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 .4 LECTUBE 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT G. INGERSOLL 
 
 TORONTO, CAN. : 
 Printed by C. M Elms, 67 Adelaide Street West 
 
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':';1^W^i 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 BY COL. R. G. INGERSOLL. 
 
 I. 
 
 William Shakespeare was the greatest genius of our world. He left to 
 us the richest legacy of all the dead — the treasures of the rarest soul 
 that ever lived and loved and wrought of words the statues, pictures, 
 robes and gems of thought. He was the greatest man who ever touched 
 this grain of sand and tear we call the world. 
 
 It is hard to overstate the debt we owe to the men and women of genius. 
 Take from our world what they have given, and all the niches would be 
 empty, all the walle naked — meaning and connection would fall from 
 words of poetry and fiction, music would go back to common air, and all 
 the forms of subtle and enchanting Art would lose proportion, and be- 
 come the unmeaning waste and shattered spoil of thoughtless Chance. 
 
 Shakespeare is too great a theme. I feel as though endeavoring to 
 grasp a globe so large that the hand obtains no hold. He who would 
 worthily speak of the gi'eat dramatist should be inspired by "a muse of 
 fire that should ascend the brightest .heaven of invention " — he should 
 have " a kingdom for a stage, and monarchs to behold the swelling scene." 
 
 More than three centuries ago, the most intellectual of the human race 
 was born. He was not of supernatural origin. At his birth there were 
 no celestial pyrotechnics. His father and mother were both English, 
 and both had the cheerful habit of living in this world. The cradle in 
 which he was rocked was canopied by neither myth nor miracle, and in 
 his veins there was no drop of royal blood. 
 
 This babe became the wonder of mankind. Neither of his parents 
 could read or write. He grew up in a small and ignorant village 01 the 
 banks of the Avon, in the midst of the common people of three hundred 
 years ago. There was nothing in the peaceful, quiet landscape on which 
 he looked, nothing in the low hills, the cultivated and undulating fields, 
 and nothing in the murmuring stream, to excite the imagination — 
 
Shakespeare. 
 
 nothing, so far as we can see, calculated to sow the seeds of the suhtlest 
 and suhlimest thought. 
 
 So there is nothing connected with his education, .or his lack of educa- 
 tion, that in any way accounts for what he did. It is supposed that he 
 attended school in his native town — but of this we are not certain. 
 Many have tried to show that he was, after all, of gentle blood, but the 
 fact seems to be the other way. Some of his biographers have sought 
 to do him honor by showing that he was patronized by Queen Elizabeth, 
 but of this there is not the slightest proof. 
 
 As a matter of fact, there never sat on any throne, a king, queen, or 
 emperor who could have honored William Shakespeare. 
 
 Ignorant people are apt to overrate the value of what is called educa- 
 tion. The sons of the poor, having suffered the privations of poverty, 
 think ^'f wealth as the mother of joy. On the other hand, the children 
 of the rich, finding that gold does not produce happiness, are apt to 
 underrate the value of wealth. So the children of the educated often 
 care but little for books, and hold all culture in contempt. The children 
 of great authors do not, as a rule, become writers. 
 
 Nature is filled with tendencies and obstructions. Extremes beget 
 limitations, even as a river by its own swiftness creates obstructions for 
 itself. Possibly, many generations of culture breed a desire for the rude 
 joys of savagery, and possibly generations of ignorance breed such a 
 longing for knowledge, that of this desire, of this htinger of the brain, 
 Genius is born. It may be that the mind, by lying fallow, by remaining 
 idle for generations, gathers strength. 
 
 Shakespeare's father seems to have been an ordinary man of his time 
 and class. About the only thing we know of him is, that he was officially 
 reported for not coming monthly to church. This is good as far as it 
 goes. We can hardly blame him, because at that time Eichard Bifield 
 was the minister at Stratford, and an extreme Puritan, — one who read 
 the Psalter by Sternhold and Hopkins. 
 
 The Church was at one time Catholic, but in John Shakespeare's day 
 it was Puritan, and in 1564, the year of Shakespeare's birth, they had 
 the images defaced. It is greatly to the honor of John Shakespeare 
 that he refused to listen to the " tidings of great joy " as delivered by 
 the Puritan Bifield. ~ 
 
 Nothing is known of his mother except her beautiful name — Mary 
 Arden. In those days, but little attention was given to the biographies 
 of women. They were born, married, had children, and died. No matter 
 
 h| 
 til 
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 ill 
 h 
 
Shakespeare. 
 
 8 
 
 how celebrated their sons became, the mothers were forgotten. In old 
 times, when a man achieved distinction, great pains were taken to find 
 out about the father and grandfather — the idea being that genius is 
 inherited from the father's side. The truth is, that all great men have 
 had great mothers. Great women have had, as a rule, great fathers. 
 
 The mother of Shakespeare was, without doubt, one of the greatest 
 of women. She dowered her son with passion and imaginp.tior and the 
 higher qualities of the soul, beyond all other men. It has been said 
 that a man of genius should select his ancestors with great care — and 
 yet there does not appear to be as much in heredity as most people think. 
 The children of the great are often small. Pigmies are born in palaces, 
 while over the child of genius is the roof of straw. Most of the great 
 are like mountains, with the valley of ancestors on one side and the 
 depression of posterity on the other. 
 
 In his day, Shakespeare was of no particular importance. It may be 
 that his mother had some marvellous and prophetic dreams, but Strat- 
 ford was unconscious of the immortal child- He was never engaged in 
 a reputable business. Socially, he occupied a position below servants. 
 The law described him as " a sturdy vagabond." He was neither a sol- 
 dier, a noble, nor a priest. Among the half-civilized people of England 
 he who amused and instructed them was regarded as a menial. Kings 
 had their clowns, the people their actors and musicians. Shakespeare 
 was scheduled as a servant. It is thus that successful stupidity has 
 always treated genius. Mozart was patronized by an archbishop — lived 
 in the palace, — but was compelled to eat with the scullions. 
 
 The composer of divine melodies was not fit to sit by the side of the 
 theologian, who long ago would have been forgotten but for the fame of 
 the composer. 
 
 We know but little of the personal peculiarities, of the daily life, or of 
 what may be called the outward Shakespeare, and it may be fortunate 
 that so little is known. He might have been belittled by friendly fools. 
 What silly stories, what idiotic r'^rsonal reminiscences, would have been 
 remembered by those who scarcely saw him ! We have his best — his 
 sublimest — and we have probably lost only the trivial and the worthless. 
 All that is known can be written on a page. 
 
 We are tolerably certain of the date of his birth> of his marriage and 
 of his death. We think he went to London in 1586, when he was twenty- 
 two years old. We think that three years afterwards he was part owner 
 of Blackfriars Theatre. We have a few signatures, some of which are 
 
Shakespeare. 
 
 supposed to be genuine. We know that he bought some land — that he 
 had two or three law-suits. We know the names of his children. We 
 also know that this incomparable man — so apart from, and so familiar 
 with, all the world — lived during his literary life in London — that he 
 was an actor, dramatist and manager — that he returned to Stratford, the 
 place of his birth, — that he gave his writings to negligence, deserted the 
 children of his brain— rthat he died on the anniversary of his birth at the 
 age of fifty-two, and that he was buried in the church where the images 
 had been defaced, and that on his tomb was chiseled a rude, absurd and 
 ignorant epitaph. 
 
 No letter of his to any human being has been found, and no line 
 written by him can be shown. 
 
 And here let me give my explanation of the epitaph. Shakespeare 
 was an actor — a disreputable business — but he made money — always 
 reputable. He came back from London a rich man. He bought land, 
 and built houses. Some of the supposed great probably treated him with 
 deference. When he died he was buried in the church. Thon came a 
 reaction. The pious thought the church had been profaned. They did 
 not feel that the ashes of an actor were fit to lie in holy ground. The 
 people began to say the body ought to be removed. Then it was, as I 
 believe, that Dr. John Hall, Shakespeare's son-in-law, had this epitaph 
 cut on the tomb : 
 
 " Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare 
 To digg the dust enclosed heare : 
 Blest be ye man yt spares these stones, 
 .A.nd curst be he yt moves my bones." 
 
 Certainly Shakespeare could have had no fear that his tomb would be 
 violated. How could it have entered his mind to have put a warning, a 
 threat and a blessing, upon his grave ? But the ignorant people of that 
 day were no doubt convinced that the epitaph was the voice of the dead, 
 and so feeling they feared to invade the tomb. In this way the dust was 
 left in peace. 
 
 This epitaph gave me great trouble for yenrs. It puzzled me to 
 explain why he, who erected the intellectual pyramids, — great ranges of 
 mountains — should put such a pebble at his tomb. But when I stood 
 beside the grave and read the ignorant words, the explanation I have 
 given flashed upon me. 
 
Shakespeare. 
 
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 II. 
 It has been said that Shakespeare was hardly mentioned by his contem- 
 poraries, and that he was substantially unknown. This is a mistake. 
 In 1600 a book was published called " England's Parnassus," and it 
 contained ninety extracts from Shakespeare. In the same year was 
 published the " Garden of the Muses," containing several pieces from 
 Shakespeare, Chapman, Marston and Ben Jonson. " England's Heli- 
 con " was printed in the same year and contained poems from Spenser, 
 Greene, Harvey and Shakespeare. 
 
 In 1600 a play was acted at Cambridge, in which Shakespeare was 
 alluded to as follows : ** Why, here's our fellow Shakespere who puts 
 them all down." John Weaver published a book of poems in 1595, in 
 which there was a sonnet to Shakespeare. In 1598 Richard Barafield 
 wrote a poem to Shakespeare. Francis Mei*es, " clergyman, master of 
 arts in both universities, compiler of school books," was the author of 
 the "Wits' Treasury." In this he compares the ancient and modern 
 tragic poets, and mentions Marlowe, Peel, Kyd, and Shakespeare. So 
 he compares the writers of comedies, and mentions Lilly, Lodge, Greene 
 and Shakespeare. He speaks of elegiac poets, and names Surrey, Wyatt, 
 Sidney, Raleigh and Shakespeare. He compares the lyric poets, and 
 names Spencer, Drayton, Shakespeare and others. This sam^. ,mter, 
 speaking of Horace, says that England has Sidney, Shakespeare and 
 others, and that " as the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in 
 Pythagoras, so the sweet- wittie soul of Ovid lives in the r mellifluous and 
 and honey-tongued Shakespeare." He also says : " If the Muses could 
 speak English, they would speak in Shakespeare's t nrase." This was 
 in 1598. In 1607, John Davies alludes in a poem to Shakespeare. 
 
 Of course, we are all familiar with what rare Ben Jonson wrote. 
 Henry Chettle took Shakespeare to task because he wrote nothing on the 
 death of Queen Elizabeth. 
 
 It may be wonderful that he was not better known. But is it not 
 
 wonderful that he gained the reputation that he did in so short a time, 
 
 and that twelve years after he began to write he stood at least with the 
 
 first ? 
 
 III. 
 
 But there is a wonderful fact connected with the writings of Shakespeare : 
 
 In the Plays there is no direct mention of any of his contemporaries. 
 
 We do not know of any poet, author, soldier, sailor, statesman, priest, 
 
 nobleman, king, or queen, that Shakespeare directly mentioned. 
 
6 
 
 SlIAKKHI'EARE. 
 
 Is it not marvelloiiH that he, living in an age of great deeds, of adven- 
 tures in far off lands and unknown seas — in a time of religious wars — 
 in the days of the Armada — the massacre of St. Bartholomew — the Edict 
 of Nantes — the assassination of Henry III. — the victory of Lepanto — the 
 execution of Marie Stuart - did not mention the name of any man or 
 woman of his time ? Some have insisted that the paragraph ending 
 with the lines : 
 
 " The imperial votress passed on in maiden meditation fancy free," 
 
 referred to Queen Elizaheth ; but it is impossible for me to believe that 
 the daubed and wrinkled face, the small black eyes, the cruel nose, the 
 thin lips, the bad teeth, and the red wig of Queen Elizabeth could by 
 any possibility have inspired these marvellous lines. 
 
 It is perfectly apparent from Shakespeare's writings that he knew but 
 little of the nobility, little of kings and queens. He gives to these sup- 
 posed great people great thoughts, and puts great words in their mouths 
 and makes them speak — not as they really did — but as Shakespeare 
 thought such people should. This demonstrates that he did not know 
 them personally. 
 
 Shakespeare lived during the great awakening of the world, when 
 Europe emerged from the darkness of the Middle Ages, when the dis- 
 covf 7 of America had made England, that blossom of the Gulf Stream, 
 the centre of commerce, and during a period when some of the greatest 
 writers, thinkers, soldiers and discoverers were produced. 
 
 Cervantes was born in 1547, dying on the same day as Shakespeare 
 died. He was undoubtedly the greatest writer that Spain has produced. 
 Rubens was born in 1577. Camoens, the Portuguese, the author of the 
 " Luciad," died in 1597. Giordano Bruno — greatest of martyrs — was 
 born in 1548 — visited London in Shakespeare's time — delivered lectures 
 at Oxford, and called that institution "the widow of learning." Drake 
 circled the globe in 1580. Galileo was born in 1564 — the same year with 
 Shakespeare. Michael Angelo died in 1563. Kepler — he of the Three 
 Laws — born in 1571. Calderon, the Spanish dramatist, born in 1601. 
 Corneille, the French poet, in 1606. Rembrandt, greatest of painters, 
 1607. Shakespeare was born in 1564. In that year John Calvin died. 
 What a glorious exchange ! 
 
 Seventy-two years after the discovery of America Shak; speare was 
 born, and England was filled with the voyages and discoveries written by 
 Hakluyt, and the wonders that had been seen by Raleigh, by Drake, by 
 
Shakespeare. 
 
 Frobisher and Hawkins. London had become the centre of the world, 
 and representatives from all known countries were in the new metropolis. 
 The world had been doubled. The imagination had been touched and 
 kindled by discovery. In the far horizon were unknown lands, strange 
 shores beyond untraversed seas. Toward every part of the world were 
 turned the prows of adventure. All these things fanned the imagination 
 into flame, and this had its effect upon the literary and dramatic world. 
 And yet Shakespeare — the master spirit of mankind — in the midst of 
 these discoveries, of these adventures, mentisned no navigator, no 
 general, no discoverer, no philosopher. 
 
 Galileo was reading the open volume of the sky, but Shakespeare did 
 not mention him. This to me is the most marvellous thing connected 
 with this most marvellous man. 
 
 At that time England was prosperous — was then laying the foundation 
 of her future greatness and power. 
 
 When men are prosperous, they are in love with life. Nature grows 
 beautiful, the arts begin to flourish, there is work for painter and sculp- 
 tor, the poet is born, the stage is erected — and this life with which men 
 are in love, is represented in a thousand forms. 
 
 Nature, or Fate, or Chance prepared a stage for Shakespeare, and 
 Shakespeare prepared a stage for Nature. 
 
 Famine and faith go together. In disaster and want the gaze of man 
 is fixed upon another world. He that eats a crust has a creed. Hunger 
 falls upon its knees, and heaven, looked for through tears, is the mirage 
 of misery. But prosperity brings joy and wealth and leisure — and the 
 beautiful is born. 
 
 One of the effects of the world's awakening was Shakespeare. We 
 account for this man as we do for the highest mountain, the greatest 
 river, the most perfect gem. We can only say : He was. 
 
 " It hath been taug^ht us from the primal state 
 That he which is was wished until he were." 
 
 IV. 
 
 In Shakespeare's time the actor was a vagabond, the dramatist a dis- 
 reputable person — and yet the greatest dramas were then written. In 
 spite of law, and social ostracism, Shakespeare reared the many-colored 
 dome that fills and glorifies the intellectual heavens. 
 
 Now the whole civilized world believes in the theatre — asks for some 
 great dramatist — is hungry for a play worthy of the century, is anxious 
 
8 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 to give gold and fame to any one who can worthily put our age upon the 
 stage — and yet no great play has been written since Shakespeare died. 
 
 Shakespeare pursued the highway of the right. He did not seek to 
 put his characters into a position where it was right to do wrong. He 
 was riound and healthy to the centre. It never occurred to him to write 
 a play in which a wife's lover should be jealous of her husband. 
 
 There was in his blood the courage of his thought. He was true to 
 himself, and enjoyed the perfect freedom of the highest art. He did 
 not write according to rules, but smaller men make rules from what he 
 wrote. 
 
 How fortunate that Shakespeare was not educated at Oxford — that the 
 winged god within him never knelt to the professor. How fortunate 
 that this giant was not captured, tied and tethered by the literary Lili- 
 putians of his time. 
 
 He was an idealist. He did not — like most writers of our time — take 
 refuge in the real, hiding a lack of genius behind j. pretended love of 
 truth. All realities are not poetic, or dramatic, or even worth knowing. 
 The real sustains the same relation to the ideal that a stone does to a 
 statue, or that paint does to a painting. Realism degrades and im- 
 poverishes. In no event can a realist be more than an imitator and a 
 copyist. According to the realist's philosophy, the wax that receives 
 and retains an image is an artist. 
 
 Shakespep^re did not rely on the stage-carpenter or the scene-painter. 
 He put his scenery in his liuos. There you will find mountains and 
 rivers and seas, valleys and cliffs, violets and clouds, and over all *' the 
 firmament fret*^^ed with gold and fire.' ile cared little for plot, little for 
 SLvprise. He d'd not rely on stage effects, or red fire. The plays grow 
 before your eyes, and they come as. the morning comes. Plot surprises 
 but once. There must be something in a play besides surprise. Plot 
 in an author is a kind oi strategy — that is to say, a sort of cunning, and 
 cunning doos not belong tc the highest natures. 
 
 Tliere is in Shakespeare such a wealth of thought that the plot be- 
 comes almost immaterial — and such is this wealth that you can hardly 
 know the play — there is too much. After you have heard it again and 
 again, it seems as pathless as an untrodden forest. 
 
 He belonged to all lands. " Timon of Athens " is as Greek as any 
 tragedy of iEschylus. " Julius CaBsar " and " Coriolanus " are perfectly 
 Roman : and as you read, the mighty ruins rise and the Eteriial City 
 once again becomes the mistress of the world. No play is more Egyptian 
 
i 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 9 
 
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 ernal City 
 3 Egyptian 
 
 than "Anthony and Cleopc4,tra" — the Nile runs through it, the shadows 
 of the pyramids fall upon it, and from its scenes the Sphinx gazes for 
 ever on the outstretched sands. 
 
 In " Lear " is the true pagan spirit. " Romeo and Juliet " is Italian 
 — everything is sudden, love bursts into immediate flower, and in every 
 scene is the climate of the land of poetry and passion. 
 
 The reason of this is, that Shakespeare dealt with elemental things, 
 with universal man. He knew that locality colors without changing, 
 and that in all surroundings the human heart is substantially the same. 
 
 Not all the poetry written before his time would make his sum ; not 
 all that has been written since, added to all that was written before, 
 would equal his. 
 
 There was nothing within the range of human thought, within the 
 horizon of intellectual effort, that he did not touch. He knew the brain 
 and heart of man — the theories, customs, superstitions, hopes, fears, 
 hatreds, vices and virtues of the human race. He knew the thrills and 
 ecstacies of love, the savage joys of hatred and revenge. He heard the 
 hiss of envy's snakes, and watched the eagles of ambition soar. There 
 was no hope that did not put its star above his head — no fear he had not 
 felt — no joy that had not shed its sunshine on his face. He experienced 
 the emotions of mankind. He was the intellectual spendthrift of the 
 world. He gave with the generosity, the extravagance of madness. 
 
 Eead one play, and you are impressed with thA idea that the wealth 
 of the brain of a god has been exhausted -that there are no more com- 
 parisons, no more passions to be expressed, no more definitions, no more 
 philosophy, beauty, or sublimity to be put in words — and yet, the next 
 play opens as the dewy gates of another day. 
 
 The outstretched wings oc his imagination filled the sky. He was the 
 intellectual crown of the earth. 
 
 V. 
 The plays of Shakespeare show so much knowledge, thought and learning, 
 that many people — those who imagine that universities furnish capacity 
 — contend that Bacon must have been the author. 
 
 We know Bacon. We know that he was a scheming politician, a cour- 
 tier, a time-server of church and king, and a corrupt judge. We know 
 that he never admitted the truth of the Copernican system — that he was 
 doubtful whether instruments were of any advantage in scientific investi- 
 gation — that he was ignorant of the higher branches of mathematics, 
 and that, as a matter of fact, he added but little to the knowledge of the 
 
10 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 world. When he was more than sixty years of age, he turned his atten- 
 tion to poetry, and dedicated his verses to George Herbert. 
 
 If you will read these verses you will say that the author of " Lear '" 
 and " Hamlet " did not write them. 
 
 Bacon d^^dicated his work on the Advancement of Learning , Divine and 
 Human, to James I., and in his dedication he stated that there had not 
 been since the time of Christ, any king or ihonarch so learned in all 
 erudition, divine or human. He placpd James the First before Marcus 
 Aurelius and all other kings and emperors since Christ, and concluded 
 by saying that James the First had ** the power and fortune of a king, 
 the illumination of a priest, the learning and universality of a philo- 
 sopher." This was written of James the First, described by Macaulay 
 as a " stammering, slobbering, trembling coward, whose writings were 
 deformed by the grossest and vilest superstitions — witches being the 
 special objects of his fear, his hatred, and his persecution." 
 
 It seems to have been taken for granted that, if Shakespeare was not 
 the author of the great dramas, Lord Bacon must have been. 
 
 li has been claimed that Bacon was the greatest philosopher of his 
 time. And yet in reading his works we find that there was in his mind 
 a strange mingling of foolishness and philosophy. He takes pains to 
 tell us, and to write it down for the benefit of posterity, that " snow is 
 colder than water, because it hath more spirit in it, and that quicksilver 
 is the coldest of all metals, because it is the lallest of spirit." 
 
 He stated that he hardly believed that you could contract air by 
 putting opium on top of the weather glass, and gave the following 
 reasons : 
 
 " I co.nceive that opium and the like make spirits fly rather by 
 malignity than by cold." 
 
 This great philosopher gave the following recipe for staunching blood: 
 
 '* Thrust the part that bleedeth into the body of a capon, new ripped 
 and bleeding. This will staunch the blood. The blood it seemeth, 
 sucking and drawing up by similitude of substance the blood it meeteth 
 with, and so itself going back." 
 
 The philosopher also records this important fact : 
 
 " Divers witches among heathen and Christians have fed upon man's 
 flesh to aid, as it seemeth, their imagination with high and foul vapors." 
 
 Lord Bacon was not only a philosopher, but he was a biologist, as appears 
 from the following : 
 
 " As for living creatures, it is certain that their vital spirits are a sub- 
 
 :y^... 
 
led his atten- 
 
 r of " Lear " 
 
 g, Divine and 
 ihere had not 
 earned in all 
 efore Marcus 
 nd concluded 
 me of a king, 
 1^ of a philo- 
 by Macaulay 
 writings were 
 es being the 
 
 )eare was not 
 
 n. 
 
 sopher of his 
 
 8 in his mind 
 
 iakes pains to 
 
 snow 18 
 
 hat 
 
 at quicksilver 
 
 . >» 
 
 )ntract air by 
 he following 
 
 fly rather by 
 
 nching blood: 
 1, new ripped 
 d it seemeth, 
 od it meeteth 
 
 1 upon man's 
 foul vapors." 
 st, as appears 
 
 rits are a sub- 
 
 SlIAKESrEARB. 
 
 11 
 
 stance compounded of an airy and flamy matter, and although air and 
 flame free will not mingle, yet bound in by a body that hath some fixing, 
 will." 
 
 Now and then the inventor of deduction reasons by analogy. He says: 
 
 "As snow and ice holpen, and their cold activated by nitre or salt, 
 will turn water into ice, so it may be it will turn wood or stiff clay into 
 stone." 
 
 Bacon seems to have been a believer in the transmutation of metals, 
 and solemnly gives a formula for changing silver or copper into gold. 
 He also believed in the transmutation of plants, and had arrived at such 
 a height in entomology that he informed the world that " insects have no 
 blood." 
 
 It is claimed that he was a great observer, and as evidence of this he 
 recorded the wonderful fact that " tobacco cut and dried by the fire loses 
 weight ;" that " bears in the winter wax fat in sleep, though they eat 
 nothing ;" that " tortoises have no bones;" that "there is a kind of 
 stone, that if ground and put in water where cattle drink, the cows will 
 give more milk ;" that "it is hard to cure a hurt in a Frenchman's 
 head, but easy in hfs leg ; that it is hard to cure a hurt in an English- 
 man's leg, but easy in his head ;" that " wounds made with brass 
 weapons are easier to cure than those made with iron ;" that " lead will 
 multiply and increase, as statues buried in the ground ;" and that " the 
 rainbow touching anything causeth a sweet smell." 
 
 Bacon seems also to have turned h. ^ attention to ornithology, and says 
 that "eggs laid in the full of the moon breed better birds," and that 
 "you can make swallows white by putting ointment on the eggs before 
 they are hatched." 
 
 He also informs us " that witches cannot hurt kings as easily as they 
 can common people ;" that " perfumes dry and strengthen the brain ;" 
 that " any one in a moment of triumph can be injured by another who 
 casts an envious eye, and the injury is greatest when the envious glance 
 comes from the oblique eye." 
 
 Lord Bacon also turned his attention to medicine, and he states that 
 " bracelets made of snakes are good for curing cramps ;" that " the skin 
 of a wolf might cure the colic, because a wolf has great digestion ;" that 
 " eating the roasted brains of hens and hares strengthens the memory ;" 
 that " if a woman about to become a mother eats a good many quinces 
 and considerable coriander seed, the child will be ingenious," and that 
 " the moss which groweth on the skull of an unburied dead man is good 
 for staunching blood." 
 
He expresses doubt, however, " as to whether you can cure a wound 
 by putting ointment on the weapon that causel the wound, instead of on 
 the wound itself." 
 
 It is claimed by the advocates of the Baconian theory that their hero 
 stood at the top of science ; and yet " it is absolutely certain that he 
 was ignorant of the law of the acceleration of falling bodies, although 
 the law had been made known and printed by Galileo thirty years before 
 Bacon wrote upon the subject. Neither did this great man understand 
 the principle of the lever. He was not acquainted with the precession of 
 the equinoxes, and as a matter of fact was ill-read in those branches 
 of learning in which, in his time, the most rapid progress had been 
 made." 
 
 After Kepler had discovered his third law, which was on the 15th of 
 May, 1618, Bacon was more than ever opposed to the Copernican system. 
 This great man was far behind his own time, not only in astronomy, but 
 in mathematics. In the preface to the " Descriptio Globi Intellectualis," 
 it is admitted either that Bacon had never heard of the correction of the 
 parallax, or was unable tc understand it. He complained on account of 
 the want of some method for shortening mathematical calculations ; and 
 yet " Napier's Logarithms " had been printed nine years before the date 
 of his complaint. 
 
 He attempted to form a table of specific gravities by a rude process of 
 his own, a process that no one has ever followed ; and he did this in 
 spite of the fact that a far better method existed. 
 
 We have the right to compare what Bacon wrote with what it is 
 claimed Shakespeare produced. I call attention to one thing — to Bacon's 
 opinion of human love. It is this : 
 
 " The stage is more beholding to love than the life of man. As to the 
 stage, love is ever matter of comedies and now and then of tragedies, but 
 in life it doth much mischief — sometimes like a siren, sometimes like a 
 fury. Amongst all the great and v/orthy persons there is not one that 
 hath been transported to the mad degree of love, which shows that great 
 spirits and great business do keep out this weak passion." 
 
 The author of " Romeo and Juliet " never wrote that. It seems cer- 
 tain that the author of the wondrous Plays was one of the noblest of men. 
 
 Let us see what sense of honor Bacon had. 
 
 In writing commentaries on certain passages of Scripture, Lord Bacon 
 tells a courtier, who has committed some offence, how to get back into 
 the graces of his prince or king. Among other things, he tells him not 
 
Shakespeare. 
 
 13 
 
 cure a wound 
 1, instead of on 
 
 hat their hero 
 ertain that he 
 dies, although 
 ;y years before 
 in understand 
 e precession of 
 tiose branches 
 ress had been 
 
 >n the 15th of 
 rnican system, 
 .stronomy, but 
 ntellectualis," 
 rrection of the 
 on account of 
 julations ; and 
 )efore the date 
 
 ude process of 
 8 did this in 
 
 th what it is 
 g — to Bacon's 
 
 Iftu. As to the 
 tragedies, but 
 letimes like a 
 5 not one that 
 ows that great 
 
 It seems cer- 
 oblestof men. 
 
 e, Lord Bacon 
 get back into 
 » tells him not 
 
 to appear too cheerful, but to assume a very grave and modest face ; not 
 to bring the matter up himself ; to be extremely industrious, so that the 
 prince will see that it is hard to get along without him ; also to get his 
 friends to tell the prince or king how badly he, the courtier, feels ; and 
 then he says, all these failing, " let him contrive to transfer the fault to 
 others." 
 
 It is true that we know but little of Shakespeare, and consequently do 
 not positively know that he did not have the ability to write the Plays ; 
 but we do know Bacon, and we know that he could not have written these 
 Plays ; consequently, they must have been written by a comparatively 
 unknown man — that is to say, by a man who was known by no other 
 writings. The fact that we do not know Shakespeare except through the 
 Plays and Sonnets, makes it possible for us to believe that he was the 
 author. 
 
 Some people have imagined that the Plays were written by several ; 
 but this only increases the wonder, and adds a useless burden to 
 credulity. 
 
 Bacon published in his time all the writings that he claimed. Natu- 
 rally, he would have claimed his best. Is it possible that Bacon left the 
 wondrous children of his brain on the doorstep of Shakespeare, and kept 
 the deformed ones at home ? Is it possible that he fathered the failures 
 and deserted the perfect ? 
 
 Of course, it is wonderful that so little has been found touching Shake- 
 speare ; but is it not equally wonderful, if Bacon was the author, that 
 not a line has been found in all his papers containing a suggestion or a 
 hint, that he was the writer of these Plays ? Is it not wonderful that 
 no fragment of any scene — no line — no word — has been found ? 
 
 Some have insisted that Bacon kept the authorship secret, because it 
 was disgraceful to write Plays. This argument does not cover the Son- 
 nets — and besides, one who had been stripped of the robes of office, for 
 receiving bribes as a judge, could have borne the additional disgrace of 
 having written " Hamlet." The fact that Bacon did not claim to be the 
 author, demonstrates that he was not. Shakespeare claimed to be the 
 author, and no one in his time or day denied the claim. This demon- 
 strates that he was. Bacon published his works, and said to the world : 
 This is what I have done. 
 
 Suppose you found in a cemetery a monument erected to John Smith, 
 inventor of the Smith churn, and suppose you were told that Mr. Smith 
 provided for the monument in his will, and dictated the inscription — 
 

 ■ ■:' 
 
 ' H 
 
 14 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 III 
 
 III 
 
 would it be possible to convince you that Mr. Smith was also the inventor 
 of the locomotive and the telegraph ? 
 
 Bacon's best can be compared with Shakespeare's common ; but 
 Shakespeare's best rises above Bacon's best, like a domed temple above 
 a beggar's hut. 
 
 VI. 
 Of course, it is admitted that there were many dramatists before and 
 during the time of Shakespeare — but they were only the foot-hills of that 
 mighty peak the top of which the clouds and mists still hide. Chapman 
 and Marlowe, Heywood and Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher wrote some 
 great lines, and in the monotony of declamation now and then is found 
 a strain of genuine music — but all of them together constituted only a 
 herald of Shakespeare. In all these Plays there is but a hint, a pro- 
 phecy, of the great drama destined to revolutionize the poetic thought 
 of the world. 
 
 Shakespeare was the greatest of poets. What Greece and Rome pro- 
 duced was great until his time. " Lions make leopards tame." 
 
 The great poet is a great artist. He is a painter and sculptor. The 
 greatest pictures and statues have been painted and chiselled with words. 
 They outlast all others. All the galleries of the world are poor and 
 cheap compared with the statues and pictures in Shakespeare's book. 
 
 Language is made of pictures represented by sounds. The outer world 
 is a dictionary of the mind, and the artist called the soul uses this dic- 
 tionary of things to express what happens in the noiseless and invisible 
 world of thought. First, a sound represents something in the outer 
 world, and afterwards something in the inner ; and this sound at last 
 is represented by a mark, and this mark stands for a picture, and every 
 brain is a gallery, and the artists — that is to say, the souls — exchange 
 pictures and statues. 
 
 All art is of the same parentage. The poet uses words — makes pic- 
 tures and statues of sounds. The sculptor expresses harmony, propor- 
 tion, passion, in marble ; the composer, in music ; the painter, in form 
 and color. The dramatist expresses himself not only in words, not only 
 paints these pictures, but he expresses his thought in action. 
 
 Shakespeare was not only a poet ; he was a dramatist, and expressed 
 the ideal, the poetic, not only in words, but in action. There are 
 the wit, the humor, the pathos, the tragedy of situation, of rela- 
 tion. The dramatist speaks and acts through others — his personality 
 is lost. The poet lives in the world of thought and feeling, and to this 
 
the inventor 
 
 immon ; but 
 lemple above 
 
 8 before and 
 t-hills of thai 
 le. Chapman 
 f wrote some 
 then is found 
 tuted only a 
 1 hint, a pro- 
 oetic thought 
 
 id Rome pro- 
 ne." 
 
 iulptor. The 
 id with words, 
 ire poor and 
 ire's book. 
 e outer world 
 uses this dic- 
 and invisible 
 in the outer 
 30und at last 
 re, and every 
 lis — exchange 
 
 — makes pic- 
 Qony, propor- 
 nter, in form 
 ords, not only 
 n. 
 
 md expressed 
 . There are 
 bion, of rela- 
 is personality 
 g, and to this 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 15 
 
 the dramatist adds the world of action. He creates characters that seem 
 to act in accordance with their own natures and independently of him. 
 He compresses lives into hours, tells us the secrets of the heart, shows 
 us the springs of action — how desire bribes the judgment and corrupts 
 the will — how weak the reason is when passion pleads, and how grand it 
 is to stand for right against the world, It is not enough to say fine 
 things, — great things, dramatic things, n ust be done. 
 
 Let me give you an illustration of drftmatic incident accompanying 
 the highest form of poetic expression : Macbeth, having returned from 
 the murder of Duncan, says to his wife : 
 
 " Methought I heard a voice cry : Sleep no more, 
 Macbeth doth murder sleep ; the innocent sleep ; 
 Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care, 
 The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath, 
 Balm of hurt minds, great Nature's second course, 
 
 Chief nourisher in life's feast 
 
 Still it cried : Sleep no more, to all the house, 
 Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor 
 Shall sleep no more — Macbeth shall sleep no more." 
 
 She exclaims : 
 
 " Who was it that thus cried ? 
 Why, worthy Thane, you do unbend your noble strength 
 To think so brain-sickly of things ; get some water 
 And wash this filthy witness from your hand. 
 Why did you bring the daggers ftom the place ? " 
 
 Macbeth was so overcome with horror at his own deed, that he not 
 only mistook his thoughts for the words of others, but was so carried 
 away and beyond himself, that he brought with him the daggers — the 
 evidence of his guilt — the daggers that he should have left with the 
 dead. This is dramatic. 
 
 In the same play, the difference of feeling before and after the com- 
 mission of a crime is illustrated to perfection. When Macbeth is on his 
 way to assassinate the king, the bell strikes, and he says, or whispers : 
 
 " Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell." 
 
 Afterward, when the deed has been committed, and a knocking is 
 heard at the gate, he cries : 
 
 " Wake Duncan with thy knocking. I would thou couldst." 
 
 Let me give one more instance of dramatic action. When Antony 
 speaks above the body of Caesar he says : 
 
i ill 
 
 16 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 ! 
 
 " You all do know this mantle : I remember 
 The first time ever Ca;sar put it on — 
 'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent, 
 That day he overcame the Nervii : 
 Look I In this place ran Cassius' dagger through : 
 See what a rent the envious Casca made ! 
 Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed, 
 And as he plucked his cursed steel away, 
 Mark how the blood of Caesar followed it." 
 
 VII. 
 There are men, and many of them, who are always trying to show that 
 somebody else chiseled the statue or painted the picture, — that the poem 
 is attributed to the wrong man, and that the battle was really won by a 
 subordinate. 
 
 Of course, Shakespeare made use of the work of others — and, we 
 might almost say, of all others. Every writer must use the work of 
 others. The only question is, how the accomplishments of other minds 
 are used, whether as a foundation to build higher, or whether stolen to 
 the end that the thief may make a reputation for himself, without add- 
 ing to the great structure of literature. 
 
 Thousands of people have stolen stones from the Coliseum to make 
 huts for themselves. So thousands of writers have taken the thoughts 
 of others with which to adorn themselves. These are plagiarists. But 
 the man who takes the thought of another, adds to it, gives -t intensity 
 and poetic form, throb and life, is in the highest sense original. 
 
 Shakespeare found nearly all of his facts in the writings of others, 
 and was indebted to others for most of the stories of his plays. The 
 question is not. Who furnished the stone ? or Who owned the quarry ? 
 but — Who chiseled the statue ? 
 
 We now know all the books that Shakespeare could have read, and 
 consequently know many of the sources of his information. We find in 
 Pliny's " Natural History," published in 1601, the following : " The sea 
 Pontis evermore floweth and runneth out into the Propontis ; but the 
 sea never retireth back again with the Impontis." This was the raw 
 material, and out of it Shakespeare made the following : 
 
 " Like to the Pontic Sea, 
 Whose icy current and compulsive course 
 Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on 
 To the Propontic and the Hellespont — 
 Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace, 
 
 1 1 i 
 
 
Shakespeare. 
 
 19 
 
 ig to show that 
 -that the poem 
 really won by a 
 
 hers — and, we 
 ie the work of 
 of other minds 
 3ther stolen to 
 f, without add- 
 
 seum to make 
 n the thoughts 
 igiarists. But 
 vee, t intensity 
 ginal. 
 
 ings of others, 
 is plays. The 
 id the quarry ? 
 
 ave read, and 
 1. We find in 
 ng : " The sea 
 mtis ; but the 
 was the raw 
 
 Shall ne'er turn back, ne'er ebb to humble love, 
 Till that a capable and wide revenge 
 owallow them up." 
 
 Perhaps we can give an idea of the difference between Shakespeare 
 ftnd other poets by a passage from " Lear." When Cordelia places her 
 hand upon her father's head and speaks of the night and of the storm, 
 an ordinary poet might have said : 
 
 " On 3Uch a night, a dog 
 Should have stood against my fire." 
 
 A very great poet might have gone a step further and exclaimed : 
 " On such a night, mine enemy's dog 
 Should have stood against my fire." 
 
 But Shakespeare said : 
 
 •' Mine enemy's dog, though he had bit me. 
 Should have stood, that night, against my fire." 
 
 Of all the poets-— of all the writers — Shakespeare is the most original. 
 He is as original as Nature. 
 
 It may truthfully be said that " Nature wants stuff to vie strange 
 forms with fancy > to make another." 
 
 VIIL 
 
 There is in the greatest poetry a kind of extravagance that touches the 
 infinite, and in this hakespeare exceeds all others. You will remember 
 the description given of the voyage of Paris in search of Helen : 
 
 ** The seas and winds, old wranglers, made a truce 
 And did him service ; he touched the ports desired, 
 And for an old aunt, whom the Greeks held captive. 
 He brought a Grecian queen whose youth and freshness 
 Wrinkles Apollo, and makes stale the mornmg." 
 
 So, in Pericles, when the father finds his daughter, he cries out i 
 
 " O Helicanus 1 strike me, honored sir ; 
 Give me a gash, put me to present pain, 
 Lest this great sea of joys, rushing upon me, 
 O'erbear the shores of my mortality." 
 
 The greatest compliment that man has ever paid to the woman he 
 ftdores is this line : 
 
 " Eyes that do mislead the morn." 
 
 Nothing can be conceived more perfectly poetic. 
 
■IP 
 
 t20 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 ill 
 
 |H 
 
 In that marvellous plaj', ' A Midsummer Night's Dream," is one of 
 
 the most extravagant things in literature : 
 
 " Thou rememberest 
 Since once I sat upon a promontory, 
 And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back 
 Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath 
 That the rude sea grew civil at her song, 
 And certain stars shot madly from their spheres 
 To hear the sea-maid's music." 
 
 This is so marvellously told, that it almost seems probable. So the 
 description of Mark Antony : 
 
 " For his bounty 
 There was no winter in't — an autumn 'twas 
 That grew the more by reaping. His delights 
 Were dolphin-like — they showed his back above 
 The element they lived in." 
 
 Think of the astronomical scope and amplitude of this : 
 " Her bed is India — there she lies a pearl." 
 
 Is there anything more intense than these words of Cleopatra ? 
 
 " Rather on Nilus mud lay me stark naked, 
 And let the water-flies blow me into abhorring." 
 
 Or this of Isabella : 
 
 •• The impression of keen whips I'd wear as rubies, 
 And strip myself to death as to a bed 
 That longing I've been sick for, ere I yield 
 My body up to shame," 
 
 Is there an intellectual man in the world who will not agree with this ; 
 
 " Let me not live 
 After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff ♦ 
 
 Of younger spirits." 
 
 Can anything exceed the words of Troilus when parting with Cressida ; 
 
 . " We two, that a ith so many thousand sighs 
 
 Did buy each other, most poorly sell ourselves 
 
 With the nide brevity and discharge of one, 
 
 Injurious time now, with a robber's haste, 
 
 Crams his rich thievery up, he knows not how j 
 
 As many farewells as be stars in heaven, 
 
 With distinct breath and consigned kisses to them,, 
 
 He fumbles up into a loose adieu. 
 
 And scants us with a single famished kiss, 
 
 Distasted with the salt of broken tears," 
 
)ream," is one of 
 
 probable. So the 
 
 s : 
 
 eppatra ? 
 
 agree with this ; 
 
 y 
 
 with Cressida ; 
 
 n. 
 
 Shakespeaiie. 
 
 17 
 
 Take this example, where pathos ahnost touches the grotesque : 
 
 " O dear Juliet, why art thou yet so fair ? 
 Shall I believe that unsubstantial death is amorous, 
 And that the lean, abhorred monster keeps thee here 
 I' the dark, to be his paramour?" 
 
 Often, when reading the marvellous lines of Shakespeare, I feel that 
 his thoughts are "too subtle potent, tuned too sharp in sweetness, for 
 the capacity of my ruder powers." Sometimes I cry out, " chur! !— - 
 write all, and leave no thoughts for those who follow after." 
 
 IX. 
 
 He eared nothing for 
 
 and 
 
 Shakespeare was an innovator, an iconoclast. 
 
 the authority of men or of schools. He violated the " unities,' 
 
 cared nothing for the models of the ancient world. 
 
 The Greeks insisted that nothing should be in a play that did not tend 
 to the catastrophe. They did not believe in the episode — in the sudden 
 contrasts of light and shade — in mingling the comic and tragic. The 
 sunlight never fell upon their tears, and darkness did not overtake their 
 laughter. They believed that nature sympathized or was in harmony 
 with the events of the play. When crime was about to be committed — 
 some horror to be perpetrated — the light grew dim, the wind sighed, the 
 trees shivered, and upon all was the shadow of the coming event. 
 
 Shakespeare knew that the play had little to do with the tides and 
 currents of universal life — that Nature cares neither for smiles nor tears, 
 for life nor death, and that the sun shines as gladly on coffins as on 
 cradles. 
 
 The first time I visited the Place de la Concorde, where during the 
 French Revolution stood the guillotine, and where now stands an Egyp- 
 tian obelisk — a bird, sitting on top, was singing with all its might. — 
 Nature forgets. 
 
 One of the most notable instances of the violation by Shakespeare of 
 the classic model is found in the 6th Scene of Act I. of Macbeth. 
 
 When the King and Banquo approach the castle in which the King is 
 to be murdered that night, no shadow falls athwart the threshold. So 
 beautiful is the scene that the King says : 
 
 *' This castle hath a pleasant seat ; the air 
 "' mbly and sweetly recommends itself 
 Jnto our gentle senses." 
 
: 
 
 i llil 
 
 1 
 
 ■ I 
 
 18 
 
 Shakbspearb. 
 
 And Banquo adds : 
 
 " This guest of summer, 
 
 The temple-haunting martlet, docs approve 
 
 By his loved mansionry that the heaven's breath 
 
 Smells wooingly here ; nojutty, frieze, 
 
 lUittress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird 
 
 Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle. 
 
 Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed 
 
 The air is delicate." 
 
 Another notable instance is the porter scene immediately following the 
 murder. So, too, the dialogue with the clown who brings the asp to 
 Cleopatra just before the suicide, illustrates my meaning. 
 
 I k-.iow of one paragraph in the Greek drama worthy of Shakespeare. 
 This is in " Medea." When Medea kills her children she curses Jason , 
 using the ordinary Billingsgate and papal curse, but at the conclusion 
 says : "I pray the gods to make him virtuous, that he may the more 
 deeply feel the nang that I inflict." 
 
 Shakespeare dealt in lights and shadows. He was intense. He put 
 noons and midnights side by side. No other dramatist would have 
 dreamed of adding to the pathos — of increasing our appreciation of Lear's 
 agony, by supplementing the wail of the mad king with the mocking 
 laughter of a loving clown. 
 
 X. 
 
 The ordinary dramatists — the men of talent — (and there is the same 
 difference between talent and genius that there is between a stone-mason 
 and a sculptor) create characters that become types. Types are of 
 necessity caricatures — actual men and women are to some extent con- 
 tradictory in their actions. Types are blown in one direction by the one 
 wind — characters have pilots. 
 
 In real people, good and evil mingle. Types are all one way, or all 
 the other — all good or all bad, all wise or all foolish. 
 
 Pecksniff was a perfect type, a perfect hypocrite — and will remain a 
 type as long as language lives — a hypocrite that even drunkenness could 
 not change. Everbody understands Pecksniff, and compared with him 
 Tartuffe was an honest man. 
 
 Hamlet is an individual, a person, an actual being — find for that reason 
 there is a difference of opinion as to his motives and as to his character. 
 We differ about Hamlet as we do about Ceesar, or about Shakespeare 
 himself. 
 
Lh 
 
 die. 
 erved 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 28 
 
 liately following the 
 lo brings the asp to 
 ling. 
 
 hy of Shakespeare. 
 I she curses Jason, 
 it at the conclusion 
 .t he may the more 
 
 intense. He put 
 natist would have 
 jreciation of Lear's 
 
 with the mocking 
 
 there is the same 
 een a stone-mason 
 Types are of 
 some extent con- 
 •eetion by the one 
 
 !S 
 
 1 one way, or all 
 
 nd will remain a 
 runkenness could 
 mpared with him 
 
 id for that reason 
 to his character, 
 out Shakespeare 
 
 Hamlet saw the ghost of his father and heard again his father's voice, 
 and yet, afterwards, he speaks of " the undiscovered country from whose 
 bourne no traveller returns." 
 
 In this there is no contradiction. The reason outweighs the senses. 
 If we should see a dead man rise from his grave, we would not, the next 
 day, believe that we did. No one can credit a miracle until it becomes 
 so common that it ceases to be miraculous. 
 
 Types are puppets — controlled from without — characters act from 
 within. There is the same difference between characters and types that 
 there is between springs and water- works, between canals and rivers, be- 
 tween wooden soldiers and heroes. 
 
 In most plays and in most novels the characters are so shadowy that 
 we have to piece them out with the imagination. 
 
 One waking in the morning sometimes sees at the foot of his bed a 
 strange figure — it may be of an ancient lady with cap and ruffles and 
 with the expression of garrulous and fussy old age — but when the light 
 gets stronger, the figure gradually changes and he sees a few clothes on 
 a chair. 
 
 The dramatist lives the lives of others, and in order to delineate cha- 
 racter must not only have imagination but sympathy with the character 
 delineated. The great dramatist thinks of a character as an entirety, 
 as an individual. 
 
 I once had a dream, and in this dream I was discuL^jing a subject with 
 another man. It occurred to me that I was dreaming, and I then said 
 to myself : If this is a dream, I am doing the talking for both sides — 
 consequently, I ought to know in advance what the other man is going 
 to say. In my dream, I tried the experiment. I then asked the other 
 man a question, and before he answered made up my mind what the 
 answer was to be. To my surprise, the man did not say what I expected 
 he would say, and so great was my astonishment that I awoke. 
 
 It then occurred to me that I had discovered the secret of Shakespeare. 
 He did, when awake, what I did when asleep — that is, he threw off a 
 character so perfect that it acted independently of him. 
 
 In the delineation of charactei- Shakespeare has no rivals. He creates 
 no monsters. His characters do not act without reason, without motive. 
 
 lago had his reasons. In Caliban, nature was not destroyed — Lady 
 Macbeth certifies that the woman was still in her heart, by saying : 
 " Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done it." 
 
 Shakespeare's characters act from within. They are centres of energy. 
 
24 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 f I 
 
 !i 
 
 li 
 
 They are not pushed by unseen hands, or pulled by unseen strings. 
 They have objects, desires. They are persons — real, living beings. 
 
 Few dramatists succeed in getting their characters loose from the 
 canvas — their backs stick to the wall — they do not have free and indepen- 
 dent action — they have no background, no unexpressed motives— no un- 
 told desires. They lack the complexity of the real. 
 
 Shakespeare makes the character true to itself. Christopher Sly, 
 surrounded by the luxuries of a lord, true to his station, calls for a pot 
 of the smaUest ale. 
 
 Take one expression by Lady Macbeth. You remember that after the 
 murder is discovered — after the alarm bell is rung — she appears upon 
 the scene wanting to know what has happened. Macdufif refuses to tell 
 her, saying that the slightest word would murder as it fell. At this 
 moment Banquo comes upon the scene and Macduff cries out to him : 
 
 " Our royal master's murdered." 
 
 What does Lady Macbeth then say ? She in fact makes a confession 
 of guilt. The weak point in the terrible tragedy is that Duncan was 
 murdered in Macbeth's castle. So when Lady Macbeth hears what they 
 suppose is news to her, she cries : 
 
 " What ! In our House ? " 
 
 Had she been iimocent, her horror of the crime would have made her 
 
 forget the place — the venue. Banquo sees through this, and sees through 
 
 her. Her expression was a light, by which he saw her guilt— and he 
 
 answers : 
 
 " Too cruel anywhere." 
 
 No matter whether Shakespeare delineated clown or king, warrior or 
 maiden — no matter whether his characters are taken from the gutter or 
 the throne — each is a work of consummate art, and when he is unnatural, 
 he is so splendid that the defect is forgotten. 
 
 When Romeo is told of the death of Juliet, and thereupon makes up 
 his mind to die upon her grave, he gives a description of the shop where 
 poison could be purchased. He goes into particulars, and tells of 
 alligators stuffed, of the skins of ill-shaped fishes, of the beggarly account 
 of empty boxes, of the remnants of pack-thread, and old cakes of roses 
 — and while it is hardly possible to believe that under such circumstances 
 a man would take the trouble to make an inventory of a strange kind of 
 drug-store, yet the inventory is so perfect — the picture is so marvellously 
 drawn — that we forget to think whether it is natural or not. 
 
 In making the frame of a great picture — of a great scene — Shakespeare 
 
Shakespeahe. 
 
 21 
 
 y unseen strings, 
 iving beings, 
 •s loose from the 
 free and indepen- 
 [ motives— no un- 
 
 Christopher Sly, 
 n, calls for a pot 
 
 ber that after the 
 he appears upon 
 iflf refuses to tell 
 3 it fell. At this 
 38 out to hira : 
 
 kes a confession 
 ;hat Duncan was 
 I hears what they 
 
 have made her 
 ind sees through 
 *r guilt— and he 
 
 cmg, warrior or 
 m the gutter or 
 le is unnatural, 
 
 upon makes up 
 
 the shop where 
 and tells of 
 
 ggarly account 
 cakes of roses 
 circumstances 
 
 trange kind of 
 marvellously 
 
 ot. 
 
 —Shakespeare 
 
 was often careless, but the picture is perfect. In making the sides of the 
 arch he was negligent, but when he placed the keystone, it burst into 
 blossom. Of course there are many lines in Shakespeare that never 
 should have been written. In other words, there are imperfections in 
 his plays. But we must remember that Shakespeare furnished the torch 
 that enables us to see these imperfections. 
 
 Shakespeare speaks through his characters, and we must not mistake 
 what the characters say, for the opinion of Shakespeare. No one can 
 believe that Shakespeare regarded life as " a tale told by an idiot, full of 
 sound and fury, signifying nothing." That was the opinion of a mur- 
 derer, surrounded by avengers, and whose wife — partner in his crimes — 
 troubled with thick-coming fancies — had gone down to her death. 
 
 Most actors and writers seem to suppose that the lines called " The 
 Sevon Ages " contain Shakespeare's view of human life. Nothing could 
 be farther from the truth. The lines were uttered by a cynic, in con- 
 tempt and scorn of the human race. 
 
 Shakespeaie did not put his characters in the livory and uniform of 
 some weakness, peculiarit}' or passion. He did not use names as tags 
 or brands. He did not write under the picture, " This is a villain.'' His 
 characters need no suggestive names to tell us what they are — we see 
 them and we know them for ourselves. 
 
 It may be that in the greatest utterances of the greatest characters in 
 the supreme moments, we have the real thoughts, opinions and convic- 
 tions of Shakespeare. 
 
 Of all writers Shakespeare is the most impersonal. He speaks through 
 others, and the others seem to speak for themselves. The didactic is 
 lost in the dramatic. He does not use the stage as a pulpit to enforce 
 some maxim. He is as reticent as Nature. 
 
 He idealizes the common and transfigures all he touches — but he does 
 not preach. He was interested m men and things as they were. He 
 did not seek to change them but to portray. He was Nature's mirror — 
 and in that mirror Nature saw herself. 
 
 When I stood amid the great trees of California that lift their spread- 
 ing capitals against the clouds, looking like Nature's columns to support 
 the sky, I thought of the poetry of Shakespeare. 
 
1 I i 
 
 I! 
 
 1 1" I 
 
 i :K I 
 
 liilll 
 
 22 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 XL 
 
 What a procession of men and women — statesmen and warriors— kings 
 and clowns— issued from Shakespeare's brain. What women ! 
 
 Isabella — in whose spotless life love and reason blended into perfect) 
 truth. 
 
 Juliet — within whose heart passion and purity met like white and red 
 within the bosom of a rose. 
 
 Cordelia— vfho chose to suffer loss, rather than show her wealth of 
 iove with those who gilded lies in hope of gain. 
 
 Hermione- — '* tender as infancy and grace "-—who bore with perfect 
 hope and faith the cross of shame, and who at last forgave with all her 
 heart. 
 
 Desdemona—QO innocent, so perfect, her love so pure, that she was 
 incapable of suspecting that another could suspect, and who with dying 
 words sought to hide her lover's crime — and with her last faint breath 
 uttered a loving lie that burst into a perfumed lily between her pallid 
 lips. 
 
 Perdita — a violet dim, and sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes— " The 
 sweetest low-born lass that ever ran on the green sward." 
 
 Helena — who said : 
 
 " I know I love in vain, strive against hope— 
 Yet in this captious and untenable sieve 
 1 still pour in the waters of iny love. 
 And lack not to lose still. 
 Thuo, Indian-like, 
 Religious in mine error, I adore 
 The sun that looks upon his worshipper. 
 But knows of him no more." 
 
 Miranda — who told her love as gladly as a flower gives its bosom to 
 the kisses of the sun. 
 
 And Cordelia — whose kisses cured and whose tears restored. 
 And stainless Imogen, who cried: " What is it to be false? '' 
 And here is the description of the perfect woman j 
 
 " To feed for aye her lamp and flame of love ,' 
 To keep her constancy in plight and youth — ; 
 Outliving beauty's outward with a mind 
 That doth renew swifter than blood decays." 
 
 Shakespeare has done more for woman than all the other dramatist!? 
 of the world. 
 
id warriors— kings 
 women ! 
 ended into perfect 
 
 like white and red 
 
 ow her wealth of 
 
 bore with perfect 
 rgave with all her 
 
 ire, that she was 
 1 who with dying 
 ' last faint breath 
 )tween her pallid 
 
 ino's eyes— "The 
 I." 
 
 ea its bosom to 
 
 stored. 
 Ise?" 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 2§ 
 
 her dramatist!? 
 
 For my part, I love the Clowns. I love La u nee and his dog Crabb, 
 and Gobbo, whose conscience threw its arms around the neck of his heart, 
 and Touchstone, with his lie seven times removed ; and dear old Dogberry 
 — a pretty piece of flesh, tedious as a king. And Bottom, the very para- 
 mour for a sweet voice, longing to take the part to tear a cat in ; and 
 Autolycus, the snapper-up of unconsidered trifles, sleeping out the thought 
 for the life to come. And great Sir John, without conscience, and for 
 that reason unblamed and enjoyed — and who at the end babbles of green 
 fields, and is almost loved. And ancient Pistol, the world his oyster ; 
 and Bardolph, with the flea on his blazing nose, putting beholders in 
 mind of a damned soul in heil. And the poor Fool, who followed the 
 mad king, and went " to bed at noon." And the clown who carried the 
 worm 0* Nilus, whose " biting was immortal." And Corin, the shepherd, 
 who described the perfect man : "I am a true laborer : I earn that I eat 
 — get that I wear — owe no man aught -envy no man's happiness — glad 
 of other men's good — content." 
 
 And mingling in this motley throng, Lear, within whose brain a tem- 
 pest raged until the depths were stirred, and the intellectual wealth of a 
 life was given back to memory — and then by madness thrown to storm 
 and night ; and when I read the living lines I feel as though I looked 
 upon the sea and saw it wrought by frenzied whirlwinds, until the buried 
 treasures and the sunken wrecks of all the years were cast upon the 
 shores. 
 
 And Othello — who like the base Indian threw a pearl away richer than 
 all his tribe. 
 
 And Hamlet — thought-entangled — hesitating between two worlds. 
 
 And Macbeth — strange mingling of cruelty and conscience, reaping the 
 sure harvest of successful crime — " Curses not loud but deep — mouth- 
 honor — breath." 
 
 And Brutus, falling on his sword that Cnesar might be still. 
 
 And Romeo, dreaming of the white wonder of Juliet's hand. And 
 Ferdinand, the patient log-man for Miranda's sake. And Florizel, who, 
 " for all the sun sees, or the close earth wombs, or the profound seas 
 hide," would not be faithless to the low-born lass. And Constance, 
 weeping for her son, while grief *' stuft's out his vacant garments with 
 his form." 
 
 And in the midst of tragedies and tears, of love and laughter and 
 crime, we hear the voice of the good friar, who declares that in every 
 human heart, as in the smallest flower, there are encamped the opposed 
 
26 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 hosts of good and evil — and our philosophy is interrupted by the garru. 
 lous old nurse, whose talk is as busily useless as the babble of a stream 
 that hurries by a ruined mill. 
 
 From every side the characters crowd upon us — the men and women 
 born of Shakespeare's brain. They utter with a thousand voices the 
 thoughts of the "myriad-minded" man, and impress themselves upon 
 us as deeply and vividly as though they really lived with us. 
 
 Shakespeare alone has delineated love in every possible phase — has 
 ascended to the very top and actually reached heights that no other has 
 imagined. I do not believe the human mind will ever produce or be in 
 a position to appreciate, a greater love-play than " Komeo and Juliet." 
 It is a symphony in which all music seems to blend. The heart bursts 
 into blossom, and he who reads feels the swooning intoxication of a 
 divine perfume. 
 
 In the alembic of Shakespeare's brain the baser metals were turned to 
 gold — passions became virtues — weeds became exotics from some diviner 
 land — and common mortals made of ordinary clay outranked the 
 Olympian Gods. In his brain there was the touch of chaos that suggests 
 the infinite — that belongs to genius. Talent is measured and mathe- 
 matical — dominated by prudence and the thought of use. Genius is 
 tropical. The creative instinct runs riot, delights in extravagance and 
 waste, and overwhelms the mental beggars of the world with uncounted 
 gold and unnumbered gems. 
 
 Some things are immortal : The plays of Shakespeare, the marbles of 
 the Greeks, and the music of Wagner. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Shakespeare was the greatest of philosophers. He knew the conditions 
 of success — of happiness — the relations that men sustain to each other, 
 and the duties of all. He knew the tides and currents of the heart — the 
 cliffs and caverns of the brain. He knew the weakness of the will, the 
 sophistry of desire — and 
 
 "That pleasure and revenge have ears more deaf than adders to the voice of any 
 true decision." 
 
 He knew that the soul lives in an invisible world — that flesh is but a 
 mask, and that 
 
 " There is no art ,to find the mind's construction 
 In the face." 
 
 tl 
 
pted by the garni, 
 babble of a stream 
 
 e men and women 
 Jusand voices the 
 i themselves upon 
 ifch us. 
 
 ssible phase—has 
 that no other has 
 produce or be in 
 meo and Juliet." 
 The heart bursts 
 ntoxication of a 
 
 Is were turned to 
 om some diviner 
 outranked the 
 1.08 that suggests 
 ired and mathe- 
 use. Genius is 
 travagance and 
 with uncounted 
 
 the marbles of 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 27 
 
 the conditions 
 to each other, 
 he heart— the 
 ' the wil], the 
 
 he voice of any 
 
 flesh is but a 
 
 He knew that courage should be the servant of judgment, and that 
 
 " When valor preys on reason, it eats the sword 
 It fights with." 
 
 He knew that man is never master of the event, that he is to some 
 extent the sport or prey of the blind forces of the world, and that 
 " In the reproof of chance lies the true proof of men." 
 
 Feeling that the past is unchangeable, and that that which must 
 
 happen is as much beyond control as though it had happened, he says : 
 
 " Let determined things to destiny 
 Hold unbewailed their way." 
 
 Shakespeare was great enough to know that every human being prefers 
 happiness to misery, and that crimes are but mistakes. Looking in pity 
 upon the human race, upon the pain and poverty, the crimes and cruel- 
 ties, the limping travellers on the thorny paths, he was great and good 
 enough to say : 
 
 " There is no darkness but ignorance." 
 
 In all the philosophies there is no greater line. This great truth fills 
 tiie heart with pity. 
 
 He knew that place and power do not give happiness — that the crowned 
 
 are subject as the lowest to fate and chance. 
 
 " Within the hollow crown 
 That rounds the mortal temples of a king 
 Keeps death his court, and there the antic sits 
 Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp. 
 Allowing him a brief and little scene 
 To monarchize by fear and kill with looks, 
 Infusing him with self and vain conceit — 
 As if this flesh that walls about our life 
 Were brass impregnable ; and humored thus, 
 Comes at the last and with a little pin 
 Bores through his castle wall — and farewell king 1 " 
 
 So, too, he knew that gold could not bring joy — that death and mis- 
 fortune come alike to rich and poor, because : 
 
 " If thou art rich thou art poor ; 
 For like an ass whose back with ingots bows 
 Thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey, 
 And death unloads thee." 
 
 In Kome of his philosophy there was a kind of scorn — a hidden meaning 
 that could not in his day and time have safely been expressed. You will 
 remember that Laertes was about to kill the king, and this king was 
 
n.yvH:i 
 
 m 
 
 28 
 
 Shakespeark. 
 
 
 the murderer of his own brother, and sat upon the throne by reason of 
 
 his crime — and in the mouth of such a king Shakespeare puts these 
 
 words : 
 
 " There's such divinity doth hedge a king." 
 
 So, in Macbeth : , 
 
 " How he solicits Heaven himself best knows ; but strangely visited people 
 All swollen and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye, 
 The mere despairs of surgery, he cures ; 
 Hanging a golden stamp about their necks, 
 Put on with holy prayers : and 'tis spoken 
 To the succeeding royalty — he leaves 
 The healing benediction. With this strange virtue 
 He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy. 
 And sundry blessings hang about his throne, 
 That speak him full of grace." 
 
 Shakespeare was the master of the human heart — knew all the hopes, 
 
 fears, ambitions, and passions that sway the mind of man ; and thus 
 
 knowing, he declared that 
 
 " Love is not love that alters 
 When it alteration finds." 
 
 This is the sublimest declaration in the literature of the world. 
 
 Shakespeare seems to give the generalization — the result — without the 
 process of thought. He seems always to be at the conclusion — standing 
 where all truths meet. 
 
 In one of the sonnets is this fragment of a line that contains the 
 highest possible truth : 
 
 " Conscience is bom of love." 
 
 If man were incapable of suffering, the words right and wrong never 
 could have been spoken. If man were destitute of imagination, the 
 flower of pity never could have blossomed in his heart. 
 
 We suffer — we cause others to suffer — those that we love — and of this 
 fact conscience is born. 
 
 Love is the many-colored flame that makes the fireside of the heart. 
 It is the mingled spring and autumn — the perfect climate of the soul. 
 
 XIIL 
 
 In the realm of comparison Shakespeare seems to have exhausted the 
 relations, parallels, and similitudes of things. He only could have said : 
 
 " Tedious as a twice-told tale 
 Vexing the ears of a drowsy man." 
 
Shakespbabb. 
 
 29 
 
 '- by reason of 
 re puts these 
 
 ted people 
 
 I the hopes, 
 I ; and thus 
 
 )rld. 
 
 *^ithout the 
 —standing 
 
 ntains the 
 
 ong never 
 ation, the 
 
 ad of this 
 
 he heart, 
 e soul. 
 
 sted the 
 ve said : 
 
 " Duller than a great thaw. 
 Dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage." 
 
 In the words of Ulysses, spoken to Achilles, we find the most wonder- 
 ful collection of pictures and comparisons ever compressed within the 
 same number of lines : 
 
 " Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, 
 Wherein he puts alms for oblivion, — 
 A great-sized monster of ingratitudes — 
 Those scraps are good deeds passed ; which are devoured 
 As fast as they are made, forgot as soon 
 As done ; perseverance, dear my lord, 
 Keeps honor bright ; to have done is to hang 
 Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail 
 In monumental mockery. ' Take the instant way ; 
 For honor travels in a strait so narrow 
 Where one but goes abreast ; keep then the path ; 
 For emulation hath a thousand sons 
 That one by one pursue ; if you give way, 
 Or hedge aside from the direct forthright, 
 Like to an entered tide, they all rush by 
 And leave you hindmost : 
 Or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank, 
 Lie there for pavement to the abject rear, 
 O'errun and trampled on : then what they do in present, 
 Tho' less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours ; 
 For time is like a fashionable host 
 That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand. 
 And with his arms outstretched as he would fly, 
 Grasps in the comer : Welcome ever smiles. 
 And Farewell goes out sighing." 
 
 So the words of Cleopatra, when Charmian speaks : 
 
 " Peace, peace : 
 Dost thou not see my baby at my breast 
 That sucks the nurse asleep ? " 
 * 
 XIV. 
 
 KoTHiNG is more difficult than a definition — a crystallization of thought 
 so perfect that it emits light. Shakespeare says of suicide : 
 
 *' It is great to do that thing 
 That ends all other deeds, 
 Which shackles accident and bolts up change." 
 
 He defines drama to be : 
 
 i 
 
:>y 
 
 80 
 
 Skakespearb. 
 
 " Turning the accomplishments of many years 
 Into an hour glass." 
 
 Of death : 
 
 " This sensible warm motion to become a kneaded clod, 
 To lie in cold obstruction and to rot." 
 
 Of memory : 
 
 " The warder of the brain." 
 
 Of the body : 
 
 "This muddy vesture of decay." 
 
 And he declares that 
 
 " Our little life is rounded with a sleep." 
 
 He speaks of Echo as : . 
 
 " The babbling gossip of the air " — 
 
 Romeo, addressmg the poison that he is about to take, says ; 
 
 " Come, bitter conduct, come unsavory guide, 
 Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on 
 The dashing rocks thy sea-sick, weary bark." 
 
 He describes the world as 
 
 "This bank and shoal of time." 
 He says of rumor — 
 
 " That it doubles, like the voice and echo." 
 
 It would take days to call attention to the perfect definitions, com- 
 parisons and generalizations of Shakespeare. He gave us the deeper 
 meanings of our words — taught us the art of speech. He was the lord 
 of language — master of expression and compression. 
 
 He put the greatest thoughts into the shortest words — made the poor 
 rich and the common royal. 
 
 Production enriched his brain. Nothing exhausted him. The 
 moment his attention was called to any subject — comparisons, definitions, 
 metaphors and generalizations filled his mind and begged for utterance. 
 
 His thoughts like bees robbed every blossom in the world, and then 
 with "merry march " brought the rich booty home '* to the tent royal 
 of their emperor." 
 
 Shakespeare was the confidant of Nature. To him she opened her 
 " infinite book of secrecy," and in his brain were " the hatch and brood 
 of time." 
 
Shakespeare. 
 
 81 
 
 XV. 
 
 There is in ShakeHpeare the mingling of laughter and tears, humor and 
 pathos. Humor is the rose, wit the thorn. Wit is a crystallization, 
 humor an efflorescence. Wit comes from the brain, humor from the 
 heart. Wit is the lightning of the soul. 
 
 In Shakespeare's nature was the climate of humor. He saw and felt 
 the sunny side even of the saddest things. "You have seen sunshine 
 and rain at once." So Shakespeare's tears fell oft upon his smiles. In 
 moments of peril — on the very darkness of death — there comes a touch 
 of humor that falls like a fleck of sunshine. 
 
 Gonzalo, when the ship is about to sink, having seen the boatswain, 
 
 exclaims : 
 
 " I have great comfort from this fellow ; 
 Methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him ; 
 His complexion is perfect gallows." 
 
 Shakespeare is filled with the strange contrasts of grief and laughter. 
 While poor Hero is supposed to be dead — wrapped in the shroud of 
 dishonor — Dogberry and Verges unconsciously put again the wedding 
 wreath upon her pure brow. 
 
 The soliloquy of Launcelot — great as Hamlet's — oifsets the bitter and 
 burning words of Shylock. 
 
 There is only time to speak of Maria in " Twelfth Night," of Autolycus 
 in the " Winter's Tale," of the parallel drawn by Fluellen between 
 Alexander of Macedon and Harry of Monmouth, or of the marvellous 
 humor of Falstaff, who never had the faintest thought of right or wrong 
 — or of Mercutio, that embodiment of wit and humor — or of the grave- 
 diggers who lamented that "great folk should have countenance in this 
 world to drown and hang themselves, more than their even Christian," 
 and who reached the generalization that " the gallows does well because 
 it does well to those who do ill." 
 
 There is also an example of grim humor — an example without a 
 
 parallel in literature, so far as I know. Hamlet, having killed Polonius, 
 
 IK asked : 
 
 "Where's Polonius?" 
 
 " At supper." 
 
 " At supper ! where ?" 
 
 " Not where he eats, but where he is eaten." 
 
 Above all others, Shakespeare appreciated the pathos of situation. 
 Nothing is more pathetic than the last scene in " Lear," No one has 
 
82 
 
 Shakehpeare. 
 
 li 
 
 I 
 
 ever bent above his dead who did not feel the words uttered by the mad 
 king, — words born of a despair deeper than tears : 
 " Oh, that a horse, a dog, a rat hath Hfe 
 And thou no breath ! " 
 
 So lago, after he has been wounded, says : 
 
 " I bleed, sir ; but not killed." 
 
 And Othello answers from the wreck and shattered remnant of his life: 
 
 " I would have thee live ; 
 For in my sense it is happiness to die." 
 
 When Troilus finds Cressida has been false, he cries : 
 " Let it not be believed for womanhood ; 
 Think ! we had mothers." 
 
 Ophelia, in her madness, " the sweet bells jangled out o' tune," says 
 
 softly : 
 
 " I would give you some violets ; 
 But they withered all when my father died." 
 When Macbeth has reaped the harvest, the seeds of which were sown 
 by his murderous hand, he exclaims, — and what could be more pitiful ? — 
 
 " I 'gin to be aweary of the sun." 
 
 Richard the Second feels how small a thing it is to be, or to have 
 been, a king, or to receive honors before or after power is lost ; and so, 
 of those who stood uncovered before him, he asks this piteous question : 
 " I live with bread, like you ; feel want, 
 Taste grief, need friends ; subjected thus. 
 How can you say to me I am a king ?" 
 
 Think of the salutation of Antony to the dead Cassar : 
 " Pardon me, thou piece of bleeding earth." 
 
 When Pisanio informs Imogen that he had been ordered by Posthumus 
 to murder her, she bares her neck and cries: .' 
 
 " The lamb entreats the butcher : 
 Where is thy knife ? Thou art too slow 
 To do thy master's bidding when I desire it." 
 
 Antony, as the last drops are falling from his self-inflicted wound, 
 utters with his dying breath to Cleopatra, this : 
 " I here importune death awhile, until 
 Of many thousand kisses the poor last 
 I lay upon thy lips." 
 
 To me, the last words of Hamlet are full of pathos : 
 " I die, Horatio. 
 The potent poison quite o'ercrows my spirit * * ♦ 
 The rest is silence." 
 
the mad 
 
 hiu life: 
 
 e," says 
 
 re sown 
 bifiil ?— 
 
 io have 
 
 and so, 
 estion : 
 
 humus 
 
 vound, 
 
 Shakehpeake. 
 
 88 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Some have insisted that Shakespeare must have heen a physician, for 
 the reason that he shows such knowledge of medicine — of the symptoms 
 of disease and death — was so familiar with the brain, and with insanity 
 in all its forms. 
 
 ^ I do not think he was a physician. He knew too much — his general- 
 izations were too splendid. He had none of the prejudices of that pro- 
 fession in his time. We might as well say that he was a musician, a 
 composer, because we find in ** The Two Gentlemen of Verona " nearly 
 every musical term known in Shakespeare's time. 
 
 Others maintain that he was a lawyer, perfectly acquainted with the 
 forms, with the expressions familiar to that profession ; yet there is 
 nothing to show that he was a lawyer, or that he knew more about law 
 than any intelligent man should know. He wa.i not a lawyer. His 
 sense of justice was never dulled by reading English law. 
 
 Some think that he was a botanist, because he named nearly all known 
 plants. Others, that he was an astronomer, a naturalist, because he 
 gave hints and suggestions of nearly all discoveries. 
 
 Some have thought that he must have been a sailor, for the reason 
 that the orders given in the opening of " The Tempest " were the best 
 that could, under the circumstances, have been given to save the ship. 
 
 For my part, I think there is nothing in the plays to show that he was 
 a lawyer, a doctor, a botanist, or a scientist. He had the observant eye 
 that really sees, the ear that really hears, the brain that retains all 
 pictures, all thoughts, logic as unerring as light, the imagination that 
 supplies defects and builds the perfect from a fragment. And these 
 faculties, ^hese aptitudes, working together, account for what he did. 
 
 He exceeded all the sons of men in the splendor of his imagination. 
 To him the whole world paid tribute, and nature poured her treasures at 
 his feet. In him all races lived again, and even those to be were pic- 
 tured in his brain. 
 
 He was a man of imagination — that is to say, of genius, and having 
 seen a leaf and a drop of water, he could construct the forests, the rivers 
 and the seas ; and in his presence all the cataracts would fall and foam, 
 the mists rise, the clouds form and float. 
 
 If Shakespeare knew one fact, he knew its kindred and its neighbors. 
 Looking at a coat of mail, he instantly imagined the society, the condi- 
 tions, that produced it, and what it, in turn, produced. He saw the 
 castle, the moat, the draw-bridge, the lady in the tower, and the knightly 
 
84 
 
 BUAKBHPEARE. 
 
 lover spurrinf^ across the plain. He saw the bold baron and the rude 
 retainer, the trampled serf, and all the glory and the grief of jfeudal 
 life. 
 
 He lived the life of all. He was a citizen of Athens in the days of 
 Pericles. He listened to the eager eloquence of the great orators, and 
 sat upon the cliffs, and with the tragic poet heard " the multitudinous 
 laughter of the sea." He saw Socrates thrust the spear of question 
 through the sliield and heart of falsehood. He was present when the 
 great man drank hemlock, and met the night of death tranquil as a star 
 meets morning. He listened to the peripatetic philosophers, and was 
 unpuzzled by the Sophists. He watched Phidias as he chiselled shapeless 
 stone to forms of love and awe. 
 
 Ho lived by the mysterious Nile, amid the vast and monstrous. He 
 knew the very thought that wrought the form and features of the Sphinx. 
 He heard great Memnon's morning song when marble lips were smitten 
 by the sun. He laid him down with the embalmed and waiting dead, 
 and felt within their dust the expectation of another life, mingled with 
 cold and suffocating doubts— -the children born of long delay. 
 
 He walked the ways of mighty Rome, and saw great Ceesar with his 
 legions in the field. He stood with vast and motley throngs and watched 
 the triumphs given to victorious men, followed by uncrowned kings, the 
 captured hosts, and all the spoils of ruthles war. He heard the shout 
 that shook the Coliseum's roofless walls, when from the reeling 
 gladiator's hand the short sword fell, while from his bosom gushed the 
 stream of wasted life. 
 
 He lived the life of savage men. He trod the forests' silent depths, 
 and in the desperate game of life or death he matched his thought 
 against the instinct of the beast. 
 
 He knew all crimes and all regrets, all virtues and their rich rewards. 
 He was victim and victor, pursuer and pursued, outcast and king. He 
 heard the applause and curses of the world, and on his heart had fallen 
 all the nights and noons of failure and success. 
 
 He knew the unspoken thoughts, the dumb desires, the wants and 
 ways of beasts. He felt the crouching tiger's thrill, the terror of the 
 ambushed prey, and with the eagles he had shared the ecstasy of flight 
 and poise and swoop, and he had lain with sluggish serpents on the 
 barren rocks uncoiling slowly in the heat of noon. 
 
 He sat beneath the bo-tree's contemplative shade, wrapped in 
 Buddha's mighty thought, and dreamed all dreams t'lat light, the 
 
Shakbspearb. 
 
 95 
 
 alchemist, has wrought from dust and dew, and stored within the slum- 
 brous poppy's subtle blood. 
 
 He knelt with awe and dread at every shrine — he offered every siicrifice, 
 and every prayer — felt the consolation and the shuddering fear — mocked 
 and worshipped all the gods — enjoyed all heavens, and felt the pangs of 
 every hell. 
 
 He lived all lives, and through his blood and brain there crept the 
 shadow and the chill of every death ; and his soul, like Mazcppa, was 
 lashed naked to the wild horse of every fear and love and hate. 
 
 The Imagination had a stage in Shakespeare's brain, whereon were 
 set all scenes that lie between the morn of laughter and the night of 
 tears, and where his players bodied forth the false and the true, the joys 
 and griefs, the careless shallows and the tragic deeps of universal life. 
 
 From Shakespeare's brain there poured a Niagara of gems spanned 
 by Fancy's seven-hued arch. He was as many-sided as clouds are many- 
 formed. To him giving » hoarding — sowing was harvest — and waste 
 itself the source of wealt' Within his marvellous mind were the fruits 
 of all thoughts past, the seeus of all to be. As a drop of dew contains 
 the image of the earth and sky, so all there is of life was mirrored forth 
 in Shakespeare's brain. 
 
 Shakespeare was an intellectual ocean, whose waves touched all the 
 shores of thought ; within which were all the tides and waves of destiny 
 and will ; over which swept all the storms of fate, ambition and revenge ; 
 upon which fell the gloom and darkness of despair and death, and all 
 the sunlight of content and love, and within which was the inverted sky 
 lit with the eternal stars — an intellectual ocean — towards which all rivers 
 ran, and from which now the isles and continents of thought receive 
 their dew and rain. 
 
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