[Illustration: INTRODUCTION]
Literary critics have many times during the past two thousand years
waged battle with one another over the question whether drama owes
its excellence chiefly to plot or chiefly to character. Is it the
business of the dramatist, critics ask successively through the
ages, to inspire the playgoer with a deeper interest in the external
circumstances which mould the fortunes of his heroes and heroines
than in their individual temperaments and the inner workings of their
minds and hearts? But critics commonly “count it a bondage to fix
a belief,” and after clothing their question in the complexity of
disquisition, they rarely “stay” for a clear and decisive answer.
The glimmering light of dialectics usually involves in shadow one
or other commanding phase of the problem. To the plain observer it
would seem that both plot and character are essential constituents of
perfect drama; that the strength of the one depends on the strength
of the other; and that, except to the questioning critic, it is a
matter of small practical consequence to which the greater importance
be attached by the refinements of theory. In the best plays of
Shakespeare the interest evoked respectively by plot and character
is so evenly balanced that he must be exceptionally short-sighted
who would set the value of the one above the value of the other. The
external circumstances that mould the fortunes of Hamlet, Macbeth,
Lear, Othello, rivet the playgoer’s and the reader’s attention in no
less a degree than the individual temperaments of these great dramatic
personages or the inner workings of their minds and hearts. It is
the perfectly harmonious co-operation of plot and character that is
responsible for Shakespeare’s noblest triumphs.
Close and constant study of the great plays of Shakespeare must
ultimately rouse in the student a more absorbing interest in their
characters than in their plots. That is the final effect of supreme
dramatic genius. But the full appreciation of Shakespeare’s sure
and illimitable insight into character can never be reached until
we have made ourselves thoroughly familiar with the plot in which
the character has its substantive being. It follows, therefore, that
if one would realise completely in due time the whole eminence of
Shakespeare’s dramatic achievement, one should be encouraged at the
outset to study closely the stories of the plays rather than the
characters apart from their settings. When the youthful mind has
grasped the manner and matter of the plots, it will in adult age be
in a far better position than it could be otherwise to comprehend all
the excellences, all the subtleties of the characters. Only when plot
and character have received equally full attention will Shakespeare
stand revealed to the mature student in his manifold glory.
It was this point of view that led Charles Lamb and his sister Mary to
prepare their “Tales from Shakespeare, designed for the use of young
persons.” Their volume was first published in 1807. The two writers
narrated, in simple language for the most part, the plots of twenty
of Shakespeare’s plays, fourteen comedies and six tragedies. None of
the historical dramas, whether English or Roman, were included, nor
was a place found for the comedies of _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, and
the _Merry Wives of Windsor_, nor for the tragedies of _Troilus and
Cressida_, and _Titus Andronicus_. The greater part of the volume was
the work of Mary Lamb. Although Charles Lamb’s name alone appeared
upon the title-page, he was responsible for no more than six of the
tales--those of the six tragedies.
Mary Lamb had little of her brother’s literary power. She was in
sympathy with his literary tastes, she had something of his shrewdness
of judgment, but she had none of his wealth of fancy, his pliancy
of style, his humorous insight, or his learning. Although Mary
Lamb’s renderings of the plots of the comedies have the charm of
matter-of-fact simplicity, they cannot be held on a close scrutiny to
satisfy all the needs of the situation. They often trace the course
of the stories too faintly and imperfectly to recall Shakespeare’s
own image. Frequently in Mary Lamb’s work pertinent intricacies of
plot are blurred by a silent omission of details, knowledge of
which is essential to a complete understanding of the Shakespearean
theme. For example, the story of the caskets is excluded altogether
from Mary Lamb’s version of the plot of _The Merchant of Venice_. Of
Bottom and his allies in _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ she has nothing
to tell; Titania falls in love with a nameless sleeping “clown who
had lost his way in the wood.” And when (in Mary Lamb’s version) the
ass’s head which Puck sets on the clown’s neck is removed, he is
“left to finish his nap with his own fool’s head upon his shoulders.”
Nothing more is vouchsafed about the “rude mechanicals” of Theseus’s
Athens. Mary Lamb’s rendering of _As You Like It_ admits no mention
of the melancholy Jaques, of the shrewdly witty Touchstone, or of
the rustic Audrey. The ludicrously self-centred Malvolio and his
comically tragic self-deception disappear from her version of _Twelfth
Night_. Elsewhere in the comedies, and even in Charles Lamb’s own
work on the tragedies, Shakespeare’s text is at times misinterpreted.
Consequently, however fascinating in themselves the narratives of
the Lambs may prove to young readers, Lamb’s Tales offer them a
very fragmentary knowledge of the scope of Shakespeare’s plots. An
endeavour to supply young readers with a fuller and more accurate
account of them is therefore well justified, and this endeavour is
made in the present volume.
In studying the stories on which Shakespeare based his plays, it is
always worth bearing in mind that he cannot be credited with the
whole invention of any of them, except in the case of one play--the
comedy of _Love’s Labour’s Lost_. In accordance with the custom of all
dramatists of the day, it was his practice to seek the main lines
of his plots in prose-fictions, or in historical chronicles by other
hands.
Romantic fiction was born for modern Europe on Italian soil.
Boccaccio of fourteenth-century Florence and Boccaccio’s long line
of disciples--Bandello of Milan, Giraldi Cinthio of Ferrara, and
many writers of less familiar name of the sixteenth century--had for
generations before Shakespeare’s epoch furnished not only Italy,
but all the Western countries of Europe with their chief recreative
literature in prose. The Italian novels were through the second half
of the sixteenth century constantly translated into English and
French, and it was to those English or French translations of the
Italian romances that Shakespeare owed the main suggestion for all
the plots of his comedies (save _Love’s Labour’s Lost_) and for many
of those of his tragedies. Belleforest’s “Histoires Tragiques,” a
collection of French versions of the Italian stories of Bandello, was
very often in his hands. Novels by Bandello are the ultimate sources
of the stories of _Romeo and Juliet_, of _Much Ado about Nothing_,
and of _Twelfth Night_. _All’s Well that Ends Well_ and _Cymbeline_
largely rest on foundations laid by Boccaccio. The tales of _Othello_
and _Measure for Measure_ are traceable to Giraldi Cinthio.
But although Shakespeare’s borrowings from the frank and vivacious
fiction of sunny Italy were large and open-handed, his debt was
greater in appearance than it was in reality. He freely altered and
adapted the borrowed stories in accordance with his sense of dramatic
and artistic fitness, so that the finished plays present them in
shapes which bear little relation to their original forms. At times
he intertwined one borrowed story with a second, and his marvellous
ingenuity completely changed the aspect of both; each assumed new and
unexpected point and consistency. With such effect did he combine in
_The Merchant of Venice_ the story of the caskets with the story of
Shylock’s bond with Antonio. His capacity of assimilating all that he
read was as omnipotent as his power of assimilating all that passed
in life within range of his eye or ear. The stories that he drew from
books on which to found his plays can only be likened to base ore,
which the magic of his genius had the faculty of transmuting into gold.
But for young readers, who approach Shakespeare’s work for the first
time through the present narration of the stories of his plays, it
is not necessary to learn whence Shakespeare derived their bare
lineaments, or how he breathed into them the glowing spirit of life.
It is essential that young readers should find delight and recreation
in the tales as he finally presented them in his plays. Such delight
and recreation I believe the contents of this volume is fitted to
afford them.
It only remains to express the wish that the knowledge here conveyed
to young readers of Shakespeare’s plots may lead them to become in
future years loving students of the text of his plays. The words
employed by Charles Lamb in a like connection when he first sent into
the world his and his sister’s “Tales from Shakespeare” may fitly be
echoed here. Young men and women cannot learn too early, in life how
the study of Shakespeare’s work may, in a far higher degree than the
study of other literature, enrich their fancy, strengthen them in
virtue, withdraw them from selfish and mercenary thoughts. Life will
bring them no better instructor in the doing of sweet and honourable
action, no better teacher of courtesy, benignity, generosity,
humanity; for of both stories and characters proffering the counsel
to seek what is good and true and to shun what is bad and false
Shakespeare’s pages are full.