“Or stoops with the Remover to remove.”
And these are true Shakespeare because in each there is we know
not what of ivory shod with steel. A mixture of the light and the
strong, of the subtle and the intense rescues his simple words from
oblivion. But another, not of our blood, would have hidden far
more; he shows it all, frankly disdaining artifice.
Also the great Elizabethan needs room for his giant limbs, for
his frame of thought and his thews of diction. Cite him just too
shortly, choose but a hair’s breadth too mickle an ensample of his
work, and it is hardly Poesy, nay, hardly Prose. Thus you shall
have Othello--the Moor they call him--betrayed and raging, full of
an African Anger. What does he say of it? Why very much; but if you
are of those that cut out their cameos too finely; you slip into
quoting this merely:--
_Oth._ Hum! Hum!
And that is not our Shakespeare at all, nor e’en our Othello. Oh!
no, it is nothing but a brutish noise, meaning nothing, empty of
tragedy, unwished for.
It was Professor Goodle who said that “none needed the spaces of
repose more than Shakespeare,” and taught us in these words that
the poet must have hills and valleys; must recline if he is to
rise. But does not Shakespeare, even in his repose, seem to create?
The Professor will indeed quote to us the mere sprawling leisure of
Stratford, and shame us with such lines as--
MAC.--The Devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon,
Where got’st thou that goose look?
Which is Shakespeare at full length. But we also, that are not over
sure of Shakespeare’s failing, can answer him with such excerpts as
these:--
HEN.--Therefore do thou, stiff-set Northumberland,
Retire to Chester, and my cousin here,
The noble Bedford, his to Glo’ster straight
And give our Royal ordinance and word
That in this fit and strife of empery
No loss shall stand account. To this compulsion
I pledge my sword, my person and my honour
On the Great Seal of England: so farewell.
Swift to your charges: nought was ever done
Unless at some time it were first begun.
This also is Shakespeare in his repose, but a better Shakespeare
than he whom the Professor would challenge. For though there is
here no work or strain in the thing, yet it reeks of English. It
is like the mist over our valleys at evening, so effortless is it
and so reposeful, and yet so native. Note the climax “On the Great
Seal of England” and the quaint, characteristic folk-lore of the
concluding couplet, with its rhyming effect. Note also how sparing
is William Shakespeare of the strong qualificative, however just
it may be. For when our moderns will speak hardly of “the tolerant
kine” or “the under-lit sky,” or of “the creeping river like a
worm upturned, with silver belly stiffened in the grass,” though
they be by all this infinitely stronger, yet are they but the more
condensed and self-belittled. Shakespeare will write you ten lines
and have in all but one just and sharp adjective--“stiff-set;” for
the rest they are a common highway; he cares not.
And here he is in the by-paths; a meadow of Poesy. I have found
it hidden away in one of the latter plays; the flowers of his
decline:--
“Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Now thine earthly task is done,
Thou’rt gone home and ta’en thy wages.
Golden lads and lasses must,
Like chimney-sweepers, come to dust.”
There is in that a line I swear no one but Shakespeare would have
dared. “Thou’rt gone home and ta’en thy wages.” Commonplace? A text
on the wall? A sermon-tag? All you will, but a _frame for glory_.
This then is William Shakespeare in a last word. A man at work full
of doing; the Ϝ ἔργον: glad if you saw the mark of the chisel;
still more glad if you did not see it. And if it be queried why
are such things written of him? Why do we of the last and woful
days turn and return the matter of our past? We say this. _Vixere
Fortes_; that is, no fame were enduring save by continued iterance
and echo of similar praise, nor any life well earned in the public
sheets that dared not touch on any matter and remodel all. It is
for ourselves and for William Shakespeare that these things are
done. For ourselves, that is a private thing to hide under the veil
of the Home-lofe. For William Shakespeare, that is the public duty,
that his fame may not fail in the noise of new voices. And we can
borrow from him and return to him what he said of another with such
distinction of plane and delicate observance of value:--
“So long as men shall breathe and eyes can see,
This lives, and living, this gives life to thee.”
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