I am aware that, in these days, when realism is all the rage and true
imagination at a discount, people will ask how, not being either an AEneas
or a Dante, I came to be admitted to an actual sight of the Elysian
Fields, and will not be fobbed off by any fanciful explanation such as
used to satisfy the more unsophisticated reader of former times. I
therefore hasten to satisfy their exacting curiosity by saying that I
happen to have done a good turn of late to the Pagan gods--not forgetting
the goddesses, whom one should always have on one's side, since they hold
the keys of the position equally on earth, in the air, and
underground--and they made their acknowledgments to me by letting me know
that I might have my choice of an interview with any one, but only one, of
the personages among those who are now disporting themselves in the other
world. At first, I was rather tempted to name Eve, in order that I might
get an intelligible account from the most trustworthy source of the Tree
of Knowledge and the Tree of Good and Evil. But I thought she perhaps
would know as little about them as myself; so I thought I would ask for an
interview, with either Helen of Troy or with Cleopatra, when it suddenly
struck me that I should probably find both one and the other not very
unlike women I had already come across here in this upper world. So,
anxious to know whether or not there ever was a real flesh-and-blood
Shakespeare, and explaining that, if there was not, I had not the smallest
desire to have a talk with my Lord Verulam, I said, "Let me have a
colloquy with Shakespeare, the wisest, sweetest, wittiest,
largest-hearted, biggest-brained of human beings"; and, almost before I
had finished the sentence, I found myself in the Elysian Fields.
At first, I forgot what I was there for at all, in my amazement at the
place itself. Though I am a tolerably close observer of external Nature, I
could not for the life of me surmise what season of the year I was in, and
finally perceived that I was in all the four seasons at one and the same
time. Primroses and bluebells were to be seen side by side with roses and
irises, with meadowsweet and traveller's joy, grass ready for the scythe
not far from swaying wheat and heavily-burred hop-garden; while, well
within view, I could see slopes of virgin snow, and folks making ready to
go tobogganing on them. It was just the same with bird-life. Stormcock,
nightingale, cuckoo, corncrake, woodpecker, robin redbreast, were all
singing together, yet there was no discord in the concert.
"You want to see me, I am told," I heard some one say behind me, and,
turning, I at once perceived that it was Shakespeare, not from the
striking resemblance to any of the portraits or busts, Droeshout, Chandos,
Stratford-on-Avon, or other effigy, but by his seeming to be compounded of
them all, with something superadded that I could recall in none of them.
Similarly, he did not seem to be of any particular age, either of youth,
early manhood, middle life, or yet elderly, but compounded of all the
years, at once young and engaging, in the grand climacteric, and withal
full of mellow wisdom. His eye glowed with fine frenzy, withal was tender
and melting as that of a boy-lover. I could not fail to observe this
extraordinary combination of ages and qualities; yet they did not strike
me as in any way incongruous, any more than I had found incongruity in all
the seasons being contemporaneous, and blossom and fruit subsisting
together. I had expected to be rather embarrassed and somewhat overawed on
first coming across this king of men; but his manner was so simple, so
frank and friendly, that he put me at my ease at once, and I ventured to
inquire if, in the Elysian Fields, they had any knowledge of what was
going on in the world they had once inhabited.
"Ample knowledge," he replied, "though we are not troubled with
newspapers, nor yet tormented by telegrams or telephones, but confine our
regard to what interests us."
"Have you happened to notice," I asked, "that _A Winter's Tale_ has
recently been produced at His Majesty's Theatre?"
"Yes, and all the more because that indefatigable manager and
all-embracing actor, Mr. Tree, has not taken a part in it. He would have
rendered Autolycus very suitably."
"Perhaps," I went on, since I now felt on a footing of the most friendly
familiarity with one I had hitherto always thought of at a respectful
distance, "perhaps you have observed some of the criticisms on the play."
"To tell the truth," he replied, "I have not. There were few such things
in my time, save by the audience; and my recollection of what few there
were does not dispose me to read fresh ones. But, if they have said
anything instructive or amusing, I shall be most happy to hear it."
"I am afraid," I said, "they are more amusing than instructive."
"Then let me have them by all means. The only thing one is sometimes
tempted to find fault with in the Elysian Fields is that its denizens are
a trifle too serious for me; being just as much inclined as ever to say,
when I find myself in the company of my fellow-creatures, 'With mirth and
laughter let me play the fool.'"
Thus encouraged, I said that one critic had pronounced the play to be dull
as drama, and inferior as poetry; Autolycus to be a bore, yet by no means
the only tiresome feature in the play; the plot to be a succession of gaps
and puerilities; and that another observed what a pity it was you had made
Leontes a lunatic, a raving maniac, and a nuisance. As I recounted these
opinions, I could see no sign of annoyance on the face of the playwright,
but only a philosophic smile illumining his tranquil features.
"I seem," he said, "to have heard that some time ago some one commented on
the meanness of the fable and the extravagant conduct of it, and declared
that the comedy caused no mirth, and the serious portion no concernment. I
daresay there is truth in the first part of the criticism, but, in regard
to the second, I seem to remember that, at the Globe, there was a good
deal of mirth at the lighter scenes, and no small attention at the grave
ones. But perhaps audiences in my day were different from audiences in
yours. I am by no means sure that I wrote the whole of the play; indeed I
am pretty certain I did not. My chief share in it was the love-scene
between Florizel and Perdita."
"Which I have always thought very beautiful, and the very opposite of
'inferior as poetry.'"
"Very good of you to say so; for I much enjoyed writing it. For the rest,
I suspect that a change has come over audiences, and still more over those
people whom you call critics. From what I have heard, they appear not to
confine themselves to appraising what is offered them, but want authors to
offer them something quite different, which is scarcely reasonable.
Moreover, they impute to an author motives he did not entertain, and ends
he did not have in view. For instance, I am supposed by them to have been
a rather successful delineator of character; overlooking the fact that I
over and over again cast character to the winds, in favour of the
situation, to which one surrendered oneself only too willingly, because in
doing so one was enabled to indulge one's humour and temperament more
freely and fully."
"Am I right," I asked, "in thinking that your humour and temperament lay
chiefly in a keen enjoyment of rural nature, the delineation of love
between men and women, and philosophic reflections on the various passions
of human beings?"
"You put it rather flatteringly," he said. "But I will not deny that what
you say concerning one's disposition is true. The external world is so
beautiful, loving and being loved are so delightful, and human beings are
so interesting, that it is a writer's own defect if he does not make them
appear beautiful, delightful, and interesting to others, no matter in what
form he presents them. If he has what you call the way with him, he will
make you accept as true almost any story, so long as he is telling it, no
matter what you may think of it afterwards. As a famous poet and critic
said long ago, _Incredulus odi_. Men naturally turn away from what seems
incredible. But what seems somewhat incredible when only read, appears
credible enough when acted, if acted well; and Ellen Terry was so
attractive and winning in her treatment of Polixenes, that the conjugal
jealousy of Leontes becomes, at least, almost intelligible."
"That was exactly what I myself felt the other day, when I went to see the
performance," I said. "But I observe you quote Horace, though many persons
have maintained that you had little Latin, if any."
"Rather a mistake that, arising, I imagine, from their not knowing what
Grammar Schools were like in my time, when we were taught something more
than the rudiments of Latin, with the assistance of prompt corporal
chastisement if we showed a disinclination to master them. Nowadays, I
see, the birch, the ferule, and the cane, have fallen into disfavour, with
the result that many English boys, at schools supposed to be very superior
in the education they provide, refuse to learn anything except cricket and
rowing; two excellent accomplishments, but not quite covering the whole
ground of a liberal education."
"May I inquire," I said, "if you, among others, had a liberal application
of the cane?"
"My fair share," he said, "but not for refusing to learn, since I enjoyed
being taught, and, still more, teaching myself; and a very little
learning, though some people have said it is a dangerous thing, goes a
long way if you only know how to turn it to account. My thrashings, which
were richly deserved, were given for being behindhand of a morning because
I had loitered with some rustic sight or sound that arrested me, and
suchlike irregularities of conduct. But what was taught us was taught
thoroughly, and I have sometimes thought that men deemed poets may be
taught and learn too much, as, for instance, my good friend Ben Jonson,
who has been justly compared to a heavy galleon, though a very well
trimmed and steered one, but which perhaps would sometimes have benefited
by a portion of its dead weight being cast overboard. Still he was a rare
poet all the same."
"Who is that, may I ask, with the pointed beard, that has just been joking
with a rubicund friar whom I no longer see, and then more gravely with a
seemly and tender-looking young woman, also vanished 'into air, into thin
air,' while he now stoops to gather daisies from the grass? I seem to know
his face."
"That is a delightful fellow, perhaps of all my companions here the most
congenial; the morning star of English song, Geoffrey Chaucer. _He_ could,
and did, delineate character consistently if you like. I think it is his
cheerful, kindly sense of humour that recommends him so strongly to me.
But a nearer contemporary of mine in the other world whom you see there,
wearing an aspect of stately distinction, essentially what English folk
call a perfect gentleman, likewise enters much into the study of my
imagination. See! Now he turns his face towards you."
"Surely it is Edmund Spenser, is it not?"
"Yes, the Poet's poet. His verse is at once so natural and so noble, as to
be irresistible. I often repeat to myself two exquisitely musical and
briefly descriptive lines of his:
A little lowly Hermitage it was,
Down in a dale, hard by a forest side.
No amount of elaboration and detail would enable one to see the Hermitage
better, or indeed, as well; and the lyrical freedom of the ostensibly
iambic verse gives to it an irresistible charm."
"And, over and over again, if I may say so, gives to the blank verse of
your dramas the same magical quality that a more stately treatment of it
can never confer. But where is Milton?"
"One sees him but seldom," he replied; "and when Chaucer and I do catch
sight of him, we behave rather like truant schoolboys, and put on a grave
face, especially if he finds us in one of our lighter moods. We are all
rather in awe of him, for he never stoops to playfulness; and Chaucer, who
is rather irreverent sometimes, says he is so uniformly sublime as now and
then to be ridiculous. But, in our hearts, we greatly revere him. To tell
the truth, I think he prefers Wordsworth's company to ours; and we find
more congenial society from time to time in--look! that handsome youth,
who carries his head with unconscious pride, and even here seems
half-discontented. The best is never good enough for him, and he cannot be
deluded even by his own illusions, poor fellow!"
"It's Byron," I said, "is it not?"
"Yes, there is no mistaking him; part man, part god, part devil. I believe
there was some doubt about admitting him here, lest he should rouse even
the Elysian Fields to mutiny, and a question whether he should not have an
enclosure all to himself. But he is a man of the world, and knows how to
behave himself when he chooses; and, when one of his misanthropic moods
comes over him, he wanders about scowling and muttering like a gathering
thunderstorm. I am told he breaks bounds sometimes to go in search of
Sappho. There would be a pair of them, would there not? What an
explosive power there was in him! for in the mind, as in your melanite,
force packs small."
"And Shelley? Where is Shelley?"
"Where the bee sucks, I suspect; for he is the very Ariel of our company;
ever, even here, in search of the unattainable! But he is a great
favourite with all of us, he is so lovable."
"And the poet who has delighted my own generation," I inquired. "Surely he
is among you."
"Not yet," he replied; "though I have not the least doubt he will be, in
due course. No one is admitted here until he has been dead for fifty
years; Time, the door-keeper and guardian of Eternity, being more
deliberate than the janitors of Westminster Abbey, who, you must allow,
make some rather ludicrous blunders in admitting, on the very morrow of
their decease, at the importunity of friends and associates, persons for
whom, half a century later, no one will dream of claiming any special
posthumous distinction."
"I fear that is so," I confessed. "We have been rather fussy and feverish
of late, and attribute to notoriety an enduring power it does not
possess."
"Just so. Notoriety is one thing, Fame quite another. Will not the result
be that men who may without presumption entertain a humble hope that, as
our lofty friend Milton puts it, Posterity will not willingly let die all
that they may have done or written, will feel a distaste for these
precipitate distinctions, and even take precautions against them. We
notice that something of the same kind is taking place among you in regard
to what you call titular honours, since they have become so common, and
are lavished on such undistinguished persons, as to be no longer valued by
the truly distinguished."
"That is so," I said; "but it is inevitable in these days, and probably
useful to the State, satisfying a number of small ambitions."
"I understand," he replied; and I thought to myself, of course he does, he
who understood everything. "In these days it is more important to satisfy
the many," he went on, "than to content the few, and persons of real
distinction must always be few; and, after all, if these are wise as well
as distinguished, they must be content with anything that ministers to the
welfare of the community at large."
It was so interesting to me to hear this great dramatist and supreme poet
talking wisdom in this familiar manner, like any ordinary being, that I
made the most of my opportunity, and asked him if he thought what he had
just said served to explain the magnificent manner in which his plays are
presented to modern audiences, and if he approved of such presentation.
"I should approve," he replied, "if there were no danger of the mounting
of the piece diverting the attention of the audience from the play itself,
and if it did not appear necessary to modern stage-managers to cut out
whatever does not easily lend itself to spectacular devices. I quite
understand their motive; for, having been in my time not only an actor,
but part proprietor, and part stage-manager of theatres, I do not forget
that they must take into consideration the material results of their
enterprise. But my colleagues and I contrived to make a fair livelihood
out of our theatres without any large outlay on the scenery or the
dresses. Apparently, your modern audiences would yawn at, and not
understand, speeches that not only the courtiers of Elizabeth, but the
citizens of Blackfriars and the Chepe, listened to with rapt and
straining ears. We observe that you pique yourselves upon what you call
the progress you have made during the last three hundred years, and some
of us are rather amused at the self-complacent claim; and, though you
travel much faster, live much more luxuriously, and blow each other to
pieces more successfully than we did, it may be doubted if men's minds
have made much advance, or if their intellectual qualities are not,
notwithstanding the increase of what you deem education, poorer and more
stinted than when the bulk of the nation read less, but reflected more."
"In one respect," I ventured to say, "you can hardly withhold your
sympathy from the claim of our having made progress. We no longer regard
actors as vagabonds."
"I am not quite so sure of that," he said, with a significant smile.
"Myself an actor as well as an author, my utterances in the second
capacity respecting the former are not particularly flattering; and the
fuss you have of late made over actors and actresses, as over millionaires
and transatlantic heiresses, is perhaps evidence less of admiration than
of self-interest, and an appetite for diversion."
"But," I observed, "an actor was recently buried, with the customary
honours, in Westminster Abbey."
"But did everybody approve of it? Milton took care to inform me that many
did not; but my withers remained unwrung, and I playfully replied that I
was rather disposed to think that special form of posthumous
acknowledgment might not unsuitably be reserved for actors and
politicians--the author of _Paradise Lost_ was, every now and then, an
active politician, was he not?--since the two have much in common, both
appealing to their audiences by voice, intonation, gesticulation, and
pursuit of popularity, and enjoying a wide but ephemeral notoriety."
I remembered the passage in _Henry the Sixth_ where he says that he hates
"the loud applause and _aves_ vehement" of the many, and of his little
esteem for those who "affect" such, and I followed up that silent
recollection by saying:
"And, after all, Milton, Pope, Byron, Wordsworth, Keats, lie far away from
that edifice; also, I might add, one greater than any of them--yourself."
"Dear old Stratford-on-Avon!" he said, as though he were musing rather
than addressing himself to me. "I am well content to be sepulchred there.
How I loved it! How I love it still! And how much I owed to it! My works,
such as they are, have in your ingenious age been attributed to one much
more nobly born, more highly educated, more deeply read, more erudite,
than I. They who started, and those who have accepted, that theory, little
understand that no such man could have written them. Whatever may be their
merit or demerit, their author could only be one who, born in a modest
condition, began by having the closest touch with frank unaffected human
nature, and for whom life and society expanded by degrees, until, though
still preferring the life removed, he could tell sad stories of the death
of kings, find books in the running brooks, and good in everything."
As he slowly uttered these familiar majestic words, he faded from my
sight; and all that was left was an enduring recollection of that
privileged interview.
Footnotes:
[1] In estimating Byron, people too often forget that the same poet wrote
_Manfred_ and _Beppo_, _Childe Harold_ and _Don Juan_. It is the variety,
in other words the extent, of Byron's genius, that constitutes his
greatness.
[2] The renderings into English verse from Dante are by the author of the
paper.
Transcriber's Notes:
Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
The misprint "Wordworth" was corrected to "Wordsworth" (page 181).
Hyphenation inconsistencies have been retained from the original.