simpler than when it was debated on former occasions. Differences
existed, then as now, in regard to the propriety of erecting a
national memorial of Shakespeare in London; but almost all who
interested themselves in the matter in the nineteenth century agreed
that the public interest justified, if it did not require, the
preservation from decay or demolition of the buildings at
Stratford-on-Avon with which Shakespeare's life was associated. So
long as those buildings were in private hands, every proposal to
commemorate Shakespeare in London had to meet a formidable objection
which was raised on their behalf. If the nation undertook to
commemorate Shakespeare at all, it should make its first aim (it was
argued) the conversion into public property of the surviving memorials
of Shakespeare's career at Stratford. The scheme of the London
memorial could not be thoroughly discussed on its merits while the
claims of Stratford remained unsatisfied. It was deemed premature,
whether or no it were justifiable, to entertain any scheme of
commemoration which left the Stratford buildings out of account.
A natural sentiment connected Shakespeare more closely with
Stratford-on-Avon than with any other place. Whatever part London
played in his career, the public mind was dominated by the fact that
he was born at Stratford, died, and was buried there. If he left
Stratford in youth in order to work out his destiny in London, he
returned to it in middle life in order to end his days there "in ease,
retirement, and the conversation of his friends."
In spite of this widespread feeling, it proved no easy task, nor one
capable of rapid fulfilment, to consecrate in permanence to public
uses the extant memorials of Shakespeare at Stratford-on-Avon.
Stratford was a place of pilgrimage for admirers of Shakespeare from
early days in the seventeenth century--soon, in fact, after
Shakespeare's death in 1616. But local veneration did not prevent the
demolition in 1759, by a private owner, of New Place, Shakespeare's
last residence. That act of vandalism was long in provoking any
effective resentment. Garrick, by means of his Jubilee Festival of
1769, effectively, if somewhat theatrically, called the attention of
the English public to the claims of the town to the affectionate
regard of lovers of the great dramatist. Nevertheless, it was left to
the nineteenth century to dedicate in perpetuity to the public service
the places which were the scenes of Shakespeare's private life in his
native town.
Charles Mathews's effort of 1821 took its rise in an endeavour to
purchase in behalf of the nation the vacant site of Shakespeare's
demolished residence of New Place, with the great garden attached to
it. But that scheme was overweighted by the incorporation with it of
the plan for a London monument, and both collapsed ignominiously. In
1835 a strong committee was formed at Stratford to commemorate the
poet's connection with the town. It was called "the Monumental
Committee," and had for its object, firstly, the repair of
Shakespeare's tomb in the Parish Church; and secondly, the
preservation and restoration of all the Shakespearean buildings in
the town. Subscriptions were limited to £1, and all the members of the
royal family, including the Princess Victoria, who two years later
came to the throne, figured, with other leading personages in the
nation's life, in the list of subscribers. But the subscriptions only
produced a sum sufficient to carry out the first purpose of the
Monumental Committee--the repair of the tomb.
In 1847 the sale by public auction was announced of the house in which
Shakespeare was born. It had long been a show-place in private hands.
A general feeling declared itself in favour of the purchase of the
house for the nation. Public sentiment was in accord with the
ungrammatical grandiloquence of the auctioneer, the famous Robins,
whose advertisement of the sale included the sentence: "It is trusted
the feeling of the country will be so evinced that the structure may
be secured, hallowed, and cherished as a national monument almost as
imperishable as the poet's fame." A subscription list was headed by
Prince Albert with £250. A distinguished committee was formed under
the presidency of Lord Morpeth (afterwards the seventh Earl of
Carlisle), then Chief Commissioner of Woods and Forests, who offered
to make his department perpetual conservators of the property. (That
proposal was not accepted.) Dickens, Macaulay, Lord Lytton, and the
historian Grote were all active in promoting the movement, and it
proved successful. The property was duly secured by a private trust in
behalf of the nation. The most important house identified with
Shakespeare's career in Stratford was thus effectively protected from
the risks that are always inherent in private ownership. The step was
not taken with undue haste; two hundred and thirty-one years had
elapsed since Shakespeare's death.
Fourteen years later, in very similar circumstances, the still vacant
site of Shakespeare's demolished residence, New Place, with the great
garden behind it, and the adjoining house, was acquired by the public.
A new Shakespeare Fund, to which the Prince Consort subscribed £100,
and Miss Burdett-Coutts (afterwards Baroness Burdett-Coutts) £600, was
formed not only to satisfy this purpose, but to provide the means of
equipping a library and museum which were contemplated at the
Birthplace, as well as a second museum which was to be provided on the
New Place property. It was appropriate to make these buildings
depositories of authentic relics and books which should illustrate the
poet's life and work. This national Shakespeare Fund was actively
promoted, chiefly by the late Mr Halliwell-Phillipps, for more than
ten years; a large sum of money was collected, and the aims with which
the Fund was set on foot were to a large extent fulfilled. It only
remained to organise on a permanent legal basis the completed
Stratford Memorial of Shakespeare. By an Act of Parliament passed in
1891 the two properties of New Place and the Birthplace were
definitely formed into a single public trust "for and in behalf of the
nation." The trustees were able in 1892, out of their surplus income,
which is derived from the fees of visitors, to add to their estates
Anne Hathaway's Cottage at Shottery, a third building of high interest
to students of Shakespeare's history.
The formation of the Birthplace Trust has every title to be regarded
as an outward and visible tribute to Shakespeare's memory on the part
of the British nation at large.[46] The purchase for the public of
the Birthplace, the New Place property, and Anne Hathaway's Cottage
was not primarily due to local effort. Justly enough, a very small
portion of the necessary funds came from Stratford itself. The British
nation may therefore take credit for having set up at least one
fitting monument to Shakespeare by consecrating to public uses the
property identified with his career in Stratford. Larger funds than
the trustees at present possess are required to enable them to carry
on the work which their predecessors began, and to compete with any
chance of success for books and relics of Shakespearean interest--such
as they are empowered by Act of Parliament to acquire--when these
memorials chance to come into the market. But a number of small annual
subscriptions from men of letters has lately facilitated the
performance of this part of the trustees' work, and that source of
income may, it is hoped, increase.
[Footnote 46: Nor is this all that has been accomplished at Stratford
in the nineteenth century in the way of the national commemoration of
Shakespeare. While the surviving property of Shakespearean interest
was in course of acquisition for the nation, an early ambition to
erect in Stratford a theatre in Shakespeare's memory was realised--in
part by subscriptions from the general public, but mainly by the
munificence of members of the Flower family, three generations of
which have resided at Stratford. The Memorial Theatre was opened in
1879, and the Picture Gallery and Library which were attached to it
were completed two years later. The Memorial Buildings at Stratford
stand on a different footing from the properties of the Birthplace
Trust. The Memorial institution has an independent government, and is
to a larger extent under local control. But the extended series of
performances of Shakespearean drama, which takes place each year in
April at the Memorial Theatre, has something of the character of an
annual commemoration of Shakespeare by the nation at large.]
At any rate, the ancient objection to the erection of a national
monument in London, which was based on the absence of any memorial in
Stratford, is no longer of avail. In 1821, in 1847, and in 1864, when
the acquisition of the Stratford property was unattempted or
uncompleted, it was perfectly just to argue that Stratford was
entitled to have precedence of London when the question of
commemorating Shakespeare was debated. It is no just argument in 1906,
now that the claims of Stratford are practically satisfied.
Byron, when writing of the memorial to Petrarch at Arquà, expressed
with admirable feeling the sentiment that would confine outward
memorials of a poet in his native town to the places where he was
born, lived, died, and was buried. With very little verbal change
Byron's stanza on the visible memorials of Petrarch's association with
Arquà is applicable to those of Shakespeare's connexion with
Stratford:--
They keep his dust in Stratford, where he died;
The midland village where his later days
Went down the vale of years; and 'tis their pride--
An honest pride--and let it be their praise,
To offer to the passing stranger's gaze
His birthplace and his sepulchre; both plain
And venerably simple, such as raise
A feeling more accordant with his strain
Than if a pyramid form'd his monumental fane.[47]
[Footnote 47: Cf. _Childe Harold_, Canto IV., St. xxxi.]
Venerable simplicity is hardly the characteristic note of
Shakespeare's "strain" any more than it is of Petrarch's "strain." But
there can be no just quarrel with the general contention that at
Stratford, where Shakespeare gave ample proof of his characteristic
modesty, a pyramidal fane would be out of harmony with the
environment. There his birthplace, his garden, and tomb are the
fittest memorials of his great career.
V
It may justly be asked: Is there any principle which justifies another
sort of memorial elsewhere? On grounds of history and sentiment, but
in conditions which demand most careful definition, the right answer
will, I think, be in the affirmative. For one thing, Shakespeare's
life was not confined to Stratford. His professional career was spent
in London, and those, who strictly insist that memorials to great men
should be erected only in places with which they were personally
associated, can hardly deny that London shares with Stratford a title
to a memorial from a biographical or historical point of view. Of
Shakespeare's life of fifty-two years, twenty-four years were in all
probability spent in London. During those years the work that makes
him memorable was done. It was in London that the fame which is
universally acknowledged was won.
Some valuable details regarding Shakespeare's life in London are
accessible. The districts where he resided and where he passed his
days are known. There is evidence that during the early part of his
London career he lived in the parish of St Helen's, Bishopsgate, and
during the later part near the Bankside, Southwark. With the south
side of the Thames he was long connected, together with his youngest
brother, Edmund, who was also an actor, and who was buried in the
church of St Saviour's, Southwark.
In his early London days Shakespeare's professional work, alike as
actor and dramatist, brought him daily from St Helen's, Bishopsgate,
to The Theatre in Shoreditch. Shoreditch was then the chief
theatrical quarter in London. Later, the centre of London theatrical
life shifted to Southwark, where the far-famed Globe Theatre was
erected, in 1599, mainly out of the materials of the dismantled
Shoreditch Theatre. Ultimately Shakespeare's company of actors
performed in a theatre at Blackfriars, which was created out of a
private residence on a part of the site on which _The Times_ office
stands now. At a few hundred yards' distance from the Blackfriars
Theatre, in the direction of Cannon Street, Shakespeare, too, shortly
before his death, purchased a house.
Thus Shakespeare's life in London is well identified with four
districts--with Bishopsgate, with Shoreditch, with Southwark, and with
Blackfriars. Unhappily for students of Shakespeare's life, London has
been more than once remodelled since the dramatist sojourned in the
city. The buildings and lodgings, with which he was associated in
Shoreditch, Southwark, Bishopsgate, or Blackfriars, have long since
disappeared.
It is not practicable to follow in London the same historical scheme
of commemoration which has been adopted at Stratford-on-Avon. It is
impossible to recall to existence the edifices in which Shakespeare
pursued his London career. Archæology could do little in this
direction that was satisfactory. There would be an awkward incongruity
in introducing into the serried ranks of Shoreditch warehouses and
Southwark wharves an archæological restoration of Elizabethan
playhouse or private residence. Pictorial representations of the Globe
Theatre survive, and it might be possible to construct something that
should materialise the extant drawings. But the _genius loci_ has
fled from Southwark and from Shoreditch. It might be practicable to
set up a new model of an Elizabethan theatre elsewhere in London, but
such a memorial would have about it an air of unreality,
artificiality, and affectation which would not be in accord with the
scholarly spirit of an historic or biographic commemoration. The
device might prove of archæological interest, but the commemorative
purpose, from a biographical or historical point of view, would be ill
served. Wherever a copy of an Elizabethan playhouse were brought to
birth in twentieth-century London, the historic sense in the onlooker
would be for the most part irresponsive; it would hardly be quickened.
VI
Apart from the practical difficulties of realising materially
Shakespeare's local associations with London, it is doubtful if the
mere commemoration in London of Shakespeare's personal connection with
the great city ought to be the precise aim of those who urge the
propriety of erecting a national monument in the metropolis.
Shakespeare's personal relations with London can in all the
circumstances of the case be treated as a justification in only the
second degree. The primary justification involves a somewhat different
train of thought. A national memorial of Shakespeare in London must be
reckoned of small account if it merely aim at keeping alive in public
memory episodes of Shakespeare's London career. The true aim of a
national London memorial must be symbolical of a larger fact. It must
typify Shakespeare's place, not in the past, but in the present life
of the nation and of the world. It ought to constitute a perpetual
reminder of the position that he fills in the present economy, and is
likely to fill in the future economy of human thought, for those whose
growing absorption in the narrowing business of life tends to make
them forget it.
The day is long since past when vague eulogy of Shakespeare is
permissible. Shakespeare's literary supremacy is as fully recognised
by those who justly appreciate literature as any law of nature. To the
man and woman of culture in all civilised countries he symbolises the
potency of the human intellect. But those who are content to read and
admire him in the cloister at times overlook the full significance of
his achievement in the outer world. Critics of all nationalities are
in substantial agreement with the romance-writer Dumas, who pointed
out that Shakespeare is more than the greatest of dramatists; he is
the greatest of thinking men.
The exalted foreign estimate illustrates the fact that Shakespeare
contributes to the prestige of his nation a good deal beyond repute
for literary power. He is not merely a literary ornament of our
British household. It is largely on his account that foreign nations
honour his country as an intellectual and spiritual force. Shakespeare
and Newton together give England an intellectual sovereignty which
adds more to her "reputation through the world" than any exploit in
battle or statesmanship. If, again, Shakespeare's pre-eminence has
added dignity to the name of Englishman abroad, it has also quickened
the sense of unity among the intelligent sections of the
English-speaking peoples. Admiration, affection for his work has come
to be one of the strongest links in the chain which binds the
English-speaking peoples together. He quickens the fraternal sense
among all who speak his language.
London is no nominal capital of the kingdom and the Empire. It is the
headquarters of British influence. Within its boundaries are assembled
the official insignia of British prestige. It is the mother-city of
the English-speaking world. To ask of the citizens of London some
outward sign that Shakespeare is a living source of British prestige,
an unifying factor in the consolidation of the British Empire, and a
powerful element in the maintenance of fraternal relations with the
United States, seems therefore no unreasonable demand. Neither
cloistered study of his plays, nor the occasional representation of
them in the theatres, brings home to either the English-speaking or
the English-reading world the full extent of the debt that England
owes to Shakespeare. A monumental memorial, which should symbolise
Shakespeare's influence in the universe, could only find an
appropriate and effective home in the capital city of the British
Empire. It is this conviction, and no narrower point of view, which
gives endeavour to commemorate Shakespeare in London its title to
consideration.
VII
The admitted fact that Shakespeare's fame is established beyond risk
of decay does not place him outside the range of conventional methods
of commemoration. The greater a man's recognised service to his
fellows, the more active grows in normally constituted minds that
natural commemorative instinct, which seeks outward and tangible
expression. A strange fallacy underlies the objection that has been
taken to any commemoration of Shakespeare on the alleged ground that
Milton warned the English people of all time against erecting a
monument to Shakespeare.
In 1630 Milton asked the question that is familiar to thousands of
tongues:
What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones?
By way of answer he deprecated any such "weak witness of his name" as
"pilèd stones" or "star-y-pointing pyramid." The poet-laureate of
England echoed Milton's sentiment in 1905. He roundly asserted that
"perishable stuff" is the fit crown of monumental pedestals. "Gods for
themselves," he concluded, "have monument enough." There are ample
signs that the sentiment to which Milton and the laureate give voice
has a good deal of public support.
None the less the poet-laureate's conclusion is clearly refuted by
experience and cannot terminate the argument. At any rate, in the
classical and Renaissance eras monumental sculpture was in habitual
request among those who would honour both immortal gods and mortal
heroes--especially mortal heroes who had distinguished themselves in
literature or art.
A little reflection will show, likewise, that Milton's fervid couplets
have small bearing on the question at issue in its present conditions.
Milton's poem is an elegy on Shakespeare. It was penned when the
dramatist had lain in his grave less that fourteen years, and when the
writer was in his twenty-second year. The exuberant enthusiasm of
youth was couched in poetic imagery which has from time immemorial
been employed in panegyrics of great poets. The beautiful figure which
presents a great man's work as his only lasting monument is as old as
poetry itself. The conceit courses through the classical poetry of
Greece from the time of Pindar, and through that of Italy from the
time of Ennius. No great Renaissance writer of modern Italy, of
sixteenth-century France, or of Elizabethan England, tired of arguing
that the poet's deathless memorial is that carved by his own pen.
Shakespeare himself clothed the conceit in glowing harmonies in his
sonnets. Ben Jonson, in his elegy on the dramatist, adapted the
time-honoured figure when he hailed his dead friend's achievement as
"a monument without a tomb."
"The truest poetry is the most feigning," and, when one recalls the
true significance and influence of great sculptured monuments through
the history of the civilised world, Milton's poetic argument can only
be accepted in what Sir Thomas Browne called "a soft and flexible
sense"; it cannot "be called unto the rigid test of reason." To treat
Milton's eulogy as the final word in the discussion of the subject
whether or no Shakespeare should have a national monument, is to come
into conflict with Sir Walter Scott, Tennyson, Ruskin, Dickens, and
all the greatest men of letters of the nineteenth century, who
answered the question in the affirmative. It is to discredit crowds of
admirers of great writers in classical and modern ages, who have
commemorated the labours of poets and dramatists in outward and
visible monuments.
The genius of the great Greek dramatists was not underrated by their
countrymen. Their literary efforts were adjudged to be true memorials
of their fame, and no doubt of their immortality was entertained. None
the less, the city of Athens, on the proposition of the Attic orator,
Lycurgus, erected in honour of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
statues which ranked with the most beautiful adornments of the Greek
capital. Calderon and Goethe, Camoens and Schiller, Sir Walter Scott
and Burns enjoy reputations which are smaller, it is true, than
Shakespeare's, but are, at the same time, like his, of both national
and universal significance. In memory of them all, monuments have been
erected as tokens of their fellow-countrymen's veneration and
gratitude for the influence which their poetry wields.
The fame of these men's writings never stood in any "need" of
monumental corroboration. The sculptured memorial testified to the
sense of gratitude which their writings generated in the hearts and
minds of their readers.
Again, the great musicians and the great painters live in their work
in a singularly vivid sense. Music and painting are more direct in
popular appeal than great poetry. Yet none can ridicule the sentiment
which is embodied in the statue of Beethoven at Bonn, or in that of
Paolo Veronese at Verona. To accept literally the youthful judgment of
Milton and his imitators is to condemn sentiments and practices which
are in universal vogue among civilised peoples. It is to deny to the
Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey a rational title to existence.
To commemorate a great man by a statue in a public place in the
central sphere of his influence is, indeed, a custom inseparable from
civilised life. The theoretic moralist's reminder that monuments of
human greatness sooner or later come to dust is a doctrine too
discouraging of all human effort to exert much practical effect.
Monuments are, in the eyes of the intelligent, tributes for services
rendered to posterity by great men. But incidentally they have an
educational value. They help to fix the attention of the thoughtless
on facts which may, in the absence of outward symbols, escape notice.
They may act as incentives to thought. They may convert the
thoughtless into the thoughtful. Wide as are the ranks of
Shakespeare's readers, they are not, in England at any rate, incapable
of extension; and, whatever is likely to call the attention of those
who are as yet outside the pale of knowledge of Shakespeare to what
lies within it, deserves respectful consideration.