and adventurous kind. In fact, no novelist has ever invented a story
as fascinating and varied as the bare facts of his most extraordinary
career. He was a soldier, a dramatist, a patriot, a slave; and after
producing, perhaps, the greatest novel ever written, a work which is
the glory of Spanish literature and a delight to the civilized world,
he died poor and neglected.
His family was noble and was first settled in Galicia, from whence it
moved to Castile. Cervantes was born in 1547. His family, although
honorable, was very poor, but he received a liberal education. He
became a page, chamberlain, and afterward a soldier, and fought at the
naval battle of Lepanto, "Where," he said, "I lost my left hand by an
arquebuse under the conquering banner of the son of that thunderbolt
of war, Charles V., of happy memory."
He also distinguished himself at the siege of Tunis, and later was
taken prisoner by a Barbary corsair, and was kept in cruel captivity
for five years at Algiers, It was customary with the Algerines to
treat their prisoners according to their supposed rank and expected
ransom. The avarice of the masters sometimes alleviated the lot of the
Christian slaves; but, unfortunately for Cervantes, he was treated
with extreme severity in order to compel him to obtain ransom from his
friends, while he, the very soul of independence, tried to escape in
order to avoid trespassing on their resources. The interest of the
Moors was to pretend to believe that their captives were of exalted
rank and position, in order to obtain a bigger ransom.
Cervantes, in one of his novels, makes Ricardo give an account of this
notable custom in the story of his adventures. His master, Fetale, is
always complimenting him upon his exalted rank, and telling him that,
from a sense of honor, he should pay a high ransom. He tells him that
it is not becoming his rank to remain an idle and inglorious captive,
and laughs at the repeated disclaimers of his prisoner. Unfortunately,
when Cervantes was captured he had in his possession letters of
introduction from public personages of the day, which caused him to be
highly valued. This led to cruel sufferings, inflicted in the
expectation of obtaining a heavy ransom. He was sentenced to be
imprisoned in a place called the Baths. The Moorish dungeons had three
depths of caverns, like underground granaries. In mockery of the light
of heaven, there was one small window, and that was crossed with iron
bars. The sun and air never entered this awful place. The only sights
were harrowing; the only company was that of convicts, thieves,
murderers, and the lowest Moorish rabble; and the sounds and voices,
mixed with blasphemies and oaths, were re-echoed as if from the vaults
of the dead. Every sense was outraged by the accumulation of horrors
that combined to disgust and horrify. Hunger, nakedness, thirst, heat,
damp, and cold, all combined to swell the catalogue of their miseries
and their woes. We can easily picture the sufferings of Cervantes,
whose captivity was as severe as it was possible even for his Algerian
master to make it. No wonder that a man so full of energy as Cervantes
should try again and again to escape from his infernal captivity. On
four occasions he was on the point of being impaled, hanged, or burned
alive for his daring attempts to liberate himself and his unfortunate
comrades. But, of all the enterprises which entered the imagination of
this fearless soldier, the most generous, noble, and remarkable, as
regarded its consequences, made too at a period when Europe trembled
at the clank of the Ottoman chains, was that of rising upon their
tyrants and destroying them in the very stronghold of their cruelty
and their power.
There is the best authority for believing that, if the good fortune of
Cervantes had been equal to his courage, perseverance, and skill, the
city of Algiers would have been taken by the Christians; for his bold
and resolute project aimed at no less a result. Moreover, if he had
not been sold and betrayed by those who undertook to assist him in his
grand and noble undertaking--to liberate the captives of so many
lands--his own captivity might have proved a fortunate event.
At last Cervantes returned to Spain, after five years' slavery at
Algiers. He returned fired with animosity against the Moors, and
filled with ardent sympathy for those Christians still in slavery.
Thus his comedy of "El Trato de Argel, Los Banos de Argel," his tale
of the Captive in "Don Quixote," and that of the Generous Lover, were
not mere literary works, but charitable endeavors to serve the
Christian captives, and to excite the public sympathy in their favor.
I have dwelt fully on this extraordinary experience of Cervantes, an
experience which brought him into direct contact with the lowest
classes and the elementary passions of mankind, with a view of showing
how profound and terrible was his knowledge of human character and
human passion.
Before producing his immortal masterpiece, "Don Quixote," Cervantes
wrote a great number of plays which were not successful. When
Cervantes speaks of his own dramatic works in his old age, his
simplicity and gayety are very touching, because he was evidently
deeply wounded at the neglect of his plays.
"Some years ago," he says, "I returned to the ancient occupation of my
leisure hours; and, imagining that the age had not passed away in
which I used to hear the sound of praise, I began to write comedies.
The birds, however, had flown from their nest. I could find no manager
to ask for my plays, though they knew that I had written them. I
threw them, therefore, into the corner of a trunk, and condemned them
to obscurity. A bookseller then told me that he would have bought them
from me, had he not been told by a celebrated author that much
dependence might be placed upon my prose, but not upon my poetry. To
say the truth, this information mortified me much. I said to myself,
'Cervantes, you are certainly either changed, or the world, contrary
to its custom, has grown wiser, for in past times you used to meet
with praise.' I read my comedies anew, together with some interludes
which I had placed with them. I found that they were not so bad but
that they might pass, from what this author called darkness into what
others might perhaps term noon-day. I was angry, and sold them to the
bookseller, who has now printed them. They have paid me tolerably; and
I have pocketed my money with pleasure, and without troubling myself
about the opinions of the actors; I was willing to make them as
excellent as I could, and if, dear reader, thou findest anything in
them good, I pray thee, when thou meetest any other calumniator, to
tell him to amend his manners, and not to judge so severely, since
after all the plays contain not any incongruities or striking faults."
I must not dwell further on Cervantes's minor works, but will pass to
his great masterpiece, "Don Quixote." This work contains the hoarded
experience of a life. It was written when its author was declining in
years. No young man could have written it, because no young man can be
a master, especially of humor and human nature. Don Quixote himself is
a character of the most complex kind. His single-heartedness, his
enthusiasm, his utter want of the sense of the ridiculous, his power
of adding romantic charms and romantic attributes to a frowsy
servant-girl, are developed and used by the author with a variety of
power that has never been equalled. Don Quixote's life is entirely in
the imagination; this enables him to see castles in windmills, beauty
and refinement in coarseness and vulgarity, and poetry, wisdom, and
genius in bombastic and absurd works on chivalry, love, and
knight-errantry. To emphasize the romantic and preposterous exaltation
of the mad gentleman of La Mancha, we have his coarse, vulgar,
practical, almost grovelling squire, Sancho Panza. The master lives in
the clouds; Sancho is most at home in the mud. Everything that can be
done to bring out the contrast between these two characters is put in
the most amusing and effective manner. No extracts could convey to the
reader the adventures of the master and man at the inn--a very vulgar
inn, too--which Don Quixote takes for an enchanted castle, in spite of
the smell of rancid oil and garlic, and where, as a climax to all the
other piled-up absurdities, poor Sancho, who is short and fat, is
tossed in a blanket. Don Quixote always expresses himself in a stilted
and oratorical manner; Sancho's language is of the coarsest kind, and
is interlarded with the vulgarest illustrations and proverbs. His
master is tall, attenuated, in fact, merely skin and bone; his face is
long, his nose prominent, his eyes hollow and very bright; Sancho, on
the contrary, is short, fat, his face is round, eyes small and
pig-like, mouth large and coarse, nose nothing to speak of; in fact,
it is a contrast between the poetical gone mad and the coarsest
realism.
This work was the delight of Spain; it was read with shouts of
laughter by the king and the peasant. Poor Don Quixote is a type of
the fatal results which follow the possession of romantic feelings and
enthusiasm without common-sense to guide and control them. On the
other hand, and that is the priceless lesson of the book, his man,
Sancho Panza, shows what the mere worship of ease and vulgar prudence
will degrade a man to. If the enthusiasm and mad exaltation of Don
Quixote could have been combined with a little of the vulgar self-love
of Sancho, one extreme might have corrected the other, and we might
have had a wise gentleman instead of a maniac and a brute.
Such was the success of this wonderful work that, as Philip III. was
one afternoon standing in a balcony of his palace at Madrid, he
observed a student on the banks of the river Manzanares, with a book
in his hand, which delighted him so that, every now and then, he broke
into an ecstasy of laughter. The king looked at him, and, turning to
his courtiers, said, "That man is either mad or reading 'Don
Quixote.'"
Although the king thought so highly of this great work, its author was
bowed down by poverty and infirmities, and nothing was done for him by
the king or his courtiers. The last glimpse of the life of Cervantes I
have space for, is from his own inimitable pen, and is taken from the
preface to the "Labors of Persiles and Sigismunda," which was
published by the author's widow.
'It happened afterward, dear reader, that as two of my friends and
myself were coming from Esquivias, a place famous for twenty reasons,
but more especially for illustrious families and for its excellent
wines, I heard a man coming behind us, whipping his nag with all his
might, and seemingly very desirous of overtaking us. Presently he
called out to us to stop, which we did; and when he came up he turned
out to be a country student, dressed in brown, with spatterdashes and
round-toed shoes. He had a sword in a huge sheath, and a band tied
with tape. He had indeed but two tapes, so that his band got out of
its place, which he took great pains to rectify.
"'Doubtless,' said he, 'senors, you are in quest of some office or
some prebend at the court of my lord of Toledo, or from the king, if I
may judge from the celerity with which you get along; for, in good
truth, my ass has hitherto had the fame of a good trotter, and yet he
could not overtake you."
"One of my companions answered, 'It is the steed of Senor Miguel de
Cervantes that is the cause of it, for he is very quick in his
paces.'"
"Scarcely had the student heard the name of Cervantes than, throwing
himself off his ass, while his cloak-bag tumbled on one side and his
portmanteau on the other, and his bands covered his face, he sprang
toward me, and, seizing me by the hand, exclaimed:
"'This, then, is the famous one-handed author, the merriest of all
writers, the favorite of the Muses!' As for me, when I heard him
pouring forth all these praises, I thought myself bound to answer him;
so, embracing his neck, by which I contrived to pull off his bands
altogether, I said, 'I am indeed that Cervantes, senor, but not the
favorite of the Muses, nor the other fine things which you have said
of me. Pray mount your ass again, and let us converse together for
the small remainder of our journey.' The good student did as I
desired. We then drew bit and proceeded at a more moderate pace. As we
rode on, we talked of my illness, but the student gave me little hope,
saying:
"'It is an hydropsy, which all the water in the ocean, if you could
drink it, would not cure; you must drink less, Senor Cervantes, and
not forget to eat, for that alone can cure you.'
"'Many other people,' said I, 'have told me the same thing, but it is
impossible for me not to drink as if I had been born for nothing but
drinking. My life is pretty nearly ended, and, to judge by the
quickness of my pulse, I cannot live longer than next Sunday. You have
made acquaintance with me at a very unfortunate time, as I fear I
shall not live to show my gratitude to you for your obliging conduct.'
"Such was our conversation when we arrived at the bridge of Toledo,
over which I was to pass, while he followed another route by the
bridge of Segovia. As to his future history, I leave that to the care
of fame. My friends, no doubt, will be very anxious to narrate it, and
I shall have great pleasure in hearing it. I embraced him anew, and
repeated the offer of my services.
"He spurred his ass, and left me as ill inclined to prosecute my
journey as he was well disposed to go on his; he had, however,
supplied my pen with ample materials for pleasantry. But all times are
not the same. Perhaps the day may arrive when, taking up the thread
which I am now compelled to break, I may complete what is now wanting,
and what I would fain tell. But adieu to gayety; adieu to humor;
adieu, my pleasant friends! I must now die, and I wish for nothing
better than speedily to see you--well contented in another world."
Such was the calm, philosophical gayety with which this
long-suffering, heroic man and Christian contemplated his approaching
death; and, in the words of Sismondi, it may be safely asserted that
this unaffected fortitude was characteristic of the soldier who fought
so valiantly at Lepanto, and who so firmly supported his five years'
captivity in Algiers.
Cervantes died at Madrid in 1616. It is, perhaps, interesting to
reflect that he was a contemporary of Shakespeare, so that the two
greatest humorists the world has produced were living at the same
time.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE[1]
[Footnote 1: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]
By SENATOR JOHN J. INGALLS
(1564-1616)
[Illustration: A house.]
In a small glazed cabinet near the north door of Holy Trinity Church
in the Warwickshire village of Stratford-upon-Avon, the long narrow
volume of the parish register lies open at the page on which is
inscribed in clear, clerkly hand the record of the christening of
William Shakespeare, April 26, 1564. Tradition, which delights in
coincidences, has selected as his birthday the anniversary of his
death, which occurred April 23, 1616, but the date is unknown. His
lineage was humble and his origin obscure, his ancestors having been
tenant farmers and small tradesmen in the same locality, without
wealth, education, estate, or public station. No other of the name has
reached special distinction before or since. His grandfather, Richard,
was a yeoman at the neighboring hamlet of Snitterfield. His father,
John, who appears, from the vague glimpses of his history discernible,
to have been of an ardent, careless, and improvident nature, removed
in early life from the farm at Snitterfield to Stratford, where he
kept a country store. He prospered in business for a while and was
active in local politics, rising through the successive gradations of
leet juror, constable, and alderman to high bailiff in 1568, although
unable to write his own name. He married, in 1557, Mary Arden, the
daughter of his father's landlord, who brought him as dower about
sixty acres of land and the equivalent of $200 in money. His pride was
apparently inflamed by political success, and he applied to the
Herald's College for a grant of arms, which was refused. From this
time his fortunes rapidly declined. He mortgaged his property,
squandered his wife's inheritance, was sued for debt, disregarded his
social and religious obligations, and became so indifferent to decency
that he was fined by the town authorities for neglecting to remove the
filth and refuse of his household from the street in front of his own
door. He died in 1601, his later years having been passed in honor and
comfort through the efforts of his son, who had already acquired
wealth and fame.
The homestead of John Shakespeare, in which he lived and carried on
his business, still stands on Henley Street, in Stratford, much the
same as it was four hundred and fifty years ago. It is a paltry hovel
of two low stories, half timbered, with meagre windows, and must have
been a squalid abode even in its prime. It is built flush with the
sidewalk, having neither vestibule nor entry, and the rough broken
pavement of the kitchen is sunken a step lower than the street. A huge
open fireplace of unhewn gray stones yawns rudely in the wall to the
right, and a narrow door leads to a smaller apartment in the rear.
Immediately above, reached by a precipitous stairway, is the bleak and
barren chamber, dimly lighted, the legendary birthplace of the poet.
The dwelling is more like the cavern of a savage than the residence of
civilized man. Making due allowance for the conditions of domestic
life and architecture in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, it is
difficult to imagine a home more rude and primitive, more destitute of
comfort and convenience, more indicative of poverty and social
inferiority. The rough-hewn oak of the frames and timbers and the
coarse mortar of the plastered spaces show no more decoration or
ornament than the frontier dug-out on the plains of Dakota or the
miner's cabin in the gulches of Montana.
In this environment William Shakespeare, the third child and eldest
son of eight children, was born and lived till the age of eighteen
years. Of his companions, his studies, his pleasures nothing is known.
A few doors from his father's house still stands a group of gray
buildings, worn, bleached, and washed like skeletons by the storms and
suns of eight centuries: a chapel with pointed windows and low square
tower, a hall and the alms-houses of the ancient guild. In the second
story of the hall was the endowed grammar school of Stratford,
restored by Edward VI. in 1553, and the uncouth, venerable desk at
which Shakespeare is said to have studied is included among the few
unauthenticated relics in the museum at the homestead. It is a
reasonable inference that whatever education he received was obtained
here, but this fact, as well as the character and amount of his early
training, is wholly conjectural. The first formal separate biography
of Shakespeare was published in 1743, one hundred and twenty-seven
years after his death, by Rowe, who says that the boy was withdrawn
from school in 1578 to assist his father in the drudgery of the shop
and farm. Other mouldy gossip makes him a butcher's apprentice, a
country pedagogue, and a lawyer's clerk, arrested for poaching,
addicted to carousing and the boorish pleasures of the country-side.
A little distance westward from Stratford by a footpath winding
through pleasant fields lies the hamlet of Shottery, in the edge of
which, with its gable to the highway, stands the cottage of Richard
Hathaway, as humble in its architecture and accessories as the
Shakespeare abode. The entrance is through a rustic garden with pinks
and marigolds bordering the narrow way, and a covered well before the
door. November 28, 1582, the Bishop of Worcester granted a license for
the marriage of "William Shagspere and Anne Hathwey" upon once asking
of the banns. The bridegroom was eighteen and the bride twenty-six. By
this act William Shakespeare assumed the paternity of a daughter born
six months afterward, and baptized Susanna, May 26, 1583. The only
other children born of the marriage were twins, Hamnet and Judith,
christened February 2, 1585. The two daughters survived their father,
but Hamnet died at the age of twelve.
Thus two months before he became of age Shakespeare found himself a
cadet of a ruined house, the parent of three children, with no
business, trade, or fortune, and the compulsory husband of a woman old
enough to have been the wife of his father. Where and how they lived
has not been discovered. The mature age and premature maternity of
Mrs. Shakespeare justify inferences which his mysterious departure for
London does not weaken, and his long absence, his infrequent visits to
Stratford, the Duke's injunction to Viola--"let still the woman take
An Elder than herself"--and the ironical bequest of his second best
bed, neither diminish nor destroy.
The seven years succeeding the birth of Hamnet and Judith are a blank
in Shakespeare's biography. He disappeared even from the reach of
rumor and tradition. One hundred and fifty years after his death
Oldys, the antiquarian, exhumed an ancient legend, to the effect that
he fled to London to avoid the consequences of lampooning a
neighboring nobleman who had prosecuted him for killing a deer in his
park, and sought employment at the theatre. Unsupported anecdotes
represent him as holding horses at the door of the play-house, then as
a servant to the company, and at last as general utility man on the
stage. As an actor he made no impression, although he continued to
appear in subordinate parts, and played in Ben Jonson's "Sejanus" at
its production in 1603, when he was forty years old. The first public
notice he received was in 1592, in a letter of Robert Greene, a
dissolute writer, who accuses Shakespeare and Marlowe of plagiarism,
conceit, and ingratitude. Chettle, the publisher, soon afterward
printed a retraction so far as Shakespeare was concerned, and
eulogized his manners, his honesty, and his art. Our acquaintance with
his life of twenty years in London, which closed probably in 1613, is
almost exclusively confined to the appearance of the plays and poems
bearing his name, and the date at which these were produced is
generally a matter of surmise or inference. During this interval he
became a large shareholder in two theatres, speculated in real estate,
loaned money, grew rapidly in wealth, and was a man about town. He
belonged to no church, nor to any political party, and sustained no
recorded relations with the scholars, soldiers, or statesmen of his
time.
[Illustration: Shakespeare arrested for Deer Stealing.]
The two volumes of poems, "Venus and Adonis," and "Lucrece," were
published respectively in 1593 and 1594, and the "Sonnets" in 1609.
The dramas were acted between 1587 and 1612, and are grouped by
critics in four periods of intellectual growth and development. They
are of unequal excellence. Some are mere versions and adaptations. The
plots and stories are generally borrowed. Some of the worst are
unspeakably bad, but the best, with their subtle and imperious command
of language, stately and splendid imagery, careless opulence of
incident, learning, and illustration, wit, wisdom, humor, and
philosophy, insight into the complex abysses of human passion,
familiarity with the secret motives of human conduct, and profound
meditation upon the most sombre problems of human destiny, mark the
highest elevation yet reached by the human mind.