. Had the scene of this tragi-comedy been +laid in Hindostan instead of Corinth, and the gods here addressed been +the Veeshnoo and Co. of the Indian Pantheon, this rant would not have +been much amiss. + +In respect of style and versification, this play and the following of +Bonduca may be taken as the best, and yet as characteristic, specimens +of Beaumont and Fletcher's dramas. I particularly instance the first +scene of the Bonduca. Take Shakspeare's Richard II., and having selected +some one scene of about the same number of lines, and consisting mostly +of long speeches, compare it with the first scene in Bonduca,--not for +the idle purpose of finding out which is the better, but in order to see +and understand the difference. The latter, that of B. and F., you will +find a Avell arranged bed of flowers, each having its separate root, and +its position determined aforehand by the will of the gardener,--each +fresh plant a fresh volition. In the former you see an Indian fig-tree, +as described by Milton;--all is growth, evolution, [Greek +(transliterated): genesis];--each line, each word almost, begets the +following, and the will of the writer is an interfusion, a continuous +agency, and not a series of separate acts. Shakspeare is the height, +breadth, and depth of genius: Beaumont and Fletcher the excellent +mechanism, in juxta-position and succession, of talent. + + + + +THE NOBLE GENTLEMAN. + + +Why have the dramatists of the times of Elizabeth, James I. and the +first Charles become almost obsolete, with the exception of Shakspeare? +Why do they no longer belong to the English, being once so popular? And +why is Shakspeare an exception?--One thing, among fifty, necessary to +the full solution is, that they all employed poetry and poetic diction +on unpoetic subjects, both characters and situations, especially in +their comedy. Now Shakspeare is all, all ideal,--of no time, and +therefore for all times. Read, for instance, Marine's panegyric in the +first scene of this play:-- + + + Know The eminent court, to them that can be wise, + And fasten on her blessings, is a sun, &c. + + +What can be more unnatural and inappropriate--(not only is, but must be +felt as such)--than such poetry in the mouth of a silly dupe? In short, +the scenes are mock dialogues, in which the poet _solus_ plays the +ventriloquist, but cannot keep down his own way of expressing himself. +Heavy complaints have been made respecting the transprosing of the old +plays by Cibber; but it never occurred to these critics to ask, how it +came that no one ever attempted to transprose a comedy of Shakspeare's. + + + + +THE CORONATION. + +Act I. Speech of Seleucus:-- + + + Altho' he be my enemy, should any + Of the gay flies that buz about the court, + _Sit_ to catch trouts i' the summer, tell me so, + I durst, &c. + + + Colman's note. + +Pshaw! 'Sit' is either a misprint for 'set,' or the old and still +provincial word for 'set,' as the participle passive of 'seat' or 'set.' +I have heard an old Somersetshire gardener say:--"Look, Sir! I set these +plants here; those yonder I 'sit' yesterday." + +Act ii. Speech of Arcadius:-- + + + Nay, some will swear they love their mistress, + Would hazard lives and fortunes, &c. + + +Read thus:-- + + + Nay, some will swear they love their mistress so, + They would hazard lives and fortunes to preserve + One of her hairs brighter than Berenice's, + Or young Apollo's; and yet, after this, &c. + + +'/They would HAzard/' [1]--furnishes an anapæst for an 'iambus'. 'And +yet,' which must be read, /'ANyet'/, is an instance of the enclitic +force in an accented monosyllable. /'And YET'/ is a complete 'iambus'; +but 'anyet' is, like 'spirit', a dibrach u u, trocheized, however, by +the 'arsis' or first accent damping, though not extinguishing, the +second. + +[Footnote 1: As noted earlier in this text, the words between / marks +are pronounced with stress on the upper-case syllables, and none on the +lower-case syllables. In the original text, stress is indicated by a +horizontal line over the syllable, and lack of stress by a u-shape, as +the u u later in this paragraph. text Ed.] + + + + +WIT AT SEVERAL WEAPONS. + +Act I. Oldcraft's speech: + + + I'm arm'd at all points, &c. + + +It would be very easy to restore all this passage to metre, by supplying +a sentence of four syllables, which the reasoning almost demands, and by +correcting the grammar. Read thus:-- + + + Arm'd at all points 'gainst treachery, I hold + My humor firm. If, living, I can see thee + Thrive by thy wits, I shall have the more courage, + Dying, to trust thee with my lands. If not, + The best wit, I can hear of, carries them. + For since so many in my time and knowledge, + Rich children of the city, have concluded + _For lack of wit_ in beggary, I'd rather + Make a wise stranger my executor, + Than a fool son my heir, and have my lands call'd + After my wit than name: and that's my nature! + + +Ib. Oldcraft's speech:-- + + + To prevent which I have sought out a match for her.-- + + +Read + + + Which to prevent I've sought a match out for her. + + +Ib. Sir Gregory's speech:-- + + + --Do you think I'll have any of the wits hang upon me after I am + married once? + + +Read it thus:-- + + + Do you think + That I'll have any of the wits to hang + Upon me after I am married once? + + +and afterwards-- + + + Is it a fashion in London, + To marry a woman, and to never see her? + + +The superfluous 'to' gives it the Sir Andrew Ague-cheek character. + + + + +THE FAIR MAID OF THE INN. + +Act II. Speech of Albertus:-- + + + But, Sir, + By my life, I vow to take assurance from you, + That right-hand never more shall strike my son, + ... + Chop his hand off! + + +In this (as, indeed, in all other respects; but most in this) it is that +Shakspeare is so incomparably superior to Fletcher and his friend,--in +judgment! What can be conceived more unnatural and motiveless than this +brutal resolve? How is it possible to feel the least interest in +Albertus afterwards? or in Cesario after his conduct? + + + + + +THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN. + +On comparing the prison scene of Palamon and Arcite, Act ii. sc. 2, with +the dialogue between the same speakers, Act i. sc. 2, I can scarcely +retain a doubt as to the first act's having been written by Shakspeare. +Assuredly it was not written by B. and F. I hold Jonson more probable +than either of these two. + +The main presumption, however, for Shakspeare's share in this play rests +on a point, to which the sturdy critics of this edition (and indeed all +before them) were blind,--that is, the construction of the blank verse, +which proves beyond all doubt an intentional imitation, if not the +proper hand, of Shakspeare. Now, whatever improbability there is in the +former, (which supposes Fletcher conscious of the inferiority, the too +poematic _minus_-dramatic nature, of his versification, and of which +there is neither proof, nor likelihood,) adds so much to the probability +of the latter. On the other hand, the harshness of many of these very +passages, a harshness unrelieved by any lyrical inter-breathings, and +still more the want of profundity in the thoughts, keep me from an +absolute decision. + +Act i. sc. 3. Emilia's speech:-- + + + --Since his depart, his _sports_, + Tho' craving seriousness and skill, &c. + + +I conjecture 'imports,' that is, duties or offices of importance. The +flow of the versification in this speech seems to demand the trochaic +ending--/u/; while the text blends jingle and _hisses_ to the annoyance +of less sensitive ears than Fletcher's--not to say, Shakspeare's. + + + + + +THE WOMAN HATER. + +Act. I. sc. 2. This scene from the beginning is prose printed as blank +verse, down to the line-- + + + E'en all the valiant stomachs in the court-- + + +where the verse recommences. This transition from the prose to the verse +enhances, and indeed forms, the comic effect. Lazarillo concludes his +soliloquy with a hymn to the goddess of plenty. + + + + +ON THE PROMETHEUS OF ÆSCHYLUS: + + +An Essay, preparatory to a series of disquisitions respecting the +Egyptian, in connection with the sacerdotal, theology, and in contrast +with the mysteries of ancient Greece. Read at the Royal Society of +Literature, May 18, 1825. + + +The French 'savans' who went to Egypt in the train of Buonaparte, Denon, +Fourrier, and Dupuis, (it has been asserted), triumphantly vindicated +the chronology of Herodotus, on the authority of documents that cannot +lie;--namely, the inscriptions and sculptures on those enormous masses +of architecture, that might seem to have been built in the wish of +rivalling the mountains, and at some unknown future to answer the same +purpose, that is, to stand the gigantic tombstones of an elder world. It +is decided, say the critics, whose words I have before cited, that the +present division of the zodiac had been already arranged by the +Egyptians fifteen thousand years before the Christian era, and according +to an inscription 'which cannot lie' the temple of Esne is of eight +thousand years standing. + +Now, in the first place, among a people who had placed their national +pride in their antiquity, I do not see the impossibility of an +inscription lying; and, secondly, as little can I see the improbability +of a modern interpreter misunderstanding it; and lastly, the +incredibility of a French infidel's partaking of both defects, is still +less evident to my understanding. The inscriptions may be, and in some +instances, very probably are, of later date than the temples +themselves,--the offspring of vanity or priestly rivalry, or of certain +astrological theories; or the temples themselves may have been built in +the place of former and ruder structures, of an earlier and ruder +period, and not impossibly under a different scheme of hieroglyphic or +significant characters; and these may have been intentionally, or +ignorantly, miscopied or mistranslated. + +But more than all the preceding,--I cannot but persuade myself, that for +a man of sound judgment and enlightened common sense--a man with whom +the demonstrable laws of the human mind, and the rules generalized from +the great mass of facts respecting human nature, weigh more than any two +or three detached documents or narrations, of whatever authority the +narrator may be, and however difficult it may be to bring positive +proofs against the antiquity of the documents--I cannot but persuade +myself, I say, that for such a man, the relation preserved in the first +book of the Pentateuch,--and which, in perfect accordance with all +analogous experience, with all the facts of history, and all that the +principles of political economy would lead us to anticipate, conveys to +us the rapid progress in civilization and splendour from Abraham and +Abimelech to Joseph and Pharaoh,--will be worth a whole library of such +inferences. + +I am aware that it is almost universal to speak of the gross idolatry of +Egypt; nay, that arguments have been grounded on this assumption in proof +of the divine origin of the Mosaic monotheism. But first, if by this we +are to understand that the great doctrine of the one Supreme Being was +first revealed to the Hebrew legislator, his own inspired writings supply +abundant and direct confutation of the position. Of certain astrological +superstitions,--of certain talismans connected with star-magic,--plates +and images constructed in supposed harmony with the movements and +influences of celestial bodies,--there doubtless exist hints, if not +direct proofs, both in the Mosaic writings, and those next to these in +antiquity. But of plain idolatry in Egypt, or the existence of a +polytheistic religion, represented by various idols, each signifying a +several deity, I can find no decisive proof in the Pentateuch; and when I +collate these with the books of the prophets, and the other inspired +writings subsequent to the Mosaic, I cannot but regard the absence of any +such proof in the latter, compared with the numerous and powerful +assertions, or evident implications, of Egyptian idolatry in the former, +both as an argument of incomparably greater value in support of the age +and authenticity of the Pentateuch; and as a strong presumption in favour +of the hypothesis on which I shall in part ground the theory which will +pervade this series of disquisitions;--namely, that the sacerdotal +religion of Egypt had, during the interval from Abimelech to Moses, +degenerated from the patriarchal monotheism into a pantheism, cosmotheism, +or worship of the world as God. + +The reason, or pretext, assigned by the Hebrew legislator to Pharaoh for +leading his countrymen into the wilderness to join with their brethren, +the tribes who still sojourned in the nomadic state, namely, that their +sacrifices would be an abomination to the Egyptians, may be urged as +inconsistent with, nay, as confuting this hypothesis. But to this I +reply, first, that the worship of the ox and cow was not, in and of +itself, and necessarily, a contravention of the first commandment, +though a very gross breach of the second;--for it is most certain that +the ten tribes worshipped the Jehovah, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and +Jacob, under the same or similar symbols:--secondly, that the cow, or +Isis, and the Io of the Greeks, truly represented, in the first +instance, the earth or productive nature, and afterwards the mundane +religion grounded on the worship of nature, or the [Greek +(transliterated): to pan], as God. In after times, the ox or bull was +added, representing the sun, or generative force of nature, according to +the habit of male and female deities, which spread almost over the whole +world,--the positive and negative forces in the science of +superstition;--for the pantheism of the sage necessarily engenders +polytheism as the popular creed. But lastly, a very sufficient reason +may, I think, be assigned for the choice of the ox or cow, as +representing the very life of nature, by the first legislators of Egypt, +and for the similar sacred character in the Brachmanic tribes of +Hindostan. The progress from savagery to civilization is evidently first +from the hunting to the pastoral state, a process which even now is +going on, within our own times, among the South American Indians in the +vast tracts between Buenos Ayres and the Andes: but the second and the +most important step, is from the pastoral, or wandering, to the +agricultural, or fixed, state. Now, if even for men born and reared +under European civilization, the charms of a wandering life have been +found so great a temptation, that few who have taken to it have been +induced to return, (see the confession in the preamble to the statute +respecting the gipsies); [1]--how much greater must have been the danger +of relapse in the first formation of fixed states with a condensed +population? And what stronger prevention could the ingenuity of the +priestly kings--(for the priestly is ever the first form of +government)--devise, than to have made the ox or cow the representatives +of the divine principle in the world, and, as such, an object of +adoration, the wilful destruction of which was sacrilege?--For this +rendered a return to the pastoral state impossible; in which the flesh +of these animals and the milk formed almost the exclusive food of +mankind; while, in the meantime, by once compelling and habituating men +to the use of a vegetable diet, it enforced the laborious cultivation of +the soil, and both produced and permitted a vast and condensed +population. In the process and continued subdivisions of polytheism, +this great sacred Word,--for so the consecrated animals were called, +[Greek (transliterated): ieroi logoi,]--became multiplied, till almost +every power and supposed attribute of nature had its symbol in some +consecrated animal from the beetle to the hawk. Wherever the powers of +nature had found a cycle for themselves, in which the powers still +produced the same phenomenon during a given period, whether in the +motions of the heavenly orbs, or in the smallest living organic body, +there the Egyptian sages predicated life and mind. Time, cyclical time, +was their abstraction of the deity, and their holidays were their gods. + +The diversity between theism and pantheism may be most simply and +generally expressed in the following 'formula', in which the material +universe is expressed by W, and the deity by G. + + W-G=O; + +or the World without God is an impossible conception. This position is +common to theist and pantheist. But the pantheist adds the converse-- + + G-W=O; + +for which the theist substitutes-- + + G-W=G; + +or that-- + + G=G, anterior and irrelative to the existence of the world, is equal to + G+W. [2] + +'Before the mountains were, Thou art.'--I am not about to lead the +society beyond the bounds of my subject into divinity or theology in the +professional sense. But without a precise definition of pantheism, +without a clear insight into the essential distinction between it and +the theism of the Scriptures, it appears to me impossible to understand +either the import or the history of the polytheism of the great +historical nations. I beg leave, therefore, to repeat, and to carry on +my former position, that the religion of Egypt, at the time of the +Exodus of the Hebrews, was a pantheism, on the point of passing into +that polytheism, of which it afterwards afforded a specimen, gross and +distasteful even to polytheists themselves of other nations. + +The objects which, on my appointment as Royal Associate of the Royal +Society of Literature, I proposed to myself were, + +1st. The elucidation of the purpose of the Greek drama, and the +relations in which it stood to the mysteries on the one hand, and to the +state or sacerdotal religion on the other:-- + +2nd. The connection of the Greek tragic poets with philosophy as the +peculiar offspring of Greek genius:-- + +3rd. The connection of the Homeric and cyclical poets with the popular +religion of the Greeks: and, + +lastly from all these,--namely, the mysteries, the sacerdotal religion, +their philosophy before and after Socrates, the stage, the Homeric +poetry and the legendary belief of the people, and from the sources and +productive causes in the derivation and confluence of the tribes that +finally shaped themselves into a nation of Greeks--to give a juster and +more distinct view of this singular people, and of the place which they +occupied in the history of the world, and the great scheme of divine +providence, than I have hitherto seen,--or rather let me say, than it +appears to me possible to give by any other process. + +The present Essay, however, I devote to the purpose of removing, or at +least invalidating, one objection that I may reasonably anticipate, and +which may be conveyed in the following question:--What proof have you of +the fact of any connection between the Greek drama, and either the +mysteries, or the philosophy, of Greece? What proof that it was the +office of the tragic poet, under a disguise of the sacerdotal religion, +mixed with the legendary or popular belief, to reveal as much of the +mysteries interpreted by philosophy, as would counteract the +demoralizing effects of the state religion, without compromising the +tranquillity of the state itself, or weakening that paramount reverence, +without which a republic, (such I mean, as the republics of ancient +Greece were) could not exist? + +I know no better way in which I can reply to this objection, than by +giving, as my proof and instance, the Prometheus of Æschylus, +accompanied with an exposition of what I believe to be the intention of +the poet, and the mythic import of the work; of which it may be truly +said, that it is more properly tragedy itself in the plenitude of the +idea, than a particular tragic poem; and as a preface to this +exposition, and for the twin purpose of rendering it intelligible, and +of explaining its connexion with the whole scheme of my Essays, I +entreat permission to insert a quotation from a work of my own, which +has indeed been in print for many years, but which few of my auditors +will probably have heard of, and still fewer, if any, have read. + + "As the representative of the youth and approaching manhood of the + human intellect we have ancient Greece, from Orpheus, Linus, Musaeus, + and the other mythological bards, or, perhaps, the brotherhoods + impersonated under those names, to the time when the republics lost + their independence, and their learned men sank into copyists of, and + commentators on, the works of their forefathers. That we include these + as educated under a distinct providential, though not miraculous, + dispensation, will surprise no one, who reflects, that in whatever has + a permanent operation on the destinies and intellectual condition of + mankind at large,--that in all which has been manifestly employed as a + co-agent in the mightiest revolution of the moral world, the + propagation of the Gospel, and in the intellectual progress of mankind + in the restoration of philosophy, science, and the ingenuous arts--it + were irreligion not to acknowledge the hand of divine providence. The + periods, too, join on to each other. The earliest Greeks took up the + religious and lyrical poetry of the Hebrews; and the schools of the + prophets were, however partially and imperfectly, represented by the + mysteries derived through the corrupt channel of the Phoenicians. With + these secret schools of physiological theology, the mythical poets + were doubtless in connexion, and it was these schools which prevented + polytheism from producing all its natural barbarizing effects. The + mysteries and the mythical hymns and pæans shaped themselves gradually + into epic poetry and history on the one hand, and into the ethical + tragedy and philosophy on the other. Under their protection, and that + of a youthful liberty, secretly controlled by a species of internal + theocracy, the sciences, and the sterner kinds of the fine arts, that + is, architecture and statuary, grew up together, followed, indeed, by + painting, but a statuesque, and austerely idealized, painting, which + did not degenerate into mere copies of the sense, till the process for + which Greece existed had been completed."[3] + +The Greeks alone brought forth philosophy in the proper and +contra-distinguishable sense of the term, which we may compare to the +coronation medal with its symbolic characters, as contrasted with the +coins, issued under the same sovereign, current in the market. In the +primary sense, philosophy had for its aim and proper subject the [Greek +(transliterated): ta peri arch_on], 'de originibus rerum', as far as man +proposes to discover the same in and by the pure reason alone. This, I +say, was the offspring of Greece, and elsewhere adopted only. The +predisposition appears in their earliest poetry. + +The first object, (or subject matter) of Greek philosophizing was in +some measure philosophy itself;--not, indeed, as the product, but as the +producing power--the productivity. Great minds turned inward on the fact +of the diversity between man and beast; a superiority of kind in +addition to that of degree; the latter, that is, the difference in +degree comprehending the more enlarged sphere and the multifold +application of faculties common to man and brute animals;--even this +being in great measure a transfusion from the former, namely, from the +superiority in kind;--for only by its co-existence with reason, free +will, self-consciousness, the contra-distinguishing attributes of man, +does the instinctive intelligence manifested in the ant, the dog, the +elephant, &c. become human understanding. It is a truth with which +Heraclitus, the senior, but yet contemporary, of Æschylus, appears, from +the few genuine fragments of his writings that are yet extant, to have +been deeply impressed,--that the mere understanding in man, considered +as the power of adapting means to immediate purposes, differs, indeed, +from the intelligence displayed by other animals, and not in degree +only; but yet does not differ by any excellence which it derives from +itself, or by any inherent diversity, but solely in consequence of a +combination with far higher powers of a diverse kind in one and the same +subject. + +Long before the entire separation of metaphysics from poetry, that is, +while yet poesy, in all its several species of verse, music, statuary, +&c. continued mythic;--while yet poetry remained the union of the +sensuous and the philosophic mind;--the efficient presence of the latter +in the 'synthesis' of the two, had manifested itself in the sublime +'mythus peri geneseos tou nou en anthropois' concerning the 'genesis', +or birth of the 'nous' or reason in man. This the most venerable, and +perhaps the most ancient, of Grecian 'myth', is a philosopheme, the very +same in subject matter with the earliest record of the Hebrews, but most +characteristically different in tone and conception;--for the +patriarchal religion, as the antithesis of pantheism, was necessarily +personal; and the doctrines of a faith, the first ground of which and +the primary enunciation, is the eternal I AM, must be in part historic +and must assume the historic form. Hence the Hebrew record is a +narrative, and the first instance of the fact is given as the origin of +the fact. + +That a profound truth--a truth that is, indeed, the grand and +indispensable condition of all moral responsibility--is involved in this +characteristic of the sacred narrative, I am not alone persuaded, but +distinctly aware. This, hovever, does not preclude us from seeing, nay, +as an additional mark of the wisdom that inspired the sacred historian, +it rather supplies a motive to us, impels and authorizes us, to see, in +the form of the vehicle of the truth, an accommodation to the then +childhood of the human race. Under this impression we may, I trust, +safely consider the narration,--introduced, as it is here introduced, +for the purpose of explaining a mere work of the unaided mind of man by +comparison,--as an [Greek (transliterated): eros hierogluphikon],--and +as such (apparently, I mean, not actually) a 'synthesis' of poesy and +philosophy, characteristic of the childhood of nations. + +In the Greek we see already the dawn of approaching manhood. The +substance, the stuff, is philosophy; the form only is poetry. The +Prometheus is a _philosophema_ [Greek (transliterated): tautaegorikon], +--the tree of knowledge of good and evil,--an allegory, a [Greek +(transliterated): propaideuma], though the noblest and the most pregnant +of its kind. + +The generation of the [Greek (transliterated): nous], or pure reason in +man. + +1. It was superadded or infused, 'a supra' to mark that it was no mere +evolution of the animal basis;--that it could not have grown out of the +other faculties of man, his life, sense, understanding, as the flower +grows out of the stem, having pre-existed potentially in the seed: + +2. The [Greek: nous], or fire, was 'stolen,'--to mark its 'helero'--or +rather its 'allo'-geneity, that is, its diversity, its difference in +kind, from the faculties which are common to man with the nobler +animals: + +3. And stolen 'from Heaven,'--to mark its superiority in kind, as well +as its essential diversity: + +4. And it was a 'spark,'--to mark that it is not subject to any +modifying reaction from that on which it immediately acts; that it +suffers no change, and receives no accession, from the inferior, but +multiplies it-self by conversion, without being alloyed by, or +amalgamated with, that which it potentiates, ennobles, and transmutes: + +5. And lastly, (in order to imply the homogeneity of the donor and of +the gift) it was stolen by a 'god,' and a god of the race before the +dynasty of Jove,--Jove the binder of reluctant powers, the coercer arid +entrancer of free spirits under the fetters of shape, and mass, and +passive mobility; but likewise by a god of the same race and essence +with Jove, and linked of yore in closest and friendliest intimacy with +him. This, to mark the pre-existence, in order of thought, of the +'nous', as spiritual, both to the objects of sense, and to their +products, formed as it were, by the precipitation, or, if I may dare +adopt the bold language of Leibnitz, by a coagulation of spirit. In +other words this derivation of the spark from above, and from a god +anterior to the Jovial dynasty--(that is, to the submersion of spirits +in material forms),--was intended to mark the transcendancy of the +'nous', the contra-distinctive faculty of man, as timeless, [Greek +(transliterated): achronon ti,] and, in this negative sense, eternal. It +signified, I say, its superiority to, and its diversity from, all things +that subsist in space and time, nay, even those which, though spaceless, +yet partake of time, namely, souls or understandings. For the soul, or +understanding, if it be defined physiologically as the principle of +sensibility, irritability, and growth, together with the functions of +the organs, which are at once the representatives and the instruments of +these, must be considered 'in genere', though not in degree or dignity, +common to man and the inferior animals. It was the spirit, the 'nous', +which man alone possessed. And I must be permitted to suggest that this +notion deserves some respect, were it only that it can shew a semblance, +at least, of sanction from a far higher authority. + +The Greeks agreed with the cosmogonies of the East in deriving all +sensible forms from the indistinguishable. The latter we find designated +as the [Greek: to amorphon], the [Greek: hudor prokosmikon], the [Greek: +chaos], as the essentially unintelligible, yet necessarily presumed, +basis or sub-position of all positions. That it is, scientifically +considered, an indispensable idea for the human mind, just as the +mathematical point, &c. for the geometrician;--of this the various +systems of our geologists and cosmogonists, from Burnet to La Place, +afford strong presumption. As an idea, it must be interpreted as a +striving of the mind to distinguish being from existence,--or potential +being, the ground of being containing the possibility of existence, from +being actualized. In the language of the mysteries, it was the +'esurience', the [Greek: pothos] or 'desideratum', the unfuelled fire, +the Ceres, the ever-seeking maternal goddess, the origin and +interpretation of whose name is found in the Hebrew root signifying +hunger, and thence capacity. It was, in short, an effort to represent +the universal ground of all differences distinct or opposite, but in +relation to which all 'antithesis' as well as all 'antitheta', existed +only potentially. This was the container and withholder, (such is the +primitive sense of the Hebrew word rendered darkness (Gen. 1. 2.)) out +of which light, that is, the 'lux lucifica', as distinguished from +'lumen seu lux phænomenalis', was produced;--say, rather, that which, +producing itself into light as the one pole or antagonist power, +remained in the other pole as darkness, that is, gravity, or the +principle of mass, or wholeness without distinction of parts. + +And here the peculiar, the philosophic, genius of Greece began its fŠtal +throb. Here it individualized itself in contra-distinction from the +Hebrew archology, on the one side, and from the PhŠnician, on the +other. The PhŠnician confounded the indistinguishable with the +absolute, the 'Alpha' and 'Omega', the ineffable 'causa sui'. It +confounded, I say, the multeity below intellect, that is, unintelligible +from defect of the subject, with the absolute identity above all +intellect, that is, transcending comprehension by the plenitude of its +excellence. With the Phoenician sages the cosmogony was their theogony +and 'vice versa'. Hence, too, flowed their theurgic rites, their magic, +their worship ('cultus et apotheosis') of the plastic forces, chemical +and vital, and these, or their notions respecting these, formed the +hidden meaning, the soul, as it were, of which the popular and civil +worship was the body with its drapery. + +The Hebrew wisdom imperatively asserts an unbeginning creative One, who +neither became the world; nor is the world eternally; nor made the world +out of himself by emanation, or evolution;--but who willed it, and it +was! [Greek: Ta athea egeneto, kai egeneto chaos,]--and this chaos, the +eternal will, by the spirit and the word, or express 'fiat',--again +acting as the impregnant, distinctive, and ordonnant power,--enabled to +become a world--[Greek: kosmeisthai.] So must it be when a religion, +that shall preclude superstition on the one hand, and brute indifference +on the other, is to be true for the meditative sage, yet intelligible, +or at least apprehensible, for all but the fools in heart. + +The Greek philosopheme, preserved for us in the Æschylean Prometheus, +stands midway betwixt both, yet is distinct in kind from either. With +the Hebrew or purer Semitic, it assumes an X Y Z,--(I take these letters +in their algebraic application)--an indeterminate 'Elohim', antecedent +to the matter of the world, [Greek: hulae akosmos]--no less than to the +[Greek: hulae kekosmaemenae.] In this point, likewise, the Greek +accorded with the Semitic, and differed from the Phoenician--that it +held the antecedent X Y Z to be super-sensuous and divine. But on the +other hand, it coincides with the PhŠnician in considering this +antecedent ground of corporeal matter,--[Greek: t_on s_omat_on kai tou +s_omatikou,]--not so properly the cause of the latter, as the occasion +and the still continuing substance. 'Maleria substat adliuc'. The +corporeal was supposed co-essential with the antecedent of its +corporeity. Matter, as distinguished from body, was a 'non ens', a simple +apparition, 'id quod mere videtur'; but to body the elder +physico-theology of the Greeks allowed a participation in entity. It was +'spiritus ipse, oppressus, dormiens, et diversis modis somnians'. In +short, body was the productive power suspended, and as it were, quenched +in the product. This may be rendered plainer by reflecting, that, in the +pure Semitic scheme there are four terms introduced in the solution of +the problem, + +1. the beginning, self-sufficing, and immutable Creator; + +2. the antecedent night as the identity, or including germ, of the light +and darkness, that is, gravity; + +3. the chaos; and + +4. the material world resulting from the powers communicated by the +divine 'fiat'. In the Phoenician scheme there are in fact but two--a +self-organizing chaos, and the omniforrn nature as the result. In the +Greek scheme we have three terms, 1. the 'hyle', [Greek: hulae], which +holds the place of the chaos, or the waters, in the true system; 2. +[Greek: ta s_omata], answering to the Mosaic heaven and earth; and 3. the +Saturnian [Greek: chronoi huperchonioi],--which answer to the antecedent +darkness of the Mosaic scheme, but to which the elder +physico-theologists attributed a self-polarizing power--a 'natura gemina +quæ fit et facit, agit et patitur'. In other words, the 'Elohim' of the +Greeks were still but a 'natura deorum', [Greek: to theion], in which a +vague plurality adhered; or if any unity was imagined, it was not +personal--not a unity of excellence, but simply an expression of the +negative--that which was to pass, but which had not yet passed, into +distinct form. + +All this will seem strange and obscure at first reading,--perhaps +fantastic. But it will only seem so. Dry and prolix, indeed, it is to me +in the writing, full as much as it can be to others in the attempt to +understand it. But I know that, once mastered, the idea will be the key +to the whole cypher of the Æschylean mythology. The sum stated in the +terms of philosophic logic is this: First, what Moses appropriated to +the chaos itself: what Moses made passive and a 'materia subjecta et +lucis et tenebrarum', the containing [Greek: prothemenon] of the +'thesis' and 'antithesis';--this the Greek placed anterior to the +chaos;--the chaos itself being the struggle between the 'hyperchronia', +the [Greek: ideai pronomoi], as the unevolved, unproduced, 'prothesis', +of which [Greek: idea kai nomos]--(idea and law)--are the 'thesis' and +'antithesis'. (I use the word 'produced' in the mathematical sense, as a +point elongating itself to a bipolar line.) Secondly, what Moses +establishes, not merely as a transcendant 'Monas', but as an individual +[Greek: Henas] likewise;--this the Greek took as a harmony, [Greek: +Theoi hathanatoi, to theion], as distinguished from [Greek: o +Theos]--or, to adopt the more expressive language of the Pythagoreans +and cabalists 'numen numerantis'; and these are to be contemplated as +the identity. + +Now according to the Greek philosopheme or 'mythus', in these, or in +this identity, there arose a war, schism, or division, that is, a +polarization into thesis and antithesis. In consequence of this schism +in the [Greek: to theion], the 'thesis' becomes 'nomos', or law, and the +'antithesis' becomes 'idea', but so that the 'nomos' is 'nomos', +because, and only because, the 'idea' is 'idea': the 'nomos' is not +idea, only because the idea has not become 'nomos'. And this 'not' must +be heedfully borne in mind through the whole interpretation of this most +profound and pregnant philosopheme. The 'nomos' is essentially idea, but +existentially it is idea 'substans', that is, 'id quod stat subtus', +understanding 'sensu generalissimo'. The 'idea', which now is no longer +idea, has substantiated itself, become real as opposed to idea, and is +henceforward, therefore, 'substans in substantiato'. The first product +of its energy is the thing itself: 'ipsa se posuit et jam facta est ens +positum'. Still, however, its productive energy is not exhausted in this +product, but overflows, or is effluent, as the specific forces, +properties, faculties, of the product. It reappears, in short, in the +body, as the function of the body. As a sufficient illustration, though +it cannot be offered as a perfect instance, take the following. + + 'In the world we see every where evidences of a unity, which the + component parts are so far from explaining, that they necessarily + presuppose it as the cause and condition of their existing as those + parts, or even of their existing at all. This antecedent unity, or + cause and principle of each union, it has since the time of Bacon and + Kepler, been customary to call a law. This crocus, for instance, or + any flower the reader may have in sight or choose to bring before his + fancy;--that the root, stem, leaves, petals, &c. cohere as one plant, + is owing to an antecedent power or principle in the seed, which + existed before a single particle of the matters that constitute the + size and visibility of the crocus had been attracted from the + surrounding soil, air, and moisture. Shall we turn to the seed? Here + too the same necessity meets us, an antecedent unity (I speak not of + the parent plant, but of an agency antecedent in order of operance, + yet remaining present as the conservative and reproductive power,) + must here too be supposed. Analyze the seed with the finest tools, and + let the solar microscope come in aid of your senses,--what do you + find?--means and instruments, a wondrous fairy-tale of nature, + magazines of food, stores of various sorts, pipes, spiracles, + defences,--a house of many chambers, and the owner and inhabitant + invisible.'[4] + +Now, compare a plant, thus contemplated, with an animal. In the former, +the productive energy exhausts itself, and as it were, sleeps in the +product or 'organismus'--in its root, stem, foliage, blossoms, seed. Its +balsams, gums, resins, 'aromata', and all other bases of its sensible +qualities, are, it is well known, mere excretions from the vegetable, +eliminated, as lifeless, from the actual plant. The qualities are not +its properties, but the properties, or far rather, the dispersion and +volatilization of these extruded and rejected bases. But in the animal +it is otherwise. Here the antecedent unity--the productive and +self-realizing idea--strives, with partial success to re-emancipate +itself from its product, and seeks once again to become 'idea': vainly +indeed: for in order to this, it must be retrogressive, and it hath +subjected itself to the fates, the evolvers of the endless thread--to +the stern necessity of progression. 'Idea' itself it cannot become, but +it may in long and graduated process, become an image, an ANALOGON, an +anti-type of IDEA. And this [Greek: eid_olon] may approximate to a +perfect likeness. 'Quod est simile, nequit esse idem'. Thus, in the +lower animals, we see this process of emancipation commence with the +intermediate link, or that which forms the transition from properties to +faculties, namely, with sensation. Then the faculties of sense, +locomotion, construction, as, for instance, webs, hives, nests, &c. Then +the functions; as of instinct, memory, fancy, instinctive intelligence, +or understanding, as it exists in the most intelligent animals. Thus the +idea (henceforward no more idea, but irrecoverable by its own fatal act) +commences the process of its own transmutation, as 'substans in +substantiato', as the 'enteleche', or the 'vis formatrix', and it +finishes the process as 'substans e substantiato', that is, as the +understanding. + +If, for the purpose of elucidating this process, I might be allowed to +imitate the symbolic language of the algebraists, and thus to regard the +successive steps of the process as so many powers and dignities of the +'nomos' or law, the scheme would be represented thus [N^1 represents N +superscript 1, i.e. N to the power of 1. text Ed.]:-- + + Nomos^1 = Product: + N^2 = Property: + N^3 = Faculty: + N^4 = Function: + N^5 = Understanding;-- + +which is, indeed, in one sense, itself a 'nomos', inasmuch as it is the +index of the 'nomos', as well as its highest function; but, like the +hand of a watch, it is likewise a 'nomizomenon'. It is a verb, but still +a verb passive. + +On the other hand, idea is so far co-essential with 'nomos', that by its +co-existence--(not confluence)--with the 'nomos' [Greek: hen +nomizomenois] (with the 'organismus' and its faculties and functions in +the man,) it becomes itself a 'nomos'. But, observe, a 'nomos +autonomos', or containing its law in itself likewise;--even as the +'nomos' produces for its highest product the understanding, so the idea, +in its opposition and, of course, its correspondence to the 'nomos', +begets in itself an 'analogon' to product; and this is +self-consciousness. But as the product can never become idea, so neither +can the idea (if it is to remain idea) become or generate a distinct +product. This 'analogon' of product is to be itself; but were it indeed +and substantially a product, it would cease to be self. It would be an +object for a subject, not (as it is and must be) an object that is its +own subject, and 'vice versa'; a conception which, if the uncombining +and infusile genius of our language allowed it, might be expressed by +the term subject-object. Now, idea, taken in indissoluble connection +with this 'analogon' of product is mind, that which knows itself, and +the existence of which may be inferred, but cannot appear or become a +'phænomenon'. + +By the benignity of Providence, the truths of most importance in +themselves, and which it most concerns us to know, are familiar to us, +even from childhood. Well for us if we do not abuse this privilege, and +mistake the familiarity of words which convey these truths for a clear +understanding of the truths themselves! If the preceding disquisition, +with all its subtlety and all its obscurity, should answer no other +purpose, it will still have been neither purposeless, nor devoid of +utility, should it only lead us to sympathize with the strivings of the +human intellect, awakened to the infinite importance of the inward +oracle [Greek: gn_othi seauton]--and almost instinctively shaping its +course of search in conformity with the Platonic intimation:--[Greek: +psuchaes phusin haxi_os logou katanoaesai oiei dunaton einai, haneu aes +tou holou phuse_os]; but be this as it may, the ground work of the +Æschylean 'mythus' is laid in the definition of idea and law, as +correlatives that mutually interpret each the other;--an idea, with the +adequate power of realizing itself being a law, and a law considered +abstractedly from, or in the absence of, the power of manifesting itself +in its appropriate product being an idea. Whether this be true +philosophy, is not the question. The school of Aristotle would, of +course, deny, the Platonic affirm it; for in this consists the +difference of the two schools. Both acknowledge ideas as distinct from +the mere generalizations from objects of sense: both would define an +idea as an 'ens rationale', to which there can be no adequate +correspondent in sensible experience. But, according to Aristotle, ideas +are regulative only, and exist only as functions of the mind:--according +to Plato, they are constitutive likewise, and one in essence with the +power and life of nature;--[Greek: hen log'o z'oae aen, kai hae z'oae +haen to ph'os t'on anthr'op'on]. And this I assert, was the philosophy +of the mythic poets, who, like Æschylus, adapted the secret doctrines of +the mysteries as the (not always safely disguised) antidote to the +debasing influences of the religion of the state. + +But to return and conclude this preliminary explanation. We have only to +substitute the term will, and the term constitutive power, for _nomos_ +or law, and the process is the same. Permit me to represent the identity +or 'prothesis' by the letter Z and the 'thesis' and 'antithesis' by X +and Y respectively. Then I say X by not being Y, but in consequence of +being the correlative opposite of Y, is will; and Y, by not being X, but +the correlative and opposite of X, is nature,--'natura naturans', +[Greek: no_mos physiko_s]. Hence we may see the necessity of +contemplating the idea now as identical with the reason, and now as one +with the will, and now as both in one, in which last case I shall, for +convenience sake, employ the term 'Nous', the rational will, the +practical reason. + +We are now out of the holy jungle of transcendental mataphysics; if +indeed, the reader's patience shall have had strength and persistency +enough to allow me to exclaim-- + + Ivimus ambo + Per densas umbras: at tenet umbra Deum. + + +Not that I regard the foregoing as articles of faith, or as all true;--I +have implied the contrary by contrasting it with, at least, by shewing +its disparateness from, the Mosaic, which, 'bona fide', I do regard as +the truth. But I believe there is much, and profound, truth in it, +'supra captum [Greek: psilosoph'on], qui non agnoscunt divinum, ideoque +nec naturam, nisi nomine, agnoscunt; sed res cunctas ex sensuali +corporeo cogitant, quibus hac ex causa interiora clausa manent, et simul +cum illis exteriora quæ proxima interioribus sunt'! And with no less +confidence do I believe that the positions above given, true or false, +are contained in the Promethean 'mythus'. + +In this 'mythus', Jove is the impersonated representation or symbol of +the 'nomos'--'Jupiter est quodcunque vides'. He is the 'mens agitans +molem', but at the same time, the 'molem corpoream ponens et +constituens'. And so far the Greek philosopheme does not differ +essentially from the cosmotheism, or identification of God with the +universe, in which consisted the first apostacy of mankind after the +flood, when they combined to raise a temple to the heavens, and which is +still the favored religion of the Chinese. Prometheus, in like manner, +is the impersonated representative of Idea, or of the same power as +Jove, but contemplated as independent and not immersed in the +product,--as law 'minus' the productive energy. As such it is next to be +seen what the several significances of each must or may be according to +the philosophic conception; and of which significances, therefore, +should we find in the philosopheme a correspondent to each, we shall be +entitled to assert that such are the meanings of the fable. And first of +Jove:-- + +Jove represents + +1. 'Nomos' generally, as opposed to Idea or 'Nous': + +2. 'Nomos archinomos', now as the father, now as the sovereign, and now +as the includer and representative of the 'nomoi ouoanioi kosmikoi', or +'dii majores', who, had joined or come over to Jove in the first schism: + +3. 'Nomos damnaetaes'--the subjugator of the spirits, of the [Greek: +ideai pronomoi], who, thus subjugated, became '[Greek: nomoi huponomioi +hupospondoi], Titanes pacati, dii minores', that is, the elements +considered as powers reduced to obedience under yet higher powers than +themselves: + +4. 'Nomos [Greek: politikos]', law in the Pauline sense, '[Greek: nomos +allotrionomos]' in antithesis to '[Greek: nomos autonomos]'. + + +[Footnote 1: The Act meant is probably the 5. Eliz. c. 20, enforcing the +two previous Acts of Henry VIII. and Philip and Mary, and reciting that +natural born Englishmen had 'become of the fellowship of the said +vagabonds, by transforming or disguising themselves in their apparel,' +&c.--Ed.] + +[Footnote 2: Mr. Coleridge was in the constant habit of expressing +himself on paper by the algebraic symbols. They have an uncouth look in +the text of an ordinary essay, and I have sometimes ventured to render +them by the equivalent words. But most of the readers of these volumes +will know that--means 'less by', or,' without'; + 'more by', or,' in +addition to'; = 'equal to', or, 'the same as'.--Ed]. + +[Footnote 3: Friend, III. Essay, 9.] + +[Footnote 4: Aids to Reflection. Moral and Religious Aphorisms. Aphorism +VI. Ed.] + + + +COROLLARY. + +It is in this sense that Jove's jealous, ever-quarrelsome, spouse +represents the political sacerdotal 'cultus', the church, in short, of +republican paganism;--a church by law established for the mere purposes +of the particular state, unennobled by the consciousness of +instrumentality to higher purposes;--at once unenlightened and unchecked +by revelation. Most gratefully ought we to acknowledge that since the +completion of our constitution in 1688, we may, with unflattering truth, +elucidate the spirit and character of such a church by the contrast of +the institution, to which England owes the larger portion of its +superiority in that, in which alone superiority is an unmixed +blessing,--the diffused cultivation of its inhabitants. But previously +to this period, I shall offend no enlightened man if I say without +distinction of parties--'intra muros peccatur et extra';--that the +history of Christendom presents us with too many illustrations of this +Junonian jealousy, this factious harrassing of the sovereign power as +soon as the latter betrayed any symptoms of a disposition to its true +policy, namely, to privilege and perpetuate that which is best,--to +tolerate the tolerable,--and to restrain none but those who would +restrain all, and subjugate even the state itself. But while truth +extorts this confession, it, at the same time, requires that it should +be accompanied by an avowal of the fact, that the spirit is a relic of +Paganism; and with a bitter smile would an Æschylus or a Plato in the +shades, listen to a Gibbon or a Hume vaunting the mild and tolerant +spirit of the state religions of ancient Greece or Rome. Here we have +the sense of Jove's intrigues with Europa, Io, &c. whom the god, in his +own nature a general lover, had successively taken under his protection. +And here, too, see the full appropriateness of this part of the +'mythus', in which symbol fades away into allegory, but yet in reference +to the working cause, as grounded in humanity, and always existing +either actually or potentially, and thus never ceases wholly to be a +symbol or tautegory. + +Prometheus represents, + +1. 'sensu generali', Idea [Greek: pronomos,] and in this sense he is a +[Greek: 'theos homophulos'], a fellow-tribesman both of the 'dii +majores', with Jove at their head, and of the Titans or 'dii pacati': + +2. He represents Idea [Greek: 'philonomos, nomodeiktaes';] and in this +sense the former friend and counsellor of Jove or 'Nous uranius': + +3. [Greek: 'Logos philanthr'opos',] the divine humanity, the humane God, +who retained unseen, kept back, or (in the 'catachresis' characteristic +of the Phoenicio-Grecian mythology) stole, a portion or 'ignicula from +the living spirit of law, which remained with the celestial gods +unexpended [Greek: en t_o nomizesthai.] He gave that which, according to +the whole analogy of things, should have existed either as pure +divinity, the sole property and birth-right of the 'Dii Joviales', the +'Uranions', or was conceded to inferior beings as a 'substans in +substantiato'. This spark divine Prometheus gave to an elect, a favored +animal, not as a 'substans' or understanding, commensurate with, and +confined by, the constitution and conditions of this particular +organism, but as 'aliquid superstans, liberum, non subactum, invictum, +impacatum, [Greek: mae nouizomenon.] This gift, by which we are to +understand reason theoretical and practical, was therefore a [Greek: +'nomos autonomus']--unapproachable and unmodifiable by the animal +basis--that is, by the pre-existing 'substans' with its products, the +animal 'organismus' with its faculties and functions; but yet endowed +with the power of potentiating, ennobling, and prescribing to, the +substance; and hence, therefore, a [Greek: nomos nomopeithaes,] lex +legisuada': + +4. By a transition, ordinary even in allegory, and appropriate to mythic +symbol, but especially significant in the present case--the transition, +I mean, from the giver to the gift--the giver, in very truth, being the +gift, 'whence the soul receives reason; and reason is her being,' says +our Milton. Reason is from God, and God is reason, 'mens ipsissima'. + +5. Prometheus represents, [Greek: nous en anthr'op'o--nous ag'onistaes]'. +Thus contemplated, the 'Nous' is of necessity, powerless; for, all +power, that is, productivity, or productive energy, is in Law, that is, +[Greek: nomos allotrionomos]:[1] still, however, the Idea in the Law, +the 'numerus numerans' become [Greek: nomos], is the principle of the +Law; and if with Law dwells power, so with the knowledge or the Idea +'scientialis' of the Law, dwells prophecy and foresight. A perfect +astronomical time-piece in relation to the motions of the heavenly +bodies, or the magnet in the mariner's compass in relation to the +magnetism of the earth, is a sufficient illustration. + +6. Both [Greek: nomos] and Idea (or 'Nous') are the 'verbum'; but, as in +the former, it is 'verbum fiat' 'the Word of the Lord,'--in the latter +it must be the 'verbum fiet', or, 'the Word of the Lord in the mouth of +the prophet.' 'Pari argumento', as the knowledge is therefore not power, +the power is not knowledge. The [Greek: nomos], the [Greek: Zeus +pantokrat'or], seeks to learn, and, as it were, to wrest the secret, the +hateful secret, of his own fate, namely, the transitoriness adherent to +all antithesis; for the identity or the absolute is alone eternal. This +secret Jove would extort from the 'Nous', or Prometheus, which is the +sixth representment of Prometheus. + +7. Introduce but the least of real as opposed to 'ideal', the least +speck of positive existence, even though it were but the mote in a sun +beam, into the sciential 'contemplamen' or theorem, and it ceases to be +science. 'Ratio desinit esse pura ratio et fit discursus, stat subter et +fit [Greek: hypothetikon]:--non superstat'. The 'Nous' is bound to a +rock, the immovable firmness of which is indissolubly connected with its +barrenness, its non-productivity. Were it productive it would be +'Nomos'; but it is 'Nous', because it is not 'Nomos'. + +8. Solitary [Greek: abat_o en eraemia]. Now I say that the 'Nous', +notwithstanding its diversity from the 'Nomizomeni', is yet, relatively +to their supposed original essence, [Greek: pasi tois nomizomenois +tantogenaes], of the same race or 'radix': though in another sense, +namely, in relation to the [Greek: pan theion]--the pantheistic +'Elohim', it is conceived anterior to the schism, and to the conquest +and enthronization of Jove who succeeded. Hence the Prometheus of the +great tragedian is [Greek: theos suggenaes]. The kindred deities come to +him, some to soothe, to condole; others to give weak, yet friendly, +counsels of submission; others to tempt, or insult. The most prominent +of the latter, and the most odious to the imprisoned and insulated +'Nous', is Hermes, the impersonation of interest with the entrancing and +serpentine 'Caduceus', and, as interest or motives intervening between +the reason and its immediate self-determinations, with the antipathies +to the [Greek: nomos autonomos]. The Hermes impersonates the eloquence +of cupidity, the cajolement of power regnant; and in a larger sense, +custom, the irrational in language, [Greek: rhaemata ta rhaetorika], the +fluent, from [Greek: rheo]--the rhetorical in opposition to [Greek: +logoi, ta noaeta]. But, primarily, the Hermes is the symbol of interest. +He is the messenger, the inter-nuncio, in the low but expressive phrase, +the go-between, to beguile or insult. And for the other visitors of +Prometheus, the elementary powers, or spirits of the elements, 'Titanes +pacati', [Greek: theoi huponomioi], vassal potentates, and their +solicitations, the noblest interpretation will be given, if I repeat the +lines of our great contemporary poet:-- + + Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own: + Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, + And e'en with something of a mother's mind, + And no unworthy aim, The homely nurse doth all she can + To make her foster-child, her inmate, Man + Forget the glories he hath known + And that imperial palace whence he came:-- + + WORDSWORTH. + +which exquisite passage is prefigured in coarser clay, indeed, and with +a less lofty spirit, but yet excellently in their kind, and even more +fortunately for the illustration and ornament of the present commentary, +in the fifth, sixth, and seventh stanzas of Dr. Henry More's poem on the +Pre-existence of the Soul:-- + + Thus groping after our own center's near + And proper substance, we grew dark, contract, + Swallow'd up of earthly life! Ne what we were + Of old, thro' ignorance can we detect. + Like noble babe, by fate or friends' neglect + Left to the care of sorry salvage wight, + Grown up to manly years cannot conject + His own true parentage, nor read aright + What father him begot, what womb him brought to light. + + So we, as stranger infants elsewhere born, + Cannot divine from what spring we did flow; + Ne dare these base alliances to scorn, + Nor lift ourselves a whit from hence below; + Ne strive our parentage again to know, + Ne dream we once of any other stock, + Since foster'd upon Rhea's [1] knees we grow, + In Satyrs' arms with many a mow and mock + Oft danced; and hairy Pan our cradle oft hath rock'd! + + But Pan nor Rhea be our parentage! + We been the offspring of the all seeing Nous, &c. + + +To express the supersensual character of the reason, its abstraction +from sensation, we find the Prometheus [Greek: aterpae]--while in the +yearnings accompanied with the remorse incident to, and only possible in +consequence of the Nous being, the rational, self-conscious, and +therefore responsible will, he is [Greek: gupi diaknaiomenos] + +If to these contemplations we add the control and despotism exercised on +the free reason by Jupiter in his symbolical character, as [Greek: nomos +politikos];--by custom (Hermes); by necessity, [Greek: bia kai +kratos];--by the mechanic arts and powers, [Greek: suggeneis t_o No_o] +though they are, and which are symbolized in Hephaistos,--we shall see +at once the propriety of the title, Prometheus, [Greek: desmotaes]. + +9. Nature, or 'Zeus' as the [Greek: nomos en nomizomenois], knows +herself only, can only come to a knowledge of herself, in man! And even +in man, only as man is supernatural, above nature, noetic. But this +knowledge man refuses to communicate; that is, the human understanding +alone is at once self-conscious and conscious of nature. And this high +prerogative it owes exclusively to its being an assessor of the reason. +Yet even the human understanding in its height of place seeks vainly to +appropriate the ideas of the pure reason, which it can only represent by +'idola'. Here, then, the 'Nous' stands as Prometheus [Greek: antipalos], +'renuens'--in hostile opposition to Jupitor 'Inquisitor'. + +10. Yet finally, against the obstacles and even under the fostering +influences of the 'Nomos', [Greek: tou nomimou], a son of Jove himself, +but a descendant from Io, the mundane religion, as contra-distinguished +from the sacerdotal 'cultus', or religion of the state, an Alcides +'Liberator' will arise, and the 'Nous', or divine principle in man, will +be Prometheus [Greek: heleutheromenos]. + +Did my limits or time permit me to trace the persecutions, wanderings, +and migrations of the Io, the mundane religion, through the whole map +marked out by the tragic poet, the coincidences would bring the truth, +the unarbitrariness, of the preceding exposition as near to +demonstration as can rationally be required on a question of history, +that must, for the greater part, be answered by combination of scattered +facts. But this part of my subject, together with a particular +exemplification of the light which my theory throws both on the sense +and the beauty of numerous passages of this stupendous poem, I must +reserve for a future communication. + +NOTES. [3] + +v. 15. [Greek: pharaggi]:--'in a coomb, or combe.' v. 17. [Greek: +ex'oriazein gar patros logous baru]. [Greek: euoriazein], as the editor +confesses, is a word introduced into the text against the authority of +all editions and manuscripts. I should prefer [Greek: ex'oriazein], +notwithstanding its being a [Greek: hapax legomenon]. The [Greek: +eu]--seems to my tact too free and easy a word;--and yet our 'to trifle +with' appears the exact meaning. + + +[Footnote 1: I scarcely need say, that I use the word [Greek: +allotrionomos] as a participle active, as exercising law on another, not +as receiving law from another, though the latter is the classical force +(I suppose) of the word.] + +[Footnote 2: Rhea (from [Greek: rheo], 'fluo'), that is, the earth as +the transitory, the ever-flowing nature, the flux and sum of +'phenomena', or objects of the outward sense, in contradistinction from +the earth as Vesta, as the firmamental law that sustains and disposes +the apparent world! The Satyrs represent the sports and appetences of +the sensuous nature ([Greek: phronaema sarkos])--Pan, or the total life +of the earth, the presence of all in each, the universal 'organismus' of +bodies and bodily energy.] + +[Footnote 3: Written in Bp. Blomfield's edition, and communicated by Mr. +Cary. Ed.] + + + + +NOTE ON CHALMERS'S LIFE OF DANIEL. + + + The justice of these remarks cannot be disputed, though some of them + are rather too figurative for sober criticism. + +Most genuine! A figurative remark! If this strange writer had any +meaning, it must be:--Headly's criticism is just throughout, but +conveyed in a style too figurative for prose composition. Chalmers's own +remarks are wholly mistaken;--too silly for any criticism, drunk or +sober, and in language too flat for any thing. In Daniel's Sonnets there +is scarcely one good line; while his Hymen's Triumph, of which Chalmers +says not one word, exhibits a continued series of first-rate beauties in +thought, passion, and imagery, and in language and metre is so +faultless, that the style of that poem may without extravagance be +declared to be imperishable English. + +1820. + + + + + +BISHOP CORBET. + + +I almost wonder that the inimitable humour, and the rich sound and +propulsive movement of the verse, have not rendered Corbet a popular +poet. I am convinced that a reprint of his poems, with illustrative and +chit-chat biographical notes, and cuts by Cruikshank, would take with +the public uncommonly well. September, 1823. + + + +NOTES ON SELDEN'S TABLE TALK. [1] + +There is more weighty bullion sense in this book, than I ever found in +the same number of pages of any uninspired writer. + + OPINION. + + Opinion and affection extremely differ. I may affect a woman best, but + it does not follow I must think her the handsomest woman in the world. + ... Opinion is something wherein I go about to give reason why all the + world should think as I think. Affection is a thing wherein I look + after the pleasing of myself. + +Good! This is the true difference betwixt the beautiful and the +agreeable, which Knight and the rest of that [Greek: plaethos atheon] +have so beneficially confounded, 'meretricibus scilicet et Plutoni'. + +O what an insight the whole of this article gives into a wise man's +heart, who has been compelled to act with the many, as one of the many! +It explains Sir Thomas More's zealous Romanism, &c. + + + PARLIAMENT. + +Excellent! O! to have been with Selden over his glass of wine, making +every accident an outlet and a vehicle of wisdom! + + + POETRY. + + The old poets had no other reason but this, their verse was, sung to + music; otherwise it had been a senseless thing to have fettered up + themselves. + +No one man can know all things: even Selden here talks ignorantly. Verse +is in itself a music, and the natural symbol of that union of passion +with thought and pleasure, which constitutes the essence of all poetry, +as contradistinguished from science, and distinguished from history +civil or natural. To Pope's Essay on Man,--in short, to whatever is mere +metrical good sense and wit, the remark applies. + +Ib. + + Verse proves nothing but the quantity of syllables; they are not meant + for logic. + +True; they, that is, verses, are not logic; but they are, or ought to +be, the envoys and representatives of that vital passion, which is the +practical cement of logic; and without which logic must remain inert. + + +[Footnote 1: These remarks on Selden, Wheeler, and Birch, were +communicated by Mr. Gary. Ed.] + + + + + +NOTE ON THEOLOGICAL LECTURES OF BENJAMIN WHEELER, D. D. + + (Vol. I. p. 77.) + + A miracle, usually so termed, is the exertion of a supernatural power + in some act, and contrary to the regular course of nature, &c. + +Where is the proof of this as drawn from Scripture, from fact recorded, +or from doctrine affirmed? Where the proof of its logical +possibility,--that is, that the word has any representable sense? +Contrary to 2x2=4 is 2x2=5, or that the same fire acting at the same +moment on the same subject should burn it and not burn it. + +The course of nature is either one with, or a reverential synonyme of, +the ever present divine agency; or it is a self-subsisting derivative +from, and dependent on, the divine will. In either case this author's +assertion would amount to a charge of self-contradiction on the Author +of all things. Before the spread of Grotianism, or the Old Bailey +'nolens volens' Christianity, such language was unexampled. A miracle is +either 'super naturam', or it is simply 'praeter experientiam.' If +nature be a collective term for the sum total of the mechanic +powers,--that is, of the act first manifested to the senses in the +conductor A, arriving at Z by the sensible chain of intermediate +conductors, B, C, D, &c.;--then every motion of my arm is 'super +naturam'. If this be not the sense, then nature is but a wilful synonyme +of experience, and then the first noticed aerolithes, Sulzer's first +observation of the galvanic arch, &c. must have been miracles. + +As erroneous as the author's assertions are logically, so false are they +historically, in the effect, which the miracles in and by themselves did +produce on those, who, rejecting the doctrine, were eye-witnesses of the +miracles;--and psychologically, in the effect which miracles, as +miracles, are calculated to produce on the human mind. Is it possible +that the author can have attentively studied the first two or three +chapters of St. John's gospel? + +There is but one possible tenable definition of a miracle,--namely, an +immediate consequent from a heterogeneous antecedent. This is its +essence. Add the words, 'praeter experientiam adhuc', or 'id temporis', +and you have the full and popular or practical sense of the term +miracle. [1] + +[Footnote A: See The Friend, Vol. III. Essay 2. Ed.] + + + + +NOTE ON A SERMON + +ON THE PREVALENCE OF INFIDELITY AND ENTHUSIASM, BY WALTER BIRCH, B. D. + + +In the description of enthusiasm, the author has plainly had in view +individual characters, and those too in a light, in which they appeared +to him; not clear and discriminate ideas. Hence a mixture of truth and +error, of appropriate and inappropriate terms, which it is scarcely +possible to disentangle. Part applies to fanaticism; part to enthusiasm; +and no small portion of this latter to enthusiasm not pure, but as it +exists in particular men, modified by their imperfections--and bad +because not wholly enthusiasm. I regret this, because it is evidently +the discourse of a very powerful mind;--and because I am convinced that +the disease of the age is want of enthusiasm, and a tending to +fanaticism. You may very naturally object that the senses, in which I +use the two terms, fanaticism and enthusiasm, are private +interpretations equally as, if not more than, Mr. Birch's. They are so; +but the difference between us is, that without reference to either term, +I have attempted to ascertain the existence and diversity of two states +of moral being; and then having found in our language two words of very +fluctuating and indeterminate use, indeed, but the one word more +frequently bordering on the one state, the other on the other, I try to +fix each to that state exclusively. And herein I follow the practice of +all scientific men, whether naturalists or metaphysicians, and the +dictate of common sense, that one word ought to have but one meaning. +Thus by Hobbes and others of the materialists, compulsion and obligation +were used indiscriminately; but the distinction of the two senses is the +condition of all moral responsibility. Now the effect of Mr. Birch's use +of the words is to continue the confusion. Remember we could not reason +at all, if our conceptions and terms were not more single and definite +than the things designated. Enthusiasm is the absorption of the +individual in the object contemplated from the vividness or intensity of +his conceptions and convictions: fanaticism is heat, or accumulation and +direction, of feeling acquired by contagion, and relying on the sympathy +of sect or confederacy; intense sensation with confused or dim +conceptions. Hence the fanatic can exist only in a crowd, from inward +weakness anxious for outward confirmation; and, therefore, an eager +proselyter and intolerant. The enthusiast, on the contrary, is a +solitary, who lives in a world of his own peopling, and for that cause +is disinclined to outward action. Lastly, enthusiasm is susceptible of +many degrees, (according to the proportionateness of the objects +contemplated,) from the highest grandeur of moral and intellectual +being, even to madness; but fanaticism is one and the same, and appears +different only from the manners and original temperament of the +individual. There is a white and a red heat; a sullen glow as well as a +crackling flame; cold-blooded as well as hot-blooded fanaticism. +Enthusiasts, [Greek: enthousiastai] from [Greek: entheos, ois ho theos +enesi], or possibly from [Greek: en thusiais], those who, in sacrifice +to, or at, the altar of truth or falsehood, are possessed by a spirit or +influence mightier than their own individuality. 'Fanatici-qui circum +fana favorem mutuo contrahunt el afflant'--those who in the same +conventicle, or before the same shrine, relique or image, heat and +ferment by co-acervation. + +I am fully aware that the words are used by the best writers +indifferently, but such must be the case in very many words in a +composite language, such as the English, before they are desynonymized. +Thus imagination and fancy; chronical and temporal, and many others. + + + + + +FÉNÉLON ON CHARITY.[1] + +Note to pages 196,197. + +This chapter is plausible, shewy, insinuating, and (as indeed is the +character of the whole work) 'makes the amiable.' To many,--to myself +formerly,--it has appeared a mere dispute about words: but it is by no +means of so harmless a character, for it tends to give a false direction +to our thoughts, by diverting the conscience from the ruined and +corrupted state, in which we are without Christ. Sin is the disease. +What is the remedy? What is the antidote?--Charity?--Pshaw! Charity in +the large apostolic sense of the term is the health, the state to be +obtained by the use of the remedy, not the sovereign balm itself,--faith +of grace,--faith in the God-manhood, the cross, the mediation, and +perfected righteousness, of Jesus, to the utter rejection and abjuration +of all righteousness of our own! Faith alone is the restorative. The +Romish scheme is preposterous;--it puts the rill before the spring. +Faith is the source,--charity, that is, the whole Christian life, is the +stream from it. It is quite childish to talk of faith being imperfect +without charity. As wisely might you say that a fire, however bright and +strong, was imperfect without heat, or that the sun, however cloudless, +was imperfect without beams. The true answer would be:--it is not +faith,--but utter reprobate faithlessness, which may indeed very +possibly coexist with a mere acquiescence of the understanding in +certain facts recorded by the Evangelists. But did John, or Paul, or +Martin Luther, ever flatter this barren belief with the name of saving +faith? No. Little ones! Be not deceived. Wear at your bosoms that +precious amulet against all the spells of antichrist, the 20th verse of +the 2nd chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Galatians:--'I am crucified +with Christ, nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: +and the life, which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the +Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me'. + +Thus we see even our faith is not ours in its origin: but is the faith +of the Son of God graciously communicated to us. Beware, therefore, that +you do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the +Law, then Christ is dead in vain. If, therefore, we are saved by +charity, we are saved by the keeping of the Law, which doctrine St. Paul +declared to be an apostacy from Christ, and a bewitching of the soul +from the truth. But, you will perhaps say, can a man be saved without +charity?--The answer is, a man without charity cannot be saved: the +faith of the Son of God is not in him. + +[Footnote 1: Communicated by Mr. Gillman. Ed.] + + + + + +CHANGE OF THE CLIMATES. + +The character and circumstances of the animal and vegetable remains +discovered in the northern zone, in Siberia and other parts of +Russia,--all with scarcely an exception belonging to 'genera' that are +now only found in, and require, a tropical climate,--are such as receive +no adequate solution from the hypothesis of their having been casually +floated thither, and deposited, by the waters of a deluge, still less of +the Noachian deluge, as related and described by the great Hebrew +historian and legislator. In order to a full solution of this problem, +two 'data' are requisite: + +1. A total change of climate: + +2. That this change shall have been, not gradual, but sudden, +instantaneous, and incompatible with the life and subsistency of the +animals and vegetables in these high latitudes, at that period, and +previously, existing. + +Now these 'data' or conditions will be afforded, if we assume a total +submersion of the surface of this planet, even of its highest mountains +then and now existing, by a sudden contemporaneous mass of waters, and +that the evaporation of these waters was aided by a steady wind, +especially adapted to this purpose in a peculiarly dry atmosphere, and +was (as it must of necessity have been) most rapid and intense at the +equator and within the tropics proportionally. For--as it has been +demonstrated by Dr. Wollaston's experiment, in which the evaporation, +occasioned by boiling water at the mid point of a line of water, froze +the fluid at the two ends, that is, at a given distance from the +greatest intensity of the evaporative process,--the effect of an +evaporation of the supposed power and rapidity would be to produce at +certain distances from the 'maximum' point, north and south, a vast +barrier of ice,--such as having once taken place, and being of such mass +and magnitude as to be only in a small degree diminishable by the +ensuing summer, must have become permanent, and beyond the power of all +the known and ordinary dissolving agents of nature. That the situation +of the magnetic poles of the earth, and the almost certain connection of +magnetism with cold, no less than with metallic cohesion, co-operated in +determining the distance of the barriers, or two poles, of evaporation, +from its centre or the 'maximum' of its activity, is highly probable, +and receives a strong confirmation from the open sea and diminished +cold, both at the north and south zones, on the ulterior of the barrier, +and towards the true or physical poles of the earth. + +Now the action of a powerful co-agent in the evaporative process, such +as is assumed in this hypothesis, is a fact of history. 'And God +remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was +with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the +waters assuaged'. Gen. viii. 1. I do not recollect the Hebrew word +rendered 'assuaged;' but I will consult my learned friend Hyman Hurwitz +on its radical, and its primary sense. At all events, the note by Pyle +in Drs. Mant and D'Oyly's Bible is arbitrary, though excusable by the +state of chemical science in his time. + +The problem of the multitude of 'genera' of animals, and their several +exclusive acclimatements at the present period may, likewise, I persuade +myself, receive a probable solution by an hypothesis legitimated by +known laws and fair analogies. But of this hereafter. + +1823. + + + + + +WONDERFULNESS OF PROSE. + +It has just struck my feelings that the Pherecydean origin of prose +being granted, prose must have struck men with greater admiration than +poetry. In the latter, it was the language of passion and emotion: it is +what they themselves spoke and heard in moments of exultation, +indignation, &c. But to hear an evolving roll, or a succession of +leaves, talk continually the language of deliberate reason in a form of +continued preconception, of a 'Z' already possessed when 'A' was being +uttered,--this must have appeared godlike. I feel myself in the same +state, when in the perusal of a sober, yet elevated and harmonious, +succession of sentences and periods, I abstract my mind from the +particular passage, and sympathize with the wonder of the common people +who say of an eloquent man:--'He talks like a book!' + + + + + +NOTES ON TOM JONES. [1] + +Manners change from generation to generation, and with manners morals +appear to change,--actually change with some, but appear to change with +all but the abandoned. A young man of the present day who should act as +Tom Jones is supposed to act at Upton, with Lady Bellaston, &c. would +not be a Tom Jones; and a Tom Jones of the present day, without perhaps +being in the ground a better man, would have perished rather than submit +to be kept by a harridan of fortune. Therefore this novel is, and, +indeed, pretends to be, no exemplar of conduct. But, notwithstanding all +this, I do loathe the cant which can recommend Pamela and Clarissa +Harlowe as strictly moral, though they poison the imagination of the +young with continued doses of 'tinct. lyttae', while Tom Jones is +prohibited as loose. I do not speak of young women;--but a young man +whose heart or feelings can be injured, or even his passions excited, by +aught in this novel, is already thoroughly corrupt. There is a cheerful, +sun-shiny, breezy spirit that prevails everywhere, strongly contrasted +with the close, hot, day-dreamy continuity of Richardson. Every +indiscretion, every immoral act, of Tom Jones, (and it must be +remembered that he is in every one taken by surprise--his inward +principles remaining firm--) is so instantly punished by embarrassment +and unanticipated evil consequences of his folly, that the reader's mind +is not left for a moment to dwell or run riot on the criminal indulgence +itself. In short, let the requisite allowance be made for the increased +refinement of our manners,--and then I dare believe that no young man +who consulted his heart and conscience only, without adverting to what +the world would say--could rise from the perusal of Fielding's Tom +Jones, Joseph Andrews, or Amelia, without feeling himself a better +man;--at least, without an intense conviction that he could not be +guilty of a base act. + +If I want a servant or mechanic, I wish to know what he does:--but of a +friend, I must know what he is. And in no writer is this momentous +distinction so finely brought forward as by Fielding. We do not care +what Blifil does;--the deed, as separate from the agent, may be good or +ill;--but Blifil is a villain;--and we feel him to be so from the very +moment he, the boy Blifil, restores Sophia's poor captive bird to its +native and rightful liberty. + +Book xiv. ch. 8. + + Notwithstanding the sentiment of the Roman satirist, which denies the + divinity of fortune; and the opinion of Seneca to the same purpose; + Cicero, who was, I believe, a wiser man than either of them, expressly + holds the contrary; and certain it is there are some incidents in life + so very strange and unaccountable, that it seems to require more than + human skill and foresight in producing them. + +Surely Juvenal, Seneca, and Cicero, all meant the same thing, namely, +that there was no chance, but instead of it providence, either human or +divine. + +Book xv. ch. 9. + + The rupture with Lady Bellaston. + +Even in the most questionable part of Tom Jones, I cannot but think, +after frequent reflection, that an additional paragraph, more fully and +forcibly unfolding Tom Jones's sense of self-degradation on the +discovery of the true character of the relation in which he had stood to +Lady Bellaston, and his awakened feeling of the dignity of manly +chastity, would have removed in great measure any just objections, at +all events relatively to Fielding himself, and with regard to the state +of manners in his time. + +Book xvi. ch. 5. + + That refined degree of Platonic affection which is absolutely detached + from the flesh, and is indeed entirely and purely spiritual, is a gift + confined to the female part of the creation; many of whom I have heard + declare (and doubtless with great truth) that they would, with the + utmost readiness, resign a lover to a rival, when such resignation was + proved to be necessary for the temporal interest of such lover. + +I firmly believe that there are men capable of such a sacrifice, and +this, without pretending to, or even admiring or seeing any virtue in, +this absolute detachment from the flesh. + + +[Footnote 1: Communicated by Mr. Gillman, Ed.] + + + + +JONATHAN WILD. [1] + +Jonathan Wild is assuredly the best of all the fictions in which a +villain is throughout the prominent character. But how impossible it is +by any force of genius to create a sustained attractive interest for +such a groundwork, and how the mind wearies of, and shrinks from, the +more than painful interest, the [Greek: mis_eton], of utter +depravity,--Fielding himself felt and endeavoured to mitigate and remedy +by the (on all other principles) far too large a proportion, and too +quick recurrence, of the interposed chapters of moral reflection, like +the chorus in the Greek tragedy,--admirable specimens as these chapters +are of profound irony and philosophic satire. Chap. VI. Book 2, on +Hats,[Footnote 1]--brief as it is, exceeds any thing even in Swift's +Lilliput, or Tale of the Tub. How forcibly it applies to the Whigs, +Tories, and Radicals of our own times. + +Whether the transposition of Fielding's scorching wit (as B. III. c. +xiv.) to the mouth of his hero be objectionable on the ground of +incredulus odi', or is to be admired as answering the author's purpose +by unrealizing the story, in order to give a deeper reality to the +truths intended,--I must leave doubtful, yet myself inclining to the +latter judgment. 27th Feb. 1832. + + +[Footnote 1: Communicated by Mr. Gillman. Ed.] + +[Footnote 2: 'In which our hero makes a speech well worthy to be +celebrated; and the behaviour of one of the gang, perhaps more unnatural +than any other part of this history.'] + + + + + + +BARRY CORNWALL.[1] + + +Barry Cornwall is a poet, 'me saltem judice'; and in that sense of the +term, in which I apply it to C. Lamb and W. Wordsworth. There are poems +of great merit, the authors of which I should yet not feel impelled so +to designate. + +The faults of these poems are no less things of hope, than the beauties; +both are just what they ought to be,--that is, now. + +If B.C. be faithful to his genius, it in due time will warn him, that as +poetry is the identity of all other knowledges, so a poet cannot be a +great poet, but as being likewise inclusively an historian and +naturalist, in the light, as well as the life, of philosophy: all other +men's worlds are his chaos. + +Hints 'obiter' are:-- + + not to permit delicacy and exquisiteness to seduce into effeminacy. + + Not to permit beauties by repetition to become mannerisms. + + To be jealous of fragmentary composition,--as epicurism of genius, and + apple-pie made all of quinces. + + 'Item', that dramatic poetry must be poetry hid in thought and + passion,--not thought or passion disguised in the dress of poetry. + + Lastly, to be economic and withholding in similies, figures, &c. They + will all find their place, sooner or later, each as the luminary of a + sphere of its own. There can be no galaxy in poetry, because it is + language,--'ergo' processive,--'ergo' every the smallest star must be + seen singly. + +There are not five metrists in the kingdom, whose works are known by me, +to whom I could have held myself allowed to have spoken so plainly. But +B.C. is a man of genius, and it depends on himself--(competence +protecting him from gnawing or distracting cares)--to become a rightful +poet,--that is, a great man. + +Oh! for such a man worldly prudence is transfigured into the highest +spiritual duty! How generous is self-interest in him, whose true self is +all that is good and hopeful in all ages, as far as the language of +Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton shall become the mother-tongue! + +A map of the road to Paradise, drawn in Purgatory, on the confines of +Hell, by S.T.C. July 30, 1819. + +[Footnote 1: Written in Mr. Lamb's copy of the 'Dramatic Scenes'. Ed.] + + + +THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN'S ADDRESS TO THE CROSS. [1] + + O! That it were as it was wont to be, + When thy old friends of fire, all full of thee, + Fought against frowns with smiles; gave glorius chace + To persecutions; and against the face + Of death and fiercest dangers durst with brave + And sober pace march on to meet a grave! + On their bold breast about the world they bore thee, + And to the teeth of hell stood up to teach thee, + In centre of their inmost souls they wore thee, + Where racks and torments strove in vain to reach thee! + Powers of my soul, be proud, And speak aloud + To the dear-bought nations this redeeming name, + And in the wealth of one rich word proclaim + New smiles to nature! May it be no wrong, + Blest heavens! to you and your superior song, + That we, dark sons of dust and sorrow, Awhile dare borrow + The name of your delights and your desires, + And fit it to so far inferior lyres!--Our lispings have their music too, + Ye mighty orbs! as well as you; Nor yields the noblest nest + Of warbling cherubs to the ear of love, A melody above + The low fond murmurs from the loyal breast + Of a poor panting turtle dove. + We mortals too + Have leave to do + The same bright business, ye third heavens with you. + +[Footnote 1: This poem was found in Mr. Coleridge's hand-writing on a +sheet of paper with other passages undoubtedly of his own composition. +There is something, however, in it which leads me to think it +transcribed or translated from some other writer, though I have been +unable from recollection or inquiry to ascertain the fact. It is +published here, therefore, expressly under caution. Ed.] + + + + + +FULLER'S HOLY STATE. + +B.I.c.9. Life of Eliezer. + + He will not truant it now in the afternoon, but with convenient speed + returns to Abraham, who onely was worthy of such a servant, who onely + was worthy of such a master. + +On my word, Eliezer did his business in an orderly and sensible manner; +but what there is to call forth this hyper-encomiastic--'who only'--I +cannot see. + +B.II.c.3. Life of Paracelsus. It is matter of regret with me, that +Fuller, (whose wit, alike in quantity, quality, and perpetuity, +surpassing that of the wittiest in a witty age, robbed him of the praise +not less due to him for an equal superiority in sound, shrewd, good +sense, and freedom of intellect,) had not looked through the two Latin +folios of Paracelsus's Works. It is not to be doubted that a rich and +delightful article would have been the result. For who like Fuller could +have brought out and set forth, this singular compound of true +philosophic genius with the morals of a quack and the manners of a king +of the gypsies! Nevertheless, Paracelsus belonged to his age--the dawn +of experimental science: and a well written critique on his life and +writings would present, through the magnifying glass of a caricature, +the distinguishing features of the Helmonts, Kirchers, &c. in short, of +the host of naturalists of the sixteenth century. The period might begin +with Paracelsus and end with Sir Kenelm Digby. + +N. B. The potential, ([Greek: Logos theanthropos]) the ground of the +prophetic, directed the first thinkers, (the 'Mystæ') to the metallic +bodies, as the key of all natural science. The then actual blended with +this instinct all the fancies and fond desires, and false perspective of +the childhood of intellect. The essence was truth, the form was folly: +and this is the definition of alchemy. Nevertheless the very terms bear +witness to the veracity of the original instinct. The world of sensible +experience cannot be more luminously divided than into the modifying +powers, [Greek: to allo],--that which differences, makes this other than +that; and the [Greek: met allo]--that which is beyond, or deeper than +the modification. 'Metallon' is strictly the base of the mode; and such +have the metals been determined to be by modern chemistry. And what are +now the great problems of chemistry? The difference of the metals +themselves, their origin, the causes of their locations, of their +co-existence in the same ore--as, for instance, iridium, osmium, +palladium, rhodium, and iron with platinum. Were these problems solved, +the results who dare limit? In addition to the 'méchanique céleste', we +might have a new department of astronomy, the 'chymie céleste', that is, +a philosophic astrology. And to this I do not hesitate to refer the +whole connection between alchemy and astrology, the same divinity in the +idea, the same childishness in the attempt to realize it. Nay, the very +invocations of spirits were not without a ground of truth. The light was +for the greater part suffocated and the rest fantastically refracted, +but still it was light struggling in the darkness. And I am persuaded, +that to the full triumph of science, it will be necessary that nature +should be commanded more spiritually than hitherto, that is, more +directly in the power of the will. + +B. IV. c. 19. The Prince. + + He sympathizeth with him that by a proxy is corrected for his offence. + +See Sir W. Scott's Fortunes of Nigel. In an oriental despotism one would +not have been surprised at finding such a custom, but in a Christian +court, and under the light of Protestantism, it is marvellous. It would +be well to ascertain, if possible, the earliest date of this +contrivance; whether it existed under the Plantagenets, or whether first +under the Tudors, or lastly, whether it was a precious import from +Scotland with gentle King Jamie. + +Ib. c. 21. The King. + + He is a mortal god. + +Compare the fulsome flattery of these and other passages in this volume +(though modest to the common language of James's priestly courtiers) +with the loyal but free and manly tone of Fuller's later works, towards +the close of Charles the First's reign and under the Commonwealth and +Protectorate. And doubtless this was not peculiar to Fuller: but a great +and lasting change was effected in the mind of the country generally. +The bishops and other church dignitaries tried for a while to renew the +old king-godding 'mumpsimus'; but the second Charles laughed at them, +and they quarrelled with his successor, and hated the hero who delivered +them from him too thoroughly to have flattered him with any unction, +even if William's Dutch phlegm had not precluded the attempt by making +its failure certain. + + + + + +FULLER'S PROFANE STATE. + +B. V. c. 2. + + God gave magistrates power to punish them, else they bear the sword in + vain. They may command people to serve God, who herein have no cause + to complain. + +And elsewhere. The only serious 'macula' in Fuller's mind is his uniform +support of the right and duty of the civil magistrate to punish errors +in belief. Fuller would, indeed, recommend moderation in the practice; +but of 'upas', 'woorara', and persecution, there are no moderate doses +possible. + + + + +FULLER'S APPEAL OF INJURED INNOCENCE. + +Part I. c. 5. + + Yet there want not learned writers (whom I need not name) of the + opinion that even the instrumental penmen of the Scripture might + commit [Greek: hamartaemata mnaemonika]: though open that window to + profaneness, and it will be in vain to shut any dores; 'Let God be + true, and every man a lyer'. + +It has been matter of complaint with hundreds, yea, it is an old cuckoo +song of grim saints, that the Reformation came to its close long before +it came to its completion. But the cause of this imperfection has been +fully laid open by no party,--'scilicet', that in divines of both +parties of the Reformers, the Protestants and the Detestants, there was +the same relic of the Roman 'lues',--the habit of deciding for or +against the orthodoxy of a position, not according to its truth or +falsehood, not on grounds of reason or of history, but by the imagined +consequences of the position. The very same principles on which the +pontifical polemics vindicate the Papal infallibility, Fuller 'et centum +alii' apply to the (if possible) still more extravagant notion of the +absolute truth and divinity of every syllable of the text of the books +of the Old and New Testament as we have it. + +Ib. + + Sure I am, that one of as much meekness, as some are of moroseness, + even upright Moses himself, in his service of the essential and + increated truth (of higher consequence than the historical truth + controverted betwixt us) had notwithstanding 'a respect to the + reward'. Heb. xi. 26. + +In religion the faith pre-supposed in the respect, and as its condition, +gives to the motive a purity and an elevation which of itself, and where +the recompense is looked for in temporal and carnal pleasures or +profits, it would not have. + + + + +FULLER'S CHURCH HISTORY. + +B. I. cent. 5. + + PELAGIUS:--Let no foreiner insult on the infelicity of our land in + bearing this monster. + +It raises, or ought to raise, our estimation of Fuller's good sense and +the general temperance of his mind, when we see the heavy weight of +prejudices, the universal code of his age, incumbent on his judgment, +and which nevertheless left sanity of opinion, the general character of +his writings: this remark was suggested by the term 'monster' attached +to the worthy Cambrian Pelagius--the teacher _Arminianismi ante +Arminium_. + +B. II. cent. 6. s. 8. + + Whereas in Holy Writ, when the Apostles (and the Papists commonly call + Augustine the English apostle, how properly we shall see hereafter,) + went to a foreign nation, 'God gave them the language thereof, &c.' + +What a loss that Fuller has not made a reference to his authorities for +this assertion! I am sure he could have found none in the New Testament, +but facts that imply, and, in the absence of all such proof, prove the +contrary. + +Ib. s. 6. + + Thus we see the whole week bescattered with Saxon idols, whose pagan + gods were the godfathers of the days, and gave them their names. 'This + some zealot may behold as the object of a necessary reformation, + desiring to have the days of the week new dipt, and called after other + names'. Though indeed this supposed scandal will not offend the wise, + as beneath their notice, and cannot offend the ignorant, as above + their knowledge. + +A curious prediction fulfilled a few years after in the Quakers, and +well worthy of being extracted and addressed to the present Friends. + +Memorandum.--It is the error of the Friends, but natural and common to +almost all sects,--the perversion of the wisdom of the first +establishers of their sect into their own folly, by not distinguishing +between the conditionally right and the permanently and essentially so. +For example: It was right conditionally in the Apostles to forbid black +puddings even to the Gentile Christians, and it was wisdom in them; but +to continue the prohibition would be folly and Judaism in us. The elder +church very sensibly distinguished episcopal from apostolic inspiration; +the episcopal spirit, that which dictated what was fit and profitable +for a particular community or church at a particular period,--from the +apostolic and catholic spirit which dictated truth and duties of +permanent and universal obligation. + +Ib. cent. 7. + +This Latin dedication is remarkably pleasing and elegant. Milton in his +classical youth, the aera of Lycidas, might have written it--only he +would have given it in Latin verse. + +B. x. cent. 17. + + Bp. of London. May your Majesty be pleased, that the ancient canon may + be remembered, 'Schismatici contra episcopos non sunt audiendi'. And + there is another decree of a very ancient council, that no man should + be admitted to speak against that whereunto he hath formerly + subscribed. + + And as for you, Doctor Reynolds, and your sociates, how much are you + bound to his Majestie's clemencye, permitting you contrary to the + statute 'primo Elizabethae', so freely to speak against the liturgie + and discipline established. Faine would I know the end you aime at, + and whether you be not of Mr. Cartwright's minde, who affirmed, that + we ought in ceremonies rather to conforme to the Turks than to the + Papists. I doubt you approve his position, because here appearing + before his Majesty in Turkey-gownes, not in your scholastic habits, + according to the order of the Universities. + +If any man, who like myself hath attentively read the Church history of +the reign of Elizabeth, and the conference before, and with, her pedant +successor, can shew me any essential difference between Whitgift and +Bancroft during their rule, and Bonner and Gardiner in the reign of +Mary, I will be thankful to him in my heart and for him in my prayers. +One difference I see, namely, that the former professing the New +Testament to be their rule and guide, and making the fallibility of all +churches and individuals an article of faith, were more inconsistent, +and therefore less excusable, than the Popish persecutors. 30 Aug. 1824. + +N.B. The crimes, murderous as they were, were the vice and delusion of +the age, and it is ignorance to lack charity towards the persons, Papist +or Protestant; but the tone, the spirit, characterizes, and belongs to, +the individual: for example, the bursting spleen of this Bancroft, not +so satisfied with this precious arbitrator for having pre-condemned his +opponents, as fierce and surly with him for not hanging them up unheard. + +At the end. Next to Shakspeare, I am not certain whether Thomas Fuller, +beyond all other writers, does not excite in me the sense and emotion of +the marvellous;--the degree in which any given faculty or combination of +faculties is possessed and manifested, so far surpassing what one would +have thought possible in a single mind, as to give one's admiration the +flavour and quality of wonder! Wit was the stuff and substance of +Fuller's intellect. It was the element, the earthen base, the material +which he worked in, and this very circumstance has defrauded him of his +due praise for the practical wisdom of the thoughts, for the beauty and +variety of the truths, into which he shaped the stuff. Fuller was +incomparably the most sensible, the least prejudiced, great man of an +age that boasted a galaxy of great men. He is a very voluminous writer, +and yet in all his numerous volumes on so many different subjects, it is +scarcely too much to say, that you will hardly find a page in which some +one sentence out of every three does not deserve to be quoted for +itself--as motto or as maxim. God bless thee, dear old man! may I meet +with thee!--which is tantamount to--may I go to heaven! + +July, 1829. + + + + + +ASGILL'S ARGUMENT. + + 'That according to the covenant of eternal life revealed in the + Scriptures, man may be translated from hence into that eternal life, + without passing through death, although the human nature of Christ + himself could not be thus translated till he had passed through + death.' Edit. 1715. + +If I needed an illustrative example of the distinction between the +reason and the understanding, between spiritual sense and logic, this +treatise of Asgill's would supply it. Excuse the defect of all idea, or +spiritual intuition of God, and allow yourself to bring Him as plaintiff +or defendant into a common-law court,--and then I cannot conceive a +clearer or cleverer piece of special pleading than Asgill has here +given. The language is excellent--idiomatic, simple, perspicuous, at +once significant and lively, that is, expressive of the thought, and +also of a manly proportion of feeling appropriate to it. In short, it is +the ablest attempt to exhibit a scheme of religion without ideas, that +the inherent contradiction in the thought renders possible. + +It is of minor importance how a man represents to himself his redemption +by the Word Incarnate,--within what scheme of his understanding he +concludes it, or by what supposed analogies (though actually no better +than metaphors) he tries to conceive it, provided he has a lively faith +in Christ, the Son of the living God, and his Redeemer. The faith may +and must be the same in all who are thereby saved; but every man, more +or less, construes it into an intelligible belief through the shaping +and coloring optical glass of his own individual understanding. Mr. +Asgill has given a very ingenious common-law scheme. 'Valeat quantum +valere potest'! It would make a figure before the Benchers of the Middle +Temple. For myself, I prefer the belief that man was made to know that a +finite free agent could not stand but by the coincidence, and +independent harmony, of a separate will with the will of God. For only +by the will of God can he obey God's will. Man fell as a soul to rise a +spirit. The first Adam was a living soul; the last a life-making spirit. + +In the Word was life, and that life is the light of men. And as long as +the light abides within its own sphere, that is, appears as reason,--so +long it is commensurate with the life, and is its adequate +representative. But not so, when this light shines downward into the +understanding; for there it is always, more or less, refracted, and +differently in every different individual; and it must be re-converted +into life to rectify itself, and regain its universality, or +'all-commonness, Allgemeinheit', as the German more expressively says. +Hence in faith and charity the church is catholic: so likewise in the +fundamental articles of belief, which constitute the right reason of +faith. But in the minor 'dogmata', in modes of exposition, and the +vehicles of faith and reason to the understandings, imaginations, and +affections of men, the churches may differ, and in this difference +supply one object for charity to exercise itself on by mutual +forbearance. + +O! there is a deep philosophy in the proverbial phrase,--'his heart sets +his head right!' In our commerce with heaven, we must cast our local +coins and tokens into the melting pot of love, to pass by weight and +bullion. And where the balance of trade is so immensely in our favour, +we have little right to complain, though they should not pass for half +the nominal value they go for in our own market. + +P. 46. + + And I am so far from thinking this covenant of eternal life to be an + allusion to the forms of title amongst men, that I rather adore it as + the precedent for them all, from which our imperfect forms are taken: + believing with that great Apostle, that 'the things on earth are but + the patterns of things in the heavens, where the originals are kept'. + +Aye! this, this is the pinch of the argument, which Asgill should have +proved, not merely asserted. Are these human laws, and these forms of +law, absolutely good and wise, or only conditionally so--the limited +powers and intellect, and the corrupt will of men being considered? + +P. 64. + + And hence, though the dead shall not arise with the same identity of + matter with which they died, yet being in the same form, they will not + know themselves from themselves, being the same to all uses, intents, + and purposes.... But then as God, in the resurrection, is not bound to + use the same matter, neither is he obliged to use a different matter. + +The great objection to this part of Asgill's scheme, which has had, and +still, I am told, has, many advocates among the chief dignitaries of our +church, is--that it either takes death as the utter extinction of +being,--or it supposes a continuance, or at least a renewal, of +consciousness after death. The former involves all the irrational, and +all the immoral, consequences of materialism. But if the latter be +granted, the proportionality, adhesion, and symmetry, of the whole +scheme are gone, and the infinite quantity,--that is, immortality under +the curse of estrangement from God,--is rendered a mere supplement +tacked on to the finite, and comparatively insignificant, if not +doubtful, evil, namely, the dissolution of the organic body. See what a +poor hand Asgill makes of it, p. 26:-- + + And therefore to signify the height of this resentment, God raises man + from the dead to demand further satisfaction of him. + + Death is a commitment to the prison of the grave till the judgment of + the great day; and then the grand 'Habeas corpus' will issue 'to the + earth and to the sea', to give up their dead; to remove the bodies, + with the cause of their commitment: and as these causes shall appear, + they shall either be released, or else sentenced to the common goal of + hell, there to remain until satisfaction. + +P. 66. + + Thou wilt not leave my 'soul' in the grave.... + + And that it is translated 'soul', is an Anglicism, not understood in + other languages, which have no other word for 'soul' but the same + which is for life. + +How so? 'Seele', the soul, 'Leben', life, in German; [Greek: psychae] +and [Greek: zo_ae], in Greek, and so on. + +P. 67. + + Then to this figure God added 'life', by breathing it into him from + himself, whereby this inanimate body became a living one. + +And what was this life? Something, or nothing? And had not, first, the +Spirit, and next the Word, of God infused life into the earth, of which +man as an animal and all other animals were made,--and then, in addition +to this, breathed into man a living soul, which he did not breathe into +the other animals? + +P. 75.-78-81. 'ad finem': + + I have a great deal of business yet in this world, without doing of + which heaven itself would be uneasy to me. + + And therefore do depend, that I shall not be taken hence in the midst + of my days, before I have done all my heart's desire. + + But when that is done, I know no business I have with the dead, and + therefore do as much depend that I shall not go hence by 'returning to + the dust', which is the sentence of that law from which I claim a + discharge: but that I shall make my 'exit' by way of translation, + which I claim as a dignity belonging to that degree in the science of + eternal life, of which I profess myself a graduate, according to the + true intent and meaning of the covenant of eternal life revealed in + the Scriptures. + + +A man so [Greek: kat exochaen] clear-headed, so remarkable for the +perspicuity of his sentences, and the luminous orderliness of his +arrangement,--in short, so consummate an artist in the statement of his +case, and in the inferences from his 'data', as John Asgill must be +allowed by all competent judges to have been,--was he in earnest or in +jest from p. 75 to the end of this treatise?--My belief is, that he +himself did not know. He was a thorough humorist: and so much of will, +with a spice of the wilful, goes to the making up of a humorist's creed, +that it is no easy matter to determine, how far such a man might not +have a pleasure in 'humming' his own mind, and believing, in order to +enjoy a dry laugh at himself for the belief. + +But let us look at it in another way. That Asgill's belief, professed +and maintained in this tract, is unwise and odd, I can more readily +grant, than that it is altogether irrational and absurd. I am even +strongly inclined to conjecture, that so early as St. Paul's apostolate +there were persons (whether sufficiently numerous to form a sect or +party, I cannot say), who held the same tenet as Asgill's, and in a more +intolerant and exclusive sense; and that it is to such persons that St. +Paul refers in the justly admired fifteenth chapter of the first epistle +to the Corinthians; and that the inadvertence to this has led a numerous +class of divines to a misconception of the Apostle's reasoning, and a +misinterpretation of his words, in behoof of the Socinian notion, that +the resurrection of Christ is the only argument of proof for the belief +of a future state, and that this was the great end and purpose of this +event. Now this assumption is so destitute of support from the other +writers of the New Testament, and so discordant with the whole spirit +and gist of St. Paul's views and reasoning every where else, that it is +'a priori' probable, that the apparent exception in this chapter is only +apparent. And this the hypothesis, I have here advanced, would enable +one to shew, and to exhibit the true bearing of the texts. Asgill +contents himself with maintaining that translation without death is one, +and the best, mode of passing to the heavenly state. 'Hinc itur ad +astra'. But his earliest predecessors contended that it was the only +mode, and to this St. Paul justly replies:'--If in this life only we +have hope, we are of all men most miserable.' + +1827. + + + + +INTRODUCTION TO ASGILL'S DEFENCE + +UPON HIS EXPULSION FROM THE HOUSE OP COMMONS. + +EDIT. 1712. + +P. 28. + + For as every faith, or credit, that a man hath attained to, is the + result of some knowledge or other; so that whoever hath attained that + knowledge, hath that faith, (for whatever a man knows, he cannot but + believe:) + + So this 'all faith' being the result of all knowledge,'tis easy to + conceive that whoever had once attained to all that knowledge, nothing + could be difficult to him. + +This whole discussion on faith is one of the very few instances, in +which Asgill has got out of his depth. According to all usage of words, +science and faith are incompatible in relation to the same object; +while, according to Asgill, faith is merely the power which science +confers on the will. Asgill says,--What we know, we must believe. I +retort,--What we only believe, we do not know. The 'minor' here is +excluded by, not included in, the 'major'. Minors by difference of +quantity are included in their majors; but minors by difference of +quality are excluded by them, or superseded. Apply this to belief and +science, or certain knowledge. On the confusion of the second, that is, +minors by difference of quality, with the first, or minors by difference +of quantity, rests Asgill's erroneous exposition of faith. + + + + + +NOTES ON SIR THOMAS BROWN'S RELIGIO MEDICI, + +MADE DURING A SECOND PERUSAL. 1808. [1] + +Part I. S.1. + + For my religion, though there be several circumstances that might + perswade the world I have none at all, 'as the generall scandall of my + profession', &c. + +The historical origin of this scandal, which in nine cases out of ten is +the honour of the medical profession, may, perhaps, be found in the +fact, that Ænesidemus and Sextus Empiricus, the sceptics, were both +physicians, about the close of the second century. [2] A fragment from +the writings of the former has been preserved by Photius, and such as +would leave a painful regret for the loss of the work, had not the +invaluable work of Sextus Empiricus been still extant. + +S. 7. + + A third there is which I did never positively maintaine or practise, + but have often wished it had been consonant to truth, and not + offensive to my religion, and that is, the prayer for the dead, &c. + +Our church with her characteristic Christian prudence does not enjoin +prayer for the dead, but neither does she prohibit it. In its own nature +it belongs to a private aspiration; and being conditional, like all +religious acts not expressed in Scripture, and therefore not combinable +with a perfect faith, it is something between prayer and wish,--an act +of natural piety sublimed by Christian hope, that shares in the light, +and meets the diverging rays, of faith, though it be not contained in +the focus. + +S. 13. + + He holds no counsell, but that mysticall one of the Trinity, wherein, + though there be three persons, there is but one mind that decrees + without contradiction, &c. + +Sir T.B. is very amusing. He confesses his part heresies, which are mere +opinions, while his orthodoxy is full of heretical errors. His Trinity +is a mere trefoil, a 3=1, which is no mystery at all, but a common +object of the senses. The mystery is, that one is three, that is, each +being the whole God. + +S. 18. + + 'Tis not a ridiculous devotion to say a prayer before a game at + tables, &c. + +But a great profanation, methinks, and a no less absurdity. Would Sir T. +Brown, before weighing two pigs of lead, A. and B., pray to God that A. +might weigh the heavier? Yet if the result of the dice be at the time +equally believed to be a settled and predetermined effect, where lies +the difference? Would not this apply against all petitionary +prayer?--St. Paul's injunction involves the answer:--'Pray always'. + +S. 22. + + They who to salve this would make the deluge particular, proceed upon + a principle that I can no way grant, &c. + +But according to the Scripture, the deluge was so gentle as to leave +uncrushed the green leaves on the olive tree. If then it was universal, +and if (as with the longevity of the antediluvians it must have been) +the earth was fully peopled, is it not strange that no buildings remain +in the since then uninhabited parts--in America for instance? That no +human skeletons are found may be solved from the circumstance of the +large proportion of phosphoric acid in human bones. But cities and +traces of civilization?--I do not know what to think, unless we might be +allowed to consider Noah a 'homo repraesentativus', or the last and +nearest of a series taken for the whole. + +S. 33. + + They that to refute the invocation of saints, have denied that they + have any knowledge of our affairs below, have proceeded too farre, and + must pardon my opinion, till I can throughly answer that piece of + Scripture, 'At the conversion of a sinner the angels of Heaven + rejoyce'. + + +Take any moral or religious book, and, instead of understanding each +sentence according to the main purpose and intention, interpret every +phrase in its literal sense as conveying, and designed to convey, a +metaphysical verity, or historical fact:--what a strange medley of +doctrines should we not educe? And yet this is the way in which we are +constantly in the habit of treating the books of the New Testament. + +S. 34. + + And, truely, for the first chapters of 'Genesis' I must confesse a + great deal of obscurity; though divines have to the power of humane + reason endeavored to make all go in a literall meaning, yet those + allegoricall interpretations are also probable, and perhaps, the + mysticall method of Moses bred up in the hieroglyphicall schooles of + the Egyptians. + +The second chapter of Genesis from v. 4, and the third chapter are to my +mind, as evidently symbolical, as the first chapter is literal. The +first chapter is manifestly by Moses himself; but the second and third +seem to me of far higher antiquity, and have the air of being translated +into words from graven stones. + +S. 48. This section is a series of ingenious paralogisms. + +S. 49. + + Moses, that was bred up in all the learning of the Egyptians, + committed a grosse absurdity in philosophy, when with these eyes of + flesh he desired to see God, and petitioned his maker, that is, truth + itself, to a contradiction. + +Bear in mind the Jehovah 'Logos', the [Symbol: 'O "omega N] [Greek: en +kolp_o patros]--the person 'ad extra',--and few passages in the Old +Testament are more instructive, or of profounder import. Overlook this, +or deny it,--and none so perplexing or so irreconcilable with the known +character of the inspired writer. + +S. 50. + + For that mysticall metall of gold, whose solary and celestiall nature + I admire, &c. + + +Rather anti-solar and terrene nature! For gold, most of all metals, +repelleth light, and resisteth that power and portion of the common air, +which of all ponderable bodies is most akin to light, and its surrogate +in the realm of [Greek: antiph'os]; or gravity, namely, oxygen. Gold is +'tellurian' [Greek: kat exochaen] and if solar, yet as in the solidity +and dark 'nucleus' of the sun. + +S. 52. + + I thank God that with joy I mention it, I was never afraid of hell, + nor never grew pale at the description of that place; I have so fixed + my contemplations on heaven, that I have almost forgot the idea of + hell, &c. + +Excellent throughout. The fear of hell may, indeed, in some desperate +cases, like the _moxa_, give the first rouse from a moral lethargy, or +like the green venom of copper, by evacuating poison or a dead load from +the inner man, prepare it for nobler ministrations and medicines from +the realm of light and life, that nourish while they stimulate. + +S. 54. + + There is no salvation to those that believe not in Christ, &c. + + +This is plainly confined to such as have had Christ preached to +them;--but the doctrine, that salvation is in and by Christ only, is a +most essential verity, and an article of unspeakable grandeur and +consolation. Name--_nomen_, that is, [Greek: noumenon], in its spiritual +interpretation, is the same as power, or intrinsic cause. What? Is it a +few letters of the alphabet, the hearing of which in a given succession, +that saves? + +S. 59. + + 'Before Abraham was, I am,' is the saying of Christ; yet is it true in + some sense if I say it of myself, for I was not only before myself, + but Adam, that is, in the idea of God, and the decree of that synod + held from all eternity. And in this sense, I say, the world was before + the creation, and at an end before it had a beginning; and thus was I + dead before I was alive;--though my grave be England, my dying-place + was Paradise, and Eve miscarried of me before she conceived of Cain. + +Compare this with s. 11, and the judicious remark there on the mere +accommodation in the 'prae' of predestination. But the subject was too +tempting for the rhetorician. + +Part II. s. 1. + + But as in casting account, three or four men together come short in + account of one man placed by himself below them, &c. + +Thus 1,965. But why is the 1, said to be placed below the 965? + +S. 7. + + Let me be nothing, if within the compass of myself, I do not finde the + battaile of Lepanto, passion against reason, 'reason against faith', + faith against the devil, and my conscience against all. + +It may appear whimsical, but I really feel an impatient regret, that +this good man had so misconceived the nature both of faith and reason as +to affirm their contrariety to each other. + +Ib. + + For my originale sin, I hold it to bee washed away in my baptisme; for + my actual transgressions, I compute and reckon with God, but from my + last repentance, &c. + +This is most true as far as the imputation of the same is concerned. For +where the means of avoiding its consequences have been afforded, each +after transgression is actual, by a neglect of those means. + +S. 14. + + God, being all goodnesse, can love nothing but himself; he loves us + but for that part which is, as it were, himselfe, and the traduction + of his Holy Spirit. + +This recalls a sublime thought of Spinosa. Every true virtue is a part +of that love, with which God loveth himself. + + +[Footnote 1: Communicated by Mr. Wordsworth.--Ed.] + +[Footnote 2: A mistake as to Ænesidemus, who lived in the age of +Augustus--Ed.] + + + + + + +NOTES ON SIR THOMAS BROWNE'S GARDEN OF CYRUS, + +OR THE QUINCUNCIAL, ETC. PLANTATIONS OF THE ANCIENTS, ETC. + +Ch. III. + + That bodies are first spirits, Paracelsus could affirm, &c. + +Effects purely relative from properties merely comparative, such as +edge, point, grater, &c. are not proper qualities: for they are +indifferently producible 'ab extra', by grinding, &c., and 'ab intra', +from growth. In the latter instance, they suppose qualities as their +antecedents. Now, therefore, since qualities cannot proceed from +quantity, but quantity from quality,--and as matter opposed to spirit is +shape by modification of extension, or pure quantity,--Paracelsus's +'dictum' is defensible. + +Ib. + + The æquivocall production of things, under undiscerned principles, + makes a large part of generation, &c. + +Written before Harvey's 'ab ovo omnia'. Since his work, and Lewenhock's +'Microscopium', the question is settled in physics; but whether in +metaphysics, is not quite so clear. + +Ch. IV. + + And mint growing in glasses of water, until it arriveth at the weight + of an ounce, in a shady place, will sometimes exhaust a pound of + water. + +How much did Brown allow for evaporation? + +Ib. + + Things entering upon the intellect by a pyramid from without, and + thence into the memory by another from within, the common decussation + being in the understanding, &c. + +This nearly resembles Kant's intellectual 'mechanique'. + +The Platonists held three knowledges of God;--first, [Greek: parousia], +his own incommunicable self-comprehension;--second, [Greek: kata +noaesin]--by pure mind, unmixed with the sensuous;--third, [Greek: kat +epistaemaen]--by discursive intelligential act. Thus a Greek +philosopher:--[Greek: tous epistaemonikous logous muthous haegaesetai +sunousa t'o patri kai sunesti'omenae hae psuchae en tae alaetheia tou +ontos, kai en augae kathara].--Those notions of God which we attain by +processes of intellect, the soul will consider as mythological +allegories, when it exists in union with the Father, and is feasting +with him in the truth of very being, and in the pure, unmixed, +absolutely simple and elementary, splendor. Thus expound Exod. c. +xxxiii. v. 10. 'And he said, thou canst not see my face: for there +shall no man see me, and live'. By the 'face of God,' Moses meant the +[Greek: idea noaetikae] which God declared incompatible with human life, +it implying [Greek: epaphae tou noaetou], or contact with the pure +spirit. + + + + + +NOTES ON SIR THOMAS BROWNE'S VULGAR ERRORS. + +ADDRESS TO THE READER. + + Dr. Primrose, + +Is not this the same person as the physician mentioned by Mrs. +Hutchinson in her Memoirs of her husband? + +Book I. c. 8. s. 1. The veracity and credibility of Herodotus have +increased and increase with the increase of our discoveries. Several of +his relations deemed fabulous, have been authenticated within the last +thirty years from this present 1808. + +Ib. s. 2. + + Sir John Mandevill left a book of travels:--herein he often attesteth + the fabulous relations of Ctesias. + +Many, if not most, of these Ctesian fables in Sir J. Mandevill were +monkish interpolations. + +Ib. s. 13. + + Cardanus--is of singular use unto a prudent reader; but unto him that + only desireth 'hoties', or to replenish his head with varieties,--he + may become no small occasion of error. + + +'Hoties'--[Greek: hoti s]--'whatevers,' that is, whatever is +written, no matter what, true or false,--'omniana'; 'all sorts of +varieties,' as a dear young lady once said to me. + +Ib. c. ix. + + If Heraclitus with his adherents will hold the sun is no bigger than + it appeareth. + +It is not improbable that Heraclitus meant merely to imply that we +perceive only our own sensations, and they of course are what they +are;--that the image of the sun is an appearance, or sensation in our +eyes, and, of course, an appearance can be neither more nor less than +what it appears to be;--that the notion of the true size of the sun is +not an image, or belonging either to the sense, or to the sensuous +fancy, but is an imageless truth of the understanding obtained by +intellectual deductions. He could not possibly mean what Sir T. B. +supposes him to have meant; for if he had believed the sun to be no more +than a mile distant from us, every tree and house must have shown its +absurdity. + +... + +In the following books I have endeavoured, wherever the author himself +is in a vulgar error, as far as my knowledge extends, to give in the +margin, either the demonstrated discoveries, or more probable opinions, +of the present natural philosophy;--so that, independently of the +entertainingness of the thoughts and tales, and the force and splendor +of Sir Thomas Browne's diction and manner, you may at once learn from +him the history of human fancies and superstitions, both when he detects +them, and when he himself falls into them,--and from my notes, the real +truth of things, or, at least, the highest degree of probability, at +which human research has hitherto arrived. + +... + +Book II. c. i. Production of crystal. Cold is the attractive or +astringent power, comparatively uncounteracted by the dilative, the +diminution of which is the proportional increase of the contractive. +Hence the astringent, or power of negative magnetism, is the proper +agent in cold, and the contractive, or oxygen, an allied and +consequential power. 'Crystallum, non ex aqua, sed ex substantia +metallorum communi confrigeratum dico'. As the equator, or mid point of +the equatorial hemispherical line, is to the centre, so water is to +gold. Hydrogen is to the electrical azote, as azote to the magnetic +hydrogen. + +Ib. + + Crystal--will strike fire--and upon collision with steel send forth + its sparks, not much inferiourly to a flint. + +It being, indeed, nothing else but pure flint. + +C. iii. + + And the magick thereof (the lodestone) is not safely to be believed, + which was delivered by Orpheus, that sprinkled with water it will upon + a question emit a voice not much unlike an infant. + +That is:--to the twin counterforces of the magnetic power, the +equilibrium of which is revealed in magnetic iron, as the substantial, +add the twin counterforces or positive and negative poles of the +electrical power, the indifference of which is realized in water, as the +superficial--(whence Orpheus employed the term 'sprinkled,' or rather +affused or superfused)--and you will hear the voice of infant +nature;--that is, you will understand the rudimental products and +elementary powers and constructions of the phenomenal world. An enigma +this not unworthy of Orpheus, 'quicunque fuit', and therefore not +improbably ascribed to him. + +N. B. Negative and positive magnetism are to attraction and repulsion, +or cohesion and dispersion, as negative and positive electricity are to +contraction and dilation. + +C. vii. s. 4. + + That camphire begets in men [Greek: taen anaphrodisian], observation + will hardly confirm, &c. + +There is no doubt of the fact as to a temporary effect; and camphire is +therefore a strong and immediate antidote to an overdose of +'cantharides'. Yet there are, doubtless, sorts and cases of [Greek: +anaphrodisia], which camphire might relieve. Opium is occasionally an +aphrodisiac, but far oftener the contrary. The same is true of 'bang', +or powdered hemp leaves, and, I suppose, of the whole tribe of narcotic +stimulants. + +Ib. s. 8. + + The yew and the berries thereof are harmless, we know. + + +The berries are harmless, but the leaves of the yew are undoubtedly +poisonous. See Withering's British Plants. Taxus. + +Book III. c. xiii. + + For although lapidaries and 'questuary' enquirers affirm it, &c. + +'Questuary'--having gain or money for their object. + +B. VI. c. viii. + + The river Gihon, a branch of Euphrates and river of Paradise. + +The rivers from Eden were, perhaps, meant to symbolize, or rather +expressed only, the great primary races of mankind. Sir T.B. was the +very man to have seen this; but the superstition of the letter was then +culminant. + +Ib. c. x. + + The chymists have laudably reduced their causes--(of colors)--unto + 'sal', 'sulphur', and 'mercury', &c. + +Even now, after all the brilliant discoveries from Scheele, Priestley, +and Cavendish, to Berzelius and Davy, no improvement has been made in +this division,--not of primary bodies (those idols of the modern atomic +chemistry), but of causes, as Sir T.B. rightly expresses them,--that is, +of elementary powers manifested in bodies. Let mercury stand for the +bi-polar metallic principle, best imaged as a line or 'axis' from north +to south,--the north or negative pole being the cohesive or coherentific +force, and the south or positive pole being the dispersive or +incoherentific force: the first is predominant in, and therefore +represented by, carbon,--the second by nitrogen; and the series of +metals are the primary and, hence, indecomponible 'syntheta' and +proportions of both. In like manner, sulphur represents the active and +passive principle of fire: the contractive force, or negative +electricity--oxygen--produces flame; and the dilative force, or positive +electricity--hydrogen--produces warmth. And lastly, salt is the +equilibrium or compound of the two former. So taken, salt, sulphur, and +mercury are equivalent to the combustive, the combustible, and the +combust, under one or other of which all known bodies, or ponderable +substances, may be classed and distinguished. + +The difference between a great mind's and a little mind's use of history +is this. The latter would consider, for instance, what Luther did, +taught, or sanctioned: the former, what Luther,--a Luther,--would now +do, teach, and sanction. This thought occurred to me at midnight, +Tuesday, the 16th of March, 1824, as I was stepping into bed,--my eye +having glanced on Luther's Table Talk. + +If you would be well with a great mind, leave him with a favorable +impression of you;--if with a little mind, leave him with a favorable +opinion of himself. + +It is not common to find a book of so early date as this (1658), at +least among those of equal neatness of printing, that contains so many +gross typographical errors;--with the exception of our earliest dramatic +writers, some of which appear to have been never corrected, but worked +off at once as the types were first arranged by the compositors. But the +grave and doctrinal works are, in general, exceedingly correct, and form +a striking contrast to modern publications, of which the late edition of +Bacon's Works would be paramount in the infamy of multiplied unnoticed +'errata', were it not for the unrivalled slovenliness of Anderson's +British Poets, in which the blunders are, at least, as numerous as the +pages, and many of them perverting the sense, or killing the whole +beauty, and yet giving or affording a meaning, however low, instead. +These are the most execrable of all typographical errors. 1808. + + + +[The volume from which the foregoing notes have been taken, is inscribed +in Mr. Lamb's writing-- + +'C. Lamb, 9th March, 1804. Bought for S.T. Coleridge.' Under which in +Mr. Coleridge's hand is written-- + +'N.B. It was on the 10th; on which day I dined and punched at Lamb's, +and exulted in the having procured the 'Hydriotaphia', and all the rest +'lucro apposita'. S.T.C.' + +That same night, the volume was devoted as a gift to a dear friend in +the following letter.-Ed.] + + + +10th, 1804, + +Sat. night, 12 o'clock. + + +My dear--, + +Sir Thomas Brown is among my first favorites, rich in various knowledge, +exuberant in conceptions and conceits, contemplative, imaginative; often +truly great and magnificent in his style and diction, though doubtless +too often big, stiff, and hyperlatinistic: thus I might without +admixture of falsehood, describe Sir T. Brown, and my description would +have only this fault, that it would be equally, or almost equally, +applicable to half a dozen other writers, from the beginning of the +reign of Elizabeth to the end of Charles II. He is indeed all this; and +what he has more than all this peculiar to himself, I seem to convey to +my own mind in some measure by saying,--that he is a quiet and sublime +enthusiast with a strong tinge of the fantast,--the humourist constantly +mingling with, and flashing across, the philosopher, as the darting +colours in shot silk play upon the main dye. In short, he has brains in +his head which is all the more interesting for a little twist in the +brains. He sometimes reminds the reader of Montaigne, but from no other +than the general circumstances of an egotism common to both; which in +Montaigne is too often a mere amusing gossip, a chit-chat story of whims +and peculiarities that lead to nothing,--but which in Sir Thomas Brown +is always the result of a feeling heart conjoined with a mind of active +curiosity,--the natural and becoming egotism of a man, who, loving other +men as himself, gains the habit, and the privilege of talking about +himself as familiarly as about other men. Fond of the curious, and a +hunter of oddities and strangenesses, while he conceived himself, with +quaint and humourous gravity a useful inquirer into physical truth and +fundamental science,--he loved to contemplate and discuss his own +thoughts and feelings, because he found by comparison with other men's, +that they too were curiosities, and so with a perfectly graceful and +interesting ease he put them too into his museum and cabinet of +varieties. In very truth he was not mistaken:--so completely does he see +every thing in a light of his own, reading nature neither by sun, moon, +nor candle light, but by the light of the faery glory around his own +head; so that you might say that nature had granted to him in perpetuity +a patent and monopoly for all his thoughts. Read his 'Hydriotaphia' +above all:--and in addition to the peculiarity, the exclusive Sir- +Thomas-Brown-ness of all the fancies and modes of illustration, wonder +at and admire his entireness in every subject, which is before him--he +is 'totus in illo'; he follows it; he never wanders from it,--and he has +no occasion to wander;--for whatever happens to be his subject, he +metamorphoses all nature into it. In that 'Hydriotaphia' or Treatise on +some Urns dug up in Norfolk--how earthy, how redolent of graves and +sepulchres is every line! You have now dark mould, now a thigh-bone, now +a scull, then a bit of mouldered coffin! a fragment of an old tombstone +with moss in its 'hic jacet';--a ghost or a winding-sheet--or the echo +of a funeral psalm wafted on a November wind! and the gayest thing you +shall meet with shall be a silver nail or gilt 'Anno Domini' from a +perished coffin top. The very same remark applies in the same force to +the interesting, through the far less interesting, Treatise on the +Quincuncial Plantations of the Ancients. There is the same attention to +oddities, to the remotenesses and 'minutiæ' of vegetable terms,--the +same entireness of subject. You have quincunxes in heaven above, +quincunxes in earth below, and quincunxes in the water beneath the +earth; quincunxes in deity, quincunxes in the mind of man, quincunxes in +bones, in the optic nerves, in roots of trees, in leaves, in petals, in +every thing. In short, first turn to the last leaf of this volume, and +read out aloud to yourself the last seven paragraphs of Chap. v. +beginning with the words 'More considerables,' &c. But it is time for me +to be in bed, in the words of Sir Thomas, which will serve you, my dear, +as a fair specimen of his manner.--'But the quincunx of heaven--(the +Hyades or five stars about the horizon at midnight at that time)--runs +low, and 'tis time we close the five ports of knowledge: we are +unwilling to spin out our waking thoughts into the phantasmes of sleep, +which often continueth præcogitations,--making tables of cobwebbes, and +wildernesses of handsome groves. To keep our eyes open longer were but +to act our Antipodes. The huntsmen are up in America, and they are +already past their first sleep in Persia.' Think you, my dear Friend, +that there ever was such a reason given before for going to bed at +midnight;--to wit, that if we did not, we should be acting the part of +our Antipodes! And then 'the huntsmen are up in America.'--What life, +what fancy!--Does the whimsical knight give us thus a dish of strong +green tea, and call it an opiate! I trust that you are quietly asleep-- + +And that all the stars hang bright above your dwelling, Silent as tho' +they watched the sleeping earth! + +S. T. COLERIDGE. + + +FINIS. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Literary Remains, Vol. 2, by Coleridge + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERARY REMAINS, VOL. 2 *** + +This file should be named 8rem210.txt or 8rem210.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 8rem211.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 8rem210a.txt + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Clytie Siddall +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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