English is, in all probability, a thing impossible. Why did not Milton
leave us half a book, or some fifty verses, that we might know what the
utmost poetical power, and the utmost mastery of our speech, and the
utmost resources of our verse, could effect? The inspiring expressive
music of the original tongue clothes the simplest and most unadorned word
and phrase in wealth, splendour, gorgeous majesty, prodigal magnificence;
and this, not with any incongruence or disharmony, any more than Eve's
GOLDEN tresses were excessive ornament, unmeet for the primitive
simplicity of Eden. The same exhilaration and vivification of the hearing
soul, which this perpetual music infuses, united to the same simplicity of
the thought and the words, will not easily be found in English. Again,
rhyme seems wanted to the richness of the harmony. Yet how shall rhyme
allow that utmost freedom and range in the flow of the thought which marks
the now majestically, now impetuously sweeping, Homeric river? That
measure, so _measured_, and yet so free; large, various, capacious--that
hexameter is despair. Meanwhile no nation concludes to forego the
incorporation of the great foreign works of literature into its own,
merely for such discouragement, merely because the adequate representation
lies wholly out of reach. We have gained much in bringing over the
powerful matter, if we must leave the style behind, and yet the style is
almost a part of the matter.
Homer is out of hand--Iliad and Odyssey. The Maeonian sun has ripened the
powers of the occidental poet. And Pope--_aged thirty-seven_--declares
that henceforward he will write _from_, as well as _to_, his own mind.
The "ESSAY ON MAN" follows. It expresses that graver study of the
universal subject, MAN, which appeared to Pope, now self-known, to be, for
the time of poetical literature to which he came, the most
practicable--for his own ability the aptest; and it embodies that part of
anthropology which doubtless was the most congenial to his own
inclination--the philosophical contemplation of man's nature, estate,
destiny.
The success of this enterprise was astonishing. Be the philosophy what and
whose it may, the poem revived to the latest age of poetry the phenomenon
of the first, when precept and maxim were modulated into verse, that they
might write themselves in every brain, and live upon every tongue.
The spirit and sweetness of the verse, the lucid and vivid expression, the
pregnant brevity of the meanings, the marrying of ardent and lofty
poetical imagings to moral sentiments and reflections, of which every
bosom is the birth-home, the pious will of the argument, which humbles the
proud and rebellious human intellect under the absolute rectitude and
benevolence of the Deity--nor least of all, the pleasure of receiving
easily, as in a familiar speech, thoughts that _were_ high, and _might be_
abstruse, that, at all events, wore a profound and philosophical air--with
strokes intervening of a now playful, now piercing, but always adroit
wit--and with touches, here and there strewn between, of natural painting,
and of apt unsought pathos--these numerous and excellent qualifications
met upon the subject of all subjects nearest to all--MAN--speedily made
the first great, original, serious writing of Pope a textbook and a manual
for its branch of ethico-theosophy, in every house where there were books
in England. These powerful excellences of this great poem did more. They
inwove its terse, vigorous, clear, significant, wise, loving, noble,
beautiful, and musical sentences--east, west, north, south--with all
memories, the mature and the immature--even as in that old, brave day of
the world or ever books were.
Pause, gentle reader, for a while, and reflect kindly on these paragraphs
for the sake of Alexander Pope and Christopher North. And now accompany us
while we select our specimens of the British critics, from the
"Nightingale of Twickenham's" preface to the works of Shakspeare. What he
proposed to accomplish in this undertaking was, "to give a more correct
text from the collated copies of the old editions, without any innovation
or indulgence to his own private sense, or conjecture; to insert the
various readings in the margin, and to place the suspected passages or
interpolations at the bottom of the page; to this was added an explanation
of some of the more obsolete or unusual words; and such as appeared to him
the most striking passages were marked by a star, or by inverted commas."
Warton laments that Pope ever undertook this edition; "a task which the
course of his reading and studies did not qualify him to execute with the
ability and skill which it deserved, and with which it has since been
executed;" but though it was a failure, there was no occasion for
lamentation. Johnson says more wisely, "that Pope did many things wrong,
and left many things undone, but let him not be defrauded of his due
praise. He was the first that knew, or at least, the first that told by
what helps the text might be improved. If he inspected the early editions
negligently, he taught others to be more accurate. In his preface he
expanded with great skill and eloquence the character which had been given
of Shakspeare by Dryden; and he drew the public attention upon his works,
which, though often mentioned, had been little read."
Warton, too, admits that the "preface is written with taste, judgment,
purity, and elegance." Pope speaks modestly of the design of his preface,
which is not, he says, to enter into a criticism upon Shakspeare, "though
to do it effectually, and not superficially, would be the best occasion
that any just writer could take to form the judgment and taste of our
nation." His humbler aim is but to give an account of the fate of his
works, and the disadvantages under which they have been transmitted to us.
But he cannot neglect the opportunity thus afforded him, "of mentioning
some of the principal and characteristic excellences for which
(notwithstanding his defects) _he is justly and universally elevated above
all other dramatic writers_."
"If ever any author deserved the name of an _original_, it was
Shakspeare. Homer himself drew not his art so immediately from the
fountains of nature; it proceeded through Egyptian strainers and
channels, and came to him not without some tincture of the learning,
or some cast of the models, of those before him. The poetry of
Shakspeare was inspiration indeed: he is not so much an imitator, as
an instrument, of Nature; and it is not so just to say that he speaks
from her, as that she speaks through him.
"His _characters_ are so much nature herself, that it is a sort of
injury to call them by so distant a name as copies of her. Those of
other poets have a constant resemblance, which shows that they
received them from one another, and were but multipliers of the same
image; each picture, like a mock rainbow, is but the reflection of a
reflection. But every single character in Shakspeare is as much an
individual as those in life itself; it is as impossible to find any
two alike; and such as from their relation or affinity in any respect
appear most to be twins, will, upon comparison, be found remarkably
distinct. To this life and variety of character, we must add the
wonderful preservation of it; which is such throughout his plays,
that had all the speeches been printed without the very names of the
persons, I believe one might have applied them with certainty to
every speaker.
"The _power_ over our _passions_ was never possessed in a more
eminent degree, or displayed in so different instances. Yet all
along, there is seen no labour, no pains to raise them; no
preparation to guide or guess to the effect, or be perceived to lead
toward it, but the heart swells, and the tears burst out, just at the
proper places; we are surprised at the moment we weep; and yet upon
reflection, find the passion so just, that we should be surprised if
we had not wept, and wept at that very moment.
"How astonishing is it again, that the passions directly opposite to
these, laughter and spleen, are no less at his command? that he is
not more a master of the _great_ than the _ridiculous_ in human
nature; of our noblest tendernesses, than of our vainest foibles; of
our strongest emotions, than of our idlest sensations!
"Nor does he only excel in the passions; in the coolness of
reflection and reasoning he is full as admirable. His _sentiments_
are not only in general the most pertinent and judicious upon every
subject; but by a talent very peculiar, something between penetration
and felicity, he hits upon that particular point on which the bent of
each argument turns, or the force of each motive depends. This is
perfectly amazing, from a man of no education or experience in those
great and public scenes of life which are usually the subject of his
thoughts; so that he seems to have known the world by intuition, to
have looked through human nature at one glance, and to be the only
author that gives ground for a very new opinion, that the
philosopher, and even the man of the world, may be _born_, as well as
the poet."
Nothing can be better. Dryden gave us large and grand outlines. Pope's is
closer criticism. But it is more than that which Johnson says, that all
the successors of Dryden have produced--an expansion only of his notions;
unless, in that sense in which every follower in time could by possibility
do nothing but expand the notions of the first critic who should have
said--"Shakspeare was a poet of the highest description, with a good many
troublesome faults." Pope's portraiture is drawn from near and intent
inspection; a likeness after the life, and reflecting the life; thoroughly
independent of any thing preceding him. Thus, THE COMPLETE SEVERING OF
NEARLY-ALLIED PERSONAGES (upon which Pope insists, and which, more than
the immense multiplicity, contemplated in a general way, of the some
hundred DRAMATIS PERSONAE, determines essential variety; attests the
constituting of every character, after the manner of Nature, from an
indivisible SELF, which at once rules it into unity, and holds it
unconfused with all others) is a finely-just observation, of which we have
not a hint from Dryden; and it carries us, instantly, deep into a most
interesting study of comparisons. As of Macbeth and Richard III., both
murderous usurpers, as different as two men can well be; of Leontes and
Othello, two jealous husbands, and as different, even in their jealousy,
as two men can be; of Coriolanus and Hotspur, each an earthly Mars; each
"the soul of honour;" each sudden in passion, impetuous, and ungovernable;
each with a kindliness of nature that draws and attaches his friends as
much as the superiority of his character overrules them; each with a
rough, abrupt, penetrating strength of intellect; each endowed, which is
more peculiar, with vivid imagination, that leaps into bold poetical
figures; each of a cutting wit, and, in his own way, humourous pleasantry;
and yet the semi-traditionary Roman patrician, and the quite historical
English earl's son, so distinct that you shall read the two plays, in
which they are, ten and twenty times over, without thinking of putting the
towering heroes, twinned by so many, so marked, and so profound
affinities, upon a line of comparison. Or put all Shakspeare's gallant
warriors in a catalogue, and what a diversified list have you drawn up!
Hector, Troilus, Diomed, Coriolanus, Tullus Aufidius, Mark Antony,
Othello, Cassio, nay, and Iago, Falconbridge, Hotspur, Glendower,
Mortimer, Henry V., Talbot, Warwick, Richard III., Richmond, Macbeth,
Banquo, Macduff, Old Seward, Edmund, Edgar, Benedict, Bertram, are some of
them; for Shakspeare like Scott loved a good soldier. Compare the
melancholy Hamlet and the melancholy Jaques; both shrewd observers of men;
both given to philosophizing; and yet different--Heaven knows. And so on.
Thus, the remark of Pope goes to the root of Shakspeare's creative art,
and leads you into a method of thinking, not soon exhausted.
We endeavour, says Dryden, to follow the VARIETY and greatness of
characters that are derived to us from Shakspeare and Fletcher. But does
this most general attribution of a characteristic--shared with
Fletcher--and such as the loosest observation of the plays forces upon the
most uncritical reader--does the accident that Dryden left this inevitable
word "VARIETY" written, make the critical observation of Pope no more than
a "diffusing" and "paraphrasing" of Dryden's "Epitome?" Has he only
"changed Dryden's gold for baser metal, of lower value, though of greater
bulk?" It would at least be as near the truth to say, that he has made
Dryden's bill good money by accepting it. Pope, in the precise and
critical sense in which he has attached the praise of "variety" to
Shakspeare, would certainly not have communicated the praise, with him, to
Fletcher.
Shakspeare, says Dryden, "drew the images of Nature, _not laboriously_,
but luckily." "All along," says Pope, "there is seen _no labour_, no pains
to raise the passions, no preparation to lead towards the effect; but the
heart swells, and the tears burst out, just at the proper places." The
unstudied, spontaneous movement of the scene, in Shakspeare, both of the
Action and of the Passion, as if every thing went on of its own impulse,
and not as willed and ruled by the poet, is an imitation of Nature which
no other dramatist has so closely urged. Pope insists upon it--for the
passion, at least. Is this characteristic already contained in the "not
laboriously, but luckily," of Dryden? If it is contained, it is hardly
conveyed. A seed has dropped from the hand of Dryden. Under the gardening
of Pope, it springs up into a fair and fairly-spread plant. That is a sort
of "diffusion" very distinct from turning gold into base metal. So Pope of
himself admires that, in the comedies, histories, and tragedies of the
unversed Shakspeare, all the businesses, high and low, of human life, turn
upon their own hinges.--If a statesman counsel, he lays down the very
grounds of proceeding which greyheaded statesmanship would have
propounded--a king reigns like a king, a soldier fights like a soldier,
woman loves and hates like a woman, a clown is a clown, a thief is a
thief. In short, besides the individual constitution and self-consistency
of the CHARACTERS, besides the spontaneous and self-timed motion of the
PASSIONS, we are further and distinctly to admire this--that the springs,
the constitution, and the government of ACTION are imitated;--as if the
inexperienced player from Avon side had stood personally, confidentially,
participatingly present in the heart of all human transactions: And if it
appears to the acute critic wonderful that Shakspeare should have found,
in his own bosom, the archetypes of so many and so diverse
individualities, that he should have found there the law given by original
Nature for the flow and current, the impulsion, the meandering, and the
precipitation of the _passions_; it strikes him as yet more wonderful,
more like an inspiring, that he should have found there a divination of
that which is subsequent to and ingrafted upon Nature--namely, of human
life itself, of universal human experience; much in the same way as
Ulysses admired most, in the song of Demodocus, his knowledge of that
which had passed withinside the Wooden Horse, and concluded, hence, to the
undoubted inspiration of the Muse.
This appears to us to be the meaning of Pope's eulogy; and if it but
unfolds the hints of Dryden's, it unfolds them, be it said, uninvidiously,
something after the fashion in which Shakspeare himself unfolded the hints
which he found in old books, of plots and personages; that is to say,
originally, creatively, with quite independent power; and certainly with
no deterioration to the matter. Pope goes on to admit faults. We must here
dissent as to facts and opinions, and must qualify.
"It must be owned, that with all these great excellences, he has
almost as great defects: and that as he has certainly written better,
so he has perhaps written worse than any other. But I think I can in
some measure account for these defects, from several causes and
accidents; without which it is hard to imagine that so large and so
enlightened a mind could ever have been susceptible of them. That all
these contingencies should unite to his disadvantage seems to me
almost as singularly unlucky, as that so many various, nay, contrary
talents should meet in one man, was happy and extraordinary.
"It must be allowed that stage-poetry, of all other, is more
particularly levelled to please the _populace_, and its success more
immediately depending upon the _common suffrage_. One cannot
therefore wonder, if Shakspeare having at his first appearance no
other aim in his writings than to procure a subsistence, directed his
endeavours solely to hit the taste and humour that then prevailed.
The audience was generally composed of the meaner sort of people, and
therefore the images of life were to be drawn from those of their own
rank; accordingly we find, that not our author's only, but almost all
the old comedies have their scene among _tradesmen_ and _mechanics_;
and even their historical plays strictly follow the common _old
stories_ or _vulgar traditions_ of that kind of people. In tragedy,
nothing was so sure to _surprise_ and cause _admiration_, as the most
strange, unexpected, and consequently most unnatural, events and
incidents; the most exaggerated thoughts; the most verbose and
bombast expression; the most pompous rhymes, and thundering
versification. In comedy, nothing was so sure to _please_ as mean
buffoonery, vile ribaldry, and unmannerly jests of fools and clowns.
Yet even in these, our author's wit buoys up, and is borne above his
subject; his genius in those low parts is like some prince of a
romance in the disguise of a shepherd or peasant; a certain greatness
and spirit now and then break out, which manifest his higher
extraction and qualities.
"It may be added, that not only the common audience had no notion of
the rules of writing, but few even of the better sort piqued
themselves upon any great degree of knowledge or nicety that way;
till Ben Jonson, getting possession of the stage, brought critical
learning into vogue; and that this was not done without difficulty,
may appear from those frequent lessons (and indeed almost
declamations) which he was forced to prefix to his first plays, and
put into the mouth of his actors, the _grex_, _chorus_, &c., to
remove the prejudices, and inform the judgment of his hearers. Till
then, our authors had no thoughts of writing on the model of the
ancients: their tragedies were only histories in dialogue; and their
comedies followed the thread of any novel as they found it, no less
implicitly than if it had been true history.
"To judge, therefore, of Shakspeare by Aristotle's rules, is like
trying a man by the laws of one country, who acted under those of
another. He writ to the _people_; and writ at first without patronage
from the better sort, and therefore without aims of pleasing them:
without assistance or advice from them: learned, as without the
advantage of education or acquaintance among them; without that
knowledge of the best of models, the ancients, to inspire him with an
emulation of them: in a word, without any views of reputation, and of
what poets are pleased to call immortality: some or all of which have
encouraged the vanity, or animated the ambition, of other writers.
"Yet it must be observed, that when his performances had merited the
protection of his prince, and when the encouragement of the court had
succeeded to that of the town, the works of his riper years are
manifestly raised above those of his former. The dates of his plays
sufficiently evidence that his productions improved, in proportion to
the respect he had for his auditors. And I make no doubt this
observation would be found true in every instance, were but editions
extant, from which we might learn the exact time when every piece was
composed, and whether writ for the town or the court."
Pope here apologises for the very middling sort of company which
Shakspeare, in his Comedies, obliges us to keep, by the obligation he was
under of "holding the mirror up to" his hearers, who being, for the most
part, "the meaner sort of people," would only duly recognise and
sympathize with "images of life drawn from those of their own rank." And
so we have a pardonable cause, wherefore "our author's" (like "almost all
the old") Comedies, HAVE THEIR SCENE among TRADESMEN and MECHANICS;" and
some excuse for the degradation of history by the historical plays, which
strictly follow the common OLD STORIES or VULGAR TRADITIONS of that sort
of people.
The DEFENCE is kindly; and bears with it, we must acknowledge, a specious
air. In the mean time, here lacks surely something to the regular ordering
of the trial. Where, we should be glad to know, is the CORPUS DELICTI?
Before justifying, let us hear some witnesses to the OFFENCE. Let us call
over the Comedies. Here is the roll of them.
THE TEMPEST!--_Dramatis Personae:_--Alonso, KING of Naples;--Sebastian, HIS
BROTHER;--Prospero, the RIGHTFUL DUKE of Milan!--Antonio, HIS BROTHER, the
USURPING DUKE of Milan!--Ferdinand, SON TO THE KING OF NAPLES!--Gonzalo,
an honest old COUNSELLOR of Naples!--Adrian, Francisco, LORDS!--Really, we
are afraid that all the ignobler males left, Caliban, a savage and
deformed SLAVE; Trinculo, a JESTER; Stephano, a drunken BUTLER; the MASTER
OF A SHIP, the BOATSWAIN, and MARINERS--will not, any more than Miranda,
with Ariel and the Spirits who personate in Prospero's masque, and who
clear out the playbill, suffice to lay THE SCENE of the "Tempest" AMONG
tradesmen and mechanics. Next come, handsomely cloaked and feathered in
old Italian garb, "The TWO GENTLEMEN of Verona!"
But we will not spare, any further, the curious reader the labour of
turning over the leaves of his own copy, or of his memory. The truth is,
as every reader's recollection at once answers, that the rule for the
comedy of Shakspeare, respectively to the social degrees along which it
moves, may be worded safely enough from the scheme of persons exhibited
above. The comedy of Shakspeare removes itself, by two great strides, from
the meaner sort of its auditory; for light-footed, or more
seriously-pacing, it loves to tread on floors of state; it associates
familiarly with the highly-born and the highly-natured. His Thalia is of a
very aristocratic humour. But, more than this, she further distances the
vulgar associations and experience of her spectators, by putting between
herself and them the Romance of Manners. We have seen the names--Naples,
Milan, Verona. Let us pursue the roll-call. In "Twelfth Night," the
"scene" is a city in Illyria, and the sea-coast near it;--in "Measure for
Measure," VIENNA;--in "Much Ado about Nothing," MESSINA;--in the
"Midsummer Night's dream," ATHENS, AND A WOOD NOT FAR FROM IT;--in "Love's
Labour's Lost," NAVARRE;--in the "Merchant of Venice," PARTLY AT VENICE,
AND PARTLY AT BELMONT, THE SEAT OF PORTIA, ON THE CONTINENT (understand,
OF ITALY;)--in "As You Like It," THE SCENE LIES, FIRST, NEAR OLIVER'S
HOUSE; AFTERWARDS, PARTLY IN THE USURPER'S COURT, AND PARTLY IN THE
FOREST OF ARDEN;--in "All's Well that End's Well," PARTLY IN FRANCE, AND
PARTLY IN TUSCANY;--in the "Taming of the Shrew," SOMETIMES IN PADUA, AND
SOMETIMES IN PETRUCHIO'S HOUSE IN THE COUNTRY;--in "The Winter's Tale," (a
comedy, wherein only two of the personages die--one eaten,) THE SCENE IS
SOMETIMES IN SICILIA, SOMETIMES IN BOHEMIA;--in the "Comedy of Errors," at
EPHESUS;--Last of all, in the "Merry Wives of Windsor," in WINDSOR and the
parts adjacent. THIRTEEN comedies lying in Italy, Illyria, Germany,
Greece, France, Asia Minor, Sicily, Bohemia, and in that uninhabited
island, inhabited by a day-dream, and which lies nowhere. _One_ in
_England_.