A Letter on Shakspere's Authorship of The Two Noble Kinsmen Part 12

But the language which has been held on this question would lead us to believe that his guilt extends further,--that he is totally insensible to any moral distinctions, and blind to moral aims and influences.

[Sidenote: Most of Shakspere's contemporaries made pleasure the law of their heroes' lives.] Of most dramatic writers of his time this charge is too true. Their characters act because they will, not because they ought,--for happiness, and not from duty:--the lowness of their aim may be disguised, but it is inherent, and cannot be eradicated. We might read every work of Fletcher's without discovering (if we were ignorant of the fact before) that there exists for man any principle of action loftier in its origin than his earthly nature, or more extended in its object than the life which that nature enjoys. But nothing of this is true as to Shakspeare. [Sidenote: Shakspere's morality not of the loftiest, not like Milton's and] That his morality is of the loftiest sort cannot be a.s.serted. [Sidenote: Michel Angelo's.] He does not, like Milton, look out on life at intervals from the windows of his sequestered hermitage, only to turn away from the sight and indulge in the most fervent aspirations after immortal purity, and the deepest adoration of uncreated power; nor does he grovel in the dust with that ascetic humiliation and religious sense of guilt which overcame the strong spirit of Michel Angelo. But he shares much of the solemnity of moral feeling which possesses all great minds, though in him its influence was restrained by external causes. [Sidenote: He was in the world, and often of it,] He moves in the hurried pageant of the world, and sometimes wants leisure to moralize the spectacle; and even when he does pause to meditate, the world often hangs about his heart, and he thinks of life as men in action are apt to think of it. [Sidenote: but evil, to him, was evil, moral law was always shown supreme. Note the general moral truth in his Tragedies.] But moral truth, seldom lost sight of, is never misrepresented: evil is always described as being evil: the great moral rule, though often stated as inoperative, is always acknowledged as binding. Read carefully any of his more lofty tragedies, and ponder the general truths there so lavishly scattered; and you will find that an immense proportion of those apophthegms have a moral bearing, often a most solemn and impressive one. [Sidenote: Even in Comedy his reflections are moral.] Even in his lighter plays there is much of the same spirit: in all he is often thoughtful, and he is never long thoughtful without becoming morally didactic. This is much in any poet, and especially in a drama[103:1]tist, who exhibits humanity directly as active, and is under continual temptations to forget what action tempts men to forget in real life. [Sidenote: Shakspere right in letting evil prevail, so long as he shows it evil.] His neglect of duly distributing punishment and reward is no moral fault, so long as moral truth is kept sight of in characterizing actions, while that neglect is borrowed closely from reality. And the same thing is true of his craving wish for describing human guilt, and darkening even his fairest characters with the shadows of weakness and sin. [Sidenote: Dramatic poetry is truest when it shows man most the slave of evil.] The poetry which depicts man in action is then unfortunately truest when it represents him as most deeply enslaved by the evil powers which surround him. [Sidenote: Shakspere bared man's soul,] Different poets have proceeded to different lengths in the degree of influence which they have a.s.signed to the evil principle: most have feared to draw wholly aside the veil which imagination always struggles to keep before the nakedness of man's breast; and Shakspeare, by tearing away the curtain with a harsher hand, has but enabled himself to add a tremendously impressive element of truth to the likeness which his portrait otherwise bears to the original. [Sidenote: and probed it to its depth.]

[Sidenote: This is why we hold to him.] His view of our state and nature is often painful; but it is its reality that makes it so; and he would have wanted one of his strongest holds on our hearts if he had probed them less profoundly; it is by his unflinching scrutiny of mortal infirmity that he has forged the very strongest chain which binds us to his footstool. [Sidenote: He durst not paint good triumphant over evil, because he knew in life it was not so.] He reverences human nature where it deserves respect: he knows man's divinity of mind, and harbours and expresses the loftiest of those hopes which haunt the heart like recollections: he represents worthily and well the struggle between good and evil, but he feared to represent the better principle as victorious: he had looked on life till observation became prophetical, and he could not fable that as existing which he sorrowfully saw could never be.

[Sidenote: Macbeth, Oth.e.l.lo, Hamlet, sink under their temptations.] The milk of human kindness in the bosom of Macbeth is turned to venom by the breath of an embodied fiend; the tempered n.o.bility and gentleness of the Moor are made the craters through which his evil pa.s.sions blaze out like central fires; and in the wonderful Hamlet, hate to the guilty pollutes the abhorrence of the crime,--irresolution waits on consciousness,--and the misery of doubt clings to the solemnity of meditation. [Sidenote: And so do we.] This is an awful representation of the human soul; but is it [104:1]not a true one? [Sidenote: Man's history is written in blood and tears.] [Sidenote: Shakspere's view of life the fittest to give us to the truth.] The sibylline volume of man's history is open before us, and every page of it is written in blood or tears. And not only are such views of human fate the truest, but they are those which are most fitted to arouse the mind to serious, to lofty, even to religious contemplation,--to guide it to the fountains of moral truth,--to lead it to meditations on the dark foundations of our being,--to direct its gaze forward on that great journey of the soul, in which mortal life is but a single step.

[Sidenote: a.n.a.logy of this inquiry.]

Oftener than once in this inquiry, I have acted towards you like one who, undertaking to guide a traveller through a beautiful valley, should frequently lead him out of the beaten road to climb precipitous eminences, promising that the delay in the accomplishment of the journey should be compensated by the pleasure of extensive prospects over the surrounding region. Conduct like this would be excusable in a guide, if the person escorted had leisure for the divergence, and it would be inc.u.mbent on him if the acquisition of a knowledge of the country were one of the purposes of the journey; but in either case the labour of the ascents would be recompensed to the traveller, only if the landscapes presented were interesting and distinctly seen. [Sidenote: Aims of this treatise;] For similar reasons, my endeavour to propose wider views than the subject necessarily suggested, has, I conceive, been fully justifiable; but it is for you to decide whether the attempt has been so far successful as to repay your exertions in attending my excursive steps. [Sidenote: 1. from Shakspere's studies, to distinguish between him and his coevals.] The first of our lengthened digressions has allowed us to combine the known facts as to the kind and amount of Shakspeare's studies, and to draw from them certain conclusions, which I cannot think altogether valueless, as to some distinctions between him and his dramatic coevals, and as to the source of some peculiarities of his which have been visited with heavy censure. [Sidenote: 2. to trace the most characteristic qualities of his thought.] In the second instance in which we have branched off from the main argument, we have been led to reflect on the most characteristic qualities of the poet's mode of thought. [Sidenote: Shakspere's variety of faculty.] If there be any truth or distinctness in the hints which have been imperfectly and hastily thrown out on this head, your own mind will cla.s.sify, modify, or extend them; and, never forgetting what is [105:1]the fundamental principle of the great poet's strength, you will regard that essential quality with the more lively admiration, when you discriminate the operations of the power from the working of those other principles which minister to it, and when you remark the number, the variety, the opposition of the mental faculties, which are all thus enlisted under the banners of the one intense and almost philosophical Perception of Dramatic Truth. [Sidenote: He, the stern inquisitor into man's heart,]

That stern inquisition into the human heart, which the finest sense of dramatic perfection elevates into the ideal, and the richest fancy touches with poetical repose, will awaken in your mind a softened solemnity of feeling, like that under whose sway we have both wandered in the mountainous forests which skirt our native river; the continuous and gloomy canopy of the gigantic pines hanging over-head like a dungeon roof, while the green sward which was the pavement of the woodland temple, and the lines of natural columns which bounded its retiring avenues, were flooded with the glad illumination of the descending sunset. [Sidenote: the anxious searcher into truth, is yet the happiest creator of beauty: the 'maker' of Ric. III. and Iago as well as Juliet and t.i.tania; of Macbeth as well as Hamlet.] We reflect with wonder that the most anxious of all poetical inquirers into truth, is also the most powerful painter of unearthly horrors, and the most felicitous creator of romantic or imaginary beauty; that the poet of Richard and Iago is also the poet of Juliet, of Ariel, and of t.i.tania; that the fearfully real self-torture, the judicially inflicted remorse, of Macbeth, is set in contrast with the wildest figures which superst.i.tious imagination ever conceived; that on the same canvas on which Hamlet stands as a personification of the Reason of man shaken by the a.s.saults of evil within him and without, the gates of the grave are visibly opened, and the dead ascend to utter strange secrets in the ear of night. [Sidenote: His faculties early expanded consistently, and workt thro' all his life actively.] But even this union is less extraordinary than the regular and unparalleled consistency with which the poet's faculties early expanded themselves, and the full activity with which through life all continued to work. [Sidenote: Homer ebbd,] Even the dramatic soul of Homer ebbed like the sea, sinking in old age into the subst.i.tution of wild and minutely told adventure for the historical portraiture of mental grandeur and pa.s.sionate strength. [Sidenote: Milton sank poetry in polemics.] The youth of Milton brooded over the love and loveliness of external nature; it was not till his maturity of years that he soared into the empyrean or descended sheer into the secrets of the abyss; and [106:1]advancing age brought weakness with it, and quenched in the mora.s.s of polemical disputation the torch which had flamed with sacred light. [Sidenote: Shakspere alone flowd full tide on.] [Sidenote: Experience came soon to him; Fancy abode with him to the end.]

Shakspeare alone was the same from youth to age; in youth no imperfection, in age no mortality or decay; he performed in his early years every department of the task which he had to perform, and he laboured in it with unexhausted and uncrippled energies till the bowl was broken at the fountain; experience visited him early, fancy lingered with him to the last; the rapid developement of his powers was an indication of the internal strength of his genius; their steady continuance was a type and prognostic of the perpetual endurance of his sway. [Sidenote: Gloster (Ric. III.) was early, Shylock and Hamlet of middle time, Lear in ripe age, _The Tempest_, near his death.] The cold and fiendish Gloster was an early conception; the eager Shylock and the superhuman Hamlet were imagined simultaneously not long afterwards; the tenderness of Lear was the fruit of the poet's ripest age; and one of the closing years of his life gave birth to the savage wildness and the youthful and aerial beauty of 'The Tempest.'

[Sidenote: Are you convinc't that Shakspere wrote much of _The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen_?]

Our last words are claimed by the proper subject of our inquiry. Have I convinced you that in the composition of 'The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen', Shakspeare had the extensive partic.i.p.ation which I have ascribed to him?

It is very probable that my reasoning is in many parts defective; but I place so much confidence in the goodness of the cause itself, that I would unhesitatingly leave the question, without a word of argument, to be determined by any one, possessing a familiar acquaintance with both the poets whose claims are to be balanced, and an ordinarily acute discernment of their distinguishing qualities. [Sidenote: I'm sure the question needs only attention.] I am firmly persuaded that the subject needs only to have attention directed to it; and my investigation of it cannot have been a failure in every particular. [Sidenote: The external evidence doesn't include the internal.] The circ.u.mstances attending the first publication of the drama do not, in the most unfavourable view which can with any fairness be taken of them, exclude us from deciding the question of Shakspeare's authorship by an examination of the work itself: and it is unnecessary that the effect of the external evidence should be estimated one step higher. [Sidenote: Does that give all the play to Fletcher?] Do the internal proofs allot all to Fletcher, or a.s.sign any share to Shakspeare? [Sidenote: The Story is alien to Fletcher] The Story is ill-suited for the dramatic purposes [107:1]of the one poet, and belongs to a cla.s.s of subjects at variance with his style of thought, and not elsewhere chosen by him or any author of the school to which he belonged; both the individual and the cla.s.s accord with the whole temper and all the purposes of the other poet, and the cla.s.s is one from which he has repeatedly selected themes. [Sidenote: Fletcher can't have chosen the subject of _The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen_; nor was its plan his.] It is next to impossible that Fletcher can have selected the subject; it is not unlikely that Shakspeare may have suggested it; and if the execution of the plan shall be thought to evince that he was in any degree connected with the work, we can hardly avoid the conclusion that it was by him that the subject was chosen. The proof here, (which I think has not been noticed by any one before me,) seems to me to be stronger than in any other branch of the argument.

[Sidenote: Its Scenical Arrangement is like Shakspere's.] The Scenical Arrangement of the drama offers points of resemblance to Shakspeare, which, at the very least, have considerable strength when they are taken together, and are corroborative of other circ.u.mstances. [Sidenote: Its Execution is, in great part, so like his,] The Execution of that large proportion of the drama which has been marked off as his, presents circ.u.mstances of likeness to him, so numerous that they cannot possibly have been accidental, and so strikingly characteristic that we cannot conceive them to be the product of imitation. [Sidenote: that many pa.s.sages must be set down to him.] Even if it should be doubted whether Shakspeare chose the subject, or arranged any part of the plot, it seems to me that his claim to the authorship of these individual parts needs only examination to be universally admitted; not that I consider the proof here as stronger than that which establishes his choice of the plot, but because it is of a nature to be more easily and intuitively comprehended.

[Sidenote: Look at all the circ.u.mstances together,]

In forming your opinion, you will be careful to view the circ.u.mstances, not singly, but together, and to give each point of resemblance the support of the others. [Sidenote: and see whether the many probabilities do not make a certainty.] It may be that every consideration suggested may not affect your mind with equal strength of conviction; but numerous probabilities all tending the same way are sufficient to generate positive certainty: and it argues no imperfection in a result that it is brought out only by combined efforts. In those climates of the New World which you have visited, a s.p.a.cious and lofty chamber receives a diffusive shower of light through a single narrow aperture, while in our cloudy region we can gather sufficient light for our apart[108:1]ments only by opening large and numerous windows: the end is not gained in the latter case without greater exertion than that which is required in the former, but it is attained equally in both; for the aspect of our habitations is not less cheerful than that of yours.

On the absolute merit of the work, I do not wish to antic.i.p.ate your judgment. [Sidenote: Shakspere's part in _The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen_, is but a sketch; yet it's better than some of his finisht works.] So far as Shakspeare's share in it is concerned, it can be regarded as no more than a sketch, which would be seen to great disadvantage beside finished drawings of the same master. Imperfect as it is, however, it would, if it were admitted among Shakspeare's acknowledged works, outshine many, and do discredit to none. It would be no unfair trial to compare it with those works of his in which he abstains from his more profound investigations into human nature, permitting the poetical world actively to mingle with the dramatic, and the radiant spirit of hope to embrace the sterner genius of knowledge. [Sidenote: Compare it with the _Midsummer Night's Dream_; the colouring and outline are from the same hand. But best, set it beside _Henry VIII._] We may call up before us the luxurious fancies of the 'Midsummer Night's Dream', or even the sylvan landscapes of the Forest of Ardennes, and the pastoral groupes which people it; and we shall gladly acknowledge a similar though harsher style of colouring, and a strength of contour indicating the same origin. But perhaps there is none of his works with which it could be so fairly compared as 'Henry VIII'. [Sidenote: It's more like that, and nearly as good.] In the tone of sentiment and imagination, as well as in other particulars, I perceive many circ.u.mstances of likeness, which it will gratify you to trace for yourself. The resemblance is more than a fanciful one, and the neglected play does not materially suffer by the comparison.

[Sidenote: _The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen_ ought to be in every '_Shakspere's Works_.']

This drama will never receive the praise which it merits, till it shall have been admitted among Shakspeare's undoubted works; and, I repeat, it is ent.i.tled to insertion if any one of the conclusions to which I have attempted to lead you be sound,--if it be true that he wrote all, or most, or a few, of those portions of it, which more competent judges than I have already confidently ascribed to him. Farewell.

W. S.

_Edinburgh, March 1833._

[In his article on 'Recent Shaksperian Literature' in No. 144 of the _Edinburgh Review_, July, 1840, page 468, Prof. Spalding states that on Shakspere's taking part in _The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen_, his "opinion is not now so decided as it once was."--F.]

FOOTNOTES:

[1:1] Locrine--Sir John Oldcastle--Lord Cromwell--The London Prodigal--The Puritan--The Yorkshire Tragedy.

[1:2] page 2

[2:1] page 3

[3:1] page 4

[4:1] "The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen: presented at the Blackfriers, by the Kings Majesties servants, with great Applause: written by the memorable Worthies of their Time, Mr John Fletcher and Mr William Shakspeare, Gent. Printed at London by Tho. Cotes, for John Watersone; and are to be sold at the signe of the Crowne, in Pauls Church-yard: 1634."

[4:2] page 5

[5:1] Gifford's Ma.s.singer, vol. i. p. xv. [Moxon's ed. p. x.x.xix, and _B.

and Fl._ i. xiii. The letter is from Nat. Field, Rob. Daborne, and Philip Ma.s.singer, to Henslowe the manager: "You know there is x. _l._ more at least to be receavd of you for the play. We desire you to lend us v _l._ of that, which shall be allowd to you. Nat. Field." "The money shall be abated out of the money remayns for _the play of Mr. Fletcher and ours_. Rob. Daborne."--F.]

[5:2] page 6

[6:1] page 7

[7:1] page 8

[8:1] Act II. Scene 4. The plucking of the roses.

[8:2] page 9

[9:1] page 10

[10:1] Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature. It would ill become me to carp at an author whom I have expressly to thank for much a.s.sistance in this inquiry, and to whom I am perhaps indebted for more than my recollection suggests. But it must be owned, that M. Schlegel's opinion loses somewhat of its weight from the fact, that he also advocates Shakspeare's authorship of some of Malone's plays, a decision in which it is neither desirable nor likely that the poet's countrymen should acquiesce.

[10:2] page 11

[11:1] Weber's Beaumont and Fletcher, vol. xiii., and Lamb, as there quoted.

[11:2] page 12

[12:1] Sonnet 76.

[12:2] page 13

[13:1] page 14

[13:2] There are numerous instances of both these effects in the play before us. "_Counter-reflect_ (a noun); _meditance_; _couch_ and _corslet_ (used as verbs); _operance_; _appointment_, for military accoutrements; _globy eyes_; _scurril_; _disroot_; _dis-seat_," &c.

_Weber._

[14:1] page 15

[15:1] t. i. _mourn them ever_

[15:2] page 16

[15:3] _ownest_

[16:1] page 17

[17:1] page 18

[18:1] page 19

[19:1] Farmer's Essay on the Learning of Shakspeare.