Essays By Ralph Waldo Emerson Part 24

[Footnote 525: Shakespeare; or the Poet is one of seven essays on great men in various walks of life, published in 1850 under the t.i.tle of _Representative Men_. These essays were first delivered as lectures in Boston in the winter of 1845, and were repeated two years later before English audiences. They must have been especially interesting to those Englishmen who had, seven years before, heard Emerson's friend, Carlyle, deliver his six lectures on great men whom he selected as representative ones. These lectures were published under the t.i.tle of _Heroes and Hero-Worship_. You should read the latter part of Carlyle's lecture on _The Hero as Poet_ and compare what he says about Shakespeare with Emerson's words. Both Emerson and Carlyle reverenced the great English poet as "the master of mankind." Even in serious New England, the plays of Shakespeare were found upon the bookshelf beside religious tracts and doctrinal treatises. There the boy Emerson found them and learned to love them, and the man Emerson loved them but the more. It was as a record of personal experiences that he wrote in his journal: "Shakespeare fills us with wonder the first time we approach him. We go away, and work and think, for years, and come again,--he astonishes us anew. Then, having drank deeply and saturated us with his genius, we lose sight of him for another period of years. By and by we return, and there he stands immeasurable as at first. We have grown wiser, but only that we should see him wiser than ever. He resembles a high mountain which the traveler sees in the morning and thinks he shall quickly near it and pa.s.s it and leave it behind. But he journeys all day till noon, till night. There still is the dim mountain close by him, having scarce altered its bearings since the morning light."]

[Footnote 526: Genius. Here instead of speaking as in _Friendship_, see note 286, of the genius or spirit supposed to preside over each man's life, Emerson mentions the guardian spirit of human kind.]

[Footnote 527: Shakespeare's youth, etc. It is impossible to appreciate or enjoy this essay without having some clear general information about the condition of the English people and English literature in the glorious Elizabethan age in which Shakespeare lived.

Consult, for this information, some brief history of England and a comprehensive English literature.]

[Footnote 528: Puritans. Strict Protestants who became so powerful in England that in the time of the Commonwealth they controlled the political and religious affairs of the country.]

[Footnote 529: Anglican Church. The Established Church of England; the Episcopal church.]

[Footnote 530: Punch. The chief character in a puppet show, hence the puppet show itself.]

[Footnote 531: Kyd, Marlowe, Greene, etc. For an account of these dramatists consult a text book on English literature. The English drama seems to have begun in the Middle Ages with what were called Miracle plays, which were scenes from Bible history; about the same time were performed the Mystery plays, which dramatized the lives of saints. These were followed by the Moralities, plays in which were personified abstract virtues and vices. The first step in the creation of the regular drama was taken by Heywood, who composed some farcical plays called Interludes. The people of the sixteenth century were fond of pageants, shows in which cla.s.sical personages were introduced, and Masques, which gradually developed from pageants into dramas accompanied with music. About the middle of the sixteenth century, rose the English drama,--comedy, tragedy, and historical plays. The chief among the group of dramatists who attained fame before Shakespeare began to write were Kyd, Marlowe, Greene, and Peele. Ben Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher rank next to Shakespeare among his contemporaries, and among the other dramatists of the period were Chapman, Dekker, Webster, Heywood, Middleton, Ford, and Ma.s.singer.]

[Footnote 532: At the time when, etc. Probably about 1585.]

[Footnote 533: Tale of Troy. Drama founded on the Trojan war. The subject of famous poems by Latin and Greek poets.]

[Footnote 534: Death of Julius Caesar. An account of the plots which ended in the a.s.sa.s.sination of the great Roman general.]

[Footnote 535: Plutarch. See note on _Heroism_(264). Shakespeare, like the earlier dramatists, drew freely on Plutarch's _Lives_ for material.]

[Footnote 536: Brut. A poetical version of the legendary history of Britain, by Layamon. Its hero is Brutus, a mythical King of Britain.]

[Footnote 537: Arthur. A British King of the sixth century, around whose life and deeds so many legends have grown up that some historians say he, too, was a myth. He is the center of the great cycle of romances told in prose in Mallory's _Morte d'Arthur_ and in poetry in Tennyson's _Idylls of the King_.]

[Footnote 538: The royal Henries. Among the dramas popular in Shakespeare's day which he retouched or rewrote are the historical plays. Henry IV., First and Second Parts; Henry V; Henry VI., First, Second, and Third Parts; and Henry VIII.]

[Footnote 539: Italian tales. Italian literature was very popular in Shakespeare's day, and authors drew freely from it for material, especially from the _Decameron_, a famous collection of a hundred tales, by Boccaccio, a poet of the fourteenth century.]

[Footnote 540: Spanish voyages. In the sixteenth century, Spain was still a power upon the high seas, and the tales of her conquests and treasures in the New World were like tales of romance.]

[Footnote 541: Prestige. Can you give an English equivalent for this French word?]

[Footnote 542: Which no single genius, etc. In the same way, some critics a.s.sure us, the poems credited to the Greek poet, Homer, were built up by a number of poets.]

[Footnote 543: Malone. An Irish critic and scholar of the eighteenth century, best known by his edition of Shakespeare's plays.]

[Footnote 544: Wolsey's Soliloquy. See Shakespeare's _Henry VIII._ III, 2. Cardinal Wolsey was prime minister of England in the reign of Henry VIII.]

[Footnote 545: Scene with Cromwell. See _Henry VIII._ III, 2. Thomas Cromwell was the son of an English blacksmith; he rose to be lord high chamberlain of England in the reign of Henry VIII., but, incurring the King's displeasure, was executed on a charge of treason.]

[Footnote 546: Account of the coronation. See _Henry VIII._ IV, 1.]

[Footnote 547: Compliment to Queen Elizabeth. See _Henry VIII._ V, 5.]

[Footnote 548: Bad rhythm. Too much importance must not be attached to these matters in deciding authorship, as critics disagree about them.]

[Footnote 549: Value his memory, etc. The Greeks, in appreciation of the value of memory to the poet, represented the Muses as the daughters of Mnemosyne, the G.o.ddess of memory.]

[Footnote 550: Homer. A Greek poet to whom is a.s.signed the authorship of the two greatest Greek poems, the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_; he is said to have lived about a thousand years before Christ.]

[Footnote 551: Chaucer. (See note 33.)]

[Footnote 552: Saadi. A Persian poet, supposed to have lived in the thirteenth century. His best known poems are his odes.]

[Footnote 553: Presenting Thebes, etc. This quotation is from Milton's poem, _Il Penseroso_. Milton here names the three most popular subjects of Greek tragedy,--the story of Oedipus, the ill-fated King of Thebes who slew his father; the tale of the descendants of Pelops, King of Pisa, who seemed born to woe--Agamemnon was one of his grandsons; the third subject was the tale of Troy and the heroes of the Trojan war,--called "divine" because the Greeks represented even the G.o.ds as taking part in the contest.]

[Footnote 554: Pope. (See note 88.)]

[Footnote 555: Dryden. (See note 35.)]

[Footnote 556: Chaucer is a huge borrower. Taine, the French critic, says on this subject: "Chaucer was capable of seeking out in the old common forest of the Middle Ages, stories and legends, to replant them in his own soil and make them send out new shoots.... He has the right and power of copying and translating because by dint of retouching he impresses ... his original work. He recreates what he imitates."]

[Footnote 557: Lydgate. John Lydgate was an English poet who lived a generation later than Chaucer; in his _Troy Book_ and other poems he probably borrowed from the sources used by Chaucer; he called himself "Chaucer's disciple."]

[Footnote 558: Caxton. William Caxton, the English author, more famous as the first English printer, was not born until after Chaucer's death. The work from which Emerson supposes the poet to have borrowed Caxton's translation of _Recueil des Histoires de Troye_, the first printed English book, appeared about 1474.]

[Footnote 559: Guido di Colonna. A Sicilian poet and historian of the thirteenth century. Chaucer in his _House of Fame_ placed in his vision "on a pillar higher than the rest, Homer and Livy, Dares the Phrygian, Guido Colonna, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and the other historians of the war of Troy."]

[Footnote 560: Dares Phrygius. A Latin account of the fall of Troy, written about the fifth century, which pretends to be a translation of a lost work on the fall of Troy by Dares, a Trojan priest mentioned in Homer's _Iliad_.]

[Footnote 561: Ovid. A Roman poet who lived about the time of Christ, whose best-known work is the _Metamorphoses_, founded on cla.s.sical legends.]

[Footnote 562: Statius. A Roman poet of the first century after Christ.]

[Footnote 563: Petrarch. An Italian poet of the fourteenth century.]

[Footnote 564: Boccaccio. An Italian novelist and poet of the fourteenth century. See note on "Italian tales," 539. It is supposed that the plan of the _Decameron_ suggested the similar but far superior plan of Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_.]

[Footnote 565: Provencal poets. The poets of Provence, a province of the southeastern part of France. In the Middle Ages it was celebrated for its lyric poets, called troubadours.]

[Footnote 566: Romaunt of the Rose, etc. Chaucer's _Romaunt of the Rose_, written during the period of French influence, is an incomplete and abbreviated translation of a French poem of the thirteenth century, _Roman de la Rose_, the first part of which was written by William of Loris and the latter by John of Meung, or Jean de Meung.]

[Footnote 567: Troilus and Creseide, etc. Chaucer ascribes the Italian poem which he followed in his _Troilus and Creseide_ to an unknown "Lollius of Urbino"; the source of the poem, however, is _Il Filostrato_, by Boccaccio, the Italian poet already mentioned.

Chaucer's poem is far more than a translation; more than half is entirely original, and it is a powerful poem, showing profound knowledge of the Italian poets, whose influence with him superseded the French poets.]

[Footnote 568: The c.o.c.k and the Fox. _The Nun's Priest's Tale_ in the _Canterbury Tales_ was an original treatment of the _Roman de Renart_, of Marie of France, a French poet of the twelfth century.]

[Footnote 569: House of Fame, etc. The plan of the _House of Fame_, written during the period of Chaucer's Italian influence, shows the influence of Dante; the general idea of the poem is from Ovid, the Roman poet.]

[Footnote 570: Gower. John Gower was an English poet, Chaucer's contemporary and friend; the two poets went to the same sources for poetic materials, but Chaucer made no such use of Gower's works as we would infer from this pa.s.sage. Emerson relied on his memory for facts, and hence made mistakes, as here in the instances of Lydgate, Caxton, and Gower.]

[Footnote 571: Westminster, Washington. What legislative body a.s.sembles at Westminster Palace, London? What at Washington?]

[Footnote 572: Sir Robert Peel. An English statesman who died in 1850, not long after _Representative Men_ was published.]

[Footnote 573: Webster. Daniel Webster, an American statesman and orator who was living when this essay was written.]