A Parallel.
Shakespeare and Rembrandt have in common the faculty of quickening
speculation and compelling the minds of men to combat and discussion.
About the English poet a literature of contention has been in process of
accretion ever since he was discovered to be Shakespeare; and about the
Dutch painter and etcher there has gradually accumulated a literature
precisely analogous in character and for the most part of equal quality.
In such an age as this, when the creative faculty of the world is mainly
occupied with commentary and criticism, the reason should not be far to
seek. Both were giants; both were original and individual in the highest
sense of the words; both were leagues ahead of their contemporaries, not
merely as regards the matter of their message but also in respect of the
terms of its delivery; each, moreover--and here one comes upon a capital
point of contact and resemblance--each was at times prodigiously inferior
to himself. Shakespeare often writes so ill that you hesitate to believe
he could ever write supremely well; or, if this way of putting it seem
indecorous and abominable, he very often writes so well that you are loth
to believe he could ever have written thus extremely ill. There are
passages in his work in which he reaches such heights of literary art as
since his time no mortal has found accessible; and there are passages
which few or none of us can read without a touch of that 'burning sense
of shame' experienced in the presence of Mr. Poynter's _Diadumene_ by the
British Matron of _The Times_ newspaper. Now, we have got to be so
curious in ideals that we cannot away with the thought of imperfection.
Our worship must have for its object something flawless, something
utterly without spot or blemish. We can be satisfied with nothing less
than an entire and perfect chrysolite; and we cannot taste our
Shakespeare at his worst without experiencing not merely the burning
sense of shame aforesaid but also a frenzy of longing to father his
faults upon somebody else--Marlowe for instance, or Green, or
Fletcher--and a fury of proving that our divinity was absolutely
incapable of them. That Shakespeare varied--that the matchless prose and
the not particularly lordly verse of _As You Like It_ are by the same
hand; that the master to whom we owe our Hamlet is also responsible for
Gertrude and King Claudius; that he who gave us the agony of Lear and the
ruin of Othello did likewise perpetrate the scene of Hector's murder, in
manner so poor and in spirit so cynical and vile--is beyond all belief
and patience; and we have argued the point to such an extent that we are
all of us in Gotham, and a mooncalf like the ascription of whatever is
good in Shakespeare to Lord Bacon is no prodigy but a natural birth.