[1] Unquestionably it holds in a considerable degree of Browning, who
in _At the Mermaid_ and _House_ wrote as though he imagined that
neither his own work nor Shakespeare's betrayed anything of the inner
man. But if we are to criticise those two poems as arguments, we must
say that they involve two hopelessly false assumptions, that we have
to choose between a self-revelation like Byron's and no
self-revelation at all, and that the relation between a poet and his
work is like that between the inside and the outside of a house.
[2] Almost all Shakespearean criticism, of course, contains something
bearing on our subject; but I have a practical reason for mentioning
in particular Mr. Frank Harris's articles in the _Saturday Review_
for 1898. A good many of Mr. Harris's views I cannot share, and I had
arrived at almost all the ideas expressed in the lecture (except some
on the Sonnets question) before reading his papers. But I found in
them also valuable ideas which were quite new to me and would
probably be so to many readers. It is a great pity that the articles
are not collected and published in a book. [Mr. Harris has published,
in _The Man Shakespeare_, the substance of the articles, and also
matter which, in my judgment, has much less value.]
[3] He is apologising for an attack made on Shakespeare in a pamphlet
of which he was the publisher and Greene the writer.
[4] It was said of him, indeed, in his lifetime that, had he not
played some kingly parts in sport (_i.e._ on the stage), he would
have been a companion for a king.
[5] Nor, _vice versa_, does the possession of these latter qualities
at all imply, as some writers seem to assume, the absence of the
former or of gentleness.
[6] Fuller may be handing down a tradition, but it is not safe to
assume this. His comparison, on the other hand, of Shakespeare and
Jonson, in their wit combats, to an English man-of-war and a Spanish
great galleon, reads as if his own happy fancy were operating on the
reports, direct or indirect, of eye-witnesses.
[7] See, for example, Act IV. Sc. v., to which I know no parallel in
the later tragedies.
[8] I allude to Sonnet 110, Mr. Beeching's note on which seems to be
unquestionably right: 'There is no reference to the poet's profession
of player. The sonnet gives the confession of a favourite of
society.' This applies, I think, to the whole group of sonnets (it
begins with 107) in which the poet excuses his neglect of his friend,
though there are _also_ references to his profession and its effect
on his nature and his reputation. (By a slip Mr. Beeching makes the
neglect last for three years.)
[9] It is perhaps most especially in his rendering of the shock and
the effects of _disillusionment_ in open natures that we seem to feel
Shakespeare's personality. The nature of this shock is expressed in
Henry's words to Lord Scroop:
I will weep for thee;
For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like
Another fall of man.
[10] There is nothing of this semi-reality, of course, in the
_passion_ of love as portrayed, for example, in men so different as
Orlando, Othello, Antony, Troilus, whose love for Cressida resembles
that of Romeo for Juliet. What I have said of Romeo's 'love' for
Rosaline corresponds roughly with Coleridge's view; and, without
subscribing to all of Coleridge's remarks, I believe he was right in
finding an intentional contrast between this feeling and the passion
that displaces it (though it does not follow that the feeling would
not have become a genuine passion if Rosaline had been kind). Nor do
I understand the notion that Coleridge's view is refuted and even
rendered ridiculous by the mere fact that Shakespeare found the
Rosaline story in Brooke (Halliwell-Phillipps, _Outlines_, 7th ed.,
illustrative note 2). Was he compelled then to use whatever he found?
Was it his practice to do so? The question is always _why_ he used
what he found, and _how_. Coleridge's view of this matter, it need
hardly be said, is far from indisputable; but it must be judged by
our knowledge of Shakespeare's mind and not of his material alone. I
may add, as I have referred to Halliwell-Phillipps, that Shakespeare
made changes in the story he found; that it is arbitrary to assume
(not that it matters) that Coleridge, who read Steevens, was unaware
of Shakespeare's use of Brooke; and that Brooke was by no means a
'wretched poetaster.'
[11] _Hamlet_, _Measure for Measure_, _Othello_, _Troilus and
Cressida_, _King Lear_, _Timon of Athens_. See _Shakespearean
Tragedy_, pp. 79-85, 275-6. I should like to insist on the view there
taken that the tragedies subsequent to _Lear_ and _Timon_ do not show
the pressure of painful feelings.
[12] It is not implied that these scenes are certainly Shakespeare's;
but I see no sufficient ground for decisively rejecting them.
[13] That experience, certainly in part and probably wholly, belongs
to an earlier time, since sonnets 138 and 144 were printed in the
_Passionate Pilgrim_. But I see no difficulty in that. What bears
little fruit in a normal condition of spirits may bear abundant fruit
later, in moods of discouragement and exasperation induced largely by
other causes.
[14] _The Sonnets of Shakespeare with an Introduction and Notes._
Ginn & Co., 1904.
[15] I find that Mr. Beeching, in the Stratford Town edition of
Shakespeare (1907), has also urged these considerations.
[16] I do not mean to imply that Meres necessarily refers to the
sonnets we possess, or that all of these are likely to have been
written by 1598.
[17] A fact to be remembered in regard to references to the social
position of the friend.
[18] Mr. Beeching's illustration of the friendship of the sonnets
from the friendship of Gray and Bonstetten is worth pages of
argument.
[19] In 125 the poet repudiates the accusation that his friendship is
too much based on beauty.
[20] This does not imply that the Sonnets are as early as the _Two
Gentlemen of Verona_, and much less that they are earlier.
[21] This seems to be referred to in lines by John Davies of
Hereford, reprinted in Ingleby's _Shakespeare's Centurie of Prayse_,
second edition, pp. 58, 84, 94. In the first of these passages, dated
1603 (and perhaps in the second, 1609), there are signs that Davies
had read Sonnet 111, a fact to be noted with regard to the question
of the chronology of the Sonnets.
[22] 'Mistress Tearsheet' too 'would fain hear some music,' and
'Sneak's noise' had to be sent for (2 _Henry IV._, II. iv. 12).
[23] It is tempting, though not safe, to infer from the _Tempest_ and
the great passage in _Pericles_ that Shakespeare must have been in a
storm at sea; but that he felt the poetry of a sea-storm is beyond
all doubt. Few moments in the reading of his works are more
overwhelming than that in which, after listening not without
difficulty to the writer of the first two Acts of _Pericles_,
suddenly, as the third opens, one hears the authentic voice:
Thou god of this great vast, rebuke these surges
That wash both heaven and hell.... The seaman's whistle
Is as a whisper in the ears of death,
Unheard.
Knowing that this is coming, I cannot stop to read the Prologue to
Act III., though I believe Shakespeare wrote it. How it can be
imagined that he did more than touch up Acts I. and II. passes my
comprehension.
I may call attention to another point. Unless I mistake, there is
nothing in Shakespeare's authorities, as known to us, which
corresponds with the feeling of Timon's last speech, beginning,
Come not to me again: but say to Athens,
Timon hath made his everlasting mansion
Upon the beached verge of the salt flood:
a feeling made more explicit in the final speech of Alcibiades.
[24] The lily seems to be in almost all cases the Madonna lily. It is
very doubtful whether the lily of the valley is referred to at all.
[25] But there is something disappointing, and even estranging, in
Sonnet 50, which, promising to show a real sympathy, cheats us in the
end. I may observe, without implying that the fact has any personal
significance, that the words about 'the poor beetle that we tread
upon' are given to a woman (Isabella), and that it is Marina who
says:
I trod upon a worm against my will,
But I wept for it.
[26] Three times in one drama Shakespeare refers to this detestable
trait. See _Shakespearean Tragedy_, p. 268, where I should like to
qualify still further the sentence containing the qualification 'on
the whole.' Good judges, at least, assure me that I have admitted too
much against the dog.
[27] Nor can I recall any sign of liking, or even approval, of that
'prudent, _cautious_, self-control' which, according to a passage in
Burns, is 'wisdom's root.'
[28] The _locus classicus_, of course, is _Troilus and Cressida_, I.
iii. 75 ff.
[29] Of all the evils inflicted by man on man those chosen for
mention in the dirge in _Cymbeline_, one of the last plays, are the
frown o' the great, the tyrant's stroke, slander, censure rash.
[30] Having written these paragraphs, I should like to disclaim the
belief that Shakespeare was habitually deeply discontented with his
position in life.
[31] Allusions to puritans show at most what we take almost for
granted, that he did not like precisians or people hostile to the
stage.
[32] In the Sonnets, for example, there is an almost entire absence
of definitely religious thought or feeling. The nearest approach to
it is in Sonnet 146 ('Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth'),
where, however, there is no allusion to a divine law or judge.
According to Sonnet 129, lust in action is
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame;
but no word shows that it is also felt as alienation from God. It
must be added that in 108 and 110 there are references to the Lord's
Prayer and, perhaps, to the First Commandment, from which a decidedly
religious Christian would perhaps have shrunk. Of course I am not
saying that we can draw any _necessary_ inference from these facts.
[33] It is only this 'quiet but deep sense' that is significant. No
inference can be drawn from the fact that the mere belief in powers
above seems to be taken as a matter of course in practically all the
characters, good and bad alike. On the other hand there may well be
something symptomatic in the apparent absence of interest in
theoretical disbelief in such powers and in the immortality of the
soul. I have observed elsewhere that the atheism of Aaron does not
increase the probability that the conception of the character is
Shakespeare's.
[34] With the first compare, what to me has, though more faintly, the
same ring, Hermione's
If powers divine
Behold our human actions, as they do:
with the second, Helena's
It is not so with Him that all things knows
As 'tis with us that square our guess by shows;
But most it is presumption in us when
The help of heaven we count the act of men:
followed soon after by Lafeu's remark:
They say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical persons
to make modern and familiar things supernatural and causeless.
Hence it is that we make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves
into seeming knowledge, when we should submit ourselves to an
unknown fear.
[35] It is worth noting that the reference, which appears in the
First Quarto version of 'To be or not to be,' to 'an everlasting
judge,' disappears in the revised versions.
[36] The suggested inference, of course, is that this speech, thus
out of character, and Hamlet's 'To be or not to be' (though that is
in character), show us Shakespeare's own mind. It has force, I think,
but not compulsory force. The topics of these speeches are, in the
old sense of the word, commonplaces. Shakespeare may have felt, Here
is my chance to show what I can do with certain feelings and thoughts
of supreme interest to men of all times and places and modes of
belief. It would not follow from this that they are not 'personal,'
but any inference to a non-acceptance of received religious ideas
would be much weakened. ('All the world's a stage' is a patent
example of the suggested elaboration of a commonplace.)
[37] What actions in particular _his_ conscience approved and
disapproved is another question and one not relevant here.
[38] This does not at all imply to Shakespeare, so far as we see,
that evil is never to be forcibly resisted.
[39] I do not mean to reject the idea that in some passages in the
_Tempest_ Shakespeare, while he wrote them with a dramatic purpose,
also thought of himself. It seems to me likely. And if so, there
_may_ have been such a thought in the words,
And thence retire me to my Milan, where
Every third thought shall be my grave;
and also in those lines about prayer and pardon which close the
Epilogue, and to my ear come with a sudden effect of great
seriousness, contrasting most strangely with their context. If they
_had_ a grave and personal under-meaning it cannot have been intended
for the audience, which would take the prayer as addressed to itself.
[40] It may be added that _As You Like It_, though idyllic, is not so
falsely idyllic as some critics would make it. It is based, we may
roughly say, on a contrast between court and country; but those who
inhale virtue from the woodland are courtiers who bring virtue with
them, and the country has its churlish masters and unkind or uncouth
maidens.
[41] This has been strongly urged and fully illustrated by Mr.
Harris.
[42] It may be suggested that, in the catalogue above, I should have
mentioned that imaginative 'unreality' in love referred to on p. 326.
But I do not see in Hamlet either this, or any sign that he took
Ophelia for an Imogen or even a Juliet, though naturally he was less
clearly aware of her deficiencies than Shakespeare.
I may add, however, another item to the catalogue. We do not feel
that the problems presented to most of the tragic heroes could have
been fatal to Shakespeare himself. The immense breadth and clearness
of his intellect would have saved him from the fate of Othello,
Troilus, or Antony. But we do feel, I think, and he himself may have
felt, that he could not have coped with Hamlet's problem; and there
is no improbability in the idea that he may have experienced in some
degree the melancholia of his hero.