_Othello_, remains in a state of incubation during the first part of a
tragedy, that part cannot produce the tension proper to the
corresponding part of a tragedy like _Macbeth_, and may even run the
risk of being somewhat flat. This seems obvious, and it is none the less
true because in _Othello_ the difficulty is overcome. We may even see
that in _Othello_ a difficulty was felt. The First Act is full of stir,
but it is so because Shakespeare has filled it with a kind of
preliminary conflict between the hero and Brabantio,--a personage who
then vanishes from the stage. The long first scene of the Second Act is
largely occupied with mere conversations, artfully drawn out to
dimensions which can scarcely be considered essential to the plot. These
expedients are fully justified by their success, and nothing more
consummate in their way is to be found in Shakespeare than Othello's
speech to the Senate and Iago's two talks with Roderigo. But the fact
that Shakespeare can make a plan succeed does not show that the plan is,
abstractedly considered, a good plan; and if the scheme of construction
in _Othello_ were placed, in the shape of a mere outline, before a
play-wright ignorant of the actual drama, he would certainly, I believe,
feel grave misgivings about the first half of the play.
There is a second difficulty in the scheme. When the middle of the
tragedy is reached, the audience is not what it was at the beginning. It
has been attending for some time, and has been through a certain amount
of agitation. The extreme tension which now arises may therefore easily
tire and displease it, all the more if the matter which produces the
tension is very painful, if the catastrophe is not less so, and if the
limits of the remainder of the play (not to speak of any other
consideration) permit of very little relief. It is one thing to watch
the scene of Duncan's assassination at the beginning of the Second Act,
and another thing to watch the murder of Desdemona at the beginning of
the Fifth. If Shakespeare has wholly avoided this difficulty in
_Othello_, it is by treating the first part of the play in such a manner
that the sympathies excited are predominantly pleasant and therefore not
exhausting. The scene in the Council Chamber, and the scene of the
reunion at Cyprus, give almost unmixed happiness to the audience;
however repulsive Iago may be, the humour of his gulling of Roderigo is
agreeable; even the scene of Cassio's intoxication is not, on the whole,
painful. Hence we come to the great temptation-scene, where the conflict
emerges into life (III. iii.), with nerves unshaken and feelings much
fresher than those with which we greet the banquet-scene in _Macbeth_
(III. iv.), or the first of the storm-scenes in _King Lear_ (III. i.).
The same skill may be observed in _Antony and Cleopatra_, where, as we
saw, the second half of the tragedy is the more exciting. But, again,
the success due to Shakespeare's skill does not show that the scheme of
construction is free from a characteristic danger; and on the whole it
would appear to be best fitted for a plot which, though it may cause
painful agitation as it nears the end, actually ends with a solution
instead of a catastrophe.
But for Shakespeare's scanty use of this method there may have been a
deeper, though probably an unconscious, reason. The method suits a plot
based on intrigue. It may produce intense suspense. It may stir most
powerfully the tragic feelings of pity and fear. And it throws into
relief that aspect of tragedy in which great or beautiful lives seem
caught in the net of fate. But it is apt to be less favourable to the
exhibition of character, to show less clearly how an act returns upon
the agent, and to produce less strongly the impression of an inexorable
order working in the passions and actions of men, and labouring through
their agony and waste towards good. Now, it seems clear from his
tragedies that what appealed most to Shakespeare was this latter class
of effects. I do not ask here whether _Othello_ fails to produce, in the
same degree as the other tragedies, these impressions; but Shakespeare's
preference for them may have been one reason why he habitually chose a
scheme of construction which produces in the final Acts but little of
strained suspense, and presents the catastrophe as a thing foreseen and
following with a psychological and moral necessity on the action
exhibited in the first part of the tragedy.
4
The more minute details of construction cannot well be examined here,
and I will not pursue the subject further. But its discussion suggests a
question which will have occurred to some of my hearers. They may have
asked themselves whether I have not used the words 'art' and 'device'
and 'expedient' and 'method' too boldly, as though Shakespeare were a
conscious artist, and not rather a writer who constructed in obedience
to an extraordinary dramatic instinct, as he composed mainly by
inspiration. And a brief explanation on this head will enable me to
allude to a few more points, chiefly of construction, which are not too
technical for a lecture.
In speaking, for convenience, of devices and expedients, I did not
intend to imply that Shakespeare always deliberately aimed at the
effects which he produced. But _no_ artist always does this, and I see
no reason to doubt that Shakespeare often did it, or to suppose that his
method of constructing and composing differed, except in degree, from
that of the most 'conscious' of artists. The antithesis of art and
inspiration, though not meaningless, is often most misleading.
Inspiration is surely not incompatible with considerate workmanship. The
two may be severed, but they need not be so, and where a genuinely
poetic result is being produced they cannot be so. The glow of a first
conception must in some measure survive or rekindle itself in the work
of planning and executing; and what is called a technical expedient may
'come' to a man with as sudden a glory as a splendid image. Verse may be
easy and unpremeditated, as Milton says his was, and yet many a word in
it may be changed many a time, and the last change be more 'inspired'
than the original. The difference between poets in these matters is no
doubt considerable, and sometimes important, but it can only be a
difference of less and more. It is probable that Shakespeare often wrote
fluently, for Jonson (a better authority than Heminge and Condell) says
so; and for anything we can tell he may also have constructed with
unusual readiness. But we know that he revised and re-wrote (for
instance in _Love's Labour's Lost_ and _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Hamlet_);
it is almost impossible that he can have worked out the plots of his
best plays without much reflection and many experiments; and it appears
to me scarcely more possible to mistake the signs of deliberate care in
some of his famous speeches. If a 'conscious artist' means one who holds
his work away from him, scrutinises and judges it, and, if need be,
alters it and alters it till it comes as near satisfying him as he can
make it, I am sure that Shakespeare frequently employed such conscious
art. If it means, again, an artist who consciously aims at the effects
he produces, what ground have we for doubting that he frequently
employed such art, though probably less frequently than a good many
other poets?
But perhaps the notion of a 'conscious artist' in drama is that of one
who studies the theory of the art, and even writes with an eye to its
'rules.' And we know it was long a favourite idea that Shakespeare was
totally ignorant of the 'rules.' Yet this is quite incredible. The
rules referred to, such as they were, were not buried in Aristotle's
Greek nor even hidden away in Italian treatises. He could find pretty
well all of them in a book so current and famous as Sidney's _Defence
of Poetry_. Even if we suppose that he refused to open this book
(which is most unlikely), how could he possibly remain ignorant of the
rules in a society of actors and dramatists and amateurs who must have
been incessantly talking about plays and play-writing, and some of
whom were ardent champions of the rules and full of contempt for the
lawlessness of the popular drama? Who can doubt that at the Mermaid
Shakespeare heard from Jonson's lips much more censure of his offences
against 'art' than Jonson ever confided to Drummond or to paper? And
is it not most probable that those battles between the two which
Fuller imagines, were waged often on the field of dramatic criticism?
If Shakespeare, then, broke some of the 'rules,' it was not from
ignorance. Probably he refused, on grounds of art itself, to trouble
himself with rules derived from forms of drama long extinct. And it is
not unlikely that he was little interested in theory as such, and more
than likely that he was impatient of pedantic distinctions between
'pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical,
tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable or poem
unlimited.' But that would not prove that he never reflected on his
art, or could not explain, if he cared to, what _he_ thought would be
good general rules for the drama of his own time. He could give advice
about play-acting. Why should we suppose that he could not give advice
about play-making?
Still Shakespeare, though in some considerable degree a 'conscious'
artist, frequently sins against art; and if his sins were not due to
ignorance or inspiration, they must be accounted for otherwise. Neither
can there be much doubt about their causes (for they have more than one
cause), as we shall see if we take some illustrations of the defects
themselves.
Among these are not to be reckoned certain things which in dramas
written at the present time would rightly be counted defects. There are,
for example, in most Elizabethan plays peculiarities of construction
which would injure a play written for our stage but were perfectly
well-fitted for that very different stage,--a stage on which again some
of the best-constructed plays of our time would appear absurdly faulty.
Or take the charge of improbability. Shakespeare certainly has
improbabilities which are defects. They are most frequent in the winding
up of his comedies (and how many comedies are there in the world which
end satisfactorily?). But his improbabilities are rarely psychological,
and in some of his plays there occurs one kind of improbability which is
no defect, but simply a characteristic which has lost in our day much of
its former attraction. I mean that the story, in most of the comedies
and many of the tragedies of the Elizabethans, was _intended_ to be
strange and wonderful. These plays were tales of romance dramatised, and
they were meant in part to satisfy the same love of wonder to which the
romances appealed. It is no defect in the Arthurian legends, or the old
French romances, or many of the stories in the _Decameron_, that they
are improbable: it is a virtue. To criticise them as though they were of
the same species as a realistic novel, is, we should all say, merely
stupid. Is it anything else to criticise in the same way _Twelfth Night_
or _As You Like It_? And so, even when the difference between comedy and
tragedy is allowed for, the improbability of the opening of _King Lear_,
so often censured, is no defect. It is not out of character, it is only
extremely unusual and strange. But it was meant to be so; like the
marriage of the black Othello with Desdemona, the Venetian senator's
daughter.
To come then to real defects, (_a_) one may be found in places where
Shakespeare strings together a number of scenes, some very short, in
which the _dramatis personae_ are frequently changed; as though a
novelist were to tell his story in a succession of short chapters, in
which he flitted from one group of his characters to another. This
method shows itself here and there in the pure tragedies (_e.g._ in the
last Act of _Macbeth_), but it appears most decidedly where the
historical material was undramatic, as in the middle part of _Antony and
Cleopatra_. It was made possible by the absence of scenery, and
doubtless Shakespeare used it because it was the easiest way out of a
difficulty. But, considered abstractedly, it is a defective method, and,
even as used by Shakespeare, it sometimes reminds us of the merely
narrative arrangement common in plays before his time.
(_b_) We may take next the introduction or excessive development of
matter neither required by the plot nor essential to the exhibition of
character: _e.g._ the references in _Hamlet_ to theatre-quarrels of the
day, and the length of the player's speech and also of Hamlet's
directions to him respecting the delivery of the lines to be inserted in
the 'Murder of Gonzago.' All this was probably of great interest at the
time when _Hamlet_ was first presented; most of it we should be very
sorry to miss; some of it seems to bring us close to Shakespeare
himself; but who can defend it from the point of view of constructive
art?
(_c_) Again, we may look at Shakespeare's soliloquies. It will be agreed
that in listening to a soliloquy we ought never to feel that we are
being addressed. And in this respect, as in others, many of the
soliloquies are master-pieces. But certainly in some the purpose of
giving information lies bare, and in one or two the actor openly speaks
to the audience. Such faults are found chiefly in the early plays,
though there is a glaring instance at the end of Belarius's speech in
_Cymbeline_ (III. iii. 99 ff.), and even in the mature tragedies
something of this kind may be traced. Let anyone compare, for example,
Edmund's soliloquy in _King Lear_, I. ii., 'This is the excellent
foppery of the world,' with Edgar's in II. iii., and he will be
conscious that in the latter the purpose of giving information is
imperfectly disguised.[23]
(_d_) It cannot be denied, further, that in many of Shakespeare's plays,
if not in all, there are inconsistencies and contradictions, and also
that questions are suggested to the reader which it is impossible for
him to answer with certainty. For instance, some of the indications of
the lapse of time between Othello's marriage and the events of the later
Acts flatly contradict one another; and it is impossible to make out
whether Hamlet was at Court or at the University when his father was
murdered. But it should be noticed that often what seems a defect of
this latter kind is not really a defect. For instance, the difficulty
about Hamlet's age (even if it cannot be resolved by the text alone) did
not exist for Shakespeare's audience. The moment Burbage entered it must
have been clear whether the hero was twenty or thirty. And in like
manner many questions of dramatic interpretation which trouble us could
never have arisen when the plays were first produced, for the actor
would be instructed by the author how to render any critical and
possibly ambiguous passage. (I have heard it remarked, and the remark I
believe is just, that Shakespeare seems to have relied on such
instructions less than most of his contemporaries; one fact out of
several which might be adduced to prove that he did not regard his plays
as mere stage-dramas of the moment.)
(_e_) To turn to another field, the early critics were no doubt often
provokingly wrong when they censured the language of particular passages
in Shakespeare as obscure, inflated, tasteless, or 'pestered with
metaphors'; but they were surely right in the general statement that his
language often shows these faults. And this is a subject which later
criticism has never fairly faced and examined.
(_f_) Once more, to say that Shakespeare makes all his serious
characters talk alike,[24] and that he constantly speaks through the
mouths of his _dramatis personae_ without regard to their individual
natures, would be to exaggerate absurdly; but it is true that in his
earlier plays these faults are traceable in some degree, and even in
_Hamlet_ there are striking passages where dramatic appropriateness is
sacrificed to some other object. When Laertes speaks the lines
beginning,
For nature, crescent, does not grow alone
In thews and bulk,
who can help feeling that Shakespeare is speaking rather than Laertes?
Or when the player-king discourses for more than twenty lines on the
instability of human purpose, and when King Claudius afterwards insists
to Laertes on the same subject at almost equal length, who does not see
that Shakespeare, thinking but little of dramatic fitness, wishes in
part simply to write poetry, and partly to impress on the audience
thoughts which will help them to understand, not the player-king nor yet
King Claudius, but Hamlet himself, who, on his side,--and here quite in
character--has already enlarged on the same topic in the most famous of
his soliloquies?
(_g_) Lastly, like nearly all the dramatists of his day and of times
much earlier, Shakespeare was fond of 'gnomic' passages, and introduces
them probably not more freely than his readers like, but more freely
than, I suppose, a good play-wright now would care to do. These
passages, it may be observed, are frequently rhymed (_e.g._ _Othello_,
I. iii. 201 ff., II. i. 149 ff.). Sometimes they were printed in early
editions with inverted commas round them, as are in the First Quarto
Polonius's 'few precepts' to Laertes.
If now we ask whence defects like these arose, we shall observe that
some of them are shared by the majority of Shakespeare's contemporaries,
and abound in the dramas immediately preceding his time. They are
characteristics of an art still undeveloped, and, no doubt, were not
perceived to be defects. But though it is quite probable that in regard
to one or two kinds of imperfection (such as the superabundance of
'gnomic' passages) Shakespeare himself erred thus ignorantly, it is very
unlikely that in most cases he did so, unless in the first years of his
career of authorship. And certainly he never can have thought it
artistic to leave inconsistencies, obscurities, or passages of bombast
in his work. Most of the defects in his writings must be due to
indifference or want of care.
I do not say that all were so. In regard, for example, to his occasional
bombast and other errors of diction, it seems hardly doubtful that his
perception was sometimes at fault, and that, though he used the English
language like no one else, he had not that _sureness_ of taste in words
which has been shown by some much smaller writers. And it seems not
unlikely that here he suffered from his comparative want of
'learning,'--that is, of familiarity with the great writers of
antiquity. But nine-tenths of his defects are not, I believe, the errors
of an inspired genius, ignorant of art, but the sins of a great but
negligent artist. He was often, no doubt, over-worked and pressed for
time. He knew that the immense majority of his audience were incapable
of distinguishing between rough and finished work. He often felt the
degradation of having to live by pleasing them. Probably in hours of
depression he was quite indifferent to fame, and perhaps in another mood
the whole business of play-writing seemed to him a little thing. None of
these thoughts and feelings influenced him when his subject had caught
hold of him. To imagine that _then_ he 'winged his roving flight' for
'gain' or 'glory,' or wrote from any cause on earth but the necessity of
expression, with all its pains and raptures, is mere folly. He was
possessed: his mind must have been in a white heat: he worked, no doubt,
with the _furia_ of Michael Angelo. And if he did not succeed at
once--and how can even he have always done so?--he returned to the
matter again and again. Such things as the scenes of Duncan's murder or
Othello's temptation, such speeches as those of the Duke to Claudio and
of Claudio to his sister about death, were not composed in an hour and
tossed aside; and if they have defects, they have not what Shakespeare
thought defects. Nor is it possible that his astonishingly individual
conceptions of character can have been struck out at a heat: prolonged
and repeated thought must have gone to them. But of small
inconsistencies in the plot he was often quite careless. He seems to
have finished off some of his comedies with a hasty and even
contemptuous indifference, as if it mattered nothing how the people got
married, or even who married whom, so long as enough were married
somehow. And often, when he came to parts of his scheme that were
necessary but not interesting to him, he wrote with a slack hand, like a
craftsman of genius who knows that his natural gift and acquired skill
will turn out something more than good enough for his audience: wrote
probably fluently but certainly negligently, sometimes only half saying
what he meant, and sometimes saying the opposite, and now and then, when
passion was required, lapsing into bombast because he knew he must
heighten his style but would not take the trouble to inflame his
imagination. It may truly be said that what injures such passages is not
inspiration, but the want of it. But, as they are mostly passages where
no poet could expect to be inspired, it is even more true to say that
here Shakespeare lacked the conscience of the artist who is determined
to make everything as good as he can. Such poets as Milton, Pope,
Tennyson, habitually show this conscience. They left probably scarcely
anything that they felt they could improve. No one could dream of saying
that of Shakespeare.
Hence comes what is perhaps the chief difficulty in interpreting his
works. Where his power or art is fully exerted it really does resemble
that of nature. It organises and vitalises its product from the centre
outward to the minutest markings on the surface, so that when you turn
upon it the most searching light you can command, when you dissect it
and apply to it the test of a microscope, still you find in it nothing
formless, general or vague, but everywhere structure, character,
individuality. In this his great things, which seem to come whenever
they are wanted, have no companions in literature except the few
greatest things in Dante; and it is a fatal error to allow his
carelessness elsewhere to make one doubt whether here one is not seeking
more than can be found. It is very possible to look for subtlety in the
wrong places in Shakespeare, but in the right places it is not possible
to find too much. But then this characteristic, which is one source of
his endless attraction, is also a source of perplexity. For in those
parts of his plays which show him neither in his most intense nor in his
most negligent mood, we are often unable to decide whether something
that seems inconsistent, indistinct, feeble, exaggerated, is really so,
or whether it was definitely meant to be as it is, and has an intention
which we ought to be able to divine; whether, for example, we have
before us some unusual trait in character, some abnormal movement of
mind, only surprising to us because we understand so very much less of
human nature than Shakespeare did, or whether he wanted to get his work
done and made a slip, or in using an old play adopted hastily something
that would not square with his own conception, or even refused to
trouble himself with minutiae which we notice only because we study him,
but which nobody ever notices in a stage performance. We know well
enough what Shakespeare is doing when at the end of _Measure for
Measure_ he marries Isabella to the Duke--and a scandalous proceeding it
is; but who can ever feel sure that the doubts which vex him as to some
not unimportant points in _Hamlet_ are due to his own want of eyesight
or to Shakespeare's want of care?
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 16: The famous critics of the Romantic Revival seem to have
paid very little attention to this subject. Mr. R.G. Moulton has written
an interesting book on _Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist_ (1885). In
parts of my analysis I am much indebted to Gustav Freytag's _Technik des
Dramas_, a book which deserves to be much better known than it appears
to be to Englishmen interested in the drama. I may add, for the benefit
of classical scholars, that Freytag has a chapter on Sophocles. The
reader of his book will easily distinguish, if he cares to, the places
where I follow Freytag, those where I differ from him, and those where I
write in independence of him. I may add that in speaking of construction
I have thought it best to assume in my hearers no previous knowledge of
the subject; that I have not attempted to discuss how much of what is
said of Shakespeare would apply also to other dramatists; and that I
have illustrated from the tragedies generally, not only from the chosen
four.]