We all know how much _mythus_ there is in the Shakspere question as it
stands to-day. Beneath a few foundations of proved facts are
certainly engulf d far more dim and elusive ones, of deepest
importance--tantalizing and half suspected--suggesting explanations that
one dare not put in plain statement. But coming at once to the point,
the English historical plays are to me not only the most eminent as
dramatic performances (my maturest judgment confirming the impressions
of my early years, that the distinctiveness and glory of the Poet reside
not in his vaunted dramas of the passions, but those founded on the
contests of English dynasties, and the French wars,) but form, as we
get it all, the chief in a complexity of puzzles. Conceiv'd out of
the fullest heat and pulse of European feudalism--personifying in
unparallel'd ways the mediaeval aristocracy, its towering spirit of
ruthless and gigantic caste, with its own peculiar air and arrogance
(no mere imitation)--only one of the "wolfish earls" so plenteous in the
plays themselves, or some born descendant and knower, might seem to be
the true author of those amazing works--works in some respects greater
than anything else in recorded literature.
The start and germ-stock of the pieces on which the present speculation
is founded are undoubtedly (with, at the outset, no small amount of
bungling work) in "Henry VI." It is plain to me that as profound and
forecasting a brain and pen as ever appear'd in literature, after
floundering somewhat in the first part of that trilogy--or perhaps
draughting it more or less experimentally or by accident--afterward
developed and defined his plan in the Second and Third Parts, and from
time to time, thenceforward, systematically enlarged it to majestic and
mature proportions in "Richard II," "Richard III," "King John," "Henry
IV," "Henry V," and even in "Macbeth," "Coriolanus" and "Lear." For it
is impossible to grasp the whole cluster of those plays, however wide
the intervals and different circumstances of their composition, without
thinking of them as, in a free sense, the result of an _essentially
controling plan_. 'What was that plan? Or, rather, what was veil'd
behind it?--for to me there was certainly something so veil'd. Even the
episodes of Cade, Joan of Arc, and the like (which sometimes seem to me
like interpolations allow'd,) may be meant to foil the possible sleuth,
and throw any too 'cute pursuer off the scent. In the whole matter I
should specially dwell on, and make much of, that inexplicable element
of every highest poetic nature which causes it to cover up and involve
its real purpose and meanings in folded removes and far recesses. Of
this trait--hiding the nest where common seekers may never find it--the
Shaksperean works afford the most numerous and mark'd illustrations
known to me. I would even call that trait the leading one through the
whole of those works.
All the foregoing to premise a brief statement of how and where I get my
new light on Shakspere. Speaking of the special English plays, my friend
William O'Connor says:
They seem simply and rudely historical in their motive, as aiming
to give in the rough a tableau of warring dynasties,--and carry to
me a lurking sense of being in aid of some ulterior design, probably
well enough understood in that age, which perhaps time and criticism
will reveal.... Their atmosphere is one of barbarous and tumultuous
gloom,--they do not make us love the times they limn,... and it is
impossible to believe that the greatest of the Elizabethan men could
have sought to indoctrinate the age with the love of feudalism which
his own drama in its entirety, if the view taken of it herein be true,
certainly and subtly saps and mines.
Reading the just-specified play in the light of Mr. O'Connor's
suggestion, I defy any one to escape such new and deep
utterance-meanings, like magic ink, warm' d by the fire, and previously
invisible. Will it not indeed be strange if the author of "Othello" and
"Hamlet" is destin'd to live in America, in a generation or two, less as
the cunning draughtsman of the passions, and more as putting on record
the first full exposé--and by far the most vivid one, immeasurably ahead
of doctrinaires and economists--of the political theory and results, or
the reason-why and necessity for them which America has come on earth to
abnegate and replace?
The summary of my suggestion would be, therefore, that while the more
the rich and tangled jungle of the Shaksperean area is travers'd and
studied, and the more baffled and mix'd, as so far appears, becomes the
exploring student (who at last surmises everything, and remains certain
of nothing,) it is possible a future age of criticism, diving deeper,
mapping the land and lines freer, completer than hitherto, may discover
in the plays named the scientific (Baconian?) inauguration of modern
democracy--furnishing realistic and first-class artistic portraitures
of the mediaeval world, the feudal personalities, institutes, in their
morbid accumulations, deposits, upon politics and sociology,--may
penetrate to that hard-pan, far down and back of the ostent of to-day,
on which (and on which only) the progressism of the last two centuries
has built this Democracy which now hold's secure lodgment over the whole
civilized world.
Whether such was the unconscious, or (as I think likely) the more
or less conscious, purpose of him who fashion'd those marvellous
architectonics, is a secondary question.