In the Arrangement of the Plot also there are circumstances which point

emphatically to Shakspeare's agency. [Sidenote: Shakspere seen in the

simplicity of the plot.] One strong argument is furnished by a very

prominent quality of the plot as it is managed,--its simplicity.

[Sidenote: He relied on the execution of the parts, not the complication

of the whole.] This quality is like him, as being in this case the

result of a close adherence to the original story; but it is also like

him in itself, since the arrangement of all his works indicates the

operation of a principle tending to produce it, namely, a reliance for

dramatic effect on the execution of the parts rather than on the

mechanical perfection or complication of the whole. His contemporaries,

in their own several ways, bestowed extreme care on their plots.

[Sidenote: Beaumont and Fletcher's plots depend more on surprise and

incident.] With Beaumont and Fletcher, hurry, surprise, and rapid and

romantic revolution of incident are the main object, rather than tragic

strength or even stage effect: their plays would furnish materials for

extended novels, and are often borrowed from such without concentration

or omission. Shakspeare's comparative poverty of plot is not approached

by them even in their serious plays, and the lively stir of their comic

adventures is the farthest from it imaginable. [Sidenote: B. Jonson's

plots admirably constructed.] Jonson's plots are constructed most

elaborately and admirably: one or two of them are without equal for

skill of conduct and pertinency and connection of parts. This cautious

and industrious poet never confided in his own capability of making up

for feebleness of plan by the force of individual passages; and his

distrust was well judged, for the abstract coldness of his mind betrays

itself in every page of his dialogue, and his scenes need all their

beauty of outline to conceal the frigidity of their filling up. Ford and

Massinger agree much in their choice of plots, both preferring incidents

of a powerfully tragic nature: but their modes of management are widely

different. [Sidenote: Ford's gloomy plots softened by tenderness and

regret.] Ford, on the gloom of whose stories glimpses [74:1]of pathos

fall like moonlight, delights, when he comes to work up the details of

his tragic plan, in softening it down into the most dissolving

tenderness; at his bidding tears flow in situations where we listen

rather to hear Agony shriek, or look to behold Terror freezing into

stone; his emotion is not the rising vehemence of present passion, but

the anguish, subsiding into regret, which lingers when suffering is

past, and suggests ideas of eventual resignation and repose;--his verse

is like the voice of a child weeping itself to sleep. [Sidenote:

Massinger's stage effect by situations, and tragic design.] [Sidenote:

His coldness of expression.] Massinger crowds adventure upon adventure,

and his situations are wound up to the height of unmixed horror; for

stage effect and tragic intensity, some of them, as for example the last

scene in 'The Unnatural Combat', and the celebrated one in 'The Duke of

Milan', are unequalled in the modern drama, and worthy of the sternness

of the antique; but it is in the design alone that the tragic spirit

works; the colouring of the details is cold as monumental marble; the

pomp of lofty eloquence apes the simplicity of grief, or silence is left

to interpret alike for sorrow or despair. To the carefulness in

outlining the plan and devising situations, thus shewn in different

ways, Shakspeare's manner is perfectly alien. [Sidenote: Shakspere's

great aim to bring out character and feeling.] He never exhausts himself

in framing his plots, but reserves his strength for the great aim which

he had before him, the evolution of human character and passion, a

result which he relied on his own power to produce from any plot however

naked. He does not want variety of adventure in many of his plays; but

he has it only where his novel or chronicle gave it to him: he does not

reject it when it is offered, but does not make the smallest exertion to

search for it. [Sidenote: Shakspere's plays with no plot:] Some of his

plays, especially his comedies, have actually no plot, and those, too,

the very dramas in which his genius has gained some of its most mighty

victories. [Sidenote: _The Tempest._] 'The Tempest' is an instance: what

is there in it? A ship's company are driven by wreck upon an island;

they find an old man there who had been injured by certain of them, and

a reconciliation takes place. [Sidenote: _As You Like It._] The only

action of 'As You Like It' is pedestrian; if the characters had been

placed in the forest in the first scene, the drama would have been then

as ripe for its catastrophe as it is in the last. [Sidenote: _Midsummer

Night's Dream_ has no plot.] 'The Midsummer Night's Dream' relates a

midnight stroll in a wood; and the unreal na[75:1]ture of the incidents

is playfully indicated in its name. It is from no stronger materials

than those three frail threads of narrative that our poet has spun

unrivalled tissues of novel thought and divine fancy. And, as in his

lighter works he is careless of variety of adventure, so in his tragic

plays he does not seek to heap horrors or griefs one upon another in

devising the arrangement of his plots. [Sidenote: In the plots of

Shakspere's Tragedies, details and character are the main things.] In

this latter class of his works, the skill and force with which the

interest is woven out of the details of story and elements of character,

make it difficult for us to see how far it is that we are indebted to

these for the power which the scene exerts over us. But with a little

reflection we are able to discover, that there is scarcely one drama of

his, in which, from the same materials, situations could not have been

formed, which should have possessed in their mere outline a tenfold

amount of interest and tragic effect to those which Shakspeare has

presented to us. [Sidenote: He could have made more striking effect out

of _Hamlet_, Acts IV. & V. 4.] 'Hamlet' offers, especially in the two

last acts, some remarkable proofs of his indifference to the means which

he held in his hands for increasing the tragic interest of his

situations, and of the boldness with which he threw himself on his own

resources for the creation of the most intense effect out of the

slenderest outline. [Sidenote: _Othello_, Act III.] But no example can

shew more strikingly his independence of tragic situation, and his power

of concocting dramatic power out of the most meagre elements of story,

than the third act of the Othello. It contains no more than the

development and triumph of the devilish design which was afterwards to

issue in murder and remorse; and other writers would have treated it in

no other style than as necessary to prepare the way for the harrowing

conclusion. In the Moor's dialogues with Iago, the act of vengeance,

ever and anon sternly contemplated, and darkening all with its horror,

is yet but one ingredient in the misery of the tale. [Sidenote: So in

the end of _Lear_,] These scenes are a tragedy in themselves, the story

of the most hideous revolution in a noble nature; and their catastrophe

of wretchedness is complete when the tumult of doubt sinks into

resolved and desolate conviction,--when the Moor dashes Desdemona from

him, and rushes out in uncontrollable agony.--Read also the conclusion

of Lear, and learn the same lesson from the economy of that most

touching scene. [Sidenote: all is left clear for the one group, the

father and his dead child.] The horrors which have gathered so thickly

[76:1]throughout the last act, are carefully removed to the background,

and free room is left for the sorrowful groupe on which every eye is

turned. The situation is simple in the extreme; but how tragically

moving are the internal convulsions for the representation of which the

poet has worthily husbanded his force! Lear enters with frantic cries,

bearing the body of his dead daughter in his arms; he alternates between

agitating doubts and wishing unbelief of her death, and piteously

experiments on the lifeless corpse; he bends over her with the dotage of

an old man's affection, and calls to mind the soft lowness of her voice,

till he fancies he can hear its murmurs. Then succeeds the dreadful

torpor of despairing insanity, during which he receives the most cruel

tidings with apathy, or replies to them with wild incoherence; and the

heart flows forth at the close with its last burst of love, only to

break in the vehemence of its emotion,--commencing with the tenderness

of regret, swelling into choking grief, and at last, when the eye

catches the tokens of mortality in the dead, snapping the chords of life

in a paroxysm of agonised horror.

Oh, thou wilt come no more;

Never, never, never, never, never!

--Pray you, undo this button: Thank you, Sir.--

Do you see this?--_Look on her--look_--HER LIPS!

_Look there! Look there!_

The application here of the differences thus pointed out is easy enough.

Fletcher either would not have chosen so bare a story, or he would have

treated it in another guise. [Sidenote: Incidents of _The Two Noble

Kinsmen_ story] The incidents which constitute the story are neither

many nor highly wrought: they are only the capture of the two

knights,--their becoming enamoured of the lady,--the combat which was to

decide their title to her,--and the death of Arcite after it. And no

complexity of minor adventures is inserted to disturb the simplicity so

presented. [Sidenote: wouldn't have suited Fletcher.] In all this there

is nothing which Fletcher could have found sufficient to maintain that

continuity and stretch of interest which he always thought necessary.

[Sidenote: He'd have added to 'em.] He would have invented accessory

circumstances, he would have produced new characters, or thrust the less

important person[77:1]ages who now fill the stage, further into the

foreground, and more constantly into action: the one simple and

inartificial story which we have, possessing none of his mercurial

activity of motion, and scarcely exciting a feeling of curiosity, would

have been transformed into a complication of intrigues, amidst which the

figures who occupy the centre of the piece as it stands, would have been

only individuals sharing their importance with others, and scarcely

allowed room enough to make their features at all distinguishable.

[Sidenote: Shakspere's handling seen in certain scenes of _The Two Noble

Kinsmen_.]

In the management of particular scenes of this play, likewise, certain

circumstances are observable, which, separately, seem to go a certain

length in establishing Shakspeare's claim to the arrangement, and have

considerable force when taken together. [Sidenote: Act I. scene ii.

design'd by Shakspere.] The second scene of the first act would appear

to have been sketched by him rather than Fletcher, from its containing

no activity of incident, and serving no obvious purpose but the

development of the character and situation of the two princes; a mode of

preparation not at all practised by Fletcher. [Sidenote: Act I. scene

iii. also. And] Neither does any consequence flow from the beautiful

scene immediately following; a circumstance which points out Shakspeare

as having arranged the scene, and would strengthen the evidence of his

having written the dialogue, if that required any corroboration.

[Sidenote: Act V. scenes i. ii. iii. [? Emilia with the pictures.]] The

bareness and undiversified iteration of situation in the first three

scenes of the last act form one presumption against the devising of

those scenes by Fletcher. [Sidenote: Act V. scene v. also designd by

Shakspere.] The economy of the fifth scene of that act, in which Emilia,

left alone on the stage, listens to the noise of the combat, is also, to

me, strongly indicative of Shakspeare. The contrivance is unusual, but

extremely well imagined. I do not recollect an instance in Fletcher

bearing the smallest likeness to it, or founded on any principles at all

analogous to that which is here called into operation. In Shakspeare, I

think we may, in more than one drama, discover something which might

have given the germ of it. [Sidenote: Shakspere's expedients for

avoiding spectacles; in] He has not only in his historical plays again

and again regretted the insufficiency of the means possessed by his

stage, or any other, for the representation of such spectacles; but in

several of those plays he has devised expedients for avoiding them. In

'Henry V.' we have the battle of Azincour; but the only encounter of

[78:1]the opposite parties is that of Pistol and the luckless Signor

Dew. [Sidenote: _1 Henry IV._,] In 'the first part of Henry IV.' he has

shewn an unwillingness to risk the effect even of a single combat; for

in the last scene of that play, where prince Henry engages Hotspur, the

spectator's attention is distracted from the fight between them, by the

entrance of Douglas, and his attack on the prudent Falstaff. [Sidenote:

_Richard II._,] In 'Richard II.' the lists are exhibited for the duel of

Bolingbroke and Norfolk, which is inartificially broken off at the very

last instant by the mandate of the king. [Sidenote: Emilia in _Two N.

K._ I. v., like Lady Macbeth in II. ii. of _Macbeth_.] But a more deeply

marked likeness to the spirit in which the scene in 'The Two Noble

Kinsmen' is arranged, meets us in Lady Macbeth watching and listening

while her husband perpetrates the murder, like a bad angel which delays

its flight only till it be assured that the whispered temptation has

done its work. And in this combat scene, even the ancient and artless

expedient used, of relating important events by messengers brought in

for that sole end, and having no part in the action, may be noticed as

belonging to an older form of the drama than Fletcher's, and as being

very frequently practised by Shakspeare himself.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The motives of the play of _The Two N. K._]

In quitting our cursory examination of the qualities which distinguish

the mechanical arrangement of the play, we may advert to the mode in

which those influences are conceived which give motion to the incidents

of the story, and regulate its progress. [Sidenote: Dramatic art

defin'd.] The dramatic art is a representation of human character in

action; and action in human life is prompted by passion, which the other

powers of the mind serve only to guide, to modify, or to quell. In the

conception of the passions which are chiefly operative in this drama,

there seems to be much that is characteristic of a greater poet than

Fletcher. [Sidenote: In _The Two N. K._ the moving passions are Love and

Jealousy.] In the first place, the passions which primarily originate

the action of the piece are simple; they are Love and Jealousy; the

purest and most disinterested form of the one, and the noblest and most

generous which could be chosen for the other. [Sidenote: This conception

is Shakspere's.] The conception is Shakspeare's in its loftiness and

magnanimity; and it is his also as being a direct appeal to common

sympathies, modified but slightly by partial or fugitive views of

nature. [Sidenote: The keeping close to the leading motives, is

Shakspere's doing.] But it also resembles him in the singleness and

coherence of design with [79:1]which the idea is seized and followed

out. It cannot be necessary that I should specifically exemplify the

closeness with which those ruling passions are brought to bear on the

leading circumstances of the story from first to last. And it is almost

equally superfluous to remind you, how far any such adherence to that

unity of impulse, operates as evidence in a question between the two

poets whom we have here to compare. [Sidenote: Fletcher's inability to

work a character out, to keep one passion always in the front.]

Fletcher, in common with other poets of all ranks inferior to the

highest, is unable to preserve any one form of passion or of character

skilfully in the foreground: he may seem occasionally to have proposed

to himself the prosecution of such an end, but he either degenerates

into the exhibition of a few over-wrought dramatic contrasts, or loses

his way altogether amidst the complicated adventures with which he

incumbers his stories. [Sidenote: Shakspere's definite purpose and

keeping to it.] This inability to keep sight of an uniform design, is in

truth one striking argument of inferiority; and the clearness with which

Shakspeare conceives a definite purpose, and the fixedness with which he

pursues it, go very far to unravel the great secret of his power.

[Sidenote: His relying on the emotion he puts into his characters.] I

have already pointed out to you, perhaps without necessity, wherein it

is that his strength of passion consists; that it is not in the

incidents of his fable, but in his mode of treating the incidents; that

he will not rely on mere vigour or skill of outline in his

stage-grouping, for that influence which he is conscious of being always

able to acquire more worthily, by the beauty and emotion which he

breathes into the organic formation of the living statuary of the scene;

that he refuses to sacrifice to the meretricious attraction of strained

situations or entangled incidents, the internal and self-supporting

strength of his historical pictures of the heart, or the unflinching

accuracy of his demonstrations of the intellectual anatomy. [Sidenote:

Shakspere's unity of purpose, seen in his conception, and his carrying

this out.] In a similar way you will look for his unity of purpose, not

in the mechanical economy of his plots, but in the elementary conception

of his characters, and in his developement of the principles of passion

under whose suggestions those characters act. [Sidenote: Shakspere's

conception of character, and method of developing it.] He chooses as the

subject of his delineation some mightily and truly conceived

impersonation of human attributes, inconsistent it may be in itself,

but faithful to its prototype as being inconsistent according to the

rules which guide inconsistency in our enigmati[80:1]cal mental

constitution; for the exhibition of the character so imagined he devises

some chain of events by which its internal springs of action may be

brought into play; and he traces the motion and results of those

spiritual impulses with an undeviating steadiness of design, which turns

aside neither to raise curiosity nor to gratify a craving for any other

mean excitement. Some singular instances of Shakspeare's fine judgment

in clinging to one great design, are furnished by the 'Othello.'

[Sidenote: Desdemona's murder compard with Annabella's (by Ford).] The

death of Desdemona has been compared with the murder of Annabella, a

scene (evidently drawn from it) in a drama of Ford's on a story which

makes the flesh creep. [Sidenote: Ford's above Shakspere's in pathos.]

Some have pronounced Ford's scene superior in pathos to Shakspeare's: I

think it is decidedly so. The tender mournfulness of the language and

few images is exquisite, and the sweet sad monotonous melody of the

versification is indescribably affecting. Is it from weakness that

Shakspeare has not given to the death of his gentle lady an equally

strong impress of pathos? No. He was not indeed susceptible of the

feminine abandonment of Ford; but he was equal to a manly tone of

feeling, fitted to excite a truer sympathy. [Sidenote: Why? Because of

Shakspere's self-restraint.] He has refused to stretch the chords of

feeling to the utmost in favour of Desdemona; and his refusal has a

design and meaning in it. [Sidenote: The mind of Othello is the centre

of Shakspere's play,] There is anguish in the scene, and the most utter

yielding to overpowering sorrow; but it is the Moor who feels those

emotions, and it is the exhibition of his mind which is the leading end

of this scene, as of the rest of the drama. [Sidenote: and the pathos of

Desdemona's death must be kept down.] The suffering lady is but an

inferior actor in the scene; her situation is brought out with perfect

skill and genuine tenderness, so far as it is consistent with the first

object and illustrative of it; but its expression is arrested at the

point where its further developement would have marred the effect of the

scene as a whole, and broken in on its pervading spirit. Ford had no

such aim in view; and the very scene of his which is so beautiful in

itself, loses almost all its force when regarded as a part of the play

in which it is inserted.

These principles of Shakspeare's could be traced as influencing the

drama of the 'Two Noble Kinsmen,' even if there were nothing farther to

shew their effect than what has been already [81:1]noticed. But their

power is displayed still more admirably in a second quality in the mode

of conception, less open to notice, but breathing actively through all.

There is skill in the mental machinery which gives motion to the story;

but there is even greater art in the application of a hidden influence,

which controls the action of the moving power, and equalizes its

effects. [Sidenote: Shakspere's art in subduing all _The Two Noble

Kinsmen_ to one Friendship.] That secret principle is Friendship, the

operation of which is shewn most distinctly in the Kinsmen, guiding

every part of their behaviour except where their mutual claim to

Emilia's love comes into operation, never extinct even there, though its

effect be sometimes suspended, and awakening on the approach of Arcite's

death, with a warmth which is natural as well as touching. [Sidenote:

Love of Friends the leading idea of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_.] But this

feeling has a farther working: Love of Friends is in truth the leading

idea of the piece: the whole drama is one sacrifice on the altar of one

of the holiest influences which affect the mind of man. Palamon and

Arcite are the first who bow down before the shrine, but Theseus and

Perithous follow, and Emilia and her sister do homage likewise.

[Sidenote: The harmony of its parts, an idea beyond Fletcher.] This

singular harmony of parts was an idea perfectly beyond Fletcher's reach;

and the execution of it was equally unfit for his attempting. The

discrimination, the delicate relief, with which the different shades of

the affection are elaborated, is inimitable. The love of the Princesses

does not issue in action; it is a placid feeling, which gladly

contemplates its own likeness in others, or turns back with memory to

the vanished hours of childhood: with Theseus and his friend, the

passion is exhibited dimly, as longing for exertion, but not gifted with

opportunity; and in the Kinsmen, it bursts out into full activity,

quelling all but the one omnipotent passion, and tempering and purifying

even it. With this exception, you will not look for much of Shakspeare's

skill in delineating character. [Sidenote: Not much of Shakspere's

characterization in _The Two Noble Kinsmen_.] The features of the two

Princes are aptly enough distinguished; but neither in them, nor in any

of the others, is there an approach to his higher efforts. You will

recollect that in his acknowledged works those finer and deeper pryings

into character have place only in few instances; and that the greater

number of his dramas depend for their effect chiefly on other causes,

some of which are energetic in this very play.

[82:1]While you successively inspected particular passages in this

play, your attention was necessarily called both to the character of its

imaginative portions, and to the tone of reflection which is so

frequently assumed in it. [Sidenote: Whose is the ruling temper of _The

Two Noble Kinsmen_?] The drama having been now put entirely before you,

I shall wish you to ponder its ruling temper as a whole, and to

determine whether that temper is Fletcher's, or belongs to a more

thoughtful, inquisitive, and solemn mind. [Sidenote: Seek in it the mind

of its author.] When you institute such a reconsideration, I shall be

desirous that you contemplate the internal spirit of the work from a

loftier and more commanding station than that which you formerly

occupied; and I shall crave you to view its elements of thought and

feeling less as the qualities of a literary work, than as the signs and

results of the mental constitution of its author. [Sidenote: The duty of

our reverence for Shakspere, the Star of Poets, being intelligent.] I

cannot regard as altogether foreign to our leading purpose any inquiry

which may hold out the promise of illustrating the characteristics of

Shakspeare even slightly, and of teaching us to mingle a more active

discernment in the reverence with which we look up to the Star of Poets

from the common level of our unendowed humanity. You will therefore have

the patience to accompany me in the suggestion of some queries as to the

character of his mode of thinking, and the way in which his reflective

spirit and his poetical qualities of mind are combined and influence

each other. We may be able to perceive the more distinctly the real

character both of his intellect and his poetical faculty, if you will

consent that our investigation shall set out from a point which you may

be inclined to consider somewhat more remote than is altogether

necessary. [Sidenote: We'll treat 1. the true functions of Poetry, 2.

its true province.] It is to be desired that we should have clearly in

our view, first, the true functions of the poetical faculty, and,

secondly, the province in poetical invention which legitimately belongs

to the imagination, properly so called. Sound conclusions on both these

points are indispensable to sound criticism on individual specimens of

the poetical art; and when we attempt to reason on particular cases,

without having those conclusions placed prominently in view at the

outset, the vagueness of ordinary language makes us constantly liable to

lose sight of their true grounds and distinctions. The laying down of

such principles at the institution of an inquiry into the poetical

character of a great [82:2]poet, is therefore in no degree less useful,

than the inculcating of familiar truths is in the instructions of

religious and moral teachers; the end in each of the cases being, not

the establishing of new principles, but the placing of known and

admitted ones in an aspect which shall render them influential; and the

necessity in each, arising from the danger which exists lest the

principles, acknowledged in the abstract, should in practice be wholly

disregarded.

[Sidenote: Contrast of the Arts of Poetry and Design, in Lessing's

_Laocoon_.]

We can in no way discover the real character and objects of the Poetical

Art so easily as by contrasting it with the Arts of Design; and the

materials for such a comparison are afforded by the Laocoon of Lessing.

[Sidenote: The Greeks subordinated Expression to Beauty.] The principles

established in that admirable essay will scarcely be now disputed, and

may be fairly enough summed up in the following manner.[83:1]--A study

of the Grecian works of art convinces us, that "among the ancients

Beauty was the presiding law of those arts which are occupied with

Form;" that, to that supreme object, the Greek artists sacrificed every

collateral end which might be inconsistent with it; and that, in

particular, they expressed the external signs of mental commotion and

bodily suffering, to no farther extent than that which allowed Beauty to

be completely preserved. [Sidenote: And all Design must do the same,

because] Now, that this subordination of Expression to Beauty is a

fundamental principle of art, and not a mere accidental quality of

Grecian art individually, is proved by considering the peculiar

constitution and mechanical necessities of art. Its representations are

confined to a single instant of time; and that one circumstance imposes

on it two limitations, which necessarily produce the characteristic

quality of the Grecian works. [Sidenote: 1. the expression must be

caught before the highest passion is attaind;] First, "the expression

must never be selected from what may be called the _acme_ or

transcendent point of the action;" and that because, the power of the

arts of design being confined to the arresting of a single point in the

developement of an action, it is indispensable that they should select a

point which is in the highest degree significant, and most fully excites

the imagination; a condition [83:2]which is fulfilled only by those

points in an action in which the action moves onward, and the passion

which prompts it increases; and which is not fulfilled in any degree by

the highest stage of the passion and the completion of the action.

[Sidenote: 2. because the expression must not be that of a momentary

feeling.] [Sidenote: But Poetry is not bound by the limits of the Fine

Arts.] [Sidenote: It can seize passion at its height.] Secondly, a

limitation is imposed as to the choice of the proper point in the onward

progress of the action: for art invests with a motionless and unchanging

permanence the point of action which it selects; and consequently any

appearance which essentially possesses the character of suddenness and

evanescence is unfit to be its subject, since the mind cannot readily

conceive such transitory appearances as stiffened into that monumental

stability.--Since it is by the limitation of the Fine Arts to the

representation of a single instant of time that the two limitations in

point of expression are imposed, and since Poetry is not subject to that

mechanical limitation, but can describe successively every stage of an

action, and every phasis of a passion, it follows that this latter art

is not fettered by the limitation in expression, which is consequent on

the physical limitation of the other; and hence the exhibition of

passion in its height is as allowable in poetry as it is inadmissible in

the arts of design. [Sidenote: Beauty is but one of its many resources.]

And since the whole range and the whole strength of human thought,

action, and passion, are thus left open to the poet as subjects of his

representation, it follows likewise, that Beauty "can never be more than

one amongst many resources, (and those the slightest,) by which he has

it in his power to engage our interest for his characters."

It will be remarked, that the purport of Lessing's reasoning, so far as

he has in express terms carried it, is no more than to demonstrate the

important truth, that the Fine Arts are confined by certain limits to

which Poetry is not subject. His elucidation of the principles of poetry

is purely incidental and negative. His reasoning seems however

necessarily to infer certain further consequences, the examination of

which has a tendency to cast additional light on the true end and

character of the poetical art: and it is for this reason rather than

from any difficulty lying in the way of those implied results, that I

wish now to direct your notice to their nature, and the grounds on which

[84:1]their soundness rests. [Sidenote: Design must represent Form of

permanent feelings.] Lessing's second canon does not assume the arts of

design as pursuing any further end than their original and obvious one,

the Representation of Form: it simply directs that only those

appearances of form shall be represented which admit of being conceived

as permanent. [Sidenote: The object of Art, a true representation of the

Beautiful.] And as the feelings which art desires to awaken are

pleasurable, and as forms, considered merely _as_ forms, give pleasure

only when they are beautiful, art would thus be regarded as proposing

for its object nothing beyond a Representation of the Beautiful, and

Verisimilitude in that representation. The first rule of limitation

however implies a great deal more: it looks to forms, not as such, but

as tokens significant of certain qualities not inherent in their own

nature: for the quality which it requires to be possessed by works of

art, is a capability of exciting the imagination to frame for itself

representations of human action and passion; and in this view, those

feelings which the qualities of form considered as such are calculated

to arouse, are no more than an accidental part of the impression which

the representation makes. It appears, therefore, that art _may_ pursue

two different ends,--the excitement of the feeling which Beauty

inspires, and the excitement of the feeling which has its root in human

Sympathy; and the question at once occurs,--Is each of these purposes of

art equally a part of its original and proper province? [Sidenote: May

it also try to excite feelings inconsistent with the Beautiful, as

Poetry does?] Or, since it is sufficiently clear that the effects which

the last-mentioned canon contemplates as produced by the fine arts, are

effects which are also produced by poetry, (whether its sole effects or

not, it is immaterial to this question to settle,) the question may be

put in another form:--Is it to be believed, that the arts of design,

which have admittedly for one purpose the reproduction of the Beautiful

in form, have also as an equally proper and original purpose the framing

of representations of form calculated to affect the mind with feelings

different from the feeling of the Beautiful,--these feelings being

identically the same with those which are at least the most obvious

effects of poetry? [Sidenote: No.] Reasons crowd in upon the mind,

evincing that the question must be answered by an unqualified negative.

The production of poetical effects cannot have been an _original_

purpose of the fine arts, which certainly were brought into existence

[85:1]by the love of Beauty; and the production of those effects is

plainly also an exertion in which the fine arts overstep their limits,

and wander into the region which belongs of right to the poetical art,

and to it alone. [Sidenote: Expression in Painting and Sculpture is a

borrowd quality.] That Expression in painting and sculpture is an

extraneous and borrowed quality, is made almost undeniably evident by

this one consideration, that it requires, as we have seen, to be always

kept subdued, and allowed to enter only partially into the composition

of the work. [Sidenote: That Fine Art is admired most when it has most

expression, only shows that] And, again, it is no argument against that

position, to say that the strongest and most general interest and

admiration are excited by those works of art in which expression is

permitted to go the utmost length which the physical limits of the art

permit. [Sidenote: Poetry stirs men more than pure Art does.] For the

universality of this preference only proves, that the feelings of our

common humanity influence more minds than does the pure love of the

beautiful; and the greater strength of the feeling produced by

expression, only evinces that poetry, which works its effect by means of

that quality, is a more powerful engine than the sister-art for stirring

up the depths of our nature. And it may be quite true that those works

of art which confine themselves to the attempt to move the calmer

feeling due to Beauty, are the truest to their own nature and proper

aim, although an endeavour to unite with that the attainment of higher

purposes may be admissible, and in some instances highly successful. I

apprehend that although an art should propose as its main end the

production of one particular effect, it does not follow that its effects

should be confined to the production of that alone, if its physical

conditions permit the partial pursuit of others. [Sidenote: Fine Art

_may_ borrow from its loftier sister, Poetry,] More especially, if an

art should admit of uniting, to a certain extent, with its own peculiar

and legitimate end, the prosecution of another loftier than the first,

surely we might expect to find such an art occasionally taking advantage

of the license; and yet its doing so would not compel us to say, that

both these are its proper and original purposes. [Sidenote: but Classic

Art very rarely does, and rightly.] And the fact is, that the attempt is

seldom made; for very few works of classical art exist in which the

union of the two principles is tried, the end sought being usually the

representation of beauty, and that alone. In no way, however, can the

radical difference and opposition between the two qualities be evinced

so satisfactorily as by a comparison [86:1]of the effects which they

severally produce on the mind. [Sidenote: Expression belongs to Poetry.

It excites.] [Sidenote: Poetry stirs men.] Expression, the poetical

element, gives rise to a peculiar activity of the soul, a certain

species of reflective emotion, which, it is true, is easily

distinguishable from underived passion, and does not necessarily produce

like it a tendency to action, but which yet essentially partakes of the

character of mental commotion, and is opposed to the idea of mental

inactivity. [Sidenote: Beauty soothes them.] The feeling which Beauty

awakens is of a character entirely opposite. The contemplation of the

Beautiful begets an inclination to repose, a stillness and luxurious

absorption of every mental faculty: thought is dormant, and even

sensation is scarcely followed by the perception which is its usual

consequence. [Sidenote: Look at the Venus de Medici.] It is with this

softness and relaxation of mind that we are inspired when we look on

such works as the Venus de Medici, in which beauty is sole and supreme,

and expression is permitted to be no farther present than as it is

necessary as an indication of the internal influence of soul, that so

those sympathies may be awakened, without whose partial action even

beauty itself possesses no power. [Sidenote: When ancient art stirs you,

as in the] If we turn to those few works of ancient art, in which the

opposite element is admitted, we are conscious that the soul is

differently acted upon, and we may be able by reflection to disentangle

the ravelled threads of feeling, and distinguish the mental changes

which flow upon and through each other like the successive waves on the

sea-beach. [Sidenote: Apollo and] In contemplating the Apollo, for

instance, a feeling akin to the poetical, or rather identical with it,

is awakened by the divine majesty of the statue; and upon the quiet and

self-brooding luxury with which the heart is filled by the perfect

beauty of the youthful outlines, there steals a more fervent emotion

which makes us proud to look on the proud figure, which makes us stand

more erect while we gaze, and imitate involuntarily that godlike

attitude and expression of calm and beautiful disdain. [Sidenote:

Laocoon,] [Sidenote: it is by their having left their own ground, and

taken that of Poetry, Expression.] Or look to the wonderful Laocoon, in

which the abstract feeling of beauty is even more deeply merged in the

human feeling of the pathetic,--that extraordinary groupe, in which

continued meditation arouses more and more actively the emotion of

sympathy, while we view the dark and swimming shadows of the eyes, the

absorbed and motionless agony of the mouth, and the tense torture of the

iron muscles of [87:1]the body. It is impossible to conceive that an art

can propose to itself, as originally and properly its own, two ends so

difficult of reconcilement and so different in the qualities by which

they are brought about. [Sidenote: Lastly, Fine Art appeals to sight.]

[Sidenote: Poetry never does.] Finally, the Plastic Arts offer form

directly to the sense of sight, whereas it is very doubtful whether

poetry can convey, even indirectly, any visual image. [Sidenote: If Fine

Art rightly includes Expression, then it has Beauty too; while Poetry,

which can't express Beauty directly, has to give up part of its

province, Expression, to Art, which can't use it fully.] Consequently,

the result of admitting Expression as a primary and legitimate end of

the arts of form, would be to ascribe to them an innate and underived

capability of presenting directly to the senses both beauty and the wide

circle of human action and feeling; while the genius of Poetry, by her

nature shut out from direct representation of the beautiful, whose

shadows she can evoke only through the agency of associated ideas, would

have even her own kingdom of thought and passion, her power as the great

interpreter of mind, shared with her by a rival, whom the decision would

acknowledge indeed as possessing a right to the divided empire, but who

is disqualified by the nature of her instruments from exercising that

sovereignty to the full. [Sidenote: Poetry rather lends its help to its

narrower ally, Art.] And, on the other hand, by the acknowledgment that

the arts of form are not properly a representation of human action or

human passion, and that when they aim at becoming so, they attempt a

task which is above and beyond their sphere, and in which their success

can never be more than partial, Poetry is exhibited in an august and

noble aspect, as stooping to lend a share in her broad and lofty

dominion to another art of narrower scope, which is so enabled to gain

over the mind an influence of transcending its own unassisted

capacities.

[Sidenote: The aims of Poetry:]

If you shall be able to think this excursive disquisition justifiable,

it will be because it insensibly leads us to perceive what truly is the

legitimate and sole end of the Poetical Art, and because it thus clears

the way for one or two elementary propositions regarding the functions

of the Poetical Faculty. [Sidenote: 1. not to represent Beauty to the

eye, but only to the mind.] First, we perceive that poetry does not aim

at the representation of visual beauty. I do not say that beauty may not

form the subject of poetry: my meaning is, that the poet can depict it

poetically in no way except by indicating its effects on the mind. When

poetry mistakingly attempts to represent beauty by its external form,

its failure to affect the mind is signal and complete, and must be

[88:1]so, even supposing it to be possible that the picture should be so

full and accurate that the painter might sketch from it. The reason of

this is perhaps discoverable. [Sidenote: Contrast of the effects of

Beauty and Expression, of Fine Art and Poetry, on the mind.] Such a

description cannot affect the mind with the poetical sentiment, because

it does not represent to the imagination those qualities by which it is

that the poetical effect is produced; and if it were to move the mind

at all, it must be with those feelings which beauty excites when it is

seen corporeally present. It fails to operate even this effect, and why?

Beauty of form affects the mind through the intervention of sense; and

the perception of the sensible qualities of form is followed

instantaneously and necessarily by the pleasurable emotion. [Sidenote:

Beauty gives pleasure, rest, absorption.] This mental process is

involuntary, and the nature of the sentiment excited implies inactivity

and absorption of the mind. [Sidenote: Poetry stirs the Imagination, the

Will, disturbs the passiveness that Beauty produces.] When however the

imagination is called on to combine into a connected whole the scattered

features which words successively present, an effort of the will is

necessary: and the failure in the pleasurable effect appears to be

adequately accounted for (independently of any imperfection in the

result of the combination) by the inconsistency of this degree of mental

activity with the inert frame of mind which is requisite for the actual

contemplation and enjoyment of the beautiful. [Sidenote: It can't

produce an image by sight, but only by association.] When, again, the

poet represents beauty in the method chalked out for him by the nature

of his art, it is quite impossible that he can convey any distinct

visual image; for he represents the poetical qualities by indicating

them as the causes which produce some particular temper or frame of

mind: and as every mind has its distinctive differences of association,

a truly poetical picture is not realised by any two minds with precisely

similar features. [Sidenote: Its effect is opposite to that of Beauty of

Form.] And the mood of mind to which this representation gives birth, is

radically opposite to the other; it is active, sympathetic, and even

reflective: we seem, as it were, to share the feeling with others, to

derive an added delight from witnessing the manner in which they are

affected, or even to have the original passive sentiment of pleasure

entirely swallowed up in that energetic emotion.[89:1] [Sidenote: 2.

Poetry's true subject is Mind, and not external nature,] Secondly, the

true subject of poetry is [90:1]Mind. Its most strictly original purpose

is that of imaging mind _directly_, by the representation of humanity as

acting, thinking, or suffering; it presents images of external nature

only because the weakness of the mind compels it; and it is careful to

represent sensible images solely as they are acted on by mind.

[Sidenote: except as tinged with thought and feeling.] When it makes the

description of external nature its professed end, it in truth does not

represent the sensible objects themselves, but only exhibits certain

modes of thought and feeling, and characterises the sensible forms no

farther than as the causes which produce them. [Sidenote: 3. Poetry is

analytical; it perceives, discriminates.] Thirdly, The most

characteristic function of the poetical faculty is _analytical_; it is

essentially a _perception_, a power of discovery, analysis, and

discrimination. An object having been presented to it by the

imagination, it discovers, and separates from the mass of its qualities,

those of them which are calculated to affect the mind with that emotion

which is the instrumental end of poetry. [Sidenote: Its combinations

depend on its first analysis.] Coincidently with the perception and

discovery of the qualities, it perceives and experiences the peculiar

effect which each particular quality produces; and, lastly, it sets

forth and represents those resulting moods of mind, indicating at the

same time what those qualities of the object are through which they are

excited. Its task of combination is no more than consequent on this

process, and supposes each step of it to have been previously gone

through. [Sidenote: 4. Poetry depends on the power and accuracy of its

perception of the poetical qualities in its materials.] Fourthly, It

follows, (and this is the result which makes the inquiry important,)

that the poetical faculty is measured by the strength and accuracy with

which it perceives the poetical qualities of those objects which the

imagination suggests as its materials, and not by the number of the

ideas so presented. [Sidenote: Of imagination or Imagery.] A

forgetfulness of this truth has occasioned more misapprehension and

[90:2]false criticism than any other error whatever; and we are

continually in danger of the mistake, from the extension of meaning

which use has attached to the word imagination, that term being commonly

employed to designate the poetical faculty. This extended application is

perhaps unavoidable; but it is on that account the more necessary to

guard against the misconception always likely to arise from the original

signification of the word, which we can never discard entirely from the

mind in using it in a secondary sense.--You do not need to be reminded

how completely the history of the poetical art evinces, that these

positions, whether expressly acquiesced in or not, have been invariably

acted on in the judgments which the world has pronounced in particular

cases. [Sidenote: Describing forms by their outsides, is not Poetry.]

[Sidenote: They must be shown as exciting changes of Mind.] The

inadequacy of a representation of forms by their external attributes to

constitute poetical pictures, could be instanced from every bad poem

which has ever been written; and the great truth, that the external

world is exhibited poetically only by being represented as the exciting

cause of mental changes, has been illustrated in no age so singularly as

in our own. [Sidenote: Wordsworth declares that all outward objects can

do this, and become sentient existences.] The writings of Wordsworth in

particular have stretched the principle to the utmost extent which it

can possibly sustain; demanding a belief that all external objects are

poetical, because all can interest the human mind; establishing the

reasonableness of the assumption by the boldest confidence in the

strength and delicacy with which the poetical perception can trace the

qualities which awaken that interest, and the progress of the feeling

itself; and applying the poetical faculty to the transforming of every

object of sense into an energetic, and as it were sentient, existence.

[Sidenote: Mere wealth of imagery is of little worth.] And attention is

especially due to the decision which has always recognized, as the rule

of poetical excellence, the operation of some power independent of mere

wealth of imagination, ranking this latter quality as one of the lowest

merits of poetry. [Sidenote: The greatest poets use the fewest images,]

We are apt to forget that those minds whose conceptions have been the

most strongly and truly poetical, are by no means those whose poetical

ideas have been the most abundant; that an overflow of poetical images

has been coincident with an intense perception of their most efficient

poetical relations only in a few rare instances; and that it is

precisely where the highest elements of the poetical are most active

that [91:1]the imagination is usually found to offer the fewest images

as the materials on which the poetical faculty should work. [Sidenote:

witness Dante, Alfieri.] It is enough to name Dante, or, a still more

singular instance, Alfieri. [Sidenote: Their intensity is their secret.]

In both cases the poetical influence rests on the intensity of the one

simple aspect of grandeur or passion in which a character is presented,

and in both that simplicity is unrelieved and undecorated by any fulness

of imagery.[91:2]

[Sidenote: Application of these principles to the Drama.]

These fundamental principles of the poetical art possess a closer

application to Dramatic Poetry than to any other species. [Sidenote: The

Passions are the chief subjects of Poetry.] All poetry being directly or

indirectly a representation of human character; and human character

admitting of appreciation only by an exhibition of its results in

action; and action being prompted by the passionate impulses of the

mind, which its reflective faculties only modify or stay; it follows

that the Passions are the leading subjects of Poetry, which consequently

must be examined in the first instance with a view to its strength and

accuracy as a representation of the working and results of that

department of the mind. The nature of the dramatic art allows this rule

to be applied to it with the greatest strictness. [Sidenote: They work

more alone in the Drama than elsewhere.] The drama is the species which

presents the essential qualities of poetry less mingled with foreign

adjuncts than they are in any other species; and there seems to be a

cause, (independent of its mechanical necessities,) enabling it to

dispense with those decorations which abound in other kinds of poetry.

The acted drama presents its picture of life directly to the senses, and

permits the imagination, without any previous exertion, to proceed at

once to its proper task of forming its own combinations from the

sensible forms thus offered to it; and even when the drama is read, the

office of the imagination in representing to itself the action and the

characters of the piece, is an easy one, and performed without the

necessity of great activity of mind. [Sidenote: In Epic and other poetry

relying only on words, the effort to turn them into a picture hinders

their prompt action.] On the other hand, in the epic, or any other

species of poetry which represents action by [92:1]words, and not by an

imitation of the action itself, the imagination has at first to form,

from the successively presented features of the poetical description, a

picture which shall be the exciting cause of the poetical impression:

this supposes considerable energy of thought, and the necessity of

relief from that exertion seems to have suggested the introduction of

images of external nature and the like, on which the fancy may rest and

disport itself. [Sidenote: Didactic poetry is not true poetry, but

sermons in verse.] Those classes of poetry which are either partially or

wholly didactic, cannot receive a strict application of the principles

of the pure art; because they are not properly poetry, but attempts to

make poetical forms serve purposes which are not poetical.

[Sidenote: Shakspere again.]

Our journey has at length conducted us to Shakspeare, of many of whose

peculiar qualities we have been gaining scattered glimpses in our

progress. [Sidenote: He takes to Drama, because it's the noblest and

truest form of Poetry, the likest the mind of man.] We remark him

adopting that species of poetry which, necessarily confined by its

forms, is yet the noblest offspring of the poetical faculty, and the

truest to the purposes of the poetical art, because it is the most

faithful and impressive image of the mind and state of man. [Sidenote:

And there he sits enthrond.] We find him seated like an eastern

sovereign amidst those who have adopted this highest form of poetry; and

we cannot be contented that, in reverentially acknowledging his

worthiness to fill the throne, we should render him only a hasty and

undiscerning homage. [Sidenote: But why?] A discrimination of the

particular qualities by which his sway is mainly supported, is rendered

the more necessary by that extraordinary union of qualities, which has

made him what he is, the unapproached and the unapproachable.--We are

accustomed to lavish commendations on his vast Imagination. [Sidenote:

What does his _Imagination_ mean?] Before we can perceive what rank this

quality of his deserves to hold in an estimate of his character, we must

understand precisely what the quality is which we mean to praise.

[Sidenote: his wealth of imagery?] If the term used denotes merely the

abundance of his illustrative conceptions, it expresses what is a

singular quality, especially as co-existent with so many other

endowments, but useful only as furnishing materials for the use of the

poetical power. [Sidenote: of fancy, of conception?] If the word is

meant to call attention to the strength and delicacy with which his mind

grasps and embodies the poetical relations of those overflowing

conceptions, (still considered simply as illustrative or decorative,)

[93:1]the quality indicated is a rare and valuable gift, and is

especially to be noted in an attempt to trace a likeness to his manner.

[Sidenote: No.] Still however it is but a secondary ground of desert; it

is even imperfectly suited for developement in dramatic dialogue, and it

frequently tempts him to quit the genuine spirit and temper of his

scene. [Sidenote: Does Shakspere's imagination mean the grandeur or

loveliness he has given some of his characters?] If, again, in speaking

of the great poet's imagination, we have regard to the poetical

character of many of his leading conceptions, to the ideal grandeur or

terror of some of his preternatural characters, or even to the romantic

loveliness which he has thrown, like the golden curtains of the

morning, over the youth and love of woman,--we point out a quality which

is admirable in itself, and almost divine in its union with others so

opposite, a quality to which we are glad to turn for repose from the

more severe portions of his works,--but still an excellence which is not

the most marked feature of his character, and which he could want

without losing the essential portion of his identity. [Sidenote: No.]

[Sidenote: We could give up Miranda, Ariel, Juliet, Romeo, and yet leave

the true, the highest Shakspere behind, in Richard, Macbeth, Lear,

Hamlet.] We could conceive, (although the idea is sacrilege to the

genius and the altar of poetry,) we could conceive that 'The Tempest'

had remained unwritten, that Miranda had not made inexperience beautiful

by the spell of innocence and youth, that the hideous slave Caliban had

never scowled and cursed, nor Ariel alighted on the world like a

shooting-star,--we could dismiss alike from our memories the moon-light

forest in which the Fairy Court revel, and the lurid and spectre-peopled

ghastliness of the cave of Hecate,--we could in fancy remove from the

gallery of the poet's art the picture which exhibits the two

self-destroyed lovers lying side by side in the tomb of the

Capulets,--and we could discard from our minds, and hold as never having

been invented by the poet, all which we find in his works possessing a

character similar to these scenes and figures;--and yet we should leave

behind that which would support Shakspeare as having pursued the highest

ends of his art, and as having attained those ends more fully than any

other who ever followed them: Richard would still be his; Macbeth would

think and tremble, and Lear weep and be mad; and Hamlet would still pore

over the riddle of life, and find in death the solution of its mystery.

[Sidenote: These show his Imagination, the force with which he throws

himself into their characters.] If it is to such characters as these

last that we refer when we speak of the poet's power of

imagina[94:1]tion, and if we wish to designate by the word the force

with which he throws himself into the conception of those characters,

then we apprehend truly what the sphere is in which his greatness lies,

although we either describe the whole of a most complicated mental

process by naming a single step of it, or load the name of that one

mental act with a weight of meaning which it is unfit to bear.

[Sidenote: Shakspere's supremacy lies in his characterization.]

It is here, in his mode of dealing with human character, that

Shakspeare's supremacy confessedly lies; and the conclusions which we

have reached as to the great purpose of poetry, allow us easily to

perceive how excellence in this department justifies the universal

decision, which places at the summit of poetical art the poet who is

pre-eminently distinguished by it. [Sidenote: Why is his the best?] What

is there in Shakspeare's view of human character which entitles him to

this high praise? [Sidenote: How is he true to Nature and imagination?]

His truth of painting is usually specified as the source of his

strength; in what sense is he true to nature? Is that faithfulness to

nature consistent with any exercise of the imagination in the

representation of character? And how? And again, how does his reflective

temper of mind harmonize with or arise out of the view of human life

which he takes?

[Sidenote: Poetry (or Drama) represent passions.]

Poetry, as we have seen, and dramatic poetry more strictly than any

other species, must be judged primarily as a representation of passion

and feeling; and when it is defective as such, it has failed in its

proper end. Its prosecution of that end, however, is subject to two

important limitations. [Sidenote: But 1. it must show human nature

entirely, both its moving and hindering forces; man's mind as well as

his passions; 2. it must do this impressively, must have a high standard

of character.] First, if it is to be in any sense a _true_

representation of human action, it must represent human nature not

partially, but entirely; it must exhibit not only the moving influences

which produce action, but also the counteracting forces which in real

life always control it. It must be a mirror of the intellectual part of

the human mind, as well as of the passionate. Secondly, if, possessing

the first requisite, truth, it is to be also an _impressive_

representation, (that is, such a representation as shall effect the ends

of poetical art,) it must set up an ideal and elevated standard to

regulate its choice of the class of intellectual endowment which is to

form the foundation of the characters which it portrays. [Sidenote: Ben

Jonson faild in (2), the other Elizabethans in (1).] We discover the

cause of Jonson's inferiority in his failure in obedience to the latter

of these rules, though he scrupulously complied with [95:1]the first: we

discover the prevailing defect of all the other dramatic writers of that

period, to consist in their neglect even of the first and subsidiary

rule, which involved a complete disregard to the other.--These latter

have, as well as Shakspeare, been proposed as models, from their close

imitation of nature. [Sidenote: Shakspere's contemporaries don't imitate

Nature, they distort it, give Passion, and no Reason.] The merit of

truth to nature belongs to them only in a very confined sense. They

seize one oblique and partial aspect of human character, and represent

it as giving a true and direct view of the whole; they are the poets of

the passions, and no more; they have failed to shadow forth that

control which the calmer principles of our nature always exert over the

active propensities. Their excellence consequently is to be looked for

only in scenes which properly admit the force of unchecked passion, or

of passions conflicting with each other; and in those scenes where the

more thoughtful spirit ought to work, we must be prepared to meet either

exaggeration of feeling or feebleness of thought, either the operation

of an evil principle, or, at best, a defect of the good one. [Sidenote:

They like to show the mind in delirium.] Even in their passionate

scenes, the vigour of the drawing is the merit oftener than the

faithfulness of the portrait; they delight to figure the human mind as

in a state of delirium, with the restraining forces taken off, and the

passions and the imagination boiling, as if the brain were maddened by

opiates or fever. Fierce and exciting visions come across the soul in

such a paroxysm; and in the intensity of its stimulated perceptions, it

gazes down into the abysses of nature, with a profound though transitory

quickness of penetration. It is a high merit to have exhibited those

partial views of nature, or even this exaggerated phasis of the mind;

and the praise is shared by no dramatic school whatever; (for the

qualities of the ancient are different;) but it must not be assumed that

the drama fulfils its highest purposes, by representations so partial,

so distorted, or so disproportioned. [Sidenote: They are poets of

impulse.] As these poets of impulse bestowed no part of their attention

on the intellect in any view, they produced their peculiar effect, such

as it was, without any attempt at that higher task of selection and

elevation in intellectual character for which the universality of views

which they wanted must always serve as the foundation. [Sidenote: Ben

Jonson as broad in aim as Shakspere.] They had accordingly little scope

for the due introduction of reflection in their works; and their turn of

mind inclined them little to [96:1]search for it when it did not

naturally present itself.--Jonson resembled Shakspeare in wideness of

aim: he is most unlike him in the method which he adopted in the pursuit

of his end. [Sidenote: Ben Jonson tried at truth to nature,] The two

stood alone in their age and class, as alone aiming at truth to nature

in any sense; both wished to read each of the opposite sides of the

scroll of human character: but the one read correctly the difficult

writing in which intellectual character is traced, while the other

misapprehended and misinterpreted its meaning, and even allowed the

eagerness with which he perused this perplexing page, to withdraw his

attention from the more easy meaning of the other. [Sidenote: but drew

individuals only, portraits of reality, but no types,] The fault of his

characters as intellectual beings, is that they are individuals and no

more; faithful or grotesque portraits of reality, they are not touched

with that purple light which affords insight into universal relations

and hidden causes. [Sidenote: not poetic creations.] His failure is

shewn by its effect: his characters are not so conceived as to lead the

mind to the comprehension of anything beyond their own individual

peculiarities, or to elevate it into that region of active and

conceptive contemplation into which it is raised by the finest class of

poetry: he exhibited reality as reality, and not in its relation to

possibility; he even diverges into the investigation of causes, instead

of seeing them at a glance, and indicating them by effects; he

anatomised human life, and hung up its dry bones along the walls of his

study.

In the close obedience which Shakspeare rendered to each of these two

canons, borne in upon his mind by the instantaneous suggestions of his

happy genius, we may discover the origin of his tremendous power.

[Sidenote: Shakspere's power lay in subordinating Fancy and Passion to

Intellect.] To commence at the point where his adherence to the first

and subsidiary rule is most slightly manifested, it is to be noticed,

that his works are marked throughout by a predominance of the qualities

of the understanding over the fancy and the passions. This is not true

of the fundamental conception of the work, nor of the relations by which

his characters are united into the dramatic groupes; in these

particulars the poetical faculty is allowed to work freely: but it is

after the initial steps have been taken under her guidance, that the

rule is committed to the sterner power of intellect. The stir of fancy

often breaks through the restraints which hold it in check; the warmth

of feeling effervesces very unfrequently. [Sidenote: All his characters

have quiet good sense.] [Sidenote: Shakspere's shrewdness in his minor

scenes.] The poet's personages [97:1]are all more or less marked by an

air of quiet sense, which is extremely unusual in poetry, and

incompatible with the unnecessary or frequent display of feeling; and

accordingly, his less important scenes, whether they be gay or serious,

occupied in the business of the drama, or devoted to an exchange of

witty sallies, possess, where they aim at nothing higher, at least a

degree of intellectual shrewdness, which very often savours of worldly

coldness. [Sidenote: His soberness gives force to his passion.] Viewed

merely as increasing the effect of his passionate scenes, this

prevailing sobriety of tone gives him an incalculable advantage:

passion in his works bursts out when it is let loose, like the spring of

a mastiff unchained. [Sidenote: Shakspere's sober rationality.] It is of

this quality, his sober rationality, that we are apt to think when we

acknowledge his truth of representation; and the excellence is

indispensable to truth in any sense, because the want of it gives birth

to imperfection and distortion of views; but I apprehend that it is to

his aiming at a higher purpose that we have to look for the genuine

source of his power. [Sidenote: But he didn't reproduce the bare

reality.] While we mark the gradual rise of the intellectual element of

poetical character upwards from its lowest stage, we are in truth

approximating to a rule which issues in something beyond a bare and

unselected reproduction of reality. [Sidenote: Poetry aims at general

truth, brings out the relation of one mind to universal nature; it

idealizes and ennobles realities.] Poetry aims at representing the whole

of man's nature; and yet a picture of human character, embracing all its

features, but neither skilfully selecting its aspect nor majestically

combining its component parts, would not effect the ends of poetry: for

that art contemplates not individual but general truth, not that which

is really produced, but that which may be conceived without doing

violence to acknowledged principles; instead of presenting a bare

portraiture of mental changes, it exhibits them in an aspect which

teaches their relation to the system of universal nature; it is

seemingly conversant with facts, but it imperceptibly hints at causes;

it aims at exciting the imagination to frame pictures for itself, and

for that reason, if for no other, it must be permitted to idealize and

ennoble the individual realities from which its materials are collected.

[Sidenote: A Painting pictured a soldier in the midst of foes, yet showd

him alone.] The mode in which poetry affects the mind is illustrated by

the description which we read of a certain ancient painting. That piece

represented a young soldier surrounded by several enemies and

desperately defending himself; but his own figure alone was

[98:1]admitted into the field of view, and the motions and place of his

unseen enemies were indicated solely by the life, energy, and

significance of the attitude in which he was drawn. Shakspeare's

attachment to truth of representation never tempted him to forget the

true purpose of his art. [Sidenote: Shakspere is true to nature in

Poetry's way.] [Sidenote: His characters are not monsters of evil,]

While he is true to nature by attempting the treatment of his whole

subject, he is true to it in the manner and with the restrictions which

the nature of poetry requires; he is true to principles which admit of

being conceived as producing effects, not to effects individually

observed as resulting; the creatures of his conception possess no

qualities which unfit them for exciting the mind as poetical character

should excite it; they are not repulsive by the unexampled and unatoned

for congregation of evil qualities, not mean by the absence of lofty

thought, not devoid of poetical significance by confining the

imagination to the qualities by which they are individually marked.

[Sidenote: nor are they above the influence of evil.] You will

particularly remark, that, while he had to bring out the features of his

characters by subjecting them to tragic and calamitous events, he was

careful not to figure them as unsusceptible of the influence of those

external evils. [Sidenote: Brutus is his one stoical character.] The

lofty view which he took of human nature did indeed admit the idea of a

resistance to calamity, and a triumph over it, based on internal and

conscious grandeur; but this is an aspect in which he does not present

the human mind; the stoical Brutus is the only character in which he has

attempted such a conception, which he has there developed but partially.

But while he was contented, even in his noblest characters, to represent

passion in all its strength and directed towards its usual objects, he

had open to him sources of tragic strength unknown to those poets who

describe passion only. Where passion alone is represented, no spectacle

is so agitating as the conflict of contending passions; and the

narrowness of such views of nature permits that tragic opposition to be

no further exhibited. [Sidenote: Shakspere dealt not with the conflict

of Passions only, but with the strife between the Passions and the

Reason,] Shakspeare had before him a wider field of contrast--the

conflict between the passions and the reason--a struggle between powers

inspired with deadly animosity, and each, as he conceived them,

possessed of gigantic strength. [Sidenote: convulsing the whole being of

man.] He has worthily represented that terrible encounter, engaging

every principle and faculty of the soul, and shaking the whole kingdom

of man's being with [99:1]internal convulsions. It is in such

representations that his power is mainly felt; and his pictures are at

the same time truest to nature and most faithful to the ends of tragic

art, by the subjugation of the intellectual principle which is the

catastrophe of the strife. The reason is assaulted by calamity from

without, and borne down by an host of rebellious feelings attacking it

internally. [Sidenote: Characters showing this mental strife, are

specially dear to Shakspere.] It is to the delineation of such

characters as afford scope for this exhibition of mental commotion that

Shakspeare has especially attached himself: the thoughtful and

reflective in character is at once his favourite resort, and the field

of his triumph.

[Sidenote: He chose the intellectual and reflective in character.]

The poet's selection of the intellectual and reflective in character, as

the subject of his art, is thus indicated as his guiding principle, to

whose operation all other principles and rules are but subservient. The

reflective element however is in excess with Shakspeare, and its undue

prevalence is not destitute of harmony with the principle which produces

its legitimately moderated effects. [Sidenote: He's a Gnomic Poet.] He

is a Gnomic Poet; and he is so, because he is emphatically the poet of

man. [Sidenote: The solemnity of meditation is thro' all his soul.] He

pauses, he reflects, he aphorizes; because, looking on life and death as

he looked on them, viewing the nature of man from so lofty a station,

and with a power of vision so far-reaching, so acute, and so delicate,

it was impossible but the deepest solemnity of meditation should diffuse

itself through all the chambers of his soul. [Sidenote: He makes his

people hint the principles beneath the shews.] His enunciations of

general truth are often serious and elevated even in his gayer works;

and where the scene denied him an opportunity of introducing these in

strict accordance with the business of the drama, he makes his

personages, as it were, step out of the groupe, to meditate on the

meanings of the scene, to hold a delicately implied communication with

the spectator, and to hint the general maxims and principles which lurk

beneath the tragic and passionate shews. He has gone beyond this: he has

brought on the stage characters whose sole task is meditation, whose

sole purpose in the drama is the suggesting of high and serious

reflection. [Sidenote: Jaques, in _As You Like It_, is like a Greek

chorus, which] Jaques is the perfection of such a character; and the

office which he discharges bears more than a fanciful likeness in

conception to the task of the ancient chorus. [Sidenote: gave the

key-note to the audience.] That forgotten appendage of the Grecian drama

originated indeed from incidental causes; but, being continued as a part

of the dramatic plan, [100:1]it had a momentous duty assigned to it: it

suggested, it interpreted, it sympathised, it gave the key-note to the

reflections of the audience. [Sidenote: The highest art made Shakspere

insert his reflective passages in his plays.] A profound sense of the

highest purposes and responsibilities of the art prompted this

employment of the choral songs; and no way dissimilar was the impression

which dictated to Shakspeare the introduction of the philosophically

cynical lover of nature in that one play, and the breaks of reflection

so frequent with him in many others.--It is worthy of remark, that this

spirit of penetrating thought, ranging from every-day wisdom to

philosophical abstraction, never becomes morose or discontented.[101:1]

Man is a selfish being, but not a malignant one; yet the acts resulting

from the two dispositions are often very similar, and it is the error of

the misanthrope to mistake the one for the other. [Sidenote: Shakspere

never made the misanthrope's mistake.] [Sidenote: His sarcasm did not

spring from envy.] Shakspeare's well-balanced mind was in no danger of

this mistake; his keen-sightedness often makes him sarcastic, but the

sarcasm forced on a mind which contrasts the poorness of reality with

the splendours of imagination, is of a different temper from that which

is bred from lowness of thought and fretful envy. [Sidenote: _Timon's_

sternness is softened by tenderness.] Shakspeare has devoted one

admirable drama to the exhibition of the misanthrophic spirit, as

produced by wrongs in a noble heart; but the sternness which is the

master-note of that work is softened by the most beautiful intervals of

redeeming tenderness and good feeling. [Sidenote: _Troilus_ is

Shakspere's only bitter play.] The only work of his evidently written in

ill humour with mankind, is the Troilus, which, both in idea and

execution, is the most bitter of satires.

The application of the distinctive qualities of Shakspeare's tone of

thought to the spirit of 'The Two Noble Kinsmen', is a task for your own

judgment and discrimination, and would not be aided by suggestions of

mine. I have stated the result to which I have been led by such an

application; and I am confident that you will be able to reach the same

conclusion by a path which may be shorter than any which I could clear

for you. In connection however with this inquiry, I would direct your

attention to one other truth possessing a clear application here.

[Sidenote: Shakspere's thoughtfulness a Moral distinction.] Shakspeare's

thoughtfulness goes the length of becoming a Moral distinction and

excellence. [Sidenote: His part of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ is of higher

tone, and purer, than Fletcher's.] That such a difference does exist

between Shakspeare and Fletcher, is denied by no one; and the moral tone

of this play, in those parts which I have [101:2]ventured to call

Shakspeare's, is distinctly a higher one than Fletcher's. It is uniform

and pure, though the moral inquisition is less severe than Shakspeare's

often is. [Sidenote: Massinger and Ben Jonson too more moral than

Fletcher.] If Massinger or Jonson had been the poet alleged to have

written part or the whole of the work, it would have been difficult to

draw any inference from this circumstance by itself; but when the

question is only between Shakspeare and Fletcher, even an abstinence

from gross violation or utter concealment of moral truth is an

important element in the decision; and the positively high strain here

maintained is a very strong argument in favour of the purer writer.

[Sidenote: Are Johnson, &c. right in condemning Shakspere's morality.]

I am tempted, however, to carry you somewhat further on this head,

because I must confess that I cannot see the grounds on which Johnson

and others have rested their sweeping condemnation of Shakspeare's

morality. There is, it must be admitted, much to blame, but there is

also something worthy of praise; and praise on this score is what

Shakspeare has scarcely ever received. [Sidenote: He admits

licentiousness] He has been charged with licentiousness, and justly; but

even in this particular there are some circumstances of palliation,

besides the equivocal plea of universal example, and the doubt which

exists whether most of his grosser dialogues are not interpolations.

[Sidenote: and coarse speech.] Mere coarseness of language may offend

the taste, and yet be so used as to give no foundation for any heavier

charge. [Sidenote: But who can be tainted by Othello's words?] There

surely never was a mind which could receive one evil suggestion from the

language wrung from the agonized Othello. Even where this excuse does

not hold, Shakspeare preserves one most important distinction quite

unknown to his contemporaries. [Sidenote: Shakspere's contemporaries

make their heroes loose livers.] By them, looseness of dialogue is

introduced indifferently anywhere in the play, licentiousness of

incident is admitted in any part of the plot, and debauchery of life is

attributed without scruple to those persons in whom interest is chiefly

meant to be excited. [Sidenote: He doesn't,] It may be safely stated

that Shakspeare almost invariably follows a rule exactly opposite. His

inferior characters may be sometimes gross and sensual; his principal

personages scarcely ever are so: these he refuses to degrade needlessly,

by attributing to them that carelessness of moral restraint of which

Fletcher's men of pleasure are so usually guilty. [Sidenote: except in

two plays.] There are only two plays[102:1] in which he [102:2]has

violated this rule, exclusively of some unguarded expressions elsewhere.

But the language which has been held on this question would lead us to

believe that his guilt extends further,--that he is totally insensible

to any moral distinctions, and blind to moral aims and influences.

[Sidenote: Most of Shakspere's contemporaries made pleasure the law of

their heroes' lives.] Of most dramatic writers of his time this charge

is too true. Their characters act because they will, not because they

ought,--for happiness, and not from duty:--the lowness of their aim may

be disguised, but it is inherent, and cannot be eradicated. We might

read every work of Fletcher's without discovering (if we were ignorant

of the fact before) that there exists for man any principle of action

loftier in its origin than his earthly nature, or more extended in its

object than the life which that nature enjoys. But nothing of this is

true as to Shakspeare. [Sidenote: Shakspere's morality not of the

loftiest, not like Milton's and] That his morality is of the loftiest

sort cannot be asserted. [Sidenote: Michel Angelo's.] He does not, like

Milton, look out on life at intervals from the windows of his

sequestered hermitage, only to turn away from the sight and indulge in

the most fervent aspirations after immortal purity, and the deepest

adoration of uncreated power; nor does he grovel in the dust with that

ascetic humiliation and religious sense of guilt which overcame the

strong spirit of Michel Angelo. But he shares much of the solemnity of

moral feeling which possesses all great minds, though in him its

influence was restrained by external causes. [Sidenote: He was in the

world, and often of it,] He moves in the hurried pageant of the world,

and sometimes wants leisure to moralize the spectacle; and even when he

does pause to meditate, the world often hangs about his heart, and he

thinks of life as men in action are apt to think of it. [Sidenote: but

evil, to him, was evil, moral law was always shown supreme. Note the

general moral truth in his Tragedies.] But moral truth, seldom lost

sight of, is never misrepresented: evil is always described as being

evil: the great moral rule, though often stated as inoperative, is

always acknowledged as binding. Read carefully any of his more lofty

tragedies, and ponder the general truths there so lavishly scattered;

and you will find that an immense proportion of those apophthegms have a

moral bearing, often a most solemn and impressive one. [Sidenote: Even

in Comedy his reflections are moral.] Even in his lighter plays there is

much of the same spirit: in all he is often thoughtful, and he is never

long thoughtful without becoming morally didactic. This is much in any

poet, and especially in a drama[103:1]tist, who exhibits humanity

directly as active, and is under continual temptations to forget what

action tempts men to forget in real life. [Sidenote: Shakspere right in

letting evil prevail, so long as he shows it evil.] His neglect of duly

distributing punishment and reward is no moral fault, so long as moral

truth is kept sight of in characterizing actions, while that neglect is

borrowed closely from reality. And the same thing is true of his

craving wish for describing human guilt, and darkening even his fairest

characters with the shadows of weakness and sin. [Sidenote: Dramatic

poetry is truest when it shows man most the slave of evil.] The poetry

which depicts man in action is then unfortunately truest when it

represents him as most deeply enslaved by the evil powers which surround

him. [Sidenote: Shakspere bared man's soul,] Different poets have

proceeded to different lengths in the degree of influence which they

have assigned to the evil principle: most have feared to draw wholly

aside the veil which imagination always struggles to keep before the

nakedness of man's breast; and Shakspeare, by tearing away the curtain

with a harsher hand, has but enabled himself to add a tremendously

impressive element of truth to the likeness which his portrait otherwise

bears to the original. [Sidenote: and probed it to its depth.]

[Sidenote: This is why we hold to him.] His view of our state and nature

is often painful; but it is its reality that makes it so; and he would

have wanted one of his strongest holds on our hearts if he had probed

them less profoundly; it is by his unflinching scrutiny of mortal

infirmity that he has forged the very strongest chain which binds us to

his footstool. [Sidenote: He durst not paint good triumphant over evil,

because he knew in life it was not so.] He reverences human nature where

it deserves respect: he knows man's divinity of mind, and harbours and

expresses the loftiest of those hopes which haunt the heart like

recollections: he represents worthily and well the struggle between good

and evil, but he feared to represent the better principle as victorious:

he had looked on life till observation became prophetical, and he could

not fable that as existing which he sorrowfully saw could never be.

[Sidenote: Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet, sink under their temptations.] The

milk of human kindness in the bosom of Macbeth is turned to venom by the

breath of an embodied fiend; the tempered nobility and gentleness of the

Moor are made the craters through which his evil passions blaze out like

central fires; and in the wonderful Hamlet, hate to the guilty pollutes

the abhorrence of the crime,--irresolution waits on consciousness,--and

the misery of doubt clings to the solemnity of meditation. [Sidenote:

And so do we.] This is an awful representation of the human soul; but is

it [104:1]not a true one? [Sidenote: Man's history is written in blood

and tears.] [Sidenote: Shakspere's view of life the fittest to give us

to the truth.] The sibylline volume of man's history is open before us,

and every page of it is written in blood or tears. And not only are such

views of human fate the truest, but they are those which are most fitted

to arouse the mind to serious, to lofty, even to religious

contemplation,--to guide it to the fountains of moral truth,--to lead it

to meditations on the dark foundations of our being,--to direct its

gaze forward on that great journey of the soul, in which mortal life is

but a single step.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Analogy of this inquiry.]

Oftener than once in this inquiry, I have acted towards you like one

who, undertaking to guide a traveller through a beautiful valley, should

frequently lead him out of the beaten road to climb precipitous

eminences, promising that the delay in the accomplishment of the journey

should be compensated by the pleasure of extensive prospects over the

surrounding region. Conduct like this would be excusable in a guide, if

the person escorted had leisure for the divergence, and it would be

incumbent on him if the acquisition of a knowledge of the country were

one of the purposes of the journey; but in either case the labour of the

ascents would be recompensed to the traveller, only if the landscapes

presented were interesting and distinctly seen. [Sidenote: Aims of this

treatise;] For similar reasons, my endeavour to propose wider views than

the subject necessarily suggested, has, I conceive, been fully

justifiable; but it is for you to decide whether the attempt has been so

far successful as to repay your exertions in attending my excursive

steps. [Sidenote: 1. from Shakspere's studies, to distinguish between

him and his coevals.] The first of our lengthened digressions has

allowed us to combine the known facts as to the kind and amount of

Shakspeare's studies, and to draw from them certain conclusions, which I

cannot think altogether valueless, as to some distinctions between him

and his dramatic coevals, and as to the source of some peculiarities of

his which have been visited with heavy censure. [Sidenote: 2. to trace

the most characteristic qualities of his thought.] In the second

instance in which we have branched off from the main argument, we have

been led to reflect on the most characteristic qualities of the poet's

mode of thought. [Sidenote: Shakspere's variety of faculty.] If there be

any truth or distinctness in the hints which have been imperfectly and

hastily thrown out on this head, your own mind will classify, modify, or

extend them; and, never forgetting what is [105:1]the fundamental

principle of the great poet's strength, you will regard that essential

quality with the more lively admiration, when you discriminate the

operations of the power from the working of those other principles which

minister to it, and when you remark the number, the variety, the

opposition of the mental faculties, which are all thus enlisted under

the banners of the one intense and almost philosophical Perception of

Dramatic Truth. [Sidenote: He, the stern inquisitor into man's heart,]

That stern inquisition into the human heart, which the finest sense of

dramatic perfection elevates into the ideal, and the richest fancy

touches with poetical repose, will awaken in your mind a softened

solemnity of feeling, like that under whose sway we have both wandered

in the mountainous forests which skirt our native river; the continuous

and gloomy canopy of the gigantic pines hanging over-head like a dungeon

roof, while the green sward which was the pavement of the woodland

temple, and the lines of natural columns which bounded its retiring

avenues, were flooded with the glad illumination of the descending

sunset. [Sidenote: the anxious searcher into truth, is yet the happiest

creator of beauty: the 'maker' of Ric. III. and Iago as well as Juliet

and Titania; of Macbeth as well as Hamlet.] We reflect with wonder that

the most anxious of all poetical inquirers into truth, is also the most

powerful painter of unearthly horrors, and the most felicitous creator

of romantic or imaginary beauty; that the poet of Richard and Iago is

also the poet of Juliet, of Ariel, and of Titania; that the fearfully

real self-torture, the judicially inflicted remorse, of Macbeth, is set

in contrast with the wildest figures which superstitious imagination

ever conceived; that on the same canvas on which Hamlet stands as a

personification of the Reason of man shaken by the assaults of evil

within him and without, the gates of the grave are visibly opened, and

the dead ascend to utter strange secrets in the ear of night. [Sidenote:

His faculties early expanded consistently, and workt thro' all his life

actively.] But even this union is less extraordinary than the regular

and unparalleled consistency with which the poet's faculties early

expanded themselves, and the full activity with which through life all

continued to work. [Sidenote: Homer ebbd,] Even the dramatic soul of

Homer ebbed like the sea, sinking in old age into the substitution of

wild and minutely told adventure for the historical portraiture of

mental grandeur and passionate strength. [Sidenote: Milton sank poetry

in polemics.] The youth of Milton brooded over the love and loveliness

of external nature; it was not till his maturity of years that he soared

into the empyrean or descended sheer into the secrets of the abyss; and

[106:1]advancing age brought weakness with it, and quenched in the

morass of polemical disputation the torch which had flamed with sacred

light. [Sidenote: Shakspere alone flowd full tide on.] [Sidenote:

Experience came soon to him; Fancy abode with him to the end.]

Shakspeare alone was the same from youth to age; in youth no

imperfection, in age no mortality or decay; he performed in his early

years every department of the task which he had to perform, and he

laboured in it with unexhausted and uncrippled energies till the bowl

was broken at the fountain; experience visited him early, fancy lingered

with him to the last; the rapid developement of his powers was an

indication of the internal strength of his genius; their steady

continuance was a type and prognostic of the perpetual endurance of his

sway. [Sidenote: Gloster (Ric. III.) was early, Shylock and Hamlet of

middle time, Lear in ripe age, _The Tempest_, near his death.] The cold

and fiendish Gloster was an early conception; the eager Shylock and the

superhuman Hamlet were imagined simultaneously not long afterwards; the

tenderness of Lear was the fruit of the poet's ripest age; and one of

the closing years of his life gave birth to the savage wildness and the

youthful and aerial beauty of 'The Tempest.'

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Are you convinc't that Shakspere wrote much of _The Two Noble

Kinsmen_?]

Our last words are claimed by the proper subject of our inquiry. Have I

convinced you that in the composition of 'The Two Noble Kinsmen',

Shakspeare had the extensive participation which I have ascribed to him?

It is very probable that my reasoning is in many parts defective; but I

place so much confidence in the goodness of the cause itself, that I

would unhesitatingly leave the question, without a word of argument, to

be determined by any one, possessing a familiar acquaintance with both

the poets whose claims are to be balanced, and an ordinarily acute

discernment of their distinguishing qualities. [Sidenote: I'm sure the

question needs only attention.] I am firmly persuaded that the subject

needs only to have attention directed to it; and my investigation of it

cannot have been a failure in every particular. [Sidenote: The external

evidence doesn't include the internal.] The circumstances attending the

first publication of the drama do not, in the most unfavourable view

which can with any fairness be taken of them, exclude us from deciding

the question of Shakspeare's authorship by an examination of the work

itself: and it is unnecessary that the effect of the external evidence

should be estimated one step higher. [Sidenote: Does that give all the

play to Fletcher?] Do the internal proofs allot all to Fletcher, or

assign any share to Shakspeare? [Sidenote: The Story is alien to

Fletcher] The Story is ill-suited for the dramatic purposes [107:1]of

the one poet, and belongs to a class of subjects at variance with his

style of thought, and not elsewhere chosen by him or any author of the

school to which he belonged; both the individual and the class accord

with the whole temper and all the purposes of the other poet, and the

class is one from which he has repeatedly selected themes. [Sidenote:

Fletcher can't have chosen the subject of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_; nor

was its plan his.] It is next to impossible that Fletcher can have

selected the subject; it is not unlikely that Shakspeare may have

suggested it; and if the execution of the plan shall be thought to

evince that he was in any degree connected with the work, we can hardly

avoid the conclusion that it was by him that the subject was chosen. The

proof here, (which I think has not been noticed by any one before me,)

seems to me to be stronger than in any other branch of the argument.

[Sidenote: Its Scenical Arrangement is like Shakspere's.] The Scenical

Arrangement of the drama offers points of resemblance to Shakspeare,

which, at the very least, have considerable strength when they are taken

together, and are corroborative of other circumstances. [Sidenote: Its

Execution is, in great part, so like his,] The Execution of that large

proportion of the drama which has been marked off as his, presents

circumstances of likeness to him, so numerous that they cannot possibly

have been accidental, and so strikingly characteristic that we cannot

conceive them to be the product of imitation. [Sidenote: that many

passages must be set down to him.] Even if it should be doubted whether

Shakspeare chose the subject, or arranged any part of the plot, it seems

to me that his claim to the authorship of these individual parts needs

only examination to be universally admitted; not that I consider the

proof here as stronger than that which establishes his choice of the

plot, but because it is of a nature to be more easily and intuitively

comprehended.

[Sidenote: Look at all the circumstances together,]

In forming your opinion, you will be careful to view the circumstances,

not singly, but together, and to give each point of resemblance the

support of the others. [Sidenote: and see whether the many probabilities

do not make a certainty.] It may be that every consideration suggested

may not affect your mind with equal strength of conviction; but numerous

probabilities all tending the same way are sufficient to generate

positive certainty: and it argues no imperfection in a result that it is

brought out only by combined efforts. In those climates of the New World

which you have visited, a spacious and lofty chamber receives a

diffusive shower of light through a single narrow aperture, while in our

cloudy region we can gather sufficient light for our apart[108:1]ments

only by opening large and numerous windows: the end is not gained in the

latter case without greater exertion than that which is required in the

former, but it is attained equally in both; for the aspect of our

habitations is not less cheerful than that of yours.

On the absolute merit of the work, I do not wish to anticipate your

judgment. [Sidenote: Shakspere's part in _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, is but

a sketch; yet it's better than some of his finisht works.] So far as

Shakspeare's share in it is concerned, it can be regarded as no more

than a sketch, which would be seen to great disadvantage beside finished

drawings of the same master. Imperfect as it is, however, it would, if

it were admitted among Shakspeare's acknowledged works, outshine many,

and do discredit to none. It would be no unfair trial to compare it with

those works of his in which he abstains from his more profound

investigations into human nature, permitting the poetical world actively

to mingle with the dramatic, and the radiant spirit of hope to embrace

the sterner genius of knowledge. [Sidenote: Compare it with the

_Midsummer Night's Dream_; the colouring and outline are from the same

hand. But best, set it beside _Henry VIII._] We may call up before us

the luxurious fancies of the 'Midsummer Night's Dream', or even the

sylvan landscapes of the Forest of Ardennes, and the pastoral groupes

which people it; and we shall gladly acknowledge a similar though

harsher style of colouring, and a strength of contour indicating the

same origin. But perhaps there is none of his works with which it could

be so fairly compared as 'Henry VIII'. [Sidenote: It's more like that,

and nearly as good.] In the tone of sentiment and imagination, as well

as in other particulars, I perceive many circumstances of likeness,

which it will gratify you to trace for yourself. The resemblance is more

than a fanciful one, and the neglected play does not materially suffer

by the comparison.

[Sidenote: _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ ought to be in every '_Shakspere's

Works_.']

This drama will never receive the praise which it merits, till it shall

have been admitted among Shakspeare's undoubted works; and, I repeat, it

is entitled to insertion if any one of the conclusions to which I have

attempted to lead you be sound,--if it be true that he wrote all, or

most, or a few, of those portions of it, which more competent judges

than I have already confidently ascribed to him. Farewell.

W. S.

_Edinburgh, March 1833._

[In his article on 'Recent Shaksperian Literature' in No. 144 of the

_Edinburgh Review_, July, 1840, page 468, Prof. Spalding states that on

Shakspere's taking part in _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, his "opinion is not

now so decided as it once was."--F.]

FOOTNOTES:

[1:1] Locrine--Sir John Oldcastle--Lord Cromwell--The London

Prodigal--The Puritan--The Yorkshire Tragedy.

[1:2] page 2

[2:1] page 3

[3:1] page 4

[4:1] "The Two Noble Kinsmen: presented at the Blackfriers, by the Kings

Majesties servants, with great Applause: written by the memorable

Worthies of their Time, Mr John Fletcher and Mr William Shakspeare,

Gent. Printed at London by Tho. Cotes, for John Watersone; and are to be

sold at the signe of the Crowne, in Pauls Church-yard: 1634."

[4:2] page 5

[5:1] Gifford's Massinger, vol. i. p. xv. [Moxon's ed. p. xxxix, and _B.

and Fl._ i. xiii. The letter is from Nat. Field, Rob. Daborne, and

Philip Massinger, to Henslowe the manager: "You know there is x. _l._

more at least to be receavd of you for the play. We desire you to lend

us v _l._ of that, which shall be allowd to you. Nat. Field." "The money

shall be abated out of the money remayns for _the play of Mr. Fletcher

and ours_. Rob. Daborne."--F.]

[5:2] page 6

[6:1] page 7

[7:1] page 8

[8:1] Act II. Scene 4. The plucking of the roses.

[8:2] page 9

[9:1] page 10

[10:1] Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature. It would ill become me

to carp at an author whom I have expressly to thank for much assistance

in this inquiry, and to whom I am perhaps indebted for more than my

recollection suggests. But it must be owned, that M. Schlegel's opinion

loses somewhat of its weight from the fact, that he also advocates

Shakspeare's authorship of some of Malone's plays, a decision in which

it is neither desirable nor likely that the poet's countrymen should

acquiesce.

[10:2] page 11

[11:1] Weber's Beaumont and Fletcher, vol. xiii., and Lamb, as there

quoted.

[11:2] page 12

[12:1] Sonnet 76.

[12:2] page 13

[13:1] page 14

[13:2] There are numerous instances of both these effects in the play

before us. "_Counter-reflect_ (a noun); _meditance_; _couch_ and

_corslet_ (used as verbs); _operance_; _appointment_, for military

accoutrements; _globy eyes_; _scurril_; _disroot_; _dis-seat_," &c.

_Weber._

[14:1] page 15

[15:1] t. i. _mourn them ever_

[15:2] page 16

[15:3] _ownest_

[16:1] page 17

[17:1] page 18

[18:1] page 19

[19:1] Farmer's Essay on the Learning of Shakspeare.

[19:2] A singularly rich and energetic piece of colouring in this sort

is near the beginning of the poem, commencing,

I have been wooed, as I entreat thee now,

Even by the stern and direful God of War--

and extending through three stanzas.

[19:3] page 20

[20:1] page 21

[21:1] page 22

[22:1] page 23

[23:1] page 24

[24:1] The | is to show the double endings.

[24:2] page 25

[25:1] page 26

[26:1] page 27

[27:1] page 28

[28:1] page 29

[29:1] page 30

[29:2] Perhaps it is worth while to direct attention to this form of

speech. Verbal names expressing the agent occur, it is true, in Fletcher

and others, but they are in an especial manner frequent with Shakspeare,

who invents them to preserve his brevity, and always applies them with

great force and quaintness.

[29:3] Probably Fletcher would not have committed this false quantity.

[30:1] page 31

[30:2] 3 middle-rymes, _key_, _three_, _knee_.

[30:3] _in her eyes_

[31:1] page 32

[32:1] page 33

[33:1] page 34

[33:2] The remainder of this speech, an extremely fine one, has been

quoted incidentally in page 26. Its richness of fancy is wonderful and

most characteristic.

[34:1] page 35

[34:2] page 36

[35:1] page 37

[37:1] page 38

[37:2] This allusion is repeatedly found in Fletcher. Here the

expression of it is defective in precision.

[37:3] page 39

[38:1] page 40

[39:1] page 41

[40:1] page 42

[41:1] page 43

[42:1] page 44

[43:1] page 45

[44:1] page 46

[45:1] In Philaster, Act IV. last scene.

Place me, some god, upon a Piramis,

Higher than hill of earth, and lend a voice,

Loud as your thunder, to me, that from thence

I may discourse, to all the under world,

The worth that dwells in him.

Shakspeare, too, was not the most likely person to have given the true

meaning of the {boôpis potnia Hêrê}. I am not aware that either

Hall or Chapman shewed him the way. Chapman in the First Book (v. 551)

has it; "She with the cowes fair eyes, Respected Juno."

[45:2] page 47

[45:3] _2 N. K._, Act V. sc. i, ii, iii. Weber, are V. i. Littledale.

[46:1] This beautiful address has been spoken of already.

[46:2] page 48

[47:1] page 49

[48:1] page 50

[49:1] Romeo and Juliet:--Midsummer Night's Dream:--also in Don Quixote,

Parte II. capit. xi.: "Los ojos de Dulcinea deben ser de _verdes

esmeraldas_."

[49:2-49:2] This is the character of Emilia, by Chaucer and Shakspere,

but not by Fletcher of IV. ii., and the author of V. v. (or iii.

Littledale)--if he is not Fletcher--with their inconsistencies of

Emilia's weak balancing of Palamon against Arcite, now liking one best,

then the other, and being afraid that Palamon may get his _figure

spoilt_! F. J. F.

[49:3] page 51

[50:1] page 52

[50:2] The thought here is frequent in Shakspeare's dramas: and the

expression of it closely resembles some stanzas in the Lucrece,

especially those beginning, "Oh, comfort-killing night!"

[51:1] Cp. Beatrice on Don John and Benedick, in _Much Ado_ II. i.

[51:2] page 53

[52:1] page 54

[52:2] It may be well to mention, that this scene contains allusions,

extending through several lines, to the every-way luckless jailor's

daughter. If I conceal the fact from you, you will, on finding it out

for yourself, suspect that I consider it as making against my

hypothesis, which assigns those episodical adventures to a different

author from this scene. Be assured that I do not regard it in that

light. It is plain that the underplot, however bad, has been worked up

with much pains; and we can conceive that its author would have been

loth to abandon it finally in the incomplete posture in which the fourth

scene of this act left it. Ten lines in this scene sufficed to end the

story, by relating the cure of the insane girl; and there can have been

no difficulty in their introduction, even on my supposition of this

scene being the work of the other author. If the two wrote at the same

time, the poet who wrote the rest of the scene may have inserted them on

the suggestion of the other; or if the drama afterwards came into the

hands of that other, (which there seems some reason to believe,) he

could easily insert them for himself. In any view these lines are no

argument against my theory.

[53:1] ? Shakspere and one daughter.

[53:2] Cf. p. 54-5.

[53:3] page 55

[53:4] The description which we have read of Mars's attributes reminds

one strongly and directly of the fine speech in the poem, where old

Saturn, the god of time, enumerates his own powers of destruction. It is

far from unlikely that the one passage suggested the other. The rich can

afford to borrow.

[54:1] page 56

[55:1] page 57

[56:1] page 58

[57:1] Beaumont's style is unluckily not characterized. F.

[57:2] page 59

[58:1] page 60

[59:1] page 61

[60:1] page 62

[61:1] page 63

[62:1] page 64

[63:1] page 65

[64:1] page 66

[65:1] page 67

[66:1] The Knight of the Burning Pestle.

[66:2] page 68

[66:3] Weber's Beaumont and Fletcher. Henslowe MSS. published by

Malone:--Boswell's Shakspeare, vol. iii. p. 303. [See Appx. I. to my

Harrison _Forewords_.]

[67:1] page 69

[68:1] page 70

[68:2] N.B. The Gower choruses in _Pericles_ are NOT Shakspere's.--F.

[69:1] page 71

[69:2] With Knowledge comes the retreat to Invention.

[70:1] page 72

[71:1] page 73

[72:1] page 74

[73:1] page 75

[74:1] page 76

[75:1] page 77

[76:1] page 78

[77:1] page 79

[78:1] page 80

[79:1] page 81

[80:1] page 82

[81:1] page 83

[82:1] page 84

[82:2] page 85

[83:1] It would be unfair not to state, that I quote and refer to the

translation of the Laocoon published by Mr. De Quincey, in Blackwood's

Magazine for November 1826; and that I am not otherwise acquainted with

that or any other work of Lessing.

[83:2] page 86

[84:1] page 87

[85:1] page 88

[86:1] page 89

[87:1] page 90

[88:1] page 91

[89:1] The theory which, denying to the Beautiful any capacity of giving

pleasure through its innate qualities, ascribes its effects exclusively

to the associated ideas which the contemplation of it calls up, proceeds

wholly on the assumption, that the sentiment awakened by Beauty when it

is beheld bodily present, is the same with that which flows from a

poetical description of it. If it be true (as I must believe it is) that

the feelings in the two cases are essentially different, the hypothesis

falls to the ground. Its maintainers seem in truth to have drawn their

conclusions altogether from reflection on the effects produced by Beauty

when it is represented in poetry, where association is undoubtedly the

source of the enjoyment; and an attention to the working of the fine

arts would have taught other inferences.

[90:1] page 92

[90:2] page 93

[91:1] page 94.

[91:2]

[Sidenote: Invention is making a _new_ thing out of a thing already

made.]

Alfieri appears to have himself perceived accurately wherein it is that

his power lies, when he says, with his usual self-reliance: "Se la

parola 'invenzione' in tragedia si restringe al trattare soltanto

soggetti non prima trattati, nessuno autore ha inventato meno di me."

"Se poi la parola 'invenzione' si estende fino al _far cosa nuova di

cosa già fatta_, io son costretto a credere che nessuno autore abba

inventato piu di me."

[92:1] page 95

[93:1] page 96

[94:1] page 97

[95:1] page 98

[96:1] page 99

[97:1] page 100

[98:1] page 101

[99:1] page 102

[100:1] page 103

[101:1] ? in Jaques.

[101:2] page 104

[102:1] ? _All's Well_, Bertram; _Othello_, Cassio; _Meas. for Meas._

Claudio; _Ant. & Cleop._ Antony; _Timon_, Alcibiades.--F.

[102:2] page 105

[103:1] page 106

[104:1] page 107

[105:1] page 108

[106:1] page 109

[107:1] page 110

[108:1] page 111

A FEW INSTANCES OF SHAKSPERE'S PECULIARITIES AS NOTED BY SPALDING.

=Repetition=, p. 12. 1. Prologue to _Henry V._:

'And at his heels,

Leashed in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire,

Crouch for employment.'

Compare _Antony and Cleopatra_, Act I. scene iv.:

'Where thou slew'st, Hirtus and Pausa, consuls, at thy heel

Did famine follow.'

2. _Macbeth_, Act V. scene vii.:

'They have tied me to a stake: I cannot fly,

But, bear-like, I must fight the course';

and _Lear_, Act III. scene vii.:

'I am tied to the stake, and I must stand the course.'

=Conciseness verging on obscurity=, p. 13. _Macbeth_, Act I. scene iii.:

'Present fears are less than horrible imaginings:

My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,

Shakes so my single state of man, that function

Is smothered in surmise, and nothing is

But what is not.'