SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES
After "Richard II" and "King John," Shakespeare turned aside from tragedy,
and within the next half-dozen years produced his masterpieces of romantic
comedy and non-tragical history. With the exception of "Titus Andronicus"
and "Romeo and Juliet," the first half of his dramatic career was devoted
entirely to comedy and history. With "Julius Caesar," about 1600, began the
period of tragedies and bitter comedies, which lasted until about 1608,
when he turned again to romantic comedy and tragicomedy. In these main
divisions and turning-points of his dramatic activity there is a
correspondence with the development of the contemporary drama which we are
able to mark with an approach to definiteness. Both romantic comedy and
chronicle history had their hey-day during the dozen years that he was
devoting to those species. Then at the close of the century various
influences produced an abandonment of those forms, a revival of tragedy,
and an extensive production of satirical and domestic comedy. About 1608,
again, the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher led a return to romance. The
Shakespearean period of tragedy may thus be separated from the Marlowean by
an interval, during which few tragedies of importance appeared; and its
beginning was coincident with new and important developments in the drama.
The leading force in initiating these changes was apparently Ben Jonson,
whose prologue to "Every Man in His Humour" (acted 1598) avowed the
principles which that play exemplified, and proclaimed the establishment of
a comedy of humors. This change was heralded as the result of a more
critical and conscious art, of a desire to free the drama from the
absurdities and lawlessness of the past, and to supply it with literary
standards and artistic aims. His practice, which during the next ten years
was mostly in accord with his preaching, was followed or paralleled in many
respects by most of the other dramatists. At the date of "Every Man in His
Humour" Shakespeare was proclaiming in the choruses of "Henry V" his sense
of the incongruities of the chronicle history play and bidding farewell to
a form of drama that he had made preeminently his own; and Chapman and
Middleton were forsaking romantic comedy for realistic comedies of London
life. Perhaps a little earlier, the satires of Donne, Hall, and Marston had
created considerable stir and doubtless had a share in turning literary
endeavor from sentiment to satire. This satire and exposure of the follies
and evils of society also received encouragement from the moral and social
change that was working in England and especially in London. The healthy
and aspiring national life that had found expression in the sound morality
and the imaginative idealism of the earlier drama was now giving place to
the moral corruption, social laxity, and lack of national pride that render
the reign of James I notorious. At all events, whatever the causes, the
comedy of the next seven or eight years was prevailingly realistic,
domestic, or satirical.
In tragedy the changes were similar, though less distinct. The protest
against the lawlessness of the early drama was manifested in the
infrequency of chronicle plays and the appearance of tragedies presenting
foreign, and especially Roman, history with due regard for both historical
truth and tragic structure. Realism appeared just at the beginning of the
century in a number of domestic tragedies that violated the established
conventions by dealing with actual events, contemporary society, and humble
persons. Satire of contemporary manners became frequent in tragedy, and
satirical comedies often dealt with tragic events and exercised an
influence on pure tragedy similar to that exercised by romantic comedy in
the earlier period. Up to this time popular tragedy had hardly received
critical consideration even from the dramatists themselves. Marlowe, Kyd,
Shakespeare, and others had been mainly concerned in telling stories on the
stage without much consciousness of theory or of the types of drama which
they were creating. In this period, however, the demarcation between
tragedy and comedy and the definition of a conception of tragedy became
positive both in occasional critical comment and in the practice of the
dramatists. The old types, however, survived. Medleys of various kinds of
tragedy and comedy, such as "Old Fortunatus" or "The Downfall and Death of
Robert, Earl of Huntingdon," are not found much after the beginning of the
century; but the revenge tragedy received a remarkable development by
Marston, Chettle, Tourneur, Chapman, and Jonson, to say nothing of
Shakespeare.
Practically synchronous with the period of Shakespeare's great tragedies
are these several interesting developments: the domestic tragedies, and
especially the allied work of Heywood; the Roman historical tragedies,
especially the two by Jonson; the French historical tragedies by Chapman;
and the various revenge plays, beginning with Marston's "Antonio and
Mellida." These dramatists, however, were mainly occupied with comedy, and
no one of them devoted himself as exclusively to tragedy as did
Shakespeare. Nor did any of them equal him in immediate popularity. The
imitative methods of his artistic apprenticeship had given place to a
maturity and independence of art that at once won a supremacy in tragedy
even greater than that already attained in comedy. Yet in themes and
treatment there is no divorce from the practice of his fellow dramatists.
His genius continued responsive to the demands of the stage of the day, and
it felt the changes in dramatic conditions, of which we have been noticing
some symptoms, and which made the tragedies of others as well as his own
more satirical and realistic than those of Marlowe's time, more concerned
with the problem of evil, more conscious and critical in their art, and in
their style less lyrical and descriptive, more reflective and sententious.
Of the domestic tragedies, very much in fashion from 1597 to 1603, the few
survivors show little advance over "Arden of Feversham." These
presentations of hideous contemporary crimes maintain the protest initiated
by that play against the conventionalities of "the ghost and revenge"
drama, and echo its demand for realism. The satirical description of
Tragedy in the induction to "A Warning for Fair Women" (1599) is
particularly noteworthy as indicating the definiteness which the current
conception of tragedy had assumed. The epilogue reiterates the cry of the
realist in an era of romanticism:--
"Perhaps it may seem strange unto you all,
That one hath not avenged another's death
After the observation of such course:
The reason is that now of truth I sing."
A second of these plays, "Two Lamentable Tragedies" (1601), is a curious
combination of the story of the babes in the wood and that of the recent
murder of one Beech. A third, "A Yorkshire Tragedy," acted by Shakespeare's
company about 1605, and published with his name (1608), is remarkable for
its naked realism and the vividness and rapidity of some of its prose.
With these plays may be grouped Heywood's "A Woman Killed with Kindness"
(1607, acted 1603), for, although it does not deal with real events, it
lacks the usual accompaniments of tragedy, courts, kings, ghosts, and
battles, and presents a story of current English life. Its themes are the
common ones of adultery and revenge, but it gives them an entirely novel
treatment, the husband refusing to take vengeance on his guilty wife, who
dies repentant and forgiven. After a fashion soon to become general, there
is an underplot which, like the main plot, presents a problem of social
ethics, the question of the sacrifice of chastity to save a brother's
honor. Similar problems are common in contemporary comedy, and the play
might be classed indifferently as a domestic tragedy or a tearful comedy.
It is Heywood's masterpiece and exemplifies the qualities that won him the
affection of Lamb, "generosity, courtesy, temperance in the depth of
passion, sweetness, in a word, and gentleness." The wife falls too easily
and repents too sentimentally to be of much interest, but the character of
Frankfort is finely conceived and, especially in the great scene of the
discovery, executed with a power and truth of feeling rarely combined
outside of Shakespeare. In a very similar play, "The English Traveller,"
written long afterwards, Heywood speaks of two hundred and twenty plays in
which he had a main finger. Some of these lost plays must have further
exemplified the method of "A Woman Killed with Kindness"; but his success
failed to encourage other dramatists to attempt domestic themes and to
abandon the tragic conventions. Such realism as his was left to comedy, and
tragedy continued to seek its stories in romance or history.
Ben Jonson's two tragedies, "Sejanus" and "Catiline," reveal an effort to
treat Roman history with accuracy and dignity, and to enforce on the
public stage what he regarded as the essential rules of tragedy. Such
representations of Roman history as "The Wounds of Civil War" or the still
more incongruous medley of Heywood's "Lucrece" must have excited in him
still greater condemnation than did the English chronicle plays. Even
Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" provoked a sneer, though its dramatization of
Plutarch's portraits of the great conspirators apparently excited his
emulation and suggested much in his treatment of Sejanus and Catiline.
Incongruous spectacle and farce disappear from these plays, and the events
are treated upon a well thought out theory of historical tragedy. Jonson
strove to present the main events and characters with accurate fidelity to
authorities, and even minor persons and deeds in constant harmony with the
historical narrative. But the scholar overtopped the dramatist. "Sejanus"
has a paraphernalia of notes like a doctor's dissertation; and "Catiline"
long excerpts from Cicero's orations.
His plays, however, were intended for the public stage, and are by no means
to be classed with closet dramas like Daniel's "Philotas," the tragedies of
Fulke Greville and Alexander, or the earlier translations of Kyd and the
Countess of Pembroke. Jonson started with current popular forms, with
"Julius Caesar" rather than the Senecan models for a basis. His purpose was
to rebuild these, not without some recognition of current dramatic method,
but with his main reliance upon classical rules. His cardinal error was his
acceptance of the current classical theory of tragedy, the belief that the
essential difference between epic and dramatic fable lay in the observance
of the three unities and similar proprieties. As he was forced to confess,
the ambitious careers of Sejanus and Catiline and the style of action
demanded by the audiences of the day did not lend themselves easily to such
limitations. But he persevered in his doughty fashion. If in "Sejanus" he
gave up the unity of time, he maintained the unity of place; if he retained
the comic scenes of the courtesan, he avoided any grotesque mixture of the
comic and tragic; he omitted battles, jigs, and spectacles, and secured a
coherent development of the main action. In "Catiline," which he boldly
proclaimed a "dramatic poem," he adopted the Senecan technic of an
introductory ghost and a segregated chorus. But though the action be one,
perfect and entire, according to Jonson's understanding of those terms, he
never learned Shakespeare's art of focusing events about a spiritual
conflict.
Yet in characterization Jonson's interest, like that of his contemporaries,
largely centres. Catiline, Cicero, Sejanus, and Tiberius are thoughtfully
conceived and faithfully represented. The representation, indeed, is that
of exposition, each scene illustrating and emphasizing some trait without
securing much illusion of life. The style, especially in the long speeches,
is too often rhetorical, and rarely displays great beauty or dramatic
power. Yet it is masterly in its way, careful and competent to its
purposes, and free from obscurity or over-richness. His plays mark another
failure to turn popular tragedy back into the classical mould. They
contributed, perhaps, to a greater regularity of action on the part of his
contemporaries and to a more serious consideration of the functions of
drama, but the scholarly student of history failed to make it live, the
author of "Bartholomew Fair" did not find his best opportunity in the
acceptance of classicist theory.
Chapman's tragedies attempted a field hitherto untried except in Marlowe's
"Massacre," that of contemporary French history. While treating historical
events with freedom of invention, he dealt with real persons and careers
familiar to his audience. In the long-popular tragedy of "The Death of
Bussy D'Ambois" (1607, acted 1600-1604) he turned to the court of Henry III
and centred a story of treasonable ambition, conspiracy, and adultery about
the interesting personality of the insolent and indomitable D'Ambois. After
the fashion of Kyd and Marston, he followed "The Death" with a "Revenge of
Bussy D'Ambois," which adopted the established technic of the revenge
plays, with less alteration than might have been expected after
Shakespeare's transformation in "Hamlet." The avenger, Clermont, is a
"Senecal man," and his sententious and rhetorical philosophizing was
doubtless incited by "Hamlet," though it followed a long-established
precedent. The "Conspiracy and Tragedy of Byron" (two parts, 1608, acted
1607) dealt with important affairs in the reign of Henry IV that were still
fresh in the memory of the audience, Biron having been executed in 1602.
In the original form of the play, in fact, Queen Elizabeth was represented,
and the French queen boxed the ears of her husband's mistress, but the
protest of the French ambassador made a revision necessary.
The new material of these plays did not lead Chapman to attempt any
variations in form from the current drama, nor did it result in any advance
in method; his fondness for long speeches and narrations resulting rather
in a treatment more epical and less dramatic than is found in any of his
contemporaries. Nor did his study of contemporary memoirs for his sources
and his interest in political philosophy result in any advance in reality
or vividness of characterization, though here he is often very felicitous,
as in his portrait of Henry IV, and though his arrogant protagonists are
interesting and original variations of the Marlowean tragic hero, not
without successors in the later drama. But for Chapman, tragedy was in the
main, as for the writers whom Gosson derided, an opportunity "to show the
majesty of his pen in tragical speeches." The abundance, ingenuity, and
beauty of his figurative language are simply amazing. Every person, deed,
or sentiment calls for illustration and lets loose a flood of similes.
Finished verse, a highly picturesque sense of the value of words, a
remarkable union of pregnant sententiousness with vividness of description,
have made his plays the delight of many a reader, though perhaps most of
his admirers have experienced a fatigue that found satisfaction in Dryden's
perverse criticism, "dwarfish thought dressed up in gigantic words,
repetition in abundance, looseness of expression, and gross hyperboles."
For, though the thought is by no means dwarfish, the dress is often too big
for it. We are wearied by the constant effort to write up to the tragic
opportunity for a heightened and sententious eloquence. In this respect,
Chapman's style partakes of the faults of his day. It has not the
spontaneity and ease of Marlowe, Peele, and "Romeo and Juliet"; it is
difficult, involved, pretentious, and self-conscious, yet its splendors
remain. Its abundance of resource, its imaginative condensation, its
suggestive power again and again compel comparison with Shakespeare
himself.
Revenge directed by a ghost found favor with both Jonson and Chapman, but
they were preceded in the use of this popular motive by John Marston. In
1598, at the age of twenty-three, he made something of a sensation by his
satires and immediately proceeded to carry his censoriousness of human
frailties into the drama. His earliest play, "Antonio and Mellida" (two
parts, 1602, acted 1599-1600), reveals in Part I the still dominant
influence of romantic comedy, despite its tragic trend; but Part II,
"Antonio's Revenge," is a tragedy of the Kydian type. The play was followed
by a number of comedies, all outspoken in satire of contemporary manners
and in the exposure of social immorality. Several dealt with tragic
material, and one, "The Malcontent," is a notable combination of a tragedy
of blood and a satirical comedy. Its protagonist is of a type represented
in the other comedies and not without influence on contemporary dramatists.
Marston's malcontents are men of virtue and honor "who hate not man but
man's lewd qualities"; in disfavor and out of joint with the world; given
to melancholy and a showy pessimism that finds fitting expression only in
images of filth and putrefaction. His tragedy "Sophonisba" (1606), which he
seems to have deemed the most important of his plays, treats history with
great freedom, and unites melodramatic horrors with his usual unflinching
fondness for rankness of thought and imagery. The horrible realism of the
Erichtho scenes comes in strange contrast with the songs, dances, and
musical accompaniment suited to a performance by the child actors for whom
all of Marston's plays were written.
"Antonio's Revenge" is the earliest representative in this period of the
Kydian type of revenge tragedy. The satirical passages in "A Warning for
Fair Women" indicate the popularity of ghosts and revenge, and there are
many evidences of the continued vogue of "The Spanish Tragedy" from 1597 to
1602. Marston's play was evidently modeled on "The Spanish Tragedy," and
probably still more directly on the Kydian "Hamlet." The story is the
revenge of a son for a father murdered by a villanous duke who seeks to wed
the hero's mother; the revenge is directed by the ghost of the father; the
hero is driven to hesitation, irresolution, and the verge of madness; he
pretends to be a fool; intrigue and trickery are indulged in by both hero
and villain, and the revenge is accomplished with an abundance of
bloodshed. There is a minor story of revenge, enforcing the main situation
as does the Laertes story in "Hamlet" and the scene with the Senex in "The
Spanish Tragedy"; and, doubtless as in the early "Hamlet," the passion of
the murderer for the widow of his victim now becomes an important motive in
the action. Moreover, the play abounds in psychological introspection and
meditative philosophy set forth for the most part through the soliloquies
of the hero.
The indebtedness to the earlier revenge plays extends to details of the
stage presentation. Revenge is accomplished much as in "The Spanish
Tragedy," though by means of a masque instead of a play, and without the
death of the hero. From similar scenes in the old "Hamlet" were probably
derived the appearance of the ghost at midnight, the cry "Antonio,
revenge!" and the second appearance of the ghost to the hero and his
mother. The dumb show exhibiting the wooing of Maria, the use of the
churchyard, the banquets, carousals, funerals, exhibition of the dead
bodies, and the oaths of the conspirators were perhaps already conventional
accompaniments of a revenge play. "Antonio's Revenge," however, is not
wanting in inventiveness; its abundant horrors and its melodramatically
ingenious stage effects were probably recognized as an advance upon the old
favorites, and they excited the emulation of succeeding dramatists.
The hero, too, is of the Kydian type. Like both Hieronimo and Hamlet, he
is a scholar, interested in philosophy and also in theatrical performances.
Like them he is distinguished by a tendency to reflection, and struggles in
solitary meditation at each crisis in his career. Like them he is driven to
the verge of madness by the pressure of his heavy responsibility and by his
awakened sense of evil in the universe. Though he does not seek further
proof, yet, like Hamlet after the revelations of the play, he becomes
frantic and irresolute, neglects an opportunity to kill the duke, and
wastes his vengeance upon an innocent child. Like Hieronimo and Hamlet, he
is tricky, wild, and ranting. With all his overdrawn passion, however, his
mental struggle occasionally attains intellectual depth and tragic power.
As he tells us, it was "the stings of anguish," "the bruising stroke of
chance" which made him run mad "as one confounded in a maze of mischief."
Several years, then, before Shakespeare's "Hamlet," we have a play dealing
with the old story of a revenge of a son for a father, following closely
the methods introduced by Kyd, appealing to a taste that delighted in
extravagant violence and melodramatic sensationalism, but also striving to
simulate profundity of thought and a passionate sense of evil. It is
difficult to-day to take Marston seriously. His plays have little merit,
while his bombastic sententiousness gives an air of insincerity to
everything that he wrote; yet a serious purpose and a considerable
influence on later drama cannot be denied to his efforts in tragedy. Like
so many others, he deserves to be remembered for what he attempted rather
than for what he did. Absurd though "Antonio's Revenge" be as an artistic
achievement, it is historically of importance as indicating an ambitious
attempt to give poetical expression to the spiritual conflict of a mind
brought to face dreadful evil. The prologue that he addressed to his London
audience testifies sufficiently to his serious and ambitious intentions,
and to the clear separation of tragedy from other forms of drama, which he
and other poets were trying to force upon the theatre.
"Therefore we proclaim,
If any spirit breathes within this round
Uncapable of weighty passion,
(As from his birth being hugged in the arms
And nuzled 'twixt the breasts of Happiness,)
Who winks and shuts his apprehension up
From common sense of what men were, and are;
Who would not know what men must be: let such
Hurry amain from our black-visaged shows;
We shall affright their eyes. But if a breast,
Nail'd to the earth with grief; if any heart,
Pierced through with anguish, pant within this ring;
If there be any blood, whose heat is choked
And stifled with true sense of misery:
If aught of these strains fill this consort up,
They arrive most welcome."
A number of plays dealing with "revenge for a father" followed. In 1602
"The Revenge of Hamlet" was entered in the Stationers' Register; and the
first quarto, a pirated and very corrupt edition, appeared in the following
year. This quarto, in the opinion of a majority of critics, represents
Shakespeare's partial revision of the old play, which was put on the stage
by Burbage's company in 1601-02. In the same years Ben Jonson was receiving
pay from Henslowe of the rival company for two sets of additions to "The
Spanish Tragedy," and these were published in 1602. In that year Henslowe
also paid Chettle for a tragedy, "Hoffman" (1631); and in 1602-03
Tourneur's "Atheist's Tragedy" (1611) was probably acted.[18] By 1603
Shakespeare had given "Hamlet" its final form as represented by the second
quarto (1604). The almost simultaneous appearance of these various plays is
sufficient testimony to the popularity of the old revenge story with both
audiences and authors. Dealing with similar plots, they naturally have many
elements in common, but they exhibit few or no signs of servile imitation
of one another. They represent independent developments of the type that
Kyd had introduced a dozen years before and that Marston had revived, each
retaining many of the old conventions, and each adding much that was new.
Jonson's additions to "The Spanish Tragedy" are distinct from the rest of
the play and affect the proportion and movement of the action rather for
the worse. They deal in the main with Hieronimo; his irony is increased and
made more effective; his reflections become more elaborate and pregnant;
above all, his madness gains enormously in reality and intensity. His
madness, indeed, receives a disproportionate development. Throughout the
additions Jonson is picturing a mind diseased by grief, sometimes conscious
of life's unrelaxing pain and again lost in frenzied delirium. Thus, the
imaginative impulses that responded to the demand for revenge plays here
stirred a great poet to a rehabilitation of the crude ravings of the old
Hieronimo in a form more intellectual, more vitally human, and of immensely
greater imaginative range.
"Hoffman" is a sensational melodrama by a hack writer not unskillful in
using prevailing conventions with theatrical effectiveness. The story is
again the revenge of a son for a father, but there is no ghost, only the
skeleton to excite him to vengeance. He banishes "clouds of melancholy" at
the start and shows no hesitation in carrying out the revenge until turned
from his purpose by his passion for the mother of his chief victim.
Intrigue and slaughter reign supreme; and, as in "Locrine," there are two
plots of revenge--Hoffman seeking revenge for his father and every one else
seeking revenge on Hoffman. In the pathetic situation of Lucibella, driven
insane by grief, Chettle made use of a character and a situation familiar
on the stage in much the same fashion as they must have been presented in
the old "Hamlet." Lucibella's madness, however, is made the instrument of
some telling hits at the villain and the means of discovering his iniquity.
While Ophelia's madness has no influence on the main action, that of
Lucibella leads directly to the _denouement_. Dramatically this is a very
important difference and seems due to Chettle's invention. Unlike Marston
or Jonson, he made little effort to give the story either imaginative
intensity or philosophical significance. He took common theatrical motives
and situations, added much and changed much, and constructed a good acting
play not without some grace of verse. A play that was popular thirty years
after it was written must have successfully met the stage demand.
Tourneur's "Atheist's Tragedy" differs in many respects from all preceding
revenge plays. The revenge is for a father murdered by an uncle and
directed by a ghost. The revenge, however, is left to Providence; the ghost
is Christian; the avenging son not only hesitates, but after a little
irresolution overcomes his inclinations to revenge, and, obeying the
ghost's behests, resignedly awaits the judgment of heaven. In stage
presentation the play also shows a wide departure from Kyd, especially in
the indescribable comic underplot. There are, however, three appearances of
the ghost,--one to soldiers on watch,--churchyard scenes, banquets, sword
fights, suicides, scaffolds, and death's-heads. In the accumulation of
horrors, in the development of the villain's character, in the emphasis on
new sensational motives at the expense of revenge, and in the more
elaborate handling of the intrigue, it may be said to carry the general
development of the revenge tragedy a step farther than Marston or Chettle,
and a step nearer to Webster. On the other hand, in its definite attempt to
present an intellectual conception not lacking in moral grandeur, it
sometimes, more closely than any of the other plays considered, approaches
"Hamlet." The change in the revenge motive is especially manifest in the
soliloquies and reflective passages, which unite in a fairly well connected
argument that points the moral of the action, the omnipotence of God's
providence.
When, after an interval of some half dozen years, Shakespeare returned to
tragedy, evidently both the demands of the theatres and the artistic
impulses of the poets were different from those of Marlowe's day. The plays
of Marlowe and Kyd were still active forces in the drama, but in 1600-01,
when Shakespeare was perhaps writing both "Julius Caesar" and the first
revision of "Hamlet," the man of the hour in tragedy was Marston.
In "Julius Caesar" Shakespeare availed himself of a theme already a
favorite. The story of the overthrow of a tyrant, the progress of a
conspiracy, the fall of a prince, and his revenge upon the murderers
furnished material well approved for tragedy, while the greatness of the
events and the actors both gave assurance of popular interest and incited
the poet to his best. Shakespeare was not directed by scrupulous regard for
historical accuracy, but his genius was stirred by that of Plutarch to give
the events of the Roman civil war the interest and vitality he had given to
the reigns of English kings. In dealing with a story that followed so
closely the standard lines of tragedy,--the murder and the
revenge,--Shakespeare adopted some of the methods current in contemporary
plays. There is really no evidence to support Mr. Fleay's ingenious surmise
that the play was originally in two parts,--I, The Death, and II, The
Revenge of Caesar,--but the play seems to have separated itself naturally
into those two divisions. The rise of the action traces the rise of the
conspiracy to Caesar's death; the return of the action proceeds to the
failure and deaths of the conspirators. But from the beginning Shakespeare
must have found his interest engaged less by the story of conspiracy or
revenge, or even by the presentation of the turmoil of an empire, than by
the delineation of the character of Brutus. There, for him, lay the kernel
of the tragedy, in the struggle of a highly gifted nature with a task unfit
for his accomplishment. The play became not a tragedy of over-reaching
ambition, as Marlowe might have made "The Tragedy of Caesar," nor the
tragedy of supernaturally ordained revenge, as Kyd might have made "Caesar's
Revenge," but the tragedy of Brutus,--the fateful struggle of a noble mind
against counter actors and against chance, and also against an incurable
deficiency in his own temperament.
Similarly, in revising the old "Hamlet," Shakespeare must have been
attracted by the possibilities in the character of the hesitating avenger.
Here, however, as we have seen, the influence of his contemporaries was
considerable and complex. The plot, situations, types of character, and
leading motives of the old "Hamlet" were already familiar to the stage in
several plays. Revenge, directed by a ghost, hesitation on the part of the
hero, insanity real or feigned, intrigue, copious bloodshed, a secondary
revenge plot, meditative philosophizing in the form of soliloquies, were
all essential elements probably of the Kydian "Hamlet," certainly of
several other revenge plays. The refusal of an opportunity to kill the
villain, the songs and wild talk of a mad woman, the murder of an innocent
intruder, scenes in a churchyard, the appearance of the ghost to soldiers
of the watch, the play within the play,--all these as well as many more
minor conventionalities, such as the swearing on the sword hilt, or the
voice of the ghost in the cellar, had appeared in other plays than the old
"Hamlet." And Hamlet himself, wild and ranting at times, crafty and
dissimulating at others, cynical and ironical, given to melancholy and
meditation, hesitating in bewilderment, harassed by the unavoidable "whips
and scorns of time,"--so far as we can analyze the tragic hero, his
characteristics had been already used by contemporary dramatists. Dramatic
ingenuity was all that was required to make a new play out of this
abundance of old material. Chettle succeeded in doing just this. Marston,
Jonson, and Tourneur, however, had been trying to give the old story
philosophical significance and a highly imaginative phrasing. They had
glimpses of the dramatic and poetic possibilities that lay in the situation
of the hesitating revenger, and at moments they succeeded in realizing
these. Shakespeare set himself to their task, and naturally enough he was
in many ways limited and directed by their efforts. It was perfectly
possible for him to change the plot completely, or to omit the ghost in the
cellar, or to remove the bloodthirsty and intriguing elements from the part
of Hamlet, or to give a more Christian interpretation to the revenge; but
in these and other matters he followed the practice of the earlier plays.
There was no dramatic need of so many long soliloquies; the meditative
avenger need not have been ironical; insanity might have received less
elaboration; but in these respects Shakespeare was in agreement with his
contemporaries. The themes which they took inspired him. He succeeded in
doing what they vainly attempted.
He by no means neglected the external story or denied the theatrical demand
for sensation. He, perhaps, did not radically change the course of events
as depicted in the old play, but he unquestionably improved on any
preceding tragedy in the mere effectiveness of the scenic presentation of a
sensational story. How great this effectiveness is may be judged by the
continued popularity of "Hamlet" as a stage performance even before
unlettered auditors. We may surmise that had poetry and philosophy both
perished, it would still draw its crowds as it does to-day on the remote
borders of civilization. This theatrical triumph is due in part to dramatic
excellence of structure and presentation. From the old play probably came a
story restricted by semi-Senecan technic to a great emotional crisis; but
Shakespeare at least resisted the temptation, to which his contemporaries
succumbed, of extending the action over the events leading up to the
murder. And assuredly to him rather than to Kyd or another is due the
recognition of the dramatic values of the story's beginning, middle, and
end. Magnificent as is his development of the ghost scenes at the
beginning, still more important structurally is his realization of the
value of the middle of the tragedy and treatment of the play within the
play and its immediate sequences; and if the end is developed with an
Elizabethan looseness of coherence that will not correspond to any logical
scheme of structure, yet the pathos of the Ophelia scenes and the wonderful
grotesquery of the graveyard excite and renew the spectator's interest to
the final catastrophe. The scenic presentation, while telling a sensational
story with preeminent effectiveness, becomes as never before in English
drama the means for exhibiting the inner struggle of the protagonist.
Parallel with the external conflict between murderer and avenger, beginning
with the advent of the ghost and ending with a holocaust, there runs the
story of a man's moods and thoughts; and this story of doubt and melancholy
overpowering resolution imposes its unity of structure and emotional tone
upon the external conflict so full of visible action. The throng of
dreadful happenings becomes a foil to set off the inner struggle of
thought. Their climax is only the brink of resolution from which Hamlet
shrinks. Their catastrophe is the end of irresolution in silence.
The reflections and moralizings and broodings over misfortunes inherited
from Seneca, and long an essential element in the revenge plays, are also,
like the sensational incidents, integrated and humanized by the conception
of the hero's character. The soliloquies, though keeping to the themes and
methods of contemporary drama, become landmarks in the depiction of the
inner struggle and in the general progress of the action. The absurd
convention of speaking aloud one's unformed and unbidden thoughts becomes
theatrically exciting, dramatically essential, and, through the reach of
Shakespeare's imaginative expression, representative of the eternal battle
of human frailty against the mysteries of chance and evil.
Analysis might, indeed, continue to discover in the multiform
impressiveness of the characterization and the poetry survivals of old
conventions and hints of the method of Shakespeare's transformation. Taken
apart, various passages seem overburdened with rhetoric, after the style of
the day, and others over-sententious. Taken piece by piece, the sarcasm,
the irony, the pessimism, the stoic philosophy, even the passionate protest
against destiny, have much in common with the ideas then current in other
plays. But here again the transformation accomplished through unrivaled
powers of expression and knowledge of human nature seems to result from an
absorbing interest in the meditating and hesitating temperament of the
hero. The union of a drama of blood-vengeance with a drama of thought, a
union that had been often attempted by others, is finally achieved,
because here for the first time there is full recognition of the tragic
interest, movement, and significance of a man's battle with himself. The
tragic drama of character has been consummated.
In Shakespeare's conception of the tragic hero we find many characteristics
and some incongruities that belong to the old avengers; but there is new
penetration into the sources of human motive that results in an essentially
new view of the functions and scope of the tragic drama. As in most
tragedies since "Tamburlaine," the play is a one-part play, presenting a
hero far above the average in mental and moral power, but for the time
mainly under the sway of one dominating mood or emotion. Like the other
heroes of revenge tragedies, Hamlet is a good man brought suddenly face to
face with evil. Again, like the heroes of Seneca and of most tragedies
dealing with a reversal of fortune, Hamlet is a strong man brought to face
the enmity of chance. He is an individual forced to struggle against a
hostile environment. Again, he is a man in a tragic crisis that requires
the exercise of all possible powers on his part if he is to avoid disaster,
who finds himself afflicted with a temperamental weakness that makes
failure possible or indeed inevitable. Critics emphasize now one and now
another element of his character as they emphasize one or another of these
conflicts as the most important. Shakespeare here, as again in later plays,
united in one hero all the varieties of conflict catalogued by the
critics. But if we ask which is most peculiarly Shakespearean, it must be
said to be the conflict with his own temperamental unfitness, call that
irresolution, melancholy, meditativeness, or what you will. Here lies
Shakespeare's main differentiation from preceding tragedy, though one
distinctly presaged in "Julius Caesar." At all events, we have a conception
of tragedy carried out in his succeeding plays. The hero, noble and
righteous, is brought into conflict with the results of evil and
circumstance, and he is crippled by his own inability or weakness. Tragedy
becomes inherent in character, in the incompleteness that marks the best
and mightiest of mankind.
Our consideration of "Hamlet" has been prolonged partly because its
relations to contemporary drama can be traced more readily than those of
Shakespeare's other tragedies, and partly because it is the first of his
plays to afford a full definition of tragedy, a conception of prime
importance both in the development of Shakespeare's art and in the future
history of the drama. A sensational struggle is presented, and the
abounding incidents are wrought into effective if loosely connected
stage-scenes, dealing with material similar to that then current in the
theatres,--villains, ghosts, murders, insanity, grim farce, meditations,
aphorisms. But the scenic presentation and the dramatic structure are to
express not only an external conflict between hero and counter-force, but
an inner struggle of the hero himself. They are to be the effects and
results, nay, the very mirror of the inner thought and feeling. And the
disaster that falls upon the hero and those by him beloved comes home to
us as due not merely to external forces or circumstances or to evil working
within, but also to an inherent unfitness of his own.
This conception of tragedy found further exemplification in "Othello,"[19]
freer from Elizabethan methods than any of the other tragedies, and the
most masterful of all as a play. The fable was found in an Italian novella
that related, like so many of its class, a bald story of love, jealousy,
and villany. The very baldness of the narrative in comparison with the
fullness of incident and characterization of the chronicles or Plutarch,
gave Shakespeare's imagination an untrammeled opportunity. The ingredients
of the story, common in romantic comedy and already combined by Shakespeare
in "Much Ado about Nothing," were also not unfamiliar in tragedy, but
Shakespeare enlarged and interpreted them to fit the conception of his two
preceding tragedies, the presentation of a spiritual struggle in which
goodness is attacked by evil at its point of greatest vulnerability. The
credulity of Othello, however, is assaulted by a more active agent of evil
than in "Julius Caesar" or "Hamlet." Malignant evil is embodied in Iago, and
it is against his machinations that the nobly idealized characters of
Othello and Desdemona prove incompetent and defenseless. He is the person
who dominates the action and gives explanation and plausibility to the
circumstances. He not only opposes the hero in the external action, he
creates through his insinuations all the evil suspicions that struggle in
Othello's mind. He might almost be considered the protagonist of the
tragedy.
In structure there is a notable advance over preceding plays, accomplished
apparently in part through deliberate intent. The first act with its
account of Iago's craft and the marriage is a distinct introduction. The
remaining four acts present a practically continuous action, confined to
Cyprus and representing about thirty-six hours. Moreover, by a skillful
ambiguity, which Christopher North called "the double clock," Shakespeare,
while securing this rapid and uninterrupted process of time, has succeeded
in conveying an impression of protracted intrigue and slowly-developing
motives. Thus, without lessening the variety and importance of the events
and emotions, he gains, by a closer observance of unity than in the other
tragedies, a greater degree of theatrical illusion and of dramatic
intensity. Again, "Othello" technically is noticeable among the tragedies
for its relinquishment of many current methods. It is neither a chronicle
history nor a Senecan tragedy. There is no presentation of history and
little of court ceremonies. There are no battles, no long exposition, no
spectacles, no ghosts, no insanity, and almost no comedy. It has few
persons and virtually a single action. The underplot is subordinated and
closely united to the main action, and there are no delays and new
excitements between crisis and catastrophe as in "Hamlet" and "Lear."
Nowhere else in Shakespeare is the progress of character, emotion, and deed
toward the final event so consecutive and so uninterrupted. This advance in
coherence and proportion seems due less to the contributing causes just
enumerated than to the explanation of action by character. Accept the
unbelievable malignity of Iago--and you do accept it before you have
proceeded far--and every step of the appalling chain of intrigue seems a
natural outcome of the motives of the persons before us.
In consequence of this integration of character and action, the characters
are, more than in the other tragedies, distinct and unmistakable. As if to
make stronger the contrast between good and evil, the good man is a Moor,
apparently, as in the case of the Moors in "Titus Andronicus" and
"Selimus," hardly distinguishable from a negro; and the bad man is deprived
of the motive which in the _novella_ rendered his wickedness intelligible.
Yet nowhere, even in Shakespeare, are generosity and greatness of soul more
admirable than in Othello, nowhere is villany more human than in Iago. The
stage villain here receives his apotheosis as the avenging hero did in
"Hamlet." The source of all the evil in the play, the Machiavellian
machinator, the subtle hypocrite whose every action is a pose to conceal
its purpose, the simulator of honesty and bluntness, the shameless egoist
who proudly avows his villany and bawls it to the gallery, the intellectual
master who plays every one for a dupe, and especially his accomplice--all
this had been embodied in the villains of Kyd and Marlowe. Although
intelligible to Elizabethan psychology and theology, and credible in the
light of Tudor politics and feuds, such a type would seem to lack enduring
truth. While preserving all the attributes of the stage type, Shakespeare
made it the means for that searching analysis of human depravity to which
his contemporaries were less successfully dedicating their efforts. This
soliloquizing devil becomes identified with the suggestions and sinuosities
of evil that partake of the flux of our consciousness. Hypocrisy, cynicism,
cruelty, the absence of human sympathies, the pride and malignity of
intellectual superiority have henceforth their symbol in Iago. Impossible,
diabolical, inhuman as Barabas or Richard III, he is never for a moment
unplausible, because he ever unearths a corresponding potentiality in us.
The persons of the play, while unusually effective on the stage, and while
human and real in their discourse, have a universality of appeal essential
in the greatest works of art, desired by Aristotle and dimly foreshadowed
in Elizabethan efforts after greatness and typicality. Othello, Desdemona,
and Iago create fresh reflection and new impulse in every reader of every
generation. And to each they are not only real persons but also symbols and
ideals of the generosity, sweetness, and iniquity of the universe. This
idealization of character is accomplished with wonderful clarity by means
of an expression, splendidly eloquent, untroubled by conceit or obscurity,
equally masterful in prose or verse, magnificently adapted to the
representation of every mood or temperament. Shakespeare here realized the
ideal toward which English tragedy under the leadership of Marlowe had been
struggling, the presentation of human greatness in blank verse beautiful
and dramatic.
If "Othello" is comparatively free from current conventions, "Lear" is in
many respects the most Elizabethan of Shakespeare's tragedies. Story,
themes, situations, stage effects constantly recall the plays of his
predecessors; and if his creative imagination here attains the most
astounding triumph in all literature, it cannot be said to free itself
entirely from a confusion of archaisms and absurdities.
Returning to English history, Shakespeare selected a story that had
outgrown the chronicles and been narrated by several poets and in one
drama. From the early "Leir" he took a few important hints, but he treated
the material of the chronicles with a freedom which both its obviously
legendary character and its remoulding by other poets permitted. He was
only slightly concerned with the presentation of history and hurried over
the battles and the shows, the still indispensable accompaniment of
historical plays. He was concerned solely with the tragic entanglements of
character, with the devastations of evil and folly.
The kernel of the story, Lear's trick and Cordelia's unsatisfactory reply,
though possessing a kind of objectivity suitable for the stage, is of
itself so absurd and childish as to impede illusion of truth. Its
development is full of inconsistency, and the interwoven themes of madness,
villany, lust, ambition, family feud, and ideal virtue suggest no break
from the Elizabethan canon of tragedy. To the story of Lear and his
daughters, Shakespeare added the still more childish parallel story of
Gloster and his sons. This common device of a reinforcing sub-plot is here
extended to every situation and motive. Even the devoted Kent is balanced
by Goneril's faithful creature, Oswald; the inhuman sisters are supported
by the machinating Edmund; and, most extraordinary of all, the assumed
madness of Edgar becomes an accompaniment for the real madness of Lear. The
elaboration of the sub-plot causes an unprecedented complexity of persons
and events, and it dislocates the structure. The intense interest which is
absorbed in the sufferings of Lear finds itself distracted and dissipated
in a medley of incidents so incongruous and so confusing that one wonders
how a rational mind could have selected them. The crowded scenes which
separate the climax of the third act from the catastrophe assuredly form
one of the least happy instances of the Elizabethan habit of introducing a
change of interest and a variety of incident in the fourth and fifth acts.
Yet the structure of the play, if far from faultless, reveals amazing
mastery. The development of the action in the first three acts with the
constantly increasing tension of feeling, and the final gathering of all
the different actions in the wonderfully condensed catastrophe, are among
the greatest achievements of dramatic plotting. Moreover, in spite of his
zest for crowded and diversified action, Shakespeare's feeling for unity of
emotional effect caused him to omit one motive that modern renovators have
never been able to forego. He found a place for battles, villany, childish
intrigue, the clown's songs and jests, the plucking out of Gloster's eyes,
and the protracted foolery between Edgar and his helpless father, but he
refused to admit romantic love into this drama of the madness that
separates father and child.
Though Shakespeare chose to involve himself in these manifold difficulties
of story and structure, he hardly felt his fetters. No play depends less on
mere incident and event. The inconsistencies and confusion of the action
are forgotten in the wild turmoil of human passions. Wild, terrible,
elementary, brutal, grotesque, or sublime,--everything in the play is
touched with the imaginative truth that gives it limitless range of
suggestion, applicable to any discord of parents and children or to the
most dreadful spiritual torture. Insanity, long a favorite theme of
Elizabethan tragedy, and fantastic grotesqueness, often its bane, summon
his imagination to its most wonderful creation when the feigning Bedlam
counters the mad king mid the jests of the fool and the havoc of the storm.
Such a conception could have been attempted only in an age which took its
emotions strong and mixed, which found insanity a subject for laughter as
well as horror, and which refused to limit the imagination by reason or
rule. In that age a lesser than Shakespeare might have formed the bare
design of making his audience laugh at the fool and poor Tom, and shudder
at the eyeless Gloster and the raving Ancient. Something akin to it may be
found in many scenes, in that in which Marlowe's emperor and empress dash
out their brains against the bars of their cage in a frenzy of humiliation,
or that in which Webster's duchess stands undazzled amid the dancing ring
of obscene maniacs. The Elizabethan drama had prepared the opportunity for
the full and terrible presentation of the discords and agony of a breaking
mind. The London audience was ready for the scenes on the heath.
Madness is only one element that contributes to the overwhelming effect of
the play. Its so-called pessimism is the only other on which our meagre
survey may dwell. English tragedy had from the beginning concerned itself
mainly with heinous crime and sin; and during the years immediately
preceding and following "Lear" there was a distinct conception of tragedy
as the representation not only of the depths of iniquity but of the moral
confusion and blackness that beset us all. In "Hamlet," "Othello," and
"Measure for Measure" the sense of evil is ever present. In "Lear" it
grips the reader like the rack. As in "Othello," evil, here represented by
the two fiendish daughters as well as by an intriguing villain, dominates
the action, and carries all that is good along with it to destruction. But
evil is only one of the forces that cause suffering and ruin. Lear and
Cordelia contend against their own imperfections and against chance and
circumstance so hostile that they seem directed by gods who sport with men
as with flies and loose the fury of the elements to torment their victims.
Where else in tragedy are the forces that make for ruin so appalling and so
irresistible; and where else are suffering and ruin so dreadful and so
complete? The sufferers are powerless. Suffering does not here arouse a
Promethean defiance, but it discovers and purifies human virtue. If evil is
dominant over the action, Cordelia, Kent, the Fool, and the chastened and
purified Lear are dominant in our reflections. The end is not the fall and
cessation of all that is good. Even in our dismay at the convulsion which
evil may cause, there remains the memory of the perfection of human
devotion and love. The final impression must, however, partake of confusion
and horror at the blackness and ruthlessness of a moral order that can
sacrifice perfect virtue in an effort to free itself from the hideous
enormity of evil. This is the tragedy of life as Shakespeare saw it, and
the cry of bewilderment and agony seems to come from the poet's own heart.
The language, sometimes crowded and difficult, has hardly a trace of
artifice. Rarely as perfectly mastered as in "Hamlet" and "Othello," it
surpasses even those plays in the tremendous sincerity of its passion. If
passionate despair at things human has a language, it is the speech of
Lear.
"Macbeth" offers a marked contrast to "Lear" in its brevity and rapidity.
In spite of a few probable interpolations, the text is so short that it may
likely represent a condensation of the original version. In none of the
tragedies is the story told with more breathless directness, or with more
effective presentation of the externals of the action. The play is more
dependent on the chronicle than "Lear," and pays more attention to the
representation of history. In "Lear" the political and national importance
of the events is forgotten, but in "Macbeth" the convulsion of the kingdom
is kept in mind, and the battles, political intrigue, and the prophecies of
future dynasties recall the early chronicle plays. The story in Holinshed's
chronicle, however, conforms to the current ideas of tragedy, so closely
indeed that one wonders that some writer had not earlier attempted its
dramatization.[20] Apparently it awaited a Scottish king and a general
interest in Scottish affairs. The story is one of crime and retribution
with a rather striking likeness to some of the classical dramas. It
coincides with the Senecan plan of a crime committed and then revenged
through the accompaniment of supernatural agencies. It is the story,
familiar to both humanistic and popular tragedy, of a usurper who becomes
a bloody tyrant and is overthrown after a reign of increasing crime.
Macbeth's inordinate and fatal ambition also offers an obvious chance for a
development akin to that of Marlowe's protagonists. Again, as in most
English tragedies from "Cambyses" to "Sejanus," the story presents the
punishment of evil rather than the suffering of the good, and, except for
the absence of lust as a motive, might have found favor with any
contemporary dramatist. All these possibilities in the story were seized
upon by Shakespeare and adapted to his purpose. "Macbeth" might be studied
as the complement of "Lear" in the reflection and summarizing of all
preceding essays at tragedy.
Shakespeare's use of these various potentialities of the story and the
definiteness of his unifying purpose may both be seen by a comparison with
his treatment of the very similar materials furnished by the chronicles for
"Richard III." There, following closely the Marlowean methods, he for some
reason minimized the motive of remorse emphasized in his sources, and left
Richard as conscienceless as Tamburlaine or Barabas. In "Macbeth" the story
of ambition is also a story of the temptation, defeat, and remorse of
conscience. As in the other great tragedies, Shakespeare informed the old
material with the struggle of the human will. At the same time he made the
most of the hints in the chronicle that the protagonist was driven by fate
or some forces beyond his control. He united with marvelous dramatic tact
the destiny tragedy of the Greeks and the villain tragedy of the
Elizabethans. As a result the character of Macbeth has its paradoxes that
are the despair of the analysts. We do not quite know how far free-will and
how far superhuman agencies determined his course. But while the superhuman
agencies give his villany a mystery and impressiveness, they never confuse
for a moment the distinctions of good and evil. The powers of right and
wrong are clearly marshaled, and the triumph of evil leads to anguish as
well as to ruin.
Shakespeare's transforming and vitalizing use of both the suggestions of
Holinshed and the established conventions of tragedy in order to suit this
changed purpose is manifest at every turn, but nowhere so transcendently as
in his treatment of the supernatural. The ghost that interrupts the banquet
is no shrieking revenger, hardly more than a hallucination of the murderer.
The invisibility of the ghost to all but the one whom he would frighten or
admonish has other examples in the drama, but by 1605 most of the
playwrights made their ghosts either melodramatically horrible or vulgarly
familiar. In "Macbeth" Shakespeare not only etherealizes the ghost as in
"Julius Caesar" and "Hamlet," but makes him a part of the very mood and
temper of the murderer. And similarly, the witches, drawn from Holinshed's
hints, represent a supernatural interference very different from that of
the furies, devils, or sorcerers usual in the theatre. Some of their stage
effects are archaic enough, as the shows of the head, the bloody child, and
the monarchs; some, like their vanishing in air, may have been novel on
the stage of the Globe; certainly they were all intended to surpass in mere
theatrical novelty and effectiveness any of the supernatural or magical
creatures of the contemporary drama. Delighting the groundlings and
appealing to the current interest in witchcraft, they are none the less
essential to the drama, inwrapt in the conception of character. The foul
hags of superstition, they seem also to have the attributes of the
classical Fates. Novel and effective on the stage, they are the supervisors
of Macbeth's destiny. They lay bare the path to his crimes, yet they seem
to obey rather than to govern his inclinations. The embodiments of the
desires hid in his bosom, they become, like the dagger in the air and the
ghost of Banquo, the symptoms of his soul's disease.
The disease of the soul is the theme, and the attention is centred upon
crime and its accompaniments, as in many contemporary plays, but with less
relief than in any other of Shakespeare's tragedies. While the range of
crime is confined, lust for instance never appearing as a motive, there is
an unrelieved concentration on the evil course of ambition. The virtuous
and noble have only minor parts. Lady Macbeth is an instigator and
accomplice in crime. For the first time since Shakespeare's early plays,
there is no idealized woman. The wickedness of Iago and the wolfish sisters
was relieved by the lovableness of Desdemona and Cordelia, unavailing for
the time but unforgettable in the sympathies of the reader. The eternal
stars never glimmer through the blackness that broods over Macbeth.
Because of this concentration on one process of evil and the absence of any
idealization of goodness, the play has a less intense appeal to our
sympathies than the three preceding tragedies. Again, because of its
concern with historical and political results, it removes itself from
immediate relationship to common experience. In these respects it links
itself with the two Roman historical tragedies that followed it.
"Antony and Cleopatra" and "Coriolanus," like "Julius Caesar," are dramas of
great historical characters already splendidly described in Plutarch. They
are consequently far more limited by their sources than are the other
tragedies. Shakespeare was circumscribed by the main historical facts of
persons and events, and he was writing as the translator and interpreter of
Plutarch; yet his conception and methods remained the same as in "Hamlet"
or "Macbeth." An idealization of the tragic struggle of the protagonist is
environed by a wealth of incidents and persons, and accomplished by a
gathering and transformation of the methods and matters of current tragedy.
The world of antiquity is not faithfully reproduced, but it is made alive
and akin to our daily experience in the same fashion as are the Elsinore of
Polonius and the grave-diggers, and the Britain of Osric and Kent. And the
tragic conflicts that involve the great persons, if confused in the
spectacles and actions of this varied stage, are the accompaniments of
momentous national crises, themselves of hardly less imaginative appeal
than the spiritual struggles which they parallel. The mental battles of
Macbeth and Lear are reflected and magnified by the incantations of the
weird sisters and the turmoil of the elements; those of Coriolanus and
Antony by the battle of the powerful and the oppressed and by the throes of
a dying civilization.
In "Antony and Cleopatra," the subject of many Renaissance tragedies,
Shakespeare chose for a theme an ignoble infatuation that leads counter to
duty and on to destruction. The difficulties of the historical material led
to a remarkable reversion in dramatic structure to the methods of the early
chronicle plays, innumerable and loosely connected scenes, constant
shifting of place, prolonged time, and an absence of tragic unity. The
problem of a confused and intricate action, voluntarily imposed in "Lear,"
is here forced upon the dramatist who will combine the wars of the
triumvirs, the conflict of East and West, and the story of an enchantress
and her victim. The tragic course of the conflict between infatuation and
ambition is incumbered by historical details and stage spectacles, but in
style and characterization few plays more greatly reveal Shakespeare's
genius. In no play is the idealization of character more magnificent; no
other dramatist has made Antony in the lures of a strumpet still
representative of what is illustrious and magnanimous in mankind, no other
has made a woman with the manners and heart of a strumpet the rightful
empress of the imagination. The interest in the play is less centred than
in the other tragedies. It is divided between the spectacle of historical
events and the conflict of motives; it lies as much in the persons as
vitalizations of history as in their fate as human beings. But this is the
triumph of historical tragedy as Shakespeare conceived it. Its scenic
presentation makes alive the events and persons, and through a grandiose
panorama interprets the passions that ravished both empires and the souls
of their possessors.
The human drama in "Coriolanus" is involved not only in historical
circumstances, but also in the eternal conflict between the upper and the
lower classes, the incurable disease of the body politic. While their pride
in class, their blindness to the rights of others, and their failure in
patriotism are made apparent, the patricians are treated as the
representatives of righteousness and nobility. The plebeians, on the
contrary, are depicted without appreciation of their sufferings or rights,
as ignorant, imbecile, and the dupes of tricky demagogues. Contempt for the
mob was a common sentiment in Renaissance literature, and the people as a
factor in history held little place in the thoughts of the sixteenth
century or in the historical drama. But here and in "Julius Caesar"
Shakespeare treats them with far less consideration than does Fletcher or
Massinger, with a contempt, indeed, that can hardly have flattered his
audiences and that has often been taken as indicative of strong personal
feeling. Shakespeare must have foreseen at least some of the political
lessons which would be derived from the play, but one may easily exaggerate
its importance as an exposition of his political theory. He was following
Plutarch closely, with an eye for interesting theatrical scenes as in
"Antony and Cleopatra," but with less than his usual inspiration. The lack
of individuality in the persons, a certain typicality in the
characterization, and the heaviness and complexity of the style may have
been caused less by an intrusion of political theory than by a lapsing of
that splendid power of characterization so long maintained. Moreover, the
political partisanship is in part a dramatic necessity, almost compelled by
Shakespeare's conception of tragedy and his dramatic method. Coriolanus
must be given resplendent virtues. The populace as a foil and contrast must
be made contemptible and the ready tool of vice. Pride, the fatal defect of
the hero, must be exposed as was the sensuality of Antony, but it must be
made the flaw of an Achilles. The role of villain is left for the
demagogues, and that of the witless accomplice for the people. Again, here,
as in all his histories, Shakespeare is blind to the importance of the
people, because for him, as for his contemporaries, the dramatization of
history was the dramatization of its great personages, and their passions,
vices, and ambitions.
The loss of power discernible in "Coriolanus" is conspicuous in "Timon."
Its corrupt text and unfinished condition and the certainty that only part
of the play is Shakespeare's render uncertain its importance among the
tragedies. Here, however, as in "Coriolanus," though the interest in the
causes that make man's misery is still keen, the lack of inspiration
results in an exaggerated type for a protagonist and in an unconvincing
exposition of human baseness. If Coriolanus's politics were Shakespeare's,
certainly Timon's misanthropy was not.
With these themes Shakespeare's interest in tragedy exhausted itself.
Possibly influenced by the success of Beaumont and Fletcher's early
romantic plays, he attempted in "Cymbeline," and perfected in "A Winter's
Tale" and "The Tempest," a type of play combining tragic and idyllic
elements, full of romantic variety of incident, and resulting in surprising
and happy _denouements_. The possibilities for tragedy are there; jealousy,
villany, and intrigue abound; even death is introduced. But the main
actions are not of suffering and ruin; love and forgiveness heal all ills;
and the end is reconciliation and marriage. These romantic tragicomedies
are not only departures from the established tragic forms, but from any
consideration of tragic themes and problems comparable in seriousness or
intensity with that of the plays which we have just discussed.
NOTE ON BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ward, Fleay, and Schelling continue to be the best general guides.
Important critical discussions of Shakespeare's tragedies by Professors A.
C. Bradley, Lounsbury, and Baker were noted in the Bibliographical Note to
chapter i. Other recent books of special interest are: _Shakespeare_,
Walter Raleigh (1907, English Men of Letters Series); _William Shakespere_,
Barrett Wendell (1894); _Shakespeare and his Predecessors_, F. S. Boas
(1896). For a general surrey of the course of Shakespearean criticism, see
Ward, vol. i, chap. iv; or Lounsbury, _Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist_,
and _Shakespeare and Voltaire_; or the bibliographical lists in the various
volumes of Furness's Variorum edition. This edition, now in progress, and
Malone's Variorum edition of 1821, are the most valuable in furnishing
information. Nearly all recent editions of Shakespeare supply fairly
adequate information in regard to critical conclusions on matters of date,
sources, and text. Probably the most serviceable bibliography of
Shakespearean editions and criticism up to 1870, and to a considerable
extent for the Elizabethan drama, is to be found in the _Catalogue of the
Barton Collection_ of the Boston Public Library (1888), accessible in most
large libraries in this country. A complete Shakespearean bibliography
since 1865 is supplied by the bibliographies published in the _Jahrbuch der
Deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft_. These also comprise nearly all
monographs of importance dealing with the drama from 1557 to 1642.
The present chapter borrows from my article on Hamlet and the Revenge Plays
(_Publ. Mod. Lang. Assn._ 1902), referred to in chap. iv. E. E. Stoll's
_John Webster_ (Cambridge, Mass., 1905) gives a further discussion of the
Revenge Plays, and especially of Marston. Bullen's edition of Marston is
the standard. The editions of Heywood's Works (1874) and of Chapman's
(1873-75) attempt no scholarly discussion. F. S. Boas's edition of the two
Bussy D'Ambois plays in the _Belles-Lettres Series_ (Boston, 1905) has a
valuable introduction. Gifford's edition of Jonson (1816) is unfortunately
not yet superseded. The careful editions of various of his plays in the
_Yale Studies in English_ as yet include none of his tragedies. _Ben
Jonson, l'homme et l'oeuvre_ Paris, 1907, by Maurice Castelain is very
elaborate, and contains a full bibliography with a preliminary descriptive
note of editions. A new edition of Jonson edited by C. H. Herford and P.
Simpson is announced.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] Mr. Elmer Stoll's argument against this early date does not seem to me
convincing. See the Appendix to his _John Webster_, Cambridge, 1904.
[19] _Troilus and Cressida_ in some form was probably acted in 1602. The
editors of the Folio apparently first intended to class it with the
tragedies, but they changed their minds while the book was printing and
placed _Troilus_ without pagination between the histories and tragedies.
The preface to one of the quartos of 1609 classes it with the comedies, and
the prologue inclines that way. For an interesting though not always
convincing discussion of the many difficulties offered by the play, the
reader is referred to Mr. R. A. Small's _The Stage Quarrel between Ben
Jonson and The So-called Poetasters_ (1899), pp. 139-170. The play offers
problems of importance in Shakespearean criticism, but in a history of
tragedy it seems negligible. The concluding scenes (v, 7-10) are clearly
not by Shakespeare, and the Prologue and v, 4-6 are doubtful.
[20] There is in fact a reference in Kempe's _Nine Days Wonder_ (1600) to
the story, which may possibly indicate an earlier play.