For a good many years past the anatomic study of Shakspere, of which a
revival seems now on foot, has been somewhat out of fashion, as compared
with its vogue in the palmy days of the New Shakspere Society in
England, and the years of the battle between the iconoclasts and the
worshippers in Germany. When Mr. Fleay and Mr. Spedding were hard at
work on the metrical tests; when Mr. Spedding was subtly undoing the
chronological psychology of Dr. Furnivall; when the latter student was
on his part undoing in quite another style some of the judgments of Mr.
Swinburne; and when Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps was with natural wrath
calling on Mr. Browning, as President of the Society, to keep Dr.
Furnivall in order, we (then) younger onlookers felt that literary
history was verily being made. Our sensations, it seemed, might be as
those of our elders had been over Mr. Collier's emendated folio, and
the tragical end thereof. Then came a period of lull in things
Shaksperean, partly to be accounted for by the protrusion of the
Browning Society and kindred undertakings. It seemed as if once more men
had come to the attitude of 1850, when Mr. Phillipps had written: "An
opinion has been gaining ground, and has been encouraged by writers
whose judgment is entitled to respectful consideration, that almost if
not all the commentary on the works of Shakspere of a necessary and
desirable kind has already been given to the world."[1] And, indeed, so
much need was there for time to digest the new criticism that it may be
doubted whether among the general cultured public the process is even
now accomplished.
To this literary phase in particular, and to our occupation with other
studies in general, may be attributed the opportunity which still exists
for the discussion of one of the most interesting of all problems
concerning Shakspere. Mr. Browning, Mr. Meredith, Ibsen, Tolstoi--a host
of peculiarly modern problem-makers have been exorcising our not
inexhaustible taste for the problematic, so that there was no very
violent excitement over even the series of new "Keys" to the sonnets
which came forth in the lull of the analysis of the plays; and yet, even
with all the problems of modernity in view, it seems as if it must be
rather by accident of oversight than for lack of interest in new
developments of Shakspere-study that so little attention has been given
among us to a question which, once raised, has a very peculiar literary
and psychological attraction of its own--the subject, namely, of the
influence which the plays show their author to have undergone from the
Essays of Montaigne.
As to the bare fact of the influence, there can be little question. That
Shakspere in one scene in the TEMPEST versifies a passage from the prose
of Florio's translation of Montaigne's chapter OF THE CANNIBALS has been
recognised by all the commentators since Capell (1767), who detected the
transcript from a reading of the French only, not having compared the
translation. The first thought of students was to connect the passage
with Ben Johnson's allusion in VOLPONE[2] to frequent "stealings from
Montaigne" by contemporary writers; and though VOLPONE dates from 1605,
and the TEMPEST from 1610-1613, there has been no systematic attempt to
apply the clue chronologically. Still, it has been recognised or
surmised by a series of writers that the influence of the essayist on
the dramatist went further than the passage in question. John Sterling,
writing on Montaigne in 1838 (when Sir Frederick Madden's pamphlet on
the autograph of Shakspere in a copy of Florio had called special
attention to the Essays), remarked that "on the whole, the celebrated
soliloquy in HAMLET presents a more characteristic and expressive
resemblance to much of Montaigne's writings than any other portion of
the plays of the great dramatist which we at present remember"; and
further threw out the germ of a thesis which has since been disastrously
developed, to the effect that "the Prince of Denmark is very nearly a
Montaigne, lifted to a higher eminence, and agitated by more striking
circumstances and a severer destiny, and altogether a somewhat more
passionate structure of man."[3] In 1846, again, Philarete Chasles, an
acute and original critic, citing the passage in the TEMPEST, went on to
declare that "once on the track of the studies and tastes of Shakspere,
we find Montaigne at every corner, in HAMLET, in OTHELLO, in CORIOLANUS.
Even the composite style of Shakspere, so animated, so vivid, so new, so
incisive, so coloured, so hardy, offers a multitude of striking
analogies to the admirable and free manner of Montaigne."[4] The
suggestion as to the "To be or not to be" soliloquy has been taken up by
some critics, but rejected by others; and the propositions of M.
Chasles, so far as I am aware, have never been supported by evidence.
Nevertheless, the general fact of a frequent reproduction or
manipulation of Montaigne's ideas in some of Shakspere's later plays
has, I think, since been established.
Twelve years ago I incidentally cited, in an essay on the composition of
HAMLET, some dozen of the Essays of Montaigne from which Shakspere had
apparently received suggestions, and instanced one or two cases in which
actual peculiarities of phrase in Florio's translation of the Essays are
adopted by him, in addition to a peculiar coincidence which has been
pointed out by Mr. Jacob Feis in his work entitled SHAKSPERE AND
MONTAIGNE; and since then the late Mr. Henry Morley, in his edition of
the Florio translation, has pointed to a still more remarkable
coincidence of phrase, in a passage of HAMLET which I had traced to
Montaigne without noticing the decisive verbal agreement in question.
Yet so far as I have seen, the matter has passed for little more than a
literary curiosity, arousing no new ideas as to Shakspere's mental
development. The notable suggestion of Chasles on that head has been
ignored more completely than the theory of Mr. Feis, which in comparison
is merely fantastic. Either, then, there is an unwillingness in England
to conceive of Shakspere as owing much to foreign influences, or as a
case of intelligible mental growth, or else the whole critical problem
which Shakspere represents--and he may be regarded as the greatest of
critical problems--comes within the general disregard for serious
criticism, noticeable among us of late years. And the work of Mr. Feis,
unfortunately, is as a whole so extravagant that it could hardly fail to
bring a special suspicion on every form of the theory of an intellectual
tie between Shakspere and Montaigne. Not only does he undertake to show
in dead earnest what Sterling had vaguely suggested as conceivable, that
Shakspere meant Hamlet to represent Montaigne, but he strenuously argues
that the poet framed the play in order to discredit Montaigne's
opinions--a thesis which almost makes the Bacon theory specious by
comparison. Naturally it has made no converts, even in Germany, where,
as it happens, it had been anticipated.
In France, however, the neglect of the special problem of Montaigne's
influence on Shakspere is less easily to be explained, seeing how much
intelligent study has been given of late by French critics to both
Shakspere and Montaigne. The influence is recognised; but here again it
is only cursorily traced. The latest study of Montaigne is that of M.
Paul Stapfer, a vigilant critic, whose services to Shakspere-study have
been recognised in both countries. But all that M. Stapfer claims for
the influence of the French essayist on the English dramatist is thus
put:--
"Montaigne is perhaps too purely French to have exercised
much influence abroad. Nevertheless his influence on England
is not to be disdained. Shakspere appreciated him (_le
goutait_); he has inserted in the TEMPEST a passage of the
chapter DES CANNIBALES; and the strong expressions of the
ESSAYS on man, the inconstant, irresolute being, contrary to
himself, marvellously vain, various and changeful, were
perhaps not unconnected with (_peut etre pas etrangeres a_)
the conception of HAMLET. The author of the scene of the
grave-diggers must have felt the savour and retained the
impression of this thought, humid and cold as the grave:
'The heart and the life of a great and triumphant emperor
are but the repast of a little worm.' The translation of
Plutarch, or rather of Amyot, by Thomas North, and that of
Montaigne by Florio, had together a great and long vogue in
the English society of the seventeenth century."[5]
So modest a claim, coming from the French side, can hardly be blamed on
the score of that very modesty. It is the fact, however, that, though
M. Stapfer has in another work[6] compared Shakspere with a French
classic critically enough, he has here understated his case. He was led
to such an attitude in his earlier study of Shakspere by the slightness
of the evidence offered for the claim of M. Chasles, of which he wrote
that it is "a gratuitous supposition, quite unjustified by the few
traces in his writings of his having read the Essays."[7] But that
verdict was passed without due scrutiny. The influence of Montaigne on
Shakspere was both wider and deeper than M. Stapfer has suggested; and
it is perhaps more fitting, after all, that the proof should be
undertaken by some of us who, speaking Shakspere's tongue, cannot well
be suspected of seeking to belittle him when we trace the sources for
his thought, whether in his life or in his culture. There is still,
indeed, a tendency among the more primitively patriotic to look
jealously at such inquiries, as tending to diminish the glory of the
worshipped name; but for anyone who is capable of appreciating
Shakspere's greatness, there can be no question of iconoclasm in the
matter. Shakspere ignorantly adored is a mere dubious mystery; Shakspere
followed up and comprehended, step by step, albeit never wholly
revealed, becomes more remarkable, more profoundly interesting, as he
becomes more intelligible. We are embarked, not on a quest for
plagiarisms, but on a study of the growth of a wonderful mind. And in
the idea that much of the growth is traceable to the fertilising contact
of a foreign intelligence there can be nothing but interest and
attraction for those who have mastered the primary sociological truth
that such contacts of cultures are the very life of civilisation.