The Man Shakespeare and His Tragic Life Story Part 15

It is curious that no one of the commentators has noticed this extraordinary one-sidedness of Shakespeare. In spite of his miraculous faculty of expression, he never found wonderful phrases for the virile virtues or virile vices. For courage, revenge, self-a.s.sertion, and ambition we have finer words in English than any that Shakespeare coined. In this field Chapman, Milton, Byron, Carlyle, and even Bunyan are his masters.

Of course, as a man he had the instinct of courage, and an admiration of courage; his intellect, too, gave him some understanding of its range.

Dr. Brandes declares that Shakespeare has only depicted physical courage, the courage of the swordsman; but that is beside the truth: Dr.

Brandes has evidently forgotten the pa.s.sage in "Antony and Cleopatra,"

when Caesar contemptuously refuses the duel with Antony and speaks of his antagonist as an "old ruffian." En.o.barbus, too, sneers at Antony's proposed duel:

"Yes, like enough, high-battled Caesar will Unstate his happiness, and be staged to the show Against a sworder."

Unhelped by memory, Dr. Brandes might have guessed that Shakespeare would exhaust the obvious at first glance. But the soul of courage to Shakespeare is, as we have seen, a love of honour working on quick generous blood--a feminine rather than a masculine view of the matter.

Carlyle has a deeper sense of this aboriginal virtue. With the fanatic's trust in G.o.d his Luther will go to Worms "though it rain devils"; and when in his own person Carlyle spoke of the small, honest minority desperately resolved to maintain their ideas though opposed by a huge hostile majority of fools and the insincere, he found one of the finest expressions for courage in all our literature. The vast host shall be to us, he cried, as "stubble is to fire." It may be objected that this is the voice of religious faith rather than of courage pure and simple, and the objection is valid so far as it goes; but this genesis of courage is peculiarly English, and the courage so formed is of the highest. Every one remembers how Valiant-for-Truth fights in Bunyan's allegory: "I fought till my sword did cleave to my hand; and when they were joined together, as if a sword grew out of my arm, and when the blood ran through my fingers, then I fought with most courage." The mere expression gives us an understanding of the desperate resolution of Cromwell's Ironsides.

But if desperate courage is not in Shakespeare, neither are its ancillary qualities--cruelty, hatred, ambition, revenge. Whenever he talks on these themes, he talks from the teeth outwards, as one without experience of their violent delights. His Gloucester rants about ambition without an illuminating or even a convincing word. Hatred and revenge Shakespeare only studied superficially, and cruelty he shudders from like a woman.

It is astounding how ill-endowed Shakespeare was on the side of manliness. His intellect was so fine, his power of expression so magical, the men about him, his models, so brave--founders as they were of the British empire and sea-tyranny--that he is able to use his Hotspurs and Harrys to hide from the general the poverty of his temperament. But the truth will out: Shakespeare was the greatest of poets, a miraculous artist, too, when he liked; but he was not a hero, and manliness was not his _forte_: he was by nature a neuropath and a lover.

He was a master of pa.s.sion and pity, and it astonishes one to notice how willingly he pa.s.sed always to that extreme of sympathy where nothing but his exquisite choice of words and images saved him from falling into the silly. For example, in "t.i.tus Andronicus," with its crude, unmotived horrors, t.i.tus calls Marcus a murderer, and when Marcus replies: "Alas, my lord, I have but killed a fly," t.i.tus answers:

"But how, if that fly had a father and mother?

How would he hang his slender gilded wings, And buzz lamenting doings in the air?

Poor harmless fly!

That with his pretty buzzing melody, Came here to make us merry! and thou hast killed him."

Even in his earliest plays in the noontide of l.u.s.ty youth, when the heat of the blood makes most men cruel, or at least heedless of others'

sorrows, Shakespeare was full of sympathy; his gentle soul wept with the stricken deer and suffered through the killing of a fly. Just as Ophelia turned "thought and affliction, pa.s.sion, h.e.l.l itself" to "favour and to prettiness," so Shakespeare's genius turned the afflictions and pa.s.sions of man to pathos and to pity.

CHAPTER VII. SHAKESPEARE AS LYRIC POET: "TWELFTH NIGHT"

Shakespeare began the work of life as a lyric poet. It was to be expected therefore that when he took up playwriting he would use the play from time to time as an opportunity for a lyric, and in fact this was his constant habit. From the beginning to the end of his career he was as much a lyric poet as a dramatist. His first comedies are feeble and thin in character-drawing and the lyrical sweetness is everywhere predominant. His apprenticeship period may be said to have closed with his first tragedy, "Romeo and Juliet." I am usually content to follow Mr. Furnival's "Trial Table of the order of Shakspere's Plays," in which "Richard II.," "Richard III.," and "King John" are all placed later than "Romeo and Juliet," and yet included in the first period that stretches from 1585 to 1595. But "Romeo and Juliet" seems to me to be far more characteristic of the poet's genius than any of these histories; it is not only a finer work of art than any of them, and therefore of higher promise, but in its lyrical sweetness far more truly representative of Shakespeare's youth than any of the early comedies or historical plays.

Whatever their form may be, nearly all Shakespeare's early works are love-songs, "Venus and Adonis," "Lucrece," "Love's Labour's Lost," "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," and he may be said to have ended his apprenticeship with the imperishable tragedy of first love "Romeo and Juliet."

In the years from 1585 to 1595 Shakespeare brought the lyric element into something like due subordination and managed to free himself almost completely from his early habit of rhyming. Mr. Swinburne has written of Shakespeare's use of rhymed verse with a fullness of knowledge and sympathy that leaves little to be desired. He compares it aptly to the use of the left hand instead of the right, and doubts cogently whether Shakespeare ever attained such mastery of rhyme as Marlowe in "Hero and Leander." But I like to think that Shakespeare's singing quickly became too sincere in its emotion and too complex in its harmonies to tolerate the definite limits set by rhyme. In any case by 1595 Shakespeare had learned to prefer blank verse to rhyme, at least for play-writing; he thus made the first great step towards a superb knowledge of his instrument.

The period of Shakespeare's maturity defines itself sharply; it stretches from 1595 to 1608 and falls naturally into two parts; the first part includes the trilogy "Henry IV." and "Henry V." and his golden comedies; the second, from 1600 to 1608, is entirely filled with his great tragedies. The characteristic of this period so far as regards the instrument is that Shakespeare has come to understand the proper function of prose. He sees first that it is the only language suited to broad comedy, and goes on to use it in moments of sudden excitement, or when dramatic truth to character seems to him all important. At his best he uses blank verse when some emotion sings itself to him, and prose as the ordinary language of life, the language of surprise, laughter, strife, and of all the commoner feelings. During these twelve or fourteen years the lyric note is not obtrusive; it is usually subordinated to character and suited to action.

His third and last period begins with "Pericles" and ends with the "Tempest"; it is characterized, as we shall see later, by bodily weakness and by a certain contempt for the dramatic fiction. But the knowledge of the instrument once acquired never left Shakespeare. It is true that the lyric note becomes increasingly clear in his late comedies; but prose too is used by him with the same mastery that he showed in his maturity.

In the first period Shakespeare was often unable to give his puppets individual life; in maturity he was interested in the puppets themselves and used them with considerable artistry; in the third period he had grown a little weary of them and in "The Tempest" showed himself inclined, just as Goethe in later life was inclined, to turn his characters into symbols or types.

The place of "Twelfth Night" is as clearly marked in Shakespeare's works as "Romeo and Juliet" or "The Tempest." It stands on the dividing line between his light, joyous comedies and the great tragedies; it was all done at the topmost height of happy hours, but there are hints in it which we shall have to notice later, which show that when writing it Shakespeare had already looked into the valley of disillusion which he was about to tread. But "Twelfth Night" is written in the spirit of "As You Like It" or "Much Ado," only it is still more personal-ingenuous and less dramatic than these; it is, indeed, a lyric of love and the joy of living.

There is no intenser delight to a lover of letters than to find Shakespeare singing, with happy unconcern, of the things he loved best--not the Shakespeare of Hamlet or Macbeth, whose intellect speaks in critical judgements of men and of life, and whose heart we are fain to divine from slight indications; nor Shakespeare the dramatist, who tried now and again to give life to puppets like Coriola.n.u.s and Iago, with whom he had little sympathy; but Shakespeare the poet, Shakespeare the lover, Shakespeare whom Ben Jonson called "the gentle," Shakespeare the sweet-hearted singer, as he lived and suffered and enjoyed. If I were asked to complete the portrait given to us by Shakespeare of himself in Hamlet-Macbeth with one single pa.s.sage, I should certainly choose the first words of the Duke in "Twelfth Night." I must transcribe the poem, though it will be in every reader's remembrance; for it contains the completest, the most characteristic, confession of Shakespeare's feelings ever given in a few lines:

"If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it, that surfeiting The appet.i.te may sicken, and so die.

That strain again;--it had a dying fall: Oh, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour.--Enough! no more 'Tis not so sweet now as it was before."

Every one will notice that Shakespeare as we know him in Romeo is here depicted again with insistence on a few salient traits; here, too, we have the poet of the Sonnets masquerading as a Duke and the protagonist of yet another play. There is still less art used in characterizing this Duke than there is in characterizing Macbeth; Shakespeare merely lets himself go and sings his feelings in the most beautiful words. This is his philosophy of music and of love:

"Give me excess of it, that surfeiting, The appet.i.te may sicken, and so die";

and then:

"Enough, no more; 'Tis not so sweet now as it was before."

--the quick revulsion of the delicate artist-voluptuary who wishes to keep unblunted in memory the most exquisite pang of pleasure.

Speech after speech discovers the same happy freedom and absolute abandonment to the "sense of beauty." Curio proposes hunting the hart, and at once the Duke breaks out:

"Why, so I do, the n.o.blest that I have.

O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first, Methought she purged the air of pestilence.

That instant was I turned into a hart, And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds, E'er since pursue me."--

Valentine then comes to tell him that Olivia is still mourning for her brother, and the Duke seizes the opportunity for another lyric:

"O, she that hath a heart of that fine frame To pay this debt of love but to a brother, How will she love, when the rich golden shaft Hath killed the flock of all affections else That live in her; when liver, brain, and heart, These sovereign thrones, are all supplied and filled-- Her sweet perfections--with one self King!-- Away before me to sweet beds of flowers, Love-thoughts lie rich when canopied with bowers."

The last two lines show clearly enough that Shakespeare was not troubled with any thought of reality as he wrote: he was transported by Fancy into that enchanted country of romance where beds of flowers are couches and bowers, canopies of love. But what a sensuality there is in him!

"When liver, brain, and heart, These sovereign thrones, are all supplied and filled-- Her sweet perfections--with one self King!--"

Of course, too, this Duke is inconstant, and swings from persistent pursuit of Olivia to love of Viola without any other reason than the discovery of Viola's s.e.x. In the same way Romeo turns from Rosaline to Juliet at first sight. This trait has been praised by Coleridge and others as showing singular knowledge of a young man's character, but I should rather say that inconstancy was a characteristic of sensuality and belonged to Shakespeare himself, for Orsino, like Romeo, has no reason to change his love; and the curious part of the matter is that Shakespeare does not seem to think that the quick change in Orsino requires any explanation at all. Moreover, the love of Duke Orsino for Olivia is merely the desire of her bodily beauty--the counterpart of the sensual jealousy of Oth.e.l.lo. Speaking from Shakespeare's very heart, the Duke says:

"Tell her, my love, more n.o.ble than the world, Prizes not quant.i.ty of dirty lands; The parts that Fortune hath bestowed upon her, Tell her, I hold as giddily as Fortune; But 'tis that miracle and queen of gems That nature pranks her in attracts my soul."

So the body wins the soul according to this Orsino, who is, I repeat again, Shakespeare in his most ingenuous and frankest mood; the contempt of wealth--"dirty lands"--and the sensuality--"that miracle and queen of gems"--are alike characteristic. A few more touches and the portrait of this Duke will be complete; he says to the pretended Cesario when sending him as amba.s.sador to Olivia:

"Cesario, Thou knowest no less but all; I have unclasped To thee the book even of my secret soul; Therefore, good youth,"--

and so forth.

It is a matter of course that this Duke should tell everything to his friend; a matter of course, too, that he should love books and bookish metaphors. Without being told, one knows that he delights in all beautiful things--pictures with their faerie false presentment of forms and life; the flesh-firm outline of marble, the warmth of ivory and the sea-green patine of bronze--was not the p.o.o.p of the vessel beaten gold, the sails purple, the oars silver, and the very water amorous?

This Duke shows us Shakespeare's most intimate traits even when the action does not suggest the self-revelation. When sending Viola to woo Olivia for him he adds:

"Some four or five, attend him; All if you will; for I myself am best When least in company."

Like Vincentio, that other mask of Shakespeare, this Duke too loves solitude and "the life removed"; he is "best when least in company."

If there is any one who still doubts the essential ident.i.ty of Duke Orsino and Shakespeare, let him consider the likeness in thought and form between the Duke's lyric effusions and the Sonnets, and if that does not convince him I might use a hitherto untried argument. When a dramatist creates a man's character he is apt to make him, as the French say, too much of a piece--too logical. But, in this instance, though Shakespeare has given the Duke only a short part, he has made him contradict himself with the charming ease that belongs peculiarly to self-revealing. The Duke tells us:

"For such as I am all true lovers are, --Unstaid and skittish in all motions else, Save in the constant image of the creature That is beloved."

The next moment he repeats this: