Scene 3.) Continually in this play is Jonson attacking Chapman for the

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Shakespeare in the Theatre

[Illustration: Yours truly, Wm. Poel.

_Photo. Bassano._]

SHAKESPEARE IN THE THEATRE

BY WILLIAM POEL

FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR OF

THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE SOCIETY

LONDON AND TORONTO

SIDGWICK AND JACKSON, LTD.

1913

_All rights reserved._

NOTE

These papers are reprinted from the _National Review_, the _Westminster

Review_, the _Era_, and the _New Age_, by kind permission of the owners of

the copyrights. The articles are collected in one volume, in the hope that

they may be of use to those who are interested in the question of stage

reform, more especially where it concerns the production of Shakespeare's

plays.

W. P.

_May, 1913._

ADDENDUM

An acknowledgement of permission to reprint should also have been made to

the _Nation_, in which several of the most important of these papers

originally appeared.

W. P.

_Shakespeare in the Theatre_

CONTENTS

PAGE

I THE STAGE OF SHAKESPEARE

The Elizabethan Playhouse--The Plays and the Players 3

II THE PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE

Some Mistakes of the Editors--Some Mistakes of the

Actors--The Character of Lady Macbeth--Shakespeare's

Jew and Marlowe's Christians--The Authors of "King

Henry the Eighth"--"Troilus and Cressida" 27

III SOME STAGE VERSIONS

"The Merchant of Venice"--"Romeo and

Juliet"--"Hamlet"--"King Lear" 119

IV THE NATIONAL THEATRE

The Repertory Theatre--The Elizabethan Stage

Society--Shakespeare at Earl's Court--The Students'

Theatre--The Memorial Scheme 193

INDEX 241

I

THE STAGE OF SHAKESPEARE

THE ELIZABETHAN PLAYHOUSE

THE PLAYS AND THE PLAYERS

SHAKESPEARE IN THE THEATRE

I

THE STAGE OF SHAKESPEARE

THE ELIZABETHAN PLAYHOUSE.[1]

The interdependence of Shakespeare's dramatic art with the form of theatre

for which Shakespeare wrote his plays is seldom emphasized. The ordinary

reader and the everyday critic have no historic knowledge of the

Elizabethan playhouse; and however full the Elizabethan dramas may be of

allusions to the contemporary stage, the bias of modern dramatic students

is so opposed to any belief in the superiority of past methods of acting

Shakespeare over modern ones, as to effectually bar any serious inquiry. A

few sceptics have recognized dimly that a conjoint study of Shakespeare

and the stage for which he wrote is possible; but they have not conducted

their researches either seriously or impartially, and their conclusions

have proved disputable and disappointing. With a very hazy perception of

the connection between Elizabethan histrionic art and its literature, they

have approached a comparison of the Elizabethan drama with the

Elizabethan stage as they would a Chinese puzzle. They have read the plays

in modern printed editions, they have seen them acted on the

picture-stage, they have heard allusions made to old tapestry, rushes, and

boards, and at once they have concluded that the dramatist found his

theatre inadequate to his needs.

Now the first, and perhaps the strongest, evidence which can be adduced to

disfavour this theory is the extreme difficulty--it might almost be said

the impossibility--of discovering a single point of likeness between the

modern idea of an Elizabethan representation of one of Shakespeare's

plays, and the actual light in which it presented itself before the eyes

of Elizabethan spectators. It is wasted labour to try to account for the

perversities of the human intellect; but displays of unblushing ignorance

have undoubtedly discouraged sober persons from pursuing an independent

line of investigation, and have led many to deny the possibility of

satisfactorily showing any intelligible connection between the Elizabethan

drama and its contemporary exponents. Nowhere has a little knowledge

proved more dangerous or more liable to misapplication, and nowhere has

sure knowledge seemed more difficult of acquisition; yet it is obvious

that investigators of the relations between the two subjects cannot

command success unless they allow their theories to be formed by facts.

To those dilettante writers who believe that a poet's greatness consists

in his power of emancipating himself from the limitations of time and

space, it must sound something like impiety to describe Shakespeare's

plays as in most cases compositions hastily written to fulfil the

requirements of the moment and adapted to the wants of his theatre and the

capabilities of his actors. But to persons of Mr. Ruskin's opinion this

modified aspect should seem neither astonishing nor distressing; for they

know that "it is a constant law that the greatest poets and historians

live entirely in their own age, and the greatest fruits of their work are

gathered out of their own age." Shakespeare and his companions were

inspired by the prolific energies of their day. Their material was their

own and their neighbours' experiences, and their plays were shaped to suit

the theatre of the day and no other. It is therefore reasonable for the

serious critic and historian to anticipate some increase of knowledge from

a thorough examination of the Elizabethan theatre in close conjunction

with the Elizabethan drama. Students who reject this method will always

fail to realize the essential characteristic of one of the greatest ages

of English dramatic poetry, while he who adopts it may confidently expect

revelations of interest, not only to the playgoer, but to all who devote

attention to dramatic literature. Above all things should it be borne in

mind that the more the conditions of the Elizabethan theatre are studied,

the better will it be perceived how workmanlike London's theatrical

representations then were, and that they had nothing amateurish about

them.

One of the chief fallacies in connection with the modern notion of the

Elizabethan stage is that of its poverty in colour and setting through the

absence of scenery--a notion that is at variance with every contemporary

record of the theatre and of its puritanical opponents, whose incessant

taunts were, "Behold the sumptuous theatre houses, a continual monument of

London's prodigality and folly." The interior of an Elizabethan playhouse

must have presented an unusually picturesque scene, with its mass of

colouring in the costume of the spectators; while the actors, moving, as

it were, on the same plane as the audience, and having attention so

closely and exclusively directed to them, were of necessity appropriately

and brilliantly attired. We hear much from the superficial student about

the "board being hung up chalked with the words, 'This is a wood,' when

the action of the play took place in a forest." But this is an impression

apparently founded upon Sir Philip Sidney's words in his "Apology of

Poetry," written about 1583: "What child is there that, coming to a play

and seeing Thebes written in great letters on an old door, doth believe

that it is Thebes?" And whether these words were "chalked" upon the

outside door of the building admitting to the auditorium, or whether they

appeared exhibited to the eye of the audience on the stage-door of the

tiring-room is not made clear, but this is certain, that there is no

direct evidence yet forthcoming to prove that boards were ever used in any

of Shakespeare's dramas or in those of Ben Jonson; and, with some other

dramatists, there is evidence of the name of the play and its locality

being shown in writing, either by the prologue, or hung up on one of the

posts of the auditorium. Shakespeare himself considered it to be the

business of the dramatist to describe the scene, and to call the attention

of the audience to each change in locality, and moreover he does this so

skilfully as to make his scenic descriptions appear as part of the

natural dialogue of the play. The naked action was assisted by the poetry;

and much that now seems superfluous in the descriptive passages was needed

to excite imagination. With reference to this question, Halliwell

Phillipps very justly remarks: "There can be no doubt that Shakespeare, in

the composition of most of his plays, could not have contemplated the

introduction of scenic accessories. It is fortunate that this should have

been one of the conditions of his work, for otherwise many a speech of

power and beauty, many an effective situation, would have been lost. All

kinds of elaborate attempts at stage illusion tend, moreover, to divert a

careful observance of the acting, while they are of no real service to the

imagination of the spectator, unless the author renders them necessary for

the full elucidation of his meaning. That Shakespeare himself ridiculed

the idea of a power to meet such a necessity, when he was writing for

theatres like the Curtain or Globe, is apparent from the opening chorus to

'Henry V.' It is obvious that he wished attention to be concentrated on

the players and their utterances, and that all surroundings, excepting

those which could be indicated by the rude properties of the day, should

be idealistic." The dramatist's disregard of time and place was justified

by the conditions of the stage, which left all to the intellect; a

complete intellectual representation being, in fact, a necessity, in the

absence of meretricious support. "The mind," writes John Addington

Symonds, "can contemplate the furthest just as easily as more familiar

objects, nor need it dread to traverse the longest tract of years, the

widest expanse of space, in following the sequence of an action." In

fact, the question of the advantage or disadvantage of scenery is well

summed up by Collier, whose words are all the more impressive when it is

borne in mind that his reasons are supported by an indisputable fact in

the history of our dramatic literature. "Our old dramatists luxuriated in

passages descriptive of natural or artificial beauty, because they knew

their auditors would have nothing before their eyes to contradict the

poetry; the hangings of the stage made little pretension to be anything

but covering for the walls, and the notion of the plays represented was

taken from what was written by the poet, not from what was attempted by

the painter. We owe to the absence of painted canvas many of the finest

descriptive passages in Shakespeare, his contemporaries, and immediate

followers. The introduction, we apprehend, gives the date to the

commencement of the decline of our dramatic poetry." Shakespeare could not

have failed to recognize that by employing the existing conventions of his

stage he could the more readily bring the public to his point of view,

since its thoughts were not being constantly diverted and distracted by

those outward decorations and subordinate details which in our day so

greatly obliterate the main object of dramatic work.

As the absence of theatrical machinery helped playwrights to be poets, so

the capacity of actors stimulated literary genius to the creation of

characters which the authors knew beforehand would be finely and

intelligently rendered. Nor were the audiences in Shakespeare's time

uncritical of the actor's art, and frequent allusions in the old plays

show that they understood what "a clean action and good delivery" meant.

To quote again from Mr. Addington Symonds, "attention was concentrated on

the actors, with whose movements, boldly defined against a simple

background, nothing interfered. The stage on which they played was narrow,

projecting into the yard, surrounded on all sides by spectators. Their

action was thus brought into prominent relief, placed close before the

eye, deprived of all perspective. It acquired a special kind of realism

which the vast distances and manifold artifices of our modern theatres

have rendered unattainable. This was the realism of an actual event, at

which the audience assisted; not the realism of a scene in which the actor

plays a somewhat subordinate part."

Noblemen used to maintain a musical establishment for the service of their

chapels, and to this department of their household the actors belonged.

When not required by their masters, these players strolled the country,

calling themselves servants of the magnate whose pay they took and whose

badge they wore. Thus Shakespeare's company first became known as "Lord

Leicester's Servants," then as the Lord Chamberlain's, afterwards, in the

reign of King James, as "The King's Company." And we can imagine the

influence of the chapel upon the art of the theatre when we consider that

choristers, who were taught to sing anthems and madrigals, would receive

an excellent training for that rhythmical and musical modulation so

indispensable to the delivery of blank verse. With regard to the boys who

performed the female characters, it is specially to be noted that they

were paid more than the ordinary actors, in consequence of the superior

physical and vocal qualifications which were needed. That the boys were

thoroughly successful in the delineation of women's parts we learn from

the Puritans, and from the insistence that those boys impressed for Queen

Elizabeth's chapel should not only be skilled in the art of minstrelsy,

but also be handsome and shapely, which seems to point to the theatrical

use that would be made of them. To this end, power was given to the

Queen's choirmaster to impress boys from any chapel in the United Kingdom,

St. Paul's only excepted. A contemporary play has the following allusion

to a boy actor: "Afore Heaven it is a sweet-faced child. Methinks he would

show well in woman's attire. I'll help thee to three crowns a week for

him, an she can act well."

Referring once more to the construction of the theatres, it is important

to note that they differed most from modern playhouses in their size; not

so much, perhaps, in the size of the stage as in the dimensions of the

auditorium. The building was so made that the remotest spectator could

hardly have been distant more than a dozen yards, or thereabouts, from the

front of the stage. The whole auditory were thus within a hearing distance

that conveyed the faintest modulation of the performer's voice, and at the

same time demanded no exaggerated effort in the more sonorous utterances.

Especially would such a building be well adapted for the skilled and rapid

delivery for which Elizabethan players were famous. Added to this, every

lineament of the actor's countenance would have been visible without

telescopic aid. It was for such a theatre that Shakespeare wrote, says Mr.

Halliwell Phillips, "one wherein an actor of genius could satisfactorily

develop to every one of the audience not merely the written, but the

unwritten words of the drama, those latter which are expressed by gesture

or by the subtle language of the face and eye. There is much of the

unrecorded belonging to the pages of Shakespeare that requires to be

elicited in action, and no little of that much which can only be

effectively rendered under conditions similar to those which prevailed at

the opening of the Globe."

Suitable to the construction of the Elizabethan theatre was the

construction of the Elizabethan play, the most noticeable feature of which

was the absence of division into scenes and acts. For even when a new act

and scene are marked in the old quartos and folios, they are probably only

printer's divisions, and we find the text often continuing the story as

though the characters had not left the stage. Not that it is to be

inferred that no pauses were made during the representation of the play,

especially at the cheaper and more popular houses, where jigs and musical

interludes were among the staple attractions. But judging from the

following words put into Burbage's mouth by Webster in his induction to

"The Malcontent" (a play that originally had been written for the Fortune

theatre), we may gather that at the Globe it was not usual to have musical

intervals.

"_W. Sly_: What are your additions?

"_D. Burb._: Sooth, not greatly needful, only as your sallet to your great

feast, to entertain a little more time, and to abridge the not received

custom of music in our theatre."

Nor is it likely Shakespeare would have approved of any interruptions to

the dramatic movement of his plays when once it had begun. He made very

sparing use of the chorus, and avoided both prologue and epilogue when

possible.

There is, in this same induction by Webster, some dialogue that throws

light also upon the estimation in which Shakespeare and his fellow actors

regarded their calling and its duties and responsibilities, and is worth

quoting:

"_W. Sly_: And I say again, the play is bitter.

"_D. Burb._: Sir, you are like a patron that, presenting a poor scholar to

a benifice, enjoins him not to rail against anything that stands within

compass of his patron's folly. Why should we not enjoy the antient freedom

of poesy? Shall we protest to the ladies that their painting makes them

angels? or to my young gallant, that his expence in the brothel shall gain

him reputation? No, sir; such vices as stand not accountable to law should

be cured as men heal tetters, by casting ink upon them."

Above all things, may it be acknowledged that if the Fortune theatre, the

great rival playhouse to the Globe, was the most successful and prosperous

financially, the Lord Chamberlain's troupe appealed, through Shakespeare,

to the highest faculties of the audience, and showed in their performances

a certain unity of moral and artistic tone.

THE PLAYS AND THE PLAYERS.[2]

An Englishman visiting Venice about 1605 wrote in a letter from that city:

"I was at one of their playhouses where I saw a comedy acted. The house

is very beggarly and base in comparison with our stately playhouses in

England, neither can the actors compare with us for apparel, shows, and

music." This opinion is confirmed by Busino, who has left an account of

his visit to the Fortune playhouse in 1617, where he observed a crowd of

nobility "listening as silently and soberly as possible." And Thomas

Heywood the dramatist, not later than 1612, affirms that the English stage

is "an ornament to the city which strangers of all nations repairing

hither report of in their countries, beholding them here with some

admiration, for what variety of entertainment can there be in any city of

Christendom more than in London?" In fact, the English people at this

time, like the Greeks and Romans before them, were lovers of the theatre

and of tragic spectacles. Leonard Digges, who was an eye-witness, has left

on record the impression made upon the spectators by a representation of

one of Shakespeare's tragedies:

"So have I seen when Caesar would appear,

And on the stage at half-sword parley were

Brutus and Cassius. Oh! how the audience

Were ravished, with what wonder they went thence!"

But plays as perfect in design as "Julius Caesar," "Othello," and "Macbeth"

were the exception, not the rule, upon the Elizabethan stage. They were

the outcome of nearly twenty years' experiment in play-writing, a period

during which Shakespeare mastered his art and schooled his audience to

appreciate the serious unmixed with the ludicrous. When he first wrote for

the stage, plays needed to have in them all that the taste of the day

demanded in the way of comic interlude and music. A dramatic

representation was a continuous performance given without pause from

beginning to end, and the dramatists, in compliance with the custom, used

the double story, so often to be found in the plays of the time, in order

that the movement should be continued uninterruptedly. The characters in

each story appeared on the stage in alternate scenes, with every now and

then a full scene in which all the characters appeared together. Ben

Jonson condemned this form of play. He ridiculed the use of short scenes,

and the bringing on to the stage of the characters in pairs. Yet he

himself found it necessary to conform to the requirements of the day, as

is shown in his first two comedies, written to be acted without pause from

beginning to end. Later on he adopted the Terentian method of

construction, that of dividing the plays into acts and making each act a

complete episode in itself; and in his dedication prefixed to the play of

"The Fox," he claims to have laboured "to reduce not only the ancient

forms, but manners of the scene." There can be no doubt, therefore, that

Ben Jonson disliked Shakespeare's tolerance of the hybrid class of play

then in vogue. Yet Shakespeare, if he thought it was not possible to work

to the satisfaction of his audience according to the rules and examples of

the ancients, none the less strove to put limits to the irregularities of

his contemporaries. At the Universities scholars regarded his plays as

compositions that were written for the public stage and therefore of no

intrinsic value; while Londoners must have looked upon them as

representations of actual life when compared with the formless dramas they

were accustomed to see. He desired unity of fable with variety of

movement, and endeavoured to abolish the use of impromptu dialogue by

writing his own interludes and making them part of the play. Shakespeare

wished to satisfy his audience and himself at the same time; and by the

force of his dramatic genius he succeeded where others failed, and wrote

plays which, if unsuitable for the modern stage, are still being acted.

About two-thirds of the plays which were acted at the Elizabethan and

Jacobean theatres are now lost to us; and this dramatic literature must

have been of unusual excellence, unless we are to suppose that the law of

the survival of the fittest may be applied to the lives of plays. From the

names of extinct dramas, accessible to us in such places as Henslowe's

"Diary" or the Stationers' Registers, it may be inferred that the

groundwork of many of them consisted either of political or purely social

and domestic topics. Domestic tragedy was one of the most popular forms of

the drama. In fact the dramatists, in most instances, took the material

for their plays from their own and their neighbours' experiences, and all

that was uppermost in men's minds was laid hold of by them, and brought

upon the stage with only a little transparent concealment. The topical

Elizabethan drama, in the plays which have come down to us, viewed from a

purely historical standpoint, is a very accurate though not very

flattering embodiment of middle-class society in London in the sixteenth

century. From it we learn the dangers incurred by the presence of a large

class of riotous idlers, discharged soldiers and sailors, over whom the

authorities exercised little control; we are given striking descriptions

of the London "roughs"; of these "swagging, swearing, drunken, desperate

Dicks, that have the stab readier in their hands than a penny in their

purses." We read, too, of the games that children played in the streets;

of the assembling of the men of fashion and business in St. Paul's; and of

the dense crowding of the neighbouring streets at the dinner-hour, when

the throng left the cathedral. The conversation that the characters

indulge in, apart from the immediate plot, invariably relates to current

events. In a play written about the time of the Irish rebellion, one of

the characters talks about Ireland in a way that might apply to recent

days:

"The land gives good increase

Of every blessing for the use of man,

And 'tis great pity the inhabitants

Will not be civil and live under law."

Uninteresting and unsavoury as some of the details of the Elizabethan

domestic tragedies are, they were often used with an avowedly moral aim,

and they had, according to many contemporary accounts, the most salutary

effect on evil-doers.[3] It was not more than forty years after

Shakespeare's death that Richard Flecknoe, in his "Discourse of the

English Stage," comments upon the altered character of the drama:

"Now for the difference betwixt our Theatres and those of former

times; they were but plain and simple, with no other scenes nor

decorations of the stage, but only old Tapestry, and the Stage

strewed with Rushes, whereas ours for cost and ornament are arrived

at the height of Magnificence, but that which makes our Stage the

better, makes our Playes the worse, perhaps through striving now to

make them more for sight than hearing, whence that solid joy of the

interior is lost, and that benefit which men formerly received from

Playes, from which they seldom or never went away but far better and

wiser than when they came."

The short space of time--two hours and a half--in which an Elizabethan

play was acted in Shakespeare's time, has excited much discussion among

commentators. It can hardly be doubted that the dialogue, which often

exceeds two thousand lines, was all spoken on the stage, for none of the

dramatists wrote with a view to publication, and few of the plays were

printed from the author's manuscript. This fact points to the employment

of a skilled and rapid delivery on the part of the actor. Artists of the

French school, whose voices are highly trained and capable of a varied and

subtle modulation, will run through a speech of fifty lines with the

utmost ease and rapidity; and there is good reason to suppose that the

blank verse of the Elizabethan dramatists was spoken "trippingly on the

tongue." And then only a few of the plays which were written for the

public stage were divided into acts; and even in the case of a five act

drama it was not thought necessary to mark each division with an interval,

since the jigs and interludes were reserved for the end of the play. So

with an efficient elocution and no "waits," the Elizabethan actors would

have got through one-half of a play before our modern actors could cover a

third. Even Ben Jonson, while disliking the form of the Elizabethan drama,

recognized the advantage to the dramatist of simplicity in the method of

representation. He alludes, with not a little contempt, to Inigo Jones's

costly settings of the masque at the court of King James.

"A wooden dagger is a dagger of wood,

Nor gold nor ivory haft can make it good ...

Or to make boards to speak! There is a task!

Painting and carpentry are the soul of masque.

Pack with your pedling poetry to the Stage.

This is the money-got mechanic age!"

If a theatre were established in this country for the performance of

Shakespeare's plays with the simplicity and rapidity with which they were

acted in his time, it might limit the endless experiments, mutilations,

and profitless discussions that every revival occasions. "To read a play,"

said Robert Louis Stevenson, "is a knack, the fruit of much knowledge and

some imagination, comparable to that of reading score"; the reader is apt

to miss the proper point of view. In omitting one-third of the play every

time Shakespeare is acted, the most appropriate scenes for representation

may not always be chosen. But were the entire play acted occasionally, the

author's point of view could not fail to declare itself. It is interesting

to note that Germany, always to the fore in Shakespearian matters, has

obtained in Baron Perfall, the director of the Royal Court Theatre in

Munich, an advocate for the performance of Shakespeare's plays as they

were originally acted.

The Elizabethan dramatists, as a rule, deprecated the printing of their

plays. They regretted that "scenes invented merely to be spoken should be

inforcively published to be read." Elocution was to the playwrights an

all-important consideration. They acknowledge that the success of their

labours "lay much in the actor's voice"; that he must speak well, "though

he understand not what," for if the actor had not "a facility and natural

dexterity in his delivery, it must needs sound harsh to the auditor, and

procure his distaste and displeasure." A good tragedy, in Ben Jonson's

opinion, "must have truth of argument, dignity of persons, gravity and

height of elocution"; "words," he says, "should be chosen that have their

sound ample, the composition full, the absolution plenteous, and poured

out all grave, sinewy, and strong." And Thomas Heywood, in 1612, thus

writes in defence of the actor's art: "Tully, in his booke, 'Ad Caium

Herennium,' requires five things in an orator--invention, disposition,

eloqution, memory, and pronuntiation; yet all are imperfect without the

sixt, which is action: for be his invention never so fluent and exquisite,

his disposition and order never so composed and formall, his eloquence and

elaborate phrases never so materiall and pithy, his memory never so ferme

and retentive, his pronuntiation never so musical and plausive; yet

without a comely and elegant gesture, a gratious and a bewitching kinde of

action, a natural and familiar motion of the head, the hand, the body, and

a moderate and fit countenance suitable to all the rest, I hold all the

rest as nothing. A delivery and sweet action is the glosse and beauty of

any discourse that belongs to a scholler; and this is the action

behoovefull in any that professe this quality, not to use any impudent or

forced motion in any part of the body, nor rough or other violent gesture,

nor, on the contrary, to stand like a stiffe starcht man, but to qualifie

everything according to the nature of the person personated: for in

overacting trickes, and toyling too much in the anticke habit of humors,

men of the ripest desert, greatest opinions, and best reputations may

breake into the most violent absurdities. I take not upon me to teach, but

to advise; for it becomes my juniority rather to be pupil'd my selfe than

to instruct others."

Shakespeare, also, though not so great an actor as he was a dramatist,

knew as well what was needed for the art of the one as of the other, and

perhaps thought even more about the acting because he had the less genius

for it. There are some descriptive passages in his plays which show that

he visualized the characters he created and gave them gestures which were

appropriate to their personalities.

If the actors were fortunate in having poets such as Shakespeare, Jonson,

and Heywood, not only to write for them, but also to instruct them, the

poets were no less fortunate in their actors. Of Burbage, we are told that

he had all the parts of an excellent orator, animating his words with his

speech, and his speech with action, so that his auditors were "never more

delighted than when he spoke, nor more sorry than when he held his peace;

yet even then he was an excellent actor still, never failing in his part

when he had done speaking, but with his looks and gesture maintaining it

still unto the height." We learn that he was small in stature; that every

thought and mood could be understood from his face; and that because of

his gifts he was "only worthy to come on the stage," and because of his

honesty "he was more worthy than to come on." So great was Burbage's

popularity that London received the news of his death, which occurred

within a few days of that of the Queen, King James's Consort, with a

greater manifestation of grief than they bestowed on the lady. Perhaps

Shakespeare was thinking of Burbage's unusual ability when he wrote the

following lines:

"The eyes of men

After a well-grac'd actor leaves the stage

Are idly bent on him that enters next,

Thinking his prattle to be tedious."

Dick Robinson was an actor of women's parts. Ben Jonson has left on record

that he could dress better than forty women, and, in the disguise of a

lawyer's wife, he could convulse a supper party with merriment. Acting so

realistic as his stirred the resentment of the Puritans. Stephen Gosson

writes: "Which way, I beseech you, shall they be excused that put on, not

the apparel only, but the gate, the gestures, the voice, the passions of a

woman." Nathan Field was the son of a minister, who was one of the

earliest as well as one of the bitterest enemies of theatrical

performances. While one of the Royal Chapel boys, Field distinguished

himself in Ben Jonson's comedy, "Cynthia's Revels," acted entirely by

children. Afterwards Field became a member of Shakespeare's company, and,

like him, an author. When Burbage died, Field was his successor in the

part of the Moor. It is said that as he was naturally of a jealous

disposition, the character suited him, and his impersonation of it became

famed as "the true Othello of the poet." Many particulars have come down

to us of the clown, Kemp. His popularity with his audiences cannot be

disputed. "Clowns," writes a dramatic author in 1597, "have been thrust

into plays by the head and shoulders ever since Kemp could make a scurvy

face.... If thou canst but draw thy mouth awry, lay thy leg over thy

staff, saw a piece of cheese asunder with thy dagger, lap up drink on the

earth, I warrant thee they'll all laugh mightily." It was by tricks such

as these that Kemp won the good opinion "of the understanding gentlemen of

the ground"; but Shakespeare was not in favour of fooling. Kemp, moreover,

loved to extemporize, and Shakespeare wished to abolish a custom fatal to

dramatic unity. He preferred to write the clown's part himself, and

desired that no more should be spoken than was set down by the author. The

interference with the clown's privilege, openly advocated by Shakespeare

in a well-known passage of "Hamlet," probably led to Kemp's temporary

retirement from the company. Kemp loved notoriety and money. His morris

dance to Norwich and journeys to France and Italy were but gambling

speculations, he undertaking to be back in a certain time, and laying

wagers with large odds in his favour to that effect.

The prosperity of the actor caused many to adopt the calling. His

vocation, we are told, was the most excellent one in the world for money,

and therefore players grew as plentifully "as spawn of frogs in March." It

was open to the actor to buy shares in his theatre, and he could, by

becoming a shareholder, attain the position of owner, and would, in

Shakespeare's theatre, as one of the King's players, be provided from the

royal wardrobe "with a cloak of bastard-scarlet and crimson velvet for the

cape." He could also term himself "gentleman," a rank he was allowed to

assume, and which he was very glad to adopt in defiance of the enemies of

theatrical performances, who constantly taunted him, in the words of the

old statute, with being "a rogue and a vagabond." The popularity of the

stage as a profession excited the envy of scholars and lawyers. They

taunted the actor with his vanity in believing that his fame would descend

to posterity. They blamed the public for affording these "glorious

vagabonds" means to ride through the "gazing streets" in satin clothes

attended by their pages, and for enabling those who had done no more than

"mouth words that better wits had framed" to purchase lands and possess

country houses. The actor retaliated by deriding the scholar's poverty and

ridiculing the lawyer's use of bad Latin. They contended that it was

better "to make a fool of the world than to be fooled of the world as you

scholars are." There is an anecdote related of Nathan Field which shows

that actors did not underrate their own importance.

"Nathan Field, the player, being in company with a certain nobleman who

was distantly related to him, the latter asked the reason why they spelt

their names differently, the nobleman's family speling it 'Feild,' and the

player spelling it 'Field'? 'I cannot tell,' answered the player, 'except

it be that my branch of the family were the first that knew to spell.'" It

would hardly have been agreeable to this tragedian to learn that he and

his fellows, Shakespeare and Burbage, were "writ down" by the Master of

His Majesty's Revels as "players, jugglers, and such kind of creatures";

nor would Ben Jonson have felt flattered by the candid confession of an

admirer who "could not understand how a poet could have so much

principle."

Most of the leading actors in Shakespeare's theatre had their apprentices.

A stage aspirant was often called upon to appear before the leading

members of the company, and to give some proof of his talent. No little

importance was attached to the youth's appearance, to his command of

facial expression, and to the sufficiency of his voice. If the young man's

talent lay in the direction of comedy, Kemp might address him after this

manner: "Methinks you should belong to my tuition, and your face,

methinks, would be good for a foolish mayor, or a foolish justice of

peace." Not seldom the efforts of novices to copy nature excited the

derision of experts. Kemp, as a character in a play--"The Return from

Parnassus" acted about 1601--says to Burbage: "It is a good sport in a

part to see them never speak but at the end of the stage, just as though,

in walking with a fellow, we should never speak but at a stile, a gate, or

a ditch, where a man can go no further." Besides having a good memory, an

actor needed the gift of studying quickly. It is not generally known that

the expression "to sleep on a part," still in use among actors, was

current in Shakespeare's day; but we read in an old play of an actor,

whose memory had failed him while acting his part, blaming the negligence

of the man in charge of the stage: "It is all along of you. I could not

get my part a night or two before to sleep upon it." The prompter, or

"bookholder," as he was more often called, was not an unnecessary person

on a "new day," the first performance of a new play. He would have

received many a warning to "hold the book well, that we be not _non plus_

in the latter end of the play." And Ben Jonson has given an amusing

description of an additional supervision on the part of the author that

was not of the actor's seeking, "to have his presence in the tiring-house,

to prompt us aloud, stamp at the bookholder, swear for our properties,

curse the poor tireman, rail the music out of tune, and sweat for every

venal trespass we commit." The members of a theatrical company being

limited in number, it was often necessary for the impersonators of kings

and heroes to represent very inferior characters in the same play, a

circumstance to the advantage of the dramatist, who could thus obtain

capable exponents for the parts of messengers and attendants, and was

able, therefore, to "write up" these parts without fear of the author's

lines being mangled by incompetence, or made ridiculous by false

pretension. Actors who doubled their parts wore the double cloak--a cloak

that might be worn on either side. A turned cloak, with a false beard and

a black or yellow peruke, supplied a ready, if not effectual, disguise.

Although the theatres were prosperous, their existence was often

imperilled by the action of the city magnates, who forbad the acting of

plays within their own jurisdiction. They viewed with annoyance the crowds

that came from north and south to bring money to the playhouses, and they

disliked the inducements these afforded to their sons and apprentices to

neglect their occupations. No opportunity was lost by the Corporation of

urging the Sovereign to abolish the theatres. The Puritans, also, if not

influential at Court, were still potent in affecting public opinion

against stage-plays, in the pulpit and by means of the Press; while

playwrights were even more violently attacked by them than were the

actors. The sonorous and majestic verse of the Elizabethan poets, that has

become the pride of our country, appeared in the eyes of the "godly" but

as an invention of Satan to entice the unwary into his "chapel."

"Because the sweete numbers of Poetrie flowing in verse do

wonderfully tickle the hearers eares, the devill hath tyed this to

most of our playes, that whatsoever he would have sticke fast to our

soules might slippe down in sugar by this intisement; for that which

delighteth never troubleth our swallow. Thus when any matter of love

is interlarded, though the thinge it selfe bee able to allure us, yet

it is so sette out with sweetnes of wordes fitness of Epithites, with

Metaphors, Alegories, Hyperboles, Amphibologies, Similitudes: with

Phrases so pickt, so pure, so proper; with action so smothe, so

lively, so wanton, that the poyson creeping on secretly without

griefe chookes us at last and hurleth us downe in a dead sleepe."

This vigorous opposition to the stage had its advantage. It kept managers

alive to their responsibilities, and obliged them to maintain a high

standard of work. The poets were called upon to justify the existence of

playhouses, and to defend their own reputations, and in this they were

triumphant. They showed that playwrights had followed the advice of

Cicero, and could create a drama which was "the schoolmistress of life,

the looking-glass of manners, and the image of truth." They contended that

in the theatre men were shown, as in a mirror, "their faults though ne'er

so small." Of Shakespeare's comedies it was said, they are "so framed to

the life, that they serve for the most common commentaries of all the

actions of our lives, and all such dull and heavy-witted worldings, as

were never capable of the wit of a comedy, coming by report of them to his

representations have found that wit there that they never found in

themselves, and have parted better-witted than they came." Thomas Heywood

contended that plays had made "the ignorant more apprehensive, taught the

unlearned the knowledge of many famous histories, instructed such as

cannot read in the discovery of all our English Chronicles, and what man

have you now of that weak capacity that cannot discourse of any notable

thing recorded, even from William the Conqueror; nay, from the landing of

Brute until this day." Perhaps it was well for the public of Shakespeare's

day that it attached an educational value to the theatre, and consciously

adopted an attitude of diffidence towards the labours of the dramatist. He

was left free to teach as well as to amuse. If the amusement consisted in

putting into the mouths of the clowns "unsavoury morsels of unseemly

sentences," the teaching consisted in making folly appear ridiculous and

vice odious. So long as the dramatists were not hampered by demands from

the audience to have its social, political, or aesthetic fancies humoured,

and from the actor to have his egotism flattered, the drama flourished as

an art as well as a business. But when managers began to consider the

whims of their patrons, when the King's Players petitioned the People's

Parliament for leave to continue their vocation because "they will not

entertain any comedian that shall speak his part in a tone as if he did it

in derision of some of the pious," then the theatre ceased to be a

looking-glass that could image life truthfully. Indeed, it cannot be

doubted that if ever the drama shall again enlist the best talent of the

time in its service it will be when the nation becomes conscious of the

power of the stage, which is capable, as Bacon says, "of no small

influence, both of discipline and corruption."

II

THE PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE

SOME MISTAKES OF THE EDITORS.

SOME MISTAKES OF THE ACTORS.

THE CHARACTER OF LADY MACBETH.

SHAKESPEARE'S JEW AND MARLOWE'S CHRISTIANS.

THE AUTHORS OF "KING HENRY THE EIGHTH."

"TROILUS AND CRESSIDA."

II

THE PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE[4]

Neither in the theatre nor on the printed page can it be said that

Shakespeare's dramas to-day reflect the form of his art or the thought of

his age. The versions acted on the stage are unlike those read in the

study, and all are dissimilar to the "authentic copies." In order to

understand the cause of these discrepancies it is necessary to trace their

origin and history.

SOME MISTAKES OF THE EDITORS

A number of Shakespeare's plays were published during his lifetime, the

first, "The Comedy of Errors," appearing in 1595, and the last one,

"Pericles," in 1609. Some of these plays went through several editions,

and the text of four of them, in their first edition, was extremely

faulty, but the second editions of "Romeo and Juliet" and of "Hamlet" were

probably printed direct from the author's manuscripts.

The special features of these early quartos are:

1. The title-pages, which indicate what in Shakespeare's time were the

popular incidents and characters in each play.

2. The unbroken continuity of the story, the plays having no divisions to

suggest where pauses were made, if any, during the representation.

3. Some descriptive stage-directions which do not reappear in subsequent

editions, and which in all probability are authentic evidence of the

action as it was then seen on the stage.

These quartos are the only playbooks existing to-day which can show

Shakespeare's constructive art as a dramatist, and it will be necessary to

refer to them from time to time.

Seven years after his death, Shakespeare's fellow-actors, Heminge and

Condell, collected all his dramas, and, with the help of some booksellers,

published them in one volume in what is known as the first folio (1623).

These "trifles," as the editors called them, were dedicated to two

noblemen in the confidence that this tribute would help to keep the

author's memory alive, and the reader is invited to purchase the book

because the plays had found favour on the stage where they were first

tried and "stood out all appeales." There is, besides, some anxiety shown

by the editors lest the publication of the volume should detract from the

author's fame as a dramatist, for the reader is urged to read the plays

"againe and againe," if he does not like them, or in other words, if he

does not understand them. Now, in this first folio, Heminge and Condell

began marking divisions for intervals in the plays. This was an

innovation, probably suggested to them by the booksellers at the

instigation of Ben Jonson. Fortunately, the editors left their task

unfinished, finding, perhaps, that these divisions were unsuitable

interpolations.

In 1709 there came a new phase in the history of Shakespearian

Bibliography when Rowe, the poet-dramatist, at the suggestion of his

bookseller, who believed that "none but a poet should presume to meddle

with a poet," undertook to present to the world a new edition of

Shakespeare's plays, in which the player-dramatist was for the first time

to be brought within the fraternity of academicians. His works were to be

edited on similar lines to those of the poets of Rowe's time, with the

appendage of a life and a recommendatory preface. The contrast between

this preface and that of Heminge and Condell is characteristic. To Rowe it

is "a great wonder" that Shakespeare should have advanced dramatic poetry

as far as he did; and, since he wrote "under a mere light of nature," and

was never acquainted with Aristotle's precepts, it would be hard to "judge

him by a law he knew nothing of." With Rowe, also, the "fable" comes first

for criticism, because even if it is not the most difficult or beautiful

part of the play, it is the most important; yet he contends that in this

art Shakespeare has "no mastery or strength." In accordance with academic

notions, Rowe completes the work begun by Heminge and Condell, and divides

all the plays into acts and scenes; cutting up the text, as it is said, on

"rational principles."[5] But Rowe's divisions are both misplaced and

unauthorized; and even his text is faulty through being printed from the

fourth edition of the first folio, the latest one and the least accurate.

Pope follows Rowe as editor in 1723, and upholds the authority of the

early copies, which, as he says with truth, "hold the place of the

originals, and are the only materials left to repair the deficiencies, or

restore the corrupted sense of the author." Pope's study of the

"originals," however, confirms him in Rowe's opinion that Heminge and

Condell were ignorant men, both as editors and actors. It was--

"Ben Jonson, getting possession of the stage, brought critical

learning into vogue: and that this was not done without difficulty

may appear from those frequent lessons (and indeed almost

declamations) which he was forced to prefix to his first plays, and

put into the mouth of his actors.... Till then, our authors had no

thoughts of writing on the model of the ancients: their tragedies

were only histories in dialogue: and their comedies followed the

thread of any novel as they found it no less implicitly than if it

had been true history."

Pope also remarks that "players have ever had a standard to themselves

upon other principles than those of Aristotle," and Shakespeare's "wrong

judgment as a poet" must be ascribed to his "right judgment as a player."

It is evident, then, that Pope, like Rowe, had nothing favourable to say

about Shakespeare's art in the management of his "fable," and if Heminge

and Condell put in some act and scene divisions, "often where there is no

pause in the action," Pope marks a change of scene at every removal of

place, "which is more necessary in this author than in any other, because

he shifts them more frequently."

It was said of Pope's edition that he had rejected whatever he disliked,

and thought more of amputation than cure. In the controversy which

followed, Pope found his match in Theobald. This critic points out in his

preface (1726) that an editor should be well versed in the history and

manners of his author's age, "if he aim at doing him service." But

Theobald, like Rowe, fails to understand Shakespeare's dramatic art, and

compares him with a "corrupt classic" for whom classical remedies are

necessary. Fortunately, Theobald confines his attention entirely to

textual emendations, and, unlike Pope, he does not tamper with the text in

order to make Shakespeare "speak better than the old copies have done."

Johnson, in spite of his censure, honoured Theobald by borrowing largely

from his labours in his own edition.

Warburton (1747) defends Pope, and shrewdly remarks that Shakespeare's

works "when they escaped the players did not fall into much better hands

when they came amongst printers and booksellers," adding, "the truth is

Shakespeare's condition was yet but ill-understood." But Warburton is

wanting in historical knowledge when he writes, "The stubborn nonsense,

with which he was incrusted, occasioned his lying long neglected amongst

the common lumber of the stage." In fact, Warburton abuses Rowe's editing,

yet none the less adopts his tone in disparaging "those impurities," the

original copies.

Dr. Johnson (1765) brings vigour and common sense to bear upon his

editorial labours, without, however, betraying special sympathy with the

poet's achievements, or any subtle comprehension of his art as a

dramatist. But Johnson never forgets that Shakespeare wrote plays and not

poems, and that he sold them to actors and not printers. His criticisms

are those of a playgoer writing of plays, as if he had seen them acted at

the theatre. At the same time he follows Rowe's lead in saying that

Shakespeare's plots are so loosely constructed that not one play would now

"be heard to the conclusion," and similarly with Rowe, he generalizes as

to the text being vitiated "by the blunders of the penman, or changed by

the affectation of the players." About the division into acts and scenes,

he writes:

"I have preserved the common distribution of the plays into acts,

though I believe it to be in almost all the plays void of authority.

Some of those which are divided in the later editions have no

division in the first folio, and some that are divided in the folio

have no division in the preceding copies. The settled mode of the

theatre requires four intervals in the play, but few if any of our

author's compositions can be properly distributed in that manner. An

act is so much of the drama as passes without intervention of time or

change of place. A pause makes a new act. In every real and therefore

in every imitative action, the intervals may be more or fewer, the

restriction of five acts being accidental and arbitrary. This

Shakespeare knew, and this he practised; his plays were written, and

at first printed in one unbroken continuity, and ought now to be

exhibited with short pauses, interposed as often as the scene is

changed, or any considerable time is required to pass. This method

would at once quell a thousand absurdities."

Something must be said later on about the "short pauses." There is wisdom

as well as humour in Johnson's observation: "Let him who desires to feel

the highest pleasure that the drama can give read every play from the

first scene to the last with utter negligence of all his commentators."

To Steevens belongs the credit of being the first to collect and reprint

(1766) in one volume the original quartos, of which a revised and

completed edition is much needed. "Many of the quartos," he writes, "as

our own printers assure me, were far from being unskilfully executed, and

some of them were much more correctly printed than the folio." With regard

to Shakespeare's text, he observes: "To make his meaning intelligible to

his audience seems to have been his only care, and with the ease of

conversation he has adopted its incorrectness." In fact, Steevens thinks

that Shakespeare, of all the writers of his day, was the most

ungrammatical.

Capell (1768) is perhaps the least dogmatic of all the eighteenth-century

editors, and the most cautious in his judgment, when he remarks:

"Generally speaking, the more distant a new edition is from its original,

the more it abounds in faults which is done by destroying all marks of

peculiarity and notes of time." And in another passage: "That division of

scenes which Jonson seems to have attempted, and upon which the French

stage prides itself, Shakespeare does not appear to have any idea of." In

a note he adds: "The current editions are divided in such a manner that

nothing like a rule can be collected from any of them." Unfortunately,

like all the other editors, Capell believes it necessary to divide

Shakespeare's plays into acts and scenes.

With Malone (1790) Shakespearian criticism enters upon a new phase--the

historical one--when research and evidence take precedence of conjecture.

What he says of the first editors of his century remains as true to-day as

it was when written--"that the men never looked behind them, but

considered their own era and their own phraseology as the standard of

perfection."

Malone, moreover, observes that the two chief duties of an editor are to

show the genuine text of an author and to explain his obscurities. This,

it must be admitted, is the view taken by all his contemporaries; and yet

dramas are not poems any more than words are deeds. And while Malone

spares no pains to amend a corrupt text in the hope of arriving at verbal

accuracy, he has little scruple about marring Shakespeare's scheme of

action. "All the stage-directions," he writes, "throughout this work I

have considered as wholly in my power, and have regulated them in the best

manner I could." To do this is to run counter to an editor's province and

duty; for a dramatist to know that his text is correct affords him small

consolation if his story has been misunderstood and mutilated. It is

doubtful whether scholars who insist on editing Shakespeare's plays as if

they were anything or everything but drama have any just appreciation of

the work they undertake. When Dr. Johnson contends that Shakespeare was

"read, admired, and imitated while he was yet deformed," he is indirectly

praising deformity. All the eighteenth-century editors blame Shakespeare

for the management of his "fable," and attribute it to his ignorance,

while many modern editors altogether overlook his art of making a play.

The late Dr. Furnivall's introduction to the "Leopold Shakespeare," which

has been deservedly and universally praised, has yet one vital defect as

dramatic criticism--his comments apply to the art of a novelist, not to

that of a playwright.

The arguments brought forward in the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy are a

striking illustration of this imperfect knowledge. While the Baconians

pride themselves on discovering a similarity in the phraseology or

philosophical sentiments of the two writers, they forget that Shakespeare

was preeminent in the writing of drama--an art which is as difficult to

master as that of a painter or a musician, and in which the hand of an

amateur can be as easily detected; an art for which Bacon showed no

aptitude, and for which he had had no training. A novelist who describes

characters vividly was once asked why she seldom made them talk. Her

answer was: "I have little talent for writing dialogue; when my characters

speak they often cease to be the same people." Undoubtedly Bacon would

have given a similar answer to anyone attributing to him the plays of

Shakespeare. Moreover, there is a wide difference between the art of

writing dialogue for a novel and for a play. The novelist has innumerable

means of escape from difficulties which beset the dramatist. The skill

required for successfully conducting the story of a play by means limited

to the use of dialogue makes the dramatist's art one of the most difficult

to succeed in, and puts it outside the reach of all but the few and the

specially gifted. To illustrate Shakespeare's constructive art it is only

necessary to look at the old play of "King John," on which his own play is

based. Then, to take an instance from a later play--"Twelfth

Night"--Viola, when first seen on the stage, is a castaway, rescued by

sailors. After an interval of one short scene she reappears as Cesario,

the Duke's favourite page. How can the gap be most naturally bridged over?

Many dramatists would add dialogue detached from the story, but

Shakespeare gives the necessary information in three words, which flash a

picture upon the spectator's mind. Valentine says to Viola as they both

enter the stage together: "If the Duke _continue these favours_ towards

you, Cesario, you are like to be much advanced," etc. In scheming the

sequence of incidents, and in suppressing explanatory narrative, lies the

art of the dramatist. This result is not obtained without a good deal of

practice. Even Shakespeare could not have written a play so compact as

"Twelfth Night" at a period when he was writing "The Two Gentlemen of

Verona."

In his young days Shakespeare must certainly have read "Gorboduc," with

its five acts, its five dumb shows, and its chorus; he may, perhaps, have

seen it revived at Greenwich Palace, or elsewhere, and have seen other

plays of the kind which were written in five acts by academicians--amateurs

who were anxious to air their learning before Queen Bess at the

Universities or at the Inns of Court. Then there was Ben Jonson at hand to

instruct his elder rival on the superiority of Latin comedy. Chapman, too,

who was highly esteemed by clergy and scholars, was within call to point

out to "artless Will" the merits of Senecan tragedy. In fact, the Bard of

Avon had good reason to know why his playhouse dramas were despised by the

learned, who, however, were not justified in presuming that he was

ignorant of classical conventions simply because he chose to ignore them.

No doubt it was possible in Shakespeare's time to write plays in five acts

for the public stage. We know that at the Rose and Fortune theatres the

action of the play was often suspended to allow of dancing and singing,

though whether these intervals for interludes came after the termination

of each act it is difficult to decide.

But if the four choruses in "Henry V." were intended by Shakespeare to

denote act divisions, they are not so marked in the first folio; while

"The Tempest," which may have been divided into acts by Shakespeare, has

stage-directions which suggest that it was not written originally for

representation in the public theatre, but for the Court.

It must also be remembered that of the plays wholly written by

Shakespeare, with the one exception of "The Tempest," all are so

constructed that characters who leave the stage at the end of an episode

are never the first to reappear, a reappearance which would involve a

short pause and an empty stage; nor, even, does a character who ends one

of the acts marked in the folio ever begin the one that follows, as Ben

Jonson directs shall be done in his tragedy of "Sejanus" (1616). Can we

reasonably suppose, then, that a method so consistently carried out by

Shakespeare throughout all his plays respecting the exit and the

re-entrance of characters was due to mere accident, and not to deliberate

intention on the part of the dramatist? And in acted drama the exact

position where a pause comes in the movement of the story is a matter of

importance to the proper understanding of the play. Yet, in the first

collected edition of Shakespeare's plays the divisions made are so

irrelevant to the story that Heminge and Condell may have considered them

as merely ornamental. It may never have occurred to them that the

divisions would some day be used as an authority for actors as well as for

readers. The result has been disastrous to both. A slavish adherence by

the actor to these unfortunate divisions for over two hundred years, has

caused the representation of Shakespeare's plays on the stage to be in

most cases unintelligent, if not almost unintelligible; while, on the

other hand, it has for an equally long period been the means of misleading

scholars as to Shakespeare's method of dramatic construction. Until

editors ignore the acts and scenes in the folio edition of 1623 and take

the form of the play as it appears in the quartos--that is, without

divisions--no progress can be made with the study of Shakespeare's

dramatic art. It is now more generally recognized, especially by American

scholars, that the folio divisions are a real stumbling-block and must go

overboard. In some of the early comedies, perhaps, pauses can be made

where the acts are marked, in the folio, without serious injury to the

representation, but the comedies were written to be acted without break,

and gain immensely when so given. Besides, the lengths of the present

divisions are absurdly unequal. The last act of "Love's Labour's Lost" is

more than twice the length of the first act, and nearly four times the

length of the second and third acts. In a theatre, it should be the

shortest act. Then, the "Comedy of Errors" was acted as an after-supper

interlude at Gray's Inn. Time there would not allow of its having four

intervals. Throughout Shakespeare's early and middle periods his plays in

their dramatic form of construction provide no opportunity for regular

intervals, nor should they ever have been divided into five acts. To put

more than one break into "Romeo and Juliet," "The Merchant of Venice,"

"Macbeth," "King Lear," "Hamlet" (acting version) injures the drama.

Shakespeare rarely cares to draw breath until he has reached the crisis,

nor should the reader be expected to do so. And to halt for talk and

refreshments on the eve of a crisis is to play havoc with the story. The

crisis comes in the "Merchant of Venice" at that part of the play marked

in the folio, Act III., Scene i. But it is almost impossible for an actor

to be animated in a scene following an _entr'acte_. The story of Macready

and the ladder is a well known instance. The pause, if any, should come

after the scene and not before it.

It cannot be urged too often that Shakespeare invented his dramatic

construction to suit his own particular stage. And but for the special

conditions of his playhouse, Shakespearian drama could never have come

into being; for Shakespeare's genius was not adapted to writing plays with

intervals for music, as was done at Court. Unity of design was his aim.

"Scene individable" is his motto. The internal evidence of the plays

themselves proves this.

Dr. Johnson, then, was right to contend that Shakespeare wrote his plays

as they were first printed "in one unbroken continuity," but to infer that

"they ought now to be exhibited with short pauses interposed as often as

the scene is changed, or any considerable time is required to pass," shows

that he failed to grasp the real object for which Shakespeare adopted the

continuous movement. An Elizabethan audience was absorbed by the story of

the play, and thought little about lapse of time or change of place. There

was only one locality recognized, and that one was the platform, which

projected to the centre of the auditorium, where the story was recited.

There was, besides, only one period, and that was "now," meaning the

moment at which the events were being talked about or acted. All

inconsistencies, then, that are apparent in the text, arising from change

of place or break in the time, should be ignored in representing the play.

It is no advantage to rearrange the order of the scenes, or to lower the

curtain, or to make a pause in the progress of the story in order to call

attention to change of place or interval of time. Whatever information

Shakespeare wished the audience to have on these matters, he put into the

mouths of his characters, and he expected the audience to accept it

without any questioning or further illustration by actual presentation.

Elizabethan folk-songs are sung without pausing between the verses; in

this way attention is fixed on the story, and Shakespeare obtains the same

result by dispensing with the empty stage.

Capell long ago pointed out the real difficulty, when he wrote in his

preface: "Neither can the representation be managed nor the order and

thread of the fable be properly conceived by the reader till the question

of acts and scenes be adjusted." Unfortunately, Capell could prescribe no

remedy. To this day these irregular divisions continue, and all our modern

editions need reprinting and re-editing. One of the debts we owe to

Shakespeare is to present his plays in their authentic form. This is due

to him for what he was and for what he has done for us, as our greatest

national poet and dramatist.

SOME MISTAKES OF THE ACTORS.

In Shakespeare's time the relations existing between the author and his

actors were often strained. Those who interpreted the characters were

blamed for more faults than their own, while the author, who was out of

sight, had his reputation depending upon the skill of his interpreters.

The actors, besides, were the author's paymasters, and often gave less for

a new play than they paid for a silk doublet, while at the same time they

were the absolute owners of all the dramas they produced. It was natural,

then, for authors to taunt the actors with being men who thrived by

speaking words which "better wits had framed."

The hired player, however, fared no better than the authors, and it was

only those actors who had the right to pool the theatre takings who became

rich. Before Shakespeare was forty years of age, he was earning a

competent income out of his shares in two playhouses. No other dramatist

of his time occupied so fortunate a position, nor probably one more

isolated. As a tradesman's son, brought up at a grammar school only, he

would have no standing among scholars, and as a writer of plays he was the

"upstart crow," taking the bread out of the mouths of those who had paid

for a college education. Then the historical dramas which brought the

Globe fame and fortune were not calculated to please at Court, because

neither the Queen nor the nobility cared to see their ancestors walking

the public stages, unmasked, showing authority robbed of its sincerity and

of its sanctity. Across the Thames stood the Blackfriars, where the

children of the Chapel Royal, backed by royal favour, were rapidly

becoming the attraction among the leaders of fashion and culture. These

patrons upheld a class of entertainment with which Shakespeare had no

sympathy. So the master spirit of the Elizabethan drama, like Beethoven,

withdrew from the crowd to work out his own destiny, and to perfect

himself in an art that fascinated him, and for which his practical life in

the theatre, and his independence, gave him exceptional opportunity for

experiment. During his last ten years in London he wrote some dozen or

more plays, all of them of supreme merit. That they were dramas far in

advance of the requirements of the day is probable, since few of them were

printed during the poet's lifetime. Some of them, perhaps, were acted "not

above once." He had outgrown, indeed, the theatrical taste of the day, and

now only cared for plays which were "well digested in the scenes," meaning

well constructed. But this was an achievement which no dramatist of his

time attempted, unless it was Ben Jonson, who wrote artificial comedy

after the classical models. Shakespeare, however, wanted the art of the

theatre to imitate Nature, and he contrived to make speech and story

appear natural; and, indeed, his contemporaries mistook this art for

Nature, and thought it the work of an untutored mind and an unskilled

hand. Even to-day many actors are under the impression that Shakespeare

would have sanctioned as improvements the liberties now taken on the stage

with his plays. Perhaps, also, his own fellow-actors failed to interpret

his dramas entirely in accordance with his wishes; and yet his art is so

vital and so vividly impressed on the printed page of the "authentic

copies" that there is little justification for misrepresenting it. There

is an anecdote about Mrs. Siddons, to the effect that when again reading

over the part of Lady Macbeth, after her retirement from the stage, she

was amazed to find some new points in the character "which had never

struck her before"! A confession which would seem incredible were it not

known how apt English actors are to base the study of their parts not on

the text, but on stage traditions, which often are valueless, because

unauthorized. Yet no actor should defend a conception of character which

is shown to be at variance with the author's words.

The only copies of Shakespeare's plays which can with any authority be

called acting-versions are the quartos, published during the poet's

lifetime, and these are not acting-versions in the modern sense of the

term, because, with the exception of textual errors, or abbreviations of

dialogue, there is no shortening of the play by the omission of entire

scenes or characters. The early quartos, with the notable exceptions of

the 1599 "Romeo and Juliet," the 1604 "Hamlet," and the 1609 "Troilus and

Cressida," have the appearance of being made up from actors' parts, or

taken down by shorthand writers during performances. In consequence, they

are less esteemed by the literary expert than are the plays as they appear

printed in the first folio; yet to the actors they provide information

which cannot be found elsewhere. That in some of these quartos the text is

corrupt may be explained by the difficulty of taking down dialogue spoken

rapidly from the stage, but at the same time it is unlikely that the

note-takers went out of their way to describe any movement which they did

not actually see carried out by the actors. From the title-page of "The

Merchant of Venice" it is evident that the copyist saw the play acted

differently from the way it is now acted. Take, for instance, the headline

which is worded: "The comicall Historie of the Merchant of Venice"; and

the title-page, which sets forth the "extreme crueltie of Shylocke the

Jewe towards the sayd Merchant, in cutting a just pound of his flesh, and

the obtayning of Portia by the choyse of three chests." These two stories,

which are continued in alternate scenes throughout most of the play, were

to the Elizabethans regarded as of equal importance. To-day the title-page

would have to be rewritten, and might run thus: "The tragicall Historie of

the Jewe of Venice, with the extreme injustice of Portia towards the sayd

Jewe in denying him the right to cut a just pound of the Merchant's flesh,

together with the obtayning of the rich heiress by the prodigal Bassanio."

Over the Shylock controversy enough ink has been wasted without adding

more, but the shortening of all the Portia scenes, and the omission of the

Prince of Aragon, one of the three suitors, and one who provides excellent

comedy, are indefensible mutilations.

The title-page of the 1600 quarto of "Henry V." mentions Henry's "battell

fought at Agin Court, in France, togither with Auntient Pistoll."

"Swaggering Pistoll," like Falstaff, had become a delight to the town. The

play is, in fact, not a "chronicle history," but a slice out of history,

and not of well-made history either, since the evils of Henry's unjust

wars are not touched upon. Then Shakespeare's King is an endless talker,

while in reality he was the most silent of men. It was ostensibly a

"Jingo" play, written to open the Globe playhouse with a patriotic

flourish of trumpets. Its object, besides, was to please those Londoners

who had not forgotten 1588, when Englishmen faced a similar ordeal to

that at Agincourt, and came out victorious, not because they had the means

but the men. The interest of this drama, to the Elizabethan playgoer,

depended on the knowledge that a handful of starved and ragged soldiers

had won a decisive battle over an army which was its superior in numbers

and equipment, and contained all the pride and chivalry of the French

nation. And the stage-direction in the folio indicates the contrast thus:

"_Enter the King and his poore Souldiers_." On the modern stage, however,

this direction is ignored, though perhaps it has never been noticed. The

whole evening is taken up by the evolutions of a handsome young prince,

gorgeously dressed, and spotlessly clean, newly come from his military

tailor, together with a large number of equally well-dressed and well-fed

soldiers, who tramp after him on and off the stage, not a penny the worse

for all the hardships they are supposed to have encountered! Of the French

episodes two are omitted and the rest mutilated, while no prominence is

given to them, nor is the numerical superiority of the French indicated.

Nothing is seen of its army beyond the leaders and their one or two

attendants, who are thrust into the contracted space of a front scene.

This seems rather an upside down way to act the play!

Among the early quartos, the two most interesting to the actor are the

first and second editions of "Romeo and Juliet," because they show how

Shakespeare adapted his art to the stage of his time. From them it may be

inferred that characters on the stage did not always retire from view when

they had finished speaking their lines. This, perhaps, was a necessity

due to the presence of spectators on the platform, who made, as it were,

an outer ring round the forefront or acting part of the stage. Romeo

therefore did not leave the stage in the balcony episode, where Juliet is

made to call him back again. He merely retired to the side of the

platform, among the gallants. When Romeo hears of his banishment, the

direction to the Nurse is "_Enter and Knocke_," which means that she comes

in at the door of the tiring-house and remains at one side of the stage,

probably knocking the floor with her crutch. After three knocks there is

again the direction "_Enter_," when, on hearing her cue, she moves from

the side into the centre of the stage to join in the dialogue. In this

same quarto she and not the Friar is directed to snatch the dagger from

Romeo, an evidence that this so-called "traditional-business," still in

use, is not of Shakespeare's time. Another stage-direction shows how

characters denoted change of locality merely by walking round the inner

stage. No doubt this "business" was done to keep the spectators on the

stage from chattering, which might easily happen whenever the actors left

the forefront of the platform.

With regard to the first quarto of "Hamlet," and its probable history,

something will be said later on. But it might be well here to call

attention to the three stage-directions in this quarto, which have dropped

out of all the subsequent editions, and which elucidate the context.

Ophelia, in her "mad" scene, did not bring in flowers, but had a lute in

her hands. There would be no need for the Queen so minutely to describe

Ophelia's flowers at the time of her death if she had been previously

seen with the garlands. The ghost, when in the Queen's chamber, wore a

dressing-gown, not armour, probably the same gown he wore at the time of

his death; Hamlet is overwhelmed with horror at this pitiful sight of his

father. And Ophelia's body was followed to the grave by villagers and a

solitary priest, who took no further part in the ceremony.

* * * * *

Elizabethan players had an advantage over modern actors in that they could

more readily appreciate the construction of Shakespeare's plays. They knew

that the dramatist's characters mutually supported each other within a

definite dramatic structure, and that it was the business of the actor to

preserve the author's framework. This attitude towards the play grew

naturally out of the conditions belonging to their theatre, for unless the

plot were adhered to, confusion would have arisen in the matter of

entrances and exits, causing the continuity of the movement to be

interrupted.

After the Restoration, when the public theatres were reopened, the "fable"

ceased to have the same importance attached to it by the actors, and

attention became more and more centred on those characters which were good

acting parts. In 1773 appeared a collected edition of Shakespeare's plays,

"As they are now performed at the Theatres Royal, Regulated from the

Prompt Books of each House." The volumes were dedicated to Garrick, whom

Bell, the compiler, pronounced to be "the best illustrator of, and the

best living comment on, Shakespeare that ever has appeared or possibly

ever will grace the British stage"; a statement which is qualified by the

remark of Capell that "Garrick spoke many speeches of Shakespeare as if he

did not understand them." Garrick, however, expresses his fear lest--

"the prunings, transpositions, or other alterations which in his

province as a manager he had often found necessary to make or adopt

with regard to the text, for the convenience of representation or

accommodation to the powers and capacities of his performers, might

be misconstrued into a critical presumption of offering to the

_literati_ a reformed and more correct edition of our author's works;

this being by no means his intention."

The reader need only examine one of the plays in Bell's "Companion to the

Theatre" to understand Garrick's modesty as to his "prunings." Take the

actor's stage-version of "Macbeth"--one of Bell's notes states, "This

play, even amidst the fine sentiments it contains, would shrink before

criticism did not Macbeth and his lady afford such uncommon scope for

acting merit. Upon the whole, it is a fine drama with some gross

blemishes." Apparently the "blemishes" are only found in those scenes

where Macbeth or his wife do not appear, for Bell continues:

"The part of the porter is properly omitted...."

"The flat, uninteresting scene, between Lenox and another useless

Lord, is properly omitted...."

"Here Shakespeare, as if the vigorous exertion of his faculties in

the preceding scene required relaxation, has given us a most

trifling, superfluous dialogue between Lady Macduff, Rosse, and her

son, merely that another murder may be committed on the stage. We

heartily concur in and approve of striking out the greater part of

it...."

"There are about eighty lines of this scene (Macduff's) omitted,

which, retained, would render it painfully tedious, and, indeed, we

think them as little deserving of the closet as of the stage," etc.

It does not seem to have struck Garrick that the scenes he "pruned" might

have some significance in the scheme of the author's drama independently

of their individual characteristics.

To take another instance. In Garrick's version of "Romeo and Juliet,"

reprinted in Dolby's "British Theatre" (1823), the following paragraph is

inserted underneath the list of characters:

"The scenery in 'Romeo and Juliet' at Covent Garden this season

(1823) is very grand. That of the 'Funeral of Juliet' is truly solemn

and impressive. The architectural arrangement of the interior of the

church is most chaste and appropriate: the slow approach of the

funeral procession, the tolling of the bell, and the heart-saddening

tones of the choristers, swelling in all the sublime richness of the

minor key, make an impression on the feelings of the auditory which

can never be forgotten."

Here, then, are illustrations, in two plays, of methods adopted by

actors--methods still in use--which are a direct interference with the

poet's dramatic intentions. They are methods, moreover, which Elizabethan

actors would have regarded as unintelligent, because they turned good

drama into bad drama, and created inconsistencies between character and

situation. The earliest acting-version of "Romeo and Juliet" (1597) has

some eight hundred lines less than the unshortened play (1599), and yet

there is no entire scene omitted, nor any of the characters; and those

scenes which have dropped out of the play, on the modern stage, are those

least curtailed in the 1597 version. In the first acting-version of

"Hamlet," published in 1603, there is still more striking evidence of the

Elizabethan actor's skill in compressing a play of Shakespeare's when it

was necessary. Not only was the play considerably shortened, without the

omission of scenes and characters, but it was slightly reconstructed. Herr

Emile Devrient, the greatest exponent of the part of Hamlet in Germany,

contended that this first quarto was a better constructed play than either

the 1604 version or that of the folio. In fact, with the faulty dialogue

amended from the perfect text, this 1603 actor's copy, which has 1,757

fewer lines than in the full play, and 557 lines less than in the modern

acting edition, would be the best model from which to shorten the play so

as to bring it within the limit of a two hours' representation. That

Shakespeare sanctioned either the compression or the reconstruction for

use in the Globe is not likely. But that he tolerated the alterations is

possible, since he would recognize that his own less regular plot, though

more artistically suited as the framework for Hamlet's irregular mind, was

too subtle and elaborate to be effective on the public stage.

With regard to acting-versions, therefore, it may be contended that the

interests of the author are more often than not opposed to those of the

modern actor in so far as the latter considers the author's drama to be

tedious whenever it fails to enhance the acting merits of some particular

character or characters in the play. Thus it is questionable whether, in

the absence of the author, the actors are the persons best qualified to

make stage-versions of his dramas. Their point of view is rarely the same

as that of the author, and if it is necessary to shorten a play they can

hardly be expected to undertake the work entirely to the satisfaction of

the author, nor yet in the interests of the public, since the value of

the fable may or may not be a matter of moment to an actor. If, then,

Shakespeare's plays are a valuable asset to the artistic wealth of the

nation, the amount of "pruning" they require for the stage should be

determined by competent experts. Unfortunately, actors believe that a

scholar is not qualified to advise on the matter, owing to his lack of

what they call "a sense of the theatre." This "sense" would no doubt be

differently interpreted by different actors. Broadly speaking, it may be

taken to mean the ability to forecast what degree of emotion or sympathy

certain incidents can arouse in an audience when they are seen represented

on the stage. Pope rejected the Gonzalo dialogue in the second act of "The

Tempest," asserting that it was not Shakespeare's because courtiers who

had been just shipwrecked on a desert island would not indulge in idle

gossip! Here Pope missed the theatre point of view. The audience see in

the first act an old man who once had been a King, but who was cruelly and

unjustly thrust out of his kingdom, and exposed with his baby daughter in

a frail and rotten bark to the mercy of the perilous ocean. Moreover, it

hears that the very men who did this wrong are now themselves shipwrecked

on this enchanted island, where Prospero is living. What the audience is

curious to see, then, in the second act, is not noblemen who are suffering

from shipwreck, but ignoble men, who merit the contempt of those who look

upon them, and who deserve the just rebuke they receive from the man who

is once more restored to his rights. The question as to what these

noblemen have themselves suffered in the course of being shipwrecked,

Shakespeare rightly judged was not one that an audience, under the

circumstances, could be interested in. Then, again, to take a textual

illustration from "King Lear" quoted by Steevens, the commentator. He

writes in his "Advertisement to the Reader":

"The dialogue might, indeed, sometimes be lengthened by yet other

insertions than have been made (from the quartos), without advantage

either to its spirit or beauty, as in the following instance:

"'LEAR. No.

"'KENT. Yes.

"'LEAR. No, I say.

"'KENT. I say, yea.'

"Here the quartos add:

"'LEAR. No, no; they would not.

"'KENT. Yes; they have.'

"By the admission of the negation and affirmation, would any new idea

be gained?"

The answer given by the actor is, "Certainly! The added words from the

quartos give the idea of reality and character." It is inconceivable that

Shakespeare, himself an actor, omitted the additional lines. Without this

reiteration, the expression of Lear's amazement at the indignity put upon

his servant cannot be adequately tuned by the actor, nor yet be consistent

with his character. This, then, is the dilemma with regard to

stage-versions; scholars are hampered in their judgment by want of

knowledge of the art of the theatre; and actors by their bias for good

acting parts, or, in other words, for parts which are always in view of

the audience.

As to elocution, it may be well to recall what an Antwerp merchant who had

for many years resided in London said of the English people, about the

year 1588. He then observed that "they do not speak from the chest like

the Germans, but prattle only with the tongue." The word "prattle" is used

in the same sense by Shakespeare in his play of "Richard the Second."[6]

In the "Stage Player's Complaint," we find an actor making use of the

expression, "Oh, the times when my tongue hath ranne as fast upon the

Sceane as a Windebanke's pen over the ocean." Added to this, there is the

celebrated speech to the players, in which Hamlet directs the actors to

speak "trippingly on the tongue." There can be no doubt, therefore, that

Shakespeare's verse was spoken on the stage of the Globe easily and

rapidly. And the actor had the advantage of standing well within the

building in a position now occupied by the stalls, nor were audiences then

stowed away under deep projecting galleries. But unless English actors can

recover the art of speaking Shakespeare's verse, his plays will never

again enjoy the favour they once had. Poetry may require a greater

elevation of style in its elocution than prose, but in either case the

fundamental condition is that of representing life, and as George Lewes

ably puts it, "all obvious violations of the truths of life are errors in

art." In the delivery of verse, therefore, on the stage, the audience

should never be made to feel that the tones are unusual. They should still

follow the laws of speaking, and not those of singing. But our actors, who

excel in modern plays by the truth and force of their presentation of

life, when they appear in Shakespeare make use of an elocution that no

human being was ever known to indulge in. They employ, besides, a

redundancy of emphasis which destroys all meaning of the words and all

resemblance to natural speech. It is necessary to bear in mind that, when

dramatic dialogue is written in verse, there are more words put into a

sentence than are needed to convey the actual thought that is uppermost in

the speaker's mind; in order, therefore, to give his delivery an

appearance of spontaneity, the actor should arrest the attention of the

listener by the accentuation of those words which convey the central idea

or thought of the speech he is uttering, and should keep in the

background, by means of modulation and deflection of voice, the words with

which that thought is ornamented. Macbeth should say:

"That but this blow

Might be the be-all and the end-all HERE,

But HERE, upon this bank and shoal of time,

We'd jump the life to COME.--But in these cases

We still have judgment HERE; that we but teach

BLOODY instructions, which, being taught, RETURN

To plague the INVENTOR."

If the emphasis fall upon the words marked, then these and no others

should be the words inflected; but modern actors, if they inflect the

right words, inflect the wrong ones too, until it becomes impossible for

the listener to identify the sense by the sound. This artificial way of

speaking verse seems traditional to the eighteenth century. David Garrick

and Edmund Kean no doubt used a more natural delivery, and also Mrs.

Siddons, though some of her exaggerations of emphasis probably were never

heard at the Globe. Shakespeare would hardly have endorsed her reading of

Lady Macbeth's words, "Give me the daggers!" There was nobody else to

whom Macbeth could give them. At moments of tension, speech is always

direct. A lady, _tete a tete_ with her husband at the breakfast-table,

enjoying an altercation over the contents of the newspaper, would surely

indicate the natural emphasis by exclaiming, "GIVE me the newspaper!"

words that can, in this way, be spoken in half the time that Mrs. Siddons

took to speak hers. The two and a half hours in which a play in

Shakespeare's time was often acted would not be possible to-day, even

without delays for acts and scenes, with the methods of elocution now in

vogue. It is legitimate for Romeo to exclaim in his farewell to Juliet:

"EYES, look your last!

ARMS, take your last embrace!"

or he may say:

"Eyes, look your LAST!

Arms, take your last EMBRACE!"

but it is not correct to say:

"EYES, look your LAST!

ARMS, take your last EMBRACE!"

which every Romeo persists in saying to-day; and this method of

duplicating emphasis, being used by all the actors throughout the whole

play, the time taken up in speaking it is at once doubled. Hence the need

for excessive "prunings."

* * * * *

To sum up the arguments: Shakespeare's dramatic art, which is unique of

its kind, cannot to-day be properly understood or appreciated on the stage

for the following reasons: (1) Because editors print the plays as if they

were five-act dramas, which they are not; (2) because actors, in their

stage versions, mutilate the "fable," and interpolate pictorial effects

where none are intended; (3) because, also, actors use a faulty and

artificial elocution, unsuited to the poet's verse. These causes,

combined, oust Shakespeare's original plays from the theatre, and impose

in their place pseudo-classical dramas which are not of his making, nor of

his time. To remedy this evil it is necessary to insist that the early

quartos alone represent Shakespeare's form of construction and his method

of representation, and that for the purpose of determining the text these

same quartos should be collated with the first folio, with occasional

reference to modern editions. Cheap facsimiles of the quartos as well as

the folio should be accessible to actors, and from these an attempt should

be made to standardize stage-versions of Shakespeare's most popular plays,

and these stage-versions should be the joint work of scholars and actors.

Perhaps what is important for the general public to recognize is that the

acting-versions of Shakespeare's plays, the interpretation given to his

characters, and the actor's "readings" have altered but little during the

last two hundred years, so that the performances given on the stage to-day

are chiefly founded upon traditions which never came into touch with

Elizabethan times. More and more, therefore, must it be realized that if

an actor wishes to interpret the plays intelligently, he must shut his

eyes to all that has taken place on the stage since the poet's time,

turning to Shakespeare's text and trusting to that alone for inspiration.

THE CHARACTER OF LADY MACBETH.

_I should never think, for instance, of contesting an actress's right

to represent Lady Macbeth as a charming, insinuating woman, if she

really sees the figure that way. I may be surprised at such a vision;

but so far from being scandalized, I am positively thankful for the

extension of knowledge, of pleasure, that she is able to open to

me._--HENRY JAMES.

The introduction of women players led to one of the evils connected with

the star system. So long as boys acted the women's parts there was no

danger of any woman's character being made over-prominent to the extent of

unbalancing the play. But when Mrs. Siddons became famous by her

impersonation of Lady Macbeth, it may be contended, without prejudice to

the talent of the actress, that the character ceased to represent

Shakespeare's point of view. This is the more to be regretted in view of

Mrs. Siddons' confession that her personality was not suited to the part.

There was, besides, another drawback unfortunately in that, during the

eighteenth century, the part of Lady Macduff dropped out of the playbill,

thus removing from the play the one person in it whose presence was

necessary for the proper understanding of Lady Macbeth's character. The

appearance of Lady Macduff on the stage affords opportunity for the

reflection that Duncan's murder would never have taken place had she been

Macbeth's wife. Yet she, too, has shortcomings to which she falls a

victim, for when the assassins are at her door she exclaims:

"Whither should I fly?

I have done no harm. But I remember now

I am in this earthly world, where to do harm

Is often laudable; to do good, sometime,

Accounted dangerous folly: why then, alas!

Do I put up that womanly defence,

To say, I have done no harm?"

Now, admirable as this reflection is from an ethical standpoint, it is not

appropriate to the moment, and in Lady Macbeth's eyes it would have been

"dangerous folly" to talk moral platitudes at such a time. In fact, if the

mistress of Inverness Castle had been placed in Lady Macduff's cruel

position, it is more than likely she would have had the courage and the

energy to save her own life and those of her children from the fury of

Macbeth. Nor is it inconceivable that if Lady Macbeth had married a man of

stronger moral fibre than her husband, she might have lived a useful life,

loved and respected by all who knew her. And yet, unhappily for both

women, neither Macbeth nor Macduff were fine types of manhood.

Another idea which needs to be cleared out of the way is that of the

unusual enormity of Lady Macbeth's crime in contriving the death of a man

who was her guest. Shakespeare's audience knew that a sovereign was never

immune from assassination. Queen Elizabeth's life became the mark for

assassin after assassin. Moreover, the Catholics contended that "good

Queen Bess," by beheading Mary Stuart, had murdered a woman who was her

guest and who had come into her kingdom assured of protection. There was

something childish about Duncan's credulity in face of the treachery he

had already experienced from the first Thane of Cawdor. In a monarch whose

position was open to attack from the jealousy of his nobles, Duncan's

conduct showed an almost incredible want of caution. In fact, it was his

unguarded confidence which brought about his death. No onlooker in the

Globe playhouse ever thought the murder of this King at Inverness to be an

improbable or unusual occurrence. And this inference suggests another of

even more importance, namely, the period in which Shakespeare's tragedy is

placed. When the poet-dramatist demanded that his actors should hold the

mirror up to Nature, it was not the nature of the Greeks, nor of the

Romans, nor of the early Britons that he meant. The spirit of the Italian

Renaissance, with its humanism and intellectuality, had taken too strong a

hold upon the imagination of Englishmen to allow of their playgoers being

interested in the puppets of a bygone age. Shakespeare had no need to look

beyond his own time to find his Lady Macbeth. There were many women still

existing who were uninfluenced by the didactic teaching of the Puritans

and their love of moral introspection. Queen Elizabeth herself was an

instance. As the historian Green points out, we track her through her

tortuous maze of lying and intrigue until we find that she revelled in

byways and crooked ways, and yet was adored by her subjects for a

womanliness she, in reality, never possessed. And this love of shuffling

and lack of all genuine religious emotion failed utterly to blur the

brightness of the national ideal. Or, to take her rival, Mary Stuart. The

rough Scottish nobles owned that there was in her some enchantment whereby

men were bewitched. "Her beauty," writes Green, "her exquisite grace of

manner, her generosity of temper and warmth of affection, her frankness of

speech, her sensibility, her gaiety, her womanly tears, her manlike

courage, the play and freedom of her nature ... flung a spell over friend

or foe which has only deepened with the lapse of years." And yet this

piece of feminine fascination visited her sick husband, Darnley, in his

lonely house near Holyrood Palace, in which he was lodged by her order,

kissed him, bade him farewell, and rode gaily back to a dance within two

hours of the terrible explosion which deprived him of his life, a murder

that was attributed to Bothwell, and at which Mary herself may easily have

connived.

And so it was with Lady Macbeth. Murder, to those who were not injured by

it, was no crime in her opinion, and excited neither terror nor remorse.

She was to the last unconscious of being criminal or sinful. Her life was

the playing of a red-handed game by one who thought herself innocent. For

this reason she could walk placidly through any evil she contemplated. She

knew that her persuasive power over men lay in her womanliness, and that

in this there was nothing compromising. Unlike her husband, her face

betrayed no moral conflict. The Puritan spirit had never penetrated her

own nature. Whatever her outward religion might be, she was at heart a

materialist, not from conviction, but from shallowness, due to the absence

of all the higher powers of reflection and imagination. Banquo is dead,

and therefore she knows that it is impossible for him to come out of his

grave to torment his murderer. It is only necessary to wash the blood from

her hands, and that will clear away the consequences. Even the "spirits,"

to which her husband has alluded; those which she mockingly invokes to her

feminine aid, have no reality to her, because they have no material

whereabouts. So that her husband's talk about conscience and retribution

is unintelligible to her. She knows that what he would do "wrongly" he

would like to do "holily," because she has heard about the Ten

Commandments; but these things have no meaning for her, they do not come

within her experience. With her limited outlook, the beginning and end of

everything necessary for her husband's success in life is that he should

be practical, inventive, and never appear embarrassed.

The most marked feature, then, in Lady Macbeth's character is her

femininity, and Shakespeare dwells upon this trait throughout her career.

In the first place, no one at Inverness Castle suspects that she is

accessory to the terrible crime. Macduff is distressed at the mere thought

of telling her what has happened. The woman who would have been trampled

under foot in the courtyard on that eventful night, if the truth about her

had been known, becomes the centre of immediate anxiety when she faints,

or feigns to faint, to rescue her husband from a perilous position. Duncan

could not find words to express his delight at her charm as a hostess. The

guests at the royal coronation banquet grieve that she should be exposed

to a trying ordeal through her husband's extraordinary behaviour. The

doctor who overhears her dying confessions is a "mated" and "amazed" and

incredulous at the thought of her self-implications. One voice speaks of

her with harshness, and it is that of the son of the murdered King, and

then only at the close of the play. If, again, we turn to her own

reflections, it is always her woman's weakness which she dreads may defeat

her purpose. Murder is something foreign to her temperament; the details

are ugly and revolting; the sight of blood may unnerve her. She can do the

crime herself if she can accomplish it without seeing the wound the dagger

will make; but she evidently imagines that her husband, who has killed men

in battle, can do it better, and this conviction becomes a moral certainty

when she is confronted with the pathetic figure of that trusting, white

face, with its whiter hair, so like her own father's. When the fatal

moment arrives she cannot meet her husband in her normal mood, but has

recourse to the wine-cup, not because she shrinks from the notion of

murder, but from dislike for the details of the operation. She has,

besides, all the little partialities of a woman who delights in the beauty

of the innocent flower and in perfumes of Arabia. Then the thought of

being a Queen and wearing a real crown is an intense delight to her.

Macbeth knew of her weakness for finery when he sought her approval of the

deed; it was his bribe for her help. And women of Lady Macbeth's

temperament do not care to be disappointed of their pleasures. To break

promise in these matters, she tells her husband, is as cruel as it would

be for her to kill her own child, that being a crime of which she is

incapable, for she is a devoted mother.

Nor must the marked contrast between her attitude before and after the

crime be overlooked. At its inception, murder is a mere means to an end,

which creates no misgivings in her mind. She sees "the future in the

instant," a future which gives her "the golden round," and bestows on her

husband "sovereign sway and masterdom." But no sooner is the crime

committed than her optimism fails her, for her husband seems no nearer to

"masterdom" than he was before. After the coronation there comes her

tragic reflection that the murder was a mistake. Unfortunately for her, it

was worse than a mistake; it was a blunder for which her husband deposes

her authority. No longer does he listen to her counsels, and although she

has not lost any of her charm or her womanliness, her spell over him has

gone for ever. Never again can she say, "From this time such I account thy

love," but merely ejaculates, "Did you send to him, _sir_?" No such cruel

awakening was in store for her husband. He knew from the first that his

crime must bring retribution and arouse the anger of the gods; but she,

for her part, foresaw no harm and no consequences. It is the shock of her

failure which paralyzes her power for further action. She is not

repentant, because she is unconscious of having sinned, and to the last

she is at a loss to understand why murdering an old man in his bed has

divorced her husband's affection from her, and turned him into a

bloodthirsty tyrant. Her brain is not big enough to take in what all these

things mean, and under strain of anxiety and disappointment her mind gives

way. This, then, is the Lady Macbeth that Mrs. Siddons identifies as "a

character which, I believe, is generally allowed to be most captivating to

the other sex, fair, feminine, nay, perhaps even fragile. Such a

combination only, respectable in energy and strength of mind and

captivating in feminine loveliness, could have composed a charm of such

potency as to fascinate the mind of a hero so dauntless as Macbeth."

There is no portrait in Shakespeare's gallery of women more generally

misunderstood than this one, the reason, perhaps, being that the poet has

not been credited with the desire or experience to draw a type of woman so

obviously disingenuous. But no one can read Shakespeare aright who thinks

that the men and women who live in our age do not resemble those who lived

in his time. Not until we read the Lady Macduff scene carefully can we

grasp the kind of woman Shakespeare had in his mind. Then it will be

evident that the real criminal in the play is Macbeth, whose conscience

warns him that "unnatural deeds beget unnatural troubles," and who,

against his better judgment, allows himself to be influenced, out of

connubial love, into an action of which he knows his wife to be incapable

of foreseeing the consequences. When disaster follows, we can set up that

"womanly defence" for her and say, "she meant no harm." There is no such

appeal possible for her husband, who is condemned from the first out of

his own mouth.

Shakespeare, it must be remembered, wrote the play of "Macbeth" probably

about 1605, when the Globe actors were still competing with the children

at Blackfriars, who, with their fine music, gorgeous costumes, and

"candlelight," attracted the well-to-do people of the town. In this

tragedy, therefore, Shakespeare revives interest in the Faustus legend,

once so popular at a rival house. The notion that man could set himself up

in opposition to the Deity was due to the teaching of the Reformation. If

man could defy the supremacy of the Pope, might he not challenge also

Omniscience Itself? Having once tasted of the Tree of Knowledge, Faustus

will not rest until he can know all, can do all, and dare all:

"Till swoln with cunning of a self-conceit,

His waxen wings did mount above his reach,

And, melting, heavens conspir'd his overthrow."

And Hecate prophesies of Macbeth that--

"He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear

His hopes 'bove wisdom, grace, and fear;

And you all know security

Is mortals' chiefest enemy."

To playgoers at the Globe, then, the interest in the play of "Macbeth" lay

in the man's daring attempt to defeat the supernatural. The scheme of

drama requires that Macbeth, like Faustus, shall be the pivot of the play.

Of necessity, then, it is an error of judgment for a stage-manager to

allow the part of Lady Macbeth to be overacted. Apart from the witches,

there are only two women in the play, neither of whom are of more than

common mould. They are alike in this, that both are by nature domestic,

and appreciate family ties; while in other respects they are finely

contrasted, and represent the old and the new type of character which must

have so interested dramatists in Shakespeare's time--that of the

Renaissance or Italian type, upholding the doctrine of expediency; and

that of the Reformation, demanding obedience to conscience.

SHAKESPEARE'S JEW AND MARLOWE'S CHRISTIANS.[7]

In the opinion of Heinrich Heine, Shylock, as a typical study of Judaism,

was merely a caricature. If this is a correct estimate of the character,

then Shakespeare's Jew is the Elizabethan Christian's notion of an

infidel in much the same way as the modern stage Paddy is the Englishman's

idea of an Irishman. Shakespeare, in fact, thrusts the conventional usurer

of the old Latin comedy into a play of love and chance and money-bags in

order to serve the purpose of a stage villain, and calls him a Jew.

Shylock is an isolated figure, unsociable, parsimonious, and relentless,

who tries to inflict harm on those who envy him his wealth and hate him

for his avarice.

Perhaps it is this marked isolation in which the dramatist has placed

Shylock that tempts the modern actor to represent him as a victim of

religious persecution, and therefore as one who does not merit the

misfortune that falls upon him. In this way the figure becomes tragic,

and, contrary to the dramatist's intention, is made the leading part; so

that when the Jew finally leaves the stage, the interest of the audience

goes with him. But if Shakespeare intended his comedy to produce this

impression, he was at fault in writing a last act in which every character

that appears is evidently not aware that Shylock's defeat was undeserved;

nor is there any evidence to show that Shakespeare designed his comedy as

a satire on the inhumanity of Christians. How then has it been brought

about that, while the exigencies of the drama require Shylock to be the

wrongdoer, he now appears on the stage as the one who is wronged?

In the first place, a change of opinion in a nation's religion or politics

causes a change in the theatre. New plays are written to give expression

to the new sentiment, and the old plays, when revived, must be modified

or readjusted to bring them in touch with the new opinions. To meet this

marked change in public taste managers and actors are forced to abandon

convention. It is useless at such a time to quote authorities. Public

opinion is arbitrary, and the genius of a Macklin or a Kean would fail to

arouse interest if it were out of sympathy with the newly awakened

conscience. A popular actor is tempted, therefore, to show the old figure

in the light of the new sentiment, and his impersonation is then set up as

a model to which every contemporary candidate for favour is expected to

conform.

It must be conceded, also, that our playgoers are rarely familiar with the

text of Shakespeare's plays, and thus increased opportunity is given to

the actor to overrule the author. Yet this does not explain why an

interpretation, quite unjustified by the text, should find favour with

many dramatic critics. If a sound judgment and true taste are to prevail

among playgoers, criticism should dissociate history from sentiment and

discriminate between old conventions and modern innovations. Few critics,

however, care to separate themselves from the opinions of their day; in

fact, so far as Shakespeare's plays are concerned, newspaper criticism is

often limited to the business of reporting. Otherwise it is difficult to

explain the chorus of unanimous approval with which the Press, as well as

the public, hailed the new Shylock in the picturesque and sympathetic

rendering given at the Lyceum in the early eighties.

Even if it be admitted that the terms of opprobrium with which Shylock is

accosted by all the Christians in Shakespeare's comedy are unnecessarily

harsh, even if it be granted that to Gratiano, Solanio, and Salarino he is

the "dog Jew," meaning a creature outside the pale of heaven, yet if we

read between the lines it is evident that religious differences are not

the chief grievance. Shylock is a Jew, therefore a moneylender; a

moneylender, therefore rich; rich, yet a miser, and therefore of little

value to the community, which remains unbenefited by his usurious loans.

This, in the eyes of the Christian merchants, is the real significance of

the word Jew. The Catholic Church, by forbidding Christians to take

interest, had unintentionally given the Jews a monopoly of the

money-market, but with it that odium which attaches to the usurer. This

point of view can be specially illustrated by Marlowe's Barabas, in "The

Jew of Malta," the precursor of Shylock. Barabas makes no secret as to the

unpopularity of his profession:

"I have been zealous in the Jewish faith,

Hard-hearted to the poor, a covetous wretch,

That would for lucre's sake have sold my soul.

A hundred for a hundred I have ta'en;

And now for store of wealth may I compare

With all the Jews in Malta."

His riches are blessings reserved exclusively for his race:

"And thus are we on every side enriched:

These are the blessings promised to the Jews."

* * * * *

"Rather had I a Jew be hated thus,

Than pitied in a Christian poverty:"

* * * * *

"Aye, wealthier far than any Christian."

* * * * *

"What more may Heaven do for earthly man

Than thus to pour out plenty in their laps."

This, then, was the Christian notion of the Jew in Shakespeare's time, and

while we have no reason for supposing that it was Shakespeare's also,

there is enough evidence to show that for the purpose of his story the

dramatist adopted the prevalent opinion that the Jew was a man who lived

solely for his wealth. In the face of this knowledge it is difficult to

understand the opinion of some commentators that Shylock was intended as a

protest against Marlowe's "mere monster." The similarity between Shylock

and Barabas has been pointed out by Dr. Ward. Both love money, both hoard

their wealth, both starve their servants to save expense, both defend

their religion as well as their usury, both love to despoil the Christians

and taunt them with their lack of fairness. Of course, every good critic

admits that there are two sides to an argument. Even Sir Walter Scott,

when reviewing a book, confesses to his son-in-law that his criticism

might have been very different were the mandate _dechirer_. And those who

want to defame Shylock's character will not find it a difficult thing to

do. The following illustration of the character is given after the manner

of a schoolboy's paraphrase:

Shylock thinks it folly to lend money without interest. Jacob was

blessed for thriving, even if he prospered by cunning means, and to

thrive by any means short of stealing is to deserve God's blessing.

Shylock can make money as quickly as ewes and rams can breed. He will

show how generous he can be towards Christians by lending Antonio

money without asking a farthing of interest, provided Antonio

consents, by way of a joke, to lose a pound of his flesh if he should

fail to repay the money on a special day; and this pound to be taken

from any part of his body which Shylock may choose, meaning, no

doubt, nearest to the heart, so as to ensure death. Yet Bassanio need

have no anxiety about the safety of his friend's life, because human

flesh is not a marketable commodity like mutton or beef.

Shylock has a servant who eats too much, and is so lazy that the Jew

is glad to part with him to the impecunious Bassanio, in the hope

that Launcelot will help to squander his new master's "borrowed

purse." For a similar reason he will himself go to Bassanio's feast,

although his religion forbids him to eat with Christians. His

daughter is not to have any pleasure from the masque, but to shut

herself up in the house so that no sound of Christian masquerading

may reach her ears. His last words to her are in praise of thrift.

The Jew's first exclamation on hearing that Jessica cannot be found

is that he has lost a diamond worth 2,000 ducats. He would like to

see his daughter dead at his feet if only he can have again the

jewels that are in her ears, and find the ducats in her coffin. It is

heartrending to think how Jessica has been squandering his treasures,

and of the additional loss to him in having to pay Tubal for trying

to find the girl; yet it is gratifying to hear of Antonio's

misfortunes; and since the merchant is likely to become bankrupt it

will be well to fee an officer in readiness to arrest him the moment

the time of the bond expires. If only Antonio can be got out of the

way, Shylock will be able to make as much money as ever he likes.

With this thought to console him he goes to the synagogue to say his

prayers.

When Antonio is arrested, Shylock demands the utmost penalty of the

law because of a "lodged hate and a certain loathing" he bears the

bankrupt. No amount of money will tempt him to forgo his rights, and

the letter of the law must be observed in every detail; not even a

surgeon must be allowed on the spot in the hope of saving this

lend-you-money-for-nothing merchant's life. When Portia frustrates

his purpose and he finds the law against him, he can still ask that

the loan be repaid "thrice" (Portia and Bassanio thought "twice" a

sufficiently tempting offer). And when Portia points out that, as an

alien, who has deliberately plotted to take the life of a Christian,

Shylock's own life is forfeited, as well as the whole of his wealth,

he still demands the return of his principal.

Now if we go back to the Latin Comedies and consider the origin of the

moneylender, we find a type of character similar to that of Shylock.

Moliere's Harpagon, who is modelled on the miser of Plautus, has a strong

resemblance to Barabas and to Shylock, although Shylock is undoubtedly the

most human. Reference has already been made to the likeness between

Barabas and Shylock, and it needs but a few illustrations to show the

resemblance between the English and French miser. Both are moneylenders,

who when asked for a loan declare that it is necessary for them to borrow

the sum required from a friend. Sheridan makes little Moses do the same.

Harpagon exclaims to his servant: "Ah, wretch, you are eating up all my

wealth," and Shylock says the same thing to Launcelot. Harpagon's, "It is

out of Christian charity that he covets my money," is not unlike the

reproach of Shylock, "He was wont to lend out money for a Christian

courtesy!" And "justice, impudent rascal, will soon give me satisfaction!"

is with Shylock "the Duke shall grant me justice!" While if we compare the

words which Moliere puts into the mouths of those who revile the miser,

they suggest the taunts thrown at Shylock. "I tell you frankly that you

are the laughing-stock of everybody, and that nothing delights people more

than to make game of you"; has its equivalent in the speech "Why, all the

boys in Venice follow him," etc. And "never does anyone mention you, but

under the name of Jew and usurer," tallies with Launcelot's "My master is

a very Jew." Other instances might be quoted.

Of course it cannot be overlooked that Shakespeare has given Shylock one

speech of undoubted power which silences all his opponents. For while the

Christians are unconscious of any wrongdoing on their side towards the

Jew, Shylock complains loudly and bitterly of the indignities thrust upon

him by the Christians, and in that often-quoted speech beginning "Hath not

a Jew eyes" he complains with an insistence which certainly claims

consideration. Now in so far as Shylock resents the want of tolerance

shown him by the Christians, he is in the right and Shakespeare is with

him; but when he tries to justify his method of retaliation and schemes to

take Antonio's life, not simply in order to revenge the indignities thrust

upon him, but also that he may put more money into his purse, Shylock is

in the wrong and Shakespeare is against him. For it is obvious that

Shylock does not seek the lives of Gratiano, Solanio, or Salarino, the men

who called him the "dog Jew," or the life of the man who ran away with his

daughter, but of the merchant who lends out money gratis, who helps the

unfortunate debtors, and who exercises generosity and charity. Whatever

blame attaches to the Christians on the score of intolerance, Antonio is

the least offender, except in so far as it touches Shylock's pocket. And

when Shylock the usurer asserts that a Christian is no better than a Jew,

he forgets that Christianity, in its original conception and purpose,

forbade the individual to prey on his fellow-creatures; and this is the

Christianity which Antonio practises.

Finally it is the intention of the comedy, as Shakespeare has designed it,

to illustrate the consequence of a too rigid adherence to the letter of

the law. The terms of the bond to which Shylock clings so tenaciously, and

for which he demands unquestioning obedience, ultimately endanger his own

life and with it the whole of his property. Shylock falls a victim to his

own plot in the same way that Barabas tumbles into his own burning

caldron; but the Christians spare the Jew's life and half his wealth is

restored to him, and restored to him by Antonio "the bankrupt," who is

still himself greatly in need of money. That Shylock must in return for

this mercy deny his faith is not in the eyes of the Christian a punishment

or even an act of malice, but a means of salvation.

The basis, then, of Shakespeare's comedy, it is contended, is a romantic

story of love and adventure. It shows us a lovable and high-minded

heroine, her adventurous and fervent lover, and his unselfish friend,

together with their merry companions and sweethearts. And into this happy

throng, for the purpose of having a villain, the dramatist thrusts the

morose and malicious usurer, who is intended to be laughed at and

defeated, not primarily because he is a Jew, but because he is a

curmudgeon; thus the prodigal defeats the miser.

* * * * *

If we look more closely into the two plays of Marlowe and Shakespeare, and

compare not only Barabas with Shylock, but also Marlowe's Christians with

those of Shakespeare, we find a dissimilarity in the portraiture of the

Christians so marked that it is impossible to ignore the idea that

Shakespeare, perhaps, wished to protest not against Marlowe's "inhuman

Jew," but against his pagan Christians. The variance, in fact, is too

striking to be accidental, as the following table will show:

THE FAMOUS TRAGEDY OF THE THE MOST EXCELLENT

RICH JEW OF MALTA. HISTORY OF THE MERCHANT

OF VENICE.

The play is named after the The play is named after the

Jew who owns the argosies. Christian who owns the

argosies.

The Christians take forcible The Christians ask a loan of

possession of all the Jew's the Jew on business terms.

wealth.

The Jew upbraids the Christians The Christian upbraids the

for quoting Scripture to Jew for quoting Scripture to

defend their roguery. defend his roguery.

The Christians break faith A Christian Court upholds

with the Turks, and also with the Jew's claim to his bond.

the Jew.

The Jew's daughter Abigail Jessica gives away her father's

rescues her father's money money to the Christians.

from the Christians.

The Jew's servant helps his Launcelot leaves his master

master to cheat the Christians. to join the Christians.

Two Christians try to cajole Lorenzo elopes with Jessica,

the Jew of his daughter, and die and finally inherits the Jew's

victims to his treachery. wealth.

Abigail becomes a Christian Jessica becomes a Christian

and is poisoned by her father. and is happy ever after.

The Jew is the means of Portia saves the Christian

saving the Christians from the from the Jew.

Turks.

The Christians are accessory The Christians spare the

to the Jew's death, which is an Jew's life, which is an act of

act of treachery on their part. mercy on their part.

It might be objected that the interval of seven years between the

production of the two plays renders it improbable that Shakespeare would

have intentionally contrasted his play with Marlowe's. But the popularity

of "The Jew of Malta" exceeded that of any other contemporary play.

Although it was not printed till 1604, it was produced in 1588, and

references to it in contemporary plays continue to be found until 1609.

Owing, besides, to Alleyne's extraordinary success as Barabas, the play

continued to be acted at intervals until 1594, between which date and 1598

Shakespeare had written his own comedy. The setting-off, too, of play

against play was a common practice, especially among the early Elizabethan

dramatists, and Greene did not hesitate to avail himself of the success of

Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus" to write his "Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay."

Now in so far as "The Jew of Malta" makes fun of friars and nuns, it would

be considered legitimate amusement by a Protestant audience. We have a

similar record on the French stage of revolutionary times when as M.

Fleury remarks: "All the convents in France were shown up at the theatres,

and the surest mode of drawing money to the treasury was to raise a laugh

at the expense of the Veil." But Marlowe goes further than this. He

attacks Christianity wantonly and aggressively, not only by portraying

Barabas's contempt for the Christians, but by making the Christians

contemptible in themselves, and wanting in all those virtues which were

upheld in the newly accessible Gospels. They are without honour and

chivalry or any sense of justice or loyalty. They are false and

treacherous to Jew and Turk alike, and Barabas can well say of them:

"For I can see no fruits in all their faith,

But malice, falsehood, and excessive pride,

Which methinks fits not their profession."

Further, the Christians take by force the Jew's money to pay the city's

tribute to the Turks, which after all is not paid, the Christians keeping

the money for themselves. It is but the bare truth that Barabas states

when he mutters:

"Who, of mere charity and Christian truth,

To bring me to religious purity,

And as it were in catechising sort,

To make me mindful of my mortal sins,

Against my will, and whether I would or no,

Seized all I had, and thrust me out o' doors."

And Marlowe also makes Barabas say, indignant at the Christians'

hypocrisy:

"Is theft the ground of your religion?

* * * * *

What, bring you scripture to confirm your wrongs?

Preach me not out of my possessions."

Scepticism is rampant throughout "The Jew of Malta," and Marlowe flaunts

his opinions before a theatre full of Christians. Not that it is contended

that Marlowe was himself an atheist, but in "The Jew of Malta" he seems,

perhaps out of a spirit of retaliation for the wanton attacks made upon

him, to be bent on exposing to ridicule the upholders of the orthodox

faith. In Marlowe's "Faustus" the good angel, the aged pilgrim, and the

final repentance satisfy the religious conscience, but his later play has

no such compensations. The boast of Barabas that, "some Jews are wicked as

_all_ Christians are," passes unchallenged.

Now it is unlikely that any member of Elizabeth's Court, any Protestant

nobleman who was responsible for upholding the reformed faith, much less

that any Catholic, could have been present at the performance of this play

without protesting against the poet's attitude towards Christianity. Nor

is it probable that the Lord Chamberlain's servants would overlook

Marlowe's taunts at the national religion spoken from the citizens'

playhouse. So that the poet-player whose sonnets were being circulated in

the houses of the nobility, whose patron was the Earl of Southampton, the

friend of Essex, and who had begun to be talked about at Court, might with

advantage to himself expose the other side of the picture, and defend the

abused Christians.

It remained then for Shakespeare to show that Christians, if they hated

the infidel, were not in themselves contemptible. In addition to her many

fascinations of mind and person, Portia possesses in an eminent degree a

sense of honour and a love of mercy. The obligations imposed upon her by

her father are religiously observed. Even when her lover is choosing the

caskets, and a glance would have put him out of his misery, her attitude

towards him is uncompromising. Later on she upholds the Jew's plea for

justice, while at the same time she urges the more divine attribute of

mercy.

Where Shakespeare, however, differs from Marlowe most strikingly is in the

character of the Merchant after whom the comedy is named. Barabas has

boasted that--

"he from whom my most advantage comes

Shall be my friend.

This is the life we Jews are used to lead."

Then he naively adds:

"And reason, too, for Christians do the like."

Now the dearest object of affection in the world for Antonio is Bassanio,

and it is the knowledge that his beloved friend has a rival for his love

in Portia, which causes Antonio's sadness; yet he not only gives up his

companion ungrudgingly to the enjoyment of greater happiness, but provides

him with the necessary means; and for this purpose he signs a perilous

bond with his bitterest foe. Of necessity he dislikes Shylock, whose

debtors he has so often saved from ruin. With Jessica's flight he had

nothing to do. He certainly never sanctioned it. Moreover, when misfortune

comes upon him he has no desire to escape from the penalty of the bond,

and when he himself is in poverty he saves from a similar calamity a man

who hates him. In face of these facts it is difficult to understand why

Heine should consider Antonio unworthy to tie Shylock's shoelaces!

Again, Bassanio is often called a fortune-hunter, but without

justification. He knew that he enjoyed the esteem and affection of Portia

while her father was yet alive. The "speechless messages" of her eyes

invited his return to Belmont. On his arrival he finds that she can no

longer dispose of herself, and yet, unlike most of the other suitors, he

does not on that account withdraw: he wins her because he loves her and

knows that love is worth more than gold or silver. When he hears of

Antonio's danger he rushes to his friend's side to offer his own life to

save him. It is to be noticed also that Portia's esteem for Antonio's

openly proclaimed virtues is drawn from a comparison with those of

Bassanio. They are by no means contemptible.

Jessica, again, who must be counted among the Christians, finds life at

home too hopelessly rigid to be longer endured. There is not a word in the

text to justify the belief that her father loves her, apart from his own

needs. She is expected to guard his gold and silver and to listen to his

discussions with Tubal and Chus about the hated Antonio and his bond. So

the girl must look after herself if she is to enjoy happiness in the

future. Lorenzo knows that to allow Jessica to forsake her father and to

rob him is a sin towards Heaven. He prays for punishment to be withheld

because she has married a Christian, and, to his credit, it must be

acknowledged that he is unconscious of any hypocrisy. As for the

"braggart" Gratiano and the remaining Christians, we tolerate them because

they love Antonio, the man who of all others most deserves our respect.

Perhaps as Christians they insist too much on their moral superiority, but

this is natural after Marlowe's play had been seen on the stage.

Of course, there are critics who will hold that Marlowe's Christians, in

some respects, are more life-like than Shakespeare's. Perhaps if "The

Merchant of Venice" had been written while Marlowe was alive, he would

have challenged Shakespeare to uphold that in matters of conduct where

money interests were involved there was any marked distinction between the

morals of the believer and the unbeliever. Marlowe might have contended

that out of one hundred Christians ninety-nine would act as his Governor

of Malta had done, though he was a Knight of St. John. It might not be

impossible for a Christian to persuade himself that money taken forcibly

from the infidel Jew, as a tribute, could justly be withheld from the

infidel Turk to whom it was due, and that it was folly to hesitate in

cutting the cord that would let the infidel Jew into the burning cauldron,

instead of the infidel Turk for whom it was designed, especially when one

hundred thousand pounds of the citizens' money would in that way be saved.

As a mere worldly truism the words that Barabas utters, when his daughter

changes her faith, have a deeper significance than the "noble platitudes"

of Lorenzo and Jessica:

"She that varies from me in belief,

Gives great presumption that she loves me not;

Or loving, does mislike of something done."

Shakespeare, probably, would have answered Marlowe's objection with the

assurance that there still remained the odd Christian out of every hundred

to be reckoned with, and that he himself was more interested in showing

the world what men ought to be like than what they actually were. But if

Shakespeare preferred to live outside the walls of reality, he did so only

in imagination, for he must have had a very practical knowledge of men's

dealings with each other. No doubt our great dramatist was not eager to

break with conventions or to imitate Marlowe by saying unpalatable truths

about the Christians at a time when he himself was still seeking the

favour of Elizabeth's Court.

THE AUTHORS OF "KING HENRY THE EIGHTH."[8]

The play of "Henry VIII." first appeared in print in 1623, seven years

after Shakespeare's death. It was published in the first collected edition

of the poet's dramas, and so became known to the world as his play. For

two centuries the genuineness of the drama was not called in question. The

earliest commentators never expressed misgivings on the subject, nor is

there evidence to show that Shakespeare's contemporaries disputed the

authorship. Choice extracts from the play have appeared in collections of

poetry, which compare favourably with selections from "Hamlet" or

"Macbeth." Wolsey's famous soliloquy is universally thought to be

Shakespeare's reflections on the vicissitudes of life. At the British

Museum will be found versions of the play in French, German, Italian, and

even one in Greek. The drama, moreover, is familiar to the playgoer, while

eminent actors and actresses, with no intention of impersonating the

creations of an inferior dramatist, have won distinction in the characters

of the Cardinal and of Queen Katharine. Yet, in the face of evidence that

is apparently convincing, it may be safely assumed that "Henry VIII." is

not Shakespeare's play in the sense in which we speak of "Hamlet" or

"Macbeth" as being his. Indeed, the statement has been put forth that not

one line of the play was written by its reputed author.

Now it is always an ungrateful task to defend an argument which no one

cares to accept, and the admirers of those scenes which have made actors

and actresses famous, and of those speeches which adorn our books of

extracts, are still too numerous and too enthusiastic to desire any other

dramatist than Shakespeare to be the author of them. Possession is nine

points of the law, and while tradition has the prior claim, public opinion

will not readily endorse the verdict of a handful of literary sceptics. On

the other hand, it must be conceded that even to challenge the genuineness

of a play attributed to the world's greatest dramatist does involve, to

some extent, a censure upon that play. The doubt implies that the play, as

a whole, does not average the work of Shakespeare's later dramas, that it

does not bear comparison with the "Winter's Tale," "Cymbeline," and the

"Tempest," plays which, in the date of their composition, are contemporary

with "Henry VIII.," and which were written at a time when the poet had

obtained complete mastery over the resources of his art. If there are

precedents of poets living till their once-glowing imaginations become

cold, there is no record of a dramatist losing technical skill which has

been acquired by the experience of a lifetime. It was but natural, then,

that there should exist a feeling of uneasiness in the minds of impartial

inquirers in regard to the authorship of this play, and it may be worth

while to consider the history of the controversy.

The earliest known mention of the play is by a contemporary, Thomas

Lorkin, in a letter of the last day of June, 1613. He writes that the day

before, while Burbage and his company were playing "Henry VIII." in the

Globe Theatre, the building was burnt down through a discharge of

"chambers," that is to say of small pieces of cannon. Early in the month

following Sir Henry Wotton writes to his nephew giving particulars of the

fire, and describing the pageantry, which was evidently an important

feature of the play:

"The King's players had a new play called 'All is True,' representing

some principal pieces of the reign of Henry the Eighth, which was set

forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty, even

to the matting of the stage; the Knights of the Order with their

Georges and Garter, the guards with their embroidered coats, and the

like; sufficient in truth, within a while, to make greatness very

familiar if not ridiculous."

Now, if Sir Henry Wotton is correct in his assertion that the play was a

_new_ one in 1613, it was probably the last play written by Shakespeare:

although some commentators contend that there is internal evidence to show

that the play was written during Elizabeth's reign, and that after her

death it was amended by the insertion of speeches complimentary to the new

sovereign, King James. In 1623 the play appears in print inserted in the

first collected edition of Shakespeare's dramas, by Heminge and Condell,

who were the poet's fellow-actors, and who claim to have printed all the

plays from the author's manuscripts. If, then, this statement were

trustworthy, there could be no reason to doubt the genuineness of the

drama. But the copies in the hands of Heminge and Condell were evidently

in some cases very imperfect, either in consequence of the burning of the

Globe Theatre, or by the necessary wear and tear of years. And it is

certain that, in several instances, the editors reprinted the plays from

the earlier quarto impressions with but few changes, sometimes for the

better, and sometimes for the worse. It has also been ascertained that at

least four of the plays in the folio were only partially written by

Shakespeare, while no mention is made of his possible share in "Pericles,"

the play having been omitted altogether. So that it is presumed that if

"Henry VIII.," in its present form, was a play rewritten by theatre-hacks

to replace a similar play by Shakespeare that was destroyed in the fire,

the editors would not be unlikely to insert it in the folio instead of the

original.

* * * * *

So long as Shakespeare's authorship was not doubted there seems to have

been no desire on the part of commentators to call attention to faults

which are obvious to every careful reader of the play. Most of the early

criticisms are confined to remarks on single scenes or speeches

irrespective of the general character of the drama and its personages.

Comments such as the following of Dr. Drake fairly represent those of most

writers until the middle of the last century. He writes in 1817: "The

entire interest of the tragedy turns upon the characters of Queen

Katherine and Cardinal Wolsey, the former being the finest picture of

suffering and defenceless virtue, and the latter of disappointed ambition,

that poet ever drew." Dr. Johnson, who ranks the play as second class

among the historical works, had previously asserted "that the genius of

Shakespeare comes in and goes out with Katherine. Every other part may be

easily conceived and easily written."

When, however, the play is judged as a work of art in its complete form,

the difficulty of writing favourably of its dramatic qualities becomes

evident by the apologetic modes of expression used. Schlegel remarks that

"Henry VIII." has somewhat "of a prosaic appearance, for Shakespeare,

artist-like, adapted himself to the quality of his materials. While others

of his works, both in elevation of fancy, and in energy of pathos and

character tower far above this, we have here, on the other hand, occasion

to admire his nice powers of discrimination and his perfect knowledge of

courts and the world." Coleridge is content to define the play as that of

"a sort of historical masque or show play"; and Victor Hugo observes that

Shakespeare is so far English as to attempt to extenuate the failings of

Henry VIII., adding, "it is true that the eye of Elizabeth is fixed upon

him!"

In an interesting little volume containing the journal of Emily Shore, who

made some valuable contributions to natural history, are to be found some

remarks upon the play written in the year 1836. The criticism is the more

noteworthy since Miss Shore was only in her sixteenth year when she wrote

it, and she then showed no slight appreciation of literature, especially

of Shakespeare:

"This evening my uncle finished reading 'King Henry VIII.' I must say

I was mightily disappointed in it. Whether it is that I am not

capable of understanding Shakespeare and cannot distinguish his

beauties, I do not know. There is no effort in Shakespeare's works;

he takes so little pains that what is interesting or noble or sublime

or finely exhibiting the features of the mind, seems to drop from his

pen by chance. One cannot help thinking that every play is executed

with slovenly neglect, that he has done himself injustice and that if

he pleased he might have given to the world works which would throw

into the shade all that he has actually written. To be sure this

gives one a very exalted idea of his intellect, for even if the mere

unavoidable overflowings of his genius excel the depths of other

men's minds, how magnificent must have been the fountain of that

genius whose very bubbles sparkle so beautifully! But to speak of

'Henry VIII.' in particular. Henry himself, Katherine and Wolsey,

though they display a degree of character, are not half so vigorously

drawn as I had expected, or as I would methinks have done myself. The

character of Cranmer exists more in Henry's language about him than

in his own actions."

To come now to the opinion of the German commentators. Gervinus observes:

"No one in this short explanation of the main character of 'Henry

VIII.' will mistake the certain hand of the poet. It is otherwise

when we approach closer to the development of the action and

attentively consider the poetic diction. The impression on the whole

becomes then at once strange and unrefreshing; the mere external

threads seem to be lacking which ought to link the actions to each

other; the interest of the feelings becomes strangely divided, it is

continually drawn into new directions and is nowhere satisfied. At

first it clings to Buckingham, and his designs against Wolsey, but

with the second act he leaves the stage; then Wolsey attracts our

attention in an increased degree, and he, too, disappears in the

third act; in the meanwhile our sympathies are more and more strongly

drawn to Katherine, who then likewise leaves the stage in the fourth

act; and after we have been thus shattered through four acts by

circumstances of a purely tragic character, the fifth act closes with

a merry festivity for which we are in no wise prepared, crowning the

King's loose passion with victory in which we could take no warm

interest."

Ulrici is even more severe in his remarks upon the play:

"The drama of 'Henry VIII.' is poetically untrue, devoid of real

life, defective in symmetry and composition, because wanting in

internal organic construction, _i.e._, in ethical vitality."

So also is Professor Hertzberg:

"A chronicle history with three and a half catastrophes varied by a

marriage and a coronation pageant, ending abruptly with the baptism

of a child in which are combined the elements of a satirical drama

with a prophetic ecstasy, and all this loosely connected by the

nominal hero whom no poet in heaven or earth could ever have formed

into a tragic character."

And Dr. Elze, who is a warm supporter of Shakespeare's authorship, admits

that the play--

"measured by the standard of the historical drama is inferior to the

other histories and wants both a grand historical substance and the

unity of strictly defined dramatic structure."

But it is not only with the general design of the play and its feeble

characterization that fault is found, but also with the versification. The

earliest criticism on the peculiarity of the metre of the play appeared

about 1757. It consists of some remarks, published by Mr. Thomas Edwards,

which were made by Mr. Roderick on Warburton's edition of Shakespeare. Mr.

Roderick, after pointing out that there are in the play many more lines

than in any other which end with a redundant syllable, continues:

"This Fact (whatever Shakespeare's design was in it) is undoubtedly

true, and may be demonstrated to Reason, and proved to sense; the

first by comparing any number of lines in this Play, with an equal

number in any other Play, by which it will appear that this Play has

very near _two_ redundant verses to _one_ in any other Play. And to

prove it to sense, let anyone read aloud an hundred lines in any

other Play, and an hundred in this; and if he perceives not the tone

and cadence of his own voice to be involuntarily altered in the

latter case from what it was in the former, I would never advise him

to give much credit to the information of his ears."

Later on we find that Emerson is also struck with the peculiarity of the

metre, and in his lecture on "Representative Men," observes:

"In 'Henry VIII.' I think I see plainly the cropping out of the

original rock on which his (Shakespeare's) own finer structure was

laid. The first play was written by a superior thoughtful man, with a

vicious ear. I can mark his lines and know well their cadence. See

Wolsey's soliloquy, and the following scene with Cromwell, where,

instead of the metre of Shakespeare, whose secret is that the thought

constructs the tune, so that reading for the sense will best bring

out the rhythm; here the lines are constructed on a given tune; and

the verse has even a trace of pulpit eloquence."

Now these quotations, it may be urged, were picked out with a view to

prejudice a favourable opinion of the play. But disparagements are, none

the less, important links in a question of authorship. In fact it was

because Shakespearian critics, of undisputed authority, declared that

"Henry VIII." was not a play worthy of the poet's genius that a few

advanced scholars were encouraged to come forward and pronounce that no

part of the play had been written by Shakespeare.

* * * * *

In the autumn of 1850 Mr. Spedding, the able editor of Bacon's works,

published a paper in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ in which he stated it to

be his belief that a great portion of the play of "Henry VIII." was

written by Fletcher; a conjecture that indeed had been anticipated and was

at once confirmed by other writers. Tennyson, on Mr. Spedding's authority,

had pointed out many years previously the resemblance of the style in some

parts of the play to Fletcher's. In fact, the conclusion arrived at by the

advanced critics was that the play has two totally different metres which

are the work of two different authors. On this point Mr. Spedding wrote:

"A distinction so broad and so uniform running through so large a

portion of the same piece cannot have been accidental, and the more

closely it is examined, the more clearly will it appear that the

metre in these two sets of scenes is managed upon entirely different

principles and bears evidence of different workmen."

This conclusion, however, was not endorsed by all commentators. It was

acknowledged that metrical evidence must not be neglected, and that "there

is no play of Shakespeare's in which eleven syllable lines are so frequent

as they are in "Henry VIII."; and even Swinburne, whose faith in

Shakespeare's authorship was unwavering, asserted "that if not the partial

work it may certainly be taken as the general model of Fletcher, in some

not unimportant passages." It was contended besides that the poet's hand

was hampered by a difficulty inherent in the subject, since of all

Shakespeare's plays, "Henry VIII." is the nearest in its story to the

poet's own time, and that the elliptical construction and the licence of

versification, which are peculiar to this play, are necessary in order to

bring the dialogue closer to the language of common life. In fact, Mr.

Spedding's opponents, while admitting an anonymous hand in the prologue

and epilogue, rejected the theory as to the manner in which the

collaboration was carried out, and asserted that the structure of the

play, the development of the action and the characters showed it to be the

work of one hand, and that Shakespeare's.

Another challenger of the metre was Mr. Robert Boyle, who endeavoured to

show, from a careful and elaborate study of Elizabethan blank verse, that

Shakespeare had no share whatever in the composition of the play, and that

whoever was the author who collaborated with Fletcher (in Mr. Boyle's

opinion it was Massinger) he certainly did not write before 1612, for the

metrical peculiarities of the verse are those of the later dramatic style,

of which the earliest characteristics did not make themselves felt in the

work of any poet till about 1607. It was after reading this paper that

Robert Browning, then the president of the New Shakspere Society, wrote

his final judgment on the play which was published in the Society's

"Transactions."

"As you desired I have read once again 'Henry the Eighth'; my opinion

about the scanty portion of Shakespeare's authorship in it was formed

about fifty years ago, while ignorant of any evidence external to the

text itself. I have little doubt now that Mr. Boyle's judgment is

right altogether; that the original play, presumably Shakespeare's,

was burnt along with the Globe Theatre; that the present work is a

substitution for it, probably with certain reminiscences of 'All is

true.' In spite of such huff-and-bullying as Charles Knight's for

example, I see little that transcends the power of Massinger and

Fletcher to execute. It is very well to talk of the tediousness of

the Chronicles, which have furnished pretty well whatever is

admirable in the characters of Wolsey and Katherine; as wisely should

we depreciate the bone which holds the marrow we enjoy on a toast.

The versification is nowhere Shakespeare's. But I have said my little

say for what it is worth."

There is yet another peculiarity that is special to this play, and it is

one which seems to have escaped the notice of the critics. The

stage-directions in it are unlike those of any other play published in the

first folio. In no other play are they so full, and so carefully detailed.

With the exception of "Henry VIII.," the stage-directions in the folio are

so few in number and so abbreviated that they appear to have been written

solely for the author's convenience. It is very rare that any reference is

made to movement, more than to indicate the entrance or exit of

characters, or to note that they fight or that they die. Sometimes the

characters are not so much as named, and the direction is simply, "Enter

the French Power and the English Lords"; at other times the directions

are so concise as to be almost incomprehensible to the modern reader, for

example, "Enter Hermione (like a statue)," "Enter Imogene (in her bed)"!

The legitimate inference, therefore, is that Shakespeare considered it to

be no part of his business to be explicit in these matters. It is

startling, then, to find, in the play of "Henry VIII.," a stage-direction

so elaborate as the following: "The Queen makes no answer, rises out of

her chair, goes about the Court, comes to the King, and kneels at his

feet, then speaks." No doubt in Elizabeth's time all stage movement was of

the simplest kind, and of a conventional order, so as to be applicable to

a great variety of plays, and what was special to any particular play in

the way of movement would, in Shakespeare's dramas, be explained at

rehearsal by the author. So that the detailed and minute stage-directions

that in the first folio are special to "Henry VIII." would seem to suggest

that the play was written at a time when the author was absent from the

theatre. To the actor, however, who is experienced in the technicalities

of the stage, these elaborate directions show that the author was not only

very familiar with what in theatrical parlance is known as stage

"business," but that he regarded the minute description of the actors'

movements as forming an essential part of the dramatist's duty. In fact,

the story of the play is made subservient to the "business" or to pageant

throughout. A dramatic incident, then a procession, another dramatic

incident, and then another procession. This seems to be the sort of effect

aimed at. Towards the year 1610 the taste for spectacle created by the

genius of Inigo Jones spread from the Court to the public theatre. Perhaps

this may account for Shakespeare's early retirement. He wrote plays and

not masques, and his genius lay in portraying the drama of human life.

Unlike Ben Jonson, he never devoted his talents to the service of the

stage carpenter. Seeing the altered condition of the public taste, there

would be nothing unnatural in his yielding his place silently and without

bitterness to others who were willing to supply the theatrical market with

the desired commodity. Had Shakespeare wanted money it would perhaps be

difficult to deny that he would have adapted his work to the requirement

of the times. But by 1610 he was very well able to live in retirement upon

a competent income, and it is difficult to believe that one who had

attained his wonderful balance of intellect and heart, of reason and

imagination, would have condescended to elaborate the details of baptismal

and coronation festivities.

And now in conclusion, what is there to be said for or against the

genuineness of the play? The supporters of the Shakespearian authorship

dwell upon the beauty of particular passages, and on the general

similarity, in many scenes, to Shakespeare's verse in his later plays; the

sceptics contend that it is a mistake to leave entirely out of view the

most important part of every drama--viz., its action and its

characterization; and unreasonable, moreover, to suppose that Shakespeare

had no imitators at the close of his successful career. But, say the

admirers, this kind of reasoning is no evidence that Shakespeare was not

the author of all that is most liked in the play. Here, however, we are

met with the argument that the popular scenes of all others in the play,

are those the most easily to be identified with the metre peculiar to

Fletcher. Then, again, it is hardly possible to accept the opinion of

Charles Knight, Professor Delius, and Dr. Elze that all the shortcomings

of the play, both in the structure and versification, are due to the fact

that the poet was hampered by a "difficulty inherent in the subject." Is

genius ever hampered by its subject? Does not history prove the contrary?

Have not the shackles put upon musicians, poets, painters, and sculptors

by their patrons, instead of checking their genius, elicited the most

exquisite products of their imagination? The conscientious inquirer,

therefore, who wades through a mass of literary criticism in the hope of

obtaining some elucidation of the question, seems only doomed to

experience disappointment. Nothing is gained but an unsettling of all

preconceived ideas. If expectations of a possible solution are aroused

they are not fulfilled because the unprejudiced mind refuses to accept

conjectural criticism and to believe more than it is possible to know.

Still, it must be admitted that in re-reading the play in the light of all

the more modern criticism upon it, the dissatisfaction with the inferior

portions becomes more acute, while the finer scenes shine with a lessened

glory. It is not only dramatic perception in the development of character

that is wanting, but the power which gives words form and meaning is also

lacking; the closely packed expression, the lifelike reality and

freshness, the rapid and abrupt turnings of thought, so quick that

language can hardly follow fast enough; the impatient audacity of

intellect and fancy with which we are familiar in Shakespeare's later

plays are not to be found in "Henry VIII." We miss even the objections

raised by modern grammarians, the idle conceits, the play upon words, the

puns, the improbability, the extravagance, the absurdity, the obscenity,

the puerility, the bombast, the emphasis, the exaggeration. Therefore it

must be admitted that in order to uphold "Henry VIII." as a late play of

Shakespeare's, it becomes necessary for his sincere admirers to invent all

sorts of apologies for its faults, and to overlook the consistent

development of the poet's genius from the close of the great tragedies to

the play of the "Tempest," "where we see him shining to the last in a

steady, mild, unchanging glory."

TROILUS AND CRESSIDA[9]

The mystery in which the history of this play is shrouded bewilders

students, for the information available is scanty. The play was entered on

the _Stationers' Register_ on February 7, 1603, as "The Booke of Troilus

and Cresseda," but it was not to be printed until the publisher had got

the necessary permission from its owners; and it was also the same book,

"as it _is_ acted by my Lord Chamberlen's men," and a play of

Shakespeare's had never before been entered on the _Register_ as one that

was being acted at the time of its publication, plays being seldom printed

in those days until they had become, to some extent, obsolete on the

stage. Then Mr. A. W. Pollard points out that the Globe managers often got

some publisher to enter a play on the _Stationers' Register_ in order to

protect their playhouse copies from pirates, and for this or some other

reason not yet fully explained, the play did not get printed. But on

January 28, 1609, another firm of publishers entered on the _Register_ a

book with a similar name, which soon afterwards was published, with the

following words on its title-page: "The Historie of Troylus and Cresseda.

As it _was_ acted by the Kings Majesties servants at the 'Globe.'" Shortly

afterwards this title-page was suppressed, being torn out of the book, and

another one inserted to allow of the following qualification: "The Famous

Historie of Troylus and Cresseid. Excellently expressing the beginning of

their loves, with the conceited wooing of Pandarus, Prince of Licia." On

both title-pages Shakespeare is announced as the author, and apparently

the object of the second title-page was to contradict the former statement

that the play had been acted at the Globe, or, in other words, was the

property of the Globe managers; and also to suggest by the title "Prince

of Licia" that the book was not the same play as the one the actors of the

theatre owned. In addition to the altered title there appeared on the back

of the new leaf a preface, and this was another unusual proceeding, since

there had not appeared before one attached to a Shakespeare play. No

further editions were issued until 1623, when Heminge and Condell

published their player's copy, with additions and corrections taken from

the 1609 quarto. It was inserted in the first folio in a position between

the Histories and Tragedies, where it appears unpaged after having been

removed from its original position among the Tragedies. No mention is made

of it in the contents of the volume. In the folio the play is called a

tragedy, which, if a correct title, is not the one given to it in the 1609

preface.

Now, in the Epilogue to "Henry IV., Part Two," we have this allusion to a

recently acted play by Shakespeare, which had not been well received by

the audience, "Be it known to you, as it is very well, I was lately here

in the end of a displeasing play, to pray your patience for it and to

promise you a better. I meant, indeed, to pay you with this." And in 1903

Mr. Arthur Acheson, of Chicago, in his book on "Shakespeare and the Rival

Poet," advanced the theory (1) that this "displeasing play," was "Troilus

and Cressida"; (2) that it was written at some time between the autumn of

1598 and the spring of 1599; (3) that it preceded and did not follow Ben

Jonson's "Poetaster," and therefore had nothing to do with the "War of the

Theatres"; (4) that it was written to ridicule Chapman's fulsome praise of

Homer and his Greek heroes--praise which was displayed in his prefaces to

the seven books of the Iliad issued in that year. On this point Mr.

Acheson says, forcibly:

"Chapman claims supremacy for Homer, not only as a poet, but as a

moralist, and extends his claims for moral altitude to include the

heroes of his epics. Shakespeare divests the Greek heroes of the

glowing, but misty, nimbus of legend and mythology, and presents them

to us in the light of common day, and as men in a world of men. In a

modern Elizabethan setting he pictures these Greeks and Trojans,

almost exactly as they appear in the sources from which he works. He

does not stretch the truth of what he finds, nor draw wilfully

distorted pictures, and yet, the Achilles, the Ulysses, the Ajax,

etc., which we find in the play, have lost their demigodlike pose.

How does he do it? The masterly realistic and satirical effect he

produces comes wholly from a changed point of view. He displays pagan

Greek and Trojan life in action--with its low ideals of religion,

womanhood, and honour, with its bloodiness and sensuality--upon a

background from which he has eliminated historical perspective."

Nor is this explanation inapplicable when we realize how exaggerated are

Chapman's eulogies on Homer. To take as an instance the following passage:

"Soldiers shall never spende their idle howres more profitablie then

with his studious and industrious perusell; in whose honors his

deserts are infinite. Counsellors have never better oracles then his

lines; fathers have no morales so profitable for their children as

his counsailes; nor shal they ever give them more honord injunctions

then to learne Homer without book, that being continually conversant

in him his height may descend to their capacities, and his substance

prove their worthiest riches. Husbands, wives, lovers, friends, and

allies, having in him mirrors for all their duties; all sortes of

which concourse and societie, in other more happy ages, have in steed

of sonnets and lascivious ballades, sung his Iliades."

Now, Mr. Acheson may be right as to the date in which "Troilus and

Cressida" was written, because neither in its dramatic construction nor in

its verse and characterization can the play consistently be called a later

composition, so that it is possible to contend that the whole of the play,

with the exception, perhaps, of the prologue, was written before "Henry

IV., Part Two." It can be urged, also, that Ben Jonson's "Poetaster,"

which was acted in 1601, contains allusions to Shakespeare's play, and to

its having been unfavourably received; then that certain incidents in the

life of Essex come into the play, and that these would not have been

mentioned had the play been written later than the spring of 1599, when

Essex had left for Ireland.

With regard to the "Poetaster," it is now generally admitted that there is

no evidence to support the assertion that, at the time this satirical play

was written, its author was on bad terms with Shakespeare. In it Jonson

announced his next production to be a tragedy, and in 1603 "Sejanus"

followed at the Globe; Shakespeare was in the cast, and may have been also

a collaborator. But the failure of this tragedy to please the patrons of

the Globe may have led to a temporary estrangement from that theatre, for

Jonson did not undervalue himself or forget that Chapman, as Mr. Acheson

has clearly shown, was always a bitter opponent of Shakespeare, while it

was characteristic of Jonson himself to be equally ready to defend or to

quarrel with friends. Now in the "Poetaster" Jonson refers to Chapman and

to his "divine" Homer, as, for instance, when he makes the father of Ovid

say: "Ay, your god of poets there, whom all of you admire and reverence so

much, Homer, he whose worm-eaten statue must not be spewed against but

with hallowed lips and grovelling adoration, what was he? What was he?...

You'll tell me his name shall live; and that, now being dead, his works

have eternized him and made him divine" (Act I., Scene 1.) Again, the

incident of the gods' banquet, although it is modelled by Ben Jonson upon

the synod of the Iliad, is obviously a satire upon Chapman's ecstatic

admiration for Homer's heroes. It may also refer to Shakespeare's "Troilus

and Cressida," for if this comedy was acted in 1598 it might well have

been suppressed after its first performance, since to the groundlings it

must have been "caviare," and to Chapman's allies, the scholars, a

malicious piece of "ignorance and impiety," while the Court would have

been sure to take offence at the Essex incidents. Besides Jonson, in the

"Poetaster," seems to be defending someone from attacks who has dared to

laugh at Chapman's idol. This appears in such witty expressions as "Gods

may grow impudent in iniquity, and they must not be told of it" ... "So

now we may play the fool by authority" ... "What, shall the king of gods

turn the king of good fellows, and have no fellow in wickedness? This

makes our poets that know our profaneness live as profane as we" (Act IV.,

Scene 3.) Continually in this play is Jonson attacking Chapman for the

same reason that Shakespeare did, and, more than this, Jonson proclaims

that the poet Virgil is as much entitled to be regarded "divine" as Homer,

while the word "divine" is seized hold of for further satire in the

remark, "Well said, my divine deft Horace."

Jonson says he wrote his "Poetaster" to ridicule Marston, the dramatist,

who previously had libelled him on the stage. In addition to Marston,

Jonson appeared himself in the play as Horace, together with Dekker and

other men in the theatre. It was but natural, then, for commentators to

centre their attention on those parts of the play where Marston and Horace

were prominent. But there is an underplot to which very little attention

hitherto has been given, and it is hardly likely, if Jonson was writing a

comedy in order to satirize living persons and contemporary events, that

his underplot would be altogether free from topical allusions. It may be

well, then, to relate the story of the underplot, and, if possible, to try

to show its significance. Julia, who is Caesar's daughter, lives at Court,

and she invites to the palace her lover, Ovid, a merchant's son, and some

tradesmen of the town, with their wives; then she contrives, unknown to

her father, for these plebeians to counterfeit the gods at a banquet

prepared for them. An actor of the Globe reports to one of Caesar's spies

that Julia has sent to the playhouse to borrow suitable properties for

this "divine" masquerade, so that while the sham gods are in the midst of

their licentious convivialities Caesar suddenly appears, led there by his

spy, and is horrified at the daring act of profanity perpetrated by his

daughter. "Be they the gods!" he exclaims,

"Oh impious sight!...

Profaning thus their dignities in their forms,

And making them like you but counterfeits."

Then he goes on to say:

"If you think gods but feigned and virtue painted,

Know _we_ sustain our actual residence,

And with the title of our emperor

Retain his spirit and imperial power."

And then, with correct imperial conventionality, he proceeds to punish the

offenders, locking up his daughter behind "iron doors" and exiling her

lover. Now, Horace--that is to say, Jonson--is supposed by the revellers

to be responsible for having betrayed the inspirer of these antics. But

this implication Jonson indignantly repudiates in a scene between Horace,

the spy, and the Globe player, in which Horace severely upbraids them for

their malice:

"To prey upon the life of innocent mirth

And harmless pleasures bred of noble wit,"

a rebuke that found expression in almost similar words in the 1609 preface

to Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida": "For it is a birth of (that)

brain that never undertook anything comical vainly: and were but the vain

names of comedies changed for titles of commodities or of plays for pleas,

you should see all those grand censors that now style them such vanities

flock to them for the main grace of their gravities." Now Jonson, if he,

indeed, intended to defend the attacks made on his friend Shakespeare's

play, has shown considerable adroitness in the delicate task he undertook,

for since the "Poetaster" was written to be acted at the Blackfriars, a

theatre under Court patronage, Jonson could not there abuse "the grand

censors," and this he avoids doing by making Caesar justly incensed at the

impudence of the citizens in daring to counterfeit the divine gods, while

Horace, out of reach of Caesar's ear, soundly rates the police spy and the

actor for mistaking the shadow for the substance and regarding playacting

as if it were political conspiracy. But what, it may be contended,

connects the underplot in the "Poetaster" directly with Shakespeare's play

is the speech of citizen Mercury and its satirical insistence that

immorality may be tolerated by the gods:

"The great god Jupiter, of his licentious goodness, willing to make

this feast no fast from any manner of pleasure, nor to bind any god

or goddess to be anything the more god or goddess for their names, he

gives them all free licence to speak no wiser than persons of baser

titles; and to be nothing better than common men or women. And,

therefore, no god shall need to keep himself more strictly to his

goddess than any man does to his wife; nor any goddess shall need to

keep herself more strictly to her god than any woman does to her

husband. But since it is no part of wisdom in these days to come into

bonds, it should be lawful for every lover to break loving oaths, to

change their lovers, and make love to others, as the heat of

everyone's blood and the spirit of our nectar shall inspire. And

Jupiter save Jupiter!"

Now this speech, it may be contended, is but a good-natured parody of

Shakespeare's travesty of the Iliad story, as he wrote it in answer to

Chapman's absurd claim for the sanctity of Homer's characters.

Shakespeare's consciousness of power might naturally have incited him to

place himself immediately by the side of Homer, but it is more likely that

he was interested in the ethical than in the personal point of view.

Unlike most of his plays, as Dr. Ward has pointed out, this comedy follows

no single original source accurately, because the author's satire was more

topical than anything he had previously attempted, except, perhaps, in

"Love's Labour's Lost." But Shakespeare for once had miscalculated not his

own powers, but the powers of the "grand censors," who could suppress

plays which reflected upon the morality or politics of those who moved in

high places; nor had he sufficiently allowed for the hostility of the

"sinners who lived in the suburbs." Shakespeare, indeed, found one of the

most striking compositions of his genius disliked and condemned not from

its lack of merit, but for reasons that Jonson so forcibly points out in

words put into the mouth of Virgil:

"'Tis not the wholesome sharp morality,

Or modest anger of a satiric spirit,

That hurts or wounds the body of the state;

But the sinister application

Of the malicious, ignorant, and base

Interpreter, who will distort and strain

The general scope and purpose of an author

To his particular and private spleen."

The stigma that rested on Shakespeare in his lifetime for having written

this play rests on him still, for some unintelligible reason, since no

man ever sat down to put his thoughts on paper with a loftier motive. But

so it is! Then, as now, whenever a dramatist attempts to be teacher and

preacher, all the other teachers and preachers in the world hold up their

hands in horror and exclaim: "What impiety! What stupendous ignorance!"

* * * * *

Gervinus, in his criticism of this play, compares the satire of the

Elizabethen poet with that of Aristophanes, and points out that the Greek

dramatist directed his sallies against the living. This, he contends,

should ever be the object of satire, because a man must not war against

the defenceless and dead. Yet Shakespeare's instincts as a dramatist were

too unerring for him to be unconscious of this fundamental principle of

his art. The stage in his time supplied the place now occupied by the

Press, and political discussions were carried on in public through the

mouth of the actor, of which few indications can now be traced on the

printed page, owing to the difficulty of fitting the date of composition

with that of the performance. Heywood, the dramatist, in his answer to the

Puritan's abuse of the theatre, alludes to the stage as the great

political schoolmaster of the people. And yet until recent years the

labours of commentators have been chiefly confined to making literary

comparisons, to discovering sources of plots, and the origin of

expressions, so that there still remains much investigation needed to

discover Shakespeare's political, philosophical, and religious affinities

as they appear reflected in his plays. Mr. Richard Simpson, the brilliant

Shakespearian scholar, many years ago pointed out the necessity for a new

departure in criticism, and added that it was still thought derogatory to

Shakespeare "to make him an upholder of any principles worth assertion,"

or to admit that, as a reasoner, he took any decided part in the affairs

which influenced the highest minds of his day. Now, in regard to politics,

government by factions was then the prevailing feature; factions

consisting of individuals who centred round some nobleman, whom the Queen

favoured and made, or weakened, according to her judgment or caprice. In

the autumn of 1597 Essex's influence over the Queen was waning, and after

a sharp rebuke received from her at the Privy Council table, he abruptly

left the Court and sullenly withdrew to his estate at Wanstead, where he

remained so long in retirement that his friends remonstrated with him

against his continued absence. One of them, who signed himself "Thy true

servant not daring to subscribe," urged him to attend every Council and to

let nothing be settled either at home or abroad without his knowledge. He

should stay in the Court, and perform all his duties there, where he can

make a greater show of discontent than he possibly could being absent;

there is nothing, adds this writer, that his enemies so much wish, enjoy,

and rejoice in as his absence. He is advised not to sue any more, "because

necessity will entreat for him." All he need do now is to dissemble like a

courtier, and show himself outwardly unwilling of that which he has

inwardly resolved. For by retiring he is playing his enemies' game, since

"the greatest subject that ever is or was greatest, in the prince's

favour, in his absence is not missed." In "Troilus and Cressida" we have a

similar situation, and we hear similar advice given. Achilles, like Essex,

has withdrawn unbidden and discontentedly to his tent, refusing to come

again to his general's council table. For doing so Ulysses remonstrates

with him in almost the same words as the writer of the anonymous letter.

"The present eye praises the present object.

Then marvel not, thou great and complete man,

That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax;

Since things in motion sooner catch the eye

Than what not stirs. The cry went once on thee,

And still it might, and yet it may again,

If thou would'st not entomb thyself alive,

And case thy reputation in thy tent;

Whose glorious deeds, but in these fields of late,

Made emulous missions 'mongst the gods themselves

And drave great Mars to faction."

Then Achilles replies:

"Of this my privacy I have strong reasons."

And Ulysses continues:

"But 'gainst your privacy

The reasons are more potent and heroical,

'Tis known, Achilles, that you are in love

With one of Priam's daughters.

ACHILLES: Ha! known?

ULYSSES: Is that a wonder?

* * * * *

All the commerce that you have had with Troy

As perfectly is ours as yours, my lord;

And better would it fit Achilles much

To throw down Hector than Polyxena."

If, again, we turn to the life and letters of Essex, we find there that

upon the 11th of February, 1598, "it is spied out by some that my Lord of

Essex is again fallen in love with his fairest B.: it cannot chance but

come to her Majesty's ears, and then he is undone." The lady in question

was Mary Brydges, a maid-of-honour and celebrated beauty. Again, in the

same month Essex writes to the Queen, "I was never proud till your Majesty

sought to make me too base." And Achilles is blamed by Agamemnon for his

pride in a remarkably fine passage. Then after news had come of the

disaster to the Queen's troops in Ireland, in the summer of 1598, Essex

reminds the Queen that, "I posted up and first offered my attendance after

my poor advice to your Maj. But your Maj. rejected both me and my letter:

the cause, as I hear, was that I refused to give counsel when I was last

called to my Lord Keeper." A similar situation is found in the play.

Agamemnon sends for Achilles to attend the Council and he refuses to come,

and later on, when he desires a reconciliation, the Council pass him by

unnoticed. It is almost impossible to read the third act of this play

without being reminded of these and other incidents in Essex's life. Nor

would Shakespeare forget the stir that had been created in London when in

1591 it was known at Court that Essex, at the siege of Rouen, had sent a

personal challenge to the governor of the town couched in the following

words: "Si vous voulez combattre vous-meme a cheval ou a pied je

maintiendrai que la querelle du rois est plus juste que celle de la ligue,

et que ma Maitresse est plus belle que la votre." And AEneas, the Trojan,

brings a challenge in almost identical words from Hector to the Greeks. It

is true that this incident is in the Iliad together with the incidents

connected with the withdrawal of Achilles, but Shakespeare selected his

material from many sources and appears to have chosen what was most likely

to appeal to his audience. Now it is not presumed that Achilles is Essex,

nor that Ajax is Raleigh, nor Agamemnon Elizabeth, or that Shakespeare's

audience for a moment supposed that they were; although it is to be

noticed that the Achilles who comes into Shakespeare's play is not the

same man at the beginning and end of the play as he is in the third act,

where, in conversation with Ulysses he suddenly becomes an intelligent

being and not simply a prize-fighter. To the injury of his drama,

Shakespeare here runs away from his Trojan story, and does so for reasons

that must have been special to the occasion for which the play was

written. For about this time, the Privy Council wrote to some Justices of

the Peace in Middlesex, complaining that certain players at the Curtain

were reported to be representing upon the stage "the persons of some

gentlemen of good descent and quality that are yet alive," and that the

actors were impersonating these aristocrats "under obscure manner, but yet

in such sorte as all the hearers may take notice of the matter and the

persons that are meant thereby. This being a thing very unfit and

offensive." The protest seems almost to suggest that the Achilles's scenes

in Shakespeare's play express, "under obscure manner," reflections upon

contemporary politicians. But, indeed, the growing political unrest which

marked the last few years of Elizabeth's reign could not fail to find

expression on the stage.

It must be remembered, besides, that the years 1597 to 1599 were marked by

a group of dramas which may be called plays of political adventure. Nash

had got into trouble over a performance of "The Isle of Dogs" at the Rose

in 1597. In the same year complaints were made against Shakespeare for

putting Sir John Oldcastle on the stage in the character of Falstaff. Also

at the same period Shakespeare's "Richard the Second" was published, but

not without exciting suspicions at Court, for the play had a political

significance in the eyes of Catholics: Queen Mary of Scotland told her

English judges that "she remembered they had done the same to King

Richard, whom they had degraded from all honour and dignity." Then on the

authority of Mr. H. C. Hart we are told that Ben Jonson brought Sir Walter

Raleigh, the best hated man in England, on to the stage in the play of

"Every Man Out of His Humour," in 1599, and, as a consequence, in the

summer of the same year it was decided by the Privy Council that

restrictions should be placed on satires, epigrams, and English histories,

and that "noe plays be printed except they be allowed by such as have an

authoritie." Dramatists, therefore, had to be much more circumspect in

their political allusions after 1599 than they were before.

There are two new conjectures therefore put forward in this article: (1)

That the underplot in the "Poetaster" contains allusions to Shakespeare's

play, and (2) that the withdrawal of Achilles is a reflection on the

withdrawal of Essex from Elizabeth's Court. Presuming that further

evidence may one day be found to support these suppositions, it is worth

while to consider them in relation to the history of the play.

And first to clear away the myth in connection with the idea that this is

one of Shakespeare's late plays, or that it was only partly written by the

poet, or written at different periods of his life. It may be confidently

asserted that Shakespeare allowed no second hand to meddle with a work so

personal to himself as this one, nor was he accustomed to seek the help of

any collaborator in a play that he himself initiated. We know, besides,

that he wrote with facility and rapidly. As to the date of the play, the

evidence of the loose dramatic construction, and the preference for

dialogue where there should be drama, place it during the period when

Shakespeare was writing his histories. The grip that he ultimately

obtained over the stage handling of a story so as to produce a culminating

and overpowering impression on his audience is wanting in "Troilus and

Cressida." In fact, it is impossible to believe that this play was written

after "Julius Caesar," "Much Ado," or "Twelfth Night." Nor is there

evidence of revision in the play, since there are no topical allusions to

be found in it which point to a later date than 1598 except perhaps in the

prologue, which could hardly have been written before 1601, and did not

appear in print before 1623. Again, it is contended that there is too much

wisdom crammed into the play to allow of its being an early composition.

But the false ethics underlying the Troy story, which Shakespeare meant to

satirize in "Troilus and Cressida," had been previously exposed in his

poem of "Lucrece":

"Show me the strumpet that began this stir,

That with my nails her beauty I may tear.

Thy heat of lust, fond Paris, did incur

This load of wrath that burning Troy did bear:

Thy eye kindled the fire that burneth here;

And here in Troy, for trespass of thine eye

The sire, the son, the dame, and daughter die.

"Why should the private pleasure of some one

Become the public plague of many moe?

Let sin, alone committed, light alone

Upon his head that hath transgressed so;

Let guiltless souls be freed from guilty woe:

For one's offence why should so many fall,

To plague a private sin in general.

"Lo, here weeps Hecuba, here Priam dies,

Here manly Hector faints, here Troilus swounds,

Here friend by friend in bloody charnel lies,

And friend to friend gives unadvised wounds,

And one man's lust these many lives confounds;

Had doting Priam check'd his son's desire,

Troy had been bright with fame, and not with fire."

The difficulty with commentators is the knowledge that the play might have

been written yesterday, while the treatment of the subject, in its

modernity, is as far removed from "The Tempest" as it is from "Henry V."

Now, if the drama be recognized as a satire written under provocation and

with extraordinary mental energy, the date of the composition can be as

well fixed for 1598, when Shakespeare was thirty-four years old, as for

the year 1609. There is, besides, something to be said with regard to its

vocabulary, as Mr. Richard Simpson has shown, which is peculiar to this

play alone. Shakespeare introduces into it a large number of new words

which he had never used before and never employed afterwards. The list is

a long one. There are 126 latinized words that are coined or used only for

this play, words such as propugnation, protractive, Ptisick, publication,

cognition, commixture, commodious, community, complimental. And in

addition to all the latinized words there are 124 commoner words simple

and compound, not elsewhere to be found in the poet's plays, showing an

unwonted search after verbal novelty.

We will now, with the help of the new information, attempt to unravel the

mystery as to the history of the play. The creation of the character of

Falstaff in "Henry IV." (Part I.) brought Shakespeare's popularity, as a

dramatist, to its zenith, and he seized the opportunity to reply to the

attacks made upon himself, as a poet, by his rival poet, Chapman, and

wrote a play giving a modern interpretation to the story of Troy, and

working into the underplot some political allusion to Essex and the Court.

The play may have been acted at the Curtain late in 1598, or at the Globe

in the spring of 1599, or, perhaps, privately at some nobleman's mansion,

who might have been one of Essex's faction. It was not liked, and

Shakespeare experienced his first and most serious reverse on the stage.

But he quickly retrieved his position by producing another Falstaff play,

"Henry IV." (Part II.), in the summer of 1599, followed by "Henry V." in

the same autumn, when Essex's triumphs in Ireland are predicted.

Shakespeare, none the less, must have felt both grieved and annoyed by the

treatment his satirical comedy had received from the hands of the "grand

censors." So at Christmas, 1601, when Ben Jonson produced his "Poetaster"

at Blackfriars, the younger dramatist defended his friend from the silly

objections which had been made to the Trojan comedy. Then early in 1603 a

revival of "Troilus and Cressida" may have been contemplated at the

Globe, and also its publication, but the death of Essex was still too near

to the memory of Londoners to make this possible, and the suggestion may

have been dropped on the eve of its fulfilment; Shakespeare, meanwhile,

had written a prologue, to be spoken by an actor in armour, in imitation

of Jonson's prologue, with a view to protect his play from further

hostility. In 1609 Shakespeare was preparing to give up his connection

with the stage, and may have handed his copy of the play to some

publishers, for a consideration, and the book was then printed. The Globe

players, however, demurred and claimed the property as theirs. The

publishers then removed their first title page and inserted another one to

give the appearance to the reader of the play being new. They also wrote a

preface to show that the publication, if unauthorized, was warranted,

since the play had not been acted on the _public_ stage. The real object

of the preface, however, was to defend the play from the attacks of the

"grand censors," who thought that the comedy had some deep political

significance, and was not merely intended to amuse and instruct. It also

shows the writer's resentment at the high-handed action of the "grand

possessors," the Globe players, who were unwilling either to act the play

themselves or yet to allow it to be published.

III

SOME STAGE VERSIONS

"THE MERCHANT OF VENICE."

"ROMEO AND JULIET."

"HAMLET."

"KING LEAR."

III

SOME STAGE VERSIONS

A critical and genuine appreciation of the poet's work imposes a reverence

for the constructive plan as well as for the text. Why should a

Shakespeare, whose cunning hand divined the dramatic sequence of his

story, have it improved by a modern playwright or actor-manager? The

answer will be: Because the modern experts are familiar with theatrical

effects of a kind Shakespeare never lived to see. But if a modern

rearrangement of Shakespeare's plays is necessary to suit these theatrical

effects, the question may well be discussed as to whether rearrangements

with all their modern advantages are of more dramatic value than the

perfect work of the master.

Among all innovations on the stage, perhaps the most far-reaching in its

effect on dramatic construction was the act-drop. Elizabethan dramatists

had to round off a scene to a conclusion, for there was no kindly curtain

to cover retreat from a deadlock. The art of modern play-writing is to

arrest the action suddenly upon a thrilling situation, and leave the

characters between the horns of a dilemma. At a critical moment the

act-drop comes down; and after the necessary interval goes up again,

showing that the characters have in the meantime somehow got out of the

difficulty. This leaves much to the fancy, but does not feed the

imagination. This leading up to a terminal climax, a "curtain," is but the

appetite for the feast, and not the food itself. It assumes that the

palate of the audience is depraved in its taste, and that it is one for

which the best work is perhaps not best suited; but it is a form of art,

and plays can be written after this form, and well written. Apart,

however, from the question as to the theatrical gain of such a crude

device as a "curtain," Shakespeare wrote with consummate art to show the

tide of human affairs, its flow and its ebb, and his constructive plan is

particularly unsuited to the act-drop. Upon one of Shakespeare's plays the

curtain falls like the knife of a guillotine, and the effect is similar to

ending a piece of music abruptly at its highest note, simply for the sake

of creating some startling impression.

The way in which some modern managers, both here and in America, set about

producing a play of Shakespeare's seems to be as follows: Choose your

play, and be sure to note carefully in what country the incidents take

place. Having done this, send artists to the locality to make sketches of

the country, of its streets, its houses, its landscape, of its people, and

of their costumes. Tell your artists that they must accurately reproduce

the colouring of the sky, of the foliage, of the evening shadows, of the

moonlight, of the men's hair and the women's eyes; for all these details

are important to the proper understanding of Shakespeare's play. Send,

moreover, your leading actor and actress to spend some weeks in the

neighbourhood that they may become acquainted with the manners, the

gestures, the emotions of the residents, for these things also are

necessary to the proper understanding of the play. Then, when you have

collected, at vast expense, labour, and research, this interesting

information about a country of which Shakespeare was possibly entirely

ignorant, thrust all this extraneous knowledge into your representation,

whether it fit the context or not; let it justify the rearrangement of

your play, the crowding of your stage with supernumeraries, the addition

of incidental songs and glees, to say nothing of inappropriateness of

costume and misconception of character, until the play, if it does not

cease to be intelligible or consistent, thrives only by virtue of its

imperishable vitality, or by its strength of characterization, and by its

brilliancy of dialogue.

These are but a few of the inconsistencies consequent upon the rage for

foisting foreign local colour into a Shakespearian play. But if the same

amount of industry bestowed in ascertaining the manners and customs of

foreign countries had been spent in acquiring a knowledge of Elizabethan

playing, and in forming some notion of what was uppermost in Shakespeare's

mind when he wrote his plays, we should have had representations which, if

possibly less pictorially successful, would have been more dramatic, more

human, and more consistent.

To use a homely image, the question of the stage representation of

Shakespeare's plays is just the question of the foot and the shoe. Must we

cut off a toe here, and slice off a little from the heel there; or stretch

the shoe upon the last, and, if need be, even buy a new pair of shoes? It

is not enough to say that modern audiences demand "curtain" and scenery

for Shakespeare's plays. No public demands what is not offered to it.

Before demand can create supply, a sample of the new ware must be shown.

Most modern playgoers are unaware of the methods of Elizabethan

stage-playing, and therefore cannot condemn them as unsatisfactory. They

may have heard something about old tapestry, rushes, and boards, but they

have no reason to infer that our greatest dramatists were "thoroughly

handicapped by the methods of representation then in vogue."

It is indeed to be regretted that no scholar nor actor has thought it

necessary to study the art of Shakespeare's dramatic construction from the

original copies. Some of our University men have written intelligently

about Shakespeare's characters and his philosophy, and one of them has

done something more than this. But it is doubtful if any serious attention

has been given yet to the way Shakespeare conducts his story and brings

his characters on and off the stage, a matter of the highest moment, since

the very life of the play depends upon the skill with which this is done.

And how many realize that the art of Shakespeare's dramatic construction

differs fundamentally from that of the modern dramatist? In fact, a Pinero

would no more know how to set about writing a play for the Elizabethan

stage, in which the characters appear in the course of the story in

twenty-six different localities during twenty-six years, than Shakespeare

would know how to make twenty-six persons live their lives through a whole

play in one room or on one day.

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.[10]

The story of this play is as follows. In the opening scene, the words of

Antonio to Bassanio--

"Well, tell me now, what lady is the same

To whom you swore a secret pilgrimage,

That you _to-day_ promised to tell me of?"

And Lorenzo's apology for withdrawing--

"My lord Bassanio, since you have _found_ Antonio

We two will leave you:"

and that of Salarino--

"We'll make our leisures to attend on _yours_"--

lead us to suppose that Bassanio has come by appointment to meet Antonio,

and that Antonio should be represented on his entrance as somewhat

anxiously expecting his friend, and we may further presume from Solanio's

words to Salarino in Act II., Scene 8--

"I think he only loves the world for _him_"--

that there is a special cause for Antonio's sadness, beyond what he

chooses to admit to his companions, and that is the knowledge that he is

about to lose Bassanio's society.

With regard to Bassanio, we learn, in this first scene, that he is already

indebted to Antonio, that he desires to borrow more money from his friend,

to free himself from debt, before seeking the hand of Portia, a rich

heiress, and that Portia has herself encouraged him to woo her. In fact,

we are at once deterred from associating purely sordid motives with

Bassanio's courtship by his glowing description of her virtues and beauty,

as also by Antonio's high opinion of Bassanio's character.

Antonio, however, has not the money at hand, and it is arranged that

Bassanio is to borrow the required sum on Antonio's security. The entrance

of Gratiano is skilfully timed to dispel the feeling of depression that

Antonio's sadness would otherwise leave upon the audience, and to give the

proper comedy tone to the opening scene of a play of comedy.

In Scene 2 we are introduced to the heroine and her attendant, and learn,

what probably Bassanio did not know, that Portia by her father's will is

powerless to bestow her hand on the man of her choice, the stratagem, as

Nerissa supposes, being devised to insure Portia's obtaining "one that

shall rightly love." This we may call the first or casket-complication.

Portia's strong sense of humour is revealed to us in her description of

the suitors "that are already come," and her moral beauty in her

determination to respect her father's wishes. "If I live to be as old as

Sibylla, I will die as chaste as Diana, unless I be obtained by the manner

of my father's will." The action of the play is not, however, continued

till Nerissa questions Portia about Bassanio, in a passage that links this

scene to the last, and confirms, in the minds of the audience, the truth

of the lover's statement--

"Sometimes from her eyes

I did receive fair speechless messages."

A servant enters to announce the leave-taking of four of the suitors, who

care not to submit to the conditions of the will, and to herald the

arrival of a fifth, the Prince of Morocco.

We now come to the third scene of the play. Bassanio enters conversing

with one, of whom no previous mention has been made but whose first

utterance tells us he is the man of whom the required loan is demanded,

and before the scene has ended, we discover further that he is to be the

chief agent in bringing about the second, or pound-of-flesh-complication.

There are no indications given us of Shylock's personal appearance, except

that he has been dubbed "old Shylock," which is, perhaps, more an

expression of contempt than of age, for he is never spoken of as old man,

or old Jew, and is chiefly addressed simply as Shylock or Jew; but the

epithet is one recognized widely enough for Shylock himself to quote--

"Well, thou shalt see, thy eyes shall be thy judge,

The difference of _old Shylock_ and Bassanio:"

as also does the Duke--

"Antonio and _old Shylock_ both stand forth."

So was it with Silas Marner. George Eliot writes: "He was so withered and

yellow that though he was not yet forty the children always called him

'old master Marner.'" However, the language that Shakespeare has put into

the mouth of Shylock does not impress us as being that of a man whose

physical and mental faculties are in the least impaired by age; so

vigorous is it at times that Shylock might be pictured as being an Edmund

Kean-like figure, with piercing black eyes and an elastic step. From

Shylock's expression, "the _ancient_ grudge I bear him," and Antonio's

abrupt manner towards Shylock, we may conclude that the two men are

avowed enemies, and have been so for some time previous to the opening of

the play. This fact should, from the very first, be made evident to the

audience by the emphasis Shylock gives to Antonio's name, an emphasis that

is repeated every time the name occurs till he has made sure there is no

doubt about who the man is that shall become bound.

The dramatic purpose of this scene is to show us Shylock directly plotting

to take the life of Antonio, and the means he employs to this end are

contrived with much skill. Shylock, in his opening soliloquy, discloses

his intention to the audience, and at once deprives himself of its

sympathy by admitting that his motives are guided more by personal

considerations than by religious convictions--

"I hate him for he is a Christian,

But _more_ for that in low simplicity

He lends out money gratis and brings down

The rate of usance here with us in Venice."

The three first scenes should be so acted on the stage as to accentuate in

the minds of the audience (1) that Bassanio is the very dear friend of

Antonio; (2) that Portia and Bassanio are in love with each other; (3)

that Antonio and Shylock are avowed enemies; (4) that Shylock conspires

against Antonio's life with full intent to take it should the bond become

forfeit.

We are again at Belmont and witness the entrance of the Prince of Morocco,

and the whole scene has a poetic dignity and repose which form a striking

contrast to the preceding one. We get in the character of the Prince of

Morocco a preliminary sketch of Shakespeare's Othello, and certainly the

actor, to do justice to the part, should have the voice and presence of a

Salvini. The second scene shows us the Jew's man about to leave his rich

master to become the follower of Bassanio, and the latter, now possessed

of Shylock's money, preparing his outfit for the journey to Belmont,

whither Gratiano also is bent on going. There is, besides, some talk of

merrymaking at night-time, which fitly leads up to our introduction to

Jessica in the next scene, and prepares us to hear of her intrigue with

Lorenzo. Jessica is the third female character in the play, and the

dramatist intends her to appear, in contrast to Portia and Nerissa, as a

tragic figure, dark, pale, melancholy, demure, yet chaste in thought and

in action, and with a heart susceptible of tender and devoted love. She

plans her elopement with the same fixedness of purpose as the father

pursues his revenge. In Scene 4 the elopement incident is advanced a step

by Lorenzo receiving Jessica's directions "how to take her from her

father's house," and a little further in the next scene, by Shylock being

got out of the way, when we hear Jessica's final adieu. It is worth noting

in this scene that, at a moment when we are ready to sympathize with

Shylock, who is about to lose his daughter, the dramatist denies us that

privilege by further illustrating the malignancy of the man's character.

He has had an unlucky dream; he anticipates trouble falling upon his

house; he is warned by Launcelot that there are to be masques at night; he

admits that he is not invited to Bassanio's feast out of love, but out of

flattery, and still he can say--

"But yet I'll go _in hate_, to feed upon

The prodigal Christian."

No personal inconvenience must hinder the acceleration of Antonio's

downfall.

In Scene 6 the elopement takes place, but is almost prevented by the

entrance of Antonio, whose solemn voice ringing clear on the stillness of

the night is a fine dramatic contrast to the whispering of the lovers.

Shakespeare now thinks it time to return to Belmont, and we are shown the

Prince of Morocco making his choice of the caskets, and we learn his fate.

But he bears his disappointment like a hero, and his dignified retreat

moves Portia to exclaim: "A _gentle_ riddance!"