Such phrases as 'Shakespeare the man' or 'Shakespeare's personality'
are, no doubt, open to objection. They seem to suggest that, if we could
subtract from Shakespeare the mind that produced his works, the residue
would be the man himself; and that his mind was some pure impersonal
essence unaffected by the accidents of physique, temperament, and
character. If this were so, one could but echo Tennyson's thanksgiving
that we know so little of Shakespeare. But as it is assuredly not so,
and as 'Shakespeare the man' really means the one indivisible
Shakespeare, regarded for the time from a particular point of view, the
natural desire to know whatever can be known of him is not to be
repressed merely because there are people so foolish as to be careless
about his works and yet curious about his private life. For my own part
I confess that, though I should care nothing about the man if he had not
written the works, yet, since we possess them, I would rather see and
hear him for five minutes in his proper person than discover a new one.
And though we may be content to die without knowing his income or even
the surname of Mr. W. H., we cannot so easily resign the wish to find
the man in his writings, and to form some idea of the disposition, the
likes and dislikes, the character and the attitude towards life, of the
human being who seems to us to have understood best our common human
nature.
The answer of course will be that our biographical knowledge of
Shakespeare is so small, and his writings are so completely dramatic,
that this wish, however natural, is idle. But I cannot think so.
Doubtless, in trying to form an idea of Shakespeare, we soon reach the
limits of reasonable certainty; and it is also true that the idea we can
form without exceeding them is far from being as individual as we could
desire. But it is more distinct than is often supposed, and it _is_
reasonably certain; and although we can add to its distinctness only by
more or less probable conjectures, they are not mere guesses, they
really have probability in various degrees. On this whole subject there
is a tendency at the present time to an extreme scepticism, which
appears to me to be justified neither by the circumstances of the
particular case nor by our knowledge of human nature in general.
This scepticism is due in part to the interest excited by Mr. Lee's
discussion of the Sonnets in his _Life_ of Shakespeare, and to the
importance rightly attached to that discussion. The Sonnets are lyrical
poems of friendship and love. In them the poet ostensibly speaks in his
own person and expresses his own feelings. Many critics, no doubt, had
denied that he really did so; but they had not Mr. Lee's knowledge, nor
had they examined the matter so narrowly as he; and therefore they had
not much weakened the general belief that the Sonnets, however
conventional or exaggerated their language may sometimes be, do tell us
a good deal about their author. Mr. Lee, however, showed far more fully
than any previous writer that many of the themes, many even of the
ideas, of these poems are commonplaces of Renaissance sonnet-writing;
and he came to the conclusion that in the Sonnets Shakespeare
'unlocked,' not 'his heart,' but a very different kind of armoury, and
that the sole biographical inference deducible from them is that 'at one
time in his career Shakespeare disdained no weapon of flattery in an
endeavour to monopolise the bountiful patronage of a young man of rank.'
Now, if that inference is correct, it certainly tells us something about
Shakespeare the man; but it also forbids us to take seriously what the
Sonnets profess to tell us of his passionate affection, with its hopes
and fears, its pain and joy; of his pride and his humility, his
self-reproach and self-defence, his weariness of life and his
consciousness of immortal genius. And as, according to Mr. Lee's
statement, the Sonnets alone of Shakespeare's works 'can be held to
throw any illumination on a personal trait,' it seems to follow that, so
far as the works are concerned (for Mr. Lee is not specially sceptical
as to the external testimony), the only idea we can form of the man is
contained in that single inference.
Now, I venture to surmise that Mr. Lee's words go rather beyond his
meaning. But that is not our business here, nor could a brief discussion
do justice to a theory to which those who disagree with it are still
greatly indebted. What I wish to deny is the presupposition which seems
to be frequently accepted as an obvious truth. Even if Mr. Lee's view of
the Sonnets were indisputably correct, nay, if even, to go much further,
the persons and the story in the Sonnets were as purely fictitious as
those of _Twelfth Night_, they might and would still tell us something
of the personality of their author. For however free a poet may be from
the emotions which he simulates, and however little involved in the
conditions which he imagines, he cannot (unless he is a mere copyist)
write a hundred and fifty lyrics expressive of those simulated emotions
without disclosing something of himself, something of the way in which
he in particular _would_ feel and behave under the imagined conditions.
And the same thing holds in principle of the dramas. Is it really
conceivable that a man can write some five and thirty dramas, and
portray in them an enormous amount and variety of human nature, without
betraying anything whatever of his own disposition and preferences? I do
not believe that he could do this, even if he deliberately set himself
to the task. The only question is how much of himself he would betray.
One is entitled to say this, I think, on general grounds; but we may
appeal further to specific experience. Of many poets and novelists we
know a good deal from external sources. And in these cases we find that
the man so known to us appears also in his works, and that these by
themselves would have left on us a personal impression which, though
imperfect and perhaps in this or that point even false, would have been
broadly true. Of course this holds of some writers much more fully than
of others; but, except where the work is very scanty in amount, it seems
to hold in some degree of all.[1] If so, there is an antecedent
probability that it will apply to Shakespeare too. After all, he was
human. We may exclaim in our astonishment that he was as universal and
impartial as nature herself; but this is the language of religious
rapture. If we assume that he was six times as universal as Sir Walter
Scott, which is praise enough for a mortal, we may hope to form an idea
of him from his plays only six times as dim as the idea of Scott that we
should derive from the Waverley Novels.
And this is not all. As a matter of fact, the great majority of
Shakespeare's readers--lovers of poetry untroubled by theories and
questions--do form from the plays some idea of the man. Knowingly or
not, they possess such an idea; and up to a certain point the idea is
the same. Ask such a man whether he thinks Shakespeare was at all like
Shelley, or Wordsworth, or Milton, and it will not occur to him to
answer 'I have not the faintest notion'; he will answer unhesitatingly
No. Ask him whether he supposes that Shakespeare was at all like
Fielding or Scott, and he will probably be found to imagine that, while
differing greatly from both, he did belong to the same type or class.
And such answers unquestionably imply an idea which, however deficient
in detail, is definite.
Again, to go a little further in the same direction, take this fact.
After I had put together my notes for the present lecture, I re-read
Bagehot's essay on Shakespeare the Man, and I read a book by Goldwin
Smith and an essay by Leslie Stephen (who, I found, had anticipated a
good deal that I meant to say).[2] These three writers, with all their
variety, have still substantially the same idea of Shakespeare; and it
is the idea of the competent 'general reader' more fully developed. Nor
is the value of their agreement in the least diminished by the fact that
they make no claim to be Shakespeare scholars. They show themselves much
abler than most scholars, and if they lack the scholar's knowledge they
are free from his defects. When they wrote their essays they had not
wearied themselves with rival hypotheses, or pored over minutiae until
they lost the broad and deep impressions which vivid reading leaves.
Ultra-scepticism in this matter does not arise merely or mainly from the
humility which every man of sense must feel as he creeps to and fro in
Shakespeare's prodigious mind. It belongs either to the clever faddist
who can see nothing straight, or it proceeds from those dangers and
infirmities which the expert in any subject knows too well.
The remarks I am going to make can have an interest only for those who
share the position I have tried to indicate; who believe that the most
dramatic of writers must reveal in his writings something of himself,
but who recognise that in Shakespeare's case we can expect a reasonable
certainty only within narrow limits, while beyond them we have to trust
to impressions, the value of which must depend on familiarity with his
writings, on freedom from prejudice and the desire to reach any
particular result, and on the amount of perception we may happen to
possess. I offer my own impressions, insecure and utterly unprovable as
I know them to be, simply because those of other readers have an
interest for me; and I offer them for the most part without argument,
because even where argument might be useful it requires more time than a
lecture can afford. For the same reason I shall assume, without
attempting to define it further, and without dilating on its
implications, the truth of that general feeling about Shakespeare and
Fielding and Scott.
But, before we come to impressions at all, we must look at the scanty
store of external evidence: for we may lay down at once the canon that
impressions derived from the works must supplement and not contradict
this evidence, so far as it appears trustworthy. It is scanty, but it
yields a decided outline.
This figure that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut:
--so Jonson writes of the portrait in the Folio, and the same adjective
'gentle' is used elsewhere of Shakespeare. It had not in Elizabethan
English so confined a meaning as it has now; but it meant something, and
I do not remember that their contemporaries called Marlowe or Jonson or
Marston 'gentle.' Next, in the earliest extant reference that we have to
Shakespeare, the writer says that he himself has seen his 'demeanour' to
be 'civil.'[3] It is not saying much; but it is not the first remark an
acquaintance would probably have made about Ben Jonson or Samuel
Johnson. The same witness adds about Shakespeare that 'divers of worship
have reported his uprightness of dealing which argues his honesty.'
'Honesty' and 'honest' in an Elizabethan passage like this mean more
than they would now; they answer rather to our 'honourable' or 'honour.'
Lastly we have the witness borne by Jonson in the words: 'I loved the
man, and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any. He
was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature.' With this notable
phrase, to which I shall have to return, we come to an end of the
testimony of eye-witnesses to Shakespeare the Man (for we have nothing
to do with references to the mere actor or author). It is scanty, and
insufficient to discriminate him from other persons who were gentle,
civil, upright in their dealings, honourable, open, and free: but I
submit that there have been not a few writers to whom all these
qualities could not be truly ascribed, and that the testimony therefore
does tell us something definite. To which must be added that we have
absolutely no evidence which conflicts with it. Whatever Greene in his
jealous embitterment might have said would carry little weight, but in
fact, apart from general abuse of actors, he only says that the upstart
had an over-weening opinion of his own capacities.
There remain certain traditions and certain facts; and without
discussing them I will mention what seems to me to have a more or less
probable significance. Stratford stories of drinking bouts may go for
nothing, but not the consensus of tradition to the effect that
Shakespeare was a pleasant and convivial person, 'very good company, and
of a very ready and pleasant smooth wit.'[4] That after his retirement
to Stratford he spent at the rate of L1000 a year is incredible, but
that he spent freely seems likely enough. The tradition that as a young
man he got into trouble with Sir Thomas Lucy for deer-stealing (which
would probably be an escapade rather than an essay in serious poaching)
is supported by his unsavoury jest about the 'luces' in Sir Robert
Shallow's coat. The more general statement that in youth he was wild
does not sound improbable; and, obscure as the matter is, I cannot
regard as comfortable the little we know of the circumstances of his
very early marriage. A contemporary story of an amorous adventure in
London may well be pure invention, but we have no reason to reject it
peremptorily as we should any similar gossip about Milton. Lastly,
certain inferences may safely be drawn from the facts that, once
securely started in London, Shakespeare soon began to prosper, and
acquired, for an actor and playwright, considerable wealth; that he
bought property in his native town, and was consulted sometimes by
fellow-townsmen on matters of business; that he enforced the payment of
certain debts; and that he took the trouble to get a coat of arms. But
what cannot with any logic or any safety be inferred is that he, any
more than Scott, was impelled to write simply and solely by the desire
to make money and improve his social position; and the comparative
abundance of business records will mislead only those who are
thoughtless enough to forget that, if they buy a house or sue a debtor,
the fact will be handed down, while their kind or generous deeds may be
recorded, if at all, only in the statement that they were 'of an open
and free nature.'
That Shakespeare was a good and perhaps keen man of business, or that he
set store by a coat of arms, we could not have inferred from his
writings. But we could have judged from them that he worked hard, and
have guessed with some probability that he would rather have been a
'gentleman' than an actor. And most of the other characteristics that
appear from the external evidence would, I think, have seemed probable
from a study of the works. This should encourage us to hope that we may
be right in other impressions which we receive from them. And we may
begin with one on which the external evidence has a certain bearing.
Readers of Shakespeare, I believe, imagine him to have been not only
sweet-tempered but modest and unassuming. I do not doubt that they are
right; and, vague as the Folio portrait and the Stratford bust are, it
would be difficult to believe that their subject was an irritable,
boastful, or pushing person. But if we confine ourselves to the works,
it is not easy to give reasons for the idea that their author was modest
and unassuming; and a man is not necessarily so because he is open,
free, and very good company. Perhaps we feel that a man who was not so
would have allowed much more of himself to appear in his works than
Shakespeare does. Perhaps again we think that anything like presumption
or self-importance was incompatible with Shakespeare's sense of the
ridiculous, his sublime common-sense, and his feeling of man's
insignificance. And, lastly, it seems to us clear that the playwright
admires and likes people who are modest, unassuming, and plain; while it
may perhaps safely be said that those who lack these qualities rarely
admire them in others and not seldom despise them. But, however we may
justify our impression that Shakespeare possessed them, we certainly
receive it; and assuming it to be as correct as the similar impression
left by the Waverley Novels indubitably is, I go on to observe that the
possession of them does not of necessity imply a want of spirit, or of
proper self-assertion or insistence on rights.[5] It did not in Scott,
and we have ground for saying that it did not in Shakespeare. If it had,
he could not, being of an open and free nature, have prospered as he
prospered. He took offence at Greene's attack on him, and showed that he
took it. He was 'gentle,' but he liked his debts to be paid. However his
attitude as to the enclosure at Welcombe may be construed, it is clear
that he had to be reckoned with. It appears probable that he held
himself wronged by Sir Thomas Lucy, and, pocketing up the injury because
he could not resent it, gave him tit for tat after some fifteen years.
The man in the Sonnets forgives his friend easily, but it is not from
humility; and towards the world he is very far from humble. Of the
dedication of _The Rape of Lucrece_ we cannot judge, for we do not know
Shakespeare's relations with Lord Southampton at that date; but, as for
the dedication of _Venus and Adonis_, could modesty and dignity be
better mingled in a letter from a young poet to a great noble than they
are there?
Some of Shakespeare's writings point to a strain of deep reflection and
of quasi-metaphysical imagination in his nature; and a few of them seem
to reveal a melancholy, at times merely sad, at times embittered or
profound, if never hopeless. It is on this side mainly that we feel a
decided difference between him and Fielding, and even between him and
Scott. Yet nothing in the contemporary allusions or in the traditions
would suggest that he was notably thoughtful or serious, and much less
that he was melancholy. And although we could lay no stress on this fact
if it stood alone, it is probably significant. Shakespeare's writings,
on the whole, leave a strong impression that his native disposition was
much more gay than grave. They seem always to have made this impression.
Fuller tells us that 'though his genius generally was jocular and
inclining him to festivity, yet he could, when so disposed, be solemn
and serious, as appears by his tragedies.'[6] Johnson agreed with Rymer
that his 'natural disposition' led him to comedy; and, although Johnson
after his manner distorts a true idea by wilful exaggeration and by
perverting distinctions into antitheses, there is truth in his
development of Rymer's remark. It would be easy to quote nineteenth
century critics to the same effect; and the study of Shakespeare's early
works leads to a similar result. It has been truly said that we feel
ourselves in much closer contact with his personality in the early
comedies and in _Romeo and Juliet_ than in _Henry VI._ and _Richard
III._ and _Titus Andronicus_. In the latter, so far as we suppose them
to be his own, he seems on the whole to be following, and then improving
on, an existing style, and to be dealing with subjects which engage him
as a playwright without much appealing to him personally. With _Romeo
and Juliet_, on the other hand, and with _Richard II._ (which seems
clearly to be his first attempt to write historical tragedy in a manner
entirely his own), it is different, and we feel the presence of the
whole man. The stories are tragic, but it is not precisely the _tragic_
aspect of them that attracts him most; and even Johnson's statement,
grotesquely false of the later tragedies, that 'in tragedy he is always
struggling after some occasion to be comic,' is no more than an
exaggeration in respect to _Romeo and Juliet_.[7] From these tragedies,
as from _Love's Labour's Lost_ and the other early comedies, we should
guess that the author was a young man, happy, alert, light-hearted, full
of romance and poetry, but full also of fun; blessed with a keen
enjoyment of absurdities, but, for all his intellectual subtlety and
power, not markedly reflective, and certainly not particularly grave or
much inclined to dejection. One might even suspect, I venture to think,
that with such a flow of spirits and such exceeding alacrity of mind he
might at present be a trifle wanting in feeling and disposed to levity.
In any case, if our general impression is correct, we shall not find it
hard to believe that the author of these plays and the creator of
Falstaff was 'very good company' and a convivial good-fellow; and it
might easily happen that he was tempted at times to 'go here and there'
in society, and 'make himself a motley to the view' in a fashion that
left some qualms behind.[8]
There is a tradition that Shakespeare was 'a handsome well-shaped man.'
If the Stratford monument does not lie, he was not in later life a
meagre man. And if our notion of his temperament has any truth, he can
hardly have been physically feeble, bloodless, or inactive. Most readers
probably imagine him the reverse. Even sceptical critics tell us that he
was fond of field-sports; and of his familiar knowledge of them there
can be no question. Yet--I can but record the impression without trying
to justify it--his writings do not at all suggest to me that he was a
splendidly powerful creature like Fielding, or that he greatly enjoyed
bodily exertion, or was not easily tired. He says much of horses, but he
does not make one think, as Scott does, that a gallop was a great
delight to him. Nor again do I feel after reading him that he had a
strong natural love of adventurous deeds, or longed to be an explorer or
a soldier. The island of his boyish dreams--if he heard much of voyages
as a boy--was, I fancy, the haunt of marmosets and hedgehogs, quaint
moon-calves and flitting sprites, lovely colours, sounds and sweet airs
that give delight and hurt not, less like Treasure Island than the Coral
Island of Ballantyne in the original illustrations, and more full of
wonders than of dangers. He would have liked the Arabian Nights better
than Dumas. Of course he admired men of action, understood them, and
could express their feelings; but we do not feel particularly close to
his personality as we read the warrior speeches of Hotspur, Henry,
Othello, Coriolanus, as we do when we read of Romeo or Hamlet, or when
we feel the attraction of Henry's modesty. In the same way, I suppose
nobody feels Shakespeare's personal presence in the ambition of Macbeth
or the pride of Coriolanus; many feel it in Macbeth's imaginative
terrors, and in the disgust of Coriolanus at the idea of recounting his
exploits in order to win votes. When we seem to hear Shakespeare's
voice--and we hear it from many mouths besides Romeo's or Hamlet's--it
is the voice of a man with a happy, enjoying, but still contemplative
and even dreamy nature, not of a man richly endowed with the impulses
and feelings either of strenuous action or of self-assertion. If he had
drawn a Satan, we should not have felt his personality, as we do
Milton's, in Satan's pride and indomitable courage and intolerance of
rule.
We know how often Shakespeare uses the antithesis of blood or passion,
and judgment or reason; how he praises the due commingling of the two,
or the control of the first by the second; how frequently it is the want
of such control that exposes his heroes to the attack of Fortune or
Fate. What, then, were the passions or the 'affections of the blood'
most dangerous to himself? Not, if we have been right, those of pride or
ambition; nor yet those of envy, hatred, or revenge; and still less that
of avarice. But, in the first place, let us remember Jonson's words, 'he
was honest and of an open and free nature,' and let me repeat an
observation, made elsewhere in passing, that these words are true also
of the great majority of Shakespeare's heroes, and not least of his
tragic heroes. Jonson almost quotes Iago:
The Moor is of a free and open nature,
That thinks men honest that but seem to be so.
The king says that Hamlet,
being remiss,
Most generous, and free from all contrivings,
Will not peruse the foils.
The words 'open and free' apply no less eminently to Brutus, Lear, and
Timon. Antony and Coriolanus are men naturally frank, liberal, and
large. Prospero lost his dukedom through his trustfulness. Romeo and
Troilus and Orlando, and many slighter characters, are so far of the
same type. Now such a free and open nature, obviously, is specially
exposed to the risks of deception, perfidy, and ingratitude. If it is
also a nature sensitive and intense, but not particularly active or (if
the word may be excused) volitional, such experiences will tempt it to
melancholy, embitterment, anger, possibly even misanthropy. If it _is_
thus active or volitional, it may become the prey of violent and
destructive passion, such as that of Othello and of Coriolanus, and such
as Lear's would be if he were not so old. These affections, passions,
and sufferings of free and open natures are Shakespeare's favourite
tragic subject; and his favouritism, surely, goes so far as to
constitute a decided peculiarity, not found thus in other tragic poets.
Here he painted most, one cannot but think, what his own nature was most
inclined to feel. But it would rather be melancholy, embitterment, an
inactive rage or misanthropy, than any destructive passion; and it would
be a further question whether, and how far, he may at any time have
experienced what he depicts. I am speaking here only of his
disposition.[9]
That Shakespeare was as much inclined to be a lover as most poets we may
perhaps safely assume; but can we conjecture anything further on this
subject? I will confine myself to two points. He treats of love
romantically, and tragically, and humorously. In the earlier plays
especially the humorous aspect of the matter, the aspect so prominent in
the _Midsummer-Night's Dream_, the changefulness, brevity,
irrationality, of the feeling, is at least as much dwelt on as the
romantic, and with at least as much relish:
Lord! what fools these mortals be!
Now, if there is anything peculiar in the pictures here, it is, perhaps,
the special interest that Shakespeare seems to take in what we may call
the unreality of the feeling of love in an imaginative nature. Romeo as
he first appears, and, in a later play, Orsino, are examples of this.
They are perfectly sincere, of course, but neither of them is really in
love with a woman; each is in love with the state of being in love. This
state is able to attach itself to a particular object, but it is not
induced by the particular qualities of that object; it is more a dream
than a passion, and can melt away without carrying any of the lover's
heart with it; and in that sense it is unreal. This weakness, no doubt,
is not confined to imaginative natures, but they may well be specially
disposed to it (as Shelley was), and Shakespeare may have drawn it from
his own experience. The suspicion is strengthened when we think of
_Richard II_. In Richard this imaginative weakness is exhibited again,
though not in relation to love. He luxuriates in images of his royal
majesty, of the angels who guard his divine right, and of his own
pathetic and almost sacred sufferings. The images are not insincere, and
yet they are like dreams, for they refuse to touch earth and to connect
themselves either with his past misdeeds or with the actions he ought
now to perform. A strain of a similar weakness appears again in Hamlet,
though only as one strain in a much more deep and complex nature. But
this is not a common theme in poetry, much less in dramatic poetry.[10]
To come to our second question. When Shakespeare painted Cressida or
described her through the mouth of Ulysses ('O these encounterers,'
etc.), or, again, when he portrayed the love of Antony for Cleopatra,
was he using his personal experience? To answer that he _must_ have done
so would be as ridiculous as to argue that Iago must be a portrait of
himself; and the two plays contain nothing which, by itself, would
justify us even in thinking that he probably did so. But we have the
series of sonnets about the dark lady; and if we accept the sonnets to
the friend as to some considerable extent based on fact and expressive
of personal feelings, how can we refuse to take the others on the same
footing? Even if the stories of the two series were not intertwined, we
should have no ground for treating the two in different ways, unless we
could say that external evidence, or the general impression we derive
from Shakespeare's works, forbids us to believe that he could ever have
been entangled in an intrigue like that implied in the second series, or
have felt and thought in the manner there portrayed. Being unable to say
this, I am compelled, most regretfully, to hold it probable that this
series is, in the main, based on personal experience. And I say 'most
regretfully,' not merely because one would regret to think that
Shakespeare was the victim of a Cressida or even the lover of a
Cleopatra, but because the story implied in these sonnets is of quite
another kind. They leave, on the whole, a very disagreeable impression.
We cannot compare it with the impressions produced, for example, by the
'heathen' spirit of Goethe's _Roman Elegies_, or by the passion of
Shakespeare's Antony. In these two cases, widely dissimilar of course,
we may speak of 'immorality,' but we are not discomfited, much less
disgusted. The feeling and the attitude are poetic, whole-hearted, and
in one case passionate in the extreme. But the state of mind expressed
in the sonnets about the dark lady is half-hearted, often prosaic, and
never worthy of the name of passion. It is uneasy, dissatisfied,
distempered, the state of mind of a man who despises his 'passion' and
its object and himself, but, standing intellectually far above it, still
has not resolution to end it, and only pains us by his gross and joyless
jests. In _Troilus and Cressida_--not at all in the portrayal of
Troilus's love, but in the atmosphere of the drama--we seem to trace a
similar mood of dissatisfaction, and of intellectual but practically
impotent contempt.
In this connection it is natural to think of the 'unhappy period' which
has so often been surmised in Shakespeare's life. There is not time here
to expand the summary remarks made elsewhere on this subject; but I may
refer a little more fully to a persistent impression left on my mind by
writings which we have reason to assign to the years 1602-6.[11] There
is surely something unusual in their tone regarding certain 'vices of
the blood,' regarding drunkenness and sexual corruption. It does not lie
in Shakespeare's _view_ of these vices, but in an undertone of disgust.
Read Hamlet's language about the habitual drunkenness of his uncle, or
even Cassio's words about his casual excess; then think of the tone of
_Henry IV._ or _Twelfth Night_ or the _Tempest_; and ask if the
difference is not striking. And if you are inclined to ascribe it wholly
to the fact that _Hamlet_ and _Othello_ are tragedies, compare the
passages in them with the scene on Pompey's galley in _Antony and
Cleopatra_. The intent of that scene is terrible enough, but in the tone
there is no more trace of disgust than in _Twelfth Night_. As to the
other matter, what I refer to is not the transgression of lovers like
Claudio and Juliet, nor even light-hearted irregularities like those of
Cassio: here Shakespeare's speech has its habitual tone. But, when he is
dealing with lechery and corruption, the undercurrent of disgust seems
to become audible. Is it not true that in the plays from _Hamlet_ to
_Timon_ that subject, in one shape or another, is continually before us;
that the intensity of loathing in Hamlet's language about his mother's
lust is unexampled in Shakespeare; that the treatment of the subject in
_Measure for Measure_, though occasionally purely humorous, is on the
whole quite unlike the treatment in _Henry IV._ or even in the brothel
scenes of _Pericles_;[12] that while _Troilus and Cressida_ is full of
disgust and contempt, there is not a trace of either in _Antony and
Cleopatra_, though some of the jesting there is obscene enough; that
this same tone is as plainly heard in the unquestioned parts of _Timon_;
and that, while it is natural in Timon to inveigh against female lechery
when he speaks to Alcibiades and his harlots, there is no apparent
reason why Lear in his exalted madness should choose this subject for
similar invectives? 'Pah! give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to
sweeten my imagination'--it is a fainter echo of this exclamation that
one seems to hear in the plays of those years. Of course I am not
suggesting that it is mainly due, or as regards drunkenness due in the
least, to any private experience of Shakespeare's. It may have no
connection whatever with that experience. It might well be connected
with it only in so far as a man frequently wearied and depressed might
be unusually sensitive to the ugly aspects of life. But, if we do not
take the second series of sonnets to be purely fanciful, we shall think
it probable that to some undefined extent it owed its origin to the
experience depicted in them.[13]
There remain the sonnets addressed to the friend. Even if it were
possible to discuss the general question about them here, it would be
needless; for I accept almost wholly, and in some points am greatly
indebted to, the views put forward by Mr. Beeching in his admirable
edition, to which I may therefore refer my hearers.[14] I intend only to
state the main reason why I believe the sonnets to be, substantially,
what they purport to be, and then to touch upon one or two of the points
where they seem to throw light on Shakespeare's personality.
The sonnets to the friend are, so far as we know, unique in Renaissance
sonnet literature in being a prolonged and varied record of the intense
affection of an older friend for a younger, and of other feelings
arising from their relations. They have no real parallel in any series
imitative of Virgil's second Eclogue, or in occasional sonnets to
patrons or patron-friends couched in the high-flown language of the
time. The intensity of the feelings expressed, however, ought not, by
itself, to convince us that they are personal. The author of the plays
could, I make no doubt, have written the most intimate of these poems to
a mere creature of his imagination and without ever having felt them
except in imagination. Nor is there any but an aesthetic reason why he
should not have done so if he had wished. But an aesthetic reason there
is; and this is the decisive point. No capable poet, much less a
Shakespeare, intending to produce a merely 'dramatic' series of poems,
would dream of inventing a story like that of these sonnets, or, even if
he did, of treating it as they treat it. The story is very odd and
unattractive. Such capacities as it has are but slightly developed. It
is left obscure, and some of the poems are unintelligible to us because
they contain allusions of which we can make nothing. Now all this is
perfectly natural if the story is substantially a real story of
Shakespeare himself and of certain other persons; if the sonnets were
written from time to time as the relations of the persons changed, and
sometimes in reference to particular incidents; and if they were written
_for_ one or more of these persons (far the greater number for only
one), and perhaps in a few cases for other friends,--written, that is to
say, for people who knew the details and incidents of which we are
ignorant. But it is all unnatural, well-nigh incredibly unnatural, if,
with the most sceptical critics, we regard the sonnets as a free product
of mere imagination.[15]
Assuming, then, that the persons of the story, with their relations, are
real, I would add only two remarks about the friend. In the first place,
Mr. Beeching seems to me right in denying that there is sufficient
evidence of his standing to Shakespeare and the 'rival' poet or poets in
the position of a literary patron; while, even if he did, it appears to
me quite impossible to take the language of many of the sonnets as that
of interested flattery. And in the second place I should be inclined to
push even further Mr. Beeching's view on another point. It is clear that
the young man was considerably superior to the actor-dramatist in social
position; but any gentleman would be so, and there is nothing to prove
that he was more than a gentleman of some note, more than plain 'Mr. W.
H.' (for these, on the obvious though not compulsory interpretation of
the dedication, seem to have been his initials). It is remarkable
besides that, while the earlier sonnets show much deference, the later
show very little, so little that, when the writer, finding that he has
pained his young friend by neglecting him, begs to be forgiven, he
writes almost, if not quite, as an equal. Read, for example, sonnets
109, 110, 120, and ask whether it is probable that Shakespeare is
addressing here a great nobleman. It seems therefore most likely (though
the question is not of much importance) that the sonnets are, to quote
Meres's phrase,[16] his 'sonnets among his private friends.'
If then there is, as it appears, no obstacle of any magnitude to our
taking the sonnets as substantially what they purport to be, we may
naturally look in them for personal traits (and, indeed, to repeat a
remark made earlier, we might still expect to find such traits even if
we knew the sonnets to be purely dramatic). But in drawing inferences we
have to bear in mind what is implied by the qualification
'substantially.' We have to remember that _some_ of these poems may be
mere exercises of art; that all of them are poems, and not letters, much
less _affidavits_; that they are Elizabethan poems; that the Elizabethan
language of deference, and also of affection, is to our minds habitually
extravagant and fantastic;[17] and that in Elizabethan plays friends
openly express their love for one another as Englishmen now rarely do.
Allowance being made, however, on account of these facts, the sonnets
will still leave two strong impressions--that the poet was exceedingly
sensitive to the charm of beauty, and that his love for his friend was,
at least at one time, a feeling amounting almost to adoration, and so
intense as to be absorbing. Those who are surprised by the first of
these traits must have read Shakespeare's dramas with very inactive
minds, and I must add that they seem to be somewhat ignorant of human
nature. We do not necessarily love best those of our relatives, friends,
and acquaintances who please our eyes most; and we should look askance
on anyone who regulated his behaviour chiefly by the standard of beauty;
but most of us, I suppose, love any human being, of either sex and of
any age, the better for being beautiful, and are not the least ashamed
of the fact. It is further the case that men who are beginning, like the
writer of the sonnets, to feel tired and old, are apt to feel an
increased and special pleasure in the beauty of the young.[18] If we
remember, in addition, what some critics appear constantly to forget,
that Shakespeare was a particularly poetical being, we shall hardly be
surprised that the beginning of this friendship seems to have been
something like a falling in love; and, if we must needs praise and
blame, we should also remember that it became a 'marriage of true
minds.'[19] And as to the intensity of the feeling expressed in the
sonnets, we can easily believe it to be characteristic of the man who
made Valentine and Proteus, Brutus and Cassius, Horatio and Hamlet; who
painted that strangely moving portrait of Antonio, middle-aged, sad, and
almost indifferent between life and death, but devoted to the young,
brilliant spendthrift Bassanio; and who portrayed the sudden compelling
enchantment exercised by the young Sebastian over the Antonio of
_Twelfth Night_. 'If you will not murder me for your love, let me be
your servant.' Antonio is accused of piracy: he may lose his life if he
is identified:
I have many enemies in Orsino's court,
But, come what may, I do adore thee so
That danger shall seem sport, and I will go.
The adoration, the 'prostration,' of the writer of the sonnets is of one
kind with this.
I do not remember what critic uses the word 'prostration.' It applies to
Shakespeare's attitude only in some of the sonnets, but there it does
apply, unless it is taken to suggest humiliation. _That_ is the term
used by Hallam, but chiefly in view of a particular point, namely the
failure of the poet to 'resent,' though he 'felt and bewailed,' the
injury done him in 'the seduction of his mistress.' Though I think we
should substitute 'resent more strongly' for the mere 'resent,' I do not
deny that the poet's attitude in this matter strikes us at first as
surprising as well as unpleasant to contemplate. But Hallam's
explanation of it as perhaps due to the exalted position of the friend,
would make it much more than unpleasant; and his language seems to show
that he, like many critics, did not fully imagine the situation. It is
not easy to speak of it in public with the requisite frankness; but it
is necessary to realise that, whatever the friend's rank might be, he
and the poet were intimate friends; that, manifestly, it was rather the
mistress who seduced the friend than the friend the mistress; and that
she was apparently a woman not merely of no reputation, but of such a
nature that she might readily be expected to be mistress to two men at
one and the same time. Anyone who realises this may call the situation
'humiliating' in one sense, and I cannot quarrel with him; but he will
not call it 'humiliating' in respect of Shakespeare's relation to his
friend; nor will he wonder much that the poet felt more pain than
resentment at his friend's treatment of him. There is something
infinitely stranger in a play of Shakespeare's, and it may be
symptomatic. Ten Brink called attention to it. Proteus actually offers
violence to Sylvia, a spotless lady and the true love of his friend
Valentine; and Valentine not only forgives him at once when he professes
repentance, but offers to resign Sylvia to him! The incident is to us so
utterly preposterous that we find it hard to imagine how the audience
stood it; but, even if we conjecture that Shakespeare adopted it from
the story he was using, we can hardly suppose that it was so absurd to
him as it is to us.[20] And it is not the Sonnets alone which lead us to
surmise that forgiveness was particularly attractive to him, and the
forgiveness of a friend much easier than resentment. From the Sonnets we
gather--and there is nothing in the plays or elsewhere to contradict the
impression--that he would not be slow to resent the criticisms,
slanders, or injuries of strangers or the world, and that he bore
himself towards them with a proud, if silent, self-sufficiency. But, we
surmise, for anyone whom he loved
He carried anger as a flint bears fire;
Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark
And straight is cold again;
and towards anyone so fondly loved as the friend of the Sonnets he was
probably incapable of fierce or prolonged resentment.
The Sonnets must not occupy us further; and I will not dwell on the
indications they afford that Shakespeare sometimes felt bitterly both
the social inferiority of his position as an actor,[21] and its
influence on his own character; or that (as we have already conjectured)
he may sometimes have played the fool in society, sometimes felt weary
of life, and often was over-tired by work. It is time to pass on to a
few hesitating conjectures about what may be called his tastes.
Some passages of his about music have become household words. It is not
downright impossible that, like Bottom, having only a reasonable good
ear, he liked best the tongs and the bones; that he wondered, with
Benedick, how sheeps-guts should hale souls out of men's bodies; and
that he wrote the famous lines in the _Merchant of Venice_ and in
_Twelfth Night_ from mere observation and imagination. But it is futile
to deal with scepticism run well-nigh mad, and certainly inaccessible to
argument from the cases of poets whose tastes are matter of knowledge.
Assuming therefore that Shakespeare was fond of music, I may draw
attention to two points. Almost always he speaks of music as having a
softening, tranquillising, or pensive influence. It lulls killing care
and grief of heart to sleep. It soothes the sick and weary, and even
makes them drowsy. Hamlet calls for it in his hysterical excitement
after the success of the play scene. When it is hoped that Lear's long
sleep will have carried his madness away, music is played as he awakes,
apparently to increase the desired 'temperance.' It harmonises with the
still and moon-lit night, and the dreamy happiness of newly-wedded
lovers. Almost all the rare allusions to lively or exciting music,
apart from dancing, refer, I believe, to 'the lofty instruments of
_war_.' These facts would almost certainly have a personal significance
if Shakespeare were a more modern poet. Whether they have any, or have
much, in an Elizabethan I do not venture to judge.
The second point is diminutive, but it may be connected with the first.
The Duke in _Measure for Measure_ observes that music often has
a charm
To make bad good and good provoke to harm.
If we ask how it should provoke good to harm, we may recall what was
said (p. 326) of the weaknesses of some poetic natures, and that no one
speaks more feelingly of music than Orsino; further, how he refers to
music as 'the food of love,' and who it is that almost repeats the
phrase.
Give me some music: music, moody food
Of us that trade in love:
--the words are Cleopatra's.[22] Did Shakespeare as he wrote them
remember, I wonder, the dark lady to whose music he had listened (Sonnet
128)?
We should be greatly surprised to find in Shakespeare signs of the
nineteenth century feeling for mountain scenery, but we can no more
doubt that within certain limits he was sensitive to the beauty of
nature than that he was fond of music.[23] The only question is whether
we can guess at any preferences here. It is probably inevitable that the
flowers most often mentioned should be the rose and the lily;[24] but
hardly that the violet should come next and not far behind, and that the
fragrance of the violet should be spoken of more often even than that of
the rose, and, it seems, with special affection. This may be a fancy,
and it will be thought a sentimental fancy too; but poets, like other
people, may have favourite flowers; that of Keats, we happen to know,
was the violet.
Again, if we may draw any conclusion from the frequency and the
character of the allusions, the lark held for Shakespeare the place of
honour among birds; and the lines,
Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings,
And Phoebus gins arise,
may suggest one reason for this. The lark, as several other collocations
show, was to him the bird of joy that welcomes the sun; and it can
hardly be doubted that dawn and early morning was the time of day that
most appealed to him. That he felt the beauty of night and of moonlight
is obvious; but we find very little to match the lines in _Richard II._,
The setting sun, and music at the close,
As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last;
and still less to prove that he felt the magic of evening twilight, the
'heavenliest hour' of a famous passage in _Don Juan_. There is a
wonderful line in Sonnet 132,
And that full star that ushers in the even,
but I remember little else of the same kind. Shakespeare, as it happens,
uses the word 'twilight' only once, and in an unforgetable passage:
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west:
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self that seals up all in rest.
And this feeling, though not often so solemn, is on the whole the
prevailing sentiment in the references to sunset and evening twilight.
It corresponds with the analogy between the times of the day and the
periods of human life. The sun sets from the weariness of age; but he
rises in the strength and freshness of youth, firing the proud tops of
the eastern pines, and turning the hills and the sea into burnished
gold, while jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops, and the
lark sings at the gate of heaven. In almost all the familiar lines about
dawn one seems to catch that 'indescribable gusto' which Keats heard in
Kean's delivery of the words:
Stir with the lark to-morrow, gentle Norfolk.
Two suggestions may be ventured as to Shakespeare's feelings towards
four-footed animals. The first must be very tentative. We do not expect
in a writer of that age the sympathy with animals which is so beautiful
a trait in much of the poetry of the last hundred and fifty years. And I
can remember in Shakespeare scarcely any sign of _fondness_ for an
animal,--not even for a horse, though he wrote so often of horses. But
there are rather frequent, if casual, expressions of pity, in
references, for example, to the hunted hare or stag, or to the spurred
horse:[25] and it may be questioned whether the passage in _As You Like
It_ about the wounded deer is quite devoid of personal significance. No
doubt Shakespeare thought the tears of Jaques sentimental; but he put a
piece of himself into Jaques. And, besides, it is not Jaques alone who
dislikes the killing of the deer, but the Duke; and we may surely hear
some tone of Shakespeare's voice in the Duke's speech about the life in
the forest. Perhaps we may surmise that, while he enjoyed field-sports,
he felt them at times to be out of tune with the harmony of nature.
On the second point, I regret to say, I can feel no doubt. Shakespeare
did not care for dogs, as Homer did; he even disliked them, as Goethe
did. Of course he can write eloquently about the points of hounds and the
music of their voices in the chase, and humorously about Launce's love
for his cur and even about the cur himself; but this is no more
significant on the one side than is his conventional use of 'dog' as a
term of abuse on the other. What is significant is the absence of
allusion, or (to be perfectly accurate) of sympathetic allusion, to the
characteristic virtues of dogs, and the abundance of allusions of an
insulting kind. Shakespeare has observed and recorded, in some instances
profusely, every vice that I can think of in an ill-conditioned dog. He
fawns and cringes and flatters, and then bites the hand that caressed
him; he is a coward who attacks you from behind, and barks at you the
more the farther off you go; he knows neither charity, humanity, nor
gratitude; as he flatters power and wealth, so he takes part against the
poor and unfashionable, and if fortune turns against you so does he.[26]
The plays swarm with these charges. Whately's exclamation--uttered after
a College meeting or a meeting of Chapter, I forget which--'The more I
see of men, the more I like dogs,' would never have been echoed by
Shakespeare. The things he most loathed in men he found in dogs too. And
yet all this might go for nothing if we could set anything of weight
against it. But what can we set? Nothing whatever, so far as I remember,
except a recognition of courage in bear-baiting, bull-baiting mastiffs.
For I cannot quote as favourable to the spaniel the appeal of Helena:
I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius,
The more you beat me I will fawn on you:
Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me,
Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave,
Unworthy as I am, to follow you.
This may show that Shakespeare was alive to the baseness of a
spaniel-owner, but not that he appreciated that self-less affection
which he describes. It is more probable that it irritated him, as it
does many men still; and, as for its implying fidelity, there is no
reference, I believe, to the fidelity of the dog in the whole of his
works, and he chooses the spaniel himself as a symbol of flattery and
ingratitude: his Caesar talks of
Knee-crooked court'sies and base spaniel-fawning;
his Antony exclaims:
the hearts
That spaniel'd me at heels, to whom I gave
Their wishes, do discandy, melt their sweets
On blossoming Caesar.
To all that he loved most in men he was blind in dogs. And then we call
him universal!
This line of research into Shakespeare's tastes might be pursued a good
deal further, but we must return to weightier matters. We saw that he
could sympathise with anyone who erred and suffered from impulse,
affections of the blood, or even such passions as were probably no
danger to himself,--ambition, for instance, and pride. Can we learn
anything more about him by observing virtues or types of character with
which he appears to feel little sympathy, though he may approve them? He
certainly does not show this imperfect sympathy towards self-control; we
seem to feel even a special liking for Brutus, and again for Horatio,
who has suffered much, is quietly patient, and has mastered both himself
and fortune. But, not to speak of coldly selfish natures, he seems
averse to bloodless people, those who lack, or those who have deadened,
the natural desires for joy and sympathy, and those who tend to be
precise.[27] Nor does he appear to be drawn to men who, as we say, try
to live or to act on principle; nor to those who aim habitually at
self-improvement; nor yet to the saintly type of character. I mean, not
that he _could_ not sympathise with them, but that they did not attract
him. Isabella, in _Measure for Measure_, is drawn, of course, with
understanding, but, it seems to me, with little sympathy. Her readiness
to abandon her pleading for Claudio, out of horror at his sin and a
sense of the justice of Angelo's reasons for refusing his pardon, is
doubtless in character; but if Shakespeare had sympathised more with her
at this point, so should we; while, as it is, we are tempted to exclaim,
She loves him not, she wants the natural touch;
and perhaps if Shakespeare had liked her better and had not regarded her
with some irony, he would not have allowed himself, for mere
convenience, to degrade her by marrying her to the Duke. Brutus and
Cordelia, on the other hand, are drawn with the fullest imaginative
sympathy, and they, it may be said, are characters of principle; but
then (even if Cordelia could be truly so described) they are also
intensely affectionate, and by no means inhumanly self-controlled.
The mention of Brutus may carry us somewhat farther. Shakespeare's
Brutus kills Caesar, not because Caesar aims at absolute power, but
because Brutus fears that absolute power may make him cruel. That is not
Plutarch's idea, it is Shakespeare's. He could fully sympathise with the
gentleness of Brutus, with his entire superiority to private aims and
almost entire freedom from personal susceptibilities, and even with his
resolution to sacrifice his friend; but he could not so sympathise with
mere horror of monarchy or absolute power. And now extend this a little.
Can you imagine Shakespeare an enthusiast for an 'idea'; a devotee of
divine right, or the rights of Parliament, or any particular form of
government in Church or State; a Fifth Monarchy man, or a Quaker, or a
thick-and-thin adherent of any compact, exclusive, abstract creed, even
if it were as rational and noble as Mazzini's? This type of mind, even
at its best, is alien from his. Scott is said, rightly or wrongly, to
have portrayed the Covenanters without any deep understanding of them;
it would have been the same with Shakespeare. I am not praising him, or
at least not merely praising him. One may even suggest that on this side
he was limited. In any age he would have been safe against fanaticism
and one-sided ideas; but perhaps in no age would he have been the man to
insist with the necessary emphasis on those one-sided ideas which the
moment may need, or even to give his whole heart to men who join a
forlorn hope or are martyred for a faith. And though it is rash to
suggest that anything in the way of imagination was beyond his reach,
perhaps the legend of Faust, with his longings for infinite power and
knowledge and enjoyment of beauty, would have suited him less well than
Marlowe; and if he had written on the subject that Cervantes took, his
Don Quixote would have been at least as laughable as the hero we know,
but would he have been a soul so ideally noble and a figure so
profoundly pathetic?
This would be the natural place to discuss Shakespeare's politics if we
were to discuss them at all. But even if the question whether he shows
any interest in the political differences of his time, or any sympathies
or antipathies in regard to them, admits of an answer, it could be
answered only by an examination of details; and I must pass it by, and
offer only the briefest remarks on a wider question. Shakespeare, as we
might expect, shows no sign of believing in what is sometimes called a
political 'principle.' The main ideas which, consciously or
unconsciously, seem to govern or emerge from his presentation of state
affairs, might perhaps be put thus. National welfare is the end of
politics, and the criterion by which political actions are to be judged.
It implies of necessity 'degree'; that is, differences of position and
function in the members of the body politic.[28] And the first
requisites of national welfare are the observance of this degree, and
the concordant performance of these functions in the general interest.
But there appear to be no further absolute principles than these: beyond
them all is relative to the particular case and its particular
conditions. We find no hint, for example, in _Julius Caesar_ that
Shakespeare regarded a monarchical form of government as intrinsically
better than a republican, or _vice versa_; no trace in _Richard II._
that the author shares the king's belief in his inviolable right, or
regards Bolingbroke's usurpation as justifiable. We perceive, again,
pretty clearly in several plays a dislike and contempt of demagogues,
and an opinion that mobs are foolish, fickle, and ungrateful. But these
are sentiments which the most determined of believers in democracy, if
he has sense, may share; and if he thinks that the attitude of
aristocrats like Volumnia and Coriolanus is inhuman and as inexcusable
as that of the mob, and that a mob is as easily led right as wrong and
has plenty of good nature in it, he has abundant ground for holding that
Shakespeare thought so too. That Shakespeare greatly liked and admired
the typical qualities of the best kind of aristocrat seems highly
probable; but then this taste has always been compatible with a great
variety of political opinions. It is interesting but useless to wonder
what his own opinions would have been at various periods of English
history: perhaps the only thing we can be pretty sure of in regard to
them is that they would never have been extreme, and that he would never
have supposed his opponents to be entirely wrong.
We have tried to conjecture the impulses, passions, and errors with
which Shakespeare could easily sympathise, and the virtues and types of
character which he may have approved without much sympathy. It remains
to ask whether we can notice tendencies and vices to which he felt any
special antipathy; and it is obvious and safe to point to those most
alien to a gentle, open, and free nature, the vices of a cold and hard
disposition, self-centred and incapable of fusion with others. Passing
over, again, the plainly hideous forms or extremes of such vice, as we
see them in characters like Richard III., Iago, Goneril and Regan, or
the Queen in _Cymbeline_, we seem to detect a particular aversion to
certain vices which have the common mark of baseness; for instance,
servility and flattery (especially when deliberate and practised with a
view to self-advancement), feigning in friendship, and ingratitude.
Shakespeare's _animus_ against the dog arises from the attribution of
these vices to him, and against them in men are directed the invectives
which seem to have a personal ring. There appears to be traceable also a
feeling of a special, though less painful, kind against unmercifulness.
I do not mean, of course, cruelty, but unforgivingness, and even the
tendency to prefer justice to mercy. From no other dramatic author,
probably, could there be collected such prolonged and heart-felt praises
of mercy as from Shakespeare. He had not at all strongly, I think, that
instinct and love of justice and retribution which in many men are so
powerful; but Prospero's words,
they being penitent,
The sole drift of my purpose doth extend
Not a jot further,
came from his heart. He perceived with extreme clearness the connection
of acts with their consequences; but his belief that in this sense 'the
gods are just' was accompanied by the strongest feeling that forgiveness
ought to follow repentance, and (if I may so put it) his favourite
petition was the one that begins 'Forgive us our trespasses.' To
conclude, I have fancied that he shows an unusual degree of disgust at
slander and dislike of censoriousness; and where he speaks in the
Sonnets of those who censured him he betrays an exceptionally decided
feeling that a man's offences are his own affair and not the
world's.[29]
Some of the vices which seem to have been particularly odious to
Shakespeare have, we may notice, a special connection with prosperity
and power. Men feign and creep and flatter to please the powerful and
to win their own way to ease or power; and they envy and censure and
slander their competitors in the race; and when they succeed, they are
ungrateful to their friends and helpers and patrons; and they become
hard and unmerciful, and despise and bully those who are now below them.
So, perhaps, Shakespeare said to himself in those years when, as we
imagine, melancholy and embitterment often overclouded his sky, though
they did not obscure his faith in goodness and much less his
intellectual vision. And prosperity and power, he may have added, come
less frequently by merit than by those base arts or by mere fortune. The
divorce of goodness and power was, to Shelley, the 'woe of the world';
if we substitute for 'goodness' the wider word 'merit,' we may say that
this divorce, with the evil bred by power, is to Shakespeare also the
root of bitterness. This fact, presented in its extreme form of the
appalling cruelty of the prosperous, and the heart-rending suffering of
the defenceless, forms the problem of his most tremendous drama. We have
no reason to surmise that his own sufferings were calamitous; and the
period which seems to be marked by melancholy and embitterment was one
of outward, or at least financial, prosperity; but nevertheless we can
hardly doubt that he felt on the small scale of his own life the
influence of that divorce of power and merit. His complaint against
Fortune, who had so ill provided for his life, runs through the Sonnets.
Even if we could regard as purely conventional the declarations that his
verses would make his friend immortal, it is totally impossible that he
can have been unaware of the gulf between his own gifts and those of
others, or can have failed to feel the disproportion between his
position and his mind. Hamlet had never experienced
the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
and that make the patient soul weary of life; the man who had
experienced them was the writer of Sonnet 66, who cried for death
because he was tired with beholding
desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimmed in jollity,
--a beggarly soul flaunting in brave array. Neither had Hamlet felt in
his own person 'the insolence of office'; but the actor had doubtless
felt it often enough, and we can hardly err in hearing his own voice in
dramatic expressions of wonder and contempt at the stupid pride of mere
authority and at men's slavish respect for it. Two examples will
suffice. 'Thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar, and the
creature run from the cur? There thou mightst behold the great image of
authority. A dog's obeyed in office': so says Lear, when madness has
cleared his vision, and indignation makes the Timon-like verses that
follow. The other example is almost too famous for quotation but I have
a reason for quoting it:
man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As makes the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal.
It is Isabella who says that; but it is scarcely in character;
Shakespeare himself is speaking.[30]
It is with great hesitation that I hazard a few words on Shakespeare's
religion. Any attempt to penetrate his reserve on this subject may
appear a crowning impertinence; and, since his dramas are almost
exclusively secular, any impressions we may form must here be even more
speculative than usual. Yet it is scarcely possible to read him much
without such speculations; and there are at least some theories which
may confidently be dismissed. It cannot be called absolutely impossible
that Shakespeare was indifferent to music and to the beauty of Nature,
and yet the idea is absurd; and in the same way it is barely possible,
and yet it is preposterous, to suppose that he was an ardent and devoted
atheist or Brownist or Roman Catholic, and that all the indications to
the contrary are due to his artfulness and determination not to get into
trouble. There is no absurdity, on the other hand, nor of necessity
anything hopeless, in the question whether there are signs that he
belonged to this or that church, and was inclined to one mode of thought
within it rather than to another. Only the question is scarcely worth
asking for our present purpose, unless there is some reason to believe
that he took a keen interest in these matters. Suppose, for example,
that we had ground to accept a tradition that he 'died a papist,' this
would not tell us much about him unless we had also ground to think that
he lived a papist, and that his faith went far into his personality. But
in fact we receive from his writings, it appears to me, a rather strong
impression that he concerned himself little, if at all, with differences
of doctrine or church government.[31] And we may go further. Have we not
reason to surmise that he was not, in the distinctive sense of the word,
a religious man--a man, that is to say, whose feelings and actions are
constantly and strongly influenced by thoughts of his relation to an
object of worship? If Shakespeare had been such a man, is it credible
that we should find nothing in tradition or in his works to indicate the
fact; and is it likely that we should find in his works some things
that we do find there?[32]
Venturing with much doubt a little farther I will put together certain
facts and impressions without at once drawing any conclusion from them.
Almost all the speeches that can be called pronouncedly religious and
Christian in phraseology and spirit are placed in the mouths of persons
to whom they are obviously appropriate, either from their position
(_e.g._ bishops, friars, nuns), or from what Shakespeare found in
histories (_e.g._ Henry IV., V., and VI.), or for some other plain
reason. We cannot build, therefore, on these speeches in the least. On
the other hand (except, of course, where they are hypocritical or
politic), we perceive in Shakespeare's tone in regard to them not the
faintest trace of dislike or contempt; nor can we find a trace anywhere
of such feelings, or of irreverence, towards Christian ideas,
institutions, or customs (mere humorous irreverence is not relevant
here); and in the case of 'sympathetic' characters, living in Christian
times but not in any decided sense religious, no disposition is visible
to suppress or ignore their belief in, and use of, religious ideas. Some
characters, again, Christian or heathen, who appear to be drawn with
rather marked sympathy, have strong, if simple, religious convictions
(e.g. Horatio, Edgar, Hermione); and in others, of whom so much can
hardly be said, but who strike many readers, rightly or wrongly, as
having a good deal of Shakespeare in them (_e.g._ Romeo and Hamlet), we
observe a quiet but deep sense that they and other men are neither their
own masters nor responsible only to themselves and other men, but are in
the hands of 'Providence' or guiding powers 'above.'[33]
To this I will add two remarks. To every one, I suppose, certain
speeches sound peculiarly personal. Perhaps others may share my feeling
about Hamlet's words:
There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will;
and about those other words of his:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy;
and about the speech of Prospero ending, 'We are such stuff as dreams
are made on.'[34] On the other hand, we observe that Hamlet seems to
have arrived at that conviction as to the 'divinity' after reflection,
and that, while he usually speaks as one who accepts the received
Christian ideas, yet, when meditating profoundly, he appears to ignore
them.[35] In the same way the Duke in _Measure for Measure_ is for the
most part, and necessarily, a Christian; yet nobody would guess it from
the great speech, 'Be absolute for death,' addressed by a supposed friar
to a youth under sentence to die, yet containing not a syllable about a
future life.[36]
Without adducing more of the endless but baffling material for a
conclusion, I will offer the result left on my mind, and, merely for the
sake of brevity, will state it with hardly any of the qualifications it
doubtless needs. Shakespeare, I imagine, was not, in the sense assigned
to the word some minutes ago, a religious man. Nor was it natural to him
to regard good and evil, better and worse, habitually from a theological
point of view. But (this appears certain) he had a lively and serious
sense of 'conscience,' of the pain of self-reproach and
self-condemnation, and of the torment to which this pain might rise.[37]
He was not in the least disposed to regard conscience as somehow
illusory or a human invention, but on the contrary thought of it (I use
the most non-committal phrase I can find) as connected with the power
that rules the world and is not escapable by man. He realised very fully
and felt very keenly, after his youth was past and at certain times of
stress, the sufferings and wrongs of men, the strength of evil, the
hideousness of certain forms of it, and its apparent incurability in
certain cases. And he must sometimes have felt all this as a terrible
problem. But, however he may have been tempted, and may have yielded, to
exasperation and even despair, he never doubted that it is best to be
good; felt more and more that one must be patient and must forgive;[38]
and probably maintained unbroken a conviction, practical if not
formulated, that to be good is to be at peace with that unescapable
power. But it is unlikely that he attempted to theorise further on the
nature of the power. All was for him, in the end, mystery; and, while we
have no reason whatever to attribute to him a belief in the ghosts and
oracles he used in his dramas, he had no inclination to play the spy on
God or to limit his power by our notions of it. That he had dreams and
ponderings about the mystery such as he never put into the mouths of
actors I do not doubt; but I imagine they were no more than dreams and
ponderings and movings about in worlds unrealised.
Whether to this 'religion' he joined a more or less conventional
acceptance of some or all of the usual Christian ideas, it is impossible
to tell. There is no great improbability to me in the idea that he did
not, but it is more probable to me that he did,--that, in fact, though
he was never so tormented as Hamlet, his position in this matter was, at
least in middle life (and he never reached old age), much like Hamlet's.
If this were so it might naturally happen that, as he grew older and
wearier of labour, and perhaps of the tumult of pleasure and thought and
pain, his more personal religion, the natural piety which seems to gain
in weight and serenity in the latest plays, came to be more closely
joined with Christian ideas. But I can find no clear indications that
this did happen; and though some have believed that they discovered
these ideas displayed in full, though not explicitly, in the _Tempest_,
I am not able to hear there more than the stream of Shakespeare's own
'religion' moving with its fullest volume and making its deepest and
most harmonious music.[39]
This lecture must end, though its subject is endless, and I will touch
on only one point more,--one that may to some extent recall and connect
the scattered suggestions I have offered.
If we were obliged to answer the question which of Shakespeare's plays
contains, not indeed the fullest picture of his mind, but the truest
expression of his nature and habitual temper, unaffected by special
causes of exhilaration or gloom, I should be disposed to choose _As You
Like It_. It wants, to go no further, the addition of a touch of Sir
Toby or Falstaff, and the ejection of its miraculous conversions of
ill-disposed characters. But the misbehaviour of Fortune, and the
hardness and ingratitude of men, form the basis of its plot, and are a
frequent topic of complaint. And, on the other hand, he who is reading
it has a smooth brow and smiling lips, and a heart that murmurs,
Happy is your grace,
That can translate the stubbornness of fortune
Into so quiet and so sweet a style.
And it is full not only of sweetness, but of romance, fun, humour of
various kinds, delight in the oddities of human nature, love of modesty
and fidelity and high spirit and patience, dislike of scandal and
censure, contemplative curiosity, the feeling that in the end we are all
merely players, together with a touch of the feeling that
Then is there mirth in heaven
When earthly things made even
Atone together.
And, finally, it breathes the serene holiday mood of escape from the
toil, competition, and corruption of city and court into the sun and
shadow and peace of the country, where one can be idle and dream and
meditate and sing, and pursue or watch the deer as the fancy takes one,
and make love or smile at lovers according to one's age.[40]
If, again, the question were put to us, which of Shakespeare's
characters reveals most of his personality, the majority of those who
consented to give an answer would answer 'Hamlet.' This impression may
be fanciful, but it is difficult to think it wholly so, and, speaking
for those who share it, I will try to trace some of its sources. There
is a good deal of Shakespeare that is not in Hamlet. But Hamlet, we
think, is the only character in Shakespeare who could possibly have
composed his plays (though it appears unlikely, from his verses to
Ophelia, that he could have written the best songs). Into Hamlet's mouth
are put what are evidently Shakespeare's own views on drama and acting.
Hamlet alone, among the great serious characters, can be called a
humorist. When in some trait of another character we seem to touch
Shakespeare's personality, we are frequently reminded of Hamlet.[41]
When in a profound reflective speech we hear Shakespeare's voice, we
usually hear Hamlet's too, and his peculiar humour and turns of phrase
appear unexpectedly in persons otherwise unlike him and unlike one
another. The most melancholy group of Sonnets (71-74) recalls Hamlet at
once, here and there recalls even his words; and he and the writer of
Sonnet 66 both recount in a list the ills that make men long for death.
And then Hamlet 'was indeed honest and of an open and free nature';
sweet-tempered and modest, yet not slow to resent calumny or injury; of
a serious but not a melancholy disposition; and the lover of his friend.
And, with these traits, we remember his poet ecstasy at the glory of
earth and sky and the marvellous endowments of man; his eager
affectionate response to everything noble or sweet in human nature; his
tendency to dream and to live in the world of his own mind; his
liability to sudden vehement emotion, and his admiration for men whose
blood and judgment are better commingled; the overwhelming effect of
disillusionment upon him; his sadness, fierceness, bitterness and
cynicism. All this, and more: his sensitiveness to the call of duty; his
longing to answer to it, and his anguish over his strange delay; the
conviction gathering in his tortured soul that man's purposes and
failures are divinely shaped to ends beyond his vision; his incessant
meditation, and his sense that there are mysteries which no meditation
can fathom; nay, even little traits like his recourse to music to calm
his excitement, or his feeling on the one hand that the peasant should
not tread on the courtier's heels, and on the other that the mere
courtier is spacious in the possession of dirt--all this, I say,
corresponds with our impression of Shakespeare, or rather of
characteristic traits in Shakespeare, probably here and there a good
deal heightened, and mingled with others not characteristic of
Shakespeare at all. And if this is more than fancy, it may explain to us
why Hamlet is the most fascinating character, and the most
inexhaustible, in all imaginative literature. What else should he be, if
the world's greatest poet, who was able to give almost the reality of
nature to creations totally unlike himself, put his own soul straight
into this creation, and when he wrote Hamlet's speeches wrote down his
own heart?[42]
1904.