Comparison of the English and Spanish Theatres--Spirit of the Romantic
Drama--Shakspeare--His age and the circumstances of his Life.
In conformity with the plan which we laid down at the first, we shall now
proceed to treat of the English and Spanish theatres. We have been, on
various occasions, compelled in passing to allude cursorily, sometimes to
the one and sometimes to the other, partly for the sake of placing, by
means of contrast, many ideas in a clearer light, and partly on account of
the influence which these stages have had on the theatres of other
countries. Both the English and Spaniards possess a very rich dramatic
literature, both have had a number of prolific and highly talented
dramatists, among whom even the least admired and celebrated, considered
as a whole, display uncommon aptitude for dramatic animation, and insight
into the essence of theatrical effect. The history of their theatres has
no connexion with that of the Italians and French, for they developed
themselves wholly out of the abundance of their own intrinsic energy,
without any foreign influence: the attempts to bring them back to an
imitation of the ancients, or even of the French, have either been
attended with no success, or not been made till a late period in the decay
of the drama. The formation of these two stages, again, is equally
independent of each other; the Spanish poets were altogether unacquainted
with the English; and in the older and most important period of the
English theatre I could discover no trace of any knowledge of Spanish
plays, (though their novels and romances were certainly known,) and it was
not till the time of Charles II. that translations from Calderon first
made their appearance.
So many things among men have been handed down from century to century and
from nation to nation, and the human mind is in general so slow to invent,
that originality in any department of mental exertion is everywhere a rare
phenomenon. We are desirous of seeing the result of the efforts of
inventive geniuses when, regardless of what in the same line has elsewhere
been carried to a high degree of perfection, they set to work in good
earnest to invent altogether for themselves; when they lay the foundation
of the new edifice on uncovered ground, and draw all the preparations, all
the building materials, from their own resources. We participate, in some
measure, in the joy of success, when we see them advance rapidly from
their first helplessness and need to a finished mastery in their art. The
history of the Grecian theatre would afford us this cheering prospect
could we witness its rudest beginnings, which were not preserved, for they
were not even committed to writing; but it is easy, when we compare
together Aeschylus and Sophocles, to form some idea of the preceding
period. The Greeks neither inherited nor borrowed their dramatic art from
any other people; it was original and native, and for that very reason was
it able to produce a living and powerful effect. But it ended with the
period when Greeks imitated Greeks; namely, when the Alexandrian poets
began learnedly and critically to compose dramas after the model of the
great tragic writers. The reverse of this was the case with the Romans:
they received the form and substance of their dramas from the Greeks; they
never attempted to act according to their own discretion, and to express
their own way of thinking; and hence they occupy so insignificant a place
in the history of dramatic art. Among the nations of modern Europe, the
English and Spaniards alone (for the German stage is but forming), possess
as yet a theatre entirely original and national, which, in its own
peculiar shape, has arrived at maturity.
Those critics who consider the authority of the ancients as models to be
such, that in poetry, as in all the other arts, there can be no safety out
of the pale of imitation, affirm, that as the nations in question have not
followed this course, they have brought nothing but irregular works on the
stage, which, though they may possess occasional passages of splendour and
beauty, must yet, as a whole, be for ever reprobated as barbarous, and
wanting in form. We have already, in the introductory part of these
Lectures, stated our sentiments generally on this way of thinking; but we
must now examine the subject somewhat more closely.
If the assertion be well founded, all that distinguishes the works of the
greatest English and Spanish dramatists, a Shakspeare and a Calderon, must
rank them far below the ancients; they could in no wise be of importance
for theory, and would at most appear remarkable, on the assumption that
the obstinacy of these nations in refusing to comply with the rules, may
have afforded a more ample field to the poets, to display their native
originality, though at the expense of art. But even this assumption, on a
closer examination, appears extremely questionable. The poetic spirit
requires to be limited, that it may move with a becoming liberty, within
its proper precincts, as has been felt by all nations on the first
invention of metre; it must act according to laws derivable from its own
essence, otherwise its strength will evaporate in boundless vacuity.
The works of genius cannot therefore be permitted to be without form; but
of this there is no danger. However, that we may answer this objection of
want of form, we must understand the exact meaning of the term form, since
most critics, and more especially those who insist on a stiff regularity,
interpret it merely in a mechanical, and not in an organical sense. Form
is mechanical when, through external force, it is imparted to any material
merely as an accidental addition without reference to its quality; as, for
example, when we give a particular shape to a soft mass that it may retain
the same after its induration. Organical form, again, is innate; it
unfolds itself from within, and acquires its determination
contemporaneously with the perfect development of the germ. We everywhere
discover such forms in nature throughout the whole range of living powers,
from the crystallization of salts and minerals to plants and flowers, and
from these again to the human body. In the fine arts, as well as in the
domain of nature--the supreme artist, all genuine forms are organical,
that is, determined by the quality of the work. In a word, the form is
nothing but a significant exterior, the speaking physiognomy of each
thing, which, as long as it is not disfigured by any destructive accident,
gives a true evidence of its hidden essence.
Hence it is evident that the spirit of poetry, which, though imperishable,
migrates, as it were, through different bodies, must, so often as it is
newly born in the human race, mould to itself, out of the nutrimental
substance of an altered age, a body of a different conformation. The forms
vary with the direction taken by the poetical sense; and when we give to
the new kinds of poetry the old names, and judge of them according to the
ideas conveyed by these names, the application which we make of the
authority of classical antiquity is altogether unjustifiable. No one
should be tried before a tribunal to which he is not amenable. We may
safely admit, that the most of the English and Spanish dramatic works are
neither tragedies nor comedies in the sense of the ancients: they are
romantic dramas. That the stage of a people who, in its foundation and
formation, neither knew nor wished to know anything of foreign models,
will possess many peculiarities; and not only deviate from, but even
exhibit a striking contrast to, the theatres of other nations who had a
common model for imitation before their eyes, is easily supposable, and we
should only be astonished were it otherwise. But when in two nations,
differing so widely as the English and Spanish, in physical, moral,
political, and religious respects, the theatres (which, without being
known to each other, arose about the same time,) possess, along with
external and internal diversities, the most striking features of affinity,
the attention even of the most thoughtless cannot but be turned to this
phenomenon; and the conjecture will naturally occur, that the same, or, at
least, a kindred principle must have prevailed in the development of both.
This comparison, however, of the English and Spanish theatre, in their
common contrast with every dramatic literature which has grown up out of
an imitation of the ancients, has, so far as we know, never yet been
attempted. Could we raise from the dead a countryman, contemporary, and
intelligent admirer of Shakspeare, and another of Calderon, and introduce
to their acquaintance the works of the poet to which in life they were
strangers, they would both, without doubt, considering the subject rather
from a national than a general point of view, enter with difficulty into
the above idea, and have many objections to urge against it. But here a
reconciling criticism [Footnote: This appropriate expression was, if we
mistake not, first used by M. Adam Müller in his _Lectures on German
Science and Literature_. If, however, he gives himself out for the
inventor of the thing itself, he is, to use the softest word, in error.
Long before him other Germans had endeavoured to reconcile the
contrarieties of taste of different ages and nations, and to pay due
homage to all genuine poetry and art. Between good and bad, it is true, no
reconciliation is possible.] must step in; and this, perhaps, may be best
exercised by a German, who is free from the national peculiarities of
either Englishmen or Spaniards, yet by inclination friendly to both, and
prevented by no jealousy from acknowledging the greatness which has been
earlier exhibited in other countries than in his own.
The similarity of the English and Spanish theatres does not consist merely
in the bold neglect of the Unities of Place and Time, and in the
commixture of comic and tragic elements: that they were unwilling or
unable to comply with the rules and with right reason, (in the meaning of
certain critics these terms are equivalent,) may be considered as an
evidence of merely negative properties. The ground of the resemblance lies
far deeper, in the inmost substance of the fictions, and in the essential
relations, through which every deviation of form, becomes a true
requisite, which, together with its validity, has also its significance.
What they have in common with each other is the spirit of the romantic
poetry, giving utterance to itself in a dramatic shape. However, to
explain ourselves with due precision, the Spanish theatre, in our opinion,
down to its decline and fall in the commencement of the eighteenth
century, is almost entirely romantic; the English is completely so in
Shakspeare alone, its founder and greatest master: in later poets the
romantic principle appears more or less degenerated, or is no longer
perceivable, although the march of dramatic composition introduced by
virtue of it has been, outwardly at least, pretty generally retained. The
manner in which the different ways of thinking of the two nations, one a
northern and the other a southern, have been expressed; the former endowed
with a gloomy, the latter with a glowing imagination; the one nation
possessed of a scrutinizing seriousness disposed to withdraw within
themselves, the other impelled outwardly by the violence of passion; the
mode in which all this has been accomplished will be most satisfactorily
explained at the close of this section, when we come to institute a
parallel between Shakspeare and Calderon, the only two poets who are
entitled to be called great.
Of the origin and essence of the romantic I treated in my first Lecture,
and I shall here, therefore, merely briefly mention the subject. The
ancient art and poetry rigorously separate things which are dissimilar;
the romantic delights in indissoluble mixtures; all contrarieties: nature
and art, poetry and prose, seriousness and mirth, recollection and
anticipation, spirituality and sensuality, terrestrial and celestial, life
and death, are by it blended together in the most intimate combination. As
the oldest lawgivers delivered their mandatory instructions and
prescriptions in measured melodies; as this is fabulously ascribed to
Orpheus, the first softener of the yet untamed race of mortals; in like
manner the whole of the ancient poetry and art is, as it were, a
_rhythmical nomos_ (law), an harmonious promulgation of the permanently
established legislation of a world submitted to a beautiful order, and
reflecting in itself the eternal images of things. Romantic poetry, on the
other hand, is the expression of the secret attraction to a chaos which
lies concealed in the very bosom of the ordered universe, and is
perpetually striving after new and marvellous births; the life-giving
spirit of primal love broods here anew on the face of the waters. The
former is more simple, clear, and like to nature in the self-existent
perfection of her separate works; the latter, notwithstanding its
fragmentary appearance, approaches more to the secret of the universe. For
Conception can only comprise each object separately, but nothing in truth
can ever exist separately and by itself; Feeling perceives all in all at
one and the same time. Respecting the two species of poetry with which we
are here principally occupied, we compared the ancient Tragedy to a group
in sculpture: the figures corresponding to the characters, and their
grouping to the action; and to these two in both productions of art is the
consideration exclusively directed, as being all that is properly
exhibited. But the romantic drama must be viewed as a large picture, where
not merely figure and motion are exhibited in larger, richer groups, but
where even all that surrounds the figures must also be portrayed; where we
see not merely the nearest objects, but are indulged with the prospect of
a considerable distance; and all this under a magical light, which assists
in giving to the impression the particular character desired.
Such a picture must be bounded less perfectly and less distinctly, than
the group; for it is like a fragment cut out of the optic scene of the
world. However the painter, by the setting of his foreground, by throwing
the whole of his light into the centre, and by other means of fixing the
point of view, will learn that he must neither wander beyond the
composition, nor omit any thing within it.
In the representation of figure, Painting cannot compete with Sculpture,
since the former can only exhibit it by a deception and from a single
point of view; but, on the other hand, it communicates more life to its
imitations, by colours which in a picture are made to imitate the lightest
shades of mental expression in the countenance. The look, which can be
given only very imperfectly by Sculpture, enables us to read much deeper
in the mind, and to perceive its lightest movements. Its peculiar charm,
in short, consists in this, that it enables us to see in bodily objects
what is least corporeal, namely, light and air.
The very same description of beauties are peculiar to the romantic drama.
It does not (like the Old Tragedy) separate seriousness and the action, in
a rigid manner, from among the whole ingredients of life; it embraces at
once the whole of the chequered drama of life with all its circumstances;
and while it seems only to represent subjects brought accidentally
together, it satisfies the unconscious requisitions of fancy, buries us in
reflections on the inexpressible signification of the objects which we
view blended by order, nearness and distance, light and colour, into one
harmonious whole; and thus lends, as it were, a soul to the prospect
before us.
The change of time and of place, (supposing its influence on the mind to
be included in the picture; and that it comes to the aid of the theatrical
perspective, with reference to what is indicated in the distance, or half-
concealed by intervening objects;) the contrast of sport and earnest
(supposing that in degree and kind they bear a proportion to each other;)
finally, the mixture of the dialogical and the lyrical elements, (by which
the poet is enabled, more or less perfectly, to transform his personages
into poetical beings:) these, in my opinion, are not mere licenses, but
true beauties in the romantic drama. In all these points, and in many
others also, the English and Spanish works, which are pre-eminently worthy
of this title of Romantic, fully resemble each other, however different
they may be in other respects.
Of the two we shall first notice the English theatre, because it arrived
earlier at maturity than the Spanish. In both we must occupy ourselves
almost exclusively with a single artist, with Shakspeare in the one and
Calderon in the other; but not in the same order with each, for Shakspeare
stands first and earliest among the English; any remarks we may have to
make on earlier or contemporary antiquities of the English stage may be
made in a review of his history. But Calderon had many predecessors; he is
at once the summit and the close nearly of dramatic art in Spain.
The wish to speak with the brevity which the limits of my plan demand, of
a poet to the study of whom I have devoted many years of my life, places
me in no little embarrassment. I know not where to begin; for I should
never be able to end, were I to say all that I have felt and thought on
the perusal of his works. With the poet as with the man, a more than
ordinary intimacy prevents us, perhaps, from putting ourselves in the
place of those who are first forming an acquaintance with him: we are too
familiar with his most striking peculiarities, to be able to pronounce
upon the first impression which they are calculated to make on others. On
the other hand, we ought to possess, and to have the power of
communicating, more correct ideas of his mode of procedure, of his
concealed or less obvious views, and of the meaning and import of his
labours, than others whose acquaintance with him is more limited.
Shakspeare is the pride of his nation. A late poet has, with propriety,
called him "the genius of the British isles." He was the idol of his
contemporaries: during the interval indeed of puritanical fanaticism,
which broke out in the next generation, and rigorously proscribed all
liberal arts and literature, and during the reign of the Second Charles,
when his works were either not acted at all, or if so, very much changed
and disfigured, his fame was awhile obscured, only to shine forth again
about the beginning of the last century with more than its original
brightness; and since then it has but increased in lustre with the course
of time; and for centuries to come, (I speak it with the greatest
confidence,) it will, like an Alpine _avalanche_, continue to gather
strength at every moment of its progress. Of the future extension of his
fame, the enthusiasm with which he was naturalized in Germany, the moment
that he was known, is a significant earnest. In the South of Europe,
[Footnote: This difficulty extends also to France; for it must not be
supposed that a literal translation can ever be a faithful one. Mrs.
Montague has done enough to prove how wretchedly, even Voltaire, in his
rhymeless Alexandrines, has translated a few passages from _Hamlet_
and the first act of _Julius Caesar_.] his language, and the great
difficulty of translating him with fidelity, will be, perhaps, an
invincible obstacle to his general diffusion. In England, the greatest
actors vie with each other in the impersonation of his characters; the
printers in splendid editions of his works; and the painters in
transferring his scenes to the canvas. Like Dante, Shakspeare has received
the perhaps indispensable but still cumbersome honour of being treated
like a classical author of antiquity. The oldest editions have been
carefully collated, and where the readings seemed corrupt, many
corrections have been suggested; and the whole literature of his age has
been drawn forth from the oblivion to which it had been consigned, for the
sole purpose of explaining the phrases, and illustrating the allusions of
Shakspeare. Commentators have succeeded one another in such number, that
their labours alone, with the critical controversies to which they have
given rise, constitute of themselves no inconsiderable library. These
labours deserve both our praise and gratitude; and more especially the
historical investigations into the sources from which Shakspeare drew the
materials of his plays, and also into the previous and contemporary state
of the English stage, and other kindred subjects of inquiry. With respect,
however, to their merely philological criticisms, I am frequently
compelled to differ from the commentators; and where, too, considering him
simply as a poet, they endeavour to enter into his views and to decide
upon his merits, I must separate myself from them entirely. I have hardly
ever found either truth or profundity in their remarks; and these critics
seem to me to be but stammering interpreters of the general and almost
idolatrous admiration of his countrymen. There may be people in England
who entertain the same views of them with myself, at least it is a well-
known fact that a satirical poet has represented Shakspeare, under the
hands of his commentators, by Actaeon worried to death by his own dogs;
and, following up the story of Ovid, designated a female writer on the
great poet as the snarling Lycisca.
We shall endeavour, in the first place, to remove some of these false
views, in order to clear the way for our own homage, that we may thereupon
offer it the more freely without let or hindrance.
From all the accounts of Shakspeare which have come down to us, it is
clear that his contemporaries knew well the treasure they possessed in
him; and that they felt and understood him better than most of those who
succeeded him. In those days a work was generally ushered into the world
with Commendatory Verses; and one of these, prefixed to an early edition
of Shakspeare, by an unknown author, contains some of the most beautiful
and happy lines that ever were applied to any poet [Footnote: It begins
with the words: _A mind reflecting ages past_, and is subscribed,
I.M.S.]. An idea, however, soon became prevalent that Shakspeare was a
rude and wild genius, who poured forth at random, and without aim or
object, his unconnected compositions. Ben Jonson, a younger contemporary
and rival of Shakspeare, who laboured in the sweat of his brow, but with
no great success, to expel the romantic drama from the English stage, and
to form it on the model of the ancients, gave it as his opinion that
Shakspeare did not blot enough, and that as he did not possess much
school-learning, he owed more to nature than to art. The learned, and
sometimes rather pedantic Milton was also of this opinion, when he says,
Our sweetest Shakspeare, fancy's child,
Warbles his native wood-notes wild.
Yet it is highly honourable to Milton, that the sweetness of Shakspeare,
the quality which of all others has been least allowed, was felt and
acknowledged by him. The modern editors, both in their prefaces, which may
be considered as so many rhetorical exercises in praise of the poet, and
in their remarks on separate passages, go still farther. Judging them by
principles which are not applicable to them, not only do they admit the
irregularity of his pieces, but on occasions they accuse him of bombast,
of a confused, ungrammatical, and conceited mode of writing, and even of
the most contemptible buffoonery. Pope asserts that he wrote both better
and worse than any other man. All the scenes and passages which did not
square with the littleness of his own taste, he wished to place to the
account of interpolating players; and he was in the right road, had his
opinion been taken, of giving us a miserable dole of a mangled Shakspeare.
It is, therefore, not to be wondered at if foreigners, with the exception
of the Germans latterly, have, in their ignorance of him, even improved
upon these opinions. [Footnote: Lessing was the first to speak of
Shakspeare in a becoming tone; but he said unfortunately a great deal too
little of him, as in the time when he wrote the _Dramaturgie_ this poet
had not yet appeared on our stage. Since that time he has been more
particularly noticed by Herder in the _Blütter von deutscher Art und
Kunst_; Goethe, in _Wilhelm Meister_; and Tieck, in Letters on Shakspeare
(_Poetisches Journal_, 1800), which break off, however, almost at the
commencement.]. They speak in general of Shakspeare's plays as monstrous
productions, which could only have been given to the world by a disordered
imagination in a barbarous age; and Voltaire crowns the whole with more
than usual assurance, when he observes that _Hamlet_, the profound master-
piece of the philosophical poet, "seems the work of a drunken savage."
That foreigners, and in particular Frenchmen, who ordinarily speak the
most strange language of antiquity and the middle ages, as if cannibalism
had only been put an end to in Europe by Louis XIV. should entertain this
opinion of Shakspeare, might be pardonable; but that Englishmen should
join in calumniating that glorious epoch of their history, [Footnote: The
English work with which foreigners of every country are perhaps best
acquainted is Hume's _History_; and there we have a most unjustifiable
account both of Shakspeare and his age. "Born in a _rude age_, and
educated in the lowest manner, without any instruction either _from the
world_ or from books." How could a man of Hume's acuteness suppose for a
moment that a poet, whose characters display such an intimate acquaintance
with life, who, as an actor and manager of a theatre, must have come in
contact with all descriptions of individuals, had no instruction from the
world? But this is not the worst; he goes even so far as to say, "a
reasonable propriety of thought he cannot for any time uphold." This is
nearly as offensive as Voltaire's "drunken savage."--TRANS.] which laid
the foundation of their national greatness, is incomprehensible.
Shakspeare flourished and wrote in the last half of the reign of Queen
Elizabeth and first half of that of James I.; and, consequently, under
monarchs who were learned themselves, and held literature in honour. The
policy of modern Europe, by which the relations of its different states
have been so variously interwoven with each other, commenced a century
before. The cause of the Protestants was decided by the accession of
Elizabeth to the throne; and the attachment to the ancient belief cannot
therefore be urged as a proof of the prevailing darkness. Such was the
zeal for the study of the ancients, that even court ladies, and the queen
herself, were acquainted with Latin and Greek, and taught even to speak
the former; a degree of knowledge which we should in vain seek for in the
courts of Europe at the present day. The trade and navigation which the
English carried on with all the four quarters of the world, made them
acquainted with the customs and mental productions of other nations; and
it would appear that they were then more indulgent to foreign manners than
they are in the present day. Italy had already produced all nearly that
still distinguishes her literature, and in England translations in verse
were diligently, and even successfully, executed from the Italian. Spanish
literature also was not unknown, for it is certain that _Don Quixote_ was
read in England soon after its first appearance. Bacon, the founder of
modern experimental philosophy, and of whom it may be said, that he
carried in his pocket all that even in this eighteenth century merits the
name of philosophy, was a contemporary of Shakspeare. His fame, as a
writer, did not, indeed, break forth into its glory till after his death;
but what a number of ideas must have been in circulation before such an
author could arise! Many branches of human knowledge have, since that
time, been more extensively cultivated, but such branches as are totally
unproductive to poetry: chemistry, mechanics, manufactures, and rural and
political economy, will never enable a man to become a poet. I have
elsewhere [Footnote: In my Lectures on the _Spirit of the Age_.] examined
into the pretensions of modern enlightenment, as it is called, which looks
with such contempt on all preceding ages; I have shown that at bottom it
is all little, superficial, and unsubstantial. The pride of what has been
called the existing maturity of human intensity, has come to a miserable
end; and the structures erected by those pedagogues of the human race have
fallen to pieces like the baby-houses of children.
With regard to the tone of society in Shakspeare's day, it is necessary to
remark that there is a wide difference between true mental cultivation and
what is called polish. That artificial polish which puts an end to every
thing like free original communication, and subjects all intercourse to
the insipid uniformity of certain rules, was undoubtedly wholly unknown to
the age of Shakspeare, as in a great measure it still is at the present
day in England. It possessed, on the other hand, a fulness of healthy
vigour, which showed itself always with boldness, and sometimes also with
petulance. The spirit of chivalry was not yet wholly extinct, and a queen,
who was far more jealous in exacting homage to her sex than to her throne,
and who, with her determination, wisdom, and magnanimity, was in fact,
well qualified to inspire the minds of her subjects with an ardent
enthusiasm, inflamed that spirit to the noblest love of glory and renown.
The feudal independence also still survived in some measure; the nobility
vied with each other in splendour of dress and number of retinue, and
every great lord had a sort of small court of his own. The distinction of
ranks was as yet strongly marked: a state of things ardently to be desired
by the dramatic poet. In conversation they took pleasure in quick and
unexpected answers; and the witty sally passed rapidly like a ball from
mouth to mouth, till the merry game could no longer be kept up. This, and
the abuse of the play on words, (of which King James was himself very
fond, and we need not therefore wonder at the universality of the mode,)
may, doubtless, be considered as instances of a bad taste; but to take
them for symptoms of rudeness and barbarity, is not less absurd than to
infer the poverty of a people from their luxurious extravagance. These
strained repartees are frequently employed by Shakspeare, with the view of
painting the actual tone of the society in his day; it does not, however,
follow, that they met with his approbation; on the contrary, it clearly
appears that he held them in derision. Hamlet says, in the scene with the
Gravedigger, "By the Lord, Horatio, these three years I have taken note of
it: the age is grown so picked, that the toe of the peasant comes so near
the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe." And Lorenzo, in the
_Merchant of Venice_, alluding to Launcelot:
O dear discretion, how his words are suited!
The fool hath planted in his memory
An army of good words: and I do know
A many fools, that stand in better place,
Garnish'd like him, that for a tricksy word.
Defy the matter.
Besides, Shakspeare, in a thousand places, lays great and marked stress on
correct and refined tone of society, and lashes every deviation from it,
whether of boorishness or affected foppery; not only does he give
admirable discourses on it, but he represents it in all its shades and
modifications by rank, age, or sex. What foundation is there, then, for
the alleged barbarity of his age? Its offences against propriety? But if
this is to be admitted as a test, then the ages of Pericles and Augustus
must also be described as rude and uncultivated; for Aristophanes and
Horace, who both were considered as models of urbanity, display, at times,
the coarsest indelicacy. On this subject, the diversity in the moral
feeling of ages depends on other causes. Shakspeare, it is true, sometimes
introduces us to improper company; at others, he suffers ambiguous
expressions to escape in the presence of women, and even from women
themselves. This species of petulance was probably not then unusual. He
certainly did not indulge in it merely to please the multitude, for in
many of his pieces there is not the slightest trace of this sort to be
found: and in what virgin purity are many of his female parts worked out!
When we see the liberties taken by other dramatic poets in England in his
time, and even much later, we must account him comparatively chaste and
moral. Neither must we overlook certain circumstances in the existing
state of the theatre. The female parts were not acted by women, but by
boys; and no person of the fair sex appeared in the theatre without a
mask. Under such a carnival disguise, much might be heard by them, and
much might be ventured to be said in their presence, which in other
circumstances would have been absolutely improper. It is certainly to be
wished that decency should be observed on all public occasions, and
consequently also on the stage. But even in this it is possible to go too
far. That carping censoriousness which scents out impurity in every bold
sally, is, at best, but an ambiguous criterion of purity of morals; and
beneath this hypocritical guise there often lurks the consciousness of an
impure imagination. The determination to tolerate nothing which has the
least reference to the sensual relation between the sexes, may be carried
to a pitch extremely oppressive to a dramatic poet, and highly prejudicial
to the boldness and freedom of his compositions. If such considerations
were to be attended to, many of the happiest parts of Shakspeare's plays,
for example, in _Measure for Measure_, and _All's Well that Ends Well_,
which, nevertheless, are handled with a due regard to decency, must be set
aside as sinning against this would-be propriety.
Had no other monument of the age of Elizabeth come down to us than the
works of Shakspeare, I should, from them alone, have formed the most
favourable idea of its state of social culture and enlightenment. When
those who look through such strange spectacles as to see nothing in them
but rudeness and barbarity cannot deny what I have now historically
proved, they are usually driven to this last resource, and demand, "What
has Shakspeare to do with the mental culture of his age? He had no share
in it. Born in an inferior rank, ignorant and uneducated, he passed his
life in low society, and laboured to please a vulgar audience for his
bread, without ever dreaming of fame or posterity."
In all this there is not a single word of truth, though it has been
repeated a thousand times. It is true we know very little of the poet's
life; and what we do know consists for the most part of raked-up and
chiefly suspicious anecdotes, of such a description nearly as those which
are told at inns to inquisitive strangers, who visit the birthplace or
neighbourhood of a celebrated man. Within a very recent period some
original documents have been brought to light, and among them his will,
which give us a peep into his family concerns. It betrays more than
ordinary deficiency of critical acumen in Shakspeare's commentators, that
none of them, so far as we know, have ever thought of availing themselves
of his sonnets for tracing the circumstances of his life. These sonnets
paint most unequivocally the actual situation and sentiments of the poet;
they make us acquainted with the passions of the man; they even contain
remarkable confessions of his youthful errors. Shakspeare's father was a
man of property, whose ancestors had held the office of alderman and
bailiff in Stratford, and in a diploma from the Heralds' Office for the
renewal or confirmation of his coat of arms, he is styled _gentleman_. Our
poet, the oldest son but third child, could not, it is true, receive an
academical education, as he married when hardly eighteen, probably from
mere family considerations. This retired and unnoticed life he continued
to lead but a few years; and he was either enticed to London from
wearisomeness of his situation, or banished from home, as it is said, in
consequence of his irregularities. There he assumed the profession of a
player, which he considered at first as a degradation, principally,
perhaps, because of the wild excesses [Footnote: In one of his sonnets he
says:
O, for my sake do you with fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmless deeds,
That did not better for my life provide,
_Than public means which public manners breeds_.
And in the following:--
Your love and pity doth the impression fill,
Which _vulgar scandal_ stamp'd upon my brow.] into which he was
seduced by the example of his comrades. It is extremely probable, that the
poetical fame which in the progress of his career he afterwards acquired,
greatly contributed to ennoble the stage, and to bring the player's
profession into better repute. Even at a very early age he endeavoured to
distinguish himself as a poet in other walks than those of the stage, as
is proved by his juvenile poems of _Adonis_ and _Lucrece_. He quickly rose
to be a sharer or joint proprietor, and also manager of the theatre for
which he wrote. That he was not admitted to the society of persons of
distinction is altogether incredible. Not to mention many others, he found
a liberal friend and kind patron in the Earl of Southampton, the friend of
the unfortunate Essex. His pieces were not only the delight of the great
public, but also in great favour at court: the two monarchs under whose
reigns he wrote were, according to the testimony of a contemporary, quite
"taken" with him [Footnote: Ben Jonson:--
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames,
That so did take Eliza and our James!]. Many were acted at court; and
Elizabeth appears herself to have commanded the writing of more than one
to be acted at her court festivals. King James, it is well known, honoured
Shakspeare so far as to write to him with his own hand. All this looks
very unlike either contempt or banishment into the obscurity of a low
circle. By his labours as a poet, player, and stage-manager, Shakspeare
acquired a considerable property, which, in the last years of his too
short life, he enjoyed in his native town in retirement and in the society
of a beloved daughter. Immediately after his death a monument was erected
over his grave, which may be considered sumptuous for those times.
In the midst of such brilliant success, and with such distinguished proofs
of respect and honour from his contemporaries, it would be singular indeed
if Shakspeare, notwithstanding the modesty of a great mind, which he
certainly possessed in a peculiar degree, should never have dreamed of
posthumous fame. As a profound thinker he had pretty accurately taken the
measure of the circle of human capabilities, and he could say to himself
with confidence, that many of his productions would not easily be
surpassed. What foundation then is there for the contrary assertion, which
would degrade the immortal artist to the situation of a daily labourer for
a rude multitude?--Merely this, that he himself published no edition of
his whole works. We do not reflect that a poet, always accustomed to
labour immediately for the stage, who has often enjoyed the triumph of
overpowering assembled crowds of spectators, and drawing from them the
most tumultuous applause, who the while was not dependent on the caprice
of crotchety stage directors, but left to his own discretion to select and
determine the mode of theatrical representation, naturally cares much less
for the closet of the solitary reader. During the first formation of a
national theatre, more especially, we find frequent examples of such
indifference. Of the almost innumerable pieces of Lope de Vega, many
undoubtedly were never printed, and are consequently lost; and Cervantes
did not print his earlier dramas, though he certainly boasts of them as
meritorious works. As Shakspeare, on his retiring from the theatre, left
his manuscripts behind with his fellow-managers, he may have relied on
theatrical tradition for handing them down to posterity, which would
indeed have been sufficient for that purpose if the closing of the
theatres, under the tyrannical intolerance of the Puritans, had not
interrupted the natural order of things. We know, besides, that the poets
used then to sell the exclusive copyright of their pieces to the theatre
[Footnote: This is perhaps not uncommon still in some countries. The
Venetian Director Medebach, for whose company many of Goldoni's Comedies
were composed, claimed an exclusive right to them.--TRANS.]: it is
therefore not improbable that the right of property in his unprinted
pieces was no longer vested in Shakspeare, or had not at least yet
reverted to him. His fellow-managers entered on the publication seven
years after his death (which probably cut short his own intention,) as it
would appear on their own account and for their own advantage.