more than himself the blow which killed him; no one resolved on
his death by a freer choice of his reason; he had not, like
Hamlet, a ghost to dictate to him his duty; in himself alone he
found that severe law to which he sacrificed his repose, his
affections, and his inclinations; no one is more thoroughly
master of himself; and yet, like all the rest, he dies, powerless
to resist fate. With him perishes the liberty which he aspired to
save; the hope of rendering his death useful does not even flash
across his mind; and yet Shakspeare does not make him exclaim,
when dying, "Virtue, thou art only an empty name!" And why not?
Because above this terrible conflict of man against necessity
soars his moral existence, independent and sovereign, free from
all the perils of the combat. The mighty genius whose view had
embraced the whole destiny of man could not have failed to
recognize its sublime secret; a sure instinct revealed to him
this final explanation, without which all is darkness and
uncertainty. Furnished, therefore, with the moral thread which
never breaks in his hands, he proceeds with firm steps through
the embarrassments of circumstances and the perplexities of
varied feelings; nothing can be simpler at bottom than
Shakspeare's action; nothing less complicated than the impression
which it leaves upon our minds. Our interest is never divided,
and still less does it waver between two opposite inclinations,
or two equally powerful affections. As soon as the characters
become known, and their position is developed, our choice is
made; we know what we desire and what we fear, whom we hate and
whom we love. There is also as little conflict of duties as of
interests; and the conscience wavers no more than the affections.
{98}
In the midst of political revolutions, in times when society is
at war with itself, and can no longer guide individuals by those
laws which it has imposed upon them for the maintenance of its
unity, then alone does Shakspeare's judgment hesitate, and allow
ours to hesitate also; he can himself no longer accurately
determine on which side lies the right, or what duty requires,
and he is therefore unable to tell us. "King John," "Richard
II.," and the three parts of "Henry VI.," furnish examples of
this. In every other drama, the moral position is evident, free
from ambiguity, and undisguised by complaisance; the characters
are not represented as deceiving or deceived, hovering between
vice and virtue, weakness and crime; what they are, they are
frankly and openly; their actions are depicted in vigorous
outlines, so that even the weakest eyesight can not mistake them.
And yet--so admirable is his perception of truths--in these
actions, so positive, complete, and consistent, all the
inconsistencies and fantastic mixtures of human nature exist and
are displayed. Macbeth has fully made up his mind to crime; no
link binds his conduct any longer to virtue; and yet who can
doubt that, in the character of Macbeth, side by side with the
passions which stimulate him to crime, there still exist those
inclinations which constitute virtue? The mother of Hamlet has
set no bounds to her incestuous love; she knows her crime and
boldly commits it; her position is that of a shameless culprit;
but her soul is that of a woman capable of loving modesty, and
finding happiness within the bounds of duty. Even Claudius
himself, the wretch Claudius, would wish to be able still to
pray; he can not do so, but he wishes he could. Thus the keen
vision of the philosopher enlightens and directs the imagination
of the poet; thus man appears to Shakspeare only when fully
furnished with all that belongs to his nature. The truth is
always there, before the eyes of the poet: he looks down and
writes.
{99}
But there is one truth which Shakspeare does not observe in this
manner, which he derives from himself, and without which all the
external truths which he contemplates would be merely cold and
sterile images; and that is, the feeling which these truths
excite within him. This feeling is the mysterious bond which
unites us to the outer world, and makes us truly know it; when
our mind has taken realities into consideration, our soul is
moved by an analogous and spontaneous impression; but for the
anger with which we are inspired by the sight of crime, whence
should we obtain the revelation of that element which renders
crime odious? No one has ever combined, in an equal degree with
Shakspeare, this double character of an impartial observer and a
man of profound sensibility. Superior to all by his reason, and
accessible to all by sympathy, he sees nothing without judging
it, and he judges it because he feels it. Could any one who did
not detest Iago have penetrated, as Shakspeare has done, into the
recesses of his execrable character? To the horror with which he
regards the criminal must be ascribed the terrible energy of the
language which he puts into his mouth. Who could make us tremble,
so much as Lady Macbeth herself, at the action for which she
prepares with so little fear? But when it becomes needful to
express pity or tenderness, the unrestraint of love, the
extravagance of maternal apprehension, or the stern and deep
grief of manly affection--then the observer may quit his post,
and the judge his tribunal. Shakspeare himself develops all the
abundance of his nature, and gives expression to those familiar
feelings of his soul which are set in motion by the slightest
contact with his imagination.
{100}
Women, children, old men--who has described them with such
truthfulness as he? Where the ingenuousness of requited affection
given birth to a purer flower than Desdemona? Has old age, when
shamefully deserted, and driven to madness by the weakness of
senility and the violence of grief, ever given utterance to more
pathetic lamentations than in "King Lear?" Who has not felt his
heart assailed by all the emotions of anguish which childhood can
inspire, on beholding the scene in which Hubert, in performance
of his promise to King John, is about to burn out the eyes of
young Arthur? And if this barbarous project were carried into
execution, who could endure it? But in such a case Shakspeare
would not have described the scene. There is an excess of grief
in presence of which he pauses; he takes pity on himself, and
repels impressions too powerful to be borne. Scarcely does he
permit Juliet to utter any words between Romeo's death and her
own; Macduff is silent after the massacre of his wife and
children; and Constance dies before we are allowed to behold the
death of Arthur. Othello alone approaches the whole of his
sufferings without mitigation; but his misfortune was so
horrible, when he was ignorant of it, that the impression which
he receives from it, after the discovery of his error, becomes
almost a consolation.
Thus moved by all that moves us, Shakspeare obtains our
confidence; we yield ourselves in security to that open soul in
which our feelings have already reverberated, and to that ready
imagination which is as much illumined by the splendid sun of
Italy as darkened by the sombre fogs of Denmark. Dramatic in the
portraiture of a mother's gambols with her child, and simple in
the terrible apparition which opens the first scene of "Hamlet,"
the poet is never unequal to the realities which ho has to
delineate, or the man to the emotions with which he wishes to
imbue our hearts.
{101}
Why, then, are we sometimes painfully compelled to pause while
following him? Why does a sort of impatience and fatigue
frequently disturb the admiration which we feel for his works?
One misfortune happened to Shakspeare; though he was always
lavish of his wealth, he was not always able to distribute it
either opportunely or skillfully. This was frequently the
misfortune of Corneille also. Ideas accumulated about Corneille,
as about Shakspeare, confusedly and tumultuously, and neither of
them had the courage to treat his own mind with prudent severity.
They forgot the position of the character they were describing,
in order to indulge in the thoughts which it awakened in the soul
of the poet. In Shakspeare, especially, this excessive indulgence
in his own ideas and feelings sometimes arrests and interrupts
the emotions awakened in the breast of the spectator, in a manner
which is fatal to the dramatic effect. It is not merely, as in
Corneille, the ingenious loquacity of a rather talkative mind;
but it is the restless and fantastic reverie of a mind astonished
at its own discoveries, not knowing how to reproduce the whole
impression which it has received from them, and heaping ideas,
images, and expressions one upon another, in order to awaken in
us feelings similar to those by which it is itself oppressed. The
feelings developed at such length are not always, however, those
which should properly occupy the personage by whom they are
expressed; and not only is the harmony of the position injured by
them, but we find ourselves compelled to undertake a certain
labor which, in the end, diverts our attention from the subject
on which it ought to be concentrated.
{102}
Though always simple in their emotions, the heroes of Shakspeare
are not always equally simple in their speeches; though always
true and natural in their ideas, they are not as constantly true
and natural in the combinations which they form from them. The
poet's gaze embraced an immense field, and his imagination,
traversing it with marvelous rapidity, perceived a thousand
distant or singular relations between the objects which met his
view, and passed from one to another by a multitude of abrupt and
curious transitions, which it afterward imposed upon both the
personages of the drama and the spectators. Hence arose the true
and great fault of Shakspeare, the only one that originated in
himself, and which is sometimes perceptible even in his finest
compositions; and that is, a deceptive appearance of laborious
research, which is occasioned, on the contrary, by the absence of
labor. Accustomed, by the taste of his age, frequently to connect
ideas and expressions by their most distant relations, he
contracted the habit of that learned subtlety which perceives and
assimilates every thing, and leaves no point of resemblance
unnoticed; and this fault has more than once marred the gayety of
his comedies, as well as destroyed the pathos of his tragedies.
If meditation had taught Shakspeare to fall back upon himself, to
contemplate his own strength, and to concentrate it by skillful
management, he would soon have rejected the abuse which he has
made of it, and would have speedily become conscious that neither
his heroes nor his spectators could follow him in that prodigious
movement of ideas, feelings, and intentions which, on every
occasion, and under the slightest pretext, arose and obtruded
themselves upon his own thought.
{103}
But so far as we are able, at the present day, to form any idea
of Shakspeare's character, from the scattered and uncertain
details which have reached us regarding his life and person, we
have every reason to believe that he never bestowed so much care
either on his labors or on his glory. More disposed to enjoy his
own powers than to turn them to their best account--docile to the
inspiration, rather than guided by the consciousness of his
genius--vexed but little by a craving after success, and more
inclined to doubt its value than attentive to the means of
obtaining it--the poet advanced without measuring his progress,
unvailing himself, as it were, at every step, and perhaps
retaining, even at the end of his career, some remains of
ingenuous ignorance of the marvelous riches which he scattered so
lavishly in every direction. His sonnets alone, of all his works,
contain a few allusions to his personal feelings, and to the
condition of his soul and life; but we rarely meet in them with
the idea, so natural to a poet, of the immortality which his
works are destined to achieve. He could not have been a man who
reckoned much upon posterity, or who cared at all about it, who
ever displayed so little anxiety to throw light upon the only
monuments of his private existence which posterity possesses
concerning him.
Printed for the first time in 1609, these sonnets were,
doubtless, published with Shakspeare's consent, although nothing
seems to indicate that he took the slightest part in their
publication. Neither his publisher nor himself has endeavored to
impart to them an historical interest by naming the persons to
whom they were addressed, or the occasions which inspired their
composition. Thus the light which they throw upon some of the
circumstances of his life is often so doubtful that it tends
rather to perplex than to guide the biographer. The passionate
style which pervades them all--even those which are evidently
addressed merely to a friend--has thrown the commentators upon
Shakspeare into great embarrassment.
{104}
Of all the conjectures which have been hazarded in explanation of
this fact, one alone, in my opinion, seems to possess any
likelihood. At a time when the mind, tormented, as it were, by
its youth and inexperience, tried all forms of expression, except
simplicity--and at a court in which _euphuism_, the
fashionable language, had introduced the most whimsical
travesties, both of persons and ideas, into familiar
conversation--it is possible that, in order to express real
feelings, the poet may sometimes have assumed, in these fugitive
compositions, the tone and language of conventionality. It is
known, from a pamphlet published in 1598, that Shakspeare's
"sugar'd sonnets," which were already celebrated, although they
had not yet been printed, were the delight of his private circle
of friends; and if it be remarked that the idea which terminates
them is almost always repeated, with variations, in several
successive sonnets, we shall feel strongly tempted to regard them
as the simple amusements of a mind which could never resist the
opportunity of expressing an ingenious idea. Not only, therefore,
are Shakspeare's sonnets insufficient to explain the facts to
which they allude, but it is only by a more or less logical
process of induction that they can be made to supply any details
regarding the occupations of Shakspeare's life during his
residence in London, and during those thirty years, now so
glorious, regarding which he has been at such pains to supply us
with no information.
Perhaps his position, as well as his character, may have
contributed to cause this silence. A feeling of pride, as much as
a sentiment of modesty, may have induced Shakspeare to leave in
oblivion an existence which gave him but little satisfaction. The
condition of an actor then possessed, in England, neither
consistency nor reputation. Whatever difference Hamlet may place
between strolling players and those who belonged to an
established theatre, the latter could not but bear the weight of
the coarseness of the public upon whom they were dependent, as
well as that of the colleagues with whom they shared the task of
diverting the public.
{105}
The general fondness for theatrical amusements furnished
employment to persons of every condition, from those who engaged
in bear-baitings, to the choristers of St. Paul's and the players
of Blackfriars. It was probably of some theatre holding a middle
rank between these two extremes that Shakspeare gives us so
amusing a description in the "Midsummer Night's Dream." But the
means of illusion to which the artisan performers of this drama
have recourse, are in no respect inferior to those of which the
most distinguished theatres made use. The actor, covered "with
lime and rough-cast," who represents the wall that separated
Pyramus and Thisbe, and moves his fingers to provide "the chink
through which the lovers whisper," and the man who, with his
lantern, his dog, and his thorn-bush, "doth the horned moon
present," did not require a much greater stretch of the
imagination of the spectators than was necessary to regard the
same scene as a garden full of flowers; then, without any
changes, as a rock upon which a vessel has just suffered
shipwreck; and, finally, as a field of battle, upon which "two
armies fly in, represented with four swords and bucklers."
[Footnote 17] There is reason to believe that all these
performances collected together very nearly the same audience; at
least, it is certain that Shakspeare's plays were performed both
at Blackfriars and at the Globe, two different theatres, although
both belonged to the same troop.
[Footnote 17: See the ironical description of the uncouth
state of the stage, given by Sir Philip Sidney in his
"Defense of Poesy."]
{106}
Strolling players were accustomed to give their performances in
the court-yards of inns. The stage was erected in one corner,
while the spectators occupied the remainder of the yard,
standing, like the actors, in the open air; the lower rooms and
the gallery which ran round the court, were doubtless opened to
the public at a higher rate of admission. The London theatres
were constructed upon this plan; and those which were called
"public playhouses," in opposition to the "private theatres,"
kept up the custom of performing in the open air, without any
other canopy than the sky. The Globe was a public theatre, and
the Blackfriars a private one; these last establishments
doubtless occupied a superior rank; and, at a later period, to
frequent the Blackfriars theatre was regarded as a mark of
elegant taste and superior discernment. But such distinctions are
incapable of being clearly defined, and when Shakspeare appeared
on the stage these shades of difference were probably very
confused. In 1609, Decker wrote a pamphlet entitled "The Gul's
Horne-booke," which contains a chapter, "How a gallant should
behave himself in a play-house." We learn from this authority
that a gentleman, on entering a public or private theatre, should
walk at once on the stage, and sit down either on the ground or
on a stool, as he found it convenient to pay for a seat or not.
He must valiantly keep his post, in spite of the gibes and
insults of the populace in the pit; because it becomes a
gentleman to laugh at "the mews and hisses of the opposed
rascality." However, if the multitude should begin to shout "Out
with the fool!" the danger becomes sufficiently serious for good
taste to permit the gentleman to withdraw. During the
performance, the common people were supplied with beer and
apples, of which the actors also frequently partook; while the
gentlemen, on their side, smoked their pipes and played at cards;
indeed, it was not at all unusual for the elegant _habitues_
of the theatre to begin a game at cards before the commencement
of the play.
{107}
"The Gul's Horne-booke" recommends them to play with an
appearance of great eagerness, even if they return the money to
each other at supper-time; and nothing, says Decker, can give
greater notoriety to a gentleman than to throw his cards on the
stage, after having torn up three or four of them with every
manifestation of rage. The duties of the spectators in possession
of the honors of the stage were to speak, to laugh, and to turn
their backs on the actors whenever they were displeased with
either the author or the play. These pleasures of the gentlemen
give a sufficient clue to those of the populace in the pit, whom
contemporary writers usually designate by the name of
"stinkards." The condition of the actors compelled to minister to
the amusement of such an audience could not but be attended by
more than one unpleasantness, and we may attribute to
Shakspeare's experience of an actor's life that aversion for
popular assemblies which is frequently displayed with great
energy in his works.
Nor do the condition and habits of the poets who wrote for the
stage give us a more honorable idea, in these two respects, of
the actors with whom they associated; and, in order to suppose
that Shakspeare, young, gay, and easy-tempered, could have
escaped from the influence of his two-fold character of poet and
actor, we need the assistance of that unshrinking faith which the
commentators repose in their patron. Shakspeare himself leaves us
little room to doubt that he fell into errors, which he at least
has the merit of regretting.
{108}
In one of his sonnets, he inquires why Fortune, whom he calls
"The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,"
should alone bear the reproach of the "public means" to which he
has been obliged to resort for his subsistence. And he adds:
"Thence comes it that my name receives a brand;
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand.
Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed,
While, like a willing patient, I will drink
Potions of eysel [Footnote 18] 'gainst my strong infection;
No bitterness that I will bitter think,
Nor double penance to correct correction."
[Footnote 18: Vinegar.]
In the next sonnet, addressing the same person, still in the same
tone of confident yet respectful affection, he says:
"Your love and pity doth th' impression fill
Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?"
In another sonnet, he laments over the blot which had divided two
lives united by affection, and says:
"I may not evermore acknowledge thee,
Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame;
Nor thou with public kindness honor me,
Unless thou take that honor from my name."
And in another sonnet, he complains that he is, if not
calumniated, at least wrongly judged; and that the "frailties of
his sportive blood" are spied out by censors, who are frailer
than himself. It is easy to divine the nature of Shakspeare's
frailties; and several sonnets on the infidelities, and even on
the vices, of the mistress whom he celebrates, give sufficient
proof that his errors were not always caused by persons capable
of excusing them. However, how can we suppose that, in the state
of morals in the sixteenth century, public severity could have
looked with great rigor on such disorders?
{109}
In order to explain the humiliation of the poet, we must suppose
either that he had been guilty of some extraordinarily scandalous
conduct, or that particular dishonor attached to the disorders
and position of an actor. The latter hypothesis appears to me the
most probable. No grave reproach can, at any time, have weighed
upon a man whose contemporaries never speak of him without
affection and esteem, and whom Ben Jonson declares to have been
"truly honest," without deriving from this assertion either the
opportunity or the right of relating some circumstance
disgraceful to his memory, or some well-known error which the
officious rival would not have failed to establish while excusing
it.
Perhaps, on being brought into contact with the higher classes of
society, struck by the display of a relative elegance of
sentiments and manners of which he had previously had no idea,
and becoming suddenly aware that his nature gave him a right to
participate in these delicacies which had hitherto been foreign
to his habits, Shakspeare felt himself oppressed, by his
position, with painful shackles; perhaps even he was led to
exaggerate his humiliation, by the natural disposition of a
haughty soul, which feels itself all the more abased by an
unequal condition, because it is conscious of its worthiness to
enjoy equality. At all events, there can be no doubt that, with
that measured circumspection which is as frequently the
accompaniment of pride as of modesty, Shakspeare labored to
overleap these humiliating differences of station, and succeeded
in his attempt. His first dedication to Lord Southampton, that of
"Venus and Adonis," is written with respectful timidity.
{110}
That of the poem of "Lucrece," which was published in the
following year, expresses grateful attachment, which feels sure
of being well received; and he vows to his protector "love
without end." The resemblance of the tone of this preface to that
of a great many of the sonnets, the repeated benefits in which
the friendship of Lord Southampton enabled their recipient to
glory, and the lively affection with which the sensitive and
confident Shakspeare was naturally inspired by the amiable and
generous protection of a young man of such brilliant rank and
merit--all these circumstances have led some of the commentators
to suppose that Lord Southampton may have been the object of the
poet's inexplicable sonnets. Without inquiring to what extent the
_euphuism_ then prevalent, the exaggeration of poetic
language, and the false taste of the age, may have imparted to
Lord Southampton the features of an adored mistress, we can not
but admit that most of these sonnets are addressed to a person of
superior rank, the devotion of the poet to whom bears the
character of submissive but passionate respect. Several of them,
also, seem to point to habitual and intimate literary
connections. Sometimes Shakspeare congratulates himself on
possessing the guidance and inspiration of his friend; and
sometimes he complains that he has ceased to be the sole
recipient of that inspiration, and says,
"I grant thou wert not married to my Muse;"
but yet the grief occasioned by this divided favor is expressed
under all the forms of jealousy, sometimes resigned to its fate,
and sometimes stimulated, by the bitterness of its feelings, to
give utterance to strong reproaches, which, however, never
transgress the bounds of respect.
{111}
Elsewhere he accuses himself, as it would appear, of infidelity
to "an old friend;" he has too "frequent been with unknown
minds," and "given to time" the "dear-purchased rights" of an
affection
"Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day;"
but he confesses his fault; and implores pardon in the name of
the confidence with which he is always inspired by the affection
he has neglected. Another sonnet speaks of mutual wrongs
pardoned, but the sorrow of which is still present. If these are
not mere forms of language, employed, perhaps, on occasions very
different from those which they appear to indicate, the feeling
which thus occupied the inner life of the poet must have been as
tempestuous as it was passionate.