"In her fair eyes two living lamps did flame,
Kindled above at the Heavenly Maker's light;
And darted fiery beams out of the same,
So passing piercing, and so wondrous bright,
They quite bereaved the rash beholder's sight;
In them the blinded god his lustful fire
To kindle oft essay'd but had no might,
For with dread majesty and awful ire
She broke his wanton darts and quenchëd base desire.
"Her ivory forehead, full of bounty brave,
Like a broad tablet did itself dispread,
For love his lofty triumphs to engrave,
And write the battles of his great godhead;
All good and honor might therein be read,
For there their dwelling was; and when she spake,
Sweet words, like dropping honey she did shed;
And, twixt the pearls and rubies softly brake
A silver Sound, that heavenly music seemed to make."
If we examine this picture, we see that it is not a photograph, such as
the sun makes, but a lover's description of his mistress. He sees her,
not as she is, but as she is to _him_. He paints her out of his own
heart. In her eyes he sees, not only brilliancy and color, but heavenly
light; he reads in them an untouched purity of soul. Looking at her
forehead, he sees, not whiteness and roundness, but goodness and honor.
Shakespeare's lovers always describe their mistresses in this way,
out of their own soul and heart. It is his own feeling that the lover
gives, seeing perhaps "Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt."
After Chaucer and Spenser the next great English poets whose names
naturally occur to us are Shakespeare and Milton.
Now, Shakespeare was the most objective dramatic writer who ever lived;
while Milton was eminently and wholly a subjective and lyrical writer.
It is true that Shakespeare was so great that he is one of the very
few men of genius in whom appear both of these elements. In his plays
he is so objective that he is wholly lost in his characters, and
his personality absolutely disappears; in his sonnets he "unlocks
his heart" and is lyrical and subjective; he there gives us his
inmost self, and we seem to know him as we know a friend with whom
we have lived in intimate relations for years. Still, he will be
best remembered by his plays; and into them he put the grandeur and
universality of his genius; so we must necessarily consider him as the
greatest dramatic genius of all time. But he belonged to a group of
dramatic poets of whom he was the greatest: Ben Jonson, Beaumont and
Fletcher, Massinger, Ford, Webster,--any one of whom would make the
fortune of the stage to-day. It was a great age of dramatic literature,
and it came very naturally to meet a demand. The play then was what the
novel is to-day. As people to-day have no sooner read a new novel than
they want another, so, in Shakespeare's time, they had no sooner seen
a new play than they ran to see another. Hence the amazing fertility
of the dramatic writers. Thomas Heywood wrote the whole or a part
of two hundred and twenty plays. The manager of one of the theatres
bought a hundred and six new plays for his stage in six years; and in
the next five years a hundred and sixty. The price paid to an author
for a play would now be equal to about two or three hundred dollars.
The dramatic element, as is natural, abounds in these writings, though
in some of them the author's genius is plainly lyrical. Such, for
example, is Massinger's, who always reminds me of Schiller. Both wrote
plays, but in both writers the faculty of losing themselves in their
characters is wanting. The nobleness of Schiller appears in all his
works, and constitutes a large part of their charm. So in Massinger all
tends to generosity and elevation. His worst villains are ready to be
converted and turn saints at the least provocation. Their wickedness is
in a condition of unstable equilibrium; it topples over, and goodness
becomes supreme in a single moment. Massinger could not create really
wicked people; their wickedness is like a child's moment of passion
or willfulness, ending presently in a flood of tears, and a sweet
reconciliation with his patient mother. But how different was it with
Shakespeare! Consider his Iago. How deeply rooted was his villainy!
how it was a part of the very texture of his being! He had conformed to
it the whole philosophy of his life. His cynical notions appear in the
first scene. Iago _believes_ in meanness, selfishness, everything that
is base; to him all that seems good is either a pretense or a weakness.
The man who does not seek the gratification of his own desires is a
fool. There is to Iago nothing sweet, pure, fair, or true, in this
world or the next. He profanes everything he touches. He sneers at the
angelic innocence of Desdemona; he sneers at the generous, impulsive
soul of Othello. When some one speaks to him of virtue, he says
"Virtue? a fig! 'tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies
are our gardens, to which our wills are gardeners." You can plant
nettles or lettuce as you please. That is to say, there is no reality
in goodness. The virtue of Desdemona will be gone to-morrow, if she
takes the whim. The Moor's faith in goodness is folly; it will cause
him to be led by the nose. There is no converting such a man as that;
or only when, by means of terrible disappointments and anguish, he is
brought to see the reality of human goodness and divine providence. And
that can hardly happen to him in this world.
Iago is a murderer of the soul, Macbeth a murderer of the body.
The wickedness of Macbeth is different from that of Iago; that of
Shylock and of Richard Third different again from either. Macbeth
is a half-brute, a man in a low state of development, with little
intellect and strong passions. Shylock is a highly intellectual man,
not a cynic like Iago, but embittered by ill-treatment, made venomous
by cruel wrong and perpetual contempt. Oppression has made this wise
man mad. Richard Third, originally bad, has been turned into a cruel
monster by the egotism born of power. He has the contempt for his race
that belongs to the aristocrat, who looks on men in humbler places
as animals of a lower order made for his use or amusement. Now, this
wonderful power of differentiating characters belongs to the essence
of the dramatic faculty. Each of these is developed from within, from
a personal centre, and is true to that. Every manifestation of this
central life is correlated to every other. If one of Shakespeare's
characters says but ten words in one scene, and then ten words more in
another, we recognize him as the same person. His speech bewrayeth him.
So it is in human life. Every man is fatally consistent with himself.
So, after we have seen a number of pictures by any one of the great
masters, we recognize him again, as soon as we enter a gallery. We know
him by a certain style. Inferior artists have a manner; great artists
have a style; manner is born of imitation; style of originality. So,
there is a special quality in every human being, if he will only allow
it to unfold. The dramatic faculty recognizes this. Its knowledge
of man is not a philosophy, nor a mere knowledge of human nature,
but a perception of individual character. It first integrates men as
human beings; then differentiates them as individuals. Play-writers,
novelists, and artists who do not possess this dramatic genius cannot
grow their characters from within, from a personal centre of life;
but build them up from without, according to a plan. In description
of nature, however, Shakespeare is, as he ought to be, subjective and
lyric; he touches nature with human feelings. Take his description of a
brook:--
"The current that with gentle murmur glides
Thou know'st, being stopp'd impatiently doth rage;
But when his fair course is not hindered,
He makes sweet music with the enamell'd stones,
Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge
He overtaketh in his pilgrimage,
And so by many winding nooks he strays
With willing sport to the wild ocean."
The brook is gentle; then it becomes angry; then it is pacified and
begins to sing; then it stops to kiss the sedge; then it is a pilgrim;
and it walks _willingly_ on to the ocean.