The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded Part 7

_Brutus_. _No_, not an oath: If not the face of men, The sufferance of our soul's, the time's abuse, If these be motives weak, break off betimes, And every man hence to his idle bed; _So_ let high-sighted tyranny range on, Till _each man drop by lottery_.

It was while he sat there, that the player who did not _write_ his speeches, said--

_Nor stony tower_, nor walls of beaten bra.s.s, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; If I know this, know _all the world beside_, That part of tyranny that _I_ do bear, _I_ can shake off at pleasure.

And why should Caesar be a tyrant then?

_Poor Man_! I know he would not be a wolf, But that he sees the _Romans_ are but sheep: _He_ were no lion, were not _Romans_ hinds.

But I, perhaps, speak _this_ Before a willing bondman.

_Hamlet_. My lord,--you played once in the university, you say?

_Polonius_. That did I, my lord; and was accounted a good actor.

_Hamlet_. And what did you enact?

_Polonius_. I did enact _Julius Caesar_. I was killed i'the Capitol; Brutus killed me.

_Hamlet_. It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there.--Be the players ready?

Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ, and the liberty. _These_ are the only _men_.

_Hamlet_. Why do you go about to recover the wind of me, as if you would drive me into a toil?

_Guild_. O my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too unmannerly.

_Hamlet_. I do not well understand that. Will you play upon this pipe?

_Guild_. My lord, I cannot.

_Hamlet_. I pray you.

_Guild_. Believe me, I cannot.

_Hamlet_. I do beseech you.

_Guild_. I know no touch of it, my lord.

_Hamlet_. 'Tis as _easy as lying. Govern_ these ventages with your fingers and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, _and it will discourse most eloquent music_. Look you, _these are the stops_.

_Guild_. But _these_ cannot _I_ command to any _utterance of harmony: I have not the_ SKILL.

_Hamlet. Why, look you now_, how _unworthy a thing_ you make of ME?

You would _play upon_ ME; _you would seem_ to know _my stops_; you would pluck out the heart of MY MYSTERY; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my key; and there is much _music_, excellent voice in _this little organ, yet_ cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood! do you think I AM EASIER TO BE PLAYED ON THAN A PIPE? Call me what _instrument_ you will, though you can _fret_ me, you cannot PLAY upon me.

_Hamlet_. Why did you laugh when I said, _Man_ delights not me?

_Guild_. To think, my lord, if you delight not in _man_, what lenten entertainment THE PLAYERS shall receive from you. We coted them on the way, and thither are they coming to offer you--SERVICE.

BOOK I.

THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF DELIVERY AND TRADITION.

PART I.

MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE'S 'PRIVATE AND RETIRED ARTS.'

And thus do we of wisdom and of reach, With windlaces and with _a.s.says_ of _bias_, By _indirections_, find _directions out_; So by my former lecture and advice, Shall you, my son.--_Hamlet_.

CHAPTER I.

ASCENT FROM PARTICULARS TO THE 'HIGHEST PARTS OF SCIENCES,' BY THE ENIGMATIC METHOD ILl.u.s.tRATED.

Single, _I'll_ resolve you.--_Tempest_.

Observe his inclination in yourself.--_Hamlet_.

For ciphers, they are commonly in letters, but may be in words.

_Advancement of Learning_.

The fact that a Science of Practice, not limited to Physics and the Arts based on the knowledge of physical laws, but covering the whole ground of the human activity, and limited only by the want and faculty of man, required, in the reigns of Elizabeth and James the First, some special and profoundly artistic methods of 'delivery and tradition,'

would not appear to need much demonstration to one acquainted with the peculiar features of that particular crisis in the history of the English nation.

And certainly any one at all informed in regard to the condition of the world at the time in which this science,--which is the new practical science of the modern ages,--makes its first appearance in history,--any one who knows what kind of a public opinion, what amount of intelligence in the common mind the very fact of the first appearance of such a science on the stage of the human affairs presupposes,--any one who will stop to consider what kind of a public it was to which such a science had need as yet to address itself, when that engine for the diffusion of knowledge, which has been battering the ignorance and stupidity of the ma.s.ses of men ever since, was as yet a novel invention, when all the learning of the world was still the learning of the cell and the cloister, when the practice of the world was still in all departments, unscientific,--any one at least who will stop to consider the nature of the 'preconceptions' which a science that is none other than the universal science of practice, must needs encounter in its princ.i.p.al and n.o.bler fields, will hardly need to be told that if produced at all under such conditions, it must needs be produced covertly. Who does not know, beforehand, that such a science would have to concede virtually, for a time, the whole ground of its n.o.bler fields to the preoccupations it found on them, as the inevitable condition of its entrance upon the stage of the human affairs in any capacity, as the basis of any toleration of its claim to dictate to the men of practice in any department of their proceedings.

That that little 'courtly company' of Elizabethan scholars, in which this great enterprise for the relief of man's estate was supposed in their own time to have had its origin, was composed of wits and men of learning who were known, in their own time, to have concealed their connection with the works on which their literary fame chiefly depended--that that 'glorious w.i.l.l.y,' who finds these forbidden fields of science all open to his pastime, was secretly claimed by this company--that a style of 'delivery' elaborately enigmatical, borrowed in part from the invention of the ancients, and the more recent use of the middle ages, but largely modified and expressly adapted to this exigency, was employed in the compositions of this school, both in prose and verse, a style capable of conveying not merely a double, but a triple significance; a style so capacious in its concealments, so large in its '_cryptic_,' as to admit without limitation the whole scope of this argument, and so involved as to conceal in its involutions, all that was then forbidden to appear,--this has been proved in that part of the work which contains the historical key to this delivery.

We have also incontestable historical evidence of the fact, that the man who was at the head of this new conjunction in speculation and practice in its more immediate historical developments,--the scholar who was most openly concerned in his own time in the introduction of those great changes in the condition of the world, which date their beginning from this time, was himself primarily concerned in the invention of this art. That this great political chief, this founder of new polities and inventor of new social arts, who was at the same time the founder of a new school in philosophy, was understood in his own time to have found occasion for the use of such an art, in his oral as well as in his written communications with his school;--that he was connected with a scientific a.s.sociation, which was known to have concealed under the profession of a curious antiquarian research, an inquiry into the higher parts of sciences which the government of that time was not disposed to countenance;--that in the opinion of persons who had the best opportunity of becoming acquainted with the facts at the time, this inventor of the art was himself beheaded, chiefly on account of the discovery of his use of it in one of his gravest literary works;--all this has been produced already, as matter of historic record merely. All this remains in the form of detailed contemporary statement, which suffices to convey, if not the fact that the forbidden parts of sciences were freely handled in the discussions of this school, and not in their secret oral discussions only, but in their great published works,--if not that, at least the fact that such was the impression and belief of persons living at the time, whether any ground existed for it or not.

But the arts by which these new men of science contrived to evade the ignorance and the despotic limitations of their time, the inventions with which they worked to such good purpose upon their own time, in spite of its restrictions and oppositions, and which enable them to 'outstretch their span,' and prolong and perpetuate their plan for the advancement of their kind, and compel the future ages to work with them to the fulfilment of its ends;--the arts by which these great original naturalists undertook to transfer in all their unimpaired splendour and worth, the collections they had made in the n.o.bler fields of their science to the ages that would be able to make use of them;--these are the arts that we shall have need to master, if we would unlock the legacy they have left to us.

The proof of the existence of this special art of delivery and tradition, and the definition of the objects for which it was employed, has been derived thus far chiefly from sources of evidence exterior to the works themselves; but the inventors of it and those who made use of it in their own speech and writings, are undoubtedly the persons best qualified to give us authentic and lively information on this subject; and we are now happily in a position to appreciate the statements which they have been at such pains to leave us, for the sake of clearing up those parts of their discourse which were necessarily obscured at the time. Now that we have in our hands that key of _Times_ which they have recommended to our use, that knowledge of times which 'gives great light in many cases to true interpretations,' it is not possible any longer to overlook these pa.s.sages, or to mistake their purport.

But before we enter upon the doctrine of Art which was published in the first great recognized work of this philosophy, it will be necessary to produce here some extracts from a book which was not originally published in England, or in the English language, but one which was brought out here as an exotic, though it is in fact one of the great original works of this school, and one of its boldest and most successful issues; a work in which the new grounds of the actual experience and life of men, are not merely inclosed and propounded for written inquiry, but openly occupied. This is not the place to explain this fact, though the continental relations of this school, and other circ.u.mstances already referred to in the life of its founder, will serve to throw some light upon it; but on account of the bolder a.s.sertions which the particular form of writing and publication rendered possible in this case, and for the sake also of the more lively exhibition of the art itself which accompanies and ill.u.s.trates these a.s.sertions in this instance, it appears on the whole excusable to commence our study of the special Art for the delivery and tradition of knowledge in those departments which science was then forbidden on pain of death to enter, with that exhibition of it which is contained in this particular work, trusting to the progress of the extracts themselves to apologize to the intelligent reader for any thing which may seem to require explanation in this selection.

It is only necessary to premise, that this work is one of the many works of this school, in which a grave, profoundly scientific design is concealed under the disguise of a gay, popular, attractive form of writing, though in this case the audience is from the first to a certain extent select. It has no platform that takes in--as the plays do, with their more glaring attractions and their lower and broader range of inculcation,--the populace. There is no pit in this theatre.

It is throughout a book for men of liberal culture; but it is a book for the world, and for men of the world, and not for the cloister merely, and the scholar. But this, too, has its differing grades of readers, from its outer court of lively pastime and brilliant aimless chat to that _esoteric_ chamber, where the abstrusest parts of sciences are waiting for those who will accept the clues, and patiently ascend to them.

The work is popular in its form, but it is inwoven throughout with a thread of lurking meanings so near the surface, and at times so boldly obtruded, that it is difficult to understand how it could ever have been read at all without occasioning the inquiry which it was intended to occasion under certain conditions, but which it was necessary for this society to ward off from their works, except under these limitations, at the time when they were issued. For these inner meanings are everywhere pointed and emphasized with the most bold and vivid ill.u.s.tration, which lies on the surface of the work, in the form of stories, often without any apparent relevance in that exterior connection--brought in, as it would seem, in mere caprice or by the loosest threads of a.s.sociation. They lie, with the 'allegations' which accompany them, strewn all over the surface of the work, like 'trap'

on 'sand-stone,' telling their story to the scientific eye, and beckoning the philosophic explorer to that primeval granite of sciences that their vein will surely lead to. But the careless observer, bent on recreation, observes only a pleasing feature in the landscape, one that breaks happily its threatened dulness; the reader, reading this book as _books_ are wont to be read, finds nothing in this phenomenon to excite his curiosity. And the author knows him and his ways so well, that he is able to foresee that result, and is not afraid to trust to it in the case of those whose scrutiny he is careful to avoid. For he is one who counts largely on the carelessness, or the indifference, or the stupidity of those whom he addresses. There is no end to his confidence in that. He is perpetually staking his life on it. Neither is he willing to trust to the clues which these unexplained stories might seem of themselves to offer to the studious eye, to engage the attention of the reader--the reader whose attention he is bent on securing. Availing himself of one of those nooks of discourse, which he is at no loss for the means of creating when the purpose of his _essaie_ requires it, he beckons the confidential reader aside, and thus explains his method to him, outright, in terms which admit of but one construction. 'Neither these stories,' he says, 'nor my allegations do always serve simply for example, authority, or ornament; I do not only regard them for the use I make of them; they carry sometimes, _besides what I apply them to_, the seeds of a richer and bolder matter, and sometimes, _collaterally, a more delicate sound_, both to me myself,--who will say no more about it _in this place_' [we shall hear more of it in another place, however, and where the delicate collateral sounds will not be wanting]--'both to me myself, and _to others who happen to be of my ear_.'

To the reader, who does indeed happen to be of his ear, to one who has read the 'allegations' and stories that he speaks of, and the whole work, and the works connected with it, by means of that knowledge of the inner intention, and of the method to which he alludes, this pa.s.sage would of course convey no new intelligence. But will the reader, to whom the views here presented are yet too new to seem credible, endeavour to imagine or invent for himself any form of words, in which the claim already made in regard to the style in which the great original writers of this age and the founders of the new science of the human life were compelled to infold their doctrine, could have been, in the case of this one at least, more distinctly a.s.serted. Here is proof that one of them, one who counted on an _audience_ too, did find himself compelled to infold his richer and bolder meanings in the manner described. All that need be claimed at present in regard to the authorship of this sentence is, that it is written by one whose writings, in their higher intention, have ceased to be understood, for lack of the '_ear_' to which his bolder and richer meanings are addressed, for lack of the _ear_, to which the collateral and more delicate sounds which his words sometimes carry with them are perceptible; and that it is written by a philosopher whose learning and aims and opinions, down to the slightest points of detail, are absolutely identical with those of the princ.i.p.al writers of this school.