THE ART OF SHAKESPEARE
The motives of Shakespeare's poetry having been described, there is
no occasion for the further question as to the way in which he has
made of them concrete poetry, in other words, as to the _form_ he
gave to that affective content. Form and content cannot be separated
from one another and considered apart. For this reason, everything
remarked of Shakespeare's poetry, provided that it is something real
and well observed, must be either a repetition applied to Shakespeare
of the statement as to the characteristics, that is to say, the
unique character of all poetry, or a description in language more
or less precise, beneath the title of "formal characteristics," of
what constituted the physiognomy of the sentiment or sentiments of
Shakespeare, thus returning to that determination of motives, of which
we have treated above. Still less can we engage in an enquiry as to the
_technique_ of Shakespeare, because the concept of technique is to be
altogether banished from the sphere of aesthetic criticism, technique
being concerned solely with the practical purposes of extrinsication,
such as for poetry would be the training of a reciter's voice, or the
making of the paper and the type, with which it is printed. There is
no trade secret in Shakespeare, which can be communicated, no "part"
that "can be taught and learned" (as has been maintained); in the best
sense "technique" has value as a synonym of artistic form and in that
way returns to become part of the dilemma above indicated.
Easy confirmation of this fact is to be found in any one of the many
books that have been written on the "form" or on the "technique" of
Shakespeare. Take for example the most intelligent of all, that by
Otto Ludwig, written with much penetration of art in general and of
Shakespearean art in particular, which contains the words that have
been censured above. There we read, that in Shakespeare "everything is
individualised, and at the same time idealised, by means of loftiness
and power: every speech accords with the sentiment that has called
it forth, every action with the character and situation, every
character and situation depends upon every other one, and both upon
the individuality of the time; every speech and every situation is
yet more individualised by means of time and place, even by means of
natural phenomena; in such a way that each one of his plays has its own
atmosphere, now clearer, now more dark."
But of what poetry that is poetry cannot this individuated idealisation
be affirmed or demanded? We read in the same volume that Shakespeare
"is never speculative, but always holds to experience, as Shylock to
the signature on the bond." But what poetry that is poetry ever does
abandon the form of the sensible for the concept or for reasoning?
The "supreme truth" of every particular of the representation is
praised, but this does not exclude the use of the "symbolical," that
is, of particulars which are not found in nature, but mean what they
are intended to mean, and "give the impression of the most persuasive
reality, although, indeed precisely because, not one word of them can
be said to be true to nature." With such a statement as this, the
utmost attained is a confutation of the pertinacious artistic heresy as
to imitation of nature. We find "Shakespearean totality" exalted, by
means of which "a passion is like a common denominator of the capital
sum, and the capital sum becomes in its turn the general denominator
of the play." This "totality" is clearly synonymous with the lyrical
character, which constitutes the poetry of every poem, including those
that are called epic and dramatic, or narrative, and those in the form
of dialogue. We find here too that nearly all the tragedies assume
in a sense the "form of a sonata," which contains in close relation
and contrast the theme, the idea of the hero and the counter-theme,
and in the passages aforesaid develops the motives of the theme with
"harmonious and contrapuntal characteristics" and "in the third part
resumes the whole theme in a more tranquil manner, and in tragedy in a
parallel minor key." But this imaginary technical excellence is nothing
but the "musical character" of all art, which, like the "lyrical
character," is certainly worth insisting upon as against the materially
figurative and realistic interpretation of artistic representations.
Analogous observations avail as to the "ideality" of "time" and
"place," which Ludwig discovers in Shakespeare, and which are to be
found in every poem, where rhythm and form obey rules, which are by no
means arithmetical or geometrical, but solely internal and poetic. They
also avail against all the other statements of Ludwig and other critics
as to typicity, impersonality, constancy of characteristics, which is
also variability, and the like. These are all similes or metaphors
for poetry, which is unique. It is true that some of these things are
noted, just with a view to differentiate Shakespeare from other poets,
and therefore assume a proper individual meaning, when we take truth as
being the particular Shakespearean truth, his vision of things, and the
sense which he reveals for the indivisible tie between good and evil
existing in every man; for "impersonality," his attitude of irresolute
but energetic dialectic, and so on; but in certain other cases, it is
not a question of the form of Shakespeare, but, as has been said, of
his own sentiment and of his motives of inspiration.
In one case only is it possible to separate form from content and to
consider it in itself; that is to say, when the rhetorical method
is applied to Shakespeare or to any other artist. This consists in
separating form from content and making of it a garment, which becomes
just nothing at all without the body with which it grew up, or gives
rise to pure caprice and to the illusion that anyone can appropriate
and adopt it to his own purposes. In romantic parlance (for there
existed a romantic manner of speech) what was known as a mixture of
comic and tragic, of prose and verse, what was called the "humorous,
the grotesque, the fanciful," such as apparitions of mysterious and
supernatural beings, and again the method that Shakespeare employed
in production of his plays, his manner of treating the conflict and
determining the catastrophe, the way in which he makes his personages
speak, the quality and richness of his vocabulary, were enumerated
as "characteristics of his art," things that others could employ if
they wished to do so, and indeed they were so employed, with the poor
results that one can imagine. This is the source of the anticritical
terminology employed for Shakespeare and other poets, which discovers
and magnifies his "ability," his "expedients," his "conveying of the
necessary information without having the air of doing so," as though he
were a calculator or constructor of instruments with certain practical
ends, not a divine imagination. But enough of this.
Certainly, it would be possible to take one of the plays of
Shakespeare, or all of them, one after the other, and having exposed
their fundamental motive (this has been done), to illustrate their
aesthetic coherence and to point out the delicacy of treatment, bit by
bit, scene by scene, accent by accent, word by word. In _Macbeth,_ for
instance, might be shown the robust and potent unity of the affective
tragical representation, which bursts out and runs like a lyric, all
of a piece, everywhere maintaining complete harmony of parts, and each
scene seeming to be a strophe of the poem, from its opening, with the
sudden news of Macbeth's victories, and the joy and gratitude of the
old king, immediately followed by the fateful meeting with the witches
and by the kindling of the voracious desire, against which Macbeth
struggles; down to the coming of the king to the castle, where ambush
and death await his unsuspecting confidence; then the scene darkens,
the murder takes place on that dread night, and Macbeth becomes
gradually involved in a crescendo of crimes, up to the moment when the
terrible tension ends in furious combat and the slaying of the hero.
King Duncan, when he arrives at the gate of the castle, serene and
happy as he is, in the event which has given peace to his kingdom,
lingers to enjoy the delicate air and to admire the amenity of the
spot. Banquo echoes him, and abandons himself to innocent pleasure, in
whole-hearted confidence, repeating that delicious little poem about
the martlet, which has suspended everywhere on the walls of the castle
its nest and fruitful cradle,
"This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet,"
whose presence he has always observed, implies that the "air is
delicate." In the whole of that quiet little conversation, we feel
sympathy for the good old man, we shudder for what is coming and are
sensible of the piteous wrong in things. When Macbeth crosses swords
with Macduff, he remembers the last words of the witches' prophecy,
which he believes to be favourable to himself; but when it becomes
suddenly evident that Macduff it is, who shall slay him, he shudders
and bursts out as before, with: "I will not fight with thee." This
ejaculation reveals the violence of the shock and an instinctive
movement of the will to live, which would elude its destiny. And we
can pause at any part of _Othello,_ for instance, at the moment when
Desdemona intercedes for Cassio, with the gentleness and coquetry of
a woman in love, who knows that she is loved, and talks like a child,
who knows it has the right to be a little spoilt; or at the moment when
Desdemona is in the act of being slain, when she does not break into
the complaints of innocence calumniated, nor assumes the attitude of a
victim unjustly sacrificed, but like a poor creature of flesh and blood
that loves life, loves love, and with childish egoism has abandoned her
father for love, and now breaks out into childish supplications, trying
to postpone and to retard death, at least for a few moments.
"O, banish me, my lord, but kill me not!...
Kill me to-morrow; let me live to-night!...
But half an hour!...
But while I say one prayer!"
We could in like manner enable anyone to understand the fabulous-human
character of _King Lear,_ who did not at once understand it for
himself, by analysing the great initial scene between Lear and his
three daughters, where, at the poet's touch, the story and the fabulous
personages assume at one stroke a reality that is the very strength of
our abhorrence of dry egoism cloaking itself in affectionate words and
also the very strength of our tender admiration for the true goodness,
which conceals itself and does not speak ("What shall Cordelia do? Love
and be silent").
This insistence upon analysis and eulogy will be of special value to
those who do not immediately understand of themselves, owing either
to preconceptions, to habitual lack of attention, to their slight
knowledge of art or to their lack of penetration. It will be of use in
schools, to promote good reading, and outside them, it may assist in
softening those hard heads which belong sometimes to men of letters.
But it does not form part of our object in writing this treatise, nor
does it appear to form part of the duty of Shakespearean criticism, for
Shakespeare is one of the clearest and most evident of poets, capable
of being perfectly understood by men of slight or elementary culture.
We run with impatience through the many prolix, aesthetic commentaries
which we already possess on his plays, as we should certainly listen
with impatience to anyone who should draw our attention to the fact
that the sun is shining brightly in the sky at midday, that it is
gilding the country with its light, making sparkle the dew, and playing
with its rays upon the leaves.
On the other hand, it is not inopportune to record that excellence
in his art was long denied or contested to Shakespeare. This was the
general view of his contemporaries themselves, because we now know
what we are to think of the words of praise, which we find relating to
him in the literature of his time. These had been diligently traced
and collected by scholars, but had been more or less deliberately
misunderstood, and interpreted in a sense opposed to their correct
meaning, which was that of benevolent sympathy and condescending praise
for a poet of popular appeal, approximately what we should employ
now for a lively and pleasing writer of romantic adventures. Similar
judgments reappeared in a different style and at a different time in
the famous utterances of Voltaire, which vary in their intonation
according to his humour: such are _barbare aimable, fou séduisant,
sauvage ivre,_ and the like. They do not appear to have lost their
weight especially in France, where a certain Monsieur Pellissier has
filled a large volume with them, coming to the conclusion that the
work of Shakespeare, "malgré tant de beautés admirables est un immense
fouillis," and that it generally seems to be, "celle d'un écolier,
d'un écolier génial, qui n'ayant ni expérience, ni mesure, ni tact,
gaspille prématuré son génie abortif." Finally (and this has greater
weight), Jusserand, a learned historian of English literature, treating
of Shakespeare with great display of erudition, presents him as "un
fidèle serviteur" of his theatrical public, and speaks of his "défauts
énormes." Chateaubriand, in his essay of 1801, playing the Voltaire in
his turn, attributed to him "le génie," while he denied to him "l'art,"
the observance of the "règles" and "genres," which are "nés de la
nature même"; but later he recognises that he was wrong to "mesurer
Shakespeare avec la lunette classique." Here he put his finger on the
fundamental mistake of that sort of criticism, which judges art, not
by its intrinsic qualities, but by comparison with other works of art,
which are taken as models. The same mistake was renewed, when French
tragedy was not the model, but the art of realistic modern drama
and fiction. The principal document in support of this is Tolstoi's
book, where at every word or gesture of Shakespeare's characters, he
exclaims that men do not speak thus, that is to say, the men who are
not man in universal, but the men of Tolstoi's romances, though these
latter happen to be far nearer to the characters of Shakespeare than
their great, but unreasonable and quite uncritical author suspected.
Tolstoi arrives at the point of preferring the popular and unpoetical
play _King Lear,_ to the _King Lear_ of Shakespeare, because there is
more logic in the conduct of the plot in the former, thus showing that
he prefers minute prosaic details to sublime poetry.
An attenuated form of these views as to the lack of art in Shakespeare
is the theory maintained better by Rümelin than by others, to the
effect that the characters in Shakespeare are worth a great deal
more than the action or plots, which are disconnected, intermittent,
contradictory and without any feeling for verisimilitude. He also
holds that Shakespeare works on each scene, without having the power
of visualising the preceding scene, or the one that is to follow,
and also that the characters themselves do not respect the truth of
dialogue and of the drama, in their manner of speech, which is always
fiery, imaginative and splendid. Finally, it might be said of him that
he composes beautiful music for libretti, which are more or less ill
constructed. Now if this theory had for its object to assert, though
with emphasis and exaggeration, that in a poetical work the material
part of the story, the web of events, does not count, and that the only
thing of importance is the soul that circulates within it, just as in
a picture, it is not the material side of the things painted (which is
called by critics of painting "the literary element," or that which
taken in itself is external and without importance), but the rhythm of
the lines and of the colours, what he maintained would be correct, if
only as a reaction. Coleridge has already noted the independence of the
dramatic interest from the intrigue and quality of the story, which in
the Shakespearean drama, was obtained from the best known and commonest
sources. But the object with which this theory was conceived by
Rümelin and with which it is generally maintained, has for its object
to establish a dualism or contradiction in the art of Shakespeare, by
proving him to be "strong" in one domain of the spirit and "weak" in
another, where strength in both is "necessary," in order to produce a
perfect work.
We are bound to deny with firmness this assumption: we refuse to
admit the existence of any such dualism and contradiction, because
the distinction between characters and actions, between style and
dialogue and style and work, is arbitrary, scholastic and rhetorical.
There is in Shakespeare one poetical stream, and it is impossible
to set its waters against one another--characters against actions,
and the like. So true is this, that save in cold blood, one does not
notice his so-called contradictions, omissions and improbabilities,
that is to say, when we leave the poetical condition of the spirit
and begin to examine what we have read, as though it were the report
of an occurrence. Nor is the imputation cast upon the speech of
Shakespeare's characters, which is perfectly consonant with the nature
of the poems, admissible. Hence from the lips of Macbeth and of Lady
Macbeth, of Othello and of Lear, came true and proper lyrics. These
are not interruptions and dissonances in the play, but motions and
upliftings of the play itself; they are not the superposition of one
life upon another, but the outpouring of that life, which is continued
in the central motive. These witticisms, conceits and misunderstandings
in _Romeo and Juliet,_ which have so often been blamed, are to
be explained, at least in great measure, in a natural way, as the
character of the play, as the comedy, which precedes and imparts its
colour to the tragedy, and is brilliant with the fashionable and
gallant speech of the day.
In making the foregoing statement, we do not wish to deny that in the
drama of Shakespeare are to be found (besides historical, geographical,
and chronological errors, which are indifferent to poetry but not
necessary and for that reason avoidable or to be avoided) words and
phrases, and sometimes entire scenes, which are not justifiable, save
for theatrical reasons. We do not know to what extent they had his
assent and to what extent they are due to the very confused tradition,
under the influence of which the text of his works has descended to us.
We also do not wish to deny that he was guilty of little over-sights
and contradictions, and that he was perhaps generally negligent.
But it is important in any case to understand and bear in mind the
psychological reasons for this negligence, inspired with that sort of
indifference and contempt for the easy perfecting of certain details,
of those engaged upon works of great magnitude and importance.
Giambattista Vico, a mighty spirit who resembles Shakespeare, both in
his full, keen sense of life and in the adventures of his work and
of his fame, was also apt frequently to overlook details and to make
slight mistakes, and was convinced "that diligence must lose itself in
arguments, which have anything of greatness in them, because it is a
minute, and because minute a tardy virtue." Thus he openly vindicated
the right of rising to the level of heroic fury, which will not brook
delay from small and secondary matters.
As Vico was nevertheless most accurate in essentials, never sparing
himself the most lengthy meditations to sound the bottom of his
thoughts, so it is impossible to think that Shakespeare did not give
the best and greatest part of himself to his plays, that he was not
continually intent upon observing, reflecting comparing, examining his
own feelings, seeking out and weighing his expressions, collecting and
valuing the impressions of the public and of his colleagues in art,
in fact, upon the study of his art. The precision, the delicacy, the
gradations, the shading of his representations, are an irrefragable
proof of this. The sense of classic form is often denied to him, even
by his admirers, that is to say, of a partial and old-fashioned
ideal of classical form, consisting of certain external regularities.
But he was a classic, because he possessed the strength that is sure
of itself, which does not exert itself, nor proceed in a series
of paroxysmal leaps, but carries in itself its own moderation and
serenity. He had that taste which is proper to genius and commensurate
with it, because genius without taste is an abstraction to be found
only in the pages of treatises. The various passages, where he chances
to find an opportunity for theorizing on art, show that he had
profoundly meditated the art he practised. In one of the celebrated
passages of the _Dream,_ he makes Theseus say,
"The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name."
And that a powerful imagination, if it is affected by some joy,
imagines someone as the bringer of that joy, and if it imagine some
nocturnal terror, it changes a bush into a wild beast with great
facility. That is to say, he shows himself conscious of the creative
virtue of poetry and of its origin in the feelings, which it changes
into persons, endowed with ethereal sentiment. But in the equally
celebrated passage of _Hamlet,_ he dwells upon the other aspect of
artistic creation, upon its universality, and therefore upon its calm
and harmony. What Hamlet chiefly insists upon in his colloquy with
the players, is "moderation," "for in the very torrent, tempest, and,
as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a
temperance that may give it smoothness." To declare Shakespeare to be
a representative of the frenzied and convulsed style in poetry, as has
been done several times, is to utter just the reverse of the truth.
In this respect, it is well to read the contemporary dramatists, with
a view to measuring the difference, indeed the abyss between them. In
the famous _Spanish Tragedy_ of Kyd, there is a scene (perhaps due to
another hand) in which Hieronymus asks a painter to paint for him the
assassin of his own son, and cries out:
"There you may show a passion, there you may show a passion....
Make me rave, make me cry, make me mad,
Make me well again, make me curse hell,
Invocate, and in the end leave me
In a trance, and so forth."
The same character is attacked by doubt and asks with anxiety: "Can
this be done?" and the painter replies: "Yes, Sir."
Such was not the method of Shakespeare, who would have made the painter
reply, not with a yes, but with a yes and a no together.
His art, then, was neither defective nor vitiated in any part of its
own constitutive character, although certain works are obviously
weak and certain parts of other works, in the vast mass that goes
under his name. Such youthful plays as _Love's Labour's Lost, The
Two Gentlemen,_ the _Comedy of Errors,_ are not notable, save for a
certain ease and grace, only manifesting in certain places the trace
of his profound spirit. The "historical plays," are as we have already
shown, fragmentary and do not form complete poems animated with a
single breath of passion. Some of them, and especially the first
part of _Henry VI,_ have about them an arid quality and are loosely
anecdotal; in others, such as _Henry IV_ and _Henry V,_ is evident the
desire to stimulate patriotic feelings, and they are further burdened
with scenes of a purely informative nature. _Coriolanus_ too, which
was apparently composed later and is derived from a different source,
also lacks complete internal justification, for it consists of a
study of characters. _Timon_ (assuming that it was his) is developed
in a mechanical manner, although it is full of social and ethical
observations and possesses rhetorical fervour. _Cymbeline_ and the
_Winter's Tale_ contain lovely scenes, but are not as a whole works
of the first order; the idyllic and romantic Shakespeare appears
in them to have rather declined in comparison to the author of the
earlier plays of the same sort, inspired with a very different vigour.
_Measure for Measure_ contains sentiments and personages that are
profoundly Shakespearean, as the protagonist Angelo, the meter out of
inexorable justice, so sure of his own virtue, who yields to the first
sensual temptation that occurs, in Claudius, who wishes and does not
wish to die, and in the Barnadine already mentioned. This play, which
oscillates between the tragic and the comic, and has a happy ending,
instead of forming a drama of the sarcastic-sorrowful-horrible sort,
fails to persuade us that it should have been thus developed and thus
ended. There is something of the composite in the structure of the
wonderful _Merchant of Venice,_ and certain of the scenes of _Troilus
and Cressida,_ such as those of the speeches of Ulysses and those
on the other side of Hector and Troilus, seem to be echoes or even
entire pieces taken from historical plays and transported with ironic
intention into comedy. Points of this sort are to be found even in the
great tragedies. In _Lear,_ for instance, the adventures of Gloucester
and his son are not completely satisfactory, grafted as they are upon
those of the king and his daughters, either because they introduce too
realistic an element into a play with an imaginary theme, or because
they create a heavy parallelism, much praised by an Italian critic,
who has attempted to express _King Lear_ in a geometrical form; but
the origin for this parallelism may perhaps be really due to the need
for theatrical variety, complication and suspense, rather than to any
moral purpose of emphasising horror at ingratitude. The clown, who
accompanies the king, abounds in phrases, which are not all of them
in place and significant. But if to set about picking holes in the
beauties of Shakespeare's plays has seemed to us a superfluous and
tiresome occupation, such too, from another point of view and in
addition pedantic and irreverent, seems to be the investigation of
defects that we observe in them; they are opaque points, which the eye
does not observe in the splendour of such a sun.
Another judgment which also has vogue refers to a constitutive or
general defect in Shakespeare's poetry, a certain limit or barrier
in it, a narrowness, albeit an ample and a rich narrowness. We must
distinguish two forms of this judgment, the first of which might
be represented by the epigrams of Platen, who, while recognising
Shakespeare's power to move the heart and the strength of his
characterisation, declared that "so much truth is a fatal gift," and
that Shakespeare draws so incisively, only because he cannot veil
his personages in grace and beauty. He greatly admired even what is
painful in Shakespeare, looking upon it as beautiful, and was full
of admiration for his comical figures, such as Falstaff and Shylock,
"an incomparable couple"; but he denied to Shakespeare true tragic
power, which "must open the deepest of wounds and then heal them."
The second of these forms is the commonest, and Mazzini may stand as
its representative. He maintained that Shakespeare was a poet of the
real, not of the ideal, of the isolated individual, not of society;
that he was not dominated by the thought of duty and responsibility
towards mankind, as expressed in politics and history, that his was a
voice rather of the Middle Ages than of modern times, which found their
origin in Schiller, the poet of humanity and Providence.
Even Harris's book concludes with a series of reservations: he says
that Shakespeare was neither a philosopher nor a sage; that he never
conceived a personage as contesting and combating his own time;
that he had only a vague idea of the spirit by which man is led to
new and lofty ideals in every historical period; that he was unable
to understand a Christ or a Mahomet; that instead of studying, he
ridiculed Puritanism and so remained shut up in the Renaissance, and
that for these reasons, in spite of _Hamlet;_ he does not belong
to the modern world, that the best of a Wordsworth or of a Tolstoi
is outside him, and so on. We may perfectly admit all this and it
may even be of use in putting a curb upon such hyperbole and such
superlatives as those of Coleridge, to the effect that Shakespeare
was _anér myriónous,_ the myriad-minded man (although even this
myriad-mindedness may seem to be but a very ample narrowness, if
myriads be taken as a finite number).
Shakespeare could never have desired to possess the ideal of beauty,
which visited the soul of the hirsute and unfortunate Platen, the
social or humanitarian ideals of the Schillers and Tourgueneffs. But
he had no need whatever of these things to attain the infinite, which
every poet attains, reaching the centre of the circle from any point
of the periphery. For this reason, no poet, whatever the historical
period at which he was born and by which he is limited, is the poet
of only one historical epoch. Shakespeare formed himself during the
period of the Renaissance, which he surpasses, not with his practical
personality, but with his poetry. There is nothing, then, for these
limiters to do, save to manifest their dissatisfaction with poetry
itself, which is always limited-unlimited. This, I think, was also the
case with Emerson, who lamented that Shakespeare (whom he nevertheless
placed in the good company of Homer and of Dante) "rested in the beauty
of things and never took the step of investigating the virtue that
resides in symbols," which seemed to be inevitable for such a genius,
and that "he converted the elements awaiting his commands," into a
diversion, and gave "half truths to half men": whereas, according
to Emerson, the entire truth for entire men could only be given by
a personage whom the world still awaits. To Emerson, this personage
seemed most attractive, but to others he may possibly perhaps seem as
little amiable as Antichrist: he called him "the poet-priest."