Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher Part 3

Lastly, contrast his _morality_ with the writers of his own or of the succeeding age, &c. If a man speak injuriously of our friend, our vindication of him is naturally warm. Shakespeare has been accused of profaneness. I for my part have acquired from perusal of him, a habit of looking into my own heart, and am confident that Shakespeare is an author of all others the most calculated to make his readers better as well as wiser.

Shakespeare, possessed of wit, humour, fancy, and imagination, built up an outward world from the stores within his mind, as the bee finds a hive from a thousand sweets gathered from a thousand flowers. He was not only a great poet but a great philosopher. Richard III., Iago, and Falstaff are men who reverse the order of things, who place intellect at the head, whereas it ought to follow, like Geometry, to prove and to confirm. No man, either hero or saint, ever acted from an unmixed motive; for let him do what he will rightly, still Conscience whispers "it is your duty."

Richard, laughing at conscience and sneering at religion, felt a confidence in his intellect, which urged him to commit the most horrid crimes, because he felt himself, although inferior in form and shape, superior to those around him; he felt he possessed a power which they had not. Iago, on the same principle, conscious of superior intellect, gave scope to his envy, and hesitated not to ruin a gallant, open, and generous friend in the moment of felicity, because he was not promoted as he expected. Oth.e.l.lo was superior in place, but Iago felt him to be inferior in intellect, and, unrestrained by conscience, trampled upon him.

Falstaff, not a degraded man of genius, like Burns, but a man of degraded genius, with the same consciousness of superiority to his companions, fastened himself on a young Prince, to prove how much his influence on an heir-apparent would exceed that of a statesman. With this view he hesitated not to adopt the most contemptible of all characters, that of an open and professed liar: even his sensuality was subservient to his intellect: for he appeared to drink sack, that he might have occasion to show off his wit. One thing, however, worthy of observation, is the perpetual contrast of labour in Falstaff to produce wit, with the ease with which Prince Henry parries his shafts; and the final contempt which such a character deserves and receives from the young king, when Falstaff exhibits the struggle of inward determination with an outward show of humility.

Order Of Shakespeare's Plays.

Various attempts have been made to arrange the plays of Shakespeare, each according to its priority in time, by proofs derived from external doc.u.ments. How unsuccessful these attempts have been might easily be shewn, not only from the widely different results arrived at by men, all deeply versed in the black-letter books, old plays, pamphlets, ma.n.u.script records, and catalogues of that age, but also from the fallacious and unsatisfactory nature of the facts and a.s.sumptions on which the evidence rests. In that age, when the press was chiefly occupied with controversial or practical divinity,-when the law, the Church, and the State engrossed all honour and respectability,-when a degree of disgrace, _levior quaedam infamiae macula_, was attached to the publication of poetry, and even to have sported with the Muse, as a private relaxation, was supposed to be-a venial fault, indeed, yet-something beneath the gravity of a wise man,-when the professed poets were so poor, that the very expenses of the press demanded the liberality of some wealthy individual, so that two-thirds of Spenser's poetic works, and those most highly praised by his learned admirers and friends, remained for many years in ma.n.u.script, and in ma.n.u.script perished,-when the amateurs of the stage were comparatively few, and therefore for the greater part more or less known to each other,-when we know that the plays of Shakespeare, both during and after his life, were the property of the stage, and published by the players, doubtless according to their notions of acceptability with the visitants of the theatre,-in such an age, and under such circ.u.mstances, can an allusion or reference to any drama or poem in the publication of a contemporary be received as conclusive evidence, that such drama or poem had at that time been published? Or, further, can the priority of publication itself prove anything in favour of actually prior composition?

We are tolerably certain, indeed, that the _Venus and Adonis_, and the _Rape of Lucrece_, were his two earliest poems, and though not printed until 1593, in the twenty-ninth year of his age, yet there can be little doubt that they had remained by him in ma.n.u.script many years. For Mr.

Malone has made it highly probable that he had commenced as a writer for the stage in 1591, when he was twenty-seven years old, and Shakespeare himself a.s.sures us that the _Venus and Adonis_ was the first heir of his invention.

Baffled, then, in the attempt to derive any satisfaction from outward doc.u.ments, we may easily stand excused if we turn our researches towards the internal evidences furnished by the writings themselves, with no other positive _data_ than the known facts that the _Venus and Adonis_ was printed in 1593, the _Rape of Lucrece_ in 1594, and that the _Romeo and Juliet_ had appeared in 1595,-and with no other presumptions than that the poems, his very first productions, were written many years earlier-(for who can believe that Shakespeare could have remained to his twenty-ninth or thirtieth year without attempting poetic composition of any kind?),-and that between these and _Romeo and Juliet_ there had intervened one or two other dramas, or the chief materials, at least of them, although they may very possibly have appeared after the success of the _Romeo and Juliet_, and some other circ.u.mstances, had given the poet an authority with the proprietors, and created a prepossession in his favour with the theatrical audiences.

CLa.s.sIFICATION ATTEMPTED, 1802.

FIRST EPOCH.

The London Prodigal.

Cromwell.

Henry VI., three parts, first edition.

The old King John.

Edward III.

The old Taming of the Shrew.

Pericles.

All these are transition works, _Uebergangswerke_; not his, yet of him.

SECOND EPOCH.

All's Well that Ends Well;-but afterwards worked up afresh (_umgearbeitet_), especially Parolles.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona; a sketch.

Romeo and Juliet; first draft of it.

THIRD EPOCH

rises into the full, although youthful, Shakespeare; it was the negative period of his perfection.

Love's Labour's Lost.

Twelfth Night.

As You Like It.

Midsummer Night's Dream.

Richard II.

Henry IV. and V.

Henry VIII.; _Gelegenheitsgedicht_.

Romeo and Juliet, as at present.

Merchant of Venice.

FOURTH EPOCH.

Much Ado about Nothing.

Merry Wives of Windsor; first edition.

Henry VI.; _rifacimento_.

FIFTH EPOCH.

The period of beauty was now past; and that of de???t?? and grandeur succeeds.

Lear.

Macbeth.

Hamlet.

Timon of Athens; an after vibration of Hamlet.

Troilus and Cressida; _Uebergang in die Ironie_.

The Roman Plays.

King John, as at present.

Merry Wives of Windsor Taming of the Shrew _umgearbeitet._ Measure for Measure.

Oth.e.l.lo.

Tempest.

Winter's Tale.

Cymbeline.

CLa.s.sIFICATION ATTEMPTED, 1810.

Shakespeare's earliest dramas I take to be-

Love's Labour's Lost.

All's Well that Ends Well.

Comedy of Errors.

Romeo and Juliet.

In the second cla.s.s I reckon-

Midsummer Night's Dream.

As You Like It.

Tempest.

Twelfth Night.

In the third, as indicating a greater energy-not merely of poetry, but of all the world of thought, yet still with some of the growing pains, and the awkwardness of growth-I place-

Troilus and Cressida.

Cymbeline.

Merchant of Venice.

Much Ado about Nothing.