versatility. It is truly extraordinary that the same pen should have
given us such finished social portraits as “Suffenus iste” (xxii.), “Ad
Furium” (xxiii.), “In Egnatium” (xxxix.); the perfection of such serious
fooling as we find in the “Lugete, O Veneres” (iii.), and, if we may
apply such an expression to the most delicious love poem ever written,
the “Acme and Septimius” (xlv.); of such humorous fooling as we find in
the “Varus me meus ad suos amores” (x.), the “O Colonia quæ cupis”
(xvii.), the “Adeste, hendecasyllabi,” the “Oramus, si forte non
molestum” (lv.); such epic as we have in the “Peleus and Thetis”; such
triumphs of richness, splendour, and grace as we have in the three
marriage poems; such a superb expression of the highest imaginative
power, penetrated with passion and enthusiasm, as we have in the
_Attis_; such concentrated invective and satire as mark some of the
lampoons; such mock heroic as we have in the _Coma Berenices_; such
piercing pathos as penetrates the autobiographical poems, and the poems
dedicated to Lesbia.
Catullus has been compared to Keats, but the comparison is not a happy
one. His nearest analogy among modern poets is Burns. Both were, in
Tennyson’s phrase, “dowered with the love of love, the scorn of scorn,”
and, in the poems of both, those passions find the intensest expression.
Both had an exquisite sympathy with all that appeals, either in nature
or in humanity, to the senses and the affections. Both were sensualists
and libertines without being effeminate, or without being either
depraved or hardened. In both, indeed, an infinite tenderness is perhaps
the predominating feature. Both had humour, that of Catullus being the
more caustic, that of Burns the more genial. Both were distinguished by
sincerity and simplicity; both waged war with charlatanry and baseness.
Burns had the richer nature and was the greater as a man; Catullus was
the more accomplished artist.
But it is time to turn to the book which has recalled Catullus and
Lesbia. Mr. Tremenheere has, with great ingenuity, succeeded in
concocting by a process of elaborate dovetailing a very pretty romance
which he divides into nine chapters, the first being “The Birth of
Love,” the second, third and fourth, “Possession,” “Quarrels” and
“Reconciliation,” the fifth, sixth, and seventh, “Doubt,” “A Brother’s
Death” and “Unfaithfulness,” the last two, “Avoidance” and “The Death of
Love.” The chief objection to this is that it is for the most part
fanciful, and is absolutely without warrant, either from tradition or
from probability. Many of the poems pressed into the service of his
narrative by Mr. Tremenheere have nothing whatever to do with Lesbia.
Such would be xiii., “The invitation to Fabullus,” xiv., “The Acme and
Septimius.”
The translations are very unequal. Of many of them it may be said in
Dogberry’s phrase that they “are tolerable and not to be endured,” or to
borrow an expression from Byron “so middling bad were better.” Thus the
powerful poem to Gellius (xci.) is attenuated into:--
’Twas not that I esteem’d you were
As constant or incapable
Of vulgar baseness, but that she
For whom great love was wasting me,
The spice of incest lacked for you;
And though we were old friends, ’tis true,
That seem’d poor cause to my poor mind,
Not so to yours.
Sometimes the versions are detestable. Nothing could be worse than to
turn:--
Nulli illum pueri nullæ optavere puellæ
No more is she glad to the eyes of a lad,
To the lasses a pride,--
or
Dulcis pueri ebrios ocellos
as
Her minion’s passion-sodden eyes,--
which might do very well for a coarse phrase like “In Venerem putres,”
but not for “Ebrios.” But sometimes the renderings are very felicitous.
As here:--
Quid vis? quâlubet esse notus optas
Eris: quandoquidem meos amores
Cum longâ voluisti amare pœnâ.
Cost what it may, you’ll win renown!
You shall, such longing you exhibit
Both for my mistress--and a gibbet!
And the following is happy:--
Nullum amans vere, sed identidem omnium
Ilia rumpens.
Nec meum respectet, ut ante, amorem
Qui illius culpâ cecidit; velut prati
Ultimi flos, prætereunte postquam
Tactus aratro est.
Ah, shameless, loveless lust, sweet, seek no more
To win love back, by thine own fault it fell,
In the far corner of the field though hid,
Touch’d by the plough at last,--the flower is dead.
The following also is neat and skilful, but how inferior to the almost
terrible impressiveness of the original:--
O Di si vostrûm est misereri, aut si quibus unquam
Extremâ jam ipsâ in morte tulistis opem.
Me miserum adspicite, et si vitam puriter egi,
Eripite hanc pestem perniciemque mihi,
Quæ mihi subrepens imos, ut torpor, in artus
Expulit ex omni pectore lætitias.
Oh God! if Thine be pity, and if Thou
E’en in the jaws of death ere now,
Hast wrought salvation--look on me;
And if my life seem fair to Thee
O tear this plague, this curse away,
Which gaining on me day by day,
A creeping slow paralysis,
Hath driven away all happiness.
Six love stories stand out conspicuous in the records of poetry--those
which find expression in the _Elegies_ of Propertius, in the _Sonnets
and Canzoni_ of Dante and Petrarch, in the _Sonnets_ of Camoens, in the
_Astrophel and Stella_ of Sidney, in the _Sonnets_ of Shakespeare. But
never has passion, never has pathos, thrilled in intenser or more
piercing utterance than in the poems which that fatal “Clytemnestra
quadrantaria”--to employ the phrase which may actually have been applied
to her--inspired, and in which the rapture and loathing and despair of
Catullus found a voice.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 48: “If the silent dead can feel any pleasure, or solace from
our sorrow, Calvus, when, in wistful regret, we recall past loves, and
weep for the friendships severed long ago, then be sure that Quintilia’s
grief for her early death is not so great as the joy she feels in
knowing your love for her.”]
THE RELIGION OF SHAKESPEARE[49]
[Footnote 49: _The Religion of Shakespeare._ Chiefly from the writings
of the late Mr. Richard Simpson. By Henry Sebastian Bowden. London.]
This book, which is partly a compilation from the uncollected writings
of the late Richard Simpson and partly the composition of Father Bowden
himself, is an attempt to show that Shakespeare was a Roman Catholic. It
contains much interesting information; it is well written, and we have
read it with pleasure. With much which we find in it we entirely concur
and are in full sympathy. We take Shakespeare quite as seriously as
Father Bowden does. We believe that the greatest of dramatic poets is
also one of the greatest of moral teachers, that his theology and ethics
deserve the most careful study, and that they have, too frequently, been
either neglected or misinterpreted. We agree with Father Bowden that
nothing could be sounder and more persistently emphasised than the
ethical element in this poet’s dramas; that his ethics are, in the
main, the ethics of Christianity, and that so far from Shakespeare being
simply an agnostic and having no religion at all, as Birch and others
have contended, he is, if not formally, at least in essence, as
religious as Æschylus and Sophocles.
And now Father Bowden must forgive us if we are unable to go further
with him. We have no prejudice against Roman Catholicism, or against any
of the creeds in which religious faith and reverence have found
expression,--“Tros Rutulusve fuat nullo discrimine agetur.” Our sole
wish is, if possible, to get at the truth. It is of comparatively little
consequence now to what form of religion Shakespeare belonged, but it
would be at least interesting, if it could be shown that any particular
sect could legitimately claim him.
In discussing this question we must bear in mind that in Shakespeare’s
time, as in the time of the ancients, religion had two aspects, its
private and its public. In its public aspect it was a part of the
machinery of the state, an essential portion of the political fabric.
Till the Reformation there had been practically no schism and no
difficulty. After the Reformation a most perplexing problem presented
itself. Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, in a long and terrible
conflict, struggled for the mastery. At the accession of Elizabeth the
victory had been won, so far as England was concerned, by Protestantism,
and Protestantism was the accepted religion of the nation. As such, it
was the duty of every loyal citizen to uphold it; it became with the
throne one of the two pillars on which the fabric of the state rested.
Roman Catholicism became identified with the political rivals and
enemies of England. Protestantism became identified with her lovers and
upholders. Thus the Church and the Throne became indissoluble, at once
the symbols, centres, and securities of political harmony and union.
This accounts for the attitude of Hooker, Spenser, Shakespeare and Bacon
towards Episcopalian Protestantism on the one hand, and towards
Puritanism on the other. About Shakespeare’s political opinions there
can be no doubt at all, for, if we except the Comedies, he preaches them
emphatically in almost every drama which he has left us. They were those
of an uncompromising and intolerant Royalist, in whose eyes the only
security for all that is dear to the patriot lay in implicit obedience
to the will of the sovereign, and in upholding a system to which that
will was law. That he should, therefore, have had any sympathy with the
Roman Catholics is, on _a priori_ grounds, exceedingly improbable. We
turn to his Dramas, and what do we find? It would be no exaggeration to
say, that there is not a line in them which indicates that he regarded
the Roman Catholics with favour. On the contrary, they abound in points
directed against them. Thus he twice goes out of his way, once in
_Henry V._[50] and once in _All’s Well that Ends Well_, to observe that
“miracles have ceased.” There is a bitter sneer at them in the reference
to the sanctimonious pirate and the commandments, in _Measure for
Measure_.[51] There can be little doubt that the words in the porter’s
speech in _Macbeth_, “here’s an equivocator that could swear in both the
scales against either scale, who committed treason enough for God’s
sake, yet could not equivocate to Heaven,” have sarcastic reference to
the doctrine of equivocation avowed by Garnett and popularly associated
with the Jesuits; while the remark about the fitness of “the nun’s lip
to the friar’s mouth”[52] in _All’s Well that Ends Well_ is another
concession to Protestant prejudice.
In _King John_ such a speech as the following may be dramatic, but who
can doubt that it expressed the poet’s own sentiments?--
Tell him this tale; and from the mouth of England
Add thus much more,--that no Italian priest
Shall tithe or toll in our dominions;
But, as we under Heaven are supreme head,
So, under Him, that great supremacy,
Where we do reign, we will alone uphold,
Without the assistance of a mortal hand:
So tell the Pope; all reverence set apart
To him, and his usurp’d authority.
_King John_ is, indeed, simply the manifesto of Protestantism against
papal aggression. What could be more contemptible than the character of
Pandulph and the part which he plays? Is it credible that Shakespeare
could have had any sympathy with a religion whose minister is one whom
he represents as saying:
Meritorious shall that hand be called,
Canonized, and worshipped as a saint,
That takes away by any secret course
Thy hateful life.
In _Henry VIII._, again, we have an elaborate eulogy of the Reformation,
Cranmer being presented in the most favourable light, Gardiner in the
most unfavourable, while Wolsey is almost as detestable as Pandulph.
It is really pitiable to see the shifts to which the authors of this
book are reduced to make out their theory. They have even pressed into
its service Jordan’s palpable and long-exploded forgery of John
Shakespeare’s Will, and the fact that John Shakespeare’s name is found
on a list of Recusants, when it is, in that very list, expressly stated
that he had absented himself from church, simply from fear of process
for debt. Passages in the dramas are similarly perverted. Shakespeare’s
hostility to the Protestants induced him, we are told, to pour contempt
on Oldcastle by depicting him as Falstaff. His delineation of Malvolio,
and his frequent sneers at the Puritans, are attributed to the same
motive. The famous lines in _Hamlet_, placed in the mouth of the Ghost,
are cited to prove his belief in purgatory; the comical penances imposed
on Biron and his friends in _Love’s Labour Lost_ to prove his belief in
penance. When in _Lear_ it is said of Cordelia that:--
She shook
The holy water from her heavenly eyes.
we are to see another indication of Shakespeare’s religion as “they have
a Catholic ring about them.” Sentiments which are common to all sects of
Christians are regarded as peculiar to Roman Catholicism; mere dramatic
utterances are forced into illustrations of supposed personal
convictions. What is habitually and systematically ignored is, that
Shakespeare, being a dramatic poet, must necessarily make his characters
express themselves dramatically, and that, as he was depicting times
preceding the Reformation, his sentiments and expressions very naturally
took the colour of the world in which his characters moved. The wonder
is not that this should have occurred, but that Shakespeare should, in
spite of the gross anachronism of such a process, have so
_Protestantized_ pre-Reformation times. We are quite willing to concede
to Father Bowden that there is enough to warrant us in assuming that
Shakespeare did not regard the Puritans with favour. But his dislike to
them arose not from the fact that they were Protestants, but that they
were not orthodox Protestants. He was opposed to them for the same
reasons that Elizabeth and James, Hooker and Bacon were opposed to them.
Their hostility to his profession, their sanctimonious cant, and the
surly asceticism of their lives, no doubt contributed to his prejudice
against them.
Nor are we in any way justified in concluding that Shakespeare accepted
the teaching of the Church of Rome in spiritual matters. Nothing could
be more unwarranted than what is assumed by Father Bowden in the
following passage. He is speaking of Shakespeare’s attitude in relation
to death. “‘Ripeness is all’; and he shows us in all his penitents how
that ripeness is secured, sin forgiven, and heaven won on the lines of
Catholic dogma and by the Sacraments of the Church.”
What are the facts? Shakespeare’s reticence about a future state, and
what may await man, in the form of reward and punishment hereafter, is
one of his most striking characteristics. Neither Cordelia nor
Desdemona, neither Constance nor Imogen in their darkest hours expresses
any confidence in the final mercy and justice of Heaven. Othello,
falling by a fate as terrible as it was undeserved, dies without a
syllable of hope. “The rest is silence” are the ominous words with which
Hamlet takes leave of life. When Gloucester believes himself to be
standing on the brink of death, in the farewell which he takes of the
world he has no anticipation of any other; all he contemplates is “to
shake patiently his great affliction off.” So die Lear, Hotspur, Romeo,
Antony, Eros, Enobarbus, Macbeth, Beaufort, Mercutio, Laertes. So die
Brutus, Coriolanus, King John. In the Duke’s speech in _Measure for
Measure_, where he is preparing Claudio to meet death, death is merely
contemplated as an escape from the pains and discomforts of life.
Macbeth would ‘jump’ the world to come if he could escape punishment in
this. Prospero suggests no hope of any waking from the “rounding sleep.”
Even Isabella, dedicated as she was to religion, in fortifying Claudio
against his fate draws no weapon from the armoury of faith. It is just
the same in the dirge in Cymbeline, in the soliloquy of Posthumus, in
the consolations addressed by the gaoler to Posthumus.[53]
The last passage is perhaps more remarkable than any, because it shows
the utter ambiguity of the directest expression which the poet has left
on the subject.
_Gaol._--Look you, sir, you know not which way you go.
_Post._--Yes, indeed do I, fellow.
_Gaol._--Your death has eyes in ’s head then; I have not seen
him so pictured: you must either be directed by some that take
upon them to know, or take upon yourself, that which I am sure
you do not know; or jump the after inquiry on your own peril;
and how you shall speed in your journey’s end, I think you’ll
never return to tell one.
_Post._--I tell thee, fellow, _there are none want eyes to
direct them the way I am going, but such as wink, and will not
use them_.
_Cymbeline_, V. 4.
Shakespeare, in truth, never attempts to lift the veil which for living
man can be raised only by Revelation. The silence of his
philosophy,--for we must not confound occasional sentiments and mere
dramatic utterances with what justifies us in deducing that
philosophy,--in relation to a life after this, is unbroken. It is,
indeed, remarkable that he represents such speculations,--the dwelling
on such problems,--as more likely to disturb, perplex, and hamper us,
than to give us any comfort. As Hamlet puts it in the well-known
lines:--
The native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
Did he believe in the immortality of the soul and in a future state? Who
can say? What we can say is, that if we require affirmative evidence of
such a faith, we shall seek for it in vain. In the Sonnets, where he
seems to speak from himself, the only immortality to which he refers is
the permanence of the impression which his genius as a poet will
leave--immortality in the sense in which Cicero and Tacitus have so
eloquently interpreted the term. But on the other hand, if there is
nothing to warrant a conclusion in the affirmative, there is nothing to
warrant one in the negative. His attitude is precisely that of Aristotle
in the _Ethics_; a life beyond this is neither affirmed nor denied, but
the scale of probability inclines towards the negative, and his moral
philosophy proceeds on the assumption that life is the end of life.[54]
Goethe has said that man was not born to solve the problems of the
universe, but to attempt to solve them, that he might keep within the
limits of the knowable. And it is within the limits of the knowable that
Shakespeare’s theology confines itself. Starting simply, as Gervinus
says, from the point, that man is born with powers and faculties which
he is to use, and with powers of self-regulation and self-determination
which are to direct aright the powers of action, the “Whence we are,”
and the “Whither we are going,” are problems for which he has no
solution.[55]
Men must endure
Their going hence e’en as their coming hither:
Ripeness is all.
And for ripeness or unripeness, man’s will is responsible. He would
probably have agreed with the saying of Heraclitus, ηθος
ανθρωπω δαιμων. Throughout his Dramas all is explicable, with the
single exception of Macbeth, without reference to supernaturalism.
Perfectly intelligible effects follow perfectly intelligible causes; the
moral law solves all. But especially conspicuous is the absence of the
theological element where we should especially have looked for it. “Men
and women,” says Brewer, “are made to drain the cup of misery to the
dregs; but, as from the depths into which they have fallen, by their own
weakness, or by the weakness of others, the poet never raises them, in
violation of the inexorable laws of nature, so neither does he put a new
song in their mouths, or any expression of confidence in God’s righteous
dealing. With as hard and precise a hand as Bacon does he sunder the
celestial from the terrestrial kingdom, the things of earth from the
things of heaven.”[56]
His theology, indeed, in its application to life, seems to resolve
itself into the recognition of universal law, divinely appointed,
immutable, inexorable, ubiquitous, controlling the physical world,
controlling the moral world, vindicating itself in the smallest facts of
life, and in the most stupendous convulsions of nature and society. In
morals it is maintained by the observance of the mean on the one hand,
and the due fulfilment of duty and obligation on the other. In politics
it is maintained by the subordination of the individual to the state,
and of the state to the higher law. Hooker says of Law, that as her
voice is the harmony of the world, so her seat is the bosom of God. The
Law Shakespeare recognises; of the Law-giver he is silent. As he is dumb
before the mystery of death, so is he equally reticent in the face of
that other mystery. He has nothing of the anthropomorphism of the Old
Testament, of the Homeric poems, and of Milton. Nor has he ever
expressed himself as Goethe has done in the famous passage in _Faust_,
beginning: “Wer darf ihn nennen.” In two important respects he seems to
differ from the Christian conception. He represents no miraculous
interpositions of Providence, no suspension of natural laws in favour of
the righteous, and to the detriment of the wicked. He is too reverend to
say with Goethe, that man, so far as direction in action goes, is
practically his own divinity. But he does say and represent--and that
repeatedly--what is expressed in such passages as these:--
Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie
Which we ascribe to Heaven: the fated sky
Gives us full scope.
_All’s Well that Ends Well._
Men at some time are masters of their fate.
_Julius Cæsar._
Omission to do what is necessary
Seals a commission to a blank of danger.
_Troilus and Cressida._
And we have no right to expect that Providence will cancel it. If deeds
do not go with prayer, prayer is not likely to be of much avail. So the
Bishop of Carlisle in _Richard II._:--
The means that Heaven yields must be embrac’d
And not neglected; else if Heaven would
And we will not, Heav’n’s offer we refuse:--
while the words which he puts into the mouth of Leonine in _Pericles_
are, we feel, significant:--
Pray: but be not tedious,
For the Gods are quick of ear, and I am sworn
To do my work with haste.
He has no sympathy with pious recluses. He has depicted no saint or
religious enthusiast, or written a line to indicate that he had any
respect for their ideals. With him,--
Spirits are not finely touched
But to fine issues.
They say best men are moulded out of faults,
And, for the most, become much more the better
For being a little bad.
Most subject is the fattest soil to weeds
are typical axioms in his philosophy of life. And the nearest approaches
he has given us to the saintly type of character are the sentimental
pietists, Henry VI. and Richard II., both of whom are failures, and
border closely on moral imbecility. On the spiritual and moral efficacy
of faith, he has nowhere laid stress. In his innumerable reflections on
life and man, in his maxims and precepts, there is, as a rule, scarcely
any flavour of Christian theology. They are just such as might be
expected from a pure rationalist. Such is the philosophy of Hamlet, of
Jacques, of the Duke in _Measure for Measure_, and of Prospero. Even
Friar Laurence, though an ecclesiastic, reasons and advises just as a
Stoic philosopher might have done. The friars in _Much Ado about
Nothing_, and in _Measure for Measure_, the Bishop of Carlisle in
_Richard II._, and the Archbishops of Canterbury and York in _Henry IV._
and _Henry V._, and Cardinal Beaufort in _Henry VI._, act and speak like
mere men of the world. A bulky volume would scarcely sum up the ethical
and political reflections scattered up and down his plays; a few pages
would comprise all that could be put down as exclusively theological.
This complete subordination of the theological element to the ethical is
the more conspicuous when we compare his dramas with the Homeric Epics,
and with the tragedies of Æschylus and Sophocles.