Shakspere and Montaigne Part 18

'Application' (that is, plagiarism) 'is now grown a trade with many; and there are that profess to have a key for the decyphering of everything: but let wise and n.o.ble persons take heed how they be too credulous, or give leave to these invading interpreters to be over-familiar with their fames, who cunningly, and often, utter their own virulent malice under other men's simplest meanings.'

Jonson then approves of those 'severe and wise patriots' who, in order to provide against 'the hurts these licentious spirits may do in a State,'

rather desire to see plays full of 'fools and devils,' and 'those antique relics of barbarism' (he means 'Masques,' which he wrote with great virtuosoship) acted on the stage, than 'behold the wounds of private men, of princes and nations.'

And now we come to the pa.s.sage, partly already quoted, which more than anything else shows that the '_purge_' which 'our fellow Shakspere gave him'--'Hamlet'--must have greatly damaged, in the eyes of the public, both the reputation of Jonson and of his friends. He confesses it in these remarkable words:--

'_I cannot but be serious in a cause of this nature, wherein my fame, and the reputation of divers honest and learned are the question; when a name so full of authority, antiquity, and all great mark, is, through their insolence, become the lowest scorn of the age; and those men subject to the petulancy of every vernaculous orator, that were wont to be the care of kings and happiest monarchs_.' [5]

Is there a character, we may ask, not only in Shakspere's dramas, but in any play of that period, to which the description given by Jonson could apply?--of course, Hamlet always excepted, who is but a mask for Montaigne. And who else but Montaigne is designated by the expressions: 'a name so full of authority, antiquity, and all great mark;' 'the care of kings and happiest monarchs?'

That the 'railing rhetoric' in which such a character was derided, could not be contained in a satirical poem, but had reference to a drama, is proved, as already explained, by the fact of Jonson's wrath being directed against the stage-poets. He says expressly, that henceforth, by all his actions, he will 'stand off from them.' To the most learned authorities, the two Universities, he announces that, by his own regular art, he intends giving these wayward disciples of Dramatic Poesy proper instruction and amendment. Had his object not been to strike the most popular of the stage-poets--Shakspere--he would have been bound to make an exception for that name of which everyone must have thought first when stage-poets were subjected to reproof. We repeat: Jonson only intended measuring himself against him who was the greatest of his time.

This was fully in accordance with his disputatious inclination. [6]

The person once '_wont to be the care of kings and happiest monarchs_'

[7] must have been a foreigner, for we do not know of any favourite '_full of authority and antiquity_' who enjoyed such high privilege from English kings. However, if a dramatist had been bold enough to put such a favourite on the stage, he would have met with the most severe punishment long before Jonson had pointed out his reprehensible audacity. By the '_happiest monarchs_,' Henry III. and Henry IV.

of France are meant. The latter, at that time, yet stood in the zenith of his good fortune. Again, the expression: '_of every vernaculous orator_,' points to the circ.u.mstance of the mockery being directed against a foreigner; and the same may be said of Jonson's question, addressed to supercilious politicians, as to what nation, society, or general order of State he had provoked? Clearly, another nation, a society of different modes of thought than the English one, and foreign inst.i.tutions, are here indicated.

We now come to some hints contained in 'Volpone,' which partly consist of an endeavour to expose Shakspere on account of plagiarisms committed against other writers, partly of references to irreligious tendencies, against which Jonson warns, and which he strives to ridicule.

Under the existing strict laws which forbade religious questions being discussed on the stage, the latter references had to be made in parable manner, but still not too covertly, so that they might be understood by a certain audience--namely, the members of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. [8]

Already, in the Prologue of his 'Volpone,' Jonson says of himself that--

In all his poems still hath been this measure, To mix profit with your pleasure.

He also despises certain deceptive tricks of composition:--

Nor hales he in a gull old ends reciting, To stop gaps in his loose writing; With such a deal of monstrous and forced action, As might make Bethlem a faction: Nor made he his play for jests stolen from each table, But makes jests to fit his fable....

The laws of time, place, persons he observeth, From no needful rule he swerveth.

In the observance of the technical rules of the cla.s.sic drama--this much Jonson could certainly prove to the world--he was superior to Shakspere. The severe words: 'monstrous and forced action,' can only refer to a drama written not long before; for, in 'Volpone,' Jonson wishes to give to the stage-poets of his time his own ideal of a drama. 'Bethlem' (Bedlam) indicates madness round which all kinds of lunatics might gather as factionaries or adherents of the kind of drama which Jonson wishes to stigmatise.

Do we go too far in thinking that 'Hamlet' is the play which is made the target of allusions in this very Prologue?

However, we proceed at once to the Interlude which follows after the first scene of the first act of 'Volpone.' In it, Shakspere himself is practically put on the stage, by being asked:

how of late thou hast suffered translation, And shifted thy coat in these days of reformation.

This Interlude is in no connection with the course of the dramatic action.

Mosca, a parasite, brings in, for the entertainment of his master (Volpone), three merry Jack Andrews. One of them, Androgyno, must be held to be SHAKSPERE.

Here we have to note that Francis Meres, a scholar of great repute, and M.A. of both Universities, wrote in 1598 a book, ent.i.tled 'Palladis Tamia,' which in English he calls 'Wit's Treasury.' It contains, so far as the sixteenth century is concerned, the most valuable statements as regards Shakspere: nay, the only trustworthy ones dating from that century. In that work, Meres cla.s.sifies and criticises the poets of his time and country by comparing each of them with some Greek or Roman poet, kindred to the corresponding English one in the line of production chosen and in quality. Ben Jonson is only mentioned once, at a very modest place; his name stands last, after Chapman and Dekker.

Meres confers upon Shakspere most enthusiastic but just praise:--

'As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras: so the sweete, wittie soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and hony-tongued Shakespeare; witness his 'Venus and Adonis;' his 'Lucrece;' his sugred 'Sonnets' among his private friends.... As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy amongst the Latines: so Shakspere among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage.'

He then mentions twelve of his plays, [9] and thus concludes his eulogy:--

'As Epius Stolo said that the Muses would speake with Plautus tongue, if they would speak Latin: so I say that the Muses would speak with Shakespeare's fine filed phrases if they would speake English.'

The envious Jonson who pledges himself, in the Dedication to the two Universities, to give back to Poesy its former majesty, may have considered it necessary, before all, to deride, before a learned audience, the enthusiastic praise conferred by Francis Meres upon Shakspere, as well as Shakspere himself on account of the free religious tendencies he had expressed in 'Hamlet' This is done, as we said, in the Interlude prepared by Mosca for the entertainment of his master. Volpone boasts of the clever manner with which he gains riches:--

I use no trade, no venture; I wound no earth with ploughshares, fat no beasts To feed the shambles; have no mills for iron, Oil, corn, or men, to grind them into powder: ... expose no ships To threatenings of the furrow-faced sea; I turn no monies in the public bank, Nor usure private.

Mosca, in order to flatter his master, continues the speech of the latter in the same strain:--

... No, sir, nor devour Soft prodigals. You shall have some will swallow A melting heir as glibly as your Dutch Will pills of b.u.t.ter, and ne'er purge for it; [10]

Tear forth the fathers of poor families Out of their beds, and coffin them alive In some kind clasping prison, where their bones May be forthcoming, when the flesh is rotten: But your sweet nature doth abhor these courses; You lothe the widow's or the orphan's tears Should wash your pavements, or their piteous cries Ring in the roofs, and beat the air for vengeance.

We have here an allusion to Hamlet, [11] where he asks the Ghost why the sepulchre has opened its 'ponderous and marble jaws' to cast him up again; also to the Queen and whilom widow; and, furthermore, to the orphans, Ophelia and Laertes, and to the tears shed by the latter at his sister's death. The cry of vengeance refers to the similar utterances of the Ghost, of Hamlet, and of Laertes, who all seek revenge.

Mosca, with a view of preparing for his master a pleasure more suitable to his taste than that which a play like 'Hamlet,' we suppose, could afford him, brings in the three gamesters:--Nano, a dwarf; Castrone, a eunuch; and Androgyne, a hermaphrodite. [12] The latter is meant to represent Shakspere; for he is introduced by Nano as a soul coming from Apollo, which migrated through Euphorbus and Pythagoras (Meres uses these two names in his eulogy of the soul of Shakspere). [13]

After having recounted several other stages in the migration of Androgyne's soul (we shall mention them further on), the latter has to give an answer why he has 'shifted his coat in these days of reformation,'

and why his 'dogmatical silence' has left him. He replies that an obstreperous 'Sir Lawyer' had induced him to do so. From this it may be concluded that Bacon had some influence on Shakspere's 'Hamlet.'

Are not, in poetical manner, the same principles advocated in 'Hamlet,'

which Bacon promoted in science? [14]

After the Hermaphrodite has admitted that he has become 'a good dull mule,' [15] he avows that he is now a very strange beast, an a.s.s, an actor,a hermaphrodite, and a fool; and that he more especially relishes this latter condition of his, for in all other forms, as Jonson makes him confess, he has 'proved most distressed.' [16]

Let us now quote from this Interlude some highly-spiced satirical pa.s.sages.

Nano, the dwarf, coming in with Androgyno and Castrone, asks for room for the new gamesters or players, and says to the public:--

They do bring you neither play, nor university show; And therefore do intreat you that whatsoever they rehea.r.s.e, May not fare a whit the worse, for the false pace of the verse. [17]

If you wonder at this, you will wonder more ere we pa.s.s, For know, here [18] is inclosed the soul of Pythagoras, [19]

That juggler divine, as hereafter shall follow; Which soul, fast and loose, sir, came first from Apollo.

It is explained how that soul afterwards transmigrated into 'the goldy-locked Euphorbus who was killed, in good fashion, at the siege of old Troy, by the cuckold of Sparta;' how it then pa.s.sed into Hermotimus, 'where no sooner it was missing, but with one Pyrrhus of Delos [20] it learned to go a-fishing;' [21] how thence it did enter the Sophist of Greece, Pythagoras. After having been changed into whom,

she became a philosopher, Crates the cynick, as itself doth relate it: [22]

Since kings, knights and beggars, knaves, lords, and fools get it, Besides ox and a.s.s, camel, mule, goat, and brock, [23]

In all which it has spoke, as in the cobbler's c.o.c.k. [24]

Nano's present intention, however, is not to refer to such things:--

But I come not here to discourse of that matter, Or his one, two, or three, or his great oath, BY QUATER, [25]

His musics,[26] his trigon, his golden thigh, [27]

Or his telling how elements [28] shift: but I Would ask, how of late thou hast suffered translation And shifted thy coat in these days of Reformation.

_Androgyno_. Like one of the reformed, a fool, as you see, COUNTING ALL OLD DOCTRINE HERESIE.

_Nano_. But not on thine own forbid meats hast thou ventured.

_Androgyno_. On fish, when first a Carthusian I entered.[29]

_Nano_. Why, then thy dogmatical silence hath left thee?