In the mid-part of the period during which Charles Lamb was writing,
either on his own account or in collaboration with his sister, the
books for children to which reference has just been made, he was also
engaged upon the work which was to bring him before the world as a
great critic, as the first of the Neo-Elizabethans if I may substitute
that nickname for the time-honoured one which calls him the last of
the Elizabethans. For us, to-day, with our bountiful acknowledgment of
all that we owe to the great body of dramatic poets who flourished
during the latter part of the sixteenth century and the first half of
the seventeenth, for us with our many collected editions of the works
of these men it is somewhat difficult to realize the benighted
condition in which our fellows were situated a century ago.
Elizabethan drama to by far the greater number of our great
grandparents meant Shakespeare and Shakespeare alone; to us
Shakespeare is only the sun of a great dramatic planetary system, and
the corrected view is largely owing to the efforts of one
revolutionary critic, and that critic was Charles Lamb. His earliest
letters show that he had revelled in this by-way of literature, and
had there found much that was of the best comparatively forgotten, or
at least wholly neglected, and he gladly availed himself of an
opportunity afforded for selecting striking passages from the English
dramatic poets. "Specimens are becoming fashionable," he wrote. "We
have 'Specimens of Ancient English Poets,' 'Specimens of Modern
English Poets,' 'Specimens of Ancient English Prose Writers,' without
end. They used to be called 'Beauties'! You have seen 'Beauties of
Shakspeare'? so have many people that never saw any beauties in
Shakspeare." Lamb was not by any means, however, an imitator of the
unfortunate clerical forger, Dodd, in the scheme which he had in hand.
When we turn to the "Specimens" themselves we discover them to be fine
indeed, and in reading them and the brief but pregnant notes upon
them, we marvel at the sureness of the touch and the maturity of the
writer. The notes, or commentary, rarely extend beyond a score of
lines, and are most often far below that, yet they are always
wonderfully pertinent; there is "no philology, no antiquarianism, no
discussion of difficult or corrupt passages," no pedantry in fact, or
dry-as-dustism. It must not be forgotten when we look over the volume
with scenes from the plays of Kyd, Peele, Marlowe, Dekker, Marston,
Chapman, Heywood, Middleton, Tourneur, Webster, Ford, Jonson,
Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger, Shirley and others--it must not be
forgotten that Lamb was pleading the merits of these dramatic poets
before a generation to which some of them were but names and the rest
practically non-existent. The suggestion which Lamb throws out in the
preface that he had desired to show "how much of Shakspeare shines in
the great men his contemporaries" is amply borne out in his brief
notes upon his selections. This can best be proved by giving some of
the editorial comments from the collection itself, comments which
fully establish Lamb in his high place among the clearest sighted if
least voluminous of our true critics:
Heywood is a sort of _prose_ Shakspeare. His scenes are to
the full as natural and affecting. But we miss _the Poet_,
that which in Shakspeare always appears out and above the
surface of _the nature_. Heywood's characters, his Country
Gentlemen, etc., are exactly what we see (but of the best
kind of what we see) in life. Shakspeare makes us believe,
while we are among his lovely creations, that they are
nothing but what we are familiar with, as in dreams new
things seem old: but we awake, and sigh for the difference.
* * * * *
The insipid levelling morality to which the modern stage is
tied down would not admit of such admirable passions as
these scenes are filled with. A Puritanical obtuseness of
sentiment, a stupid infantile goodness, is creeping among
us, instead of the vigorous passions and virtues clad in
flesh and blood, with which the old dramatists present us.
Those noble and liberal casuists could discern in the
differences, the quarrels, the animosities of man, a beauty
and truth of moral feeling, no less than in the iterately
inculcated duties of forgiveness and atonement. With us all
is hypocritical meekness. A reconciliation scene (let the
occasion be never so absurd or unnatural) is always sure of
applause. Our audiences come to the theatre to be
complimented on their goodness. They compare notes with the
amiable characters in the play, and find a wonderful
similarity of disposition between them. We have a common
stock of dramatic morality out of which a writer may be
supplied without the trouble of copying from originals
within his own breast. To know the boundaries of honour, to
be judiciously valiant, to have a temperance which shall
beget a smoothness in the angry swellings of youth, to
esteem life as nothing when the sacred reputation of a
parent is to be defended, yet to shake and tremble under a
pious cowardice when that ark of an honest confidence is
found to be frail and tottering, to feel the true blows of a
real disgrace blunting that sword which the imaginary
strokes of a supposed false imputation had put so keen an
edge upon but lately; to do, or to imagine this done in a
feigned story, asks something more of a moral sense,
somewhat a greater delicacy of perception in questions of
right and wrong, than goes to the writing of two or three
hackneyed sentences about the laws of honour as opposed to
the laws of the land or a commonplace against duelling. Yet
such things would stand a writer nowadays in far better
stead than Captain Ager and his conscientious honour; and he
would be considered a far better teacher of morality than
old Rowley or Middleton if they were living.
* * * * *
Though some resemblance may be traced between the Charms in
Macbeth and the Incantations in this Play, which is supposed
to have preceded it, this coincidence will not detract much
from the originality of Shakspeare. His Witches are
distinguished from the Witches of Middleton by essential
differences. These are creatures to whom man or woman
plotting some dire mischief might resort for occasional
consultation. Those originate deeds of blood, and begin bad
impulses to men. From the moment that their eyes first meet
with Macbeth's, he is spellbound. That meeting sways his
destiny. He can never break the fascination. These Witches
can hurt the body: those have power over the soul. Hecate in
Middleton has a Son, a low buffoon: the hags of Shakspeare
have neither child of their own, nor seem to be descended
from any parent. They are foul Anomalies, of whom we know
not whence they are sprung, nor whether they have beginning
or ending. As they are without human passions, so they seem
to be without human relations. They come with thunder and
lightning, and vanish to airy music. This is all we know of
them.--Except Hecate, they have no names; which heightens
their mysteriousness. Their names, and some of the
properties, which Middleton has given to his Hags, excite
smiles. The Weird Sisters are serious things. Their presence
cannot co-exist with mirth. But in a lesser degree the
witches of Middleton are fine creations. Their power too is,
in some measure, over the mind. They raise jars, jealousies,
strife, _like a thick scurf o'er life_.
Here surely we have the right stuff. Terse, pregnant sentences; few
words, but going to the very heart of the matter. That Lamb was justly
proud of his pioneer work in this field of literary research is
certain, for in a short autobiography which he prepared for a friend's
album--in what has been called "the briefest, and perhaps the wittiest
and most truthful autobiography in the language"--he wrote as follows:
He also was the first to draw the Public attention to the
old English Dramatists, in a work called "Specimens of
English Dramatic Writers who lived about the Time of
Shakspeare," published about fifteen years since.
Of Lamb's work in this field the elder Disraeli admirably said, "He
carries us on through whole scenes by a true, unerring motion. His was
a poetical mind, labouring in poetry." Within the century that has
elapsed since Lamb was engaged in exploring the forgotten old tomes in
which lay buried so much excellent literature, the study which he
started has taken its place as one of the most important of its kind,
and a large library might be formed of the books and reprints which
may be looked upon as direct descendants of that modest single octavo
volume of 1808. During his later years Lamb devised something in the
nature of a supplement when he prepared further extracts from the
Garrick collection of plays in the British Museum for Hone's "Table
Book" (1827), and these extracts are now generally bound up with the
earlier ones in a single work.