little; but, like that of Burns, it was indisputably far more liberal
than the devotees of miracle are wishful to suppose. To-day no competent
inquirer doubts that, with the grammar-school at Stratford opening its
doors free to the son of John Shakespeare, burgess and alderman, the
opportunity was grasped by that struggling but ambitious person. Nor is
it doubted that there, under some Holofernes or Sir Hugh Evans, the boy
learned his Lyly's grammar, and read his share of Latin authors--his
Terence, Ovid, and Seneca, together with Baptista "the old Mantuan." In
French he assuredly did more than dabble, if his _Henry V_ be taken as
any proof. The other day Mr. Churton Collins essayed to prove, by an
array of quotations, that he was tolerably read in Greek. For my own
part I confess that I find, in the passages of AEschylus cited with
passages of Shakespeare, no more than happy coincidences in the
thinking of two kindred original minds. Yet some Greek at least he had.
Our witness is Ben Jonson. Rare Ben was himself a monument of learning,
and to him the ordinary mortal's modicum was but a trifle. When he
observes "and though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek," we should
do well to take him as meaning precisely what he says. If he had meant
"no Latin and no Greek," he would have written it so; the line would
have scanned as easily, and the desired point would have been made still
more effective. Add to these studies of Shakespeare his early study in
the Bible; early familiarity with that book, apart from all questions of
character and religion, will always shoot a rich woof of word and
thought through all the warp of writing.
Remember that Shakespeare at school was not distracted by hours of
mathematics and other agreeable but alien pursuits. Remember also--what
is so strangely forgotten--that he was a genius, whose capacious mind
would grasp and retain with unique facility. Remember that at school
there are boys and boys, and that, while some of them waste time in
laboriously endeavouring to assimilate the shells of knowledge along
with the oysters, others instinctively use their powers of secretion to
better purpose. Remember also that in Elizabethan times school-boy study
was a far more strenuous matter than it is in these degenerate days, and
that it was not chiefly directed towards examinations.
Be assured that Shakespeare's school education was as good as your own;
or, if you are not convinced of that, be at least assured that an
illiterate man never did, and never will, write even tolerable poetry.
It may seem as if I were acting the traitor to my own profession when I
rejoice that Shakespeare was never turned into what is technically
called a learned man. He was something better, he was an educated man.
You do not need erudition to be a creator of great works of imagination,
whether it be erudition concerning Latin syntax or concerning the Origin
of the Concept or concerning the life-history of the worm. What you
chiefly require to know is the human heart; and the best books for that
knowledge are human beings. Learning is after all but the milch-cow of
education. If Shakespeare had been as learned as Ben Jonson, or the
so-called University Wits, he might perchance have come to view mankind
too much through the medium of books, as Jonson himself did, instead of
through his own keen natural orbs of vision.
His soul proud science never taught to stray
Far as the Solar walk or Milky Way.
No! but he had soared otherwise to the Solar walk and the Galaxy, he had
gladdened at the sight of the sun flattering all Nature with his
sovereign eye, and he had felt the full sense of the nocturnal heavens,
thick inlaid with patines of bright gold. A learned man, says Bagehot,
may study butterflies till he forgets that they are beautiful. On the
other hand, it is only fair to say that he need forget nothing of the
kind. So a man may study Aristotle till he forgets that Aristotle
derived his psychology from men and not men from Aristotle.
The real scandalum to Greene and the scholar playwrights was not that
Shakespeare was illiterate, but that, not having studied by Cam or Isis,
he had no business to be literate. He was an "upstart crow," and what
right had he to be "as well able to bumbast out a blank verse as the
best of you?" The attitude was perhaps natural to jealous rivals, but it
should never have been used to show that Shakespeare was destitute of a
decent school education. Perhaps the most regrettable outcome of this
notion is that Milton should have written the amazing line which tells
how Shakespeare
Warbled his native woodnotes wild.
Like the famous description of the crab as the little red fish which
walks backwards, it contains only three demonstrable errors. Shakespeare
does not warble, his notes are not woodnotes, and they are not wild.
He was, moreover, a man of the sort whose education--even book
education--never ceases. At a later date in London he manifestly
absorbed numerous translations. He knew his way about his Golding's Ovid
and North's Plutarch. Before he attempted those splendid poetical
exercises the _Venus and Adonis_, the _Lucrece_, and the early sonnets,
he had studied, like every one else, the models for sonneteers and
lyrists which came from Italy and France, from Petrarch or Du Bellay. It
is clear that he was familiar with the Essays of Montaigne. Earlier
English literature was no sealed book to him. He also read his own
contemporaries. Hence his _Lucrece_ is part Ovid, part Chaucer, part
Daniel or Watson; his _Venus and Adonis_ is part Ovid, part Lodge.
Better still than reading is conversation, the rubbing of wits and
furbishing of knowledge amid well-informed and bright-minded company.
Tradition tells us that Shakespeare was a member of that brilliant
coterie of the Mermaid Tavern, where rare Ben presided, as glorious John
presided at a later day in his favoured Coffee-house. Fuller describes
the wit-combats between Shakespeare and his learned confrere, and there
is no reason to doubt that the nimble man-of-war and the heavy galleon
fought many a bout. Of that coterie Beaumont writes to Jonson:--
What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid! Heard words that have been
So nimble and so full of subtle flame,
As if that every one from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest.
The classical quotation, the apt allusion, would fly freely in that
society. The matter of books new and old would be talked of and
discussed. For the purpose of Shakespeare, here was learning to be
picked up of the most telling sort. For, let us repeat, reading was then
pursued on high levels, and intellectual curiosity was eager. And let
us remember always that Shakespeare must have possessed an astonishing
instinct for seizing the essentials, which he shaped for himself "in the
quick forge and working-house of thought."
Also among the actors into whose company he was perpetually thrown there
were men who had, as we should call it, toured through England and
Scotland, and sometimes abroad to France, Germany, or Denmark. Scores of
his acquaintances must have travelled in Italy, even if they did not
return _diavoli incarnati_. Each man brought back description,
information, story, which the vivid imagination of Shakespeare, as he
listened, turned into abiding picture; and this, after he had chosen his
theme from Cinthio or Bandello or elsewhere, he would employ for the
background in his Verona or his Venice. How powerfully this can be done
by the imagination of genius is well exemplified in _Wilhelm Tell_,
which, from its opening verses of _Es laechelt der See_, carries in it
the whole sense of Swiss landscape and Swiss air, although Schiller had
never set foot in Switzerland.
Over and above all this, a man whose heart and whose interests are alike
engaged in a particular profession, be he physician, or inventor, or
artist, and who is ambitious to excel and prosper in that profession,
will be for ever alert to every hint or lesson which will make for
success. Shakespeare was from his heart a playwright; he was at the same
time a shrewd business man as partner in a theatre. Not only did he love
his work with all the passion of a creator, he was also concerned to
outvie his professional rivals. The plays of the Globe must be better
than the plays of the Fortune. He therefore studied existing dramas, in
order to surpass them, if possible, at every point. He began by
recasting or improving the plays of feebler writers, and so learned to
distinguish what was effective from what was not. He then went on in the
effort--an easy effort it proved to him--to transcend the plays of
writers of strength; to transcend them in construction, in
characterisation, in intellectual matter, in humour, and in diction; and
this means that his aim was, by compulsion, high.
The standard already set was a lofty one. Marlowe's mighty line was not
easy to surpass. There is nothing which provokes the best efforts of
genius so powerfully as formidable predecessors and rivals. It is as
with the forest trees; if some grow tall, the rest will struggle to
grow taller, so that they may escape from the shade into the sun. The
University Wits and scholar poets, who had "climbed to the height of
Seneca his style," deserve no little thanks for the making of our
Shakespeare. If his pieces were to be performed before the Queen's
Majesty, or the King's Majesty, and all that cultivated court, or if
they were to receive the applause of the learned Benchers of Gray's Inn,
they must attain a distinguished level both of living interest and of
admirable poetry. Shakespeare's precursors had rendered this high
perfection indispensable.
Let me insist also on another consideration, too often overlooked. The
Elizabethan stage was without scenery. The bare boards, a curtain at the
back, a table and inkstand to represent a court of justice, two or three
ragged foils to disgrace the name of Agincourt, and the imagination of
the audience did the rest. All the gorgeousness of the modern
_mise-en-scene_; all the painting, mechanical contrivances, and
elaborate furnishing, were wanting. There was none of that modern
realism, which consists in driving a real train across a painted country
or eating real sandwiches under a property tree. To a great extent all
this elaborate staging has been the death of dramatic art. Among the
Elizabethans, the interest depended solely on the action and the acting,
on the piece and its language. All these must be excellent. They were
not yet considered inferior to those of optical effect. The Elizabethans
listened with their minds, not solely with their eyes.
Thus, from his teaching at school, from his wide reading, from bright
and varied conversation, from assiduous exercise, Shakespeare derived
perpetual education. If, as Bacon declares, "reading maketh a full man,
conference a ready man, and writing an exact man," then Shakespeare was
trebly well equipped.
But there was another element in his training, which, for the dramatist,
was worth all the rest. This was his habit of observation, an
observation shrewd but sympathetic, of all sorts and conditions of men.
The experience lying between his youthful escapades at Stratford and his
sober retirement thither was doubtless a wonderful polychrome. He had
plodded his way among many peculiar folk as he passed from Warwickshire
to London by way of Banbury or Oxford. He had stopped at inns in strange
company of fools and knaves, pedlars, roisterers and swashbucklers. He
had hobnobbed with dull-pated village constables. He had consorted with
Stephen Sly and old John Naps of Greece,
And Peter Turf and Henry Pimpernel.
In London he had foregathered with Mrs. Quickly and haply with Doll
Tearsheet. All the whimsical miscellany of the Bohemians must have been
known to him. We need not doubt that he had sowed wild oats. Doubtless,
if he lived the same life now, he would be looked upon askance by good
people who knew nothing of his temptations. But he was no neurotic; no
genius of the first rank ever is or was. He never lost control of
himself, and so did not, like some of his brilliant contemporaries,
tread the primrose path which leads down to futility and death. He was
always pre-eminently sane. While composing his transcendent _Lear_ and
_Othello_, he was suing Philip Rogers for L1 15s. 10d. While his fancy
roamed in the fairyland of _Midsummer Night's Dream_, his investments
were in the highest degree judicious.
Elizabethan life, whether in town or country, whether among earls or
tapsters, was infinitely more frank, varied, and picturesque than it can
ever be again. Men and women displayed more freely their natural
idiosyncrasies. Nor did the traveller rush at fifty miles an hour
through all this variegated world. He saw it lingeringly and intimately,
as Chaucer saw his Pilgrims, or Goldsmith his Village, or Scott his
Border peasants.
Bagehot says truly that, to have experiences, one must have the
experiencing nature. To make observations, one must have an observing
nature, and that nature Shakespeare possessed as no other man has
possessed it. He noted everything. So might another, but the superlative
merit of Shakespeare's observation is that he noted all and always with
humorous and universal sympathy, with an eye absolutely free from the
jaundice of Carlyle, as it was free from the bookish astigmatism of Ben
Jonson. His mental retina formed a perfect mirror to hold up to nature.
Whether it be true or not that he had seen a veritable Dogberry at
Grendon, Bucks, it is certain that he had seen the type somewhere. Best
of all, he had not seen it in irritation or contempt. If we are told
that Shakespeare presents "no entire and perfect hero, no entire and
perfect villain," it is simply because he had--like ourselves--never set
eyes on either of those monsters. He also never made the mistake of
reading himself into other men, any more than he made the artistic
mistake of unlocking his heart and taking a hundred and fifty sonnets to
do it. His clear objective picture is never vitiated by the desire to
preach. He has no system of ethics, politics, or anything else to teach.
Doubtless Shakespeare had his own views on all important matters of life
and death; but in the drama the artist's business is to present us with
the kaleidoscope of life, not to insist upon our interpreting it to
certain ends, of which he is to be the arbiter. You cannot, perhaps,
read _Lear_ without being a better man, or _Hamlet_ without being a
wiser; but you are permitted to be better and wiser in your own way, and
not in some way ready mapped out for you. Do not let us talk of the
ethical purpose of Shakespeare's plays. Let us only speak of their
ethical effect. What that effect is has been expressed by Shelley thus:
"The gentleness and elevation of mind connected with sacred emotions
render men more amiable, more generous and wise, and lift them out of
the dull vapours of the little world of self."
Last element in the making of our Shakespeare was one which I dare
hardly name, in fear of the deluge of contempt which the minor prophets
of artistry will pour upon my head. Well, I take my Philistine courage
in my hands, and say that he was thus great because he never wrote for
any special class of the illuminati; he never troubled his soul with any
other theory of art than that it should present interesting and
universal truth, truth so manifestly true that it should appeal to all
the world of men and women. When Angelo was asked by a sculptor in what
light a certain statue should be viewed, his answer was, "in the light
of the public square." A statue which will not bear the criticism of
that place is assuredly untrue. Shakespeare wrote for the public square,
not for exhibition in the gallery of some ephemeral school of taste, nor
for the private collection of some self-elected critic, who holds a
pouncet-box while he applies his little artificial canons of
correctness.
Doubtless a man who writes in this large massive spirit, overlooks some
trifling blemishes. "Nice customs curtesy to great kings." "Great men,"
says Landor, "often have greater faults than smaller men can find room
for." Shakespeare has his, but, of all wise things that Ruskin has said
of art, this--which describes our Shakespeare--is perhaps the truest:
"There are two characters in which all greatness of art consists--first,
the earnest and intense seizing of natural facts; then the ordering
those facts by strength of human intellect, so as to make them, for all
who look upon them, to the utmost serviceable, memorable and
beautiful."
Literature and Life
The Literature Society of Melbourne meets monthly in order to assimilate
true literature and to study its principles. If its President is
entitled to speak its corporate mind, it approaches this task in a
grateful and docile spirit.
There is, I believe, no necessity to defend the existence and aims of a
Literature Society. It would be enough if we simply confessed that we
meet for the enjoyment of a rational and not unelevating pleasure. It
would be enough if we said that literature, like pictorial art and
music, is one of the recognized resources for the gladdening of life,
and that we meet in order to get as much of that high refreshment as
possible in each other's company. And this, indeed, we do so far frankly
acknowledge and confess.
But we also claim that there is a more serious aspect of our
association. We believe that great literature and its zealous study
produce most powerful effects, both upon our inner selves and upon the
value and happiness of our lives; that they supply us with a rich
equipment, both for our private thinking and feeling and also for social
action and social intercourse; that from great literature we derive
indefeasible resources, which form glorious company in the midst of
solitude, abundant wealth in the midst of poverty, and an unfailing
refuge from the too frequent harshness of circumstance.
Our objects are not those of mere dilettanti, although for my part I
should blame no association which boldly inscribed "dilettanti" on its
breezy flag. Our "literature" is not mere elegant trifling--although men
who do choose to spend an occasional evening in trifling with elegance
are men whom we can still afford to respect and perhaps to envy. But
literature, as we understand it, is no trifling, however elegant. By
literature we mean what Milton has called the "seasoned life of man
preserved and stored up in books"; and the seasoned life of man is no
trifle. We mean something of which the influence--or the effluence--may
profoundly determine the quality of our lives, both as they affect
others and as they affect ourselves.
* * * * *
We do not mean simply printed books. The vaster proportion of what is
printed is not literature. It may be statements of fact and items of
information; it may be sound science and unimpeachable record; it may be
truism; it may be platitude; it is often sheer bathos or doggerel. We do
not count these things as literature. A good deal of singing,
piano-beating and tin-whistling is not music. It is only in virtue of a
certain fine quality that books are literature. According to Emerson,
literature is "a record of the best thoughts." According to Matthew
Arnold it is "the best that has been thought and said in the world." If
literature is a collection of great books, then we may recall Milton's
description of a great book, as "the precious life-blood of a
master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond
life." And so literature becomes a store of inexhaustible vials, filled
with the most generous elixir decanted from the world's master-spirits.
Listen again to Vauvenargues: "Good literature is the essence of the
best minds, the abstract of their knowledge, the fruit of their long
vigils." Or let us drop metaphor, and accept, as entirely satisfying and
luminous, the account given by Mr. John Morley, that "literature
consists of all books ... where moral truth and human passion are
touched with a certain largeness, sanity, and attraction of form."
* * * * *
Such is the sense in which we interpret the term "literature."
The range and variety of such true literature are as wide and varied as
human genius. It includes, for instance, the novel, whenever the novel,
as in Balzac, Thackeray, and Fielding, shows this fine, large, sane,
attractive touch; it includes verse, when, and only when, moral truth
and human passion are touched finely or nobly in this way. Its forms are
manifold, and its themes include--
All thoughts, all passions, all delights
Whatever stirs this mortal frame.
In its shape and form literature may be a hard-headed essay of Bacon or
an impassioned lyric of Shelley; its sound may be the majestic
organ-peal of Milton or the sumptuous flute music of Keats; its mood may
be the scathing fervour of Carlyle or the genial humour of Lamb; its
manner may be the rugged strength of Browning or the fastidious grace of
Arnold; but, whatever it be, it everywhere contains this high
distinction; it touches some vital truth or human passion with "a
certain largeness and sanity and attraction of form." What is not sane
and large and expressive is not the literature which we meet to study
and absorb.
Literature, then, is no mere "elegant trifling." It is no mere _belles
lettres_. We do not, indeed, pretend, and none but a human machine will
pretend, to despise the graces and charms of _belles lettres_. That
would be as ridiculous and inhuman as to despise the delights of music
or architecture. But literature is more than _belles lettres_; it is
something of far superior intellectual weight and dignity, of far
superior moral force and energy. In its contents it is a body of the
wisest, most suggestive, most impressive utterance of the world's best
minds, at their best moments, from the Psalmist to Wordsworth, from the
_Iliad_ to _The Ring and the Book_. Meanwhile its outward vesture is
full of art and beauty.
And without going further we ask, how can one stand in habitual
communion with wise, seminal and impressive speech; how can one
saturate oneself with its wisdom and energy, without being the better
equipped for the demands of both the life within and the life without?
"Consider," says Emerson, "what you have in the smallest chosen library.
A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all
civil countries have set in their best order the results of their wisdom
and learning." Well, let us keep company like that, and what is the
result? The value of great literature is that it conveys an endless
number of eternal truths for the use and enrichment of human life:
moreover it conveys them by a medium of language of such peculiar power
and beauty that those truths penetrate keenly into the heart and brain,
and, at least in some measure, and often in very large measure, they
find a fixed and perennial lodgment there. They enter the blood which
reddens our whole mental complexion.
* * * * *
This is true of literature in general, but, though the wisdom and the
wit and the passion are found in both prose and verse, the crowning form
of literature--and that which all literary societies inevitably study
most--is great poetry. The supreme mastery and our supreme interest lie
with Dante or Shakespeare or Goethe. It is astounding how commonly the
function and the brain power of the great poet are misconceived and
underrated. The supreme poets are no dainty or fragile sentimentalists;
in reality they are the very flower of human penetration. Not because
they write in splendid verse. That, indeed, is the appropriate vehicle
of their power; the harmonies and melodies of verse represent and
reproduce the tone and colour vibrations of their singularly rich
natures; but verse is only their vehicle. These great writers are
supreme, not for this versification, however magnificent, but because
that utterance of theirs is the voice of the seer, the voice of a
marvellous insight into vital truths, of a sane and ripe philosophy of
life, of a wide and profound sympathy with the myriad thoughts and
emotions of mankind. They write in verse simply because, as Hazlitt
describes it, poetry is "the most vivid form of expression that can be
given to our conception of anything." They write in verse because Nature
herself insists on having--
High and passionate thoughts
To their own music chanted.