Ignorance or Learning of Shakspeare--Costume as observed by Shakspeare,
and how far necessary, or may be dispensed with in the Drama--Shakspeare
the greatest drawer of Character--Vindication of the genuineness of his
pathos--Play on words--Moral delicacy--Irony--Mixture of the Tragic and
Comic--The part of the Fool or Clown--Shakspeare's Language and
Versification.
Our poet's want of scholarship has been the subject of endless
controversy, and yet it is surely a very easy matter to decide. Shakspeare
was poor in dead school-cram, but he possessed a rich treasury of living
and intuitive knowledge. He knew a little Latin, and even something of
Greek, though it may be not enough to read with ease the writers in the
original. With modern languages also, the French and Italian, he had,
perhaps, but a superficial acquaintance. The general direction of his mind
was not to the collection of words but of facts. With English books,
whether original or translated, he was extensively acquainted: we may
safely affirm that he had read all that his native language and literature
then contained that could be of any use to him in his poetical avocations.
He was sufficiently intimate with mythology to employ it, in the only
manner he could wish, in the way of symbolical ornament. He had formed a
correct notion of the spirit of Ancient History, and more particularly of
that of the Romans; and the history of his own country was familiar to him
even in detail. Fortunately for him it had not as yet been treated in a
diplomatic and pragmatic spirit, but merely in the chronicle-style; in
other words, it had not yet assumed the appearance of dry investigations
respecting the development of political relations, diplomatic
negotiations, finances, &c., but exhibited a visible image of the life and
movement of an age prolific of great deeds. Shakspeare, moreover, was a
nice observer of nature; he knew the technical language of mechanics and
artisans; he seems to have been well travelled in the interior of his own
country, while of others he inquired diligently of travelled navigators
respecting their peculiarity of climate and customs. He thus became
accurately acquainted with all the popular usages, opinions, and
traditions which could be of use in poetry.
The proofs of his ignorance, on which the greatest stress is laid, are a
few geographical blunders and anachronisms. Because in a comedy founded on
an earlier tale, he makes ships visit Bohemia, he has been the subject of
much laughter. But I conceive that we should be very unjust towards him,
were we to conclude that he did not, as well as ourselves, possess the
useful but by no means difficult knowledge that Bohemia is nowhere bounded
by the sea. He could never, in that case, have looked into a map of
Germany, who yet describes elsewhere, with great accuracy, the maps of
both Indies, together with the discoveries of the latest navigators.
[Footnote: _Twelfth Night, or What You Will_--Act iii. scene ii.] In
such matters Shakspeare is only faithful to the details of the domestic
stories. In the novels on which he worked, he avoided disturbing the
associations of his audience, to whom they were known, by novelties--the
correction of errors in secondary and unimportant particulars. The more
wonderful the story, the more it ranged in a purely poetical region, which
he transfers at will to an indefinite distance. These plays, whatever
names they bear, take place in the true land of romance, and in the very
century of wonderful love stories. He knew well that in the forest of
Ardennes there were neither the lions and serpents of the Torrid Zone, nor
the shepherdesses of Arcadia: but he transferred both to it, [Footnote:
_As You Like It._] because the design and import of his picture
required them. Here he considered himself entitled to take the greatest
liberties. He had not to do with a hair-splitting, hypercritical age like
ours, which is always seeking in poetry for something else than poetry;
his audience entered the theatre, not to learn true chronology, geography,
and natural history, but to witness a vivid exhibition. I will undertake
to prove that Shakspeare's anachronisms are, for the most part, committed
of set purpose and deliberately. It was frequently of importance to him to
move the exhibited subject out of the background of time, and bring it
quite near us. Hence in _Hamlet_, though avowedly an old Northern
story, there runs a tone of modish society, and in every respect the
costume of the most recent period. Without those circumstantialities it
would not have been allowable to make a philosophical inquirer of Hamlet,
on which trait, however, the meaning of the whole is made to rest. On that
account he mentions his education at a university, though, in the age of
the true Hamlet of history, universities were not in existence. He makes
him study at Wittenberg, and no selection of a place could have been more
suitable. The name was very popular: the story of _Dr. Faustus of
Wittenberg_ had made it well known; it was of particular celebrity in
protestant England, as Luther had taught and written there shortly before,
and the very name must have immediately suggested the idea of freedom in
thinking. I cannot oven consider it an anachronism that Richard the Third
should speak of Macchiavel. The word is here used altogether proverbially:
the contents, at least, of the book entitled _Of the Prince (Del
Principe,)_ have been in existence ever since the existence of tyrants;
Macchiavel was merely the first to commit them to writing.
That Shakspeare has accurately hit the essential costume, namely, the
spirit of ages and nations, is at least acknowledged generally by the
English critics; but many sins against external costume may be easily
remarked. But here it is necessary to bear in mind that the Roman pieces
were acted upon the stage of that day in the European dress. This was, it
is true, still grand and splendid, not so silly and tasteless as it became
towards the end of the seventeenth century. (Brutus and Cassius appeared
in the Spanish cloak; they wore, quite contrary to the Roman custom, the
sword by their side in time of peace, and, according to the testimony of
an eye witness, [Footnote: In one of the commendatory poems in the first
folio edition:
And on the stage at _half sword parley_ were
Brutus and Cassius.] it was, in the dialogue where Brutus stimulates
Cassius to the conspiracy, drawn, as if involuntarily, half out of the
sheath.) This does in no way agree with our way of thinking: we are not
content without the toga. The present, perhaps, is not an inappropriate
place for a few general observations on costume, considered with reference
to art. It has never been more accurately observed than in the present
day; art has become a slop-shop for pedantic antiquities. This is because
we live in a learned and critical, but by no means poetical age. The
ancients before us used, when they had to represent the religions of other
nations, which deviated very much from their own, to bring them into
conformity with the Greek mythology. In Sculpture, again, the same dress,
namely, the Phrygian, was adopted, once for all, for every barbaric tribe.
Not that they did not know that there were as many different dresses as
nations; but in art they merely wished to acknowledge the great contrast
between barbarian and civilized: and this, they thought, was rendered most
strikingly apparent in the Phrygian garb. The earlier Christian painters
represent the Saviour, the Virgin Mary, the Patriarchs, and the Apostles
in an ideal dress; but the subordinate actors or spectators of the action,
in the dresses of their own nation and age. Here they were guided by a
correct feeling: the mysterious and sacred ought to be kept at an awe-
inspiring distance, but the human cannot be rightly understood if seen
without its usual accompaniments. In the middle ages all heroical stories
of antiquity, from Theseus and Achilles down to Alexander, were
metamorphosed into true tales of chivalry. What was related to themselves
spoke alone an intelligible language to them; of differences and
distinctions they did not care to know. In an old manuscript of the
_Iliad_, I saw a miniature illumination representing Hector's funeral
procession, where the coffin is hung with noble coats of arms, and carried
into a Gothic church. It is easy to make merry with this piece of
simplicity, but a reflecting mind will see the subject in a very different
light. A powerful consciousness of the universal validity and the solid
permanency of their own manner of being, an undoubting conviction that it
has always so been and will ever continue so to be in the world: these
feelings of our ancestors were symptoms of a fresh fulness of life; they
were the marrow of action in reality as well as in fiction. Their plain
and affectionate attachment to every thing around them, handed down from
their fathers, is by no means to be confounded with the obstreperous
conceit of ages of mannerism, who, out of vanity, introduce the fleeting
modes and fashion of the day into art, because to them everything like
noble simplicity seems boorish and rude. The latter impropriety is now
abolished: but, on the other hand, our poets and artists, if they would
hope for our approbation, must, like servants, wear the livery of distant
centuries and foreign nations. We are everywhere at home except at home.
We do ourselves the justice to allow that the present mode of dressing,
forms of politeness, &c., are altogether unpoetical, and art is therefore
obliged to beg, as an alms, a poetical costume from the antiquaries. To
that simple way of thinking, which is merely attentive to the inward truth
of the composition, without stumbling at anachronisms, or other external
inconsistencies, we cannot, alas! now return; but we must envy the poets
to whom it offered itself; it allowed them a great breadth and freedom in
the handling of their subject.
Many things in Shakspeare must be judged of according to the above
principles, respecting the difference between the essential and the merely
learned costume. They will also in their measure admit of an application
to Calderon.
So much with respect to the spirit of the age in which Shakspeare lived,
and his peculiar mental culture and knowledge. To me he appears a profound
artist, and not a blind and wildly luxuriant genius. I consider, generally
speaking, all that has been said on the subject a mere fable, a blind and
extravagant error. In other arts the assertion refutes itself; for in them
acquired knowledge is an indispensable condition of clever execution. But
even in such poets, as are usually given out as careless pupils of nature,
devoid of art or school discipline, I have always found, on a nearer
consideration of the works of real excellence they may have produced, even
a high cultivation of the mental powers, practice in art, and views both
worthy in themselves and maturely considered. This applies to Homer as
well as to Dante. The activity of genius is, it is true, natural to it,
and, in a certain sense, unconscious; and, consequently, the person who
possesses it is not always at the moment able to render an account of the
course which he may have pursued; but it by no means follows, that the
thinking power had not a great share in it. It is from the very rapidity
and certainty of the mental process, from the utmost clearness of
understanding, that thinking in a poet is not perceived as something
abstracted, does not wear the appearance of reflex meditation. That notion
of poetical inspiration, which many lyrical poets have brought into
circulation, as if they were not in their senses, and like Pythia, when
possessed by the divinity, delivered oracles unintelligible to themselves
--this notion, (a mere lyrical invention,) is least of all applicable to
dramatic composition, one of the most thoughtful productions of the human
mind. It is admitted that Shakspeare has reflected, and deeply reflected,
on character and passion, on the progress of events and human destinies,
on the human constitution, on all the things and relations of the world;
this is an admission which must be made, for one alone of thousands of his
maxims would be a sufficient refutation of whoever should attempt to deny
it. So that it was only for the structure of his own pieces that he had no
thought to spare? This he left to the dominion of chance, which blew
together the atoms of Epicurus. But supposing that, devoid of any higher
ambition to approve himself to judicious critics and posterity, and
wanting in that love of art which longs for self-satisfaction in the
perfection of its works, he had merely laboured to please the unlettered
crowd; still this very object alone and the pursuit of theatrical effect,
would have led him to bestow attention to the structure and adherence of
his pieces. For does not the impression of a drama depend in an especial
manner on the relation of the parts to each other? And, however beautiful
a scene may be in itself, if yet it be at variance with what the
spectators have been led to expect in its particular place, so as to
destroy the interest which they had hitherto felt, will it not be at once
reprobated by all who possess plain common sense, and give themselves up
to nature? The comic intermixtures may be considered merely as a sort of
interlude, designed to relieve the straining of the mind after the stretch
of the more serious parts, so long as no better purpose can be found in
them; but in the progress of the main action, in the concatenation of the
events, the poet must, if possible, display even more expenditure of
thought than in the composition of individual character and situations,
otherwise he would be like the conductor of a puppet-show who has
entangled his wires, so that the puppets receive from their mechanism
quite different movements from those which he actually intended.
The English critics are unanimous in their praise of the truth and uniform
consistency of his characters, of his heartrending pathos, and his comic
wit. Moreover, they extol the beauty and sublimity of his separate
descriptions, images, and expressions. This last is the most superficial
and cheap mode of criticising works of art. Johnson compares him who
should endeavour to recommend this poet by passages unconnectedly torn
from his works, to the pedant in Hierocles, who exhibited a brick as a
sample of his house. And yet how little, and how very unsatisfactorily
does he himself speak of the pieces considered as a whole! Let any man,
for instance, bring together the short characters which he gives at the
close of each play, and see if the aggregate will amount to that sum of
admiration which he himself, at his outset, has stated as the correct
standard for the appreciation of the poet. It was, generally speaking, the
prevailing tendency of the time which preceded our own, (and which has
showed itself particularly in physical science,) to consider everything
having life as a mere accumulation of dead parts, to separate what exists
only in connexion and cannot otherwise be conceived, instead of
penetrating to the central point and viewing all the parts as so many
irradiations from it. Hence nothing is so rare as a critic who can elevate
himself to the comprehensive contemplation of a work of art. Shakspeare's
compositions, from the very depth of purpose displayed in them, have been
especially liable to the misfortune of being misunderstood. Besides, this
prosaic species of criticism requires always that the poetic form should
he applied to the details of execution; but when the plan of the piece is
concerned, it never looks for more than the logical connexion of causes
and effects, or some partial and trite moral by way of application; and
all that cannot be reconciled therewith is declared superfluous, or even a
pernicious appendage. On these principles we must even strike out from the
Greek tragedies most of the choral songs, which also contribute nothing to
the development of the action, but are merely an harmonious echo of the
impressions the poet aims at conveying. In this they altogether mistake
the rights of poetry and the nature of the romantic drama, which, for the
very reason that it is and ought to be picturesque, requires richer
accompaniments and contrasts for its main groups. In all Art and Poetry,
but more especially in the romantic, the Fancy lays claims to be
considered as an independent mental power governed according to its own
laws.
In an essay on _Romeo and Juliet_, [Footnote: In the first volume of
_Charakteristiken und Kritiken_, published by my brother and myself.]
written a number of years ago, I went through the whole of the scenes in
their order, and demonstrated the inward necessity of each with reference
to the whole; I showed why such a particular circle of characters and
relations was placed around the two lovers; I explained the signification
of the mirth here and there scattered, and justified the use of the
occasional heightening given to the poetical colours. From all this
it seemed to follow unquestionably, that with the exception of a few
witticisms, now become unintelligible or foreign to the present taste,
(imitations of the tone of society of that day,) nothing could be taken
away, nothing added, nothing otherwise arranged, without mutilating and
disfiguring the perfect work. I would readily undertake to do the same for
all the pieces of Shakspeare's maturer years, but to do this would require
a separate book. Here I am reduced to confine my observations to the
tracing his great designs with a rapid pencil; but still I must previously
be allowed to deliver my sentiments in a general manner on the subject of
his most eminent peculiarities.
Shakspeare's knowledge of mankind has become proverbial: in this his
superiority is so great, that he has justly been called the master of the
human heart. A readiness to remark the mind's fainter and involuntary
utterances, and the power to express with certainty the meaning of these
signs, as determined by experience and reflection, constitutes "the
observer of men;" but tacitly to draw from these still further
conclusions, and to arrange the separate observations according to grounds
of probability, into a just and valid combination, this, it may be said,
is to know men. The distinguishing property of the dramatic poet who is
great in characterization, is something altogether different here, and
which, (take it which way we will,) either includes in it this readiness
and this acuteness, or dispenses with both. It is the capability of
transporting himself so completely into every situation, even the most
unusual, that he is enabled, as plenipotentiary of the whole human race,
without particular instructions for each separate case, to act and speak
in the name of every individual. It is the power of endowing the creatures
of his imagination with such self-existent energy, that they afterwards
act in each conjuncture according to general laws of nature: the poet, in
his dreams, institutes, as it were, experiments which are received with as
much authority as if they had been made on waking objects. The
inconceivable element herein, and what moreover can never be learned, is,
that the characters appear neither to do nor to say any thing on the
spectator's account merely; and yet that the poet simply, by means of the
exhibition, and without any subsidiary explanation, communicates to his
audience the gift of looking into the inmost recesses of their minds.
Hence Goethe has ingeniously compared Shakspeare's characters to watches
with crystalline plates and cases, which, while they point out the hours
as correctly as other watches, enable us at the same time to perceive the
inward springs whereby all this is accomplished.
Nothing, however, is more foreign to Shakspeare than a certain anatomical
style of exhibition, which laboriously enumerates all the motives by which
a man is determined to act in this or that particular manner. This rage of
supplying motives, the mania of so many modern historians, might be
carried at length to an extent which would abolish every thing like
individuality, and resolve all character into nothing but the effect of
foreign or external, influences whereas we know that it often announces
itself most decidedly in earliest infancy. After all, a man acts so
because he is so. And what each man is, that Shakspeare reveals to us most
immediately: he demands and obtains our belief, even for what is singular
and deviates from the ordinary course of nature. Never perhaps was there
so comprehensive a talent for characterization as Shakspeare. It not only
grasps every diversity of rank, age, and sex, down to the lispings of
infancy; not only do the king and the beggar, the hero and the pickpocket,
the sage and the idiot, speak and act with equal truthfulness; not only
does he transport himself to distant ages and foreign nations, and portray
with the greatest accuracy (a few apparent violations of costume excepted)
the spirit of the ancient Romans, of the French in the wars with the
English, of the English themselves during a great part of their history,
of the Southern Europeans (in the serious part of many comedies), the
cultivated society of the day, and the rude barbarism of a Norman fore-
time; his human characters have not only such depth and individuality that
they do not admit of being classed under common names, and are
inexhaustible even in conception: no, this Prometheus not merely forms
men, he opens the gates of the magical world of spirits, calls up the
midnight ghost, exhibits before us the witches with their unhallowed
rites, peoples the air with sportive fairies and sylphs; and these beings,
though existing only in the imagination, nevertheless possess such truth
and consistency, that even with such misshapen abortions as Caliban, he
extorts the assenting conviction, that were there such beings they would
so conduct themselves. In a word, as he carries a bold and pregnant fancy
into the kingdom of nature, on the other hand, he carries nature into the
regions of fancy, which lie beyond the confines of reality. We are lost in
astonishment at the close intimacy he brings us into with the
extraordinary, the wonderful, and the unheard-of.
Pope and Johnson appear strangely to contradict each other, when the first
says, "all the characters of Shakspeare are individuals," and the second,
"they are species." And yet perhaps these opinions may admit of
reconciliation. Pope's expression is unquestionably the more correct. A
character which should be merely a personification of a naked general idea
could neither exhibit any great depth nor any great variety. The names of
genera and species are well known to be merely auxiliaries for the
understanding, that we may embrace the infinite variety of nature in a
certain order. The characters which Shakspeare has so thoroughly
delineated have undoubtedly a number of individual peculiarities, but at
the same time they possess a significance which is not applicable to them
alone: they generally supply materials for a profound theory of their most
prominent and distinguishing property. But even with the above correction,
this opinion must still have its limitations. Characterization is merely
one ingredient of the dramatic art, and not dramatic poetry itself. It
would be improper in the extreme, if the poet were to draw our attention
to superfluous traits of character, at a time when it ought to be his
endeavour to produce other impressions. Whenever the musical or the
fanciful preponderates, the characteristical necessarily falls into the
background. Hence many of the figures of Shakspeare exhibit merely
external designations, determined by the place which they occupy in the
whole: they are like secondary persons in a public procession, to whose
physiognomy we seldom pay much attention; their only importance is derived
from the solemnity of their dress and the duty in which they are engaged.
Shakspeare's messengers, for instance, are for the most part mere
messengers, and yet not common, but poetical messengers: the messages
which they have to bring is the soul which suggests to them their
language. Other voices, too, are merely raised to pour forth these as
melodious lamentations or rejoicings, or to dwell in reflection on what
has taken place; and in a serious drama without chorus this must always be
more or less the case, if we would not have it prosaical.
If Shakspeare deserves our admiration for his characters, he is equally
deserving of it for his exhibition of passion, taking this word in its
widest signification, as including every mental condition, every tone,
from indifference or familiar mirth to the wildest rage and despair. He
gives us the history of minds; he lays open to us, in a single word, a
whole series of their anterior states. His passions do not stand at the
same height, from first to last, as is the case with so many tragic poets,
who, in the language of Lessing, are thorough masters of the legal style
of love. He paints, with inimitable veracity, the gradual advance from the
first origin; "he gives," as Lessing says, "a living picture of all the
slight and secret artifices by which a feeling steals into our souls, of
all the imperceptible advantages which it there gains, of all the
stratagems by which it makes every other passion subservient to itself,
till it becomes the sole tyrant of our desires and our aversions." Of all
the poets, perhaps, he alone has portrayed the mental diseases,
melancholy, delirium, lunacy, with such inexpressible and, in every
respect, definite truth, that the physician may enrich his observations
from them in the same manner as from real cases.
And yet Johnson has objected to Shakspeare that his pathos is not always
natural and free from affectation. There are, it is true, passages, though
comparatively speaking very few, where his poetry exceeds the bounds of
actual dialogue, where a too soaring imagination, a too luxuriant wit,
rendered a complete dramatic forgetfulness of himself impossible. With
this exception, the censure originated in a fanciless way of thinking, to
which everything appears unnatural that does not consort with its own tame
insipidity. Hence an idea has been formed of simple and natural pathos,
which consists in exclamations destitute of imagery and nowise elevated
above every-day life. But energetical passions electrify all the mental
powers, and will consequently, in highly-favoured natures, give utterance
to themselves in ingenious and figurative expressions. It has been often
remarked that indignation makes a man witty; and as despair occasionally
breaks out into laughter, it may sometimes also give vent to itself in
antithetical comparisons.
Besides, the rights of the poetical form have not been duly weighed.
Shakspeare, who was always sure of his power to excite, when he wished,
sufficiently powerful emotions, has occasionally, by indulging in a freer
play of fancy, purposely tempered the impressions when too painful, and
immediately introduced a musical softening of our sympathy. [Footnote: A
contemporary of the poet, the author of the already-noticed poem,
(subscribed I. M. S.,) tenderly felt this while he says--
Yet so to temper passion, that our ears
Take pleasure in their pain, and eyes in tears
Both smile and weep.] He had not those rude ideas of his art which many
moderns seem to have, as if the poet, like the clown in the proverb, must
strike twice on the same place. An ancient rhetorician delivered a caution
against dwelling too long on the excitation of pity; for nothing, he said,
dries so soon as tears; and Shakspeare acted conformably to this ingenious
maxim without having learned it. The paradoxical assertion of Johnson that
"Shakspeare had a greater talent for comedy than tragedy, and that in the
latter he has frequently displayed an affected tone," is scarcely
deserving of lengthy notice. For its refutation, it is unnecessary to
appeal to the great tragical compositions of the poet, which, for
overpowering effect, leave far behind them almost everything that the
stage has seen besides; a few of their less celebrated scenes would be
quite sufficient. What to many readers might lend an appearance of truth
to this assertion are the verbal witticisms, that playing upon words,
which Shakspeare not unfrequently introduces into serious and sublime
passages, and even into those also of a peculiarly pathetic nature.
I have already stated the point of view in which we ought to consider this
sportive play upon words. I shall here, therefore, merely deliver a few
observations respecting the playing upon words in general, and its
poetical use. A thorough investigation would lead us too far from our
subject, and too deeply into considerations on the essence of language,
and its relation to poetry, or rhyme, &c.
There is in the human mind a desire that language should exhibit the
object which it denotes, sensibly, by its very sound, which may be traced
even as far back as in the first origin of poetry. As, in the shape in
which language comes down to us, this is seldom perceptibly the case, an
imagination which has been powerfully excited is fond of laying hold of
any congruity in sound which may accidentally offer itself, that by such
means he may, for the nonce, restore the lost resemblance between the word
and the thing. For example, How common was it and is it to seek in the
name of a person, however arbitrarily bestowed, a reference to his
qualities and fortunes,--to convert it purposely into a significant name.
Those who cry out against the play upon words as an unnatural and affected
invention, only betray their own ignorance of original nature. A great
fondness for it is always evinced among children, as well as with nations
of simple manners, among whom correct ideas of the derivation and affinity
of words have not yet been developed, and do not, consequently, stand in
the way of this caprice. In Homer we find several examples of it; the
Books of Moses, the oldest written memorial of the primitive world, are,
as is well known, full of them. On the other hand, poets of a very
cultivated taste, like Petrarch, or orators, like Cicero, have delighted
in them. Whoever, in _Richard the Second_, is disgusted with the affecting
play of words of the dying John of Gaunt on his own name, should remember
that the same thing occurs in the _Ajax_ of Sophocles. We do not mean to
say that all playing upon words is on all occasions to be justified. This
must depend on the disposition of mind, whether it will admit of such a
play of fancy, and whether the sallies, comparisons, and allusions, which
lie at the bottom of them, possess internal solidity. Yet we must not
proceed upon the principle of trying how the thought appears after it is
deprived of the resemblance in sound, any more than we are to endeavour to
feel the charm of rhymed versification after depriving it of its rhyme.
The laws of good taste on this subject must, moreover, vary with the
quality of the languages. In those which possess a great number of
homonymes, that is, words possessing the same, or nearly the same,
sound, though quite different in their derivation and signification, it is
almost more difficult to avoid, than to fall on such a verbal play. It
has, however, been feared, lest a door might be opened to puerile
witticism, if they were not rigorously proscribed. But I cannot, for my
part, find that Shakspeare had such an invincible and immoderate passion
for this verbal witticism. It is true, he sometimes makes a most lavish
use of this figure; at others, he has employed it very sparingly; and at
times (for example, in _Macbeth_), I do not believe a vestige of it
is to be found. Hence, in respect to the use or the rejection of the play
upon words, he must have been guided by the measure of the objects, and
the different style in which they required to be treated, and probably
have followed here, as in every thing else, principles which, fairly
examined, will bear a strict examination.
The objection that Shakspeare wounds our feelings by the open display of
the most disgusting moral odiousness, unmercifully harrows up the mind,
and tortures even our eyes by the exhibition of the most insupportable and
hateful spectacles, is one of greater and graver importance. He has, in
fact, never varnished over wild and blood-thirsty passions with a pleasing
exterior--never clothed crime and want of principle with a false show of
greatness of soul; and in that respect he is every way deserving of
praise. Twice he has portrayed downright villains, and the masterly way in
which he has contrived to elude impressions of too painful a nature may be
seen in Iago and Richard the Third. I allow that the reading, and still
more the sight, of some of his pieces, is not advisable to weak nerves,
any more than was the _Eumenides_ of Aeschylus; but is the poet, who
can only reach an important object by a bold and hazardous daring, to be
checked by considerations for such persons? If the effeminacy of the
present day is to serve as a general standard of what tragical composition
may properly exhibit to human nature, we shall be forced to set very
narrow limits indeed to art, and the hope of anything like powerful effect
must at once and for ever be renounced. If we wish to have a grand
purpose, we must also wish to have the grand means, and our nerves ought
in some measure to accommodate themselves to painful impressions, if, by
way of requital, our mind is thereby elevated and strengthened. The
constant reference to a petty and puny race must cripple the boldness of
the poet. Fortunately for his art, Shakspeare lived in an age extremely
susceptible of noble and tender impressions, but which had yet inherited
enough of the firmness of a vigorous olden time, not to shrink with dismay
from every strong and forcible painting. We have lived to see tragedies of
which the catastrophe consists in the swoon of an enamoured princess: if
Shakspeare falls occasionally into the opposite extreme, it is a noble
error, originating in the fulness of a gigantic strength. And this
tragical Titan, who storms the heavens and threatens to tear the world
from off its hinges, who, more terrible than Aeschylus, makes our hair to
stand on end, and congeals our blood with horror, possessed at the same
time the insinuating loveliness of the sweetest poesy; he toys with love
like a child, and his songs die away on the ear like melting sighs. He
unites in his soul the utmost elevation and the utmost depth; and the most
opposite and even apparently irreconcilable properties subsist in him
peaceably together. The world of spirits and nature have laid all their
treasures at his feet: in strength a demi-god, in profundity of view a
prophet, in all-seeing wisdom a guardian spirit of a higher order, he
lowers himself to mortals as if unconscious of his superiority, and is as
open and unassuming as a child.
If the delineation of all his characters, separately considered, is
inimitably bold and correct, he surpasses even himself in so combining and
contrasting them, that they serve to bring out each other's peculiarities.
This is the very perfection of dramatic characterization: for we can never
estimate a man's true worth if we consider him altogether abstractedly by
himself; we must see him in his relations with others; and it is here that
most dramatic poets are deficient. Shakspeare makes each of his principal
characters the glass in which the others are reflected, and by like means
enables us to discover what could not be immediately revealed to us. What
in others is most profound, is with him but surface. Ill-advised should we
be were we always to take men's declarations respecting themselves and
others for sterling coin. Ambiguity of design with much propriety he makes
to overflow with the most praiseworthy principles; and sage maxims are not
unfrequently put in the mouth of stupidity, to show how easily such
common-place truisms may be acquired. Nobody ever painted so truthfully as
he has done the facility of self-deception, the half self-conscious
hypocrisy towards ourselves, with which even noble minds attempt to
disguise the almost inevitable influence of selfish motives in human
nature. This secret irony of the characterization commands admiration as
the profound abyss of acuteness and sagacity; but it is the grave of
enthusiasm. We arrive at it only after we have had the misfortune to see
human nature through and through; and when no choice remains but to adopt
the melancholy truth, that "no virtue or greatness is altogether pure and
genuine," or the dangerous error that "the highest perfection is
attainable." Here we therefore may perceive in the poet himself,
notwithstanding his power to excite the most fervent emotions, a certain
cool indifference, but still the indifference of a superior mind, which
has run through the whole sphere of human existence and survived feeling.
The irony in Shakspeare has not merely a reference to the separate
characters, but frequently to the whole of the action. Most poets who
pourtray human events in a narrative or dramatic form take themselves a
part, and exact from their readers a blind approbation or condemnation of
whatever side they choose to support or oppose. The more zealous this
rhetoric is, the more certainly it fails of its effect. In every case we
are conscious that the subject itself is not brought immediately before
us, but that we view it through the medium of a different way of thinking.
When, however, by a dexterous manoeuvre, the poet allows us an occasional
glance at the less brilliant reverse of the medal, then he makes, as it
were, a sort of secret understanding with the select circle of the more
intelligent of his readers or spectators; he shows them that he had
previously seen and admitted the validity of their tacit objections; that
he himself is not tied down to the represented subject, but soars freely
above it; and that, if he chose, he could unrelentingly annihilate the
beautiful and irresistibly attractive scenes which his magic pen has
produced. No doubt, wherever the proper tragic enters every thing like
irony immediately ceases; but from the avowed raillery of Comedy, to the
point where the subjection of mortal beings to an inevitable destiny
demands the highest degree of seriousness, there are a multitude of human
relations which unquestionably may be considered in an ironical view,
without confounding the eternal line of separation between good and evil.
This purpose is answered by the comic characters and scenes which are
interwoven with the serious parts in most of those pieces of Shakspeare
where romantic fables or historical events are made the subject of a noble
and elevating exhibition. Frequently an intentional parody of the serious
part is not to be mistaken in them; at other times the connexion is more
arbitrary and loose, and the more so the more marvellous the invention of
the whole, and the more entirely it is become a light revelling of the
fancy. The comic intervals everywhere serve to prevent the pastime from
being converted into a business, to preserve the mind in the possession of
its serenity, and to keep off that gloomy and inert seriousness which so
easily steals upon the sentimental, but not tragical, drama. Most
assuredly Shakspeare did not intend thereby, in defiance to his own better
judgment, to humour the taste of the multitude: for in various pieces, and
throughout considerable portions of others, and especially when the
catastrophe is approaching, and the mind consequently is more on the
stretch and no longer likely to give heed to any amusement which would
distract their attention, he has abstained from all such comic
intermixtures. It was also an object with him, that the clowns or buffoons
should not occupy a more important place than that which he had assigned
them: he expressly condemns the extemporizing with which they love to
enlarge their parts [Footnote: In Hamlet's directions to the players. Act
iii, sc. 2.]. Johnson founds the justification of the species of drama in
which seriousness and mirth admixed, on this, that in real life the vulgar
is found close to the sublime, that the merry and the sad usually
accompany and succeed one another. But it does not follow that because
both are found together, therefore they must not be separable in the
compositions of art. The observation is in other respects just, and this
circumstance invests the poet with a power to adopt this procedure,
because every thing in the drama must be regulated by the conditions of
theatrical probability; but the mixture of such dissimilar, and apparently
contradictory, ingredients, in the same works, can only be justifiable on
principles reconcilable with the views of art, which I have already
described. In the dramas of Shakspeare the comic scenes are the
antechamber of the poetry, where the servants remain; these prosaic
attendants must not raise their voices so high as to deafen the speakers
in the presence-chamber; however, in those intervals when the ideal
society has retired they deserve to be listened to; their bold raillery,
their presumption of mockery, may afford many an insight into the
situation and circumstances of their masters.
Shakspeare's comic talent is equally wonderful with that which he has
shown in the pathetic and tragic: it stands on an equal elevation, and
possesses equal extent and profundity; in all that I have hitherto said, I
only wished to guard against admitting that the former preponderated. He
is highly inventive in comic situations and motives: it will be hardly
possible to show whence he has taken any of them, whereas, in the serious
part of his dramas, he has generally laid hold of some well-known story.
His comic characterization is equally true, various, and profound, with
his serious. So little is he disposed to caricature, that rather, it may
be said, many of his traits are almost too nice and delicate for the
stage, that they can only be made available by a great actor, and fully
understood by an acute audience. Not only has he delineated many kinds of
folly, but even of sheer stupidity has he contrived to give a most
diverting and entertaining picture. There is also in his pieces a peculiar
species of the farcical, which apparently seems to be introduced more
arbitrarily, but which, however, is founded on imitation of some actual
custom. This is the introduction of the merry-maker, the fool with his cap
and bells, and motley dress, called more commonly in England _Clown_,
who appears in several comedies, though not in all, but of the tragedies
in _Lear_ alone, and who generally merely exercises his wit in
conversation with the principal persons, though he is also sometimes
incorporated into the action. In those times it was not only usual for
princes to have their court fools, but many distinguished families, among
their other retainers, kept such an exhilarating housemate as a good
antidote against the insipidity and wearisomeness of ordinary life, and as
a welcome interruption of established formalities. Great statesmen, and
even ecclesiastics, did not consider it beneath their dignity to recruit
and solace themselves after important business with the conversation of
their fools; the celebrated Sir Thomas More had his fool painted along
with himself by Holbein. Shakspeare appears to have lived immediately
before the time when the custom began to be abolished; in the English
comic authors who succeeded him the clown is no longer to be found. The
dismissal of the fool has been extolled as a proof of refinement; and our
honest forefathers have been pitied for taking delight in such a coarse
and farcical amusement. For my part, I am rather disposed to believe, that
the practice was dropped from the difficulty in finding fools able to do
full justice to their parts: [Footnote: See Hamlet's praise of Yorick. In
_The Twelfth Night_, Viola says:--
This fellow is wise enough to play the fool,
And to do that well craves a kind of wit;
He must observe their mood on whom he jests,
The quality of the persons, and the time;
And like the haggard, check at every feather
That comes before his eye. This is a practice
As full of labour as a wise man's art:
For folly that he wisely shows if fit,
But wise mens' folly fall'n quite taints their wit.--AUTHOR.
The passages from Shakspeare, in the original work, are given from the
author's masterly translation. We may be allowed, however, to observe that
the last line--
"Doch wozu ist des Weisen Thorheit nutz?"
literally, _Of what use is the folly of the wise?_--does not convey
the exact meaning of Shakespeare.--TRANS.] on the other hand, reason, with
all its conceit of itself, has become too timid to tolerate such bold
irony; it is always careful lest the mantle of its gravity should be
disturbed in any of its folds; and rather than allow a privileged place to
folly beside itself, it has unconsciously assumed the part of the
ridiculous; but, alas! a heavy and cheerless ridicule. [Footnote: "Since
the little wit that fools have was silenced, the little foolery that wise
men have makes a greater show."--_As You Like It_. Act i., sc. 2.] It
would be easy to make a collection of the excellent sallies and biting
sarcasms which have been preserved of celebrated court fools. It is well
known that they frequently told such truths to princes as are never now
told to them. [Footnote: Charles the Bold, of Burgundy, is known to have
frequently boasted that he wished to rival Hannibal as the greatest
general of all ages. After his defeat at Granson, his fool accompanied him
in his hurried flight, and exclaimed, "Ah, your Grace, they have for once
Hanniballed us!" If the Duke had given an ear to this warning raillery, he
would not so soon afterwards have come to a disgraceful end.] Shakspeare's
fools, along with somewhat of an overstraining for wit, which cannot
altogether be avoided when wit becomes a separate profession, have for the
most part an incomparable humour, and an infinite abundance of intellect,
enough indeed to supply a whole host of ordinary wise men.
I have still a few observations to make on the diction and versification
of our poet. The language is here and there somewhat obsolete, but on the
whole much less so than in most of the contemporary writers, a sufficient
proof of the goodness of his choice. Prose had as yet been but little
cultivated, as the learned generally wrote in Latin: a favourable
circumstance for the dramatic poet; for what has he to do with the
scientific language of books? He had not only read, but studied the
earlier English poets; but he drew his language immediately from life
itself, and he possessed a masterly skill in blending the dialogical
element with the highest poetical elevation. I know not what certain
critics mean, when they say that Shakspeare is frequently ungrammatical.
To make good their assertion, they must prove that similar constructions
never occur in his contemporaries, the direct contrary of which can,
however, be easily shown. In no language is every thing determined on
principle; much is always left to the caprice of custom, and if this has
since changed, is the poet to be made answerable for it? The English
language had not then attained to that correct insipidity which has been
introduced into the more recent literature of the country, to the
prejudice, perhaps, of its originality. As a field when first brought
under the plough produces, along with the fruitful shoots, many luxuriant
weeds, so the poetical diction of the day ran occasionally into
extravagance, but an extravagance originating in the exuberance of its
vigour. We may still perceive traces of awkwardness, but nowhere of a
laboured and spiritless display of art. In general Shakspeare's style yet
remains the very best model, both in the vigorous and sublime, and the
pleasing and tender. In his sphere he has exhausted all the means and
appliances of language. On all he has impressed the stamp of his mighty
spirit. His images and figures, in their unsought, nay, uncapricious
singularity, have often a sweetness altogether peculiar. He becomes
occasionally obscure from too great fondness for compressed brevity; but
still, the labour of poring over Shakspeare's lines will invariably meet
an ample requital.
The verse in all his plays is generally the rhymeless Iambic of ten or
eleven syllables, occasionally only intermixed with rhymes, but more
frequently alternating with prose. No one piece is written entirely in
prose; for even in those which approach the most to the pure Comedy, there
is always something added which gives them a more poetical hue than
usually belongs to this species. Many scenes are wholly in prose, in
others verse and prose succeed each other alternately. This can only
appear an impropriety in the eyes of those who are accustomed to consider
the lines of a drama like so many soldiers drawn up rank and file on a
parade, with the same uniform, arms, and accoutrements, so that when we
see one or two we may represent to ourselves thousands as being every way
like them.
In the use of verse and prose Shakspeare observes very nice distinctions
according to the ranks of the speakers, but still more according to their
characters and disposition of mind. A noble language, elevated above the
usual tone, is only suitable to a certain decorum of manners, which is
thrown over both vices and virtues, and which does not even wholly
disappear amidst the violence of passion. If this is not exclusively
possessed by the higher ranks, it still, however, belongs naturally more
to them than to the lower; and therefore in Shakspeare dignity and
familiarity of language, poetry, and prose, are in this manner distributed
among the characters. Hence his tradesmen, peasants, soldiers, sailors,
servants, but more especially his fools and clowns, speak almost without
exception, in the tone of their actual life. However, inward dignity of
sentiment, wherever it is possessed, invariably displays itself with a
nobleness of its own, and stands not in need, for that end, of the
artificial elegancies of education and custom; it is a universal right of
man, of the highest as well as the lowest; and hence also, in Shakspeare,
the nobility of nature and morality is ennobled above the artificial
nobility of society. Not unfrequently also he makes the very same persons
express themselves at times in the sublimest language, and at others in
the lowest; and this inequality is in like manner founded in truth.
Extraordinary situations, which intensely occupy the head and throw mighty
passions into play, give elevation and tension to the soul: it collects
together all its powers, and exhibits an unusual energy, both in its
operations and in its communications by language. On the other hand, even
the greatest men have their moments of remissness, when to a certain
degree they forget the dignity of their character in unreserved
relaxation. This very tone of mind is necessary before they can receive
amusement from the jokes of others, or what surely cannot dishonour even a
hero, from passing jokes themselves. Let any person, for example, go
carefully through the part of Hamlet. How bold and powerful the language
of his poetry when he conjures the ghost of his father, when he spurs
himself on to the bloody deed, when he thunders into the soul of his
mother! How he lowers his tone down to that of common life, when he has to
do with persons whose station demands from him such a line of conduct;
when he makes game of Polonius and the courtiers, instructs the player,
and even enters into the jokes of the grave-digger. Of all the poet's
serious leading characters there is none so rich in wit and humour as
Hamlet; hence he it is of all of them that makes the greatest use of the
familiar style. Others, again, never do fall into it; either because they
are constantly surrounded by the pomp of rank, or because a uniform
seriousness is natural to them; or, in short, because through the whole
piece they are under the dominion of a passion, calculated to excite, and
not, like the sorrow of Hamlet, to depress the mind. The choice of the one
form or the other is everywhere so appropriate, and so much founded in the
nature of the thing, that I will venture to assert, even where the poet in
the very same speech makes the speaker leave prose for poetry, or the
converse, this could not be altered without danger of injuring or
destroying some beauty or other. The blank verse has this advantage, that
its tone may be elevated or lowered; it admits of approximation to the
familiar style of conversation, and never forms such an abrupt contrast as
that, for example, between plain prose and the rhyming Alexandrines.
Shakspeare's Iambics are sometimes highly harmonious and full sounding;
always varied and suitable to the subject, at one time distinguished by
ease and rapidity, at another they move along with ponderous energy. They
never fall out of the dialogical character, which may always be traced
even in the continued discourses of individuals, excepting when the latter
run into the lyrical. They are a complete model of the dramatic use of
this species of verse, which, in English, since Milton, has been also used
in epic poetry; but in the latter it has assumed a quite different turn.
Even the irregularities of Shakspeare's versification are expressive; a
verse broken off, or a sudden change of rhythmus, coincides with some
pause in the progress of the thought, or the entrance of another mental
disposition. As a proof that he purposely violated the mechanical rules,
from a conviction that too symmetrical a versification does not suit with
the drama, and on the stage has in the long run a tendency to lull the
spectators asleep, we may observe that his earlier pieces are the most
diligently versified, and that in the later works, when through practice
he must have acquired a greater facility, we find the strongest deviations
from the regular structure of the verse. As it served with him merely to
make the poetical elevation perceptible, he therefore claimed the utmost
possible freedom in the use of it.
The views or suggestions of feeling by which he was guided in the use of
rhyme may likewise be traced with almost equal certainty. Not unfrequently
scenes, or even single speeches, close with a few rhyming lines, for the
purpose of more strongly marking the division, and of giving it more
rounding. This was injudiciously imitated by the English tragic poets of a
later date; they suddenly elevated the tone in the rhymed lines, as if the
person began all at once to speak in another language. The practice was
welcomed by the actors from its serving as a signal for clapping when they
made their exit. In Shakspeare, on the other hand, the transitions are
more easy: all changes of forms are brought about insensibly, and as if of
themselves. Moreover, he is generally fond of heightening a series of
ingenious and antithetical sayings by the use of rhyme. We find other
passages in continued rhyme, where solemnity and theatrical pomp were
suitable, as, for instance, in the mask, [Footnote: I shall take the
opportunity of saying a few words respecting this species of drama when I
come to speak of Ben Jonson.] as it is called, _The Tempest_, and in
the play introduced in _Hamlet_. Of other pieces, for instance, the
_Midsummer Night's Dream_, and _Romeo and Juliet_, the rhymes form a
considerable part; either because he may have wished to give them a
glowing colour, or because the characters appropriately utter in a more
musical tone their complaints or suits of love. In these cases he has even
introduced rhymed strophes, which approach to the form of the sonnet, then
usual in England. The assertion of Malone, that Shakspeare in his youth
was fond of rhyme, but that he afterwards rejected it, is sufficiently
refuted by his own chronology of the poet's works. In some of the
earliest, for instance, in the Second and Third Part of _Henry the
Sixth_, there are hardly any rhymes; in what is stated to be his last
piece, _The Twelfth Night, or What You Will_, and in _Macbeth_, which is
proved to have been composed under the reign of King James, we find them
in no inconsiderable number. Even in the secondary matters of form
Shakspeare was not guided by humour and accident, but, like a genuine
artist, acted invariably on good and solid grounds. This we might also
show of the kinds of verse which he least frequently used; for instance,
if the rhyming verses of seven and eight syllables, were we not afraid of
dwelling too long on merely technical peculiarities.
In England the manner of handling rhyming verse, and the opinion as to its
harmony and elegance, have, in the course of two centuries, undergone a
much greater change than is the case with the rhymeless Iambic or blank
verse. In the former, Dryden and Pope have become models; these writers
have communicated the utmost smoothing to rhyme, but they have also tied
it down to a harmonious uniformity. A foreigner, to whom antiquated and
new are the same, may perhaps feel with greater freedom the advantages of
the more ancient manner. Certain it is, the rhyme of the present day, from
the too great confinement of the couplet, is unfit for the drama. We must
not estimate the rhyme of Shakspeare by the mode of subsequent times, but
by a comparison with his contemporaries or with Spenser. The comparison
will, without doubt, turn out to his advantage. Spenser is often diffuse;
Shakspeare, though sometimes hard, is always brief and vigorous. He has
more frequently been induced by the rhyme to leave out something necessary
than to insert anything superfluous. Many of his rhymes, however, are
faultless: ingenious with attractive ease, and rich without false
brilliancy. The songs interspersed (those, I mean, of the poet himself)
are generally sweetly playful and altogether musical; in imagination,
while we merely read them, we hear their melody.
The whole of Shakspeare's productions bear the certain stamp of his
original genius, but yet no writer was ever farther removed from every
thing like a mannerism derived from habit or personal peculiarities.
Rather is he, such is the diversity of tone and colour, which varies
according to the quality of his subjects he assumes, a very Proteus. Each
of his compositions is like a world of its own, moving in its own sphere.
They are works of art, finished in one pervading style, which revealed the
freedom and judicious choice of their author. If the formation of a work
throughout, even in its minutest parts, in conformity with a leading idea;
if the domination of one animating spirit over all the means of execution,
deserves the name of correctness (and this, excepting in matters of
grammar, is the only proper sense of the term); we shall then, after
allowing to Shakspeare all the higher qualities which demand our
admiration, be also compelled, in most cases, to concede to him the title
of a correct poet.
It would be in the highest degree instructive to follow, if we could, in
his career step by step, an author who at once founded and carried his art
to perfection, and to go through his works in the order of time. But, with
the exception of a few fixed points, which at length have been obtained,
all the necessary materials for this are still wanting. The diligent
Malone has, indeed, made an attempt to arrange the plays of Shakspeare in
chronological order; but he himself only gives out the result of his
labours for hypothetical, and it could not possibly be attended with
complete success, since he excluded from his inquiry a considerable number
of pieces which have been ascribed to the poet, though rejected as
spurious by all the editors since Rowe, but which, in my opinion, must, if
not wholly, at least in great measure be attributed to him. [Footnote:
Were this book destined immediately for an English public, I should not
have hazarded an opinion like this at variance with that which is
generally received, without supporting it by proofs. The inquiry, however,
is too extensive for our present limits, and I have therefore reserved it
for a separate treatise. Besides at the present moment, while I am putting
the last hand to my Lectures, no collection of English books but my own is
accessible to me. The latter I should have enlarged with a view to this
object, if the interruption of intercourse with England had not rendered
it impossible to procure any other than the most common English books. On
this point, therefore, I must request indulgence. In an Appendix to this
Lecture I shall merely make a few cursory observations.]