beguiled by Coleridge's laudanum trances? A limbo--of this we are
confident--where Shakespeare never set foot at any moment in his life,
and where no robust critical intelligence can endure for a moment. We
must save ourselves from this insidious disintegration by keeping our
eye upon the object, and the object is just a good (not a very good)
play. Not an Ibsen, a Hauptmann, a Shaw, or a Masefield play, where the
influence and ravages of these 'ideas' are certainly perceptible, but
merely a Shakespeare play, one of those works of true poetic genius
which can only be produced by a mind strong enough to resist every
attempt at invasion by the 'idea'-bacillus.
In considering a Shakespeare play the word 'idea' had best be kept out
of the argument altogether; but there are two senses in which it might
be intelligibly used. You might call the dramatic skeleton Shakespeare's
idea of the play. It is the half-mechanical, half-organic factor in the
work of poetic creation--the necessary means by which a poet can
conveniently explicate and express his manifold æsthetic intuitions.
This dramatic skeleton is governed by laws of its own, which were first
and most brilliantly formulated by Aristotle in terms that, in
essentials, hold good for all time. You may investigate this skeleton,
seize, if you can, upon the peculiarity by which it is differentiated
from all other skeletons; you may say, for instance, that _Othello_ is a
tragedy of jealousy, or _Hamlet_ of the inhibition of self-consciousness.
But if your 'idea' is to have any substance it must be moulded very
closely upon the particular object with which you are dealing; and in
the end you will find yourself reduced to the analysis of individual
characters.
On the other hand, the word 'idea' might be intelligibly used of
Shakespeare's whole attitude to the material of his contemplation, the
centre of comprehension from which he worked, the aspect under which he
viewed the universe of his interest. There is no reason to rest content
with Coleridge's application of the epithet 'myriad-minded,' which is,
at the best, an evasion of a vital question. The problem is to see
Shakespeare's mind _sub specie unitatis_. It can be done; there never
has been and never will be a human mind which can resist such an inquiry
if it is pursued with sufficient perseverance and understanding. What
chiefly stands in the way is that tradition of Shakespeariolatry which
Coleridge so powerfully inaugurated, not least by the epithet
'myriad-minded.'
But of 'ideas' in any other senses than these--and in neither of these
cases is 'idea' the best word for the object of search--let us beware as
we would of the plague, in criticism of Shakespeare or any other great
poet. Poets do not have 'ideas'; they have perceptions. They do not have
an 'idea'; they have comprehension. Their creation is æsthetic, and the
working of their mind proceeds from the realisation of one æsthetic
perception to that of another, more comprehensive if they are to be
great poets having within them the principle of poetic growth. There is
undoubtedly an organic process in the evolution of a great poet, which
you may, for convenience of expression, call logical; but the moment you
forget that the use of the word 'logic,' in this context, is
metaphorical, you are in peril. You can follow out this 'logical
process' in a poet only by a kindred creative process of æsthetic
perception passing into æsthetic comprehension. The hunt for 'ideas'
will only make that process impossible; it prevents the object from ever
making its own impression upon the mind. It has to speak with the
language of logic, whereas its use and function in the world is to speak
with a language not of logic, but of a process of mind which is at least
as sovereign in its own right as the discursive reason.
Let us away then with 'logic' and away with 'ideas' from the art of
literary criticism; but not, in a foolish and impercipient reaction, to
revive the impressionistic criticism which has sapped the English brain
for a generation past. The art of criticism is rigorous; impressions are
merely its raw material; the life-blood of its activity is in the
process of ordonnance of æsthetic impressions.
It is time, however, to return for a moment to Shakespeare, and to
observe in one crucial instance the effect of the quest for logic in a
single line. In the fine scene where John hints to Hubert at Arthur's
murder, he speaks these lines (in the First Folio text):--
'I had a thing to say, but let it goe:
The Sunne is in the heauen, and the proud day,
Attended with the pleasure of the world,
Is all too wanton, and too full of gawdes
To giue me audience: If the midnight bell
Did with his yron tongue, and brazen mouth
Sound on into the drowzie race of night,
If this same were a Churchyard where we stand,
And thou possessed with a thousand wrongs:
... Then, in despight of brooded watchfull day,
I would into thy bosome poure my thoughts....'
If one had to choose the finest line in this passage, the choice would
fall upon
'Sound on into the drowsy race of night.'
Yet you will have to look hard for it in the modern editions of
Shakespeare. At the best you will find it with the mark of corruption:--
+'Sound on into the drowsy race of night ('Globe');
and you run quite a risk of finding
'Sound one into the drowsy race of night' ('Oxford').
There are six pages of close-printed comment upon the line in the
_Variorum_. The only reason, we can see, why it should be the most
commented line in _King John_ is that it is one of the most beautiful.
No one could stand it. Of all the commentators, only one, Miss Porter,
whom we name _honoris causa_, stands by the line with any conviction of
its beauty. Every other person either alters it or regrets his inability
to alter it.
'How can a bell sound on into a race?' pipe the little editors. What is
'the race of night?' What _can_ it mean? How _could_ a race be drowsy?
What an _awful_ contradiction in terms! And so while you and I, and all
the other ordinary lovers of Shakespeare are peacefully sleeping in our
beds, they come along with their little chisels, and chop out the
horribly illogical word and pop in a horribly logical one, and we
(unless we can afford the _Variorum_, which we can't) know nothing
whatever about it. We have no redress. If we get out of our beds and
creep upon them while they are asleep--they never are--and take out our
little chisels and chop off their horribly stupid little heads, we shall
be put in prison and Mr Justice Darling will make a horribly stupid
little joke about us. There is only one thing to do. We must make up our
minds that we have to combine in our single person the scholar and the
amateur; we cannot trust these gentlemen.
And, indeed, they have been up to their little games elsewhere in _King
John_. They do not like the reply of the citizens of Angiers to the
summons of the rival kings:--
'A greater powre than We denies all this,
And till it be undoubted, we do locke
Our former scruple in our strong-barr'd gates;
Kings of our feare, untill our feares resolu'd
Be by some certaine king, purg'd and depos'd.'
Admirable sense, excellent poetry. But no! We must not have it. Instead
we are given 'King'd of our fears' ('Globe') or 'Kings of ourselves'
('Oxford'). Bad sense, bad poetry.
They do not like Pandulph's speech to France:--
'France, thou maist hold a serpent by the tongue,
A cased lion by the mortall paw,
A fasting tiger safer by the tooth
Than keep in peace that hand which thou dost hold.'
'Cased,' caged, is too much for them. We must have 'chafed,' in spite of
'If thou would'st not entomb thyself alive
And case thy reputation in thy tent.'
Again, the Folio text of the meeting between the Bastard and Hubert in
Act V., when Hubert fails to recognise the Bastard's voice, runs thus:--
'Unkinde remembrance: thou and endles night,
Have done me shame: Brave Soldier, pardon me
That any accent breaking from thy tongue
Should scape the true acquaintaince of mine eare.'
This time 'endless' is not poetical enough for the editors. Theobald's
emendation 'eyeless' is received into the text. One has only to read the
brief scene through to realise that Hubert is wearied and obsessed by
the night that will never end. He is overwrought by his knowledge of
'news fitting to the night,
Black, fearful, comfortless, and horrible,'
and by his long wandering in search of the Bastard:--
'Why, here I walk in the black brow of night
To find you out.'
Yet the dramatically perfect 'endless' has had to make way for the
dramatically stupid 'eyeless.' Is it surprising that we do not trust
these gentlemen?
[APRIL, 1920
End of Project Gutenberg's Aspects of Literature, by J. Middleton Murry