Shakespeare in the Theatre Part 6

And then, with correct imperial conventionality, he proceeds to punish the offenders, locking up his daughter behind "iron doors" and exiling her lover. Now, Horace--that is to say, Jonson--is supposed by the revellers to be responsible for having betrayed the inspirer of these antics. But this implication Jonson indignantly repudiates in a scene between Horace, the spy, and the Globe player, in which Horace severely upbraids them for their malice:

"To prey upon the life of innocent mirth And harmless pleasures bred of n.o.ble wit,"

a rebuke that found expression in almost similar words in the 1609 preface to Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida": "For it is a birth of (that) brain that never undertook anything comical vainly: and were but the vain names of comedies changed for t.i.tles of commodities or of plays for pleas, you should see all those grand censors that now style them such vanities flock to them for the main grace of their gravities." Now Jonson, if he, indeed, intended to defend the attacks made on his friend Shakespeare's play, has shown considerable adroitness in the delicate task he undertook, for since the "Poetaster" was written to be acted at the Blackfriars, a theatre under Court patronage, Jonson could not there abuse "the grand censors," and this he avoids doing by making Caesar justly incensed at the impudence of the citizens in daring to counterfeit the divine G.o.ds, while Horace, out of reach of Caesar's ear, soundly rates the police spy and the actor for mistaking the shadow for the substance and regarding playacting as if it were political conspiracy. But what, it may be contended, connects the underplot in the "Poetaster" directly with Shakespeare's play is the speech of citizen Mercury and its satirical insistence that immorality may be tolerated by the G.o.ds:

"The great G.o.d Jupiter, of his licentious goodness, willing to make this feast no fast from any manner of pleasure, nor to bind any G.o.d or G.o.ddess to be anything the more G.o.d or G.o.ddess for their names, he gives them all free licence to speak no wiser than persons of baser t.i.tles; and to be nothing better than common men or women. And, therefore, no G.o.d shall need to keep himself more strictly to his G.o.ddess than any man does to his wife; nor any G.o.ddess shall need to keep herself more strictly to her G.o.d than any woman does to her husband. But since it is no part of wisdom in these days to come into bonds, it should be lawful for every lover to break loving oaths, to change their lovers, and make love to others, as the heat of everyone's blood and the spirit of our nectar shall inspire. And Jupiter save Jupiter!"

Now this speech, it may be contended, is but a good-natured parody of Shakespeare's travesty of the Iliad story, as he wrote it in answer to Chapman's absurd claim for the sanct.i.ty of Homer's characters.

Shakespeare's consciousness of power might naturally have incited him to place himself immediately by the side of Homer, but it is more likely that he was interested in the ethical than in the personal point of view.

Unlike most of his plays, as Dr. Ward has pointed out, this comedy follows no single original source accurately, because the author's satire was more topical than anything he had previously attempted, except, perhaps, in "Love's Labour's Lost." But Shakespeare for once had miscalculated not his own powers, but the powers of the "grand censors," who could suppress plays which reflected upon the morality or politics of those who moved in high places; nor had he sufficiently allowed for the hostility of the "sinners who lived in the suburbs." Shakespeare, indeed, found one of the most striking compositions of his genius disliked and condemned not from its lack of merit, but for reasons that Jonson so forcibly points out in words put into the mouth of Virgil:

"'Tis not the wholesome sharp morality, Or modest anger of a satiric spirit, That hurts or wounds the body of the state; But the sinister application Of the malicious, ignorant, and base Interpreter, who will distort and strain The general scope and purpose of an author To his particular and private spleen."

The stigma that rested on Shakespeare in his lifetime for having written this play rests on him still, for some unintelligible reason, since no man ever sat down to put his thoughts on paper with a loftier motive. But so it is! Then, as now, whenever a dramatist attempts to be teacher and preacher, all the other teachers and preachers in the world hold up their hands in horror and exclaim: "What impiety! What stupendous ignorance!"

Gervinus, in his criticism of this play, compares the satire of the Elizabethen poet with that of Aristophanes, and points out that the Greek dramatist directed his sallies against the living. This, he contends, should ever be the object of satire, because a man must not war against the defenceless and dead. Yet Shakespeare's instincts as a dramatist were too unerring for him to be unconscious of this fundamental principle of his art. The stage in his time supplied the place now occupied by the Press, and political discussions were carried on in public through the mouth of the actor, of which few indications can now be traced on the printed page, owing to the difficulty of fitting the date of composition with that of the performance. Heywood, the dramatist, in his answer to the Puritan's abuse of the theatre, alludes to the stage as the great political schoolmaster of the people. And yet until recent years the labours of commentators have been chiefly confined to making literary comparisons, to discovering sources of plots, and the origin of expressions, so that there still remains much investigation needed to discover Shakespeare's political, philosophical, and religious affinities as they appear reflected in his plays. Mr. Richard Simpson, the brilliant Shakespearian scholar, many years ago pointed out the necessity for a new departure in criticism, and added that it was still thought derogatory to Shakespeare "to make him an upholder of any principles worth a.s.sertion,"

or to admit that, as a reasoner, he took any decided part in the affairs which influenced the highest minds of his day. Now, in regard to politics, government by factions was then the prevailing feature; factions consisting of individuals who centred round some n.o.bleman, whom the Queen favoured and made, or weakened, according to her judgment or caprice. In the autumn of 1597 Ess.e.x's influence over the Queen was waning, and after a sharp rebuke received from her at the Privy Council table, he abruptly left the Court and sullenly withdrew to his estate at Wanstead, where he remained so long in retirement that his friends remonstrated with him against his continued absence. One of them, who signed himself "Thy true servant not daring to subscribe," urged him to attend every Council and to let nothing be settled either at home or abroad without his knowledge. He should stay in the Court, and perform all his duties there, where he can make a greater show of discontent than he possibly could being absent; there is nothing, adds this writer, that his enemies so much wish, enjoy, and rejoice in as his absence. He is advised not to sue any more, "because necessity will entreat for him." All he need do now is to dissemble like a courtier, and show himself outwardly unwilling of that which he has inwardly resolved. For by retiring he is playing his enemies' game, since "the greatest subject that ever is or was greatest, in the prince's favour, in his absence is not missed." In "Troilus and Cressida" we have a similar situation, and we hear similar advice given. Achilles, like Ess.e.x, has withdrawn unbidden and discontentedly to his tent, refusing to come again to his general's council table. For doing so Ulysses remonstrates with him in almost the same words as the writer of the anonymous letter.

"The present eye praises the present object.

Then marvel not, thou great and complete man, That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax; Since things in motion sooner catch the eye Than what not stirs. The cry went once on thee, And still it might, and yet it may again, If thou would'st not entomb thyself alive, And case thy reputation in thy tent; Whose glorious deeds, but in these fields of late, Made emulous missions 'mongst the G.o.ds themselves And drave great Mars to faction."

Then Achilles replies:

"Of this my privacy I have strong reasons."

And Ulysses continues:

"But 'gainst your privacy The reasons are more potent and heroical, 'Tis known, Achilles, that you are in love With one of Priam's daughters.

ACHILLES: Ha! known?

ULYSSES: Is that a wonder?

All the commerce that you have had with Troy As perfectly is ours as yours, my lord; And better would it fit Achilles much To throw down Hector than Polyxena."

If, again, we turn to the life and letters of Ess.e.x, we find there that upon the 11th of February, 1598, "it is spied out by some that my Lord of Ess.e.x is again fallen in love with his fairest B.: it cannot chance but come to her Majesty's ears, and then he is undone." The lady in question was Mary Brydges, a maid-of-honour and celebrated beauty. Again, in the same month Ess.e.x writes to the Queen, "I was never proud till your Majesty sought to make me too base." And Achilles is blamed by Agamemnon for his pride in a remarkably fine pa.s.sage. Then after news had come of the disaster to the Queen's troops in Ireland, in the summer of 1598, Ess.e.x reminds the Queen that, "I posted up and first offered my attendance after my poor advice to your Maj. But your Maj. rejected both me and my letter: the cause, as I hear, was that I refused to give counsel when I was last called to my Lord Keeper." A similar situation is found in the play.

Agamemnon sends for Achilles to attend the Council and he refuses to come, and later on, when he desires a reconciliation, the Council pa.s.s him by unnoticed. It is almost impossible to read the third act of this play without being reminded of these and other incidents in Ess.e.x's life. Nor would Shakespeare forget the stir that had been created in London when in 1591 it was known at Court that Ess.e.x, at the siege of Rouen, had sent a personal challenge to the governor of the town couched in the following words: "Si vous voulez combattre vous-meme a cheval ou a pied je maintiendrai que la querelle du rois est plus juste que celle de la ligue, et que ma Maitresse est plus belle que la votre." And aeneas, the Trojan, brings a challenge in almost identical words from Hector to the Greeks. It is true that this incident is in the Iliad together with the incidents connected with the withdrawal of Achilles, but Shakespeare selected his material from many sources and appears to have chosen what was most likely to appeal to his audience. Now it is not presumed that Achilles is Ess.e.x, nor that Ajax is Raleigh, nor Agamemnon Elizabeth, or that Shakespeare's audience for a moment supposed that they were; although it is to be noticed that the Achilles who comes into Shakespeare's play is not the same man at the beginning and end of the play as he is in the third act, where, in conversation with Ulysses he suddenly becomes an intelligent being and not simply a prize-fighter. To the injury of his drama, Shakespeare here runs away from his Trojan story, and does so for reasons that must have been special to the occasion for which the play was written. For about this time, the Privy Council wrote to some Justices of the Peace in Middles.e.x, complaining that certain players at the Curtain were reported to be representing upon the stage "the persons of some gentlemen of good descent and quality that are yet alive," and that the actors were impersonating these aristocrats "under obscure manner, but yet in such sorte as all the hearers may take notice of the matter and the persons that are meant thereby. This being a thing very unfit and offensive." The protest seems almost to suggest that the Achilles's scenes in Shakespeare's play express, "under obscure manner," reflections upon contemporary politicians. But, indeed, the growing political unrest which marked the last few years of Elizabeth's reign could not fail to find expression on the stage.

It must be remembered, besides, that the years 1597 to 1599 were marked by a group of dramas which may be called plays of political adventure. Nash had got into trouble over a performance of "The Isle of Dogs" at the Rose in 1597. In the same year complaints were made against Shakespeare for putting Sir John Oldcastle on the stage in the character of Falstaff. Also at the same period Shakespeare's "Richard the Second" was published, but not without exciting suspicions at Court, for the play had a political significance in the eyes of Catholics: Queen Mary of Scotland told her English judges that "she remembered they had done the same to King Richard, whom they had degraded from all honour and dignity." Then on the authority of Mr. H. C. Hart we are told that Ben Jonson brought Sir Walter Raleigh, the best hated man in England, on to the stage in the play of "Every Man Out of His Humour," in 1599, and, as a consequence, in the summer of the same year it was decided by the Privy Council that restrictions should be placed on satires, epigrams, and English histories, and that "noe plays be printed except they be allowed by such as have an authoritie." Dramatists, therefore, had to be much more circ.u.mspect in their political allusions after 1599 than they were before.

There are two new conjectures therefore put forward in this article: (1) That the underplot in the "Poetaster" contains allusions to Shakespeare's play, and (2) that the withdrawal of Achilles is a reflection on the withdrawal of Ess.e.x from Elizabeth's Court. Presuming that further evidence may one day be found to support these suppositions, it is worth while to consider them in relation to the history of the play.

And first to clear away the myth in connection with the idea that this is one of Shakespeare's late plays, or that it was only partly written by the poet, or written at different periods of his life. It may be confidently a.s.serted that Shakespeare allowed no second hand to meddle with a work so personal to himself as this one, nor was he accustomed to seek the help of any collaborator in a play that he himself initiated. We know, besides, that he wrote with facility and rapidly. As to the date of the play, the evidence of the loose dramatic construction, and the preference for dialogue where there should be drama, place it during the period when Shakespeare was writing his histories. The grip that he ultimately obtained over the stage handling of a story so as to produce a culminating and overpowering impression on his audience is wanting in "Troilus and Cressida." In fact, it is impossible to believe that this play was written after "Julius Caesar," "Much Ado," or "Twelfth Night." Nor is there evidence of revision in the play, since there are no topical allusions to be found in it which point to a later date than 1598 except perhaps in the prologue, which could hardly have been written before 1601, and did not appear in print before 1623. Again, it is contended that there is too much wisdom crammed into the play to allow of its being an early composition.

But the false ethics underlying the Troy story, which Shakespeare meant to satirize in "Troilus and Cressida," had been previously exposed in his poem of "Lucrece":

"Show me the strumpet that began this stir, That with my nails her beauty I may tear.

Thy heat of l.u.s.t, fond Paris, did incur This load of wrath that burning Troy did bear: Thy eye kindled the fire that burneth here; And here in Troy, for trespa.s.s of thine eye The sire, the son, the dame, and daughter die.

"Why should the private pleasure of some one Become the public plague of many moe?

Let sin, alone committed, light alone Upon his head that hath transgressed so; Let guiltless souls be freed from guilty woe: For one's offence why should so many fall, To plague a private sin in general.

"Lo, here weeps Hecuba, here Priam dies, Here manly Hector faints, here Troilus swounds, Here friend by friend in b.l.o.o.d.y charnel lies, And friend to friend gives unadvised wounds, And one man's l.u.s.t these many lives confounds; Had doting Priam check'd his son's desire, Troy had been bright with fame, and not with fire."

The difficulty with commentators is the knowledge that the play might have been written yesterday, while the treatment of the subject, in its modernity, is as far removed from "The Tempest" as it is from "Henry V."

Now, if the drama be recognized as a satire written under provocation and with extraordinary mental energy, the date of the composition can be as well fixed for 1598, when Shakespeare was thirty-four years old, as for the year 1609. There is, besides, something to be said with regard to its vocabulary, as Mr. Richard Simpson has shown, which is peculiar to this play alone. Shakespeare introduces into it a large number of new words which he had never used before and never employed afterwards. The list is a long one. There are 126 latinized words that are coined or used only for this play, words such as propugnation, protractive, Ptisick, publication, cognition, commixture, commodious, community, complimental. And in addition to all the latinized words there are 124 commoner words simple and compound, not elsewhere to be found in the poet's plays, showing an unwonted search after verbal novelty.

We will now, with the help of the new information, attempt to unravel the mystery as to the history of the play. The creation of the character of Falstaff in "Henry IV." (Part I.) brought Shakespeare's popularity, as a dramatist, to its zenith, and he seized the opportunity to reply to the attacks made upon himself, as a poet, by his rival poet, Chapman, and wrote a play giving a modern interpretation to the story of Troy, and working into the underplot some political allusion to Ess.e.x and the Court.

The play may have been acted at the Curtain late in 1598, or at the Globe in the spring of 1599, or, perhaps, privately at some n.o.bleman's mansion, who might have been one of Ess.e.x's faction. It was not liked, and Shakespeare experienced his first and most serious reverse on the stage.

But he quickly retrieved his position by producing another Falstaff play, "Henry IV." (Part II.), in the summer of 1599, followed by "Henry V." in the same autumn, when Ess.e.x's triumphs in Ireland are predicted.

Shakespeare, none the less, must have felt both grieved and annoyed by the treatment his satirical comedy had received from the hands of the "grand censors." So at Christmas, 1601, when Ben Jonson produced his "Poetaster"

at Blackfriars, the younger dramatist defended his friend from the silly objections which had been made to the Trojan comedy. Then early in 1603 a revival of "Troilus and Cressida" may have been contemplated at the Globe, and also its publication, but the death of Ess.e.x was still too near to the memory of Londoners to make this possible, and the suggestion may have been dropped on the eve of its fulfilment; Shakespeare, meanwhile, had written a prologue, to be spoken by an actor in armour, in imitation of Jonson's prologue, with a view to protect his play from further hostility. In 1609 Shakespeare was preparing to give up his connection with the stage, and may have handed his copy of the play to some publishers, for a consideration, and the book was then printed. The Globe players, however, demurred and claimed the property as theirs. The publishers then removed their first t.i.tle page and inserted another one to give the appearance to the reader of the play being new. They also wrote a preface to show that the publication, if unauthorized, was warranted, since the play had not been acted on the _public_ stage. The real object of the preface, however, was to defend the play from the attacks of the "grand censors," who thought that the comedy had some deep political significance, and was not merely intended to amuse and instruct. It also shows the writer's resentment at the high-handed action of the "grand possessors," the Globe players, who were unwilling either to act the play themselves or yet to allow it to be published.

III

SOME STAGE VERSIONS

"THE MERCHANT OF VENICE."

"ROMEO AND JULIET."

"HAMLET."

"KING LEAR."

III

SOME STAGE VERSIONS

A critical and genuine appreciation of the poet's work imposes a reverence for the constructive plan as well as for the text. Why should a Shakespeare, whose cunning hand divined the dramatic sequence of his story, have it improved by a modern playwright or actor-manager? The answer will be: Because the modern experts are familiar with theatrical effects of a kind Shakespeare never lived to see. But if a modern rearrangement of Shakespeare's plays is necessary to suit these theatrical effects, the question may well be discussed as to whether rearrangements with all their modern advantages are of more dramatic value than the perfect work of the master.

Among all innovations on the stage, perhaps the most far-reaching in its effect on dramatic construction was the act-drop. Elizabethan dramatists had to round off a scene to a conclusion, for there was no kindly curtain to cover retreat from a deadlock. The art of modern play-writing is to arrest the action suddenly upon a thrilling situation, and leave the characters between the horns of a dilemma. At a critical moment the act-drop comes down; and after the necessary interval goes up again, showing that the characters have in the meantime somehow got out of the difficulty. This leaves much to the fancy, but does not feed the imagination. This leading up to a terminal climax, a "curtain," is but the appet.i.te for the feast, and not the food itself. It a.s.sumes that the palate of the audience is depraved in its taste, and that it is one for which the best work is perhaps not best suited; but it is a form of art, and plays can be written after this form, and well written. Apart, however, from the question as to the theatrical gain of such a crude device as a "curtain," Shakespeare wrote with consummate art to show the tide of human affairs, its flow and its ebb, and his constructive plan is particularly unsuited to the act-drop. Upon one of Shakespeare's plays the curtain falls like the knife of a guillotine, and the effect is similar to ending a piece of music abruptly at its highest note, simply for the sake of creating some startling impression.

The way in which some modern managers, both here and in America, set about producing a play of Shakespeare's seems to be as follows: Choose your play, and be sure to note carefully in what country the incidents take place. Having done this, send artists to the locality to make sketches of the country, of its streets, its houses, its landscape, of its people, and of their costumes. Tell your artists that they must accurately reproduce the colouring of the sky, of the foliage, of the evening shadows, of the moonlight, of the men's hair and the women's eyes; for all these details are important to the proper understanding of Shakespeare's play. Send, moreover, your leading actor and actress to spend some weeks in the neighbourhood that they may become acquainted with the manners, the gestures, the emotions of the residents, for these things also are necessary to the proper understanding of the play. Then, when you have collected, at vast expense, labour, and research, this interesting information about a country of which Shakespeare was possibly entirely ignorant, thrust all this extraneous knowledge into your representation, whether it fit the context or not; let it justify the rearrangement of your play, the crowding of your stage with supernumeraries, the addition of incidental songs and glees, to say nothing of inappropriateness of costume and misconception of character, until the play, if it does not cease to be intelligible or consistent, thrives only by virtue of its imperishable vitality, or by its strength of characterization, and by its brilliancy of dialogue.

These are but a few of the inconsistencies consequent upon the rage for foisting foreign local colour into a Shakespearian play. But if the same amount of industry bestowed in ascertaining the manners and customs of foreign countries had been spent in acquiring a knowledge of Elizabethan playing, and in forming some notion of what was uppermost in Shakespeare's mind when he wrote his plays, we should have had representations which, if possibly less pictorially successful, would have been more dramatic, more human, and more consistent.

To use a homely image, the question of the stage representation of Shakespeare's plays is just the question of the foot and the shoe. Must we cut off a toe here, and slice off a little from the heel there; or stretch the shoe upon the last, and, if need be, even buy a new pair of shoes? It is not enough to say that modern audiences demand "curtain" and scenery for Shakespeare's plays. No public demands what is not offered to it.

Before demand can create supply, a sample of the new ware must be shown.

Most modern playgoers are unaware of the methods of Elizabethan stage-playing, and therefore cannot condemn them as unsatisfactory. They may have heard something about old tapestry, rushes, and boards, but they have no reason to infer that our greatest dramatists were "thoroughly handicapped by the methods of representation then in vogue."

It is indeed to be regretted that no scholar nor actor has thought it necessary to study the art of Shakespeare's dramatic construction from the original copies. Some of our University men have written intelligently about Shakespeare's characters and his philosophy, and one of them has done something more than this. But it is doubtful if any serious attention has been given yet to the way Shakespeare conducts his story and brings his characters on and off the stage, a matter of the highest moment, since the very life of the play depends upon the skill with which this is done.

And how many realize that the art of Shakespeare's dramatic construction differs fundamentally from that of the modern dramatist? In fact, a Pinero would no more know how to set about writing a play for the Elizabethan stage, in which the characters appear in the course of the story in twenty-six different localities during twenty-six years, than Shakespeare would know how to make twenty-six persons live their lives through a whole play in one room or on one day.