was mottled by the modern Gallic in phrase and in criticism, corrupting
our national taste, and thus removing us still further from the
Shakespearian diction in idiom and in imagery. A great master of
language, Dryden, confesses he found Shakespeare almost as difficult as
old Chaucer.
On the restored theatre, "the renowned Jonson," thus distinguished by
Shadwell, retained his supremacy in _The Fox_, _The Silent Woman_, and
_The Alchemist_, and the airy and loose Fletcher was popular, being
considered by this new generation as having drawn the characters of
gentlemen more to their humour than his grave predecessors. One of the
first managers was Davenant: to his partiality, for he was eager to
acknowledge Shakespeare his father, both in blood and in verse, we may
ascribe the revival of that poet's plays. Dryden has told that it was
Davenant who first taught him to appreciate our national bard; they were
caught by the fancy of the poet; but the great ethical preceptor of
mankind had never entered into their contemplation; and thus _Macbeth_
shrank into an opera under the hand of Davenant; and the _Tempest_,
after having been seemingly burlesqued by duplicate characters of
Miranda, Ferdinand, and Caliban, by Davenant and Dryden together, was
turned into an opera by Shadwell, and exhibited as if it were a
pantomime, depending now on popular favour for new dresses, new music,
and new machinery. _Romeo and Juliet_ was altered by the Honourable
James Howard, Dryden's brother-in-law, to introduce a happy conclusion:
however, it is but justice to the town to record that they were so
firmly divided in opinion on the catastrophe, that it was alternately
played as tragedy and tragic-comic. We may fairly conclude by these
profanations, that the true taste for our national bard had passed
away.[15]
Evelyn is a literary man, whose judgment has its value; and assuredly,
he records the taste of the court-circle. In 1661 he saw "_Hamlet,
Prince of Denmark_, played; but now, _the old plays begin to disgust
this refined age_, since his Majesty has been so long abroad." Pepys,
his contemporary, was a play-haunter: and how he relished _The Midsummer
Night's Dream_, with all its beautiful fancy, appears by his firm
opinion, that "it was the most insipid, ridiculous play he had ever
seen." _Macbeth_, though "a deep tragedy, had a strange perfection in a
_divertisement_;" that is, _Macbeth_ was Davenant's opera, with music
and dancing. But Pepys _read_ Othello, and we have his deliberate
notion; "but having lately read the _Adventures of Five Hours, Othello_
seemed a mean thing!" It is clear from these, and there are other as
remarkable instances, that their ideas of the drama had wholly changed;
that Nature and Fancy had retired from the stage to give precedence to
what are called "Heroic Tragedy," and comedies of Intrigue.
Shakespeare's plays, in a great measure, were banished the stage; but we
may presume that Shakespeare still preserved some readers, though not
critical ones, for four years after the Restoration the third edition of
Shakespeare in 1664, with seven additional dramas, one of which, _The
Yorkshire Tragedy_, had been printed with his name in his lifetime, was
given to the world.
Leaving the theatre, and its moody humours of the populace, let us turn
to those who think in their closet. How did such critics arbitrate? We
can have no judge more able than the learned author of "Hudibras,"--"The
quickest apprehensions, and aptest geniuses to anything they undertake,
do not always prove _the greatest masters_ in it, for there is more
patience and phlegm required in those that attain to any degree of
perfection, than is commonly found in the temper of _active and ready
wits that soon tire, and will not hold out_." Butler instances Virgil,
who wanting much of that natural easiness of wit that Ovid had, "did,
nevertheless, with hard labour and long study, arrive at a higher
perfection, than the other, with all his dexterity of wit, but less
industry, could attain to. The same we may observe of JONSON and
SHAKESPEARE, for he that _is able to think long and judge well, will be_
_sure to find out better things than another man can hit upon suddenly,
though of more quick and ready parts_; which is commonly but CHANCE, and
the other wit and judgment."[16]
After this long extract, it is quite evident that with a predilection
for Shakespeare, alive at times to his true touches of nature, BUTLER
could not at that day take a comprehensive view of the faculties of the
great bard. What we deem his intuitive faculty seemed but "chance" that
could only "hit suddenly;" that prodigality of genius, the marvels which
modern criticism has revealed to its initiated--was an advent--the day
had not yet come! Butler perceived the electrical strokes of
Shakespeare; but the mental shadowings--and the oneness--which rose
together in the creation of a _Macbeth_, a _Hamlet_, a _Lear_, was a
philosophical result, which probably no one had yet dreamed of.
If the genius of SHAKESPEARE were neglected, it was also destined to be
arraigned and condemned.
Critical learning was yet new in our literature; it had taken its birth
in Italy, among a crowd of philosophers, rhetoricians and philologists,
busied in developing the true principles of every species of literary
composition. The academy _Della Crusca_ was a tribunal, and the "Poetic
of Aristotle," commented on by the renowned Castelvetro, was a code,
which was chiefly directed to the dramatic art. Our airy neighbours,
whose national theatre at its beginning had much resembled our own in
its freedom and originality, at the erection of the famous French
Academy, evidently in imitation of the Cruscan, with the great cardinal
at its head, surrendered to the Greeks and to Aristotle. Everything now
was to be as it had been, and every work, whatever might be its genius,
was to be strictly modelled by certain arbitrary decisions; and all
tragedies were to be written according to the humour of that ancient
people, the Greeks, with their choruses,--and regulated by the severe
unities of time and place and action! Bossu set down his prescriptions
to compound an Epic, and Pere Rapin, in his "Reflections on Aristotle's
Treatise of Poetry," dictated "Universal Rules" for all sorts of
poetry. RYMER, the collector of our Foedera, in his earlier days, was an
excellent scholar, and cultivated elegant literature. He translated this
very work of Pere Rapin, to which he prefixed an ingenious critical
preface on comparative poetry. Enraptured by Grecian tragedy, and
vivacious with French criticism, and moreover sanguine with an elevated
conception of a certain forthcoming tragedy, which was to appear "a
faultless piece" among our own monstrous dramas, Rymer grasped the new
and formidable weapon of modern criticism. Armed at all points with a
Grecian helmet and a Gallic lance, this literary Quixote sallied forth
to attack all the giants, or the windmills, of the English theatre.
Now appeared "The Tragedies of the Last Age examined by the Practice of
the Ancients. 1678." This explosion entirely fell on three of Fletcher's
plays.[17] This critical bomb was learned and lively. The court, and
consequently the popular, tastes were classical or Gallic; RYMER haunted
St. James's, and soon became one of "their majesties' servants." He had
formed the most elevated conception of the dramatic art, and that
tragedy was a poem for kings; and he tells, that the poets who first
brought tragedy to perfection were made viceroys.
"The poetry of the last age," the age of Elizabeth, he considered was
"rude as our architecture," and he detected the cause in our utter
"neglect of the Poetic of Aristotle, on which all the great men in Italy
had commented, before on this side of the Alps we knew of the existence
of such a book."
This critic-poet,--for unluckily for Aristotle, Rymer resolved on being
both,--had a notion that "though it be not necessary that all heroes
should be kings, yet undoubtedly all crowned heads should be heroes;"
this was a prerogative of the crown never to be invaded by any
parliament of poets. This passive obedience in the critical art was
perfume in "the royalty" of a dedication to Charles the Second,
preparatory of the writer's own legitimate tragedy of _Edgar, or the
English Monarch_, in rhymed verse; and the first inroad of his critical
demolition was to expose "the barbarisms" of Milton's blank! Rymer was
as intrepid as he was enterprising. He composed his tragedy on the
principles which he advocated, and the result was precisely what
happened to the Abbe d'Aubignac, who wrote on the same system.
Undoubtedly, he congratulated himself on the perfection of the clockwork
machinery of his legitimate drama, where he had inviolably preserved the
unities, for the action begins about one o'clock at noon, and the
catastrophe closes at ten at night! He would have been right by
"Shrewsbury clock." To the audience, however, the "long hour" might have
seemed much longer than the delightful _Winter's Tale_ of Shakespeare,
which includes the events of twenty years!
The formidable critique, not the tragedy, made a great sensation; many
were on the side of the stout Aristotelian, though some might deem that
little mercy had tempered his justice. Dryden prepared an answer, for we
have its heads; but he seems to have been awed by the critic's learning,
for he never proceeded, and at a later day Rymer was a critic quite
after Pope's own heart on our ancient drama.[18] Some years after, the
critique was honoured by a second edition, and in the following year
this _combat a l'outrance_ was again waged, with no diminished
intrepidity, in "A Short View of Tragedy, with some reflections on
SHAKESPEARE, and other PRACTITIONERS for the Stage," 1693. This,
notwithstanding the offensive theme, is replete with curious literature,
and some original researches in Provencal poetry.
"Rymer is the worst critic that ever lived." Such is the warm decision
of an eloquent modern critic.[19] But in taste, as well as in more
serious affairs, every age is governed by opinions. A mechanical critic
then seemed mathematically irrefutable. Judging an English drama by the
practice of the ancients, his triumph was easy. This scholastic
doctrine, however, proved too subtle for the English people, and even
the learned themselves in time looked up to nature. The philosophy of
criticism, that is, of the human mind, was then imperfectly
comprehended. A critic will be no longer safe who has nothing by heart
but canons of criticism. The curious "Tracts" of RYMER are a memorable
evidence how a learned critic deprived of native susceptibility, may
distort the noblest productions, by coarse jocularity and that malice of
criticism--ridicule! He calls _Othello_ "the tragedy of the
pocket-handkerchief." That beautiful incident Shakespeare had found in
Cynthio's novel, and probably intuitively felt how casualties, small as
this one, in human affairs may become associated with our highest
passions. Rymer only exposed the poverty of his imagination when, with a
morsel of Quintilian, he would demonstrate this incident to be "too
small a matter to move us in tragedy, much like Fortunatus' purse and
the invisible cloak, long ago worn threadbare, and stowed up in the
wardrobe of obsolete romance." With _Othello's_ tragic tale before him,
the critic worms himself into "the burlesque or comic parts," and these
he insidiously lauds, to insinuate that _Othello_ is but "a bloody
farce." The blending of the comic and the serious in the same character,
as in that of Iago, as often we find it in the many-coloured scenes of
human life, was an artful mixture too potent and poisonous in the cup of
mechanical criticism. There is a strange malignant drollery, a bitter
pleasantry in the villanous Iago, as in the scene where he alarms
Brabantio for the fate of his daughter, which to "the heroic" dramatist,
who could only move on stilts, was mistaken for "farce," and not
comprehended in his narrow views of human nature.
RYMER, however, was a ripe scholar, and the founder in our literature of
what has been considered as the French or the classical school of
criticism; and he has won the unlucky distinction of being designated as
"Shakespeare's critic!" In Dryden's prologue to "Love Triumphant," there
is an allusion which Sir Walter Scott could not assign to any
individual, though he acutely suspected it had a reference to some
person: Sir Walter at that moment forgot Rymer and his "heroic
tragedy." The lines are now very significant.
To SHAKESPEARE'S CRITIC, he bequeaths the curse,
_To find his faults_, and yet HIMSELF MAKE WORSE.[20]
The uncertain criticisms of Dryden on Shakespeare were often dictated by
the impulse of the moment, and stand in strange opposition to each
other. At one happy time, indeed, he exclaimed, "I admire Jonson, but I
love Shakespeare;" but he had not dived into the spirit of the poet,
else we should not have had the strong censure of a "lethargy of thought
for whole scenes together;" we should not have heard of "the bombast
speeches of Macbeth;" nor that "the historical plays, _The Winter's
Tale_, and _Measure for Measure_, are so meanly written, that the comedy
neither caused your mirth, nor the serious part your concernment."
Dryden, however great as a poet, was deficient in passion, whose natural
touches he acknowledged he had found in Otway. In his earliest pieces,
while enamoured of the false taste of his heroic tragedies, it is
certain he had formed little relish for nature and Shakespeare, which,
at a later period of life, he seems to have been more open to.
In 1681, the Poet Laureate, Nahum Tate, was so little acquainted with
Shakespeare, that _Lear_ being brought to his notice, he found it a
treasure, a heap of jewels unstrung and unpolished; and having had "the
good fortune to light upon an expedient to rectify it," he brought it on
the stage.
Shakespeare was now out of fashion, and a man of fashion aimed a last
and mortal blow. The noble author of the "Characteristics" anathematised
"the Gothic model of poetry." He told the nation that "the British muses
were in their infant state, without anything of shapeliness or person,
lisping in their cradles, with stammering tongues which nothing but
their youth and rawness can excuse." Our dramatic SHAKESPEARE and our
epic MILTON are among these venerable bards, "_rude as they were
according to their time and age_." The classical pedant had, however,
the sagacity to perceive that they have provided us with "the richest
ore." Nature and Shakespeare lifted not their veil to the cold
artificial soliloquist whose faint delicacy bred its own sickliness, and
who, in the march and glitter of his external pomp, only betrayed the
internal failure of his vigour.
The fourth and last folio edition of Shakespeare appeared in 1685. The
poet again was locked up in a huge folio for the following twenty-five
years, when, in 1709, he was freed by Rowe, who now gave him to the
world at large in a more current form, which would meet the eye of the
many.[21]
The appearance of Rowe's edition at least placed the volumes in the
hands of Steele and Addison, and possibly it formed their first studies
of this poet. Whoever will take the pains to examine their popular
papers may discover the fruits of their first thoughts. Steele at first
seems to have derived his knowledge of Shakespeare from the plays as
they were represented; he quotes _Macbeth_ by memory very faultily in
the famous exclamation of Macduff, and seems quite unconscious of the
character of Lady Macbeth, and indeed notices that all the female
characters of Shakespeare make "so small a figure."[22] As we proceed,
we discover him more deeply read and more familiar with the poet's
language. It was not to be hoped from Addison's colder fancy and
classical severity, that the Elizabethan poet could transport this
critic by his inexhaustible imagery and a diction which paints the
passions as well as reveals them. The prosaic genius of Addison, which
had produced a frigid _Cato_, could hardly fathom the depth of the
mightier soul. He pronounced Shakespeare "very faulty in hard metaphors
and forced expressions," and he joins Shakespeare and Nat Lee as
instances of the false sublime.[23] Pope's idea was similar, in his
conversation, not in his preface; and later so was Thomas Warton's.[24]
In 1718, Bysshe, in compiling his "Art of Poetry," which consists of
mere extracts, passed by "Spenser and the poets of his age, because
their language has become so obsolete that most readers of our age have
no ear for them, and therefore SHAKESPEARE is so rarely cited in this
collection."
Rowe silently corrected his unostentatious edition; when fifteen years
had elapsed, Tonson called on a greater poet to succeed to the editorial
throne. The classical taste of Pope was disturbed and rarely sympathised
with "the choice of the subjects, the wrong conduct of the incidents,
false thoughts, forced expressions:" in tenderness to Shakespeare these
he held to be "not so much defects, but superfoetations," which are to
be ascribed to the times, to interpolation, to the copyists; and
contemning "the dull duty" of editorship, he initiated himself into the
novel office of expurgator; striking out or inserting at pleasure--not
only pruning, but grafting. Schlegel exclaims in agony, that Pope would
have given us a mutilated Shakespeare! but Pope, to satisfy us that he
was not insensible to the fine passages of Shakespeare, distinguished by
inverted commas all those which he approved! So that Pope thus furnished
for the first time what have been called "The _Beauties_ of
Shakespeare!" but amid such a disfigured text, the _faults_ of
Shakespeare must have been too apparent! Pope but partially relished and
often ill understood his Shakespeare; yet in the liveliest of prefaces
he offers the most vivid delineation of our great bard's _general
characteristics_. The _genius of Shakespeare_ was at once comprehended
by his brother poet; but _the text_ he was continually tampering with
ended in a fatal testimony that POPE had no congenial taste for the
style, the manner, and the whole native drama of England.[25] POPE laid
himself open to the investigating eye of THEOBALD.
The attention of THEOBALD had been drawn to our old plays by THOMAS
COXETER, an enthusiast of our ancient dramatists. This Coxeter was the
original projector of their revival, but having communicated his plan,
he witnessed the incompetent DODSLEY appropriate this fond hope of his
dreamy life, and he has left us his indignant groans.[26]
After an interval of seven years Theobald gave his edition. His attempts
were limited to the emendation of corrupt passages and the explanation
of obscure ones: the more elevated disquisitions to develope the genius
of his author, by principles of criticism applied to his beauties or his
defects, he assigned to "a masterly pen." This at least was not
arrogant; the man who is sensible of his own weakness, is safe by not
tasking it to the proof. His annotations are amusing from the
self-complacency of the writer, who at times seems to have been struck
by his own felicitous results; and in truth he was often successful,
more than has been honestly avowed by those who have poached on his
manor. Theobald exulted over Pope, but he read his triumph in "The
Dunciad."
The Popeians now sunk the sole merit of the laborious sagacity of "the
restorer," as Mr. Pope affectionately called him, to that of "a
word-catcher." But "piddling Theobald," branded in the forehead by the
immortal "Dunciad," was the first who popularised the neglected writings
of Shakespeare.[27] His editions dispersed thirteen thousand copies,
while nearly a third of Pope's original subscription edition, of seven
hundred and fifty copies, were left unvendible.[28]
It is an evidence of the spread of Shakespeare's celebrity, that a
fashionable circle had formed themselves into a society under the title
of "The Shakespeare Club." Every week they bespoke some favourite play;
but, unexpectedly, the _acted plays_ of Shakespeare seemed to lose
greatly of their secret magic: this failure was charged upon the unhappy
performers, whose skill appeared all unequal to raise the emotions
which the bard had inspired in the closet. Certain it is, that for the
full comprehension of the genius of this great poet, we must learn to
think, to reflect, to combine, for what has passed is a part of what is
going on; and this is a labour more adapted for the repose of the closet
than the business of the theatre. Much is written which must remain in
the mind, and cannot come within the province of acting. The dramas of
Shakespeare, as they have descended to us, modern taste also has always
required to be altered and adapted; they are less calculated for
performance on the stage than those of almost any other dramatist who
has become classical in the theatre. Unquestionably, the great poet had
retained much of the barbarism of the old plays which he re-wrote
without remodelling; bustle which hurries on our attention without
stimulating our feelings; some flagrant indecorums and some absolute
nonsense to the taste of "the groundlings of the Globe." In the reverie
of the poet's pages, the eye glides silently over the offending passages
which cannot detain it. It was these prominent defects which provoked so
many modern alterations; and no doubt Tate and Cibber, and all that
race, exulted like Shadwell, who in his dedication to his alteration of
_Timon of Athens_ exclaims, "I can truly say I have made it into a
play." When Sir James Mackintosh observed, that "Massinger's taste, as
Shakespeare's genius, is displayed with such prodigal magnificence in
the _parts_, but never employed in the construction of the whole," he
was perhaps not aware of the real cause, which was that of our great
poet following the construction of old plays, without altering their
ordonnance. It is true also, that the characters of Shakespeare require
something of his own genius in their personifiers to sustain the perfect
illusion; great actors seem always to have felt the deep emotions they
raised; they studied, they meditated, till at length they personified
the ideal character they represented. We are told this of Burbage and
Betterton, and we know it of Garrick and Mrs. Siddons.
A novel fate was now to befal Shakespeare. Theobald had made his volumes
useful for all hands; a man of rank, who had been the Speaker of the
House of Commons, set the first example of literary magnificence. Sir
THOMAS HANMER had cradled his fancy in the idealism of publication; his
edition was to be not only "the fairest impression, beautified with the
ornaments of sculpture," but it was not to be _sold_ by booksellers! The
Shakespeare of Sir Thomas Hanmer seemed to be a sacred thing, like the
shew-bread of ancient Israel, to be touched by no profane hand, nor
eaten but by an exclusive class. He made a gratuitous donation of his
"sculptured" edition to his Alma Mater, to issue from the university
press, at a very moderate subscription price. The embroidered mantle,
however, but ill concealed the trifler. Sir Thomas had vigorously
attacked the grammatical errors of the poet, which, in fact, was often a
violation of the text, for Shakespeare wrote ungrammatically; the other
editorial effort was a metrical amusement, gently lopping a redundant,
or straightening a limping line; the only harm of his edition was his
modesty in adopting all the innovations of his predecessors, for his own
were quite innocent. On the whole, Sir Thomas appears to have edited his
Shakespeare, wearing all the while his "white kid gloves," which the Mad
Tom Hervey, who ran away with his lady, by information which he ought
not to have divulged, assured the world that the baronet always slept
in.
Under the veil of giving "dear Mr. Pope's" edition, which no one craved,
the great author of "The Divine Legation" now edited Shakespeare. It
must have occurred to the readers of this edition, that hitherto no one
had entered into any right conception of a great portion of the poet's
writings. Many passages with which our memory is familiar were wrested
into the most whimsical readings; plain matters were for ever obscured
by perverse but ingenious interpretations; not only the words, but the
thoughts of the author were changed; here a line was to be wholly
rejected, and there an interpolation was to clear an imperfect sense;
but the most prominent feature of the commentary was that learned fancy
which struck out allusions to the most recondite circumstances of
learned antiquity.[29]
In this great commentator on Shakespeare there was always a contest
between his learning and his fancy; the one was copious, and the other
was exuberant; neither could yield to the other; and the reader was
sure to be led astray by both. His fervid curiosity was absolutely
creative; all things crowded to bear on his point; in the precipitancy
of his pen, his taste or his judgment was not of that degree which could
save him even from inglorious absurdities. But the ingenious follies of
his literature were such that they have often been preserved, for the
sake of all that learning which it required for their refutation.
When all was over, and the battle was fought and lost, the friends of
the great man acknowledged that the editor's design had never been to
explain Shakespeare! and that he was even conscious that he had
frequently imputed to the poet meanings which had never entered the mind
of the bard! Our critic's grand object was to display his own learning
in these amusements of his leisure. Warburton wrote for Warburton, and
not for Shakespeare; and the literary confession almost rivals those of
Lauder or Psalmanazar.
There is one more remarkable object in the Shakespeare of Warburton. He
not only preserved that strange device of Pope to distinguish the most
beautiful passages by _inverted commas_, but carried on that ridiculous
process on his own separate account, by marking his favourites by
_double commas_. It is evident that these great editors judged
Shakespeare by these fragmentary and unconnected passages, which could
not indicate the harmonious and gradual rise of the thoughts, nor the
fine transitions of emotions, and less the comprehensive genius of the
inventor. They were scattering the living members which must be viewed
whole with all their movements, and at last must be sought for by the
reader in his own mind. The truest mode of discovering the beauties of
an author is first to be conversant with the beautiful, otherwise it is
possible that the beauties may escape the readers, even should they be
marked by a Pope or a Warburton.
The acknowledged failure of the preceding editions invited to a fresh
enterprise, and it was the edition of Johnson, in 1765, which conferred
on Shakespeare the stability of a classic, by the vigour and
discrimination of his criticism, and the solemnity of his judicial
decisions.
When Johnson had issued his proposals twenty years before for an edition
of Shakespeare, he pointed to a great novelty for the elucidation of
the poet. His intuitive sagacity had discerned that a poet so racy and
native required a familiarity both with the idiom and the manners of his
age. He was sensible that a complete explanation of an author, not
systematic and consequential, but desultory and vagrant, abounding in
casual allusions and slight hints, is not to be expected from any single
scholiast. He enumerates, however, the desiderata for this purpose;
among which we find that of reading the books which Shakespeare read,
and to compare his works with those of writers who lived at the same
time, or immediately preceded, or immediately followed him. This
project, happily conceived, inferred comprehensive knowledge in the
proposer; but it was only a reverie; a dim Pisgah view which the
sagacity of the great critic had taken of that future Canaan, which he
himself never entered. With this sort of knowledge, and these forgotten
writers, which the future commentators of Shakespeare revelled in,
Johnson remained wholly unacquainted.
But what proved more fatal to the editorial ability of JOHNSON than this
imperfect knowledge of the literature and the manners of the age of
Shakespeare, was that the commentator rarely sympathised with the poet,
for his hard-witted and unpliant faculties, busied with the more
palpable forms of human nature, when thrown amid the supernatural and
the ideal, seemed suddenly deserted of their powers; the magic knot was
tied, which cast our Hercules into helpless impotence; and in the circle
of imaginative creation, we discover the baffled sage resisting the
spell, by apologising for Shakespeare's introduction of his mighty
preternatural beings! a certain evidence that the critic had never
existed for a moment under their influence. "Witches, fairies, and
ghosts, would not now be tolerated by an audience;" such was the grave
and fallacious assumption of the unimaginative critic, which seems
something worse than Voltaire's raillery; for though that wit ridiculed
the ghost in Hamlet, he afterwards had the poetic agility to transfer
its solemnity to his own Semiramis,--though, like all rapid inlayers,
the applique did not fit to his work.[30]
We may even suspect the degree of our great critic's susceptibility of
the infinitely-varied emotions flowing in the inexhaustible vein of the
poet of nature. In those judicial summaries at the close of each drama,
his cold approbation, his perplexing balancings, his hazarded doubts, or
his positive censures, all alike betray the uncertainty and the
difficulties of a critical mind, which misapplied its energies to themes
adverse to its habits.
Johnson's preface to his Shakespeare was long held as a masterpiece; and
several splendid passages, after more than half a century, remain to
remind us of his nervous intellect. If we now read that preface with a
different understanding than that of most of his contemporaries, it is
because Johnson himself has revealed his poetical confessions in certain
"Lives of the Poets." We now look on that famed preface much more as a
labour of pomp than a labour of love. Far from me be any irreverence to
our master-genius of the passed century, whose volumes were read by all
readers, and imitated by all writers; my first devotion to literature
was caught from his pages; and the fire still burns on that altar. But
the literary character of JOHNSON, with his enduring works, is no longer
a subject of inquiry, but of history; of truths established, and not of
opinions which are mutable.
Can we imagine that Johnson himself experienced a degree of conviction,
some perplexing consciousness, that his spirit was not endowed with the
sensibility of Longinus? A profound thinker, acutely argumentative and
analytical, though clothed in the purple of his cumbrous diction, and
the cadences of his concatenated periods, when he touched on themes of
pure imagination, and passions not merely declamatory, had nothing left
to him but the solitary test of his judgment, to decide on what lies out
of the scope of daily life. He interpreted the pathetic and the sublime,
till they ceased to be either by the force of his reasoning and the
weakness of his conceptions; he cross-examined shadowy fancies, till
they vanished under the eye of the judge. He had no wing to ascend into
"the heaven of invention."
In JOHNSON'S SHAKESPEARE, therefore, we may trace that deficient
sympathy which subsequently betrayed itself in his revolting decisions
on Collins, on Gray, on Milton, and on others. It was his hard fate to
be called on to deliver his solemn decisions on two of our greatest
poets; from Spenser he had fortunately escaped, having wholly forgotten
the Muse of Mulla, while his piety and his taste had remembered
Blackmore, in the collection of English poets. It is curious to detect
the mode by which our great critic extricated himself from the
difficulties of his judicial function on Shakespeare and on Milton, by
his prudential sagacity, and his passive obedience to established
authorities. Johnson's preface to Shakespeare was grafted on Pope's, as
afterwards, when he came to Milton, he followed the track of Addison.
But Johnson was too honest to disguise the reality of his own
conviction: it was legitimate to adopt theirs, but it was independent to
preserve his own; in this dissonance he has left a lesson and a warning
for some who are eminent, and who travel in the high-road of criticism.
It is thus that we find in this famous preface to Shakespeare that he is
hailed as the poet of nature, and is placed by the side of Homer; and of
this Pope had instructed the critic; but in the sudden change the noble
qualities of the bard are minutely reversed; the antithesis was too
often in the critic's own taste; and the characteristic excellence
ascribed to Shakespeare seems hardly compatible with the number and the
grossness of his faults. Every work of note bears the impression of its
times; and we learn from the faithful chronicler of Johnson the real
occasion which gave rise to this remarkable preface. "A blind and
indiscriminate admiration of Shakespeare had exposed the British nation
to the ridicule of foreigners; and this preface was considered as a
grave, well-considered, and impartial opinion of the judge." Such was
the defence of the logical critic, who so diligently enumerated the
defects of his author, that Voltaire, who could never understand the
language nor comprehend the genius of Shakespeare, might sometimes have
referred to Johnson to confirm his own depreciating notions.
The extensive plan for the illustration of the poet, imperfectly
projected by Johnson, was finally executed through a series of editions,
which gave rise to a new class of literary antiquaries.
Shortly after the first edition of Johnson, Dr. FARMER led the way to
the disclosure of a new lore in our old books. Farmer had silently
pursued an untired chase in this "black" forest, for he had a keen
_gusto_ for the native venison, and, alluding to his Shakespearian
pursuits, exclaimed in the inspiring language of his poet--
Age cannot wither them, nor custom stale
Their infinite variety.
His vivacity relieved the drowsiness of mere antiquarianism. This novel
pursuit once opened, an eager and motley pack was hallooed up, and
Shakespeare, like Actaeon, was torn to pieces by a whole kennel of his
own hounds, as they were typified, with equal humour and severity. But
to be severe and never to be just is the penury of the most sordid
criticism; and among these
Spirits black, white, and grey,
are some of the most illustrious in English literature.
The original edition of Johnson consisted only of eight volumes; had not
the contriving wisdom of the printers impressed the last into twenty and
one huge tomes, they might easily have been expanded into forty.
When we survey the massive _variorum_ edition of Shakespeare, we are
struck by the circumstance that nothing similar has happened to any
other national author. It was not to be expected that, after the
invention of the art of printing, an author could arise, whose works
should be disfigured by treacherous transcribers, corrupted by
interpolations, and still more by a race of men whose art was unknown to
the ancients, subjecting his text to the mercy of contending
commentators and conjectural critics. But a singular combination of
untoward circumstances attached to this poet and his works, produced
this remarkable result. The scholiasts among the ancient classics had
rejoiced in some rare emendation of the text, or the rhetorical
commentator had flourished in the luxuriance of the latent beauties of
some favourite author. But a far wider and deeper source of inquiry was
now to be attempted, historical or explanatory--comments to clear up
obscure allusions; to indicate unknown prototypes; to trace the
vicissitudes of words as well as things; to picture forth the customs
and the manners which had faded into desuetude; and to re-open for us
the records of our social and domestic life, thus at once to throw us
back into that age, and to familiarize us with that language, of
Shakespeare which had vanished. Shakespeare, it may be said, suddenly
became the favourite object of literary inquiry. Every literary man in
the nation conned over and illumined "the infinite variety" of the bard.
And assuredly they enriched our vernacular literature with a collection
of historical, philological, and miscellaneous information, unparalleled
among any other literary people. In 1785, ISAAC REED, in one of his
prefaces, informs us, that "the works of Shakespeare, during the last
twenty years, have been the object of public attention."
All this novel knowledge was, however, not purchased at a slight cost.
It was not only to be snatched up by accidental discovery, but it was
more severely tasked by what Steevens called "a course of
black-letter!"--dusty volumes, and fugitive tracts, and the wide range
of antiquarian research. The sources whence they drew their waters were
muddy; and STEEVENS, who affected more gaiety in his chains than his
brothers in the Shakespearian galley, with bitter derision reproached
his great coadjutor MALONE, whom he looked on with the evil eye of
rivalry for drawing his knowledge from "books too mean to be formally
quoted."
The commentators have encumbered the poet, who often has been but a
secondary object of their lucubrations, for they not only write notes on
Shakespeare, but notes, and bitter ones too, on one another. This
commentary has been turned into a gymnasium for the public sports of
friendly and of unfriendly wrestlers; where some have been so earnest,
that it is evident that, in measuring a cast, they congratulated
themselves in the language of Orlando, "If ever he goes alone again,
I'll never wrestle for prize more."
THOMAS WARTON once covered with his shield some of the minor
brotherhood: "If Shakespeare is worth reading, he is worth explaining;
and the researches used for so valuable and elegant a purpose merit the
thanks of genius and candour, not the satire of prejudice and
ignorance." But this serves not as an apology for abusing the privilege
of a commentator; elucidating the poet into obscurity by information
equally contradictory and curious; racking us by fantastic readings
which no one imagined before or since; and laying us open to the mercy
of some who never ventured to sharpen their pens but on our irresistible
Shakespeare. What has been the result of the petty conflicts between the
arch maliciousness of Steevens and the fervent plodding of Malone, which
raised up two parties among the Shakespearian commentators, till they
became so personal, that a Steevenite and a Malonist looked on each
other suspiciously, and sometimes would drop the ordinary civilities of
life? At length, strange to tell, after Steevens had laboured with zeal
equal to the whole confraternity, it became a question with him, In what
manner the poet COULD be read? Are we to con over each note appended to
each word or passage?--but this would be perpetually to turn aside the
flow of our imagination; or are we to read a large portion of the text
uninterruptedly, and then return to the notes?--but this would be
breaking the unity of the poet into fragments; or, for a final decision,
and the avowal must have mortified the ingenuous illustrator, according
to a third class of readers, were these illustrations to be altogether
rejected? must the poet or the commentator be at continual variance? or
shall we endure to see "Alcides beaten by his page?"
Might I be allowed to offer an award on a matter so involved and
delicate as this union between the genius of Shakespeare and the genius
of his commentators, I would concede the divorce, from the
incompatibility of temper between the parties; but I would insist on a
separate maintenance, to preserve the great respectability attached to
the party most complained of. The true reader of Shakespeare may then
accommodate himself with two editions; the one for his hand, having
nothing but what the poet has written; the other for the shelf, having
all the commentators have conjectured, confuted, and confounded.[31]
The celebrity of Shakespeare is no longer hounded by his nationality.
Even France responds, though the voice of Parisian critics is muffled,
confused, and ambiguous; they have not yet solved the great problem, why
Shakespeare is an omnipotent dramatist.[32] The school of Corneille and
Racine are perplexed, like Quin, who could not be brought to acknowledge
the creative acting of Garrick, observing that, "If that young man were
right, all which they had hitherto done was wrong."
Voltaire, in early life, to compose the _Henriade_, to escape from the
Bastile, or to conceal his espionage--for he appears to have been a
secret _employe_ of the French ministry--resided a considerable time in
England. He acquired an unusual knowledge of our language, and
published an essay on the epic poets in English.[33] He discovered a new
world among our writers, and was the first who introduced the Literature
of England into France. Voltaire expounded to his nation the philosophy
of Newton; but unhappily he criticized and translated Shakespeare, whose
idiomatic phrases and metaphorical style did not admit of the
demonstrations of the Newtonian system. To the author of the _Henriade_,
who had ever before his eyes the two great masters whom he was one day
to rival, the anti-classical and "Gothic" genius of a poet of the
Elizabethan period, scorning the unities, following events without the
contrivance of an intrigue artfully developed, mingling farce with
tragedy, buffoons with monarchs, and preternatural beings stalking amid
the palpable realities of life--such irregular dramas seemed to the
Aristotelian but "des farces monstrueuses," as we see they appeared to
Rymer and Shaftesbury; but Voltaire was too sagacious to be wholly
insensible that "these monstrous farces, which they call tragedies, had
scenes grand and terrific." Voltaire, then meditating on his future
dramas, in passing over the surface of the soil, discovered that a mine
lay beneath--
Some ore
Among a mineral of metals base,
and the embedded treasure was worked with more diligence than with
gratitude to the owner. If Voltaire ridiculed what he had found, it was
partly with the desire of its concealment, but not wholly; for it was
impossible for any foreigner to interpret sweet words, and idiomatic
phrases, not to be found in dictionaries; or to make way through the
bewilderment of the perpetual metaphorical diction of the daring fancy
of the great poet; but the deformities of the bard would be too
intelligible; all those parts which Pope would have struck out as
"superfoetations." A bald version, or a malicious turn, would amuse the
world by those amazing absurdities, which the wit, too famous for his
ridicule, rejoiced to commit, and Europe yet knew nothing of
Shakespeare, and lay under the sway of this autocrat of Literature.[34]
Mrs. MONTAGUE was the Minerva, for so she was complimented on this
occasion, whose celestial spear was to transfix the audacious Gaul. Her
"Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespeare, compared with the
Greek and French dramatic poets," served for a popular answer to
Voltaire. This accomplished lady, who had raised a literary coterie
about her, which attracted such fashionable notice that its title has
survived its institution, found in "the Blue-stocking Club" choral hymns
and clouds of incense gathering about the altar in Portman Square! The
volume is deemed "a wonderful performance," by those echoes of
contemporary prepossessions, the compilers of dictionary-biography; even
the poet Cowper placed Mrs. Montague "at the head of all that is called
learned."
This lady's knowledge of the English drama, and the genius of our
ancient Literature, is as vague and indistinct as that of the Greek
tragedians, to whom she frequently refers, without, we are told, any
intimacy with the originals. She discovers many bombast speeches even in
_Macbeth_, but she triumphantly exclaims, "Shakespeare redeems the
nonsense, the indecorum, the irregularities of his plays;"
irregularities which seem to her incomprehensible. Her criticisms are
the random reflections of her feelings; but trusting to our feelings
alone, unaccompanied by that knowledge on which they should be based, is
confiding in a capricious, and often an erring dictator, governed by our
own humours, or by fashionable tastes.
Thus have we viewed our bard through distinct eras, from the time in
which he was not yet pre-eminently distinguished among his numerous
peers; the Shakespeare of his own day could not be the Shakespeare of
posterity; his rivals could only view that genius in its progress, and
though there was not one who was a Shakespeare, yet, in that bursting
competition of genius, there were many who were themselves Shakspearian.
In a succeeding era, novel and unnational tastes prevailed; to the
Drydenists who, dismissing the language of nature, substituted a false
nature in their exaggerated passion, Shakespeare might have said of
himself--
I dare do all that may become a man,
Who dares do more is none;--
and when tried by the conventional code of criticism, and condemned;
the poet of creation, might have exclaimed to Rymer and to Shaftesbury--
The poet's eye,
Bodying forth the forms of THINGS UNKNOWN, gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Emerging into light through his modern editors, the volume in the hands
of all men; the English public, with whom the classical model was held
as nothing, received him as their national bard; for every one read in
"the chance" that could only "hit suddenly," as Butler has described the
genius of Shakespeare, revelations about himself. It seemed as if the
poet had served in all professions, taking every colour of public and
domestic life. Lawyers have detected their law-cunning in the legal
contrivances of the poet; physicians have commented on the madness of
Lear, and the mystery of Hamlet; statesmen have meditated on profound
speculations in civil polity; the merchant and the mechanic, the soldier
and the maiden--all, from the crowned head to the sailor-boy, found that
in the cursory pages of the great dramatist, he had disclosed to all the
tribes of mankind the secrets of their condition. The plenitude and the
pliancy of the Shakespearian mind may be manifested by a trivial
circumstance. We are a people of pamphleteers; a free country has a free
communication; and many, for interest or vainglory, rush to catch the
public ear. To point out the drift of their effusions, and aid a dubious
title by an unquestioned authority, the greater number of these
incessant fugitives, coming in all shapes, will be usually found to have
recourse for this apposite thought, and crowning motto, to the prodigal
pages of Shakespeare, who, thus pressed into their service, has often
made the drift of the pamphleteer intelligible, vainly sought in his
confused pamphlet.
When the strange condition of his works made the poet the noble prey of
a brood of commentators, antiquarian and philological, from that
generation he derived nothing of that abstract greatness with which we
are now accustomed to contemplate a genius which seems universal. It was
not by new readings, contested restorations, conjectural emendations,
and notes explanatory of customs and phrases, however useful, that we
could penetrate into the depths of a genius profound as nature herself,
and it was only when philosophical critics tested this genius by their
own principles, that the singularity was discovered to Europe.
Hitherto the critical art had been verbal, or didactic, or dogmatic; but
when the mind engaged itself in watching its own operations, by analysis
and combination, and when the laws of its constitution formed a science,
educing principles, and exploring the sources of our emotions, all
arbitrary conventions were only rated at their worth, while the final
appeal was made to our own experience: these nobler critics founded the
demonstrations of their metaphysical reasonings on our consciousness.
This novel philosophy was more surely and more deeply laid in the nature
of man, and whatever concerns man, than the arbitrary code of the
Stagyrite, who had founded many of his laws on what had only been
customs. We were passing from the history of the human understanding to
the history of the imagination; and the whole beautiful process of the
intellectual faculties was a new revelation. Theories of taste and
systems of philosophy multiplied our sympathies, and amplified our
associations; the intellectual powers had their history, and the
passions were laid bare in their eloquent anatomy. But in these severe
investigations, this new school had to seek for illustrations and for
examples which might familiarize their abstract principles; and these
philosophical critics appealed to nature, and drew them from her poetic
interpreter.
It was the philosophical critics who, by trying Shakespeare by these
highest tests, fixed him on his solitary eminence. From Lord Kaimes,
through a brilliant succession of many a Longinus, the public has been
instructed. The strokes of nature and the bursts of passion, the
exuberance of his humour and the pathos of his higher mood, untutored
minds had felt more or less, and Shakespeare was lauded for what they
considered to be his "natural parts;" and it was parts only on which
they could decide, for the true magnitude they could not yet comprehend.
The loneliness of his genius, in its profundity or its elevation, and
the delicacy of its delineations, the mighty space his universal faculty
extends before us, these they could never reach! The phenomenon had not
been explained--the instruments had not yet been invented which could
fathom its depths, or take the admeasurement at the meridian.
But if philosophical criticism has been so far favourable to develope
the truth of nature in the great poet, it is not a consequence that
Shakespeare himself produced his poetry on those revolving systems of
metaphysics by which some late aesthetic and rhetorical German critics
have somewhat offuscated the solitary luminary. They have developed such
a system of intricate thinking in the genius of the poet, such a refined
connexion between his conceptions and the execution of his dramatic
personages--they have so grafted their own imagination upon his, that at
times it becomes doubtful whether we are influenced by the imagination
of the critic, or that of the poet. In this seraphic mode of criticism,
the poem becomes mythic, and the poet a myth; in the power of
abstraction, these critics have passed beyond the regions of humanity.
We soar with them into the immensity of space, and we tremble as if we
stood alone in the universe; we have lost sight of nature, as we seem to
have passed her human boundaries. The ancient divinity of poetry itself,
even Homer, is absorbed in the Shakespearian myth; for Shakespeare, to
snatch a feather from the fiery wing of Coleridge, is "the Spinosistic
deity, an omnipresent creativeness."
Thou whose rapt spirit beheld the vision of human existence, "the wheel
in the middle of the wheel, and the spirit of the living creature
within," and wrotest thy inspirations, how shall we describe thy
faculty? To paint lightning, and to give it no motion, is the doom of
the baffled artist. Something, however, we may conceive of the
Shakespearian faculty when we say that it consisted in a facility of
feeling, an aptitude in following those trains of thought which
constitute that undeviating propriety, in the consonance of the
character with its action, and the passion with its language. Whether
the poet followed the romancer or the chronicler in his conception of a
dramatic character, he at the first step struck into that undeviating
track of our humanity amid the accidents of its position. The progress
of each dramatic personage was therefore a unity of diction and
character, of sentiment and action; all was direct, for there was no
effort where all was impulse; and the dramatic genius of Shakespeare, as
if wholly unstudied, seems to have formed the habit of his intellectual
character. Was this unerring Shakespearian faculty an intuitive
evidence, like certain axioms; or may we venture to fancy that our poet,
as it were, had discovered the very mathematics of metaphysics?
Besides this facility of feeling appropriating to itself the whole
sphere of human existence, there is another characteristic of our
national bard. He struck out a diction which I conceive will be found in
no other poet. What is usually termed diction would, applied to
Shakespeare, be more definite, and its quality more happily explained,
if we call it _expression_, and observed in what magic the Shakespearian
expression lies. This diction has been subject to the censure of
obscurity. Modern critics have ascribed the invention of our dramatic
blank verse to Shakespeare; but Shakespeare was no inventor in the usual
acceptation of the term, and assuredly was not of unrhymed metre: what,
indeed, are imperfectly or rarely found among his tuneful predecessors
and contemporaries, are the sweetness of his versification, combined
with ceaseless imagery; we view the image through the transparency of
the thought never disturbing it; it is neither a formal simile nor an
expanded metaphor--it is a single expression, a sensible image combined
with an emotion.