SHAKESPEARE

There is something pathetic about the blind devotion of humanity to

its famous names. But how indiscriminate it is; how lacking in

discernment!

This is, above all, true of Shakespeare, whose peculiar and quite

personal genius has almost been buried under the weight of popular

idolatry. No wonder such critics as Voltaire, Tolstoi, and Mr.

Bernard Shaw have taken upon themselves to intervene. The

Frenchman's protest was an aesthetic one. The more recent objectors

have adopted moral and philosophic grounds. But it is the

unreasoning adoration of the mob which led to both attacks.

It is not difficult to estimate the elements which have gone to make

up this Shakespeare-God. The voices of the priests behind the Idol

are only too clearly distinguishable. We hear the academic voice, the

showman's voice, and the voice of the ethical preacher. They are all

absurd, but their different absurdities have managed to flow together

into one powerful and unified convention. Our popular orators

gesticulate and clamour; our professors "talk Greek;" our ethical

Brutuses "explain;" and the mob "throw up their sweaty night-caps;"

while our poor Caesar of Poetry sinks down out of sight, helpless

among them all.

Charles Lamb, who understood him better than anyone--and who

loved Plays--does not hesitate to accuse our Stage-Actors of being

the worst of all in their misrepresentation. He doubts whether even

Garrick understood the subtlety of the roles he played, and the few

exceptions he allows in his own age make us wonder what he would

say of ours.

Finally there is the "Philosophical Shakespeare" of the German

appreciation, and this we feel instinctively to be the least like the

original of all!

The irony of it is that the author of Hamlet and the Tempest does not

only live in a different world from that of these motley exponents.

He lives in an antagonistic one. Shakespeare was as profoundly the

enemy of scholastic pedantry as he was the enemy of puritan

squeamishness. He was almost unkindly averse to the breath of the

profane crowd. And his melancholy scepticism, with its half-humorous

assent to the traditional pieties, is at the extremest opposite

pole from the "truths" of metaphysical reason. The Shakespeare

of the Popular Revivals is a fantastic caricature. The Shakespeare

of the College Text-Books is a lean scarecrow. But the Shakespeare

of the philosophical moralists is an Hob-goblin from whom one flees

in dismay.

Enjoying the plays themselves--the interpreters forgotten--a

normally intelligent reader cannot fail to respond to a recognisable

Personality there, a Personality with apathies and antipathies, with

prejudices and predilections. Very quickly he will discern the absurd

unreality of that monstrous Idol, that ubiquitous Hegelian God. Very

soon he will recognize that in trying to make their poet everything

they have made him nothing.

No one can read Shakespeare with direct and simple enjoyment

without discovering in his plays a quite definite and personal

attitude towards life. Shakespeare is no Absolute Divinity,

reconciling all oppositions and transcending all limitations. He is not

that "cloud-capped mountain," too lofty to be scanned, of Matthew

Arnold's Sonnet. He is a sad and passionate artist, using his bitter

experiences to intensify his insight, and playing with his humours

and his dreams to soften the sting of that brutish reality which he

was doomed to unmask. The best way of indicating the personal

mood which emerges as his final attitude is to describe it as that of

the perfectly natural man confronting the universe. Of course, there

is no such "perfectly natural man," but he is a legitimate lay-figure,

and we all approximate to him at times. The natural man, in his

unsophisticated hours, takes the Universe at its surface value, neither

rejecting the delicate compensations, nor mitigating the cruelty of

the grotesque farce. The natural man accepts _what is given._ He

swallows the chaotic surprises, the extravagant accidents, the whole

fantastic "pell-mell." He accepts, too, the traditional pieties of his

race, their "hope against hope," their gracious ceremonial, their

consecration of birth and death. He accepts these, not because he is

confident of their "truth" but because _they are there;_ because they

have been there so long, and have interwoven themselves with the

chances and changes of the whole dramatic spectacle.

He accepts them spontaneously, humorously, affectionately; not

anxious to improve them--what would be the object of that?--and

certainly not seeking to controvert them. He reverences this Religion

of his Race not only because it has its own sad, pathetic beauty, but

because it has got itself involved in the common burden; lightening

such a burden here, making it, perhaps, a little heavier there, but

lending it a richer tone, a subtler colour, a more significant shape. It

does not trouble the natural man that Religion should deal with "the

Impossible." Where, in such a world as this, does _that_ begin? He

has no agitating desire to reconcile it with reason.

At the bottom of his soul he has a shrewd suspicion that it rather

grew out of the earth than fell from the sky, but that does not

concern him. It may be based upon no eternal verity. It may lead to

no certain issue. It may be neither very "useful" or very "moral." But

it is, at any rate, a beautiful work of imaginative art, and it lends life

a certain dignity that nothing can quite replace. As a matter of fact,

the natural man's attitude to these things does not differ much from

the attitude of the great artists. It is only that a certain lust for

creation, and a certain demonic curiosity, scourge these latter on to

something beyond passive resignation.

A Da Vinci or a Goethe accepts religion and uses it, but between it

and the depths of his own mind remains forever an inviolable film of

sceptical "white light." This "qualified assent" is precisely what

excites the fury of such individualistic thinkers as Tolstoi and

Bernard Shaw. It were amusing to note the difference between the

"humour" of this latter and the "humour" of Shakespeare. Shaw's

humour consists in emphasizing the absurdity of human Custom,

compared with the good sense of the philosopher. Shakespeare's

humour consists in emphasizing the absurdity of philosophers,

compared with the good sense of Custom. The one is the humour of

the Puritan, directed against the ordinary man, on behalf of the

Universe. The other is the humour of the Artist, directed against the

Universe, on behalf of the ordinary man.

Shakespeare is, at bottom, the most extreme of Pessimists. He has

no faith in "progress," no belief in "eternal values," no

transcendental "intuitions," no zeal for reform. The universe to him,

for all its loveliness, remains an outrageous jest. The cosmic is the

comic. Anything may be expected of this "pendant world," except

what we expect; and when it is a question of "falling back," we can

only fall back on human-made custom. We live by Illusions, and

when the last Illusion fails us, we die. After reading Shakespeare,

the final impression left upon the mind is that the world can only be

justified as an aesthetic spectacle. To appreciate a Show at once so

sublime and so ridiculous, one needs to be very brave, very tender,

and very humorous. Nothing else is needed. "Man must abide his

going hence, even as his coming hither. Ripeness is all." When

Courage fails us, it is--"as flies to wanton boys are we to the gods.

They kill us for their sport." When tenderness fails us, it

is--"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace

from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time." When humour

fails us, it is--"How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, seem to me

all the uses of this world!"

So much for Life! And when we come to Death, how true it is, as

Charles Lamb says, that none has spoken of Death like Shakespeare!

And he has spoken of it so--with such an absolute grasp of our

mortal feeling about it--because his mood in regard to it is the mood

of the natural man; of the natural man, unsophisticated by false

hopes, undated by vain assurance. His attitude towards death neither

sweetens "the unpalatable draught of mortality" nor permits us to let

go the balm of its "eternal peace." How frightful "to lie in cold

obstruction and to rot; this sensible warm motion to become a

kneaded clod!" and yet, "after life's fitful fever," how blessed to

"sleep well!"

What we note about this mood--the mood of Shakespeare and the

natural man--is that it never for a moment dallies with philosophic

fancies or mystic visions. It "thinks highly of the soul," but in the

natural, not the metaphysical, sense. It is the attitude of Rabelais and

Montaigne, not the attitude of Wordsworth or Browning. It is the

tone we know so well in the Homeric poems. It is the tone of the

Psalms of David. We hear its voice in "Ecclesiastes," and the

wisdom of "Solomon the King" is full of it. In more recent times, it

is the feeling of those who veer between our race's traditional hope

and the dark gulf of eternal silence. It is the "Aut Christus aut Nihil"

of those who "by means of metaphysic" have dug a pit, into which

metaphysic has disappeared!

The gaiety and childlike animal spirits of Shakespeare's Comedies

need not deceive us. Why should we not forget the whips and scorns

for a while, and fleet the time carelessly, "as they did in the golden

age?" Such simple fooling goes better with the irresponsibility of

our fate than the more pungent wit of the moral comedians. The

tragic laughter which the confused issues of life excite in subtler

souls is not lacking, but the sweet obliquities of honest clowns carry

us just as far. Shakespeare loves fools as few have loved them, and it

is often his humour to put into their mouth the ultimate wisdom.

It is remarkable that these plays should commence with a

"Midsummer Night's Dream" and end with a "Tempest." In the

interval the great sombre passions of our race are sounded and

dismissed; but as he began with Titania, so he ends with Ariel. From

the fairy forest to the enchanted island; from a dream to a dream.

With Shakespeare there is no Wagnerian, Euripidean "apologia."

There is no "Parsifal" or "Bacchanals." From the meaningless tumult

of mortal passions he returns, with a certain ironic weariness, to the

magic of Nature and the wonder of youth. Prospero, dismissing his

spirits "into thin air," has the last word; and the last word is as the

first: "we are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is

rounded with a sleep." The easy-going persons who reluct at the idea

of a pessimistic Shakespeare should turn the pages of Troilus and

Cressida, Measure for Measure, and Timon of Athens. What we

guessed as we read Hamlet and Lear grows a certainty as we read

these plays.

Here the "gentle Shakespeare" does the three things that are most

unpardonable. He unmasks virtue; he betrays Woman; and he curses

the gods. The most intransigent of modern revolutionaries might

learn a trick or two from this sacred poet. In Lear he puts the very

voice of Anarchy into the mouth of the King--"Die for adultery?

No!" "Handy-dandy, which is the Magistrate and which is the

Thief?" "A dog's obeyed in office."

Have I succeeded in making clear what I feel about the

Shakespearean attitude? At bottom, it is absolutely sceptical. Deep

yawns below Deep; and if we cannot read "the writing upon the

wall," the reason may be that there is no writing there. Having lifted

a corner of the Veil of Isis, having glanced once into that

Death-Kingdom where grope the roots of the Ash-Tree whose name is

Fear, we return to the surface, from Nadir to Zenith, and become

"superficial"--"out of profundity."

The infinite spaces, as Pascal said, are "frightful." That way

madness lies. And those who would be sane upon earth must drug

themselves with the experience, or with the spectacle of the

experience, of human passion. Within this charmed circle, and here

alone, they may be permitted to forget the Outer Terror.

The noble spirit is not the spirit that condescends to pamper in itself

those inflated moods of false optimistic hope, which, springing from

mere physiological well-being, send us leaping and bounding, with

such boisterous assurance, along the sunny road. Such pragmatic

self-deception is an impertinence in the presence of a world like this.

It is a sign of what one might call a philosophically ill-bred nature. It

is the indecent "gratitude" of the pig over his trough. It is the little

yellow eye of sanctified bliss turned up to the God who _"must_ be

in His Heaven" if _we_ are so privileged. This "never doubting

good will triumph" is really, when one examines it, nothing but the

inverted prostration of the helot-slave, glad to have been allowed to

get so totally drunk! It blusters and swaggers, but at heart it is base

and ignoble. For it is not sensitive enough to feel that the Universe

_cannot be pardoned_ for the cry of one tortured creature, and that

all "the worlds we shall traverse" cannot make up for the despair of

one human child.

To be "cheerful" about the Universe in the manner of these people is

to insult the Christ who died. It is to outrage the "little ones" over

whose bodies the Wheel has passed. When Nietzsche, the martyr of

his own murdered pity, calls upon us to "love Fate," he does not

shout so lustily. His laughter is the laughter of one watching his

darling stripped for the rods. He who would be "in harmony with

Nature." with those "murderous ministers" who, in their blind abyss,

throw dice with Chance, must be in harmony with the giants of

Jotunheim, as well as with the lords of Valhalla. He must be able to

look on grimly while Asgard totters; he must welcome "the Twilight

of the Gods." To have a mind inured to such conceptions, a mind

capable of remaining on such a verge, is, alone, to be, intellectually

speaking, what we call "aristocratic." When, even with eyes like

poor Gloucester's in the play, we can see "how this world wags," it

is slavish and "plebeian" to swear that it all "means intensely, and

means well." It is also to lie in one's throat!

No wonder Shakespeare treats reverently every "superstition," every

anodyne and nepenthe offered to the inmates of this House of the

Incurable. Such "sprinkling with holy water," such "rendering

ourselves stupid," is the only alternative. Anything else is the insight

of the hero, or the hypocrisy of the preacher!

Has it been realized how curiously the interpreters of Shakespeare

omit the principal thing? They revel in his Grammar, his History, his

Biology, his Botany, his Geography, his Psychology and his Ethics.

They never speak of his Poetry. Now Shakespeare is, above

everything, a poet. To poetry, over and over again, as our Puritans

know well, he sacrifices Truth, Morality, Probability, nay! the very

principles of Art itself.

As Dramas, many of his plays are scandalously bad; many of his

characters fantastic. One can put one's finger in almost every case

upon the persons and situations that interested him and upon those

that did not. And how carelessly he "sketches in" the latter! So far

from being "the Objective God of Art" they seek to make him, he is

the most wayward and subjective of all wandering souls.

No natural person can read him without feeling the pulse of extreme

personal passion behind everything he writes.

And this pulse of personal passion is always expressing itself in

Poetry. He will let the probabilities of a character vanish into air, or

dwindle into a wistful note of attenuated convention, when once

such a one has served his purpose as a reed to pipe his strange tunes

through. He will whistle the most important personage down the

wind, lost to interest and identity, when once he has put into his

mouth his own melancholy brooding upon life--his own imaginative

reaction.

And so it happens that, in spite of all academic opinion, those who

understand Shakespeare best tease themselves least over his

dramatic lapses. For let it be whispered at once, without further

scruple. As far as _the art of the drama_ is concerned, Shakespeare

is _shameless._ The poetic instinct--one might call it "epical" or

"lyrical," for it is both these--is far more dominant in our "greatest

dramatist" than any dramatic conscience. That is precisely why

those among us who love "poetry," but find "drama," especially

"drama since Ibsen," intolerably tiresome, revert again and again to

Shakespeare. Only absurd groups of Culture-Philistines can read

these "powerful modern productions" more than once! One knows

not whether their impertinent preaching, or their exasperating

technical cleverness is the more annoying.

They may well congratulate themselves on being different from

Shakespeare. They are extremely different. They are, indeed,

nothing but his old enemies, the Puritans, "translated," like poor

Bottom, and wearing the donkey's head of "art for art's sake" in

place of their own simple foreheads.

Art for art's sake! The thing has become a Decalogue of forbidding

commandments, as devastating as _those Ten._ It is the new avatar

of the "moral sense" carrying categorical insolence into the sphere of

our one Alsatian sanctuary!

I am afraid Shakespeare was a very "immoral" artist. I am afraid he

wrote as one of the profane.

But what of the Greeks? The Greeks never let themselves go! No!

And for a sufficient reason. Greek Drama was Religion. It was

Ritual. And we know how "responsible" ritual must be. The gods

must have their incense from the right kind of censer.

But you cannot evoke Religion "in vacuo." You cannot, simply by

assuming grave airs about your personal "taste," or even about the

"taste" of your age, give it _that consecration._

Beauty? God knows what beauty is. But I can tell you what it is not.

It is not the sectarian anxiety of any pompous little clique to get

"saved" in the artistic "narrow path." It is much rather what Stendhal

called it. But he spoke so frivolously that I dare not quote him.

Has it occurred to you, gentle reader, to note how "Protestant" this

New Artistic Movement is? Shakespeare, in his aesthetic method, as

well as in his piety, had a Catholic soul. In truth, the hour has

arrived when a "Renaissance" of the free spirit of Poetry in Drama is

required. Why must this monstrous shadow of the Hyperborean

Ibsen go on darkening the play-instinct in us, like some ugly,

domineering John Knox? I suspect that there are many generous

Rabelaisian souls who could lift our mortal burden with oceanic

merriment, only the New Movement frightens them. They are afraid

they would not be "Greek" enough--or "Scandinavian" enough.

Meanwhile the miserable populace have to choose between

Babylonian Pantomimes and Gaelic Mythology, if they are not

driven, out of a kind of spite, into the region of wholesome

"domestic sunshine."

What, in our hearts, we natural men desire is to be delivered at one

blow from the fairies with weird names (so different from poor

Titania!), and from the three-thousand "Unities!" What "poetry" we

do get is so vague and dim and wistful and forlorn that it makes us

want to go out and "buy clothes" for someone. We veer between the

abomination of city-reform and the desolation of Ultima Thule.

But Shakespeare is Shakespeare still. O those broken and gasped-out

human cries, full of the old poignancy, full of the old enchantment!

Shakespeare's poetry is the extreme opposite of any "cult." It is the

ineffable expression, in music that makes the heart stop, of the

feelings which have stirred every Jack and Jill among us, from the

beginning of the world! It has the effect of those old "songs" of the

countryside that hit the heart in us so shrewdly that one feels as

though the wind had made them or the rain or the wayside grass; for

they know too much of what we tell to none! It is the "one touch of

Nature." And how they break the rules, these surpassing lines, in

which the emotions of his motley company gasp themselves away!

It is not so much in the great speeches, noble as these are, as in the

brief, tragic cries and broken stammerings, that his unapproachable

felicity is found. "Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia, the gods

themselves throw incense." Thick and fast they crowd upon our

memory, these little sentences, these aching rhythms! It is with the

flesh and blood of the daily Sacrifice of our common endurance that

he celebrates his strange Mass. Hands that "smell of mortality," lips

that "so sweetly were forsworn," eyes that "look their last" on all

they love, these are the touches that make us bow down before the

final terrible absolution. And it is the same with Nature. Not to

Shakespeare do we go for those pseudo-scientific, pseudo-ethical

interpretations, so crafty in their word-painting, so cunning in their

rational analysis, which we find in the rest. A few fierce-flung words,

from the hot heart of an amorist's lust, and all the smouldering magic

of the noon-day woods takes your breath. A sobbing death-dirge

from the bosom of a love-lorn child, and the perfume of all the

"enclosed gardens" in the world shudders through your veins.

And what about the ancient antagonist of the Earth? What about the

Great Deep? Has anyone, anywhere else, gathered into words the

human tremor and the human recoil that are excited universally

when we go down "upon the beached verge of the salt flood, who

once a day with his embossed froth the turbulent surge doth cover?"

John Keats was haunted day and night by the simple refrain in Lear,

"Canst thou not hear the Sea?"

Charming Idyllists may count the petals of the cuckoo-buds in the

river-pastures; and untouched, we admire. But let old Falstaff, as he

lies a' dying, "babble o' green fields," and all the long, long thoughts

of youth steal over us, like a summer wind.

The modern critic, with a philosophic bias, is inclined to quarrel

with the obvious human congruity of Shakespeare's utterances. What

is the _use_ of this constant repetition of the obvious truism: "When

we are born we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools?"

No use, my friend! No earthly use! And yet it is not a premeditated

reflection, put in "for art's sake." It is the poetry of the pinch of Fate;

it is the human revenge we take upon the insulting irony of our lot.

But Shakespeare does not always strike back at the gods with bitter

blows. In this queer world, where we have "nor youth, nor age, but,

as it were, an after-dinner's sleep, dreaming on both," there come

moments when the spirit is too sore wounded even to rise in revolt.

Then, in a sort of "cheerful despair," we can only wait the event.

And Shakespeare has his word for this also.

Perhaps the worst of all "the slings and arrows" are the intolerable

partings we have to submit to, from the darlings of our soul. And

here, while he offers us no false hope, his tone loses its bitterness,

and grows gentle and solemn.

It is--"Forever and forever, farewell, Cassius. If we do meet again,

why then 'tis well; if not, this parting was well made." And for the

Future:

"O that we knew

The end of this day's business ere it comes!

But it suffices that the day will end;

And then the end is known."