The Man Shakespeare and His Tragic Life Story Part 42

When his vanity was injured, his blindness was almost inconceivable. He should have seen Mary Fitton as she was and given us a deathless-true portrait of her; but the n.o.ble side of her, the soul-side a lover should have cherished, is not even suggested. He deserved to lose her, seeking only the common, careless of the "silent, silver lights" she could have shown him. He was just as blind with his wife; she had been unwillingly the ladder to his advancement; he should have forgiven her on that ground, if not on a higher.

He was inordinately vain and self-centred. He talked incontinently, as he himself a.s.sures us, and as Ben Jonson complains. He was exceedingly quick and witty and impatient. His language shows his speed of thought; again and again the images tumble over each other, and the mere music of his verse is breathlessly rapid, just as the movement of Tennyson's verse is extremely slow.

More than once in his works I have shown how, at the crisis of fate, he jumps to conclusions like a woman. He seems often to have realized the faults of his own haste. His Oth.e.l.lo says:

"How poor are they that have not patience."

With this speed of thought and wealth of language and of wit, he naturally loved to show off in conversation; but as he wished to get on and make a figure in the world, he should have talked less and encouraged his patrons to show off. Poor heedless, witty, charming Shakespeare! One threat which he used again and again, discovers all his world-blindness to me. Gravely, in sonnet 140, he warns Mary Fitton that she had better not provoke him or he will write the truth about her--just as if the maid of honour who could bear b.a.s.t.a.r.d after b.a.s.t.a.r.d, while living at court, cared one straw what poor Shakespeare might say or write or sing of her. And Hamlet runs to the same weapon: he praises the players to Polonius as

"Brief chronicles of the time; after your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live."

It is all untrue; actors were then, as now, only mummers without judgement. Shakespeare was thinking of himself, the dramatist-poet, who was indeed a chronicle of the time; but the courtier Lord Polonius would not care a dam for a rhymester's praise or blame. Posthumus, too, will write against the wantons he dislikes. Shakespeare's weapon of offence was his pen; but though he threatened, he seldom used it maliciously; he was indeed a "harmless opposite," too full of the milk of human kindness to do injury to any man. But these instances of misapprehension in the simple things of life, show us that gentle Shakespeare is no trustworthy guide through this rough all-hating world. The time has now come for me to consider how Shakespeare was treated by the men of his own time, and how this treatment affected his character. The commentators, of course, all present him as walking through life as a sort of uncrowned king, feted and reverenced on all sides during his residence in London, and in the fullness of years and honours retiring to Stratford to live out the remainder of his days in the bosom of his family as "a prosperous country gentleman," to use Dowden's unhappy phrase. As I have already shown, his works give the lie to this flattering fiction, which in all parts is of course absolutely incredible. It is your Tennyson, who is of his time and in perfect sympathy with it; Tennyson, with his May Queens, prig heroes and syrupy creed, who pa.s.ses through life as a conqueror, and after death is borne in state to rest in the great Abbey.

The Shakespeares, not being of an age, but for all time, have another guess sort of reception. From the moment young Will came to London, he was treated as an upstart, without gentle birth or college training: to Greene he was "Maister of Artes in Neither University." He won through, and did his work; but he never could take root in life; his children perished out of the land. He was in high company on sufferance. On the stage he met the highest, Ess.e.x, Pembroke, Southampton, on terms of equality; but at court he stood among the menials and was despitefully treated. Let no one misunderstand me: I should delight in painting the other picture if there were any truth in it: I should have joyed in showing how the English aristocracy for this once threw off their senseless pride and hailed the greatest of men at least as an equal.

Frederic the Great would have done this, for he put Voltaire at his own table, and told his astonished chamberlains that "privileged spirits rank with sovereigns." Such wisdom was altogether above the English aristocracy of that or any time. Yet they might have risen above the common in this one instance. For Shakespeare had not only supreme genius to commend him, but all the graces of manner, all the sweetness of disposition, all the exquisite courtesies of speech that go to ensure social success. His imperial intelligence, however, was too heavy a handicap. Men resent superiority at all times, and there is nothing your aristocrat so much dislikes as intellectual superiority, and especially intellect that is not hall-marked and accredited: the Southamptons and the Pembrokes must have found Shakespeare's insight and impartiality intolerable. It was Ben Jonson whom Pembroke made Poet Laureate; it was Chapman the learned, and not Shakespeare, who was regarded with reverence. How could these gentlemen appreciate Shakespeare when it was his "Venus and Adonis" and his "Lucrece" that they chiefly admired.

"Venus and Adonis" went through seven editions in Shakespeare's lifetime, while "Oth.e.l.lo" was not thought worthy of type till the author had been dead six years.

But badly as the aristocrats treated Shakespeare they yet treated him better than any other cla.s.s. The shopkeepers in England are infinitely further removed from art or poetry than the n.o.bles; now as in the time of Elizabeth they care infinitely more for beef and beer and broadcloth than for any spiritual enjoyment; while the ma.s.ses of the people prefer a dog-fight to any masterpiece in art or letters.

Some will say that Shakespeare was perhaps condemned for dissolute living, and did not come to honour because of his shortcomings in character. Such a judgement misapprehends life altogether. Had Shakespeare's character been as high as his intellect he would not have been left contemptuously on one side; he would have been hated and persecuted, pilloried or thrown into prison as Bunyan was. It was his dissolute life that commended him to the liking of the loose-living Pembroke and Ess.e.x. Pembroke, we know from Clarendon, was "immoderately given to women." Four maids of honour, we learn, were _enceintes_ to Ess.e.x at the same time. Shakespeare was hardly as dissolute as his n.o.ble patrons. The truth was they could not understand his genius; they had no measure wherewith to measure it, for no one can see above his own head; and so they treated him with much the same condescending familiarity that n.o.bles nowadays show to a tenor or a ballet dancer. In March, 1604, after he had written "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," Shakespeare and some other actors walked from the Tower of London to Westminster in the procession which accompanied King James on his formal entry into London. Each of the actors received four and a half yards of scarlet cloth to wear as a cloak on the occasion. The scarlet cloak to Shakespeare must have been a sort of Nessus' shirt, or crown of thorns--the livery of derision.

Shakespeare, who measured both enemies and friends fairly, measured himself fairly, too. He usually praises his impersonations: Hamlet is "a n.o.ble heart," Brutus "the n.o.blest Roman of them all"; and speaking directly he said of himself in a sonnet:

"I am that I am, and they that level At my abuses reckon up their own; I may be straight though they themselves be bevel."

He knew his own greatness, none better, and as soon as he reached middle age and began to take stock of himself, he must have felt bitterly that he, the best mind in the world, had not brought it far in the ordinary estimation of men. No wonder he showed pa.s.sionate sympathy with all those who had failed in life; he could identify himself with Brutus and Antony, and not with the Caesars.

Shakespeare's view of England and of Englishmen was naturally affected by their treatment of him. He is continually spoken of as patriotic, and it is true that he started in youth with an almost lyrical love of country. His words in "Richard II." are often quoted; but they were written before he had any experience or knowledge of men.

"_Gaunt_. This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

This happy breed of men, this little world; This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat, defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands; This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England."

The apologists who rejoice in his patriotism never realize that Shakespeare did not hold the same opinions throughout his life; as he grew and developed, his opinions developed with him. In "The Merchant of Venice" we find that he has already come to saner vision; when Portia and Nerissa talk of the English suitor, Portia says:

"You know I say nothing to him; for he understands not me, nor I him: he hath neither Latin, French, nor Italian; and you will come into the court and swear that I have a poor pennyworth in the Englishman. He is a proper man's picture; but, alas, who can converse with a dumb show? How oddly he is suited! I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany, and his behaviour everywhere."

What super-excellent criticism it all is; true, now as then, "a proper man's picture but ... a dumb show." It proves conclusively that Shakespeare was able to see around and over the young English n.o.ble of his day. From this time on I find no praise of England or of Englishmen in any of his works, except "Henry V.," which was manifestly written to catch applause on account of its jingoism. In his maturity Shakespeare saw his countrymen as they were, and mentioned them chiefly to blame their love of drinking. Imogen says:

"Hath Britain all the sun that shines? Day, night, Are they not but in Britain?..........................prithee, think There's livers out of Britain."

Whoever reads "Coriola.n.u.s" carefully will see how Shakespeare loathed the common Englishman; there can be no doubt at all that he incorporated his dislike of him once for all in Caliban. The qualities he lends Caliban are all characteristic. Whoever will give him drink is to Caliban a G.o.d. The brutish creature would violate and degrade art without a scruple, and the soul of him is given in the phrase that if he got the chance he would people the world with Calibans. Sometimes one thinks that if Shakespeare were living to-day he would be inclined to say that his prediction had come true.

One could have guessed without proof that in the course of his life Shakespeare, like Goethe, would rise above that parochial vanity which is so much belauded as patriotism. He was in love with the ideal and would not confine it to any country.

There is little to tell of his life after he met Mary Fitton, or rather the history of his life afterwards is the history of his pa.s.sion and jealousy and madness as he himself has told it in the great tragedies.

He appears to have grown fat and scant of breath when he was about thirty-six or seven. In 1608 his mother died, and "Coriola.n.u.s" was written as a sort of monument to the memory of "the n.o.blest mother in the world." His intimacy with Mary Fitton lasted, I feel sure, up to his breakdown in 1608 or thereabouts, and was probably the chief cause of his infirmity and untimely death.

It only remains for me now to say a word or two about the end of his life. Rowe says that "the latter part of his life was spent as all men of good sense will that theirs may be, in ease, retirement, and the conversation of his friends. He had the good fortune to gather an estate equal to his occasion, and, in that, to his wish, and is said to have spent some years before his death at his native Stratford." Rowe, too, tells us that it is a story "well remembered in that country, that he had a particular intimacy with Mr. Combe, an old gentleman noted thereabouts for his wealth and usury; it happened that in a pleasant conversation amongst their common friends Mr. Combe told Shakespeare, in a laughing manner, that he fancied he intended to write his epitaph, if he happened to outlive him; and since he did not know what might be said of him when he was dead, he desired it might be done immediately; upon which Shakespeare gave him these four verses:

"Ten in the Hundred lies here ingrav'd 'Tis a Hundred to Ten his soul is not sav'd: If any Man ask, 'Who lies in this tomb,'

Oh! ho! quoth the Devil, 'tis my John-a-Combe."

But the sharpness of the Satyr is said to have stung the man so severely that he never forgave him."

I have given all this because I want the reader to have the sources before him, and because the contempt of tradesman-gain and usury, even at the very end, is so characteristic.

It appears, too, from the Stratford records, and is therefore certain, that as early as the year 1614 a preacher was entertained at New Place--"Item, one quart of sack, and one quart of claret wine, given to a preacher at the New Place, twenty pence." The Reverend John Ward, who was vicar of Stratford, in a ma.n.u.script memorandum book written in the year 1664, a.s.serts that "Shakespeare, Drayton and Ben Johnson had a merie meeting, and itt seems drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a feavour there contracted."

Shakespeare, as we have seen from "The Tempest," retired to Stratford--"where every third thought shall be my grave"--in broken health and in a mood of despairing penitence. I do not suppose the mood lasted long; but the ill-health and persistent weakness explain to me as nothing else could his retirement to Stratford. It is incredible to me that Shakespeare should leave London at forty-seven or forty-eight years of age, in good health, and retire to Stratford to live as a "prosperous country gentleman"! What had Stratford to offer Shakespeare--village Stratford with a midden in the chief street and the charms of the village usurer's companionship tempered by the ministrations of a wandering tub-thumper?

There is abundant evidence, even in "The Winter's Tale" and "Cymbeline,"

to prove that the storm which wrecked Shakespeare's life had not blown itself out even when these last works were written in 1611-12; the jealousy of Leontes is as wild and sensual as the jealousy of Oth.e.l.lo; the att.i.tude of Posthumus towards women as bitter as anything to be found in "Troilus and Cressida":

"Could I find out The woman's part in me! For there's no motion That tends to vice in man but I affirm It is the woman's part: be it lying, note it, The woman's; flattering, hers; deceiving, hers; l.u.s.t and rank thoughts, hers, hers; revenges, hers; Ambitions, covetings, change of prides, disdain, Nice longing, slanders, mutability, All faults that may be named, nay, that h.e.l.l knows, Why, hers, in part or all, but rather all; For even to vice They are not constant, but are changing still One vice, but of a minute old, for one Not half so old as that."

The truth is, that the pa.s.sions of l.u.s.t and jealousy and rage had at length worn out Shakespeare's strength, and after trying in vain to win to serenity in "The Tempest," he crept home to Stratford to die.

In his native air, I imagine, his health gradually improved; but he was never strong enough to venture back to residence in London. He probably returned once or twice for a short visit, and during his absence his pious daughter, Mrs. Hall, entertained the wandering preacher in New Place.

As Shakespeare grew stronger he no doubt talked with Combe, the usurer, for want of any one better.

It is probable, too, that on one of his visits to London he took up Fletcher's "Henry VIII." and wrote in some scenes for him and touched up others, or Fletcher may have visited him in Stratford and there have begged his help.

His youngest daughter, Judith, was married early in 1616; it seems probable to me that this was the occasion of the visit of Jonson and Drayton to Stratford. No doubt Shakespeare was delighted to meet them, talked as few men ever talked before or since, and probably drank too much with those "poor unhappy brains for drinking" which his Ca.s.sius deplored. Thus fanned, the weak flame of his life wasted quickly and guttered out. It is all comprehensible enough, and more than likely, that the greatest man in the world, after the boredom of solitary years spent in Stratford, died through a merry meeting with his friends; in his joy and excitement he drank a gla.s.s or so of wine, which brought on a fever. It is all true, true to character, and pitiful beyond words.

Shakespeare to me is the perfect type of the artist, and the artist is gradually coming to his proper place in the world's esteem. In the introduction to one of his "Lives," Plutarch apologizes for writing about a painter, a mere artist, instead of about some statesman or general, who would be a worthy object of ambition for a well-born youth.

But since Plutarch's time our view of the relative merits of men has changed and developed: to-day we put the artist higher even than the saint. Indeed, it seems to us that the hero or statesman, or saint, only ranks in proportion to the artist-faculty he may possess. The winning of a battle is not enough to engage all our admiration; it must be won by an artist. In every department of life this faculty is beginning to be appreciated as the finest possession of humanity, and Shakespeare was an almost perfect example of the self-conscious artist.

People talk as if his masterpieces were produced at haphazard or by unconscious fruition; but masterpieces are not brought forth in this happy-go-lucky fashion. They are of the sort that only come to flower with perfect tendance. Even if we did not know that Shakespeare corrected his finest verses again and again with critical care, we should have to a.s.sume it. But we know that he spared no pains to better his finer inspirations, and he has told us in a sonnet how anxiously he thought about his art and the art of his rivals:

"Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope With what I most enjoy contented least."

He has all the qualities and all the shortcomings of the reflective, humane, sensuous artist temperament, intensified by the fact that he had not had the advantage of a middle-cla.s.s training.

In a dozen ways our Puritan discipline and the rubs and buffets one gets in this work-a-day world where money is more highly esteemed than birth or sainthood or genius, have brought us beyond Shakespeare in knowledge of men and things. The courage of the Puritan, his self-denial and self-control, have taught us invaluable lessons; Puritanism tempered character as steel is tempered with fire and ice, and the necessity of getting one's bread not as a parasite, but as a fighter, has had just as important results on character. Shakespeare is no longer an ideal to us; no single man can now fill our mental horizon; we can see around and above the greatest of the past: the overman of to-day is only on the next round of the ladder, and our children will smile at the fatuity of his conceit.

But if we can no longer worship Shakespeare, it is impossible not to honour him, impossible not to love him. All men--Spenser as well as Jonson--found him gentle and witty, gay and generous. He was always willing to touch up this man's play or write in an act for that one. He never said a bitter or cruel word about any man. Compare him with Dante or even with Goethe, and you shall find him vastly superior to either of them in loving kindness. He was more contemptuously treated in life than even Dante, and yet he never fell away to bitterness as Dante did: he complained, it is true; but he never allowed his fairness to be warped; he was of the n.o.blest intellectual temper.

It is impossible not to honour him, for the truth is he had more virtue in him than any other son of man. "By their fruits ye shall know them."

He produced more masterpieces than any other writer, and the finest sayings in the world's literature are his. Think of it: Goethe was perfectly equipped; he had a magnificent mind and body and temperament: he was born in the better middle cla.s.ses; he was well off; splendidly handsome; thoroughly educated; his genius was recognized on all hands when he was in his teens; and it was developed by travel and princely patronage. Yet what did Goethe do in proof of his advantages? "Faust" is the only play he ever wrote that can rank at all with a dozen of Shakespeare's. Poor Shakespeare brought it further in the sixteenth century than even Goethe at full strain could bring it in the nineteenth. I find Shakespeare of surpa.s.sing virtue. Cervantes ranks with the greatest because he created Don Quixote and Sancho Panza; but Hamlet and Falstaff are more significant figures, and take Hamlet and Falstaff away from Shakespeare's achievement, and more is left than any other poet ever produced.

Harvest after harvest Shakespeare brought forth of astounding quality.

Yet he was never strong, and he died at fifty-two, and the last six years of his life were wasted with weakness and ill-health. No braver spirit has ever lived. After "Hamlet" and "Antony and Cleopatra" and "Lear" and "Timon" he broke down: yet as soon as he struggled back to sanity, he came to the collar again and dug "The Winter's Tale" out of himself, and "Cymbeline," and seeing they were not his best, took breath, and brought forth "The Tempest"--another masterpiece, though written with a heart of lead and with the death-sweat dank on his forehead. Think of it; the n.o.blest autumn fruit ever produced; all kindly-sweet and warm, bathed so to speak in love's golden sunshine; his last word to men:

"The rarer action is In virtue than in vengeance...."

And then the master of many styles, including the simple, wins to a childlike simplicity, and touches the source of tears:

"We are such stuff as dreams are made of, And our little life is rounded with a sleep."