field of imagination. He comes from the hand of Nature an essential poet.
That he is a dramatic poet, should have two reasons. The first, given in
his poetical constitution; that the piercing and various inquisition of
humanity for which he was gifted; the intimate mastery of passion; and the
extraordinary activity of ratiocination which distinguish him, are
satisfied only by the Drama. Then, in the accident of the times--that as
the stage rose for AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and they for the
stage--so, with Shakspeare, in England. At a certain point of the social
progression, the theatre becomes the spot where poetry has living power.
Shakspeare must seize upon the mind of his countrymen, as Homer took
possession of Greece--VIVA VOCE. The silent and retired press is for the
dream-like Spenser--for the star-like Milton. To Shakspeare, the
Promethean maker of men and women, earthly-moulded if kindled into life
with fire from heaven--give a stage and actors!--Give men and women, to
personate men and women!--And give three thousand men and women, to throng
roundabout, and look and listen--thrill and weep--suspended in one
breathlessness! But not because he has deigned to trace upon those actual
boards his magical ring, and because within it his powerful art calls up
no air-made phantasmagoria, but breathing and sentient _substantial_
humanity; not, therefore, is he less a magician--less a POET--less, if you
will, a dreamer. Imagination is the faculty which habitually divides him,
as all his brotherhood, from us, the vulgar of mankind. To him the stage
is the field of imagination; therefore, he avails himself of all allowed
imaginative resources. Distance, in time and place, which renders
indefinite; strange, picturesque, poetical manners, and regions, are such
legitimate means. In particular, imagination prefers high rank to low, for
half a dozen reasons. The outward show, state, pomp, retinue, splendour of
costume, of habitation, of all daily accidental conditions;--these allure
imagination, which, like grief, "is easily beguiled." EASE, in human life,
like that attributed to the heavenly divinities--the [Greek: reia
zontes]--the gods who live at ease, pleases imagination;--which might be
justified. But imagination is not a light and idle child, to be won by the
mere toy of a throne and robe, crown and sceptre. These are the signs of a
universal homage rendered; and in this meaning, besides their natural
richness and beauty, pleasing. Again, imagination itself does homage to
stately power--not homage servile, as to that from which it dreads
evil--but free homage, contemplatively, to a wellspring of momentous
effects. The power that invests the person of a sovereign, of necessity
clothes him in majesty. Again, many and grave destinies hang about high
persons. Each stands for many of less note; and imagination is a faculty,
taking delight in the representation of many by one. Besides, high persons
carry on high actions; and they are free to act. They will, and
straightway they do.
Here, then, is good cause why the imaginative drama, comic or tragic,
shall delight in high persons. And you see accordingly, that the plays of
Shakspeare, of whatsoever description, move regularly amongst the loftily
born--kings, independent dukes, nobles, gentlemen.
"The Emperor of Russia was my father:"
says the falsely accused Hermione, and you sympathize with her proud
consciousness, and you THE MORE feel her abhorred indignity.
If Spenser could say, that it belongs to gentle blood to sit well on
horseback--much more does the easy and inborn courage and worth of gentle
blood bestride bravely, gracefully, lightly, and well, the careering,
rearing, bounding, plunging, and headlong rushing horses of human
destinies.
The fact, then, is this:--Shakspeare thus views the world; and he frames
his idea of the drama accordingly.
What, then, does Pope mean, when he says that Shakspeare "lays his scene
amongst tradesmen and mechanics?"
Surely he does not include under _tradesmen_, great _merchants_. Not, for
example, the "Merchant of Syracusa," the grave and good old AEgaeon,
condemned to death in the "Comedy of Errors" because Ephesus and Syracusa
have war. He and his fortune are as far away as a king with his--from the
'prentices of London. It is not the Venetian merchant, the princely
Antonio, with his argosies, spice and silk laden, that Pope regards as
letting down the dignity of the sock; nor, we hope, the Jew and usurer,
Shylock; the sublime in indignation, when he vindicates to his
down-spurned race the parity of the human tempering in body and soul; the
sublime in hate, when he fastens like a devil his fangs--or prepares to
fasten--in the quivering, living flesh of his Christian debtor.
No! these are not yet the key to the enigma--"_tradesmen_ and mechanics."
In the "Midsummer Night's Dream," "a crew" of six "rude _mechanicals_,"
"hard-handed men," "that work for bread upon Athenian stalls," enact TWO
scenes wholly to themselves--ONE, which mixes them up with the fairies;
and ONE, in the presence of Theseus, Duke of Athens, and of his fair
warrior-bride Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons; to say nothing of ONE, or
possible TWO fairy scenes, which include one of the said "swaggering
hempen homespuns," transformed by faery.
Is _this_ that "laying" of the "scene amongst tradesmen and mechanics,"
which has afforded our critic his absolute description of Shakspeare's
comedy?
We greatly suspect, that it had too much to do in suggesting the strange
misrepresentation.
And is this all?
No! It is not.
There is one play that, by its whole invention, lies nearest the reality,
which must be taken as habitually possessing the understandings of an
English--a London--audience, in the reign of Elizabeth. It is that one
comedy which haunts upon English ground--"The Merry Wives of Windsor." The
complexion and constitution of the play lay it in the bosom--the manners
are those--of MIDDLE English life.
Here are the persons:--Sir John Falstaff; Fenton, (he is Ann Page's lover,
the list of the names assigns him no rank. In conversation with mine host
of the Garter, however, he asserts his own quality; with "as I am a
gentleman;") Shallow, _a country justice_; Slender, _cousin to Shallow_;
Mr Ford, Mr Page, _two gentlemen_ dwelling at Windsor; William Page, a
boy, _son to Mr Page_; Sir Hugh Evans, _a Welsh parson_; Dr Caius, _a
French Physician; Host of the Garter Inn_; Bardolf, Pistol, Nym,
_followers_ of Falstaff; Robin, _page_ to Falstaff; Simple, _servant_ to
Slender; Rugby, _servant_ to Dr Caius.
There is no need of adding two wives and a daughter. Here is the _toning_
of that which we will take leave to call Shakspeare's _only unromantic and
unaristocratical_ comedy.
Was this written to please the "meaner sort" of people who frequented the
playhouses?
Dennis hands down the tradition--which he may have had from Dryden, who
may have had it from Sir W. Davenant--that "the comedy was written at the
command of Queen Elizabeth, and _by her direction_." At all events, and
whatsoever other tastes it courted and may have gratified, it won the
favour of the highest audience. The quarto edition of 1602, describes it
as having been "divers times acted by the right honourable my Lord
Chamberlaine's servants, both before her Maiestie, and else-where;" and
in the accounts of the _Revels at Court_, in the latter end of 1604, it
figures as performed on the Sunday following November first, "by his
Majestie's plaiers."
We have thus, in part explicitly and in part summarily, documented the
TONE, if it may be so called, of Shakspeare's Comic Theatre--being
impelled so to do, first of all, by the duty of contradicting, the most
injurious and utterly groundless characterization of a critic, whom we
cite with the highest esteem and applause; further, by the fear that the
positive and unqualified averment of a high and critical authority might
entrap a docile and easy reader into an unhappy _misrecollection_ of his
own true and clear knowledge upon the matter. Thirdly, we were not sorry
to find ourselves engaged in clearing up, once for all, our own hitherto
somewhat confused and insecure impressions. In the fourth place, we do
always rejoice, and are irresistibly swayed from our equipoise, and are
liable to be hurried any lengths, when we fall in with any opportunity of
talking in any way about Shakspeare. But in particular we are glad to be
obliged to approve and authenticate any general and grounding views of his
poetry; and it came not amiss to our humour, in this day of the world, to
show how tenderly and reverently the Spirit, who has the most lovingly,
largely, and profoundly comprehended humanity, viewed the mistrusted and
assailed institutions which have all along built and sustained the
societies of men. If there is "beauty" that "maketh beautiful old rhyme,"
there is verse that reacts upon its matter; the poetry of Shakspeare shall
stand in the place of a more easily fallible political science, to
strengthen, whilst it adorns, the old pillars of man's world. Song can
draw down the moon from the sky--song shall draw and charm many a rugged,
uncouth, untamed understanding to a more submissive political docility.
But, indeed, there lurked one other less ambitious motive. What could the
accurate Pope mean by this most inaccurate description of his author? We
presume that there is an answer. The eulogy which precisely describes
Shakspeare, is Pope's own. The imputations against Shakspeare, of which
Pope will palliate the edge, are not Pope's. They are the impeachments
laid by the adversary, which Pope, zealous of mitigating, too largely and
hastily concedes. Standing, then, in bare and sharp opposition, as they
do, to the fact, they may serve us as constituting a fact in themselves.
They attest the opinion of the day--opinion, at least, prevalent high and
wide, since Pope allows it. We can understand the opinion itself only as a
confused and excessive exaggeration of the admixture which Shakspeare
allowed to the lower comic, in comedy and in tragedy; as a protest--in
which how far did Pope join?--against that admixture. The conclusion which
this day will draw, must be, that the criticism of Shakspeare in polite
circles, at that day, stood low.
"Another cause (and no less strong than the former) may be deduced
from our author's being a _player_, and forming himself first upon
the judgments of that body of men whereof he was a member. They have
ever had a standard to themselves, upon other principles than those
of Aristotle. As they live by the majority, they know no rule but
that of pleasing the present humour, and complying with the wit in
fashion; a consideration which brings all their judgment to a short
point. Players are just such judges of what is _right_, as tailors
are of what is _graceful_. And in this view it will be but fair to
allow, that most of our author's faults are less to be ascribed to
his wrong judgment as a poet, than to his right judgment as a player.
"By these men it was thought a praise to Shakspeare, that he scarce
ever _blotted a line_. This they industriously propagated, as appears
from what we are told by Ben Jonson in his _Discoveries_, and from
the preface of Heminges and Condell to the first folio edition. But
in reality (however it has prevailed) there never was a more
groundless report, or to the contrary of which there are more
undeniable evidences; as the comedy of the _Merry Wives of Windsor_,
which he entirely new writ; the _History of Henry VI._, which was
first published under the title of _The Contention of York and
Lancaster_, and that of _Henry V._, extremely improved: that of
_Hamlet_, enlarged to almost as much again as at first, and many
others. I believe the common opinion of his want of learning
proceeded from no better ground. This too might be thought a praise
by some, and to this his errors have as injudiciously been ascribed
by others. For it is certain, were it true, it could concern but a
small part of them; the most are such as are not properly defects,
but superfoetations; and arise not from want of learning or
reading, but from want of thinking or judging: or rather (to be more
just to our author) from a compliance to those wants in others. As to
a wrong choice of the subject, a wrong conduct of the incidents,
false thoughts, forced expressions, &c., if these are not to be
ascribed to the aforesaid accidental reasons, they must be charged
upon the poet himself, and there is no help for it. But I think the
two disadvantages which I have mentioned, (to be obliged to please
the lowest of people, and to keep the worst of company,) if the
consideration be extended as far as it reasonably may, will appear
sufficient to mislead and depress the greatest genius upon earth.
Nay, the more modesty with which such a one is endued, the more he is
in danger of submitting and conforming to others against his own
better judgment."
On the other hand, as the intellectual destiny of Shakspeare was to be the
greatest of dramatists, the trade of a player had its advantages. He
learned absolutely what a stage is, what actors can do, and what audiences
are. Charles Lamb feebly maintained, that Shakspeare's Plays are unfitted
for acting, by being above it. They are above reading too; at least, they
are above most--why not say the truth at once--above all readers of them.
Yet it would be a pity to leave them unread. They are the best fitted of
all plays for acting; for of all plays they best possess the stage, and
command the audience. In thus extolling the essential poetry of
Shakspeare, he condemns his practical understanding, his art. He
oversteps, too, the inabilities of the histrionic art. The inabilities of
the histrions themselves, is another matter. The difficulty of
understanding Shakspeare, must not be turned into the impossibility of
representing him when understood. The power, art, science, capacity, what
you will, with which he has fitted his works to their immediate use, shows
itself remarkably in this, that as the stage grows in its material means,
the play comes out in power, splendour, majesty, magnificence, as if the
stage but grew to the dimensions of that which it must contain; and it
must have been hundreds of times felt in the green-room, that only the
Plays of Shakspeare try, and form actor and actress, foster and rear them
to the height of their possible stature.
"But as to his _want of learning_, it may be necessary to say
something more: there is certainly a vast difference between
_learning_ and _languages_. How far he was ignorant of the latter, I
cannot determine; but it is plain he had much reading at least, if
they will not call it learning. Nor is it any great matter, if a man
has knowledge, whether he has it from one language or another.
Nothing is more evident than that he had a taste of natural
philosophy, mechanics, ancient and modern history, poetical learning,
and mythology: we find him very knowing in the customs, rights, and
manners of antiquity. In _Coriolanus_ and _Julius Caesar_, not only
the spirit, but manners of Romans are exactly drawn: and still a
nicer distinction is shown between the manners of the Romans in time
of the former and of the latter. His reading in the ancient
historians is no less conspicuous, in many references to particular
passages, and the speeches copied from Plutarch in _Coriolanus_ may,
I think, as well be made an instance of his learning as those copied
from Cicero in _Catiline_, of Ben Jonson's. The manners of other
nations in general, the Egyptians, Venetians, French, &c., are drawn
with equal propriety. Whatever object of nature or branch of science
he either speaks of or describes, it is always with competent, if not
extensive knowledge; his descriptions are still exact; all his
metaphors appropriated, and remarkably drawn from the true nature and
inherent qualities of each subject. When he treats of ethic or
politic, we may constantly observe a wonderful justness of
distinction as well as extent of comprehension. No one is more a
master of the poetical story, or has more frequent allusions to the
various parts of it. Mr Waller (who has been celebrated for this last
particular) has not shown more learning this way than Shakspeare. We
have translations from Ovid published in his name, among those poems
which pass for his, and for some of which we have undoubted
authority, (being published by himself, and dedicated to his noble
patron, the Earl of Southampton.) He appears also to have been
conversant in Plautus, from whom he has taken the plot of one of his
plays. He follows the Greek authors, and particularly Dares Phrygius,
in another; although I will not pretend to say in what language he
read them. The modern Italian writers of novels he was manifestly
acquainted with; and we may conclude him to be no less conversant
with the ancients of his own country; from the use he has made of
Chaucer in _Troilus and Cressida_, and in the _Two Noble Kinsmen_, if
that play be his, as there goes a tradition it was; and indeed it has
little resemblance of Fletcher, and more of our author than some of
those that have been received as genuine.
"I am inclined to think, this opinion proceeded originally from the
zeal of the partisans of our author and Ben Jonson; as they
endeavoured to exalt the one at the expense of the other. It is ever
the nature of parties to be in extremes; and nothing is so probable,
as that because Ben Jonson had much the more learning, it was said,
on the one hand, that Shakspeare had none at all; and because
Shakspeare had much the most wit and fancy, it was retorted, on the
other, that Jonson wanted both. Because Shakspeare borrowed nothing,
it was said that Ben Jonson borrowed every thing. Because Jonson did
not write extempore, he was reproached with being a year about every
piece; and because Shakspeare wrote with ease and rapidity, they
cried, he never once made a blot. Nay, the spirit of opposition ran
so high, that whatever those of the one side objected to the other,
was taken at the rebound, and turned into praises; as injudiciously
as their antagonists before had made them objections."
The learning of Shakspeare! Pope, like Dryden, has said well upon it.
Shakspeare, the personal friend of men of highest rank, learning, genius;
and reading in the English language as much as he chose of the wit and
wisdom there entreasured, inherited the mind of the world. What will you
have more? That he shall read his own spirit; and, therefore, is he above
all men learned. As for that seeming wildness and irregularity of his
style, which many are inclined, even at this day, to set down to his
imperfect education, we beg you to recollect his more elaborated rhymed
poems; his Venus and Adonis; his Rape of Lucrece; his Passionate Pilgrim;
his Sonnets. And are you quite sure that some of the most finished, the
strictest composition as to language and verse, of his age, shall not be
found there, far beyond the experience or even comprehension of Dr Parr
and all his scholars?
Reader beloved from old, and with whom we have ever loved, on pleasant
landing-place in spacious article, lovingly to confabulate--while
printer's devil, forgetful of copy, in the far depths of Altisidora
indulged in snoreless sleep--reader, beloved anew, tell us who were the
Greeks? "They were that division of mankind in which Homer took mortal
existence. Homer spoke Greek." Good. And so, three or five thousand years
hence, somebody will be asking somebody, who were the English? "Oh! they
inhabited the island in which Shakspeare was born! Then, and a little
while before and after. Shakspeare spoke English. He was an Englishman."
Good. Ay, ay, rough and ready, and gentle reader, in what civilized part
of Central Africa such question and reply will be made, we predict not;
but you and we feel, that when and wheresoever the little dialogue shall
occur, we two shall have for ourselves our own sufficient share of
posthumous reputation, and eke Charles Knight. These twelve volumes always
lying on their own line of our table, are Charles' edition of Shakspeare,
alone of all our valuables uninsured at the Sun, for they are bound in
asbestos. And now, obedient reader, listen to us lecturing, like a
philosophical critic as we are, on Pope's ESSAY ON CRITICISM, involved in
these ten volumes, edited twenty years ago by William Roscoe, now with the
saints.
Essay on Criticism! What does one expect? Criticism, be it noted, has two
phases. This is the first. In its origin, it follows now afar, now close
upon the works out of which it has arisen. It describes the methods which
genius has half-instinctively, half-thoughtfully followed. It brings out
into clear statement, certain movements and felt workings of genius; and
it defines formal imitation to workers that shall come. It appears,
therefore, as an embodying of rules. This is, in the main, the shape in
which criticism appears in classical antiquity. This was the meaning of
the name with Pope and his contemporaries. "_Dicta sunt omnia_," remarks
Quinctilian, (insisting upon the order in which nature produces, first,
the arts themselves, poetry or eloquence, in power--operative; _then_, the
deduction and exposition of the method,) "_antequam praeciperentur_." And
so in Pope and his contemporaries, we read of nothing but
RULES--RULES--RULES! At this day, the word then in honour, grates, albeit
a smooth one, upon one's ear. It seems to depress and to tame, to shut up
and imprison thought, which would range and soar, and asks breath, and
vigour, and liberty, from true criticism. The truth is, that since that
day the world has turned round, and we are turned philosophers. Thus the
second phasis has arisen. We want no longer the rules, but the
PRINCIPLES--the facts or the laws in our nature, and the nature of things
about us, which have given out the rules; whence they flowed to Homer and
to Demosthenes. We will drink from the fountains; not even from those
"golden urns!" And with right and with reason, for we, too, are the
children of nature. Besides, we will JUDGE Homer and Demosthenes. Without
doubt, criticism, founded as an art empirical, tends continually to its
second phasis, of a science grounding an art. And it is to be hoped, that
something towards this profounder constitution has been attained, and that
we, in following down our critics, shall follow out some part of such a
progress. In the mean time, let us not rate our predecessors too low,
merely upon the showing of their own modesty. Do not believe that
Aristotle could propound a rule, through which a principle did not gleam
out. And, in sooth, when this Essay sprang from the brain of Pope,--were
not, possibly, the papers lying in the desk of Addison, in which he began,
for our literature, the deliberate and express examination into the
Philosophy of Criticism, within the domain of the beautiful in Art and
Nature?
Addison, in a commendatory critique in the _Spectator_, said, that the
observations in the Essay "follow one another without that methodical
regularity that would have been requisite in a prose writer." And Warton,
in opposition to Warburton, who asserted that it was a regular piece,
written on a regular and consistent plan, has spoken scornfully of the
Bishop's Commentary, and concluded in his usual forcible-feeble way, that
Pope had no plan in the poem at all. Roscoe spiritedly rates Warton for
assuming to know Pope's mind better than Pope himself, who gave the
Commentary his _imprimatur_. It may occasionally refine rather too
ingeniously, but on the whole it is elucidatory, and Roscoe did well to
give it entire in his edition of Pope. The Essay is in one book, but
divided into three principal parts or numbers; and Warburton in a few
words tells its plan:--"The rest gives the rules for the study of the art
of criticism; the second exposes the causes of wrong judgment; and the
third marks out the morals of the critic." And Roscoe says, with equal
truth, that "a certain degree of order and succession prevails, which
leads the reader through the most important topics connected with the
subject; thereby uniting the charm of variety with the regularity of art."
Adding finely, that "poetry abhors nothing so much as the _appearance_ of
formality and restraint."