An Introduction to Shakespeare Part 5

SONG

Who is Sylvia? what is she, That all our swains commend her?

Holy, fair, and wise is she; The heaven such grace did lend her, That she might admired be.

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Is she kind as she is fair?

For beauty lives with kindness: Love doth to her eyes repair To help him of his blindness, And being helped, inhabits there.

Then to Sylvia let us sing, That Sylvia is excelling; She excels each mortal thing Upon the dull earth dwelling; To her let us garlands bring.

Such are Shakespeare's nondramatic writings. Two narrative poems with the faults of youth but with many redeeming virtues; one hundred and fifty-four sonnets, very unequal in merit but touching at their best the high-water mark of English verse; a few stray fragments of disputed authorship and doubtful value; and finally a handful of scattered songs, short, but almost perfect of their kind,--this is what we have outside of the plays. Neither in quant.i.ty nor quality can this work compare with the poetic value of the great dramas; but had it been written by any other man, we should have thought it wonderful enough.

On the sonnets, the appendix to Mr. Sidney Lee's book, _A Life of William Shakespeare_, 1909, is particularly valuable.

[1] Shakespeare in his dedication calls it "the first heir of my invention"; but opinions differ as to what he meant by this.

[2] Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, Book X.

[3] That is, the common, or standard, line has ten syllables with an accent on every even syllable, as in the following line:--

1 +2+ 3 +4+ 5 +6+ 7 +8+ 9 +10+ The NIGHT of SORrow NOW is TURN'D to DAY.

[4] From his _Fasti_.

[5] The rime scheme of the Italian type divided each sonnet into two parts, the first one of eight lines, the second of six. In the first eight lines the rimes usually went a, b, b, a, a, b, b, a; but sometimes _a, b, a, b, a, b, a, b_: in both cases using only two rimes for the eight lines. In the second or six-line part there were several different arrangements, of which the following were the most common: (1) _c, d, e, c, d, e_; (2) _c, d, c, d, c, d_; (3) _c, d, e, d, c, e_.

All of these rime-schemes alike were intended, by their constant repet.i.tion and interlocking of the same rimes, to give the whole poem an air of exquisite workmanship, like that of a finely modeled vase.

Here is an English sonnet of Milton's, imitating the form of Petrarch's and ill.u.s.trating its rime scheme:--

"When I consider how my light is spent (_a_) Ere half my days in this dark world and wide, (_b_) And that one talent which is death to hide (_b_) Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent (_a_) To serve therewith my Maker, and present (_a_) My true account, lest He returning chide, (_b_) Doth G.o.d exact day-labour, light denied? (_b_) I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent (_a_) That murmur, soon replies, G.o.d doth not need (_c_) Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best (_d_) Bear his mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state (_e_) Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed, (_c_) And post o'er land and ocean without rest; (_d_) They also serve who only stand and wait." (_e_)

[6] See p. 113.

[7] Including at least three which do not have in all respects the regular sonnet form.

[8] Southampton's chief rival for this position in the opinion of scholars has been William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. One point in his favor has been that the initials W. H. (supposed to stand for William Herbert) are given as those of the person to whom the dedication of the volume was addressed by its publisher. Mr. Sidney Lee thinks, however, that this is a dedication by the printer to the printer's friend, not by Shakespeare to Shakespeare's friend,--a possible, though not wholly convincing, explanation. The First Folio was dedicated to Herbert after Shakespeare's death, but we have no evidence that the two men were intimate friends while living. Meres mentions the sonnets of Shakespeare in 1598, so part of them at least must have been written before that year; but Herbert did not have a permanent residence in London until 1598, and was then only eighteen years old.

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CHAPTER VI

THE SEQUENCE OF SHAKESPEARE's PLAYS

The most profitable method of studying any writer is to take up his works in the order in which they were written. More and more this method is being adopted toward all authors, ancient and modern, Virgil or Milton, Dante or Tennyson. We are thus enabled to trace the gradual growth of the poet's mind from one production to another,--his constant increase in skill, in judgment, in knowledge of mankind. The great characteristic of the genius is, not simply that he knows more than other men at first, but that he has in him such vast possibilities of growth, of improving with time, and learning by his own mistakes.

Consequently, it is very important to know that a certain play or poem is faulty because it was its author's first crude attempt; that a second is better because it was written five years later in the light of added experience; and that a third is better still because it came ten years after the second, at the climax of the writer's powers.

Besides showing the author's growth, this method also shows his relation to the great literary movements of his time. As fashions in dress and sports keep shifting, fashions in literature are changing just as constantly, and the dominant type may alter two or {74} three times during one man's life. If an author changes to meet these demands, it is important to know that one of his plays was merry comedy because written at a time when merry comedies filled all the playhouses; and that another is sober tragedy because composed while most of the theaters were acting and demanding sober tragedy.

Now Shakespeare not only improved a great deal while composing his plays, but also conformed, to some extent at least, to the different tastes of his audience at different periods of his life. Hence, a knowledge of the order in which his plays were written is very valuable, and should form the first step in a careful study of his writings.

Unfortunately, when we attempt to arrange Shakespeare's plays in chronological order, we encounter many practical difficulties in finding just what this order is. We know that Tennyson developed a great deal as a poet between the ages of eighteen and thirty-three; and we can show this by pointing to four successive volumes of his poems, published respectively at the ages of eighteen, twenty-one, twenty-three, and thirty-three, and each rising in merit above the one before it. We know definitely in what order these volumes come, for we find on the t.i.tle-page of each the date when it was printed. But scarcely half of Shakespeare's plays were printed in this way during his life. The others, some twenty in all, are found only in one big folio volume which gives no hint of their proper order or year of composition, and which bears on its t.i.tle-page the date of the printing, 1623, seven years after Shakespeare died. Many plays, too, published {75} early, were written some years before publication, so that the date of printing on the flyleaf of the quarto, even where a quarto exists, simply shows that the play was written sometime before that year but does not tell at all _how long_ before. How, then, are we to trace Shakespeare's growth from year to year, through his successive dramas, when the quartos help us so little and when the majority of these dramas are piled before us in one volume by the editors of the First Folio, without a word of explanation as to which plays are early attempts and which mature work?

At first sight the above problem seems almost hopeless. The researches of scholars for over a century, however, have gathered together a ma.s.s of evidence which determines pretty accurately the order in which these different plays were written.

This evidence is of two kinds, external and internal. By external evidence we mean that found _outside_ of the play, references to it in other books of the time, and similar material. By internal evidence we mean that found _inside_ of the play itself.

+External Evidence+.--This is of several kinds. In the first place, every play which was to be printed had to be entered in the Stationers'

Register, and all these entries are dated. Hence we know that certain plays were prepared for publication by the time mentioned. For instance, "A Book called Antony and Cleopatra" was entered May 20, 1608; and although apparently the book was not finally printed at that time, and although our only copy of _Antony and Cleopatra_ is that in the Folio of 1623, yet we feel reasonably certain from this entry that this play must have been written either {76} in 1608 or earlier. In addition to the record of the Stationers' Register, we have the dates on the t.i.tle-pages of such plays as appeared in Quarto. These evidences, it must be remembered, determine only the latest possible date for the play, as many were written long before they were printed, or even entered.

Again, other men sometimes used in their books expressions borrowed from Shakespeare or remarks which sound like allusions to something of his. Here, if we know the date of the other man's book, we learn that the play of Shakespeare from which he borrowed must have been in existence before that date. Thus, when the poet Barksted prints a poem in 1607 and borrows a pa.s.sage in it from _Measure for Measure_, we conclude that _Measure for Measure_ must have been produced before 1607, or Barksted could not have copied from it. This form of evidence has its dangers, since occasionally we cannot tell whether Shakespeare borrowed from the other man or the other man from him; nevertheless it is often valuable.

Furthermore, we sometimes find in contemporary books or papers, which are dated, an account of the acting of some play. A law student named John Manningham left a diary in which he records that on February 2, 1602 he saw a play called _Twelfth Night or What You Will_ in the Hall of the Middle Temple; and his account of the play shows that it was Shakespeare's. Dr. Simon Forman, in a similar diary, describes the performance of three Shakespearean plays, two of the accounts being dated. Still more important in this cla.s.s is the famous allusion, already quoted, by Francis Meres in his _Palladis Tamia_, a {77} book published in 1598. In this he mentions with high praise six comedies of Shakespeare: _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_, _The Comedy of Errors_, _Love's Labour's Lost_, _Love's Labour's Won_,[1] _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, and _The Merchant of Venice_; and six "tragedies": _Richard II_, _Richard III_, _Henry IV_, _King John_, _t.i.tus Andronicus_, and _Romeo and Juliet_.[2] Hence, we know that all these plays were written and acted somewhere before 1598, although three of them did not appear in print until 1623.

The above list does not exhaust all the forms of external evidence, but merely shows its general nature. External evidence, as can be seen, is not something mysterious and peculiar, but simply an application of common sense to the problem in hand.

Frequently two pieces of external evidence will accomplish what neither one could do alone. Often one fact will show that a play came somewhere before a certain date, but not show how long before, and another will prove that the play came after another date, without telling how long after. For example, _King Lear_ was written before 1606, for we have a definite statement that it was performed then. It was written after 1603, for it borrowed material from a book printed in that year. This method of hemming in a play between its earliest and its latest possible date is common and useful, both with Shakespeare and with other writers.

+Internal Evidence+.--By the above methods a few plays have been dated quite accurately, and many others confined between limits only two or three years {78} apart. But many plays are still dated very vaguely, and some are not dated at all. For further results we must fall back on internal evidence. The first, though by no means the most important, form of this consists of allusions _within the play to contemporary events_. If a boy should read in an old diary of his grandmother's that she had just heard of the fight at Gettysburg, he would feel certain that the words were written a few days after that great battle, even if there were no date anywhere in the ma.n.u.script.

In the same way, when the Prologue of Shakespeare's _Henry V_ alludes to the fact that Elizabeth's general (the Earl of Ess.e.x) is in Ireland quelling a rebellion, we know that this was written between April and September of 1599, the period during which Ess.e.x actually was in Ireland. Similarly, certain details in _The Tempest_ appear to have been borrowed from accounts of the wreck of Sir George Somers's ship in 1609. As Shakespeare could not have borrowed from these accounts before they existed, he must have written his comedy sometime after 1609.[3]

But the main form of internal evidence, what is usually meant by that term, is the testimony in the character and style of the plays themselves as to the maturity of the man who wrote them. Just as the stump of a tree sawn across shows its age by its successive rings of growth, so a poem, if carefully {79} examined, shows the rings of growth in the author's style of thought and expression.

The simplest and most tangible form of this evidence is that which is found in meter. If we read in order of composition those plays which we have already succeeded in dating, we shall find certain habits of versification steadily growing on the author, as play succeeded play.

In the first place, most of the lines in the early plays are 'end-stopped'; that is, the sense halts at the close of each line with a resulting pause in reading. In the later plays the sense frequently runs over from one line into another, producing what is called a 'run-on' line instead of an 'end-stopped' one. By comparing the following pa.s.sages, the first of which contains nothing but end-stopped lines and the second several run-on lines, the reader can easily see the difference.

(_a_) From an early play:--

"I from my mistress come to you in post: If I return, I shall be post indeed, For she will score your fault upon my pate.

Methinks your maw, like mine, should be your clock, And strike you home without a messenger."

--_Comedy of Errors_, I, ii, 63-67.

(_b_) From a late play:--

"Mark your divorce, young sir, [end-stopped]

Whom son I dare not call. Thou art too base [run-on]

To be acknowledg'd. Thou, a sceptre's heir, [end-stopped]

That thus affects a sheep-hook! Thou old traitor, [end-stopped]

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