with coarse and insipid productions; a pleasure which is so
ardently sought after by the human mind, calls for all the
efforts and all the power of human genius, This national movement
now stood in need only of a man of genius, capable of receiving
its impulse, and raising the public to the highest regions of
art. By what stimulus was Shakspeare prompted to undertake this
glorious task? What circumstance revealed to him his mission?
What sudden light illumined his genius?
{59}
These questions we can not answer. Just as a beacon shines in
the nighttime without disclosing to our view the prop by which it
is supported, so Shakspeare's mind appears to us, in his works,
in isolation, as it were, from his person. Scarcely, throughout
the long series of the poet's successes, can we discern any
traces of the man, and we possess no information whatever
regarding those early times of which he alone was able to give us
an account. As an actor, it does not appear that he distinguished
himself above his fellows. The poet is rarely adapted for action;
his strength lies beyond the world of reality, and he attains his
lofty elevation only because he does not employ his powers in
bearing the burdens of earth. Shakspeare's commentators will not
consent to deny him any of those successes to which he could
possibly lay claim, and the excellent advice which Hamlet gives
to the actors at the court of Denmark has been quoted in support
of a theory that Shakspeare must have executed marvelously well
that which he so thoroughly understood. But Shakspeare showed
equal acquaintance with the characters of great kings, mighty
warriors, and consummate villains, and yet no one would be likely
to conclude from this that he was capable of being a Richard the
Third or an Iago. Fortunately, we have reason to believe that
applause, which was then so easily obtained, was not bestowed in
a sufficient degree to tempt an ambition which the character of
the young poet would have rendered it too easy for him to
satisfy; and Rowe, his first historian, informs us that his
dramatic merits "soon distinguished him, if not as an
extraordinary actor, yet as an excellent writer."
{60}
Years nevertheless elapsed before Shakspeare made his appearance
on the stage as an author. He arrived in London in 1584, and is
not known to have engaged in any employment unconnected with the
theatre during his residence in the metropolis; but "Pericles,"
his first work, according to Dryden, though many of his other
critics and admirers have rejected it as spurious, did not appear
until 1590. How was it possible that, amid the novel scenes that
surrounded him, his active and fertile mind, whose rapidity,
according to his contemporaries, "equaled that of his pen," could
have remained for six years without producing any thing? In 1593,
he published his poem of "Venus and Adonis," which he dedicated
to Lord Southampton as "the first heir of his invention;" and
yet, during the two preceding years, two dramas which are now
ascribed to him had achieved success upon the stage. The
composition of the poem may have preceded them, although the
dedication was written subsequently to their production; but if
the "Venus and Adonis" is anterior to all his dramas, we must
come to the conclusion that, in the midst of his theatrical life,
Shakspeare's eminently dramatic genius was able to engage in
other labors, and that his first productions were not intended
for the stage. A more probable supposition is that Shakspeare
spent his labor, at first, upon works which were not his own, and
which his genius, still in its novitiate, has been unable to
rescue from oblivion. Dramatic productions, at that time, were
less the property of the author who had conceived them than of
the actors who had received them. This is always the case when
theatres begin to be established; the construction of a building
and the expenses of a performance are far greater risks to run
than the composition of a drama. To the founder of the theatre
alone is dramatic art indebted, at its origin, for that popular
concourse which establishes its existence, and which the talent
of the poet could never have drawn together without his
assistance.
{61}
When Hardy founded his theatre at Paris, each troop of actors had
its poet, who was paid a regular salary for the composition of
plays, just in the same way as the chaplain of the Earl of
Northumberland. In the time of Shakspeare, the English stage had
made much greater progress, and already enjoyed the facility of
selection and the advantages of competition. The poet no longer
disposed of his labor beforehand, but he sold it when completed;
and the publication of a piece, for permission to perform which
an author had been paid, was regarded, if not as a robbery, at
least as a want of delicacy which he found it difficult to defend
or excuse. While dramatic property was in this state, the share
which the self-love of an author might claim in it was held in
very low account the success of a work which he had sold did not
belong to him, and its literary merit became, in the hands of the
actors, a property which they turned to account by all the
improvements which their experience could suggest. Transported
suddenly into the midst of that moving picture of human
vicissitudes which even the paltriest dramatic productions then
heaped upon the stage, the imagination of Shakspeare doubtless
beheld new fields opening to its view. What interest, what
truthfulness might he not infuse into the store of facts
presented to him with such coarse baldness! What pathetic effects
might he not educe from all this theatrical parade! The matter
was before him, waiting for spirit and life. Why had not
Shakspeare attempted to communicate them to it? However confused
and incomplete his first views may have been, they were rays of
light arising to disperse the darkness and disorder of chaos. Now
a superior man possesses the power of making the light which
illumines his own eyes evident to the eyes of others.
{62}
Shakspeare's comrades doubtless soon perceived what new successes
he might obtain for them by remodeling the uncouth works which
composed their dramatic stock; and a few brilliant touches
imparted to a ground-work which he had not painted--a few
pathetic or terrible scenes intercalated in an action which he
had not directed--and the art of turning to account a plan which
he had not conceived, were, in all probability, his earliest
labors, and his first presages of glory. In 1592, a time at which
we can scarcely be certain that a single original and complete
work had issued from his pen, a jealous and discontented author,
whose compositions he had probably improved too greatly, speaks
of him, in the fantastic style of the time, as an "upstart crow,
beautified with our feathers; an absolute _Johannes
Factotum_, who is, in his own conceit, the only Shakescene in
the country." [Footnote 15]
[Footnote 15: Greene's "Groatsworth of Wit," published in
1592.]
It was, we are inclined to believe, while engaged in these
labors, more conformable to the necessities of his position than
to the freedom of his genius, that Shakspeare sought to recreate
his mind by the composition of his "Venus and Adonis." Perhaps
even the idea of this work was not then entirely new to him; for
several sonnets, relating to the same subject, occur in a volume
of poems published in 1596, under Shakspeare's name, and the
title of which, "The Passionate Pilgrim," is expressive of the
condition of a man wandering, in affliction, far from his native
land. The amusement of a few melancholy hours, from which the age
and character of the poet had not availed to preserve him at his
entrance upon a painful or uncertain destiny--these little works
are doubtless the first productions which Shakspeare's poetic
genius allowed him to avow; and several of them, as well as the
poem of "Venus and Adonis," need to be excused, it must be
confessed, by the effervescence of a youth too much addicted to
dreams of pleasure not to attempt to reproduce them in all their
forms.
{63}
In "Venus and Adonis," the poet, absolutely carried away by the
voluptuous power of his subject, seems entirely to have lost
sight of its mythological wealth. Venus, stripped of the prestige
of divinity, is nothing but a beautiful courtesan, endeavoring
unsuccessfully, by all the prayers, tears, and artifices of love,
to stimulate the languid desires of a cold and disdainful youth.
Hence arises a monotony which is not redeemed by the simple
gracefulness and poetic merit of many passages, and which is
augmented by the division of the poem into stanzas of six lines,
the last two of which almost invariably present a _jeu
d'esprit_. But a metre singularly free from irregularities, a
cadence full of harmony, and a versification which had never
before been equaled in England, announced the "honey-tongued
poet," and the poem of "Lucrece" appeared soon afterward to
complete those epic productions which for some time sufficed to
maintain his glory.
After having, in "Venus and Adonis," employed the most lascivious
colors to depict the pangs of unsatisfied desire, Shakspeare has
described, in "The Rape of Lucrece," with the chastest pen, and
by way of reparation, as it were, the progress and triumph of
criminal lust. The refinement of the ideas, the affectation of
the style, and the merits of the versification, are the same in
both works: the poetry in the second is less brilliant, but more
emphatic, and abounds less in graceful images than in lofty
thoughts; but we can already discern indications of a profound
acquaintance with the feelings of man, and great talent in
developing them in a dramatic form, by means of the slightest
circumstances of life.
{64}
Thus Lucrece, weighed down by a sense of her shame, after a night
of despair, summons a young slave at dawn of day, to dispatch him
to the camp with a letter to call her husband home; the slave,
being of a timid and simple character, blushes on appearing in
the presence of his mistress; but Lucrece, filled with the
consciousness of her dishonor, imagines that he blushes at her
shame; and, under the influence of the idea that her secret is
discovered, she stands trembling and confused before her slave.
One detail in this poem seems to indicate the epoch at which it
was written. Lucrece, to while away her grief, stops to
contemplate a picture of the siege of Troy; and, in describing
it, the poet complacently refers to the effects of perspective:
"The scalps of many, almost hid behind,
To jump up higher seem'd to mock the mind."
This is the observation of a man very recently struck with the
wonders of art, and a symptom of that poetic surprise which the
sight of unknown objects awakens in an imagination capable of
being moved thereby. Perhaps we may conclude, from this
circumstance, that the poem of "Lucrece" was composed during the
early part of Shakspeare's residence in London.
But whatever may be the date of these two poems, their place
among Shakspeare's works is at a period far more remote from us
than any of those which filled up his dramatic career. In this
career he marched forward, and drew his age after him; and his
weakest essays in dramatic poetry are indicative of the
prodigious power which he displayed in his last works.
Shakspeare's true history belongs to the stage alone; after
having seen it there, we can not seek for it elsewhere; and
Shakspeare himself no longer quitted it.
{65}
His sonnets--fugitive pieces which the poetic and sprightly grace
of some lines would not have rescued from oblivion but for the
curiosity which attaches to the slightest traces of a celebrated
man--may here and there cast a little light on the obscure or
doubtful portions of his life; but, in a literary point of view,
we have in future to consider him only as a dramatic poet.
I have already stated what was the first employment of his
talents in this kind of composition. Great uncertainty has
resulted therefrom with regard to the authenticity of some of his
works. Shakspeare had a hand in a vast number of dramas; and
probably, even in his own time, it would not have been always
easy to assign his precise share in them all. For two centuries,
criticism has been engaged in determining the boundaries of his
true possessions; but facts are wanting for this investigation,
and literary judgments have usually been influenced by a desire
to strengthen some favorite theory on the subject. It is,
therefore, almost impossible, at the present day, to pronounce
with certainty upon the authenticity of Shakspeare's doubtful
plays. Nevertheless, after having read them, I can not coincide
with M. Schlegel--for whose acumen I have the highest respect--in
attributing them to him. The baldness which characterizes these
pieces, the heap of unexplained incidents and incoherent
sentiments which they contain, and their precipitate progress
through undeveloped scenes toward events destitute of interest,
are unmistakable signs by which, in times still rude, we may
recognize fecundity devoid of genius; signs so contrary to the
nature of Shakspeare's talent, that I can not even discover in
them the defects which may have disfigured his earliest essays.
{66}
Among the multitude of plays which, by common consent, the latest
editors have rejected as being at least doubtful, "Locrine,"
"Thomas, Lord Cromwell," "The London Prodigal," "The Puritan,"
and "The Yorkshire Tragedy," scarcely present the slightest
indications of having been retouched by any hand superior to that
of their original author. "Sir John Oldcastle," which is more
interesting, and composed with greater good sense than any of the
foregoing, is animated in some scenes by a comic humor akin to
that of Shakspeare. But if it be true that genius, even in its
lowest abasement, gives forth some luminous rays to betray its
presence; if Shakspeare, in particular, bore that distinctive
mark which, in one of his sonnets, makes him say, in reference to
his writings,
"That every word doth almost tell my name," [Footnote 16]
assuredly he had not to reproach himself with the production of
that execrable accumulation of horrors which, under the name of
"Titus Andronicus," has been foisted upon the English people as a
dramatic work, and in which, Heaven be thanked! there is not a
single spark of truth, or scintillation of genius, which can give
evidence against him.
[Footnote 16: Sonnet 76, Knight's Library edition, vol. xii.,
p. 152.]
Of the doubtful plays, "Pericles" is, in my opinion, the only one
to which the name of Shakspeare can be attached with any degree
of certainty; or at least, it is the only one in which we find
evident traces of his co-operation, especially in the scene in
which Pericles meets and recognizes his daughter Marina, whom he
believed dead. If, during Shakspeare's lifetime, any other man
could have combined power and truth in so high a degree in the
delineation of the natural feelings, England would then have
possessed another poet.
{67}
Nevertheless, though it contains one fine scene and many
scattered beauties, the play is a bad one; it is destitute of
reality and art, and is entirely alien to Shakspeare's system: it
is interesting only as marking the point from which he started;
and it seems to belong to his works as a last monument of that
which he overthrew--as a remnant of that anti-dramatic
scaffolding for which he was about to substitute the presence and
movement of vitality.
The spectacles of barbarous nations always appeal to their sense
of vision before they attempt to influence their imagination by
the aid of poetry. The taste of the English for those
_pageants_, which, during the Middle Ages, constituted the
chief attraction of public solemnities throughout Europe,
exercised great influence over the stage in England. During the
first half of the fifteenth century, the monk Lydgate, when
singing the misfortunes of Troy with that liberty of erudition
which English literature tolerated to a greater extent than that
of any other country, describes a dramatic performance which, he
says, took place within the walls of Troy. He describes the poet,
"with deadly face all devoid of blood," rehearsing from a pulpit
"all the noble deeds that were historical of kings, princes, and
worthy emperors." At the same time,
"Amydde the theatre, shrowded in a tent
There came out men, gastful of their cheres,
Disfygured their faces with vyseres,
Playing by signes in the people's sight
That the poete songe hath on height."
Lydgate, a monk and poet, equally ready to rhyme a legend or a
ballad, to compose verses for a masquerade or to sketch the plan
of a religious pantomime, had probably figured in some
performance of this kind; and his description certainly gives us
an accurate idea of the dramatic exhibitions of his time.
{68}
When dialogue-poetry had taken possession of the stage, pantomime
remained as an ornament and addition to the performance. In most
of the plays anterior to Shakspeare, personages of an almost
invariably emblematical character appear between the acts, to
indicate the subjects of the scenes about to follow. An
historical or allegorical personage is introduced to explain
these emblems, _moralize_ the piece, that is, to point out
the moral truths contained in it. In "Pericles," Gower, a poet of
the fourteenth century--celebrated for his "Confessio Amantis,"
in which he has related, in English verse, the story of Pericles
as told by more ancient writers--comes upon the stage to state
to the public, not that which is about to happen, but such
anterior facts as require to be explained, that the drama may be
properly understood. Sometimes his narrative is interrupted and
supplemented by the dumb representation of the facts themselves.
Gower then explains all that the mute action has not elucidated.
He appears not only at the commencement of the play and between
the acts, but even during the course of an act, whenever it is
found convenient to abridge by narrative some less interesting
part of the action, in order to apprise the spectator of a change
of place or a lapse of time, and thus to transport his
imagination wherever a new scene requires its presence. This was
decidedly a step in advance; a useless accessory had become a
means of development and of clearness. But Shakspeare speedily
rejected this factitious and awkward contrivance as unworthy of
his art and ere long he inspired the action with power to explain
itself, to make itself understood on appearance, and thus to give
dramatic performances that aspect of life and reality which could
never be attained by a machinery which thus coarsely displayed
its wheel-works to public view.
{69}
Among Shakspeare's subsequent dramas, "Henry V." and the
"Winter's Tale" are the only ones in which the chorus intervenes
to relieve the poet in the difficult task of conveying his
audience through time and space. The chorus of "Romeo and
Juliet," which was retained perhaps as a relic of ancient usage,
is only a poetic ornament, quite unconnected with the action of
the play. After the production of "Pericles," dumb pageants
completely disappeared; and if the three parts of "Henry VI." do
not attest, by their power of composition, a close relationship
to Shakspeare's system, nothing, at least in their material
forms, is out of harmony with it.
Of these three pieces, the first has been absolutely denied to
Shakspeare; and it is, in my opinion, equally difficult to
believe that it is entirely his composition, and that the
admirable scene between Talbot and his son does not bear the
impress of his hand. Two old dramas, printed in 1600, contain the
plan, and even numerous details of the second and third parts of
"Henry VI." These two original works were long attributed to our
poet, as a first essay which he afterward perfected. But this
opinion will not bear an attentive examination; and all the
probabilities, both literary and historical, unite in granting to
Shakspeare, in the last two parts of "Henry VI.," no other share
than that of a more important and extensive remodeling than he
was able to bestow upon other works submitted to his correction.
Brilliant developments, imagery conceived with taste and followed
up with skill, and a lofty, animated, and picturesque style, are
the characteristics which distinguish the great poet's work from
the primitive production which he had merely beautified with his
magnificent coloring.
{70}
As regards their plan and arrangement, the original pieces have
undergone no change; and even after the composition of the three
parts of "Henry VI.," Shakspeare might still speak of the "Venus
and Adonis" as the "first heir of his invention."
But when will this invention finally display itself in all its
freedom? When will Shakspeare walk alone on that stage on which
he is to achieve such mighty progress? Some of his biographers
place the "Comedy of Errors," and "Love's Labor Lost"--the first
two works the honors and criticisms of which he has to share with
no one--before "Henry VI." in order of time. In this unimportant
discussion, one fact alone is certain, and becomes a new subject
of surprise. The first dramatic work which the imagination of
Shakspeare truly produced was a comedy; and this comedy will be
followed by others: he has at last taken wing, but not as yet
toward the realms of tragedy. Corneille also began with comedy,
but he was then ignorant of his own powers, and almost ignorant
of the drama. The familiar scenes of life had alone presented
themselves to his thoughts; and the scenes of his comedies are
laid in his native town, in the Galerie du Palais and in the
Place Royale. His subjects are timidly borrowed from surrounding
circumstances; he has not yet risen above himself, or transcended
his limited sphere; his vision has not yet penetrated into those
ideal regions in which his imagination will one day roam at will.
But Shakspeare is already a poet; imitation no longer trammels
his progress; and his conceptions are no longer formed
exclusively within the world of his habits. How was it that the
frivolous spirit of comedy was his first guide in that poetic
world from which he drew his inspiration?
{71}
Why did not the emotions of tragedy first awaken the powers of so
eminently tragic a poet? Was it this circumstance which led
Johnson to give this singular opinion: "Shakspeare's tragedy
seems to be skill; his comedy to be instinct?"
Assuredly, nothing can be more whimsical than to refuse to
Shakspeare the instinct of tragedy; and if Johnson had had any
feeling of it himself, such an idea would never have entered his
mind. The fact which I have just stated, however, is not open to
doubt; it is well deserving of explanation, and has its causes in
the very nature of comedy, as it was understood and treated by
Shakspeare.