The Catholic World Volume I Part 80

{549}

We apply to him phrases which he has uttered of others; we believe that he must have involuntarily described himself, when he says,

"Take him all in all, We shall not look upon his like again;"

or that he must even consciously have given a reflection of himself when he so richly represents to us "the poet's eye in a fine phrenzy rolling." ("Midsummer-Night's Dream," act v., scene 1.)

But in fact, considering that the character of a man is like that which he describes, "as compounded of many simples extracted from many objects" ("As You Like It," act iv., scene 1), we naturally seek for those qualities which enter into his composition; we look for them in his own pages; we endeavor to cull from every part of his works such attributions of great and n.o.ble qualities to his characters, and unite them so as to form what we believe is his truest portrait. In truth, no other author has perhaps existed who has so completely reflected himself in his works as Shakespeare. For, as artists will tell us that every great master has more or less reproduced in his works characteristics to be found in himself, this is far more true of our greatest dramatist, whose genius, whose mind, whose heart, and whose entire soul live and breathe in every page and every line of his imperishable works. Indeed, as in these there is infinitely greater variety, and consequently greater versatility of power necessary to produce it, so must the amount of elements which enter into is composition represent changeable yet blending qualities beyond what the most finished master in any other art an be supposed to have possessed.

The positive and directly applicable materials which we possess for constructing a biography of this our greatest writer, are more scanty than have been collected to ill.u.s.trate the life of many an inferior author. His contemporaries, his friends, perhaps admirers, have left us but few anecdotes of his life, and have recorded but few traits of either his appearance or his character. Those who immediately succeeded him seem to have taken but little pains to collect early traditions concerning him, while yet they must have been fresh in the recollections of his fellow-countrymen, and still more of his fellow-townsmen. [Footnote 103]

[Footnote 103: As evidence of this neglect we may cite the "Journal"

of the Rev. John Ward, Inc.u.mbent of Stratford-upon-Avon, to which he was appointed in 1662. This diary, which has been published by Doctor Severn, "from the original MSS.," preserved in the library of the Medical Society of London, contains but two pages relating to Shakespeare, and those contain but scanty and unsatisfactory notices. I will quote only two sentences: "Remember to peruse Shakespeare's Plays--bee much versed in them, that I may not bee ignorant in that matter, whether Dr. Heylin does well, in reckoning up the dramatick poets which have been famous in England, to omit Shakespeare" (p. 184). Shakespeare's daughter was still alive when this was written, as appears from the sentence that immediately follows: it seems to us wonderful that so soon after the poet's death a shrewd and clever clergyman and physician (for Mr. Ward was both) should have known so little about his celebrated townsman's works or life. ]

It appears as though they were scarcely conscious of the great and brilliant luminary of English literature which was shining still, or had but lately pa.s.sed away; and as though they could not antic.i.p.ate either the admiration which was to succeed their duller perceptions of his unapproachable grandeur, or the eager desire which this would generate of knowing even the smallest details of its rise, its appearance, its departure. For by the biography of Shakespeare one cannot understand the records of what he bought, of what he sold, or the recital of those acts which only confound him with the common ma.s.s which surrounded him, and make him appear as the worthy burgess or the thrifty merchant; though even about the ordinary commonplace portions of his life such uncertainty exists, that doubts have been thrown on the very genuineness of that house which he is supposed to have inhabited.

Now, it is the characteristic individualizing quality, actions, and mode of executing his works, to whatever cla.s.s of excellence he may belong, that we long to be familiar with in order to say that we know the man. What matters it to us that he paid so many marks or {550} shillings to purchase a homestead in Stratford-upon-Avon? The simple autograph of his name is now worth all the sums that he thus expended.

One single line of one of his dramas, written in his own hand, would be worth to his admirers all the sums which are known to have pa.s.sed between him and others. What has become of the goodly folios which must have once existed written in his own hand? Where are the books annotated or even scratched by his pen, from which he drew the subjects and sometimes the substance of his dramas? What vandalism destroyed the first, or dispersed the second of these valuable treasures? How is it that we know nothing of his method of composition? Was it in solitude and sacred seclusion, self-imprisoned for hours beyond the reach of the turmoil of the street or the domestic sounds of home? Or were his unrivalled works produced in sc.r.a.ps of time and fugitive moments, even perhaps in the waiting-room of the theatre, or the brawling or jovial sounds of the tavern?

Was he silent, thoughtful, while his fertile brain was seething and heaving in the fermentation of his glorious conceptions; so that men should have said--"Hush! Shakespeare is at work with some new and mighty imaginings!" or wore he always that light and careless spirit which often belongs to the spontaneous facility of genius; so that his comrades may have wondered when, and where, and how his grave characters, his solemn scenes, his fearful catastrophes, and his sublime maxims of original wisdom, were conceived, planned, matured, and finally written down, to rule for ever the world of letters?

Almost the only fact connected with his literary life which has come down to us is one which has been recorded, perhaps with jealousy, certainly with ill-temper, by his friend Ben Jonson--that he wrote with overhaste, and hardly ever erased a line, though it would have been better had he done so with many.

This almost total absence of all external information, this drying-up of the ordinary channels of personal history, forces us to seek for the character and the very life of Shakespeare in his own works. But how difficult, in a.n.a.lyzing the complex const.i.tution of such a man's principles, motives, pa.s.sions, and affections, to discriminate between what he has drawn for himself, and what he has created by the force of his imagination. Dealing habitually with fictions, sometimes in their n.o.blest, sometimes in their vilest forms--here gross and even savage, there refined and sometimes ethereal, how shall we discover what portions of them were copied from the gla.s.s which he held before himself, what from the magic mirrors across which flitted illusive or fanciful imagery? The work seems hopeless. It is not like that of the printer, who, from a chaotic heap of seemingly unmeaning lead, draws out letter after letter, and so disposes them that they shall make senseful and even brilliant lines. It is more like the hopeless labor of one who, from the fragments of a tesselated pavement, should try to draw the elegant and exquisitely tinted figure which once it bore.

This difficulty of appreciating, and still more of delineating, the character of our great poet, makes him, without perhaps an exception, the most difficult literary theme in English letters.

How to reduce the subject to a lecture seems indeed a literal paradox.

But when to this difficulty is added that of an impossible compression into narrow limits of the widest and vastest compa.s.s ever embraced by any one man's genius, it must appear an excess of rashness in any-one to presume that he can do justice to the subject on which I am addressing you.

It seems, therefore, hardly wonderful that even the last year, dedicated naturally to the tercentenary commemoration of William Shakespeare, should have pa.s.sed over without any public eulogy of his greatness in this our metropolis. It seemed, indeed, as if the magnitude of that one man's genius was too oppressive for this generation. It was not, I believe, an undervaluing {551} of his merits which produced the frustration of efforts, and the disappointment of expectations, that seemed to put to rout and confusion, or rather to paralyze, the exertions so strenuously commenced to mark the year as a great epoch in England's literary history. I believe, on the contrary, that the dimensions of Shakespeare had grown so immeasurably in the estimation of his fellow-countrymen, that the proportions of his genius to all that had followed him, and all that surround us, had grown so enormously in the judgment and feeling of the country, from the n.o.bleman to the workman, that the genius of the man oppressed us, and made us feel that all our multiplied resources of art and speech were unequal to his worthy commemoration. No plan proposed for this purpose seemed adequate to attain it. Nothing solid and permanent that could either come up to his merits or to our aspirations seemed to be within the grasp either of the arts or of the wealth of our country.

The year has pa.s.sed away, and Shakespeare remains without any monument, except that which, by his wonderful writings, he has raised for himself. Even the research after a site fit for the erection of a monument to him, in the city of squares, of gardens, and of parks, seemed only to work perplexity and hopelessness.

Presumptuous as it may appear, the claim to connect myself with that expired and extinct movement is my only apology for my appearing before you. If, a year after its time, I take upon myself the eulogy of Shakespeare, if I appear to come forward as with a funeral oration, to give him, in a manner, posthumous glory, it is because my work has dropped out of its place, and not because I have inopportunely misplaced it. In the course of the last year, it was proposed to me, both directly and indirectly, to deliver a lecture on Shakespeare. I was bold enough to yield my a.s.sent, and thus felt that I had contracted an obligation to the memory of the bard, as well as to those who thought that my sharing what was done for his honor would possess any value. A task undertaken becomes a duty unfulfilled. When, therefore, it was proposed to me to perform my portion of the homage which I considered due to him, though it was to be a month too late, I felt it would be cowardice to shrink from its performance.

For in truth the undertaking required some courage; and to retire before its difficulties might be stigmatized as a dastardly timidity.

It is a work of courage at any time and in any place to undertake a lecture upon Shakespeare, more in fact than to venture on the delivery of a series. The latter gives scope for the thousand things which one would wish to say--it affords ample s.p.a.ce for apposite ill.u.s.tration--and it enables one to enrich the subject with the innumerable and inimitable beauties that are flung like gems or flowers over every page of his magnificent works. But in the midst of public, or rather universal, celebration of a national and secular festival in his honor, in the presence probably of the most finished literary characters in this highly-educated country, still more certainly before numbers of those whom the nation acknowledges as deeply read in the works of our poet as the most accomplished critic of any age has been in the writings of the cla.s.sics--men who have introduced into our literature a cla.s.s-name--that of "Shakespearian scholars"--to have ventured to speak on this great theme might seem to have required, not courage, but temerity. Why, it might have been justly asked, do none of those who have consumed their lives in the study of him, not page by page, but line by line, who have pressed his sweet fruits between their lips till they have absorbed all their lusciousness, who have made his words their study, his thoughts their meditation,--why does not one at least among them stand forward now, and leave for posterity the record of his matured observation? Perhaps I may a.s.sign the reason which I have before, that they {552} know, too, the unapproachable granduer of the theme, and the rare powers which are required to grasp and to hold it.

Be it so; but at any rate, if in the presence of others so much more capable it would have been rash to speak, to express one's thoughts, when there is no compet.i.tion, may be pardonable at least.

And yet, when everybody else is silent, it may be very naturally asked, Have I a single claim to put forward upon your attention and indulgence? I think I may have _one_; though I fear that when I mention it, it may be considered either a paradox or a refutation of my pretensions. My claim, then, to be heard and borne with is this--that I have never in my life seen Shakespeare acted; I have never heard his eloquent speeches declaimed by gifted performers; I have not listened to his n.o.ble poetry as uttered by the kings or queens of tragedy; I have not witnessed his grand, richly-concerted scenes endowed with life by the graceful gestures, the cla.s.sical att.i.tudes, the contrasting emotions, and the pointed emphasis of those who in modern times may be considered to have even added to that which his genius produced; I know nothing of the original and striking readings or renderings of particular pa.s.sages by masters of mimic art; I know him only on his flat page, as he is represented in immovable, featureless, unemotional type.

Nor am I acquainted with him surrounded, perhaps sometimes sustained, but, at any rate, worthily adorned and enhanced in accessory beauty, by the magic illusion of scenic decorations, the splendid pageantry which he simply hints at, but which, I believe, has been now realized to its most ideal exactness and richness--banquets, tournaments, and battles, with the almost deceptive accuracy of costume and of architecture. When I hear of all these additional ornaments hung around his n.o.ble works, the impression which they make upon my mind creates a deeper sense of amazement and admiration, how dramas written for the "Globe" Theatre, wretchedly lighted, incapable of grandeur even from want of s.p.a.ce, and without those mechanical and artistical resources which belong to a later age, should be capable of bearing all this additional weight of l.u.s.tre and magnificence without its being necessary to alter a word, still less a pa.s.sage, from their original delivery. [Footnote 104 ] This exhibits the nicely-balanced point of excellence which is equally poised between simplicity and gorgeousness; which can retain its power and beauty, whether stript to its barest form or loaded with exuberant appurtenances.

[Footnote 104: The chorus which serves as a prologue to "King Henry V.," shows how Shakespeare's own mind keenly felt the deficiencies of his time, and almost antic.i.p.atingly wrote for the effects which a future age might supply:

"But pardon, gentles all, This flat unraised spirit that hath dar'd, On this unworthy scaffold, to bring forth So great an object. Can this c.o.c.k-pit hold The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram Within this wooden O the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt.

Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts; Into a thousand parts divide one man, And make imaginary puissance: Think, when we talk of horses, that ye see them Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth; For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings."]

After having said thus much of my own probably unenvied position, I think I shall not be wrong in a.s.suming that none of Shakespeare's enthusiastic admirers, one of whom I profess myself to be, and that few of my audience, are in this exceptional position. They will probably consider this a disadvantage on my side; and to some extent I must acknowledge it--for Shakespeare wrote to be acted, and not to be read.

But, on the other hand, is it not something to have approached this wonderful man, and to have communed with him in silence and in solitude, face to face, alone with him alone; to have read and studied and meditated on him in early youth, without gloss or commentary, or preface or glossary? For such was my good or evil fortune; not during the still hours of night, but during that stiller portion of an Italian {553} afternoon, when silence is deeper than in the night, under a bright and sultry sun when all are at rest, all around you hushed to the very footsteps in a well-peopled house, except the unquelled murmuring of a fountain beneath orange trees, which mingled thus the most delicate of fragrance with the most soothing of sounds, both stealing together through the half-closed windows of wide and lofty corridors. Is there not more of that reverence and that relish which const.i.tute the cla.s.sical taste to be derived from the concentration of thought and feelings which the perusal of the simple unmarred and unoverlaid text produces; when you can ponder on a verse, can linger over a word, can repeat mentally and even orally with your own deliberation and your own emphasis, whenever dignity, beauty, or wisdom invite you to pause, or compel you to ruminate?

In fact, were you desired to give your judgment on the refreshing water of a pure fountain, you would not care to taste it from a richly-jewelled and delicately-chased cup; you would not consent to have it mingled with the choicest wine, nor flavored by a single drop of the most exquisite essence; you would not have it chilled with ice, or gently attempered by warmth. No, you would choose the most transparent crystal vessel, however homely; you would fill at the very cleft of the rock from which it bubbles fresh and bright, and drink it yet sparkling, and beading with its own air-pearls the walls of the goblet. Nay, is not an opposite course that which the poet himself censures as "wasteful, ridiculous excess?"

"To gild refined gold, to paint the lily; To throw a perfume on the violet.

Or with a taper light To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to varnish."

(_"King John" act iv., scene 2._)

You will easily understand, from long and almost apologetic preamble, in the first place, that I take it for granted that I am addressing an audience which is not a.s.sembled to receive elementary or new information concerning England's greatest poet. On the contrary, I believe myself to stand before many who are able to judge, rather than merely accept, my opinions, and in the presence of an a.s.sembly exclusively composed of his admirers, thoroughly conversant with his works. A further consequence is this, that my lecture will not consist of extracts--still less of recitations of any of those beautiful pa.s.sages which occur in every play of Shakespeare. The most celebrated of these are present to the mind of every English scholar, from his school-boy days to his maturer studies.

II.

It would be superfluous for a lecturer on Shakespeare to put to himself the question, What place do you intend to give to the subject of your discourse in the literature of England or of Europe? Whatever difference of opinion may exist elsewhere, I believe that in this country only one answer will be given. Among our native writers no one questions that Shakespeare is supremely pre-eminent, and most of us will probably a.s.sign him as lofty a position in the whole range of modern European literature. Perhaps no other nation possesses among its writers any one name to which there is no rival claim, nor even an approximation of equality, to make a balance against it. Were we to imagine in England a Walhalla erected to contain the effigies of great men, and were one especial hall to contain those of our most eminent dramatists, it must needs be so constructed as to have one central niche. Were a similar structure prepared in France, it would be natural to place in equal prominence at least two figures, or, in cla.s.sical language, two different muses of Tragedy and of Comedy would have to be separately represented. But in England, a.s.sign what place we may to those who have excelled in either branch in mimic art, {554} the highest excellence in both would be found centered in one man; and from him on either side would have to range the successful cultivators of the drama.

But this claim to so undisputed an elevation does not rest upon his merits only in this field of our literature. Shakespeare has established his claim to the n.o.blest position in English literature on a wider and more solid basis than the mere composition of skilful plays could deserve. As the great master of our language, as almost its regenerator, quite its refiner--as the author whose use of a word stamps it with the mark of purest English coinage--whose employment of a phrase makes it household and proverbial--whose sententious sayings, flowing without effort from his mind, seem almost sacred, and are quoted as axioms or maxims indisputable--as the orator whose speeches, not only apt, but natural to the lips from which they issue, are more eloquent than the discourses of senators or finished public speakers--as the poet whose notes are richer, more wondrously varied than those of the greatest professed bards--as the writer who has run through the most varied ways and to the greatest extent through every department of literature and learning, through the history of many nations, their domestic manners, their characteristics, and even their personal distinctives, and who seems to have visited every part of nature, to have intuitively studied the heavens and the earth--as the man, in fine, who has shown himself supreme in so many things, superiority in any one of which gains reputation in life and glory after death, he is preeminent above all, and beyond the reach of envy or jealousy.

And if no other nation can show us another man whose head rises above all their other men of letters, as Shakespeare does over ours, they cannot pretend, by the acc.u.mulation of separated excellences, to put in compet.i.tion with him a type rather than a realization of possible worth.

Until, therefore, some other writer can be produced, no matter from what nation, who unites in himself personally these gifts of our bard in an equally sublime degree, his stature overtops them all, wherever born and however celebrated.

The question, however, may be raised, Is he so securely placed upon his pedestal that a rival may not one day thrust him from it?--is he so secure upon his throne that a rebel may not usurp it? To these interrogations I answer unhesitatingly, Yes.

In the first place, there have only been two poets in the world before Shakespeare who have attained the same position with him. Each came at the moment which closed the volume of the period past and opened that of a new epoch. Of what preceded Homer we can know but little; the songs by bards or rhapsodists had, no doubt, preceded him, and prepared the way for the first and greatest epic. This, it is acknowledged, has never been surpa.s.sed; it became the standard of language, the steadfast rule of versification, and the model of poetical composition. His supremacy, once attained, was shaken by no compet.i.tion; it was as well a.s.sured after a hundred years as it has been by thousands. Dante again stood between the remnants of the old Roman civilization and the construction of a new and Christian system of arts and letters. He, too, consolidated the floating fragments of an indefinite language, and with them built and thence himself fitted and adorned that stately vessel which bears him through all the regions of life and of death, of glory, of trial, and of perdition.

A word found in Dante is cla.s.sical to the Italian ear; a form, however strange in grammar, traced to him, is considered justifiable if used by any modern sonneteer. [Footnote 105] He holds the place in his own country which Shakespeare does in ours; not only is his _terza rima_ considered inimitable, {555} but the concentration of brilliant imagery in our words, the flashes of his great thoughts and the copious variety of his learning, marvellous in his age, make his volume be to this day the delight of every refined intelligence and every polished mind in Italy.

[Footnote 105: Any one acquainted with Mastrofini's "Dictionary of Italian Verbs" will understand this.]

And he, too, like Homer, notwithstanding the magnificent poets who succeeded him, has never for a moment lost that fascination which he alone exercises over the domain of Italian poetry. He was as much its ruler in his own age as he is in the present.

In like manner, the two centuries and more which have elapsed since Shakespeare's death have as completely confirmed him in his legitimate command as the same period did his two only real predecessors. No one can possibly either be placed in a similar position or come up to his great qualities, except at the expense of the destruction of our present civilization, the annihilation of its past traditions, the resolution of our language into jargon, and its regeneration, by a new birth, into something "more rich and strange" than the powerful idiom which so splendidly combines the Saxon and the Norman elements. Should such a devastation and reconstruction take place, whether they come from New Zealand or from Siberia, then there may spring up the poet of that time and condition who may be the fourth in that great series of unrivalled bards, but will no more interfere with his predecessor's rights than Dante or Shakespeare does with those of Homer.

But further, we may truly say that the legislator of a people can be but one, and, as such, can have no rival beyond his own sh.o.r.es. Solon, Lycurgus, and Numa are the only three men in profane history who have reached the dignity of this singular t.i.tle. The first seized on the character of the bland and polished Athenians, and framed his code in such harmony with it, that no subsequent laws, even in the periods of most corrupt relaxation, could efface their primitive stamp, cease to make the republic proud of their lawgiver's name.

Lycurgus understood the stern and almost savage hardihood and simplicity of the Spartan disposition, and perpetuated it and regulated it by his harsh and unfeeling system, of which, notwithstanding, the Lacedaemonian was proud. And so Numa Pompilius comprehended the readiness of the infant republic, sprung from so doubtful and discreditable a parentage, to discover a n.o.ble descent, and connect its birth and education with G.o.ds and heroes; took hold of this weakness for the sanction of his legislation; and feigned his conferences with the nymph Egeria as the sources of his wisdom. No; whatever may become of kings, legislators are never dethroned.

And so is Shakespeare the unquestioned legislator of modern literary art. No one will contend that, without certain detriment, it would be possible for a modern writer, especially of dramatic fiction, to go back beyond him and endeavor to establish a pre-Shakespearian school of English literature, as we have the pre-Raphaelite in art. Struggle and writhe as any genius may--even if endowed with giant strength it--will be but as the battle of the t.i.tans against Jove. Huge rocks will be rolled down upon him, and the lightning from Shakespeare's hand will a.s.suredly tear his laurels, if it do not strike his head.

Byron could not appreciate the dramatic genius of Shakespeare; perhaps his sympathies ranged more freely among corsairs and Suliotes than among purer and n.o.bler spirits. Certainly he speaks of him with a superciliousness which betrays his inability fully to comprehend him.

[Footnote 106] And yet, would "Manfred" have existed if the romantic drama and the spirit-agency of Shakespeare {556} had not given it life and rule? So in other nations. I shall probably quote to you the sentiments of foreign writers of highest eminence concerning Shakespeare, not as authorities, but as ill.u.s.trations of what I may say.

[Footnote 106: Lord Byron thus writes to Mr. Murray, July 14, 1821: "I trust that Sardanapalus will not be mistaken for a political play ... . You will find all this very unlike Shakespeare; and so much the better, in one sense, for I look upon him to be the worst of models, though the most extraordinary of writers."--_Moore's Life of Lord Byron._]

Singularly enough, the greatest of German modern writers has nowhere recorded a full and deliberate opinion on our poet. But who can doubt that "Gotz von Berlichingen with the Iron Hand," and even the grand and tender "Faust," and no less Schiller's "Wallenstein," belong to the family of Shakespeare, are remotely offsprings of his genius, and have to be placed as tributary garlands round his pedestal. To imagine Shakespeare even in intention removed from his sovereignty would be a treachery parallel only to that of Lear dethroned by his own daughters.