[Footnote 6: The excitement about the details of the witch trials would
culminate in 1592. Harsnet's book would be read by Shakspere in 1603.]
106. There is one other mode of temptation which was adopted by the evil
spirits, implicated to a great extent with the traditions of witchcraft,
but nevertheless more suitably handled as a separate subject, which is
of so gross and revolting a nature that it should willingly be passed
over in silence, were it not for the fact that the belief in it was, as
Scot says, "so stronglie and universallie received" in the times of
Elizabeth and James.
From the very earliest period of the Christian era the affection of one
sex for the other was considered to be under the special control of the
devil. Marriage was to be tolerated; but celibacy was the state most
conducive to the near intercourse with heaven that was so dearly sought
after. This opinion was doubtless generated by the tendency of the early
Christian leaders to hold up the events of the life rather than the
teachings of the sacred Founder of the sect as the one rule of conduct
to be received by His followers. To have been the recipients of the
stigmata was a far greater evidence of holiness and favour with Heaven
than the quiet and unnoted daily practice of those virtues upon which
Christ pronounced His blessing; and in less improbable matters they did
not scruple, in their enthusiasm, to attempt to establish a rule of life
in direct contradiction to the laws of that universe of which they
professed to believe Him to be the Creator. The futile attempt to
imitate His immaculate purity blinded their eyes to the fact that He
never taught or encouraged celibacy among His followers, and this
gradually led them to the strange conclusion that the passion which,
sublimed and brought under control, is the source of man's noblest and
holiest feelings, was a prompting proceeding from the author of all
evil. Imbued with this idea, religious enthusiasts of both sexes immured
themselves in convents; took oaths of perpetual celibacy; and even, in
certain isolated cases, sought to compromise with Heaven, and baffle the
tempter, by rendering a fall impossible--forgetting that the victory
over sin does not consist in immunity from temptation, but, being
tempted, not to fall. But no convent walls are so strong as to shut
great nature out; and even within these sacred precincts the ascetics
found that they were not free from the temptations of their arch-enemy.
In consequence of this, a belief sprang up, and spread from its original
source into the outer world, in a class of devils called incubi and
succubi, who roamed the earth with no other object than to tempt people
to abandon their purity of life. The cases of assault by incubi were
much more frequent than those by succubi, just as women were much more
affected by the dancing manias in the fifteenth century than
men;[1]--the reason, perhaps, being that they are much less capable of
resisting physical privation;--but, according to the belief of the
Middle Ages, there was no generic difference between the incubus and
succubus. Here was a belief that, when the witch fury sprang up,
attached itself as a matter of course as the phase of the crime; and it
was an almost universal charge against the accused that they offended in
this manner with their familiars, and hundreds of poor creatures
suffered death upon such an indictment. More details will be found in
the authorities upon this unpleasant subject.[2]
[Footnote 1: Hecker, Epidemics of the Middle Ages, p. 136.]
[Footnote 2: Hutchinson, p. 52. The Witch of Edmonton, Act V. Scot,
Discoverie, book iv.]
107. This intercourse did not, as a rule, result in offspring; but this
was not universally the case. All badly deformed or monstrous children
were suspected of having had such an undesirable parentage, and there
was a great tendency to believe that they ought to be destroyed. Luther
was a decided advocate of this course, deeming the destruction of a life
far preferable to the chance of having a devil in the family. In
Drayton's poem, "The Mooncalf," one of the gossips present at the birth
of the calf suggests that it ought to be buried alive as a monster.[1]
Caliban is a mooncalf,[2] and his origin is distinctly traced to a
source of this description. It is perfectly clear what was the one
thing that the foul witch Sycorax did which prevented her life from
being taken; and it would appear from this that the inhabitants of
Argier were far more merciful in this respect than their European
neighbours. Such a charge would have sent any woman to the stake in
Scotland, without the slightest hope of mercy, and the usual plea for
respite would only have been an additional reason for hastening the
execution of the sentence.[3]
[Footnote 1: Ed. 1748, p. 171.]
[Footnote 2: Tempest, II. ii. 111, 115.]
[Footnote 3: Cf. Othello, I. i. 91. Titus Andronicus, IV. ii.]
108. In the preceding pages an endeavour has been made to delineate the
most prominent features of a belief which the great Reformation was
destined first to foster into unnatural proportions and vitality, and in
the end to destroy. Up to the period of the Reformation, the creed of
the nation had been practically uniform, and one set of dogmas was
unhesitatingly accepted by the people as infallible, and therefore
hardly demanding critical consideration. The great upheaval of the
sixteenth century rent this quiescent uniformity into shreds; doctrines
until then considered as indisputable were brought within the pale of
discussion, and hence there was a great diversity of opinion, not only
between the supporters of the old and of the new faith, but between the
Reformers themselves. This was conspicuously the case with regard to the
belief in the devils and their works. The more timid of the Reformers
clung in a great measure to the Catholic opinions; a small band, under
the influence possibly of that knight-errant of freedom of thought,
Giordano Bruno, who exercised some considerable influence during his
visit to England by means of his Oxford lectures and disputations,
entirely denied the existence of evil spirits; but the great majority
gave in their adherence to a creed that was the mean between the
doctrines of the old faith and the new scepticism. Their strong common
sense compelled them to reject the puerilities advanced as serious
evidence by the Catholic Church; but they cast aside with equal
vehemence and more horror the doctrines of the Bruno school. "That there
are devils," says Bullinger, reduced apparently from argument to
invective, "the Sadducees in times past denied, and at this day also
some scarce religious, nay, rather Epicures, deny the same; who, unless
they repent, shall one day feel, to their exceeding great pain and
smart, both that there are devils, and that they are the tormentors and
executioners of all wicked men and Epicures."[1]
[Footnote 1: Bullinger, Fourth Decade, 9th Sermon, p. 348, Parker
Society.]
109. It must be remembered, too, that the emancipation from medievalism
was a very gradual process, not, as we are too prone to think it, a
revolution suddenly and completely effected. It was an evolution, not an
explosion. There is found, in consequence, a great divergence of
opinion, not only between the earliest and the later Reformers, but
between the statements of the same man at different periods of his
career. Tyndale, for instance, seems to have believed in the actual
possession of the human body by devils;[1] and this appears to have
been the opinion of the majority at the beginning of the Reformation,
for the first Prayer-book of Edward VI. contained the Catholic form of
exorcism for driving devils out of children, which was expunged upon
revision, the doctrine of obsession having in the mean time triumphed
over the older belief. It is necessary to bear these facts in mind
whilst considering any attempt to depict the general bearings of a
belief such as that in evil spirits; for many irreconcilable statements
are to be found among the authorities; and it is the duty of the writer
to sift out and describe those views which predominated, and these must
not be supposed to be proved inaccurate because a chance quotation can
be produced in contradiction.
[Footnote 1: I Tyndale, p. 82. Parker Society.]
110. There is great danger, in the attempt to bring under analysis any
phase of religious belief, that the method of treatment may appear
unsympathetic if not irreverent. The greatest effort has been made in
these pages to avoid this fault as far as possible; for, without doubt,
any form of religious dogma, however barbarous, however seemingly
ridiculous, if it has once been sincerely believed and trusted by any
portion of mankind, is entitled to reverent treatment. No body of great
and good men can at any time credit and take comfort from a lie pure and
simple; and if an extinct creed appears to lack that foundation of truth
which makes creeds tolerable, it is safer to assume that it had a
meaning and a truthfulness, to those who held it, that lapse of time
has tended to destroy, together with the creed itself, than to condemn
men wholesale as knaves and hypocrites. But the particular subject which
has here been dealt with will surely be considered to be specially
entitled to respect, when it is remembered that it was once an integral
portion of the belief of most of our best and bravest ancestors--of men
and women who dared to witness to their own sincerity amidst the fires
of persecution and in the solitude of exile. It has nearly all
disappeared now. The terrific hierarchy of fiends, which was so real, so
full of horror three hundred years ago[1], has gradually vanished away
before the advent of fuller knowledge and purer faith, and is now hardly
thought of, unless as a dead mediaeval myth. But let us deal tenderly
with it, remembering that the day may come when the beliefs that are
nearest to our hearts may be treated as open to contempt or ridicule,
and the dogmas to which we most passionately cling will, "like an
insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a wrack behind."
[Footnote 1: Perhaps the following prayer, contained in Thomas Becon's
"Pomander," shows more clearly than the comments of any critic the
reality of the terror:--
"An infinite number of wicked angels there are, O Lord Christ, which
without ceasing seek my destruction. Against this exceeding great
multitude of evil spirits send Thou me Thy blessed and heavenly angels,
which may deliver me from then tyranny. Thou, O Lord, hast devoured
hell, and overcome the prince of darkness and all his ministers; yea,
and that not for Thyself, but for those that believe in Thee. Suffer me
not, therefore, to be overcome of Satan and of his servants, but rather
let me triumph over them, that I, through strong faith and help of the
blessed angels, having the victory of the hellish army, may with a
joyful heart say, Death, where is thy sting? Hell, where is thy
victory?--and so for ever and ever magnify Thy Holy Name. Amen." Parker
Society, p. 84.]
* * * * *
111. Little attempt has hitherto been made, in the way of direct proof,
to show that fairies are really only a class of devils who exercise
their powers in a manner less terrible and revolting than that depicted
by theologians; and for this reason chiefly--that the proposition is
already more than half established when it has been shown that the
attributes and functions possessed by both fairy and devil are similar
in kind, although differing in degree. This has already been done to a
great extent in the preceding pages, where the various actions of Puck
and Ariel have been shown to differ in no essential respect from those
of the devils of the time; but before commencing to study this phase of
supernaturalism in Shakspere's works as a whole, and as indicative, to a
certain extent, of the development of his thought upon the relation of
man to the invisible world about and above him, it is necessary that
this identity should be admitted without a shadow of a doubt.
112. It has been shown that fairies were probably the descendants of the
lesser local deities, as devils were of the more important of the
heathen gods that were overturned by the advancing wave of
Christianity, although in the course of time this distinction was
entirely obliterated and forgotten. It has also been shown, as before
mentioned, that many of the powers exercised by fairies were in their
essence similar to those exercised by devils, especially that of
appearing in divers shapes. These parallels could be carried out to an
almost unlimited extent; but a few proofs only need be cited to show
this identity. In the mediaeval romance of "King Orfeo" fairyland has
been substituted for the classical Hades.[1] King James, in his
"Daemonologie," adopts a fourfold classification of devils, one of which
he names "Phairie," and co-ordinates with the incubus.[2] The name of
the devil supposed to preside at the witches' sabbaths is sometimes
given as Hecat, Diana, Sybilla; sometimes Queen of Elfame,[3] or
Fairie.[4] Indeed, Shakspere's line in "The Comedy of Errors," had it
not been unnecessarily tampered with by the critics--
"A fiend, a fairy, pitiless and rough,"[5]
would have conclusively proved this identity of character.
[Footnote 1: Fairy Mythology of Shakspere, Hazlitt, p. 83.]
[Footnote 2: Daemonologie, p. 69. An instance of a fairy incubus is
given in the "Life of Robin Goodfellow," Hazlitt's Fairy Mythology, p.
176.]
[Footnote 3: Pitcairn, iii. p. 162.]
[Footnote 4: Ibid. i. p. 162, and many other places.]
[Footnote 5: Fairy has been altered to "fury," but compare Peele, Battle
of Alcazar: "Fiends, fairies, hags that fight in beds of steel."]
113. The real distinction between these two classes of spirits depends
on the condition of national thought upon the subject of
supernaturalism in its largest sense. A belief which has little or no
foundation upon indisputable phenomena must be continually passing
through varying phases, and these phases will be regulated by the nature
of the subjects upon which the attention of the mass of the people is
most firmly concentrated. Hence, when a nation has but one religious
creed, and one that has for centuries been accepted by them, almost
without question or doubt, faith becomes stereotyped, and the mind
assumes an attitude of passive receptivity, undisturbed by doubts or
questionings. Under such conditions, a belief in evil spirits ever ready
and watching to tempt a man into heresy of belief or sinful act, and
thus to destroy both body and soul, although it may exist as a theoretic
portion of the accepted creed, cannot possibly become a vital doctrine
to be believed by the general public. It may exist as a subject for
learned dispute to while away the leisure hours of divines, but cannot
by any possibility obtain an influence over the thoughts and lives of
their charges. Mental disturbance on questions of doctrinal importance
being, for these reasons, out of the question, the attention of the
people is almost entirely riveted upon questions of material ease and
advantage. The little lets and hindrances of every-day life in
agricultural and domestic matters are the tribulations that appeal most
incessantly to the ineradicable sense of an invisible power adverse to
the interests of mankind, and consequently the class of evil spirits
believed in at such a time will be fairies rather than devils--malicious
little spirits, who blight the growing corn; stop the butter from
forming in the churn; pinch the sluttish housemaid black and blue; and
whose worst act is the exchange of the baby from its cot for a fairy
changeling;--beings of a nature most exasperating to thrifty housewife
and hard-handed farmer, but nevertheless not irrevocably prejudiced
against humanity, and easily to be pacified and reduced into a state of
fawning friendship by such little attentions as could be rendered
without difficulty by the poorest cotter. The whole fairy mythology is
perfumed with an honest, healthy, careless joy in life, and a freedom
from mental doubt. "I love true lovers, honest men, good fellowes, good
huswives, good meate, good drinke, and all things that good is, but
nothing that is ill," declares Robin Goodfellow;[1] and this jovial
materialism only reflects the state of mind of the folk who were not
unwilling to believe that this lively little spirit might be seen of
nights busying himself in their houses by the dying embers of the
deserted fire.
[Footnote 1: Hazlitt, Fairy Mythology, p. 182.]
114. Such seems to have been the condition of England immediately before
the period of the great Reformation. But with the progress of that
revolution of thought the condition changes. The one true and eternal
creed, as it had been deemed, is shattered for ever. Men who have
hitherto accepted their religious convictions in much the same way as
they had succeeded to their patrimonies are compelled by this tide of
opposition to think and study for themselves. Each man finds himself
left face to face with the great hereafter, and his relation to it.
Terrible doctrines are formulated, and press themselves with remorseless
vigour upon his understanding--original sin, justification by faith,
eternal damnation for even honest error of belief,--doctrines that throw
an atmosphere of solemnity, if not gloom, about national thought, in
which no fairy mythology can flourish. It is no longer questions of
material ease and gain that are of the chief concern; and consequently
the fairies and their doings, from their own triviality, fall far into
the background, and their place is occupied by a countless horde of
remorseless schemers, who are never ceasing in their efforts to drag
both body and soul to perdition.
115. But it is in the towns, the centres of interchange of thought, of
learning, and of controversy, that this revolution first gathers power;
the sparsely populated country-sides are far more impervious to the new
ideas, and the country people cling far longer and more tenaciously to
the dying religion and its attendant beliefs. The rural districts were
but little affected by the Reformation for years after it had triumphed
in the towns, and consequently the beliefs of the inhabitants were
hardly touched by the struggle that was going on within so short a
distance. We find a Reginald Scot, indeed, complaining, half in joke,
half in sarcasm, that Robin Goodfellow has long disappeared from the
land;[1] but it is only from the towns that he has fled--towns in which
the spirit of the Cartwrights and the Latimers, the Barnhams and the
Delabers, is abroad. In the same Cambridge where Scot had been educated,
a young student had hanged himself because the shadow of the doctrine of
predestination was too terrible for him to live under;[2] and such a
place was surely no home for Puck and his merry band. But in the country
places, remote from the growl and trembling of this mental earthquake,
he still loved to lurk; and even at the very moment when Scot was
penning the denial of his existence, he was nestling amongst the woods
and flowers of Avonside, and, invisible, whispering in the ear of a
certain fair-haired youth there thoughts of no inconsiderable moment.
And long time after that--after the youth had become a man, and had
coined those thoughts into words that glitter still; after his monument
had been erected in the quiet Stratford churchyard--Puck revelled,
harmless and undisturbed, along many a country-side; nay, even to the
present day, in some old-world nooks, a faint whispering rumour of him
may still be heard.
[Footnote 1: Scot, Introduction.]
[Footnote 2: Foxe, iv. p. 694.]
116. Now, perhaps one of the most distinctive marks of literary genius
is a certain receptivity of mind; a capability of receiving impressions
from all surrounding circumstance--of extracting from all sources,
whether from nature or man, consciously or unconsciously, the material
upon which it shall work. For this process to be perfectly accomplished,
an entire and enthusiastic sympathy with man and the current ideas of
the time is absolutely essential, and in proportion as this sympathy is
contracted and partial, so will the work produced be stunted and untrue;
and, on the other hand, the more universal and entire it is, the more
perfect and vital will be the art. Bearing this in mind, and also the
facts that Shakspere's early training was effected in a little country
village; that upon the verge of manhood, he came to London, where he
spent his prime in contact with the bustle and friction of busy town
life; and that the later years of his life were passed in the quiet
retirement of the home of his boyhood--there would be good ground for an
argument, _a priori_, even were there none of a more conclusive nature,
that his earlier works would be found impregnated with the country
fairy-myths with which his youth would come in contact; that the result
of the labours of his middle life would show that these earlier
reminiscenses had been gradually obliterated by the gloomier influence
of ideas that were the result of the struggle of opposed theories that
had not then ceased to rage in the towns, and that the diabolic element
and questions relating thereto would predominate; and that, finally, his
later works, written under the calmer influence of Stratford life, would
show a certain return to the fairy-lore of his earlier years.
117. But fortunately we are not left to rely upon any such hypothetical
evidence in this matter, however probable it may appear. Although the
general reading public cannot be asked to accept as infallible any
chronological order of Shakspere's plays that dogmatically asserts a
particular sequence, or to investigate the somewhat dry and specialist
arguments upon which the conclusions are founded, yet there are certain
groupings into periods which are agreed upon as accurate by nearly all
critics, and which, without the slightest danger of error, may be
asserted to be correct. For instance, it is indisputable that "Love's
Labour's Lost," "The Comedy of Errors," "Romeo and Juliet," and "A
Midsummer Night's Dream" are amongst Shakspere's earliest works; that
the tragedies of "Julius Caesar," "Hamlet," "Othello," "Macbeth," and
"Lear" are the productions of his middle life, between 1600 and 1606;
and that "A Winter's Tale" and "The Tempest" are amongst the latest
plays which he wrote.[1] Here we have everything that is required to
prove the question in hand. At the commencement and at the end of his
writings--when a youth fresh from the influence of his country nurture
and education, and when a mature man, settling down into the old life
again after a long and victorious struggle with the world, with his
accumulated store of experience--we find plays which are perfectly
saturated with fairy-lore: "The Dream" and "The Tempest." These are the
poles of Shakspere's thought in this respect; and in the centre,
imbedded as it were between two layers of material that do not bear any
distinctive stamp of their own, but appear rather as a medium for
uniting the diverse strata, lie the great tragedies, produced while he
was in the very rush and swirl of town life, and reflecting accurately,
as we have seen, many of the doubts and speculations that were agitating
the minds of men who were ardently searching out truth. It is worth
noting too, in passing, that directly Shakspere steps out of his beaten
path to depict, in "The Merry Wives of Windsor," the happy country life
and manners of his day, he at the same time returns to fairyland again,
and brings out the Windsor children trooping to pinch and plague the
town-bred, tainted Falstaff.
[Footnote 1: For an elaborate and masterly investigation of the question
of the chronological order of the plays, which must be assumed here, see
Mr. Furnivall's Introduction to the Leopold Shakspere.]
118. But this is not by any means all that this subject reveals to us
about Shakspere; if it were, the less said about it the better. To look
upon "The Tempest" as in its essence merely a return to "The Dream"--the
end as the beginning; to believe that his thoughts worked in a weary,
unending circle--that the Valley of the Shadow of Death only leads back
to the foot of the Hill Difficulty--is intolerable, and not more
intolerable than false. Although based upon similar material, the ideas
and tendencies of "The Tempest" upon supernaturalism are no more
identical with those of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" than the thoughts of
Berowne upon things in general are those of Hamlet, or Hamlet's those of
Prospero. But before it is possible to point out the nature of this
difference, and to show that the change is a natural growth of thought,
not a mere retrogression, a few explanatory remarks are necessary.
There is no more insufficient and misleading view of Shakspere and his
work than that which until recently obtained almost universal credence,
and is even at the present time somewhat loudly asserted in some
quarters; namely, that he was a man of considerable genius, who wrote
and got acted some thirty plays more or less, simply for commercial
purposes and nothing more; made money thereby, and died leaving a will;
and that, beyond this, he and his works are, and must remain, an
inexplicable mystery. The critic who holds this view, and finds it
equally advantageous to commence a study of Shakspere's work by taking
"The Tempest" or "Love's Labour's Lost" as his text, is about as
judicious as the botanist who would enlarge upon the structure of the
seed-pod without first explaining the preliminary stages of plant
growth, or the architect who would dilate upon the most convenient
arrangement of chimney-pots before he had discussed the laws of
foundation. The plays may be studied separately, and studied so are
found beautiful; but taken in an approximate chronological order, like a
string of brilliant jewels, each one gains lustre from those that
precede and follow it.
119. For no man ever wrote sincerely and earnestly, or indeed ever did
any one thing in such a spirit, without leaving some impress upon his
work of his mental condition whilst he was doing it; and no such man
ever continued his literary labours from the period of youth right
through his manhood, without leaving behind him, in more or less legible
character, a record of the ripening of his thought upon matters of
eternal importance, although they may not be of necessity directly
connected with the ostensible subject in hand. Insincere men may ape
sentiments they do not really believe in; but in the end they will
either be exposed and held up to ridicule, or their work will sink into
obscurity. Sincerity in the expression of genuine thought and feeling
alone can stand the test of time. And this is in reality no
contradiction to what has just been said as to the necessity of a
receptive condition of mind in the production of works of true genius.
This capacity of receiving the most delicate objective impressions is,
indeed, one essential; but without the cognate power to assimilate this
food, and evolve the result that these influences have produced
subjectively, it is, worse than useless. The two must co-exist and act
and react upon one another. Nor must we be induced to surrender these
principles, in the present particular case, on account of the usual fine
but vague talk about Shakspere's absolute self-annihilation in favour of
the characters that he depicts. It is said that Shakspere so identifies
himself with each person in his dramas, that it is impossible to detect
the great master and his thoughts behind this cunningly devised screen.
If this means that Shakespere has always a perfect comprehension of his
characters, is competent to measure out to each absolute and unerring
justice, and is capable of sympathy with even the most repulsive, it
will not be disputed for an instant. It is so true, that it is dangerous
to take a sentence out of the mouth of any one of his characters and say
for certain, "This Shakspere thought," although there are many
characters with whom every one must feel that Shakspere identified
himself for the time being rather than others. But if it is intended to
assert that Shakspere has so eliminated himself from his writings as to
make it impossible to trace anywhere the tendencies of his own thought
at the time when he was writing, it must be most emphatically denied for
the reasons just stated. Freedom from prejudice must be carefully
dissociated from lack of interest in the motive that underlies the
construction of each play. There is a tone or key-note in each drama
that indicates the author's mental condition at the time when it was
produced; and if several plays, following each other in brisk
succession, all have the same predominant tone, it seems to be past
question that Shakspere is incidentally and indirectly uttering his own
personal thought and experience.
120. If it be granted, then, that it is possible to follow thus the
growth of Shakspere's thought through the medium of his successive
works, there is only one small point to be glanced at before attempting
to trace this growth in the matter of supernaturalism.
The natural history of the evolution of opinion upon matters which, for
want of a more embracing and satisfactory word, we must be content to
call "religious," follows a uniform course in the minds of all men,
except those "duller than the fat weed that roots itself at ease on
Lethe's wharf," who never get beyond the primary stage. This course is
separable into three periods. The first is that in which a man accepts
unhesitatingly the doctrines which he has received from his spiritual
teachers--customary not intellectual, belief. This sits lightly on him;
entails no troublesome doubts and questionings; possesses, or appears to
possess, formulae to meet all possible emergencies, and consequently
brings with it a happiness that is genuine, though superficial. But this
customary belief rarely satisfies for long. Contact with the world
brings to light other and opposed theories: introspection and
independent investigation of the bases of the hereditary faith are
commenced; many doctrines that have been hitherto accepted as eternally
and indisputably true are found to rest upon but slight foundation,
apart from their title to respect on account of age; doubts follow as to
the claim to acceptance of the whole system that has been so easily and
unhesitatingly swallowed; and the period of scepticism, or no-belief,
with its attendant misery, commences--for although Dagon has been but
little honoured in the time of his strength, in his downfall he is much
regretted. Then comes that long, weary groping after some firm, reliable
basis of belief: but heaven and earth appear for the time to conspire
against the seeker; an intellectual flood has drowned out the old order
of things; not even a mountain peak appears in the wide waste of
desolation as assurance of ultimate rest; and in the dark, overhanging
firmament no arc of promise is to be seen. But this is a state of mind
which, from its very nature, cannot continue for ever: no man could
endure it. While it lasts the struggle must be continuous, but
somewhere through the cloud lies the sunshine and the land of peace--the
final period of intellectual belief. Out of the chaos comes order; ideas
that but recently appeared confused, incoherent, and meaningless assume
their true perspective. It is found that all the strands of the old
conventional faith have not been snapped in the turmoil; and these,
re-knit and strengthened with the new and full knowledge of experience
and investigation, form the cable that secures that strange holy
confidence of belief that can only be gained by a preliminary warfare
with doubt--a peace that truly passes all understanding to those who
have never battled for it,--as to its foundation, diverse to a miracle
in diverse minds, but still, a peace.
121. If this be a true history of the course of development of every
mind that is capable of independent thought upon and investigation of
such high matters, it follows that Shakspere's soul must have
experienced a similar struggle--for he was a man of like passions with
ourselves; indeed, to so acute and sensitive a mind the struggle would
be, probably, more prolonged and more agonizing than to many; and it is
these three mental conditions--first, of unthinking acceptance of
generally received teaching; second, of profound and agitating
scepticism; and, thirdly, of belief founded upon reason and
experience--that may be naturally expected to be found impressed upon
his early, middle, and later works.
122. It is impossible here to do more than indicate some of the
evidence that this supposition is correct, for to attempt to investigate
the question exhaustively would involve the minute consideration of a
majority of the plays. The period of Shakspere's customary or
conventional belief is illustrated in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," and
to a certain extent also in the "Comedy of Errors." In the former play
we find him loyally accepting certain phases of the hereditary Stratford
belief in supernaturalism, throwing them into poetical form, and making
them beautiful. It has often before been observed, and it is well worthy
of observation, that of the three groups of characters in the play, the
country folk--a class whose manner and appearance had most vividly
reflected themselves upon the camera of Shakspere's mind--are by far the
most lifelike and distinct; the fairies, who had been the companions of
his childhood and youth in countless talks in the ingle and ballads in
the lanes, come second in prominence and finish; whilst the ostensible
heroes and heroines of the piece, the aristocrats of Athens, are
colourless and uninteresting as a dumb-show--the real shadows of the
play. This is exactly the ratio of impressionability that the three
classes would have for the mind of the youthful dramatist. The first is
a creation from life, the second from traditionary belief, the third
from hearsay. And when it has been said that the fairies are a creation
from traditionary belief, a full and accurate description of them has
been afforded. They are an embodiment of a popular superstition, and
nothing more. They do not conceal any thought of the poet who has
created them, nor are they used for any deeper purpose with regard to
the other persons of the drama than temporary and objectless annoyance.
Throughout the whole play runs a healthy, thoughtless, honest, almost
riotous happiness; no note of difficulty, no shadow of coming doubt
being perceptible. The pert and nimble spirit of mirth is fully
awakened; the worst tricks of the intermeddling spirits are mischievous
merely, and of only transitory influence, and "the summer still doth
tend upon their state," brightening this fairyland with its sunshine and
flowers. Man has absolutely no power to govern these supernatural
powers, and they have but unimportant influence over him. They can
affect his comfort, but they cannot control his fate. But all this is
merely an adapting and elaborating of ideas which had been handed down
from father to son for many generations. Shakspere's Puck is only the
Puck of a hundred ballads reproduced by the hand of a true poet; no
original thought upon the connection of the visible with the invisible
world is imported into the creation. All these facts tend to show that
when Shakspere wrote "A Midsummer Night's Dream," that is, at the
beginning of his career as a dramatic author, he had not broken away
from the trammels of the beliefs in which he had been brought up, but
accepted them unhesitatingly and joyously.
123. But there is a gradual toning down of this spirit of unbroken
content as time wears on. Putting aside the historical plays, in which
Shakspere was much more bound down by his subject-matter than in any
other species of drama, we find the comedies, in which his room for
expression of individual feeling was practically unlimited, gradually
losing their unalloyed hilarity, and deepening down into a sadness of
thought and expression that sometimes leaves a doubt whether the plays
should be classed as comedies at all. Shakspere has been more and more
in contact with the disputes and doubts of the educated men of his time,
and seeds have been silently sowing themselves in his heart, which are
soon to bring forth a plenteous harvest in the great tragedies of which
these semi-comedies, such as "All's Well that Ends Well" and "Measure
for Measure," are but the first-fruits.
124. Thus, when next we find Shakspere dealing with questions relating
to supernaturalism, the tone is quite different from that taken in his
earlier work. He has reached the second period of his thought upon the
subject, and this has cast its attendant gloom upon his writings. That
he was actually battling with questions current in his time is
demonstrated by the way in which, in three consecutive plays, derived
from utterly diverse sources, the same question of ghost or devil is
agitated, as has before been pointed out. But it is not merely a point
of theological dogma which stamps these plays as the product of
Shakspere's period of scepticism, but a theory of the influence of
supernatural beings upon the whole course of human life. Man is still
incapable of influencing these unseen forces, or bending them to his
will; but they are now no longer harmless, or incapable of anything but
temporary or trivial evil. Puck might lead night wanderers into
mischance, and laugh mischievously at the bodily harm that he had caused
them; but Puck has now disappeared, and in his stead is found a
malignant spirit, who seeks to laugh his fiendish laughter over the soul
he has deceived into destruction. Questions arise thick and fast that
are easier put than answered. Can it be that evil influences have the
upper hand in this world? that, be a man never so honest, never so pure,
he may nevertheless become the sport of blind chance or ruthless
wickedness? May a Hamlet, patiently struggling after truth and duty, be
put upon and abused by the darker powers? May Macbeth, who would fain do
right, were not evil so ever present with him, be juggled with and led
to destruction by fiends? May an undistinguishing fate sweep away at
once the good with the evil--Hamlet with Laertes; Desdemona with Iago;
Cordelia with Edmund? And above the turmoil of this reign of terror, is
there no word uttered of a Supreme Good guiding and controlling the
unloosed ill--no word of encouragement, none of hope? If this be so
indeed, that man is but the puppet of malignant spirits, away with this
life. It is not worth the living; for what power has man against the
fiends? But at this point arises a further question to demand solution:
what shall be hereafter? If evil is supreme here, shall it not be so in
that undiscovered country,--that life to come? The dreams that may come
give him pause, and he either shuffles on, doubting, hesitating, and
incapable of decision, or he hurls himself wildly against his fate. In
either case his life becomes like to a tale
"Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying--nothing!"
125. It is strange to note, too, how the ebb of this wave of scepticism
upon questions relating to the immaterial world is only recoil that adds
force to a succeeding wave of cynicism with regard to the physical world
around. "Hamlet," "Macbeth," and "Othello" give place to "Lear,"
"Troilus and Cressida," "Antony and Cleopatra," and "Timon." So true is
it that "unfaith in aught is want of faith in all," that in these later
plays it would seem that honour, honesty, and justice were virtues not
possessed by man or woman; or, if possessed, were only a curse to bring
down disgrace and destruction upon the possessor. Contrast the women of
these plays with those of the comedies immediately preceding the Hamlet
period. In the latter plays we find the heroines, by their sweet womanly
guidance and gentle but firm control, triumphantly bringing good out of
evil in spite of adverse circumstance. Beatrice, Rosalind, Viola,
Helena, and Isabella are all, not without a tinge of knight-errantry
that does not do the least violence to the conception of tender,
delicate womanhood, the good geniuses of the little worlds in which
their influence is made to be felt. Events must inevitably have gone
tragically but for their intervention. But with the advent of the second
period all this changes. At first the women, like Brutus' Portia,
Ophelia, Desdemona, however noble or sweet in character and well
meaning in motive, are incapable of grasping the guiding threads of the
events around them and controlling them for good. They have to give way
to characters of another kind, who bear the form without the nature of
women. Commencing with Lady Macbeth, the conception falls lower and
lower, through Goneril and Regan, Cressida, Cleopatra, until in the
climax of this utter despair, "Timon," there is no character that it
would not be a profanity to call by the name of woman.
126. And just as womanly purity and innocence quail before unwomanly
self-assertion and voluptuousness, so manly loyalty and unselfishness
give way before unmanly treachery and self-seeking. It is true that the
bad men do not finally triumph, but they triumph over the good with whom
they happen to come in contact. In "King Lear," what man shows any
virtue who does not receive punishment for the same? Not Gloucester,
whose loyal devotion to his king obtains for him a punishment that is
only merciful in that it prevents him from further suffering the sight
of his beloved master's misery; not Kent, who, faithful in his
self-denying service through all manner of obloquy, is left at last with
a prayer that he may be allowed to follow Lear to the grave; and beyond
these two there is little good to be found. But "Lear" is not by any
means the climax. The utter despair of good in man or woman rises higher
in "Troilus and Cressida," and reaches its culminating point in "Timon,"
a fragment only of which is Shakspere's. The pen fell from the tired
hand; the worn and distracted brain refused to fulfil the task of
depicting the depth to which the poet's estimate of mankind had fallen;
and we hardly know whether to rejoice or to regret that the clumsy hand
of an inferior writer has screened from our knowledge the full
disclosure of the utter and contemptuous cynicism and want of faith with
which, for the time being, Shakspere was infected.
127. Before passing on to consider the plays of the third period as
evidence of Shakspere's final thought, it will be well to pause and
re-read with attention a summing-up of Shakspere's teaching as it has
been presented to us by one of the greatest and most earnest teachers of
morality of the present day. Every word that Mr. Ruskin writes is so
evidently from the depth of his own good heart, and every doctrine that
he enunciates so pure in theory and so true in practice, that a
difference with him upon the final teaching of Shakspere's work cannot
be too cautiously expressed. But the estimate of this which he has given
in the third Lecture of "Sesame and Lilies"[1] is so painful, if
regarded as Shakspere's latest and most mature opinion, that everybody,
even Mr. Ruskin himself, would be glad to modify its gloom with a few
rays of hope, if it were possible to do so. "What then," says Mr.
Ruskin, "is the message to us of our own poet and searcher of hearts,
after fifteen hundred years of Christian faith have been numbered over
the graves of men? Are his words more cheerful than the heathen's
(Homer)? is his hope more near, his trust more sure, his reading of
fate more happy? Ah no! He differs from the heathen poet chiefly in
this, that he recognizes for deliverance no gods nigh at hand, and that,
by petty chance, by momentary folly, by broken message, by fool's
tyranny, or traitor's snare, the strongest and most righteous are
brought to their ruin, and perish without word of hope. He, indeed, as
part of his rendering of character, ascribes the power and modesty of
habitual devotion to the gentle and the just. The death-bed of Katharine
is bright with visions of angels; and the great soldier-king, standing
by his few dead, acknowledges the presence of the hand that can save
alike by many or by few. But observe that from those who with deepest
spirit meditate, and with deepest passion mourn, there are no such words
as these; nor in their hearts are any such consolations. Instead of the
perpetual sense of the helpful presence of the Deity, which, through all
heathen tradition, is the source of heroic strength, in battle, in
exile, and in the valley of the shadow of death, we find only in the
great Christian poet the consciousness of a moral law, through which
'the gods are just, and of our pleasant vices make instruments to
scourge us;' and of the resolved arbitration of the destinies, that
conclude into precision of doom what we feebly and blindly began; and
force us, when our indiscretion serves us, and our deepest plots do
pall, to the confession that 'there's a divinity that shapes our ends,
rough-hew them how we will.'"[2]
[Footnote 1: 3rd edition, § 115.]
[Footnote 2: Mr. Ruskin has analyzed "The Tempest," in "Munera
Pulveris," § 124, et seqq., but from another point of view.]
128. Now, it is perfectly clear that this criticism was written with two
or three plays, all belonging to one period, very conspicuously before
the mind. Of the illustrative exceptions that are made to the general
rule, one is derived from a play which Shakspere wrote at a very early
date, and the other from a scene which he almost certainly never wrote
at all; the whole of the rest of the passage quoted is founded upon
"Hamlet," "Macbeth," "Othello," and "Lear"--that is, upon the earlier
productions of what we must call Shakspere's sceptical period. But these
plays represent an essentially transient state of thought. Shakspere was
to learn and to teach that those who most deeply meditate and most
passionately mourn are not the men of noblest or most influential
character--that such may command our sympathy, but hardly our respect or
admiration. Still less did Shakspere finally assert, although for a time
he believed, that a blind destiny concludes into precision what we
feebly and blindly begin. Far otherwise and nobler was his conception of
man and his mission, and the unseen powers and their influences, in the
third and final stage of his thought.
129. Had Shakspere lived longer, he would doubtless have left us a
series of plays filled with the bright and reassuring tenderness and
confidence of this third period, as long and as brilliant in execution
as those of the second period. But as it is we are in possession of
quite enough material to enable us to form accurate conclusions upon the
state of his final thought. It is upon "The Tempest" that we must in
the main rely for an exposition of this; for though the other plays and
fragments fully exhibit the restoration of his faith in man and woman,
which was a necessary concurrence with his return from scepticism, yet
it is in "The Tempest" that he brings himself as nearly face to face as
dramatic possibilities would allow him with circumstances that admit of
the indirect expression of such thought. It is fortunate, too, for the
purpose of comparing Shakspere's earliest and latest opinions, that the
characters of "The Tempest" are divisible into the same groups as those
of "The Dream." The gross _canaille_ are represented, but now no longer
the most accurate in colour and most absorbing in interest of the
characters of the play, or unessential to the evolution of the plot.
They have a distinct importance in the movement of the piece, and
represent the unintelligent, material resistance to the work of
regeneration that Prospero seeks to carry out, and which must be
controlled by him, just as Sebastian and Antonio form the intelligent,
designing resistance. The spirit world is there too, but they, like the
former class, have no independent plot of their own, and no independent
operation against mankind; they only represent the invisible forces over
which Prospero must assert control if he would insure success for his
schemes. Ariel is, perhaps, one of the most extraordinary of all
Shakspere's creations. He is, indeed, formed upon a basis half fairy,
half devil, because it was only through the current notions upon
demonology that Shakspere could speak his ideas. But he certainly is not
a fairy in the sense that Puck is a fairy; and he is very far indeed
from bearing even a slight resemblance to the familiars whom the
magicians of the time professed to call from the vasty deep. He is
indeed but air, as Prospero says--the embodiment of an idea, the
representative of those invisible forces which operate as factors in the
shaping of events which, ignored, may prove resistant or fatal, but,
properly controlled and guided, work for good.[1] Lastly, there are the
heroes and heroine of the play, now no longer shadows, but the centres
of interest and admiration, and assuming their due position and
prominence.
[Footnote 1: It is difficult to accept Mr. Ruskin's view of Ariel as
"the spirit of generous and free-hearted service" (Mun. Pul. § 124); he
is throughout the play the more-than-half-unwilling agent of Prospero.]
130. It is probable, therefore, that it is not merely a student's fancy
that in Prospero's storm-girt, spirit-haunted island can be seen
Shakspere's final and matured image of the mighty world. If this be so,
how far more bright and hopeful it is than the verdict which Mr. Ruskin
finds Shakspere to have returned. Man is no longer "a pipe for fortune's
fingers to sound what stop she please." The evil elements still exist in
the world, and are numerous and formidable; but man, by nobleness of
life and word, by patience and self-mastery, can master them, bring them
into subjection, and make them tend to eventual good. Caliban, the
gross, sensual, earthly element--though somewhat raised--would run riot,
and is therefore compelled to menial service. The brute force of
Stephano and Trinculo is vanquished by mental superiority. Even the
supermundane spirits, now no longer thirsting for the destruction of
body and soul, are bound down to the work of carrying out the decrees of
truth and justice. Man is no longer the plaything, but the master of his
fate; and he, seeing now the possible triumph of good over evil, and his
duty to do his best in aid of this triumph, has no more fear of the
dreams--the something after death. Our little life is still rounded by a
sleep, but the thought which terrifies Hamlet has no power to affright
Prospero. The hereafter is still a mystery, it is true; he has tried to
see into it, and has found it impenetrable. But revelation has come like
an angel, with peace upon its wings, in another and an unexpected way.
Duty lies here, in and around him in this world. Here he can right
wrong, succour the weak, abase the proud, do something to make the world
better than he found it; and in the performance of this he finds a
holier calm than the vain strivings after the unknowable could ever
afford. Let him work while it is day, for "the night cometh, when no man
can work."
131. It is not a piece of pure sentimentality that sees in Prospero a
type of Shakspere in his final stage of thought. It is a type altogether
as it should be; and it is pleasing to think of him, in the full
maturity of his manhood, wrapping his seer's cloak about him, and, while
waiting calmly the unfolding of the mystery which he has sought in vain
to solve, watching with noble benevolence the gradual working out of
truth, order, and justice. It is pleasing to think of him as speaking
to the world the great Christian doctrine so universally overlooked by
Christians, that the only remedy for sin demanded by eternal justice "is
nothing but heart's sorrow, and a clear life ensuing"--a speech which,
though uttered by Ariel, is spoken by Prospero, who himself beautifully
iterates part of the doctrine when he says--
"The rarer action is
In virtue than in vengeance: they being penitent,
The sole drift of my purpose doth extend
Not a frown further."[1]
It is pleasant to dwell upon his sympathy with Ferdinand and
Miranda--for the love of man and woman is pure and holy in this
regenerate world: no more of Troilus and Cressida--upon his patient
waiting for the evolution of his schemes; upon his faith in their
ultimate success; and, above all, upon the majestic and unaffected
reverence that appears indirectly in every line--"reverence," to adapt
the words of the great teacher whose opinion about Shakspere has been
perhaps too rashly questioned, "for what is pure and bright in youth;
for what is true and tried in age; for all that is gracious among the
living, great among the dead, and marvellous in the Powers that cannot
die."
[Footnote 1: V. l. 27.]