\m ill 15 ' II liljillil lilii liiiiliiii li),, . Mi" li!. \m mi^ I B^^^ it. liiiillj iiiiiiiiiiiiiiir ^"■ i iilli ili I,; THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA J SHAKESPEAEE AND fitt^ CRITICS BY CHARLES ¥. JOHNSON, Litt. D. Professor Emeritus of English Literature at Trinity College^ Hartford BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY i^ht 0iter^iDe pce^jj Cambrtbge 1909 COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY CHARLES F. JOHNSON ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published March igog GIFT TO DR. HORACE HOWARD FURNESS IN RECOGNITION OF THE DEBT DUE HIM FROM ALL THE FRIENDLY ADMIRERS OF SHAKESPEARE'S ENDOWMENTS ivi772660 PREFACE The object of this book is to give an outline of the attitude of the English and American literary world towards the plays of William Shakespeare from the seventeenth century to the present time. The verdict of the world of playgoers, that some of the plays when well acted were far better worth seeing than those of any other dramatist, has been the same for all genera- tions. But the estimate of the plays by professional writers, as reflected in literary criticism, has varied, or rather the views on which the estimate was based have varied, greatly. For a long time it was a matter of faith with most of them that Shakespeare was ' irregular,' because his construction and method differed widely from that of the dramatists of Greece. Admitting that he was a unique genius, as shown in many passages of force and beauty, it was thought that the plays would be much better if they were less original and more imi- tative of the ancient models, and the poet had always kept to a certain dignity of diction and situation, and in particular had observed the formal rules which were supposed to be deduced from the plays of the ancient dramatists and were known as the three unities. Eng- lish common sense continually rebelled against the con- tention that an English poet lacked taste and culture because he did not imitate the methods or style of the poets of another race, and the position was finally abandoned in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Coleridge barely alludes to it, and Lamb and Hazlitt of the early nineteenth century ignore it completely. viii PREFACE The critics of the eighteenth century were largely- occupied with endeavors to establish a standard text by emendation and conjecture. Quite generally they looked at the plays from the standpoint of the theatre, ignor- ing the idea that the tragedies were commentaries on human nature and possessed an absolute quality like truth or beauty. Dr. Johnson is typical of this class, if he is not too extreme an instance of common sense to be typical of that excellent quality. Though these critics rebelled rather timidly against slavish obedience to the authority of ' the ancients,' the idea that the author was an untutored, natural genius, who would have been much improved by a university training, was not fully eradicated. The true nature of art was not philosophically grasped, and the profound relation of the plays to life was but dimly hinted at. The idea that the characters could be discussed exactly as if they were real, that they differed from historic characters in pos- sessing more interesting personalities, in being placed in more complicated and trying situations, and, there- fore, exemplifying more fully the passions of men, did not occur to the critics till very late in the eighteenth century. Nor was it discovered till towards the close of the eighteenth century that Shakespeare's female characters bear almost as close a relation to feminine nature as his heroes do to manly nature. In fact, both of these views may be said to belong to the romantic school of the nineteenth century. In the beginning of the nineteenth century the critics of the so-called romantic school, who viewed life and literature from the standpoint of the emotions, widened the scope of criticism and justified the preeminence of the poet by more refined considerations. Coleridge was the leading figure of this school, in which, though enthusiasm tended to rhapsodical generalizations, the PREFACE ix conception of literature and art became more spiritual. The importation of notions from the German aesthetic school gave a new philosophic basis and added elements to criticism, which, if sometimes tending to mystic in- definiteness, were at least part of a system of thought. In the latter half of the nineteenth century the suc- cess of the scientific method applied to the material and animate world affected the tone of critical thought, and, indeed, of all reasoning. Great attention was paid to details of material form, and some remarkable dis- coveries resulted from exact analysis of the verse of different plays. At the same time there was a dispo- sition to minimize the elements of wonder and rever- ence, and to reduce all critical considerations to rational grounds. This corrected some of the extravagancies of the romanticists, but in some instances overdid itself by sinking the aesthetic quality of the play and concen- trating attention on matters that could be counted and generalized mathematically, or by accumulating a mass of historic details of slight significance and regarding the accumulation as an end. This is quite evident in the writings of Messrs. Furnival, Fleay, and Simpson. The influence of the scientific method is also apparent in a tendency towards minute subdivisions such as are properly made in botany and geology, and further in a disposition to treat the poet and his plays as ordinary phenomena, natural products to be accounted for by favorable circumstances, a view which leads to erro- neous conceptions as surely as does the other extreme, that poetry is the result of a direct inspiration from some source outside the inspired individual. Many critics who may be regarded as natural-born roman- ticists, or perhaps influenced by the later-day aesthetes, combatted the scientific critics vigorously. In the end, however, the scientific method was lim- X PREFACE ited to careful scrutiny of facts and rational deduction therefrom, tempered by a consciousness that the ma- terial criticised was great poetry, a product of the imagination as well as of the reason, and dependent on a faculty which, if not abnormal in its nature, is so excessive in the favored individual as to be abnormal in energy, and, therefore, creative. In Professors Brad- ley and Lounsbury we have critics to whom poetry is a wonderful and beautiful thing, but who sift evidence and form no conclusions not legitimately based on evidence. They might be called rational romanticists, combining learning and culture. They have a sub- limated common sense and a comprehension of the function of great art which to the mathematicians is foolishness. Of course men of any type may exist in any period. A romantic individualist like Mr. Swinburne may be contemporary with the most rigorous scientist like Mr. Fleay, a man of ponderous common sense like Dr. Gervinus may succeed a romanticist like Schlegel. Hallam closely follows Coleridge, instead of preceding him by a generation. Nevertheless, there is a develop- ment of thought in Shakespearean criticism. Consider- ing the effort that has been expended on it, it would be discouraging were there not signs of more catholic views and increasing breadth of grasp. This book considers only the principal critics. The first volume of Knight's Cabinet Edition contains a brief review of the critical writings on Shakespeare down to 1850, but is principally taken up with an account of various editions. It is out of print. The copious extracts in Dr. Furness'^ Variorum Edition apply to individual plays. Professor Lounsbury's vol- umes give a minute history of Shakespearean criticism for the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. PREFACE xi None but professionals can read all the originals. This book, growing- out of college lectures, is intended for the ordinary reader. Acknowledgments are due to Messrs. Macmillan and Company of London and the editor of the A tlantic for permission to print extracts from their publications. I wish, too, to thank the librarians of Yale, Harvard, and the Boston Public Library for lending me valuable books. C. F. Johnson. Hartford, September, 1908. CONTENTS I. The Departments of Shakespearean Criti- cism 1 II. Criticism of Shakespeare by his Contempo- raries AND UP to the Restoration .... 23 III. From the Restoration to 1710 45 IV. The Early Eighteenth-Century Editors : Rowe, Pope, Theobald, Hanmer, Warburton ... 78 V. The Later Eighteenth-Century Editors : John- son, Capell, Steevens, Malone 113 VI. The Late Eighteenth-Century Essayists : Mrs. Montagu, Richardson, Farmer, Morgann . . 143 VII. The Early Nineteenth Century : Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt 164 VIII. Foreign Criticism of Shakespeare : Schlegel, Ulrici, Gervinus, Freytag, Voltaire, Ana- tole France, Taine 209 IX. The Middle of the Nineteenth Century : Mrs. Jameson, Richard Grant White 242 X. The Later Nineteenth Century : Swinburne, Dowden, Tolstoy 262 XI. The Close of the Nineteenth Century : Wen- dell, Fleay, Lee, Carlyle, Emerson, Lowell, Miles, Corbin, Stoll 289 XII. Criticism of the Twentieth Century : Bradley, Baker, Lewis, Raleigh 321 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS CHAPTER I THE DEPARTMENTS OF SHAKESPEAREAN CRITICISM Literary criticism has been one branch of the writer's profession since the days of Aristotle. Shakespeare is so preeminently an important and interesting figure in our literary history that the criticism of his plays forms a large library. Some of it is unintelligent, but it can- not be said that any part of it is unimportant, because the gradual development of reasonable views on the subject is parallel to the gradual growth of liberalism in religion and politics. The history of Shakespearean criticism is an epitome of the history of the general mind of Christendom since the seventeenth century. There is to be seen in both the same progress from conservatism and reverence for authority to reliance on reasoned principles based on an examination of the thing itself regardless of the codified law, and also the same perception that codified law is not necessarily erroneous because it is ancient, but, unless misinter- preted, is an expression of truth, with the reservation that it is truth as it appeared to the general mind in a certain stage of its development. We have learned to respect both Samuel Johnson and Samuel Coleridge. Shakespearean criticism has its historical value and slow line of development as much as free institutions. It may well be, too, that it is still in the same partially developed condition. .2...... .SHAKES-PEARE AND HIS CRITICS Shakespearean literature concerns itself with several distinct kinds of subject-matter. I. TEXTUAL CKITICISM As the plays of Shakespeare were printed long before large publishing establishments had brought the art of proof-reading to its present state of exactness, and were particularly unfortunate in not coming under the eye of a corrector of any intelligence, the first editions, the large folio of 1623 and the earlier quartos, are full of errors. Some of the plays in the folio were much better printed than others, perhaps because the copy was better; but in all the proof was very imperfectly corrected, if corrected at all. It seems as if it were a matter of indifference to the compositors whether the words they set up were intelligible or not. In questions of punctuation their rule apparently was: when in doubt use a question mark. In consequence, the first thing to do when Shakespeare's works were edited in 1709 was to correct the most obvious mistakes, many of which were so plainly typographical as to call for no ingenu- ity. But others present all degrees of difficulty. The main authority for the text is the large folio volume of 1623, of which some hundred copies are known to exist. It was brought out, seven years after Shakespeare's death, by two of his partners, who, al- though they did not understand the duties of publishers very well, may be supposed to have desired to produce as good a book as possible, and in particular to have in- cluded all the plays of their late associate which could 1 justly be called his composition. This First Folio, then, is the basis of the Shakespearean text ; for the Second Folio, the Third Folio, and the Fourth Folio are merely reprints issued with no systematic effort at improvement. But before the printing of the folio many of the plays had DEPARTMENTS OF CRITICISM 3 been printed soon after their production in pamphlet form, apparently against the wishes of the promoters of the theatre,* for the editors speak of them as 'stolen and surreptitious copies.' Many of these have survived, varying greatly in quality, and these very editors used seven of them as printer's copy, although they stigma- tized them all as stolen. In some cases the quarto is fuller than the same play in the folio. In others the folio is the better ; and for eighteen it is the sole au- thority, no quarto having come down to us for Macbeth^ The Tempest^ Winter's Tale^ As You Like It, Cym- heline, Julius Ccesar, Timon of Athens, and several others. Of some of the plays several quartos were issued; six or seven of Richard III a,ud four of Rich- ard II. In some cases, when the dates are far apart, the quartos show the play in different stages of devel- opment, and are then, as in the case of Hamlet, of great value in showing how the author amplified his work. In some instances different copies of the same edition of a quarto differ, as if the presswork had been stopped and changes made in the form. As the early quartos, * There seems to have been a brisk demand for * playbooks ' in the seventeenth century. Prynne, author of Histriomastix, 1633, says that forty thousand of them were issued in the two years before his writing. This is within the bounds of possibility. They were used in the theatre as prompt-books, as is evident from the fact that in some of them the names of the actors are written before the entrances of the character. In the folio the name of Kemp, the famous comedian who took the part, appears a number of times in the place of Dogberry in the margin, showing that Much Ado About Nothing was set up from the very copy used by the prompter. But doubtless the greater number were bought for individual reading. After the printing of the folio many Sliake- spearean quartos were issued down to the eighteenth century. These are known as ' players' quartos,' and are not of the slightest value in settling disputed readings, and of little as bibliographic cariosities. 4 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS even if surreptitious, are authentic, it is evident that they are valuable in settling disputed readings, and that the labor of collating or comparing them line by- line with the folio was a task requiring infinite pa- tience and industry. It was begun in the eighteenth century, and carried out in the course of one hundred and fifty years by English and German scholars, to whom the thanks of posterity are due. Dr. Johnson advised the student to read the plays through before consulting any notes. It is true that all or very nearly all of the famous passages are correctly printed and need no textual commentary, and it is true also that we gather the suggested meaning of poetry without a logical comprehension of the words and phrases. But the young student who reads the first three acts of Winter s Tale,, or any part of Cymhe- line^ or many passages of other plays where the style is involved and condensed, or the allusions dark to him, certainly needs illustrative notes and a text in which the principal errors are corrected and the punctuation modernisied. Suppose him to come across^the following speech of the Duke of Buckingham in the first scene of the first act of Henry VIII: — Why the devilj Upon this French going out, took he upon him, Without the privity of the King, to appoint Who should attend him ? He makes up the file Of all the gentry ; for the most part such To whom as great a charge as little honour He meant to lay upon : and his own letter, The honourable board of council out. Must fetch him in he papers . He readily understands that the * French going out ' is the embassy to France when Henry met Francis on the Field of the Cloth of Gold; possibly he may see that DEPARTMENTS OF CRITICISM 5 the next to the last line is parenthetical and means, the council not being in session, or being disregarded ; but if he can interpret the last line without a note telling him that ' him ' is equivalent to * him whom,' also that * papers ' is a verb, meaning ' puts on the list,' he is one of a thousand. The errors which have been corrected come under several heads : — (a) In some cases speeches are plainly attributed to the wrong person, in the folio and quartos both, as, for example, in the speech of the ghost in Hamlet: — Thus was I, . . . Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, . . . No reckoning made, but sent to my account With all my imperfections on my head ; 0, horrible ! 0, horrible ! most horrible ! If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not. It seems unlikely that the ghost, who has but a few min- utes left, should interrupt himself to comment on his murder, and natural that his son should interject the line beginning, ' O, horrible ! ' and not confine the ex- pression of his feeling to dumb show. It is very easy for the printer to omit the speaker 's name. The speech is usually taken by the actor of Hamlet, and it would seem rightly. But there are other cases where the trans- ference of speeches is not warranted, though the se- quence of ideas would be more manifest if it were done. (6) As a matter of course many words and phrases used in 1600 have since become obsolete. Some of these are explained as allusions to social customs, to folklore of the day, or to sports, as archery, hawking, or bowls. The vocabulary of slang is very ephemeral. No one ever uses wrongly a slang expression of his time, but it is sometimes very difficult to appreciate the force of ob- 6 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS solete slang, and the same may be said of fashionable jargon and the current style of wit. This is especially evident in Loves Labour 's Lost^ and is one of the sub- jects that need illuminating notes. All these questions have been pretty well threshed out, and this book will be concerned with them only incidentally. The reader soon learns from the context that, with Shakespeare, sad means serious, but not melancholy ; conceit, mental conception, not egotistic self-esteem ; favor, counte- nance, not good-will ; complexion, natural composition, not hue of skin ; owe, own, not be indebted ; and the significance of many other words which are not obsolete but have changed their shade of meaning. But he learns it more readily from having it pointed out to him. (c) Closely allied to the above is the question of grammatical construction. Shakespeare knew nothing of our modern rules, and would have disregarded them cheerfully in favor of current usage had they been drilled into him. His usage was of course the good usage of his day, for he was very sensitive to the signi- fication of words as well as to English syntax, though he wrenched both in the latter part of his life when vigor- ous expression was in question. That he uses * who ' when we should say ' whom,' and writes ' none ' with the plural or singular verb according to the shade of meaning, is not a matter of great importance either way. As a rule his style is very idiomatic, and there- fore offensive to purists. {d) In places where the original sources fail to con- vey an intelligible meaning, conjecture has been re- sorted to, sometimes with happy effect and sometimes with inconceivable ineptitude. For example, in Twelfth Night the Duke says of music : — That strain again : — it had a dying fall : O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound DEPARTMENTS OF CRITICISM 7 That breathes upon a bank of violets Stealing and giving odour. Though music is a ' sound,' it is difficult to see how it could confer or convey smell. Pope changed 'sound' to ' south,' which makes the passage one of those appro- priate images disclosing the essence of the thing de- scribed, a creation of a poet. The damp south wind in spring passing over beds of flowers does steal and give odor. Nevertheless, the emendation is not universally or even generally accepted. Another famous and universally accepted change is less satisfactory. In Henry V, ii, iii, Dame Quickly, describing the death of Sir John Falstaff, says, ' His nose was as sharp as a pen and a table of green fields.' Theobald, an excellent critic of the eighteenth century, the man who incurred the enmity of Pope, who called him ' poor piddling Tibbalds ' in the Dunciad because he had pointed out some of the shortcomings of Pope's edition, emended this passage to read : ' For his nose was as sharp as a pen and he babbled of green fields.' Whoever has witnessed the deathbed of an old man of the Falstaff type knows that the delightful old repro- bate never weakened to a commonplace pathos in the stupor that precedes dissolution. ' His nose was as sharp as a pen' is precisely the realism of a woman like Quickly, to whose mind details like the ' dish of prawns' and the ' parcel-gilt goblet ' are always present, and Mr. Collier's suggestion : ' His nose was as sharp as a pen on a table of green frieze ' seems nearer the true reading. But the former is universally accepted. In some cases, like ' that runaway's eyes may wink * in Romeo and Juliet^ it is impossible to hit on a satis- factory reading, though we should like exceedingly to know who ' runaway ' was. The conjecture * rumour's 8 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS eyes ' is not altogether satisfactory, and the question is insoluble. In other cases the true word or the meaning of the word is of little consequence, as in The Tempest^ when Caliban, in an excess of loyalty to his new master, Stefan o, says, ' I '11 bring thee to clustering filberds, and sometimes I '11 get thee young scammels from the rock.' What are scammels ? Sea birds or oysters? It is of no consequence that we cannot tell. They were some- thing good to eat, — excellent beyond question, — and the freckled whelp knew where they most did congre- gate. There are some hundred and eighty cases where con- jecture is at a loss. These are known as * cruxes.' Many of the ingenious minds of the nineteenth century com- mented on these and endeavored to suggest a mean- ing. When a line has apparently dropped out in the printing, it is hopeless to attempt to replace it, so much of the force of Shakespeare's verse depends on the indi- vidual choice and collocation of the words. For instance, in the first act and first scene of Hamlet, Horatio is describing the portents that appeared In the most high and palmy state of Rome, A little ere the mightiest Julius fell. He says : — The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets ; As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, Disasters in the sun ; and the moist star Upon whose influence Neptune's Empire stands Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse. In the above 'stars' and 'disasters' are plainly subjects with no verb. Perhaps a line was omitted by the com- positor. If so, it has dropped into oblivion. It has been suggested that ' disasters in the sun ' might be changed DEPARTMENTS OF CRITICISM 9 to ' disastrous, dimmed the sun,' but that will not do, for comets do not dim the sun, and, besides, we cannot give up the great phrase ' disasters in the sun.' Here, then, is a place when Heminge and Condell failed in their promise to give us the plays ' cured and perfect of their limbs, and all the rest absolute in their numbers as he conceived them,' and modern ingenuity cannot touch it. We must submit to one of the great historical misfortunes. Fortunately few of the insoluble cruxes occur in passages as beautiful as the above. In some cruxes a meaning is dimly shadowed but cannot be for- mulated. The various suggestions and conjectures as to the force of the words and as to the true reading in these cases are brought together with great patience and fidel- ity by Dr. Furness in the notes on the plays contained in his great Variorum Edition, and it is to be regretted that he does not oftener sum up the argument and give a decision, which no one is more competent to do. Some of the guesses are more plausible than others, but as a rule no one is convincing. The unjustifiable suggestions of the eighteenth century have as a rule been rejected. The Globe Edition — based on the Cambridge Edition of Aldis and Wright — is an example of conservative scholarship. In it the passages where a definite mean- ing cannot be gathered without violent conjecture are marked with a dagger. They number 185, if the writer counted correctly, and even some of these suggest a logical thought, shadowy perhaps, but not entirely dark. It was of course absolutely necessary first to settle as nearly as possible on all textual questions. The subject has been exhausted, and the argument for the various conjectural readings is easily accessible. Nevertheless, the following interpretation by Mr. F. Sturges Allen of Springfield, almost unquestionably correct, was made in the spring of 1907 : — 10 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS ' No, 't is slander, Wliose edge is sharper than the sword, whose tongue Outvenoms all the worms of Nile, whose breath Rides on the posting winds, and doth belie All corners of the world. — Cymbeline, iii, iv, 38. In order to make sense of this, helie has been inter- preted, ' filled with lies,' a meaning for which no au- thority can be found. The ordinary meaning is, to calumniate. But Mr. Allen points out on the authority of the New English Dictionary that helie from another source meant 'to lie around, to encompass, to belea- guer.' This carries out the strong image in 'whose breath rides on the posting winds.' A slander encom- passes the remote parts of the world. This must be the sense intended by Shakespeare. II. THE VERSE-FORM Another subject of criticism is the metre and scansion, question of emphasis and adjustment of voice. This is largely a matter for the consideration of the actor. Any one with a reasonably good ear learns readily the move- ment of the Shakespearean verse. Rarely does the ten- syllable line or the eleven-syllable line present any dif- ficulties. The end-stopt verse of Love's Labour 's Lost has a different beauty from the overflow verse of Lear and Cymheline^ but both are poetic forms, used by the author at different periods of his life. The first play opens : — King. Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives, Live registered upon our brazen tombs And then grace us in the disgrace of death ; When, spite of cormorant devouring Time, The endeavour of this present breath may buy • That honour which shall bate his scythe's keen edge And make us heirs of all eternity. DEPARTMENTS OF CRITICISM 11 The first lines of Imogen in Cymheline are : — Im. Dissembling Courtesy ! How fine this tyrant Can tickle where she wounds ! My dearest husband, I something fear my father's wrath, but nothing (Always reserved my holy duty) what His rage can do on me : you must be gone, And I shall here abide the hourly shot Of angry eyes ; not comforted to live But that there is this jewel in the world, That I may see again. The different way in which the phrases and clauses lie embedded in the verse is quite evident. In the first extract, grammar and metre frequently coincide, in the next more rarely. The simplest way of distinguishing the end-stopt and the overflow verse is to observe the greater number of punctuation marks at the ends of the lines of the first, but a better way is to notice the great difference of the movement of the two when they are read aloud. The latter is more free and has an ele- ment of careless strength in its freedom; it is more conversational and dramatic, and Shakespeare used it more and more as he grew older. Thus the proportion of end-stopt lines to overflow lines in Love's Labour 's Lost is 1 in 18, and in Cymheline is 1 in 2|, and the rate of increase in the intermediate plays is pretty nearly uniform. The normal line of Shakespeare's plays is the iambic pentameter, consisting of ten syllables with the accent on the even-numbered syllables. But as the number of accents is more important than their position, the line is properly distinguished as the five-accent line, or the line of five stresses, and as occasionally one of the feet or divisions of the line contains three syllables, it is sometimes called the line of five measures. Occasion- ally we find lines of two measures, of three measures, n SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS and even of six measures, but rarely of four mea- sures. A young man in his first serious attempts at writing adheres closely to the formal rules. As he acquires more experience and more confidence, he learns that the ob- ject of his work is to attain a certain literary effect, — force, euphony, or artistic presentation, — and that sometimes the rules can properly be disregarded and the object attained by that very disobedience. Great men like Shakespeare can trust their instinct in this. We find that he modified his metrical practice consider- ably as he grew older. The change was partly due to the change in literary fashion that took place during his life and partly to his own increasing perception of the essence of metrical art. Taking one of his earliest and one of his later plays, we find the following pro- portions : ^ — Lovers Labour 's Lost Winter's Tale (1611) 14 19 13 16 That is, he used lines of irregular length more fre- quently in the later play. In Shakespeare's first plays he frequently rhymed his ten-syllable verses. This practice he gradually abandoned. Rhyming lines in Love's Labour 's Lost 1028 Rhyming lines in Hamlet 81 Rhyming lines in Antony and Cleopatra 42 » From Mr. Fumivall's tables. (1593) Number of lines of two measures 12 Number of lines of three measures 13 Number of lines of four measures Number of lines of six measures 1 DEPARTMENTS OF CRITICISM 13 Another change in Shakespeare's versification is noteworthy. The line of five accents but eleven sylla- bles is very well adapted to conversational delivery. The last foot of this is usually an amphibrach, for example : — Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness. The increasing use of this is shown in Mr. Fumivall's tables ; the proportion of eleven-syllable lines in Love''s Labour 's Lost is 4 per cent ; in Winter^ s Tale^ 31 per cent ; and in The Tempest., 33 per cent. The normal ten-syllable blank verse line ends, of course, with an accented syllable. Towards the end of his life Shakespeare fell into the habit of ending the line occasionally with an unimportant syllable, like * by,' * for,' ' from,' — conjunctions which evidently belong to the first word of the next line. These are called weak endings. He also sometimes ended a line with a monosyllabic pronoun or verb be- longing to the next line ' like,' ' can,' ' did,' ' am,' ' be,' ' I,' etc. These are called light endings. His habit or usage at certain periods is so well marked in the plays whose date of composition is known, that the metrical style of other plays, the date of which is not fixed, determines approximately the period of their production. The matter of metrical structure is therefore of more than merely mechanical importance; it marks the technical development of the greatest art- ist of our race. The notion that by getting the percentage of rhymed lines, overflow lines, weak-ending lines, and the like, the student can attain exact evidence as to the date of a play or decide the precise parts of a play written by each of two or three joint authors, is very fascinating to certain minds. They feel a pride in using a new 14 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS organ which seems to impart to literature the precision of science. But the method, like all statistics, must be used with great precaution. Its success depends on the presumption that a poet, having modified his metrical scheme, never goes back to his earlier style. This is not entirely true, for the style depends somewhat on the subject-matter. Suppose that at a late period in his career Shakespeare had thought it worth while to re- write Love's Labour'' s Lost, If his associates and he had thought it a good idea, he might have done so im- mediately after he had finished Cymheline, He would have retained a good deal of the old rhyming matter and have assimilated the new and the old, have struck out the farcical scenes, and have elevated Armado, Holo- fernes, and Moth into the region of witty comedy. He would have remodeled the last act entirely and have produced a play in the true comic spirit. In doing so he would have recast nearly all the prose in the play because the wit is forced and thin. The result would be a play with nearly as many rhymes as the present one; and there is no reason why it should not be virtually the work of his last period, for such a rewriting would result in a new production. In other words, Shakespeare could have written a rhyming society comedy at any period of his life, the only difference being that it would have been a far better comedy if written when he was forty-nine than if written when he was twenty-nine. And the conditions which would have led him to do so are by no means inconceivable. There is nothing abso- lute about rhyme percentages. Mr. Fleay, to whom we all owe so much, has in his Shakespeare Handbook carried this method to extremes. He proves that Twelfth Night must have been written at two different periods, and divides it into two sepa- rate structural parts, — the Viola story and the Toby- DEPARTMENTS OF CRITICISM 15 Aguecheek-Maria story. This is manifestly a reductio ad absurdnm^ for the play is evidently a unit and the parts could not have been prepared separately and then put together. Mr. Swinburne, in his Study of Shake- speare, has put a capital bit of satire in the appendix, entitled a 'Report of a Session of the Newest Shake- speare Society.' It is excellent fooling, though the fun is a trifle heavy-handed, and as good an argument against introducing scientific methods into literary criticism as could be imagined. The scientific spirit may well be infused with the appreciation of art, but the strict scientific method is inapplicable, for method depends on material handled. Technical methods are not of the essence of art. There are other more important though unformulated qualities. Such a verse as : — Now cracks a noble heart : •— Good night, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest ! is a poetic expression of manly grief. Its supreme beauty is not affected by the fact that the fourth foot of the second line is a trochee. It is one of many hun- dred collocations of vowel and consonant sounds har- monious with the sentiment which are scattered through Shakespeare's plays. Its logical rhythm makes an over- tone on the metrical beat. Its melody is an idealized form of the natural cadence of emotion. This essential element of verse which appeals to the poetic sense might be overlooked by one who analyzed the metrical form alone. This reservation, that metre does not constitute poetic style in the highest sense, must be held in mind in any examination of the verse of Shakespeare's plays. m. V ORDEB IN "WHICH THE PLAYS WERE "WRITTEN This question is closely connected with that of the change in metrical form alluded to above. It is there- 16 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS fore, though historical, related to literary considerations and bears on the development of ' Shakespeare's Mind and Art/ It is settled by several kinds of evidence : — 1. Internal evidence. Is the thought and view of life, especially the conception of love, that of a young, ardent poet or that of a mature, reflective man ? Is the versi- fication that of the earlier or of the later period of the writer's technical development? 2. External: references to or quotations from the play in question in contemporaneous writings whose date can be fixed. The most famous of these is the pas- sage in Palladia Tamia, a little book published by Francis Meres in 1598, referring to twelve plays by name and to the Sonnets as in manuscript. The dates of the printing of the quartos and of their entry in the stationers' register for license to print are important, as are a few casual references in diaries and the like. 3. External- Internal : that is, when in the play some allusion is made to an historical event whose date is well fixed. Sometimes the allusion is so obscure that no precise inference can be drawn. But in the chorus of Henry V the lines, Were now the general of our gracious empress — As in good time he may, from Ireland coming, Bringing rebellion broached on his sword, fix the date positively between the departure of the Earl of Essex, April 15, 1599, and his return, Sep- tember 28, 1599. It is rarely, however, that as precise evidence as this can be found. The subject of the suc- cession of the plays is well and succinctly presented in Mr. Dowden's Shakspere Primer, TV. SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE The materials bearing on Shakespeare's life were gathered by Halliwell-Phillipps in a large volume en- DEPARTMENTS OF CRITICISM 17 titled Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, They con- sist of deeds, of casual references to the company of players to which Shakespeare belonged, legal entries of his baptism, his will, and much traditional matter put in print after the Restoration of Charles II, some of which is of doubtful value. The amount of matter is very considerable, and has been so well arranged and digested by Mr. Sidney Lee in his Life of Shakespeare that until some new facts are disclosed, which is not impossible, students may be confidently referred to Mr. Lee's book. There are lapses of time during which little or nothing is known of Shakespeare's doings, and no one can say precisely what his private character was, for we have no report of a word he uttered. He seems to have been liked and respected, as far as we can judge, and was not concerned in the personal quarrels of the playwrights. The following bit of familiar verse by the younger Heywood goes to show that Shakespeare was admitted to easy familiarity with the playwrights of the day as a ' worthy friend and fellow.' Mario, renowned for his fair art and wit, Could ne'er attain beyond the name of Kit, Although his Hero and Leander did Merit addition rather. Famous Kid Was called but Tom. Tom Watson, though he wrote Able to make Apollo's self to dote Upon his muse, for all that he could strive Yet never could to his full name arrive. Tom Nash, in his time of no small esteem, Could not a second syllable redeem. Excellent Beaumont, in the foremost rank Of the rarest wits, was never more than Frank. Mellifiuous Shakespeare, whose enchanting quill Commanded mirth or passion, was hut Will ; 18 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS And famous Jonson, though his learned pen Be dipt in Castaly, is still but Ben. Perhaps it is as well that we know little of him ex- cept as artist, because his work as artist is of such surpassing interest. It is very difficult to resist the impression that he was personally attractive, and still more difficult to resist the belief that he was well balanced, in spite of his obvious sympathy with human weakness. He possessed or acquired the knack of worldly success. He evidently became a remarkable judge of human nature, able to estimate correctly the value of the different emotions and habits that make up individual natures, and, consequently, was wise in the highest sense. Whether he had the lower wisdom that regulates conduct in accordance with principles is another matter. It is, however, extremely improbable that he ever deviated seriously, — certainly he could not have done so for any extended period, — from a life of sane and well-ordered activity. He remains at once obscure and illustrious. V. LITERARY CRITICISM The most important branch of Shakespearean Criti- cism is that which has to do with the artistic value of the plays. This is a subject which has attracted the literary artists of every century succeeding Shake- speare's death. [Eational appreciation may be said to begin in England with Coleridge early in the nine- teenth century, b^t funreasoning admiration ", existed from the appearance of the plays, or at least from the printing of the folio. The dramatic construction or thp technical playwright's work is one branch of this de- partment of Shakespearean criticism; the beai^ty, force, eloquence, and wit off detached passages is another. The true nature of the characters and ex- % DEPARTMENTS OF CRITICISM 19 planation of their motives has been a fruitful subject, and is the most important one of all. The interpretation of great actors is aHfife^nimportant part of this branch of the subject, for a really great actor has a sym- pathetic insight into the nature of the character he represents, and in order to give a convincing embodi- ment must study and reflect on it assiduously and intelligently. Analysis of the leading characters began late in the eighteenth century, and has formed the burden of countless essays and many ponderous vol- umes. A review of some of the most important writings on this subject will be given in the following chapters. That 'aesthetic criticism is the most important branch follows from the fact that art deals with the realities which lie behind facts, and history deals with the facts themselves. [A rtistic criticism may wander off into all kinds of cloudy rhapsodies^ but it is no more apt to err than is historical or scientific criticism, as we may readily see in Fleay's Shakespeare Manual and in much of the eighteenth-century disputes over the texts. The textual and historical critics are apt to exult over the aesthetic critics, as if their own department was the only one based on facts and truth. They forget that their study, if of any worth, is important simply because the plays are great poetry. Otherwise, their labors would be of no more value than the hours spent in analyzing the moves of a game of chess. It is the poetry of Shakespeare that gives dignity and worth to Shake- spearean scholarship in all branches. The historical and textual scholars are in the habit of referring disparag- ingly to those who discuss the jplays from^he artistic standpoint, as 'sign-board critics^' as if they did not care to have beauties pointed out to them. But it is one of the marks of genuine love of beauty to desire expression and sympathy from others. This is part of the radical i 20 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS unselfishness of the artistic impulse. If a man discovers a beautiful thing, his first and most natural thought is to call some one else to share his admiration. The love of art is rooted in sympathy and communion of spirit, and any one who dislikes to be called to admire a beau- tiful thing does not care for beauty — at least in that form. Of course the call must come from one in whom the appreciation is genuine. The ' sign-boards ' must be erected at the cross-roads, and indicate the right road. VI. OKIGEN" OP THE PLOTS Shakespeare invented the plots of Love's Labour 's Lost and of the Merry Wives of Windsor. As a rule he dramatized some tradition or current story, some- times already dramatized, that appealed to Englishmen, or some incidents from English history as it was known to his contemporaries. Some account of the origin and development of the story is usually given in the introduc- tions to modern editions of his work. The fact that he availed himself of current literary matter gives the folk element to his plays — makes them represent the thought of the people of England of his day, and not the whims of some literary clique. His handling of the matter raised it out of the realm of folk literature and gave it universality, while at the same time it preserved the freshness and raciness of folk legend. To follow back the story to its genesis is a matter of special training, nor are the originals easy to get at. We can, however, easily observe how Shakespeare turned the old English prose of Holinshed's history and of North's translation of Plutarch into dignified verse. His historical inaccu- racies, as in Henry IV, are not of great importance, because he is always true to English human nature. In the case of the play of Othello it is interesting to see how magnificently he adorned and elevated the Italian DEPARTMENTS OF CRITICISM 21 novel which forms the basis of the plot. The genesis and development of Hamlet can be studied to advantage, since the English translation of the Norse tale and the first quarto are given in full in the second volume of Dr. Furness's edition. A very useful compendium of the stories, or, at least, a reference to the originals, is given in Dowden's Shakspere Primer, VII. HISTOKICAIi DEVELOPMENT OF THE DKAMA The development of the Elizabethan drama and its position in the social life of London, and the tone and character of Renaissance society, are special subjects in- directly bearing on a comprehension of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets. Symond's Shakespere's Predeces- sor s^Ward's History of English Dramatic Literature, and Sidney Lee's Shakespeare^ s Life and Work throw considerable light on a subject, to approach which intel- ligently we must discard most of our ideas about modern cities and the modern theatre and form a conception of the sixteenth-century London. We usually form our notions of the period from the plays themselves, and are apt to give a romantic tinge to an environment that must have had its commonplace, everyday features, like any other years of this working-day world, though its dramatic expression was so highly imaginative. We should remember that, though the poet was for all time, the plays were written for his age. When we consider, too, that the plays were written for a certain kind of stage, their astonishing vitality is more evident to us, for they alone do not grow ' old-fashioned,' and are still eminently playable, though not in the least mechanically adapted to the methods of modern acting. The criticism we wish to review usually considers them as detached specimens of beautiful literature existing in an ideal world rather than as practically actable plays. They 22 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS are both, and some knowledge of the stage and the audi- ence and of the dramas preceding 1600 puts them in a truer relation to the humanity of their age and of ours. Such knowledge is difficult to acquire, for it demands imaginative power. It cannot be acquired en hloc sim- ply by diligence in learning facts. It may be regarded as, if not a major department of Shakespearean criticism, at least as a very useful minor. vn. THE doubtfuIj plays and questions op DIVIDED AUTHORSHIP There are a number of plays, like the Two Noble Kinsmen and Pericles^ in which Shakespeare aided an- other writer or another writer aided him. The deter- mination of the respective parts is a matter of great delicacy, and is effected by consideration of style — largely by the percentages of eleven-syllable lines and run-on lines in the different portions. This very diffi- cult question is then decided by the extension of the methods already alluded to, but forms no part of our general subject. CHAPTER II CRITICISM OF SHAKESPEARE BY HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND UP TO THE RESTORATION Shakespeare came to London to live in the year 1585 or 1586. His three children were all born before the earlier date. There is no record that he revisited Strat- ford before 1596. He left London and returned to his native village as a permanent home about 1611. In the interval he had written thirty-one plays and helped in the composition or writing of five or six others, — had written two poems of considerable length and one hun- dred and fifty-six sonnets. He is first alluded to by the playwright, Robert Greene (who died in September, 1592) in rather an ill-natured way, in a pamphlet en- titled, ' A Groat's Worth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance,' which shows at least that he was at- tracting attention as a writer. That the tone of this reference was resented by some of his friends is proved by some apologetic words penned by Henry Chettle in December of the same year, in the preface to another pamphlet. Chettle says that he is sorry that he did not moderate the expressions in the original pamphlet^ which he edited, as he ' might easily have done,' because ' divers of worship,' i. e., several people of worth, have told him, what he had noticed himself, that the man in question was ' civil in his demeanor and excellent in the quality he professes.' That Shakespeare is the man alluded to as an ' upstart crow ' in the original pamphlet is evident from the fact that Greene says, ' he is, in his owne con- ceit, the only Shakescene in the countrie.' Greene was of course jealous of him as a young writer, but Chettle 24 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS alludes only to his ' excellence in his qualitie,' that is, acting. At this date, however, he had done nothing more than to help in rewriting three parts of Henry VI, which came out in March, 1592. Lovers Labour 's Lost, probably his first complete play, may have been written, but in the expression 'bumbast out a blank verse as well as the best of you ' Greene evidently refers to a historical play and not a graceful comedy, nor does it seem probable that the expression refers simply to act- ing. There is, however, in this reference to Shake- speare's early work no hint of literary criticism. We can gather from it, however, that Shakespeare had begun to write, and that his work was good enough to arouse the jealousy of older men. The next six years was a period of great activity and rapidly rising success, for in 1597 the young man, though but thirty-three, was able to buy a large house in Stratford. In 1598 Francis Meres brought out a little book entitled Palladis Tamia, in which is the famous reference to the dramatist-poet. The English tongue is mightily enriched and gorgeously invested in rare ornaments and resplendent abiliments by Sir Philip Sidney, Spenser, Daniel, Drayton, Warner, Shake- speare, Marlow, and Chapman. As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythag- oras, so the sweete, wittie soule of Ovid lives in mellifluous and hony-tongued Shakespeare ; witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his Sugred Sonnets among his private friends. As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy among the Latines, so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage ; for comedy, witness, his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love's Labour 's Lost, his Midsummer- Nig hfs Dream, and his Merchant of Venice ; for tragedy, his Eichard the Second, CRITICISM BY CONTEMPORARIES 25 Richard the Third, Henry the Fourth, King John, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo and Juliet. As Epius Stolo said the Muses would speak with Plautus' tongue, if they would speak Latin ; so I say that the Muses would speak with Shakespeare's fine filed phrase if they would speak English. We gather from the above, and from the seventeen other contemporary references to Shakespeare given in Halliwell's Outlines, that the popular reputation of the poet was as great in his lifetime as at any subsequent period, not only among playgoers but among lovers of poetry. Among scholars and among the literary people he was apparently not held in as high estimation as he has been since the seventeenth century. A popular reputation is usually ephemeral, but in the cases of Shakespeare and Bunyan it has proved lasting. A con- temporary reputation among writers and scholars is achieved by good work, but it must be good work in the conventional fashion. They are more shy of new methods than are those who read or look at a play for the sake of being touched or amused. In the seven- teenth century the Latin and Greek authors were recognized as models. The authority of the Latin lan- guage was very great. It had been the recognized me- dium for jurists and philosophers and publicists for a thousand years. Its acquirement was the centre of education. The study of Greek was introduced into English universities late in the sixteenth century, and the beauties of Greek literature made a great impres- sion on receptive minds, and it, too, soon was regarded as authoritative on points of literary art. Men are very apt to overestimate the value of what they painfully acquired in youth, much as persons to-day plume them- selves on their accurate spelling of English words. Phrases in a foreign language have a peculiar flavor of 26 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS depth and mystery. For this reason Matthew Arnold quotes in his criticism some Latin phrases as if of ultimate poetic perfection, and the men of Shakespeare's day used Latin quotations as if the words held pecul- iar virtue. As a rule, too, evil spirits paid little atten- tion to adjurations unless couched in sonorous Latin. The Latin and Greek authors were regarded as a race apart from and above English writers. The rules for correctness and excellence were to be drawn from their practice, and there has been a tendency down to the last decade of the nineteenth century to deduce even grammatical rules for English speech from their writings, sometimes from the most rhetorical of Latin authors. The rules which Aristotle deduced from an exami- nation of Greek Tragedies were therefore regarded as laws for English tragedy. Shakespeare rarely pays any attention to these rules. Consequently, for a long time, down to the nineteenth century, he was considered * irregular.' The attraction of his plays was admitted, indeed, it forced itself on men's attention every time a really competent actor personated one of his characters. The force, wit, and eloquence of detached passages could not be denied. This was attributed to inspiration, but his dramatic construction was considered all wronsf because he did not regard the ' unities.' We shall see hereafter how, in spite of English good sense, this view recurs in the criticism of the eighteenth century. The most important critical expressions of Shake- speare's contemporaries after his death are to be found in the eulogistic verses prefixed to the folio editions of the seventeenth century. The First Folio of 1623 Mr. Lee considers to have consisted of five hundred copies, judging from the number now existing. Even then doubtless many quarto pamphlets containing single CRITICISM BY CONTEMPORARIES 27 plays were in existence and could be procured by those desirous of reading the plays, and many of what are known as 'players' quartos,' published after the print- ing of the First Folio, in 1623. These last of course are of no authority in settling disputed points in the text, since they must be copies of earlier publications, and in printing them no particular attention was paid to correctness, certainly no effort was made for improve- ment. But the fact that only four editions for readers, amounting in all probably to not more than three thou- sand five hundred copies, were printed till the six- volume edition of Rowe, in 1709, shows that outside of the public representations few persons could have had an opportunity of knowing the plays. The fact, too, that twenty-four years (1685-1709) elapsed between the printing of the Fourth Folio and the first popular edition shows that Shakespeare as an author was not accessible to the general public. During the entire seventeenth century fewer copies were sold than the present yearly demand. This fact would go to show that, for a considerable period, love for Shakespeare was confined to readers of some special powers of poetic appreciation. At the same time the number of times the plays were represented after the Restoration, from 1660 to 1709, shows that his hold on audiences was interrupted but briefly, and then not by change in taste, but by outside circumstances. Samuel Pepys, whose diary runs from 1660 to 1669, was present at the representation of twelve plays of Shakespeare. He saw Hamlet four times and Tlie Tem- pest and Macbeth many times. As his diary was in shorthand and in no way addressed to the public, it is absolutely unbiased. Furthermore, as he was a man destitute of poetic insight, his criticisms are valuable as representing the views of the average playgoer, and 28 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS will be referred to hereafter. For the present we note that the acting qualities of the plays insured their con- tinuous public presentation, even when it was hard to buy the ' book of the play.' The literary critics were in time forced to recognize them, and after a century or so discovered their great literary qualities and began reluctantly to admit that the ' rules ' were not of abso- lute validity. The eulogistic verses in the folios must of course be interpreted as obituary notices, in which praise is awarded without much discrimination. Prefixed to edi- tions of the plays they do not refer to ' the back or second, that might hold if this should blast in proof,' — the claim to the title of poet based on the poems and sonnets. But Ben Jonson's verses have a hearty ring, and his conviction that Shakespeare was a great poet shines through the exaggerated language of post-mor- tem encomium. He says, — \^ Triumph, my Britain ! thou hast one to show To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe. Although the verses are so familiar, it is as well to transcribe them, as the first authoritative statement of Shakespeare's greatness. COMMENDATORY VERSES PREFIXED TO THE FOLIO OF 1623 To the memory of my beloved, the Author, Master WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, and what he hath lejl us. To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name, Am I thus ample to thy book and fame ; While I confess thy writings to be such As neither man nor Muse can praise too much : 'T is true, and all men's suffrage. But these ways Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise ; CRITICISM BY CONTEMPORARIES 29 For silliest ignorance on these may light, Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right ; Or blind affection, which doth ne'er advance The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance ; Or crafty malice might pretend this praise, And think to ruin where it seem'd to raise : These are as some infamous bawd or whore Should praise a matron : what could hurt her more ? But thou art proof against them ; and, indeed, Above th' ill fortune of them or the need. I, therefore, will begin : Soul of the age, Th' applause, delight, the wonder of our stage. My Shakespeare, rise ! I will not lodge thee by Chaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie A little further, to make thee a room : Thou art a monument without a tomb, And art alive still, while thy book doth live. And we have wits to read, and praise to give. That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses, — I mean, with great but disproportion'd Muses ; For, if I thought my judgment were of years, I should commit thee surely with thy peers, And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine. Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line : And, though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek, From thence to honour thee I would not seek For names ; but call forth thundering ^schylus, Euripides, and Sophocles to us, Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova, dead, To life again, to hear thy buskin tread And shake a stage ; or, when thy socks were on, Leave thee alone for the comparison Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come. — Triumph, my Britain ! thou hast one to show, To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe. He was not of an age, but for all time ; And all the Muses still were in their prime. 30 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm. Nature herself was proud of his designs, And joy'd to wear the dressing of his lines ; Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit, As since she will vouchsafe no other wit : The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes, Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please ; But antiquated and deserted lie, As they were not of Nature's family. — Yet must I not give Nature all ; thy art, My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part : For, though the poet's matter Nature be, His art doth give the fashion ; and that he Who casts to write a living line must sweat, — Such as thine are, — and strike the second heat Upon the Muses' anvil ; turn the same, And himself with it, that he thinks to frame ; Or, for the laurel, he may gain a scorn, — For a good poet 's made, as well as born : And such wert thou. — Look how the father's face Lives in his issue ; even so the race Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines In his well-turned and true-filed lines ; In each of which he seems to shake a lance, As brandish'd at the eyes of ignorance. — Sweet Swan of Avon, what a sight it were To see thee in our waters yet appear. And make those flights upon the banks of Thames That so did take Eliza and our James ! But stay ; I see thee in the hemisphere Advanced, and made a constellation there : Shine forth, thou star of poets, and with rage Or influence chide or cheer the drooping stage ; Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourn'd like night. And despairs day, but for thy volume's light. Ben Jonsox. CRITICISM BY CONTEMPORARIES 31 The testimony to the author's literary craftmanship is explicit when he writes : — His lines Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit, As since she [Nature] will vouchsafe no other wit. He gives him credit for natural powers and technical skill both : — Yet must I not give Nature all ; thy art, My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part. He speaks of his 'well-turned and true-filed lines' which is not altogether a just characterization of Shake- speare's later work, — Cymheline^ for example, — where the emotion and idea seem almost too much for the line, and strain the words as if to tear them apart, occasionally striking out a great phrase where music and idea meet in a harmony far beyond the grace of ' weU-filed lines.' But the poem is a noble tribute to friend, dramatist, and poet. Leonard Digges, a university man, contributed twenty- two lines to the first folio, claiming immortality for the plays. He speaks of his ' wit-fraught book,' — wit, signifying thought. Both in these verses and in a longer poem introducing an edition of the poems (1640) he speaks of the acting quality of the plays, which were so much more acceptable than the Fox or Alchemist of Ben Jonson. In the first one he says : — Impossible with some new strain to outdo Passions of Juliet and her Romeo, Or till I hear a scene more nobly take Than when thy half-sword-parleying Romans spake. * Half-sword-parleying Romans ' applies admirably to the dialogue between Brutus and Cassius. In the preface to the 1640 edition of the poems, the 32 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS writer says of them : ' You shall find them severe, clear, and elegantly plaine, such gentle straines as shall re- create and not perplex your braine, no intricate or cloudy stuffe to puzzle intellect, but perfect eloquence.' As the sonnets, many of which are the most suggestive and profound poetry in the world, make up the major part of the volume and certainly ' perplex the braine ' of the reader as to how far they are based on real exper- ience, — a question never to be settled, — our trust in seventeenth-century prefaces is considerably shaken by this offhand utterance. It would be interesting to know how he gathers a * severe, clear, and elegantly plaine ' meaning out of Sonnets 121 and 125. John Milton's first public appearance in print was made by sixteen verses in the Second Folio, 1632, he being then in his twenty-seventh year. It contains the well-known line : — Dear Son of memory, great heir of fame, but he, too, speaks of Shakespeare's ' easy numbers which flow to the shame of slow, endeavoring art,' as if he were more struck with the natural grace of Shake- speare's verse than with the power and justness of his thought. But he speaks, too, of ' the unvalued book ' and the * Delphic lines.' A year or two later, in U Allegro^ he writes : — If Sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, Warble his native wood-notes wild, and makes Ben Jonson the exemplar of English tragedy. It would seem from this that he did not appreciate the epic grandeur of Macbeth or the tragic pathos of Desde- mona and Cordelia. But the reference need not be taken too seriously. He needed to refer to a dignified, stately play and to a charming pastoral comedy ; possibly he CRITICISM BY CONTEMPORARIES 33 had Midsummer Nighfs Dream in mind, and naturally- thought of Jonson and Shakespeare. But undoubtedly, like most of his learned contemporaries, he failed en- tirely to appreciate the nature and quality of Shake- speare's genius. For in II Penseroso he says of serious plays : — And what, though rare, of later age, Ennobled hath the buskined stage. Lear and Macbeth evidently had not made much im- pression on him, or he would not have passed by English tragedy with such slighting mention. In this Second Folio (1632), however, appeared a copy of verses signed I. M. S., initials which Mr. Singer sup- poses to stand for the last name of Richard James. These, too, must be transcribed in full, not only as an admirable specimen of overflow deca-syllabics, but as the first acknowledgment of one of the chiefest of Shakespeare's powers, his ability to make a character real: — A mind reflecting ages past, whose clear And equal surface can make things appear, — Distant a thousand years, — and represent Them in their lively colours, just extent : To outrun hasty Time, retrieve the Fates, Roll back the heavens, blow ope the iron gates Of Death and Lethe, where confused lie Great heaps of ruinous mortality : In that deep, dusky dungeon to discern A royal ghost from churls ; by art to learn The physiognomy of shades, and give Them sudden birth, wondering how oft they live ; What story coldly tells, what poets feign At second hand, and picture without brain, — Senseless and soulless shows, — to give a stage — Ample and true with life, — voice, action, age. 34 SHAKESPEAEE AND HIS CRITICS As Plato's year, and new scene of the world, Them unto us, or us to them had hurl'd : To raise our ancient sovereigns from their hearse, Made kings his subjects ; by exchanging verse Enlive their pale trunks, that the present age Joys in their joy, and trembles at their rage ; Yet so to temper passion, that our ears Take pleasure in their pain, and eyes in tears Both weep and smile ; fearful at plots so sad, Then laughing at our fear ; abused, and glad To be abused ; affected with that truth Which we perceive is false, pleased in that ruth At which we start, and by elaborate play Tortured and tickled ; by a crab-like way Time past made pastime, and in ugly sort Disgorging up his ravin for our sport : — While the plebeian imp, from lofty throne, Creates and rules a world, and works upon Mankind by secret engines ; now to move A chilling pity, then a rigorous love ; To strike up and stroke down both joy and ire ; To stir th' affections ; and by heavenly fire Mould us anew, stol'n from ourselves : — This, and much more which cannot be express'd But by himself, his tongue, and his own breast. Was Shakespeare's freehold; which his cunning brain Improved by favour of the nine-fold train ; The buskin'd Muse, the comic queen, the grand And louder tone of Clio, nimble hand And nimbler foot of the melodious pair, The silver-voiced lady, the most fair Calliope, whose speaking silence daunts, And she whose praise the heavenly body chants 5 These jointly woo'd him, envying one another, — Obey'd by all as spouse, but loved as brother, — And wrought a curious robe, of sable grave. Fresh green, and pleasant yellow, red most brave, CRITICISM BY CONTEMPORARIES 35 And constant blue, rich purple, guiltless white, The lowest russet, and the scarlet bright ; Branch'd and embroider'd like the painted Spring; Each leaf match'd with a flower, and each string Of golden wire, each line of silk ; there run Italian works, whose thread the sisters spun ; And there did sing, or seem to sing, the choice Birds of a foreign note and various voice ; Here hangs a mossy rock ; there plays a fair But chiding fountain, purled ; not the air, Nor clouds nor thunder, but were living drawn, — Not out of common tiffany or lawn, But fine materials, which the Muses know, And only know the countries where they grow. Now, when they could no longer him enjoy In mortal garments pent, — ' Death may destroy,' They say, ' his body ; but his verse shall live. And more than Nature takes our hands shall give ; In a less volume, but more strongly bound, Shakespeare shall breathe and speak; with laurel crown 'd Which never fades ; fed with ambrosian meat.' So with this robe they clothe him, bid him wear it ; For time shall never stain nor envy tear it. The writer apparently is thinking of Henry IV, Richard III, and the other Shakespearean kings ; possi- bly, too, of the Roman plays. He says it was ' Shake- speare's freehold to give shades' sudden birth — a stage ample and true with life, voice, action, age,' as if they had come back to play their parts in the revolution of Plato's year ; that the artist, standing outside his work, ' creates and rules a world.' It is a ' world,' not a nebu- lous chaos, in which his figures move, an ordered world where law reigns and men act from motives and char- acter, because its creator rules it. The characters live, and move 36 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS A chilling pity, then a rigorous love . .". The present age Joys in their joy, and trembles at their rage. Is he thinking of Othello ? At all events, he touches the point with a needle. Shakespeare's characters have the attributes of living men and women. And I. M. S. enunciates for the first time — to be forgotten for a cen- tury and rediscovered by Coleridge — the main princi- ple of Shakespearean criticism. He calls the author a ' plebeian imp,' ^ but at least he puts him on a ' lofty throne,' and we must take it that the playwright is 'plebeian ' compared to the royal ghosts he marshals, for compared to the living princes, James I and his sons, he is an aristocrat. But it is hard to forgive I. M. S. for the adjective. Perhaps he could not hit on any other epithet to fill out his line. His assertion that Shake- speare ' by heavenly fire moulds us anew, stolen from ourselves,' is almost as true of the effect of a tragedy as Aristotle's phrase, 'purge our affections through pity and terror.' I. M. S. not only loved Shakespeare's plays, but he could give some reason for the faith that was in him, and his words are true dramatic criticism. In the Centurie of Prayse^ published by the New Shakespearean Society, are collected all the casual refer- ences to the dramatist in the hundred years following his death. They are almost universally commendatory, but none of them show appreciation of the true great- ness of the author. The adjectives : ' honey-ton gued,' * sweet,' * mellifluous,' 'honey-flowing,' 'gentle,' 'silver- tongued,' ' enchanting quill,' ' sugred dainties,' and the like, show that the writers as a rule had not got much 1 There is nothing derogatory in the term * imp,' which did not mean at that time a puny devil of low social standing. There were then /imps of light ' as well as 'imps of darkness.' But 'ple- beian ' provokes at least the counter-check quarrelsome. CRITICISM BY CONTEMPORARIES 37 beyond the most superficial view of the plays, and did not feel much more than the harmony of certain pas- sages. It is not till 1640 that a more broad-minded critic calls him ' lofty,' and till 1653 that another calls him * most rich in humors.' The numerous passages, about seventy-five, from writings before Shakespeare's death, in which some of his characters or situations are plainly alluded to, or some striking lines parodied, show distinctly that the writers assumed that readers were familiar with the plays. Shakespeare's position in the latter part of his life seems to have been not unlike that of Dickens in 1860, when everybody referred to his characters as common acquaintances and the literary and learned world had not begun to discuss the question whether he was an artist or not. Among the characters, Richard III, Falstaff, and Justice Shallow are the most frequently mentioned. In fact, they quoted Shakespeare just as we now quote Kipling, familiarly, arid with no thought of the critics. Beaumont and Fletcher, in their amusing burlesque, The Knight of the Burning Pestle^ quote Hotspur's words in Henry /F, Part 1, as follows : — By Heaven, methinks it were an easy leap, To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon, Or dive into the bottom of the sea, And pluck up drowned honour from the lake of hell. The original runs : — By Heaven, methinks it were an easy leap, To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon, Or dive into the bottom of the deep, Where fathom line could never touch the ground, And pluck up drowned honour by the locks. The quotation is evidently made from memory, and with full confidence that it would be at once recognized 38 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS by the audience. Such offhand reference is the highest tribute to the popularity of the original. In a play, Return from Parnassus, 1601, written by a student for the Christmas festivities at Cambridge, the actors Kempe and Burbage appear as dramatis personce, Kempe says : — * Few of the Universities pen plays well, they smell too much of Ovid and that writer Metamorphosis and talk too much of Proserpina and Jupiter. Why, here 's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all downe, — ay, and Ben Jonson too.' This, too, goes to establish the fact that the plays were popular, of which, indeed, there was never any question ; or if any, it was answered at once when the plays were put on the stage, and ' all was so pestered you scarce shall have a roome,' when Ben Jonson's Fox or Alchemist scarcely paid for heating the hall. Oh, how the audience Were ravished ; with what wonder went they thence, When some new day they would not brook a line Of tedious (though well-labored) Cataline ; Sejanus, too, was irksome ; they prized more Honest lago or the jealous Moore. And though the Fox and Subtile Alchemist, Long intermitted, could not quite be mist, Yet these sometimes even at a friend's desire Acted, have scarce defraid the seacoale fire And dore-keepers : when, let but Falstaffe come, Hall, Poines, the rest, — You scarce shall have a rooms All is so pestered. (Leonard Digges, in Shakespeare's 'Poems,' printed 1640.) One of the charges brought against Shakespeare by the academic critics of succeeding generations was lack of taste in bringing comic scenes in juxtaposition to CRITICISM BY CONTEMPORARIES 39 trasric scenes. We find no mention of this till after the Restoration. One very absurd person of the earlier period, named William Cartwright, charges him with coarseness and vulgarity. We are quite willing to ad- mit that/ Shakespeare's unrefined people do use very unrefined language, and that sometimes, especially in his earlier plays, his gentlemen make allusive remarks of an unpleasant character, though the tone of the plays is sound and the view of life they present true and pure. The versifier in question destroys any weight that his words might have by asserting that Fletcher was blame- less in a quality where Shakespeare was reprehensible. His verses run, or rather limp, as follows : — Shakespeare to- thee was dull, whose best jest lies In the Ladies' questions and the Foole's replies ; Old fashioned wit which walked from town to town In turned hose which our fathers called the clown. Whose wit our nice times would obsceanness call ; And which made bawdry pass for comical, Nature was thy art, thy veine was free As his, but without his scurrillity. At such stuff we glance and pass. The beginning of another question which agitated the critical world pro- foundly may be discerned in these notices before the Restoration, and that is, were Shakespeare's plays out- side of the category of great art because he did not observe the unities, and did not form himself on classi- cal models ? Just after Shakespeare's death, and before the publication of the First Folio, Ben Jonson visited Drummond of Hawthornden, near Edinburgh. His host took some notes of the conversation, and reports Jonson as saying of Shakespeare that 'he wanted art.' As Pro- fessor Lounsbury says, Jonson must have referred to Shakespeare's disregard of the unities, for he must have been fully sensible of Shakespeare's mastery of the art 40 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS of versifying, to which indeed he bears emphatic testi- mony in his prefatory verses. Shirley, one of the later dramatists, speaks of Wise Jonson at whose name art did bow. The writer of the preface to the poems — 1640 — says that Shakespeare was The patterne of all wit, Art without art unparalleled as yet. Milton said (1630): — While to the shame of slow-endeavoring art Thy easy numbers flow — and his lines — Sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, Warble his native wood-notes wild, carry much the same idea, — that the poet was a natural genius, a sort of lusus naturce writing fine poetry with- out knowing what he was doing. This notion, which does violence to the true conception of the artist, keeps cropping up continually during the next century. A passage in the life of Shakespeare, in one of the early editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, by De Quincey, has contributed to establish the idea that Mil- ton rather looked down on Shakespeare as an unschol- arly person, and reproached Charles I in (^Eikonoklastes) for making his plays his ' closet companion.' Milton's language does not justify such an impression. He says that a ' tyrant may use pious and gentle language,' and by inference that the prayers and religious musings attributed to the king are no proof that he was not a tyrant. To prove this he will cite, he says, ' not an abstruse author, wherein the king might be less con- versant, but one whom we know was the closet compan- ion of his solitude, William Shakespeare, who intro- CRITICISM BY CONTEMPORARIES 41 duces the person of Richard III, speaking in as high a strain of piety and mortification as is uttered in any passage of this book' {Eikon BasUihe). Milton does not reproach the king with reading Shakespeare, but im- plies that he may be no more really pious than Richard III. This is no proof that Milton admired Shakespeare, ) but merely shows that he was more or less familiar with the play of Richard III, which had not been acted for many years. The following may bear distantly on the question, did Milton appreciate Shakespeare? Edward Phillips (1630-1676), the nephew whom Milton educated and with whom he was on terms of affectionate intimacy, published the Theatrum Poetarum the year after his uncle's death (1675). In it he gives short notes on the Elizabethan dramatists: ' Christopher Marlowe,' he says^ ' was a kind of second Shakespeare, because like him he rose from an actor to be a maker of plays, though infer- ior both in fame and merit, and because in his begun poem of Hero and Leander he seems to have a resem- blance to that clean and unsophisticated wit which is natural to that incomparable poet.' He holds Shakespeare far superior to the rest. William Shakespeare, the glory of the English stage ; whose nativity at Stratford upon Avon is the highest honour that town can boast of ; from an actor of tragedies and comedies, he became a maker ; and such a maker that though some others may pretend to a more exact decorum and economy, especially in tragedy, never any expressed a more lofty and tragic height, never any represented nature more freely to the life ; and when the polishments of art are most wanting he pleaseth with a certain wild and native elegance, and in all his writings hath an unvulgar style, as well in his Venus and Adonis, his Rape of Lucrece, and other various poems as in his dramatics. 42 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS The writer sets Shakespeare above all his contem- porary playwrights. In his preface he says that — Wit, ingenuity, and learning in verse, even elegancy itself, though it comes nearest, are one thing ; true, native poetry is another, — nay, though all the laws of heroic poem, all the laws of tragedy, were exactly observed, yet still this tour entregent — this poetic energy, if I may so call it, would be required to give life to all the rest. . . . Shakespeare, in spite of all his unfiled expressions, his rambling and undigested fancies, the laughter of the critical, yet must be confessed a poet above many that go beyond him in literature many degrees. We have no warrant in saying that Mr. Phillips was reflecting the judgment of his honored uncle, but it is a conjecture as plausible as many we find in critical writings. The last quotation especially is just about what we may suppose Milton would have said when he had finished Samson Agonistes in exact accordance with ' the laws of tragedy.' The absence of any reasoned criticism of the plays during the first half of the seventeenth century is less remarkable than the fact that so many writers ignore Shakespeare's existence entirely. We should hardly expect Bishop Hooker or Francis Bacon to show by quotation that they were familiar with works a line or two from which would have illustrated the finer dis- tinctions of their subjects and have cast a deathless light on their pages, or to discover that, in their homely English tongue, plays, written by an uneducated actor, were being presented which were in the same category as the Agamemnon or the Prometheus. One was too professional, and the other too aristocratic. But it does seem remarkable that Walter Raleigh, a poet and a man of the active world, sympathizing, too, with all popular interests, should show no trace of familiarity CRITICISM BY CONTEMPORARIES 43 with the words or story of plays he undoubtedly wit- nessed many times. Daniel and Warner, the heavy poets of the day, do not allude to their great contem- porary, though it is stated that Shakespeare was inti- mate with Drayton. A remarkable example of this neglect is afforded by the poet, preacher, scholar. Dr. John Donne. He was born in 1573 and died in 1631, and consequently was at the height of his impression- able and enthusiastic youth when Shakespeare's most brilliant comedies and greatest tragedies were first acted or published. He was a friend and admirer of Ben Jonson, a fine scholar and a verse-writer of some remarkable qualities. He took orders in 1614, and be- came a very eloquent and forcible preacher. He is pre- cisely the man we should expect to be an enthusiastic admirer of the plays, — were he living now he would be a Shakespearean critic of the first order, — and yet in his voluminous correspondence, much of which is on literary topics, he never mentions the name of the first dramatist of his day. It is evident that Shakespeare's position in the literary world was entirely different from what it is now, and that, owing perhaps to the fact that he was not a university man or to the fact that he was an actor, he was never received in the literary world the first half of the seventeenth century on a footing commensurate with his real value. He was, as said be- fore, recognized as a writer of very popular, amusing, and effective plays. How great an achievement this is was perhaps not understood, at all events he was usually spoken of as ' honey-tongued,' * mellifluous,' * sweet,' and the like epithets which, though true in a sense, are so inadequate as to be exasperating. Here and there he found more intelligent admirers, but his excellence was so different from that of the classic authors that a cen- tury or two was necessary before men could adjust their 44 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS ideas to a new literary phenomenon. The attitude of the professional contemporary world was only the usual attitude of professional literature towards the new, — conservatism compounded with non-comprehending in- difference. Wordsworth, Keats, and Shelley were re- ceived with even more slighting indifference by the literary world in what was called a more enlightened age. CHAPTER III FROM THE RESTORATION TO 1710 Although the object of this book is to follow the de- velopment of the criticism of Shakespeare as a literary- artist, the criticism of him as a dramatist is so closely bound up with purely aesthetic appreciation that the two cannot be separated. He was primarily a writer of plays for public presentation, though it would make very little difference in the estimation in which he is held at present if none of his plays were shown on the stage. But in the latter part of the seventeenth century printed copies were comparatively rare, and the favor of the public was given to the plays because they were seen, not because they were read. It was natural that they should be judged by critics by technical rules drawn from the practice of the ancients rather than by their own essential qualities. These rules were: first, a properly constructed drama should observe the three unities ; second, a properly constructed tragedy should be elevated in tone and language, and the hero should pose as a person of social importance and never be shown in an undignified or ludicrous position ; third, a tragedy should be pure, that is, comic scenes should never be shown in the same play with tragic ones ; fourth, scenes of bloodshed and brutal violence should never be exhibited on the stage. It is evident that Shakespeare violated these rules whenever they were violated in the fable he was dramatizing. In conse- quence he was accused of lacking in literary art, even by men who admitted that his plays possessed the charm which it is the privilege of literary art alone to exert. 46 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS The first rule, that the unities must be observed, is based on the authority of Aristotle. It is not to be wondered at that Aristotle was regarded with almost superstitious reverence in the seventeenth century. Those who read his Poetics were introduced for the first time to literary criticism of the highest order. The lofty view he takes of the drama as a noble and serious form of art could not fail to make a profound impres- sion on his readers. When they read the Greek plays on which his criticism is founded they could not be insensible to their heroic dignity. His traditional repu- tation was reinforced by his evident merit. Naturally, his works became a literary bible of unquestioned authority, and his words were taken as applicable to tragedy in the abstract, not merely to tragedy as de- veloped in Greece two thousand years ago. Indeed, there is so much that is universally true in his criticism that it was natural to take what he says as applicable to all dramatic construction. Speaking of the distinction between Epic narration and Tragedy he says, ' They differ in that Epic poetry admits but one kind of metre and is narrative in form. They differ again in the length of the action, for Tra- gedy endeavors as far as possible to confine itself to a single revolution of the sun or but slightly to exceed this limit.' On this sentence is founded the rule of ' Unity of time.' Corneille, writing in 1656, Discours de Vutilite et des parties du Poeme Dramatique^ says : — These words have given ground to the famous discussion whether they should be understood as referring to a solar day of twenty-four hours or to the artificial day of twelve ; there are many partizans of each opinion. For my part I find so many plots difficult to complete in so short a period, that, not only should I give them twenty-four whole hours, but I FROM THE RESTORATION TO 1710 47 should avail myself of the permission of the philosopher to take a few more and extend the plot without scruple even to thirty. There is a maxim of law that indulgence may be in- creased and restrictions lessened, and I notice that an author is frequently hampered by this rule, which forced some of the ancients to take impossibilities for granted. Euripides in the Suppliants makes Theseus leave Athens with his army, fight a battle before the walls of Thebes, some twelve or fif- teen leagues distant, and return a victor in the next act. During the interval between his departure and the arrival of the messenger with news of the victory, ^thra and the cho- rus declaim thirty-six verses. Certainly he employed the time well. Again, ^schylus makes Agamemnon return from Troy still more rapidly. He had arranged with his wife, Clytem- nestra, that as soon as the city was captured he would let her know by beacon-fires on the mountain tops, of which the sec- ond should be lighted as soon as the flare of the first was seen and so on from mountain to mountain, so that she should learn the news before morning. But as soon as she has learned by the last bonfire that Troy has fallen, Agamemnon appears. His ship, though battered by a tempest, came as quickly as the light could travel from one bonfire to an- other. Many critics have argued against this rule and called it arbitrary, and they would be right were it not based on the authority of Aristotle. But they ought to bow to it for a very natural reason. A dramatique poem is an imitation, or rather a picture, of human action, and certainly portraits are the better the more closely they resemble their originals. The representation lasts two hours, and would exactly represent the action if that also covered not more than two hours. We should then not limit ourselves to an action of not more than twenty-four hours or not more than twelve in duration, but to one as short as possible that it may be an exact picture. The language of the great French tragedian shows 48 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS the almost superstitious regard paid to th6 Greek critic in France. Englishmen were by nature more independ- ent of authority, and disposed to defend their national playwright, whose dramas they witnessed with never- failing pleasure, but the scholarly critics among them were apt to think that the ancients had set models of excellence which it was almost impious to decry. A modification of the rule which seems more reasonable was that the time, even if over twenty-four hours, should be all accounted for; there should be no gaps in which the hero, like Hamlet, was brooding in quiescence, or a cause was slowly gathering strength before its effect appeared in a deed, or a character was developing or deteriorating, like Macbeth's. But it is evident that, however the rule be modified or interpreted, Shake- speare paid no attention to it. The time supposed to elapse from the first to the last scene in his tragedies is long enough for the action to develop, whether a week or three months is necessary. From the rule for few hours, or consecutive hours, whichever be taken, the rule for unity of place was de- duced. If the scenes represented are in distant coun- tries, and some of the actors, as is evidently necessary, appear in both places, a longer time than one day would be required to transport them from place to place. This requires that the scene be restricted to a city and the neighboring country, or to a palace and the adja- cent garden. Shakespeare rarely observes this rule, even in his comedies, but transports Rosalind and her cousin and Touchstone to the forest of Arden, a jour- ney at least long enough to weary them. Lear is car- ried from Leicester to Dover, Othello and Desdemona sail from Venice to Cyprus, between two acts. In none of these can it be said that the violation of the unities of time and place detracts in the least from the interest FROM THE RESTORATION TO 1710 49 or the artistic propriety of the drama. ^ Nevertheless, it was made the ground of adverse criticism of the plays during the eighteenth century, and only feebly defended by men like Samuel Johnson and Pope on the ground that Shakespeare was ignorant of the rules and must therefore be excused. None went so far as to inquire what a tragic story proper for representation really is, or to note that only when, as in Greece, the audience was thoroughly familiar with the story and the characters, the representation of the catastropbe, taking place as it does on the long-expected day, may be sufficient material for a play. But great tragic situ- ations are results from slow-gathering causes, and if the audience are not familiar with the antecedents it is necessary to make them so, and this can be effectu- ally done only by representation. If narration is used, except very sparingly, the interest drops, for the essence of a drama is action. Therefore, the representation must assume time enough for the story to develop. The Greek tragedy is exceptional and can furnish no gen- eral rule, because the audience knew all about the Atridae and the princes of Thebes beforehand, and needed only a few poetical allusions to lead up to the catastrophe. Again the lyric element as represented by the chorus is as important as the dialogue. It is there- fore impossible to apply the rules of the classic drama to the English drama, except in the most general way. But it was necessary that a century or so should elapse before critics would admit this common-sense conclu- sion. The third rule, the unity of action, is of a different 1 The unities of time and place apply to a tragedy, since it is tragedy that Aristotle is discussing. In a comedy when the plot is an intrigue the time is usually short enough to satisfy the most exacting advocate of the rules. 50 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS character and does not apply to mechanical form, but to the construction of the plot or story. This is, of course, a matter of infinitely more consequence, and involves artistic considerations. A building need not be restricted to a particular height or length, but its parts must harmonize and effect a unified impression. The words of Aristotle on this subject are : — Now, according to our definition, Tragedy is an imitation ^ of an action that is complete and whole and of a certain mag- nitude ; for there may be a whole that is wanting in magni- tude. A whole is that which has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A beginning is that which does not itself follow any- thing by causal necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be. An end, on the contrary, is that which itself naturally follows some other thing, either by necessity or as a rule, but has nothing following it. A middle is that which follows something as some other thing follows it. A well-constructed plot must therefore neither begin nor end at haphazard, but must conform to these principles. That is as true as it is elemental. The action of a tragedy is a series of concatenated events leading up to a catastrophe. Those events are linked together, partly by chance, but for the most part they are caused in the Shakespearean tragedy by the characters. The original situation, or the beginning, is not caused by any of these linked events, and, after the catastrophe, the series of events is terminated for the purposes of the poet, though the end or catastrophe may be the cause of a new series of events with which the spectators have nothing to do. Lear and his daughters are dead ; no more harm or blessing can come from them, and that Kent,^ and ^ The word translated imitation seems to mean concrete, artistic embodiment, and is applied to painting, tragedy, and epic poetry. It evidently does not carry the idea of photographic realism. '' It is not certain that. Kent can endure to survive his loved master. FROM THE RESTORATION TO 1710 61 Edgar, and Albany will restore the civil and moral order is no part of the tragedy of Lear, Every work of art must make a unified impression, — a powerful impression if the work be great art ; and in a tragedy the character-group must be a unit and , the myth or story a unit, for a play cannot be made up of alternate acts of Macbeth and Hamlet^ to take an extreme example. Shakespeare always attains unity in the true sense, except perhaps in Troilus and Cressida^ when the death of Hector is not dramatically connected with the perfidy of Cressida. This rule of unity of plot was taken to forbid the introduction of sub-plots or episodes, as in the Merchant of Venice and Lear. Aristotle says : *0f all plots and actions the episodes are the worst. I call a plot episodic, in which the episodes or acts suc- ceed one another without probable or necessary se- quence.' A plot in which the characters are divided into two groups, and there is a culmination of the action in each group, though the individuals of each group freely mix and influence the acts of the other, as Shylock binds the casket story to the story of the Merchant of Venice, would not be one in which 'the episodes or acts succeed one another without probable or necessary sequence.' No play constructed with skillfully interwoven plots, in which the interest in the secondary story was care- fully subordinated to the main story, existed in Greece. But the critics did not notice that much of what Aris- totle said is applicable to Greek plays alone, though the rest is applicable to all dramatic art. In the twelfth section he enumerates the separate parts into which Tragedy is divided, namely : ' Prologue, Epi- sode, Exodus, Choric Song ; this last being divided into Parodos and Stasimon. These are common to all plays, peculiar to some are the songs of the actors from the stage and the Commos.* 62 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS He says : — The Prologue is that entire part of a tragedy which pre- cedes the Parodos of the Chorus. The episode is that part of a tragedy which has no choric song after it. Of the Choric part, the Parodos is the first undivided utterance of the Chorus. The Stasimon is a choric ode without anapests or trochees ; the Commos is a joint lamentation of Chorus and actors. The mention of the Chorus as on an equality with the actors might have warned the critics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that the Greek philosopher was commenting on a different art-form from the tra- gedies they were in the habit of witnessing. But few of them insisted on this. If he was talking about a differ- ent tragedy, that at least was the true and real tragedy, and, so far as men varied from the norm, so far they were wrong. There were so many maxims in his treat- ise of universal validity that all must be true. The Greek said also, ' Whether Tragedy has as yet per- fected its proper types or not, and whether it is to be judged in itself abstractly or in relation also to the audience, — this raises another question.' This also they overlooked, for the idea that a professional play- wright of their grandfather's day had perfected an- other ' proper type ' would have seemed as preposterous as the assurance that somebody had written a new Bible. They had not yet learned from Mr. Kipling that — There are three and thirty ways Of constructing tribal lays, And-every-one-of-them-is-right. Shakespeare must have heard the rules discussed ; for he was a playwright in the active practice of his profession, and intimate with Ben Jonson and others of FROM THE RESTORATION TO 1710 53 the classical school who regarded Seneca as an authority on construction. A comedy can more easily be made to conform to the rules than a tragedy, for the action is largely determined by whim or chance, rather than by fate or passion. The writer can make things happen as rapidly as he likes, for they are arbitrary happenings not dependent on slow incubation in the human will. In a comedy men and women are willful, but they are puppets in the hands of their designer ; in a tragedy they are motive-driven, and assume mastery over their creator. Lovers Labour 's Lost is a comedy, but it observes the unity of time and place well enough. The place is either a ' park with a palace in it,' or ' another part of the same,' with ' a Pavilion and tents at a dis- tance.' The scenes succeed one another with no sug- gestion of an interval, and may readily be supposed to have occupied the hours of one long day. The pageant of the nine worthies is presented in the * posterior of the day.' After it is over the young King of Navarre says to the Princess of France : — Now at this latest minute of the hour, Grant us your loves. To which she replies very properly : — A time, methinks, too short To make a world-without-end bargain in. This is a comedy. There is no reason to wait for the slow growth of a purpose in a weakened will or the gathering together of causes before they can effect the final catastrophe. The motive force is whim ; the counterforce, the natural attraction between young people. The story has little to do with the ongoing of time. One of the last plays of Shakespeare, Tlie Tempest^ also observes the unity of time and place, but this is so distinctly a work of the imagination that it 54 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS is independent of time and place. A magician is man- aging the action, and if we admit that he can wreck a ship and save the passengers and put the crew to sleep and repair the vessel and hang music in the air in the course of a few hours, why not allow that a sincere love can bud and blossom in the hearts of Ferdinand and Miranda as rapidly as the other marvels? But in the Winter s Tale, written about the same time, Shake- speare disregards the unities entirely, closes the stage in Sicily at the end of the third act, and opens the fourth act, with ' Time * as Chorus, in Bohemia fourteen years later. This is a romance, for which hard-and-fast rules would be an unsupportable tyranny. But in Shakespeare's serious tragedies — his historical plays do not enter into the question — time plays an important part. After Ham- let receives the message from his father's spirit, lie spends two months in inaction, brooding over his shame. After the banquet scene, Macduff journeys to London and back to Dunsinane. The time required for this and in consulting with Siward and Malcolm could not have been less than three months. In fact, whenever time is required for the maturing of a plan or the consolidating of motives into an act, time is taken without any regard to the artificial unities of time and place. But event follows event, and all move logically to a predetermined end. Unity of action in the true sense is always ob- served. Every scene has its place in the main develop- ment. But the disregard of time and place constitute one of the counts of the indictment of Shakespeare by critics of the classical school. It is difficult for us to understand how such trivial and formal objections could be made by intelligent persons. The second objection urged against the plays by the critics of the same order was bringing comic scenes into tragedies. Aristotle carries the idea that a comedy FROM THE RESTORATION TO 1710 65 is a comedy, and a tragedy a tragedy, and that it is bad art to combine the kinds, though he nowhere directly says so. A playwright in his time was either a tra- gedian or a comedian — never both. The object of a tragedy, he says, is 'to purify the mind of the onlooker by sympathy and alarmed excitement.' It must not 'present the spectacle of a virtuous man brought from prosperity to adversity,' but that of a 'man who is not eminently good and just yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty.' The first would strike us as unjust, and would arouse anger rather than sympathy. There is no hint that the effect may or may not be heightened by the contrast of tragic scenes with comic scenes, but tragedy, he says, is 'something serious and dignified,' hence it was assumed by the eighteenth-century critics that to combine or contrast the two was bad art. Again, the hero in the tragedy must not only be a good man, but he must be a man of social importance. Aristotle says, 'Tragedies are founded on the story of a few houses — on the fortunes of Alcmaeon, CEdipus, Orestes, Meleager, Thyestes, Telepheus, and those others who have done or suffered something terrible.' 'Tra- gedy is an imitation [artistic presentation] of persons who are above the common level.' The bearing and language of these persons is always heroic and dig- nified. They are contending against fate ; in the back- ground looms the family curse. Shakespeare was greatly censured, even by those who could not deny the attrac- tion of his plays, for making his kings sometimes act and talk like ordinary people. They thought that this was not only bad art, it was striking at the sacred foundation of society, — respect for rulers. To repre- sent Claudius as indulging in a drunken revel, or Henry V as talking familiarly with his soldiers, even 56 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS when disguised, was held to be a shocking impropriety. Kings, our ancestors thought, were always on dress- parade ; at least they should always be shown so on the stage, otherwise their awful majesty would be less- ened. These three views were held quite generally in the eighteenth century, and the statement of them is necessary to explain the tone of Shakespearean criti- cism when it began to take definite form. Much of this slavish respect for the rules and for dignity of character and treatment was due to the French, and Englishmen were always found to resent it. The French had developed their own tragedy largely on the pattern of Seneca, whose pompous and tiresome plays had the seal of classicism. The hero and heroine make long harangues called ' tirades.' They are usually characters from Grecian or Roman history. The dia- logue is dignified and correct, and is in rhyme. Some of the French heroic tragedies are exceedingly beau- tiful, but not beautiful in a way we should call dra- matic. They usually observe the unities carefully. We cannot well say that the Cid is more or less beautiful than Hamlet^ they are so entirely different in art con- ception. One is Gothic, the other Latin. They are ex- pressions of different races. But to a certain school of eighteenth-century critics the French tragedy was what a tragedy ought to be, and the English tragedy was ' irregular.' The perennial attraction of the Shake- spearean plays was accounted for on the hypothesis that they contained some fine passages, — that the author was a crazy creature but inspirisd. There is an element of real beauty in the French neo-classic drama which appealed strongly to the eighteenth-cen- tury mind, even in England. There is dignity, for- mality, scholarship, and regularity. The general con- ception of life and of dramatic interest is different FROM THE RESTORATION TO 1710 57 from that held by the Elizabethans. The characters represent man as a member of a highly artificial soci- ety. Mr. Taine says : — If Racine or Corneille had framed a psychology, they would have said with Descartes : * Man is an incorporeal soul, served by organs, endowed with reason and will, living in palaces or porticos, made for conversation and society, whose harmonious and ideal action is developed by dis- courses and replies, in a world constructed by logic beyond the realms of time and space. If Shakespeare had framed a psychology, he would have said with Esquirol : ^ ' Man is a nervous machine, governed by a mood, transported by unbridled passions, essentially unreasoning, a mixture of animal and poet, having no rap- ture but mind, no sensibility but virtue, imagination for prompter and guide, and led at random, by the most deter- minate and complex circumstances, to pain, crime, madness, and death. While this is a very incomplete apergu of the Shake- spearean conception of life, it serves to emphasize the radical distinction between the French and the Eliza- bethan tragedy. To Us it snggests that the French tragic hero, governed by ' noblesse oblige * and talking in the ' high Roman fashion,' is tiresome, while the emo- tional hero of Shakespeare appeals to human sym- pathy, and is, in consequence, interesting. But in Eng- land after the Restoration the French method came into favor with the educated class. ^ The new king, Charles II, was half French by blood and more than half French by education. His favorites were Frenchwomen and Frenchmen, and so the court gave its powerful sup- ^ A celebrated French alienist. 2 Nevertheless we who remember Rachel in Phedre must believe that there is something great and elemental in Racine, not touch- ing human sympathy like Hamlet and Othello, but alarming and frightful. 58 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS port to French fashions and French art. In 1660 the regular theatres were opened, and Elizabethan plays were at first acted because there were no others. Then Dryden wrote plays for which the French tragedy was a model. He and another playwright even rewrote some of Shakespeare's plays, for there was none of the rever- ence for the original form that controls us now. In about fifteen years a new school of playwrights came into existence: Congreve, Farquhar, Vanbrugh, Wych- erley, introducing the society play of gallantry and wit. Shakespeare always held his own on the stage, partly owing to the presence of a very fine actor, Better- ton, to whose enthusiasm we owe the preservation of most of the traditions and the meagre information con- cerning the poet's career that we possess. It was, how- ever, not till 1709 that a definite edition of the plays (Rowe's) appeared. Till then men had to depend on the few folio volumes in existence, with here and there some quartos either single or bound in a volume of haK a dozen plays, some of which might have been Shake- speare's and some the work of other Elizabethan play- wrights. Then began the long fight over the text, which occupied the attention of Pope, Theobald, Steevens, Capell, Johnson, and Malone during the eighteenth century. Dryden was too good a poet and too able a man and too skilled a craftsman not to appreciate Shakespeare. At the same time he was under the domination of the superstitions of the scholar. In his own plays, begun with the Wild Gallant, 1662, and running through twenty years with the production of some twenty-seven plays, he adhered to the heroic model of the French drama, as is shown by the titles All for Love (the Cleopatra story), Conquest of Granada, etc. For some time he carried out the idea that plays should be written FROM THE RESTORATION TO 1710 59 in the rhyming couplet, largely becanse such was the French practice. It is evident that this must result in a very different play from those of his great predecessor, who uses, first the familiar prose of everyday life, second, a lofty and measured prose, and third, blank verse, all of these being modified for the occasion and speaker, each adapted to higher and lower emotional expression, and the combination of the three giving an instrument of great scope and flexibility. But though Dryden's dramatic ideal was so different from that of the Elizabethans, and though there was among literary men and critics a general opinion that the French trage- dies were 'right tragedies,' and a disposition to say of Othello and Hamlet^ ' They are striking, but are they art ? ' Dryden left on record one of the finest apprecia- tions of Shakespeare. Dryden's plays were published from time to time, and most of his criticism is contained in the prefaces. The Essay of Dramatic Poesy was published separately in 1668, and is based to a certain extent on the treatises of Corneille. It was the third in a series of documents written by Dryden and his brother-in-law. Sir Robert Howard, also a playwright. It is cast in the form of a dialogue in which Crites re- presents Howard ; Neander, Dryden ; Eugenius, Lord Buckhurst, who maintains that the French tragedies are more regular and therefore of a higher type than the English, and Lisideius, Sir Charles Sedley. It is a dis- cussion in the form of a dialogue, and Mr. Lowell calls it ' by far ^ the most delightful reproduction of the classic dialogue ever written in English.' We are at least in the company of four of the most cultured men of the time. Dryden's other deliverances on the subject of dramatic criticism are the Defense of an Essay of ^ Is * by far ' quite fair to Landor, to say nothing of Macau- lay's Cowley and Milton f 60 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS Dramatic Poesy^ Heroic Plays^ An Apology for He- roic Poetin) and Poetic License^ the Grounds of Criti- cism in Tragedy, and the short 'Epistle dedicatory' to the Rival Ladies. It is in the Essay and the De- fense that Dryden shows himself a great critic, and his language about Shakespeare is that of one who feels and comprehends the poet's supremacy, though ham- pered in his judgment by the conventional regard for the 'ancients.' He reminds us of a judge of strong English common sense and regard for equity, forced to decide one of those cases where the old law manifestly works absurd injustice, and allowing his sense of right to rule him though he cannot quite discard his reverence for precedent. Thus Dryden says : — To begin with Shakespeare. He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still pre- sent to him and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily : when he describes anything you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning give him the greater commendation : he was naturally learned ; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature ; he looked inwards and found her there. I cannot say he is everywhere alike ; were he so I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat, insipid ; his comic wit degenerating into clenches,^ his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great when some great occa- sion is presented to him ; no man can say he ever had a fit sub- ject for his wit and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets. But he had written just before : ' It will be first ne- cessary to speak somewhat of Shakespeare and Fletcher 1 * Clenches ' are quibbles or cheap puns. But where does Mr. Dryden find < bombast ' except in the mouth of bombastic characters and properly placed ? FROM THE RESTORATION TO 1710 61 his [Ben Jonson 's] rivals in poesy, and one of them, in my opinion, at least his equal, perhaps his superior.' One would imagine that if Shakespeare had the 'largest and most comprehensive soul of all modern poets,' which greatness of soul was evidenced by his writings alone, it would be contradictory to speak of him as Jonson's, equal ' perhaps his superior.' But the appre- ciation is a fine one, and the only evidence of Dryden's belief in the heresy of the day is, *he drew them,' — his representations of nature, — ' not laboriously but luckily^ as if here were an exceptional person taught to write above a mental pitch by some ' affable, famil- iar ghost that mighty gulls him with intelligence ' — the old and long-to-survive notion of the ' inspired savage,' a phrase sometimes applicable to mathematicians, but never to dramatists, who of all others must learn by labor and never ' forget the adjoining world.' Dryden elsewhere calls the Elizabethans *the great race before the flood,' and says of Shakespeare, * In his magic circle none dared tread but he,' the last an admirable phrase, but still implying something more than mortal power. It took another century to discover that Shake- speare 's preeminence depended on the possession of the literary artistic power in a very high degj-ee, the exer- cise of it in a language not yet hampered, except among the scholars, by conventional phrases, the possession of a very wide, unconscious human sympathy, and the necessity of writing for the general public and not for the literary coterie. The effect of this last condition might be questioned, for his sonnets show him as much of a poet as do his tragedies, but at all events it gave us Falstaff and Silence. Dryden, it will be observed, was a little in advance of his time. He refuses to yield to the French regard for the unities, and stands up manfully for his own 62 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS country. He speaks in the person of ' Neander,' — new man, — and gives the role of the conservatives to Crites, Sir Robert Howard, his brother-in-law, and Lisideius, Sir Charles Sedley. The position that English plays are a serious and worthy form of art is admitted, and that in itself argues a great advance in criticism ; for the interlocutors are representative scholars of the class who sixty years earlier would have scouted the idea that the moderns were equal to the ancients. Eugenius says, ' There is no man more ready to adore those great Greeks and Romans than I am, but on the other side I cannot think so contemptibly of the age in which I live, or so dishonorably of my own country as not to judge we equal the ancients in most kinds of poesy and in some surpass them.' Lisideius says that ' he conceived a play ought to be a just and lively image of human nature, representing its passions and humqrs and the changes of fortune to which it is subject, for the delight and instruction of mankind,' a definition with which no one can find fault, and free from the absurd requirement that a play written in the year 1700 should conform in certain de- tails of construction to those written two thousand years earlier. The phrase * a just and lively image of human nature ' would preclude all artificial requirements, but is itself the basis of the rule * follow nature,' of which we hear so much during the next century. In fact, to decide what is an ' image ' is the prime question of gBsthetics, and to decide what is ' human nature ' is the prime question of philosophy. Dryden's definition, like all definitions, opens the field for more discussion. But the principle is far nearer right than if he had added that a play was to be a just and lively image of human nature drawn in the manner supposed to be that of Grecian dramatists. FROM THE RESTORATION TO 1710 63 Common sense and a vigorous understanding can never rise quite superior to the conventions of the age» but Dryden comes as near doing so as any literary man of any time. Of the French playwrights, Neander . ... 1 />^'^ By their servile observations of the unities of tinae and ' ' ^ place, and the integrity of scenes, they have brought on themA Q^ selves that dearth of plot and narrowness of imagination, \ ^ which may be observed in all their plays. How many beautiful \ accidents might happen in two or three days which cannot \ arrive with any probability in the compass of twenty-four I hours ? There is time to be allowed also for maturity of de- / sign, which amongst great and prudent persons, such as are / often represented in tragedy, cannot with any likelihood of / truth be brought to pass at so short a warning. Farther by/ tying themselves strictly to the unity of place, and unbrokenf scenes, they are forced many times to omit some beauties which cannot be shown where the act began, but might if the scene were interrupted and the stage cleared for the persons to enter in another place. On the fly-leaf of a copy of Rymer's The Tragedies of the Last Age, Dryden wrote : ' It is not enough that Aristotle said so, for Aristotle drew his models of tragedy from Sophocles and Euripides, and if he had seen ours might have changed his mind.' Shakespearean criticism is closely bound up with this question of the absolute authority of the ' ancients ' for the next hundred years, and it is difficult for us to understand how much independence of judgment and sturdy good sense is implied in an expression like the above, which appears to us a mere truism. In The Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy, Dryden lays down excellent rules for the conduct of a play, though not without reference to the artificial standard of the times. He says, ' Pointed wit and sentences 64 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS affected out of season ; these are nothing of kin to the violence of passion. No man is at leisure to make sentences and similes when his soul is in agony.' He refers evidently to such expressions as Othello's Like to the Pontic Sea, Whose icy current and compulsive course Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on — or to Macbeth's Life ... is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing. It is true that when a ' soul is in agony ' it does not ' make sentences and similes,' neither does it speak in blank verse, still less in rhyme. The sentences and similes come to it. The stress and excitement of emotion in the natural man force language to take a highly poetic color. The classic hero is dignified and restrained in all circumstances, and our perception of this gives his words power ; but a poetic nature — and a Teutonic hero must be a man of imaginative excitability — rises naturally to figurative heights of expression when * his soul is in agony.' Indeed, in such stress uneducated persons sometimes express themselves in language of wonderful reach and poignancy. Even the wildest ex- travagances of Shakespeare's heroes are not out of place. Lear and Othello can disclose themselves in no other way. Dryden goes on to say : 'If Shakespeare be allowed, as I think he must, to have made his characters distinct, it will easily be inferred that he understood the nature of the passions, because it has already been proved that confused passions make indistinguishable characters.' In this he falls into two of the errors of early criticism, first, that a man must 'understand the nature of the FROM THE RESTORATION TO 1710 66 passions' in order to create characters, as if the artist were a workman handling material the nature of which he understood as a smith does his iron. He takes it for granted that the ' passions * are distinct parts of the character, which may represent avarice or revenge or some ' ruling passion ' ; and second, that ' confused pas- sions make indistinguishable characters.' ' Confused passions,' or readiness to respond to different emotions, indicate complex characters in which contradictory im- pulses, love, ambition, mercy, and revenge, struggle for mastery in a strongly marked individual. The better human nature is understood, the more evident it becomes that Shakespeare's conception of character was true, not because he ' understood the nature of the passions,' but because he divined the complexity of man. In the same paper, however, Dryden writes that ' Shakespeare had a universal mind, which comprehended all characters and all passions,' a saying almost as adequate as the great one : ' of all men, ancient and modern, he had the most comprehensive soul.' Dryden is rightly given a very high rank among the critics of Shakespeare. He wrote before there was any body of criticism to guide and inspire him, and when the plays were still buried in the old folios. Thomas Rymer (1641-1713) is highly esteemed by historians for his Federa^ a collection of the original documents of the alliances and treaties between Eng- land and other countries from 1101 to his own time, an undertaking which as 'historiographer royal' he prose- cuted with great industry from 1672 to his death. He wrote a tragedy in 1667, entitled Edgar ^ or the Eng- lish Monarchy which was not successful, and in 1678 a pamphlet. The Tragedies of the Last Age considered. In 1693 appeared his little book, A Short View of Tragedy. As a critic he is a very preposterous person, 66 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS that IS, he was deficient in the first requisite, a capacity for sympathetically appreciating a work of literary art, and was entirely unaware of his deficiency* He is men- tioned here because the utterances of the preposterous person have a certain significance in disclosing the limits of the opinion of the age. Such a person, writing at the present time, hows to public opinion in assuming that the plays are great literature, but tries to prove that they were written by Lord Bacon on the ground that a man lacking the advantages of ' classical educa- tion ' cannot possibly be a great poet. That a scholar and literary man like Rymer could write a book assum- ing that Shakespeare's plays were nonsense shows that a century after the appearance of the great plays their true value was not generally understood, notwithstand- ing the appreciation of Dryden and of many others of literary insight. So general became the opinion that Shakespeare was a great poet as well as a great dra- matist in the next century, that to criticise him ad- versely was to write one's self down an ass, — Deaf to the melody of sound, To every form of beauty blind, which the most obtuse person hesitates to do. Even George III, when confessing to Miss Burney that Shake- speare's plays were * sad stuff,' adds, ' But one must not say so, you know.' Rymer' s style is detestable, and goes to prove how much English prose owes to John Dryden for consecu- tiveness and intelligibility. In his second book he quotes quite freely from Othello^ and the effect of find- ing the address to the senate, — ' most potent grave and reverend Signiors,' — and Othello's farewell to war on his pages is very odd, something as if a man should dis- cern a heap of jewels amid the ordure of a stable floor. FROM THE RESTORATION TO 1710 67 The first he calls a ' tedious and heavy form of pleading,* and the second ' has nothing poetical in it besides the sound that pleases.' One cannot tell whether it was per- versity or dullness of ear that made him deaf to the dignified melody of the orations in Julius Caesar. That he should entirely overlook the feminine charm of Des- demona and the heart-rending pathos of the situation and the matronly dignity of Portia — dear to Brutus as the ' ruddy drops that visit ' his ' sad heart ' — is not so much to be wondered at, for no one seems to have noticed the delicacy and beauty of Shakespeare's hero- ines till the end of the eighteenth century : this is one of the strangest facts in the history of Shakespearean criticism ; but that Rymer should not have noticed the eloquent beat of poetry that from its first delivery stirred the hearts of all Englishmen seems incompre- hensible. What was the mental condition of a man who wrote — This may show with what indignity our Poet treats the noblest Romans. But there is no other cloth in his wardrobe. Every one must be contented to wear a fool's coat who comes to be dressed by him. Nor is he more civil to the ladies. Portia in good manners might have challenged more re- spect, she that shines, a glory of the first magnitude in the Galaxy of Heroic Dames is with our poet scarce one remove from a natural. She is the own cousin German, of one piece, the very same impertinent, silly flesh and blood with Desde- mona. Shakespeare's genius lay for Comedy and Humour. In tragedy he appears quite out of his element, he raves and rambles without any coherence, any spark of reason, or any rule to control him or set bounds to his frenzy. Rymer had no doubt heard the great actor, Better- ton, deliver the tragic music of Othello^ and it is impos- sible to resist the conclusion that the failure of his 68 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS tragedy Edgar^ and the success of Othello and Julius CcBsar in winning the plaudits of the audience, had aroused in him a feeling of personal animosity against the great dramatist. Preposterous as it seems, a similar sentiment probably actuated Voltaire half a century later. Rymer bears testimony to the fact that the scene between Othello and lago, ill, iii, is the ' top scene that raises Othello above all other tragedies on our theatre.' This is interesting, though he attributes the success to the actors. We also find him under the in- fluence of an error that has done a great deal to vitiate \ dramatic criticism in men infinitely his superiors : that is, that the characters of a drama must conform to certain traditions, — the kings move in a world of unreal and unbending dignity, the soldier be a stage soldier, and the villain a stage villain. Rymer com- plains of lago, that Shakespeare, to * entertain the audience with something new and surprising against common sense, would pass upon us a close, dissembling, false, insinuating rascal instead of an open-hearted, frank, plain-dealing soldier, a character constantly worn by them for some thousands of years in the world' (the Duke of Alva, for instance, or General Monk). Shakespeare does, in his minor characters, use the tra- ditionary stage figures, — the ' miles gloriosus ' in Pa- roUes or the Bobadil in Pistol, but his dramatis per- sonce are persons, each ' himself alone.' Even his clowns have each an individual flavor, and the jesting of Touchstone is on a different key from that of Feste in Twelfth Night. All this, however, was not to be dis- covered till the nineteenth century, and is of course far beyond the ken of Rymer.* 1 The modern preposterous person, — the race is immortal, — if he ventures on Shakespearean criticism, takes up the thesis that FROM THE RESTORATION TO 1710 69 Rymer is evidently entirely negligible as far as appre- ciation or intelligent criticism of the drama is con- cerned.^ He is mentioned to show that at the end of the seventeenth century, in spite of the generous praise of Dry den, the reputation of Shakespeare was not so firmly established as to render it impossible for senseless abuse of the plays to be published by a member of the learned and scholarly world. He was rebuked by Dennis and Gildon, literary critics of the period, in short critical Francis Bacou was the writer of the plays, and in an extreme in- stance, like Mr. Ignatius Donnelly, finds a cryptogram imbedded in the text. The motive of money-getting raises him above the spiteful ineptitude of Rymer. Another favorite pursuit of the pre- posterous person is hunting for mare's nests and exploiting the plays as mines of mystical meanings, a pursuit inaugurated by the German Romanticists. In an edition of the Sonnets the editor thus interprets the play of * Pyramus and Thisbe ' in Midsummer Night's Dream : — *The student will see the signification of the wall, "the vile wall which did these lovers sunder." Through this wall (the dull substance of the flesh) the lovers may indeed communicate but only by a "whisper, very secretly," because the intercourse of spirit with spirit is a secret act of the soul in a sense of its unity with the spirit. The student will readily catch the meaning of the " moonshine " or nature light, the moon being always taken as nature in all mystic writings. He will see the symbolism of the " dog " — the watch-dog of course — representing the moral guard in a nature-life ; as also the bush of thorns ever ready to illustrate the doctrine that the way of the transgressor is hard. The student will notice the hint that the lovers meet by moonlight and at a tomb, and he will understand the office of the lion which tears not Thisbe herself, but only her mantle, or what the poet calls the extern of life ; and finally will observe that the two principles disappear, for the unity cannot become mystically visible until the two principles are mystically lost sight of.' This is a touch beyond Mr. Thomas Rymer. Changing Ben Jouson's lines a little, we can say, — Triumph, my country, thou hast two to show To whom all fools of Europe homage owe. ^ Rymer seems to have used the quarto of Othello in his extracts. 70 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS publications, but not with the scorn his sentiments merited. There was evidently in the literary world a feeling that playwrights ought to observe the unities. Even Dryden did so at first, though later he said that he preferred to ' sin with honest Shakespeare.' In the next generation Addison in his ' Cato ' followed the rules very closely and produced a very uninteresting play. Numerous writers of less note followed the same standard, regardless of the fact that their plays were rarely successful and that Shakespeare continued to delight large audiences, a sure proof that he was right in his practice. In 1709 Rowe's edition was brought out, and the long struggle on the proper readings was inaugurated to continue through the eighteenth century, in the editions of Pope, Theobald, Johnson, Steevens, and Malone. This involved a consideration of his merits as a dramatist, for each edition was prefaced with an introduction containing more or less literary criticism. As soon as the plays were published in a form accessi- ble to the public the conviction that the author was a great dramatist was certain to spread till it became a matter of national faith, strongest among those least capable of justifying it. The Tational grounds for such a feeling were not investigated till the nineteenth cen- tury. JOHN DENNIS (1657-1734) Dennis was a literary man of the period and, like most of his colleagues, a playwright whose dramas could not hold the stage. ^ He was a vain and irascible per- ^ Dennis invented a method of producing stage-thunder, and being present at a presentation of Macbeth where his invention was used, he rose and said, * The rascals have refused my play, but they have stolen my thunder.'' A man who adds to the language a phrase so frequently useful is entitled to the gratitude of pos- terity. FROM THE RESTORATION TO 1710 71 son, and disappointment and poverty made him envious and unreasonable in his later days. He criticised Pope's Homer and Pope's pastoral poetry with great vigor, and incurred the enmity of the poet, who gave him a conspicuous place in the Dunciad, His criticism of Pope's writings^ was mixed with personalities, and it is greatly to the credit of the poet whose art, religion, and person were subjected to vulgar abuse, that when Dennis was old, poor, and neglected he joined in a subscription for his relief. Dennis was a learned man, and in some regards a good critic, — he was very appreciative of the great qualities of Milton, — but he was possessed with the notion of the authority of the ancients and of the binding character of ' the rules.' Unlike the ridiculous Rymer, he recognizes that ' Shakespeare was one of the greatest geniuses that the world e'er saw for the tragic stage.' He says that — His imaginations were often as just as they were bold and strong. He had a natural discretion which never could have been taught him, and his judgment was strong and pene- trating. He seems to have wanted nothing but time and leisure for thought to have found out those rules of which he appears so ignorant. . . . His expression is in many places good and pure after a hundred years ; simple tho ' ele- vated, graceful tho ' bold, and easy tho' strong. He seems to have been the original of our English Tragical har- mony. He then finds fault with Shakespeare for making so many of his aristocratic personages talk and act like ordinary mortals, ' against the dignity of noble poetry,' and for paying no attention to ' poetic justice.' He says, ' The good and the bad then, perishing promiscuously in the best of Shakespeare's Tragedies, there can be either none or only weak instruction in them ; for such promiscuous events call the government of Providence 72 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS into question and by sceptics and libertines are resorbed into chance.' It does not seem to occur to him that 'sceptics and libertines' are usually acute enough to draw from the 'promiscuous events' of life the con- clusion that the good and the bad 'perish promiscu- ously ' when the laws of life are violate^d by either. He develops with considerable force the thesis that Shakespeare was not conversant with ancient history and says that ' his friends were not qualified to advise him,' for even ' Ben Jonson had no right notion of Tragedy.' 'Jonson erred grossly in Tragedy, of which there were not only stated rules but rules which he had often read and had even translated.' If Shakespeare had only had Mr. Dennis at his elbow, he might have written some tragedies not only fine but regular. As that could not be, Dennis 'employed some time and pains, and that little judgment which I have acquired in these matters by a long and faithful reading both of ancients and moderns, in adding, retrenching, and alter- ing several things in the Coriolanus of Shakespeare.' It was put on the stage, and failed in spite of the ' im- provements.' The idea that there were 'monstrous fine things' and grave structural faults in Shakespeare's plays, and that the fine things could be cut out and reset in a regular frame, was very prevalent among literary men in the seventeenth century. It was the cause of the adaptations and amended versions, some twenty-five of which were put on the stage between 1670 and 1703. The first and most sacrilegious was Dry den and Davenant's desecration of The Tempest; the most excusable was Colley Gibber's version of Richard III, For the modern stage, of course, acting versions have to be prepared, because Shakespeare, whose scenes were imaginary, changes the place so frequently — in one act of Antony and Cleopatra eighteen times — that FROM THE RESTORATION TO 1710 73 the modern manager cannot afford to present his plays as they were written. Another reason is that the plays are too long for modern representation, when a change of scene means a change of scenery. This adaptation to the modern stage is, of course, quite a different thing from rewriting the play, bringing in new matter and new characters, as was done with such disastrous results in the seventeenth century.^ CHABIiES GIIiDON (1665-1724) Gildon belongs to the same class as Dennis, — hack- writer, playwright, scholar, and critic, — but was a per- son of a much more amiable and manageable disposition. He, too, changed one of Shakespeare's plays, Measure for Measure^ into something poor and strange, but he condemned Dryden and Davenant's version of Hie Tempest^ and, like Dennis, he became a mark for the satire of Pope. In 1710 he contributed two essays to an additional volume for Rowe's edition of the plays : one entitled ' An Essay on the Art, Rise, and Progress of the Stage,' and the other 'Remarks on the Plays of Shakespeare.' His general position does not differ greatly from that of Dennis, though he insists more on the poet's disregard of the unities and less on his viola- tion of poetic justice. 'Nature,' he says (enabled Shake- speare to succeed in Manners^ and Diction often to perfection, but he could never by his force of genius or nature vanquish the-barbarous mode of the times and come to any excellence in the Fable except in the Merry Wives of Windsor and The Tempest). In his second essay Gildon gives the epitomes of the plots of 1 This subject is fully treated in Professor Lounsbury's excel- lent volume, Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist. ^ By the term ' Manners ' Gildon apparently means character- drawing. 74 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS the successive plays, and generally some reference to the sources of the story and copious quotations of pas- sages that seem admirable to him. This is, then, the first commentary, the germ of Gervinus and Brandeis. Of Lear he says that * the King and Cordelia ought by no means to have died, and therefore Mr. Tate has very justly altered that particular which must disgust the audience and reader to have so much vertue and piety meet so unjust a reward.' He approves of Much Ado about Nothing: 'To quote all the comick excellences of this play would be to transcribe three parts of it. For all that passes be- tween Benedict and Beatrice is admirable. . . . For while Shakespeare is out in the Dramatic Imitation of the Fable he always draws men and women so per- fectly that when we read, we can scarce persuade our- selves but that the discourse is real and no fiction.' PeojDle of rank must not express themselves naturally. 'The scolding between Elinor and Constance [King John'] is quite out of character; and indeed it is a difficult matter to represent a quarrel betwixt two women without falling into something indecent for their degree to speak, as most of what is said in this scene is. For whatever the Ladies of the stocks-market might do. Queens and Princesses can never be supposed to talk to one another at that rate.' The disregard of the unity of time and place in the historical plays is shocking, for of Henry VIII he says : — This concludes the English Historical Plays ; tho the rest are indeed little better, yet they generally are within a nar- rower compass of time and take in fewer actions. Tho when they exceed the unities, I see no reason why they may not as well and with good reason stretch the time to five thousand years and the actions to all the nations and people of the uni- FROM THE RESTORATION TO 1710 75 verse, and as there has been a puppet-show of the Creation of the World so there may be a Play called the History of the World. Gildon sternly condemns the ' wholly monstrous, un- natural mixture of tragedy and comedy ' in the same play, on the authority of the ancients, one of whom had said ' Wit and Railery belong not properly to a tragedy, to which laugbter is an enemy.' Dryden had said : — '*'^ Why should he [the classic critic] imagine the soul of ^ man more heavy than his senses ? Does not the eye pass / from an unpleasant object to a pleasant one in much shorter / time than is required for this ? and does not the unpleasant- / ness of the first commend the beauty of the second ? / Mr. Gildon argues that — The soul can no more pass in a moment from the tumult of a strong passion in which it is thoroughly engaged than the sea can pass from the most turbulent and furious storm into a perfect calm in a moment. There must be time for the terrible emotion to subside by degrees into a calm, and there must be a gradual passage from the extremity of grief, pity, or the like to its opposite, mirth, humor, or laughter. Mr. Gildon seems to think that the grief we feel at the death of Hamlet is precisely the same as the emo- tion that would possess us at the lamentable end of a dear brother. If that were so, no one but ghouls could be dragged to see the play. He might as well argue that a picture of a battle was dangerous on the walls of a room. Art is the representation of life without its frightful responsibilities. The grief we feel at wit- nessing a tragic action on the stage is an artificial, a stimulated emotion, but the amusement with which we witness a comedy is genuine. This is a profound dif- ference between comedy and tragedy, but no reason why they should not be combined. A year or two later 76 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS Theobald tells us, ' For these thirty years last past, I believe, not a season has elapsed in which it [^Hamlet] has not been performed on the stage more than once.' The audiences insisted on the gravediggers' scene, and rebelled when it was cut out. This might well have given the critics pause. For when an art representation is delightful to several generations, there must be some philosophical explanation of the fact. The audiences of a season may be wrong, but there is no appeal from the verdict of the audiences of a century. It does not follow that the play which lasts is perfect, but it does follow that its great qualities are far more important than its defects, and are the qualities for which the critic should search and which he should try to bring to the light. It also follows that the defects are not detachable. These two Shakespearean commentators are by no means of prime importance, but their writings show that the cultivated and scholarly world believed in the early eighteenth century that there were in Shakespeare's plays admirable passages due to an untutored poetical genius, and grave faults due to the fact that he had never learned the rules for a correct drama, and further that his plays might be rewritten so as to retain the beauties and eliminate the errors. When they tried to do this, the result, to their great surprise, was a play which would not hold an audience. Tate's Lear and Gibber's Richard III^ it is true, were fairly well received, but the pit de- manded the gravediggers' scene in Hamlet^ though ' the judicious ' could easily prove that it was a dramatic blem- ish. To the audience it was not merely amusing, but a y powerful and truthful presentation of one of the great f contrasts of life. To the learned it was always a puzzle f why Shakespeare's plays, written in defiance of the rules, were so attractive on the stage in their original FROM THE RESTORATION TO 1710 77 condition, and received with such indifference when the blemishes were removed. That the blemishes were really beauties could not be admitted for an instant, for Ans- totle had not said so. The French dramatists were au- thorities in questions of good taste, and their tragedies were written in accordance with the rules. It took a long time to change this frame of the critical mind, and to this idea that the plays were full of barbarous errors is partly due the craze for amending the text by improvements, which possessed some of the eighteenth-century editors. When dogmas are once firmly established on authority, years must elapse before experience can prove that they are unsound. It is difficult to codify common sense in art so as to make it acceptable to professionals. It is perhaps more difficult to do so in government or relig- ion. We need not wonder that it was a long time before the learned world gave up the idea that Shakespeare's faults were entirely technical and could be cured by ap- plying a just method based on the practice of the writers of a foreign country two thousand years ago, or, rather, on the notions of learned men as to what that method was. The grasp of a dead hand is not readily relaxed. CHAPTER IV THE EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS IflCHOLAS BOWE (1674-1718) RowE was the first of the multitude of Shakespearean editors. He was a successful playwright and literary man of the early eighteenth century, and attained the dignity of poet-laureate under Queen Anne. He brought out his edition of Shakespeare in seven octavo volumes in 1709. He used as his original a copy of the Fourth Folio, and thereby subjected himself to the burden of all the errors that the later folios superinduced on the first, so that many of the emendations he made are merely corrections of misprints he might have avoided by going back to the original. He had no idea of the value of the old quarto ^ texts, and little of the necessity of reading all available books of the Shakespearean period so as to familiarize himself with usages and ex- pressions already becoming obsolete. In fact, neither he nor his successor, Pope, was a Shakespearean scholar in the modern sense. They could not well be so, since the duty of careful collation and investigation of sources was not then understood. Nevertheless, Rowe did a good work. He put it in the power of everybody to procure in a convenient form and at a moderate cost all the plays. Men were no longer forced to buy a rare, cumbrous, and expensive folio or else content themselves with such pamphlets of ^ Nevertheless, Rowe inserted from the 1504 quarto Hamlet, or from some quarto now lost, the lines from 17 to 38, i, iv ; and also fifty lines, iv, iv, including the great soliloquy, *How all occasions do inform against me.* EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS 79 separate plays as they could find. Rowe brought the spelling up to date and corrected the irregular punc- tuation of the folios. He prefixed lists of the dramatis personce^ so useful in introducing the reader to the company whose intimate acquaintance he is about to make. Some of the plays in the folios are divided into ! acts and scenes, some into acts only, and some printed solid. Rowe divided all into acts and scenes, and his \ experience as a practical playwright enabled him to do this in the main properly, so that most of his divisions are accepted at present. The scenes in Shakespeare's plays, when marked in the folios, are distinguished by change of place, all the actors leaving the stage at the end of the scene, and not, as in the French stage, by a change of group so that a scene terminates when one actor departs or another enters. As change of local scene was left largely to the imagination in the Elizabethan period and was not marked by change of ' scenery,' the scenes in Shakespeare's plays are some- times very numerous, and this feature presents great difiiculty to modern representation, when every place is indicated by a change of ' set.' Rowe's task in dividing the plays into scenes was therefore one of little diffi- culty. Acts, on the contrary, should indicate the com- pletion of a certain part of the action. Each act should be a chapter in the story, and the divisions plainly marked as steps in the unfolding of the plot and separated by a short interval. In setting these larger divisions, Rowe, thanks to his practical experience, shows in the main great good sense and conception of the artistic and logical effect of the dramatic chapter or act. In the scene divisions he followed, as said before, the method of the plays already divided, and regarded a scene as a locality. The divisions in any example of literary art — the paragraphs, the chapters, the cantos, 80 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS the scenes, and the acts — are of great importance In making an impression on the reader's eye and mind. If we regard the play primarily as a spectacle, the scenes should be short, for whenever a new person comes on the stage a new tableau is formed. The scenes thus become like a succession of pictures thrown on an illuminated screen ; they succeed one another rapidly and form a unified impression if they are artistically combined and contrasted. But if our fundamental con- ception of the play is action rather than spectacle, the scene or minor division may be longer and contain a definite part of the action or development of the story. A long scene of this kind is sometimes a little drama of itself. Thus in Hamlet^ ill, i, 'A room in the Castle,' the entire anti-Hamlet party enter and discuss the question of Hamlet's lunacy, Rosencrantz and Guilden- stern retire, the King explains the test of Hamlet's sanity suggested by Polonius (ii, ii) ; the Queen re- tires ; the two, Polonius and the King, instruct Ophe- lia and hide. Hamlet enters and delivers ' To be or not to be.' He notices Ophelia, and addresses her with bitter irony. He retires ; Ophelia's beautiful soliloquy, *0, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown,' follows; the King and Polonius reenter, and after a few words all depart. Locally and dramatically this is one scene, and is so marked in the folio. One motif runs throuo:h it. From the pictorial point of view it is at least three, if not four. Pope, the next editor, made three without any warrant. He should have followed the folio, and should have noticed that though a drama is a compound of tab- leaux and actions, in Shakespeare's conception the ac- tion, the thing done, is the vital matter ; though the action may not be a concrete deed, it may be the * strug- gle of a limed soul.' And in Shakespeare's plays, when EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS 81 the stage is ' voided,' an entirely new subdivision of the action is presented. At the same time it must be admitted that the Shakespearean scene sometimes covers different dramatic elements. In Hamlet^ ill, iii, the King gives the courtiers his directions for the voyage to England. Polonius tells the King that he intends to overhear Hamlet's words to his mother; the King is left alone, and his ineffective attempt to pray follows; then Hamlet enters and watches him, and resolves not to kill him. The latter part of this marvelous scene has little to do with the beginning, either as a spectacle or as action. But the first part is subtly linked to the last by the fact that the King, after arranging for Hamlet's murder, prays to be forgiven for the murder of Hamlet's father. It is a marvelous disclosure of character when Claudius says, ' Then I '11 look up ; my fault is past,^ and forgets that he has just arranged a new and equally heinous murder. It is never entirely safe to assume that Shakespeare com- mitted a fault of construction. Rowe, then, was right in following the arrangement of scenes in the folio as far as possible. Rowe's knowledge of the stage enabled him to cor- rect the marking of exits and entrances, which were sometimes omitted and sometimes displaced in the ori- ginal. He did something, too, towards distinguishing ' asides,' but very little towards emending difficult pas- sages, except when the error is manifestly typographi- cal. His edition, being from the Fourth Folio, includes, of course, Pericles^ and the doubtful plays. A second edition was published in 1714. Rowe perceives the power and beauty of the plays. There is none of the insufferable conceit of Rymer in his introductory essay. He holds, however, the eight- eenth-century idea of the antithesis between ' nature ' 82 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS and ' art,' and says of his author : ' Art had so little and nature so large a share in what he did, that for aught I know the performances of his youth, as they were the most vigorous and had the most fire and strength of imagination in them, were the best.'' This taking it for granted that the mysterious thing, genius, can be a master before it is an apprentice, comes very likely from the notion of the ' divine afflatus ' as an extra- human energy entering into its chosen subjects, like ' the power ' in a negro revival, and is an error running through much of early criticism. In fact, it is not entirely eradicated yet. Again, Rowe says : * Shakespeare lived under a kind of mere light of nature and had never been made ac- quainted with those written precepts ' (the rules), 'so it would be hard to judge him by a law he knew nothing of.' Why not? '-Ignorantia legis neminem excusat^ But the true defense is, that the Greek rules are not binding on an English playwright except so far as they conform to the eternal laws governing the nature of a beautiful thing. Most of the eighteenth-century critics seem to think that the rules of Aristotle are like the Ten Commandments, based on the nature of right and wrong. Again, it is not the author, but the work, that is to be judged, and for the plays Rowe had a feeling of generous admiration. If his service to his generation lay in making the plays more easily accessible, his service to posterity consists in putting in print all the information about the man Shakespeare he could procure. In the latter part of the seventeenth century the actor, Betterton, whose admir- able interpretations of Othello, Hamlet, and the rest, contributed not a little to the reputation of the poet, went to Stratford and collected all the local tradition about William Shakespeare that had survived. Rowe, in EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS 83 his sketch, acknowledged his obligation to Betterton. As a playwright, Rowe knew the friends of Sir William Davenant (1606-68), himself playwright and dramatist, who in his younger days must have known the actors and playwrights who were young men when Shakespeare died. Rowe was therefore in a better position than any writer of Shakespeare's life has ever been to find out and record the facts bearing on the personal history and character of the great dramatist. That he found out so little is remarkable, but he found out about all that we know. We have nothing in the handwriting of Shakespeare, and no record of a word he uttered. From his works we can form an idea of his character as an artist; the man himself remains in the background. Rowe's memoir testifies in general terms to his agree- ableness as a companion, circumstances testify to his success as a man of business, and his book testifies to his greatness as a poet and thinker, and there is a hazy lot of evidence tending to establish his personal worth and human aberrations. But all this is very far from biographical matter; so that Mr. Sidney Lee, who knows everything that has been collected, is forced to begin many sentences with 'perhaps ' or ' probably,' and, to make a book, must fill out his pages with literary biography. What was Shakespeare's attitude towards religion or towards the great religious bodies ? We can answer only : ' Probably ' he conformed to the Established Church, since he was married by its rite, his children were baptized into its communion, and he was buried in the parish church. So it is in regard to every ques- tion that would disclose Shakespeare's personality. In some regards he ' probably ' was a very reticent person, though ' perhaps ' superficially companionable. It is sometimes said that we know as much about Shake- speare as we do about any writer of his period. This is 84 SHAKESPEAKE AND HIS CRITICS an error. To be sure, biographical memoirs were not written when he died. But we can construct a fairly full biography of Ben Jon son, John Donne, Herrick, Daniel, and others of his period. The fact that the man Shakespeare is far back in the obscurity and the artist Shakespeare the centre of a brilliant light is one of the mysteries. ' Perhaps ' all papers, letters, and the like were destroyed in the great fire of London. But why did not his daughter, Mrs. Susanna Hall, preserve a bundle at Stratford and transmit them to her daughter? ' Perhaps ' they were ashamed of his calling as an actor. It is all conjectural, though biographers usually go so far as to say ' no doubt, he attended the grammar school in Stratford like any other town boy.' We are, therefore, much obliged to Nicholas Rowe for gathering what tradition he could and refraining from inventing rumors or expanding doubtful hints. Rowe's emendations, as said above, are confined to apparent typographical errors. For example, in The Tempest^ i, ii, Prospero says to Miranda : — [They] bore us some leagues to sea, where they prepared A rotten carkasse of a butt, not rigg'd, Nor tackle, sayle, nor mast, the very rats Instinctively have quit it — Rowe naturally changed ' butt ' to ' boat,' as the word 'butt' never meant boat, but only large barrel, or else object aimed at (archery butts), or (derivative) end of journey : ' here is my butt and very sea-mark of my ut- most sail ' ( Othello). Respect for the folio and the con- viction that Shakespeare would use a specific word instead of a general one leads modern commentators to retain ' butt ' and to invent the explanation that a 'butt ' was a kind of boat. It seems more likely that it was a misspelled boat than that it was an obsolete one. But no one can mistake the meaning. EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS 85 In his literary criticism Rowe shows love and appre- ciation, though naturally falling in with many of the errors of the day. He says: — The plays are properly to be distinguished only into come- dies and tragedies. Those which are called histories and even some of his comedies are really tragedies with a run or mixture of comedy through them. That way of tragi-comedy was the common mistake of the age, and is indeed become so agreeable to the English taste, that though the severer critics among us cannot bear it, yet the generality of our audiences seem to be better pleased with it than with an exact tragedy. In calling the historic plays tragedies, he certainly forgets for the moment that grand pageant, Henry Fl The idea that a tragedy must be ' pure,' i. e.jjree from anything that could rouse a smile as well as from any representation of life on the ordinary plane, and from all unheroic language, was one of the canons of criticism at the period. J Among the characters he seems to have been the most impressed with Falstaff and Shylock, as was per- haps natural, for both are striking in different ways ; and the greater figures — Hamlet, Othello, Lear, and Macbeth — have a profundity in their relation to hu- man nature not so easily sounded. Shakespeare's super- natural characters appeal to him, and he says, 'Cer- tainly the greatness of this author's genius does no- where so much appear as where he gives his imagina- tion an entire loose rein and raises his fancy above mankind and the limits of the visible world.' He con- siders that Shakespeare is not strong in construction, and explains the fact by saying that ' his tales were sel- dom invented, but taken from true history or novels or romances,' and that he ' commonly followed the authors from whence he borrowed them.' The sources of Shake- speare's plots were very imperfectly known at the time, 86 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS so his first editor could not be aware how he had informed the old stories with human interest and poetic value ; but there is a modicum of truth in Howe's stric- ture : ' It is not in this province of the drama that the strength and mastery of Shakespeare lay, so I shall not undertake the tedious and ill-natured trouble to "point out the several faults he was guilty of/ It is a pity that he did not, for it would be interesting to know how the technical art of the great dramatist struck a fellow craftsman who was also an accomplished playwright. Personally, Mr. Howe was an agreeable man. Pope was much attached to him, and in one of his letters, 1713, says : ' There is a vivacity and gaiety of disposition almost peculiar to him, which renders it impossible to part from him without the uneasiness and chagrin which generally succeeds all great pleasures.' A second edition of Rowe's Shakespeare was called for in 1714. This was in nine volumes, eleven years be- fore Pope's edition was published. He died in 1718, in his forty-second year, too soon to take part in the lively war of words inaugurated in 1726 by Theobald's review of Pope's edition, and continued with brief intermis- sions, while ammunition was gathered, till the end of the century. ALEXANDER POPE (1688-1744) It is a tribute to the universality of Shakespeare's genius that his work attracted so much attention in the eighteenth century, for it was an age the spirit of which was opposed to the force and enthusiasm of his method and to his independence of classic models. It was an age of ordered life and rational conduct, and he, as a great romanticist, seems to have been guided by the rule of romance that * from rational conduct there is nothing to be expected of a touching, instructive, or amusing EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS 87 nature.' Lear and Hamlet and Macbeth and Othello are not prudent, well-conducted persons. They are gov- erned by irrational emotions. That makes them interest- ing, even when, as in the case of Macbeth, the emotions are not rooted in nobility of impulse. The plots of Twelfth Nighty As You Like It^ and Midsummer NigMs Dream are based on the most wildly improbable incidents, and the conduct of the characters is entirely opposed to the eighteenth-century theory of life. Never- theless, edition after edition of the plays was called for from 1709 to 1800, and the two chief literary men of the time, Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson, are responsible for two of them. They undertook a task entirely foreign to their conception of literature, and were not actuated solely by the desire for gain, but by the sense that they were connecting their names with a far greater one. Pope writes in 1722, 'I am very busy in doing justice to a far greater poet.' Pope was not very well qualified to be a Shakespear- ean editor. It is true he had a very delicate perception of the value of words, and a trained and accurate ear for metre, with perhaps a better perception of accent than of rhythm. But he had neither the health nor the patience for the long and careful work necessary to the examination of the original texts, nor sufficient mastery of the Elizabethan vocabulary to guide his judgment. The true object of editing, to produce a text as near like the original words of the author as possible and to explain obscure passages by marginal glossary or com- ment, was not at all understood in his day. The aim was to modernize the text by emendation, for the English speech had developed so rapidly in the seventeenth cen- tury that many expressions in the folio were as obsolete then as they are now. In consequence Pope took many unwarrantable liberties, and thereby laid himself open 88 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS to the attacks of Theobald, the next editor. In some instances his guesses were illuminating and ingenious. The excellent one of ' south ' for ' sound,' in Twelfth Nighty — O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour, — has already been referred to. In the same play (r, iii), Sir Andrew says of his leg: 'Ay, 't is strong and does indifferent well in a c?am?iC?-coloured stock.' Pope changed this to 'flame-coloured,' and the emendation is generally accepted, though ' dun-coloured ' has been suggested as the more plausible reading, since stockings of that color are mentioned elsewhere. But Sir Andrew was such a vain and feather-headed fool that conspicu- ous garments for his legs would have been likely to please him. Another of Pope's emendations was in Henry F/, Part 1, V, iv. The Duke of York says : — Speak, Winchester ; for boiling choler chokes The hollow passage of my poisoned voice, By sight of these, our baleful enemies. Pope changed 'poisoned' to 'prisoned.' This involves the substitution of but one vowel, and strikes the reader as justifiable. But it has not been generally accepted. York has been worked up to a great rage, and might by a bold metaphor speak of his voice as ' poisoned,' i. e., venomous and bitter, though he might also say that it was ' prisoned ' or smothered by boiling anger. As we can get a meaning, not absurdly forced, out of the original, we must let it stand. As an example of the careful consideration necessary EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS 89 before an emendation can be received, take the dying speech of Juliet in the folio : — Yea, noise ? then I '11 be brief. O happy [i. 6., fortunately found] dagger! This is thy sheath (stabs herself) ; there rust and let me die. In the first quarto instead of *rust* we find *rest.* Pope, and the other eighteenth-century editors, except Steevens, give ' rest.' The nineteenth-century editors prefer rust. The argument is that the first quarto was an unauthori- tative issue, as is shown by its many imperfections ; that the second quarto is evidently from a better copy and most likely represents the play from the author's hand, and that 'rust* is a far stronger and more Shakespearean word than * rest.* This, then, is a case just on the divid- ing line where the arguments balance. But most lovers of Shakespeare will prefer ' rust.* An amusing example of the fact that the verbal pro- prieties of one age may be quite different from those of another is given by an emendation Pope made in Romeo and Juliet* The bustling and cheery host, old Capulet, says: — Welcome, gentlemen ! Ladies that have their toes Unplagued with corns will have a bout with you. Pope changed 'toes' to *feet,* on the ground of the indeli- cacy of the word. This, in an age that could stand Wycherley's and Congreve's comedies, where the entire plot needs emendation ! The change is one of a kind that no conscientious editor should make, because the object of editing is to give us the text as it was, not as anybody thinks it ought to be. The rule is, alter no word of the old copies unless it yields no meaning and is plainly a misprint, and the substituted word is justi- fied by the context or by the ordinary rules of proof- 90 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS correcting. For instance, in Romeo and Juliet^ v, 1, Romeo says to the apothecary : — I pray thy poverty and not thy will. As he immediately gives the apothecary some money, 'pray' is properly changed to 'pay.' Were it not for the accompanying action, the reading of the folio would have to stand. Even so, it is not absolutely certain that Shakespeare did not write 'pray.' The substitution in- volving the erasure of a single letter is barely justified. But the first editors of the eighteenth century thought that they had a right to improve the text by guessing, and frequently made ludicrous mistakes. Pope's preface is a good piece of work.^ He takes the ground so generally held in the eighteenth century that the poet was an untutored genius, owing every- thing to nature, nothing to art, and that he is * justly and universally elevated above all other dramatic writ- ers for his characteristic excellences notwithstanding his defects.^ He is impressed by the individuality of the characters : — His characters are so much nature herself that it is a sort of injury to call them by so distant a name as copies of her. Every single character in Shakespeare is as much an in- dividual as those in life itself ; it is as impossible to find any two alike ; and such as from their relation or affinity in any respect appear most to be twins, will, upon comparison, be found remarkably distinct. To this life and variety of char- acters we must add the wonderful preservation of it ; which is such throughout his plays that had all the speeches been printed without the very names of the persons, I beHeve one might have applied them with certainty to every speaker. ^ The introductions of Rowe, Pope, Johnson, Steevens, Capell, and Malone can be conveniently come at either in Malone's Vari- orum Edition or in Eighteenth Century Shakespearean Essays or in Famous Introductions to Shakespeare's Plays. EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS 91 This power did not enable Pope to correct the misap- plication of speeches, or, at least, he did not exert it. He speaks of Shakespeare's power of rousing our feel- ings whether of amusement or sympathy, of his 'just- ness of distinction ' and ' extent of comprehension when he treats of ethic or politic ' ; he notices that ' not only the spirit, but manners of the Romans are exactly drawn, and still a nicer distinction is shown between the manners in the time of Julius Caesar and Coriola- nus.' He vindicates Shakespeare's acquaintance with literature, and says ' there is a vast difference between learning and languages.' He thinks he made use of Chaucer in Troilus and Cressida, an opinion which will hardly be shared by any one who has noticed the profound difference between the characterization of Cressida in Chaucer's poem and in that singular med- ley of irony, cynicism, and philosophy, called Troi- lus and Cressida in the First Folio. He says very justly: — I make no doubt to declare that those wretched plays Pericles, Locrine, Sir John Oldcastle, Yorkshire Tragedy, Lord Cromwell, The Puritan, and London Prodigal, and a thing called The Double Falsehood cannot be admitted as his, if I may judge from all the distinguishing marks of his style and his manner of thinking and writing. In this modern criticism would sustain him, except as to parts of Pericles. Unfortunately Pope lessens our admiration of his literary judgment by adding: — And I should conjecture of some of the others (particu- larly Love's Labour 's Lost, The Winter's Tale, Comedy of Errors, and Titus Andronicus), that only some characters, single scenes, or, perhaps, a few particular passages were of his hand. Love's Labour '« Lost is as plainly by the youthful 92 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS Shakespeare as Winter's Tale is by the Shakespeare who had developed into the master-poet. He errs, too, in considering that Shakespeare wrote for unrefined audiences, because the theatre at Black- friars, at least, was frequented by audiences above the average of the day in cultivation and appreciation, audiences every way superior to those that heard Dry- den's and Congreve's plays, because they were drawn from a superior England, and came to see more natural and poetic plays. Of course no eighteenth-century lit- erary man could admit this for an instant, and it must be reckoned to Pope's credit that he says : — With all his faults and with all the irregularity of his drama, one may look upon his works in comparison with those that are more finished and regular as upon an ancient majestic piece of Gothic architecture compared with a neat modern building ; the latter is more elegant and glaring, but the former is more strong and more solemn. It must be al- lowed that in one of these there are materials enough to make many of the other. It has much the greater variety and much the nobler apartments, though we are often conducted to them by dark, odd, and uncouth passages. Nor does the whole fail to strike us with greater reverence, though many of the parts are childish, ill-placed, and unequal to its grandeur. Pope adopted the singular device of ' distinguishing the most shining passages by commas in the margins, and where the beauty lay, not in the particulars but in the whole, a star is prefixed to the scene.' This is ' sign-board criticism,' pure and simple, and must have been rather irritating to those whose favorite passages were not starred. As he says, he ' has rather given a proof of his willingness than of his ability to do his author justice.' No one man could accomplish the immense labor necessary to establishing a standard text, and Pope is EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS 93 entitled to our thanks if he did little more than call attention to the necessity for the task. As Shakespeare belongs to the world, the true reading must be decided by a world- jury. A certain conjectural emendation occurs to an editor, and he at once becomes an advo- cate for his guess. Before it is received it must be de- liberated on by those who feel no personal interest in that particular reading. The consensus of many minds must be had, and the proper limitations of conjecture established before we have the Cambridge Edition. The task is too great for one man, even were he especially fitted for it. Pope adopted also the entirely unjustifiable plan of striking out entire passages that seemed to him unwor- thy of the author. This, as much as anything else, led to the supersession of his edition, after two issues, by that of his successor and critic, Lewis Theobald. He also amended the metre in many cases in accordance with his own feeling for rhythm. This should never be done unless the change is justifiable on other grounds. In As You Like It Oliver describes himself as found sleeping by Orlando — Under an old oak whose boughs were mossed with age And high top bald with dry antiquity. Here the word old is superfluous to the metre and tautological. Its insertion is an error the compositor might easily fall into. It was properly stricken out by Steevens. But most of Pope's emendations of this sort are rejected. Pope's underhand efforts to discredit Theobald, the next editor, have been brought to light by the careful researches of Professor Lounsbury in The Text of Shakespeare. Pope's inveteracy and subtlety and un- truthfulness are incomprehensible, and the man himself » 94 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS is a more extraordinary compound than any of Shake- speare's characters. He did Theobald harm, but in the end has done himself far more. LEWIS THEOBALD (1688-1744) Theobald was born a month earlier than Pope and died three months later. He was trained for an attorney, but chose a literary life and was not very successful as a poet or dramatist, though he was an industrious stu- dent and became in some respects a learned man. In 1726 he published a review of Pope's edition, entitled in the voluminous language of the day, ' Shakespeare Restored, or Specimens of the many Errors as well Committed as Unamended by Mr. Pope, designed not only to correct the same edition, but to restore the true reading of Shakespeare in all the editions ever yet pub- lished.' Pope, who was a sensitive and rather waspish person, did not take this in very good part, and re- venged himself personally by making Theobald the hero of the first edition of the Dunciad (1728). In 1733 Theobald brought out an edition of the plays, in which he retorted on Pope with great effect. This was the be- ginning of the Shakespeare controversy lasting through the eighteenth century, in which each editor attacked some of his predecessors with lively personalities. Our eighteenth-century ancestors, though dignified and even pompous in their manners, relieved the tedium of life by a boyish explosiveness of language when they were irritated. They did not sneer in a superior manner, as we do, but indulged in hearty scolding and calling of names, which gave their opponents a chance to get even, unless they were very poorly gifted. This practice no doubt contributed to the 'gayety of nations,' but seems to us very bad manners. One of the mildest of their phrases was to remark that their opponent's work was EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS 95 * a tissue of mere dotage which scarcely deserves un- raveling.' This is in refreshing contrast to the trickle of lukewarm praise with which our literary periodicals ' notice ' each new book. Theobald was in reality the first ' Shakespeare scholar,' ' and, as he says, his book is ' the first Essay of literal Criticism upon any author in the English tongue.' He ^ made intelligent use of the quartos, and when we re- member how meagre was his * apparatus criticus * — no concordance, a most imperfect glossary, no aid from others except what he could gather from conversation with the ' ingenious Dr. Thirlby ' or the * accurate Mr. Hughes,' we must admire his acuteness and ability. His memory must have been very strong, for, having occa- sion to illustrate Shakespeare's use of a noun for a verb, as ' knee his throne,' ' history his loss,' and the like, he adduces instances from fourteen different plays, and says he ' could stretch out the catalogue to a great ex- tent.' He says he could bring a great number of exam- ples of the reduplication of words, like ' that father lost^ lost his,' but that he can remember but five off-hand. He illustrates Shakespeare's use of ' whirling ' and ' warrant ' and several other words with the same copi- ous and ready citations. Many of his emendations of I Pope's edition are sanctioned by modern authority. He I is not always in the right, — who could be in 194 pages of new matter, involving many minute points ? He says of the words of Claudius to Voltimand and Cornelius: And we here dispatch You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltimand, For Bearers of this Greeting, that ' the word For should be Owr, as giving the ad- dress a more kingly tone.' Here, of course, Theobald was wrong, but the canon, ' Never change the words of 96 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS the folio when sense can be extracted from the original,' had not been established. It is in this book that he suggested the famous emendation in Dame Quickly's description of Falstaff's death, from ' a table of green frieze ' to ' a [he] babbled of green fields.' Theobald says that in the margin of a copy of the plays belonging to a deceased friend the word talked was suggested for tahle^ but that he thinks * babbled ' nearer the true reading. He is not so fortunate in his attempts to correct the metre of the original, a proceeding rarely warranted, and the cause of ridiculous mistakes by some of his successors, especially when they attempted to fill every line out to five feet. Shakespeare's short lines frequently come in with admirable rhythmical effect, and, even if they did not, it is sacrilegious to attempt to patch them. In correcting the pointing Theobald's work is usually excellent, for he had a very clear idea of the relation of clauses. The punctuation of the early copies was largely the work of the printers, and has no sacrosanct char- acter. The body of Theobald's book is taken up with a con- sideration of Hamlet^ but in a closely printed appendix of nearly equal length he considers passages from some twenty other plays. He is rather too ingenious in some of his conjectural readings, but far less inclined to guesswork than many of his successors. His strictures on Pope do not pass much beyond the bounds of cour- tesy, at least, of critical courtesy. In the introduction he writes : — I have so great an esteem for Mr. Pope, and so high an opinion of his genius and excellencies, that I beg to be excused from the least intention of derogating from his merits, in this attempt to restore the true reading of Shakespeare. Tho' I confess a veneration, almost rising to idolatry, for the writings EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS 97 of this inimitable poet, I would be very loth even to do him justice at the expense of that other gentleman's character. But I am persuaded, I shall stand as free from such a charge in the execution of this design, as I am sure in the intention of it, for I am assuming a task here, which this learned editor seems purposely (I was going to say, with too nice a scruple) to have declined. In the body of the book he says : — There are many passages of such intolerable carelessness interspersed thro' all the six volumes, that were not a few of Mr. Pope's notes scattered here and there too, I should be induced to believe that the words on the title-page of the first volume — collated and corrected by the former editions, by Mr. Pope — were placed there by the Bookseller to enhance the credit of his edition ; but that he had played false with his editors and never sent him the sheets to revise. . . . I shall leave these conjectural readings to the arbitrament of better judgments. But I think I may with modesty affirm every one of them to be more just, and better grounded than that espoused by the Editor. . . . We have already, in the course of these Remarks, con- versed with a Place or two which have given reason to pre- sume, that if corrected at all, they could be corrected only by the servants at the press. Here again is a passage so con- fused, and so indiscriminately printed that it furnishes a strong suspicion of never having been revised by the Editor. Could so nice a judge as Mr. Pope pass over such absurd stuff as is jumbled here together, and not observe a fault that is so plain and palpable ? Correct it with all the editions that I have ever seen except the Quartos of 1637 and 1703, in which the text is likewise shuffled and faulty. There is nothing in this undeserved nor offensively personal, but Pope was enraged and mortified, and re- venged himself, as said before, by making Theobald the hero of the first edition of the Dunciad (1728), and by trying to injure him and prevent the sale of his edi- 98 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS tion in every underhand way. In the edition of 1743 he gave the place of dishonor to CoUey Gibber, as little of a dunce as Theobald, retaining the first disparaging references to ' poor piddling Tibbalds.' Men like Pope, Swift, and Prior were very disdainful of hack writers like Defoe, Dennis, and Theobald, who made a trade of letters, and did not regard them as technically gentle- men, though they themselves were not at all averse to receiving pay for the productions of their pens. Pope even went so far as to endeavor to prevent the pub- lisher, Tonson, from bringing out Theobald's edition two years later. This seems very petty, as the privilege of printing Pope's writings was valuable to Tonson, and Theobald was poor. Tonson excused himself by the plea that he was committed with others and could not withdraw. Theobald's edition in six volumes came out in 1733. In the seven years since the publication of Shakespeare Restored he had become a more thorough critic, and the publication of the Dunciad had given him just cause for indignation. He was not in the least cowed, and attacks Pope in a lively manner. A few extracts will show that the war is on : — The editors [Rowe and Pope] in their sagacity have mur- dered a joke changing Slender's (Meri'y Wives) words from * I hope upon familiarity will grow more contempt * to ' grow more content,' thereby disarming the sentiment of all its salt and humor and disappointing the audience of a reasonable cause of laughter. . . . The former editors content themselves with words with- out any reference to meaning. . . . Mr. Pope follows Mr. Rowe's edition in his errors and omissions. It gives great suspicion that Mr. Pope for the generality took Mr. Rowe's edition for his guide. . . . * Troubles thee o'er * {Tempest) is a foolish reading, which EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS 99 I believe first got birth in Mr. Pope's two editions of our poet, and I dare say will be buried there in a proper obscur- ity. * Trebles thee o'er ' is the proper reading. . . . These two mere poetical editors can do nothing towards an emendation, even when it is chalked out to their hands. . . . This scene {Taming of the Shrew) Mr. Pope, upon what authority J cannot guess, has made the first of the fifth Act. The consequence is that two unpardonable absurdities are fixed upon the author which he could not possibly have com- mitted. If such a critick be fit to publish a stage-writer, I shall not envy Mr. Pope's admirers if they applaud his sa- gacity. Of Mallet, a defender of Pope, he says : — I may fairly say of this author as Falstaff does of Poins, * Hang him, babboon ! his wit is as thick as Tewksbury mus- tard. There is no more conceit [Judgment] in him than is in a mallet ! ' In the end of the last volume he has an extraordin- ary lot of indexes, the final one being a list of editions divided into three classes : first, those * of prime author- ity,' — the folios and quartos before 1623; second, those ' of middle authority,' — the third folios and the quartos printed after the First Folio ; third, ' those of no authority, — Mr. Rowe's and Mr. Pope's editions.' Theobald's edition of six octavo volumes soon dis- placed its predecessors, for intelligent men could not help seeing that there vras more intelligent work in it. Of his many emendations, nearly one thousand, as large a proportion are received to this day as could be ex- pected. When Rosalind is entering the Forest of Arden the folio makes her say, ' O, Jupiter, how merry are my spirits.' Theobald made the change of ' merry ' to ' weary,' ^ * Dr. Furness contends adroitly for the retention of ' merry,' but it is not likely that he will find many adherents in one of the very 100 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS which is evidently correct from the next speech of Touchstone. ' I care not for my spirits, if my legs were not weary ^ In the same play, however, he makes two very inept corrections, the first and most extraordinary on the suggestion of Warburton. Rosalind says of Orlando, 'His kissing is as full of sanctity as the touch of holy bread,'' Warburton thought this should be ' holy heard^ Warburton was a clergyman, and thought that to refer to 'holy bread' was sacrilegious, but that a critic of the acuteness of Theobald should agree with him is incomprehensible. But in the same play he makes almost as absurd a suggestion : — Celia, He hath bought a pair of cast lips of Diana. Theobald says ' cast ' means ' cast off,' or second-hand. The word is so plainly the Latin form of 'chaste' — castus — that it is inconceivable that a scholar like Theobald should fail to perceive it. In the Merchant of Venice Lorenzo says of music : — Such harmony is in immortal souls ; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it. Theobald changed 'souls' to 'sounds,' missing the poetry of the lines. Such misconceptions are rare with him, however, and in many cases he displays a power which may be called divination. No editor has ever surpassed him in so altering an incomprehensible passage that we say at once, ' That is what Shakespeare wrote.' In appreciation of lyric poetry Mr. Theobald is weak. In Ariel's fairy song — few cases when his judgment does not command instant agree- ment. Even the ultra-conservative editors of the Globe Edition sanction 'weary.' EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EJt)lYffRS 101 Where the bee sucks, there suck I : In a cowslip's bell I lie, ... On the bat's back I do fly After summer merrily. Merrily, merrily, shall I live now Under the blossom that hangs on the bough — he changes ' summer ' to ' sunset ' and * suck ' to ' lurk.' This is entirely unjustifiable, not to say impertinent. It is prosaic and spoils the music. Theobald says he changes * summer' to 'sunset' ' from the known nature of the bat.' But can you hold a great poet in a moment of inspira- tion responsible for the habits of so nondescript an animal as the bat? He says that -fairies do not such honey, whereas they do lurk. No man can argue about the habits of fairies with William Shakespeare, who learned all about them when he was a country boy, and 'Queen Mab was with him.' Theobald's preface ^ shows him an ardent admirer of the poet. He says ; — ^.^ If his diction and the clothing of his thoughts attract us, how much more must we be charmed with the richness and variety of his images and ideas! If his images and ideas steal into our souls and strike upon our fancy, how much are they improved in price when we come to reflect with what propriety and justness they are applied to character ! If we look into his characters and how they are furnished and proportioned to the employment he cuts out for them, how are we taken up with the mastery of his portraits.' What draughts of nature ! What variety of originals, and how different each from the other ! How are they dressed from the stores of his own luxurious imagination, without being the apes of mode, or borrowing from any foreign wardrobe ! Theobald adds little to the life of Shakespeare ; his ^ Reference is had to the preface to the second edition (1740). 102 SfflKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS researches did not lie in that direction. He says : ' As I have never proposed to dilate further on the char- acter of my author than was necessary to explain the nature and use of this edition, 1 shall proceed to con- sider him as a genius in possession of an everlasting fame.' That is about all an eighteenth-century critic could do. His task was to settle, or to help to settle, the correct reading. To us the more interesting ques- tion is, why is he 'in possession of an everlasting fame ' ? Why, in an age full of men of facile talent, when plays were at once salable and a shrewd old fox of business like Philip Henslowe was ready to buy them for cash, and at least forty young men had the knack of writing plays, some four hundred of which have survived to our time, — why in such an age were no other plays produced which are in a class with the fifteen or sixteen of Shakespeare's best ones? Why is it that of the hundred thousand men in our country who can quote long passages from his plays and read some of them every year or so, not more than twenty- five could give the plot of an Elizabethan play not his ? The rest may possibly be able to recall the names of one or more of his contemporaries — useless lumber stored during student days to be ejected as soon as possible. Why is it that audiences will listen with in- terest to certain plays written three hundred years ago, when they would not for an instant /^ brook a line . Of tedious though well-laboured Catiline ? Where is the difference which causes such opposite effects ? This is the interesting question to us, but it was not approached till the days of Coleridge. Gen- eralities as to diction, images, characters, such as are suggested by Theobald, are not explanations or ana- EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS 103 lyses. They only push the question one step further back and take it for granted that Shakespeare is * the possessor of an everlasting fame,' which indeed was self-evident. The same inadequacy of judgment is evident when Theobald speaks of the everlasting question of nature and art applied to a poet. To his generation art meant following certain rules of construction and observing certain canons of taste. The nature of art was not in the least understood, and so they speak of one of the greatest artists in the world as 'lacking art.' They sometimes confounded art and learning, for a poet who did not imitate the technic of the ancients was supposed to be ' without art.' Theobald lays down an excellent rule when he says : — Wherever the author's sense is clear and discoverable (though perchance low and trivial), I have not by any inno- vation tampered with his text, out of an ostentation of en- deavoring to make him speak better than the old copies have done. He deviated from this rule sometimes, but some of his successors ignored it completely, and others could not see where ' the sense was clear and discoverable.' He pays his compliments to Pope from time to time : — Mr. Pope pretended to have collated the old copies, and yet seldom has corrected the text but to his injury. I con- gratulate with the manes of our poet, that this gentleman has been sparing in indulging his private sense, as he phrases it ; for he who tampers with an author whom he does not under- stand, must do it at the expense of his subject. . . . Mr. Pope, like a most obsequious editor, has taken the pas- sage upon content and followed the track of stupidity. . . . It is not with any secret pleasure that I so frequently animadvert on Mr. Pope as a critick, but there are provoca- 104 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS tions which a man can never quite forget. His libels have been thrown out with so much inveteracy, that, not to dis- pute whether they should come from a Christian, they leave it a question whether they could come from a man. . . . The indignation for being represented as a blockhead may be as strong in us as it is in the ladies for a reflection on their beauties. It is certain, I am indebted to him for some flagrant civilities, and I shall willingly devote a part of my life to the honest endeavor of quitting scores: with this exception, however, that I will not return these civilities in his proper strain, but confine myself, at least, to the limits of common decency. Fortunately for Pope, Theobald's satirical powers were not as highly developed as his own. Theobald had sufficient advantage in knowledge of his subject, in- dustry in collecting the evidence for both sides of a dis- puted reading, and enough sagacity to form an opinion, usually a correct one. It is unfortunate that he did not ignore Pope altogether and devote himself entirely to Shakespearean criticism. However, it may be that lit- erary quarrels call the attention of the public to the subject. The eighteenth-century personalities may have given a zest to the study of Shakespeare, which it lacks in these days of decorum and indifference. Still, there can be little doubt that the sneers of Pope and his friends at textual criticism, as the petty employment of dull and plodding minds, was of material injury to Theobald, and retarded the work of settling the proper reading of the text, which he did so much to further. SIR THOMAS HANMER (1667-1746) Sir Thomas Hanmer, the next editor of Shakespeare, was a man of family and position, and the Speaker of the House of Commons from 1714 to 1727. He pos- EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS 105 sessed excellent abilities, and took to annotating the ! plays for his own pleasure. In 1744 be brought out a very beautiful edition of Shakespeare's works in six vol- umes, under the auspices of the University of Oxford. It is commonly known as the Oxford Edition, and may be regarded as the admission of the great poet among the classics by the learned world, though the contention that he was a barbaric and uncultured genius was not terminated for some years. It was illustrated with a number of engravings. Sir Thomas is altogether too dignified a person to take part in the quarrels of the early editors, and carries the idea that editing Shake- speare is the work of elegant leisure rather than the serious vocation of life. He follows Pope in degrading to the bottom of the page passages which seem low or undignified, on the ground that they were 'foisted in by the players after his death to please the vulgar audi- ences.' If this could be proved, excision might be justi- fied ; but as proof is out of the question, no one should mutilate the text at his pleasure. The editor struck out the conversation in Henry Y between the French prin- cess and her gentlewoman, which, though not particu- larly witty, is amusing enough as such things go, and stands in the original. He seems to have thought that it was undignified in the daughter of a king to be enter- taining. He made a few emendations which have been accepted, but many that are inadmissible. His famil- iarity with hunting terms enabled him to point out that him in one passage was a misprint for lym (an old word meaning hound), and thereby restore the sense. In the Merry Wives of Windsor the host says, 'It's a merry Knight, will you go, An-heiresf* Hanmer suggested Minheires (Mynheers), which seems plau- sible enough, though not accepted by the Cambridge editors. 106 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS WHiLIAM WARBUBTON (1698-1779) Warburton was a clergyman, and finally became Bishop of Gloucester. He was a man of fine abilities but of an arrogant nature, and entirely unfitted to edit Shakespeare, not only by reason of lack of delicate per- ception, but because he was so insufferably sure that his own ideas were right. He was at first a correspondent of Theobald's, and attacked Pope on account of the deistical doctrines in the Essay on Man. Afterwards he accused Theobald of appropriating some corrections he had communicated to him confidentially, and took Pope's side in the quarrel between him and Theobald. He is of no authority in Shakespearean criticism, and his edition, 1747, merely proves the increasing demand for the poet's works. His emendations, now discredited, with very few exceptions, are so bad that one or two of them are given to show what absurdities an able man may promulgate when he attempts to correct poetry and lacks poetic conception. The most preposterous one, ' beard ' for 'bread,' has already been given (page 100), and was adopted by Theobald, who, fortunately for his own reputation, gave Warburton credit. Of the line in Hamlet's second soliloquy, — Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, — Warburton says, 'Without question, Shakespeare wrote, 'against assail of troubles.' Why not 'assault of troubles,' or 'a siege of troubles^ or any other word containing an s f Either kills the poetry as effect- ually as does 'assail.' In As You Like It Celia says to Orlando : — If you saw yourself with your eyes, or knew yourself with your judgement, the fear of your adventure would counsel you to a more equal enterprise. EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS 107 This is as plain as ordinary conversation need be, but Warburton says, 'Absurd; we must read our eyes and our judgment.^ No good reason can be given for the change. Had Celia meant, ' If you could see your- self as we see you,' she would have said so. As it is, the emphasis is not on 'your,' but on 'eyes' and 'judgment.' Later, the Duke asks Orlando if he believed in what Rosalind (disguised as a boy) had promised. Orlando says very neatly : — I sometimes do believe and sometimes do not, As those that fear they hope and know they fear. Warburton's note is: 'This strange nonsense should read : — ' As those that fear their hap and know their fear.* This is not even paraphrasing. To paraphrase would be to write, 'As those who are apprehensive lest their hope prove vain and are sure they are excited ' ; — as Or- lando might well be. Warburton pays his respects to Theobald and Han- mer in good old eighteenth-century fashion. Theobald, he says, was a poor man and Hanmer a poor critic, ... to each of them I communicated a great number of observations which they managed, as they saw fit, to the relief of their several dis- tresses. Theobald generally exerts his conjectural talent in the wrong place : he tampers with what is found in the com- mon books, and in the old ones, omits all notice of variations, the sense of which he did not understand. What he read he could transcribe ; hut as to what he thought, if he ever thought, he could but ill express, so he read on and by that means got a character for learning. . . . How the Oxford editor came to think himself qualified for this office, from which the whole course of his life had been so remote, is still more difficult to conceive. For what- 108 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS ever parts he might have either of genius or erudition, he was absolutely ignorant of the art of criticism, as well as of the poetry of that time, and the language of his author. This was in the Augustan age, the age of Queen Anne, ' when letters were polite ' and litterateurs not, and clergymen were only partially reformed and be- lieved in the original sin of those who did not agree with them. The ineptitude of many of Warburton's notes passes belief, and is one of the reasons for the dislike felt for a century by the lovers of the dramatist for textual critics. The following are no more than fair specimens ; Macbeth, Time and the hour runs through the roughest day. Time is painted with an hour-glass. This occasioned the expression. Merchant of Venice. Launcelot. The old proverb is very well parted between my master, Shylock, and you, sir. You have the grace of God, and he has enough. Bassanio. Thou speak'st it well. I should choose to read, thou splitfst it well. Othello. lago. Not poppy nor mandragora. Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou ow'dst yesterday. Ow*dst is right and of much greater force than the common reading hadst, not to sleep being finely called de- frauding the day of a debt of nature.^ ^ In another place Warburton says, * the cocles of the heart should be muscles of the heart, one shell-fish mistaken for another ' ! EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS 109 1 Henry IV, Hotspur. By this hand, if I were now by this rascal, I could brain him with his lady's fan. The fans then in fashion had very long handles. All 's Well that Ends Well. Helena. How shall they credit A poor unlearned virgin, when the schools, Embowelled of their doctrine, have left off The danger to itself. Emhowelled of doctrine plainly means ' having ex- hausted all their learning or skill,' but Dr. Warburton says, — The expression is beautifully satirical, and implies that the theories of the school are spun out of the bowels of the pro- fessors [as this note is from Dr. Warburton's viscera], like the cobwebs of the spider. Dr. Warburton found his Theobald in Thomas | Edwards (1699-1757). Edwards was a barrister and a man of excellent wit. ^ His Canons of Criticism^ de- voted entirely to Warburton's shortcomings, is nearly always right, for he invariably contradicts Warburton, who is nearly always wrong. He first lays down twenty- five canons, and then illustrates each from Warburton's notes. Some of Edwards's ironical rules are : — 1. A professed critic has a right to declare that his author wrote whatever he thinks he ought to have written, with as much positiveness as if he had been at his elbow. 2. He has a right to alter any passage which he does not understand. 3. These alterations he may make in spite of the exact- ness of measure. 1 The wittiest of all commentators, for Steevens is a sardonic prac- tical joker, and Dr Furness's comments in summing the opinions on a knotty point of interpretation are humorous rather than witty. 110 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS 4. When he does not like an expression and cannot mend it he may abuse the author for it. 5. Or he may condemn it as a foolish expression. 6. As every author is to be corrected into all possible per- fection, and of that perfection the professed critic is the sole judge, he may alter any word or phrase which does not want amendment, or which will do, provided he can think of any- thing which he imagines will do better. The other canons cover every possible fault a critic can be guilty of. A few examples will show with what good sense and caustic wit Mr. Edwards points out Warburton's mistakes. Canon II. Example 33. Twelfth Night. It is silly sooth And dallies with the innocence of love Like the old age. * It is a plain old song,' says Shakespeare ; has the sim- plicity of the ancients, and dallies with the innocence of love ; i. e., sports and plays innocently with a love subject, as they did in old times. But Mr. Warburton, who is here out of his element, and on a subject not dreamt of in his philosophy, pronounces peremptorily : — ' Dallies has no sense ; we should read tallies.'' Spoken more like a baker or a milkman than a lover. — Edwards. Canon II. Example 37. Measure for Measure. For all thy blessed youth becomes as aged. Warburton says, * Read " for palled, thy blazed youth becomes assuaged.'' * The reason for this alteration is worthy of the critic by profession, who not finding in his author what to censure first corrupts under pretence of amending him, and then abuses him for the imputed senti- ment. — Edwards. EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS 111 Canon V. Example 7. Hamlet* That father lost, lost his. Mr. Warburton's reason for believing that the beauty of redoubling the word lost, is easier to be conceived than ex- plained, is, because when it is explained, it amounts to non- sense. An odd reason, this. — Edwards. Canon VIII. Example 37. Much Ado About Nothing. Past the infinite of thought. Human thought cannot sure be called infinite with any- kind of figurative propriety. I suppose the true reading was definite. — Warburton. Whatever the impropriety of applying this term to finite and even trifling things, the practice is so common that it is almost a shame to quote any proof of it, but I cannot forbear giving one from one of Mr. W.'s own prefaces. — Edwards. Canon VI. Example 5. Cymheline. The very Gods. The very Gods may indeed signify the Gods themselves, yet I am persuaded the reading is corrupt and that Shake- speare wrote ' the warey Gods,' warey here signifying fore- warning — ready to give notice, and not as in its more usual meaning, cautious, reserved. — Warburton. Here again it is to be wished that Mr. Warburton had given some authority for using the word in this sense, which, if he had looked for, he might have found at least how to spell it. — Edwards. Canon VIII. Example 39. 1 Henry IV. If I travel but four foot, by the square further on foot I shall break my wind. The thought is humorous and alludes to his bulk, insinu- ating that his (Falstaff's) legs being four foot asunder, when he advanced four foot this put together made four foot square. — Warburton. 112 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS According to this rule let us measure the leap of the dancer in the Winter's Tale, who ' jumped twelve foot and a half by the square,' i. e., twelve foot forward and as much sideways. But whether he did this by jumping in the dia- gonal, or whether he carried his legs twelve feet and a half asunder, is not very easily determined. . . . By the square in both places Shakespeare means nothing more than a com- mon measure, a foot rule (carpenter's square). — Edwards. There is something very modern in the tone and style of Edwards's criticism of criticism. He makes few mistakes in his book. In Macbeth the Sergeant says : — As whence the sun 'gins his reflection Shipwrecking storms and direful thunders break. Iteflection means the turning back of the sun after the solstice whence, at the equinox, storms were sup- posed to be engendered, but both Edwards and Warbur- ton take it to mean reflection oj^ light. Warburton thinks that storms come from the east when the sun begins to shine ; Edwards, that they come from the sky (heaven) ' whence the sun gives his reflection,' or his light and heat, reading 'gives' for ' gins ' on the author- ity of Pope. Both are wrong. ^ 1 In the seventh edition of Edwards's book, published after the author's death (1765), a number of sonnets are found which just miss beiug excellent social verse. There is also an excur- sus on spelling reform, entitled the Trial of the Letter V or Up^ sUoriy in which Apollo hears the petitions of various letters. The letter N petitions that G may be excluded from the yioxdiS foreign and sovereign, A cross-petitions that E and I may be ousted and he put in possession (sovran). O enters a complaint against U for intruding in the words labor, honor, and * all words ending in or derived from the Latines.' This was granted at once, forty- five years before the day of Noah Webster. In fact this eight- eenth-century barrister's ideas on spelling are more radical than those of our reformers, except with regard to ough, which multi-sonant combination be votes to retain in all its incongru- ous but time-honored positions. CHAPTER V THE LATER EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS DR. JOHNSON (1709-1784) When we read Dr. Johnson's prospectus or the intro- duction to his edition of the plays (1765), we feel at once that we are in the grasp of a powerful intellect. There is a dignified march in the opening paragraphs, and a massive good sense in the handling of the subject, that is very impressive. But we soon find that it is an intel- lect no less limited than powerful, and one strangely un- conscious of its limitations. This impression is increased by the notes to the separate plays. When the point can be determined by good sense, when it is a question of the meaning of certain words or the grammatical rela- tion of certain clauses. Dr. Johnson's notes are instruct- ive. He says, ' This must mean so and so,' or ' This is nonsense, I can make nothing of it, ' and we are apt to agree with him. But when some necessary question of the play is to be considered, especially anything depending on the vital nature of the characters, this robust intel- lect is helpless. It is men of this type that have built imperial England. Intellectual integrity, regard for truth, justice, and duty have made Englishmen success- ful in dealing with Oriental nations. But at the same time a peculiar inability to take the sympathetic and imaginative point of view prevents them from compre- hending the inner life of alien races, so that sometimes, as in India and Egypt, England, though a beneficent, is a hated power, and a mutiny may arise and the Eng- lish officials be entirely unable to foresee or prevent it. This same unwillingness or inability to understand a 114 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS mental condition foreign to insular education, and an absolute certainty that the individual's point of view is the correct and only one, characterizes Dr. Johnson's criticism of Shakespeare. Dr. Johnson was a scholar, a moralist, and a literary man, but his scholarship was almost entirely confined to the classics and the Latin element of our language, his philosophy was dogmatic and rested on arbitrary assumptions, and his knowledge of literature did not cover the intimate acquaintance with the writings of the Elizabethan period his task demanded. It is a tribute to the estimation in which Shakespeare's plays were held that the two leading literary men of their respect- ive generations should be chosen to edit them. Dr. Johnson was a conscientious worker, but at the period (1756) when he undertook to bring out an edition of Shakespeare he was beginning to grow old and weary, and was inclined to procrastinate, so much so that he had to be sharply reminded of his duty. Very likely he had underestimated the immense labor necessary for the minute examination of each line and the collation of the quartos with the First Folio. He laid down the excellent rule that * the old books were probably right,' and that ' conjecture should not be substituted unless justified by probability.' On the whole, his edition was a disappoint- ment, even in his own day. Dr. Johnson was not a poet, and it is only through the poet in us that we can appreciate Shakespeare. He hated romanticism or any tendency to give an air of mystery or a tone of enthusiasm or passion to a literary representation of life. He could see nothing in Gray's Odes or Milton's Lycidas. They were too spectacular, and conveyed no definite moral. For him the poet must hold a mirror up to nature, but it must not be a magic mirror — it must be destitute of the first quality for LATER EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS 115 a poetic reflection. His ear was trained to classic scan- ; sion and the regular beat of Pope's verse, and deaf to \ the finer melodies of his own tongue. He could even say |li that there ' were not more than five or at least six per- fect lines in Shakespeare.' His criticism was vitiated by the pernicious idea that poetry must convey some definite lesson in morals, of which the poet himself is conscious; and, by morals, he means the conven- tional, established standard of social equity, not the underlying principles of justice and love existing from the beginning. / Under these circumstances it may be wondered at I that he could see anything good in Shakespeare at all, I and it may be that his recognition is a very high tribute j to the universality of the poet. But Shakespeare by this time had become an English institution. His plays had been presented for nearly a hundred years by a succession of great actors. Dr. Johnson had repeatedly seen Garrick in the great tragedies. The representa- tions were a part of the life of London. Dr. Johnson had not the slightest idea of their signifi^cance, but they were English and established and respectable. He ^ could even tolerate Midsummer NigMs Dream^ for the fairies, though * wild and fantastical,' were also an established English institution. He says, in one of the oddest sentences ever penned : ' wild and fantastical as this play is, all the parts in their various modes are well written, and give the kind of pleasure "which the author designed. Fairies in his time were much in fashion; common tradition had made them familiar, and Spenser's poem had made them great.' ' Fairies were much in fashion ' is an extraordinary statement. In fact, the entire passage is utterly incom- prehensible. What has the Faerie Queene to do with Cobweb and Peaseblossom ? 116 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS He seems to have regarded the Shakespearean char- acters as stage figures, not as real people. This may have been the attitude of most of his contemporaries, for the human nature and individuality of Shake- speare's characters is not what first attracts attention. This is most noticeable in the case of the women of the plays. The dignity, purity, vivacity, and charm which attract us so powerfully in Viola, Portia, Imogen, Rosalind, and Beatrice, were not noticed by any one before the last quarter of the eighteenth century. This is surprising, and shows the great value of Shakespearean criticism, for to know such women ' is a liberal educa- tion.* Dr. Johnson was blind to the chief beauty in the book he was commenting on. For instance, he says of our charming Viola/ * when she determines to seek service with the Duke Orsino, Viola is an excellent schemer, never at a loss.' ^ As American college stu- dents say, ' We cannot stand for that.' Viola is a type of something most sacred to every man, — the maiden. In her distress she is obliged to seek the first means of livelihood available, and, as she cannot find service with Olivia, she is obliged to disguise herself as a boy and enter Orsino's household. Granting that she is a trifle sentimental and falls in love very promptly, we must remember that things must move rapidly in a play, even if the limit of twenty-four hours is disregarded. Besides, Orsino is an attractive person, — a gentleman. Olivia says : — ... I suppose him virtuous, know him noble, Of great estate, of fresh and stainless youth ; In voices well divulged, free, learned, and valiant, 1 In Literature of Europe, Mr. Hallam, a man of something- the same solid density, says the same thing' of Viola. Campbell calls the high-spirited, witty Beatrice * an odious creature.' These things are ' all long ago.' LATER EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS 117 And in dimension and the shape of nature A gracious person. It is a crude and cruel slander to say that Viola was attracted by the ' great estate.' Dr. Johnson failed to see the charm and dignity of Imogen, and says of the play : — To remark the folly of the fiction, the ahsurdity of the conduct, the confusion of the names and manners of differ- ent times, and the impossibility of the events in any system of life, were to waste criticism on unresisting imbecility, upon faults too evident for detection, and too gross for aggra- vation.* ^ That is like the irruption of an elephant into a flower garden, — an intelligent and dignified beast out of his sphere. The heresy that a play must teach some definite J maxim in social morals runs through much of Dr. I Johnson's criticism. Of Twelfth Night he says : — * The marriage of Olivia and the succeeding perplexity, though well enough contrived to divert on the stage, wants credibiHty, and fails to produce the proper instruction '• required in the drama, as it exhibits no just picture of. life. Of As You Like It he says : — By hastening to the end of his work, Shakespeare sup- pressed the dialogue between the usurper and the hermit, and 1 Shakespeare's anachronisms are quite evident. The outside of things he views from the standpoint of an EHzabethan, the inner hfe, sub specie ceternitaiis. But he never jumbled the ages as Lodge did in Wounds of the Civil War^ Lodge takes it for granted that a Gaul is a Frenchman because some Frenchmen are Gauls, and makes the Gaul sent to kill Marins in prison say; *Me no dare kill Caius Marius, a Dieu Messieurs, me be dead si je touch Marius.' Lodge was a scholar, too, a graduate of Oxford. 118 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS lost an opportunity of exhibiting a moral lesson, in which he might have found matter worthy of his highest powers. Shakespeare knew better than to use his poetry like * a stalking horse, and under the presentation of that to shoot his ' sermons. He ' exhibits his moral lessons,' just as life does, in the warp and woof of the web. Of I^ear Dr. Johnson says : — But though this moral [that crime begets crime] be in- cidentally enforced, Shakespeare has suffered the virtue of Cordelia to perish in a just cause, contrary to the natural ideas of justice, to the hope of the reader, and, what is yet more strange, to the faith of the chronicles. ... A play in which the wicked prosper, and the virtuous miscarry, may doubtless be good, because it is a just representation of the common events of life ; but since all reasonable beings naturally love justice, I cannot easily be persuaded that the observation of /justice makes a play worse. / 5 He therefore gives the preference to Tait's version of Z/ear, where Cordelia marries Edgar and Lear dances at the wedding. Doubtless our feelings when Lear / hangs over the dead body of Cordelia are poignant, and we rebel against so cruel a fate, but it had to be. It is the logical outcome of hers and her father's characters. People sometimes by good luck escape the consequences of pride and folly, but these did not. ' The wonder is he hath endured so long.' Besides, what Dr. Johnson overlooks, ' the wicked ' did not * prosper.' The five wicked people all die before Lear, and three good ones survive. Dr. Johnson overlooks another case, when the drama- tist ' lost an opportunity of exhibiting a moral lesson.' Falstaif is behind the scene in Henry V, He might have been brought in a chair by Bardolph and Pistol, and have made bis death-bed repentance to a clergyman LATER EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS 119 of the Established Church, and departed, if not in the odor of sanctity, at least in an impressive and moral manner. Shakespeare could have written the scene in half an hour, and have made it acceptable to the audi- ence by concealing the fact that it was a moral lesson. He had promised in the epilogue to Henry IV, Part 2, to bring the old knight on the stage again. But it would have been a grave artistic error to do so, for it would have distracted attention from the central figure, 'that Star of England,' and from the hero, the English army, so admirably presented in its component parts, the Englishman, the Welshman, and the Irishman, w^ith the Scotchman, — hereafter to prove its main- stay, — just on the outskirts. A 'necessary question of the play is to be considered,' and Sir John cannot be allowed to occupy the centre of the stage and distort the action. The stern virtue of the moralist is, however, sensible of the attraction of Falstaff. He exclaims : — But Falstaff ! unimitated, unimitable Falstaff ! how shall I describe thee ? Thou compound of sense and vice ; of sense which may be admired but not esteemed, of vice which may be despised but hardly detested ? . . . Yet the man thus cor- rupt, thus despicable, makes himself necessary to the prince that despises him, by the most pleasing of all qualities, per- petual gaiety, by an unfailing power of exciting laughter, which is the more freely indulged as his wit is not of the splendid or ambitious kind, but consists in easy scapes and sallies of levity, which make sport, but raise no envy. It must be observed, that he is stained with no enormous OTJ sanguinary crimes, so that his licentiousness is not so offens-/ ive but that it may be borne for his mirth. Remembering, suddenly, his duty to society, the Doc- tor comes about, and concludes : — The moral to be drawn from this representation is that no 120 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS man is more dangerous than he that, with a will to corrupt, hath the power to please ; and that neither wit nor honesty- ought to think themselves safe with such a companion when they see Henry seduced by Falstaff. In his preface, Dr. Johnson assumes without question Shakespeare's power. He notes that — Upon every other stage the universal agent is love, by whose power all good and evil is distributed and every action quickened or retarded. . . . But love is only one of many passions, and as it has no great influence on the sum of life, it has little operation in the dramas of a poet, who caught his ideas from the living world, and exhibited only what he saw before him. He knew that any other passion, as it was regular or exorbitant, was a cause of happiness or calamity. The critic probably refers to the tragedies, for it is only in Romeo and Juliet that love is the sole motive force. In the comedies love, vanity, egotism, whim — everything that is mingled in the kindly view of life, contributes to our pleasure. Avarice and loyalty to race make Shylock a more dramatic figure than Portia. In Antony and Cleopatra and Othello love is the im- pelling power, but it plays a very subordinate part in Hamlet^ and is absent from Xear, Macbeth^ and Timon, Shakespeare estimated all passions at their relative value ; ambition, revenge, avarice, and intellectual pride are not exaggerated as they are by Marlowe, but the threads in the tangled web of human life are un- raveled and then woven into a coherent fabric, as men wove it in his day, and do in ours when they are most men. Dr. Johnson comments on the stricture that ' Shake- speare has united the powers of exciting laughter and sorrow not only in one mind but in one composition.* He admits : — LATER EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS 121 That . . . this is a practice contrary to the rules of criticism will be readily allowed ; but there is always an appeal from criticism to nature. The end of writing is to instruct,^ the end of poetry is to instruct hy pleasing. That the mingled P drama may convey all the instruction of tragedy or comedy cannot be denied, because it includes both in its alterations of exhibition and approaches nearer than either to the ap- pearance of life. He fails to appreciate the nature of the Shakespearean tragedy, as every one did till the day of Coleridge and Schlegel. He makes the extraordinary statement that ' the dramatist is weak in narration, forgetting Pros- pero's story to Miranda, Horatio's talk with the guards- men, and many other passages where the situation is placed before us by narrative conversation of a dra- matic quality. He forgets that the absence of scenery necessitated on the Elizabethan stage descriptive pas- sages to create an illusion. He declares that ' his decla- rations or set speeches are weak.' Could he ever have read Julius Ccesar or Othello f He says, with more justice, that a ' quibble [pun] is to Shakespeare what luminous vapours are to the traveller ; he follows it at all adventures — it is sure to lead him out of his way, and sure to engulf him in the mire.' He forgets that when punning was first invented its attraction was irre- sistible, and that at least one of the dramatists was a worse punster than Shakespeare. He points out that , the poet was not strong in the construction of final acts of his plays. He defends Shakespeare for the violation of the unities, partly, perhaps, because Voltaire had at- tacked him so venomously; for Dr. Johnson was by * True enough, but not in the sense Dr. Johnson takes it. In- struct, instruere, to build up in the mind general conceptions of beauty and truth, not to teach arithmetic or the catechism * by pleasing.' 122 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS nature a conservative classicist. His argument on this point is a model of cogency. He admits that he is * almost frightened by my own temerity ; and when I estimate the fame and strength of those that maintain the contrary opinion I am ready to sink down in rev- erential silence,' an attitude so foreign to his position before other men that we can understand how deeply rooted in the minds of critics was the belief that the unities were essential to a tragedy. Dr. Johnson writes : — The objection [to change of scene] arising from the im- possibility of passing the first hour at Alexandria, and the next at Rome, supposes, that when the play opens, the spec- tator really believes himself at Alexandria, and believes that his walk to the theatre has been a voyage to Egypt, and that he lives in the days of Antony and Cleopatra. Surely he that imagines this may imagine more. He that can take the stage At one time for the palace of the Ptolemies, may take it in half an hour for the promontory of Actium. . . . [jDhe drama exhibits successive imitations of successive actions, and why may not the second imitation represent an action that happened years after the first, if it be so connected with it that nothing but time can be supposed to intervene ? His argument ought to have been enough entirely to destroy the slavish regard for the unities, already much X weakened. His predecessors had excused Shakespeare, on the plea of his ignorance and the lack of taste in his audiences. Dr. Johnson defends him, on the ground of the essential nature of dramatic illusion. Shakespeare's tragedies fulfilled the essential requirement ; they held the attention of the audience when acted, and they de- lighted the most cultivated part of the audience when well acted. Dr. Johnson might have added, ' If the spectators were willing to accept an English boy in female attire as the Queen of Egypt, no greater strain LATER EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS 123 would be superinduced on their imaginations by con- sidering a platform in London to be in succession the palace of the Ptolemies in Alexandria and the hall of the imperial Caesars in Rome/ His comparison between Shakespeare and the regular writers is marked by the same victorious common sense : — The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accu- rately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades and scented with flowers : the composition of Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend their branches and pines tower in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds and brambles, and sometimes giving shelter to myrtles and roses ; filling the eye with awful pomp and gratifying the mind with endless diversity. There is still here a suggestion of the old heresy that Shakespeare ' lacked art,* which really meant that he lacked artificiality ; but had Dr. Johnson noticed that the forest was far more germane to the spirit of man than the garden, he would have left little to be desired in the way of appreciation. The great moralist lacked the quickness of apprehen- sion necessary to amend the dark places in the text, — indeed, some places that are quite clear seemed dark to him. For instance, Lear says : — Dear daughter, I confess that I am old ; Age is unnecessary. On my knees I beg . . . Dr. Johnson says the meaning of ' Age is unnecessary ' is ' Old age has few wants,' whereas the reader feels at once that the speech is bitterly ironical, and the ex- pression in question means that old men are superfluous or useless. Again, in Merry Wives ^ v, v, Falstaff says, ' Ignorance itself is a plummet over me.' 124 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS The word ' plummet ' Dr. Johnson says should be ' plume.' The exact meaning of this passage is obscure, but it is difficult to see how ' plume ' enlightens it. Falstaff may mean, I am so shallow that ignorance can sound me with a plummet, or, ignorance can hold a plumb line to rectify my errors. The difficulty lies in the word ' over.' In As You Like It Silvius says to Phebe, — Will you sterner be Than he that dies and lives by bloody drops ? This passage gave a great deal of trouble to early com- mentators, though it is evident, as Silvius had a few lines before spoken of an executioner, that the meaning is ' Will you be more cold-hearted than a man who lives and dies by a bloody trade ? ' ' Lives and dies ' is equival- ent to * gains his living by,' or ' passes his life in,' and is so used now. Dr. Johnson said it should read — Will you sterner be Than he that dyes his lips by bloody drops ? For this change no good reason can be given. The trouble probably arises from the fact that either Shake- speare or the printer carelessly transposed 'lives and dies ' into ' dies and lives.' Dr. Johnson illustrates well the prosaic and literal tendency of the eighteenth century. In common with several others he is determined to find a logical se- quence of thought in the fooling of the clowns, and rehashes Launce's soliloquy in the Tioo Gentlemen of Verona. Wit in a man like Benedick has a substratum of sense, but wit in a rattlebrain skips over the surface of thought, touching it here and there, with only the most airy connection of ideas, and frequently none at all. This a man like Dr. Johnson cannot understand. He tries to turn nonsense into his idea of sense, and comic poetry into prose. LATER EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS 125 In interpreting passages where analysis only is needed, Dr. Johnson is much more successful, and, of course, his other emendations are not always as absurd as those cited, though he is not credited with any of the notable ones. He laid down in his admirable pre- fatory essay the sound rule to ' adhere to the old books ' and avoid conjecture unless buttressed by evidence. Unfortunately, he did not always adhere to this rule. His name is inseparably connected with that of Shake- speare. His edition, reedited by Steevens and Reed, and republished in this country many times, was the one from which our fathers learned the plays. In particular, many persons will remember the seventeen brown octavos of 1809, in which they first read the plays fifty years ago. His edition was venomously attacked by a man named Kendrick, who is mentioned in Goldsmith's Retaliation, but Dr. Johnson was too dignified a person to pay any attention to criticism, and Kendrick had not learn- ing or ability enough to cause him any uneasiness. Be- sides, Dr. Johnson's theory was that to notice critics was the only way to give them any importance. 'De- pend upon it, sir,' he said, ' no man was ever written down but by himself.' He failed entirely to appreciate Theobald, who entered into the spirit of the plays so much more fully than he could, and said to his friend, Dr. Burney : * Warburton would make two-and-fif ty Theobalds cut into slices.' He added, however, 'The worst of Warburton is that he has a rage for saying something when there is nothing to be said,' which certainly would not apply to Theobald, who always makes his point. With Steevens, the next editor who republished and amplified Johnson's edition, he was on the best of terms, and made him a member of the Literary Club on the same night that the historian 126 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS Gibbon was admitted. Steevens gave life and credit to Johnson's Shakespeare, and, though a very acrimonious person, was careful not to offend his senior. He was, too, a wit and a scholar, and possessed in his conver- sational power a sure passport to Johnson's favor. Dr. Johnson was equally fortunate in his friends and in his enemies. Had Steevens been among the latter, his work on Shakespeare's plays would have been severely and deservedly criticised. One point which should be noted in Dr. Johnson's favor is, that when he found a passage unintelligible he did not ignore it, as some of his predecessors had ^ done, but confessed his inability to make it clear. He says: 'To time I have been obliged to resign many passages, which, though I did not understand them, will perhaps hereafter be explained.' ' In many passages I have failed like others ; and from many, after all my efforts, I have retreated, and confessed the repulse. I have not passed over, with affected superiority, what is equally difficult to the reader and to myself, but where I could not instruct him have owned my ignorance.' The great charm of Dr. Johnson as a man is, that he was absolutely honest ; there was no affectation about him. This is not an undesirable trait in a critic, though by no means universal. EDWARD CAPEIili (1713-1781) With the exception of Theobald, the editors previ- ously mentioned were amateurs. It was not perceived that a peculiar kind of scholarship, quite as minute and painstaking as that requisite for editing a Greek or Latin text, was called for to collect and arrange the materials and deduce the proper readings, and, even had it been perceived, a generation or two would have passed before such a type could be developed. Con- LATER EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS 127 jectural readings had been freely and sometimes rashly admitted. Everywhere in England ' ingenious gentle- men ' indulged in guesses as to what the author said, and corresponded with one another and with the editors. The editors printed the conjectures if they liked, and each expended a large amount of energy in abusing other editors. Each successively formed his text largely on that of his predecessor, with the exception of Theo- bald, whom all agreed in regarding as a poor creature, because he argued his points on evidence and was usu- ally right. Rowe had formed his text on the Fourth Folio, with some use of a late quarto, now lost, in the case of Hamlet. Pope followed Rowe, with some use of the quartos and more of his own imagination. Theo- bald was an editor in the true sense. Warburton as- serts that he collated the former editions, but Capell, one of the most accurate men that ever lived, says that Warburton based his text on that of Theobald. Dr. Johnson stated the proper rule, but also based his text on that of Theobald. There was no agreement as to editorial method or as to the relative value of the sources, nor was the propriety recognized of giving a former editor credit for his readings when accepted. In this respect Theobald alone seems to have been con- scientious, though Warburton accused him of appro- priating his notes, a thing he was unlikely to do, as he would have seen that the notes were more discreditable than the theft. The great editors, Capell, Steevens, and Malone, were scholars in the fullest sense. All of them were men of independent fortunes, and devoted themselves to re- search from natural bias. Admitting that they pos- sessed something of the specialist's instinct in gathering materials without reference to their value, their indus- try in gathering materials was unremitting. They ex- 128 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS amined the original texts with minute care and printed the conjectural readings in notes at the bottom of the page, so that the court of inquiry of successive genera- tions of scholars could attack the task of settling as far as possible on an accepted text, a task brought well towards a conclusion by the Cambridge editors in the middle of the nineteenth century. Edward Capell was the most of an old-fashioned ' antiquary ' of the three, though Malone was not far behind him. In his ten-volume edition of 1768 he gave disputed readings in footnotes, so that his is the first 'variorum edition.' He revised the division of the plays into acts and scenes, observing carefully the dramatic principle that a scene is a place, though the persons present may change. He published two books of Readings in Shahespeare (bound in one volume as we have it) in 1774, which contained an admirable glossary of obsolete words. This was withdrawn, but republished after his death in three beautiful volumes, the third containing extracts from Elizabethan books which Shakespeare might be supposed to have read, and passages from older books illustrating the plays. Capell's work is strictly Shake- spearean scholarship, as distinguished from Shake- spearean criticism, and it is impossible to overestimate his industry and conscientiousness. He is said to have transcribed the plays eight times with his own hand. He devised a system of symbols, and he crowded so much into his notes that it is sometimes very difficult to ascertain the point. No one but a most persevering specialist would attempt to decipher his meaning. His long introduction to the plays is one of the most con- fused pieces of prose in the language. Dr. Johnson said, 'The fellow should have come to me. I would have endowed his purpose with words. As it is, he doth LATER EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS 129 gabble monstrously.' But the sense and learning of Capell are everywhere evident in his ill-formed sen- tences. Capell was too much of a gentleman to engage in the personal controversies that engaged the attention of the other editors (except Dr. Johnson). He alludes to Rowe, Pope, and Theobald as the first, second, and third 'of the moderns.' Like the rest he fails to do justice to Theobald, and he complains that Steevens plagiarized from his edition without giving him credit. He left his Shakespearean collection to the University of Cam- bridge, and it forms one of its most valued treasures. The editors of the Cambridge Edition (1865) say in their preface that in Capell's copy of the Second Folio, * annotated in the margin with a multitude of marks in red ink,' — conventional symbols showing how it differs from the First Folio, — which they examined carefully, ' they hardly in a single instance found him wrong.' QEOBQE STEEVENS (1736-1800) ^ Steevens, the next editor, was a man of greater ability than Capell, and of almost equal industry. His life was devoted to Shakespearean scholarship. In 1776 he pub- lished twenty of the quartos, being as he supposed the whole number of those printed before the Restoration that had survived. In 1799 he published six old plays, on which Shakespeare had founded Measure for Meas- ure^ the Comedy of Errors^ the Taming of the Shrew, King John^ Henry I F, and Henry V. He says, ' As I have only collected materials for future artists, I consider what I have been doing as no more than an apparatus for their use. . . . My design amounted to no more than a wish to encourage others to think of preserving the oldest editions of the English writers, which are growing scarcer every day, and afford the world all the 130 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS assistance or pleasure it can receive from the most authentic copies of its noblest poet.' In 1773 he assisted Johnson in a new edition of the plays in ten volumes. From this time he worked enthusi- astically on his favorite author, a second edition appear- ing in 1778, a third, in which he was assisted by Isaac Reed, in 1785, and a fourth of fifteen volumes in 1793. The name of Johnson was retained in all these editions, on account of its commercial value. This last was reissued under the superintendence of Mr. Reed, in twenty-one volumes, and is really Steevens's edition. It was reprinted in our country in 1809, and contained besides the plays a volume of Prolegomena, The text of 'Johnson and Steevens,' or 'Johnson, Steevens, and Reed,' published in many forms, was read by our fathers and grandfathers up to the middle of the century. Steevens was too apt to adopt an unauthorized read- ing for the sake of regulating the versification. Mr. Kemble, the great actor, said, ' he had no ear for the colloquial metre of our old dramatists ' ; but his know- ledge of the costume, the manners, the language, and the superstitions of the time of Shakespeare was very great, and enabled him to explain many obscure passages. He was a man of wit and of a ' sarcastic and mischievous temper,' and has been called the ' Puck of criticism.' He laid traps for other writers on the subject, and, when they fell into one, rejoiced with diabolical glee. He dwelt with minuteness on any allusion to indelicate subjects, and attributed the notes on them to two harm- less gentlemen, Collins and Amner, the first a friend of Capell's and the last an exemplary and retiring clergy- man. How he managed to escape the penalties of the English law of libel does not appear. He kept up the traditional reputation of Shakespeare's editors by quar- reling with Malone, but learned to respect his learning. LATER EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS 131 It was of him that it was written : * When death by one stroke and in one moment makes such a dispersion of knowledge and intellect, when such a man is carried to his grave — the mind can feel but one emotion : we con- sider the vanity of everything beneath the sun — we perceive what shadows we are and what shadows we pur- sue.' The poet Rogers said, with less feeling but more point, 'So, the old wolf is dead in his den.' Dr. John- son, who knew him intimately, said when Beauclerc had declared that he was * malignant ' : ' No, Sir, he is not malignant. He is mischievous, if you will. He would do no man an essential injury : he may, indeed, love to make sport of people by vexing their vanity.' This is perhaps as charitable a judgment as can be made. One of Steevens's hoaxes is amusingly described by Mr. Lee in Shahespeare and the Modern Stage. In the Theatrical Review^ a short-lived periodical of 1763, appeared an anonymous biography of Edward AUeyn, the famous actor of Shakespeare's day. It contained the statement that — A gentleman of honour and veracity in the commission of the peace for Middlesex has shown us a letter dated in the year 1600, which he assures us has been in the possession of his family by the mother's side, for a long series of years and which bears all the marks of antiquity. The letter as printed runs : — Friend Marle, — I must desyre that my syster hyr watche, and the cookerie book you promysed be sent by the man. I never longed for thy company more than last night ; we were all very merrye at the Globe, when Ned AUeyn did not scruple to affyrme pleasantly to thy friend Will that he had stolen his speech about the qualityes of an actor's excel- lencye in Hamlet his tragedye, from conversations manyfold and opinions given by Allen which had passed between them 132 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS touchinge the subject. Shakespeare did not take this talke in good sorte ; but Jonson put an end to the stryf e with wittilie saying, This affaire needeth no contentione, you stole it from Ned no doubt : do not marvel ; have you not seen him act times without number ? Believe me most syncerelie Harrie Thyne, G. Peel. This is palpably a forgery. The 'Believe me most sincerely thine ' alone is enough to condemn it, to say nothing of the fact that Peele died in 1598 and Shake- speare's Hamlet was not played before 1602. But it was copied into the Annual Register of 1770, and into Blographia Literaria in 1777. It was shown to be clearly spurious in D'Israeli's Curiosities of Litera- ture in 1839, but it has appeared since in the Academy of London and in Poet Lore in our country. D'Israeli also gives Steevens credit, though without definite proof, for originating the 'deadly upas tree of Java,' the effluvia from which ' spread desolation through a dis- trict of twelve or fourteen miles*, affording a scene of desolation,' according to the London Magazine^ ' be- yond what poets have described or painters delineated.' It is given there as an 'extract from the diary of a Dutch traveler,' who seems to have been as unreal as ' the gentleman of honour and veracity ' with a ' family by the mother's side ' who communicated the letter from ' G. Peel.' The 'deadly upas tree' was a favorite image for orators in the early part of the nineteenth century when referring to the opposite party, but is now virtually extinct, and, if not Steevens's invention, is worthy of him. Mr. Steevens's preface to his edition of 1793 is full of incisive wit. It is particularly to be noticed how admirably he works quotations from the poet into his LATER EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS 133 discourse. He discusses the portraits of Shakespeare and the engravings from the Droeshout print, from Howe's edition, down to Malone's, twelve in number, and remarks in an ojff-hand manner, ' No two of these portraits are alike, nor does any one of them bear the slightest resemblance to its wretched original.' Such a slapdash judgment lessens our faith in the writer, which is almost demolished by the following extraordi- nary statement : — We have not reprinted the Sonnets, etc., of Shakespeare, because the strongest act of Parliament that could be framed would fail to compel readers into their service, notwithstand- ing these miscellaneous poems have derived every possible advantage from the literature and judgment of their only intelligent editor, Mr. Malone, whose implements of criti- cism, like the ivory rake and golden spade of Prudentius, are on this occasion disgraced by the objects of their culture. Had Shakespeare produced no other works than these, his name would have reached us with as little celebrity as time has conferred on that of Thomas Watson, an older and much more elegant sonneteer. The history of criticism furnishes few more inept judgments than the above. Steevens says of Monck Ma- son, after praising some of his strictures on a former edi- tion of Shakespeare : ' Mr. M. Mason will also forgive us if we add that a small number of his proposed amend- ments are suppressed through honest commiseration.' Perhaps Christian charity would have left Mr. Steevens's opinion of the Sonnets in 'its proper obscurity,' for Steevens was a great scholar. His expression was no doubt due to the fact that Malone had edited the Sonnets. EDMUND MALONE (1741-1812) The last of the three Shakespearean editors of the latter eighteenth century was an Irishman settled in 134 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS London. He was no less industrious than Capell, but more systematic, and, if not so brilliant as Steevens, less opinionated and incisive, and covered more ground in his investigation than either of his great contempora- ries. In 1778 he published An Attempt to Ascertain the Order in which the Inlays of Shakespeare were written ; and in 1780 two volumes, entitled, Supple- mental Observations concerning BrooJce^s Rendering of the Italian Poem^ Romeus and Jxdiet; Shake- speare^ s Poems and the Seven Doubtful Plays, includ- ing Pericles. To this was appended an ' Essay on the English Stage,' which he afterwards expanded with minute and accurate learning. In 1790 his edition of the plays and poems was published' in ten volumes. This included the historical account above mentioned, and an essay on the relations between Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, and a dissertation on the three parts of Henry VI. Malone discovered at Dulwich College, near Lon- don, the Memorandum Book of Philip Henslowe, a theatrical business man contemporary with Shake- speare. ' Discovered ' is perhaps too strong a word, but Malone's attention having been called to it, he printed considerable extracts from it and was able to settle some dates and questions of authorship. It was edited by Collier for the Shakespeare Society in 1856, but had been much mutilated since Malone used it. It contains entries of the plays acted under Henslowe's manage- ment, of the amounts received from the performance, the sums paid to the playwrights, and inventories of apparel and properties, and receipts with the auto- graphs of various dramatists. It is an oddly spelled and confused lot of fragments, but establishes some facts of minor importance. Malone also copied extracts from the Stratford Register, and from the Stationer's LATER EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS 135 Book — that is, the record of books allowed to be printed — every item he could find that bore directly or indirectly on the life of the poet. He said that he could prove Howe's life erroneous in many particulars. This he was unable to do, but he corrected some mis- takes made by Rowe and added a few insignificant facts. He regarded the First Folio as the prime author- ity, whereas Steevens gave more credit to the quartos. Relations between Steevens and Malone were strained at one time, but Malone was too accurate and well grounded a commentator to make it safe to attack him. Ritson, it is true, did criticise him in a number of pamphlets for his preference for the First Folio; but Ritson, though far superior to Kendrick, was not strong enough to make any impression on the reputation of a great scholar like Malone. At his death he left a great number of notes on the text — he was a very careful and tireless collator — and other antiquarian matter relating to Shakespearean questions. These were edited and seen through the press by James Boswell, the son of Dr. Johnson's bio- grapher. The edition is known as ' Malone's Vario- rum,' and is an encyclopaedia of all that was known about Shakespeare at the time. The footnotes contain comments and various readings, each credited to the proper author. The first, second, and third volumes (^Prolegomena) are taken up with the principal writ- ings connected with Shakespeare, prefaces to the former editions, Dr. Farmer's Essay on the learning of Shakespeare, Rowe's life, and an examination by Ma- lone of portions of the First and Second Folios, show- ing the great superiority of the First in correctness, and accounting for the errors in the Second. He says that the ' editor of the Second Folio, whoever he was, and Mr. Pope are the great corrupters of our poet's text.' 136 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS He even says that the Second Folio should never be opened, but Steevens maliciously points out that he had * admitted 186 corrections from it into his text.' These are for the most part, however, corrections of no im- portance, or such as any one accustomed to reading proof would make as a matter of course. Malone would admit no conjectural emendations without good collat- eral evidence. He said that the number of unauthor- ized emendations in Capell's edition amounted to 972. This can only be justified by counting minor questions of form, such as ' I am ' for ' I 'm,' and the like. Capell gave more weight to the quartos than Malone, to whom the First Folio was of prime authority. Malone was honestly devoted to the task of making a text of Shakespeare as nearly as possible to represent the words written by the master, and was not of a com- bative disposition, despite his nationality. Steevens was jealous of him and made him the target for witty invec- tive, but Malone's learning and exactness gave him a slight advantage over his adversary, who surpassed him in wit and literary power. There was little of the asper- ity of the day of Pope, Theobald, and Warburton left. It may be that Malone would not have done as much work as he did had he not been spurred on by the desire to prove Steevens wrong. ' Principles not men ' is a sound maxim ethically, but a personal attack arouses Shakespearean commentators to effort — at least it did so in the eighteenth century. It is strange that Shake- speare, the most peaceable of the Elizabethans, should have been the subject of a controversy he would have avoided when living, and that no one should fight over the body of Ben Jonson, who lived in an atmosphere of combat. But our ancestors, French and English, always used the name of a saint for a war-cry. Malone's accurate knowledge of the Elizabethan LATER EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS 137 drama enabled him to prove that Vortigem^ impudently asserted by the author, Ireland, to be a genuine play of Shakespeare's, was a forgery. He detected at once the spurious character of the manuscript poems the poet Chatterton produced and asserted to be of the fourteenth century. Readers of Shakespeare, as well as scholars, owe him a great debt. He can be forgiven for the sacrilege of putting a coat of whitewash on the bust of Shakespeare in the Stratford church, for he had a mania for preserving things over a century old. After the publication of Malone's Variorum and the Johnson-Steevens-Reed edition, the elucidation of Shakespeare's text became more scientific. The sources aud the authoritative dissertations were accessible to aU. Comparison could readily be made between all sug- gested readings. The canons of criticism were well es- tablished. Futile and licentious conjectures were still made, but they commanded little attention. The com- mentaries of Seymour and Becket were more absurd than anything that had appeared before, but they were disregarded. A printer, Zachary Jackson, who had cor- rected a great deal of proof, was able to show how some of the errors in the original texts had originated in mistakes of the compositor. When he steps beyond this narrow province, he falls into ludicrous errors. For instance, quoting Ursula's words in Much Ado About Nothing, ill, i : — Signior Benedick, For shape, for bearing, argument and valour Goes foremost in report through Italy, Mr. Jackson remarks from the depths of domestic experience : — Argument is the very worst recommendation to a lady's 138 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS love, as it is not only productive of serious quarrels abroad, but also the strongest poison to domestic happiness. Our author wrote : — Siguier Benedick For shape, forbearing argument, and valour Goes foremost in report through Italy.' Thus the recommendation is strong, he ever forbears argument in order to avoid dissension: Such endowments, I think could not fail of finding sufficient influence in the heart of Beatrice. Again, in Troilus and Cressida, AJexander says : — Hector, whose patience Is as a virtue fixed, to-day was moved. Jackson says, — We should read : — Hector, whose patience Is as a vulture fixed, to-day was moved. Thus the patience of Hector is compared to the Vulture, which never moves from the object of its insatiate gluttony till it has entirely devoured it. These things belong to the humor of Shakespearean criticism, and need be pursued no further. Even in our own country not many years ago a commentator full of praiseworthy reverence for the First Folio, extending to the most palpable errors of punctuation, interpreted Perdita's words which read : — O Doricles, Your praises are too large ; but that your youth And the true blood which peepeth fairly through it, Do plainly give you out an unstained shepherd, With wisdom, I might fear, my Doricles, You woo'd me the false way. LATER EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS 139 Even with the above original faulty punctuation the construction is plain enough. ' With wisdom ' qualifies ' I might fear/ but the commentator in question in- sists that ' with wisdom ' qualifies ' unstained,' that Perdita means that her lover is a shepherd untainted with worldly wisdom. That is equal to anything of Warburton's or Jackson's. But common sense has been the rule since the eight- eenth century. Discussion is conducted on scientific principles. Research has cleared up many obscure allu- sions, and every accessible record that could throw any light on the social or theatrical history of the times has been scrutinized. It is possible that some may yet be unearthed which may disclose facts of minor im- portance. Some one may appear who is possessed of the divining power of Theobald, and solve one or more of the cruxes in a way that shall command immediate assent. The day of patching the text is past, thanks to Capell, Steevens, and Malone. During the first half of the nineteenth century the editions of Staunton, Singer, Collier, Knight, and Dyce were the work of conscientious scholars. Some of them gave more weight to the First Folio, and some were inclined to regard the quartos as of equal or greater authority. The First Folio and the quartos were repro- duced in facsimile, making the originals accessible to all. In 1852 Mr. Collier announced that he had dis- covered a copy of the Second Folio, copiously annotated in the margin, and that the corrections were appar- ently made soon after the publication of the book, 1632. If so, the notes would be of high authority, as the writer could have heard the original delivered on the stage by actors who received instructions directly from the mouth of Shakespeare. Great expectations were aroused, but the publication of the volume proved 140 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS a disappointment. Experts showed that the notes were in the handwriting of at least two persons, and not necessarily of great antiquity, possibly of the early eighteenth century. Analysis proved that, of the large number of erasures and marginal corrections, many were unimportant, some were anticipated by Theobald, many others were to be found in the First Folio, and the rest were obviously erroneous. Richard Grant White called attention to the fact that the annotator inserted in Lovers Labour 's Lost a stage direction to Biron, ' gets him into a tree,' ^ which could not have been written before 1662, and probably was written much later, since ' practicable ' scenery was not intro- duced on the stage till after that date. Of the 1303 new readings proposed in the notes, he showed that 1013 were palpably inadmissible, and 173 were already received, leaving but 117 as plausible, from which to select such as were satisfactory. None of the really difficult cruxes are explained. It would seem as if the notes were made by some ' ingenious gentleman,' inter- ested in the poet early in the eighteenth century. With the failure of these notes to unlock any of the puzzles, all hopes of a contemporary annotated edition perished. The great event of the nineteenth century was the publication of the Cambridge Edition, begun under the editorship of George Clark and John Glover and com- pleted under the editorship of Clark and William Aldis Wright. The text is an extremely conservative one, and is prepared with great care. No passage is emended 1 *Gets up into a tree' was substituted for *he stands aside,* by Capell, who was followed by Johnson and Steevens and all editors except those of the Cambridge Edition. This does not in the least weaken Mr. White's argument, in fact strengthens it, for Capell could not have seen the Collier folio, and the annotator might have seen Capell's edition. LATER EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS 141 simply because it is unintelligible and conjecture may afford a plausible meaning, unless probability favors the change. As an example of a change admitted but just on the line of rejection, in Homeo and Juliet, I, i, line 156, Benvolio says that Romeo is so secret and so close, . . . As is the bud, bit with an envious worm Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air, Or dedicate his beauty to the same. The word 'same' gives a clear meaning, but it is dread- fully commonplace and un-Shakespearean. Theobald proposed i *" And dedicate his beauty to the sun,'' which was followed by all the editors except Malone, and Col- lier in his first edition. Collier afterwards adopted the reading ' sun ' on the authority of the manuscript an- notator. The Cambridge Edition reads 'sun,' probably on the ground that the word was originally written ' sunne,' which the compositor could readily mistake for *same.' There must be an explanation of the mistake. It is not enough that the change improves the poetry. The Cambridge text is taken as the basis of most of the modern popular editions, whose name is legion. The Shakespeare scholar editors in our country are Gulian C. Verplanck, whose handsomely illustrated edi- tion came out in 1847, and Richard Grant White, a very excellent though rather opinionated commentator. His first edition was published 1857-65, and his second, in which he receded from some of the readings given in the first, in 1883. This is called the Riverside Edition, and is a beautiful specimen of bookmaking. The monu- mental Variorum of Dr. Furness is in the course of publication. A large octavo is devoted to each play (two to Hamlet). The text is sometimes that of the folio, and sometimes based on that of the Cambridge Edition. Below the text are given all the readings of the authori- 142 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS ties and of the principal editors. Beneath are conjec- tural explanations and suggestions, each credited to its author. In an appendix are treatises on the text, on the date of appearance, copies of rare quartos, reprints of the original stories, and copious extracts from dramatic and literary critics, — a complete Shakespearean li- brary. When this great edition is complete, neither the ordinary reader interested in Shakespearean questions nor the specialist will need any other apparatus criti- cus, for the first can obtain from it all the valuable information he needs, and the second can find full refer- ences to the original authorities to be looked up in some great library. There is, however, no absolutely authoritative text, nor is it likely that there ever will be one, unless a com- mittee of the leading scholars of England, Germany, and America were formed to deliberate, exchange views, and vote on all disputed points. It is not likely that such a body will ever be formed ; and even if it should be, the results of the labors of the revisers of the Eng- lish Bible give no surety that the decision of the ma- jority would be acceptable to the great body of the lovers of Shakespeare. A great writer cannot be cor- rected in vital points except by himself. Originality is the mark of his style, and it would be as difficult for the best of his contemporaries to fill out a lapsed line as it is for one of us. We have a text in which many thousands of evident corrections and a few happy con- jectural emendations have been made. Shakespeare's works are accessible to all very nearly in the form in which he wrote them. He is substantially intelligible, — that is, as intelligible as any great soul can be to his fellow men. At best, language has its limitations as a medium of communication on the mysterious matters which possessed the poet's consciousness. CHAPTER VI THE LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ESSAYISTS MKS. MONTAGU (1720-1800) Besides the criticism contained in the prefaces to the successive editions of the eighteenth century, — which might be supposed to be more favorable than the general judgment of the literary circles, — a number of inde- pendent papers had been published dealing with special textual points, and others reflecting the attitude of scholarly cliques. Those of Gildon and Rymer have been mentioned, and the sequence of the others is fol- lowed out minutely in Lounsbury's Shahespeare as a Dramatic Artist. The opinion that the disregard of classic form and the combining of serious and comic elements in a tragedy were radical faults, grew gradually weaker. The increasing interest taken in the plays as poetry, and the sustained interest taken in their pre- sentation, were too strong arguments for the advocates of classic theory. The attack by Voltaire on the Eng- lish dramatist as a wild barbarian, in the first half of the century, in itself vicious and unreasonable, was re- sented as an arraignment of the taste of the English nation* Patriotism forced the classicists to oppose his views, as it had forced Catholic and Protestant Eng- lishmen to unite against the invasion threatened by the Spanish Armada. When they took a position favorable to the national poet it was easy to find good arguments to sustain it. In 1767 the Honorable Mrs. Montagu, a grande dame with a taste for literature, published an essay. On the Writings and Genius of Shakespeare compared with the Greek and French Dramatic Poets, 144 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS with some Remarks on the Misrepresentations of M. de Voltaire. She says : — I was incited to the undertaking by the great admiration of Shakespeare's genius and still greater indignation at the treatment he had received from a French wit, who seems to tiiink he has made prodigious concessions to our prejudices in favor of the works of our countrymen in allowing them the credit of a few splendid passages, while he speaks of every entire piece as a monstrous and ill-constructed farce. Nevertheless, Mrs. Montagu excuses Shakespeare on the ground of the unpolished character of his age, which * the examples of judicious artists and the admonitions of delicate connoisseurs had not taught that only grace- ful nature and decent customs give proper subjects for imitation.' She attacks the French tragedies of Corneille and Racine as stilted and unnatural, and her chapter on ' The Praeternatural Beings ' does not hesitate to claim great artistic superiority for the Englishman over ^schylus. Had she read the play of Voltaire, in which he attempts to emulate Hamlet and creates the most absurd ghost in literature, she could have retorted on him with cutting effect. Through Mrs. Montagu's 188 pages the waning influence of the classic school of criti- cism is evident. It does not occur to her that there may be two schools of literature, each admirable, neither to be judged by rules induced from the examples of the other, but both by their success in producing beautiful works of art and by their hold on successive generations of men. Dr. Johnson, according to Boswell, said that there ' was not a word of true criticism in Mrs. Mon- tagu's Shakespearean Essay'; an ungallant judgment, to say the least. According to the same authority, how- ever, he said that 'she diffuses more knowledge than any woman I know, or, indeed, almost any man ' ; in which, unless Mrs. Montagu's conversation was vastly LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ESSAYISTS 145 superior to her book, he was more polite and less frank than his wont. In the year 1794, R. W. Richardson, Professor of Humanity at the University of Glasgow, brought out a small book of 187 pages entitled Philosophical Analy^ sis of some of Shakespeare^ s Remarkable Characters, This is the first of a long line of books and essays on the subject, and was reprinted in Boston in 1808 ; it was the first book of literary criticism printed in America. Since then, Shakespeare's literary characters have been written about more fully than any historical personages, with the possible exceptions of Napoleon Bonaparte and Mary Queen of Scots. The style of the book imitates Dr. Johnson's senten- tious utterance, but lacks the wit and pith which give the original his rank among great writers. The opening sentences run : — Moralists of all ages have recommended poetry as an art no less instructive than amusing ; tending at once to improve the heart, and entertain the fancy. The genuine and original poet, peculiarly favored by nature, and intimately acquainted with the constitution of the human mind, not by a long train of metaphysical deductions, but, as it were, by immediate in- tuition, displays the workings of every affection, detects the origin of every passion, traces its progress, and delineates its character. Thus he teaches us to know ourselves, inspires us with magnanimous sentiments, animates love of virtue, and confirms our hatred of vice. Moreover, by his striking pic- tures of the instability of human enjoyments, we moderate the vehemence of our desires, fortify our minds, and are en- abled to sustain adversity. This is the very quintessence of the eighteenth cen- tury ; a very characteristic point being the implied as- sumption that any one can become ' intimately acquainted 146 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS with the constitution of the human mind by a long train of metaphysical deductions,' in the face of the evi- dent fact that the long train must start from ' some inti- mate acquaintance with the human mind ' unless some knowledge was revealed a 'priori, Mr. Richardson pro- ceeds to dissect Hamlet by Scotch metaphysics, in which human nature is mapped out in a mechanical scheme and the ' passions ' and the ' moral principles ' contend to control the will, like hostile forces in a foreign coun- try, one or the other obtaining temporarily exclusive possession and driving the other out. The question with regard to Hamlet has always been, why does he not act as he is requested to do by his father ? There is no rea- son why he should not. As he says, he has ' cause and will and strength and means to do it.' The question is attractive because Hamlet is so interesting and intelli- gent a man, and he is so evidently a man that it is cer- tain there is a rational explanation of his conduct — rational, that is, as far as human character is rational or the will motive-driven and not fortuitous. Mr. Rich- ardson explains Hamlet's failure to act, in the scene when he refrains from killing his uncle at prayer, by saying that just then he was ' irresolute,' — that is to say, his passion, thirst for revenge, and his moral sense of justice exactly balanced one another. Therefore he did not stab his uncle, nor did he give up the idea of doing so. To give Mr. Richardson's words : — You ask me why he did not kill the usurper ? and I an- swer because he was at that moment irresolute. This irresolu- tion arose from the inherent principles of his constitution, and is to be accounted natural ; it arose from virtuous, or at least from amiable sensibility, and therefore cannot be blamed. His sense of justice or his feelings of tenderness, in a moment when his violent emotions were not excited, overcame his re- sentment LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ESSAYISTS 147 The reason Hamlet gives for his failure Mr. Richard- son says is not the true one : 'On many occasions we allege those considerations as the motives for our con- duct which are not the true ones.' We do, indeed, espe- cially when we are ashamed of ourselves, but not often in soliloquy ; nor do we ever say, ' I was precisely bal- anced in motive, like Buridon's ass between two equi- distant and equally attractive bundles of hay.* "We know perfectly well that the ass could have shut one eye by an effort of will. But we can hardly expect a Scotch metaphysician of the school of Reed, loyal to his wooden and systematic psychology, to solve so in- tricate a problem as the genesis of motive and the con- nection between character and action in Shakespeare's Hamlet. The terms of his psychology — the * affections,' the ' passions,' the * moral principles,' and the like — are at once too inclusive and too nebulous to discuss the delicate elements of personality, and his style, dealing as it does largely in general terms, does not lend itself to the delineation of individual traits when they are so perplexing and obscure. He is, however, right as to the substratum of the character of Hamlet, and in this is in advance of many of his successors. He says (page 54) : * The strongest feature in the mind of Hamlet, as exhibited in the tra- gedy, is an exquisite sense of moral conduct.' Again (page 28) : ' He is moved by finer principles, by an exquisite sense of virtue, of moral beauty, and turpitude.' This is true ; for though it may be difficult to reconcile Hamlet's conduct in some instances, notably his sending Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to death by means of a forged document, with the idea of a passionate devotion to justice, it is evident that violation of the moral law governing the relation of the sexes is profoundly abhor- rent to him, and that the knowledge of the guilt of his 148 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS mother casts him into an utter agony in which the action of his mind is confused, spasmodic, and contradictory. This refinement is also shown by his disgust with drunken excesses, and it goes far to establish the propo- sition that in Shakespeare's conception he was a young man, as he is in the original story, and called thirty- one to agree with the personality of the great actor, Burbage. In a man of thirty-one the first bloom of enthusiasm for virtue is worn off by the disillusionment of time, but Hamlet exhibits the feelings of a pure- minded, delicately-nurtured boy, not made cynical by premature worldly experience. The pedantic Edinburgh professor feels the charm of Hamlet's moral character, as thousands of others have done, unconsciously. When he endeavors to give some rational explanation of his actions he fails, as we have seen, most lamentably. He is struck by the fact that though, — in the progress of the tragedy he appears irresolute and in- decisive — discovers reluctance to perform actions, which, we think, needed no hesitation — proceeds to violent outrage where the occasion does not seem to justify evidence — ap- pears jocular where his situation is most serious and alarm- ing — uses subterfuges not consistent with an ingenuous mind, and expresses sentiments not only immoral but inhuman, yet every reader and every audience have hitherto taken part with Hamlet. They have not only pitied, but esteemed him ; and the voice of the people^ in poetry as well as politics, deserves some attention. To admit that the ' voice of the people deserves some attention ' is very liberal in an eighteenth-century pro- fessor. The problem of Hamlet is well stated. It is the question that puzzles us to-day. Mr. Richardson cannot solve it, nor can the latest commentators solve it to our perfect satisfaction, but it has a permanent attraction because it cannot be completely solved — we cannot LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ESSAYISTS 149 pluck the heart out of his mystery any more than we can from the mystery of life. He takes the ground that Hamlet's insanity is feigned, though his mind is in a ' condition of extreme agitation,' therein agreeing with the best authorities on mental disorders. He says that Hamlet 'practices his artifice' on Ophelia in the un- spoken interview when, ' his doublet all imbraced, his stockings fouled,' he 'came before' her. It seems more likely that Hamlet was much hurt when Ophelia, whom he had idealized, and in a certain sense loved, persist- ently refused to see him, in obedience to her father's commands. He therefore resolved to see her, and, one glance revealing her timid and shallow soul, gave her up forever. It is certainly absurd to suppose that he went to see her to practice his acting of insanity. In subsequent chapters Mr. Richardson analyzes the characters of Macbeth, Lear, Richard III, Jaques, Timon, and Imogen on the same principles he applied to Hamlet. He fails to appreciate the power of Lear and Macbeth, and his methodical analysis does not dis- close the human nature of any of the dramatic figures. His chapter on Imogen is the first acknowledgment by a critic of the beauty of Shakespeare's women, but he misses a full perception of the high-bred purity and sweet dignity of her nature. Dr. Johnson was also blind to these delicate creations, however, and Schlegel and Coleridge were soon to do them justice. The last chapter is devoted to the ' Faults of Shake- ' speare.' These are summarized as, 'inattention to the laws of unity, deviations from geographical and histori- cal truth, rude mixture of tragic and comic scenes, to- gether with the vulgarity and even indecency of lan- guage admitted too often into his dialogue.' That the unities were necessary had been pretty well discredited during the discussions induced by the attacks of Vol- 150 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS taire on the English poet, and the author admits that 'some departure from the strict rules of unity enacted by ancient critics, and some deviation from the sim- plicity of Grecian poets, is no loss to the drama,' but adds, ' Shakespeare, however, by having known them, and by having adhered to them in some degree, would have been less irregular and incoherent.' He also con- siders his historical and geographical mistakes of no great moment, but is shocked by the bad taste of bring- ing comic scenes into a tragedy and representing people of high social station as vulgar in language. He ad- mits that they sometimes are so in real life, and might possibly be realistically represented in comedy, but ' the solemn in dramatical composition should be kept apart from the ludicrous,' because the mind is pained and distracted by ' pouring in upon us at once or in immediate succession opposite feelings though in them- selves agreeable.' Taking a fact for granted and then finding a philosophic explanation for it is not unknown in metaphysics. It never occurs to Mr. Richardson that, if people were pained and distracted by the graveyard scene in Hamlet or the porter scene in Macbeth^ they would stay away from the play. On the contrary, they have always insisted on their representation, as if they enjoyed being 'pained and distracted.' The fault of the dramatist being taken for granted, the critic ac- counts for it by saying that his theory was, 'follow nature.' ' This is an excellent maxim,' but ' Shake- speare misunderstood it.' According to Dr. Richardson, nature should be followed, not as she is, but as she should be. An artificial nature should be evolved by selection. Taste must be exerted. If we would describe a cheerful landscape, we will avoid mentioning the gloomy forests or deep morasses which may actually exist in it. In like manner, if we would dispose our LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ESSAYISTS 161 audience to entertain sentiments of veneration for some re- spectable personage, we will throw into the shade those levi- ties which may have place in his character but which lessen his dignity. . . . When a judicious improver covers a bleak heath with enlivening groves, or removes the dreariness of a noisome fen, by changing it into a lovely lake, interspersed with islands, can we accuse him of departing from nature ? In like manner, the poet who excludes from tragedy mean persons and vulgar language, because they are dissonant to the general tone of his work, neither violates nature nor tres- passes against the great obligation he is under of affording us pleasure. . . . Though, like Polonius, statesmen and courtiers may, on various occasions, be very wise and very foolish ; yet, whatever indulgence may be shown to the courtiers and statesmen of real life, those of the drama must be of an uni- form and consistent conduct. All this is an epitome of the eighteenth-century view of art. The representation of life on the historic or the tragic plane must at all hazards be dignified and correct. Selection must be made, not of the character- istic or the intimately true, but of that which accords with a certain ideal of stately social bearing. That dramas constructed on this principle are lifeless and dull does not occur to Mr. Richardson ; perhaps they were not tiresome to him, but, as he says, ' the voice of the people deserves some attention,' and he pays it none at all. He seems to respect the rule, 'follow nature,' but evades it by making nature unnatural. More extension has been given to a review of Mr. Richardson's book than its intrinsic merit demands, because it shows that the superstitious regard for the unities was dying out even in academic circles, and because it is the first attempt to analyze any Shake- spearean characters as if they were real human beings, although he turns around and argues that they ought 152 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS to be unnatural and unreal. His statement that the basis of Hamlet's character ' is an exquisite sense of virtue ' meets the approval of the best modern critics, although he does not understand the confusing com- plex of contradictory traits which overlay it. But per- haps no one but Shakespeare could read that baffling psychological phenomenon, and very likely he could not do so. A pioneer — for we cannot admit that Dr. Johnson even opened the subject — is entitled to re- spect, and awakens an interest greater than his accom- plishment warrants. Mr. Richardson is a pioneer, though he penetrated a very little way. THE COM-TKOVERSY ABOUT SHAKESPEARE'S LEARNING In the eighteenth century there was a disposition in many members of the scholarly and critical world to assert that Shakespeare was a man of learning in the technical sense. The value of a classical education seemed to be in question, for if a man could produce such fine literature without education, of what use was a knowledge of Latin and Greek or even a univer- sity degree? It was intolerable to think that a man by natural ability alone could outdo graduates trained to write verse in Latin, the native language of poetry. The apt use the dramatist makes of classical history and mythology, and the ease of his incidental allusions to both, seem to imply the familiarity begotten of inti- mate acquaintance, and to sustain the natural desire to affiliate him with the academic world. Admitting that he violated the rules as no educated man should, it must be proved for the credit of learning that his ' small Latin and less Greek ' was enough to give him considerable acquaintance with Latin writers in the original. LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ESSAYISTS 153 Rowe thought that ' his acquaintance with Latin au- thors was such as he might have gained at school ; he could remember tags of Horace or Virgil, but was unable to read Plautus in the original.' Gildon believed that the poet had read Ovid and Plautus. Dennis, a man of strong sense, denied that he ' had learning and a familiar acquaintance with the Ancients.' Pope is rather cautious in his statements, and thinks that the errors in the Latin of the folio, such as ' Exit omnes,' ' Enter three witches solus,' ' actus tertia,' and the like, are errors of the printers. He asserts that the dram- atist ' had much reading ' ; that he ' was very knowing in the customs, rites, and manners of antiquity ' ; that he copied speeches from Plutarch in Coriolanus ; that he 'appears to have been conversant with Plautus,' and was ' manifestly acquainted with the modern Ital- ian writers of novels.' The many anachronisms in the plays he attributes to the illiteracy of the actors and publishers. He, however, distinguishes between ' learn- ing ' and ' languages.' ' How far,' he writes, ' he was , ignorant of the latter I cannot determine ; but 't is plain he had much reading at least, if they will not call it learning.' Pope's position is mainly right, but his dislike to commit himself and his disposition to argue a point so that he may seem to agree with whichever side is eventually proved right, is apparent in all he says in his preface. He would have saved himself great annoyance had he hedged as carefully in his emendations of the text. Theobald was at first inclined to believe from simi- larity of expression that Shakespeare knew the classics at first hand. Upton and Grey were eager to prove that he was a man of profound reading. In 1748 Peter Whaley brought out his Enquiry into the Learning of ' Shakespeare^ and took the ground that he ' knew enough 154 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS Latin to have acquired taste and elegance of judgment,' which, presumably, he thinks all good Latin scholars possess. The question was one well adapted to John- son's critical faculty, because it is to be determined by a common-sense examination of facts, and is not at all a matter of literary art. He points out that — Jonson, his friend, affirms that he had * small Latin and less Greek ' ; who, besides that he had no imaginable temptation to falsehood, wrote at the time when the charac- ter and acquisitions of Shakespeare were known to multi- tudes. His evidence ought therefore to decide the controversy, unless some testimony of equal force could be opposed. . . . Some have imagined that they have discovered deep learning in many imitations of old writers ; but the examples which I have known urged, were drawn from books translated in his time ; or even such easy coincidences of thought as will hap- pen to all who consider the same subjects ; or such remarks on life or axioms of morality as float in conversation, and are transmitted through the world in proverbial sentences. Johnson shows that the poet used North's translation of Plutarch and that there was in the sixteenth century an English version of the Latin comedy on which the Comedy of Errors is founded. He concludes : — There is however proof enough that he was a very dili- gent reader, nor was our language then so indigent of books but that he might very liberally indulge his curiosity without excursion into foreign literature. Many of the Roman authors were translated and some of the Greek. . . . This was a stock of knowledge sufficient for a mind so capable of appro- priating and improving it. In 1767 Dr. Richard Farmer, Master of Emmanuel College and Head Librarian of the University of Cam- bridge, published a long Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare. In this he shows that the dramatist inva- LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ESSAYISTS 155 riably used translations when he based his plot on a story originally told in a foreign language, because wherever the translator or printer made a mistake he follows in the same error. Aided by Capell, whom he calls 'a very curious and intelligent gentleman/ he points out the absurdity of drawing an argument from parallel passages in the classics unless the parallels are near together. For instance, it is absurd to imagine that the ' sweete oblivious antidote ' Macbeth asks for was suggested by the * Nepenthe ' of Ulysses. He illus- trates this point very fully, but he had such a strong case that it was not difficult to make a convincing argu- ment. He fails to avail himself of the many openings for caustic wit which Steevens would have improved so gleefully, and so much to our satisfaction. Dr. Farmer does not treat the subject in a very broad way, for in reality it is related to the essentials of liter- ary creation. But his paper is a document in Shake- spearean criticism, though it seems strange to us that the question should have been debated. Shakespeare, we know, came to London a young man, with little scholastic education. Very likely he had construed some of Ovid, and had imbibed the traditionary respect for Latin literature felt by his contemporaries. Then for some twenty years he spent his time professionally 9,3 actor and playwright and theatrical 'Johannes Fac- totum.' Probably he had to appear in a new part every week. Even admitting that the season was interrupted, it is evidently out of the question that he could have spent much time in reading anything which was not useful in his vocation, certainly not in translating Latin books, because such a task would not have been of the slightest benefit to him. Ben Jonson could do it, but he was not a theatrical owner like Shakespeare. But Shakespeare saw plays continually, and was thrown into 156 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS intimate relations with poets and writers; he was in the centre of the literary as well as of the theatrical world. As Dr. Farmer quotes, — probably from Capell, — ' They who are in such astonishment at the learning of Shakespeare forget that the Pagan imagery was famil- iar to all the poets of his time, and that abundance of this sort of learning was to be picked up from almost every English book that he could take in his hands.' Under similar conditions we know that a bright young man of to-day assimilates literary expressions and the prevalent literary tone with great rapidity. It is not at all remarkable that the young Shakespeare should have used classical allusions and some Latin words in Lovers Labour 's Lost. The marvel is how he so soon got enough knowledge of good society and of dilettante culture to portray a representative group of a class he could never have seen in Stratford. Anybody can write rhymes, and some people can even read Latin now, but who can embody the modern Biron, even if he has known a modern illustration of that delightful com- pound of whim, gallantry, and intelligence? The question of Shakespeare's learning is at best a fanciful one, like Shakespeare's knowledge of the law or medicine or the Bible. It sets on one side all consid- eration of the artistic receptive and creative power, and even of the exceptionally active intellect — it leaves Shakespeare out. So do some other branches of Shake- spearean criticism. MAURICE MORGANN Mrs. Montagu expressed the general opinion of the time that Sir John Falstaff was a coward. The Gads- hill exploit she calls ' a frolic to play on the cowardly and braggart temper of Falstaffe.' In 1777 appeared Maurice Morgann's Essay on the Dramatic Character LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ESSAYISTS 157 of Sir John Falstaffe. Of this admirable discussion the author says, * The viudication of Falstaffe's * courage is truly no otherwise the object than some fantastic oak or grotesque rock may be the object of a morning ride ; yet, being purposed as such, may serve to limit the distance and shape the course. The real object is exercise, and the delight which a rich, beauti- ful, and picturesque, and perhaps unknown, country may excite from every side.' Accordingly, though his thesis is, ' Falstaffe is not a coward,' he diverges from his line of proof to general criticism of the Shake- spearean art. Richardson had discussed some of the personages of the plays, but it is principally as stage figures that he apprehends them. He regards what they say and do, and not why they talk and act in a certain manner. This is the way in which most people regard their fellow mortals, — they do not trouble themselves much about the finer motives of their neigh- bors ; but it was not Shakespeare's way, though it was the way of the eighteenth-century critics. Mr. Mor- gann's attitude to the question is modern. The contrast between his style and method and that of Dr. John- son's preface is so striking as to suggest that they must be a century apart instead of only fifteen years. Mr. Morgann says that Shakespeare — very frequently makes a character act and speak from those parts of the composition (of his nature) which are inferred only and not distinctly shown. This produces a wonderful effect ; it seems to carry us beyond the poet to nature it- self and gives an integrity and truth to facts and character which they could not otherwise obtain. And this is in reality that art in Shakespeare, which being withdrawn from our notice we more emphatically call nature. A felt propriety 1 He refers of course to the Falstaff of Henry / F, disregarding the water-color replica of Merry Wives. 158 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS and truth from causes unseen I take to be the highest point of poetic composition. If the characters of Shakespeaie are thus whole, and, as it were, original, while those of almost all other writers are mere imitation, it may be fit to consider them rather as historic than as dramatic beings, and when occasion requires, to account for their conduct from the whole of character, from general principles, from latent mo- tives, and from policies not avowed. This shows more insight into human nature than any- other critic of the century possessed, and a critical faculty absolutely necessary to an adequate compre- hension of the Elizabethan tragedies. The stage charac- ter acts from some evident motive, the villain scowls, the lover sighs professionally ; but a man is a complex, and the motive which determines actions is not paraded as the reason for conduct. The critic applies this principle to Falstaff and says that he is not radically timid, because * cowardice is not the impression which the whole character of Falstaffe is calculated to make on the minds of an audience,' and that we estimate character by actions, but interpret actions by a feeling for the character made on us by minute circumstances. Sir John lies and boasts fearfully, but we feel that what in another would proceed from cowardice or egotism, in him is prompted by jocularity and humorous exaggeration. He is abso- lutely indifferent to the punctilio or artificial point of honor, because he is intelligent but destitute of the higher imagination. He is of this earth, and judges everything by a mundane standard, but is by no means a ' constitutional coward.' This we ' feel from the totality of the presentation.' That we are right is proved by the social position of the man as an old soldier in enjoyment of a pension, and one to whom a charge of foot is intrusted. Mr. Morgann develops LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ESSAYISTS 159 these points with insight, and throughout regards Sir John as a real man and points out that he ' never does or says anything which indicates terror or disorder of mind.' He is always self-possessed, but we cannot con- ceive of him as doing anything heroic. That Falstaff is not constitutionally timid is evi- dent from the ascendency he possesses over his disre- putable followers. No one acquires this power over a set of parasites unless the men know instinctively that their ' boss ' will not shrink from physical conflict if they rebel. Falstaff has not the slightest regard for them, but they obey him. This is the lowest form of courage, but no one can be a leader of rough men with- out it. This Falstaff possesses. Of the higher form which leads a man to sacrifice himself for a principle or for others, — a courage based on unselfishness, which is sometimes strong enough to conquer physical timid- ity, — he is entirely destitute. To him honor is some- thing absurd. There is no profit in it. ' Who hath it ? He that died o' Wednesday. . . . Honor is a mere scutcheon.' This is the view of the unimaginative man, and Falstaff never betrays the least imaginative fac- ulty in his language, so consistent is the dramatist to his conception of a character. Mr. Morgann points out the fact that Falstaff is the same in both parts of the play, and says this is the only instance where a personage is presented in two plays with perfect consistency. He passes from the particu- lar to more general considerations of Shakespeare's method, always with the same insight and justness of touch. The remembrance that Voltaire had called the great dramatist a barbarian inspires the following elo- quent passage : — "When the hand of time shall have brushed off his present Editors and Commentators, and when the very name of Vol- 160 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS taire, and even the memory of the language in which he has written, shall be no more, the Apalachian Mountains, the banks of the Ohio, and the plains of Sciota shall resound with the accents of this Barbarian. In his native tongue he shall roll the genuine passions of nature, nor shall the griefs of Lear be alleviated, nor the charms and wit of Rosalind be abated by time. There is, indeed, nothing perishable about him, except that very learning which he is said so much to want. He had not, it is true, enough for the demands of the age in which he lived, but he had perhaps too much for the reach of his genius, and the interest of his fame. Milton and he will carry the decayed remnants and fripperies of antient mythology into more distant ages than they are by their own force entitled to extend ; and the metamorphoses of Ovid, up- held by them, lay in a new claim to unmerited immortality. Nor is his eulogy of Shakespeare in a lower strain : — He differs essentially from all other writers. Him we may profess rather to feel than to understand, and it is safer to say, on many occasions, that we are possessed by him than that we possess him. And no wonder, — he scatters the seeds of things, the principles of character and action, with so cun- ning a hand, yet with so careless an air, and, master of our feelings, submits himself so little to our judgment, that every- thing seems superior. We discern not his course, we see no connection of cause and effect, we are rapt in ignorant admira- tion and claim no kindred with his abilities. All the incidents, all the parts, look like chance, whilst we feel and are sensible that the whole is design. His characters not only act and speak in strict conformity to nature, but in strict relation to us ; just so much is shown as is requisite, just so much is impressed ; he commands every passage to our heads and to our hearts, and moulds us as he pleases, and that with so much ease, that he never betrays his own exertions. We see these characters act from the mingled motives of passion, reason, interest, habit, and complection in all their proportions when they are supposed to know it not themselves, and we are made to acknowledge that their actions and sentiments are, from these LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ESSAYISTS 161 motives, the natural result. He at once blends and distin- guishes everything. Everything is complicated, everything is plain. I restrain the further expressions of my admiration lest they should seem not applicable to man ; but it is really astonishing that a mere human being, a part of humanity only, should so perfectly comprehend the whole, and that he should possess such exquisite art, that whilst every woman and every child shall feel the whole effect, his learned editors and commentators should yet so very frequently mistake or seem ignorant of the cause. A sceptre or a straw are in his hands of equal efficacy ; he needs no selection ; he converts everything into excellence ; nothing is too great, nothing is too base. Is a character efficient like Richard III, it is everything we can wish : is it otherwise like Hamlet, it is productive of equal admiration. Action produces one mode of excellence and inaction another. The chronicle, the novel, or the ballad ; the king, or the beggar, the hero, the madman, the sot, or the fool ; it is all one ; nothing is worse, nothing is better. The same genius pervades and is equally admirable in all. Or is a character to be shown in progressive change and the events of years comprized within the hour ; with what a magic hand does he prepare and scatter his spells ! The understanding must in the first place be subdued, and, lo ! how the rooted prejudices of the child spring up to confound the man ! The weird sisters rise, and order is extinguished. The laws of na- ture give way and leave nothing in our minds but wildness and horror. No pause is allowed us for reflection. Horrid sentiment, furious guilt and compunction, air-drawn daggers, murders, ghosts and inchantment, shake and ' possess us wholly.' In the meantime the process is completed. Macbeth changes under our eye, ' the milk of human kindness is con- verted to gall ' ; ' he has supped full of horrors,' and his * way of life is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf ' ; whilst we, the fools of nature, are insensible to the shifting of place and the lapse of time, and, till the curtain drops, never once awake to the truth of things, or recognize the laws of exist- ence. On such an occasion a fellow like Rymer, waking from his trance, shall lift up his constable's staff, and charge this 162 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS great magician, this daring practicer of arts inhibited, in the name of Aristotle to surrender ; whilst Aristotle himself, dis- owning his wretched officer, would fall prostrate at his feet and acknowledge his supremacy. * O supreme of dramatic excellence ! ' (might he say) ' not to me be imputed the in- solence of fools. The bards of Greece were confined within the narrow circle of the chorus, and hence they found them- selves constrained to practice, for the most part the precision, and copy the details of nature. I followed them, and knew not that a larger circle might be drawn, and the drama ex- tended to the whole reach of human genius. Convinced, I see that a more compendious nature may be obtained ; a nature of effects only, to which neither the relations of place, or continuity of time are always essential. Nature condescending to the faculties and apprehensions of man, has drawn through human life a regular chain of visible cause and effects. But poetry delights in surprise, conceals her steps, seizes at once upon the heart, and obtains the sublime of things without be- traying the rounds of her ascent ? True Poesy is magic, not nature, an effect from causes hidden or unknown. To the magician I prescribed no laws ; his law and his power are one ; his power is his law. Him who neither imitates nor is within the reach of imitation, no precedents can or ought to bind, no limits to contain. If this end is obtained, who shall question his course ? Means, whether apparent or hidden, are justified in Poesy by success ; but then most perfect and most admirable when most concealed ! * Mr. Morgann is not mentioned in the encyclopaedias, but his prose is the most living and vigorous of the eighteenth century — if we except Burke's. Some exten- sion is given to the extract because his book is not easy to come at, and it shows that poetry is to be esti- mated by the effect it produces and not by resemblance to previous models or adherence to rules. That ' Poesy is magic,* that * means are justified by success and the artist is his own law,' is going as far as Keats would LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ESSAYISTS 163 have gone in an appreciation of beauty in words. The book must have appeared very heretical to Dr. Johnson and his friends, — indeed to the entire scholastic world of the day, to which moderation and restraint were car- dinal literary virtues ; to us it seems a just appreciation of Sir John and of the luxuriance of the great poet's genius, though it overlooks the fact that over-luxuriance is a fault, more divine perhaps, but hardly less dis- pleasing, than slavish moderation or studied unity. CHAPTER VII THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY SAMUEIi TAYLOB COLEKIDGE (1772-1834) The progress of Shakespearean criticism in the eight- eenth century is manifest. Most of the work was text- ual or historic, and, though it was complete in neither direction, the difference between Howe and Malone is far greater than the difference between Malone and the Cambridge editors. In aesthetic and literary inter- pretation no solid advance was made, unless we allow to Morgann's isolated paper more significance than its re- stricted topic can claim. Unreasoning love and admira- tion of the plays, always strong among educated men, became so imperious in its expression that no dullard like Rymer — dull that is in artistic sense, not in intel- lectual ability — dare write anything derogatory to them for fear of the storm of contemptuous public opinion he was sure to encounter. Reverence for the unities, once a general academic superstition, as we have noticed, grew weaker with each succeeding decade. By degrees, too, it began to be felt that the characters were the result of creative power putting together the elements of human nature in a new combination, and not merely of skill in writing stage dialogue full of witty, eloquent, and pathetic speeches. Judging from Morgann's words with reference to Rosalind and Mr. Richardson's inade- quate analysis of Imogen, it began to dawn on critics that Shakespeare's women, though originally repre- •sented by boys, were on the same artistic plane as his men, equally various, equally true, and some of them striking as deep a root into human nature. THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY 165 With the opening of the nineteenth century, if we take Coleridge as a representative, — and his critical faculty and his wide influence certainly entitle him to be so considered, — Shakespearean criticism made a decided advance. Not that academic circles suddenly ceased to be Johnsonian and classic and became Cole- ridgean and romantic, or that the Edinburgh Review became liberal, but that energetic and talented young men broke away from literary tradition and rallied around a new standard. In fact, the old had become too conventional. One enthusiastic young man said that Pope was not a poet. Other enthusiastic young men agreed with him. Wordsworth even dared to say that the great Dr. Johnson's style was a ' hubbub of words.' Verse was written in new free and varied forms, the lyrical element predominating. It was re- ceived at first with ridicule, but the best of it slowly made its way to popular favor. Coleridge lectured on Shakespeare, and a great many people listened with ap- proval. The manifestations of the new spirit in litera- ture were manifold. The movement is known as the rise of romanticism. It extended over Europe, and its influ- ence on literature is fully treated in Brandeis's The Rise of the Romantic Movement in Europe. This is not the place to detail the causes of the ro- mantic movement. Advanced Englishmen were at first much excited over the French Revolution. They hailed it as an emancipation. Afterwards they were alarmed by the days of the Terror, and still more by the rise of Napoleon. From the literary point of view, the inocu- lation of a few Englishmen with the metaphysics of Kant and the German criticism of the drama was the most efficient. Literature, from the ballad to the drama, was regarded as a manifestation of the human spirit, not as a thing apart, a collection of scholastic or anti- 166 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS quariau documents. German thought gave enthusiastic young men new conceptions as to the nature of the beautiful and the function of the artist. Even when these conceptions were imperfectly apprehended, they were germinal, and were taken up by minds already full of kindred notions. This change of the critical point of view did not come suddenly over England. Throughout the eight- eenth century there had been an undercurrent of ro- manticism.^ Grray, though an academic scholar, was a romantic poet. Kindly humanitarianism pervades the poetry and prose of Goldsmith and Cowper. There are always conservatives and romantics. Keats wrote with fine scorn of the old classical school, in the free verse form the later romanticists affected : — Yes, a schism, Nurtured by foppery and barbarism, Made great Apollo blush for this his land. Men were thought wise who could not understand His glories : with a puling infant's force They swayed about upon a rocking horse And thought it Pegasus. But ye were dead To things ye know not of — were closely wed To musty laws, lined out with wretched rule And compass vile ! so that ye taught a school Of dolts to smooth, inlay, and clip, and fit. Till like the certain wands of Jacob's wit Their verses tallied. Easy was the task : A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask Of Poesy. But at the very time this was written the critical Reviews were in the hands of the conservatives. On the other hand we read of Coleridge's father saying as * This is well traced out by Professor Phelps in the Romantic Movement of the Eighteenth Century. THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY 167 early as 1775, when Dr. Johnson was a recognized authority in criticism, that ' he detested the measured, insipid, rhetorical pseudo-classical correctness of the school of Pope.* In the year his son was born (1772) he wrote in a Latin grammar he published, ' Artificial rules hamper a great genius : A soaring mind will wear no shackles,* a sentence singularly inappropriate in a grammar, but embodying one of the most extreme tenets of romanticism. But we speak of the Elizabethan drama also as the * romantic drama,* and properly, for in its general con- ception of the mystery of life and the power of the human will, as well as its occasional violence and ex- aggeration, it is characterized by the method and the faults of romanticism. The Renaissance was, too, a lyrical age, and the Elizabethan lyric is the natural expression of the romantic spirit. But the word applied to the early seventeenth century has a slightly differ- ent significance when we use it of the later period. The first was more healthily objective, it revered the newly discovered world of antiquity. The,J[attej! _waa self- conscious, and its subjectivity easily degenerated into sentimentalism, an artificial cultivation of personal emotions. It revered medisevalism, so much so, that on the Continent many of its enthusiasts became Catholics. It loved the mysterious and the obscure. The meta- physical base of the thought of the two was quite dif- ferent ; between them lay the age of Puritanism, which left an ineffaceable mark on the English mind. The Coleridgean romanticist was face to face with demo- cracy, whether he knew it or not. The Shakespearean romanticism was aristocratic and feudal. But in both periods there was a coming to the surface of the Gothic spirit, as opposed to the Greco-Latin spirit. The Goth delights in sombreness, — half-lights and mystery, — 168 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS and puts together in his story and his cathedral ele- ments that seem incongruous, — angels and demons, the ideal and the coarse, commonplace, jesting spirits of the earth. In his literature he rebels against the restraint, the self-possession, the dignity and finish of classic art. Sometimes this resulted in a strong and natural picture of the world ; sometimes, as in Titus Andronicus and the Duchess of Malfi^ it overdid it- self in violent action. So there was enough resem- blance and inner sympathy between 1608 and 1808 to make the author of the Ancient Mariner the best interpreter of The Tempest and Hamlet that had ap- peared, and indeed one of the best that has ever appeared, and the first critic on whose aesthetic con- ceptions later critics could build. The new romanticism was akin to the old, and could sympathize more fully with its poetic spirit. It took a larger view of the artist, a more enthusiastic view of the world and man. It set aside the classical tradition firmly, and ranked Shakespeare at once with the old masters. Its unrea- soning admiration of the plays was not less, but its reasoned admiration was more philosophical and its analysis more profound. Even when the analysis is fanciful or tinged by German mysticism, it is at least an attempt to get at the nature of the thing. Of all these tendencies Samuel Taylor Coleridge is the ex- ponent. Hazlitt, Lamb, De Quincey, and the others are at once his spiritual pupils and the children of their age. Coleridge's influence was largely due to his remark- able powers of conversation. To the quickening in- fluence of his talk, testimony is abundant. The printed record of his criticism ^ on Shakespeare is fragmentary ^ Coleridge's Shakespearean criticism has been brought to- gether and arranged as well as possible by Mr. Ashe, in one THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY 169 though of considerable bulk. It consists of extracts from The Fnend and Biographia Literaria, news- paper reports of his lectures, notes taken by some one of the audience, and a mass of matter from his notes published after his death by his nephew, H. N. Cole- ridge, under the title of Literary Remains. This con- sists of some papers of considerable length and many notes, some of which are careless jottings of ideas, others elaborated matter to be used in his lectures. In all this there are naturally many repetitions to be found, and few lines of thought are logically followed out. Coleridge was well called the ' man of magnificent be- ginnings,' of ' infinite title pages.' His Table Talk^ published after his death, contains many striking and just remarks on Shakespeare. He read continuously, and made full notes for his lectures, but usually aban- doned his written material, sometimes disappointing and wearying his audience by his digressions, but oftener holding it in rapt attention, so much so that Mr. Collier, the Shakespearean editor, who as a young man attended his .lectures and took shorthand notes, says : — They [the reports, afterwards printed] are, I am sure, full of omissions, owing in some degree to want of facility on my part, in a greater degree, perhaps, to a mistaken estimate of what it was, or was not, expedient to minute, and in no little proportion to the fact that in some cases I relied upon my re- collection to fill up chasms in my memoranda. A few defects may be attributed to my position among the auditors (though voUime (pp. 540), Bohn's Library. Mr. Ashe omits, however, the article in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana on * The Method of Shakespeare,' little more than two pages of which were extracted from The Friend. The article is also interesting as showing that Coleridge was not above copying from himself, whether this or the paper in The Friend were published first. / 170 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS the lectures were not always very fully attended), and others to the plain fact that I was not infrequently so engrossed and absorbed by the almost inspired look and manner of the speaker, that I was for a time incapable of performing the mechanical duty of writing. Although the eighteenth -century critics had the ad- vantage of seeing Shakespeare's women played by some great actresses — notably, Sarah Siddons — they were strangely insensible to them except as stage figures. They classed Juliet and Ophelia together as girls in love, and regarded Lady Macbeth as a type of the ambitious, masterful woman. The delicate shading that distinguishes Rosalind and Viola was too fine for their I perception. Coleridge, however, claims for them as a i class the simplicity, tenderness, and latent heroism that mark gracious womanhood. Beaumont and Fletcher's women, he says, 'are, when of the right kind, not decent, when heroic, complete viragos.* But in Shakespeare all the elements of womanhood are holy, and there is the sweet yet dignified feeling of all that continuates society,^ as sense of ancestry and of sex, with a purity unassailable by sophistry, because it rests not in the analytical processes, but in that same equipoise of the facul- ties, 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 woman that lived. Shakespeare saw that the want of prominence, which Pope notices for sarcasm, was the blessed beauty of 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 dis- tinctive energies of faith, patience, constancy, fortitude, — 1 Here Colericlge seems to anticipate by the intuition of genius the modern theory of atavism and race heredity. THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY 171 shown in all of them as following the heart, which gives its results by a nice tact and 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 Shakespearean women there is essentially the same foundation and principle ; the distinct individuality and variety are merely the result of the modifi- cation of circumstances, whether in Miranda the maiden, in Imogen the wife, or in Katharine the queen. We can agree heartily that the ' foundation and principle ' is the same, but dissent no less heartily from the critic's assertion that the individuality is the result of the modification of circumstances ; for Viola, Por- tia, and Miranda are far more distinctly and radically different individuals than are the men in the plays, if we exclude the Jew and the Magician. Coleridge's en- thusiasm for the Shakespearean women causes him to overestimate Ophelia. Of her he says : — . . . the faults of the sex from which Ophelia is so free, that the mere freedom therefrom constitutes her character. Note Shakespeare's charm of composing the female charac- ter by the absence of characters, that is, marks and out- juttings. . . . The soliloquy of Ophelia which follows is the perfection of love — so exquisitely unselfish. To us it seems as if that soliloquy, so musical in its rhythm, is a marvelous revelation of a shallow nature ; and shallowness connotes selfishness, the absence of capacity for the profounder psychical relations. O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown. She, like her father, is convinced that Hamlet's mind is unsettled, because he talks in an excited and uncon- ventional manner. She then thinks of his position and appearance, and then of herself, all in placidly modulated language. She is a docile and negative 172 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS character, incapable of the sympathetic insight and of the passion to help and comfort which is the attribute of feminine love. The loneliness of soul which her de- ficiencies force on her lover is one of his troubles. Coleridge says that ' Shakespeare has left the charac- ter of the Queen in an unpleasant perplexity. Was she or was she not conscious of the fratricide ? ' The queen is an indolent, good-natured, sensual creature, but her evident astonishment when Hamlet says : — A bloody deed ! almost as bad, good mother, As kill a king, and marry with his brother, — coupled with the fact that he at once drops the accusa^ tion, should acquit her of being particeps criminis. Coleridge's remarks on the characters are full of genuine human sympathy. They are his brothers and sisters in circumstances that elicit pity and love. lago affects him with terror, as if he were alive. This is entirely different from the cool regard of the classic critics. The romanticist yields to his emotions, — some- times, indeed, cherishes and exaggerates them. His estimate of Hamlet is much the same as that of his contemporary, Schlegel, and both may be traced to the criticism of Goethe in Wilhelm Meister, This view is that Hamlet lacked will power to carry out a reso- lution. In the lectures of 1811-12 Coleridge says : — He [Shakespeare] intended to portray a person in whose view the external world and all its incidents and objects were comparatively dim, and of no interest in themselves, and which began to interest only when they were reflected in the mirror of his mind. Hamlet believed external things in the same way that a man of vivid imagination, who shuts his eyes, sees what has previously made an impression on his organs. THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY 173 The same general philosophical view obtains in the lectures of 1818 : — 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 work- ings of our mind. 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 color not their own. Hence we see a great, an almost enormous, intellectual activity, and a pro- portionate aversion to real action consequent upon it, with all its symptoms and accompanying qualities. This character Shakespeare places in circumstances under which it is obliged to act on the spur of the moment. In 1812 Coleridge said : — He [Hamlet] is full of purpose but void of that quality of mind which accomplishes purpose. Anything finer than this conception, and working out of a great character, is merely impossible. Shakespeare wished to impress upon us the truth, that action is the chief end of existence — that no faculties of intellect, however brilliant, can be considered valuable, or indeed otherwise than as misfortunes, if they withdraw us from, or render us repugnant to action, and lead us to think of doing until the time has elapsed when we can do anything effectually. Hamlet is a man living in medi- tation, called upon to act by every motive, human and divine, but the great object of his life is defeated by continually re- solving to do, yet doing nothing but resolve. This, at least, is better than Mr. Richardson's expla- nation that he does not act because he is ' irresolute.' It is an attempt to explain irresolution by mental and temperamental composition. It is more philosophical than the explanation that Hamlet dreaded to shed blood or that he feared the consequences of his act, of which 174 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS there is not the slightest evidence in the play. With some modifications it is the position taken by the lead- ing critics of the nineteenth century. He gives the final blow to the idea that the unities of time and place are vital in the construction of a drama. In his second lecture of the 1811-12 series he said: — The works of Shakespeare are honored in a double way, by the admiration of the Germans and the contempt of the French. . . . Among other points of objection taken by the French, perhaps the most noticeable is that he has not ob- served the sacred unities, so hallowed by the practice of their own extolled tragedians. They hold, of course, after Corneille and Racine, that Sophocles is the most perfect model for tragedy, and Aristotle its most infallible censor ; and that, as Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, and other dramas by Shakespeare are not framed upon that model, and consequently not sub- ject to the same laws, they maintain that Shakespeare was a sort of irregular genius, that he is now and then tasteful and touching, but generally incorrect ; and in short that he was a mere child of nature, who did not know any better than to write as he has written. Coleridge's answer is, that the construction of the ancient theatre and the presence of the chorus necessi- tated continuity of action, but that even then the plays represented ' were made to include within a short space of time events which it is impossible should have occurred in that short space.' In both cases dramatic performances were looked on as ideal. * Nobody sup- poses that a tragedian suffers real pain when he is stabbed or tortured.' And so real occurrences, when imitated, must be transposed, foreshortened, and forced into a temporal perspective in order to create an artis- tic illusion. The length of a drama is limited to two hours or so by the power of an audience for enduring emotional excitement. The time supposed to elapse is THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY 175 limited or extended by an artificial convention to in- clude all that is essential to the plot. Coleridge justifies the juxtaposition of the comic and tragic in the old plays by the obvious argument of the effect of contrast. He rejects for no sufficient reason the porter scene in Macbeth. He considers the fools the legitimate successors of the ' vice ' of the moralities, and says they are not used only to create amusement ; he thinks they fill to a certain extent the function of the Greek chorus, in that they stand outside of the action and comment on what is going on as a spectator might. In some of the plays he thinks that the office of the fool is divided among several characters. He discusses the probable order in which the plays were written, and, characteristically, does not base himself on the evidence collected by Malone, but on psychological reasons, and divides them into 'youthful,' 'manly,' and 'mature' plays. He notices the important point that 'the works of Shakespeare are romantic poetry revealing itself in the drama,' and says, following Schlegel, that — they are in the ancient sense neither tragedies nor comedies nor both in one, but a different genus, diverse in kind, not merely different in degree. They may be called romantic dramas or dramatic romances. . . . The essence of the Athe- nian dramatists consists of the sternest separation of the diverse in kind and the disparate in degree, whilst the romantic drama delights in interlacing by a rainbow-like transfusion of hues the one with the other. But one is not of a higher degree of beauty than another, for — we call, for we both see and feel, the swan and the dove transcendently beautiful. As absurd would it be to institute a comparison between their separate claims to beauty from any 176 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS 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 criticize 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 of their own end and being, their want of significance as symbols or physiognomy. In this Coleridge recognizes the principle that the human race 'works for itself new organs of power appropriate to a new sphere of its activity,' and shakes himself free from the narrow notion of restricted forms, each with its specially imposed rules. It is a great advance to claim unhesitatingly for the Gothic art of Shakespeare the right to be judged by itself with refer- ence to its ' own end and being,' and not by formal comparison with the Greek art of Sophocles. The most consecutive piece of criticism is headed, in Literary Remains^ ' Recapitulation and Summary of the Characteristics of Shakespeare's Dramas.' It occu- pies ten pages, and Mr. H. N. Coleridge, the editor, says it was * for the most part communicated by Mr. Justice Coleridge '(Sir John Taylor Coleridge). Mr. Ashe adds, * That is to say, written by Mr. Justice Coleridge and revised by H. N. Coleridge.' But it bears many marks of the mind of S. T. Coleridge, in fact, seems his in everything but its logical order. It contains two of the passages which have been made the basis of charging him with plagiarizing from Augustus Schlegel (of which more hereafter). Mr. Justice Coleridge would not have taken matter from a German book and called it a tran- scription of his uncle's notes. Nor could he have written THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY 177 such excellent Shakespearean criticism unless the spirit of S. T. Coleridge had been speaking through him. Take the sentence, * The stage in Shakespeare's time was a naked room with a blanket for a curtain, but he made it a field for monarchs.' That is precisely like the great Coleridge in its formal inaccuracy and its radical truth. The stage in Shakespeare's time was not a room, it was a platform open on three sides. There was no curtain unless before the recess under the balcony which ran across the rear. But Shakespeare did make it a ' field for monarchs ' ; he peopled it with dignified and noble figures, monarchs in intellect and will. There is as much of Coleridge in this short essay as in any other part of the book, and it is always taken as his. He says : — 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. As the feeling with which we startle at a shooting star, compared with that of watching the sunrise at the pregstablished moment, such and so low is surprise compared with expectation. 2. Signal adherence to the great law of nature that opposites tend to attract and temper each other. Passion in Shakespeare generally displays libertinism, but involves morality. . . . Hence, real folly and dullness are made hyj him the vehicles of wisdom. 3. Keeping at all times in the high road of life. Shak( speare has no innocent adulteries, no interesting incests, no virtuous vice. Shakespeare's fathers are roused by ingrati- tude ; his husbands stung by unfaithfulness ; in him, in short, the affections are wounded in those points in which all may, nay, must, feel. . . . He does not use the faulty thing for a faulty purpose, nor carry on war against virtue by causing wickedness to appear as no wickedness, through the medium of a morbid sympathy with the unfortunate. He inverts not i the order of nature and propriety, — does not make every/ 178 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS magistrate a drunkard or glutton, nor every poor man meek, humane, and temperate. / 4. Independence of the dramatic interest in 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 canvas and no more. 5. Independence of the interest in the story as the ground- work of the plot. Hence Shakespeare never took the trouble of inventing stories. . . . The greater part, if not all of his dramas, were as far as the names and main incidents are concerned already stock-plays. All the stories preexisted in the chronicles, ballads, or translations of contemporary writers. 6. Interfusion of the lyrical. 7. The characters of the dramatis personce, like those in real life, are to he inferred hy the reader — they are not told to him. Shakespeare's characters, like those in real life, are very commonly misunderstood. The causes are the same in either case. If you take only what the friends of the char- acter 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, all the speeches receiving light from it and attesting its reality by reflecting it. Lastly, in Shakespeare the heterogeneous is limited, as it is in nature. You must not suppose a pressure or passion always acting on or in the character. He 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. When Coleridge keeps clear of German metaphysics his criticism is of the above clear and sound nature, with here and there sentences that light up the matter THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY 179 and clear away the confusion of the past. Occasionally some reminiscence of Schelling's ' identity in contra- riety * comes over him and he attempts to tell the time of day by the light of the moon, but for the most part he reckons from the fixed stars. He notes the tone of each play, how different Hamlet is from Othello^ or Midsummer NigMs Dream from The Tempest. Com- menting on Macbeth^ he makes the excellent point — suggested perhaps by his translation of Schiller's Wallenstein — that 'victorious generals are prone to superstition.' He scouts the idea that Othello was a negro, — in this going directly contrary to Schlegel, — and he notices the excellence of Shakespeare's intro- ductions, though he overlooks the fact that the fifth acts are not always so well constructed. Even in their chaotic condition his notes have the unity, or, rather, similarity, which a thinker, even when most desultory, impresses on his utterances, and his reputation as a critic depends as much on his Shakespearean notes as on the discussion of poetry published during his life in BiograpMca Literaria, His lecture on Johnson's Pre- face is unfortunately lost, but it is not needed to mark the gap between him and his successors and the neo- classicists of the eighteenth century. During his life it was said that he drew his meta- physical ideas from Schelling and his Shakespearean ideas from Augustus Schlegel, one of the leaders of the German romanticists. After his death the charge was rudely pressed by Sir William Hamilton in the Edinburgh Review. His ideas on metaphysics need not detain us, though we may note that Schelling re- garded him as a brilliant disciple. With regard to his critical principles it is true that Coleridge did spend a year in Germany in 1798, and much of it at the Uni- versity of Gottingen, and undoubtedly discussed litera- 180 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS ture and art with many of the enthusiastic young men of the new school. He imbibed and expanded the ideas that were in the air, as every young man does according to his receptivity and originality. If these principles are reiterated in later writings, it is absurd to caU such reiteration plagiarism, or even an indication of a lack of originality ; no one can plagiarize the spirit of his age in religion or philosophy. He adopts certain ex- planations and ways of accounting for things, and his originality depends on the form in which he embodies and applies them. Plagiarism is repeating the thoughts of another in the original form. Of this Coleridge was never guilty, for he colored and amplified in expression any ideas that came to him from others. There is a minor form of plagiarism, appropriating an image, a turn of phrase, or the general color of a passage. It is usually unconscious, and is pardonable when the original is in a different language. Of this, due largely to a very untrustworthy memory for facts and a very retentive memory for ideas, Coleridge is guilty. Coleridge undoubtedly lectured on Shakespeare before 1811-12, but we have no record of what he said before the later date. In the ninth lecture of his 1811-12 course, probably early in 1812, he is reported as saying: Yesterday afternoon a friend left a book for me by a. German critic of which I have only had time to read a small part, but what I did read, I approved, and I should be disposed to applaud the work much more highly, were it not that in so doing I should, in a manner, applaud myself. The sentences and opinions are coincident with those to which I gave utterance in my lectures at the Royal Institution. The friend was Henry Crabb Robinson — and the book was Schlegel's Dramatic Literature in German, just published, though read as lectures at Vienna in 1808, and much expanded as printed. This, fixes the THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY 181 date at which Coleridge read Schlegel's book, and also the fact that he had delivered one course and part of another before he read it. Coleridge died in 1829, and in the preface to Liter- ary Remains (1836) Mr. H. N. Coleridge says : — The materials were fragmentary in the extreme — Sibyl- line leaves — notes of the lecturer, memoranda of the inves- tigator, outpourings of the solitary and self-communing student. The fear of the press was not in them. The first thing that occurs to us is that Coleridge is not responsible for anything printed after his death from such a heterogeneous mass of material. It is true that he said : — I have already written materials [for a work on Shake- speare and the Dramatists] requiring only to he put together from the loose papers and commonplace or memorandum books and needing no other change whether of omission, ad- dition, or correction than the mere act of arranging. . . . This work with every art of compression, amounts to three volumes of about five hundred pages each. By this he would seem to claim all the notes as his, but, as Mr. Ashe says, ' the opening sentence is prob- ably a marvel of self-deception.' As H. N. Coleridge says, ' The materials were fragmentary in the extreme, and to give them method and continuity was a delicate and perplexing task,' — in which he failed. Three of the passages in Literary Remains which are plainly taken from notes Coleridge translated from Schlegel's Dramatic Literature, with the correspond- ing passages from Schlegel, are as follows : — 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 the spring, but it ends with a long deep sigh like the last breeze of the Italian evening. 182 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS This unity of feeling and character pervades every drama of Shakespeare. — Coleridge, Lectures on Shakespeare, Bohn Edition, p. 237. All that is most intoxicating in the odor of a southern spring — all that is languishing in the song of the nightin- gale, or voluptuous in the first opening of the rose, all alike breathe forth from this poem. . . . The fullness of life and self-annihilation are here all brought close to each other ; and yet these contrasts are so blended into a unity of impression, that the echo which the whole leaves behind in the mind resembles a single but endless sigh. — Schlegel, Dramatic Literature^ p. 400. No work of true genius dares want its appropriate form, nor indeed is there any danger of this. . . . The form is me- chanic, when on any given material we impress a predeter- mined 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 develops itself, from within, and the fulness of its development is one and the same with the perfection of its outward form. Nature, the prime genial artist inexhaustible in diverse powers, is equally inexhaustible in forms. — Coleridge, Lectures on Shakespeare, p. 229. The works of genius cannot therefore be permitted to be without form, but of this there is no danger. . . . Form is mechanical when, through external force, it is imparted to any material merely as an accidental addition without refer- ence to its quality ; as, for example, when we give a particu- lar shape to a soft mass that it may retain the same after its induration. Organical form, again, is innate ; it unfolds itself from within. ... In the fine arts as well as in the domain of nature — the supreme artist — all genuine forms are organ- ical, that is determined by the quality of the work. — Schlegel, Dramatic Literature, p. 340. The true poet's work in its form, its shapings, and its modifications is distinguished from all other works that as- THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY 183 sume 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 beauti- ful to the eye and fragrant to the sense, but their colors soon fade and their odor is transient as the smile of the planter : — while the meadow may be visited again and again with re- newed delight, its beauty is innate in the soul, and its bloom is of the freshness of nature. — Coleridge, Lectures on Shakespeare, p. 232. Many productions which appear at first sight dazzling phenomena in the province of the fine arts, and which as a whole have been honored with the appellation of works of a golden age, resemble the mimic gardens of children : impa- tient to witness the works of their hands, they break off here and there branches and flowers, and plant them in the earth ; everything at first assumes a noble appearance : the childish gardener struts proudly up and down among his showy beds ; the rootless plants begin to droop and hang their withered leaves and blossoms, and nothing soon remains but the bare twigs, while the dark forest on which no art or care was ever bestowed, and which towered up towards heaven long before human remembrance, bears every blast unshaken, and fills the solitary beholder with religious awe. — Schlegel, Droy matic Literature, p. 19. There are some eight or nine other passages where there is the same general resemblance of simile or phrase. It is evident that Coleridge did not translate directly, but that he read Schlegel's lectures in the German and afterwards recalled and appropriated parts of them unconsciously in his notes. It would be absurd to say that he * lifted ^ phrases, for he had a superabundance of them at the point of his pen. Mr. Saintsbury says, justly, that Coleridge cannot be held accountable for anything in Literary Remains, for it was not printed until some years after his death. 184 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS But the nightingale passage appears also in the re- port of his lectures at Bristol printed in 1813 in the Bristol Gazette. (^Lectures on Shakespeare^ P^-ge 464.) The report was either furnished by Coleridge or taken by shorthand, no doubt the latter. He evidently re- read his old notes before going on the platform. If he took any papers to his desk, he usually made little use of them. A comparison of the extracts will, however, convince any one that there is far more life and warmth in Coleridge's words than in Schlegel's. The resem- blances testify simply to his receptivity and to his want of system in preparing his notes. Coleridge and Schlegel occupied much the same critical ground, but Coleridge never follows the other in his mistakes, as, A^^^ for instance, in /regarding Othello as a negrb^ nor in \jv'' his extraordinary statement that Lord Cromwell, Sir John Oldcastle^ and A Yorkshire Tragedy are not only ' unquestionably Shakespeare's, but in my opinion they deserve to be classed among his best and maturest works.' Coleridge was far too sound a critic and far too deeply imbued with knowledge of Elizabethan literature to make such a statement. That the Englishman and the German agree in re- garding Shakespeare as a consummate artist and not a 'wild irregular genius,' and in calling his plays not tragedies or comedies in the old sense, but ' romantic dramas,' is due to the fact that both are enthusiastic spokesmen of the romantic spirit. A critic is one who loves literature naturally, and is disposed to point out to others the beauty of the parts and of the whole of any fine production. A great critic is one who loves lit- etature warmly for itself and not from any professional bias, and is impelled to call the attention of others to what he loves, and can put his appreciations in language that compels assent, — indeed, is itself literature. If he THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY 185 analyzes, he must not do so with the systematic piti- lessness of a machine, and above all, he must not bring the literature of one period to the bar and try to meas- ure it by standards deduced from the practices of a remote time and a foreign country, since every people develops its art independently. He must comprehend the radical differences between the Greek and the Goth and the greatness of each, even if he rank Greek art higher than that of his own race. He must regard the classical tradition as a frame in which beautiful things were constructed by the spirit of man, — so beautiful as to be immortal, — but not as the only possible frame for literary art, nor, on the other hand, as so far outworn that every departure from its fashions is necessarily praiseworthy because freed from restraint. Romantic enthusiasm is not always inspiration. n we measure Coleridge by these considerations, he is a great critic, not merely of Shakespeare, but of poetry, — one of those who broaden the ideal view of their contemporaries and successors, and emancipate the spirit of man from superstitions. CHARLES LAMB (1775-1834) ^ Lamb's sympathetic insight into literature, his mas- tery of the quaint and the dexterous phrase, the personal appeal to the reader of his unique and charming style, and his happy facility of quotation, gave him more im- portance as a literary critic than can be allowed to any other man whose production is so limited. His speci- mens from the old dramatists, with illustrative notes, made men see that Shakespeare's contemporaries also possessed some of the minor Shakespearean qualities, and showed that Shakespeare was but one, though the greatest, of a body of playwrights, and not a unique phenomenon. In reading the plays of Beaumont, 186 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS Fletcher, and Massinger, we become more than before aware of Shakespeare's distinction. Lamb is a great critic, and he is so attractive a person that it is almost impossible to disagree with him. Even when he is most whimsical or paradoxical, or seems to admire the book because it is old and he has discovered it, he says so many admirable things which compel our assent that we are forced to admit that when he is most per- sonal he is most delightful. His Shakespearean criticism is confined almost entirely to his article on the Trage- dies of Shakespeare, in which his thesis is that the Tragedies are too great for stage representation. He makes his strongest point on Lear. In proving that it is too great to be acted, he impresses on the reader's mind the immense power of the play. The passage may be found in the preface or notes to every edition of the play, but cannot become hackneyed by repetition: — To see Lear acted — to see an old man turned out of doors by his daughters on a rainy night, has nothing in it but what is painful and disgusting. We want to take him into shelter and relieve him. That is all the feeling which the acting of Lear ever produced in me. But the Lear of Shakespeare cannot be acted. The contemptible machin- ery by which they mimic the storm he goes out in is not more inadequate to represent the horrors of the real elements than any actor can be to represent Lear ; they might more easily propose to personate the Satan of Milton upon a stage, or one of Michael Angelo's terrible figures.^ The greatness But is not that a reason why a great actor can represent Lear ? Again, all the Shakespearean heroes are men of physical strength, — great minds in perfect frames ; Macbeth, the captain of rude levies, not less than Hamlet, * the courtier, soldier * (athlete), who droops when he foregoes * all custom of exercises.* /^The part of the fool in Ltar^ that lovable compound of whim ( and faithfulness, simplicity and worldly wisdom, — serving at r THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY 187 ! of Lear is not in corporal dimensions, but in intellectual. The explosions of his passion are terrible as a volcano, they are storms turning up and disclosing to the bottom that sea, his mind, with all its vast riches. It is his mind which is laid bare. The case of flesh and blood seems too insignifi- cant to be thought on ; even as he himself neglects it. On the stage we see nothing but corporal infirmities and weak- nesses, the impotence of rage ; while we read it we see not Lear, but we are Lear, — we are in his mind, we are sus- tained by a grandeur which baffles the malice of daughters , and storm, in the aberrations of his reason we discover a j mighty irregular power of reasoning, immethodized from the ordinary purposes of life, but exerting its powers as the wind blows where it listeth, at will upon the corrup- tions and abuses of mankind. What have looks or tones to do with that sublime identification of his age with that of the heavens themselves, when in his reproaches to them for conniving at the injustice of his children he reminds them that * they themselves are old ' ? What gesture shall we ap- propriate to this ? What has the voice or eye to do with such things ? Whatever we think of the thesis, — 'the plays of Shakespeare are less calculated for performance on the stage than those of almost any other dramatist,' — we must admit that the above is a true appreciation of Lear. When he says of The Tempest ^ 'The Garden of Eden, with our first parents in it, is not more impossible to be shown on a stage than the enchanted isle with its in- teresting and innocent first settlers,' we assent. His illustrations from Macbeth^ Hamlet^ and Othello are not so convincing. He overlooks the distinction between dramatic qualities and literary or poetic qualities. The once as relief and background for the frightful anarchy that invades the faculties of his master, — is quite as difficult as that of the warm-hearted, impetuous old king. But because an em- bodiment is difficult is no reason why it should be abandoned. 188 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS dramatic qualities are action, situation, and dialogue. Something must be going on, and the movement of the story must be continuous. Situations must develop which are striking and interesting from either the scenic or the psychological point. The dialogue must attract attention either from its wit or from its revealing the mental state of the speakers, or from both. These are not literary qualities of a high order, and a play which contains them and some florid declamation will be suc- cessful but will not last. The higher qualities of musical verse, poetic figures, subtle soul-disclosure of a com- plicated human personality, ideal correspondence to the higher truths of life, which sometimes runs directly counter to the appearances of the social life of man, these make great literature. If a play possesses dramatic merit, the literary value will give it immortality ; but the dramatic qualities are absolutely essential, the poetic qualities of great literature are not essential in the same sense. Lamb's argument is, unliterary plays are some- times received with great favor, poetic plays should disdain to compete with them. Poetic plays are more injured by inadequate acting than ordinary declamatory plays, and are ridiculous when not well acted, therefore they should not be acted at all. What he says might apply to Cymheline and the Winter's Tale^ in which the true dramatic qualities are feeble, but not to Ham- let nor to Lear^ which are at once dramatic and literary plays. In fact, the part of Hamlet is more difficult than the part of Lear, except that the latter requires more physical power. Lamb was an excellent critic of acting, as is shown in his paper * On Some of the Old Actors ' and ' On the Acting of Munden.' In both he considers the minor, whimsical character parts. He had seen John Kemble and his sister, Mrs. Siddons, in the chief Shakespearean THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY 189 parts, and Edmund Kean in Othello^ to witness whose performances was, Coleridge said, like 'seeing Shake- speare by flashes of lightning.' Lamb was so fastidious a critic and so devout a worshiper of Shakespeare that he may sometimes have been displeased with Kemble's level declamation and Kean's explosiveness. But he knew that Shakespeare's tragedies were written for the stage and for a certain company, and the great parts with the powers of the actor Burbage always in the writer's mind, very likely after many consultations with him. There is nothing to show that Shakespeare ever regarded his dramas as anything more than acting plays. He wrote them with the stage in view, but, being a poet, he made them literature. Lamb confesses that a char- acter in a book is but half revealed, that we must supply bodily presence, gesture, bearing — all but words — from our own imaginations. A fine actor works these things out and presents his ' reading.' We can find fault with his reading without taking the ground that the histrionic art is always inadequate. Lamb confesses the pleasure he received from seeing John Kemble and Mrs. Siddons in the principal parts of a tragedy of Shakespeare. With whimsical ingenuity he turns this into an argument for his theme. It seemed to embody and realise conceptions which had hitherto assumed no distinct shape. But dearly do we pay all our life after for this juvenile pleasure, this sense of distinct- ness. When the novelty is past, we find to our cost that instead of realising an idea we have only materialised and brought down a fine vision to the standard of flesh and blood. We have let go a dream in quest of an unattainable substance. If Sarah Siddons and her brother disillusionized Lamb, then there is nothing to be said for the stage. Romantic tragedy is impossible. He seems a little capricious in saying : — V 190 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS I confess myself utterly unable to appreciate that cele- brated soliloquy in Hamlet beginning ' To be or not to be,' or to tell whether it be good, bad, or indifferent, it has been so handled and pawed about by declamatory boys and men, and torn so inhumanly from its living place and principle of continuity in the play till it is become to me a perfect dead member. Nothing in Shakespeare can be vulgarized by repeti- tion and quotation. The old familiar household words when found again in their places assume a new beauty, as we are told the faces of friends will in heaven. Whether detached or in its place, ' To be or not to be ' is, like a starlit night, always new and beautiful. Lamb is capricious, but his affected anger is a humorous phase of his reverence for the plays and his artistic compre- hension. Every one of his words on the subject is precious. WILLIAM HAZLITT (1778-1830) Hazlitt, the son of a Unitarian minister who had spent some time in Massachusetts, was bred to be a painter, but drifted into literary work. He did not fail as a painter, though his artistic ability could not have been as great as his powers as an essayist. He does not write as a painter, for the visual image of the Shakespearean situations does not strike him so much as the purely poetic qualities of the play. In the passages he quotes for illustration the verbal harmony, the wit, or the elo- quence appeal to him more than the picturesque setting or the dramatic surroundings. He was by no means so fine a scholar as Coleridge, nor even as Lamb, for his reading did not cover much more than two centuries of English literature, and of the literatures of other nations he knew little or nothing. He never alludes to the unities nor to any of the classical rules, nor to the THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY 191 question of the order in which the plays were written ; it is a matter of indifference to him whether Lear or Twelfth Night be the older, so sure is he that there are beautiful things in each. He is the spiritual son of Coleridge, but he cares nothing for metaphysics ; he is a romanticist in his enthusiasm and his independence of classic authority, but he has nothing of the vague- ness or the sense of the mystery of life and the im- manence of the spiritual world which mark the true romanticist. His deficiences would seem to preclude him from being a great critic ; but such is his own wit, eloquence, and enthusiasm, and so unerring is his perception of the beautiful and powerful in language, that he is one \ of the most inspiring of the many men that have writ- \ ten or lectured on poetry. He can hardly be called a dramatic critic, for he ignores the subjects of dramatic construction, of unity, of tone, and the like, nor is he particularly felicitous in the analysis of the character ; but he is emphatically a literary critic. He regards each j play by itself, and does not wander off into considera- tions about aesthetics or morals or the philosophy of literature. Only one outside interest was allowed to bias his judgment of a literary work, and that, oddly enough as it seems to us, was politics. He was a man of bitter temper, and an uncompromising radical. He hated priv- ilege and the conservative classes with a pungency which made him break with Coleridge after the latter's return to conservatism, though he never failed to do justice to Coleridge's genius, and speaks in a well-known passage with peculiar fervor of its awakening power on himself. He was an Ishmaelite among essay writers ; and an Ishmaelite of literary genius is apt to make enemies. Charles Lamb was about the only man with whom he did not quarrel, and no one could quarrel with 192 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS Lamb, whose simple, lovable nature would disarm even a more cantankerous person than William Hazlitt. Kings of Denmark or Britain are too remote to arouse him, but when he discusses kings of England his polit- ical passion comes between him and his subject, so that he sees everything through a red mist. He cannot do just- ice to Henry V the King, though he is too good a critic not to feel the poetry of Henry Fthe play. He says : Henry V is a very favorite monarch with the English nation, and he appears to have been a favorite with Shake- speare, who labors hard to apologise for the actions of the King by showing us the character of the man as the * King of good fellows.' He scarcely deserves this honor. He was fond of war and low company ; we know little else of him. He was careless, dissolute, and ambitious ; idle or doing mis- chief. . . . Henry V, it is true, was a hero, a king of Eng- land, and the conqueror of the King of France. Yet we feel little love or admiration for him. He was a hero ; that is, he was ready to sacrifice his own life for the pleasure of destroy- ing thousands of other lives ; he was a king of England, but not a constitutional one, and we only like kings according to the law ; lastly, he was a conqueror of the French King, and for this we dislike him less than if he had conquered the French people. How then do we like him ? We like him in the play. There he is a very amiable monster, a very splendid pageant. As we like to gaze at a panther, or a young lion, in the Tower, and catch a pleasing horror from their glistening eyes, their velvet paws, and dreadful roar, so we take a very romantic, heroic, and poetical delight in the boasts and feats of our younger Henry, as they appear on the stage and are confined to lines of ten syllables. Henry VIII arouses the critic's ire still more power- fully:- The character of Henry VIII is drawn with great truth and spirit. It is like a very disagreeable portrait sketched by THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY 193 the hand of a master. His gross appearance, his blustering demeanor, his vulgarity, his arrogance, his sensuality, his cruelty, his hypocrisy, his want of common decency and com- mon humanity are marked in strong lines. . . . Kings ought never to be seen upon the stage. In the abstract they are very disagreeable characters ; it is only while living that they are the best of kings. . . . Death cancels the bond of alle- giance and interest ; and seen as they were, their power and their pretensions look monstrous and ridiculous. . . . No reader of history can be a lover of kings. We have often wondered that Henry VIII, as he is drawn by Shakespeare, and as we have seen him represented in all the bloated deformity of mind and person, is not hooted from the English stage. That, of course, is not dramatic criticism at all. If it were, Macbeth would be condemned as sternly as the Henrys. It is republicanism of the reign of George IV, a noble political passion no doubt, and the inspiration of eloquence, but not of literary art, to which the question whether a character is liberal or conservative is of little moment compared with the question, does the character live ? Kings should be put upon the stage, for a certain dignity and interest attaches to their positions, and they are conventional figureheads of society. They suggest something far more important than the individual. If they are, like Henry V, able as men of action and strik- ing in their representative character, the dramatist is doubly justified. If they are neither, like Henry VI, they are hardly less so, so effective is the contrast be- tween what is and what should be. Besides, kings, courts, councils, and the like are spectacular, and spectacle is a legitimate part of the drama. No effective picture of so- ciety can be made that does not portray the highest as well as the lowest groups, and the highest and lowest motives in humanity. This was Shakespeare's art, and in bringing them sometimes close together he was 194 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS following out the artistic impulse of the Teutonic race. Hazlitt's politics interfere oddly in his appreciation of the Merchant of Venice. There is an aristocratic at- mosphere about this play. Antonio is a merchant prince without a trace of the commercial spirit, and lends money to a bankrupt gentleman with a lordly disregard of payment. Portia is a high-bred lady, with all the paraphernalia of a ' fair mansion,' attendants, musi- cians, and the like ; so great an heiress that her court- ship is intrusted to chance. All this irritates Hazlitt extremely, so much so that not only he overlooks the womanly beauty of Portia's character, but, what is un- precedented with him, he fails to do full justice to the poetic passages of the play. His sympathies are with Shylock, jeered at and insulted by the aristocratic Vene- tian gentlemen, as their English counterparts of the Regent's set jeered at and insulted Hazlitt himself, if they did not ignore him utterly. After expressing his admiration of the dramatic skiU with which the trial scene is worked up, he says : — Portia is not a very great favorite with us ; neither are we in love with her maid, Nerissa. Portia has a certain degree of affectation and pedantry about her, which is very unusual in Shakespeare's women, but which perhaps was a proper qualification for the office of a ' civil doctor ' which she under- takes and executes very successfully. The speech about mercy is very well ; but there are a thousand finer ones in Shake- speare. We do not admire the scene of the caskets and ob- ject entirely to the Black Prince, Morochius. We should like Jessica better if she had not deceived and robbed her father, and Lorenzo if he had not married a Jewess, though he thinks he has a right to wrong a Jew. The dialogue between this newly married couple by moonlight beginning, ' On such a night, etc.,' is a collection of classical elegancies. THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY 195 This political radicalism led him to speak satirically of Coleridge and Wordsworth, who became conserva- tive in middle life, and also of Scott. His Characters of Shahespeare^ dedicated to Lamb, and his Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth are his chief contributions to dramatic criticism. His radicalism rarely warps his appreciation of literature, for that was his master passion. Of Coleridge he wrote : Hardly a speculation has been left on record from the ear- liest time, but it is loosely folded up in Coleridge's memory, like a rich but somewhat tattered piece of tapestry ; we might add (with more seeming than real extravagance), that scarce a thought can pass through the mind of man, but its sound has at some time or other passed over his head with rustling pinions. There is no man of genius in whose praise he de- scants, but the critic seems to stand above the author, and what in him is weak to strengthen, what is low to raise and support — nor is there any work of genius that does not come out of his hands like an illuminated missal, sparkling even in its defects. If Mr. Coleridge had not been the most impressive talker of his age, he would probably have been the finest writer ; but he lays down his pen to make sure of an auditor and mortgages the admiration of posterity for the stare of an idler. Scott's legitimacy and king worship was peculiarly offensive to him. He defines Scott's poetry as a ' pleas- ing superficiality,' which may be true enough. Of his novels he says : — Sir Walter has found out (oh, rare discovery) that facts are better than fiction, that there is no romance like the romance of real life. . . . He has taken his material from the original, authentic sources, in large concrete masses, and not tampered with or too much frittered them away. He is only the amanu- ensis of truth and history. It is impossible to say how fine his writings in consequence are, unless we could describe how fine 196 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS nature is. In all that portion of the history of his country that he has touched on, the manners, the personages, the events, the scenery, live over again in his volumes. Nothing is wanting, the illusion is complete. There is a hurtling in the air, a trampling of feet upon the ground, as these perfect representatives of human character or fanciful belief come thronging back on our imaginations. He then gives two pages to the most wonderful cata- logue in literature, characterizing each name with a line or two that makes it live again, and concludes : — What a list of names ! What a host of associations ! What a thing is human life ! What a power is that of genius ! What a world of thought and feeling is thus rescued from oblivion ! . . . His worst is better than any other person's best. His back-grounds (and his later works are little else but back-grounds capitally made out) are more attractive than the principal figures and most complicated actions of other writers. His works, taken together, are almost like a new edi- tion of human nature. This is indeed to be an author ! He notes with astonishment the innumerable and incessant instances of bad and slovenly English in the novels, and concludes with an eloquent lament that his writer — Born for the universe, narrowed his mind, And to party gave up what was meant for mankind. In prose it is what Pope's lament for Addison is in verse. But Hazlitt keeps his literary admiration and his political detestation in separate pages. In either case he puts feeling into his prose. He lets himself go. His vigorous style betrays the man as the oddly associated thoughts and far-fetched quotations do Lamb. This gives his essays on Shakespeare interest. To use his favorite word, they have 'gusto.' They are inspiring rather than instructive, and inspiration is what men THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY 197 need. Facts they can pick up anywhere ; like Falstaff's soldiers, they can ' find linen enough on every hedge,' but where are they to pick up notions of military honor ? A Midsummer NigMs Dream is especially dear to him both for the poetry and the humor, but he thinks when acted it is 'converted from a delightful fiction unto a dull pantomime.' All that is finest in the play is lost in the representation. The spectacle was grand, but the spirit was evaporated, the genius was fled, . . . the idea can have no place on the stage, which is a picture without perspective, everything there is in the foreground. That which was merely an airy shape, a dream, a passing thought, immediately becomes an unman- ageable reality. Fancy cannot be embodied any more than a simile can be painted ; and it is as idle to attempt it as to per- sonate Wall or Moonshine. . . . The boards of a theatre and the region of fancy are not the same thing. In The Tempest he remarks on the artistic unity of the composition, * though Shakespeare has here given *' to airy nothing a local habitation and a name," yet that part which is only the fantastic creation of his mind, has the same palpable texture and coheres sembla- bly with the rest. The human and imaginary characters, the dramatic and the grotesque, are blended together with the greatest art and without any appearance of it.' As the preternatural part has the air of reality and almost haunts the imagination with a sense of truth, the real characters and events partake of the wildness of a dream. He says : — Shakespeare's pencil is, to use an allusion of his own, * like the dyer's hand,' subdued to what it works in. Everything in him, though it partakes of the * liberty of wit,' is also sub- jected to the law of the understanding. For instance, even the drunken sailors share, in the disorder of their minds and 198 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS bodies, in the tumult of the elements, and seem on shore to be as much at the mercy of chance as they were before at the mercy of the winds and waves. The character of Caliban is generally thought — and justly so — to be one of the author's masterpieces. It is not indeed pleasant to see this character on the stage, any more than it is to see the god Pan personated there. But in itself it is one of the wildest and most abstracted of all Shakespeare's char- acters ; whose deformity, whether of body or mind, is redeemed by the power and truth of the imagination dis- played in it. It is the essence of grossness, but there is not a particle of vulgarity in it. Shakespeare has described the brutal mind of Caliban in contrast with the pure and origi- nal forms of nature ; the character grows out of the soil where it is rooted, uncontrolled, uncouth, and wild, uncramped by any of the meannesses of custom. It is *of the earth, earthy.' It seems almost to have been dug out of the ground, with a soul instinctively superadded to it, answering to its wants and origin. In his paper on Lear Hazlitt writes : — All that we can say must fall far short of the subject, or even of what we ourselves conceive of it. . . . It is the great- est of all Shakespeare's plays, for it is the one in which he was most in earnest. He was here fairly caught in the weh of his own imagination. The passion which he has taken as his subject is that which strikes its root deepest into the human heart, of which the bond is the hardest to be unloosed ; and the cancelling and tearing to pieces of which gives the greatest revulsion to the frame. To say that Shakespeare here was 'caught in the web of his imagination' apparently contradicts what he had so finely said in his critique on The Tempest : ' Everything in him, though it partakes of the liberty of wit, is also subject to the law of understanding,* but a critic like Hazlitt, who flashes a penetrating light first THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY 199 on one then on another of the Shakespearean structures, cannot be held always to the same disclosure.* When he is writing on Lear the relation of father and daughter seems to him the most sacred and beautiful of ties. Haz- litt sees distinctly before him the play he is criticising. Had he thought of Hamlet or Othello^ he would have felt that the bond between mother and son or between husband and wife is no less fundamental, and its viola- tion fraught with no less profound a moral catastrophe than the unnatural disregard of the filial relation by Lear's daughters. One of the great values of Shake- '^ speare*s tragedies is that the motive force in each is i one of the primal, underlying instincts of humanity, or, | at least, of Teutonic humanity, on which the entire so- , cial order rests. It is this which gives them their uni- versal appeal. The early notion of tragedy, as seen in Chaucer's De Casibus Virorum lllustrium (The Monke's Tale) is stories of men who had fallen from prosperity to adversity. The monk begins : — I wol biwayle in maner of Tragedie, The harm of hem that stode in heigh degree, And fillen so that ther nas no remedio To bringe hem out of hir adversitee. This is concrete misfortune, no doubt a very serious matter, and one which the most thoughtless can under- stand ; but Shakespeare made the stuff of tragedy to consist in an outrage to the soul, so that a man might * be a tragic figure while outwardly prosperous — an hon- ' * Of the admirable passage beginning ' The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,' Hazlitt says, * It has been so often quoted that every school-hoy knows it by heart.* Of Byron he says, ' He dwells chiefly (in Childe Harold) on what is familiar to every school-hoy.' Here is 'Macaulay's school-boy' appearing in print while Macaulay was still at school. Is he not really * Hazlitt's school-boy * ? 200 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS ored general, a ' chiefest courtier,' or an ex-king, vexed only by trifling inattentions. The * minds ' of all ' are full of scorpions.' As Hazlitt comes to write of each, he feels for each ; but he does not generalize — and per- haps it is as well — nor see that in each case the tragic motive strikes the same ' deep root into the human heart,' far deeper than ' mutation of fortune' can reach. 1 He sympathizes deeply with Hamlet, for ' the play has a prophetic truth, which is above that of history.' There was a restless intensity of spirit in Hazlitt, and a sense of the mystery of life and of the irony of things, which drew him to the Danish Prince whom no one precisely understands. He makes the excellent criticism : — Shakespeare had more of the magnanimity of genius than any other poet, and he has shown more of it in this play than in any other. There is no attempt to force our interest ; every- thing is left to time and circumstances. The attention is ex- cited without premeditation or effort, the incidents succeed each other as matters of course, the characters think and speak and act just as they would do if left entirely to themselves. There is no set purpose, no straining at a point. The obser- vations are suggested by the passing scene — the gusts of pas- sion come and go like sounds of music borne on the wind. There is undoubtedly justice in this. There is very little of the ' constructed plot ' in the play. Things drift under the influence of the characters and the situation. Hazlitt was much stronger in pointing out detachable poetic beauties and in appreciating the atmosphere — the Ethos — of the entire play than in analyzing the characters. Like his contemporaries he is misled by the pathos of Ophelia's position. Ophelia is a character almost too exquisitely touching to be dwelt upon. Oh, rose of May, oh, flower too soon faded ! ^ Her love, her death, are described with the truest touches of ten- ^ This passage recalls Schlegel's words on the same character. THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY 201 derness and pathos. It is a character which nobody but Shakespeare could have drawn in the way that he has done, and to the conception of which there is not even the smallest approach except in some of the old romantic ballads. Shakespeare's characters are so much like natural products that a certain amount of scientific realism is necessary to their interpretation. The romanticist al- lows his feelings to carry him away in contemplating the innocent and the unfortunate, and Hazlitt, with all his bitterness and radicalism, is at heart a romanticist. His pessimism is amusingly shown in his critique on Twelfth Night. This, he thinks, is ' full of sweetness and pleas- antry.' *It is perhaps too good-natured for comedy.' ' It has little satire and no spleen.' ' It aims at the lu- dicrous rather than the ridiculous,' and makes us ' laugh at the follies of mankind rather than despise them.* But that is the true nature of the comic spirit. It is amused, not indignant with the world. It cannot be * too good-natured ' ; its very essence is high spirits com- bined with whimsical insight. It reinstates Malvolio, and draws no moral from Toby and the foolish Knight. It leaves Satire to the severer muse of Measure for Measure. This Hazlitt thinks a play as ' full of genius as it is of wisdom,' though there is an ' original sin in the nature of the subject which prevents us from tak- ing a cordial interest in it.' Hazlitt is never quite consist- ent, for if a comedy should make us ' despise mankind,' Measure for Measure is a model. But he is always con- sistent in his love for poetry. His paper on Macbeth strikes out many things that are now the commonplaces of criticism ; the underlying superstition of the murderer, the combination of moral weakness and physical strength in him, the darkness and gloom so continually used as figures, the abrupt- ness of the style so harmonious with the violence of the 202 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS action, are all referred to with force and point. In speaking of Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth, he says : — We can conceive of nothing grander. It was something above nature. It seemed almost as if a being of a superior order had dropped from a higher sphere to awe the world with the majesty of her appearance. Power was seated on her brow, passion emanated from her breast as from a shrine ; she was tragedy personified. In coming on from the sleeping scene, her eyes were open but their sense was shut. She was like a person bewildered and unconscious of what she did. Her lips moved involuntarily — all her gestures were invol- untary and mechanical. She glided on and off the stage like an apparition. To have seen her in that character was an event in one's life not to be forgotten. He notices that Shakespeare excelled in the openings of his plays, and reverts again to the sense of reality the poet imparts to his scene : — The Castle of Macbeth, round which the * air smells woo- ingly * and where the ' temple-haunting martlett builds,' has a real subsistence in the mind ; the weird Sisters meet us in per- son on the * blasted heath ' ; ^ the ' air-drawn dagger ' moves slowly before our eyes; the * gracious Duncan,' the blood-bol- teredBanquo stand before us ; all that passed through the mind of Macbeth passes, without the loss of a tittle, through ours. Hazlitt mentioned Schlegel with high commenda- j tion, and quotes freely from him. At the same time he derives directly from Coleridge. There is little of the habitual reference to related principles of human na- ture and art, and nothing of the wide reading of the great master of criticism in the brilliant discourse of the younger man ; but it is plain that he has been roused with a contagious enthusiasm — his ' eye glares ^ Is not that phrase very remotely a reminiscence of Maurice Morgann ? See page 161. THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY 203 with the frenzy of a kindred inspiration.' It is easy to say that Hazlitt ' adds nothing to the sum of human information.' That may be true, but he adds to the sum of poetic enjoyment, a much more important incre- ment. His work may be called ' sign«board criticism ' by those who without a sign-board would not know what to admire. At all events his sign-board is illumi- nated from time to time with electric flashes, that show the road to be quite other than we thought it. Hazlitt is directly in line with the great English critics, from Coleridge to Bradley. His very want of any theory of art was one of his excellences, for it enabled him to fix his attention on the poetry, which is lasting, and not on a system of rules which changes with every generation. We cannot say that what he says we would ' have found out for ourselves,' for that would be to credit ourselves with his insight. Again, a thought ex- pressed by a writer like Hazlitt has vitality, for it is the form that gives thought germinal power. When a thought or a point of view has become part of the traditionary stock, the next generation says, * That is true, but it is too obvious. It is a mere rhetorical com- monplace. Give us something mystical that we can pretend to understand, and in doing so enjoy a sense of superiority.' They forget that a great many things that are now obvious were not so till genius pointed them out. While Coleridge, Lamb, and Hazlitt were writing on the poetry and philosophy of the plays in the tone of enthusiastic romanticism, another set of critics confined themselves to elucidating the text and publishing new editions. Some of them published commentaries, or, as they were usually called. Illustrations of Shakespeare, Among them were Francis Douce (1757-1834), Joseph Hunter (1783-1861), Joseph Singer (1786-1866), 204 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS Alexander Dyce (1798-1869), Charles Knight (1790- 1873), and John Payne Collier (1789-1883). These men were diligent workers in the Shakespearean field, and their contributions have been carefully sifted and the wheat separated from the chaff in the notes of Mr. Furness's Variorum. As a rule they were antiquaries of the early nineteenth-century type, and, with the pos- sible exception of Knight, did little to promote the aes- thetic appreciation of the plays. Mr. Douce's two volumes of Illustrations of Shake- speare, 1808, are among the most entertaining and in- structive books on the subject. They contain comments on the readings in Steevens's edition, which are marked throughout by good sense and good temper. Especially valuable is the article on the ' clowns and fools ' from the fourteenth century down, and the notes on early social customs and superstitions, such as blessing the marriage bed, the ' Morris dance,' the betrothal, lace- making, the fairies, etc. These are illustrated by very interesting reproductions of ancient woodcuts. No book contributes more to reproducing the atmosphere of Old England. Mr. Douce's minute learning and retentive memory enable him to supply a wealth of illustrative passages from early authors, though his parallelisms are sometimes rather far-fetched. Charles Knight's Pictorial Shakespeare, completed in 1841, is well known, — a sumptuous illustrated book, the plates by the best artists of the time. His Cabinet Edition was also well received. In both he prudently adheres to the First Folio in questions of disputed read- ings. These and the handsomely printed edition of Alexander Chalmers in nine volumes (1809), based on the work of Steevens, are, however, little more than publishers' ventures. John Payne Collier's History of English Dramatic THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY 205 Poetry^ 1883, is a work involving a great deal of re- search, and is valuable for throwing light on the de- velopment of the theatre. In 1854 he published a single- volume edition of the plays, adopting a multitude of new readings on the authority of written notes in a copy of the Second Folio he had purchased. He adhered to these emendations in his six-volume edition of 1858. His contention was that the marginal notes in his copy of the folio, known from the name of one of its owners as the 'Perkins Folio,' were made in the seventeenth century before the Restoration, and consequently by some one who had heard the plays given by actors who were governed by traditions of the author's stage direc- tions. The question of the value of these thirteen hun- dred corrections is treated exhaustively by Richard Grant White in the Shakespeare Scholar^ and it is shown that most of them had been anticipated, and few, not more than 117, are even plausible. He, however, acquits Collier of conscious deceit. On the question of their genuineness, experts have shown that they are in two different handwritings and that some of them are palpably modern forgeries. It is difficult to determine how far Mr. Collier is guilty ; probably he at first de- ceived himself and then was tempted to buttress his cause by forgery. He also presented several Elizabethan documents which are plainly forgeries but were copied in reputable publications. A letter from the Earl of Southampton concerning Burbage and Shakespeare is likely to startle the student in the preface to some of the early nineteenth-century editions, for it is a very ingenious and plausible fabrication. The matter created great excitement at the time, and Mr. Collier behaved exactly like an innocent person. The question, though interesting, does not bear on criticism, least of all on aesthetic criticism, and need not detain us. 206 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS Collier discovered in the British Museum a manu- script diary of John Maningham, containing an inter- esting account of the first presentation of Twelfth Night before the lawyers* society, February 2, 1602, at the Middle Temple. Collier misquotes it in his History of Dramatic Poetry^ and it was afterwards found by Hunter, who claims — apparently — original discovery. Hunter unearthed the personality of John Maningham, and, following out the reference to the Italian play GV Inganni (the cheats), showed that the plot bears more resemblance to GV Inganniti (the cheated), making it slightly probable that Shakespeare could read Italian. Joseph Hunter was a man of curious, antiquarian learning, and we'are indebted to him for his Collections concerning the Founders of New Plymouth^ N E, He published in 1845 two volumes of Illustrations of the Life^ Studies, and Writings of Shakespeare, He made the extraordinary mistake of regarding The Tempest as an early play and the original of Love's Labour 's Won, mentioned by Meres. This of course deprives him of the least consideration as a judge of literature, but in several cases his out-of-the-way learning enables him to throw new light on obscure passages and obsolete ex- pressions. He inclines to give too much authority to the Second Folio in cases of considerable variation. His book is full of instances of parallelisms from literature contemporary with Shakespeare, usually more curious than convincing. He gives a full account of the name of Shakespeare and its variants, from Shagsper and Saxpere down, and a history of Shakespeare's father's family and descendants, in which he adds little to the researches of Malone. Joseph Singer brought out a ten-volume edition in 1826, characterized by careful collection of existing authorities and commentaries, giving to the First Folio THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY 207 preponderant authority. Later he attacked Collier's emendations with great vigor. Alexander Dyce, known for his editions of the plays of Middleton, Beaumont and Fletcher, Marlowe, Web- ster, and Greene, published an edition of Shakespeare in nine volumes in 1857, and another in 1864, in which he retracted many of his former readings. In spite of his unfortunate indecisions, his textual criticism is of high value, and his glossary excellent. His remarks on Knight's and Collier's editions (1854) revive the tradi- tion of good, old eighteenth-century critical vitupera- tion ; e. ^., of Knight's Hamlet he remarks with can- dor, * of which tragedy his text is beyond all doubt the worst that has appeared in modern times.' ' To suppose (as Caldecot does) that " the most fond and winnowed opinions " could mean all judgments, not the simplest only, but the most sifted and wisest, is little short of insanity.' * What he says here about Cleopatra's " wand lip " (i. e., that her lip is as potent as a magician's wand) cannot be allowed the merit of originality ; at least it had been previously said in that mass of folly, ignor- ance, and conceit, Jackson's Shakespeare^ s Genius Justified.^ O good old man, how well in thee appears The constant [wrangling] of the antique world. The above is by no means an exhaustive list of the commentaries up to 1850, when the work was sifted by the editors of the Cambridge Edition. Thomas Tyrwhitt (1730-86), the learned editor of Chaucer, published anonymously in 1776 Observations and Conjectures upon Some Passages of SJiahe- spear e^ and gave many suggestions to Malone. William Sidney Walker (1795-1846) was an acute textual critic. 208 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS His Critical Examination and Notes on the Plays and Poems was not published till after his death, and is of recognized value. But most of the men mentioned were merely antiquarians, * wrapped in the funeral shroud of erudition.' They hunt up microscopic facts with little reference to their correlation; they throw light on the meaning of the text, not on its significance. They say nothing of the plays as poetry beyond refer- ring to the force or harmony of individual lines. Char- acters, construction, and philosophy, the higher techni- cal qualities and the higher poetic qualities, they ignore. Between these and such critics as Coleridge, Lamb, and Hazlitt there is a great gulf fixed. They illustrate one side of English historical scholarship, the uninspired side. Their virtues are industry and good sense, and they evince their good sense by dealing with material suited to their powers. They do not in any way illus- trate and forward the progress of the human mind as the others do. CHAPTER VIII FOREIGN CRITICISM OF SHAKESPEARE Although the object of this book is to trace the course of English appreciation of Shakespeare's plays as shown in a few of the most authoritative writers, German and French criticism has, since the eighteenth century, reacted so profoundly on English thought that a brief outline of the most important of the foreign writings is necessary even in a general sketch of the subject. At present, translations of Shakespeare's plays are more frequently, and on the whole better, presented in Germany and Austria than the originals are in Eng- land and America. This is owing, first, to the exist- ence in all the important continental cities of theatres under official control and aided by the state or munici- pality ; second, to the thorough and painstaking man- ner in which Germans carry out any undertaking ; and third, to the fact that they have not fallen into the habit of lavish expenditure in scenic decoration which in our country, and in England, too, has made the cost of the representation of a Shakespearean play so great as to be almost prohibitive, besides distracting the au- dience from imaginative appreciation of the play. It is greatly to be regretted that the popular educative value of Shakespeare's wonderful art is therefore largely lost among those who speak his language ; indeed, it is no- thing less than a national misfortune ; but at present we can only regret it without much hope for its amel- ioration. A translation of a great poem is at best but a shadow and a suggestion of the original, for the substance is so 210 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS intimately connected with the form, and even with minor elements of the form — the versification, the phrasing, the peculiar poetic association with certain words — that it can never be reproduced except in a few happy instances when a lyric carried from one lan- guage into another is a new poem equal to the original. German lends itself admirably to translations, and the Germans are Teutonic, and in consequence much of the substance and form of a Shakespearean play is not foreign to them. They have perfected laboriously, and with an approximation to the spirit of the original, their translation since the day of Schlegel, but there are elements which must necessarily escape them. The humor of each nation is its own, and no one who has not been familiar with it since childhood can readily take the national humorous attitude. Even the dull come to have a vague comprehension of the popular form of jesting, which remains more or less incompre- hensible to the cultured foreigner, or at best is regarded ah extra^ as something peculiar and amusing but not germane to him. Novalis (F. von Hardenberg) said that he could not understand Shakespeare's fun, and that the humor of Aristophanes was more comprehens- ible to him. Rarely, too, can the entire content of an English word be felt by one who has learned the lan- guage at school, and very rarely, unless it be some con- crete thing or a simple physical action, can it be fully rendered by a foreign word. Take a simple case. Fal- staff has been much amused by the senile boasts of Mr. Justice Shallow.* He recalls the time when Shallow was at Clement's Inn, a foolish youth, and, contrasting his past insignificance with his present position, says : * And now has he land and beeves.* There is no other word in the language to take the place of 'beeves,' with its subtle suggestion of rural opulence. Certainly FOREIGN CRITICISM OF SHAKESPEARE 211 ' cattle ' or ' steers ' would be much weaker, and it may be doubted whether there is another word in any lan- guage that would have the slight humorous effect of 'beeves.' This difficulty renders the best translation inadequate, and leads the foreign critic into mistakes which the native, even of inferior culture, instinctively avoids. But there is so much of Shakespeare besides humor and phrasing, that the Germans, and in a less degree the French, do possess him, and what they have to say is entitled to respect on higher grounds than curiosity to learn how a national literature strikes for- eigners. In the seventeenth century France was the arbiter of elegance for Germany, especially in the drama. A very curious importation of dramatic themes from England had taken place earlier, but had been forgotten. The French drama was completely under the influence of the classical tradition, and Corneille and Racine were imitated on the German stage. This influence was com- bated by Lessing, poet, philosopher, art-critic, play- wright, and in addition a man of admirable judgment and independence of character. His dramatic and the- atrical criticism is contained chiefly in Literary Letters and Dramatic Notes on the plays presented in the Hamburg Theatre (1767-69). In these he incidentally maintains the superiority of Shakespeare in the essen- tials of dramatic art, and declares that the French writers adhered to the form and misunderstood the spirit of Aristotle's rules. He compares the ghost in Hamlet to the ghost in Voltaire's Semiramis, greatly to the disadvantage of the Frenchman. Of the unity of time in the same writer's Merope he says : — What good does it do the poet, that the particular actions that occur in every act would not require much more time for their real occurrence than is occupied by the representa- 212 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS tion of each act, and that this time, including what is ab- sorbed between the acts, would not require a complete revo- lution of the sun ; has he therefore regarded the unity of time ? He has fulfilled the words of the rule, but not their spirit. For what he lets happen in one day can be done in one day, it is true, but no sane mortal would do it in one day. Physical unity of time is not sufficient, the moral unity must also be considered. He quotes with approbation from the English critic, Hurd: — Shakespeare, we may observe, in this [delineation of human parts], as in all the more essential beauties of the drama, is a perfect model. If the discerning reader peruse attentively his comedies, he will find his best marked characters discours- ing through a great deal of their parts just like any others, and only expressing their essential and leading qualities oc- casionally, and as circumstances occur to give an easy exposi- tion to them. It is to be regretted that no plays of Shakespeare were given at the Hamburg Theatre while Lessing was writing his Hamhurgische Dramaturgies for we should have had some criticism of the highest order. Ulrici says : ' He commended Shakespeare, not because of sin- gle beauties in his works, in the manner of the English critics of the time, but because of beauty itself, because of the agreement of Shakespeare's works with the true rules of art, and with the true nature of art.' The first German translation was twenty-two plays by Wieland, published in eight volumes, from 1762 to 1766. This was in prose, and of course could give but a pale reflex of the poetic substance. Eschenburg's complete translation soon followed, and acting versions were based on these and presented after 1780 by Schroder, a very fine actor. They received an enthusi- astic welcome, but the adherents of the classic school FOREIGN CRITICISM OF SHAKESPEARE 213 insisted that their beauties were more than balanced by their irregularities and that their popularity ' put back the German stage more than ten years.' The younger men, on the contrary, the first representatives of the rising romantic school, went to the other ex- treme, and hailed Shakespeare as an ' impetuous genius blindly following the creative caprice of his own imag- ination,' whose extravagancies were as admirable as his genuine and characteristic beauties. ' Imitation of nature and, moreover, of stark-naked nature as God made it ' was considered ' the highest aim of art.' This resulted in the ' Sturm und Drang ' period, when vigor and violence and virility were idealized, or, rather, pre- sented in unmitigated reality. Even the great and self- possessed Goethe fell under this influence, and Gbtz von Berlichingen (1773) was 'the first cupful from this ocean of true nature.' Schiller says in his criticism of his own play. The Rohhers^ 'If its beauties do not show that the author was captivated by Shakespeare, all the more must this be evident from its extravagance.' Although Goethe came later to reproduce the restraint and calmness of the classic model, it is certain that the ' first blossoms of the great period of German poetry were fructified by Shakespeare's genius.' In Wilhelm Meister Goethe says, semi-autobiographically : — I do not remember that any book or person or event in my life ever produced so great an effect on me as Shake- speare's plays. They seem to be the work of some heavenly genius who came down to men to make himself known to them in as gentle a manner as possible. They are no mere poems. We could fancy that we were standing before the gi- gantic books of Fate, through which the hurricane of life was raging and violently blowing its leaves to and fro. I am so astounded by their strength and their tenderness, by their power and their peace, and my mind is so excited, that I 214 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS long for the time when I shall again feel myself in a fit state to read further. Schiller, too, testifies no less warmly to his admira- tion of the plays, though in his adaptation of Macbeth he takes unwarrantable liberties with the original. Both Schiller and Goethe were aroused and inspired by the English poet, though both were too great as artists to be imitators in any sense. Augustus William Schlegel published between 1797 and 1810 his translation of seventeen of Shakespeare's plays, and this was completed later by Tieck. This is an admirable work, for verse is rendered by verse and prose by prose. Shakespeare uses verse, and either rhetorical or conversational prose, according to the speaker and the occasion, and it is evidently impossi- ble to reproduce the effect of a play even in a weakened form unless the distinction is observed. With the cor- rection of some minor verbal errors, Schlegel's trans- lation is satisfactory to-day. It has lately been revised by the German Shakespeare Society, although numer- ous others of varying degrees of merit were published in the nineteenth century. Schlegel was a romanticist, and in fact is regarded in connection with his brother Frederick as the founder of the romantic school in Germany. The influence of his Lectures on Dramatic Literature (1808) on the English romanticists has been already alluded to. Little more than one hundred pages are directly con- cerned with Shakespeare, but the work is the first connected commentary on the plays in the language. It exhibits the fault of the romanticist in giving general impressions in impassioned language, and not analyzing or establishing statements by quotations. It is true, these general propositions commend themselves to us except when he says that the three parts of Henry VI FOREIGN CRITICISM OF SHAKESPEARE 215 and Richard III ' were undoubtedly composed in suc- cession, as is proved by the style and the spirit in the handling of the subject.' Confidence in his critical faculty receives a severe shock when we read of Thomas Lord Cromwell^ Sir John Oldcastle (First Part), and A Yorkshire Tragedy: 'These three pieces are not only unquestionably Shakespeare's, but in my opinion they deserve to be classed among his best and maturest works.' He falls into another but less serious error in writing of Othello : — What a fortunate mistake that the Moor (under which name in the original novel a baptized Saracen of the north- ern coast of Africa was unquestionably meant) has been made by Shakespeare in every respect a negro : we recognize in Othello the wild nature of that glowing zone, which gener- ates the most ravenous beasts of prey and the most deadly poisons, tamed only in appearance by foreign laws of honor and by nobler and milder manners. His jealousy is not the jealousy of the heart which is compatible with the tenderest feeHngs and adoration of the beloved object; it is of that sensual kind which in burning climes has given birth to the disgraceful confinement of women and many other unnatural To us who know the docile, childlike nature of the negro and his indifference to female exclusiveness, the above seems absurd. It is the Arab, not the Ethiopian, who instituted the ' disgraceful confinement of women.' But Othello is in essentials an Elizabethan gentle- man, of a * free and noble nature,' driven to despera- tion by agony of soul from the conviction that the wife he loves has proved unfaithful. Again, it is India rather than Africa which * generates the most ravenous beasts of prey and the most deadly poisons.' But, apart from the above errors, Schlegel shows a broad and generous comprehension of Shakespearean art. A gen- 216 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS uine romanticist, he sets aside with scorn the rule for unity of time : — The intriguer is ever expeditious, and loses no time in at- taining to his object. But the mighty course of human desti- nies proceeds, like the change of seasons, with measured pace ; great designs ripen slowly ; stealthily and hesitatingly the dark suggestions of deadly malice quit the abysses of the mind for the light of day ; and, as Horace observes, with equal truth and beauty, ' the flying criminal is only limpingly followed by penal retribution.' ^ Let only the attempt be made, for instance, to bring within the narrow frame of the Unity of Time Shakespeare's gigantic picture of Macbeth's Murder of Duncan, his tyrannical usurpation and final fall ; let as many as may be of the events which the great dramatist successively exhibits before us in such dread array be placed anterior to the opening of the piece, and made the subject of an after recital, and it will be seen how thereby the story loses all its sublime significance. This drama does, it is true, embrace a considerable period of time : but does its rapid progress leave us leisure to calculate this ? We see as it were the Fates weaving their dark web on the whirling loom of time, and we are drawn irresistibly on by the storm and whirlwind of events, which hurries on the hero to the first atrocious deed, and, from it to innumerable crimes to secure its fruits, with fluctuating fortunes and perils, to his final fall on the field of battle. He, too, attacks Voltaire with energy, and is justly severe on his treatment of the mysterious — a theme especially dear to romanticists — in Semiramls. He holds emphatically that Shakespeare is ' a profound artist and not a blind and wildly extravagant genius,* and considers the opposite opinion ^a mere fable, a * Not an entirely accurate translation of Raro antecedentem scelestum Deseruit pede poena claudo. But the error may be between the German and the English. FOREIGN CRITICISM OF SHAKESPEARE 217 blind and extravagant error.' He notes the power of giving life to stage characters, declaring that the poet * possesses a capability of transporting himself so com- pletely into every situation, even the most unusual, that he is enabled as plenipotentiary of the whole human race^ without particular instructions for each separate case, to act and speak in the name of every individual.' The inconceivable element herein, and what, moreover, can never be learned, is that the characters appear neither to do or say anything on the spectator's account merely ; and yet that the poet, simply by means of the exhibition, and with- out any subsidiary explanation, communicated to the audience the gift of looking into the inmost recesses of their minds. Hence Goethe has ingeniously compared Shakespeare's char- acters to watches with crystalline plates and cases, which, while they point out the hours as correctly as other watches, enable us at the same time to perceive the inward springs by which all this is accomplished. The power of drawing character is as mysterious as character itself, and it is hardly possible to ' look into the inmost recesses of the minds ' of the great Shake- spearean characters — we only know that the ' recesses ' are there. The romanticists are fond of ingenious and striking imagery. The ' roaring loom of time,' or ' the book of fate, its leaves violently stirred by the wind of life,' is frequently brought forward. Sometimes these figures are of extreme beauty, and the greatness of Coleridge is evinced by the fact that with him and, in a less degree, with Hazlitt, they are always apposite. , Sometimes, as in the above from Goethe, they are beau- tiful but do not illustrate the subject, for Shakespeare's great characters are by no means in transparent cases. Hamlet and lago and Macbeth are mysterious even to themselves, because they are original centres of force 218 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS and not merely motive-driven machines. Schlegel seems to recognize this indirectly in several passages. His defense of the mixture of the tragic and the comic, and the relation of each to the other as elements of dramatic art, is more philosophical than that which defends the combination merely because it is not uncommon in real life. It is at once the strength and the weakness of the German commentators that they instinctively base their criticism on some form of the peculiarly German science of aesthetics. They sometimes gain thereby systematic form at the expense of a firm hold of reality. Goethe, in his criticism of Hamlet in Wilhelm Meister, which contains the beautiful simile of the oak tree planted in a porcelain vase, had said that Hamlet was a 'lovely, pure, and most moral nature, without the strength of nerve which forms a hero, sinking beneath a burden (of duty) which it cannot bear and must not cast away ' — in other words, a sentimentalist, a weak- ling. Schlegel says : — With respect to Hamlet's character ; I cannot, as I under- stand the poet's views, pronounce altogether so favorable a sentence upon it as Goethe does. He is, it is true, of a highly cultivated mind, a prince of royal manners, endowed with the finest sense of propriety, susceptible of noble ambition, and open in the highest degree to an enthusiastic admiration of excellence in others of which he himself is deficient. . . . He is not solely impelled by necessity to artifice and dissimu- lation, he has a natural inclination for crooked ways ; he is a hypocrite towards himself, his far-fetched scruples are often mere pretexts to cover his want of determination. . . . Ham- let has no firm belief either in himself or in anything else ; from expressions of religious confidence he passes over to sceptical doubts. . . . It is a tragedy of thought ; the whole is intended to show that a calculating consideration, which exhausts all the relations and possible consequences of a deed, must cripple the power of acting. FOREIGN CRITICISM OF SHAKESPEARE 219 These views, or modifications of them, one gathers from reading the play as a whole, for they are the general impressions left on the mind. Hamlet does not act, therefore he is irresolute. Since the publication of Professor Bradley's Shahespearean Tragedy^ they have merely an historical interest, for there the character is analyzed and referred to well-known though subtle ele- ments of human nature, and the propositions are estab- lished by quotations from the play itself. In other words, Bradley's criticism is not merely an appreciation, it is also a scientific argument. Schlegel seems to rank Macbeth as the greatest of the tragedies, in which opinion he is not alone. His dis- course on Caliban is admirable, and his animadversions on Dr. Johnson will command general assent. The German criticism on Shakespeare with which Americans are most familiar is Dr. Hermann Ulrici's Shakespeare^ s Dramatic Art, published first in 1846, and the third and revised edition in 1876, and Dr. George Gervinus's extensive Commentary. Both of these are accessible in excellent translations, and are to be found in all public libraries. Dr. Ulrici gives a com- pendious historic outline of the life and times of the dramatist and of his predecessors and contemporaries, a careful review of the plays, and an examination of the evidence as to the order in which they were written as far as it was then known. His work is therefore at once historic and aesthetic criticism. In the latter he seeks for what the Germans, following Hegel, call the ' central idea' of the play, an abstraction which the critic some- times* finds in the work of art and assumes to be the conscious aim of the artist. As far as it refers to organic life, to harmony of parts, and to unity of the total im- pression, the phrase ' central idea ' represents a sound 220 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS critical conception, as it usually does with Ulrici. Bat when we read that the central idea of Othello is the danger of marriage between persons of different races, or of Romeo and Juliet^ the inadvisability of love not sanctioned by parental authority, we feel that a sub- jective impression is usurping the authority of general truth. Dr. Ulrici is far too able a critic to fall into such extreme subjection to theory ; but we object to his con- tinual use of the word ' intention ' applied to the motive .^. of the dramatist in writing the play or in introducing X certain features. Thus, we read of the union of the Lear N^ and Gloster stories : — The Poet wishes to show us that the moral corruption is not only a single case, but that it has affected the noblest families, the representatives of all the others. The development of the leading thought, the fundamental conception upon which the inner organic unity of the drama [Zear] is based, is all the more clear and perfect. . . . The poet wishes to give us a vivid picture of how the domestic circle — the chief and firmest bond of human society, mo- rality, and happiness — snaps asunder and becomes a suc- cession of misfortunes and miseries, if its foundation, purity of heart and free, unconditional love, is eaten away and undermined in the heads of the family themselves by tragic contradiction in its inner nature, as in Lear, or by frivolity and weakness of character, as in Gloster. . . . ^ The tragedy [_Macbeth^ is evidently intended to represent the deep fall of human greatness ... it is intended to show us how Macbeth's heroic greatness is unavoidably ruined by want of moral strength. . . . / The purpose of the piece [^Hamlet"] is to show how the self-made thoughts, hopes, and intentions of man miss their mark, not only on account of their own short-sightedness, but that, by internal necessity, their unfounded suppositions are thwarted and disturbed by the equally baseless empire of chance. , , . It was intended that the spectator should FOREIGN CRITICISM OF SHAKESPEARE 221 be overwhelmed, stupefied, and bewildered by it, and that he should himself thus become directly aware of similar weak- nesses and uncertainty in himself. Extracts might be multiplied on this point ; and if by ' intention ' is meant conscious purpose on the au- thor's part before sitting down to elaborate a play, or even in the course of the writing, the fact that Shake- speare frequently rewrote a play, sometimes height- ening the ethical tone as in the case of Hamlet^ would negative the theory of a preconceived moral plan. An artist gets his material from a myth or old story, or from life around him. The form grows in his mind under a process of incubation, and consistency requires that there be a central idea of unity to which the tone conforms, and truth requires that there be a paral- lelism to the moral law if the play is to have any sig- nificance and reality. In Lovers Labour 's Lost very likely Shakespeare intended to make fun of the intel- lectual requisites of his day, as Dickens intended to satirize a certain type of boys' school in Nicholas Nicklehy ; and there may be works of a higher grade in which the author has written around a ' central idea ' consciously kept in mind ; but no didactic im- pulse formed the great tragedies. They are morally instructive simply because they are on the heroic, ideal plane ; they build up in us a counterpart of the mood in which they were conceived. The word 'intention' is applicable to creations of a much inferior order. However, it may be that Dr. Ulrici used the word with reference to unconscious intention, the deeper sort, — volition which governs the artist in giving body and form to a general conception, and this, indeed, is his individual personality, his genius. Dr. Ulrici ranks the historical plays very highly, and his admiration for them is so great that he con- 222 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS siders the three parts of Henry VI as belonging to an integral whole and as undoubtedly Shakespearean in conception. In this modern criticism, less enthusiastic and more scientific than his, does not follow him. ' The eight historical plays,' he says, ' which embrace one of the most important centuries of English history, when taken collectively form such a full, grand, and artistic picture that I know of nothing in the whole domain of dramatic poetry that can be compared to it.' With Hegel, he regards history as a great process, a sublime procession of humanity moving under hidden but com- prehensible forces — comprehensible that is to the mind of genius — to a definite end. The nation is a sacred organism, having a conscience and a moral individu- ality. In representing history on the artistic plane, accuracy in depicting events is irrational compared to faithfulness in presenting 'the idea.' He accordingly defends Shakespeare's anachronisms and inaccuracies, not because he followed his authorities, but because they are of not the slightest consequence compared to his faithfulness in presenting the national character and harmonizing the elements of the national genius. In this it is difficult not to agree with him, nor does the flavor of mysticism, so abhorrent to the twentieth century, weaken the force of his words for those who, he says, ' have any appreciation of that higher beauty, which alone raises art above the low apeing of com- mon reality.' He says of Twelfth Night : ' It is not merely the experiencing of such a life, the very beholding it pro- duces that quality, that inward contentment at which we are all aiming,'' This is certainly an excellent state- ment of the true function of comic art ; it should pro- duce satisfaction as well as amusement. There is critical acumen in his remark that Richard Ill's conduct ' pro- FOREIGN CRITICISM OF SHAKESPEARE 223 ceeds not only from his demoniacal desire to give forc- ible evidence of his power over mankind, it proceeds likewise from the demoniacal pleasure he finds in prov- ing it.' Of Shakespeare's verse he says admirably : — His language has a peculiar internal restlessness, as if a sappy, over-ripe life were palpitating in it, as if it were swelling with hidden springs, seeking at every moment to burst their bounds ; it is only on rare occasions — but still too frequently — that this surging and swelling degenerates into a bombastic, high-flown, and inflated style. This throbbing is in fact not the soft round undulating line of beauty ; the rhythm of the Shakesperean diction resembles the short, pointed breakers of the sea on precipitous coasts, when the inroUing wave meets the one rebounding from the shore. Hence it never falls into effeminateness and sentimentality, its expression of tenderness and grace has something piquant ... it is invariably in the highest degree animated, preg- nant, and appropriate . . . for it receives its substance from a productive imagination which works in it, and which not only names and describes the object but also provides it with life and animation. His chapter on ' Shakespeare's Modes of Character- ization ' is an excellent piece of philosophical criticism, showing some traces of the influence of Coleridge, and as valuable now as it was when first written. Dr. Gervinus is inferior to Dr. Ulrici because he lacks enthusiasm and insight. In his ponderous commentary he shows great industry in bringing together all that was known at the time of the plays on the historical side, and his commentary — largely a restatement of the plots — is readable, though not illuminating. His analyses of the characters are commonplace, and no one need fear finding sentences not easily comprehens- 224 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS ible. He follows the current views, or steers a deco- rous middle course between them. He is one of those painstaking persons whose usefulness lies in want of originality. In consequence he does not represent so much in the development of Shakespearean criticism as Coleridge, Schlegel, or Ulrici, not to speak of lesser men. His lack of appreciation of humor leads him into a singular error in speaking of Hotspur : — In repose and left to himself he is pliable and yielding like a lamb in his true unsuspicious nature. In private with Glendower he allows him for nine hours to entertain him with the devils^ names, although it disgusts him. This is based on Hotspur's petulant exaggeration : — I tell you what : He held me last night — at least nine hours In reckoning up the several devils' names That were his lackeys : I cried ' hum ' and * well ; go to,* But mark'd him not a word. O, he is as tedious As a tired horse, a railing wife. Dr. Gervinus is guilty of one or two other misappre- hensions of the kind, which though not serious in themselves betray a mind to which much of Shake- speare must remain a sealed book. Commenting on the Two Gentlemen of Verona., he writes : — The plot is unravelled, at length, by a romantic meeting of all, in a conclusion which appears to all critics sudden, abrupt, and inartistic. It is undeniable that here the form of the plot is carelessly treated. We must, however, be cautious not to criticise rashly. For in a pathological point of view the catastrophe has been attacked just where it is most to be defended. It is, namely, essentially brought about by the offer of Valentine to sacrifice his beloved one to his faithless friend. This, Charles Lamb and many others considered as an unjustifiable act of heroic friendship. But this trait essen- FOREIGN CRITICISM OF SHAKESPEARE 225 tially belongs to Valentine's character. That it was not unintentionally introduced may also be traced from the mere parallelism observed throughout the composition. For Julia also is exhibited to us in the same aspect of resignation and self-renunciation springing from pure good-nature which in her as in Valentine stands out in contrast to the self-love of Proteus. Even if we admit that Valentine's offer to give up his lady-love to his false friend is an exaggerated repre- sentation of chivalric friendship, the idea that ' paral- lelism ' requires a self-sacrificing young man to balance a self-sacrificing young woman will hardly be accepted. If it were, there should be a selfish, false young woman to balance the selfish, false young man. There should be two waiting-maids instead of one only, and Speed should have a dog, or at least a cat, to offset Launce's dog. But parallelism is dear to the mechanical critic. It is strange, however, that none of the critics, though agreeing that the last scene of the play is unnatural — indeed impossible — have never noticed its grave dra- matic fault. The high-spirited, aristocratic Sylvia is kept on the stage twenty minutes in the crisis of her life, and never says a word while her lover discards and resumes her. No woman would be content with by-play under such circumstances, nor would the great drama- tist have forced her to keep silent. There is a lack of * parallelism ' here between Sylvia's quiescence and the natural conduct of a rejected girl. In 1863 Gustav Freytag, the celebrated German novelist, author of Soil und Hahen (Debit and Credit), published Technique of the Drama. Although a large part of his illustrations is taken from the Greek and German drama, Shakespearean criticism has from that time been turned more or less to the important question 226 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS of ' dramatic construction.' The author first defines the 'Idea of the Drama' as the central important event as it takes form in the poet's mind, ' toward which inde- pendent inventions are directed like rays;' He illustrates this by relating how Schiller's Kabale und Liehe was suggested by a short notice in a newspaper of the suicide of two lovers. This was the germ from which the ' fancy of the poet, aroused by sympathy, fashioned the char- acter of an ardent and passionate youth and of an inno- cent and susceptible maiden.' It is, however, from the remodeling and developing that the 'occurrence in real life becomes a dramatic idea.' The idea is not the germ merely — otherwise there might be any number of plays with the same idea ; it is the germ developing in the mind of the writer, it is the germ colored by the personal imagination, in taking form. This notion, though ab- stract, is comprehensible, and affords a base for con- sidering the analysis of a serious play or tragedy. Freytag then considers the ' dramatic action ' and the ' construction of the drama.' He considers that a tragedy is normally divided into five parts : First, the introduc- tion, in which the characters are presented and their antecedents and surroundings are so far discussed that we may without difficulty comprehend the succeeding action. The tone is given, — the artistic note of the whole, as in Macbeth and Hamlet; and the 'rising force,' or the impulses, the juxtaposition of characters, the antecedent or existing circumstances which are likely to lead to a conflict, is indicated. Thus we see early in the first act that Othello is frank and lago subtle and envious, that Macbeth is ambitious and fun- damentally unmoral, and are prepared for the conflict that is to follow. Secondly, comes the ' rising action,' when the rising force is gathering strength and the hero is apparently successful, or at least the rising force is FOREIGN CRITICISM OF SHAKESPEARE 227 effective. Thirdly, the * climax,* when the rising force has gone as far as it may. Fourthly, the * falling action,' when an opposing force gathers strength and combats the force (moral or social) which instituted the rising action. Fifthly, comes the ' catastrophe,' involving the death of the hero and perhaps of several minor characters. These final divisions correspond roughly to the five acts, and the fact that they are the articulations of a tragic action is the reason for the division of a tragedy into five acts. Freytag's illustration of the movement of a tragedy by inclined lines meeting in an angle representing the climax is so well known as hardly to be worth repro- ducing. C A/ \E A represents the introduction ; B, the rising action ; C, the climax, which introduces the counter force ; D, the counter or falling action ; and E, the catastrophe. Macbeth is a good illustration of the scheme. The in- troduction gives the tone, the witches and the blasted heath suggest wickedness and destructiveness. All the characters are introduced and their relations explained, and the impelling force, the ambition of the guilty pair, is brought before the mind, in the first four scenes. Then comes the rising action with slight reactions, — in Frey- tag's scheme the rising and falling actions are regarded as liable to interruptions and setbacks, — culminating in the murder and discovery in act ii. The climax is the banquet scene in the centre of act III, when Mac- beth and his wife have attained the royal dignity. The 228 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS retributive force is suggested. It is remorse in Macbeth's mind and the reaction of the social order against tyranny, suggested in the last scene of the act. In the fourth act the representatives of the counter force organize for active resistance. In the fifth act comes the final con- flict and the catastrophe. Here everything conforms to Freytag's scheme, and the movements of the action agree. very nearly with the divisions into acts. But when we endeavor to apply it to Hamlet or Othello we at once meet difficulties. In Macbeth the two impelling forces are quite evident, — personal ambition and the instinct of society towards security under the law ; but what are they in Hamlet f The answer depends on the conception we form of a character not entirely compre- hensible. We might say in this case and in that of Othello that the forces were the good and the evil in man, but such a conception is too general to form the groundwork of an analysis of a drama. In each of these plays the catastrophe is evident, but the climax is less so. Othello is at the height of happiness when he lands in Cyprus early in the second act, but up to this point all is introduction. Hamlet, representing the good, the moral force in man, is so weakened by melancholy as to be ineffective ; the triumph of the bad man is antece- dent to the play, when Claudius is elected to the throne. The climax in Hamlet may be taken to be the play-scene when the prince establishes the guilt of his uncle, at least in his own mind and that of Horatio. But it is followed by no reversal of the action. Nevertheless Freytag's scheme is of great value, even if it should only emphasize the fact that there is such a thing as definite construction in a tragedy, and that dramatic action is progressive to a definite end under certain very general laws. It is not invertebrate. Per- haps if we modified the conception that a tragedy FOREIGN CRITICISM OF SHAKESPEARE 229 IS a conflict between moral forces (originally Hegel's idea), and took the ground that it was a conflict be- tween men, — representing, if you wish to be meta- physical, certain moral forces, — the scheme would be applicable to all of Shakespeare's tragedies. Hamlet contends with the King with varying fortunes ; Othello with lago ; Macbeth with Malcolm ; and Lear with his daughters, till the final catastrophe. All of these are, it is true, representative characters. But it is because they are characters, not because they stand for good or evil, that we are interested in them. Lincoln was a just man and slavery was unjust, therefore he did not sympathize with it ; but we love him for himself, not solely because he represented a moral cause. Shakespeare's four heroes are very interesting men, and all but Macbeth are^^ lovable. They are engaged in a conflict with external circumstances and with other men. This involves, too, a conflict in their own minds, which they disclose with wonderful power of language, revealing thereby the richness and depth of their nature and their affinity to the human race. We therefore become much interested in their conflict with other men ; for by reason of hereditary instinct, there is nothing that excites men and women so much as a fight, especially a serious one. The Romans wanted the real thing in the arena ; we are forced to be contented with a mimetic representa- tion. But are we not quite warranted in calling a tragic plot a conflict between men f Freytag says, as an explanation of the pleasure we take in witnessing a tragedy : — The ultimate ground of every great effect of the drama lies not in the necessity of the spectator to receive impressions, but in his never ceasing and irresistible desire to create and fashion. The dramatist compels the listener to repeat his cre- alions. The whole world of characters, of sorrow, and of des- 230 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS tiny, the hearer must make alive in himself. While he is re- ceiving with a high degree of suspense, he is in most powerful, most rapid creative activity. An ardor and beautifying cheer- fulness like that which the poet himself has felt, fills the hearer, who repeats the poet's efforts ; therefore the pain with the feeling of pleasure ; therefore the exaltation which outlasts the conclusion of the piece. And this stimulation of the cre- ative imagination is penetrated with still a milder light ; for closely connected with it is an exalting sense of eternal reason in the severest fates and sorrows of men. The spectator feels and recognizes that the divinity which guides his life, even when it shatters the individual human being, acts in a benevo- lent fellowship with the human race ; and he feels himself creatively exalted as united with and in accord with the great world-guiding power. Any one who feels a sympathetic creative thrill on witnessing the production of a great tragedy must be, like Herr Freytag himself, more or less of an artist. But we doubt if even he could feel any creative exalta- tion of spirit on witnessing Ghosts or the Master Builder or the Philanderers, much as he might have admired the technical skill of all. In fact, after reading or witnessing one of Shaw's or Ibsen's dramas, instead of feeling any ' ardor and beautifying cheerfulness,' we feel ashamed of the human race, — it is built on so small a pattern and furnished with so slight internal strength of resistance. The world seems essentially futile and hopeless and ridiculous. The * divinity which guides our lives ' is not ' acting in benevolent fellowship with the human race ' ; it is withdrawn in profound indiffer- ence. There does come a feeling of exaltation to the plainest spectator after seeing one of the great trage- dies. He is proud to feel that he is cousin to Hamlet or Othello, to know that our human nature can produce such noble souls, amorous of the good. Even the gigan- FOREIGN CRITICISM OF SHAKESPEARE 231 tic vigor of Macbeth is refreshing to one who has dwelt long with the petty figures of the modern stage, for he, too, * greatly lived.' Herr Freytag died before the apotheosis of the common and the unclean, and was recalling the feelings with which he first witnessed the plays of Lessing and Shakespeare and Schiller and Goethe. Freytag's scheme is carried out with great minute- ness and numberless subdivisions. He applies to acts and even to important scenes his ideas of the introduc- tion, the rising action, the climax, the falling action, and the catastrophe. If he sometimes seems fanciful, he never fails to enforce the idea that dramatic con- struction is a technical art subject to principles, entirely different from those of narration or lyric abandon. His book was not translated into English till 1898, but his view-point was taken here and there by English critics much earlier. A very admirable little book, The Drama and its Technique^ by Dr. Elizabeth Woodbridge, in the same year, follows Freytag's method in the main, avoiding much of his fancif ulness and diffuseness, and adding an element of common sense and definite point that makes it more satisfactory than the German treat- ise. It adds, too, a discussion of that very difficult sub- ject, the art of comedy, and contains many admirable suggestions for practical criticism of dramatic art as far as it may be distinguished from dramatic substance. But it must be remembered that technical construction is only the framework into which the dramatic elements of characterization, wit, dialogue, and poetry are to be fitted, and that it is quite possible to overestimate its relative importance. The well-articulated scheme must contain something of a higher value than itself, and of a less mechanical nature. The subject of Dramatic Construction has been 232 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS treated later by Mr. Richard G. Moulton in an inter- esting but quite unconvincing book There is a method of pseudo-criticism which assumes that because science classifies ants and spiders under many technical tribe- names, literary products can be profitably treated in the same general manner. Thus Mr. Moulton makes mi- nute and fanciful divisions and subdivisions of the plays, even of the scenes, and invents a corresponding termin- ology : * Nemesis Action,' ' Oracular Action,' ' Problem Action,' 'Enveloping Action,' and the like. If these terms correspond to any real differences, they do not mark the qualities which give life and distinction to a drama. The qualities of form which the Merchant of Venice has in common with Midsummer NigMs Dream^ if treated in the ' inductive method,' are of little more importance from the standpoint of literary criti- cism than the shape of the type or the material of the paper. The fact that a romantic drama is not the proper subject of this kind of scientific analysis is the essence of its excellence. To science thus interpreted, a play is a play regardless of its quality, and Mr. Moulton's critique of the Merchant of Venice might be applied with equal force to one of the crude and childish comedies of Dekker. As far as the methods of science imply sin- cerity, industry, and common sense combined with imag- inative realization of the nature of the subject-matter, they are applicable to the analysis of literary products. In this sense they govern the analysis of the leading modern critics, Bradley, Lee, and Lounsbury, and the result is a substantial refinement of appreciation. But to take the form and not the real method of science, and simply build an elaborate structure of classifications with groups and sub-groups, gives a suspicious appear- ance of thoroughness without touching the necessary question of the play or illuminating with the faintest FOREIGN CRITICISM OF SHAKESPEARE 233 spark its essential nature. In reality it is as unfruitful and arbitrary as the old notion that construction must observe the three unities, and is based on the same mis- taken point of view, though appealing to a more modern authority. The best consideration of the important question of dramatic construction is to be found in the second chap- ter of Dr. Bradley's book on the four tragedies. He considers each separately, and does not hesitate to point out faults of construction, and how, in some instances, the faults are more than compensated for by special excellences which the very faults make possible. It is greatly to be desired that he, or some one of equal philo- sophical grasp and power of expression, analyze the con- struction of the comedies, taking up each one separately, showing how an effect is created by the succession and variety of the scenes, how laughter and amusement are blended, and quiet suggestions of pathos heighten the effect of both ; how far in the unrolling of the story the author relied on the fact that his audience were familiar with its general outlines — in a word, how the total effect is produced by harmonious but sometimes appar- ently discordant parts. He would not hesitate to point out that Shakespeare, though sometimes showing great skiU in construction, frequently depends more on wit, poetry, and character interest to hold his audience than on plot interest ; and that occasionally the latter part of his plot forgets the beginning. He would explain, if it be explainable, how he mingles the elements and pro- duces a total effect which has the charm of one of na- ture's best days. That would be the result of the true scientific method. Shakespeare has become almost as important in Ger- man as in English literature. Some twelve translations have been made, the most important being the revision ^34 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS of Schlegel by the German Shakespeare Society, be- gun on the three hundredth anniversary of the poet's birth. The yearly publications of this society are of the greatest value. The independent works connected with the subject form a large library. The edition of Delius — giving the English text and German notes — is a monu- ment of painstaking scholarship. All this has reacted on English criticism, by increasing the pride English- men take in their national poet and by presenting them with a body of criticism in which the plays are treated on the principles of aesthetic art and the historical milieu is viewed from a standpoint different from that taken by a native. Among some of the lesser German critics there has been from time to time a disposition to assume that their nation discovered Shakespeare, and that, as the representatives of pure Teutonism, they could best comprehend and interpret the great poet of the race ; but, as is usually the case, the leading scholars of both nations estimate the labors of all at their proper value. A true conception of Shakespeare's art implies a width and catholicity of mind incompatible with petty jealousy. Thus, one very narrow-minded but broadly arrogant person, Professor Lemcke, says: — Let us for once lay aside our proverbial modesty, and openly declare that it is not the affinity of race, nor the in- dications in his poetry of a German spirit, which have brought us so close to Shakespeare, but it is that God-given power vouchsafed to us Germans before all other nations, by the grace of which we are enabled to recognize true genius, of whatsoever nation, better than other nations, oftentimes better than its own, and better to enjoy and to appropriate its gifts. We understand and love Shakespeare by virtue of that same German insight which has helped the Italians to understand their Dante. . . . We comprehend and love Shakespeare because we are undeniably a ^ Nation of Think- FOREIGN CRITICISM OF SHAKESPEARE 235 ers,* as other nations have before now so often been obliged with ill-concealed vexation to acknowledge.^ Schlegel, as a nineteenth-century romanticist, shows less respect for the commentators of the eighteenth cen- tury than does Ulrici, but he bears emphatic testimony to the love the general gender bore their national poet, for he writes : — With respect to the criticisms which are merely of a philo- logical nature I am frequently compelled to differ from the commentators (Steevens, Malone, Capell) ; and when they consider him merely a poet, endeavor to pronounce upon his views and to enter into his merits, I must separate myself from them entirely. I have hardly ever found either truth or profundity in their observations ; and these critics seem to me to be but stammering interpreters of the general and almost idolatrous admiration of his countrymen. On the other hand. Professor Mommsen, whose edi- tion of Romeo and Juliet^ says Dr. Furness, * will stand as long as Shakespeare is studied, a monument of criti- cal sagacity, patient toil, and microscopic investigation of the text,' writes in the spirit of scholarly brother- hood : — It is assuredly a valuable work to epitomize intelligently the great English commentators of Shakespeare ; here and there by a collation of the old copies we may happily settle some doubtful reading, but it is a perilous game not to con- fess under all circumstances, frankly and modestly, that we are wholly dependent on the English ; verily we should suffer wreck if with the one hand we accept from them all the means by which we live and breathe, and with the other, by way of thanks, fling scorn and contempt upon their names. In the same spirit Ulrici says : — It [the translation, some 1000 pages] will worthily, as far 1 Furness's Romeo and Juliet^ Preface, p. liv. 236 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS as form is concerned, fulfil its object in being a small contri- bution to the great wealth of Shakespearean literature in Eng- land. It would give me great pleasure and satisfaction, were I to find that the substance of my book itself met with the sympathy and approval of the English public, more especially of English Shakespearean scholars, for whose judgment I entertain the highest esteem and regard. In pure profound veneration for the great poet, I venture to think that my work is not inferior to that of any English writer on the subject. In view of such modest and manly words from the great men, the irritation of some English and American commentators — notably Mr. Richard Grant White and Mr. Swinburne — with the Germans, seems hardly worth while. SHAKESPEAKE IN FRANCE The genius of the English and French nations is so radically different, that it would seem unlikely that French critics would comprehend Shakespearean art. An adequate translation of the plays, one which should give something of the form and spirit and produce an impression somewhat akin to that of the original, is obviously impossible in French except as applied to the dignified passages of the historical plays. But the intel- ligence of Frenchmen is so keen, and the spirit of French literary men is so catholic, that they are able to put themselves imaginatively into the spiritual mood of other races. They love art so fundamentally that they can recognize it in the most alien form. Therefore, in spite of their Latin dislike of the unrestrained and the unconventional in expression, and of the fact that the masterpieces of their dramatic period are as different from the Shakespearean tragedies as can well be imag- ined, and in spite of the fact that their master of the eighteenth century, Voltaire, after confessing his aston- FOREIGN CRITICISM OF SHAKESPEARE 237 ishment and wonder at the effect produced on him by the representation of the plays in London, went after- wards to the extreme of ill-natured ridicule, and in spite of the linguistic and spiritual gulf that separates a French classic from an Elizabethan masterpiece, French critics have come to admire Shakespeare intelligently, though their admiration is still tinctured with astonish- ment. The changing attitude of Voltaire, in whom an aston- ishingly petty jealousy was combined with reverence for conventional rules of construction and an underly- ing perception of Shakespeare's literary power, is fully set forth by Professor Lounsbury in the second volume of Shakespearean Wars^ a book which is profoundly interesting not merely as historj^, but as a study of human nature. We will cite only Voltaire's well-known criticism on Hamlet^ made at a period when he was especially unreasonable: — Far be it from me to justify everything in that tragedy ; it is a vulgar and barbarous drama which would not be toler- ated by the vilest populace of France or Italy. Hamlet be- comes crazy in the second act, and his mistress becomes crazy in the third ; the prince slays her father under the pretence of killing a rat, and the heroine throws herself into the river ; a grave is dug on the stage, and the gravediggei-s talk quodlib- ets worthy of themselves, while holding skulls in their hands. Hamlet responds to their nasty vulgarities in silliness no less disgusting. In the mean time another of the actors conquers Poland. Hamlet, his mother, and his father-in-law carouse on the stage ; songs are sung at table; there is quarreling, fight- ing, killing — one would imagine this to be the work of a drunken savage. But amidst all these vulgar irregularities, which to this day make the English drama so absurd and so barbarous, there are to be found in Hamlet^ by a bizarrerie still greater, some sublime passages worthy of the greatest genius. It seems as though nature had mingled in the brain 238 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS of Shakespeare the greatest conceivable strength and grand- eur with whatsoever witless vulgarity can devise that is low- est and most detestable. As an offset to this we will quote the words of M. Anatole France, one hundred and fifty years later.* They atone for the foolish words of Voltaire, indeed, leave Shakespeare in debt to the French nation. M. France has been to the play and seen Hamlet. He im- agines that he and the Danish Prince go home together, and he talks to the figment of Shakespeare's brain as if he were a real person. He says : — First he must apologize to Hamlet for the audience, some part of which, as he may have noticed, seemed a trifle inat- tentive and light. Hamlet must not lay this to heart. * It was an audience of Frenchmen and Frenchwomen,' he should un- derstand. ' You were not in evening dress, you had no amor- ous intrigue in the world of high finance, and you wore no flower in your buttonhole. For that reason the ladies coughed a little in their boxes while eating iced fruits. Your adven- tures could not interest them. They were not worldly adven- tures, they were only human adventures. Besides, you force people to think, and that is an offense which will never be par- doned to you here.' Still there were a few among the spectators who were profoundly moved, a few by whom the melancholy Dane is preferred before all other beings ever created by the breath of genius. The critic himself by a happy chance sat near one such, M. Auguste Dorchain. * He understands you, my prince, as he understands Racine, because he is a poet.* And then, after a little, he concludes by confiding to Ham- let what a mystery and contradiction the world has found him, though he is the universal man, the man of all times and all countries, though he is exactly like the rest of us, a man living in the midst of universal evil. It is just because he is like the rest of us, indeed, that we find his character a ^ Quoted by Mr. Bradford Torrey in the Atlantic, March, 1906. FOREIGN CRITICISM OF SHAKESPEARE 239 thing so impossible to grasp. It is because we do not under- stand ourselves that we do not understand him. His very in- consistencies and contradictions are the sign of his profound humanity. * You are prompt and slow, audacious and timid, benevolent and cruel ; you believe and you doubt ; you are wise, and above everything else you are insane. In a word, you live. Who of us does not resemble you in something ? Who of us thinks without contradiction and acts without in- consistency ? Who of us is not insane ? Who of us but says to you with a mixture of pity, of sympathy, of admiration, and of horror, "Good-night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest." * That may not be systematic criticism, but it is a very beautiful and adequate appreciation. French literary criticism has a sympathetic quality, so that in the hands of the brilliant men, like Scherer, Jusserand, Taine, or Sainte-Beuve, it becomes literature itself. It has had a great influence on Englishmen, and has developed greatly since the eighteenth century, when Boileau was dictator. The criticism of Shakespeare in France has been of less importance than the indirect influence of the French writers. His form was so different from the accepted dramatic form that when his plays were trans- lated and adapted for the stage they were mutilated. Victor Hugo, as the romantic champion of the nine- teenth century, was an extravagant admirer of the English poet, and his son Francois produced an excel- lent translation of the plays. At present no foreigners understand Shakespeare, both from the dramatic and the philosophic side, better than the leading French scholars, and their influence has contributed to form the tone of good sense, moderation, and reference to human nature as it really is which marks the writings of the latest critics in England and America. German idealism and French artistic comprehension, the one 240 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS fixing its attention on abstract beauty and the other on the beautiful things, have combined to justify, perhaps to heighten, our admiration of Shakespeare. The sparkling chapter in Taine's English Literature on Shakespeare is the French criticism best known to English readers. Shakespeare, he says, is ' one whom we have perceived before us through all the vistas of the Renaissance, like some vast oak to whom all forest ways converge.' ' No writer, not even Moliere, has pene- trated so far beneath the semblance of common sense and logic in which the human machine is inclosed in order to grasp the brute powers which constitute its substance and its mainspring.' But the Frenchman's predilection for form governs M. Taine, in spite of his admiration of the poetry. Hamlet's language to his mother he calls ' the style of phrensy ' ; we should say that it is the language of profound emotion. In Shakespeare, he declares, ' there is no preparation, no adaptation, no development, no care to make himself understood.' Shakespeare flies, we creep. ' A poet,' he insists, * does not copy at random the manners which surround him ' — If he is a logician, an actor or moralist as Racine, he will only present noble manners, he will avoid low characters ; he will have a horror of valets and plebs ; he will observe the greatest decorum in respect of the strongest outbreaks of pas- sion ; he will blot out precise details, special traits, and will raise tragedy into a serene and sublime region, where his ab- stract personages, after an exchange of eloquent harangues and noble dissertations, will kill each other becomingly and as though they were merely concluding a ceremony. . . . Shake- speare's master faculty is an impassioned imagination, freed from the fetters of reason and morality. He does not dream of ennobling but of copying human life. By * morality ' M. Taine evidently means propriety, FOREIGN CRITICISM OF SHAKESPEARE 241 that which is the mos^ or custom. He can make nothing of Hamlet except that he has a ' heated imagination,* is * an artist whom evil chance has made a prince.* The Shakespearean drama, he says, 'reproduces pro- miscuously ugliness, basenesses, horrors, unclean de- tails, profligate and ferocious manners, the whole reality of life just as it is when it is unrestrained by decorum, common sense, and duty.* All these animadversions on Shakespeare's art are, however, quite compatible in the Frenchman's mind with admiration of his fecundity and his power, nor does he fail to do justice to the deli- cate beauty of some of his creations, like the fairies in Midsummer NigM s Dream^ the woodland scenes of ^s You Like It^ and Prospero's enchanted island. He is at once broad and narrow, and a trifle bewildered by his own enthusiasm, and is, on the whole, more success- ful in revealing the mind and method of a brilliant Frenchman than in criticising an English poet. I CHAPTER IX THE MIDDLE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY MHS. JAMESON (1794-1860) The romanticists beginning with Coleridge were the first to appreciate fully the delicate psychical qualities of Shakespeare's female characters. This is but natural, for the Shakespearean conception of love as something divine and unaccountable and yet permanent is akin to the enthusiasm of the romantic spirit. Mrs. Jameson's Characteristics of Shakespeare^ s Women appeared in 1832, and her views are therefore not novel. But the agreeable style in which it was written gave the book considerable influence with the reading public, and en- titles it to rank high among theVmino'rl documents of criticism, though it is not marked ^by subtle discrimina- tions or a very profound knowledge of human nature or thorough comprehension of dramatic art. The classifica- tion of the heroines into * Characters of Intellect, Char- acters of Passion and Imagination, Characters of the Affections, and Historical Characters,' reminds one of the eighteenth century, and is not in the least scientific, since it leaves Cleopatra out of the list of the characters of passion and puts her with the Roman matrons, Octa- via and Volumnia, among the historical characters, and separates Rosalind and Viola and joins Rosalind and Isabella as ' characters of intellect.' ' Portia, Isabella, Beatrice, and Rosalind,' she declares, ' may be classed together, because when compared with the others they are all distinguished by mental superiority.' She gives no citations in support of this view, and we are very sure that their superiority over Viola, Imogen, and Helena MIDDLE OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 243 in intellectual acuteness or activity is not at once mani- fest. It may be that Portia, Beatrice, and Rosalind excel the others in wit, but Isabella certainly does not. In putting Portia and Isabella in the same class, because both are eloquent, though in very different ways, Mrs. Jameson confounds two entirely different types of women. Portia is in love, Isabella is not, and, as far as we can see, is incapable of a generous affection. She is digni- fied, but cold, reserved, and self-centred. Indeed, there is not a single fine character in Measure for Measure^ if we except Escalus. The duke is a crotchety, unprac- tical person, and shirks his duties, though he philoso- phizes admirably on death. Isabella talks beautifully about mercy, but with none of the natural fervor that inspires Portia's eloquence on the same subject. Isabella is a very disagreeable person, and her righteous horror at her brother's infamous suggestion is tinged with no compassion for the poor wretch sentenced to die. She is * en skied and sainted ' as a religious devote^ not as a woman. Mrs. Jameson does full justice to Rosalind's irresist- ible vivacity and pleasantry. Rosalind is so blithe and so full of the life of youth that every one must feel her natural charm. But the merry, high-spirited girl once discloses the depth of her nature. Dressed as a boy, she proposed and went through a travesty of the marriage ceremony with Orlando. Scarcely has she pronounced in jest the solemn words : ' I do take thee, Orlando, for my husband,' before a wave of seriousness passes over her merry spirit, and a chill shadow of the possibilities of the future saddens her as she realizes what love is to her and how frightful it would be if her lover should grow indifferent. B.OS, Now, tell me how long you would have her after you have possessed her. 244 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS Orl. For ever and a day. Bos. Say * a day ' without the *ever.' No, no, Orlando ; men are April when they woo, December when they wed. Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives. Shakespeare sketches his characters in broad, firm I lines ; then the lights and shades are put in by little j touches like the above, so that they are at once types and individuals. The slight differentiae escape us unless we imagine the person vividly or see it portrayed by an actor who realizes the part. Of Juliet, the heroine of love, at once passionate and pure, Mrs. Jameson says : ' Such is the simplicity, the truth, and the loveliness of Juliet's character, that we are not at once aware of its complexity, its depth, and its variety. All Shakespeare's women either love or have loved, but Juliet is love itself — nearly the whole of the dialogue appropriated to Juliet is one rich stream of imagery.' It is difficult to see how the ' simplicity ' of Juliet's character can hide its ' complexity.' Undoubt- edly Juliet is capable of great resolution, and so is her lover, but in each case it is under the influence of an exalted passion that they are courageous. Juliet's language in the passages Mrs. Jameson has in mind is simply a lyrical expression of love, due to the heighten- ing and quickening of the imagination all young people experience when first dominated by the most powerful I of emotions. The theme of the tragedy goes no deeper than true love crossed by the stars. It is general, and the hero and heroine are more typical than individual, and so absorbed in their passion as to display little else. The play is a beautiful poem, but as a study of human nature and of the world it is not in the same class as ' Hamlet and Macbeth. To Viola Mrs. Jameson hardly does justice, though MIDDLE OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 245 she does say that she ' has a touch of sentiment more profound and heart-stirring ' than Perdita. The truth is, Viola has the most poetic soul of any of the Shake- spearean women. Portia says beautiful things, always tinged with intellectuality. Juliet ascends under the excitement of love or fear to the heights of imaginative expression, but neither of them could have said on hearing a strain of music, — It gives a very echo to the seat Where Love is throned. Viola has a nature more akin to music than either of them, and, though she lacks the high spirits of Rosa- lind, she is hardly less witty. Besides, she is not con- scious of being beloved, as Rosalind is, and is therefore more reflective. All of Shakespeare's young women are distinctly feminine, and but one has a living mother, so that he missed the full portrayal of one of the most beautiful relations, one from which he could readily have drawn charming dramatic effects. Beatrice is the imperial, aristocratic young woman, witty and beautiful, but in her wit there is no trace of imagination. Her standard of honor is high, so that, though she undoubtedly loves Benedick, and probably was in love with him before the play opens, she is ready to have him fight Claudio in the first hour of their engagement. Nevertheless, she will make a devoted wife, and he will have * fire-new jests to his breakfast every day.* Mrs. Jameson seems to have some doubt as to their matrimonial felicity, which only shows that one brilliant woman never likes an- other. The vengeful * hill Claudio ' of Beatrice to Bene- dick has a startling effect, and passes beyond the comic, though it comes in the first love passage, but Beatrice is clearly right, as her lover sees in a moment. f 246 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS In common with the critics of the period, Mrs. Jame- son thinks that in Ophelia Shakespeare paints the lily:- Ophelia — poor Ophelia. O far too soft, too good, too fair to be cast among the briars of this working-day world, and fall and bleed upon the thorns of life ! What shall be said of her ? for eloquence is mute before her ! Like a strain of sad, sweet music which comes floating by us on the wings of night and silence, and which we rather feel than hear — like the exhalation of the violet dying even upon the sense it charms — like the snow flake dissolved in air before it has caught a stain of earth — like the light surf severed from the billow, which a breath disperses — such is the char- acter of Ophelia : so exquisitely delicate it seems as if a touch would profane it ; so sanctified in our thoughts by the last and worst of human woes, that we scarcely dare to consider it too deeply. The love of Ophelia which she never once confesses is like a secret which we have stolen from her, and which ought to die upon our hearts as upon her own. The above criticism illustrates several faults of the romantic school. The style is unduly impassioned, and the feeling^ are allowed to get the better of the under- standing.LLife is viewed from the emotional stand- point solel^ The facts of the case are disregarded. The feeling between Ophelia and Hamlet was not the powerful attraction of mated souls, for she did not un- derstand Hamlet in the least, and love not only * lends a precious seeing to the eye,* it imparts a divining power to the heart. Ophelia obeys her father with the utmost docility, which fact alone shows that her love was not very deep. After the nunnery scene, where Hamlet speaks to her with cruel harshness, she accepts the theory that he is insane, but her soliloquy, ' Oh, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown,' is quiet in its tone of regret, and its smooth, equable rhythm betrays no deep MIDDLE OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 247 feeling. Mrs. Jameson says also that 'the love of Hamlet for Ophelia is real, and is precisely the kind of love which such a man as Hamlet would feel for such a woman as Ophelia/ — a pretty safe statement, but she qualifies it by saying that ' he loves her with a love as intense as can belong to a nature in which there is much more of contemplation and sensibility than action or passion.' This is the old view of Hamlet, which con- siders him a dreamer and a weak-willed person, and need not detain us. But Mrs. Jameson misconceives the character of Ophelia and her function in the soul- drama. The love between her and the prince is antece- dent to the action. No doubt Hamlet had been attracted by her innocence and youth, for she says that he had made * many tenders of his affection ' to her, and Ham- let was not the man to make such tenders as * springes to catch woodcocks.' When his father died and he was brought face to face with grief, it is probable that he perceived that she was essentially shallow and com- monplace ; for in his first soliloquy, which is uttered before she in obedience to her father had refused, so to slander any moment leisure As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet, he does not refer to his love. It is impossible that any lover could say of the world : — Fie on 't, ah fie. ' Tis an unweeded garden That grows to seed ; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely, — unless he had found himself deceived in the woman he loved. Still he tries to see her, and her repulse no doubt added to his melancholy. In the funeral scene the pathos of the situation overcomes him, and for the moment he remembers only that he had once thought tenderly of her, and behaves with the most absurd ex- 248 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS travagance. In the nunnery scene he expresses his re- sentment and disappointment in the same manner, and it is a great mistake for the actor to inject an element of tenderness into the representation. All that Mrs. Jameson says of the historical charac- ters, especially of Queen Katharine and Constance, is excellent. Oddly enough, she puts Lady Macbeth among the historical characters. In common with all the gener- ation who witnessed the impressive representation of Mrs. Siddons, she is more struck with the grandeur than with the wickedness of the woman, and considers her the far ' superior mind.' Macbeth is certainly her superior in imaginative ardor and in the power of putting his visionary perceptions into words. The male and female criminal are finely discriminated in the pair, and Lady Macbeth is certainly a great woman, the difference being that the evil energy is more easily roused to action in her than in him, but after it is roused it car- ries him further than she would have gone, because his imagination goads him on. The power of foresee- ing vividly the consequences of a criminal act is an in- tellectual power, and its absence makes the ordinary criminal stupid. Macbeth has this, and the further power of reflecting on his crime and seeing it in its relations to society and its true nature. True, he yields to her, but that is not because he is the inferior nature, but because he loves her — she is his wife, the * dearest partner of his greatness.' Miranda and Perdita are lovely creations, and no one can be insensible to their charm. Shakespeare him- self seems to regard them with paternal tenderness, and they are in reality children, with all the attraction of youthful promise. They are, however, but ideal sketches, not individualized enough to call out differ- ences^of interpretation. They are perfect. Imogen, too, MIDDLE OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 249 though a woman and a wife, is compounded of all that is admirable and noble, though with a sweetness all her own. Mrs. Jameson considers her the most perfect of Shakespeare's female characters. ' In her,' she says, — We have all the fervor of youthful tenderness, all the ro- mance of youthful fancy, all the enchantment of ideal grace — the bloom of beauty, the brightness of intellect, and the dignity of rank taking a peculiar hue from the conjugal char- acter which is shed over all like a consecration and a holy charm. These three appearing in romantic plays, where the treatment is poetic rather than dramatic, have, natur- ally, less complexity of nature than their sisters. They speak little prose or none, and the' iridescence of poetry clothes them with its luminous haze. They exist in an enchanted land. So, indeed, do Rosalind and Viola; but lUyria and the Forest of Arden are not set so far away in the poetic world that we cannot readily jour- ney there and find the place less strange than Perdita's sheep-shearing, or Prosperous island, or Cymbeline's Britain. It is a mistake to imagine Desdemona, as Mrs. Jameson does, to be devoid of force of character, though her unsuspecting innocence does give the impression of weakness. Mrs. Jameson uses the expressions, ' gentle- ness verging on passiveness,' 'soft credulity,' 'endued with that temper which is the origin of love as of reli- gion,' and adds : — I know a Desdemona in real life, one in whom the ab- sence of intellectual power is never felt as a deficiency, nop the absence of energy of will as impairing the dignity, nor the most imperturbable serenity as a want of feeling : one in whom thoughts appear mere instincts, the senti- ment of rectitude supplies the principle, and virtue itself seems rather a necessary state of being than an imposed law. 250 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS No shade of sin or vanity has yet stolen over that briglit innocence. . . . The impression produced is exactly that of the character of Desdemona. ... In Desdemona we cannot but feel that the slightest manifestation of intellectual power or active will would have injured the dramatic effect. She is a victim consecrated from the first — 'an offering without blemish.' There is a good deal of truth in this. Desdemona does seem incapable of resentment or resistance; we naturally compare her to a ' dove in the talons of a vul- ture.' But when we examine the story we find that she had resolution enough to leave her father's house and marry the man to whom her heart was given, although the step forfeited her position as daughter of one of the Venetian aristocracy. She overcame the race prejudice and ' saw Othello's visage in his mind.' We cannot call her weakly timid because she prevaricated to her hus- band about the lost handkerchief, for Othello when aroused was a frightful person. lago, evidently a man of personal courage, is alarmed when he sees what a dan- gerous force he has evoked, and Othello tells him : — Give me the ocular proof ; Or, by the worth of man's eternal soul, Thou hadst been better have been born a dog Than answer my naked wrath. lago sees at once that Othello is dangerous, and that he himself can take no backward step. Desdemona is not so courageous as Juliet, who, we can well imagine, would have gone directly to the point and found out what was the matter with her husband, but she is far from a negative character. Her goodness of heart is positive, and forces her to active exertions for Cassio. j In much the same way the beauty of Cordelia's love, ihich has made her the type of the relation between MIDDLE OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 251 father and daughter, blinds Mrs. Jameson to the de- fects of her character. Cordelia understands the selfish- ness of her sisters, and it is a noble pride which makes her disdain to enter on a contest in fulsome praise with them, but her conduct in the first act certainly verges on the bounds of willful perversity. It would have been the part of an intelligent and kind daughter to have humored the old man instead of goading him to fury by untimely opposition. Cordelia will make no terms with hypocrisy. Her proud reticence — not un- common in young people — is a defect, though the de- fect of a fine nature. She loves her father and knows very well that he loves her, but she virtually insults and bitterly disappoints him in public. She displays bluntness and lack of tact and incapacity to grasp the situation. She could not have foreseen the hard cruelty which power would develop in her sisters, but she knew them selfish, and must have known that she was deliv- ering Lear into their hands. She says to them : — I know you what you are ; And, like a sister, am most loath to call Your faults as they are named.^ And this before they have said a word to her. 'She must have loved the King of France and known that he loved her, and this alone should have made her more considerate. Cordelia is an uncompromising person, and as much harm is done in this world by the good who will hold no terms with evil and will admit no half- way measures as by the wicked themselves. Cordelia is essentially good, and yet her conduct is the fons et origo of all her father's sufferings. Cordelia's character ^ Mrs. Jameson says, * Her mild magnanimity shines out in her farewell to her sisters.' If this is magnanimity, how would Cor- delia express scorn ? 252 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS is by no means all beautiful, but her love for her father is pure womanly, and makes her appear an angel of light, especially in comparison with her sisters. The father and sisters are all marked by courage and quick- ness of temper and dislike of any restraint. Lear and Cordelia have in addition the capacity for loving. So great is our admiration for this, and so settled our con- sciousness that it is a divine thing, that we rank Cordelia high among women, though any other of the Shake- spearean heroines would have prevented or avoided the frightful misfortunes her willfulness entailed. Women sometimes comprehend character instinct- ively without being able to justify their conclusions logically. In analyzing Cleopatra Mrs. Jameson does not comprehend and cannot justify her non-comprehen- sion. The character is perhaps too complex and too feminine to admit of analysis. Mrs. Jameson's estimate of her as made up of 'inconsistent consistency,' a unity in ' infinite variety,' rather dodges the question, but is perhaps as near as any one comes to explaining this marvelous creation. To some of the minor characters, like Emilia, she does scant justice ; others, like the Queen in Hamlet^ she ignores. But she has done much in calling attention to the reality and truth of the heroines to know whom is a liberal education. KICHAKD GRANT T^THITE Mr. Richard Grant White was the first American Shakespearean scholar to win a European reputation. His criticism appeared for the most part in American magazines between 1850 and 1880, and was afterwards collected in Studies in Shahespeare. His Shakespeare Scholar^ however, was published in 1854. This is a large octavo (500 pages). In it he gives an historical sketch of the text and the successive editors, a critical exami- MIDDLE OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 253 nation of the notes in Mr. Collier's folio, in which he completely disproves their value, and a review of the plays, devoted for the most part to a consideration of the various suggested readings. He published also two very beautiful editions of the plays, decidedly the best that had appeared up to that time in America. His knowledge of etymology and his acquaintance with Elizabethan literature make his textual criticism of high value, though he is a little inclined to incisive and sarcastic comments on his predecessors, most of whom well deserve his strictures. He has the merit denied to many textual critics of being entertaining, and the fur- ther not less rare merit of not adhering to an inter- pretation when he is convinced, or should be convinced, that it is wrong. Mr. White's bent is not at all towards philosophical or aesthetic criticism. He was an artist, and a musical critic of high rank, and in spite of his etymological attainments the play appeared to him as a beautiful work of art, and he admires the comedies as much as the tragedies. He regards the characters as contem- porary men and women rather than as heroes on the ideal plane, and he pays no attention to construction in the broad sense. Had he read Frey tag's book, he would have felt impatient of the views it presents, as unprac- tical and fanciful. But his artistic sense made him an unerring judge of the actor's interpretation of a part or of a delicately sentimental or humorous scene. This instinctive perception of concrete beauty is compatible with a taste for philosophical analysis, but in Mr. White the two were not combined. Thus, after saying that the dramatic unities are ob- served in The, Tempest^ he hastens to add : — I do wrong to say that they are observed, which implies purpose on the part of the dramatist ; and nothing is clearer 254 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS to me, the more I read and reflect upon his works, than that after his first three or four years' experience as a dramatist, he was entirely without any art^purpose or aim whatever, and used his materials just as they came to his hand, taking no more pains with them than he thought necessary to work them into a play that would please his audience and suit his company, while at the same time, from the necessities of his nature and the impulse that was within him, he brought out the charac- ters of his personages with the knowledge of a creator of hu- man souls, and in his poetry showed himself the supremest master of human utterance. The Tempest conforms to the unities of time and place merely because the story made it convenient for the writer to observe them ; the Winter's Tale defies them because its story made the observance of them very troublesome, and, indeed, almost, if not quite, impossible. There has been a great deal of ingenious speculation about Shakespeare's system of dramatic art. It is all unfounded, vague, and worthless. Shakespeare had no system of dramatic art. . . . Shakespeare did not write plays with ' central ideas.' In all such incidents as those referred to \_Merchant of Venice~\ he merely followed the course or indications of the stories upon which he worked, as will appear in a very marked manner in the next play which we shall examine — Romeo and Juliet. . . . Shakespeare merely dramatized the old ballad to make a play to please his audience, just as any hack-playwright might to-day, who was engaged by a manager to do a like task. It merely happened that he had a peculiar way of doing such things. As to a moral, plainly nothing was further from Shakespeare's thought. The above would tend to make Shakespeare a brilliant and skillful adaptor with the box-office in his mind. He did work over old stories, but he made them dramatic themes. He added or omitted incidents, and created characters out of names. The play frequently has a central moral conception totally different from the naive, mediaeval story on which it is founded. The sub- ject brings up the very obscure question : What does the MIDDLE OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 255 conscious intelligence contribute to a work of art, and what is due to the unconscious soul? It cannot be dis- missed in a summary way by saying, ' Shakespeare had no system of dramatic art.' The ultra-materialistic form of interpretation which came in during the latter part of the century was a re- action from the ultra-romanticism of the earlier decades. Romanticism degenerates into sentimentalism as readily as genuine religious expression does into cant. It was natural that sturdy common sense should reassert itself, and go as far in denying inspiration and transcendental meaning as romanticism had in exalting them. But there is something very annoying in bald, common-sense criti- cism, because there is an element of truth in it, and that element is precisely what perverts it. Thus when we read, ' Shakespeare's case was in no wise essentially different from that of a young man from the country who now- adays comes to New York to join the staff of a news- paper. He simply brought his youth and talents to the central market and rose by the force of native abilities,* we feel like admitting the analogy. Shakespeare was a young man of ' native abilities ' ; he did * come up ' from the country to the city and enter into the competition of life. For the moment we forget how different was the ' coming up ' on horseback, with leisurely conver- sation and greetings to other wayfarers and the stop at Oxford and Windsor and the loiterings on the country road, from being 'conveyed' on a railroad. 'The city' was in a different world from modern London. Realistic criticism overlooks the spiritual effects of environment, — its real, vital effect, — and calls a city a city ; a young man of the sixteenth century the counterpart of his suc- cessor of the twentieth, and writing the same sort of trade then that it is now. The historic sense and the artistic sense are both in abeyance when such assertions 256 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS are taken literally, and we pin our faith to the dictum that human nature is the same radically in all ages. In speaking of Mr. Fleay's method of determining the relative dates of the plays by the percentage of rhymes, of ' end-stopt lines,* ' weak endings,' and the like, Mr. White says, with much good sense : — The student who proposes to enter upon the well-worked field of Shakespearean criticism, or to become his editor, might have his attention directed to certain minute traits of Shakespeare's versification in this second period. But to one who only seeks to enjoy Shakespeare's poetry and his dra- niatic creations and to follow the development of his powers, this would be dry, almost arithmetical, and quite unprofitable work. Nor can these traits of mere external form be relied upon with reasonable confidence. Their value as criterions depends in a great measure upon the theory of probabilities and chances ; and this, although it is a safe guide as to the actions of mankind, cannot be trusted as regards the actions of one man. For in the latter case, there enter into the prob- lem the indeterminable quantities of will, preference, deliber- ate intention, and passing mood. We may establish a for- mula by which we may determine with reasonable certainty how many letters will be dropped into a certain post-oflSce without addresses or unsealed during a year, but we cannot in the same way determine how many in like condition any one man has dropped in or will drop in during the same time, for we can never be acquainted with all the circumstances and impulses which influence his action. Metrical tests, of whatever kind, have a value in the establishment of the order of production of a poet's works ; but they are secondary and accessory and must be considered only in connection with all other evidence, external and internal. The above embodies a sound principle of criticism. The percentages of metrical forms give no absolute proof of the date of a composition, but as far as they indicate qualities of style are entitled to great weight, MIDDLE OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 257 for style changes with practice, and it is very doubtful if a man could write in middle age as he did in his youth without considerable effort to imitate his younger self. The relative number of end-stopt and overflow lines, for instance, affects the intrinsic qualities of style that have to do with the substance of the poem, and in Shakespeare's case afford a pretty sure criterion of the maturity of the author. The relative number of rhymed and unrhymed lines, on the other hand, is a question of literary fashion, which might be dropped and then taken up again. As might be anticipated from his matter-of-fact way of regarding the plays as written solely with a view to the London audience, Mr. White has little patience with the Germans or with aesthetic criticism. Ulrici he calls a ' mad mystic,' which is far enough from being just ; and Gervinus, a ' literary Dogberry, bestowing his tediousness on all the world with a generosity surpass- ing that of his prototype,' which is hardly a less exag- gerated statement. 'In my own edition,' he says, 'I avoided as much as possible the introduction of aesthetic criticism, not because of its difficulty, for it is easy and alluring work. . . . But in my judgment the duty of an editor is performed when he puts his reader as nearly as possible in the same position for the apprehension of his author's meaning that he would have occupied if he had been contemporary with him and had received from him a correct copy of his writings.' An editor who could put his readers in the 'same position for the apprehension of the author's meaning ' as an average Elizabethan contemporary was, would be not only an editor but a commentator of inspired qualities, for he must re-create in us imaginatively the old superstitions, veneration for royalty, credulity about distant countries, and a temper of mind that has passed away entirely. 258 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS Commentators like Coleridge, Charles Lamb, and Ulrici help us to recapture a poetical apprehension of the author's meaning when not the bare content of the words, but the meaning, is felt, but even they cannot make us Elizabethans. Mr. White says further : — Not a little of the Shakespearean criticism of this kind is the mere result of an effort to say something fine about what needs no gilding, no such prism-play of light to enhance or bring out its beauties. I will not except from these remarks much of what Coleridge himself has written about Shake- speare. But the German critics whom he emulated are worse than he. Avoid them. The German pretence that Germans have taught us folk of English blood and speech to understand Shakespeare is the most absurd and arrogant thing that could be set up. Shakespeare owes them nothing, and we have re- ceived from them little more than some maundering mystifi- cations and much ponderous platitude. Like the western di- ver, they go down deeper and stay down longer than other critics, but like him, too, they come up muddier. Above all of them, avoid Ulrici and Gervinus. The above, especially in grouping such different men as Ulrici and Gervinus, is unscholarly and uncritical, and can hardly be pardoned in view of Mr. White's undoubtedly valuable services. His examination of the tragedies minimizes the element of romance and strange- ness and pushes common sense to the bounds of material- lism. In his paper on Hamlet he certainly errs in saying that the Queen ' consented to, or at least winked at her husband's murder by her paramour.' This would change the entire ethical groundwork of the play as it is gener- ally received, and would leave the ghost's injunction, — • nor let thy soul contrive Against thy mother aught, — without any justification. MIDDLE OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 259 He assumes also that Hamlet ' could not have been more than twenty years old ' at the date of his father's murder, and also that he was in college at the time. As the gravedigger says definitely that he was twenty-eight or thirty, we must take it for granted that it is the wreck of early manhood, not of youth, that the drama- tist took as his theme. Horatio came from Wittenberg to the funeral. Had Hamlet been there, they would probably have come together, and certainly Hamlet would have known a fellow countryman in a strange city well enough to make it impossible for him to ex- press the doubt implied in, — Horatio, — or I do forget myself. It is true, Hamlet has expressed a desire to go 'back to Wittenberg,' but that may as readily mean, back after an absence of four years, as back from a short absence. We must take it that Hamlet was at Elsinore at the time of his father's murder. In his paper on Lear Mr. White assumes that the ' Fool and Lear have grown old together.' 'The Fool has the marks of time upon his face as well as upon his mind, though the King is much the older.' The better opinion is that the Fool is a young man, an affectionate feather-head, a contrast to the King in age and physique. These are blemishes of no great importance, compared with Mr. White's appreciation of the plays as artistic creations, as poetic representations of strong men and beautiful women in beautiful places. He pays no atten- tion to the fact that the tragedies show us — what we can never learn from real life — how great men meet great trials and overwhelming misfortune. In his long chapter in Shakespeare^ s Scholar on that powerful play Measure for Measure he takes a much lower view of the character of Isabella than most commentators do. He 260 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS regards her as radically cold-hearted, a professional prude, and a very disagreeable young woman, and it must be allowed that he makes out his case with great acuteness. It is easier to agree with him than with Ger- vinus, who calls her a ' complete human nature,' or with Mrs. Jameson, who gushes over her as an embodiment of angelic purity. The play is, however, such a tremen- dous indictment of sexual impurity as to be beyond the scope of ordinary criticism. ' No one ever saw better than Mr. White how a Shake- spearean play should be acted to bring out the dramatic truth as opposed to the theatrical effects. His sense of / artistic propriety is unerring, and is especially evident in the chapters on * the acting of lago ' and on * Stage Rosalinds.' Of Rosalind he says that she was thoroughly disguised by the trunk hose of the period, and that she should allow no suggestion of her feminine character to escape her when disguised, except when she is alone with Celia, The audience are in the secret, of course, but they do not wish to have Orlando seem like a fool in not dis- covering that Ganymede is a woman. Mr. White says : — The absolute incongruity between the real Rosalind and the seeming Ganymede is the very essence of the comedy of the situation. One example of this, which I have never seen properly emphasized upon the stage : at the end of the first interview with Orlando in the forest, after she has wheedled him into wooing her as Rosalind, she asks him to go with her to her cot. * Ros, Go with me to it, and I '11 show it you : and by the way you shall tell me where in the forest you live. Will you go ? * OrL With all my heart, good youth. ' Ros. Nay, you must call me Rosalind. Come, sister, will you go ? ' MIDDLE OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 261 Now, here most Rosalinds go shyly off with Celia, and leave Orlando to come dangling after them ; hut when I read this passage I see Ganymede jauntily slip his arm into Or- lando'S) and lead him off, laughingly lecturing him ahout the name ; then turn his (or her) head over his (or her) shoulder and say, * come, sister,' — leaving Celia astounded at the boundless * cheek ' of her enamoured cousin. The article shows a very delicate appreciation of the comic spirit. Mr. White's sarcastic wit makes his text- ual notes entertaining, especially the long excursus in which he ridicules Schmidt's Shakespearean Lexicon, In the latter half of the nineteenth century, interest in industrial and scientific questions, fostered by the writ- ings of Darwin, Spencer, and their disciples, brought about, as we said before, a temporary reaction against the romantic spirit. The world was to be interpreted in the terms of every-day phenomena, and the artist was no more than a superior workman. The spiritual was the unknowable, and the mysterious and awful, only something not yet understood. The old metaphysic was discredited, and the new not established. Mr. White's criticism reflects this passing temper of mind, which examines the phenomenon before it and refuses to in- vestigate obscure motives or delicate mental reactions. But as he is an artist himself, — not merely a literary- artist, like Coleridge, but a lover of beautiful things made by man, — he views the plays from an artistic standpoint, in spite of his unconscious deference to the spirit of the age. To him the drama was always an act- able play, and as he knew better than any other writer on the subject how it ought to be acted, his criticism has justness and novelty even when he aims at common sense alone and scorns aesthetics, the soul of art. CHAPTER X THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY AIiGEKNON" CHAKLES SWINBURNB Mr. Swinburne's Study of Shakespeare (1880) is the first detailed criticism of the plays by a poet of high rank (if we except the essays of Thomas Camp- bell) since the lectures of Coleridge seventy years before. Many others have left in short papers or poems testi- mony to their admiration. Many men of poetic sensi- bility, though not poetic craftsmen, as Hazlitt and Lamb, have expressed at length their appreciation of Shake- speare's poetic power, for it is not necessary that a man should possess technical skill in order to comprehend and criticise intelligently the highest expression of human thought and feeling. If he really loves art and has learned something of its historical development, he may be able to justify his love by a reasonable analy- sis and to touch other minds with something of his own enthusiasm. Nevertheless, what one great craftsman has to say of another has a peculiar interest, even when it is as hopelessly inadequate as Tolstoy's views of Shakespeare, for he rarely fails to take at least an independent and personal standpoint. Mr. Swinburne's prose style is a very vicious one, but is full of animation and sonorous clangor. Excessively long and involved sentences containing from one hun- dred to one hundred and fifty words often bury the meaning in a redundancy of adjectives. These sentences are not only long, but they are neatly tied in an orna- mented bow-knot, and if we can find the ends and pull on them they readily straighten out into a line of THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 263 thought, usually a truism which Mr. Swinburne's hatred of the commonplace has led him to adorn with extravagant rhetoric. One reason for his obscurity is that he rarely states his subject or predicate definitely, and we frequently have to wait till the next sentence to be sure of his meaning. If he wishes to speak of Shakespeare, Rabelais, and Cervantes, he calls them the * divine and human trio of humorists whose names make radiant forever the century of their new-born glory.' We know that Shakespeare is one, for he is the subject of the book ; we learn soon that Rabelais is the second, and on the next page the mention of Sancho shows us that Cervantes is the third. We could not have been certain of this till the name is mentioned, for Mr. Swinburne is so whimsical in his judgments that he might have been referring to some obscure writer. If he has occasion to mention Ben Jonson and Fletcher, he calls one the ' author of Volpone^ ' and the other * the creator of ValentinianJ* Mr. Swinburne would say that he writes for intelligent adults only, and that his conundrums are not difficult ones ; but they sometimes call for more ingenuity than a writer should demand of a reader. Lucidity is, after all, an artistic quality of prose. Mr. Swinburne's dislike of personal names is noticeable even when speaking of his contemporaries. His loathing and scorn for the members of the ' New Shakespearean Society,' especially for the estimable and laborious men who count the ten-syllable, eleven- syllable, rhymed and unrhymed, weak-ending and light- ending lines, is unmeasured, and expressed in un- measured terms ; but he mentions no names, and we can never be positive whether he is referring to Mr. Furni- vall or Mr. Fleay or some one else who has excited his wrath. His sense of propriety forbids more than evident allusions, like the initials in eighteenth-century 264 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS pamphlets or Swift's manufactured names in Gulliver*8 Travels, His witty satire in the Appendix — one of the neatest literary skits of the century — is concerned solely with Mr. A., Mr. B., or Mr. C. In fact, he says : — Never once in my life have I had or will I have recourse in self-defence, either to the blackguard's loaded bludgeon of personalities or to the dastard's sheathed dagger of dis- guise. I have reviled no man's person ; I have outraged no man's privacy. It is difficult to say what Mr. Swinburne's idea of a loaded bludgeon of personalities is, for in the same book we find, apropos of the egotistic, aristocratic prig and self-righteous murderer, Marcus Brutus, the fol- lowing ' sheathed dagger ' struck at the back of a man too old to answer and too highly honored by the world to make it worth while for his friends to answer for him: — Whatever manner of man may have been the actual Ro- man, our Shakespearean Brutus is undoubtedly the very no- blest figure of a typical and ideal republican in all the litera- ture of the world. * A democracy such as yours is my ab- horrence,* wrote Landor once to an impudent and foul-mouthed Yankee philosophaster (this word, permissible or not, but certainly convenient, is none of mine, but belongs to the late Mr. Kingsley), who had intruded himself on that great man's privacy in order to have the privilege of afterwards informing the readers of a pitiful pamphlet on England that Landor had * pestered him with Southey,* an impertinence, I may add, which Mr. Landor at once rebuked with the sharp- est contempt and chastised with the haughtiest courtesy. But the old friend and lifelong champion of Kossuth went on to say, his feelings were far different towards a republic.^ ^ By a republic he evidently meant an aristocracy. It is easy to see why many Englishmen of his class were hostile to the Union in our Civil War. THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 265 It is hard to believe that the above refers to the gentle and refined Emerson, and that the * pitiful pam- phlet ' is English Traits^ a book of shrewd and kindly comment and penetrating insight. Literature may be searched in vain for a more misplaced adjective than * foul-mouthed * applied to a man so marked by purity of thought, reticence of expression, and delicacy of feeling. On turning to the passage we find that Emer- son speaks of Landor in terms of high appreciation. The amusing thing in the extract is — or perhaps it is too extraordinary to be amusing — that Mr. Swin- burne is entirely unconscious that Landor's words, ' A democracy such as yours is my abhorrence,* were insuf- ferably insolent, judged by the ordinary standard, of good breeding. To tell a man to his face that he is your abhorrence has at least the merit of courage, but to abuse a man's mother or his country by letter betokens a singular lack of conventional politeness, and may be 'haughty,' but certainly is not 'courtesy.' Both Mr. Landor and Mr. Swinburne display an extraordinary obtuseness, a thickness of perception, due to an absence of humor, rare among Englishmen of culture^ Mr. Swinburne's criticism of the plays is ^^fined to sonorous eulogium] He even calls the Comedy of Er- rors a ' light and lovely work ' — 'on its own ground perfect in its consistency, blameless in composition and coherence.' He apprehends the plays as beautiful things with all the fervor of a poet's fancy, and praises them with more than the enthusiasm of a passionate parti- san. But he cannot point out where the beauty lies. He is like an old-fashioned exhorter, who can arouse careless souls, but knows no theology. He has not sufii- cient grasp of human nature to comprehend the char- acters, nor sufficient knowledge of the world to perceive the inner truth of the action and its correspondence to 266 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS universal law ; but never, since the day of Coleridge, has the poetic beauty of the plays been celebrated in more convincing and enthusiastic terms. Analysis of any sort is foreign to his temperament, but his appre- ciations are instinctively right, even if sometimes ex- pressed in exaggerated language. He combats vigor- ously the notion that Hamlet was irresolute, and we agree with him ; but to the question, ' If not irresolute why did he act irresolutely ? ' he has no answer to give. It never occurs to him that such a question presents itself irresistibly to most readers, or that Hamlet is in any sense a study in human nature. Hamlet is good, he is charming. Hamlet says beautiful things, lago says horrible things ; that is enough. So the fine characters get rhapsodical admiration, the bad ones rhapsodical abuse, and they deserve it. What he says of Hamlet is admirable as far as it goes : — I trust it will be taken as no breach of my past pledge to abstain from all intrusion on the sacred ground of Gigadibs and the Germans, if I venture to indicate a touch inserted by Shakespeare for no other perceptible or conceivable pur- pose than to obviate by anticipation the indomitable and in- eradicable fallacy of criticism which would find the keynote of Hamlet's character in the quality of irresolution. I may observe at once that the misconception involved in such a reading ought to have been evident even without this epi- sodical stroke of illustration. In any case it should be plain to any reader that the signal characteristic of Hamlet's in- most nature is by no means irresolution or hesitation or any form of weakness, but rather the strong conflux of contend- ing forces. That during four whole acts Hamlet cannot or does not make up his mind to any direct and deliberate ac- tion against his uncle is true enough : true also we may say that Hamlet had somewhat more of mind than another man to make up and might properly want more time than another man to do it in ; but not, I venture to say, in spite of Goethe, THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 267 through innate inadequacy to his task and unconquerable weakness of the will ; not, I venture to think, in spite of Hugo, through immedicable scepticism of the spirit and irremediable propensity to nebulous intellectual refinement. Mr. Swinburne proves his point, admitted now by the best critics, by the fact that the changes from the imperfect first quarto to the final form, including the great soliloquy on irresolution, — not in the folio, — do not improve the play for the stage, — already too long, — but do tend to lessen the impression that Hamlet's will-power was impaired,* — in fact, tend to establish the contrary. In speaking of lago, Mr. Swinburne gives countenance to, if he does not originate, a view which is accepted in a more or less modified form by the best modern critics. He credits it to Thomas Car- lyle, who drew the suggestion from the Germans, the objects of Mr. Swinburne's abhorrence. It rests on a supposed analogy between the criminal and the artist: — Malignant as he is, the very subtlest and strongest compo- nent of his complex nature is not even malignity. It is the instinct of what Mr. Carlyle would call an inarticulate poet. In his immortal study on the * affair of the Diamond Neck- lace ' the most profound and potent humorist of the century has unwittingly touched on the mainspring of lago's charac- ter — the *very pulse of the machine.* He describes his Circe de la Mothe-Valois as a practical dramatic poet, or playwright at least, in lieu of play-writer : while indicating why and wherefore, with all her constructive skill and rhythmic art in action, such genius as she has so differs from ^ I once said to a working^an who sat next me and wit- nessed the play for the first time, * Hamlet was a great fool, don't you think ? ' He answered with conviction, * Well, I don't know. He was certainly up against it for good.* This, in the vernacular, is the substance of Mr. Swinburne's criticism. The difficulty is to say just what moral impasse Hamlet is * up against.' 268 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS the genius of Shakespeare that she undeniably could not have written a Hamlet Neither could lago have written an Othello. . . . But what he can do he will : and if it be bet- ter to make a tragedy than to write one, to act a poem than to sing it, we must allow lago a station in the hierarchy of poets very far in advance of his creator. The analogy between the impulse of the poet to embody a story in beautiful form and the impulse of the malevolent criminal to act out his nature, is cer- tainly an inverted one. Carlyle's great story is humor- ous and ironic. His idea that the ' two fixed ideas must meet,' that the French thief and the Italian quack are drawn to each other from a distance by wicked sym- pathy, is wonderfully striking, and is not so far from the reality of things, for the wicked do troop together. To put the creative artistic impulse on the same plane as the greed and lack of human sympathy that actuates the criminal, throws a lurid light on human nature by the power of contrast. But to assume that they are energies of the same character sinks all moral distinc- tions. The deification of the voluptuous and of the phys- ical perfection of the human body, the obliteration of the line between spiritual and sensual beauty, — all rest on this same confusion of thought, which results, when carried to its legitimate end, in shocking and un- natural perversions, as all moral confusion must. The idea that lago is a creative artist in evil, who takes to his work from pure enjoyment in malevolent action and makes a tragedy with the same zest with which Shakespeare writes one, has been sanctioned by some of the best critics of our day. Even Dr. Bradley, after specifying the more obvious springs of lago's action, says : — But lago finally is not simply a man of action, he is an artbt His action is a plot, the intricate plot of a drama, and THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 269 in the conception and execution he experiences the tension and the joy of artistic creation. But has this explanation any foundation in human nature as we see it and know it, and is it not destruct- ive of any just philosophy of good and evil ? Similar views were taken up and widely extended by the Pre- Raphaelites and their French prototypes, and result in no permanent addition to human thought. It certainly does not explain Macbeth, in whom the imaginative power was far more developed than in lago. But in- verted comparisons of this sort taken as humor are wonderfully suggestive; witness Carlyle's Diamond NecTddce^ which is as clearly ironical as De Quincey's Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts is farci- cal, lago as evidently takes pleasure in gratifying his sense of power as does the ordinary scandal-monger in making mischief. But the delight of the artist is in producing something beautiful, — is disinterested and fed from springs of sympathy. The pleasure of the inventor or scientific investigator or of the artisan is akin to this. Their activity energizes in production. But the arch-plotters' activity is dedicated to destruc- tion ; and though there may be a diabolical pleasure in destruction, it is in no way akin to the joy of creation. On any point relating to the author as poet or to the plays as poetry, Mr. Swinburne naturally speaks with an authority greater than that of any one since Cole- ridge. He is familiar with all Elizabethan dramatic lit- erature, — a familiarity of loving appreciation, not of professional study. He loves Othello and Hamlet as if they were personal friends, perhaps far better than he would had they conversed with him in the flesh. On a technical point his judgment is unerring, for he knows good verse — it is the * stuff he has handled * for fifty years. He well says : — 270 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS Now, all tragic poets, I presume from iEschylus, the god- like father of them all, to the last aspirant who may struggle after the traces of his steps, have been poets before they were tragedians ; their lips have had power to sing before their feet had strength to tread the stage, before their hands had skill to paint or carve figures from the life. With Shakespeare it was so as certainly as with Shelley, as evidently as with Hugo. It is in the great comic poets, in Moli^re as in Congreve, our own lesser Moli^re, so far inferior in breadth and depth, in tenderness and in strength, to the 'greatest writer of the great age,' yet so near him in science and in skill, so like him in brilliance and in force — it is in these that we find theatrical instinct twin-born with imaginative impulse, dra- matic power with inventive perception. That is all true enough. Young men can write love lyrics and comedies, but a tragedy is a 'criticism of life ' ; and to criticise life intelligently the artist must have en- dured it, and to criticise it at once nobly and profoundly demands the breadth of perception and power of ex- pression we call genius. DB. DCWDEN Professor Edward Dowden of Trinity College, Dub- lin, is the author of the very useful manual, A Shak- spere Primer^ in which is condensed all the evidence as to the date of appearance of the successive plays, exter- nal and internal. His longer book, Shakspere^ His Mind and ArU is the best piece of sustained liter- ary criticism that appeared in England in the latter part of the nineteenth century. It is very attractively written, and has been very generally read in our country in the third edition, which came out in 1880. The first chapter contains an examination of the ethical tone of the Elizabethan period, with brief references to Spenser and Bacon as exponents of different phases of the spirit THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 271 of their time, and a consideration of Shakespeare as a product of his age, — a dramatic poet moulded by his environment. The governing idea of the book is the de- velopment of the poet in thought and technical skill, as shown by the progressive characters of the plays. One editor says that ' the date of a play is the most trivial question, except questions on Shakespeare's biography, on which time can be wasted.' Considered as a bare fact, this may be true, — the date is of lit- tle importance compared to the play, — but as re- lated to the growth of the most remarkable mind in the annals of time, the date becomes an' important fact in the illustration of psychological law, and Dr. Dowden based an interesting and suggestive book on the subject. The question of the chronological order, first treated competently by Malone, had, when he wrote, been settled as positively as it ever can be, and the labors of Fleay and Furuivall on the successive changes in style and the relative numbers of different verse-forms from Love's Labour s Lost to Winter s Tale had corroborated the evidence from other sources, and the facts were ready for whatever interpretation they would bear. Professor Dowden was familiar with modern Ger- man criticism, and this led him to imitate in some degree the fantastical method of the Germans, and to attribute to Shakespeare a conscious effort after self- culture — a dedication of himself to artistic improve- ment and a conscious training in a poetic curriculum after the manner of Milton. For instance, he says : — When these poems were written [ Venus and Adonis and Lucrece'] Shakspere was cautiously feeling his way (page 46). Setting aside TitiLS Andronicus and Marina^ four drO' 272 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS matic experiments by Shakspere remain, each in a differ- ent manner from the rest (page 49). During the years in which the poet was experimenting on history, comedy, and farce, that about which he was most of all secretly concerned was a tragedy {Romeo and Juliet) (page 50). Shakspere, when he had completed his English historical plays, needed rest for his imagination, and in such a mood, craving refreshment and recreation, he wrote his play of As You Like It (page 67).^ Now, when writing Hamlet, his second tragedy, Shak- spere, we must needs believe, determined that he would break away from the influence of his first tragedy, Romeo and Juliet (page 88). We shall rather think of him [Shakespeare] as a man pos- sessing immense potential strength, but aware of certain weak- nesses of his own nature : resolved therefore to be stern with himself and to master those weaknesses ; resolved to realize all that potential strength which lay within him (page 146). But having in Macbeth studied the ruin of a nature which gave fair promise in men's eyes of greatness and nobility, Shakspere, it may be, proceeded directly to a similar study in Antony (page 248). Shakspere's admiration of the great men of action is im- mense, because he himself was primarily not a man of action. He is stern to all idealists, because he was aware that he might too easily yield himself to the tendencies of an idealist (page 250). Citations similar to the above, implying that Shake- speare consciously trained his powers, and ' meant to teach * us something, might be multiplied, and all imply an erroneous conception. We know that Shakespeare was a poet, and we have a right to infer that in common with all poets he experienced the rapture of creation ^ Is there not more imaginative work in As You Like It than in Hewy Vt THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 273 and tlie supreme content which follows the production of something beautiful. We know, too, from the plays themselves, that as he increased in years he increased in favor with the muses, that when he was young he wrote on young men's subjects in a young man's manner, and that maturity brought strength, and practice, ease. But to say that he consciously went through a poetio education and reserved himself for profound subjects till he thought he was strong enough for them, is mere guesswork. We can see from the volume of the plays that he was very industrious, a wonderful observer, and a great reader, for one cannot acquire a knowledge of classic mythology without reading. As far as we know, he regarded his plays merely as drawing cards for the theatre, and took no more interest in them after they were staged than a brilliant editorial writer does in last year's articles. His plays were apparently written for the company, and without the slightest reference to posterity. In the sonnets he discloses his belief that good poetry is a legacy to the world, but not in the plays. In a word, as far as we know, they were strictly professional work, and so regarded by their author. This may be wrong, but there is no evidence to the contrary, and criticism must be based on what Professor Dowden calls a 'firm grasp of fact,' and not on theories. But the theories are well put and interesting, and even if not accepted in their entirety give us an idea of the differ- ence between the earlier and the later work of a poet. Dr. Dowden's analysis of the characters is lifelike, and embodies the results of the best modern thought on the subject, English and German. He says of Ophe- lia, with truth : — She is a tender, fragile, little soul who might have grown to her slight perfection in some neat garden-plot of life. Ham- let falls into the too frequent error of supposing that a man 274 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS gains rest and composure through the presence of a nature weak, gentle, and clinging ; and that the very incapacity of such a nature to share the troubles of heart and brain which beset one must be a source of refreshment and repose. . . . There is an exchange of little tokens between the lovers, but of the large exchange of soul there is none ; and Hamlet in his bitter mood can truthfully exclaim, * I never gave you aught.' But Hamlet fell in love with her during his father's life, when he felt no need of * rest and composure.' Dr. Dowden points out that, as soon as Ophelia brings out the casket of his gifts, Hamlet perceives that she had come to the palace oratory on purpose, and most likely had been sent. He longs for sincerity, but ' Ophe- lia is joined with the rest of them ; she is an impostor, a spy, incapable of truth, of honor, of love.' In his es- timate of the character of Hamlet Dr. Dowden follows in the main the Goethe-Schlegel-Coleridge theory of exaggerated reflective powers and weak will, but adds : But Hamlet is not merely or chiefly intellectual ; the emo- tional side of his nature is quite as important as the intellec- tual ; his malady is as deep-seated in his sensibilities and in his heart as it is in his brain. If all his feelings translate them- selves into thoughts, it is no less true that all his thoughts are impregnated with feelings. To represent Hamlet as a man of preponderating power of reflection and to disregard his crav- ing, sensitive heart, is to make the whole play incoherent and unintelligible. It is very evident that Hamlet is of an affectionate nature and that he is predisposed to intellectual subtle- ties. But the question is, why does he stand paralyzed before a certain deed the performance of which is im- posed on him by the highest authority and sanctioned by deep-seated instinct of duty ? He is evidently a hu- THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 275 man type. Can we point to any men of his type in the world ? Dr. Dowden does not attempt to explain Ham« let, but he describes him and his actions admirably. The critic closes his paper by saying, ' One thing, however, we do know — that the man who wrote the play of Hamlet had obtained a thorough comprehension of Hamlet's malady.' Is this altogether certain ? May not the artist create something greater than himself, something about which lingers the mystery of life ? It is certainly so with musicians and painters, why not with poets, too ? Do they not sometimes ' build better than they know'? Hamlet did not understand himself. Is it certain that his creator understood him ? Dr. Dowden treats with sense and ability a question which in the latter part of the nineteenth century began to vex the souls of many worthy radicals, that is, did Shakespeare feel the true aristocrat's disdain for the lower orders ? As the point is comparatively mod- ern, the passage is given at length : — Shakspere, a great modem poet (Walt Whitman) has said, * is incarnated, uncompromising feudalism in literature.* Shakspere is surely something more human and permanent than feudalism ; but it is true he is not in the modern sense democratic. That he recognized the manly worth and vigor of the English people is evident. It cannot be denied, how- ever, that when the people are seen in masses in Shakspere's plays, they are nearly always shown as factious, fickle, and irrational. To explain this fact we need not suppose that Shakspere wrote to flatter the prejudice of the jeunesse dorSe of the Elizabethan period. How could Shakspere represent the people otherwise? In the Tudor period the people had not yet emerged. The people, like Milton's half- created animals, is still pawing to get free its hinder parts from the mire. The mediaeval attempts to resist oppression, the risings of peasants or of citizens, inaugurated commonly 276 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS by the murder of a lord or of a bishop, were for the most part desperate attempts, rash and dangerous, sustained by- no sense of adequate moral or material power. It is only after such an immense achievement as that of 1784, such a proof of power as the French Revolution afforded, that moral dignity, the spirit of self-control and self-denial, the heroic devotion of masses of men to ideas and not merely interests, could begin to manifest themselves. Shakspere studied and represented in his art the world which lay before him. If he prophesied the future, it was not in the ordinary manner of prophets, but only by completely embodying the present, in which the future was contained. Dr. Dowden's book is full of contagious enthusiasm for the plays, and is one of the best books, if not the best, a young student can read. TOLSTOY There had been no systematic belittling of Shake- speare since Voltaire's diatribe in the eighteenth cen- tury till the Russian, Count Tolstoy, published a. Critical Essay on Shakespeare in 1901, which was prompted by an article on the poet's attitude towards the work- ing classes by Mr. Ernest Crosby of New York. Any- thing that comes from the author of Anna Karenina and War and Peace is entitled to consideration, even though it proves that a great artist may be entirely lacking in critical faculty. He declares that he has ' read Shakespeare in every possible form ; in Russian, in English, in German, and in Schlegel's translation,' and 'invariably underwent the same feelings: repul- sion, weariness, and bewilderment.' ' At the age of seventy-five, being desirous once more to test myself,* he says, ' I have again read the whole of Shakespeare and have felt with even greater force the same feelings — this time, however, not of bewilderment but of firm THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 277 indubitable conviction that the unquestionable glory of a great genius which Shakespeare enjoys is a great evil, as is every untruth.' He takes King Lear as the play which is regarded as the finest production of the poet, and rehearses the plot in realistic language. Of course it is impossible to para- phrase any romantic tale in this manner without making it seem absurd; the sublime is easily made ridiculous by bad acting or a change of words. He says: — Any man not under (hypnotic suggestion must be con- vinced that it is a very bad, carelessly composed production, which, if it could have been of interest to the public at a certain time, cannot evoke among us anything but aversion and weariness. Every reader of our time who is free from the influence of suggestion will also receive exactly the same / impression from all the other extolled dramas of Shakespeare, not to mention the senseless dramatized tales, — Pericles, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, Cymbeline, and Troilus and Cressida, Classing the above plays together is something that Voltaire in his most venomous mood would never have done^^ because he would have known that it would destroy his claim, not only to critical acumen, but to the simplest comprehension of dramatic arL^To attribute the admiration of Shakespeare to * suggestion ' is an extraordinary thing. Undoubtedly there have been { such things as popular delusions, when the judgment of numbers of people is in abeyance, as in the Children's Crusade or the excitement over witchcraft in the sev- enteenth century, but the very essence of such a delu- sion is that it is temporary and followed by a reaction. /;^he world is not always crazy. . A delusion of all the world for three centuries is impossiblcy Count Tol- 278 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS stoy uses scientific terms, as 'development* and 'germ,' in War and Peace, in the same uncomprehending manner. The critic seems destitute of historic knowledge, for he says : — It often happens that even during these ohviously inten- tional efforts after effect, as, for instance, the dragging out by the- legs of half a dozen ijorpses, with which all Shake- speare's tragedies terminateUnstead of feeling fear and pity one is tempted rather to laugh.y^ The most elementary knowledge of the Elizabethan stage would inform him that after a fight, in the ab- sence of curtain, it was necessary to ' drag off the body/ He writes : If he means by that that they sometimes speak blank verse, he is correct, for the plays are poetry, and the Greeks discovered long ago that rhythmical language conveyed emotion as does no other form. The critic says that the characters alV' suffer from a common intemperance of language.' 'They speak all alike. Lear raves exactly as does Edgar when feigning madness. Both Kent and the fool speak alike.^> There must be a mistranslation tere, unless Russians jl use the same word for 'alike' and 'different.' But the 1 1 critic goes on to astonish us still further when he says I that/in Shakespeare there is no expression of character^* i and tnktc ^is characters are mostly depicted, not by the dramatic inethod, which consists in making each person speak with his own diction, but in the epic niethod of one person describing the features of another,'/^ state- \ THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 279 ment directly contrary to the fact, as any one who needs to be convinced can easily assure himself by reading the first act of Hamlet or Macbeth, The critic, however, is consistent ; for he says that the originals, the old play of XeiV, the Hystorie of Hamhlet^ and the story of the Moot and the Wicked Ensign^ which no one reads by choice, are more interesting, more natural, than the plays founded on them. After this we are not surprised to hear that * Emilia has not even the slightest sem- \ blance to a real character.' In fact, we are rudderless ^ in a sea of unfounded assertion and impossible explana- tions. Falstaff is, however, too much for him, and is,\ he declares, ^perhaps the only natural and typical char- J acter depicted by Shakespeare!/' Hamlet is too much^ for him in another way; for he declares, 'There is no possibility of finding any explanation whatever of Hamlet's actions or words, and therefore no possibil- ity of attributing any character to him.' Some persons might reasonably think that 'there is no possibility of finding any explanation whatever ' of Count Tolstoy's words. It is inexplicable that a writer of novels should not perceive the naturalness of the conversation in Shake- speare's dramas and the individual character of their utterances, extending even to little peculiarities of man- ner and tricks of expression. Macbeth never swears nor puns. Hamlet has an odd way of reduplicating his words, and there is a soldier-like heartiness in Othello's speeches before he is overcome by mental distress, and at all times a poetic coloring quite different from that with which Macbeth, Hamlet, and Lear invest their thoughts. The speeches come from a mental point of view, and are the result of a mental operation sometimes very difficult to follow. Like real people the characters sometimes say unexpected things, which strike us as 280 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS inconsequent till we know the persons better. The con- versation, too, is frequently absolutely natural: — Ham. Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me. Hold you the watch to-night ? Mar. Ber. We do, my lord. Ham. Arm'd, say you ? Mar. Ber. Arm'd, my lord. Ham. From top to toe? Mar. Ber. My lord, from head to foot Ham. Then saw you not his face ? Hot. Oh yes, my lord, he wore his beaver up. Hamlet asks a few more eager questions about the ap- pearance of the ghost, and then follows this dialogue : Ham. I would I had been there. Hor. It would have much amazed you. Ham. Very like, very like. Stay'd it long ? Is there any other person in the plays who would have interjected that singular remark, 'Very like, very like ' ? Imagine Macbeth using the words in similar cir- cumstances ! It is out of the question. But from Ham- let they seem so appropriate that we hardly notice their unique oddity. Not only is the conversation of Shakespeare's char- acters absolutely natural and the outcome of their personalities, but the speakers rarely address the audi- ence, or say anything for the sake of effect. They talk to each other. Even their soliloquies are self -commun- ings, — mental disclosures, — not addresses to the audi- ence. But when we consider such dialogue as the scene between Brutus and Cassius (^Julius CcBsar) or the angry parle between Kent and Lear, where the words come hot from the heart, and especially when we notice the contrast between Kent's defiance of his liege and his farewell : — THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 281 Thus Kent, O princes, bids you all adieu ; He '11 shape his old course in a country new, — which is plainly addressed to the audience, we cannot understand how any novelist could fail to mark that the speeches of Shakespeare's characters are essentially dramatic and individual. Indeed, this was the point remarked on by the earliest and most superficial criti- cism. Count Tolstoy attributes the reputation for depicting character which Shakespeare possesses to a little matter of technical skill easily acquired by an intelligent play- wright, in which several of his contemporaries equaled him. However unnatural the positions may be in which he places his characters, however improper to them the language which he makes them speak, however featureless they are, the very play of emotion, its increase and alteration, and the combina- tion of many contrary feelings, as expressed correctly and powerfully in some of Shakespeare's scenes and in the play of good actors, evokes, even if only for a time, sympathy with the persons represented. Shakespeare, himself an actor and an intelligent man, knew how to express by the means not only of speech but of exclamation, gesture, and the repetition of words, states of mind and developments or changes of feel- ing taking place in persons represented. So that in many in- stances Shakespeare's characters, instead of speaking, merely make an exclamation or weep, or in the middle of a mono- logue, by means of gestures demonstrate the pain of their position (just as Lear asks somebody to unbutton him) or in moments of great agitation, repeat a question several times or several times demand the repetition of a word which has particularly struck them, as do Othello, Macduff, Cleopatra, and others. Such clever methods of expressing the develop- ment of feeling, giving good actors the possibility of demon- strating their powers, were, and are, often mistaken by many 282 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS "^critics for the expression of character. But however strongly the play of feeling may be expressed in one scene, a single scene cannot give the character of a jBgure when this figure, after a correct exclamation or gesture, begins in a language not its own, at the author's arbitrary will, to volubly utter words which are neither necessary nor in harmony with its character. Had the critic cited passages in support of his posi- tion, we might have been able to tell what he means. He seems to be exalting technical skill in writing emotional scenes for the actors, but says that Shakespeare fol- lowed them by unnatural language. The only place that occurs to us where the criticism applies, is Kent's rhymed soliloquy after his quarrel with Lear just re- ferred to. The writing of passionate or emotional scenes is, of course, great art. The critic also says that Shakespeare is destitute of the ' sense of measure,' meaning apparently reserve or moderation. In Shakespeare everything is exaggerated ; the actions are exaggerated, so are their consequences ; the speeches of the characters are exaggerated, and therefore at every step the possibility of artistic impression is interfered with. Whatever people may say, however they may be enraptured by Shake- speare's works, whatever merits they may attribute to them, it is perfectly certain that he was not an artist, and that his works are not artistic productions. Without the sense of measure there never was nor can be an artist, as without the feeling of rhythm there cannot be a musician. Shakespeare might have been whatever you like, but he was not an artist. Shakespeare's tragedies, except Hamlet^ deal with the explosive expression of violent emotions by powerful natures. They are destitute of the restrained dignity of classic art. This is because he was a Teuton expressing THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 283 in the Teutonic manner the vigorous Teutonic nature, which 'gives itself away' in moments of great ex- citement. There are passages in the tragedies which Pericles or Virgil would have considered extravagant, and there are passages which even we, to the manner born, would prefer to have toned down nearer to the dignity of Corneille. There is one kind of artistic power in the suggestion of emotion restrained by a sense of measure, and another kind in the stormy out- bursts of Lear or Othello. It is singular that the race whose everyday expression is grave and unemphatic should originate the violent method of dramatic ex- pression, and the lively, gesticulating Latin people should represent the distress of great natures with the decorum and reserve of the high Roman fashion. But to admit that there are places where Shakespeare's re- dundant excitement might be tempered, and the effect be as powerful and more agreeable, does not concede that the Teutonic way of telling a story is radically bad art compared to the Greek way. At least the former does not degenerate into a stiff formalism, in its worst. In Titus Andronicus, or the tragedies of Webster, it is repulsive, but not tiresome. Count Tolstoy declares : — Until the end of the eighteenth century Shakespeare not only failed to gain any special fame in England but was valued less than his contemporary dramatists, Ben Jonson, Fletcher, Beaumont, and others. [Who were the others, besides Massinger ?] His fame originated in Germany and thence was transferred to England. That this is historically incorrect must be evident to any one with even a superficial knowledge of literary history. Shakespeare's reputation has gone through phases of interpretation, but not of magnitude, since 284 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS his death in the seventeenth century. It was only dur- ing a short period in the seventeenth century that other Elizabethan playwrights were valued more than he, and then only by playgoers, not by the literary pub- lic. German criticism of the early nineteenth cen- tury was no doubt gratifying to Englishmen, but the criticism of Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and De Quincey had far more to do with establishing a philosophical basis for the dramatist's fame than anything Goethe, Lessing, Schlegel, and Schiller could say. In fact there has always been a disposition to laugh at German criti- cism, except among the best critics, and even they re- ject much of the commentary of continental scholars. The idea that a nation waits till foreigners discover their national poet and then sustains the foreign verdict, if ever true, is certainly not so in the case of WiUiam Shakespeare. The critic finds fault with the Shakespearean tragedy because his plays do not embody a religious motif. Originally dramatic art and government were closely connected with religion. Time has shown clearly that the government and religion should not be in the hands of the same persons, and large provinces of life have developed in the Christian era and become the proper subject of dramatic art. Shakespeare might have made a powerful play turning on religious martyrdom. Why he did not, we cannot tell ; perhaps the censor who at one time would not allow the name of God to be spoken on the stage would not license anything that might stir up religious animosity, perhaps Shakespeare regarded all religious disputes as sectarian. When he adapted King John he struck out everything appealing to reli- gious prejudice, as well as the vulgar matter satirizing the Catholics. But his plays represent the world as it is, and are therefore essentially moral. They show the THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 285 evil which results from violation of the primitive ties of loyalty, love, friendship, or family affection. They attribute a holy and sacred nature to chastity and honor. They teach as life teaches, for they select from life what is most impressive of reality, and that is all the secular drama can do. Count Tolstoy affirms, * That man alone can write a drama who has something to say to men, and something which is of the greatest import- ance to them; about man's relation to God, to the Universe, to the All, the Eternal, the Infinite.' That might be true of the twelfth century, but the Eliza- bethan drama has to do with man's relation to men. If this is misrepresented, secular art may be immoral ; if it is represented with truth and referred to the proper principles, the drama is moral and cannot be irreligious. A novel may turn on religious emotion, as Robert Elsmere does, but Anna Karenina is a bet- ter moral lesson than Robert Elsmere^ and it is as de- void of the religious element as Macbeth or Lear, The day of the Passion Play or the liturgical play has long passed, and had passed when Shakespeare wrote. Count Tolstoy's critique is printed as a preface to an article on * Shakespeare's Attitude towards the Work- ing Classes ' by Mr. Ernest Crosby, though the latter occupies less than one third of the book; and it is quite evident that the animus of Tolstoy's animad- versions comes from a feeling that Shakespeare was aristocratic in his sympathies and not disposed to do justice to laboring men, whose cause the Russian writer has so passionately espoused. There is no good reason for this. Shakespeare shows us a proud aristocrat like Coriolanus vituperating the plebs in contemptuous terms. This is true history, and true to the character of the Roman, and true to Shakespeare's artistic method as a satirist. He invariably represents a street mob as 286 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS irrational and fickle, whether composed of Romans or Englishmen. In his representation he does Jack Cade injustice, but he follows the only historical record ac- cessible to him. A mob was to him something disor- ganized, dangerous, and unintelligent ; he did not un- derstand that civil liberty and equal participation in the rights of a citizen were to be reached only through violent and irregular effort. In manhood suffrage and the rule of the majority he probably had no faith what- soever, and he was perfectly right, for they are destruct- ive till the principle of representative government has been firmly established and the power of the executive over taxation and the standing army limited. This was not done till forty years after his death, and he could not foresee that a picked body of Englishmen, in whom the traditions of the original rights of the Saxon free- men still survived, would isolate themselves in a dis- tant wilderness and prove that a government by free- men was still possible, still less that it would be found after two centuries that the privileges of the freemen might safely be extended to the entire body of resi- dents. It is certainly not to be wondered at that Shake- speare should know nothing of the possibilities of de- mocracy before the experiment was made. One might as well expect him to anticipate the principles of evo- lution in the physical world. The ordered society of Shakespeare's day probably seemed to him the necessary safeguard of law and civil peace. Apparently, it made a strong appeal to his imagi- nation as an historic organism, if we may judge from the force and eloquence with which the wise Ulysses describes the state, or Archbishop Chichel^ compares the civil order to the bees, though it is dangerous to ascribe to the dramatist the personal sentiments of any of his characters. Where a representative of the lower THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 287 orders is brought on the stage he is represented as simple, but loyal and honest and industrious. As Dr. Bradley says : ' He has no respect for the plainer and simpler kind of people as politicians, but a great re- spect and regard for their hearts.' He satirizes the mob in Coriolanus, and he makes good-natured fun of the artisans' attempts at theatricals in Midsummer . JMghfs Dream, but he never satirizes plain people as I Chaucer does in the Canterbury Tales, where the Wife ' of Bath (Dame Quickly is refined compared to her), the Miller, the Reve, and the Pardoner are all hope- lessly vulgar. A very neat interpretation of The Tem^ pest, where Caliban represents the laborer ; Stephano and Trinculo, labor-leaders ; and Prospero, capital, was made some years ago, and, though confessedly fanciful, is as good an argument as can be brought to prove that Shakespeare felt the rich man's disdain of the poor. Shakespeare's first play was a satire on enthusi- astically intellectual young men. Vanity and pretense in the rich he ridicules scathingly : Slender and Shal- low, country gentlemen ; Osric, the courtier who ' has much land and fertile ' (there is something suggesting personal bitterness on the author's part in the disdain Hamlet feels for him) ; Polonius, the type of the worldly-wise conventional old man ; and Sir Andrew Aguecheek, a knight, but addle-pated, and many others, are rich. He arraigns kings and nobles, and if they cannot *raake good,' they are rebuked with sternest justice. Nowhere does he favor the rich or well-born as such ; he is the advocate for humanity. Tolstoy's love for humanity is no justification for hostility to Shakespeare. There is one quality of Shakespeare's lines which is the first that appeals to the reader, and that is the music and the eloquence and pith of his phrases. Many 288 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS of his sentences have the folk quality of proverbs, and the wit shines through the dullest translation. As for his music, the foreigner ought to be warmed and touched by it. Every American boy or girl of sensibility per- ceives the music in La Fontaine or Virgil as soon as one hundred lines are painfully construed. How can any one who is not tone-deaf miss the melody of Mac- beth's Duncan is in his grave ; After life's fitful fever he sleeps well, or of the songs in ^5 You Like It, especially of Iris's, There is mirth in heaven When earthly things made even Atone together, or of hundreds of other well-known lines ? Count Tolstoy says he has read Shakespeare in English, otherwise his lack of reference to one of the most noticeable qualities of the lines might be ex- plained by saying that the music was lost in the trans- lation as the music of the Iliad is lost in Pope's rhymed version. Count Tolstoy's love for humanity is a noble passion, but it blinds his reason. If the judgment of all educated Russians who love their fellow men is equally perverse, what hope is there for the elevation \J of his countrymen ? CHAPTER XI THE CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY BAKBETT WEMDEIiIi Professor Wendell's William Shahspere follows the same general outline as Dowden's Shakspere, his Mind and ^r^,^ — that is, it regards the plays prima- rily as events in the development of the artistic powers of the poet. Such a method was not possible till the chronology of the plays had been established and the plays themselves had been thoroughly studied. Profes- sor Wendell, however, owes very little to his predecessor, Dr. Dowden, who connects the development shown in the plays with growth in the author's power due to life experiences of which we have no certain knowledge, for he regards the plays simply as marking successive dates in the normal growth of natural artistic power in the period from young manhood to maturity. If the growing seriousness they evince is due to anything more than the natural replacement of the joyous energy of youth by the thoughtful earnestness of middle life, we have no evidence of such a cause, nor can we safely deduce it from the apparent self-confessions of the sonnets. Professor Wendell's book borrows no interest from plausible conjecture about psychological states induced by the treachery of friend or mistress or personal knowledge of the evil of the world bitten in by disappointment and disillusion. Taking the plays as * Professors Dowden and Wendell follow the spelling Shak- spere. The form has not commended itself, and, except when referring to their books, I use the ancient spelling Shakespeare, 290 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS we have them and the chronological order as it is established, he inquires what sort of a series do they make, what is the nature of the progression from Love's Labour 's Lost to The Tempest f Is it uniform, or are there lapses ? What can we learn about the ar- tistic mind by examining the succession broadly and in detail? Professor Wendell is entirely free from several erroneous conceptions which have vitiated Shakespear- ean criticism from Dr. Johnson down. The first is that the artist means to teach a moral lesson, and the sec- ond, that the artist aims consciously at the production of something the form of which is worked out in his own mind beforehand. He holds that the act of poetic creation is largely spontaneous and the result of ' sub- conscious cerebration,' that the character which is em- bodied in a portrait or a drama forms itself as the artist thinks over it, and may fairly be said to have an independent life and to come into being without, even against, the artist's volition. This, of course, is true only of the highest type of artist. We call them crea- tive, precisely because they do not create. Thus Pro- fessor Wendell says : — The Merchant of Venice is full of implicit wisdom and beauty and significance. That Shakspere realized all this, however, does not follow. Critics who declare a great artist fully conscious of whatever his work implies are generally those who least know how works of art are made. One thing, however, is certain. The nearer any work of art approaches, not the details, but the proportions of actual life, the nearer the imagination of its maker approaches in its scheme the divine imagination which has made our infinitely mysterious world, the more endlessly suggestive that work of art must always be. To the artist, however, all this meaning is often as strange as to one who meets for the first time the CLOSE O^ THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 291 work in which it lies implied. What the artist knows is often no more than a blind conviction that thus and not otherwise the mood which possesses him must be expressed. Those who find in the great artists consciously dogmatic philosophers are generally those who are the least artists themselves. It is prudent to warn whoever has not carefully watched the work of artists that no valid conclusion concerning their actual lives and characters can be drawn from even their most sincere artistic achievements. We may still be sure that even deliberate, conscious, funda- mentally historic art can express nothing beyond what the artist has known. His knowledge may come from his own experience, or from the experience of others whom he has watched ; or from experiences recorded in history or in lit- erature ; or even from the vividly imagined experiences of creatures whom he himself has invented. Actually or sympa- thetically, however, he must somehow have known the moods which he expresses. In the sense then that what any artist expresses must somehow have formed a part of his mental life, all art may be called self-revealing, autobiographic. The above extracts indicate a theory of artistic crea- tion which will enable the critic to avoid the mistakes of those who believe in outside divine inspiration, or think that artistic activity is precisely similar to the ordi- nary mental processes of logical construction. The last paragraph might have been supplemented by adding as a source of knowledge the great hinterland of race experience, a source from which we all draw profound emotional susceptibilities, which only the artist can make articulate. Shakespeare might have learned from books or from observation how a man like Othello would have felt when he believed his wife untrue, but he could not have felt the depth of the outrage, the sense of wrong which death only could expiate ; he never could have written ' It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul. Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars,* had he not come 292 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS from a race to which the purity of the wife was an ancestral religion. He could have learned that a man like Hamlet would sport with his mental anguish and hide it with trifling jests and an antic disposition, but how did he know that the knowledge of his mother's infidelity would cause him such deep-seated distress ? For thousands of years his Germanic forefathers had held the matron sacred, the adulteress punishable by death, and bastard a word of shame. The artist is a I man in whom ancestral sensibilities and prejudice and appetites and passions, though subconscious, realize themselves promptly, and who has the gift to embody \them so that they appeal to us and we respond. The Japanese artist is different from the Germanic artist because there come to the surface in him a different set of ancestral experiences, as the samurai differs from the knight. Professor Wendell's theory of artistic action gives a far more rational explanation of William Shakespeare and his relation to the plays than those of his predecessors. After a short introduction, the book gives a chapter to the * Facts of Shakspere's Life' and another to ' The Theatre until 1587.' The poems are then consid- ered. Here, as throughout the book, conjecture is not indulged in. Facts are given, and only such deductions as may fairly be said to flow from the facts. That Elizabethan audiences were very fond of ingenious constructions, of puns, figurative twists of meaning, and the like, as the author contends, is quite evident, as much so from their serious as from their light compo- sitions. Professor Wendell also points out, from an ex- amination of Marlowe's Hero and Leander and Shake- speare's poems, that Shakespeare's language is the more concrete and his figures less conventional. The con- crete and even homely nature of Shakespeare's words CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 293 had been noticed before, but never so convincingly illus- trated. The author says that it arises from an * instinct- ive habit of mind in which the natural alliance of words and concepts was uniquely close.' It is one of the ways in which a man's mental habit and vision influence his expression and make his talk interesting. It gives Shakespeare's style that most precious quality, life. It is illustrated when he changes Salisbury's speech in the original of Henry VI, — See how the pangs of death do gripe his heart, — - to See how the pangs of death do make him grin, Shakespeare changed in the course of his life his verse-form and his habitual sentence construction, but this matter of using concrete figures was characteristic of him from youth to middle age. In Xoue's Labour '8 Lost he wrote, — Is not love a Hercules Still climbing trees in the Hesperides, and This fellow picks up wit as pigeons, pease. And he makes Prospero, in his farewell, speak of — The green sour ringlets . . . Whereof the ewe not bites, and the elves Whose pastime Is to make midnight mushrooms. From the beginning he possessed this concreteness of phrase, the vividness which distinguished his style from any other. Professor Wendell takes up the plays in succession, giving in each case an epitome of the known facts and 294 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS acute and intelligent deductions. For the first time the scientific method is combined with literary appreciation and imaginative insight. The central theme being the development of the dramatist as artist, the relation of the action of the plays to a sane philosophy of life or any analysis of the great tragic heroes would be out of place; but the artistic character of each play — quite as important and interesting a consideration — receives adequate treatment. The facts are interpreted as land- marks in the march of a great artistic soul, an inter- preter of life and nature, and not left us, as on the pages of Fleay or Furnivall, as mere records without signifi- cance. He points out that Shakespeare's life covered the rise, culmination, and decline of Elizabethan dramatic production ; for Marlowe, the pioneer, and he were born the same year, and Beaumont, who marks the beginning of the decadence, died just before the great master ; and that in his early work are found traces of archaic theatri- cal conventions. Of his versatility he says : — When we consider Shakspere's experiments, however, rang- ing over the first six years of his professional life, we are presently impressed by the fact that no two of them are alike. One is a tragedy of blood, one is a chronicle history, one is a fantastic comedy after the manner of Lyly, one is something resembling a pseudo-classical comedy, one is a kind of romantic comedy which later Shakspere made peculiarly his own, one is a fashionable erotic poem. He brings out the interesting point that the poet made his romantic plots plausible by ' adopting and de- veloping for his purposes the conventional device of the induction,' that is, by presenting at first something quite possible in real life and, as soon as we have become in- terested in the characters, passing on to the strange and fanciful part of the story. Thus the Merchant of Venice CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 295 opens with a scene in which a merchant, embarrassed by too many speculative ventures, is worried over the future, and his friend tries to cheer him. Then we pass on to the romantic Belmont, and even here Portia and Nerissa discuss the suitors in womanly fashion before the absurd condition of the choice of the caskets is alluded to. The same feature is observable in Midsummer Nighfs Dream and in As You Like It^ but it is not quite clear whether all this is not the result of sound art rather than a reminiscence of the earlier induction. Macbeth at least opens with a supernatural scene, which has much the effect of a musical overture. Professor Wendell takes the ground that 'Elizabe- than England was childishly brutal,' and that the temper of the age was such that Shylock was simply an ob- ject of aversion and contempt to the audience. Shake- speare's genius, he says, made the Jew 'grandly hu- man,' and to our broader sympathies he is a tragic figure, though originally intended as a comic or at least a re- pulsive one. This may be true, but a study of all the stage Jews of the period would be necessary to prove it. It would seem at first glance almost impossible that the old man's inflexibility and pride of race would not have roused the admiration of some of the audience, though in the Middle Ages the Jew was undoubtedly the object of a fierce race hatred . If this point is not al- together proved, we cannot follow Professor Wendell when he says, ' Only when we understand that King" Lear, for all his marvellous pathos, was meant, in scene after scene, to impress the audience as comic, can we begin to understand the theatrical intention of Shak- spere's tragedy.' Edgar's assumed madness and the half- intelligible absurdities of the loving fool might seem lu- dicrous to an Elizabethan audience of the lower class, but reverence for a king and respect for an old man 296 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS and a conviction of the justice of parental authority were natural then, and must have prevented Lear from seem- ing comic even to the most thoughtless. The antics of the others only serve to bring out his dignity more forci- bly, and the reality of his suffering must havebeen as evi- dent to a seventeenth-century audience as it is to us. Throughout the book Professor Wendell carries the idea that the reality and vividness of the characters constitute the great charm of the plays. They are so real that they make us accept without question the ro- mantic situations in which they are placed and the im- possible or fanciful stories in which they are the actors. Of ^s You Like It he says : — When people live for us as Rosalind lives and Celia and Orlando and the Duke and Jaques and Touchstone and Audrey, we accept them as facts ; and with them we accept whatever else their existence involves. What makes As You Like It live, then, is the spontaneous ease with which Shak- spere's creative imagination translated conventional types into living individuals. This is undoubtedly true. We are apt to think that the attraction of the plays is due to the poetry, the wit, or the phrases of supreme and final excellence; but when we reflect we will conclude that it is mainly due to the fact that these things are said by interesting in- dividuals. There is plenty of wit in Sheridan's comedies, but we rarely re-read them because the speakers are theatrical puppets, not human beings. We find, too, that we are drawn to those of our acquaintances who take their own views and express them in their own language, rather than to those who may be more intel- ligent or learned but are immersed in an intellectual reticence which prevents them from disclosing their na- tures. We take great pleasure sometimes in the company CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 297 of persons, rather stupid perhaps, but to whom the popu- lar expression, ' You always know where to find them,' is naturally applied. Shakespeare's characters are con- sistent, sometimes conventional like Osric, sometimes complex like Hamlet, but always intelligible sources of speech and action, whether in an enchanted island or in a London tavern, and we as human beings are drawn to them. On reading Every Man in his Humour or King or no King^ we find no such attraction, though we do find a neatly constructed and well-told story. Professor Wendell is inclined to give Shakespeare little credit for inventive or original constructive power. There is truth in this, too. He declares, ' Among men- dacious proverbs few are so completely false as that which declares Shakespeare never to repeat ; it were truer to say that he rarely did much else if he could help it.' But this proverb — if there be such a one — refers to repetition of phraseology, not to repetition of situation. Disguise and mistakes of identity are familiar devices of all playwrights, and you cannot have a modern play without a * love interest.' The events of life are not endless, though they may be endlessly combined and colored. But the number of individuals is endless, and Shakespeare never repeats a character, though some of the earlier ones may be suggestions of later ones. Biron is more than a water-color of Benedick, and each of Shakespeare's women is herself alone. The saying is true if we apply it to form. Consider Por- tia addressing the Jew on mercy, and Isabella address- ing Angelo on the same theme. Hamlet and Claudio both speak of death and the unknown hereafter, with- out the repetition of a single figure or turn of phrase. The subject treated in Lucrece (lines ?88 to 700) is the subject of Sonnet 129. The parallelism ends with the subject. Shakespeare repeated the consideration 298 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS of certain phases of human nature, but always from a different standpoint. Professor Wendell says that Shakespeare was 'economical of invention,' and that he is 'remarkable among dramatists for persistent repetition of whatever had once proved dramatically effective.' This certainly applies to the comedies only, for the four great tragedies show no ' economy of in- vention,' but are independently developed each from a mere germ of legend or story. We cannot follow Professor Wendell in his theory that ' the character of Cressida has an obvious likeness to that of Cleopatra,' unless we class all light-o'-loves together ; and still less when he says that ' the charac- ter of Cressida has an equal and less generally recog- nized likeness to that of Desdemona.' These two are antipodal because they differ toto ccelo in the most im- portant part of character, the instinctive conception of love. The one is a fascinating wanton, the other a wife. As the author says, ' both are untruthful ' ; but Cressida's untruthfulness is radical, whereas Desde- mona prevaricates about the handkerchief because she is frightened by her husband. There are very few women, or men either, who would dare to tell an un- welcome truth to Othello when he was angry. It was not necessary for Professor Wendell to sustain his theory that at one period of his life Shakespeare was deeply impressed by the fact that love, the source of happiness, might also be the cause of misery and ruin, that good and evil are bound up in it as they are in the constitution of the world, by assuming that at one time Shakespeare regarded all women as untruthful, or at least unreliable. Professor Wendell concludes that — Shakspere's artistic development from beginning to end was perfectly normal . . . that his two most marked traits CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 299 as an artist are both unmistakable and persistent ; from be- ginning to end he displayed a habit of mind which made less distinction than is generally conceivable between words and concepts for which they stand ; and his imaginative power, in many aspects unlimited, always exerted itself chiefly in mat- ters of detail — most of all in the creation of uniquely indi- vidual characters. In mere invention, in what is vulgarly called originality and what really means instinctive straying from fact, he was weaker than hundreds of lesser men. When the term invention is limited in this way all will agree with him. It is not easy to see precisely what he means by 'less distinction than is usual be- tween words and concepts.' If he means a rapid assim- ilation of a word in all its associations, that which is ordinarily called language power or perception of val- ues, he is undoubtedly right ; and, as language is the criterion of the difference between man and brute, he gives Shakespeare preeminence in the highest human attribute. He might have noticed also his perception of the musical values of words, and noted how this de- veloped in the poet. His book is full of thought, and provocative of thought in the reader. It is at once scholarly and marked by common sense, and if it invites criticism it is because it is not a repetition of conventional views. MR. FREDERICK Q. FLEAT Historical research was prosecuted in the latter part of the nineteenth century with great pertinacity, prin- cipally by the members of the New Shakespearean Soci- ety. Halliwell-Phillipps, in Outlines of a Life of Shake- speare^ published many documents, some of which bear remotely on the subject. Mr. Fleay, in his Life and Work of Shakespeare (1886), gathered every scrap of information concerning theatrical matters in the period 300 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS that could be gleaned. In his Manual he presented the results of tabulation of the various forms of verse in the plays of Shakespeare and others. His industry was phe- nomenal. For example, on page 154 of his Shahespeare Manual he gives a list of thirty-two plays by Fletcher and Massinger, in which he has counted the number of double-ending lines, rhyming lines. Alexandrines, and short lines, and computed the averages of each. On pages 135 and 136 he gives a complete metrical analysis of forty-four plays, including all of Shakespeare's, the doubtful plays, and the first sketches in early quartos. These are tabulated under fifteen heads. It is hardly possible to appreciate the plodding labor necessary to the production of these comparative tables, which re- present but a small fraction of his work. He upholds frankly the rigid scientific method, and says : ' The great need for any critic who attempts to use these tests' (the weak-ending test, the pause-test, etc., which imply some aesthetic sense), ' is to have had a thorough train- ing in the natural sciences, especially in Mineralogy, classificatory Botany, and above all in chemical analy- sis.^ As Touchstone says, ' Thus men may grow wiser every day ; it is the first time that ever I heard break- ing of ribs was sport for ladies.' Had Mr. Fleay's training in natural sciences been more thorough, he would have learned that tabulation of observations is one thing and drawing general con- clusions another, depending on different faculties. He would have refrained from hasty and fanciful generali- zations both from historical facts and from metrical tables, or at least have been more cautious in his hypo- theses. To assert that Twelfth Night shows clear evi- dence of having been written in two parts at different times, and dovetailed together at a later period, is to ignore the laws that observation shows govern the CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 301 production of a unified work of art. He writes of the plays of contemporary satire of the Elizabethan period, like Wily Beguiled, the Poetaster, Sat iro- Mast ix, etc.: — I have ascertained by induction from several plays of this class, that when the lover indicates a dramatic author, his mis- tress signifies the company of players for whom he writes, her father is the manager of the company, and marriage sig- nifies his binding himself to write for them. This is discovering a mare's nest and attempting to hatch the wind eggs placed there by the finder. Never- theless, we owe Mr. Fleay and the new Shakespeare Society a debt — and no small one — for making clear and definite, as far as may be, the changes in Shake- speare'sybr7/za? style, for this bears on the development of his poetic powers. MB. SIDNEY LEE Mr. Sidney Lee's Life of William Shakespeare, 1898, both in the original and in the condensed form, — Shakespeare's Life and Work, 1900, — combines all the good qualities. Both are historical criticism, written by one who appreciates the value of the subject-matter. They are written in the judicial spirit — the spirit not only of a judge, but of a great judge who has listened to the evidence in hundreds of cases, till he has become familiar with the laws of proof, the bearing of documents on the point at issue, and the deceptions the human mind im- poses upon itself in considering circumstances bearing on a question of interest. An historian must take inter- est in the facts he investigates, otherwise he is simply a compiler.^ But this interest immediately arouses the ^ Mr. Furnivall's introduction to the Leopold Shakespeare is characterized by the same industry in gathering facts and form- ing tables, and the same ignoring of relative values. 302 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS imagination to form a picture of persons and their sur- roundings, for the details of which there may be little warrant, and which may be colored by knowledge of a later and different phase of society. Few can read of Shakespeare coming to London and becoming author and playwright, without involuntarily reproducing the situation. The life and vividness of the plays compels this interest in the man. But unless the writer has im- mense knowledge of literary history and a trained judg- ment, his picture will be largely subjective, and then he will force the facts to fit the judgment. Mr. Lee is free from this tendency, partly from natural habit of mind, but largely from his long training on the Dictionary of National Biography^ where Mr. Leslie Stephen insisted on a lawyer-like sifting of evidence and careful discrim- ination between fact and deduction. In consequence of this and of an inborn love of literature, Mr. Lee's book leaves nothing to be desired and is indispensable to the student. These qualities are particularly evident in his discussion of the sonnets, which, on account of their poetic force, have excited so many commentators to step beyond criticism into conjecture and creation. Un- less some significant document is discovered, it is diffi- cult to believe that anything of importance can be added to our knowledge of Shakespeare's life. Mr. Lee's delightful collection of essays, Shakespeare and the Modern Stage^ bear out this estimate. Professor Lounsbury's three volumes, grouped under the general head of Shakespearean Wars^ are a monu- ment of careful and discriminating research and give us a right to claim one of the great historical critics, as Dr. Furness's Variorum Edition gives us a right to claim one of the great editors. Professor Lounsbury's volumes throw a great deal of light on the progress of critical opinion during the seventeenth and eighteenth CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 303 centuries, and, if carried out with the minute care that has characterized them hitherto, will constitute a veri- table history of Shakespearean criticism. His investiga- tions into the conduct of Pope and Voltaire give us a new conception of the possibilities of literary jealousy and of the rage that can possess poetic minds. His books are so entertainingly written that a student is apt to overlook the amount of research given to unearthing the facts. To pounce upon the interesting and signifi- cant statements in a mass of unreadable periodicals and to present them in their ' true colors and just extent ' is the task of the trained historian of literary powers, and is well accomplished in Shahespearean Wars. THE ESSAYS The essays on various points of Shakespearean criti- cism and historical research are almost innumerable. Fifty-two belonging to the first quarter of the nine- teenth century were collected by Nathan Drake in Memorials of Shakespeare^ including some by Cole- ridge, Campbell, and Schlegel. Of the first half of the century, those by Carlyle in Heroes and Hero- Wor- ship, Emerson in Representative Men, and Lowell's Shakespeare Once More are among the most notable. The first two consist of general philosophical reflec- tions on the function of the poet, and Shakespeare is rather an illustration than the subject of critical examination. Carlyle says, 'The poet we may call a revealer of what we are to love.' ' A German critic says that " the poet has an infinitude in him," he communi- cates a certain character of infinitude to whatever he delineates. This, though not very precise, yet in so vague a matter is worth remembering; if well medi- tated, some meaning can be found in it. For my own part I find considerable meaning in the old vulgar dis- 304 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS tiuction of poetry being metrical^ haviog music in it, being a song. Truly if pressed to give a definition one might say this as soon as anything else.' ' The best judgment, not of this country only, but of Europe at large, is slowly pointing to the conclusion that Shake- speare is the chief of all Poets hitherto ; the greatest intellect who in our recorded world has left record of himself in literature.' He finds Shakespeare's power in his ' calmly seeing eye,' he looks unconsciously into the heart of things — Or indeed we may say again it is in what I called portrait- painting, delineating of men and things, especially of men, that Shakespeare is great. It is unexampled, I think, that calm creative perspicacity of Shakespeare. The thing he looks at reveals not this or that face of it, but its inmost heart and generic secret ; it dissolves itself as in light before him, so that he discerns the perfect structure of it. No twisted, poor convex concave mirror reflecting all objects with its own convexities and concavities, a perfectly level mirror — that is to say, withal, if we will perfectly under- stand it a man justly related to all things and men, a good man. It is truly a lordly spectacle how this great soul takes in all kinds of men and objects, a Falstaff. an Othello, a Juliet, aCoriolanus, sets them all forth to us in their rounded complete- ness ; loving, just, the equal brother of all. Novum Organum, and all the intellect you will find in Bacon, is of quite a sec- ondary order ; earthy, material, poor in comparison with this. Carlyle recognizes, what critics have not always done, that Shakespeare wrote for the theatre. Passages there are that come upon you like splendor out of heaven ; bursts of radiance, illuminating the very heart of the thing ; you say, * that is true, spoken once and for- ever ; wheresoever and whensoever there is an open human soul that will be recognized as true.' Such bursts, however, make us feel that the surrounding matter is not radiant ; that CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 305 it is in part temporary, conventional. Alas, Shakespeare had to write for the Globe Playhouse, his great soul had to crush itself, as it could, into that and no other world. It was with him as with us all. No man works save under conditions. That last is a truth that Carlyle did not always recog- nize as cheerfully as his friend Emerson, whose essay, if not so vigorous as Carlyle's, is more temperate. As in his chapter on Montaigne, he makes the name the starting- point of a discourse on skepticism and belief and indif- ference, so Shakespeare suggests to him that a poet is the voice of his age, Shakespeare's being an age full of folklore and agitated by important religious and philo- sophical questions, and particularly fortunate in that the people loved the drama. Dr. Garnett says rightly that ' Emerson is incapable of contemplating Shake- speare with the eye of the dramatic critic' This is true, for the morbid seriousness of the Puritan, which re- gards this world as probationary and joy as an imperti- nence and beauty as a trifle, was not entirely eradicated from his mind. He says : — Shakespeare employed them [the material things of the earth, trees, clouds, fields] as colors to compose his picture. He rested in their beauty ; and never took the step which seemed inevitable to such genius, namely to explore the vir- tue which resides in these symbols and imparts this power. . . . He was master of the revels to mankind. Is it not as if one should have, through majestic powers of science, the comets given into his hand, or the planets and their moons, and should draw them from their orbits to glare with the municipal fireworks on a holiday night, and advertise in all towns, * Very superior pyrotechny this evening.' ... As long as the question is of talent and mental power, the world of men has not his equal to show. But when the question is, to life and its materials and its auxiliaries, how does he profit me ? What does it signify ? It is but a Twelfth Night, 306 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS or Midsummer-Night's Dream, or Winter Evening's Tale. What signifies another picture more or less ? . . . This man of men, he who gave to the science of mind a new and larger subject than had ever existed, and planted the standard of humanity some furlongs forward into Chaos, — that he should not be wise for himself ; — it must even go into the world's history that the best poet led an obscure and profane life, using his genius for the public amusement. The essayist says that other men, ' priest and prophet, Israelite, German, and Swede,' beheld the same ob- jects, but they also saw through them that which they contained, — And to what purpose? The beauty straightway vanished; they read commandments, all-excluding mountainous duty ; an obligation, a sadness, as of piled mountains, fell on them, and life became ghastly, joyless, a pilgrim's progress, a pro- bation, beleaguered round with doleful histories of Adam's fall and curse behind us; with doomsdays and purgatorial and penal fires before us ; and the heart of the seer and the heart of the listener sank in them. It must be conceded that these are half-views of half-men. The world still wants its poet-priest, a reconciler, who shall not trifle, with Shake- speare the player, nor shall grope in graves, with Swedenborg the mourner ; but who shall see, speak, and act, with equal inspiration. The seriousness of Shakespeare's tragedies is too well understood now to make it worth while to comment on Mr. Emerson's strictures. His are the views of the poet who loves beautiful phrases, looking through the spectacles of the philosopher who worships righteous- ness. The essay abounds in delicate literary apprecia- tions. He goes to the play: 'The recitation begins: one golden word leaps out immortal from aU this painted pedantry and sweetly torments us with invita- tions to its own inaccessible home.^ ' There is in all CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 307 cultivated minds a silent appreciation of his superla- tive power and beauty, which, like Christianity, quali- fies the period.' The ' golden word ' or phrase he refers to is 'glimpses of the moon ' in the lines of Hamlet to the ghost : — What may this mean, That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon^ — words which at once reduce the big reality of the world to phantasmal twilight in the hearer's imagina- tion. But those words are beautiful because they cohere in the structure of the entire scene, and are the utter- ance of a young man under stress of emotion. But even if Mr. Emerson confines himself too closely to the literary man's standpoint, the worship of the phrase, we find his sentence as exhilarating as if Shakespeare himself had penned it. LOWELIi Mr. Lowell's essay, Shakespeare OnceMore^ is longer than those of his illustrious predecessors. Coming later in the century (1868), it is free from the transcendental tone of the criticism of the earlier period — reflected from German philosophy — and is governed by the spirit of common sense which the scientific method was impressing on the writings of the age. Written, how- ever, by a poet and a scholarly man of letters, it is entirely free from the bald realism which science some- times imposes on literary research. It ranges over a great variety of topics from the inner life of the Eliza- bethan period, the flexibility and vigor of the language, the printing of the folio, the character of the poet, and the character of Hamlet. This discursiveness gives the essay a conversational charm, which is exceedingly 308 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS attractive. The abounding wit sometimes withdraws attention from the question discussed ; but if this be a fault it compensates for itself by its own exceeding ingenuity and nimbleness. Mr. Lowell calls attention to this very thing in Shakespeare : — I am ready to grant that Shakespeare sometimes allows his characters to spend time, that might be better employed, in carving some cherry-stone of a quibble ; that he is sometimes tempted away from the natural by the quaint ; that he some- times forces a partial, even a verbal analogy between the ab- stract thought and the sensual image into an absolute identity, giving us a serious pun. Mr. Lowell's puns and verbal conceits are far bet- ter than Shakespeare's, for they always illustrate the thought ; but they sometimes assume a familiarity with literature and literary anecdotes in the reader, not general now, though possibly Mr. Lowell was justified in assuming it in his generation. It is possible that Mr. Lowell is wrong in referring to Ophelia's words as 'the piteous " no more, but so ! " Mn which Ophelia compresses the heart-break whose compression was to make her mad,' for the words are addressed to her brother at a time when she is resting secure in the consciousness that Hamlet has ' importuned her with love in honorable fashion.' The heart-break is expressed in the words, ' I was the more deceived,' in reply to Hamlet's ' I loved you not,' spoken long after, when at her father's com- mand she had denied for two weeks her maiden presence to her lover. This error is but a trifling matter. Mr. Lowell ranges over so many topics that it is im- possible to summarize. The distinction he makes be- * These words are followed in F. by an interrogation mark, which would mark them as arch. Some critics prefer to omit it, but even so, the girl's next speech shows that she is not alarmed. CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 309 tween the Greek conception of fate and Shakespeare's of character as a cause, is summed up in the sentence, 'Generally it may be said that with the Greeks the character is involved in the action' (helpless, power- less), ' while with Shakespeare the action is evolved from the character.' Of the costuming and setting he says they should be * in keeping,' first historically as far as is possible, and secondly intrinsically, so as to make a 'harmony with the total impression.' He criticises John Kemble for dressing Macbeth in a modern Highland costume, not because it 'wounds the antiquarian conscience,' but because it ' wounds the poetic conscience.' ^ Hamlet he regards as so intellectual a person, so given to moraliz- ing on every situation and reducing motives and duty to general propositions, as to have no energy left for action. He thinks that the prince sees both sides so clearly, and has so remarkable a gift for language, that he is taken up in comparing them, and can never decide which is so far the best as to call for instant action. [His irony] is the half-jest, half-earnest of an inactive tem- perament, that has not quite made up its mind whether Ufe is a reality or no, whether men were not made in jest, and which amuses itself equally with finding a deep meaning in trivial things and a trifling one in the profoundest mysteries of being, because the want of earnestness in its own essence infects everything else with its own indifference. If we accede to this, and perhaps we must, we may at least remember the peculiar circumstances in which Hamlet is placed, and his antecedent history and educa- tion, which so intensify the shock of the ghost's disclos- ure. Mr. Lowell puts aside firmly the hypothesis that * The entire passage on the subject of antiquarian truth is ad- mirable. 310 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS Hamlet is insane, because a crazy man could not be the hero of a tragedy. He knows that an intellectual man of vivid imagination and high-strung emotional tem- perament may appear insane in mental distress. Of the play he well says : — Whether I have fancied anything into Hamlet which the author never dreamed of putting there, I do not greatly con- cern myself to inquire. . . . Praise art as we will, that which the artist did not mean to put into his work, but which found itself there by some generous process of Nature of which he was as unaware as the blue river is of its rhyme with the blue sky, has somewhat in it that snatches us into sympathy with higher things than those which come by plot and observa- tion. . . . Without foremeaning it, [Goethe] impersonated in Mephistopheles the genius of his century. ... I believe that Shakespeare intended to impersonate in Hamlet, not a mere metaphysical entity, but a man of flesh and blood, yet it is certainly curious how prophetically typical the character is of that introversion of mind which is so constant a phenomenon of these latter days, of that over-consciousness which wastes itself in analyzing the motives of action instead of acting. Is it certain that the Hamlet type is more common now than it was in 1600 ? The skeptic, who instinctively asks of life ' What is all this worth? ' is a product of all civilizations. Without him there would not be much be- sides material progress. Undoubtedly Shakespeare drew what he saw and what he divined in the men around him, and his characters were contemporaneously typical rather than 'prophetically typical.' Neither Shake- speare nor Mr. Lowell could take out of their brains more than their ancestors and their observation and their education had put in, though it may seem to us that both had an unfair advantage over us in some * affable familiar ghost that nightly gulled them with intelligence/ CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 311 •MTT.TT.a The Review of Hamlet by George Henry Miles, first printed in the Southern Review^ 1870, and published in a volume of eighty-eight pages, is a thoughtful exam- ination of the play. The writer combats very success- fully the Schlegel-Coleridge-Goethe hypothesis that Hamlet was a weakling, a sentimentalist, staggering be- neath the weight of a duty he is constitutionally incap- able of performing. In this he anticipates Swinburne and Bradley. Hamlet in his view is a cynic. ' With too much wisdom,' he says, ' Hamlet had lost all trust in his mother ; and when we cease to trust our mothers, we cease to trust humanity.' Mr. Miles considers it not unnatural that Hamlet should refrain from killing his uncle when he finds him praying. This desire to kill his enemy when his condition was such that he would incur damnation has always been a stumbling-block to critics, who regard it as indicating a fiendish refinement of malice ; but granting, as why should we not, that Hamlet really believed that if his uncle died in the act of prayer he would be received into an eternity of happiness, and granting, too, that Hamlet was glad to grasp at an excuse, the delay seems natural enough. Hamlet's duty is revenge, which for the moment is unattainable. It is not so easy to follow Mr. Miles in his declaration that Hamlet planned beforehand his recapture by the ' pirate of very warlike appointment,' nor to see that the mono- logue in the third scene of the fourth act, — ' How all occasions do inform against me and spur my dull re- venge,' — is not only superfluous and contradictory, but absurd unless Hamlet planned the subsequent ' piratical recapture.' This strong soliloquy is not in the folio, but it casts a great light on Hamlet's character, especially in the lines : — 312 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS I do not know- Why yet I live to say * This thing 's to do ' ; Sith I have cause and will and strength and means To do 't. Mr. Miles says this is false. ' He had not strength and means to do it, and could not have, until rescued from captivity and impending death by that well-appointed pirate.' But Hamlet did not know at that moment that he was to be executed in England, and he had ' strength and means ' as long as he wore a sword, even if he was under arrest. The essay is full of spirited appreciations : — Hamlet is not directly on trial for his soul, but the question of eternal loss or gain is constantly suggested. It is the man- agement of this deep sorrow of the world to come ; this sharp contrast between providence and fate ; this complicated war between conscience and passion ; this final appeal from time to eternity, that gives the drama such universal indestructible interest. ... In Hamlet Shakespeare has not only created a character but a soul. "' There are other plays, Macbeth^ Julius Ccesar^ Rich- ard III^ where the forces from the world after death react directly on this present, evil world, but none in which the beyond seems so immanent, nor where the victim is so lovable and interesting, so human and so pathetic. JOHN CORBIN Mr. John Corbin's little book. The Elizabethan Hamlet (1895), may fairly be classed as an * essay,' indeed, it is so designated in the prefatory letter. Its main thesis is that the ' mad scenes in Hamlet had a comic aspect now ignored,' which adhered to them from the original treatment of the story in the first drama- tization, — now lost, — and that the traces of this do CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 313 something towards explaining the inconsistencies in the character and action of the hero. This is supported by an admirable and temperate argument conducted in the true scientific spirit, in which nothing is exaggerated or suppressed by the wish to uphold the author's posi- tion. Every bit of evidence given bears on the point — some of it, indeed, not very heavily, but none is given undue force nor placed on the wrong side of the scale. In fact, the book is a model of historico-literary investi- gation. Should the lost play, the first Hamlet^ possibly by Kyd, ever be discovered, it is twenty to one that the first step in the development from the prose Hystorie to Shakespeare's play will be found exactly what Mr. Corbin supposes it to have been ; that is, a ' tragedy of blood ' combined loosely with comic matter, in which Hamlet's mad talk and action caused the barren spec- tators to laugh. It is possible that Mr. Corbin makes rather too much of the brutal disposition of seventeenth- century audiences compared to eighteenth-century audi- ences. There were simple-hearted and compassionate people in England before Uncle Toby, and in Dr. John- son's day press-gangs, the condition of the penal law, the love of witnessing prize fights and public execu- tions, indicate a public as brutal as any that supported the Elizabethan theatre. Defoe's and Smollett's public cannot have been much in advance of their grandfa- thers'. But, however this be regarded, it cannot be denied that the theatre-goers of the early seventeenth century delighted in spectacles of blood, that they regarded a crazy person as an object of derision and a cause of mirth rather than pity, and that the pre-Shakespearean dramatic presentation of such motives has left faint traces in Shakespeare's handling of similar themes, though his justice of perception and warm humanity made tragically pathetic what had been and perhaps 314 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS was at his time regarded as mirth-provoking. Mr. Corbin presents this in a way no student can afford to overlook. Especially philosophical is his remark : ' My personal opinion is that Shakespeare's audiences were quite capable of feeling strongly and simultaneously both the archaic comedy and the enduring tragedy of the scene' (the nunnery scene in Hamlet^. It is not quite clear whether he means that the audience as a unit took the scene in both ways ' simultaneously,' or whether different individuals were thrilled or amused; probably the latter, though the first is by no means impossible, as any one will admit who has noticed the contest be- tween pity and amusement excited in his own mind by occurrences at once distressing and absurd. Mr. Corbin's admirable studj^ recognizes that, after all, the important thing is not Hamlet as he appeared to the audiences of 1603, but the Hamlet that has been built up by thousands of interpretations by great actors and critics. He says : — Each actor and critic has divined new traits of beauty, and generations have so loved the gentleness of the Prince, that in the light of their love the brutal facts of many of the scenes in which he moves are glorified. The modern Hamlet is the true Hamlet. In the truest sense of the word he is the Shakespearean Hamlet ; and will continue so, until new ages shall add new beauties to our interpretation. Ordinarily, the disciple of the modern school would ignore the psychical Hamlet, the product of so much re- flection and traditional love, as something fanciful and incomprehensible, and insist on the original conception as the only veritable one. Mr. Corbin recognizes that an art-product, though unchangeable in its outward form as it left its creator's hand, has an existence in the general consciousness which develops like a living thing or CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 315 languishes and dies. Frequently scientific research treats the dead body and the living one with the same respect because unconscious of the difference, but Mr. Corbin adds to the spirit of exact investigation a comprehension of what constitutes literary value, — life in the minds of the people. This gives his essay an almost unique worth. STOLL A typical example of scientific treatment of a criti- cal question is to be found in the paper of Mr. E. E. Stoll in the June (1907) number of Modem Lan- guage Notes. The thesis is that the ghosts in Shake- speare's plays are not subjective ghosts, figments of the excited brains of criminals and the outcome of mental states, but, in the conception of the artist and the per- ception of the Elizabethan audience, veritable visitants from the supernatural world. The question is not, did Shakespeare himself believe in ghosts, but did he write in the full consciousness that his audience did believe in their reality, and therefore intend his ghosts to be taken as veritable ? About the ghost of Hamlet's father there can be no question. It appears to four persons, and it speaks. The consciences of the guardsmen who see it first are not burdened. The ghost is almost one of the dramatis personcB. None of Shakespeare's ghosts do anything; there is no such absurdity as in the German Hamlet, where the ghost gives the soldier a box on the ear. The fairies, Oberon, Puck, and Ariel, act in accordance with their imagined characters as developed in folk- lore. The Harpies in The Tempest carry off the banquet and the phantom dogs bite the drunken conspirators and make them 'roar.' Shakespeare's ghosts are also true to the belief of the time. They appear to the doomed man before his death, or in the fulfillment of a 316 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS curse ; they are the ghosts of popular superstition, and therefore not projections of a guilty conscience. The crucial instance is Banquo's ghost. Professor Bradley, in a note, suggests that this may be an halluci- nation. Macbeth is highly imaginative. He has already seen the air-borne dagger. He caUs the ghost an ' un- real mockery.' It vanishes when he recovers self-pos- session. He alone sees it. It is therefore an illusion, as the dagger was.* Mr. StoU combats this conclusion successfully. Dr. Forman's diary shows that the ' blood- boltered Banquo' was represented on Shakespeare's stage by a real actor, supposed to be visible to Macbeth and the audience, but not to the rest of the actors. From the day of Homer goddesses and ghosts have had the power of being visible to one person only. We have as much right to say that Macbeth recovers self-posses- sion when the ghost propria motu vanishes as that he causes the illusion to disappear by an effort of his will. As to Caesar's ghost, there would seem to be even less question that Shakespeare intended the audience to take it for a real ghost, for it speaks. In the Eliza- bethan audience the greater number believed in the ^ It is a mark of scientific criticism to be absolutely fair. Mr. StoU is not entirely so to Professor Bradley. He does not men- tion that the discussion is contained in a note and is merely sug- gestive. He finds fault with him for adducing the argument that the ghost is visible only to Macbeth, but omits Professor Brad- ley's remark, * I should attach no weight to ' (that point) * taken alone,' and his reference to the page where he asserts that the ghost of Hamlet's father was meant to be taken as real. Finally, he omits Professor Bradley's summary : — * On the whole, and with some doubt, I think that Shakespeare (1) meant the judicious to take the ghost (Banquo's) for an hallu- cination, but (2) know that the bulk of the audience would take it for a reality. And I am more sure of (2) than of (1).' When a man of straw is set up, he should not be labeled with the name of the first modern critic. CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 317 reality of ghosts, and if there were any skeptics they were ready to yield temporarily to the emotion of the crowd. In fact, even now many of us are willing to set aside for the moment our convictions in favor of our imaginings when we witness a Shakespearean play. We enjoy the make-believe and are thrilled by the sight of a theatrical ghost if ushered in by the master, though we have not the slightest belief in the appearance of disembodied spirits. The Elizabethan audience was of course far more susceptible than we. When ghosts or spirits appear in a dream, and when they are represented on the stage by real actors who move and speak, as in Richard III and Henry Vllly it would seem as if they must be subjective, and must stand for figures of the dreamer's imagination, since he can neither hear nor see. Mr. StoU will hardly admit this. He says, 'It may be that Shakespeare meant that the ghosts (in Richard III) should be no more than a dream, no more than pangs of conscience.' 'But even so our thesis stands, for he has not suc- ceeded. They are objective still. Not only do the ghosts tread the stage and lift up their voices, but — unmis- takable immemorial token — the lights burn blue. Moreover, at the same time these ghosts appear and prophesy to Richmond, and by him, too, are recognized as the souls of the bodies which Richard murdered.' This last goes far to prove that Shakespeare did not regard the ghosts as emanations of Richard's guilty conscience, but as the veritable spirits of the dead, though appearing in a vision. A modern playwright — for example, the author of the Bells — conceives the dream of Matthias as subjective strictly, and is careful to present nothing which might interfere with such an interpretation. He would never represent two men see- ing the same sleeping vision. 318 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS The spirits in Henry VIII appear before the sleep- ing Queen and ' hold the garland over her head.' She ' makes in her sleep signs of rejoicing, and holdeth up her hands to heaven.' The celestial visitants are not visible to her servants. They can hardly be held to represent merely creations of the imagination of the dying woman. They are good angels sent from heaven to comfort her, and were so regarded by the audience and intended to be so regarded by the author. They are stage representations of real beings, at least beings considered actual in the seventeenth century. Did the poet regard them as such, or was he simply playing on popular beliefs? As Mr. StoU says : — Did Shakespeare then believe in these things, in the super- natural character and significance of portents and omens, prophecies and presentiments, dreams, magic, curses, witches, ghosts ? So much as that we must not, need not here under- take to prove : it is the implication and corollary of all that we have proved. As did his fellow playwrights, he repre- sented ghosts, witches, omens, dreams, and the like alt^ays as simply as if he believed in them, and his belief there is no more reason to question than theirs. It would be difficult to prove how far intelligent men believe in popular superstitions at any time. Poets, especially, take up the symbols of a faith and invest them with esoteric meaning ; they penetrate beyond the creed to the verities and powers, a dim perception of which led men to formulate the creed or invent the myth. Everything is symbolic to them. Witches, or ghosts, or legendary history, or folklore, they believe in all for the purpose of envisaging life. Shakespeare does not disclose his personal belief, but addresses himself to the public mind with a full knowledge of its superstitions, and an instinct how they might be used parabolically CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 319 and harmoniously with their nature and source. Appar- ently he shared the idea, inherited from Komanism, that occupation and mental condition at the moment of death affected powerfully fate after death ; for he puts into the mouth of his most intelligent and skeptical char- acter the words, * This is hire and salary, not revenge ' ; to kill my uncle praying, that is, would be a very in- effectual way and would carry out the words, not the spirit, of my father's command, to send my uncle to eter- nal bliss. ' In our circumstance and course of thought 'tis heavy with him' (his father). Hamlet believed this ; why not Shakespeare, too, as most of the men of his time did ? And if Shakespeare believed that, why should he not believe in the reality and frequent visita- tion of disembodied spirits as far as other intelligent men of his day ? Of course we can say that Hamlet grasped at this as a formal^ excuse for procrastination, but he must have had some sort of a belief in the dogma in order to deceive himself. But, on the other hand, we find the poet putting into the mouth of the wicked man the rational argument that justice must rule in the future life and no quibbling will avail : — There is no shuffling, there the action lies In his true nature. Evidently, Shakespeare's religious belief cannot be in- ferred from the words of his dramatic characters. Mr. StoU fails to note, what Mr. Corbin fully com- prehends, that the original intention of the author and the sense in which the Elizabethan audience took repre- sentations of supernatural beings, though interesting if they could be definitely established and rendered com- prehensible to modern understanding, are of very little consequence in comparison with the plays themselves, enriched as they are by aesthetic interpretation for two 320 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS centuries and by the love and interest of the descendants of the men for whom they were written. Did Raphael paint merely a woman and a mother, or did he expect those who viewed his picture to regard it as a portrait of a veritable Queen of Heaven ? The question is of the same nature as the subject of Mr. StoU's paper. Shakespeare's ghosts conform to Elizabethan supersti- tion in externals ; but it is far more important that they conform in essentials to moral differences. Banquo's ghost is quite as true if interpreted symbolically to be a picture projected so vividly by a guilty conscience as to seem real to the guilty man, as if it be considered a veritable spirit, no 'unreal mockery,' but the actual presentment of the bloody corpse of the murdered man. It is a property of great poetry to use the conventions of the day in order to express lasting truths, and to mean more and more as time goes on. Shakespeare's ghosts have an artistic function not confined to the seventeenth century. In fact, they are as impressive as they were then, perhaps more so, though they do not appeal to the same popular mind. Otherwise Shake* speare would be of the age, not for all time. CHAPTER XII CRITICISM OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY DB. A. C. BBADIjET Dr. Bradley's Shahespearean Tragedy is the most notable piece of literary criticism that has appeared since the day of Coleridge, Lamb, and Hazlitt. It com- bines the enthusiasm and vision of the romanticists with the common sense and exactness of the scientific ^ method. Though confined to the four great tragedies^V it is packed so full of meaning that no brief review can give an idea of its value. In the introduction the author restricts the ground by declaring, 'Nothing \ will be said of Shakespeare's place in the history of English literature or of the drama in general; questions concerning his life and character I shall leave untouched. Even the poetry in the restricted sense, the beauties of style, diction, versification will be merely glanced at.' 'The object is to learn to appre- hend the action and some of the personages with a somewhat greater truth and intensity.' But Dr. Brad- ley's mastery of the parts of the general subject he does not discuss, is so full and adequate as to give his treatment a justice and weight not often reached by the specialist. It is felt as a substratum of his thought, and colors much of what he says, and prevents his view from ever becoming extreme or one-sided. His familiarity with the fundamentals of human nature makes his analysis of the complicated natures of the Shakespearean characters convincing to the common sense of the modern reader. 322 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS The first lecture (the matter of the book was first made public in lectures at Glasgow, Liverpool, and Oxford, — the writer is Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and consequently retains a tone of personal address and the formal divisions of the university lecture) is on the 'substance of Shakespeare's Tragedy.' This is a philosophical examination of the question, What is a tragic action? or, rather, ^ What is the nature of the tragic aspect of lif e^as represented by Shakespeare ? ' In answering this tne writer, naturally, builds upon Aristotle's analysis, but the superstructure is worth at leasT as much as the foundation. He defines a tragedy to be ' a story of exceptional calamity tending to the death oT^aTman m high estate.' The actions proceed from character, and, in the Shakespeare tragedy, the effect of chance or accident is minimized. It enters TKeT actton much as it enters human life, capriciously modifying the effect of free will, but not as the promi- nent, controlling influence. Thus it is due to chance that the gracious Duncan enters Macbeth's castle just as ' the thought whose murder yet is but fantastical ' was ready to take possession of the minds of his hosts ; that Hamlet is brought back to Denmark by the pirates, that Desdemona drops the handkerchief at the fatal moment, that the letter of Edmund is too late to save the life of Cordelia ; but these accidents modify only slightly the course of events, the controlling influence is the will and characters of men and women. The interest of the play never depends upon the unrav- eling of a complicated plot any more than it does on the happening of lucky or unlucky events. The jitory is a conflict, — not only between two groups representing good and evil, in which the hero is repre- sentative of one side, but there is also the conflict in the mind of jbe hero. To make this striking, the hero CRITICISM OF TWENTIETH CENTURY 323 need not be good, but he must be great, and capable of profound feeling. Such an emotional nature as that of a Shakespearean hero when thoroughly aroused can express itself, and its struggles and suffering can be represented, only by poetry of the highest order. This poetry overflows and becomes the atmosphere of the play, and affects the utterance of the lesser charac- ters, so that the Queen, Horatio, Ophelia, Banquo, Kent, Ludovico, even the 'first' and 'second gentle- man,' may express themselves properly in figurative and rhythmical language. No other form can impress upon us the agony or the joy of great souls. But the tragic conflict as conceived by Shakespeare is not the good man striving against fate, which, as in the Greek tragedies, has a spite against him or his family and insists that he expiate the sins of his grandfather. The ultimate power outside of man, which, ' represented in terms of the understanding, is our imaginative and emotional experience in reading the plays,' is not to be interpreted in religious language as God or Providence, nor as either malicious or beneficent. It is ' something piteous, fearful, and mysterious ; but the tragic repre- sentation of it does not leave us crushed, rebellious, or desperate.' It is ' the moral order,' a world beyond our \ experience, in whicli evil (using the word in its broad- est sense) sometimes seems predominant and victorious. It^ is not a blind fate or a blank necessity, still less is it a^~w6rld'in which justice ultimately triumphs, but one in which evil works out in time its own destruction and that of its agents, involving, however, also the good who are swept up into its maleficent march in the same destruction. The feeling evoked in us by the Shakespearean tragic spectacle is sorrow, awe, even terror, but not a pessimistic despair. This chapter not only brings out the remarkable reach and justness of 324 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS Shakespeare's fundamental thought, but it furnishes a reasonable philosophy of life to those who are 'per- plexed in the extreme' by the superficial aspects of the world. We cannot say that Shakespeare had con- sciously formulated the profound conclusions it pre- sents, but that they are rightly deducible from his tragedies there can be no doubt. It establishes his title as supreme poet on a far higher plane than qualities of versification or technical construction. The sensibility of the poet to beauty passes over, in its highest development, to insight into the reality of things. It is then that he becomes ' supreme.* This profound and serious view of the world, as far from optimism as from despair, is to be gathered from the tragedies. It is, of course, not the only aspect in which the poet regards life. In the romances the question why the innocent and the good should suffer undeservedly ^ is subordinate to the idea of beauty ; the suffering of Imogen is temporary, the injury done to Prospero is righted: in the Comedies and Midsummer NigMs Dream there is no suffering at all, but the happy hours ^ of youth are viewed with indulgence and sympathy. In the historical plays life is looked at from the point of v/ view of usefulness to society. The practical executive man like Henry V is the hero, — the man who under- takes the duty before him in a straightforward, sensible manner, who intrusts his relations to the unknown to the Church, and whose conscience can be satisfied by build- ing chantries for Richard's soul or by a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Mr. Dowden even thinks that the practi- cal, able man, ' whose large hands mould the world,' who has no doubts, because he is in the hands of God, whose aim is justice, and whose affections are but a subordinate part of his being, is more admirable to Shakespeare than is Hamlet. But every one feels that CRITICISM OF TWENTIETH CENTURY 325 the tragedies are more profoundly true and philosophi- cal than the historical plays, and that the conflict they embody is more serious. Dr. Bradley's next chapter considers the subject of dramatic construction. Here we find the same grasp and the same disregard of wire-drawn distinctions. As the four tragedies only are in question, his generaliza- tions are not subject to so many exceptions as are Freytag's, who tries to deduce rules from Greek, Ger- man, and English dramas. Dr. Bradley notes that the exordium or introduction Jsneci^sary, and that Shake- speare manages^with great skill to mix striking dra- matic matter with the narrative or exposition which imparts the situation and introduces the actors to us. Thus in Hamlet the ghost excites and interests us, and afterwards we can listen with a sense of relief to the explanation of Horatio, which, if it opened the play, would be awkward, possibly tedious. In Macbeth we have the short opening scene of the witches on the blasted heath, * when the senses and imagination are as- saulted by a storm of thunder and supernatural alarm.* This is followed by the scene where the bleeding ser- geant relates the occurrences of the battle to the King, in which pure narrative is relieved by the interest excited by the fainting condition of the messenger. The admirable cumulative effect of the rapid entrance of the actors one after another in the first act of Romeo and Juliet^ and their participation in the street fight, is also noticed by the author. In all the four tragedies, however, the dramatist introduces^arly a pageant scene, in which a large number of actors participate in a court functipn^aiidr information is imparted to the audience while their sense of the picturesque is gratified, and their feelings of compassion and interest are not aroused too early. The Court enters in procession in Hamlet and 326 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS Lear^ it is gathered about Duncan at the camp near Forres. In Othello we have the midnight meeting of the Venetian magnificos, before whom Othello and Des- demona so eloquently rehearse the events which have led up to the situation. These full-dress scenes, alternating with dialogue scenes, relieve the tedium of an exposi- tion evidently intended to put the audience in possession of the antecedent and surrounding circumstances. After the exposition comes the dramatic conflict, physical as it is between the hero and the embodiment of the opposing force, and psychological as it is in the mind of the hero. It moves forward, sometimes one side and then the other gaining an advantage, but one advancing on the whole to a culmination or crisis. It is in depicting the inward conflict that Shakespeare's power appears ; but the ' outward conflict, with its in- fluence on the fortunes of the hero, is the aspect which at first catches, if it does not engross, the attention,' at least, of the ordinary playgoer. In the construction of the outward conflict, or plot proper, Shakespeare is simply a skilled playwright, and no wise superior to several of his contemporaries. Dr. Bradley notices with his usual judgment that ' as the plays vary so much, no simple way of regarding the conflict will answer precisely to the construction of all, and that it sometimes appears possi- ble to look at the construction of a tragedy in two quite different ways.' This readiness to admit the inadequacy of a mechanical theory when applied to a work of art except in the most general way, is a testimony to the author's critical ability, and in direct contrast to those who form a theory and then force each play to fit it. The author brings out another point, which, though noticed long ago, has never been analyzed with so great skill, and that is, that there is an ' alternation of emo- tional tension all through the tragedy.* This is com- CRITICISM OF TWENTIETH CENTURY 327 mon to all good plays, but is very marked in its regu- larity in the Shakespearean tragedy. The well-known example is the introduction of the drunken-porter scene immediately after the murder in Macbeth. This ' rests on the elementary fact that relief must be given after emotional strain and that contrast is required to bring out the full force of an effect.' The construction of Othello Dr. Bradley finds to differ from that of the other tragedies ; the introduction is much longer, it is difficult to say which scene is the crisis, and after the conflict is under way there are no pathos scenes or humorous scenes to relieve the emotional tension of the audience, which is increased by stroke after stroke, till in the fourth and fifth acts it becomes almost un- endurable. After an admirable discussion of the question : how far was Shakespeare a conscious artist, scrutinizing and improving his first draft, and how far were his effects unpremeditated, — or, are his great effects due to deliberate work along a scheme or to unconscious tact? — Dr. Bradley considers ' Shakespeare's defects'; for a critic of his calibre must acknowledge tbat the plays are marked by defects, whether they are due to carelessness or indifference or hurry. That the actions are improbable or strange, as in the opening of Lear,, is of course a matter of no moment. The old stories were wonderful and strange, that is, they were roman- tic, and they were dramatized. It would be absurd to look for realistic construction in a story from Geoffrey - of Monmouth. The first 'real defect' Dr. Bradley notices is that sometimes Shakespeare strings together a number of short scenes, where he 'flits from one ^ group of characters to another without giving time for each to make a definite impression.' This defect is evi- dent in the latter part of Macbeth and the middle part 328 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS of Antony and Cleopatra. It was made possible by the absence of scenery, but it is not a true dramatic method. It approximates to narrative in short, broken paragraphs. Second : Shakespeare sometimes introduces * mat- ter neither required for the plot nor essential to the development of character, e. g.^ the reference in Ham- let to theatre quarrels of the day, the length of the pTayer's speech and of Hamlet^s directions to him respecting the delivery of the lines to be inserted in the " Murder of Gonzago." ' These we should be ' sorry to miss, but who can defend it from the point of view of constructive art?' We suppose that Dr. Bradley is S right in this, but at least some of the scenes when the ^^ dramatist seems for the moment to forget the develop- ment of his main theme are necessary to give the audi- \ ence relief from continuous excitement. Third : Some of Shakespeare's soliloquies are evi- dently addressed to the audience, whereas a soliloquy should be a self-disclosure and never used for the pur- pose of conveying information as to facts, but solely as to psychological conditions. Thus Edgar's soliloquy in Lear^ ii, iii, plainly takes the audience into his confidence. Dr. Bradley does not discuss the question how far the soliloquy and the aside are awkward, in- artistic methods, because he is not discussing dramatic art in general. Fourth: There are 'inconsistencies and contradic- tions in many of Shakespeare's plays,' especially as to the lapse of time. It may be observed, however, that these are generally unimportant, and such as could be made clear to the spectator by the actor, who had re- ceived directions from the author. Fifth : Though ' the early critics were often provok- ingly wrong when they censured the language of par- CRITICISM OF TWENTIETH CENTURY 329 ticular passages in Shakespeare as inflated, obscure, tasteless, or *' pestered with metaphors," they were surely right in the general statement that his language often shows these faults.' Sixth: Shakespeare sometimes 'sacrifices dramatic appropriateness to some other object ' ; as, for instance, thTelihes of the player King in Hamlet on the instabil- ity of the human will, or those of the King to Laertes on the same subject are not dramatic, that is, they do not help on the action or disclose to us the nature of the speakers, but they throw a side light on the character of the prince. Last : Shakespeare was ' fond of gnomic passages,' L e., general philosophical reflections, frequently rhymed; and introduces them, ' probably not more freely than his readers like, but more freely than, I suppose, a good playwright now would care to do.' Dr. Bradley discusses these points scientifically, that is, on evidence, not on impressions, and his perception of Shakespeare's shortcomings in no wise diminishes his certainty of Shakespeare's preeminence. In examining the character of Hamlet, Dr. Bradley disposes of the theories that his delay was due to exter- nal difficulties ; that he was restrained by conscience or a moral scruple ; that he was, as Goethe says, ' a lovely, pure, and most moral nature without the strength of nerve which forms a hero,' and that he was irresolute because of an excess of the reflective or speculative habit of mind, the last being the idea of Coleridge. The critic asks first, what was Hamlet's original character ? sec- ond, what was the effect on this nature of the events immediately preceding the opening of the play ? third, what was the additional effect of the events narrated in the first act ? In considering these points the critic bases his argument on lines in the play ; he does not 330 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS force the lines to support his theory, still less does lie Ignore parts of the text, as so many of his predecessors had done. In consequence he comes nearer to a rational explanation of Hamlet's character, a definite connection l)etween his nature and his words and acts, than any other critic has done. It is impossible by any epitome to^^ive an adequate idea of his analysis. By tempera- ment he thinks Hamlet ' inclined to nervous instability, to rapid and perhaps extreme changes of mood and feel- ing ' ; he possesses ' an exquisite sensibility to which we may give the name moral if the word Js taken in the wfde meaning it ought to bear.' ' This makes his cyni- cism, grossness, and hardness appear to us morbidities, and has an inexpressibly attractive and pathetic effect.* Nothing is to be found elsewhere in Shakespeare, unless in the rage of the disillusioned idealist, Timon, of quite the same kind as Hamlet's disgust at his uncle's drunkenness, his loath- ing of his mother's sensuality, his astonishment and horror at her shallowness, his contempt; for anything pretentious or false, his indifference to everything merely external. . . . With this temper and this sensibility we find, lastly, in the Hamlet of earlier days, as of later, intellectual genius. . This brilliant, sensitive, warm-hearted young man led an active, well-balanced life — 'courtier, scholar, soldier ' — till one day his father, whom he had loved and admired and in whose shelter he lived, was found dead in his summer-house. The whole world was changed for the young man, for it now presented to him its most selfish and cruel aspect. His mother soon married his uncle, a man whom he instinctively abhorred. There was nothing for him to respect. He fell into a condition of melancholy — 'dejection, not yet insanity. That Hamlet was not very far from insanity is very probable.' His acuteness of mental vision, enhanced by his uu- CRITICISM OF TWENTIETH CENTURY 331 happiness, led him to suspect his uncle of the crime. While he was in this mental condition there came in the shape of a message from the other world confirmation of his suspicions and the profoundly shocking assertion of his mother's infidelity. We may regard the ghost as an imaginative presentation of the confirmation of an , instinctive presentiment, when little bits of evidence, / lying in the mind detached like separate grains of gun- j powder, suddenly catch fire one after the other, and the i truth stands disclosed for a moment in a lurid glow, never to be forgotten, but incapable of further disclosure. This takes place only in minds in which the unconscious in- , stinctive impulses are strong, and more frequently in ! women than in men. Coming as it did over this young; man in the condition he then was, it left him so far un-j nerved that for a month or more he did nothing what- , soever, certainly nothing toward avenging his father's / death or bringing the murderer to justice. He had fallen in love — not very deeply — with a young girl, the daughter of a state official, and during this time tried to see her ; but she, in obedience to her father, refused to see him and returned his letters unopened. Doubtless this intensified his dejection, and he forced his way into her presence and, finding that she was merely frightened and thought him crazy, he was convinced of the shal- low nature of her who received him favorably when he was prosperous and had no sympathy for him when in trouble. During the rest of the play Hamlet acts as a nature of his prof oundly moral instincts and sympathetic and acute intellectual perceptions might be supposed to. Dr. Bradley elaborates his theory with profound knowledge of human nature, and tests every part of the drama by it. As said before, it accounts for many things Hamlet says and does, which no other explana- tion has done. Hamlet is sane, but under great tension. y^oJi^^ 332 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS It is difficult for any one to realize the frightful effect produced on a young man of exquisite refinement by the certainty of his mother's impurity. No one has ever observed a similar case, and we can only reflect that regard for the purity of the matron is one of the deep- seated inherited instincts and that a sense of elemental shame at its violation by a mother is inherently human, and, according to Shakespeare, is capable of paralyzing the will and forcing a man to find relief in ' wild and I whirling words/ It might be observed in passing that all the four tragedies are motived by the violation or supposed violation of a primeval instinct. Macbeth turns on the violation of the instinct of loyalty to the chief as representing the tribe or the state ; Lear^ on the perversion of parental and filial love, and Othello^ on the suspected betrayal of the sanctity of married love. These instincts are necessary to the ongoing of social order, indeed, to the very life of humanity, and are perhaps stronger in uneducated than in educated men, and as strong now as they were in the age of Elizabeth. The cynical perversions of them, of which we hear, do not weaken their general presence nor their elemental ^iM force in the least. Hence comes the ' universal appeal ' />^y }} of the Shakespearean tragedies, for they turn on pri- >y^Y^v meval instincts. 'J^y.C^ Dr. Bradley shows that his conception of the charac- ■ .0 ter furnishes a rational explanation of Hamlet's conduct in all but one case. Hamlet's forgery of the commission -J. ; carried by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to England, J \ j whereby they lose their lives, and his indifference to their fate, seems cold-blooded and not at all compatible with the idea of a ' pure moral nature under great ten- sion.' It is hardly to be excused by Hamlet's supposi- tion that they were cognizant of the purport of the packet, for a blank paper would have served his purpose CRITICISM OF TWENTIETH CENTURY 333 as well. It is true that Hamlet regarded them with de- testation as treacherous spies masquerading as friends, and that he had reason to hate and despise the entire human race, with the exception of Horatio. Again, in Shakespeare's day, — the plays must of course be judged by the ethical standard of the time, — a judicial murder was not regarded with the horror it inspires in us. Further, Hamlet may have been one of those men who do not regard the lives of inferior natures as sacred — he is but slightly affected by the death of Polonius, and only says : * Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell. Take thy fortune.' Even the just Horatio does not exclaim at the cruelty of sending Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to death, but thinks only of the conse- quences when the news shall reach Denmark. We are not entirely justified in assuming that had Hamlet ac- companied the envoys to England he would not have found some means to prevent their execution. But make the best we can of it, the forgery of the commission seems, in our way of thinking, a piece of premeditated and unnecessary cruelty. It shows that Hamlet could raise his hand against all his enemies but Claudius, the very one he should have attacked promptly. Dr. Bradley's analysis of the minor characters evinces the same keen insight into human nature. Especially felicitous are his words on the Queen : — The Queen was not a bad-hearted woman, not at all the woman to think little of murder. But she had a soft animal nature, and was very dull and very shallow. She loved to be happy, like a sheep in the sun ; and, to do her justice, it pleased her to see others happy, like more sheep in the sun. It was pleasant to sit upon her throne and see smiling faces round her, and foolish and unkind in Hamlet to persist in grieving for his father instead of marrying Ophelia and making every- thing comfortable. . . . The belief at the bottom of her heart 334 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS was that the world is a place constructed simply that people may be happy in it in a good-humoured sensual fashion. His analysis of Ophelia is less acute. ' No reasonable doubt,' he says, ' can be felt on the point that Hamlet was once sincerely and ardently in love with Ophelia.' ' But his love was not an absorbing passion,' and ' after her rejection of him by her father's command it was mingled with suspicion and resentment.' Is not ' sin- cerely and ardently ' too strong an adverb ? Ophelia's nature is too shallow to call out profound love in one so superior to her both emotionally and intellectually as the prince. He says nothing in his first soliloquy that indicates such feeling, and that is before she had re- fused to see him. Dr. Bradley points out that she was very young and inexperienced, and motherless, and also that after a ' storm of utterly unjust reproach not a thought of resentment crosses her mind.' But this indi- cates a lack of spirit and of self-respect rather than sweetness and unselfishness. The critic, though not carried away by sympathy for Ophelia's pathetic fate, as Coleridge and Hazlitt and Mrs. Jameson were, can- not quite resist a man's natural impulse to excuse a young girl. It may be, however, that it is not just to blame a passive character for not being active and ener- getic. Of King Claudius Dr. Bradley says very justly that he is — very interesting both psychologically and dramatically. On the one hand he is not without respectable qualities. As a King he is courteous and never undignified. He performs his ceremonial duties efficiently, and he takes good care of the national interests. He nowhere shows cowardice . . . Nor is he cruel or malevolent. On the other hand he is no tragic character. He had a small nature. . . . He was a villain of no force. . . . He had the inclination of natures physically CRITICISM OF TWENTIETH CENTURY 335 weak and morally small towards intrigue and crooked dealing. — He was not stupid, but rather quick-witted and adroit. The King is one of the best examples to prove that Shakespeare drew at once types and individuals, i. e., typical individuals. The criminal of this stamp, pompous, good-natured, sly, devoid of moral principle, but with a keen perception of propriety in appearance and bearing, trusting no confederates, capable of asking his Maker to pardon him for fratricide at the very moment that he is planning another crime, is not rare, though rarely detected. But Claudius is himself, though he is a mem- ber of the great tribe of shams. Hamlet's contempt for him and the fact that the King does not resent public exhibitions of it, — apparently it does not touch him in the least, — are significant. The absence of force in the character of the King makes more puzzling the question, why does not Hamlet annihilate him at once ? In the first quarto, which represents the play before the psychological problem on which the later version turns had taken its final form in the poet's mind, Claudius is spoken of as having — A face like Vulcan. A look fit for a murder and a rape, A dull dead hanging look, and a hell-bred eye, To affright children and amaze the world. Shakespeare never showed better judgment as to the effect of character on the countenance than when he erased these lines and let us imagine Claudius as a man of mean appearance, — a mildewed ear, a toad, a bat, and bloated by excess of drinking. Dr. Bradley regards Othello as the most painfully exciting and the most terrible of the tragedies. If Des- demona were presented by an actress equal to Salvini in Othello, the impression would be unendurable. 336 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS Othello, he thinks, is more of a poet than Hamlet, though not possessing Hamlet's meditative or specula- tive imagination. He considers Othello to be a Moor, not a negro, but thinks that Desdemona's love over- came a racial repugnance no less strong than if he had been a negro. But is it not rather a social than a racial barrier that her love overcame ? Her father and Emilia think she should have married some one whose name was in the ' golden book ' of Venetian aristocracy, a Moro- sini or a Contarini, one of ' the wealthy curled darlings of our nation.' The Moor, though an honored soldier, was a foreign adventurer, to Roderigo, the young Vene- tian of fashion, he seems a 'wheeling and extravagant stranger.' In Dr. Bradley's analysis of the character of lago he shows the same grasp of human nature evinced in his treatment of Hamlet, lago's absolute antithesis. Referring to the fact that lago had lived to early man- hood without being found out, he says : — lago's powers of dissimulation and of self-control must have been prodigious ; for he was not a youth like Edmund, but had worn the mask for years. ... In fact, so prodigious does his self-control appear that a reader might be excused for feeling a doubt of its possibility. Such a doubt is certainly justifiable, for the anteced- ents of Lear, Hamlet, and Macbeth are entirely har- monious with the estimation in which they are held at the beginning of the play. But lago is shown plucking the gull Roderigo in a manner which evinces long prac- tice. How is it possible that he can have robbed his victims for years without the knowledge of his fellow soldiers? Such a man soon earns his reputation, yet lago is called ' honest ' by all. Again, how is it possible that lago's malevolence was not called out till he was disappointed in his promotion? Circumstances con tin- CRITICISM OF TWENTIETH CENTURY 337 ually conspire to test the patience even of a reasonable man. It seems more than improbable that he could have concealed his nature so many years in the rough and tumble of a soldier's life. This of course does not bear on the question of the excellence of a drama, for the position at the opening is assumed to be true ; nor does the incongruity between the reputation and the conduct of lago strike us when we see the play ; we are so taken up by his present malevolence that we think nothing of his past. Nevertheless, this is the only one of the tragedies where a man's reputation at the open- ing is not harmonious with his character and previous surroundings and actions. Macbeth is radically weak and bad, but the temptation of finding Duncan in his power and the influence of his wife never before con- spired to urge him to crime. He had waited all his life for just the necessary conjunction. Lear is plainly a noble, loving, impetuous nature, which during a very long life as King has never been thwarted and never come in contact with the realities of life. But lago has not only concealed his real nature, but has built up a reputation at variance with his conduct. Dr. Bradley considers Lear greater as a dramatic poem than as a drama. ' It is the tragedy in which evil is shown in the greatest abundance, and the evil char- acters are peculiarly repellent from their hard sav- agery and because so little good is mingled with their evil. The effect is, therefore, more startling than else- where; it is even appalling.' But 'there is another aspect of Lear's story, the influence of which modifies the impression that evil is all-powerful ' : — There is nothing more noble and beautiful in literature than Shakespeare's exposition of the effect of suffering in reviving the greatness and eliciting the sweetness of Lear's nature. The occasional occurrence, during his madness, of 338 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS autocratic impatience or of desire for revenge serves only to heighten this effect, and the moments when his insanity be- comes merely infinitely piteous do not weaken it. The old King, who in pleading with his daughters, feels so intensely his own humiliation and their horrible ingratitude, and who yet, at fourscore and upward, constrains himself to practise a self-control and patience so many years disused ; who out of old affection for his Fool, and in repentance for his injust- ice to the Fool's beloved mistress, tolerates incessant and cutting reminders of his own folly and wrong ; in whom the rage of the storm awakes a power and a poetic grandeur sur- passing even that of Othello's anguish; who comes in his affliction to think of others first, and to seek, in tender solici- tude for his poor boy, the shelter he scorns for his own bare head; who learns to feel and pray for the miserable and houseless poor, to discern the falseness of flattery and the brutality of authority, and to pierce below differences of rank and raiment to the common humanity beneath ; whose sight is so purged by scalding tears that it sees at last how power and peace and all things in the world are vanity except love ; who tastes in his own extreme hours the extremes of love's raptures and of its agony, but could never, if he lived on or lived again, care a jot for aught beside — there is no figure, surely, in the world of poetry at once so grand, so pathetic, and so beautiful as his. Well, but Lear owes the whole of this to those sufferings which made us doubt whether life were not simply evil, and men like the flies which wanton boys torture for their sport. Should we not at least be as near the truth if we called this poem the Redemption of King Lear, and declared that the business of the gods with him was neither to torment him, nor to teach him a noble anger, but to lead him to attain through apparently hopeless failure the very end and aim of life ? Dr. Bradley is as satisfying in his analysis of the minor characters as in his criticism of the philosophy and the construction of the play. His chapters on Macbeth show the same grasp of dramatic principle CRITICISM OF TWENTIETH CENTURY 339 and of the nature of poetry, the same perception of minute artistic beauty and the same comprehension of human character. It is rare that these critical faculties are united, and rarer still that they are backed by pains- taking, minute examination of the subject-matter criti- cised. Most critics are satisfied by recording general impressions and citing the passages which sustain them, overlooking: those which contradict. This is the habit of Coleridge and his contemporaries. But Dr. Bradley does not generalize without giving the evidence on both sides, and if the deductions from the various passages cannot be reconciled, he does not hesitate to say so. His citations are much fuller than those of any other critic, and his admiration for the plays does not pre- vent him from calling attention to faults of construc- tion or irreconcilable statements where such exist. His notes — ninety pages in the Appendix — are full of what is called ' Shakespearean scholarship,' and show that mastery of minute points is comparable with breadth of view, literary appreciation, and practical knowledge of human nature. He demonstrates very plainly that it is impossible to construct a satisfactory time-scheme for Othello^ even with the most liberal interpretation of Professor Wilson's theory of a double time-standard ; that is, that the critical and exciting scenes of a tragedy seem to the spectator to follow rapidly and uninterruptedly and that Shakespeare in- tends such to be the effect, but by casual remark indi- cated sufficient lapse of time between them for the normal operation of cause and effect or for the move- ment of his characters between distant points. In Othello^ however, there is no possibility that all the events after the arrival in Cyprus could have taken place in the short time indicated, nor is there any place between the scenes when we could conceive suffi- 340 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS cient time to have elapsed to render their sequence possible without contradicting definite statements. Fre- quently Shakespeare conceived the action so vividly that his plots hang together like natural events, but it is probably out of the question for any artist to manu- facture a story in which there shall not be some contra- dictions and impossibilities. A rigid cross-examination rarely fails to detect these in a manufactured story, un- less the witness professes to forget everything but one occurrence. The time-scheme in Hamlet is perfect if we allow the expression ' It is a nipping and an eager air' to refer to the chill of midnight, not to that of winter, but even here the flowers which Ophelia dis- tributes and those in her garland belong some of them to June and others to August. Thus ' pansies ' bloom in the spring, so do 'crow-flowers' (Ranunculi, Butter- cups, Celandines, etc.) ; ' long purples ' blossom in April and May, but 'rosemary' flowers in July and August, 'fennel' not before July, and no variety of ' nettle ' before August. Other indications point to late summer as the date of the drowning of Ophelia. The matter is of little consequence, but shows that so many little circumstances cohere in the natural sequence of \ events that it is almost out of the question to construct ^ a story which shall in every part harmonize with reality. The fifth act of Hamlet has sometimes been criticised as forced. The fencing bout is clearly to be a passage with blunted weapons, yet Hamlet feels a presentiment and Horatio counsels him to withdraw his consent if his heart misgives him, as if he thought the contest dangerous. When the fencers meet, Hamlet does not notice that Laertes is using a ' sword unbated,' — that is, without a button on the end, — though it is his part to keep his eye on his opponent's point, till he is pricked. He ' touches ' Laertes twice, — once a ' very CRITICISM OF TWENTIETH CENTURY 341 palpable hit,' without drawing blood, showing that his foil has the usual button on the end. The strange thing is that neither Osric, the umpire, nor the calm and watchful Horatio notices that Laertes is using a dan- gerous weapon. The moment Hamlet is pricked he per- ceives the treachery — probably seizes the sword-hand of Laertes with his left in an access of fury, forces the foil from his grasp, throws his own on the ground, and wounds Laertes severely, for he dies before Hamlet.* Even then Hamlet gives no sign that he suspects his uncle till his mother dies and Laertes gasps feebly, * The King — the King 's to blame,' when he at once stabs Claudius with such force that he dies immediately, before Laertes. That nobody should perceive that Laertes was using a dangerous weapon is inexplicable,^ but the audience never notices it, because the fact that a noble-minded young man is treacherously killed is ^ The superiority of Hamlet over Laertes — the average young man — in physical strength is evident in this scene and the grave- yard scene. Clearly he was no nervous weakling. * With regard to Horatio's oversight in allowing his prince to fence against an opponent using an unbated point, we may im- agine, if we are liberal-minded, that Laertes carefully covered the point with a leather button. This would enable him to say after Hamlet's death that his was one of the ' foils of a length ' and that he took it by chance. It is possible, too, that in Shakespeare's day friendly bouts might easily be made dangerous, and that Hamlet, knowing this, was justified in his anticipation of possible danger. Mr. Collier quotes from Maningham's diary, in which is the mention of the acting of Twelfth Night : ' Turner and Dun played their prizes this day at the Bankside ; but Turner at last ran Dun so farre in the brayne at the Eye that he fell down presently, stone-dead. A goodly sport in a Christian state to see one man kill another.' Shakespeare may have seen this occurrence, and must have heard of it, so Hamlet may have known that there was danger in a fencing match, but not have dreamed of treachery till he felt the envenomed point. \ 342 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS so fearfully exciting and presented with such force that the mind is filled with terror and pity to the entire ex- clusion of the analytical power. Emotion is so forcibly aroused that reason is in abeyance. The address is to the imagination, not to the mind, and details which are not part of the tragic movement are properly omitted, though they must have happened in the ordinary se- quence of events. If there is sometimes no intimation of a lapse of time sufficient for them, — for instance, for news of the ' grievous wreck ' of the Turkish fleet to reach Venice and the appointment of Othello's suc- cessor to be made and the bearer of the commission to reach Famagusta, — the oversight is of not the slightest consequence artistically, because it does not detract from the imaginative power of the drama. It is one of the many points of excellence in Dr. Bradley's criticism that he keeps matters of constructive de- tail subordinate to questions of effect on the imagina- tion, though his ability and learning in dissecting the former is of the highest order. GEOKGE PIEKCE BAKER Professor Baker's /Shakespeare as a Dramatist is characterized by the genial, urbane common sense of modern Harvard scholarship. The author bases his thesis solidly on facts, and brings to their interpreta- tion his practical experience in reproducing at Cam- bridge Elizabethan plays on an Elizabethan stage. He seeks to visualize Shakespeare's plays as they were first represented. He takes the ground that in criticising the dramas of any period we must consider the theatre of the period and the audiences of the period, their habits of thought and their prejudice in favor of the stories and the method of treatment to which they were accustomed. Novelties in the theatre make their CRITICISM OF TWENTIETH CENTURY 343 way slowly even now, and are subject to the approval of the audience. The author of a play must write with his spectators in mind. Consequently, every artist, especially every dramatic artist, must learn his trade and regard himself as a continuation of his predeces- sors. All that genius can do is to develop the method in vogue and improve by practice ; but it may develop a crude method and make it applicable to productions far superior to those it takes for models. It puts new wine into bottles very similar to the old ones. Dryden was therefore entirely wrong in making Shakespeare say : — Untaught, unpractised, in a barbarous age, I found not, but created first the stage. Shakespeare was neither a genius independent of old traditions, striking out a new form of art, nor was he merely a superior craftsman, slavishly bound by commercial considerations, producing poetic dramas un- wittingly, and ' growing great in his own despite.* At first he was deficient in the art of telling a story dra- matically, as an examination of Lovers Labour 's Lost and the Tivo Gentlemen of FeT-OTia shows. But the action of the Comedy of Errors and of Midsummer NigMs Dream shows improving skill, and in the Merchant of Venice he proves that he has learned how to con- catenate the incidents of a play and weave three stories into one so as to hold the attention of his audience and not shock them with palpable improbabilities. In the historic plays he was bound more or less by the record, which might cover a series of episodes of equal import- ance. Here he soon learned to attain unity by concen- trating interest on a single strong character like Richard III, or to relieve the pageant-like chronicle with a group of realistic figures like Falstaff and his bench- 344 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS men. Then, when he went on to higher comedy and tragedy, he developed still further the art of putting on the stage interesting and attractive individuals whose characters have both background and foreground. Consequently they are not only effective stage figures, but they are types of humanity as true for one genera- tion as for another, for the background of character is the same now as it was in the seventeenth century. In a word, Shakespeare developed normally, and by exer- cising his great natural powers in the same field with his contemporaries ; learning one thing at a time, sometimes neglecting one province of his art tempora- rily by reason of his interest in another, his eye in writing always on the theatre and the audience, and yet not disobedient to the heavenly vision, a conscien- tious artist creating beautiful things and yet a drama- tist writing for the contemporary stage, a poet but a friend and fellow in a cry of actors. All this and much more in detail Professor Baker makes clear and definite by reference to the plays themselves. The artistic and professional life of the dramatist has never before been made so comprehen- sible and convincing and so within the common law. This common-sense exposition is much more satisfactory than Professor Dowden's attribution of the plays to life periods dominated by various moods : the joyous period of youth, the disillusionment and gloom of early manhood, the profound pessimistic philosophy of ma- turity, and the tranquil reconcilement of age, thus making the character of the plays depend on the way the writer felt or on some heart-searching ex- perience, and not on what he had learned of his pro- fession ; on stages in the soul-history of the author instead of on stages in his technical skill and slowly acquired knowledge of men and things combined with CRITICISM OF TWENTIETH CENTURY 345 the general development of the drama and the chang- ing taste of audiences. Perhaps such periods did exist, certainly Shakespeare acquired with years and experience insight into more than technical method ; but a man writing for the public must consult its taste and not his own, and must subdue his spirit to what it works in. At all events here are the plays to prove, by citation of scene and line, increasing skill in first one part of the dramatic art and then in another; whereas periods of joy, depression, despair, and re- concilement, still more a reason for such periods, can be inferred only indirectly and by the exercise of con- siderable imagination. The development of power in constructing a plot and in creating characters is vastly more important than the changes in metrical usage the plays display, of which Mr. Fleay makes so much. The first is part of the intellectual effort put forth by the artist ; the metrical form is merely the clothing of the thought. The same vigorous adherence to fact and use of conjecture only when there is no other way to harmo- nize imperfect knowledge marks Professor Baker's chapters on the Elizabethan theatre. It is extremely probable that, when there were half a dozen theatres competing for patronage, new mechanical devices would be invented and tried continually. There are always among the English some ingenious mechanics in every art, and there was the example of the court masques to stimulate invention. A stage as large as that at the Fortune, ' fortie and three foote of lawful assize in length ' and at least twenty-eight feet deep, indicates that the business of theatrical presentation had de- veloped in magnitude. As it did so, it would also attract to itself such ingenious devices as commended themselves to the managers. Professor Baker's illus- 346 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS trations enable us to get a very clear idea of the stage of Shakespeare's day. It was a large platform, not quite as high as the head of a man, projecting into the uncovered central part of the building. In it about halfway from the front were two pillars sup- porting a roof over the rear part, at the back was a balcony, and under the balcony was a space at the back of which were doors for entrance of the actors. The interesting question is, how far were hangings or painted scenery used, and how far did the manager avail himself of the use of curtains. As Professor Baker very sensibly says, no two Elizabethan stages were exactly alike in all appointments, and this, in- deed, shows that improvements were being made. As to the use of scenery, it would seem that ' painted cloths ' were used in the upper part above the balcony. It would require but very little ingenuity to devise something to make the space underneath represent Prospero's cell, or the cave dwelling of Belarius, which Imogen enters. With regard to the use of a blanket or curtain, it undoubtedly served to shut off the upper stage, — the space under the balcony, — so that Prosper© could ' discover ' (uncover) ' Ferdinand and Miranda playing at chess.' Whether a curtain was ever suspended on a rope between the pillars so as to make a front stage, a middle stage, and an upper or rear stage under the balcony, besides the balcony itself, is not absolutely certain, but is highly probable from the citations Pro- fessor Baker gives, which indeed cannot well be inter- preted on any other theory. Nor does it seem possible that 'old stuttering Heming' or whoever else had charge of the stage arrangements could have over- looked so obvious a device, and one which would give so valuable an addition to stage effects. Altogether, the CRITICISM OF TWENTIETH CENTURY 347 stage offered the playwright more resources for theatri- cal effect than Coleridge imagined. Professor Baker regards the plays primarily as acting plays, and never for a moment strays beyond his thesis, the ' development of Shakespeare as a dramatist.' But he is far more than an antiquarian seeking to visualize material conditions long passed. He needs a clear idea of the theatre, to show how and where and when the author took forward steps. Here and there we see that he appreciates the aesthetic value of the plays, the beauty of the phrasing, and the light thrown on human char- acter, but those are not his present theme. He adheres to his point of view, which is more than some scholars do. In insisting that the ordinary uncritical theatre- goer is more interested in a story than in a character in a story, he hardly does justice to that convenient per- son, the * average man.' Of course we average men like a story ; we like to see things happen, we love a fight, — second hand ; many of us, when young, first hand, — and therefore go to football games. Energizing, phys- ically and intellectually, is life, and we average men like to live and to see younger men live more energeti- cally than we can. We like to follow the adventures of a man or a set of men with whom we have become ac- quainted, for we thereby ' economize attention ' and get more impressions from a certain amount of exertion. We like the events of a story to be concatenated and to lead to something, so that each adds to a remembered pleasure. We do like a story, a story with action and unity, and we leave to our betters pleasure in psycho- logical problems. But we are social animals and sympa- thetic animals, and we attach ourselves to those of our fellows who seem to typify what we should like to be, or who possess qualities that contribute to the ongoing of the race. So in a mimetic representation we like to see 348 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS a man in action, exciting, interesting action, making love, combating an enemy, or extricating himself from danger, subject to good or evil chance. But the person must be an interesting person, otherwise we soon tire of his adventures. If he possesses physical strength and grace, he is to a certain extent admirable ; if he pos- sesses force of will and mental power, like Richard III, he may have an abiding attraction even if he is bad, for those qualities are necessary to the welfare of society, and we instinctively regard the man with favor. If he is refined and intellectual and of a thoroughly kind nature, if he sympathizes with humanity freely and easily, we are sometimes irresistibly attracted to him, even if, as in the case of Hamlet, his motives are so complex as to be unreadable. In other words, it is the character that attracts the majority of spectators in a theatre, not the story alone ; and Shakespeare drew characters, not to practice his highest art, but because men like men even in the mimic world. Several of his contemporaries, notably Fletcher, told a story in scenes and acts as well as he, and we are tired of them, not because they are old-fashioned, but rather because their characters are not men and women, but merely names prefixed to theatrical parts. Professor Baker points out very clearly the increase in the power of presenting character — accompanied very likely by an increase in knowledge of the depths of human nature — which marked the career of Shakespeare, which is no less dis- tinct, though developing later, than his skill in telling a story in dramatic dialogue. It is the plays in which appear the characters with charm, Viola, Beatrice, Rosalind, Portia, Hamlet, or with power, like Lear, Macbeth, and Othello, that have survived on the stage by reason of the favor of audiences. Shakespeare's name carries some of the others, like The Taming of the CRITICISM OF TWENTIETH CENTURY 349 Shrew^ aud his poetry or wit carries others as dramas to read, like Midsummer Nighfs Dream and Henry IV. The story of Hamlet might be told with the Prince in the background, but the expression ' Hamlet with the part of Hamlet omitted ' testifies that the character of the prince is the central and perennial attraction. The story might be told and the poetry but slightly weakened if the prince did not appear ; but when the soul is out the play is dead. The uncritical spectator feels the attraction of this character as well as any one, though he is totally unable to analyze, much less to formulate, his impressions. It is the boy in us — a large part — that loves a story ; the man loves to come in contact with a strong man, or a brilliant man, or a good man, and to surrender to him. In life we are con- stantly fooled by sham men and women, who seem brave and unselfish, but in Shakespeare's world we are never disappointed. There is always more in his people — good or bad — than we thought at first, and therefore some of his plays retain their hold on the public as plays, not merely as dramatic stories. Professor Baker does not go nearly so far as the above would imply. Indeed, he says : ' Like the child, an au- dience, loving story-telling for its own sake, craves some compelling figure whom it can follow sympathetically or even with fascinated abhorrence.' But again he says : ' In reading it is characterization which tells most ; but on the stage, it is a story in action.' The character-in- terest does more than enhance or unify the story-inter- est on the stage, it is an independent element also. The action of the character may be largely a subjective or internal struggle, embarrassing to the movement of the plot. The uncritical spectator discerns it, perhaps better than the critic, and is moved by it if the art is of a high order. Phrasing and story-telling are important, but 350 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS Shakespeare's supremacy depends on his mastery in the most difficult and telling part of the dramatist's art, the ability to conceive and draw characters which inter- est and attract. Professor Baker's book illustrates the sane and judicial method of twentieth-century scholarship, which investigates carefully the minutiae of a subject without ignoring the architectonics, the higher things and the broad principles. It avoids the error of materialism, which sometimes attempts to formulate the phenomena of a higher order of facts in terms of the categories of a lower order of facts, and also the error of ultra-ro- manticism, which assumes that the higher order of facts exists in a rarefied atmosphere, independent of ordinary mundane conditions. It bears much the same relation to the Coleridgean criticism that Professor James's pragmatism does to the Hegelian philosophy. The thesis that the theatre reflects the national life is carried through the book as a Leit-motiv^ but it is applied with reference to known facts of our own day and of history, and to the permanent attributes of human nature. The Elizabethan stage is portrayed as it reaUy was, not es- sentially cheap and makeshift because it lacked the in- genious mechanism of our theatres, but a place where a dramatist could make the same appeal to his audience he tries to make to-day. Consequently the impression we gather from Professor Baker's pages about the poet and his career and the original effect of the plays is more full and rounded and, we instinctively feel, truer than anything romanticism can furnish. The book is literary criticism because, in a measure, it enables us to see the plays as the author and his friends saw them, and to correlate them with the society of the day and of our own century. CRITICISM OF TWENTIETH CENTURY 351 CHARLTON M. LEWIS Professor Lewis's essay, The Genesis of Hamlet^ collects all the arguments in support of the theory that the first dramatic presentation of the story of Hamlet was by William Kyd, about 1590, who took the prin- cipal incidents of the plot from an English translation (or the original) of a historic novel in French, itself based on a much earlier story in Latin by a Dane known as Saxo-Grammaticus. From this play of Kyd's, of which we have no copy, proceeded, by the usual process of re- production and rewriting, the play by Shakespeare pre- served for us in the imperfectly reported first quarto printed in 1603. Next year appeared the second quarto, nearly twice as long and much elaborated in style and incident. This is the complete play, as we have it, for the copy in the folio is the same with some omissions. Furthermore, there is a crude German play, using the Hamlet plot in most of its features, which can be traced back to 1710, but is evidently a work of a much earlier date. The source of this was on the first casual reading supposed to be the first Shakespearean quarto, but ex- amination shows that the two are in parallel states of development and must be derivatives from the same orig- inal, the hypothetical lost play by Kyd. We have there- fore the germ, the Hystorie of Hamhlet ; we postulate a missing link ; and we have a German and an English derivative from the missing link and the final, highly developed English organism. The problem is to recon- struct the missing link with the merest hint of a fossil bone in a pamphlet of the period. We have the two ends of the series, the secondary form, and the abortive Ger- man by-product, and some knowledge of the environment in which the missing link grew, the method and man- ner of the dramatist Kyd in constructing a tragedy. 352 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS Reasoning from effect to cause is a hazardous pro- ceeding, especially when the cause is multifarious, and one of the elements, the genius of Shakespeare, out- weighs all the rest in efficiency in the ratio of fifty to one. Professor Lewis's argument is admirably lucid, and is cogent as far as meagre circumstantial evidence can make a case. That Kyd did write a play on the subject seems about as certain as anything can be which is not definitely stated in the literature of the period. That the German play was derived from this seems more than probable. That Kyd's play suggested to Shakespeare to write a play on the same subject from a totally different (because Shakespearean) standpoint, seems hardly less so. That he carelessly left in his fin- ished work some expressions or hints of situations to be found in the original which do not seem strictly in line with any reasonable theory of his characters or plot, may be possible. These incongruities — survivals or atrophied organs in tlie process of evolution — Professor Lewis points out with great acuteness, and his hand- ling makes the subject extremely interesting. But when he says that the 'composite Hamlet is not an entity at all, and, therefore, not a subject for psychological ana- lysis,' we cannot follow him. As well say that a man is not a physiological entity because he has a pineal gland and a vermiform appendix, or not a psychologi- cal entity because, in addition to the habits imposed 'on him by his bringing up, he is swayed by instincts of cruelty — and loyalty — derived from his barbarian for- bears. The fact is, psychological analysis cannot be applied to men of the Hamlet type until it has developed much further than it has to-day. Every day we attribute the actions of ordinary men to a set of everyday motives : love, family affection, greed, vanity, love of applause, CRITICISM OF TWENTIETH CENTURY 353 selfishness, envy, and the like. If their actions cannot be motived in any one of these convenient categories, we say they are unaccountable, that is, the man in an analysis is a fool or a lunatic. If he does something particularly brave or unselfish, the reason for which we cannot find in our own little list, we feel that there was a reason for it in his character, though we cannot give it a name. It is impossible to predict how a man of high intellectual qualities and a specially developed emo- tional nature will act in circumstances that try his soul. When he does act, it is impossible to explain exactly why he did what he did. He did it because he was him- self. Hamlet is a type of such a man, highly wrought emotionally, highly developed intellectually, and placed in distressing circumstances. Because we are unable formally to analyze the complex motives of such a man when his action seems contradictory, gives us no right to say — as his friends said of Shelley — that he is not an entity or not a normal man. Problems insoluble to plane geometry yield to calculus ; but we still ana- lyze character by elementary methods. A chemist, find- ing a refractory compound, does not at once decide that it is non-reducible. He tries to improve his ap- paratus. Only a small fraction of what Hamlet does can be referred to ordinary, comprehensible motives. Pie joins the guardsmen in watching for the reappearance of his father's ghost, incited by reverence and wonder. Seeking an interview with Ophelia after he had been moping in the palace — ' foregoing all custom of exer- cise ' — for two months might be attributed to a des- perate desire to find out whether there was one woman in the world with a soul. The scheme of the ' Mouse-trap ' may have been formed from the natural wish to obtain corroborative evidence. Refraining from attacking the 354 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS King when praying is the result of a religious belief held by his contemporaries. He acts with a direct view to results when he forges the commission on shipboard, and in killing Polonius he thinks he is accomplishing an object. But everything else he does is the result of his character and the state of his mind. What is the object of his brutal treatment of Ophelia and her father, of his * wild and whirling words,' of his bitter reproaches to his mother, of his absurd willingness to fence for a wager when he has serious business on hand? These are not actions prompted by a simple motive — or by any comprehensible balance of motives — such as we find in the everyday man when he ' makes up his mind.' They are the result of a peculiar con- geries of emotional capacities worked on by distressing events. Judged by the ordinary workings of the human mind, his nature is inexplicable. We feel certain, how- ever, that high and noble qualities — love of his fellows, a horrified disdain of vice, an inability to compromise with evil — are moving him, we cannot tell exactly how, because the way is beyond the reaches of our intellect. But that is no reason that we should not speculate about the way, for coming into imperfect contact with a rare and noble character is a better education than scien- tifically analyzing thousands of the average men who crawl between earth and heaven. Hamlet himself is confident that he will be justified if he is 'reported aright to the unsatisfied,' but the report must be made by one who ' held him in his heart.' Professor Lewis argues that since the obstacles to the hero's revenge in the Hystorie and in the German Hamlet were objective they were so in Kyd's Hamlet, The German Hamlet feigns madness deliberately to secure his own safety. He says he cannot attack the King because he is 'guarded.' 'He has no qualms CRITICISM OF TWENTIETH CENTURY 355 of conscience, no hesitation or irresolution ' ; he never loses sight of his object, which is revenge and to gain the kingdom for himself. Now Shakespeare, at the period of writing this play, was more intent on character than on plot, although a past-master of construction. Adventures were not so much to him as were people undergoing adventures. He minimized external dan- gers — as Professor Lewis says, ' resolved them into the fourth dimension.' Professor Lewis is of the opin- ion, however, that certain parts of the action originally motived by external' danger to the hero were retained by Shakespeare or allowed to remain when the reason for their existence had been taken away, and that in consequence the dramatic action is ' in some features in- explicable.' This may well be, and the theory affords a means of confessing and avoiding the difficulties found in making the conduct of the play conform to compre- hensible cause and effect. The essayist in support of the above proposition points out that in the original Hystorie and in the Ger- man Hamlet^ or Fratricide Punished^ and presumably in Kyd's Hamlet^ the obstacles the hero must overcome were objective, — he could not safely attack the King because he was 'guarded.' His scheme of feigning madness is therefore not purposeless, because he was an object of suspicion. Shakespeare's Hamlet is, how- ever, in no immediate danger until he himself arouses the suspicion of the King. Yet as soon as he has re- ceived the disclosure of the ghost he administers to the guardsmen a solemn oath : — Here, as before, never, so help you mercy, How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself, As I perchance hereafter shall think meet To put an antic disposition on, That you, at such times seeing me, never shall, . . , 356 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS [By] such ambiguous giving out, to note That you know aught of me. As Professor Lewis justly says, * To present him as resolving on the pretense (a totally unnecessary one) in the white heat of his first wrath and vindictiveness is very doubtful psychology.' The words, therefore, he thinks, are a part of the old play left in the new one. But cannot we regard the words as a survival as words, but not in the old sense ? Hamlet is in such a condition that he cannot be held strictly responsible for what he says. Why should there not drift through his mind the idea, ' This is going to be too much for me. I must let myself go occasionally as I did a moment ago. I must tell my friends not to notice my behavior.' So that the words are not the formation of a definite plan, but an apology in advance for what seemed to the speaker inevitable. In the German play Hamlet is about to disclose to Horatio and Francisco the message of the ghost, and desists and requests secrecy because he thinks that the underground words of the ghost indicate displeasure. He tells Horatio what the ghost said as soon as Fran- cisco has gone. In the Shakespeare play Hamlet of his own motion insists on non-disclosure, even of the fact that the guardsmen have seen the ghost. This injunc- tion is quite as foolish as his decision to feign madness. He might reasonably have confided in Horatio. Kyd invented the ghost and the underground echo, ' Swear.' It would be rather derogatory to Shakespeare to say that he retained the underground business on account of the excellent theatrical effect, leaving the request for secrecy apparently motiveless, and it is certainly as much so as the request to his friends not to notice his future antics. It is better to say that both requests are indications of a perturbed mind, no less so than his * wild CRITICISM OF TWENTIETH CENTURY 367 and whirling words," which cause Horatio to forget for the moment the respect due to his prince.* Professor Lewis is of the opinion that there is no- thing to indicate that Shakespeare ever read the Hamlet story in the French of Belleforest or in the English translation ; or, in other words, that the missing play by Kyd alone furnished the suggestions of incident and character worked up into Hamlet^ Prince of Denmark, But there is one plot-element in the crude mediaeval novel as translated by the Frenchman which is almost entirely obliterated in the German play. It was there- fore presumably not used by Kyd, a supposition made more likely by the fact that it furnishes a psychic mo- tive altogether too profound for any one but the master, who was attracted by its very profundity. The central figure of the Hystorie of Hamhlet is a Scandinavian boy prince, in a hostile court, bent on revenge for the mur- der of his father, feigning madness for his own safety, and in the end accomplishing his object and recovering the crown of Denmark for himself. It is simply a story of successful revenge. But this youth is possessed by the Teutonic race-horror of the crime of adultery, and rebukes his mother in an interview strictly parallel to that in which Hamlet so bitterly upbraids Queen Ger- trude. In the German play this boy appears as a young prince, and is informed of the murder and his mother's guilt by his father's ghost. The originals of all Shake- speare's character-group surround him, — pale ghosts of Polonius, Horatio, Osric, and the rest. His mind is ^ It might be suggested as a motive for secrecy on Hamlet's part that he feared that if anything came out it would reflect on his mother. The ghost shows a chivalrous desire to shield the woman, and enjoins his son not to ' contrive against his mother aught.' Judging from the fourth scene of the third act, Hamlet for two months believed that his mother was privy to the murder. Hence possibly his nervous dread of publicity. 358 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS full of desire for revenge, and he alludes to his mother's shame as a secondary matter. The natural conclusion is that Kyd made the boy a young man and regarded the plot simply as a story of revenge. In Shakespeare's mind the figure of a young prince, compounded of in- tellect and emotion, the flower of Elizabethan society, having in his heart the ineradicable race-instinct for female purity, coming suddenly into contact with the wickedness, stupidity, and selfishness of the conven- tional world, and absolutely solitary till he finds one friend, was slowly developed. He portrayed such a man, and the conception has made a great impression on other people ever since. He did not build on the old foundations, though he used much of the old material. The revenge motive is obscured in the artist's mind by the terrible situation of the young man after the disclos- ure of the ghost, — a situation almost as awful as that of CEdipus, — and is thrust to the background, whence it emerges from time to time when Hamlet pulls him- self together, but it never remains long enough to be operative. The terrible mystery of human wickedness and guilt in one from whom he drew his life prostrated the young man's soul with the sharp anguish of pity and shame known only to the heroic. He is too well bal- anced to be driven crazy and kill both mother and uncle, but is in a position that would render any one else in- sane. When the ghost tells him to ' revenge his foul and most unnatural murder,' Hamlet replies : — Haste me to know 't — [that is, tell me who it was] that I, with wings as swift As meditation or the thoughts of love, May sweep to my revenge. The ghost then informs him that his uncle was the criminal, and, had he stopped there, Claudius would have CRITICISM OF TWENTIETH CENTURY 359 been dead before daybreak ; but he goes on to explain the manner of his taking off, and also — what seems strange in a father — to tell his son that his mother was an adulteress. He enjoins his son not to punish the woman, and bids him ' remember me.' Hamlet, on the departure of the ghost, bursts out in the magnificent invocation to earth and heaven and hell. Conscious that this experience must determine his life, he vows that * thy commandment all alone shall live within the book and volume of my brain.' Then, coming back to actualities, he cries with an exceeding bitter cry, first : — O most pernicious woman ! and then — O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain! Standing there with the ruins of the moral world about his feet, what is duty, what is revenge? That which sustains both, relation to the outer world, to other people, has disappeared ; for the moment he is on one side and the rest of the world on the other, there is no reciprocity between him and living men. The conception of a man paralyzed by elemental shame is of course Shakespeare's, and it would seem that he must have got the hint from Belleforest, not from Kyd, and strengthened the paralyzing force by letting the son think his mother privy to the murder. The source is of little consequence, for the development goes far beyond the germ. All of Shakespeare's heroes possess a strong, normal subconscious life — they belong to the human family. When emotion wells up from the depths it does not always result in rational thinking. Grief sometimes intermittently and temporarily paralyzes the thinking apparatus, and relief is found in spasmodic, irregular, and irrational action. Hamlet's emotional 360 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS disturbance is far more profound and lasting than any grief can create. The form in which it manifests itself is peculiar to him as an individual, its intensity is de- termined by the fact that he is a typical human being. The primitive instincts on which the evolution of society rests have not been obliterated in him by cynicism or experience in a conservative, commercial world ; though a prince, he is still a man. Professor Lewis points out in his first chapter the futility of the ' Coleridgean theory ' that Hamlet was a ' man of wide and keen intellectual powers, but feeble will.' This theory hardly needs refuting nowadays, any more than does the theory that Hamlet was insane. ' The general gender bear him great love,' and the general gender are never interested in a dead man or an insane man. So they soon forget the tragic heroes of other dramatists, who are usually insane or dead, or in some intermediate state, and accept Hamlet as a brother of the human race.^ 1 It is impossible for a writer of fiction to avoid discrepancies in relating parallel series of events. Shakespeare is as accurate as any novelist can be in taking account of the lapse of time, but he sometimes fails. The play of Hamlet occupies, from the death of the father to that of the son, four months plus the time from the presentation of the ' Mouse-Trap ' to the final catastrophe, for Ophelia says at the play, ' It is twice two months ' since your father died. She must be taken au pied de la lettre, for she is precisely one of those limited intellects who are exact in the matter of dates. The interview with the Queen-mother and the death of Polo- nius take place immediately after. The arrest and deportation of Hamlet follow hard upon, — say next day. The pirates attacked the ship * ere we were two days old at sea.' An indefinite time must be allowed for the return of Hamlet, because when he arrived Laertes was already in Elsinore, having been recalled from Paris, or overtaken on his way, by the news of the death of his father. The fencing match is at once arranged, for, as soon as Hamlet had met Horatio, passed by the churchyard, and entered the castle. It takes place in the hall. Immediately on the fatal end- CRITICISM OF TWENTIETH CENTURY 361 PKOFESSOR RALEIGH The latest work in Shakespearean criticism (1907) is Professor Walter Raleigh's Shakespeare^ one of the ing Fortinbras appears, having been successful in his Polack wars, and the ambassadors from England enter. In the interim, there- fore, a ship had finished the voyage to England and returned to Denmark, and Fortinbras had completed a campaign. But if we allow a considerable time for Hamlet's absence, — the pirates may have set him ashore at some distance from Elsinore, a port they would naturally shun, or he may have remained in hiding, — the interval may have been long enough to allow for the return of the ship from England. The time after the representation of the * Mouse-Trap ' is, therefore, indefinite, but not so long that Ophe- lia's flowers could not be still in bloom. The four months before that present one discrepancy. Hamlet says at the opening of the play that his father was not two months dead, and that the wed- ding followed the funeral within a month. If we call the interval between the murder and the official announcement of the marriage with which the second scene opens, six weeks, the body lay in state three weeks, giving time for Laertes and Horatio to be recalled to the official funeral. The only objection to this is that Horatio would probably have seen Hamlet in the three weeks between the funeral and the wedding. Hamlet, therefore, moped in the palace for two months and a half before he got up the * Mouse-Trap.' This makes up Ophelia's ' twice two ' months since his father died. For the time of year we must work the other way, beginning with the murder. Snakes do not emerge from their hibernation much before the first of April, and Claudius was altogether too acute a man to start the rumor that the King was stung by a ser- pent at a period when every peasant would know that snakes are as harmless as walking-sticks. Nor would even a hardy warrior King be likely to sleep in the afternoon in an open pavilion accessible to snakes much before May-day, say April 15. This would bring the ghost scene about June 15, a date which har- monizes all the conditions but one. The night is evidently short, for the ghost leaves at one o'clock, and Horatio notices that the sun is about to rise after he and the guardsmen have discussed the situation. The sun rises at half-past three on June 15 in southern England and at twenty minutes past two in Elsinore. 362 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS series of English Men of Letters^ which have so amply illustrated the wealth of contemporary England in men June 15 is a little early for glowworms, but the discrepancy is slight. But next night at twelve Hamlet says, 'The air bites shrewdly, it is very cold.' Horatio replies, 'It is a nipping and an eager air.' That would not apply at all to the damp chill of a summer midnight, even supposing that the young men were cold with apprehension. It means frost, or at least a temperature in which glowworms would have permanently 'paled 'their 'inef- fectual fires.' Again, the night before Horatio speaks of the dew. He may mean dampness, but even so, it is incompatible with a * nipping air.' If the murder is dated April 15, the * Mouse-Trap 'was pre- sented August 15. Ophelia's death would then occur early in Sep- tember, and the flowers she presents, though some are out of season, may reasonably be accepted as possible. But there is very little time allowed for the ship to return from England or the energetic Fortiubras to finish his war. Three weeks at least is necessary. Slight discrepancies can be found in Thackeray, Fielding, Trol- lope, and others. The events in Hamlet hang together remarkably. Shakespeare's time-scheme is much more out of order in Othello, but we do not notice it in reading because the total impression is of things happening in sequence. Irregularities in the time- scheme are of course much less important than those pointed out by Professor Lewis, and very likely arose from the same cause. It is impossible to make the details in fiction fit together as they do in real life. In real life Fortinbras would not have disem- barked his ' lawless resolutes ' on an island and marched across merely to take ship on the other side. Apparently, Shakespeare did not know that Elsinore was on an island. Again, a June night at Elsinore is all twilight, and no star could be said to ' illume that part of heaven where now it hurns.^ Arcturus himself, if visible, would be but the faintest twinkle. Another point which may be regarded as a legacy from the Kyd play is the anomalous position of Hamlet at the Danish cap- ital. He has his own suite in the palace, though he is 'most dreadfully attended.' He is the heir-apparent in a civilized court, but he is an heir-apparent without a party, a state of afPairs unknown in English history. He is a cultured and attractive young man of thirty with no personal friends but one, whom he attaches to himself CRITICISM OF TWENTIETH CENTURY 363 of culture and scholarship. Two hundred and thirty- seven pages is scanty room in which to display the after the play begins, — a state of affairs impossible at any court, where there would certainly be some men like Kent, Edgar, Mac- duff, and Lennox. The court in the Belleforest story is mediaeval and the prince is a helpless boy, so his isolation is less unnatural. We might say, then, that Hamlet's position is a survival from the old play, but a more reasonable point of view is taken when we say that the play is a poem, no matter what scrap of the older story clings to it. Thus the Danish court is not a real court made up of average human beings, but a poetic presentation of 'this present evil world ' — that is, the evil part of it. It is a court made up exclusively of selfish, indifferent, stupid, and unsympathetic people, and Hamlet is the good man, solitary and bewildered, coming to comprehend his moral isolation, an isolation impossible in real life but made complete in the play for the sake of poetic emphasis. The cases of partial isolation we sometimes see in real life are hardly less pathetic, but for dramatic effect Hamlet's moral soli- tude must be complete, with the relief of only one sound-hearted but limited friend. The position that Hamlet's conduct is partly due to shock at the second part of the ghost's disclosure does not lessen the diffi- culty of comprehending his unique and high-strung character. The play turns on a psychological problem : how will a shocking and shameful disclosure respecting a loved mother affect a man of highly moral nature and refined temperament already in a condi- tion of melancholy? Shakespeare says that it paralyzed him for two months, during which he refrained from 'all custom of exer- cises ' and remained in stupefied inaction. At the end of the period he endeavors to see the girl he had loved (not very profoundly, it is true). When he looks at her he sees, once for all, the hopeless- ness of any sympathy. He has recovered tone partially, and wel- comes his college friends warmly and frankly, though he is still in a highly nervous and irritable state, to which irony gives some relief. He is rather unreasonably hurt when he discovers that it is not a ♦ free visitation,' but that the young men have been ' sent for.' He describes his condition in beautiful and touching words, but, strangely enough, he is not irritated when they, utterly unable to comprehend him, respond with vacuous grins, but takes up the news of the advent of the players with eagerness, almost enthu- siasm. These young men have been terribly abused by critics, but 364 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS views of so capable a critic as the author, and in con- sequence the book has in places the effect of too great they are simply ordinary, harmless persons, — finely developed specimens of the genus bore. Their contrast to Hamlet is so great that as we love him we instinctively hate them, which is hardly fair to the great body of the human race. Then Hamlet takes up the idea of the ' Mouse-Trap,' not without justification, for he may reasonably have felt that there was a bare possibility that he was mistaken. If we talk about Hamlet as a real man we cannot regard the ghost as a veritable ghost, but only as a poetical and highly effective theatrical device for presenting the effect of suspicion ripening into conviction but calling for proof. Ham- let's nervous tension is very marked when his device is successful. This is, however, no more evidence of insanity than stumbling after violent exercise is evidence of drunkenness. His reluctance to kill his uncle in sanctuary is natural enough for a seventeenth- century man. His spasmodic murder of Polonius is very unfor- tunate, for from that time till he returns to Elsinore Hamlet is under arrest. His return to the castle is an act of tlie highest courage. His conduct at Ophelia's grave is due to a nervous break- down, perilously near insanity. His willingness to play the * friendly wager ' is the supremest folly, for he had the King's commission in his pocket, and could easily have raised a party against him. But impulsive, high-strung men do act and talk impulsively. Hamlet was, of course, never the man to form a practical plan, looking to all details and thinking of nothing else till it was exe- cuted. He is far too much given to abstracting particulars and con- sidering how they fit into the general plan of the universe, — he is far too much of a poet. But he is a man of so much general intelligence and so entirely destitute of physical fear that, had the sacred duty of revenge been laid on him when he was in normal psychical condition, it is impossible to believe he would not have carried it out. What prevented him except his mental anguish ? What caused that stunned, inert mental condition for two months, followed by spasms of semi-hysterical raving alternating with moody inaction, except the double conviction of his father's mur- der and his mother's shame ? And the last was by far the more potent. In the tragedy of Hamlet effect follo\7S cause, but the effects are complicated and remote phenomena of human na- ture, and the cause is the distressing nature of the conditions confronting a unique character — unique in degree, not in kind. CRITICISM OF TWENTIETH CENTURY 365 condensation and of a construction limited by necessity and unjust to the author's mastery of his theme. The style is brilliant, without any appearance of conscious effort. The numerous quotations worked into the page, many of them without quotation marks, testify to the writer's familiarity with the text, and witness to the fact that a line apposite to the expression of every shade of thought can be found somewhere in the plays. The first chapter is entitled ' Shakespeare,' and has to do primarily with his character as artist. Of Shake- speare the man we have little but negative knowledge, indeed, we know nothing of him as a living and com- In all the tragedies the experiences are subtly fitted to the character that undergoes them, so much so that were the charac- ters interchanged there would be no tragedy. In Hamlet^ not only is the central character a very complicated and elusive one, but the experiences cannot be related to anything that we or any of our friends have undergone or that we have read of in another book. Hence the great difficulty in analyzing his motives is lack of any sufficient analogies in experience, though we are conscious of the fundamental truth of the tragic action. Flowers distributed by Ophelia Rosemary blossoms in July and August. Pansies " " May, but later when cultivated. Fennel " " July and early August. Columbine " " June. Rue " " June to September. Daisies (some varieties) blossom all the season. Flowers in her garlands Cornflowers blossom in May and June. Nettles (some varieties) blossom all the summer. Daisies " '* " " " Long Purples blossom in May and June. Some of the above might have been dried herbs, but their average time of flowering is near enough to August or early Sep- tember for a dramatist, though not for a botanist. 366 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS panionable spirit. Of Shakespeare the artist, criticism has revealed a great deal. We know the man was suc- cessful in affairs. From this we can gather that he was destitute of the improvident, impatient, and self-indul- gent temper which we know prevents thrift. He cer- tainly was destitute of the qualities which make enemies, for, had he been arrogant, opinionated, and selfish, some record of quarrels resulting from such qualities would surely have survived. We are sure that he was not positively bad, but we are not sure that he was positively good. Now a man may be a great poet and yet be a person of little positive force either for good or evil, and he may be a fine artist and yet at the bot- tom not at all an estimable person. Professor Raleigh thinks : — No dramatist can create live characters save by bequeath- ing the best of himself to the children of his art, scattering among them a largess of his own qualities : giving, it may be, to one, his wit ; to another, his philosophic doubt ; to another, his love of action ; to another, the simplicity and constancy that he finds deep in his own nature. With this no one can find fault, but it applies to Shakespeare the craftsman and artist, and not to Shakespeare the man. Professor Raleigh may make the distinction in his mind, but he does not make it clear. Is it not time that we acknowledge once for all that, while we may learn a great deal as to how the writer of the plays reacted imaginatively on what he learned from observation or from books, we know and can learn nothing positively about the way in which he reacted habitually on the everyday world in his daily speech and conduct? He may have been reti- cent or effusive, selfish or generous, dictatorial or yielding, possessed, indeed, of any qualities except those CRITICISM OF TWENTIETH CENTURY 367 which render fruitless great mental powers. He was industrious and self -controlled within the limits neces- sary to worldly success. Can we go much further ? At all events, when Professor Raleigh goes on to build up a personality for Shakespeare's father he is careful to say, 'The bare facts, so far as they lend themselves to portraiture, seem to sujoply svggestions for the pic- ture of an energetic, pragmatic, sanguine, frothy man, who was always restlessly scheming and could not make good his gains. We guess him to have been of a mercurial temperament, and are not surprised to find that he was a lover of dramatic shows.' This con- jecture gives life and animation to the page, and is frankly stated as conjecture. The further conjecture, that the poet's aristocratic descent on his mother's side may have been not without effect in making him ap- preciative of the character and bearing of high-born ladies, has at least a plausible basis. Nothing affects the character of an imaginative child more than the tradition of well-born ancestors. The author, in the next chapter of his delightful book, shows himself well aware of the danger of assuming a theory and then interpreting the facts in its support. His theory is : — A new type of character meets us in these plays {The Terrv- pest and Winter's Tale) ; a girl innocent, frank, dutiful, and wise, cherished and watched , over by her devoted father, or restored to him after long separation. It is impossible to escape the thought that we are indebted to Judith Shake- speare for something of the beauty and simplicity which appear in Miranda and Perdita, and in the earlier sketch of Marina. A touching and interesting and suggestive picture that brings Shakespeare close to our sympathy, but the author hastens to add : — 368 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS These speculations may easily be carried too far ; and they bring with them this danger, that prosaic minds take them for a key to the plays and translate the most exquisite works of imagination into dull chronicles and gossip. Perhaps we do best to abide by the bare facts, and the straightforward tale they tell. The third chapter, headed * Books and Poetry,' con- siders the books Shakespeare might have read and those he evidently did read. It recapitulates the literature of the day, and makes a vivid — Professor Raleigh always succeeds in making his descriptions living — picture of the conditions of the time. He points out how ' rich ' the plays are in the ' floating debris of popular litera- ture, — scraps and tags and broken ends of a whole world of songs and ballads and romances and proverbs. Few of his contemporaries can match him in the wealth that he caught out of the air or picked up by the road- side.' In considering the sonnets he inclines to the idea that they (some of them ?) ' express his own feelings in his own person ' and ' are not merely poetic exercises.' 'The situations shadowed are unlike the conventional situations described by the tribe of sonneteers, as the hard-fought issues of a law-court are unlike the formal debates of the courts of love.' That is to say, the feeling is so intense that it could have been aroused only by imagination working on a real and remembered situa- tion. This is the crux of the question, and imaginative people — the only ones entitled to judge — will agree with him. The next chapter is on the development of the theatre and of Shakespeare's plays. As it contains but thirty pages, no systematic treatment is possible, but the author touches lightly and always originally on many topics. He points out that the scenic illusion is produced by poetic description. In As You Like It, he says 'a CRITICISM OF TWENTIETH CENTURY 369 minute examination of the play has given a curious result. The words " flower " and " leaf " do not occur. The oak is the only tree.' Doubtless the effect is pro- duced, first by the words of Charles the Wrestler : — They say he is already in the Forest of Arden, and a many merry men with him ; and there they live like the old Robin Hood of England : they say, many young men flock to him every day, and fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world. This at once rouses the boy in every one of the au- dience. Who is there that does not long to be with the old Duke and ' fleet the time carelessly ' ? Then the lyrics heighten the illusion, and we are perfectly willing to admit that ' under the greenwood tree ' ' this life is most jolly.' The effect is produced by two or three touches of poetry, as Professor Raleigh says. But he is not quite exact in saying * the oak is the only tree.' Rosalind finds some verses on a ' palm tree,' and if * hawthornes and brambles ' and a ' rank of osiers ' do not rise above the dignity of shrubs, at all events the cote which the cousins buy ' right sodainly ' and without any fuss over conveyancing or searches of title, is * fenced about with olive trees.' But this has no bear- ing on the truth that the sylvan atmosphere is created by a very few poetic touches, and by the consistency of the whole with ' losing and neglecting the creeping hours of time ' under the shade of melancholy boughs, where^ — 'T is but an hour ago since it was nine, And after one hour more 't will be eleven. The next chapter, ' Story and Character,' or Shake- speare's materials and how he handled them, is much the longest, occupying, indeed, more than one third of 370 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS the book. It, too, is full of brilliant appreciations ex- pressed in striking language. He takes a different view from most modern critics when he says : — At this point of the play (the opening) improbability is of no account : the intelligent reader will accept the situation as a gift, and will become alert and critical only when the next step is taken and he is asked to concede the truth of the argu- ment — given these persons in this situation, such and such events will follow. Before appealing to the sympathies and judgment of his audience he has to acquaint them with the situation. Until the situation is created he cannot get to work on his char- acters. It is true that in some of the plays the situation is developed early ; in Lear in the first and second scenes and in Hamlet in the first act, but in Othello and in As You Like It, for example, the first act puts us in possession of the surroundings but not the situation. In every case the characters are made interesting at once. The ' situation ' in the first case is a high-spirited husband ' wrought ' and ' perplexed in the extreme ' by insinuations against his young wife, who has left home and kindred for him ; in the second it is two girls, one of them masquerading as a boy, running away from home, united by a genuine friendship, and finding the lover of one of them in the Forest of Arden. In neither is the situation created till the characters have made a definite impression on the audience, and not till the second act. Othello is never greater or Desdemona more attractive than before they leave Venice, and the varied charm of the two cousins is displayed in the court of Duke Frederick as irresistibly as in the cote ' at the tuft of olives.' He is wide of the mark, too, when he says that ' the King in Hamlet is little better than a man of straw,' CRITICISM OF TWENTIETH CENTURY 371 and that ' we see him through Hamlet's eyes.' The scoundrel is solidly drawn, and any one is to be con- gratulated who has not had the reality of this one of Shakespeare's portraits forced on him by personal con- tact with some verbose, rhetorical hypocrite, given over to sensual pleasures, and entirely unconscious of the wickedness of his acts till there is imminent danger of exposure. If we ' see him through Hamlet's eyes ' (and Horatio's, too) we see him as he is, for the disillusioned Hamlet looks — perhaps too deeply for his own good — into reality. The world is apt to accept fatuously the judgments of Polonius and Rosencrantz and Guilden- stern and the Queen and Osric, the shallow judgments of the conventional majority. The chapter is, however, full of epigrammatic truth. It is true that Shakespeare is ' curiously impatient of dullness and that he pays scant regard and does no justice to men of slow wit,' and in this he differs from Chaucer or Goldsmith or Addison. Stupidity is made absurd, as if he had a rooted contempt for the non-in- tellectual. The fool in Lear may be an exception, but Horatio, sometimes spoken of as non-intellectual, which he is in a limited sense, is a man of ability. The author points out the underlying family resemblance in Shake- speare's women, — a resemblance compatible with great variety of character. ' They are almost all practical, impatient of mere words, clear-sighted as to ends and means.' They do not accept the premises to deny the conclusion, or ' decorate the inevitable with imaginative lendings.' This may be a feminine characteristic, but is it not true of Shakespeare's women, with the possible exception of Ophelia and Gertrude ? They look reso- lutely at facts with entire absence of what we are accus- tomed to call feminine perversion of logic. But they are feminine enough in their instinctive perception of 372 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS the motives of others. There is a part of their minds in which Beatrice, Imogen, Viola, Cordelia, and Rosa- lind are sisters, and, horrible as it may sound, Lady- Macbeth, Goneril, and Regan are of the same fam- ily. Not one is affected. The last chapter is largely taken up with a discussion of Shakespeare's language and style, which seems rather out of place, though we could have wished it longer. The book is made up of fragmentary interpre- tations of the plays looked at under certain aspects by a brilliant writer. The conditions were such that it could not be exhaustive of any one topic, but it is be- yond question vivid, original, and interesting. CONCLTJSION Several of the less important criticisms of Shake- speare have not been mentioned, though in nearly all of them can be found valuable hints or brilliant appre- ciations. The essays in the periodical press are number- less, and to refer to them, however briefly, would make a book encyclopaedic in character and more than en- cyclopaedic in volume. The general object of this book as stated in the introduction was to epitomize the critics who initiated or emphasized advancing points of view and a more philosophic insight. Though it cannot be said that there has been from the beginning a steady progress towards an intelligent and adequate conception of the plays, for the habits of thought of one genera- tion may easily be more conservative than those of their predecessors, the advance from Ben Jonson to Professor Bradley is as marked as in any other depart- ment of human thought in the same interval, not ex- cepting natural science or religious philosophy. When the plays were first printed the qualities that most attracted admiration were the story, the wit, the elo- CRITICISM OF TWENTIETH CENTURY 373 quence, the music, and the phrasing, all largely quali- ties of form, though of form related to substance. Ben Jonson's eulogy, as far as it passes from generalities to particulars, dwells on the ' easy numbers,' ' the well- turned and true-filed lines ' : — The dressing of his lines, Which were so richly spun and woven so fit. Even the writer of the verses in the Second Folio, who alludes so finely to the reality of Shakespeare's kings, lays by far the more stress on the variety and beauty of his style, ' the embroidered robe ' woven by the muses. The repetition of the epithet ' sweet ' or some equivalent is monotonous in the seventeenth-cen- tury criticism. The spirit of the eighteenth century was so little akin to Shakespearean art that the critics of the age made no forward step. It was forced upon them by the ver- dict of the public that Shakespeare was interesting, and most of them felt the superficial beauties of the plays ; but they considered him ' irregular,' and gravely doubted whether they ought to approve of a poet who disre- garded ' good taste ' and poetic justice. It was plain to them that he would have been much improved by a classical training, and they lacked the enthusiastic love of artistic things which must lie behind rational criticism of an artist. So they confined themselves to textual corrections, and thought that a tragedy by Dry- den was more regular than one by Shakespeare, in which no doubt they were correct, for regularity means accordance with rules recognized by the critic. In the early nineteenth century, Coleridge, drawing his inspiration from Germany and gifted with the true critical faculty, took a new standpoint. He insisted on Shakespeare's remarkable power of drawing characters ; 374 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS complex, interesting, and true to human nature. He showed that the poet was more than a singer or a story- teller ; he was an interpreter whose creations had a true correspondence to life. ' True to nature ' did not mean that the stage figure to which it was applied should recall oddities of manner or diction, but that it should be actuated by the unique complex of habit and motive we call individuality. The play itself was a unity, because it was held together by a rational perception of moral cause and effect and was written under the dominance of a single poetic mood, and not because the time of the action was consecutive or the place un- changed. The romantic age thus contributed to a better understanding of the poet of a century earlier. This understanding has been greatly developed since, and the tendency is to analyze the great characters more fully and to find in the action a sound philosophical conception of life and to see that the great elemental passions and affections, which are the basis of all mo- rality, underlieX it. We find the plays correspond more closely to our philosophy of life as our philosophy comes to correspond more to reality. There has been no step backward, for when once the notion that the poet was an inspired savage, a great but irregular genius who would have been vastly improved by edu- cation, was eradicated, a juster estimate became tra- ditional. Now, every one can discern power of which Dr. Johnson was entirely ignorant and beauties to which he was blind. We see that Shakespeare was a thinker, because we know the difference between formal and instinctive thinking. The conception that Shake- speare ' held the mirror up to nature ' at first covered the idea that his portraits were realistic and animated, and at once typical and individualistic. Now the word mirror has come to have a wider significance. The CRITICISM OF TWENTIETH CENTURY 375 correspondence is found in the depth of the reflection. Nature is not merely the human nature of men gathered in social groups, it is the whole framework of things in which man is rooted. Lear and Macbeth are as natural as Benedick and Falstaff, though the background of the last two is a social group, and of the others opposing forces whose conflict is in the moral world. This juster and fuller comprehension of the poet of our race has not resulted in blind worship. Shake- speare's faults — well analyzed and summed up by Professor Bradley — are frankly admitted. Professor Bradley regards as inartistic construction the intro- duction into a tragedy of matter which does not forward the development of the action nor accentuate the pre- sentation of characters, as, for example, the long speech of the player in Hamlet and the hero's discourse on the art of acting. These, though interesting in themselves, could be omitted without loss to the general interest. It must be remembered, however, that an effective stage presentation compels concentrated attention, and con- centrated attention must be relieved after a few mo- ments. This relief can be obtained by consecutive scenes, in different moods, between different members of the character group, which forward the action but, by change and contrast, lessen the emotional tension in the audience, which is not one man but a group react- ing on itself. Absolute relaxation follows scenes which do not involve the relations of the characters at all, so that it may be good art to introduce such scenes in a tragedy. The trained athlete spars gracefully with relaxed muscles till the proper moment for violent exertion, otherwise his strength would be prematurely exhausted. So the artist presenting an exciting story might be wearied and his audience become distracted if no breathing spells were allowed. The fourth and 376 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS fifth acts of Othello sustain emotion at a height, and for a time that makes it painful, as any one must admit who remembers Salvini as Othello. And this is true, though the catastrophe is relieved and adorned by poetic diction more than in any other tragedy. Professor Bradley thinks, too, that the undeniable faults of construction, the impossibility of constructing a consistent time-scheme in some of the plays, the occasional use of diction which, if it does not deserve the epithet ' bombastic,' is nevertheless more rhetorical than dramatic, are the ' faults of a great but negligent artist,' L e., of one who did not finish all parts of his work with the conscientious care of Milton or Tenny- son. The soliloquies, too, are in some cases too evidently addressed to the audience, thus putting the player in an inartistic relation to them and taking him out of the character for the moment. These points cannot be controverted, though their force is mitigated by the re- flection that the writer might have been pressed to finish a play when not in the mood. The poor quality of Shakespeare's puns excited Dr. Johnson's wrath, and arouses the contempt of the mod- ern reader. We become tired of the repetition of lie and lie, angel and angel, light and light, and the rest. We must remember, however, that the play on words had just been invented, and puns passed current which have now been permanently retired from circulation as containing too large a percentage of cheap metal. Had Shakespeare lived in the golden age of the pun, it is not likely that he would have rivaled Thomas Hood, but his puns would have been at least as neat as those of Sheridan or Theodore Hook. His wit is of another and more refined kind, and the point that he was a poor punster is of infinitesimal significance. We are apt to judge the plays as if they were writ- CRITICISM OF TWENTIETH CENTURY 377 ten for a reading public. But they were written for the company to present to an audience of men. Among them were some university men more or less acquainted with the Latin classics or with the modern Italian literature, and a few writers and lawyers and courtiers, but these plays and some songs and ballads were the only contact the greater part of the audience had with literary art. They had a general acquaintance with the names of the gods of Roman mythology, a slight tra- ditionary knowledge of history and of English folk- lore, and were accustomed to stage representations. The readers, scholars, and dilettanti were too few to give a critical tone to the body of hearers, who stood or sat in the daytime and in the open air instead of the close, heated air of the modern theatre. This audience did not represent ' society,' as the Jacobean audiences did and as modern audiences do ; it reflected the na- tional temper, which was vigorous, elated, and mascu- line. Englishmen had just conquered Spain, they were ready to set sail on adventurous voyages, determined to find the ' Northwest ' or the ' Southwest Passage,' — to achieve something romantically new. They played grandly with life, — they suffered from no constitutional malady. They felt what Sir Thomas Browne calls ' the contempt of death from corporeal animosity,' much as our plainsmen did. They did not fear death less than we, — that is a matter of individual temperament, — but they were much less shocked by scenes of fatal vio- lence, by representations of slaughter. This audience had, of course, its effect on writer and players. Vio- lent deaths are frequently represented on the stage, and the language is sometimes coarse. The coward is always regarded with contempt, but not more than are the car- pet knight and the dilettante. The characters must be men and the passions those common to the human 378 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CRITICS race. In comparison with Shakespeare's, how pale, thin, unnatural, and anaemic seem the heroes of Congreve's dramas when the stage had become fashionable and the audience sophisticated. Some of the characters of the drama of the Restoration are brave, gallant, and witty, but they are not deeply rooted in human nature, be- cause the audience responded more readily to the con- scious and artificial ideals of a social group than to the more general and unconsciously held ideals of human- ity. For the same reason Shakespeare's epigrammatic lines have a quality of directness and force like folk epigrams or proverbs, and are quite unlike Bacon's apothegms. The obscurity noticeable in his later work, especially in Winter* s Tale and Cymheline^ disappears when the syntax is disentangled. Then, if the sen- tences are read aloud and the parentheses and ellipses are marked by the natural intonation, the meaning falls readily into the mind of a hearer. They were writ- ten to be delivered by a trained speaker to an audience of men. The temper of the audience, then, accounts for what might seem faults or carelessness in the writer of the plays and for their virile, open-air qualities, but not in the least for their poetry, nor their correspond- ence to a moral scheme of life. Some of the audi- ence, it is true, may have been dimly conscious of the solidity and truth of the revelation they witnessed with little thought beyond its amusing or exciting qualities. Criticism, intelligent examination and reflec- tion, has brought out hidden elements and put the tragedies on a higher plane, possibly higher than their author ever imagined they would occupy. There sure those who think that a purer, more natural pleasure is derived from reading the plays, independently of all that has been written on them, than comes from read- CRITICISM OF TWENTIETH CENTURY 379 ing them with some knowledge of what others have written about them. But such an independent reading is impossible, for now no one can take them up with- out a conscious and subconscious knowledge of how; they are regarded. It is the spirit in which criticism is assimilated that counts, and the more we understand the intimate constitution of the tragedies, the higher our estimate and the more refined our pleasure. We may admire in a general way a range of mountains : the verdure of the slopes, the shadows of the ravines, the suggested eternity of the bare heights. It is true that a microscopic study of the rocks may not make the range appear more beautiful, in fact, may divert attention from its magnitude and strength ; but when we learn that it is the mother range, an Archaean uplift, the result of cosmic forces working in the depths of the planet, we regard it with a new interest that ap- proaches very close to reverence. The heights are not merely beautiful, they are from central depths. The great tragedies are greater when we find that they are grounded in the primal passions of humanity, that at the bottom they are simple and elemental and related to the constitution of things. Nor are their superficial beauties lessened, and even the scars on the surface come to have their significance, when we know that the plays are not merely Elizabethan literature, but an expression of humanity. Criticism, from Coleridge to Bradley, has established for us the literal truth of Ben Jonson's line : — He was not of an age, but for all time. INDEX Adaptation of Plays, 72. Addison, 70. ^schylus, 47. ^Esthetic Criticism, 19. Aldis and Wright, 9. Amner, 130. Anna Kar&nina, 285. Annual Reg^lster, 132. Arcturus, 362 (note). Aristotle, 46, 47, 82; his rules, 26; on unity, 48-50; on Greek plays, 51, 52; on dignity of heroes, 55. Art in the eighteenth century, 151. Ashe, 169, 176. ^ Attention must be relieved, 375. Audience of the seventeenth cen- tury, 376-377. Average man, 347. Bacon, 42. Baker, G. P., 342 ; on Shakespeare's development, 344; on the theatre, 345. Banquo's ghost, 316. Beatrice, 245. Beauclerck, 131. Beaumont, 17, 170. Becket, 137. Bells, The, 317. Betterton, 67, 82. Biographia Literaria, 132, 169. Biron, 156. Boswell, 135. Bradley, A. C, 321, 316 (note); on construction, 325, 232; on the dra- matic conflict, 326; extracts, 268; on faults of S., 327; on Hamlet, 329-333; on Claudius, 334; on lago, 336; on Ophelia, 334; on Othello, 335; on Lear, 337; on Macbeth, 338; on time-scheme of Othello, 339. Brandeis, 74. Browne, Sir Thomas, 377. Brutus, 264. Burbage, 38, 148. Buridon's Ass, 147. Burke, on Steevens, 13L Burney, Dr., 126. Caliban, 8. Cambridge Edition, 9, 140. Canons of Criticism, Edwards, 109- 112. Capell, Edward, 126; his industry, 128; style, 128; publications, 128. Carlyle, 267. Carlyle's Essay, 303. Cartwright, 38. Cato, Addison's, 70. Central idea, 219. Centurie of Prayse, 36. Cervantes, 263. Chance, 322. Character interest, 348. Charles II, 57. Chatterton, 137. Chettle, 23. Cibber, 72, 98. Cid, The, 56. Clark, George, 140. Claudius, 81. Cleopatra, 298. Coleridge, H. N., 176, 181. Coleridge, Mr. Justice, 176. Coleridge, S. T., vii, viii, xi, 18, 36, 164; his father, 166; conversation, 168; parallelisms with Schlegel, 179-184 ; criticism, 168-183; lectures, 170-183; plagiarism, 180, 183; avoids Schlegel's mistakes, 184. Collaboration, 22. Collier, 134, 139, 169; his folio, 139. Comedy and tragedy united, 175. Comedy vs. tragedy, 53. Congreve, 377. Corbin, comic scenes in ITam^e^, 313. Cordelia, 251. Corneille, 46, 144. Cowper, 166. Criticism, by contemporaries, 26; Phillips, 41; Dryden,60; Rymer, 67; Dennis, 70; Gildon, 73; Rowe, 78; Pope, 87; Theobald, 96; Haumer, 104; Warburton, 105; Johnson, 113; Capell, 128; Steevens, 129; Malone, 133; f Richardson, 145; Morgann, 157; Coleridge, 168; Lamb, 188; Haz- litt,190; foreign, 209; Schlegel, 214; Ulrici, 219; Gervinus, 223; French, 236; Anatole France, 238; Taine, 382 INDEX 240; White, 252; Swinburne, 262; Dowden, 270; Tolstoy, 276; Wen- dell, 289; Fleay, 300; Carlyle, 303; Emerson, 305 ; Lowell, 307 ; Miles, 311; Corbin, 312; StoU, 315; Brad- ley, 321; Lewis, 351; Raleigh, 361. Cruxes, 8. Daniel, 42. Danish court, 363 (note). Davenant, 72. Defoe, 98. Delius, 234. Dennis, John, criticism, 70; criti- cised Pope's Homer, 71; rewrote Coriolanus, 72; on Shakespeare's learning, 153. Departments of Criticism, 1. De Quincey, 40, 168, 269. Desdemona, 249, 298. Determination of dates of plays, 13. Development of Drama, 21. Diamond Necklace, 267, 269. Dickens, 37. Digges, verse, 31, 38. D' Israeli, 132. Divided authorship, 22. Dogberry, 3 (note). Donne, John, 413. Double plot, 51. Doubtful plays, 22. Dowden, 16, 20, 270; on Ophelia, 273; on Hamlet, 274; on Shakespeare's democracy, 275. Drake, Nathan, 303. Dramatic construction, 226, 325. Dranlatic literature, Schlegel, 180, 181, 182. Dramatic notes, Lessing, 211. Dramatic vs. literary qualities, 188. Drayton, 43. Dropped line, 8. Drummond, 39. Dryden, John, imitates French dra- ma, 58; plays, 58, 59; criticism, 60; on the unities, 63; on tragic ex- pression, 63; on characterization, - 64; Essay on Dramatic Poesy, 59. Dun, a fencer, 341 (note). Dunciad, 7. Dyce, Alexander, 139, 207. Earl of Essex, 16. Editors and Editions of plays: Globe, 9; Rowe, 78; Pope, 81; Theo- bald, 98; Hanmer, 104; Oxford, 105; ! Warburton, 106; Johnson, 114 Reed, 125; Capell, 128; Steevens 130; Malone, 134; Boswell, 135; Staunton, 139; Cambridge, 140 Riverside, 141; Verplanck, 141 Furness' Variorum, 141; White, 141; Knight, 200; Collier, 205 Singer, 206; Dyce, 207. Edwards, on Warburton's Emenda- tions, 110. Eighteenth-century manners, 94. Eikonoklastes, 40. Eleven-syllable lines, 13. Elsinore, time of sunrise, 361 (note) ; an island, 362 (note); stars not visible in summer, 362 (note). Elsmere, Robert, 285. Emerson, 264. Emerson's Essay, 303, 305. Encyclopwdia Metropolitana, 169. End-stopt verse, 11. English Men of Letters, 362. English Traits, 265. Episodes, 51. Esquirol, 57. Essay on the learning of Shake- speare, 154-156. Essays, 372. Eulogistic verses, 26. Evidence of date, 16. Falstafl, 119; was he a coward? 157. Famagusta, 342. Farmer, Dr. Richard, 154-156. Farquhar, 58. Fate, 323. Fleay, ix, x, 14, 190, 256,263, 271, 299, 300,340. Fletcher, 39. Folios, 23, 27, 33. Foreign Criticism, 209. France, Anatole, 238. Fratricide punished, 355. French influence, 56. Freytag, G., 225-231. Friend, The, 169. Function of Criticism, 378. Furness, Dr. H. H., x, 9, 20, 99 (note), 141, 271. Fumivall, ix, 263, 271. German criticism, 165, 258; transla- tions, 212. Gervinus, x, 74, 219, 234, 257. Ghosts, 230. Ghosts, 315, 319. INDEX 383 Gildon, Charles, 73; on unity of tiuie, 74; on tragi-comedy, 75; on Shakespeare's learning, 153. Globe Edition, 9. Glover, John, 140. Goethe, 172, 213, 217; on Hamlet, 218. Goetz von Berlichingen, 213. Goldsmith, 166. Grammatical construction, 6. Gray, 166. Greek, regard for, 25. Grey, 153. Hall, Mrs. Susanna, 84. Hallam, x. Halliwell's Outlines, 25. Halliwell-Phillipps, 16. Hamilton, Sir William, 179. Hamlet, extract, 5; dropped line in, 8 ; genesis of, 31 ; Lowell on, 309 ; review of. Miles, 311 ; time-scheme, 340; fencing bout, 340-341 ; without Hamlet, 349; supposed play by Kyd, 351 ; Genesis of, 351 ; German version, 351 ; survival of features of old play in, 352; extract, 355; original element in, 357 ; revenge motive in, 358; time-scheme in, 360-3G2 (note) ; king in, 370. Hamlet, analysis, Richardson, 146- 48; Coleridge, 173 ; Anatole France, 238; White, 259; Swinburne, 260; Dowden, 274; insanity, 309; Lowell, 309; Miles, 311; Bradley, 329-333; his physical strength, 341; his complexity, 348; Lewis, 352; a type, 353; character inexplicable, 354 ; possible motive of, 357 ; reason for inaction, 327, 359; not insane, 360; explanation of conduct, 363 (note); his college friends, 363 (note); not executive, 364 (note); courage, 364 (note); nervous ten- sion, 364 (note). Hanmer, Sir Thomas, 104. Hazlitt, William, vii, 168, 190; on Fhakespeare's kings, 192; on Por- tia, on Coleridge, 195 ; on Scott, 195; on Midsummer Xight's Dream, 197; on The Tempest, 197; on Lear, 198; his schoolboy, 201 (note); on Mrs. Siddons, 202. Heminge, 8, 346. Henry V, 324. Henry VIII, extract, 4. Heroes and Hero Worship, 303. Herrick, 84. Heywood, 17. History of Drama, 21. Histriomastix, 3 (note). Holinshed, 20. Hood, 376. Hook, 376. Hooker, 42. Horatio's oversight, 341. Hugo, Franyois, 239. Hugo, Victor, 239. Hunter, Joseph, 206. Hurd, quotation, 212. Hystorie of Hamblet, 351. I. M. S., verses, 33. Iambic pentameter, 11. Ibsen, 230. Imitation, 50 (note). Imogen, 11, 149, 248. Ireland, 137. Isabella, 259. Jackson, 3, 137. James, verses, 33. James, William, 350. Jameson, Mrs., 242, on Desdemona, 250; see Shakespeare, women of. Johnson, Dr. Samuel, viii, 1,4, 49; - on criticism, 113; on unity, 120; on narration, 121; on change of place, 122; emendations, 123; edi- tion, 144; on Mrs. Montagu, 144; on Shakespeare's learning, 154. Jonson, Ben, verses, 28, 39. Juliet, 244. Jusserand, 239. Kabale und Liebe, 226. Keats, 44 ; extract. Kemp, 38, 3 (note). Kendrick, 125, 135. Kid, 17. Kingsley, 264, Kipling, 37, 52. Knight's Cabinet Edition, x, 204. Kyd, 351 ; invented ghost in Hamlet, 356. Laertes, his treachery, 340, 341. Lamb, vii, 168, 185; on acting, 188; on Lear, 187 ; on Mrs. Siddons, 189. Landor, 264. hl.atin, regard for, 25. Lee, Sidney, 17, 21, 83, 131, 162. Lemcke, 234. 384 INDEX Lesslng, 210. Lewis, 351. Literary Criticism, 18. Literary Remains, 169, 176. Literary vs. dramatic qualities, 188. Lounsbury, T., x, 34, 143, 237, 302. Lovers Labour's Lost, extract, 10; proportion of different lines, 12; stage direction in Collier's Folio, 140. Lowell, 307, 308, 309. Macbeth, 226, 227, 228, 295, 350. Macbeth, 68, 161, 179, 201, 220, 227, 325. Macbeth, Lady, 202, 248. Malet, 99. Malone, 127, 133; his edition, 134. Mario, 17. Measure for Measure, 259. Memorials of Shakespeare, 303. Merchant of Venice, 295. Meres, Francis, 24. Metrical tests, 300. Miles on Hamlet, 311. Milton, John, 32, 40. Miranda, 248. Mommsen, 235. Montagu, Mrs., 142, 144. Montaigne, 305. Moor, The, and the wicked Ensign, 279. Morgann, M., on Falstaff, 156. Moulton, R. G., 232. Mouse Trap, 361 (note). Nash, 17. Nature, false idea of, 180. Nerissa, 174. Nineteenth-Century Commentators, 203. North, 20. Novalis, 210. Object of book, 372. Ophelia, 171, 246; Coleridge on, 171 Hazlitt on, 200; Jameson on, 246 Dowden on, 275 ; her garlands, 340 season of her flowers 365 (note). Order in which plays were written 15. Origins of plots, 20. Osric, 287, 341. Othello, 250, 335; not a negro, 215 375. Overflow verse, 11. Pageant scenes, 325. Palladis Tam,ia, 24. Peel, 132. Pepys, Samuel, 27. Perdita, 248. Pericles, 22. Plagiarism, 180-183. Player's Quarto, 3, 27. Plots, origin of. 20. Plutarch, 20. Poetics, 46. Poet-Lore, 132. Pope, Alexander, 49, 86, 127; criti- cism, 87, 93; emendations, 88-90; on doubtful plays, 91; on scene division, 80; on Shakespeare's learning, 153. Portia, 67, 194, 297. Preposterous person, the, 68 (note). Prynne, 3 (note). Puns, 376. Quartos, 3, 27. Queen, in Hamlet, 172, 333, 357. Quickly, Dame, 7. Rabelais, 263. Rachel, 57 (note). Racine, 57 (note), 144. Raleigh, Professor "W., 361. Reed, Isaac, 130, 137. Relief necessary after attention, 375. Representative Men, 303. Rhyming lines, 12. Richardson, criticism, 145-148. Ritson, 135. Riverside Edition, 141. Robbers, The, 213. Robinson, H. C, 180. Romances, 324, Romantic drama, 167. Romantic movement, 165. Romanticism of the nineteenth cen- tury, 167 ; of the Renaissance, 167. Romeo and Juliet, 325; emendations, 7, 141. Rosalind, 260, 343. Rowe, Nicholas, 27, 70, 78, 127; his edition, 58; divides acts and scenes, 79; life of Shakespeare, 83; emendations, 84; second edition, 86; his personality, 86 ; on Shake- speare's learning, 153. Rymer, Thomas, 63, 65, 68. Rules, 45. Runaway's eyes, 7. INDEX 385 Saintsbury, 183. Salvini, 375. Saniso7i Agonistes, 42. Scherrer, 239. Schiller, 213, 226. Schlegel, Agustus, x, 44, 172, 179, 214; parallelisms with Coleridge, 185; on Othello, 215; on unity, 216; on dramatic characters, 217; on "Hamlet, 218. Schmitt, 261. Scientific method, ix. Seneca, 56. Seymour, 137. Shakespeare, Judith, 367. Shakespeare, William, acts and scenes divided, 79; anachronisms, 117 (note); as artist, 365; attitude to the rich, 287; toward religion, 83; his audience, 377 ; .'blamed for want of dignity in kingsT, 55_j>books he read, 368; chance in tragedies, 322 ; characters, 157, 176, 296 ; com- mentators on, nineteenth-century, 201-207 ; conception of fate, 309, 322 ; of tragic action, 322; considered irregular, vii ; how far a conscious artist, 327; Freytag, on construc- tion, 228; constructive power, 297; construction, 325; contradictions, 328; critics, see criticism; daughter, his, 367; democracy, 275, 285; de- velopment, 344; disregard of me- trical rules, 12 ; of technical rules, 45; of unity of time, 48; dream scenes, 317; early position in lit- erary world, 43; editors, see Edi- tions; father, his, 367; faults of, 143 ; female characters, see Women; ghosts, 315; gnomic passages, 329; heroes, his, 359; his introductions, Raleigh, 370; his language, 292; in- troduction of irrelevant matter, 328-329; life of, in London, 23, Rowe's, 83, Lee's, 301; learning, his, 152; Lovers Labour's Lost, might have rewritten, 14; man, as, 366; maternal descent, 357; metre, follows traditionary, 343; mixing comedy and tragedy, 55, 75 ; tragic motifs, 199; moral tone of plays, 177; music, his, 287; musical quali- ty of lines, 15; obscurity, 379; oversights in Hamlet, 362, see note ; perception of race emotion, 291; plays adapted, 72, attractive on stage, 76, not to be acted, 186, acted in Germany, 209; plots, sources of, 20; poems, 31; redundancy, 328; repetitions, 297; reputation, his, 283, see Tolstoy ; rhymes in plays, 12; romanticism, 167; situations, his, 370, see Raleigh ; skill, improv- ing, 343; short scenes, 327; solilo- quies, 328; sonnets, 32; spirits, belief in, 318 ; stage of his day, 346 ; thinker, a, 374; translations, 204; unity, attains true tone, 51; unity of The Tempest, 53 ; verse form, 10- 11 ; wrote for men, 378; women in plays, not appreciated, 67, 149, 164, 170, 171, 242, 252; Mrs. Jameson on, 371, 375. Shakespearean Lexicon, 261 ; Manu- al, 300; Society, new, 263; Society, German, 234. Shaw, 230. Shelley, 44, 353. Shelling, 179. Sheridan, 376. Shirley, 39. Short lines, 11. Siddons, Sarah, 170, 189; as Lady Macbeth, 202 Signboard criticism, 19. Simpson, ix. Singer, Joseph, 139, 206. Sonnets, 368; extract from preface of edition, 69 (note). Stage, Elizabethan, 345. Staunton, Howard, 139. Steevens, George, 125, 127, 129; his hoaxes, 131 ; on the Sonnets, 133. Stoll, E., 315. Story-interest, 347. Style, affected by subject, 14. Sunrise time in Southern England, 361 (note). Swedenborg, 306. Swinburne, A. C.^ x, 15, 262; his prose style, 262 ; on The Comedy of Errors, 264; on Emerson, 264; on Hamlet, 266; on lago, 267; on tragic poets, 270. Sylvia, 234. Symonds, 21. Table-talk, 169. Taine, H., 57, 239; extract, 240. Tate, 74, 76; his version of Lear, 118. Technique of Drama, Freytag, 225. 386 INDEX Text, 142. Textual criticism, 2. Theatre, Elizabethan, 345. Theatriim Poetarum, 41. Theobald, emendation in Quickly's speech, 7; criticism, 95, 97; his memory, 95; his emendations, 96- 100; attack on Pope, 97, 103; non- comprehension of lyrics, 100; on learning of Shakespeare, 153. Tibbalds, 7. Tolstoy, 262, 267; on Lear, 277; on characterization, 278; on exaggera- tion of Shakespeare, 282 ; on repu- tation of Shakespeare, 282; on neglect of religious themes in dra- ma, 284; on The Tempest, 287; on Shakespeare's lack of democratic sympathies, 282. Tonson, 98. Tragic action, 322. Tragic conflict, 299. Translations, 209. Turkish fleet, 219. Turner, a fencer, 341 (note). Twelfth Night, 6; Fleay's idea of composition of, 14. Two Gentlemen of Verona, 224. Tivo Noble Kinsmen, 22. Tyrwhitt, Thomas, 209. y Ulrici, 219, 235, 337; his criticism, 219, 223. Unities, 45, 174, 254; of time and place, 48; of action, 49; in The Tempest, 54. Upas tree, 132. Upton, 153. Valentine, 234. Valentlnian, 263. Vanbrugh, 58. Variorum Edition, Furness, 9, 141; Malone, 135. Verplanck, G., 141. Verse-form, 10. Viola, 16, 246. Volpone, 263. Voltaire, 143, 144. Vortigern, 137. Walker, W. S., 207. War and Peace, 278. Warburton, W., 104, 127; quarrel with Hanmer and Theobald, 107; emendations, 106, 108; Edwards, on, iii, 109. Ward, 21. Warner, 42. Watson, 7. Weak endings, 13. Wendell, Barrett, 289, 299 ; on Lear, 295; on Shy lock, 295; on power of drawing character, 296 ; on repeti- tions by Shakespeare, 297 ; on con- structive power, 297; on Shake- speare's women, 298. Whalley, 153. White, R. G., 140,252; on the unities, 254 ; on metrical tests, 256 ; on Gervinus, 257; on Ulrici, 257; on the editor's duty, 257 ; on German critics, 258; on Isabella, 259; on Hamlet's age, 259; on Rosalind, 260; on acting, 260. Wilson, Professor, 339. Women in Shakespeare, 149; see Shakespeare ad fin. Woodbridge, Dr. E., 228. Wordsworth, W., 44, 165. Wright, William Aldis, 140. Wycherley, 58. CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A i> 14 DAY USE RSTURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewals only: Tel. No. 642-3405 Renewals may be made 4 days i>rior to date due. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. ~ KHTDIO NnviQ 73'2PM MAY 2 3 1983 Dl RtC.Ctw ^^7 20*83 LD2lA-30m-10,'73 (R3728sl0)476— A-30 .¥ m-7. HI»(P»PT- General Library University of California Berkeley General Library University of California Berkeley v^ ftm^iki-6 0m^^ 62 of r*»1«»ornta -1 liiiiiiiiiiiiyiyiiiiiiij^ CD3nMMS27 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. THIS BOOK IS DUE BEFORE CLOSING TIME j ON LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW {»pR26'b5 i REOO LD RPR 2 8 '65 -9 PM , ■.-*■ • . - - ■ "' ♦■ . . '■ . . r . ■ ' c' "S^S^M Univ«1?ggK.nia 'nil '111 nil! ''M;'iliill!ill: I III ^'iiiiHIiillllll illlil P HI!' illl 'I 1 PI in I! illii 111 lllil .1 ! aiil ! i liiiiiiiiiilli lii 11 I If! I 1 miJlllijiiiiHli!