THE PRACTICAL PERSONALITY AND THE POETICAL PERSONALITY
To state at the outset, that the practical personality of Shakespeare
is not the object of study for the critic and historian of art, but his
poetical personality; not the character and development of his life,
but the character and development of his art, will perhaps seem to be
superfluous, but as a matter of fact it will aid us in proceeding more
rapidly.
We do not aim at forbidding the natural curiosity, which leads to the
enquiry as to what sort of men in practical life were those whom we
admire as poets, thinkers and scientists. This curiosity often leads
to delusion, because there is nothing to be found behind the poet,
the philosopher, or the man of science, which can arouse interest,
though it is sometimes fruitful. It would certainly be agreeable to
raise that sort of mysterious veil that surrounds Shakespeare. We
should like to know what sort of passions, what ethical, philosophical
and mental experiences were his, and above all what he thought about
himself--whether, as appeared to those who rediscovered him a century
or so later, he were really without feeling the greatness of his genius
and of his own work. For what reason, too, if there were a special
reason, did he not take the trouble to have his plays printed, but
exposed them to the risk of being lost to posterity? Was it due to the
ingenuousness and innocence of the poet, or to proud indifference on
the part of a man, who disdains the world's applause and the mirage of
glory, because he is completely satisfied with the greatness of his
work? Or was it due to simple indolence, or to a settled plan, or to
the web of events? Did he suppose, as has been suggested, that those
plays, written for the theatre, would have continued ever to live in
the theatre, under the care of his companions in art, in accordance
with his intentions and in a manner suitable to their merit? But it
is clear that these and such like questions concern the biography,
rather than the artistic history of Shakespeare, which gives rise to an
altogether different series of researches.
We do not however wish to assert that these two series of different
questions are without relation: even different things have some
relation to one another, which resides in their diversity itself
and is connected above them. The critic and historian of art would
certainly find it advantageous for the studies that he was about to
undertake, to know the chronology, the circumstances, the details, the
compositions, the recompositions, the recastings and the collaborations
of the Shakespearean drama. He would thus avoid the obligation of
vexing his mind as to certain interpretations, and of remaining more or
less perplexed for a greater or lesser space of time, before certain
peculiarities, discordances and inequalities, doubtful, that is to
say, as to whether they be errors in art, or art forms of which it is
difficult to seize the hidden connection. But he would gain nothing
more from this advantage (with the conjoined admonition, to beware of
the prejudices that such information is apt to cause). His judgment
would of necessity be founded, in final analysis, upon intrinsic
reasons of an artistic nature, arising from an examination of the works
before him. The chronology that he will succeed in fixing, will not be
a real or material chronology, but an ideal and an aesthetic one, for
these are two forms of chronology which only coincide approximately and
sometimes altogether diverge from one another. Were the authenticity
of the works all clearly settled, the critic would be preserved from
proclaiming that certain works or parts of works are Shakespeare's,
when they are really, say, Greene's or Marlowe's, which is an
inexactitude of nomenclature, as also is the treating of Shakespeare's
work as being by someone else or anonymous. But this onomastic
inexactitude is already corrected by the presumption that the critic
has his eye fixed, not on the biographical and practical personage
of Shakespeare, but on the poetical personage. He is thus able to
face with calmness the danger, which is not a danger and is extremely
improbable, of allowing to pass under the colours of Shakespeare a work
drawn from the same or a similar source of inspiration, which stands at
an equal altitude with others, or of adding another work to those of
inferior quality and declining value assigned to the same name, because
he is differentiating aesthetic values and not title-deeds to legal
property.
As we have said, it has not seemed superfluous to repeat these
statements, because in the first place, the silent and tenacious,
though erroneous conviction, as to the unity and identity of the two
histories, the practical and the poetical, or at least the obscurity as
to their true relation, is the hidden source of the vast and to a large
extent useless labours, which form the great body of Shakespearean
philology. This in common with the philology of the nineteenth century
in general, is unconsciously dominated by romantic ideas of mystical
and naturalistic unity, whence it is not by accident that Emerson
is found among the precursors of hybrid biographical aesthetic, and
the romanticizing Brandes among its most conspicuous supporters.
These labours are animated with the hope of obtaining knowledge
of the poetry of Shakespeare in its full reality, by means of the
discovery of the complete chronology, of biographical incidents, of
allusions, and of the origin of his themes. The ranks of the seekers
are also swollen by those who are animated with like hopes and wish
to exhibit their cleverness in the solution of enigmas, or are urged
by the professional necessity of producing dissertations and theses.
Unfortunately, the documents and traditions relating to the life of
Shakespeare are very few. All or nearly all, relate to external and
insignificant details. We are without letters, confessions or memoirs
by the author, and also without authentic and abundant collections of
facts relating to him. Although almost every year there appears some
new _Life of Shakespeare,_ it is now time to recognise with resignation
and clearly to declare that it is not possible to write a biography of
Shakespeare. At the most, an arid and faulty biographical chronicle
can be composed, rather as proof of the devotion of posterity,
longing to possess even a shadow of that biography, than as genuinely
satisfying a desire for knowledge. Owing to this lack of documents, the
above-mentioned philological literature consists, almost altogether,
of an enormous and ever increasing number of conjectures, of which
the one contests, impugns, or varies the other, and all are equally
incapable of nourishing the mind. It suffices to glance through a
few pages of a Shakespearean annual or handbook, to hear of the
"Southampton theory," the "Pembroke theory," and of other theories, in
relation to the _Sonnets;_ that is to say, whether the person concealed
beneath the initials W. H. in the printer's dedication, is the Earl
of Southampton, or the Earl of Pembroke, or a musician of the name
of Hughes, or even William Harvey, the third husband of Southampton's
mother, or the retail bookseller, William Hell, or an invention of
the printer, or a joke of the poet, who should thus indicate himself
(William Himself); and so on, with the "Fitton theory," the "Davenant
theory," and the like, that is to say, whether the "dark lady,"
celebrated in some of the sonnets, be a court lady of the name of Mary
Fitton, or the hostess by whom Shakespeare is said to have become
the father of the poet Davenant (and one of the critics has dared
admit that he spent fifteen years in research and meditation on this
point alone), or the French wife of the printer Field, or finally a
conventional and imaginary personage of Elizabethan sonneteering, which
was based upon the manner of Petrarch. And in the same way as with the
_Sonnets,_ there have been conjectures of the most varied sorts as to
Shakespeare's marriage, his relations with his wife, the incidents
of his family and of his profession. Passing to the plays, there are
and have been discussions without apparent end, as to whether _Titus
Andronicus_ be an original work, or has been patched up by him; as to
whether _Henry VI_ be all of it his, or only a part, or revised and
enlarged by him; as to which portions of _Henry VIII_ and of _Pericles_
are his and which Fletcher's, or whether by other hands; as to whether
_Timon_ be a sketch finished by others or a sketch by others finished
by Shakespeare; whether and to what extent there persists in _Hamlet_ a
previous _Hamlet_ by Kyd or by another author; whether certain of the
so-called "apocryphas," such as _Arden of Feversham_ and _Edward III,_
are on the contrary to be held to be authentic. In like manner, the
difficulties connected with the chronology are great and conjectures
numerous. The _Dream,_ for instance, is by some placed in the year
1590, by others in 1595, _Julius Caesar_ now in 1606, now in 1599,
_Cymbeline_ in 1605 and 1611, _Troilus and Cressida,_ by some in 1599,
by others in 1603, by others still in 1609, by yet others resolved into
three parts or strata, form 1592 to 1606, and 1607, with additions by
other hands. For the majority, the _Tempest_ belongs to the year 1611,
but is by others dated earlier, and as regards _Hamlet_ again, in
its first form, there are some who believe that it was composed, not
by any means in 1602, but between 1592 and 1594. And so on, without
advantage being taken of the few sure aids offered by stylistic or
metrical measurements, as one may prefer to call them. Now conjectures
are of use as heuristic instruments, only in so far as it is hoped
to convert them into certainties, by means of the documents of which
they aid in the search and the interpretation. But when this is not
possible, they are altogether vain and vacuous, and consequently, were
they convertible into certainties, would not give the solution or the
criterion of solution of the critical problems relating to the poetry
of Shakespeare. When they are not to be so converted and remain mere
vague imagining, they do not even supply the practical and biographical
history, which others delude themselves with the belief that they
can construct piecemeal by means of them. Hence it has happened that
careful writers, who have wished to give the character and life of
Shakespeare, as far as possible without hypotheses and fancies, have
been obliged to retail a series of general assertions, in which all
individualisation is lost, even if Shakespeare be pronounced good,
honest, gentle, serviceable, prudent, laborious, frank, gay, and the
like.
But the majority convert the less probable conjectures into
certainties, and proceed from conjecture to conjecture and from
assertion to assertion, finally producing, under the title, _Life of
Shakespeare,_ nothing but a romance, which, however, always turns
out to be too colourless to be called artistic. A rapacious hand is
stretched out to seize the poetical works themselves, with the view
of writing this sort of fiction since (to quote the author of one of
these unamusing fictions, Brandes) it cannot be admitted that it is
impossible to know by deducing them from his writings, the life, the
adventures, and the person of a man who has left about forty plays
and poems. And it is certainly possible to deduce all these things
from the poetical writings, but the life, and the poetical adventures
and personages, not the practical and biographical; save in the case
(which is not that of Shakespeare,) where definitely informative,
autobiographical statements and excursions are to be found among the
poems, that is to say, passages that are not poetical, but prosaic.
In every other instance, the poetical emotion does not lead to the
practical, because the relation between the two is not _deterministic,_
from effect to cause, but _creative,_ from material to form, and
therefore incommensurable. The moment it is raised to the sphere of
poetry, a sentiment that has really been experienced is plucked from
its practical and realistic soil, and made the motive of composition
for a world of dreams, one of the infinite possible worlds, in which it
is as useless to seek any longer the reality of that sentiment, as it
is vain to seek a drop of water poured into the ocean, and transformed
from what it was previously by ocean's vast embrace. One feels almost
inclined to repeat as warning that strophe from the _Sonnets,_ where
the poet said of his mistress to his friend:
"Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it; for I love you so,
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe."
For this reason, when we read in Brandes's book (which we select for
quotation here, because it has been widely circulated), such statements
as that Richard III, the deformed dwarf, whom we feel to be superior
in intellect, adumbrates Shakespeare himself, obliged to adopt the
despised profession of the actor, but full of the pride of genius,
it is not a case of rejecting or accepting his statements, but of
simply looking upon them as so many conjectures founded upon air and
as such, devoid of interest. This criterion can also be applied in the
following cases: that the pitiful death of the youthful Prince Arthur,
in _King John,_ shows traces of the loss of one of his sons, sustained
by the author at the moment when he was composing that drama; that
the riotous youth of Henry V is a symbol of the youth of Shakespeare
during his first years in London; that Brutus, in _Julius Caesar,_ has
reference to the persons of Essex and Southampton, protectors of the
poet and unsuccessful conspirators against the queen; that Coriolanus,
disdainful of praise, is Shakespeare in the attitude that it suited
him to take up towards the public and the critics; that the feeling of
King Lear, appalled with ingratitude, is that of the poet, appalled at
the ingratitude he experienced at the hands of his colleagues, of the
impresarii and of his pupils; and finally that Shakespeare must have
written those terrible dramas in the nocturnal hours, although he most
probably worked as a rule in the early morning; together with many
other fancies of a similar sort; it is not a case of accepting or of
confuting them, but of just taking them for what they are, conjectures
based upon air, and as such of no interest.
The like may be said of another volume, which has also been much
discussed, that of Harris. Here, in a view based upon the inspection of
his lyrics and dramas, he is represented as sensual and neuropathic,
almost affected with erotic mania, weak of will, attracted and
tyrannised over during almost the whole of his life, by a fascinating
and faithless dark lady, named Mary Fitton. Hence the origin of his
most poignant tragedies, and the mystery that conceals his last years,
when he withdrew to Stratford, by no means with the intention of
there enjoying the peace of the country as a _foenerator Appuis,_ but
because, ruined in body and soul, he wished there to nurse his ills, or
rather to die there, as soon afterwards he did.
The period of the great tragedies, especially, has been connected
with circumstances in the private life of the author and with events
in English public life. This too may or may not be true: Shakespeare
may or may not have been extremely excitable, both in personal and
practical matters; he may on the other hand have remained perfectly
calm and watched the tossing sea from the shore, with that tone
of feeling proper to artists, described by psychologists as
_Scheingefühle,_ a feeling of appearance and dream. No value also is
to be attributed to conjectures as to the models that Shakespeare
sometimes had before him: for Shylock in the shape of some adventurer
of his time, or for Prospero in the person of the Emperor Rudolph II,
who was interested in science and magic, and the like, because the
relation between art and its model is incommensurable. In reading the
works of Shakespeare, one is sometimes inclined to think (as for that
matter in the case of other poets), that some affection or incident
of the life of the author is to be found in the words of this or that
character, as for example in _Cymbeline,_ where Posthumus says,
"Could I find out
The woman's part in me! But there's no motion
That tends to vice in man, but I affirm
It is the woman's part!"
or in those others of _Troilus and Cressida_:
"Lechery, lechery; still, wars and lechery; nothing
else holds fashions: a burning devil take them!"
in the same way as some have suspected a personal memory in the case
of Dante, in the Francesca episode of the reading and inebriation.
But there is nothing to be done with this suspicion and the thought
that suggested it. Nor is there anything to be built upon in those rare
passages, where it may seem that the poet breaks the coherence and
aesthetic level of his work, in order to lay stress upon some real or
practical feeling of his own, by over-accentuation; because, even if we
admit that there are such passages in Shakespeare, it always remains
doubtful whether for him, as for other poets, the true motive for
this inopportune emphasis, is to be found in the eruption of his own
powerful feelings, or rather in some other accidental motive.
We may also save ourselves from wonder and invective of the "Baconian
hypothesis," by means of this indifference of the poetical work towards
biography. This hypothesis maintains that the real author of the plays,
which pass under the name of Shakespeare, was Francis Bacon. We are
likewise preserved from those others of more recent date and vogue,
which maintain that the author was Roger, fifth Earl of Rutland, or
that Rutland collaborated with Southampton, or that there really
existed a society of dramatic authors, (Chettle, Heywood, Webster,
etc.) with the final revision entrusted to Bacon, or finally (the
latest discovery of the sort) that he was William Stanley, sixth Earl
>of Derby. A thousand or more volumes, opuscules and articles have been
printed to deal with these conjectures, and although--to the severe eye
of the trained philologist--they may justly seem to be extravagant,
yet they retain the merit of being a sort of involuntarily _ironic
treatment_ of the purely philological method and of its abuse of
conjecture.
But even if we grant the unlikely contention that in the not very
great brain of the philosopher Bacon, there lodged the brain of a very
great poet, from which proceeded the Shakespearean drama, nothing
would thereby have been discovered or proved, save a singular marvel,
a joke, a monstrosity of nature. The artistic problem would remain
untouched, because that drama remains always the same; Lear laments
and imprecates in the same manner, Othello struggles furiously, Hamlet
meditates and wavers before the problem of humanity and the action that
he is called upon to take, and in the same manner, all are enwrapped in
the veil of Eternity, It is a good thing to shake off this weight of
erroneous philology (another philology exists alongside of it, which
is not erroneous, since it preserves the probably genuine text, and
interprets the vocabulary and the historical references with a genuine
feeling for art), not only because, whether or no it attain the end
of biography, it distracts attention from the right and proper object
of artistic criticism, but also because it employs the biography,
true or false, for the purpose of clouding and changing the artistic
vision. Confounding art and document, it transports into art whatever
it has discovered or believes itself to have discovered by means of
research, turning the serene compositions of the poet into a series
of shudders, cries, restless motions, convulsions, ferocious springs,
manifestations, now of sentimental rapture, now of furious desire.
We know that it is necessary to make an effort of abstraction, to
forget biographical details concerning the poets, in those cases where
they abound, if we wish to enjoy their art, in what it possesses of
ideality, which is truth. We know, too, that poets and artists have
always experienced dislike and contempt for those gossip-mongers, who
investigate and record the private occurrences of their lives, in
order to extract from them the elements of artistic judgment. This is
the reason why a poet's contemporaries and his fellow-countrymen and
fellow-townsmen are said not to be good judges and that no one is a
poet or prophet among his familiars and in the place of his birth.
The advantage of the lack of a bar to artistic contemplation, one of
the good consequences of this lack of biographical detail relating to
Shakespeare, is thrown away by these conjecturers, who, like the mule
of Galeazzo Florimonte, bring stones to birth that they may stumble
upon them.
We can observe the re-immersion of Shakespearean poetry in
psychological materiality in the already mentioned book of Brandes (and
also to some extent in the more subtle and ingenious work of Frank
Harris) and in the case of Brandes, the readjustment of values that is
its consequence, as with _King Lear_ and _Timon,_ both documents of
misanthropy induced by ingratitude; and even the sinking of values into
non-values, when he fails to effect his psychological reduction, even
by means of those extravagant methods, as in the case of _Macbeth,_
where he declares that this play, which is one of the dramatic
masterpieces, appears to him to possess but "slight interest," because
he does not feel "the heart of Shakespeare beating there," that is to
say, of the Shakespeare endowed with certain practical objects and
interests by his imagination.
This error is also to be found in the so-called "pictures of the
society of the time," by means of which another group has striven to
interpret the art of Shakespeare. These are not less extrinsic and
disturbing than the others, assuming that they are composed with like
historical ignorance. Taine, for instance, having got it into his head
that the English of the time of Elizabeth were "_des bêtes sauvages_,"
describes the drama of the time as a reproduction "_sans choix_" of
all "_les laideurs, les bassesses, les horreurs, les détails crus,
les mœurs déréglées et féroces_" of that time, and the style of
Shakespeare as "_un composé d'expressions forcenées,_" in such wise
that when one reads the famous _Histoire de la littérature anglaise,_
it is difficult to say whether poets or assassins are passing across
the stage, whether these be artistic and harmonious contests, or
dagger-thrust struggles. The opinion of Goethe is opposed to all these
deformations, to the Shakespeare who moans and shrieks on the wind of
the wild passions of his time, to that other Shakespeare who reveals
the wounds of his own sickly soul with bitter sarcasm and disgust. In
the conversations with Eckermann, he gives as his impression that the
plays of Shakespeare were the work "of a man in perfect health and
strength, both in body and spirit"; he must indeed have been healthy
and strong and free, when he created something so free, so healthy and
so strong as his poetry.
In a calmer sphere of considerations, those who make the personages and
the action of the plays depend upon the political and social events
of the time commit a similar deterministic error--upon the victory
over the Armada, the conspiracy of Essex, the death of Elizabeth, the
accession of James, the geographical discoveries and colonisation of
the day, the contests with the Puritans, and the like.
Others err in tracing the different forms of the poetry to the course
of his reading, to the Chronicle of Holinshed, to Italian novels, to
the Lives of Plutarch, and especially to the _Essais_ of Montaigne
(where Chasles and others of more recent date have placed the origin
of the new great period of his poetical work); others again have found
it in the circumstances of the English stage of the time, and in the
various tastes of the "reserved" and "pit" seats, as in the so-called
"realistic" criticism of Rümelin.
The poetry, then, should certainly be interpreted historically, but in
the proper sense, disconnected, that is to say from a history that is
foreign to it and with which its only connection is that prevailing
between a man and what he disregards, puts away from him and rejects,
because it either injures him or is of no use, or, which comes to the
same thing, because he has already made sufficient use of it.