A Letter on Shakspere's Authorship of The Two Noble Kinsmen Part 3

He only attributes The faculties of other instruments To his own nerves and act; commands men's ser vice, And what they gain in't, boot and glory too.

... What man _Thirds_ his own worth, (the case is each of ours,) When that his action's dregged with mind a.s.sured 'Tis bad he goes about?--Act I. scene ii.

Dowagers, take hands: [15:1]_Let us be widows to our woes_: Delay Commends us to a famishing hope.--Act I. scene i.

I do not quote these lines for praise. The meaning of the last quotation in particular is obscure when it stands alone, and not too clear even when it is read in the scene. But I ask you, whether the oracular brevity of each of the sentences is not perfectly in the manner of Shakspeare. A fragment from another beautiful address in the first scene is equally characteristic and less faulty:--

[Sidenote: Shakspere, not Fletcher.]

[15:2]Honoured Hippolita, Most dreaded Amazonian, that hast slain The scythe-tusked boar; that, with thy arm as strong As it is white, wast near to make the male To thy s.e.x captive, but that this thy lord (_Born to uphold creation in that hon our First Nature styled it in_) shrunk thee in to The bound thou wast o'erflow ing, at once subdu ing Thy force and thy affection;--Soldieress!

That equally canst poise sternness with pit y;-- Who now, I know, hast much more power o'er him Than e'er he had on thee;--_who owest[15:3] his strength And his love too, who is a servant to The tenor of thy speech_!

Is this like Fletcher? I think not. It is unlike him in versification and in the tone of thought; and you will here particularly notice that it is unlike him in abruptness and brevity. It is like Shakspeare in all these particulars.

[Sidenote: Shakspere hardly ever vague,]

I have said that Shakspeare, often obscure, is scarcely ever vague; that he may fail to express all he wishes, but almost always gives distinctly the part which he is able to convey. [Sidenote: Fletcher unable to grasp images distinctly.] Fletcher is not only slow in his ideas, but often vague and deficient in precision. The following lines are taken from a scene in the play under our notice, which clearly is not Shakspeare's. I would direct your attention, not to the remoteness of the last conceit, but to the want of distinctness in grasping images, and the inability to see fully either their picturesque or their poetical relations.

[Sidenote: Fletcher, not Shakspere.]

_Arcite._ We were not bred to talk, man: when we are armed, And both upon our guards, then _let our fur y, Like meeting of two tides, fly strongly from us_.

_Palamon._ Methinks this armour's very like that, Ar cite, Thou worest that day the three kings fell, but light er.

_Arc._ That was a very good one; and that day, I well remember, you out-did me, cous in: ... When I saw you charge first, _Methought I heard a dreadful clap of thund er Break from the troop_.

_Pal._ _But still before that flew The lightning of your valour._--Act III. scene vi.

[Sidenote: Shakspere metaphorical, but seldom has long description.]

[16:1]Shakspeare's style, as every one knows, is metaphorical to excess.

[Sidenote: His thought and imagination work together.] His imagination is always active, but he seldom pauses to indulge it by lengthened description. I shall hereafter have occasion to direct your observation to the sobriety with which he preserves imagination in its proper station, as only the minister and interpreter of thought; but what I wish now to say is, that in him the two powers operate simultaneously.

He goes on thinking vigorously, while his imagination scatters her inexhaustible treasures like flowers on the current of his meditations.

His constant aim is the expression of facts, pa.s.sions, or opinions; and his intellect is constantly occupied in the investigation of such; but the mind acts with ease in its lofty vocation, and the beautiful and the grand rise up voluntarily to do him homage. He never indeed consents to express those poetical ideas by themselves; but he shows that he felt their import and their legitimate use, by wedding them to the thoughts in which they originated. [Sidenote: Shakspere's truths and their imagery glorify one another.] The truths which he taught, received magnificence and amenity from the ill.u.s.trative forms; and the poetical images were elevated into a higher sphere of a.s.sociations by the dignity of the principles which they were applied to adorn. [Sidenote: Metaphor the strength of poetry; simile its weakness.] Something like this is always the true function of the imagination in poetry, and dramatic poetry in particular; and it is also the test which tries the presence of the faculty; metaphor indicates its strength, and simile its weakness. [Sidenote: Fletcher is diffuse in description and simile, loses the original thought in it,] Nothing can be more different from this, or farther inferior to it, than the style of a poet who turns aside in search of description, and indulges in simile preferably to the brevity of metaphor, to whom perhaps a poetical picture originally suggested itself as the decoration of a striking thought, but who allowed himself to be captivated by the beauty of the suggested image, till he forgot the thought which had given it birth, and on its connexion with which its highest excellence depended. [Sidenote: is poor in metaphor, and picturesque.] Such was Fletcher, whose style is poor in metaphor. His descriptions are sometimes beautifully romantic; but even then the effect of the whole is often picturesque rather than poetically touching; and it is evident that lengthened description can still less frequently be dramatic. In his descriptions, it is observable that the poetical relations introduced in ill.u.s.tration [17:1]are usually few, the character of the leading subject being relied on for producing the poetical effect. [Sidenote: Fletcher's and Shakspere's descriptions contrasted.] Fletcher's longest descriptions are but elegant outlines; Shakspeare's briefest metaphors are often finished paintings. Where Shakspeare is guilty of detailed description, he is very often laboured, cold, and involved; but his ill.u.s.trative ideas are invariably copious, and it is often their superfluity which chiefly tends to mar the general effect. [Sidenote: Metaphor in _The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen_ is Shakspere's.]

In the play that you are to examine, you will find a profusion of metaphor, which is undoubtedly the offspring of a different mind from Fletcher's; and both its excellence and its peculiarity of character seem to me to stamp it as Shakspeare's. I think the following pa.s.sage cannot be mistaken, though the beginning is difficult, and the text perhaps incorrect.

[Sidenote: Instances of Shakspere's metaphors.]

They two have _cab ined_ In many as dangerous, as poor a corn er-- Peril and want contending, they have _skiffed_ Torrents, whose raging _tyranny_ and _pow er_ I' the least of these was dreadful; and they have Fought out together where _Death's self_ was _lodged_, Yet FATE hath BROUGHT THEM OFF. Their _knot_ of love, Tied, _weaved_, ENTANGLED, with so true, so long, And with a _finger_ of so deep a cun ning, May be _outworn_, never _undone_. I think Theseus cannot be _umpire_ to himself, _Cleaving his conscience into twain_, and do ing Each side like justice, which he loves best.--Act I. scene iii.

The play throughout will give you metaphors, like Shakspeare's in their frequency, like his in their tone and character, and like his in their occasional obscurity and blending together.

[Sidenote: Shakspere's cla.s.sical images.]

We have been looking to Shakspeare's imagery. You will meet with cla.s.sical images in the 'The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen.' Do not allow any ill-applied notion of his want of learning to convert this into an argument against his authorship. You will recollect, that an attachment of this sort is very perceptible in Shakspeare's dramas, and pervades the whole thread of his youthful poems. It is indeed a prominent quality in the school of poetry, which prevailed during the earlier part of his life, perhaps during the whole of it. In his early days, the study of [18:1]Grecian and Latin literature in England may be said to have only commenced, and the scenery and figures of the cla.s.sical mythology broke on the view of the student with all the force of novelty. [Sidenote: Elizabethan literature tinged with cla.s.sicism.] All the literature of that period is tinged with cla.s.sicism to a degree which in our satiated times is apt to seem pedantic. It infected writers of all kinds and cla.s.ses: translations were multiplied, and a familiarity with cla.s.sical tales and history was sought after or affected even by those who had no access to the original language. Shakspeare clearly stood in this latter predicament, his knowledge of Latin certainly not exceeding that of a schoolboy: but the translated cla.s.sics enabled him to acquire the facts, and he shared the taste of the age to its full extent. [Sidenote: Shakspere's cla.s.sical allusions.] His admiration of the cla.s.sical writers is vouched by the subjects and execution of his early poems, by numerous allusions in his dramas, particularly his histories, by the subjects chosen for some of his plays, by one or two imitations of the translated Latin poets,[19:1] and by many exotic forms in his language, derived from the same secondary source. Correct tameness is the usual character of cla.s.sical allusion in authors well versed in cla.s.sical studies. [Sidenote: Milton's cla.s.sical allusions.] [Sidenote: Fletcher's.] Even Milton, who has drawn the most exquisite images of this kind, has sometimes remembered only, where he should have invented: and Fletcher, whom we have especially to consider, is no exception to the rule; his many cla.s.sical ill.u.s.trations are invariably cold and poor.

[Sidenote: Shakspere's treatment of mythology.] Shakspeare's mythological images have something singular in them. They are incorrect as transcripts of the originals, but admirable if examined without such reference; they are highly-coloured paintings whose subjects are taken from the simplicity of some antique statue. [Sidenote: His _Venus and Adonis_.] The 'Venus and Adonis' has some fine and some overcharged pictures thus formed from the hints which he derived from his books.[19:2] He received the mythological images but imperfectly, and his fancy was stimulated without being [19:3]clogged. [Sidenote: Shakspere's treatment of cla.s.sical mythology;] He stood but at the entrance of those visionary forests, within whose glades the heroes and divinities of ancient faith reposed; he looked through a glimmering and uncertain light, and caught only glimpses of the sanct.i.ty of that world of wonders: and it was with an imagination heated by the flame of mystery and partial ignorance that he turned away from the scene so imperfectly revealed, to brood on the beauty of its broken contours, and allow fancy to create magnificence richer than memory ever saw. The occurrence of cla.s.sical allusions here, therefore, affords no reason for doubting his authorship even of those pa.s.sages in which they are found: and if we could trace any of his singularities in the images which we have, the argument in his favour would be strengthened by these. Most of the allusions are too slightly sketched to permit this; but one or two are like him in their unfaithfulness. We have "Mars' drum" in the 'Venus and Adonis'; and here beauty is described as able to make him spurn it: the altar of the same deity is alluded to as the scene of a Grecian marriage. The "Nemean lion's hide" is here, as his nerve in 'Hamlet.'

[Sidenote: specially in Arcite's prayer in Act V. scene i.] But the most characteristic use of this sort of imagery is in the prayer in the first scene of the Fifth Act. [Sidenote: This scene is certainly Shakspere's.]

The whole tenor of the language, the solemnity and majesty of the tone of thought, the piling up of the heap of metaphors and images, and the boldness and admirable originality of their conception, all these are Shakspeare's; and the fact of this acc.u.mulation of feeling, thought, and imagination, being employed to create, out of a fragmentary cla.s.sical outline, a picture both new in its features and gorgeously magnificent in its filling up, is strongly indicative of his hand, and strikingly resembles his mode of dealing with such subjects elsewhere.

[Sidenote: Shakspere's tendency to reflection.]

You will be furnished with a rule to guide your decision on many pa.s.sages of the drama otherwise doubtful, by having your notice slightly directed to what will fall more properly under our consideration when we look back on the general scope of the play,--I mean Shakspeare's prevailing tendency to reflection. The presence of a spirit of active and inquiring thought through every page of his writings is too evident to require any proof. It is exerted on every object which comes under his notice: it is serious when its theme is lofty; and when the subject is familiar, [20:1]it is contented to be shrewd. [Sidenote: His own active and inquiring thought, is the only quality of his own that he's given _all_ his characters.] He has impressed no other of his own mental qualities on all his characters: this quality colours every one of them.

It is one to which poetry is apt to give a very subordinate place: and, in most poets, fancy is the predominating power; because, immeasurably as that faculty in them is beneath its unequalled warmth in Shakspeare, yet intellect in them is comparatively even weaker. With inferior poets, particularly the dramatic, inflation of feeling and profusion of imagery are the alternate disguises which conceal poverty of thought. [Sidenote: Fletcher's thought, small beside Shakspere's.] Fletcher is a poet of much and sterling merit; but his fund of thought is small indeed when placed beside Shakspeare's. [Sidenote: Shakspere's worldly wisdom, and solemn thought.] He has, indeed, very little of Shakspeare's practical, searching, worldly wisdom, and none of that solemnity of thought with which he penetrates into his loftier themes of reflection. [Sidenote: Shakspere's Imagination the handmaid of his Understanding.] This quality in Shakspeare is usually relieved by poetical decoration: Imagination is active powerfully and unceasingly, but she is rebuked by the presence of a mightier influence; she is but the handmaid of the active and piercing Understanding; and the images which are her offspring serve but as the breeze to the river, which stirs and ripples its surface, but is not the power which impels its waters to the sea. As you go through this drama, you will not only find a sobriety of tone pervading the more important parts of it, but activity of intellect constantly exerted.

[Sidenote: Note the ma.s.s of general truths and maxims in this part of _The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen_.] But what demands particular notice is, the ma.s.s of general truths, of practical, moral, or philosophical maxims, which, issuing from this reflective turn of mind, are scattered through Shakspeare's writings as thick as the stars in heaven. The occurrence of them is characteristic of his temper of mind; and there is something marked in the manner of the adages themselves. They are often solemn, usually grave, but always pointed, compressed, and energetic;--they vary in subject, from familiar facts and rules for social life to the enunciation of philosophical truths and the exposition of moral duty.

You will meet with them in this drama in all their shapes and in every page [of Shakspere's part of it].

[Sidenote: Shakspere's reach of thought.]

Shakspeare's reach and comprehension of thought is as remarkable as its activity, while Fletcher's is by no means great, and in this respect Ma.s.singer comes much nearer to him. The simplest fact has many dependent qualities, and may be related by [21:1]men of different degrees of intellect with circ.u.mstances differing infinitely, a confined mind seeing only its plainest qualities, while a stronger one grasps and combines many distant relations. Shakspeare's love of brevity would not have produced obscurity nearly so often, had it not been aided by his width of mental vision. [Sidenote: Pa.s.sages in _The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen_ too comprehensive for Fletcher.] There are many pa.s.sages in the play before us which seem to emanate from a mind of more comprehension than Fletcher's. Look at the following lines. The idea to be expressed was a very simple one. Hippolita is entreating her husband to leave her, and depart to succour the distressed ladies who kneel at her feet and his; and she wishes to say, that though, as a bride, she was loth to lose her husband's presence, yet she felt that she should act blameably if she detained him. Fletcher would have expressed no idea beyond that; but on it alone he would have employed six lines and two or three comparisons.

Hear how many cognate ideas present themselves to Shakspeare's mind in expressing the thought. The pa.s.sage is obscure, but not the less like Shakspeare on that account.

[Sidenote: Shakspere's pregnancy and obscurity.]

Though much unlike ly I should be so transported, _as much sor ry I should be such a suitor_; yet I think, Did I not, by the abstaining of my joy, _Which breeds a deeper longing_, cure the sur feit _That craves a present medicine_, I should pluck All ladies' scandal on me--Act I. scene i.

It would be well if Shakspeare's continual inclination to thought gave rise to no worse faults than occasional obscurity. It was not to be hoped that it should not produce others. His tone of thinking could not be always high and serious; and even when it flowed in a lofty channel, its uninterrupted stream could not always be pure. [Sidenote: Shakspere's conceits and quibbles.] His judgment often fails to perform its part, and he is guilty of conceit and quibble, not merely in his comic vein, but in his most deeply tragical situations. He has indeed one powerful excuse; he had universal example in both respects to justify or betray him. But he has likewise another plea, that his constant activity of mind, and the wideness of its province, exposed him to pe[22:1]culiar risks. A mind always in action must sometimes act wrongly; and the constant exercise of the creative powers of the mind dulls the edge of the corrective. It was not strange that he who was unwearied in tracing the manifestations of that spirit of likeness which pervades nature, should often mistake a resemblance in name for a community of essence,--that he whose mind was sensible to the most delicate differences, should sometimes fancy he saw distinction where there was none;--it was not strange, however much to be regretted, that he who left the smooth green slopes of fancy to clamber among the craggy steeps of thought, should often stumble in his dizzy track, either in looking up to the perilous heights above, or downwards on the morning landscape beneath him. [Sidenote: Shakspere's faults.] While the most glaring errors of the tropical Euphues are strained allegorical conceits, Shakspeare's fault is oftener the devising of subtle and unreal distinctions, or the ringing of fantastical changes upon words.

[Sidenote: Lyly's faults.] Lily's error was one merely of taste; Shakspeare's was one of the judgment, and the heavier of the two, but still the error of a stronger mind than the other; for the judgment cannot act till the understanding has given it materials to work upon, and those fanciful writers who do not reflect at all, are in no danger of reflecting wrongly. [Sidenote: Shakspere's evil genius triumphs in his puns.] Shakspeare's evil genius triumphs when it tempts him to a pun--it enjoys a less complete but more frequent victory in suggesting an ant.i.thesis; but it often happens that this dangerous turn of mind does not carry him so far as to be of evil consequence. It aids its quickness and directness of mental view, in giving to his style a pointed epigrammatic terseness which is quite its own, and a frequent weight and effect which no other equals. Where, however, this ant.i.thetic tendency is allowed to approach the serious scenes, it throws over them an icy air which is very injurious, while it often gives the comic ones a ponderousness which is altogether singular, and but imperfectly accordant with the nature of comic dialogue. [Sidenote: Characteristics of his wit.] The arrows of Shakspeare's wit are not the lightly feathered shafts which Fletcher discharges, and as little are they the iron-headed bolts which fill the quiver of Jonson; but they are weapons forged from materials unknown to the others, and in an armoury to which they had no access; their execution is [23:1]resistless when they reach their aim, but they are covered with a golden ma.s.siveness of decoration which sometimes impedes the swiftness of their flight. But whether the effect of these peculiarities of Shakspeare be good or evil, their use in helping an identification of his manner is very great. [Sidenote: Contrast with Fletcher's.] Nothing can be more directly opposite to them than the slow elegance and want of pointedness which we find in Fletcher, who is not free from conceits, but does not express them with Shakspeare's hard quaintness, while he is comparatively quite guiltless of plays on words. The following instances are only a few among many in the present drama, which seem to be perfectly in Shakspeare's manner, and to most of which Fletcher's works could certainly furnish no parallel, either in subject or in expression.

[Sidenote: Pa.s.sages by Shakspere, not Fletcher.]

Oh, my pet.i.tion was Set down in ice, which, by hot grief uncan died, Melts into tears; so sorrow, wanting form, Is pressed with deeper matter.--Act I. scene i.

Theseus speaks thus of the Kinsmen lying before him in the field of battle desperately wounded:--

[Sidenote: Shakspere metaphors.]

Rather than have them Freed of this plight, and in their morning state, Sound and at liberty, I would them dead: But forty thousand fold we had rather have them[24:1]

_Prisoners to us than Death_. Bear them speedi ly From _our kind air, to them unkind_, and min ister What man to man may do.--Act I. scene iv.

A lady hunting is addressed in this strain:

Oh jewel O' the wood, O' the world!--Act III. scene i.

In the same scene one knight says to another,--

[Sidenote: Shakspere metaphor.]

This question sick between us, By bleeding must be cured.

[24:2]And the one, left in the wood, says to the other, who goes to the presence of the lady whom both love--

You talk of feeding me, to breed me strength; You are going now to look upon a sun, That strengthens what _it_ looks on.--Act III. scene i.

The two knights, about to meet in battle, address each other in these words:--

_Pal._ Think you but thus; That there were aught in me which strove to shew Mine enemy in this business,--were't one eye Against another, arm opposed by arm, I would destroy the offender;--coz, I would, Though parcel of myself: then from this, gath er How I should tender you!