Definition Of Poetry.
Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is
opposed to science, and prose to metre. The proper and immediate object of
science is the acquirement, or communication, of truth; the proper and
immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate pleasure.
This definition is useful; but as it would include novels and other works
of fiction, which yet we do not call poems, there must be some additional
character by which poetry is not only divided from opposites, but likewise
distinguished from disparate, though similar, modes of composition. Now
how is this to be effected? In animated prose, the beauties of nature, and
the passions and accidents of human nature, are often expressed in that
natural language which the contemplation of them would suggest to a pure
and benevolent mind; yet still neither we nor the writers call such a work
a poem, though no work could deserve that name which did not include all
this, together with something else. What is this? It is that pleasurable
emotion, that peculiar state and degree of excitement, which arises in the
poet himself in the act of composition;—and in order to understand this,
we must combine a more than ordinary sympathy with the objects, emotions,
or incidents contemplated by the poet, consequent on a more than common
sensibility, with a more than ordinary activity of the mind in respect of
the fancy and the imagination. Hence is produced a more vivid reflection
of the truths of nature and of the human heart, united with a constant
activity modifying and correcting these truths by that sort of pleasurable
emotion, which the exertion of all our faculties gives in a certain
degree; but which can only be felt in perfection under the full play of
those powers of mind, which are spontaneous rather than voluntary, and in
which the effort required bears no proportion to the activity enjoyed.
This is the state which permits the production of a highly pleasurable
whole, of which each part shall also communicate for itself a distinct and
conscious pleasure; and hence arises the definition, which I trust is now
intelligible, that poetry, or rather a poem, is a species of composition,
opposed to science, as having intellectual pleasure for its object, and as
attaining its end by the use of language natural to us in a state of
excitement,—but distinguished from other species of composition, not
excluded by the former criterion, by permitting a pleasure from the whole
consistent with a consciousness of pleasure from the component parts;—and
the perfection of which is, to communicate from each part the greatest
immediate pleasure compatible with the largest sum of pleasure on the
whole. This, of course, will vary with the different modes of poetry;—and
that splendour of particular lines, which would be worthy of admiration in
an impassioned elegy, or a short indignant satire, would be a blemish and
proof of vile taste in a tragedy or an epic poem.
It is remarkable, by the way, that Milton in three incidental words has
implied all which for the purposes of more distinct apprehension, which at
first must be slow-paced in order to be distinct, I have endeavoured to
develope in a precise and strictly adequate definition. Speaking of
poetry, he says, as in a parenthesis, “which is simple, sensuous,
passionate.” How awful is the power of words!—fearful often in their
consequences when merely felt, not understood; but most awful when both
felt and understood!—Had these three words only been properly understood
by, and present in the minds of, general readers, not only almost a
library of false poetry would have been either precluded or still-born,
but, what is of more consequence, works truly excellent and capable of
enlarging the understanding, warming and purifying the heart, and placing
in the centre of the whole being the germs of noble and manlike actions,
would have been the common diet of the intellect instead. For the first
condition, simplicity,—while, on the one hand, it distinguishes poetry
from the arduous processes of science, labouring towards an end not yet
arrived at, and supposes a smooth and finished road, on which the reader
is to walk onward easily, with streams murmuring by his side, and trees
and flowers and human dwellings to make his journey as delightful as the
object of it is desirable, instead of having to toil with the pioneers and
painfully make the road on which others are to travel,—precludes, on the
other hand, every affectation and morbid peculiarity;—the second
condition, sensuousness, insures that framework of objectivity, that
definiteness and articulation of imagery, and that modification of the
images themselves, without which poetry becomes flattened into mere
didactics of practice, or evaporated into a hazy, unthoughtful,
day-dreaming; and the third condition, passion, provides that neither
thought nor imagery shall be simply objective, but that the _passio vera_
of humanity shall warm and animate both.
To return, however, to the previous definition, this most general and
distinctive character of a poem originates in the poetic genius itself;
and though it comprises whatever can with any propriety be called a poem
(unless that word be a mere lazy synonym for a composition in metre), it
yet becomes a just, and not merely discriminative, but full and adequate,
definition of poetry in its highest and most peculiar sense, only so far
as the distinction still results from the poetic genius, which sustains
and modifies the emotions, thoughts, and vivid representations of the poem
by the energy without effort of the poet’s own mind,—by the spontaneous
activity of his imagination and fancy, and by whatever else with these
reveals itself in the balancing and reconciling of opposite or discordant
qualities, sameness with difference, a sense of novelty and freshness with
old or customary objects, a more than usual state of emotion with more
than usual order, self-possession and judgment with enthusiasm and
vehement feeling,—and which, while it blends and harmonizes the natural
and the artificial, still subordinates art to nature, the manner to the
matter, and our admiration of the poet to our sympathy with the images,
passions, characters, and incidents of the poem:—
“Doubtless, this could not be, but that she turns
Bodies to _spirit_ by sublimation strange,
As fire converts to fire the things it burns—
As we our food into our nature change!
“From their gross matter she abstracts _their_ forms,
And draws a kind of quintessence from things,
Which to her proper nature she transforms
To bear them light on her celestial wings!
“_Thus_ doth she, when from _individual states_
She doth abstract the universal kinds,
_Which then reclothed in divers names and fates_
_Steal access thro’ our senses to our minds_.”
Greek Drama.
It is truly singular that Plato,—whose philosophy and religion were but
exotic at home, and a mere opposition to the finite in all things, genuine
prophet and anticipator as he was of the Protestant Christian æra,—should
have given in his Dialogue of the Banquet, a justification of our
Shakespeare. For he relates that, when all the other guests had either
dispersed or fallen asleep, Socrates only, together with Aristophanes and
Agathon, remained awake, and that, while he continued to drink with them
out of a large goblet, he compelled them, though most reluctantly, to
admit that it was the business of one and the same genius to excel in
tragic and comic poetry, or that the tragic poet ought, at the same time,
to contain within himself the powers of comedy. Now, as this was directly
repugnant to the entire theory of the ancient critics, and contrary to all
their experience, it is evident that Plato must have fixed the eye of his
contemplation on the innermost essentials of the drama, abstracted from
the forms of age or country. In another passage he even adds the reason,
namely, that opposites illustrate each other’s nature, and in their
struggle draw forth the strength of the combatants, and display the
conqueror as sovereign even on the territories of the rival power.
Nothing can more forcibly exemplify the separative spirit of the Greek
arts than their comedy as opposed to their tragedy. But as the immediate
struggle of contraries supposes an arena common to both, so both were
alike ideal; that is, the comedy of Aristophanes rose to as great a
distance above the ludicrous of real life, as the tragedy of Sophocles
above its tragic events and passions,—and it is in this one point, of
absolute ideality, that the comedy of Shakespeare and the old comedy of
Athens coincide. In this also alone did the Greek tragedy and comedy
unite; in every thing else they were exactly opposed to each other.
Tragedy is poetry in its deepest earnest; comedy is poetry in unlimited
jest. Earnestness consists in the direction and convergence of all the
powers of the soul to one aim, and in the voluntary restraint of its
activity in consequence; the opposite, therefore, lies in the apparent
abandonment of all definite aim or end, and in the removal of all bounds
in the exercise of the mind,—attaining its real end, as an entire
contrast, most perfectly, the greater the display is of intellectual
wealth squandered in the wantonness of sport without an object, and the
more abundant the life and vivacity in the creations of the arbitrary
will.
The later comedy, even where it was really comic, was doubtless likewise
more comic, the more free it appeared from any fixed aim.
Misunderstandings of intention, fruitless struggles of absurd passion,
contradictions of temper, and laughable situations there were; but still
the form of the representation itself was serious; it proceeded as much
according to settled laws, and used as much the same means of art, though
to a different purpose, as the regular tragedy itself. But in the old
comedy the very form itself is whimsical; the whole work is one great
jest, comprehending a world of jests within it, among which each maintains
its own place without seeming to concern itself as to the relation in
which it may stand to its fellows. In short, in Sophocles, the
constitution of tragedy is monarchical, but such as it existed in elder
Greece, limited by laws, and therefore the more venerable,—all the parts
adapting and submitting themselves to the majesty of the heroic
sceptre:—in Aristophanes, comedy, on the contrary, is poetry in its most
democratic form, and it is a fundamental principle with it, rather to risk
all the confusion of anarchy, than to destroy the independence and
privileges of its individual constituents,—place, verse, characters, even
single thoughts, conceits, and allusions, each turning on the pivot of its
own free will.
The tragic poet idealizes his characters by giving to the spiritual part
of our nature a more decided preponderance over the animal cravings and
impulses, than is met with in real life: the comic poet idealizes his
characters by making the animal the governing power, and the intellectual
the mere instrument. But as tragedy is not a collection of virtues and
perfections, but takes care only that the vices and imperfections shall
spring from the passions, errors, and prejudices which arise out of the
soul;—so neither is comedy a mere crowd of vices and follies, but whatever
qualities it represents, even though they are in a certain sense amiable,
it still displays them as having their origin in some dependence on our
lower nature, accompanied with a defect in true freedom of spirit and
self-subsistence, and subject to that unconnection by contradictions of
the inward being, to which all folly is owing.
The ideal of earnest poetry consists in the union and harmonious melting
down, and fusion of the sensual into the spiritual,—of man as an animal
into man as a power of reason and self-government. And this we have
represented to us most clearly in the plastic art, or statuary; where the
perfection of outward form is a symbol of the perfection of an inward
idea; where the body is wholly penetrated by the soul, and spiritualized
even to a state of glory, and like a transparent substance, the matter, in
its own nature darkness, becomes altogether a vehicle and fixture of
light, a means of developing its beauties, and unfolding its wealth of
various colours without disturbing its unity, or causing a division of the
parts. The sportive ideal, on the contrary, consists in the perfect
harmony and concord of the higher nature with the animal, as with its
ruling principle and its acknowledged regent. The understanding and
practical reason are represented as the willing slaves of the senses and
appetites, and of the passions arising out of them. Hence we may admit the
appropriateness to the old comedy, as a work of defined art, of allusions
and descriptions, which morality can never justify, and, only with
reference to the author himself, and only as being the effect or rather
the cause of the circumstances in which he wrote, can consent even to
palliate.
The old comedy rose to its perfection in Aristophanes, and in him also it
died with the freedom of Greece. Then arose a species of drama, more fitly
called dramatic entertainment than comedy, but of which, nevertheless, our
modern comedy (Shakespeare’s altogether excepted) is the genuine
descendant. Euripides had already brought tragedy lower down and by many
steps nearer to the real world than his predecessors had ever done, and
the passionate admiration which Menander and Philemon expressed for him,
and their open avowals that he was their great master, entitle us to
consider their dramas as of a middle species, between tragedy and
comedy,—not the tragi-comedy, or thing of heterogeneous parts, but a
complete whole, founded on principles of its own. Throughout we find the
drama of Menander distinguishing itself from tragedy, but not as the
genuine old comedy, contrasting with, and opposing it. Tragedy, indeed,
carried the thoughts into the mythologic world, in order to raise the
emotions, the fears, and the hopes, which convince the inmost heart that
their final cause is not to be discovered in the limits of mere mortal
life, and force us into a presentiment, however dim, of a state in which
those struggles of inward free will with outward necessity, which form the
true subject of the tragedian, shall be reconciled and solved;—the
entertainment or new comedy, on the other hand, remained within the circle
of experience. Instead of the tragic destiny, it introduced the power of
chance; even in the few fragments of Menander and Philemon now remaining
to us, we find many exclamations and reflections concerning chance and
fortune, as in the tragic poets concerning destiny. In tragedy, the moral
law, either as obeyed or violated, above all consequences—its own
maintenance or violation constituting the most important of all
consequences—forms the ground; the new comedy, and our modern comedy in
general (Shakespeare excepted as before) lies in prudence or imprudence,
enlightened or misled self-love. The whole moral system of the
entertainment exactly like that of fable, consists in rules of prudence,
with an exquisite conciseness, and at the same time an exhaustive fulness
of sense. An old critic said that tragedy was the flight or elevation of
life, comedy (that of Menander) its arrangement or ordonnance.
Add to these features a portrait-like truth of character,—not so far
indeed as that a _bona fide_ individual should be described or imagined,
but yet so that the features which give interest and permanence to the
class should be individualized. The old tragedy moved in an ideal
world,—the old comedy in a fantastic world. As the entertainment, or new
comedy, restrained the creative activity both of the fancy and the
imagination, it indemnified the understanding in appealing to the judgment
for the probability of the scenes represented. The ancients themselves
acknowledged the new comedy as an exact copy of real life. The grammarian,
Aristophanes, somewhat affectedly exclaimed:—“O Life and Menander! which
of you two imitated the other?” In short the form of this species of drama
was poetry, the stuff or matter was prose. It was prose rendered
delightful by the blandishments and measured motions of the muse. Yet even
this was not universal. The mimes of Sophron, so passionately admired by
Plato, were written in prose, and were scenes out of real life conducted
in dialogue. The exquisite feast of Adonis (Συρακούσιαι ῆ Ἀδωνιάζουσαι) in
Theocritus, we are told, with some others of his eclogues, were close
imitations of certain mimes of Sophron—free translations of the prose into
hexameters.
It will not be improper, in this place, to make a few remarks on the
remarkable character and functions of the chorus in the Greek tragic
drama.
The chorus entered from below, close by the orchestra, and there, pacing
to and fro during the choral odes, performed their solemn measured dance.
In the centre of the _orchestra_, directly over against the middle of the
_scene_, there stood an elevation with steps in the shape of a large
altar, as high as the boards of the _logeion_ or moveable stage. This
elevation was named the _thymele_ (θυμέλη), and served to recall the
origin and original purpose of the chorus, as an altar-song in honour of
the presiding deity. Here, and on these steps the persons of the chorus
sate collectively, when they were not singing; attending to the dialogue
as spectators, and acting as (what in truth they were) the ideal
representatives of the real audience, and of the poet himself in his own
character, assuming the supposed impressions made by the drama, in order
to direct and rule them. But when the chorus itself formed part of the
dialogue, then the leader of the band, the foreman, or _coryphæus_,
ascended, as some think, the level summit of the _thymele_ in order to
command the stage, or, perhaps, the whole chorus advanced to the front of
the orchestra, and thus put themselves in ideal connection, as it were,
with the _dramatis personæ_ there acting. This _thymele_ was in the centre
of the whole edifice, all the measurements were calculated, and the
semi-circle of the amphitheatre was drawn from this point. It had a double
use, a twofold purpose; it constantly reminded the spectators of the
origin of tragedy as a religious service, and declared itself as the ideal
representative of the audience by having its place exactly in the point,
to which all the radii from the different seats or benches converged.
In this double character, as constituent parts, and yet at the same time
as spectators, of the drama, the chorus could not but tend to enforce the
unity of place;—not on the score of any supposed improbability, which the
understanding or common sense might detect in a change of place;—but
because the senses themselves put it out of the power of any imagination
to conceive a place coming to, and going away from the persons, instead of
the persons changing their place. Yet there are instances, in which,
during the silence of the chorus, the poets have hazarded this by a change
in that part of the scenery which represented the more distant objects to
the eye of the spectator—a demonstrative proof, that this alternately
extolled and ridiculed unity (as ignorantly ridiculed as extolled) was
grounded on no essential principle of reason, but arose out of
circumstances which the poet could not remove, and therefore took up into
the form of the drama, and co-organised it with all the other parts into a
living whole.
The Greek tragedy may rather be compared to our serious opera than to the
tragedies of Shakespeare; nevertheless, the difference is far greater than
the likeness. In the opera all is subordinated to the music, the dresses,
and the scenery;—the poetry is a mere vehicle for articulation, and as
little pleasure is lost by ignorance of the Italian language, so is little
gained by the knowledge of it. But in the Greek drama all was but as
instruments and accessaries to the poetry; and hence we should form a
better notion of the choral music from the solemn hymns and psalms of
austere church music than from any species of theatrical singing. A single
flute or pipe was the ordinary accompaniment; and it is not to be
supposed, that any display of musical power was allowed to obscure the
distinct hearing of the words. On the contrary, the evident purpose was to
render the words more audible, and to secure by the elevations and pauses
greater facility of understanding the poetry. For the choral songs are,
and ever must have been, the most difficult part of the tragedy; there
occur in them the most involved verbal compounds, the newest expressions,
the boldest images, the most recondite allusions. Is it credible that the
poets would, one and all, have been thus prodigal of the stores of art and
genius, if they had known that in the representation the whole must have
been lost to the audience,—at a time too, when the means of after
publication were so difficult and expensive, and the copies of their works
so slowly and narrowly circulated?
The masks also must be considered—their vast variety and admirable
workmanship. Of this we retain proof by the marble masks which represented
them; but to this in the real mask we must add the thinness of the
substance and the exquisite fitting on to the head of the actor; so that
not only were the very eyes painted with a single opening left for the
pupil of the actor’s eye, but in some instances, even the iris itself was
painted, when the colour was a known characteristic of the divine or
heroic personage represented.
Finally, I will note down those fundamental characteristics which
contradistinguish the ancient literature from the modern generally, but
which more especially appear in prominence in the tragic drama. The
ancient was allied to statuary, the modern refers to painting. In the
first there is a predominance of rhythm and melody, in the second of
harmony and counterpoint. The Greeks idolized the finite, and therefore
were the masters of all grace, elegance, proportion, fancy, dignity,
majesty—of whatever, in short, is capable of being definitely conveyed by
defined forms or thoughts: the moderns revere the infinite, and affect the
indefinite as a vehicle of the infinite;—hence their passions, their
obscure hopes and fears, their wandering through the unknown, their
grander moral feelings, their more august conception of man as man, their
future rather than their past—in a word, their sublimity.
Progress Of The Drama.
Let two persons join in the same scheme to ridicule a third, and either
take advantage of, or invent, some story for that purpose, and mimicry
will have already produced a sort of rude comedy. It becomes an inviting
treat to the populace, and gains an additional zest and burlesque by
following the already established plan of tragedy; and the first man of
genius who seizes the idea, and reduces it into form,—into a work of
art,—by metre and music, is the Aristophanes of the country.
How just this account is will appear from the fact that in the first or
old comedy of the Athenians, most of the _dramatis personæ_ were living
characters introduced under their own names; and no doubt, their ordinary
dress, manner, person and voice were closely mimicked. In less favourable
states of society, as that of England in the middle ages, the beginnings
of comedy would be constantly taking place from the mimics and satirical
minstrels; but from want of fixed abode, popular government, and the
successive attendance of the same auditors, it would still remain in
embryo. I shall, perhaps, have occasion to observe that this remark is not
without importance in explaining the essential differences of the modern
and ancient theatres.
Phenomena, similar to those which accompanied the origin of tragedy and
comedy among the Greeks, would take place among the Romans much more
slowly, and the drama would, in any case, have much longer remained in its
first irregular form from the character of the people, their continual
engagements in wars of conquest, the nature of their government, and their
rapidly increasing empire. But, however this might have been, the conquest
of Greece precluded both the process and the necessity of it; and the
Roman stage at once presented imitations or translations of the Greek
drama. This continued till the perfect establishment of Christianity. Some
attempts, indeed, were made to adapt the persons of Scriptural or
ecclesiastical history to the drama; and sacred plays, it is probable,
were not unknown in Constantinople under the emperors of the East. The
first of the kind is, I believe, the only one preserved,—namely, the
Χριστὸς Πάσχων, or, “Christ in his sufferings,” by Gregory
Nazianzen,—possibly written in consequence of the prohibition of profane
literature to the Christians by the apostate Julian. In the West, however,
the enslaved and debauched Roman world became too barbarous for any
theatrical exhibitions more refined than those of pageants and
chariot-races; while the spirit of Christianity, which in its most corrupt
form still breathed general humanity, whenever controversies of faith were
not concerned, had done away the cruel combats of the gladiators, and the
loss of the distant provinces prevented the possibility of exhibiting the
engagements of wild beasts.
I pass, therefore, at once to the feudal ages which soon succeeded,
confining my observation to this country; though, indeed, the same remark
with very few alterations will apply to all the other states, into which
the great empire was broken. Ages of darkness succeeded;—not, indeed, the
darkness of Russia or of the barbarous lands unconquered by Rome; for from
the time of Honorius to the destruction of Constantinople and the
consequent introduction of ancient literature into Europe, there was a
continued succession of individual intellects;—the golden chain was never
wholly broken, though the connecting links were often of baser metal. A
dark cloud, like another sky, covered the entire cope of heaven,—but in
this place it thinned away, and white stains of light showed a half
eclipsed star behind it,—in that place it was rent asunder, and a star
passed across the opening in all its brightness, and then vanished. Such
stars exhibited themselves only; surrounding objects did not partake of
their light. There were deep wells of knowledge, but no fertilizing rills
and rivulets. For the drama, society was altogether a state of chaos, out
of which it was, for a while at least, to proceed anew, as if there had
been none before it. And yet it is not undelightful to contemplate the
education of good from evil. The ignorance of the great mass of our
countrymen was the efficient cause of the reproduction of the drama; and
the preceding darkness and the returning light were alike necessary in
order to the creation of a Shakespeare.
The drama re-commenced in England, as it first began in Greece, in
religion. The people were not able to read,—the priesthood were unwilling
that they should read; and yet their own interest compelled them not to
leave the people wholly ignorant of the great events of sacred history.
They did that, therefore, by scenic representations, which in after ages
it has been attempted to do in Roman Catholic countries by pictures. They
presented Mysteries, and often at great expense; and reliques of this
system still remain in the south of Europe, and indeed throughout Italy,
where at Christmas the convents and the great nobles rival each other in
the scenic representation of the birth of Christ and its circumstances. I
heard two instances mentioned to me at different times, one in Sicily and
the other in Rome, of noble devotees, the ruin of whose fortunes was said
to have commenced in the extravagant expense which had been incurred in
presenting the _præsepe_ or manger. But these Mysteries, in order to
answer their design, must not only be instructive, but entertaining; and
as, when they became so, the people began to take pleasure in acting them
themselves—in interloping—(against which the priests seem to have fought
hard and yet in vain) the most ludicrous images were mixed with the most
awful personations; and whatever the subject might be, however sublime,
however pathetic, yet the Vice and the Devil, who are the genuine
antecessors of Harlequin and the Clown, were necessary component parts. I
have myself a piece of this kind, which I transcribed a few years ago at
Helmstadt, in Germany, on the education of Eve’s children, in which after
the fall and repentance of Adam, the offended Maker, as in proof of his
reconciliation, condescends to visit them, and to catechise the
children,—who with a noble contempt of chronology are all brought together
from Abel to Noah. The good children say the ten Commandments, the Belief,
and the Lord’s Prayer; but Cain and his rout, after he had received a box
on the ear for not taking off his hat, and afterwards offering his left
hand, is prompted by the devil so to blunder in the Lord’s Prayer as to
reverse the petitions and say it backward!
Unaffectedly I declare I feel pain at repetitions like these, however
innocent. As historical documents they are valuable; but I am sensible
that what I can read with my eye with perfect innocence, I cannot without
inward fear and misgivings pronounce with my tongue.
Let me, however, be acquitted of presumption if I say that I cannot agree
with Mr. Malone, that our ancestors did not perceive the ludicrous in
these things, or that they paid no separate attention to the serious and
comic parts. Indeed his own statement contradicts it. For what purpose
should the Vice leap upon the Devil’s back and belabour him, but to
produce this separate attention? The people laughed heartily, no doubt.
Nor can I conceive any meaning attached to the words “separate attention,”
that is not fully answered by one part of an exhibition exciting
seriousness or pity, and the other raising mirth and loud laughter. That
they felt no impiety in the affair is most true. For it is the very
essence of that system of Christian polytheism, which in all its
essentials is now fully as gross in Spain, in Sicily, and the South of
Italy, as it ever was in England in the days of Henry VI. (nay, more so,
for a Wicliffe had not then appeared only, but scattered the good seed
widely),—it is an essential part, I say, of that system to draw the mind
wholly from its own inward whispers and quiet discriminations, and to
habituate the conscience to pronounce sentence in every case according to
the established verdicts of the church and the casuists. I have looked
through volume after volume of the most approved casuists,—and still I
find disquisitions whether this or that act is right, and under what
circumstances, to a minuteness that makes reasoning ridiculous, and of a
callous and unnatural immodesty, to which none but a monk could harden
himself, who has been stripped of all the tender charities of life, yet is
goaded on to make war against them by the unsubdued hauntings of our
meaner nature, even as dogs are said to get the _hydrophobia_ from
excessive thirst. I fully believe that our ancestors laughed as heartily,
as their posterity do at Grimaldi;—and not having been told that they
would be punished for laughing, they thought it very innocent;—and if
their priests had left out murder in the catalogue of their prohibitions
(as indeed they did under certain circumstances of heresy), the greater
part of them,—the moral instincts common to all men having been smothered
and kept from development,—would have thought as little of murder.
However this may be, the necessity of at once instructing and gratifying
the people produced the great distinction between the Greek and the
English theatres;—for to this we must attribute the origin of
tragi-comedy, or a representation of human events more lively, nearer the
truth, and permitting a larger field of moral instruction, a more ample
exhibition of the recesses of the human heart, under all the trials and
circumstances that most concern us, than was known or guessed at by
Æschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides;—and at the same time we learn to
account for, and—relatively to the author—perceive the necessity of, the
Fool or Clown or both, as the substitutes of the Vice and the Devil, which
our ancestors had been so accustomed to see in every exhibition of the
stage, that they could not feel any performance perfect without them. Even
to this day in Italy, every opera—(even Metastasio obeyed the claim
throughout)—must have six characters, generally two pairs of cross lovers,
a tyrant and a confidant, or a father and two confidants, themselves
lovers;—and when a new opera appears, it is the universal fashion to
ask—which is the tyrant, which the lover? &c.
It is the especial honour of Christianity, that in its worst and most
corrupted form it cannot wholly separate itself from morality;—whereas the
other religions in their best form (I do not include Mohammedanism, which
is only an anomalous corruption of Christianity, like Swedenborgianism)
have no connection with it. The very impersonation of moral evil under the
name of Vice, facilitated all other impersonations; and hence we see that
the Mysteries were succeeded by Moralities, or dialogues and plots of
allegorical personages. Again, some character in real history had become
so famous, so proverbial, as Nero for instance, that they were introduced
instead of the moral quality, for which they were so noted;—and in this
manner the stage was moving on to the absolute production of heroic and
comic real characters, when the restoration of literature, followed by the
ever-blessed Reformation, let in upon the kingdom not only new knowledge,
but new motive. A useful rivalry commenced between the metropolis on the
one hand,—the residence, independently of the court and nobles, of the
most active and stirring spirits who had not been regularly educated, or
who, from mischance or otherwise, had forsaken the beaten track of
preferment,—and the universities on the other. The latter prided
themselves on their closer approximation to the ancient rules and ancient
regularity—taking the theatre of Greece, or rather its dim reflection, the
rhetorical tragedies of the poet Seneca, as a perfect ideal, without any
critical collation of the times, origin, or circumstances;—whilst, in the
mean time, the popular writers, who could not and would not abandon what
they had found to delight their countrymen sincerely, and not merely from
inquiries first put to the recollection of rules, and answered in the
affirmative, as if it had been an arithmetical sum, did yet borrow from
the scholars whatever they advantageously could, consistently with their
own peculiar means of pleasing.
And here let me pause for a moment’s contemplation of this interesting
subject.
We call, for we see and feel, the swan and the dove both transcendantly
beautiful. As absurd as it would be to institute a comparison between
their separate claims to beauty from any abstract rule common to both,
without reference to the life and being of the animals themselves,—or as
if, having first seen the dove, we abstracted its outlines, gave them a
false generalization, called them the principles or ideal of bird-beauty,
and then proceeded to criticise the swan or the eagle;—not less absurd is
it to pass judgment on the works of a poet on the mere ground that they
have been called by the same class-name with the works of other poets in
other times and circumstances, or on any ground, indeed, save that of
their inappropriateness to their own end and being, their want of
significance, as symbols or physiognomy.
O! few have there been among critics, who have followed with the eye of
the imagination the imperishable yet ever wandering spirit of poetry
through its various metempsychoses, and consequent metamorphoses;—or who
have rejoiced in the light of clear perception at beholding with each new
birth, with each rare _avatar_, the human race frame to itself a new body,
by assimilating materials of nourishment out of its new circumstances, and
work for itself new organs of power appropriate to the new sphere of its
motion and activity!
I have before spoken of the Romance, or the language formed out of the
decayed Roman and the Northern tongues; and comparing it with the Latin,
we find it less perfect in simplicity and relation—the privileges of a
language formed by the mere attraction of homogeneous parts;—but yet more
rich, more expressive and various, as one formed by more obscure
affinities out of a chaos of apparently heterogeneous atoms. As more than
a metaphor,—as an analogy of this, I have named the true genuine modern
poetry the romantic; and the works of Shakespeare are romantic poetry,
revealing itself in the drama. If the tragedies of Sophocles are in the
strict sense of the word tragedies, and the comedies of Aristophanes
comedies, we must emancipate ourselves from a false association arising
from misapplied names, and find a new word for the plays of Shakespeare.
For they are, in the ancient sense, neither tragedies nor comedies, nor
both in one,—but a different _genus_, diverse in kind, and not merely
different in degree. They may be called romantic dramas, or dramatic
romances.
A deviation from the simple forms and unities of the ancient stage is an
essential principle, and, of course, an appropriate excellence, of the
romantic drama. For these unities were to a great extent the natural form
of that which in its elements was homogeneous, and the representation of
which was addressed pre-eminently to the outward senses;—and though the
fable, the language, and the characters appealed to the reason rather than
to the mere understanding, inasmuch as they supposed an ideal state rather
than referred to an existing reality,—yet it was a reason which was
obliged to accommodate itself to the senses, and so far became a sort of
more elevated understanding. On the other hand, the romantic poetry—the
Shakespearian drama—appealed to the imagination rather than to the senses,
and to the reason as contemplating our inward nature, and the workings of
the passions in their most retired recesses. But the reason, as reason, is
independent of time and space; it has nothing to do with them: and hence
the certainties of reason have been called eternal truths. As for
example—the endless properties of the circle:—what connection have they
with this or that age, with this or that country?—The reason is aloof from
time and space; the imagination is an arbitrary controller over both;—and
if only the poet have such power of exciting our internal emotions as to
make us present to the scene in imagination chiefly, he acquires the right
and privilege of using time and space as they exist in imagination, and
obedient only to the laws by which the imagination itself acts. These laws
it will be my object and aim to point out as the examples occur, which
illustrate them. But here let me remark what can never be too often
reflected on by all who would intelligently study the works either of the
Athenian dramatists, or of Shakespeare, that the very essence of the
former consists in the sternest separation of the diverse in kind and the
disparate in the degree, whilst the latter delights in interlacing, by a
rainbow-like transfusion of hues, the one with the other.
And here it will be necessary to say a few words on the stage and on
stage-illusion.
A theatre, in the widest sense of the word, is the general term for all
places of amusement through the ear or eye, in which men assemble in order
to be amused by some entertainment presented to all at the same time and
in common. Thus an old Puritan divine says:—“Those who attend public
worship and sermons only to amuse themselves, make a theatre of the
church, and turn God’s house into the devil’s. _Theatra ædes
diabololatricæ._” The most important and dignified species of this _genus_
is, doubtless, the stage (_res theatralis histrionica_), which, in
addition to the generic definition above given, may be characterized in
its idea, or according to what it does, or ought to, aim at, as a
combination of several or of all the fine arts in an harmonious whole,
having a distinct end of its own, to which the peculiar end of each of the
component arts, taken separately, is made subordinate and
subservient,—that, namely, of imitating reality—whether external things,
actions, or passions—-under a semblance of reality. Thus, Claude imitates
a landscape at sunset, but only as a picture; while a forest-scene is not
presented to the spectators as a picture, but as a forest; and though, in
the full sense of the word, we are no more deceived by the one than by the
other, yet are our feelings very differently affected; and the pleasure
derived from the one is not composed of the same elements as that afforded
by the other, even on the supposition that the _quantum_ of both were
equal. In the former, a picture, it is a condition of all genuine delight
that we should not be deceived; in the latter, stage-scenery (inasmuch as
its principle end is not in or for itself, as is the case in a picture,
but to be an assistance and means to an end out of itself), its very
purpose is to produce as much illusion as its nature permits. These, and
all other stage presentations, are to produce a sort of temporary
half-faith, which the spectator encourages in himself and supports by a
voluntary contribution on his own part, because he knows that it is at all
times in his power to see the thing as it really is. I have often observed
that little children are actually deceived by stage-scenery, never by
pictures; though even these produce an effect on their impressible minds,
which they do not on the minds of adults. The child, if strongly
impressed, does not indeed positively think the picture to be the reality;
but yet he does not think the contrary. As Sir George Beaumont was shewing
me a very fine engraving from Rubens, representing a storm at sea without
any vessel or boat introduced, my little boy, then about five years old,
came dancing and singing into the room, and all at once (if I may so say)
_tumbled in_ upon the print. He instantly started, stood silent and
motionless, with the strongest expression, first of wonder and then of
grief in his eyes and countenance, and at length said “And where is the
ship? But that is sunk, and the men are all drowned!” still keeping his
eyes fixed on the print. Now what pictures are to little children, stage
illusion is to men, provided they retain any part of the child’s
sensibility; except, that in the latter instance, the suspension of the
act of comparison, which permits this sort of negative belief, is somewhat
more assisted by the will, than in that of a child respecting a picture.
The true stage-illusion in this and in all other things consists—not in
the mind’s judging it to be a forest, but, in its remission of the
judgment that it is not a forest. And this subject of stage-illusion is so
important, and so many practical errors and false criticisms may arise,
and indeed have arisen, either from reasoning on it as actual delusion
(the strange notion, on which the French critics built up their theory,
and on which the French poets justify the construction of their
tragedies), or from denying it altogether (which seems the end of Dr.
Johnson’s reasoning, and which, as extremes meet, would lead to the very
same consequences, by excluding whatever would not be judged probable by
us in our coolest state of feeling, with all our faculties in even
balance), that these few remarks will, I hope, be pardoned, if they should
serve either to explain or to illustrate the point. For not only are we
never absolutely deluded—or any thing like it, but the attempt to cause
the highest delusion possible to beings in their senses sitting in a
theatre, is a gross fault, incident only to low minds, which, feeling that
they cannot affect the heart or head permanently, endeavour to call forth
the momentary affections. There ought never to be more pain than is
compatible with coexisting pleasure, and to be amply repaid by thought.
Shakespeare found the infant stage demanding an intermixture of ludicrous
character as imperiously as that of Greece did the chorus, and high
language accordant. And there are many advantages in this;—a greater
assimilation to nature, a greater scope of power, more truths, and more
feelings;—the effects of contrast, as in Lear and the Fool; and especially
this, that the true language of passion becomes sufficiently elevated by
your having previously heard, in the same piece, the lighter conversation
of men under no strong emotion. The very nakedness of the stage, too, was
advantageous,—for the drama thence became something between recitation and
a representation; and the absence or paucity of scenes allowed a freedom
from the laws of unity of place and unity of time, the observance of which
must either confine the drama to as few subjects as may be counted on the
fingers, or involve gross improbabilities, far more striking than the
violation would have caused. Thence, also, was precluded the danger of a
false ideal,—of aiming at more than what is possible on the whole. What
play of the ancients, with reference to their ideal, does not hold out
more glaring absurdities than any in Shakespeare? On the Greek plan a man
could more easily be a poet than a dramatist; upon our plan more easily a
dramatist than a poet.
The Drama Generally, And Public Taste.
Unaccustomed to address such an audience, and having lost by a long
interval of confinement the advantages of my former short schooling, I had
miscalculated in my last Lecture the proportion of my matter to my time,
and by bad economy and unskilful management, the several heads of my
discourse failed in making the entire performance correspond with the
promise publicly circulated in the weekly annunciation of the subjects to
be treated. It would indeed have been wiser in me, and perhaps better on
the whole, if I had caused my Lectures to be announced only as
continuations of the main subject. But if I be, as perforce I must be,
gratified by the recollection of whatever has appeared to give you
pleasure, I am conscious of something better, though less flattering, a
sense of unfeigned gratitude for your forbearance with my defects. Like
affectionate guardians, you see without disgust the awkwardness, and
witness with sympathy the growing pains, of a youthful endeavour, and look
forward with a hope, which is its own reward, to the contingent results of
practice—to its intellectual maturity.
In my last address I defined poetry to be the art, or whatever better term
our language may afford, of representing external nature and human
thoughts, both relatively to human affections, so as to cause the
production of as great immediate pleasure in each part, as is compatible
with the largest possible sum of pleasure on the whole. Now this
definition applies equally to painting and music as to poetry; and in
truth the term poetry is alike applicable to all three. The vehicle alone
constitutes the difference; and the term “poetry” is rightly applied by
eminence to measured words, only because the sphere of their action is far
wider, the power of giving permanence to them much more certain, and
incomparably greater the facility, by which men, not defective by nature
or disease, may be enabled to derive habitual pleasure and instruction
from them. On my mentioning these considerations to a painter of great
genius, who had been, from a most honourable enthusiasm, extolling his own
art, he was so struck with their truth, that he exclaimed, “I want no
other arguments;—poetry, that is, verbal poetry, must be the greatest; all
that proves final causes in the world, proves this; it would be shocking
to think otherwise!”—And in truth, deeply, O! far more than words can
express, as I venerate the Last Judgment and the Prophets of Michel Angelo
Buonarotti,—yet the very pain which I repeatedly felt as I lost myself in
gazing upon them, the painful consideration that their having been painted
in _fresco_ was the sole cause that they had not been abandoned to all the
accidents of a dangerous transportation to a distant capital, and that the
same caprice, which made the Neapolitan soldiery destroy all the exquisite
masterpieces on the walls of the church of _Trinitado Monte_, after the
retreat of their antagonist barbarians, might as easily have made vanish
the rooms and open gallery of Raffael, and the yet more unapproachable
wonders of the sublime Florentine in the Sixtine Chapel, forced upon my
mind the reflection: How grateful the human race ought to be that the
works of Euclid, Newton, Plato, Milton, Shakespeare, are not subjected to
similar contingencies,—that they and their fellows, and the great, though
inferior, peerage of undying intellect, are secured;—secured even from a
second irruption of Goths and Vandals, in addition to many other
safeguards, by the vast empire of English language, laws, and religion
founded in America, through the overflow of the power and the virtue of my
country;—and that now the great and certain works of genuine fame can only
cease to act for mankind, when men themselves cease to be men, or when the
planet on which they exist, shall have altered its relations, or have
ceased to be. Lord Bacon, in the language of the gods, if I may use an
Homeric phrase, has expressed a similar thought:—
“Lastly, leaving the vulgar arguments, that by learning man
excelleth man in that wherein man excelleth beasts; that by
learning man ascendeth to the heavens and their motions, where in
body he cannot come, and the like; let us conclude with the
dignity and excellency of knowledge and learning in that whereunto
man’s nature doth most aspire, which is immortality or
continuance: for to this tendeth generation, and raising of houses
and families; to this tend buildings, foundations, and monuments;
to this tendeth the desire of memory, fame, and celebration, and
in effect the strength of all other human desires. We see then how
far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the
monuments of power, or of the hands. For have not the verses of
Homer continued twenty-five hundred years, or more, without the
loss of a syllable or letter; during which time, infinite palaces,
temples, castles, cities, have been decayed and demolished? It is
not possible to have the true pictures or statues of Cyrus,
Alexander, Cæsar; no, nor of the kings or great personages of much
later years; for the originals cannot last, and the copies cannot
but lose of the life and truth. But the images of men’s wits and
knowledges remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time, and
capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they fitly to be
called images, because they generate still, and cast their seeds
in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and
opinions in succeeding ages: so that, if the invention of the ship
was thought so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from
place to place, and consociateth the most remote regions in
participation of their fruits; how much more are letters to be
magnified, which, as ships, pass through the vast seas of time,
and make ages so distant to participate of the wisdom,
illuminations, and inventions, the one of the other?”
But let us now consider what the drama should be. And first, it is not a
copy, but an imitation, of nature. This is the universal principle of the
fine arts. In all well laid out grounds what delight do we feel from that
balance and antithesis of feelings and thoughts! How natural! we say;—but
the very wonder that caused the exclamation, implies that we perceived art
at the same moment. We catch the hint from nature itself. Whenever in
mountains or cataracts we discover a likeness to any thing artificial
which yet we know is not artificial—what pleasure! And so it is in
appearances known to be artificial, which appear to be natural. This
applies in due degrees, regulated by steady good sense, from a clump of
trees to the _Paradise Lost_ or _Othello_. It would be easy to apply it to
painting and even, though with greater abstraction of thought, and by more
subtle yet equally just analogies—to music. But this belongs to others;
suffice it that one great principle is common to all the fine arts, a
principle which probably is the condition of all consciousness, without
which we should feel and imagine only by discontinuous moments, and be
plants or brute animals instead of men;—I mean that ever-varying balance,
or balancing, of images, notions, or feelings, conceived as in opposition
to each other;—in short, the perception of identity and contrariety; the
least degree of which constitutes likeness, the greatest absolute
difference; but the infinite gradations between these two form all the
play and all the interest of our intellectual and moral being, till it
leads us to a feeling and an object more awful than it seems to me
compatible with even the present subject to utter aloud, though I am most
desirous to suggest it. For there alone are all things at once different
and the same; there alone, as the principle of all things, does
distinction exist unaided by division; there are will and reason,
succession of time and unmoving eternity, infinite change and ineffable
rest!—
“Return Alpheus! the dread voice is past
Which shrunk thy streams!”
——“Thou honour’d flood,
Smooth-_flowing_ Avon, crown’d with vocal reeds,
That strain I heard, was of a higher mood!—
But now my _voice_ proceeds.”
We may divide a dramatic poet’s characteristics before we enter into the
component merits of any one work, and with reference only to those things
which are to be the materials of all, into language, passion, and
character; always bearing in mind that these must act and react on each
other,—the language inspired by the passion, and the language and the
passion modified and differenced by the character. To the production of
the highest excellencies in these three, there are requisite in the mind
of the author;—good sense, talent, sensibility, imagination;—and to the
perfection of a work we should add two faculties of lesser importance, yet
necessary for the ornaments and foliage of the column and the roof—fancy
and a quick sense of beauty.
As to language;—it cannot be supposed that the poet should make his
characters say all that they would, or that, his whole drama considered,
each scene, or paragraph should be such as, on cool examination, we can
conceive it likely that men in such situations would say, in that order,
or with that perfection. And yet, according to my feelings, it is a very
inferior kind of poetry, in which, as in the French tragedies, men are
made to talk in a style which few indeed even of the wittiest can be
supposed to converse in, and which both is, and on a moment’s reflection
appears to be, the natural produce of the hot-bed of vanity, namely, the
closet of an author, who is actuated originally by a desire to excite
surprise and wonderment at his own superiority to other men,—instead of
having felt so deeply on certain subjects, or in consequence of certain
imaginations, as to make it almost a necessity of his nature to seek for
sympathy,—no doubt, with that honourable desire of permanent action, which
distinguishes genius.—Where then is the difference?—In this that each part
should be proportionate, though the whole may be perhaps, impossible. At
all events, it should be compatible with sound sense and logic in the mind
of the poet himself.
It is to be lamented that we judge of books by books, instead of referring
what we read to our own experience. One great use of books is to make
their contents a motive for observation. The German tragedies have in some
respects been justly ridiculed. In them the dramatist often becomes a
novelist in his directions to the actors, and thus degrades tragedy into
pantomime. Yet still the consciousness of the poet’s mind must be diffused
over that of the reader or spectator; but he himself, according to his
genius, elevates us, and by being always in keeping, prevents us from
perceiving any strangeness, though we feel great exultation. Many
different kinds of style may be admirable, both in different men, and in
different parts of the same poem.
See the different language which strong feelings may justify in Shylock,
and learn from Shakespeare’s conduct of that character the terrible force
of every plain and calm diction, when known to proceed from a resolved and
impassioned man.
It is especially with reference to the drama, and its characteristics in
any given nation, or at any particular period, that the dependence of
genius on the public taste becomes a matter of the deepest importance. I
do not mean that taste which springs merely from caprice or fashionable
imitation, and which, in fact, genius can, and by degrees will, create for
itself; but that which arises out of wide-grasping and heart-enrooted
causes, which is epidemic, and in the very air that all breathe. This it
is which kills, or withers, or corrupts. Socrates, indeed, might walk arm
in arm with Hygeia, whilst pestilence, with a thousand furies running to
and fro, and clashing against each other in a complexity and agglomeration
of horrors, was shooting her darts of fire and venom all around him. Even
such was Milton; yea, and such, in spite of all that has been babbled by
his critics in pretended excuse for his damning, because for them too
profound excellencies,—such was Shakespeare. But alas! the exceptions
prove the rule. For who will dare to force his way out of the crowd,—not
of the mere vulgar,—but of the vain and banded aristocracy of intellect,
and presume to join the almost supernatural beings that stand by
themselves aloof?
Of this diseased epidemic influence there are two forms especially
preclusive of tragic worth. The first is the necessary growth of a sense
and love of the ludicrous, and a morbid sensibility of the assimilative
power,—an inflammation produced by cold and weakness,—which in the boldest
bursts of passion will lie in wait for a jeer at any phrase, that may have
an accidental coincidence in the mere words with something base or
trivial. For instance,—to express woods, not on a plain, but clothing a
hill, which overlooks a valley, or dell, or river, or the sea,—the trees
rising one above another, as the spectators in an ancient theatre,—I know
no other word in our language (bookish and pedantic terms out of the
question), but _hanging_ woods, the _sylvæ superimpendentes_ of Catullus;
yet let some wit call out in a slang tone,—“the gallows!” and a peal of
laughter would damn the play. Hence it is that so many dull pieces have
had a decent run, only because nothing unusual above, or absurd below,
mediocrity furnished an occasion,—a spark for the explosive materials
collected behind the orchestra. But it would take a volume of no ordinary
size, however laconically the sense were expressed, if it were meant to
instance the effects, and unfold all the causes, of this disposition upon
the moral, intellectual, and even physical character of a people, with its
influences on domestic life and individual deportment. A good document
upon this subject would be the history of Paris society and of French,
that is, Parisian, literature from the commencement of the latter half of
the reign of Louis XIV. to that of Buonaparte, compared with the preceding
philosophy and poetry even of Frenchmen themselves.
The second form, or more properly, perhaps, another distinct cause, of
this diseased disposition is matter of exultation to the philanthropist
and philosopher, and of regret to the poet, the painter, and the statuary
alone, and to them only as poets, painters, and statuaries;—namely, the
security, the comparative equability, and ever increasing sameness of
human life. Men are now so seldom thrown into wild circumstances, and
violences of excitement, that the language of such states, the laws of
association of feeling with thought, the starts and strange far-flights of
the assimilative power on the slightest and least obvious likeness
presented by thoughts, words, or objects,—these are all judged of by
authority, not by actual experience,—by what men have been accustomed to
regard as symbols of these states, and not the natural symbols, or
self-manifestations of them.
Even so it is in the language of man, and in that of nature. The sound
_sun_, or the figures _s_, _u_, _n_, are purely arbitrary modes of
recalling the object, and for visual mere objects they are not only
sufficient, but have infinite advantages from their very nothingness _per
se_. But the language of nature is a subordinate _Logos_, that was in the
beginning, and was with the thing it represented, and was the thing it
represented.
Now the language of Shakespeare, in his _Lear_ for instance, is a
something intermediate between these two; or rather it is the former
blended with the latter,—the arbitrary, not merely recalling the cold
notion of the thing, but expressing the reality of it, and, as arbitrary
language is an heir-loom of the human race, being itself a part of that
which it manifests. What shall I deduce from the preceding positions? Even
this,—the appropriate, the never to be too much valued advantage of the
theatre, if only the actors were what we know they have been,—a
delightful, yet most effectual remedy for this dead palsy of the public
mind. What would appear mad or ludicrous in a book, when presented to the
senses under the form of reality, and with the truth of nature, supplies a
species of actual experience. This is indeed the special privilege of a
great actor over a great poet. No part was ever played in perfection, but
nature justified herself in the hearts of all her children, in what state
soever they were, short of absolute moral exhaustion, or downright
stupidity. There is no time given to ask questions, or to pass judgments;
we are taken by storm, and, though in the histrionic art many a clumsy
counterfeit, by caricature of one or two features, may gain applause as a
fine likeness, yet never was the very thing rejected as a counterfeit. O!
when I think of the inexhaustible mine of virgin treasure in our
Shakespeare, that I have been almost daily reading him since I was ten
years old,—that the thirty intervening years have been unintermittingly
and not fruitlessly employed in the study of the Greek, Latin, English,
Italian, Spanish, and German _belle lettrists_, and the last fifteen years
in addition, far more intensely in the analysis of the laws of life and
reason as they exist in man,—and that upon every step I have made forward
in taste, in acquisition of facts from history or my own observation, and
in knowledge of the different laws of being and their apparent exceptions,
from accidental collision of disturbing forces,—that at every new
accession of information, after every successful exercise of meditation,
and every fresh presentation of experience, I have unfailingly discovered
a proportionate increase of wisdom and intuition in Shakespeare;—when I
know this, and know too, that by a conceivable and possible, though hardly
to be expected, arrangement of the British theatres, not all, indeed, but
a large, a very large, proportion of this indefinite all—(round which no
comprehension has yet drawn the line of circumscription, so as to say to
itself, “I have seen the whole”)—might be sent into the heads and
hearts—into the very souls of the mass of mankind, to whom, except by this
living comment and interpretation, it must remain for ever a sealed
volume, a deep well without a wheel or a windlass;—it seems to me a
pardonable enthusiasm to steal away from sober likelihood, and share in so
rich a feast in the faery world of possibility! Yet even in the grave
cheerfulness of a circumspect hope, much, very much, might be done;
enough, assuredly, to furnish a kind and strenuous nature with ample
motives for the attempt to effect what may be effected.
Shakespeare, A Poet Generally.
Clothed in radiant armour, and authorized by titles sure and manifold, as
a poet, Shakespeare came forward to demand the throne of fame, as the
dramatic poet of England. His excellences compelled even his
contemporaries to seat him on that throne, although there were giants in
those days contending for the same honour. Hereafter I would fain
endeavour to make out the title of the English drama as created by, and
existing in, Shakespeare, and its right to the supremacy of dramatic
excellence in general. But he had shown himself a poet, previously to his
appearance as a dramatic poet; and had no _Lear_, no _Othello_, no _Henry
IV._, no _Twelfth Night_ ever appeared, we must have admitted that
Shakespeare possessed the chief, if not every, requisite of a poet,—deep
feeling and exquisite sense of beauty, both as exhibited to the eye in the
combinations of form, and to the ear in sweet and appropriate melody; that
these feelings were under the command of his own will; that in his very
first productions he projected his mind out of his own particular being,
and felt, and made others feel, on subjects no way connected with himself,
except by force of contemplation and that sublime faculty by which a great
mind becomes that on which it meditates. To this must be added that
affectionate love of nature and natural objects, without which no man
could have observed so steadily, or painted so truly and passionately, the
very minutest beauties of the external world:—
“And when thou hast on foot the purblind hare,
Mark the poor wretch; to overshoot his troubles,
How he outruns the wind, and with what care,
He cranks and crosses with a thousand doubles;
The many musits through the which he goes
Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes.
“Sometimes he runs among the flock of sheep,
To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell;
And sometime where earth-delving conies keep,
To stop the loud pursuers in their yell;
And sometime sorteth with the herd of deer:
Danger deviseth shifts, wit waits on fear.
“For there his smell with others’ being mingled,
The hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt,
Ceasing their clamorous cry, till they have singled
With much ado, the cold fault cleanly out,
Then do they spend their mouths; echo replies,
As if another chase were in the skies.
“By this poor Wat far off, upon a hill,
Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear,
To harken if his foes pursue him still:
Anon their loud alarums he doth hear,
And now his grief may be compared well
To one sore-sick, that hears the passing bell.
“Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch
Turn, and return, indenting with the way:
Each envious briar his weary legs doth scratch,
Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay.
For misery is trodden on by many,
And being low, never relieved by any.”
_Venus and Adonis._