"Our greatest agitations have strange springs and ridiculous
causes. What ruin did our last Duke of Burgundy run into,
for the quarrel of a cart-load of sheep-skins?... See why
that man doth hazard both his honour and life on the fortune
of his rapier and dagger; let him tell you whence the cause
of that confusion ariseth, he cannot without blushing; so
vain and frivolous is the occasion."
And the idea in Hamlet's lines "rightly to be great," etc., is suggested
in the essay OF REPENTING,[46] where we have:
"The nearest way to come unto glory were to do that for
conscience which we do for glory.... The worth of the mind
consisteth not in going high, but in going orderly. Her
greatness is not exercised in greatness; in mediocrity it
is."
In the essay OF EXPERIENCE[47] there is a sentence partially expressing
the same thought, which is cited by Mr. Feis as a reproduction:
"The greatness of the mind is not so much to draw up, and
hale forward, as to know how to range, direct, and
circumscribe itself. It holdeth for great what is
sufficient, and sheweth her height in loving mean things
better than eminent."
Here, certainly, as in the previous citation, the idea is not identical
with that expressed by Hamlet. But the elements he combines are there;
and again, in the essay OF SOLITARINESS[48] we have the picture of the
soldier fighting furiously for the quarrel of his careless king, with
the question: "Who doth not willingly chop and counter-change his
health, his ease, yea his life, for glory and reputation, the most
unprofitable, vain, and counterfeit coin that is in use with us."
And yet again the thought crops up in the APOLOGY OF RAYMOND SEBONDE:
"This horror-causing array of so many thousands of armed
men, so great fury, earnest fervour, and undaunted courage,
it would make one laugh to see on how many vain occasions it
is raised and set on fire.... The hatred of one man, a
spite, a pleasure ... causes which ought not to move two
scolding fishwives to catch one another, is the soul and
motive of all this hurly-burly."
XII. Yet one more of Hamlet's sayings peculiar to the revised form of
the play seems to be an echo of a thought of Montaigne's. At the outset
of the soliloquy last quoted from, Hamlet says:--
"What is a man
If his chief good and market of his time,
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast; no more.
Sure He that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and godlike reason
To fust in us unused."
The bearing of the thought in the soliloquy, where Hamlet spasmodically
applies it to the stimulation of his vengeance, is certainly never given
to it by Montaigne, who has left on record[49] his small approbation of
revenge; but the thought itself is there, in the essay[50] ON GOODS AND
EVILS.
"Shall we employ the intelligence Heaven hath bestowed upon
us for our greatest good, to our ruin, repugning nature's
design and the universal order and vicissitude of things,
which implieth that every man should use his instrument and
means for his own commodity?"
Again, there is a passage in the essay OF THE AFFECTION OF FATHERS TO
THEIR CHILDREN,[51] where there occurs a specific coincidence of phrase,
the special use of the term "discourse," which we have already traced
from Shakspere to Montaigne; and where at the same time the contrast
between man and beast is drawn, though not to the same purpose as in the
speech of Hamlet:--
"Since it hath pleased God to endow us with some capacity of
discourse, that as beasts we should not servilely be
subjected to common laws, but rather with judgment and
voluntary liberty apply ourselves unto them, we ought
somewhat to yield unto the simple authority of Nature, but
not suffer her tyrannically to carry us away; only reason
ought to have the conduct of our inclinations."
Finally we have a third parallel, with a slight coincidence of terms, in
the essay[52] OF GIVING THE LIE:
"Nature hath endowed us with a large faculty to entertain
ourselves apart, and often calleth us unto it, to teach us
that partly we owe ourselves unto society, but in the better
part unto ourselves."
It may be argued that these, like one or two of the other sayings above
cited as echoed by Shakspere from Montaigne, are of the nature of
general religious or ethical maxims, traceable to no one source; and if
we only found one or two such parallels, their resemblance of course
would have no evidential value, save as regards coincidence of terms.
For this very passage, for instance, there is a classic original, or at
least a familiar source, in Cicero,[53] where the commonplace of the
contrast between man and beast is drawn in terms that come in a general
way pretty close to Hamlet's. This treatise of Cicero was available to
Shakspere in several English translations;[54] and only the fact that we
find no general trace of Cicero in the play entitles us to suggest a
connection in this special case with Montaigne, of whom we do find so
many other traces. It is easy besides to push the theory of any
influence too far; and when for instance we find Hamlet saying he fares
"Of the chameleon's dish: I eat the air, promise-crammed," it would be
as idle to assume a reminiscence of a passage of Montaigne on the
chameleon[55] as it would be to derive Hamlet's phrase "A king of shreds
and patches" from Florio's rendering in the essay[56] OF THE INCONSTANCY
OF OUR ACTIONS:
"We are all framed of flaps and patches, and of so
shapeless and diverse a contexture, that every piece and
every moment playeth his part."
In the latter case we have a mere coincidence of idiom; in the former a
proverbial allusion.[57] An uncritical pursuit of such mere accidents of
resemblance has led Mr. Feis to such enormities as the assertion that
Shakspere's contemporaries knew Hamlet's use of his tablets to be a
parody of the "much-scribbling Montaigne," who had avowed that he made
much use of his; the assertion that Ophelia's "Come, my coach!" has
reference to Montaigne's remark that he has known ladies who would
rather lend their honour than their coach; and a dozen other
propositions, if possible still more amazing. But when, with no
foregone conclusion as to any polemic purpose on Shakspere's part, we
restrict ourselves to real parallels of thought and expression; when we
find that a certain number of these are actually textual; when we find
further that in a single soliloquy in the play there are several
reproductions of ideas in the essays, some of them frequently recurring
in Montaigne; and when finally it is found that, with only one
exception, all the passages in question have been added to the play in
the Second Quarto, after the publication of Florio's translation, it
seems hardly possible to doubt that the translation influenced the
dramatist in his work.
Needless to say, the influence is from the very start of that high sort
in which he that takes becomes co-thinker with him that gives,
Shakspere's absorption of Montaigne being as vital as Montaigne's own
assimilation of the thought of his classics. The process is one not of
surface reflection, but of kindling by contact; and we seem to see even
the vibration of the style passing from one intelligence to the other;
the nervous and copious speech of Montaigne awakening Shakspere to a
new sense of power over rhythm and poignant phrase, at the same time
that the stimulus of the thought gives him a new confidence in the
validity of his own reflection. Some cause there must have been for this
marked species of development in the dramatist at that particular time:
and if we find pervading signs of one remarkable new influence, with no
countervailing evidence of another adequate to the effect, the inference
is about as reasonable as many which pass for valid in astronomy. For it
will be found, on the one hand, that there is no sign worth considering
of a Montaigne influence on Shakspere before HAMLET; and, on the other
hand, that the influence to some extent continues beyond that play.
Indeed, there are still further minute signs of it there, which should
be noted before we pass on.
XIII. Among parallelisms of thought of a less direct kind, one may be
traced between an utterance of Hamlet's and a number of Montaigne's
sayings on the power of imagination and the possible equivalence of
dream life and waking life. In his first dialogue with Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, where we have already noted an echo of Montaigne, Hamlet
cries:
"O God! I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a
king of infinite space; were it not that I have bad dreams;"
and Guildenstern answers:
"Which dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance
of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream."
The first sentence may be compared with a number in Montaigne,[58] of
which the following[59] is a type:
"Man clean contrary [to the Gods] possesseth goods in
imagination and evils essentially. We have had reason to
make the powers of our imagination to be of force, for all
our felicities are but in conceipt, and as it were in a
dream;"
while the reply of Guildenstern further recalls several of the passages
already cited.
XIV. Another apparent parallel of no great importance, but of more
verbal closeness, is that between Hamlet's jeering phrase:[60] "Your
worm is your only emperor for diet," and a sentence in the APOLOGY: "The
heart and the life of a great and triumphant emperor are the dinner of a
little worm," which M. Stapfer compares further with the talk of Hamlet
in the grave-diggers' scene. Here, doubtless, we are near the level of
proverbial sayings, current in all countries.
XV. As regards HAMLET, I can find no further parallelisms so direct as
any of the foregoing, except some to be considered later, in connection
with the "To be" soliloquy. I do not think it can be made out that, as
M. Chasles affirmed, Hamlet's words on his friendship for Horatio can be
traced directly to any of Montaigne's passages on that theme. "It would
be easy," says M. Chasles, "to show in Shakspere the _branloire
perenne_[61] of Montaigne, and the whole magnificent passage on
friendship, which is found reproduced (_se trouve reporte_) in HAMLET."
The idea of the world as a perpetual mutation is certainly prevalent in
Shakspere's work; but I can find no exact correspondence of phrase
between Montaigne's pages on his love for his dead friend Etienne de la
Boetie and the lines in which Hamlet speaks of his love for Horatio. He
rather gives his reasons for his love than describes the nature and
completeness of it in Montaigne's way; and as regards the description
of Horatio, it could have been independently suggested by such a
treatise as Seneca's DE CONSTANTIA SAPIENTIS, which is a monody on the
theme with which it closes: _esse aliquem invictum, esse aliquem in quem
nihil fortuna possit_--"to be something unconquered, something against
which fortune is powerless." In the fifth section the idea is worded in
a fashion that could have suggested Shakspere's utterance of it; and he
might easily have met with some citation of the kind. But, on the other
hand, this note of passionate friendship is not only new in Shakspere
but new in HAMLET, in respect of the First Quarto, in which the main
part of the speech to Horatio does not occur, and in view of the
singular fact that in the first Act of the play as it stands Hamlet
greets Horatio as a mere acquaintance; and it is further to be noted
that the description of Horatio as "one in suffering all that suffers
nothing" is broadly suggested by the quotation from Horace in
Montaigne's nineteenth chapter (which, as we have already seen,
impressed Shakspere), and by various other sayings in the Essays. After
the quotation from Horace (_Non vultus instantis tyranni_), in the
Nineteenth Essay, Florio's translation runs:
"She (the soul) is made mistress of her passions and
concupiscences, lady of indigence, of shame, of poverty, and
of all fortune's injuries. Let him that can, attain to this
advantage. Herein consists the true and sovereign liberty,
that affords us means wherewith to jest and make a scorn of
force and injustice, and to deride imprisonment, gyves, or
fetters."
Again, in the essay OF THREE COMMERCES OR SOCIETIES,[62] we have this:
"We must not cleave so fast unto our humours and
dispositions. Our chiefest sufficiency is to supply
ourselves to diverse fashions. It is a being, but not a
life, to be tied and bound by necessity to one only course.
The goodliest minds are those that have most variety and
pliableness in them.... Life is a motion unequal, irregular,
and multiform....
" ... My fortune having inured and allured me, even from my
infancy, to one sole, singular, and perfect amity, hath
verily in some sort distasted me from others.... So that it
is naturally a pain unto me to communicate myself by halves,
and with modification....
"I should commend a high-raised mind that could both bend
and discharge itself; that wherever her fortune might
transport her, she might continue constant.... I envy those
which can be familiar with the meanest of their followers,
and vouchsafe to contract friendship and frame discourse
with their own servants."
Again, la Boetie is panegyrised by Montaigne for his rare poise and
firmness of character;[63] and elsewhere in the essays we find many
allusions to the ideal of the imperturbable man, which Montaigne has in
the above cited passages brought into connection with his ideal of
friendship. It could well be, then--though here we cannot argue the
point with confidence--that in this as in other matters the strong
general impression that Montaigne was so well fitted to make on
Shakspere's mind was the source of such a change in the conception and
exposition of Hamlet's relation to Horatio as is set up by Hamlet's
protestation of his long-standing admiration and love for his friend.
Shakspere's own relations with one or other of his noble patrons would
make him specially alive to such suggestion.
XVI. We now come to the suggested resemblance between the "To be or not
to be" soliloquy and the general tone of Montaigne on the subject of
death. On this resemblance I am less disposed to lay stress now than I
was on a first consideration of the subject thirteen years ago. While I
find new coincidences of detail on a more systematic search, I am less
impressed by the alleged general resemblance of tone. In point of fact,
the general drift of Hamlet's soliloquy is rather alien to the general
tone of Montaigne on the same theme. That tone, as we shall see,
harmonises much more nearly with the speech of the Duke to Claudio, on
the same theme, in MEASURE FOR MEASURE. What really seems to subsist in
the "To be" soliloquy, after a careful scrutiny, is a series of echoes
of single thoughts; but there is the difficulty that some of these occur
in the earlier form of the soliloquy in the First Quarto, a circumstance
which tends--though not necessarily[64]--to throw a shade of doubt on
the apparent echoes in the finished form of the speech. We can but weigh
the facts as impartially as may be.
First, there is the striking coincidence of the word "consummation"
(which appears only in the Second Quarto), with Florio's translation of
_aneantissement_ in the essay OF PHYSIOGNOMY, as above noted. Secondly,
there is a curious resemblance between the phrase "take arms against a
sea of troubles" and a passage in Florio's version of the same essay,
which has somehow been overlooked in the disputes over Shakspere's line.
It runs:
"I sometimes suffer myself by starts to be surprised with
the pinchings of these unpleasant conceits, which, whilst I
arm myself to expel or wrestle against them, assail and beat
me. Lo here another huddle or tide of mischief, that on the
neck of the former came rushing upon me."
There arises here the difficulty that Shakspere's line had been
satisfactorily traced to AElian's[65] story of the Celtic practice of
rushing into the sea to resist a high tide with weapons; and the matter
must, I think, be left open until it can he ascertained whether the
statement concerning the Celts was available to Shakspere in any
translation or citation.[66]
Again, the phrase "Conscience doth make cowards of us all" is very like
the echo of two passages in the essay[67] OF CONSCIENCE: "Of such
marvellous working power is the sting of conscience: which often
induceth us to bewray, to accuse, and to combat ourselves"; "which as it
doth fill us with fear and doubt, so doth it store us with assurance and
trust;" and the lines about "the dread of something after death" might
point to the passage in the Fortieth Essay, in which Montaigne cites the
saying of Augustine that "Nothing but what follows death, makes death to
be evil" (_malam mortem non facit, nisi quod sequitur mortem_) cited by
Montaigne in order to dispute it. The same thought, too, is dealt with
in the essay[68] on A CUSTOM OF THE ISLE OF CEA, which contains a
passage suggestive of Hamlet's earlier soliloquy on self-slaughter. But,
for one thing, Hamlet's soliloquies are contrary in drift to Montaigne's
argument; and, for another, the phrase "Conscience makes cowards of us
all" existed in the soliloquy as it stood in the First Quarto, while the
gist of the idea is actually found twice in a previous play, where it
has a proverbial ring.[69] And "the _hope_ of something after death"
figures in the First Quarto also.
Finally, there are other sources than Montaigne for parts of the
soliloquy, sources nearer, too, than those which have been pointed to in
the Senecan tragedies. There is, indeed, as Dr. Cunliffe has pointed
out,[70] a broad correspondence between the whole soliloquy and the
chorus of women at the end of the second Act of the TROADES, where the
question of a life beyond is pointedly put:
"Verum est? an timidos fabula decepit,
Umbras corporibus vivere conditis?"
It is true that the choristers in Seneca pronounce definitely against
the future life:
"Post mortem nihil est, ipsaque mors nihil....
Rumores vacui verbaque inania,
Et par sollicito fabula somnio."
But wherever in Christendom the pagan's words were discussed, the
Christian hypothesis would be pitted against his unbelief, with the
effect of making one thought overlay the other; and in this fused form
the discussion may easily have reached Shakspere's eye and ear. So it
would be with the echo of two Senecan passages noted by Mr. Munro in the
verses on "the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller
returns." In the HERCULES FURENS[71] we have:
"Nemo ad id sero venit, unde nunquam
Quum semel venit potuit reverti;"
and in the HERCULES OETAEUS[72] there is the same thought:
"regnum canis inquieti
Unde non unquam remeavit ullus."
But here, as elsewhere, Seneca himself was employing a standing
sentiment, for in the best known poem of Catullus we have:
"Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum
Illuc, unde negant redire quemquam."[73]
And though there was in Shakspere's day no English translation of
Catullus, the commentators long ago noted[74] that in Sandford's
translation of Cornelius Agrippa (? 1569), there occurs the phrase, "The
countrie of the dead is irremeable, that they cannot return," a fuller
parallel to the passage in the soliloquy than anything cited from the
classics.
Finally, in Marlowe's EDWARD II.,[75] written before 1593, we have:
"Weep not for Mortimer,
That scorns the world, and, as a traveller,
Goes to discover countries yet unknown."[76]
So that, without going to the Latin, we have obvious English sources for
notable parts of the soliloquy.
Thus, though Shakspere may (1) have seen part of the Florio translation,
or separate translations of some of the essays, before the issue of the
First Quarto; or may (2) easily have heard that very point discussed by
Florio, who was the friend of his friend Jonson, or by those who had
read the original; or may even (3) himself have read in the original;
and though further it seems quite certain that his "consummation
devoutly to be wished" was an echo of Florio's translation of the
Apology of Socrates; on the other hand we are not entitled to trace the
soliloquy as a whole to Montaigne's stimulation of Shakspere's thought.
That Shakspere read Montaigne in the original once seemed probable to
me, as to others; but, on closer study, I consider it unlikely, were it
only because the Montaigne influence in his work begins, as aforesaid,
in HAMLET. Of all the apparent coincidences I have noticed between
Shakspere's previous plays and the essays, none has any evidential
value. (1) The passage on the music of the spheres in the MERCHANT OF
VENICE[77] recalls the passage on the subject in Montaigne's essay of
CUSTOM;[78] but then the original source is Cicero, IN SOMNIUM
SCIPIONIS, which had been translated into English in 1577. (2)
Falstaff's rhapsody on the virtues of sherris[79] recalls a passage in
the essay OF DRUNKENNESS,[80] but then Montaigne avows that what he says
is the common doctrine of wine-drinkers. (3) Montaigne cites[81] the old
saying of Petronius, that "all the world's a stage," which occurs in AS
YOU LIKE IT; but the phrase itself, being preserved by John of
Salisbury, would be current in England. It is, indeed, said to have been
the motto of the Globe Theatre. Thus, while we are the more strongly
convinced of a Montaigne influence beginning with HAMLET, we are bound
to concede the doubtfulness of any apparent influence before the Second
Quarto. At most we may say that both of Hamlet's soliloquies which touch
on suicide evidently owe something to the discussions set up by
Montaigne's essays.[82]
XVII. In the case of the Duke's exhortation to Claudio in MEASURE FOR
MEASURE, on the contrary, the whole speech may be said to be a synthesis
of favourite propositions of Montaigne. The thought in itself, of
course, is not new or out-of-the-way; it is nearly all to be found
suggested in the Latin classics; but in the light of what is certain for
us as to Shakspere's study of Montaigne, and of the whole cast of the
expression, it is difficult to doubt that Montaigne is for Shakspere the
source. Let us take a number of passages from Florio's translation of
the Nineteenth Essay, to begin with:
"The end of our career is death: it is the necessary object
of our aim; if it affright us, how is it possible we should
step one foot further without an ague?"
"What hath an aged man left him of his youth's vigour, and
of his fore past life?... When youth fails in us, we feel,
nay we perceive, no shaking or transchange at all in
ourselves: which is essence and verity is a harder death
than that of a languishing and irksome life, or that of age.
Forasmuch as the leap from an ill being into a not being is
not so dangerous or steepy as it is from a delightful and
flourishing being into a painful and sorrowful condition. A
weak bending and faint stopping body hath less strength to
bear and undergo a heavy burden: So hath our soul."
"Our religion hath no surer human foundation than the
contempt of life. Discourse of reason doth not only call and
summon us unto it. For why should we fear to lose a thing,
which being lost, cannot be moaned? But also, since we are
threatened by so many kinds of death, there is no more
inconvenience to fear them all than to endure one: what
matter it when it cometh, since it is unavoidable?... Death
is a part of yourselves; you fly from yourselves. The being
you enjoy is equally shared between life and death ... The
continual work of your life is to contrive death; you are in
death during the time you continue in life ... during life
you are still dying."
The same line of expostulation occurs in other essays. In the Fortieth
we have:
"Now death, which some of all horrible things call the most
horrible, who knows not how others call it the only haven of
this life's torments? the sovereign good of nature? the only
stay of our liberty? and the ready and common receipt of our
evils?...
" ... Death is but felt by discourse, because it is the
emotion of an instant. A thousand beasts, a thousand men,
are sooner dead than threatened."
Then take a passage occurring near the end of the APOLOGY OF RAYMOND
SEBONDE:
"We do foolishly fear a kind of death, whereas we have
already passed and daily pass so many others.... The flower
of age dieth, fadeth, and fleeteth, when age comes upon us,
and youth endeth in the flower of a full-grown man's age,
childhood in youth, and the first age dieth in infancy; and
yesterday endeth in this day, and to-day shall die in
to-morrow."
Now compare textually the Duke's speech:
"Be absolute for death: either death or life
Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life:--
If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art,
(Servile to all the skiey influences)
That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st,
Hourly afflict: merely, thou are death's fool;
For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun,
And yet run'st towards him still: Thou art not noble;
For all the accommodations that thou bear'st
Are nursed by baseness: Thou art by no means valiant,
For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork
Of a poor worm: Thy best of rest is sleep,
And that thou oft provok'st; yet grossly fear'st
Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself;
For thou exist'st on many thousand grains
Which issue out of dust: Happy thou art not;
For what thou hast not, still thou striv'st to get,
And what thou hast forget'st: Thou art not certain,
For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,
After the moon: If thou art rich, thou art poor;
For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey,
And death unloads thee: Friend hast thou none;
For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire,
Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum,
For ending thee no sooner: Thou hast no youth nor age,
But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep,
Dreaming on both: for all thy blessed youth
Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms
Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich,
Thou hast neither heat, affection, limbs, nor beauty,
To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in this,
That bears the name of life? Yet in this life
Lie hid more thousand deaths: yet death we fear,
That makes these odds all even."[83]
Then collate yet further some more passages from the Essays:
"They perceived her (the soul) to be capable of diverse
passions, and agitated by many languishing and painful
motions ... subject to her infirmities, diseases, and
offences, even as the stomach or the foot ... dazzled and
troubled by the force of wine; removed from her seat by the
vapours of a burning fever.... She was seen to dismay and
confound all her faculties by the only biting of a sick dog,
and to contain no great constancy of discourse, no virtue,
no philosophical resolution, no contention of her forces,
that might exempt her from the subjection of these
accidents...."[84]
"It is not without reason we are taught to take notice of
our sleep, for the resemblance it hath with death. How
easily we pass from waking to sleeping; with how little
interest we lose the knowledge of light, and of
ourselves...."[85]
"Wherefore as we from that instant take a title of being,
which is but a twinkling in the infinite course of an
eternal night, and so short an interruption of our perpetual
and natural condition, death possessing whatever is before
and behind this moment, and also a good part of this moment,
"[86]
"Every human nature is ever in the middle between being born
and dying, giving nothing of itself but an obscure
appearance and shadow, and an uncertain and weak
opinion."[87]
Compare finally the line "Thy best of rest is sleep" (where the word
rest seems a printer's error) with the passage "We find nothing so sweet
in life as a quiet and gentle sleep," already cited in connection with
our fourth parallel.
XVIII. The theme, in fine, is one of Montaigne's favourites. And the
view that Shakspere had been impressed by it seems to be decisively
corroborated by the fact that the speech of Claudio to Isabella,
expressing those fears of death which the Duke seeks to calm, is
likewise an echo of a whole series of passages in Montaigne. Shakspere's
lines run:
"Ay, but to die, and go we know not where,
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot:
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice,
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those, that lawless and incertain thoughts
Imagine howling!--'tis too horrible!..."
So far as I know, the only idea in this passage which belongs to the
current English superstition of Shakspere's day, apart from the natural
notion of death as a mere rotting of the body, is that of the
purgatorial fire; unless we assume that the common superstition as to
the souls of unbaptised children being blown about until the day of
judgment was extended in the popular imagination to the case of executed
criminals. He may have heard of the account given by Empedocles, as
cited in Plutarch,[88] of the punishment of the offending daemons, who
were whirled between earth and air and sun and sea; but there is no
suggestion in that passage that human souls were so treated. Dante's
INFERNO, with its pictures of carnal sinners tossed about by the winds
in the dark air of the second circle,[89] and of traitors punished by
freezing in the ninth,[90] was probably not known to the dramatist; nor
does Dante's vision coincide with Claudio's, in which the souls are
blown "about the pendent world." Shakspere may indeed have heard some of
the old tales of a hot and cold purgatory, such as that of Drithelm,
given by Bede,[91] whence (rather than from Dante) Milton drew his idea
of an alternate torture.[92] But there again, the correspondence is only
partial; whereas in Montaigne's APOLOGY OF RAIMOND SEBONDE we find,
poetry apart, nearly every notion that enters into Claudio's speech:
"The most universal and received fantasy, and which
endureth to this day, hath been that whereof Pythagoras is
made author ... which is that souls at their departure from
us did but pass and roll from one to another body, from a
lion to a horse, from a horse to a king, incessantly
wandering up and down, from house to mansion.... Some added
more, that the same souls do sometimes ascend up to heaven,
and come down again.... Origen waked them eternally, to go
and come from a good to a bad estate. The opinion that Varro
reporteth is, that in the revolutions of four hundred and
forty years they reconjoin themselves unto their first
bodies.... Behold her (the soul's) progress elsewhere: He
that hath lived well reconjoineth himself unto that star or
planet to which he is assigned; who evil, passeth into a
woman. And if then he amend not himself, he transchangeth
himself into a beast, of condition agreeing to his vicious
customs, and shall never see an end of his punishments until
... by virtue of reason he have deprived himself of those
gross, stupid, and elementary qualities that were in him....
They (the Epicureans) demand, what order there should be if
the throng of the dying should be greater than that of such
as be born ... and demand besides, what they should pass
their time about, whilst they should stay, until any other
mansion were made ready for them.... Others have staved the
soul in the deceased bodies, wherewith to animate serpents,
worms, and other beasts, which are said to engender from the
corruption of our members, yea, and from our ashes....
Others make it immortal without any science or knowledge.
Nay, there are some of ours who have deemed that of
condemned men's souls devils were made...."[93]
It is at a short distance from this passage that we find the suggestion
of a frozen purgatory:
"Amongst them (barbarous nations) was also found the belief
of purgatory, but after a new form, for what we ascribe unto
fire they impute unto cold, and imagine that souls are both
purged and punished by the vigor of an extreme
coldness."[94]
And over and above this peculiar correspondence between the Essays and
the two speeches on death, we may note how some of the lines of the Duke
in the opening scene connect with two of the passages above cited in
connection with Hamlet's last soliloquy, expressing the idea that nature
or deity confers gifts in order that they should be used. The Duke's
lines are among Shakspere's best:
"Thyself and thy belongings
Are not thine own so proper as to waste
Thyself upon thy virtues, them on thee.
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
Not light them for themselves: for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike
As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touched
But to fine issues: nor nature never lends
The smallest scruple of her excellence,
But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor,
Both thanks and use...."
Here we have once more a characteristically Shaksperean transmutation
and development of the idea rather than a reproduction; and the same
appears when we compare the admirable lines of the poet with a homiletic
sentence from the APOLOGY OF RAYMOND SEBONDE:--
"It is not enough for us to serve God in spirit and soul; we
owe him besides and we yield unto him a corporal
worshipping: we apply our limbs, our motions, and all
external things to honour him."
But granting the philosophic as well as the poetic heightening, we are
still led to infer a stimulation of the poet's thought by the Essays--a
stimulation not limited to one play, but affecting other plays written
about the same time. Another point of connection between HAMLET and
MEASURE FOR MEASURE is seen when we compare the above passage, "Spirits
are not finely touched but to fine issues," with Laertes' lines[95]:
"Nature is fine in love, and when 'tis fine
It sends some precious instance of itself
After the thing it loves."
And though such data are of course not conclusive as to the time of
composition of the plays, there is so much of identity between the
thought in the Duke's speech, just quoted, and a notable passage in
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA, as to strengthen greatly the surmise that the
latter play was also written, or rather worked-over, by Shakspere about
1604. The phrase:
"if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, 'twere all the same
As if we had them not,"
is developed in the speech of Ulysses to Achilles[96]:
"A strange fellow here
Writes me that man--how dearly ever parted
How much in having, or without, or in--
Cannot make boast to have that which he hath,
Nor feels not what he knows, but by reflection;
As when his virtues shining upon others
Heat them, and they retort their heat again
To the first giver."
I do not remember in Montaigne any such development of the idea as
Shakspere here gives it; indeed, we have seen him putting forth a
contrary teaching; and looking to the context, where Ulysses admits the
thesis to be "familiar," we are bound to infer a direct source for it.
In all probability it derives from Seneca, who in his treatise DE
BENEFICIIS[97] throws out the germ of the ideas as to Nature demanding
back her gifts, and as to virtue being nothing if not reflected; and
even suggests the principle of "thanks and use."[98] This treatise, too,
lay to Shakspere's hand in the translation of 1578, where the passages:
"Rerum natura nihil dicitur perdere, quia quidquid illi avellitur, ad
illam redit; nec perire quidquam potest, quod quo excidat non habet, sed
eodem evolvitur unde discedit"; and "quaedam quum sint honesta,
pulcherrima summae virtutis, nisi cum altero non habent locum," are
translated:
"The nature of a thing cannot be said to have foregone
aught, because that whatsoever is plucked from it returneth
to it again; neither can anything be lost which hath not
whereout of to pass, but windeth back again unto whence it
came;"
and
"Some things though they be honest, very goodly and right
excellently vertuous, yet have they not their effect but in
a co-partner."
Whether it was Shakspere's reading of Montaigne that sent him to Seneca,
to whom Montaigne[99] avows so much indebtedness, we of course cannot
tell; but it is enough for the purpose of our argument to say that we
have here another point or stage in a line of analytical thought on
which Shakspere was embarked about 1603, and of which the starting point
or initial stimulus was the perusal of Florio's Montaigne. We have the
point of contact with Montaigne in HAMLET, where the saying that reason
is implanted in us to be used, is seen to be one of the many
correspondences of thought between the play and the Essays. The idea is
more subtly and deeply developed in MEASURE FOR MEASURE, and still more
subtly and philosophically in TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. The fact of the
process of development is all that is here affirmed, over and above the
actual phenomena of reproduction before set forth.
As to these, the proposition is that in sum they constitute such an
amount of reproduction of Montaigne as explains Jonson's phrase about
habitual "stealings." There is no justification for applying that to the
passage in the TEMPEST, since not only is that play not known to have
existed in its present form in 1605,[100] when VOLPONE was produced, but
the phrase plainly alleges not one but many borrowings. I am not aware
that extracts from Montaigne have been traced in any others of the
English contemporary dramatists. But here in two plays of Shakspere,
then fresh in memory--the Second Quarto having been published in 1604
and MEASURE FOR MEASURE produced in the same year--were echoes enough
from Montaigne to be noted by Jonson, whom we know to have owned, as did
Shakspere, the Florio folio, and to have been Florio's warm admirer. And
there seems to be a confirmation of our thesis in the fact that, while
we find detached passages savouring of Montaigne in some later plays of
the same period, as in one of the concluding period, the TEMPEST, we do
not again find in any one play such a cluster of reminiscences as we
have seen in HAMLET and MEASURE FOR MEASURE, though the spirit
of Montaigne's thought, turned to a deepening pessimism, may be said to
tinge all the later tragedies.
(a) In OTHELLO (? 1604) we have Iago's "'tis in ourselves that we are
thus or thus," already considered, to say nothing of Othello's phrase--
"I saw it not, thought it not, it harmed not me....
He that is robb'd, not wanting what is stolen,
Let him not know it, and he's not robb'd at all."
--a philosophical commonplace which compares with various passages in
the Fortieth Essay.
(b) In LEAR (1606) we have such a touch as the king's lines[101]--
"And take upon's the mystery of things
As if we were God's spies;"
--which recalls the vigorous protest of the essays, THAT A MAN OUGHT
SOBERLY TO MEDDLE WITH THE JUDGING OF THE DIVINE LAWS,[102] where
Montaigne avows that if he dared he would put in the category of
imposters the
"interpreters and ordinary controllers of the designs of
God, setting about to find the causes of each accident, and
to see in the secrets of the divine will the
incomprehensible motives of its works."
This, again, is a recurrent note with Montaigne; and much of the
argument of the APOLOGY is typified in the sentence:--
"What greater vanity can there be than to go about by our
proportions and conjectures to guess at God?"
(c) But there is a yet more striking coincidence between a passage in
the essay[103] of JUDGING OF OTHERS' DEATH and the speech of Edmund[104]
on the subject of stellar influences. In the essay Montaigne sharply
derides the habit of ascribing human occurrences to the interference of
the stars--which very superstition he was later to support by his own
authority in the APOLOGY, as we have seen above, in the passage on the
"power and domination" of the celestial bodies. The passage in the
thirteenth essay is the more notable in itself, being likewise a protest
against human self-sufficiency, though the bearing of the illustration
is directly reversed. Here he derides man's conceit: "We entertain and
carry all with us: whence it followeth that we deem our death to be some
great matter, and which passeth not so easily, nor without a solemn
consultation of the stars." Then follow references to Caesar's sayings as
to his star, and the "common foppery" as to the sun mourning his death a
year.
"And a thousand such, wherewith the world suffers itself to
be so easily cony-catched, deeming that our own interests
disturb heaven, and his infinity is moved at our least
actions. 'There is no such society between heaven and us
that by our destiny the shining of the stars should be as
mortal as we are.'"
There seems to be an unmistakable reminiscence of this passage in
Edmund's speech, where the word "foppery" is a special clue:
"This is the excellent foppery of the world! that when we
are sick in fortune (often the surfeit of our own
behaviour), we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the
moon, and the stars: as if we were villains by necessity;
fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and traitors
by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers
by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all
that we are evil in, by divine thrusting on...."
(d) Again, in MACBETH (1606), the words of Malcolm to Macduff[105]:
"Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak,
Whispers the o'erfraught heart and bids it break"
--an idea which also underlies Macbeth's "this perilous stuff, which
weighs upon the heart"--recalls the essay[106] OF SADNESS, in which
Montaigne remarks on the
"mournful silent stupidity which so doth pierce us when
accidents surpassing our strength overwhelm us," and on the
way in which "the soul, bursting afterwards forth into tears
and complaints ... seemeth to clear and dilate itself";
going on to tell how the German Lord Raisciac looked on his
dead son "till the vehemency of his sad sorrow, having
suppressed and choked his vital spirits, felled him stark
dead to the ground."
The parallel here, such as it is, is at least much more vivid than that
drawn between Shakspere's lines and one of Seneca:
Curae leves loquuntur: ingentes stupent[107]--"Light
troubles speak: the great ones are dumb."
Certainly no one of these latter passages would singly suffice to prove
that Shakspere had read Montaigne, though the peculiar coincidence of
one word in Edgar's speech with a word in Florio, above noted, would
alone raise the question. But even had Shakspere not passed, as we shall
see cause to acknowledge, beyond the most melancholy mood of Montaigne
into one of far sterner and more stringent pessimism, an absence or
infrequency of suggestions of Montaigne in the plays between 1605 and
1610 would be a very natural result of Jonson's gibe in VOLPONE. That
gibe, indeed, is not really so ill-natured as the term "steal" is apt to
make it sound for our ears, especially if we are prepossessed--as even
Mr. Fleay still seems to be--by the old commentators' notion of a deep
ill-will on Jonson's part towards Shakspere. There was probably no such
ill-will in the matter, the burly scholar's habit of robust banter being
enough to account for the form of his remark. As a matter of fact, his
own plays are strewn with classic transcriptions; and though he
evidently plumed himself on his power of "invention"[108] in the matter
of plots--a faculty which he knew Shakspere to lack--he cannot
conceivably have meant to charge his rival with having committed any
discreditable plagiarism in drawing upon Montaigne. At most he would
mean to convey that borrowing from the English translation of Montaigne
was an easy game as compared with his own scholar-like practice of
translating from the Greek and Latin, and from out-of-the-way authors,
too.
However that might be, the fact stands that Shakspere did about 1604
reproduce Montaigne as we have seen; and it remains to consider what the
reproduction signifies, as regards Shakspere's mental development.