the Religion of the Middle Ages, the Religion of our Modern Europe, its
Inner Life; so Shakespeare, we may say, embodies for us the Outer Life
of our Europe as developed then, its chivalries, courtesies, humours,
ambitions, what practical way of thinking, acting, looking at the world,
men then had. As in Homer we may still construe Old Greece; so in
Shakespeare and Dante, after thousands of years, what our modern Europe
was, in Faith and in Practice, will still be legible. Dante has given us
the Faith or soul; Shakespeare, in a not less noble way, has given us
the Practice or body. This latter also we were to have; a man was sent
for it, the man Shakespeare. Just when that chivalry way of life had
reached its last finish, and was on the point of breaking down into slow
or swift dissolution, as we now see it everywhere, this other sovereign
Poet, with his seeing eye, with his perennial singing voice, was sent to
take note of it, to give long-enduring record of it. Two fit men: Dante,
deep, fierce as the central fire of the world; Shakespeare, wide,
placid, far-seeing, as the Sun, the upper light of the world. Italy
produced the one world-voice; we English had the honour of producing the
other.
Curious enough how, as it were by mere accident, this man came to us. I
think always, so great, quiet, complete and self-sufficing is this
Shakespeare, had the Warwickshire Squire not prosecuted him for
deer-stealing, we had perhaps never heard of him as a Poet! The woods
and skies, the rustic Life of Man in Stratford there, had been enough
for this man! But indeed that strange outbudding of our whole English
Existence, which we call the Elizabethan Era, did not it too come as of
its own accord? The "Tree Igdrasil" buds and withers by its own
laws,--too deep for our scanning. Yet it does bud and wither, and every
bough and leaf of it is there, by fixed eternal laws; not a Sir Thomas
Lucy but comes at the hour fit for him. Curious, I say, and not
sufficiently considered: how everything does co-operate with all; not a
leaf rotting on the highway but is indissoluble portion of solar and
stellar systems; no thought, word or act of man but has sprung withal
out of all men, and works sooner or later, recognisably or
irrecognisably, on all men! It is all a Tree: circulation of sap and
influences, mutual communication of every minutest leaf with the lowest
talon of a root, with every other greatest and minutest portion of the
whole. The Tree Igdrasil, that has its roots down in the Kingdoms of
Hela and Death, and whose boughs overspread the highest Heaven!
In some sense it may be said that this glorious Elizabethan Era with its
Shakespeare, as the outcome and flowerage of all which had preceded it,
is itself attributable to the Catholicism of the Middle Ages. The
Christian Faith, which was the theme of Dante's Song, had produced this
Practical Life which Shakespeare was to sing. For Religion then, as it
now and always is, was the soul of Practice; the primary vital fact in
men's life. And remark here, as rather curious, that Middle-Age
Catholicism was abolished, so far as Acts of Parliament could abolish
it, before Shakespeare, the noblest product of it, made his appearance.
He did make his appearance nevertheless. Nature at her own time, with
Catholicism or what else might be necessary, sent him forth; taking
small thought of Acts of Parliament. King-Henrys, Queen-Elizabeths go
their way; and Nature too goes hers. Acts of Parliament, on the whole,
are small, notwithstanding the noise they make. What Act of Parliament,
debate at St. Stephen's,[82] on the hustings or elsewhere, was it that
brought this Shakespeare into being? No dining at Freemasons' Tavern,
opening subscription-lists, selling of shares, and infinite other
jangling and true or false endeavouring! This Elizabethan Era, and all
its nobleness and blessedness, came without proclamation, preparation of
ours. Priceless Shakespeare was the free gift of Nature; given
altogether silently; received altogether silently, as if it had been a
thing of little account. And yet, very literally, it is a priceless
thing. One should look at that side of matters too.
Of this Shakespeare of ours, perhaps the opinion one sometimes hears a
little idolatrously expressed is, in fact, the right one; I think the
best judgment not of this country only: but of Europe at large, is
slowly pointing to the conclusion, That Shakespeare is the chief of all
Poets hitherto; the greatest intellect who, in our recorded world, has
left record of himself in the way of Literature. On the whole, I know
not such a power of vision, such a faculty of thought, if we take all
the characters of it, in any other man. Such a calmness of depth; placid
joyous strength; all things imaged in that great soul of his so true and
clear, as in a tranquil unfathomable sea! It has been said, that in the
constructing of Shakespeare's Dramas there is, apart from all other
"faculties" as they are called, an understanding manifested, equal to
that in Bacon's _Novum Organum_. That is true; and it is not a truth
that strikes every one. It would become more apparent if we tried, any
of us for himself, how, out of Shakespeare's dramatic materials, _we_
could fashion such a result! The built house seems all so fit,--everyway
as it should be, as if it came there by its own law and the nature of
things,--we forget the rude disorderly quarry it was shaped from. The
very perfection of the house, as if Nature herself had made it, hides
the builder's merit. Perfect, more perfect than any other man, we may
call Shakespeare in this: he discerns, knows as by instinct, what
condition he works under, what his materials are, what his own force and
its relation to them is. It is not a transitory glance of insight that
will suffice; it is deliberate illumination of the whole matter; it is a
calmly _seeing_ eye; a great intellect, in short. How a man, of some
wide thing that he has witnessed, will construct a narrative, what kind
of picture and delineation he will give of it--is the best measure you
could get of what intellect is in the man. Which circumstance is vital
and shall stand prominent; which unessential, fit to be suppressed;
where is the true _beginning_, the true sequence and ending? To find out
this, you task the whole force of insight that is in the man. He must
_understand_ the thing; according to the depth of his understanding,
will the fitness of his answer be. You will try him so. Does like join
itself to like; does the spirit of method stir in that confusion, so
that its embroilment becomes order? Can the man say, _Fiat lux_, Let
there be light; and out of chaos make a world? Precisely as there is
_light_ in himself, will he accomplish this.
Or indeed we may say again, it is in what I called Portrait-painting,
delineating of men and things, especially of men, that Shakespeare is
great. All the greatness of the man comes out decisively here. It is
unexampled, I think, that calm creative perspicacity of Shakespeare. The
thing he looks at reveals not this or that face of it, but its inmost
heart, and generic secret: it dissolves itself as in light before him,
so that he discerns the perfect structure of it. Creative, we said:
poetic creation, what is this too but _seeing_ the thing sufficiently?
The _word_ that will describe the thing, follows of itself from such
clear intense sight of the thing. And is not Shakespeare's _morality_,
his valour, candour, tolerance, truthfulness; his whole victorious
strength and greatness, which can triumph over such obstructions,
visible there too? Great as the world! No _twisted_, poor convex-concave
mirror, reflecting all objects with its own convexities and concavities;
a perfectly _level_ mirror--that is to say withal, if we will
understand it, a man justly related to all things and men, a good man.
It is truly a lordly spectacle how this great soul takes-in all kinds of
men and objects, a Falstaff, an Othello, a Juliet, a Coriolanus; sets
them all forth to us in their round completeness; loving, just, the
equal brother of all. _Novum Organum_, and all the intellect you will
find in Bacon, is of a quite secondary order; earthy, material, poor in
comparison with this. Among modern men, one finds, in strictness, almost
nothing of the same rank. Goethe alone, since the days of Shakespeare,
reminds me of it. Of him too you say that he _saw_ the object; you may
say what he himself says of Shakespeare: "His characters are like
watches with dial-plates of transparent crystal; they show you the hour
like others, and the inward mechanism also is all visible."
The seeing eye! It is this that discloses the inner harmony of things;
what Nature meant, what musical idea Nature has wrapped-up in these
often rough embodiments. Something she did mean. To the seeing eye that
something were discernible. Are they base, miserable things? You can
laugh over them, you can weep over them; you can in some way or other
genially relate yourself to them--you can, at lowest, hold your peace
about them, turn away your own and others' face from them, till the hour
come for practically exterminating and extinguishing them! At bottom, it
is the Poet's first gift, as it is all men's, that he have intellect
enough. He will be a Poet if he have: a Poet in word; or failing that,
perhaps still better, a Poet in act. Whether he write at all, and if so,
whether in prose or in verse, will depend on accidents: who knows on
what extremely trivial accidents,--perhaps on his having had a
singing-master, on his being taught to sing in his boyhood! But the
faculty which enables him to discern the inner heart of things, and the
harmony that dwells there (for whatsoever exists has a harmony in the
heart of it, or it would not hold together and exist), is not the result
of habits or accidents, but the gift of Nature herself; the primary
outfit for a Heroic Man in what sort soever. To the Poet, as to every
other, we say first of all _See_. If you cannot do that, it is of no use
to keep stringing rhymes together, jingling sensibilities against each
other, and _name_ yourself a Poet; there is no hope for you. If you can,
there is, in prose or verse, in action or speculation, all manner of
hope. The crabbed old Schoolmaster used to ask, when they brought him a
new pupil, "But are ye sure he's _not a dunce_?" Why, really one might
ask the same thing, in regard to every man proposed for whatsoever
function; and consider it as the one inquiry needful: Are ye sure he's
not a dunce? There is, in this world, no other entirely fatal person.
For, in fact, I say the degree of vision that dwells in a man is a
correct measure of the man. If called to define Shakespeare's faculty, I
should say superiority of Intellect, and think I had included all under
that. What indeed are faculties? We talk of faculties as if they were
distinct, things separable; as if a man had intellect, imagination,
fancy, etc., as he has hands, feet and arms. That is a capital error.
Then again, we hear of a man's "intellectual nature," and of his "moral
nature," as if these again were divisible, and existed apart.
Necessities of language do perhaps prescribe such forms of utterance; we
must speak, I am aware, in that way, if we are to speak at all. But
words ought not to harden into things for us. It seems to me, our
apprehension of this matter is, for most part, radically falsified
thereby. We ought to know withal, and to keep forever in mind, that
these divisions are at bottom but _names_; that man's spiritual nature,
the vital Force which dwells in him, is essentially one and indivisible;
that what we call imagination, fancy, understanding, and so forth, are
but different figures of the same Power of Insight, all indissolubly
connected with each other, physiognomically related; that if we knew one
of them, we might know all of them. Morality itself, what we call the
moral quality of a man, what is this but another _side_ of the one vital
Force whereby he is and works? All that a man does is physiognomical of
him. You may see how a man would fight, by the way in which he sings;
his courage, or want of courage, is visible in the word he utters, in
the opinion he has formed, no less than in the stroke he strikes. He is
_one_; and preaches the same Self abroad in all these ways.
Without hands a man might have feet, and could still walk: but, consider
it--without morality, intellect were impossible for him; a thoroughly
immoral _man_ could not know anything at all! To know a thing, what we
can call knowing, a man must first _love_ the thing, sympathise with it:
that is, be _virtuously_ related to it. If he have not the justice to
put down his own selfishness at every turn, the courage to stand by the
dangerous true at every turn, how shall he know? His virtues, all of
them, will lie recorded in his knowledge. Nature, with her truth,
remains to the bad, to the selfish and the pusillanimous forever a
sealed book: what such can know of Nature is mean, superficial, small;
for the uses of the day merely. But does not the very Fox know something
of Nature? Exactly so: it knows where the geese lodge! The human
Reynard, very frequent everywhere in the world, what more does he know
but this and the like of this? Nay, it should be considered too, that if
the Fox had not a certain vulpine _morality_, he could not even know
where the geese were, or get at the geese! If he spent his time in
splenetic atrabiliar reflections on his own misery, his ill usage by
Nature, Fortune and other Foxes, and so forth; and had not courage,
promptitude, practicality, and other suitable vulpine gifts and graces,
he would catch no geese. We may say of the Fox too, that his morality
and insight are of the same dimensions; different faces of the same
internal unity of vulpine life! These things are worth stating; for the
contrary of them acts with manifold very baleful perversion, in this
time: what limitations, modifications they require, your own candour
will supply.
If I say, therefore, that Shakespeare is the greatest of Intellects, I
have said all concerning him. But there is more in Shakespeare's
intellect than we have yet seen. It is what I call an unconscious
intellect; there is more virtue in it than he himself is aware of.
Novalis beautifully remarks of him, that those Dramas of his are
Products of Nature too, deep as Nature herself. I find a great truth in
this saying. Shakespeare's Art is not Artifice; the noblest worth of it
is not there by plan or precontrivance. It grows-up from the deeps of
Nature, through this noble sincere soul, who is a voice of Nature. The
latest generations of men will find new meanings in Shakespeare, new
elucidations of their own human being; "new harmonies with the infinite
structure of the Universe; concurrences with later ideas, affinities
with the higher powers and senses of man." This well deserves
meditating. It is Nature's highest reward to a true simple great soul,
that he get thus to be _a part of herself_. Such a man's works,
whatsoever he with utmost conscious exertion and forethought shall
accomplish, grow up withal _un_consciously, from the unknown deeps in
him;--as the oak-tree grows from the Earth's bosom, as the mountains and
waters shape themselves; with a symmetry grounded on Nature's own laws,
conformable to all Truth whatsoever. How much in Shakespeare lies hid;
his sorrows, his silent struggles known to himself; much that was not
known at all, not speakable at all: like _roots_, like sap and forces
working underground! Speech is great; but Silence is greater.
Withal the joyful tranquillity of this man is notable. I will not blame
Dante for his misery: it is as battle without victory; but true
battle,--the first, indispensable thing. Yet I call Shakespeare greater
than Dante, in that he fought truly, and did conquer. Doubt it not, he
had his own sorrows: those _Sonnets_ of his will even testify expressly
in what deep waters he had waded, and swum struggling for his life--as
what man like him ever failed to have to do? It seems to me a heedless
notion, our common one, that he sat like a bird on the bough; and sang
forth, free and offhand, never knowing the troubles of other men. Not
so; with no man is it so. How could a man travel forward from rustic
deer-poaching to such tragedy-writing, and not fall-in with sorrows by
the way? Or, still better, how could a man delineate a Hamlet, a
Coriolanus, a Macbeth, so many suffering heroic hearts, if his own
heroic heart had never suffered?--And now, in contrast with all this,
observe his mirthfulness, his genuine overflowing love of laughter! You
would say, in no point does he _exaggerate_ but only in laughter. Fiery
objurgations, words that pierce and burn, are to be found in
Shakespeare; yet he is always in measure here; never what Johnson would
remark as a specially "good hater." But his laughter seems to pour from
him in floods; he heaps all manner of ridiculous nicknames on the butt
he is bantering, tumbles and tosses him in all sorts of horse-play; you
would say, with his whole heart laughs. And then, if not always the
finest, it is always a genial laughter. Not at mere weakness, at misery
or poverty; never. No man who _can_ laugh, what we call laughing, will
laugh at these things. It is some poor character only _desiring_ to
laugh, and have the credit of wit, that does so. Laughter means
sympathy; good laughter is not "the crackling of thorns under the pot."
Even at stupidity and pretension this Shakespeare does not laugh
otherwise than genially. Dogberry and Verges tickle our very hearts; and
we dismiss them covered with explosions of laughter: but we like the
poor fellows only the better for our laughing; and hope they will get on
well there, and continue Presidents of the City-watch. Such laughter,
like sunshine on the deep sea, is very beautiful to me.
We have no room to speak of Shakespeare's individual works; though
perhaps there is much still waiting to be said on that head. Had we, for
instance, all his plays reviewed as _Hamlet_, in _Wilhelm Meister_, is!
A thing which might, one day, be done. August Wilhelm Schlegel has a
remark on his Historical Plays, _Henry Fifth_ and the others, which is
worth remembering. He calls them a kind of National Epic. Marlborough,
you recollect, said, he knew no English History but what he had learned
from Shakespeare. There are really, if we look to it, few as memorable
Histories. The great salient points are admirably seized; all rounds
itself off, into a kind of rhythmic coherence; it is, as Schlegel says,
_epic_;--as indeed all delineation by a great thinker will be. There are
right beautiful things in those Pieces, which indeed together form one
beautiful thing. That battle of Agincourt strikes me as one of the most
perfect things, in its sort, we anywhere have of Shakespeare's. The
description of the two hosts: the wornout, jaded English; the dread
hour, big with destiny, when the battle shall begin; and then that
deathless valour: "Ye good yeomen, whose limbs were made in England!"
There is a noble Patriotism in it--far other than the "indifference" you
sometimes hear ascribed to Shakespeare. A true English heart breathes,
calm and strong, through the whole business; not boisterous, protrusive;
all the better for that. There is a sound in it like the ring of steel.
This man too had a right stroke in him, had it come to that!
But I will say, of Shakespeare's works generally, that we have no full
impress of him there; even as full as we have of many men. His works are
so many windows, through which we see a glimpse of the world that was in
him. All his works seem, comparatively speaking, cursory, imperfect,
written under cramping circumstances; giving only here and there a note
of the full utterance of the man. Passages there are that come upon you
like splendour out of Heaven; bursts of radiance, illuminating the very
heart of the thing: you say, "That is _true_, spoken once and forever;
wheresoever and whensoever there is an open human soul, that will be
recognised as true!" Such bursts, however, make us feel that the
surrounding matter is not radiant; that it is in part, temporary,
conventional. Alas, Shakespeare had to write for the Globe Playhouse:
his great soul had to crush itself, as it could, into that and no other
mould. It was with him, then, as it is with us all. No man works save
under conditions. The sculptor, cannot set his own free Thought before
us; but his Thought as he could translate it into the stone that was
given, with the tools that were given. _Disjecta membra_[83] are all
that we find of any Poet, or of any man.
Whoever looks intelligently at this Shakespeare may recognise that he
too was a _Prophet_, in his way; of an insight analogous to the
Prophetic, though he took it up in another strain. Nature seemed to this
man also divine; _un_speakable, deep as Tophet, high as Heaven: "We are
such stuff as Dreams are made of!" That scroll in Westminster Abbey,[84]
which few read with understanding, is of the depth of any seer. But the
man sang; did not preach, except musically. We called Dante the
melodious Priest of Middle-Age Catholicism. May we not call Shakespeare
the still more melodious Priest of a _true_ Catholicism, the "Universal
Church" of the Future and of all times? No narrow superstition, harsh
asceticism, intolerance, fanatical fierceness or perversion: a
Revelation, so far as it goes, that such a thousandfold hidden beauty
and divineness dwells in all Nature; which let all men worship as they
can! We may say without offence, that there rises a kind of universal
Psalm out of this Shakespeare too; not unfit to make itself heard among
the still more sacred Psalms. Not in disharmony with these, if we
understood them, but in harmony!--I cannot call this Shakespeare a
"Sceptic," as some do; his indifference to the creeds and theological
quarrels of his time misleading them. No: neither unpatriotic, though he
says little about his Patriotism; nor sceptic, though he says little
about his Faith. Such "indifference" was the fruit of his greatness
withal: his whole heart was in his own grand sphere of worship (we may
call it such); these other controversies, vitally important to other
men, were not vital to him.
But call it worship, call it what you will, is it not a right glorious
thing, and set of things, this that Shakespeare has brought us? For
myself, I feel that there is actually a kind of sacredness in the fact
of such a man being sent into this Earth. Is he not an eye to us all; a
blessed heaven-sent Bringer of Light?--and, at bottom, was it not
perhaps far better that this Shakespeare, everyway an unconscious man,
was _conscious_ of no Heavenly message? He did not feel, like Mahomet,
because he saw into those internal Splendours, that he specially was the
"Prophet of God:" and was he not greater than Mahomet in that? Greater;
and also, if we compute strictly, as we did in Dante's case, more
successful. It was intrinsically an error that notion of Mahomet's, of
his supreme Prophethood; and has come down to us inextricably involved
in error to this day; dragging along with it such a coil of fables,
impurities, intolerances, as makes it a questionable step for me here
and now to say, as I have done, that Mahomet was a true Speaker at all,
and not rather an ambitious charlatan, perversity and simulacrum; no
Speaker, but a Babbler! Even in Arabia, as I compute, Mahomet will have
exhausted himself and become obsolete, while this Shakespeare, this
Dante may still be young;--while this Shakespeare may still pretend to
be a Priest of Mankind, of Arabia as of other places, for unlimited
periods to come!