IN Shakespeare's time the actor was a vagabond, the dramatist a
disreputable person--and yet the greatest dramas were then written. In
spite of law, and social ostracism, Shakespeare reared the many-colored
dome that fills and glorifies the intellectual heavens.
Now the whole civilized world believes in the theatre--asks for some
great dramatist--is hungry for a play worthy of the century, is anxious
to give gold and fame to any one who can worthily put our age upon the
stage--and yet no great play has been written since Shakespeare died.
Shakespeare pursued the highway of the right. He did not seek to put his
characters in a position where it was right to do wrong. He was sound
and healthy to the centre. It never occurred to him to write a play in
which a wife's lover should be jealous of her husband.
There was in his blood the courage of his thought. He was true to
himself and enjoyed the perfect freedom of the highest art. He did not
write according to rules--but smaller men make rules from what he wrote.
How fortunate that Shakespeare was not educated at Oxford--that the
winged god within him never knelt to the professor. How fortunate
that this giant was not captured, tied and tethered by the literary
Lilliputians of his time.
He was an idealist. He did not--like most writers of our time--take
refuge in the real, hiding a lack of genius behind a pretended love of
truth. All realities are not poetic, or dramatic, or even worth knowing.
The real sustains the same relation to the ideal that a stone does to
a statue--or that paint does to a painting. Realism degrades and
impoverishes. In no event can a realist be more than an imitator and
copyist. According to the realist's philosophy, the wax that receives
and retains an image is an artist.
Shakespeare did not rely on the stage-carpenter, or the scenic painter.
He put his scenery in his lines. There you will find mountains and
rivers and seas, valleys and cliffs, violets and clouds, and over all
"the firmament fretted with gold and fire." He cared little for plot,
little for surprise. He did not rely on stage effects, or red fire. The
plays grow before your eyes, and they come as the morning comes. Plot
surprises but once. There must be something in a play besides surprise.
Plot in an author is a kind of strategy--that is to say, a sort of
cunning, and cunning does not belong to the highest natures.
There is in Shakespeare such a wealth of thought that the plot becomes
almost immaterial--and such is this wealth that you can hardly know the
play--there is too much. After you have heard it again and again, it
seems as pathless as an untrodden forest.
He belonged to all lands. "Timon of Athens" is as Greek as any tragedy
of Eschylus. "Julius Cæsar" and "Coriolanus" are perfect Roman, and as
you read, the mighty ruins rise and the Eternal City once again becomes
the mistress of the world. No play is more Egyptian than "Antony and
Cleopatra"--the Nile runs through it, the shadows of the pyramids
fall upon it, and from its scenes the Sphinx gazes forever on the
outstretched sands.
In "Lear" is the true pagan spirit. "Romeo and Juliet" is
Italian--everything is sudden, love bursts into immediate flower, and in
every scene is the climate of the land of poetry and passion.
The reason of this is that Shakespeare dealt with elemental things, with
universal man. He knew that locality colors without changing, and that
in all surroundings the human heart is substantially the same.
Not all the poetry written before his time would make his sum--not all
that has been written since, added to all that was written before, would
equal his.
There was nothing within the range of human thought, within the horizon
of intellectual effort, that he did not touch. He knew the brain and
heart of man--the theories, customs, superstitions, hopes, fears,
hatreds, vices and virtues of the human race.
He knew the thrills and ecstasies of love, the savage joys of hatred and
revenge. He heard the hiss of envy's snakes and watched the eagles of
ambition soar. There was no hope that did not put its star above his
head--no fear he had not felt--no joy that had not shed its sunshine
on his face. He experienced the emotions of mankind. He was the
intellectual spendthrift of the world. He gave with the generosity, the
extravagance, of madness.
Read one play, and you are impressed with the idea that the wealth
of the brain of a god has been exhausted--that there are no more
comparisons, no more passions to be expressed, no more definitions, no
more philosophy, beauty, or sublimity to be put in words--and yet, the
next play opens as fresh as the dewy gates of another day.
The outstretched wings of his imagination filled the sky. He was the
intellectual crown o' the earth.