Montaigne and Shakspere Part 1

Montaigne and Shakspere.

by John M. Robertson.

For a good many years past the anatomic study of Shakspere, of which a revival seems now on foot, has been somewhat out of fashion, as compared with its vogue in the palmy days of the New Shakspere Society in England, and the years of the battle between the iconoclasts and the worshippers in Germany. When Mr. Fleay and Mr. Spedding were hard at work on the metrical tests; when Mr. Spedding was subtly undoing the chronological psychology of Dr. Furnivall; when the latter student was on his part undoing in quite another style some of the judgments of Mr.

Swinburne; and when Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps was with natural wrath calling on Mr. Browning, as President of the Society, to keep Dr.

Furnivall in order, we (then) younger onlookers felt that literary history was verily being made. Our sensations, it seemed, might be as those of our elders had been over Mr. Collier's emendated folio, and the tragical end thereof. Then came a period of lull in things Shaksperean, partly to be accounted for by the protrusion of the Browning Society and kindred undertakings. It seemed as if once more men had come to the att.i.tude of 1850, when Mr. Phillipps had written: "An opinion has been gaining ground, and has been encouraged by writers whose judgment is ent.i.tled to respectful consideration, that almost if not all the commentary on the works of Shakspere of a necessary and desirable kind has already been given to the world."[1] And, indeed, so much need was there for time to digest the new criticism that it may be doubted whether among the general cultured public the process is even now accomplished.

To this literary phase in particular, and to our occupation with other studies in general, may be attributed the opportunity which still exists for the discussion of one of the most interesting of all problems concerning Shakspere. Mr. Browning, Mr. Meredith, Ibsen, Tolstoi--a host of peculiarly modern problem-makers have been exorcising our not inexhaustible taste for the problematic, so that there was no very violent excitement over even the series of new "Keys" to the sonnets which came forth in the lull of the a.n.a.lysis of the plays; and yet, even with all the problems of modernity in view, it seems as if it must be rather by accident of oversight than for lack of interest in new developments of Shakspere-study that so little attention has been given among us to a question which, once raised, has a very peculiar literary and psychological attraction of its own--the subject, namely, of the influence which the plays show their author to have undergone from the Essays of Montaigne.

As to the bare fact of the influence, there can be little question. That Shakspere in one scene in the TEMPEST versifies a pa.s.sage from the prose of Florio's translation of Montaigne's chapter OF THE CANNIBALS has been recognised by all the commentators since Capell (1767), who detected the transcript from a reading of the French only, not having compared the translation. The first thought of students was to connect the pa.s.sage with Ben Johnson's allusion in VOLPONE[2] to frequent "stealings from Montaigne" by contemporary writers; and though VOLPONE dates from 1605, and the TEMPEST from 1610-1613, there has been no systematic attempt to apply the clue chronologically. Still, it has been recognised or surmised by a series of writers that the influence of the essayist on the dramatist went further than the pa.s.sage in question. John Sterling, writing on Montaigne in 1838 (when Sir Frederick Madden's pamphlet on the autograph of Shakspere in a copy of Florio had called special attention to the Essays), remarked that "on the whole, the celebrated soliloquy in HAMLET presents a more characteristic and expressive resemblance to much of Montaigne's writings than any other portion of the plays of the great dramatist which we at present remember"; and further threw out the germ of a thesis which has since been disastrously developed, to the effect that "the Prince of Denmark is very nearly a Montaigne, lifted to a higher eminence, and agitated by more striking circ.u.mstances and a severer destiny, and altogether a somewhat more pa.s.sionate structure of man."[3] In 1846, again, Philarete Chasles, an acute and original critic, citing the pa.s.sage in the TEMPEST, went on to declare that "once on the track of the studies and tastes of Shakspere, we find Montaigne at every corner, in HAMLET, in OTh.e.l.lO, in CORIOLa.n.u.s.

Even the composite style of Shakspere, so animated, so vivid, so new, so incisive, so coloured, so hardy, offers a mult.i.tude of striking a.n.a.logies to the admirable and free manner of Montaigne."[4] The suggestion as to the "To be or not to be" soliloquy has been taken up by some critics, but rejected by others; and the propositions of M.

Chasles, so far as I am aware, have never been supported by evidence.

Nevertheless, the general fact of a frequent reproduction or manipulation of Montaigne's ideas in some of Shakspere's later plays has, I think, since been established.

Twelve years ago I incidentally cited, in an essay on the composition of HAMLET, some dozen of the Essays of Montaigne from which Shakspere had apparently received suggestions, and instanced one or two cases in which actual peculiarities of phrase in Florio's translation of the Essays are adopted by him, in addition to a peculiar coincidence which has been pointed out by Mr. Jacob Feis in his work ent.i.tled SHAKSPERE AND MONTAIGNE; and since then the late Mr. Henry Morley, in his edition of the Florio translation, has pointed to a still more remarkable coincidence of phrase, in a pa.s.sage of HAMLET which I had traced to Montaigne without noticing the decisive verbal agreement in question.

Yet so far as I have seen, the matter has pa.s.sed for little more than a literary curiosity, arousing no new ideas as to Shakspere's mental development. The notable suggestion of Chasles on that head has been ignored more completely than the theory of Mr. Feis, which in comparison is merely fantastic. Either, then, there is an unwillingness in England to conceive of Shakspere as owing much to foreign influences, or as a case of intelligible mental growth, or else the whole critical problem which Shakspere represents--and he may be regarded as the greatest of critical problems--comes within the general disregard for serious criticism, noticeable among us of late years. And the work of Mr. Feis, unfortunately, is as a whole so extravagant that it could hardly fail to bring a special suspicion on every form of the theory of an intellectual tie between Shakspere and Montaigne. Not only does he undertake to show in dead earnest what Sterling had vaguely suggested as conceivable, that Shakspere meant Hamlet to represent Montaigne, but he strenuously argues that the poet framed the play in order to discredit Montaigne's opinions--a thesis which almost makes the Bacon theory specious by comparison. Naturally it has made no converts, even in Germany, where, as it happens, it had been antic.i.p.ated.

In France, however, the neglect of the special problem of Montaigne's influence on Shakspere is less easily to be explained, seeing how much intelligent study has been given of late by French critics to both Shakspere and Montaigne. The influence is recognised; but here again it is only cursorily traced. The latest study of Montaigne is that of M.

Paul Stapfer, a vigilant critic, whose services to Shakspere-study have been recognised in both countries. But all that M. Stapfer claims for the influence of the French essayist on the English dramatist is thus put:--

"Montaigne is perhaps too purely French to have exercised much influence abroad. Nevertheless his influence on England is not to be disdained. Shakspere appreciated him (_le goutait_); he has inserted in the TEMPEST a pa.s.sage of the chapter DES CANNIBALES; and the strong expressions of the ESSAYS on man, the inconstant, irresolute being, contrary to himself, marvellously vain, various and changeful, were perhaps not unconnected with (_peut etre pas etrangeres a_) the conception of HAMLET. The author of the scene of the grave-diggers must have felt the savour and retained the impression of this thought, humid and cold as the grave: 'The heart and the life of a great and triumphant emperor are but the repast of a little worm.' The translation of Plutarch, or rather of Amyot, by Thomas North, and that of Montaigne by Florio, had together a great and long vogue in the English society of the seventeenth century."[5]

So modest a claim, coming from the French side, can hardly be blamed on the score of that very modesty. It is the fact, however, that, though M. Stapfer has in another work[6] compared Shakspere with a French cla.s.sic critically enough, he has here understated his case. He was led to such an att.i.tude in his earlier study of Shakspere by the slightness of the evidence offered for the claim of M. Chasles, of which he wrote that it is "a gratuitous supposition, quite unjustified by the few traces in his writings of his having read the Essays."[7] But that verdict was pa.s.sed without due scrutiny. The influence of Montaigne on Shakspere was both wider and deeper than M. Stapfer has suggested; and it is perhaps more fitting, after all, that the proof should be undertaken by some of us who, speaking Shakspere's tongue, cannot well be suspected of seeking to belittle him when we trace the sources for his thought, whether in his life or in his culture. There is still, indeed, a tendency among the more primitively patriotic to look jealously at such inquiries, as tending to diminish the glory of the worshipped name; but for anyone who is capable of appreciating Shakspere's greatness, there can be no question of iconoclasm in the matter. Shakspere ignorantly adored is a mere dubious mystery; Shakspere followed up and comprehended, step by step, albeit never wholly revealed, becomes more remarkable, more profoundly interesting, as he becomes more intelligible. We are embarked, not on a quest for plagiarisms, but on a study of the growth of a wonderful mind. And in the idea that much of the growth is traceable to the fertilising contact of a foreign intelligence there can be nothing but interest and attraction for those who have mastered the primary sociological truth that such contacts of cultures are the very life of civilisation.

II.

The first requirement in the study, obviously, is an exact statement of the coincidences of phrase and thought in Shakspere and Montaigne. Not that such coincidences are the main or the only results to be looked for; rather we may reasonably expect to find Shakspere's thought often diverging at a tangent from that of the writer he is reading, or even directly gainsaying it. But there can be no solid argument as to such indirect influence until we have fully established the direct influence, and this can only be done by exhibiting a considerable number of coincidences. M. Chasles, while avowing that "the comparison of texts is indispensable--we must undergo this fatigue in order to know to what extent Shakspere, between 1603 and 1615, became familiar with Montaigne"--strangely enough made no comparison of texts whatever beyond reproducing the familiar paraphrase in the TEMPEST, from the essay OF CANNIBALS; and left absolutely unsupported his a.s.sertion as to HAMLET, OTh.e.l.lO, and CORIOLa.n.u.s. It is necessary to produce proofs, and to look narrowly to dates. Florio's translation, though licensed in 1601, was not published till 1603, the year of the piratical publication of the First Quarto of HAMLET, in which the play lacks much of its present matter, and shows in many parts so little trace of Shakspere's spirit and versification that, even if we hold the text to have been imperfectly taken down in shorthand, as it no doubt was, we cannot suppose him to have at this stage completed his refashioning of the older play, which is undoubtedly the substratum of his.[8] We must therefore keep closely in view the divergencies between this text and that of the Second Quarto, printed in 1604, in which the trans.m.u.ting touch of Shakspere is broadly evident. It is quite possible that Shakspere may have seen parts of Florio's translation before 1603, or heard pa.s.sages from it read; or even that he might have read Montaigne in the original. But as his possession of the translation is made certain by the preservation of the copy bearing his autograph, and as it is from Florio that he is seen to have copied in the pa.s.sages where his copying is beyond dispute, it is on Florio's translation that we must proceed.

I. In order to keep all the evidence in view, we may first of all collate once more the pa.s.sage in the TEMPEST with that in the Essays which it unquestionably follows. In Florio's translation, Montaigne's words run:

"They [Lycurgus and Plato] could not imagine a genuity so pure and simple, as we see it by experience, nor ever believe our society might be maintained with so little art and human combination. It is a nation (would I answer Plato) that hath no kind of traffic, no knowledge of letters, no intelligence of numbers, no name of magistrate, nor of politic superiority; no use of service, of riches, or of poverty; no contracts, no successions, no dividences, no occupations, but idle; no respect of kindred, but common; no apparel, but natural; no manuring of lands, no use of wine, corn, or metal. The very words that import lying, falsehood, treason, dissimulation, covetousness, envy, detraction, and pa.s.sion, were never heard of amongst them. How dissonant would he find his imaginary commonwealth from this perfection?"

Compare the speech in which the kind old Gonzalo seeks to divert the troubled mind of the shipwrecked King Alonso:

"I' the commonwealth I would by contraries Execute all things: for no kind of traffic Would I admit; no name of magistrate; Letters should not be known; no use of service, Of riches, or of poverty; no contracts, Succession; bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none: No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil: No occupation, all men idle, all; And women too: but innocent and pure: No sovereignty...."

There can be no dispute as to the direct transcription here, where the dramatist is but incidentally playing with Montaigne's idea, proceeding to put some gibes at it in the mouths of Gonzalo's rascally comrades; and it follows that Gonzalo's further phrase, "to excel the golden age,"

proceeds from Montaigne's previous words: "exceed all the pictures wherewith licentious poesy hath proudly embellished the golden age." The play was in all probability written in or before 1610. It remains to show that on his first reading of Florio's Montaigne, in 1603-4, Shakspere was more deeply and widely influenced, though the specific proofs are in the nature of the case less palpable.

II. Let us take first the more decisive coincidences of phrase.

Correspondences of thought which in themselves do not establish their direct connection, have a new significance when it is seen that other coincidences amount to manifest reproduction. And such a coincidence we have, to begin with, in the familiar lines:

"There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will."[9]

I pointed out in 1885 that this expression, which does not occur in the First Quarto HAMLET, corresponds very closely with the theme of Montaigne's essay, THAT FORTUNE IS OFTENTIMES MET WITHALL IN PURSUIT OF REASON,[10] in which occurs the phrase, "Fortune has more judgment[11]

than we," a translation from Menander. But Professor Morley, having had his attention called to the subject by the work of Mr. Feis, who had suggested another pa.s.sage as the source of Shakspere's, made a more perfect identification. Reading the proofs of the Florio translation for his reprint, he found, what I had not observed in my occasional access to the old folio, not then reprinted, that the very metaphor of "rough-hewing" occurs in Florio's rendering of a pa.s.sage in the Essays:--[12] "My consultation doth somewhat roughly hew the matter, and by its first shew lightly consider the same: the main and chief point of the work I am wont to resign to Heaven." This is a much more exact coincidence than is presented in the pa.s.sage cited by Mr. Feis from the essay OF PHYSIOGNOMY:--[13] "Therefore do our designs so often miscarry.... The heavens are angry, and I may say envious of the extension and large privilege we ascribe to human wisdom, to the prejudice of theirs, and abridge them so much more unto us by so much more we endeavour to amplify them." If there were no closer parallel than that in Montaigne, we should be bound to take it as an expansion of a phrase in Seneca's AGAMEMNON,[14] which was likely to have become proverbial. I may add that the thought is often repeated in the Essays, and that in several pa.s.sages it compares notably with Shakspere's lines.

These begin:

"Rashly, --And praised be rashness for it--Let us know Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well When our deep plots do pall; and that should learn us There's a divinity" etc.

Compare the following extracts from Florio's translation:--

"The _Daemon_ of Socrates were peradventure a certain impulsion or will which without the advice of his discourse presented itself unto him. In a mind so well purified, and by continual exercise of wisdom and virtue so well prepared as his was, it is likely his inclinations (though rash and inconsiderate) were ever of great moment, and worthy to be followed. Every man feeleth in himself some image of such agitations, of a prompt, vehement, and casual opinion. It is in me to give them some authority, that afford so little to our wisdom. And I have had some (equally weak in reason and violent in persuasion and dissuasion, which was more ordinary to Socrates) by which I have so happily and so profitably suffered myself to be transported, as they might perhaps be thought to contain some matter of divine inspiration."[15]

"Even in our counsels and deliberations, some chance or good luck must needs be joined to them; for whatsoever our wisdom can effect is no great matter."[16]

"When I consider the most glorious exploits of war, methinks I see that those who have had the conduct of them employ neither counsel nor deliberation about them, but for fashion sake, and leave the best part of the enterprise to fortune; and on the confidence they have in her aid, they still go beyond the limits of all discourse. Casual rejoicings and strange furies ensue among their deliberations."[17] etc.

Compare finally Florio's translation of the lines of Manilius cited by Montaigne at the end of the 47th Essay of the First Book:

"'Tis best for ill-advis'd, wisdom may fail,[18]

Fortune proves not the cause that should prevail, But here and there without respect doth sail: A higher power forsooth us overdraws, And mortal states guides with immortal laws."

It is to be remembered, indeed, that the idea expressed in Hamlet's words to Horatio is partly antic.i.p.ated in the rhymed speech of the Player-King in the play-scene in Act III., which occurs in the First Quarto:

"Our wills, our fates do so contrary run That our devices still are overthrown; Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own."

Such a pa.s.sage, reiterating a familiar commonplace, might seem at first sight to tell against the view that Hamlet's later speech to Horatio is an echo of Montaigne. But that view being found justified by the evidence, and the idea in that pa.s.sage being exactly coincident with Montaigne's, while the above lines are only partially parallel in meaning, we are forced to admit that Shakspere may have been influenced by Montaigne even where a partial precedent might be found in his own or other English work.

III. The phrase "discourse of reason," which is spoken by Hamlet in his first soliloquy,[19] and which first appears in the Second Quarto, is not used by Shakspere in any play before HAMLET; and he uses it again in TROILUS AND CRESSIDA;[20] while "discourse of thought" appears in OTh.e.l.lO;[21] and "discourse," in the sense of reasoning faculty, is used in Hamlet's last soliloquy.[22] In English literature this use of the word seems to be special in Shakspere's period,[23] and it has been noted by an admirer as a finely Shaksperean expression. But the expression "discourse of reason" occurs at least four times in Montaigne's Essays, and in Florio's translation of them: in the essay[24] THAT TO PHILOSOPHISE IS TO LEARN HOW TO DIE; again at the close of the essay[25] _A demain les affaires_; again in the first paragraph of the APOLOGY OF RAIMOND SEBONDE[26]; and yet again in the chapter on THE HISTORY OF SPURINA;[27] and though it seems to be scholastic in origin, and occurs once or twice before 1600 in English books, it is difficult to doubt that, like the other phrase above cited, it came to Shakspere through Florio's Montaigne. The word _discours_ is a hundred times used singly by Montaigne, as by Shakspere in the phrase "of such large discourse," for the process of ratiocination.

IV. Then again there is the clue of Shakspere's use of the word "consummation" in the revised form of the "To be" soliloquy. This, as Mr. Feis pointed out,[28] is the word used by Florio as a rendering of _aneantiss.e.m.e.nt_ in the speech of Socrates as given by Montaigne in the essay[29] OF PHYSIOGNOMY. Shakspere makes Hamlet speak of annihilation as "a consummation devoutly to be wished." Florio has: "If it (death) be a consummation of one's being, it is also an amendment and entrance into a long and quiet night. We find nothing so sweet in life as a quiet and gentle sleep, and without dreams." Here not only do the words coincide in a peculiar way, but the idea in the two phrases is the same; the theme of sleep and dreams being further common to the two writings.

Beyond these, I have not noted any correspondences of phrase so precise as to prove reminiscence beyond possibility of dispute; but it is not difficult to trace striking correspondences which, though falling short of explicit reproduction, inevitably suggest a relation; and these it now behoves us to consider. The remarkable thing is, as regards HAMLET, that they almost all occur in pa.s.sages not present in the First Quarto.

V. When we compare part of the speech of Rosencrantz on sedition[30]

with a pa.s.sage in Montaigne's essay, OF CUSTOM,[31] we find a somewhat close coincidence. In the play Rosencrantz says:

"The cease of Majesty, Dies not alone; but like a gulf doth draw What's near with it: it is a ma.s.sy wheel Fix'd on the summit of the highest mount, To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things Are mortised and adjoined; which, when it falls, Each small annexment, petty consequence, Attends the boisterous ruin."

Florio has:

"Those who attempt to shake an Estate are commonly the first overthrown by the fall of it.... The contexture and combining of this monarchy and great building having been dismissed and dissolved by it, namely, in her old years, giveth as much overture and entrance as a man will to like injuries. Royal _majesty_ doth more hardly fall from the top to the middle, than it tumbleth down from the middle to the bottom."

The verbal correspondence here is only less decisive--as regards the use of the word "majesty"--than in the pa.s.sages collated by Mr. Morley; while the thought corresponds as closely.

VI. The speech of Hamlet,[32] "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so"; and Iago's "'tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus,"[33] are expressions of a favourite thesis of Montaigne's, to which he devotes an entire essay.[34] The Shaksperean phrases echo closely such sentences as:--