SHAKSPEARE

The four greatest names in English poetry, are almost the four first we

come to--Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton. There are no others

that can really be put in competition with these. The two last have had

justice done them by the voice of common fame. Their names are blazoned in

the very firmament of reputation; while the two first, (though "the fault

has been more in their stars than in themselves that they are underlings")

either never emerged far above the horizon, or were too soon involved in

the obscurity of time. The three first of these are excluded from Dr.

Johnson's Lives of the Poets (Shakspeare indeed is so from the dramatic

form of his compositions): and the fourth, Milton, is admitted with a

reluctant and churlish welcome.

In comparing these four writers together, it might be said that Chaucer

excels as the poet of manners, or of real life; Spenser, as the poet of

romance; Shakspeare, as the poet of nature (in the largest use of the

term): and Milton, as the poet of morality. Chaucer most frequently

describes things as they are: Spenser, as we wish them to be; Shakspeare,

as they would be; and Milton as they ought to be. As poets, and as great

poets, imagination, that is, the power of feigning things according to

nature, was common to them all: but the principle or moving power, to

which this faculty was most subservient in Chaucer, was habit, or

inveterate prejudice; in Spenser, novelty, and the love of the

marvellous; in Shakspeare, it was the force of passion, combined with

every variety of possible circumstances; and in Milton, only with the

highest. The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity; of Spenser,

remoteness; of Milton, elevation; of Shakspeare, everything.--It has been

said by some critic, that Shakspeare was distinguished from the other

dramatic writers of his day only by his wit; that they had all his other

qualities but that; that one writer had as much sense, another as much

fancy, another as much knowledge of character, another the same depth of

passion, and another as great a power of language. This statement is not

true; nor is the inference from it well-founded, even if it were. This

person does not seem to have been aware that, upon his own shewing, the

great distinction of Shakspeare's genius was its virtually including the

genius of all the great men of his age, and not his differing from them in

one accidental particular. But to have done with such minute and literal

trifling.

The striking peculiarity of Shakspeare's mind was its generic quality, its

power of communication with all other minds--so that it contained a

universe of thought and feeling within itself, and had no one peculiar

bias, or exclusive excellence more than another. He was just like any

other man, but that he was like all other men. He was the least of an

egotist that it was possible to be. He was nothing in himself; but he was

all that others were, or that they could become. He not only had in

himself the germs of every faculty and feeling, but he could follow them

by anticipation, intuitively, into all their conceivable ramifications,

through every change of fortune or conflict of passion, or turn of

thought. He had "a mind reflecting ages past," and present:--all the

people that ever lived are there. There was no respect of persons with

him. His genius shone equally on the evil and on the good, on the wise

and the foolish, the monarch and the beggar: "All corners of the earth,

kings, queens, and states, maids, matrons, nay, the secrets of the grave,"

are hardly hid from his searching glance. He was like the genius of

humanity, changing places with all of us at pleasure, and playing with our

purposes as with his own. He turned the globe round for his amusement, and

surveyed the generations of men, and the individuals as they passed, with

their different concerns, passions, follies, vices, virtues, actions, and

motives--as well those that they knew, as those which they did not know,

or acknowledge to themselves. The dreams of childhood, the ravings of

despair, were the toys of his fancy. Airy beings waited at his call, and

came at his bidding. Harmless fairies "nodded to him, and did him

curtesies:" and the night-hag bestrode the blast at the command of "his so

potent art." The world of spirits lay open to him, like the world of real

men and women: and there is the same truth in his delineations of the one

as of the other; for if the preternatural characters he describes could be

supposed to exist, they would speak, and feel, and act, as he makes them.

He had only to think of any thing in order to become that thing, with all

the circumstances belonging to it. When he conceived of a character

whether real or imaginary, he not only entered into all its thoughts and

feelings, but seemed instantly, and as if by touching a secret spring, to

be surrounded with all the same objects, "subject to the same skyey

influences," the same local, outward, and unforeseen accidents which would

occur in reality. Thus the character of Caliban not only stands before us

with a language and manners of its own, but the scenery and situation of

the enchanted island he inhabits, the traditions of the place, its strange

noises, its hidden recesses, "his frequent haunts and ancient

neighbourhood," are given with a miraculous truth of nature, and with all

the familiarity of an old recollection. The whole "coheres semblably

together" in time, place, and circumstance. In reading this author, you do

not merely learn what his characters say,--you see their persons. By

something expressed or understood, you are at no loss to decypher their

peculiar physiognomy, the meaning of a look, the grouping, the bye-play,

as we might see it on the stage. A word, an epithet paints a whole scene,

or throws us back whole years in the history of the person represented. So

(as it has been ingeniously remarked) when Prospero describes himself as

left alone in the boat with his daughter, the epithet which he applies to

her, "Me and thy _crying_ self," flings the imagination instantly back

from the grown woman to the helpless condition of infancy, and places the

first and most trying scene of his misfortunes before us, with all that he

must have suffered in the interval. How well the silent anguish of Macduff

is conveyed to the reader, by the friendly expostulation of

Malcolm--"What! man, ne'er pull your hat upon your brows!" Again, Hamlet,

in the scene with Rosencrans and Guildenstern, somewhat abruptly concludes

his fine soliloquy on life by saying, "Man delights not me, nor woman

neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so." Which is explained by

their answer--"My lord, we had no such stuff in our thoughts. But we

smiled to think, if you delight not in man, what lenten entertainment the

players shall receive from you, whom we met on the way:"--as if while

Hamlet was making this speech, his two old schoolfellows from Wittenberg

had been really standing by, and he had seen them smiling by stealth, at

the idea of the players crossing their minds. It is not "a combination and

a form" of words, a set speech or two, a preconcerted theory of a

character, that will do this: but all the persons concerned must have been

present in the poet's imagination, as at a kind of rehearsal; and

whatever would have passed through their minds on the occasion, and have

been observed by others, passed through his, and is made known to the

reader.--I may add in passing, that Shakspeare always gives the best

directions for the costume and carriage of his heroes. Thus, to take one

example, Ophelia gives the following account of Hamlet; and as Ophelia had

seen Hamlet, I should think her word ought to be taken against that of any

modern authority.

"_Ophelia._ My lord, as I was reading in my closet,

Prince Hamlet, with his doublet all unbrac'd,

No hat upon his head, his stockings loose,

Ungartred, and down-gyved to his ancle,

Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,

And with a look so piteous,

As if he had been sent from hell

To speak of horrors, thus he comes before me.

_Polonius._ Mad for thy love!

_Oph._ My lord, I do not know,

But truly I do fear it.

_Pol._ What said he?

_Oph._ He took me by the wrist and held me hard.

Then goes he to the length of all his arm;

And with his other hand thus o'er his brow,

He falls to such perusal of my face,

As he would draw it: long staid he so;

At last, a little shaking of my arm,

And thrice his head thus waving up and down,

He rais'd a sigh so piteous and profound,

As it did seem to shatter all his bulk,

And end his being. That done, he lets me go,

And with his head over his shoulder turn'd,

He seem'd to find his way without his eyes;

For out of doors he went without their help,

And to the last bended their light on me."

_Act II. Scene 1._

How after this airy, fantastic idea of irregular grace and bewildered

melancholy any one can play Hamlet, as we have seen it played, with strut,

and stare, and antic right-angled sharp-pointed gestures, it is difficult

to say, unless it be that Hamlet is not bound, by the prompter's cue, to

study the part of Ophelia. The account of Ophelia's death begins thus:

"There is a willow hanging o'er a brook,

That shows its hoary leaves in the glassy stream."----

Now this is an instance of the same unconscious power of mind which is as

true to nature as itself. The leaves of the willow are, in fact, white

underneath, and it is this part of them which would appear "hoary" in the

reflection in the brook. The same sort of intuitive power, the same

faculty of bringing every object in nature, whether present or absent,

before the mind's eye, is observable in the speech of Cleopatra, when

conjecturing what were the employments of Antony in his absence:--"He's

speaking now, or murmuring, where's my serpent of old Nile?" How fine to

make Cleopatra have this consciousness of her own character, and to make

her feel that it is this for which Antony is in love with her! She says,

after the battle of Actium, when Antony has resolved to risk another

fight, "It is my birth-day; I had thought to have held it poor: but since

my lord is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra." What other poet would have

thought of such a casual resource of the imagination, or would have dared

to avail himself of it? The thing happens in the play as it might have

happened in fact.--That which, perhaps, more than any thing else

distinguishes the dramatic productions of Shakspeare from all others, is

this wonderful truth and individuality of conception. Each of his

characters is as much itself, and as absolutely independent of the rest,

as well as of the author, as if they were living persons, not fictions of

the mind. The poet may be said, for the time, to identify himself with

the character he wishes to represent, and to pass from one to another,

like the same soul successively animating different bodies. By an art like

that of the ventriloquist, he throws his imagination out of himself, and

makes every word appear to proceed from the mouth of the person in whose

name it is given. His plays alone are properly expressions of the

passions, not descriptions of them. His characters are real beings of

flesh and blood; they speak like men, not like authors. One might suppose

that he had stood by at the time, and overheard what passed. As in our

dreams we hold conversations with ourselves, make remarks, or communicate

intelligence, and have no idea of the answer which we shall receive, and

which we ourselves make, till we hear it: so the dialogues in Shakspeare

are carried on without any consciousness of what is to follow, without any

appearance of preparation or premeditation. The gusts of passion come and

go like sounds of music borne on the wind. Nothing is made out by formal

inference and analogy, by climax and antithesis: all comes, or seems to

come, immediately from nature. Each object and circumstance exists in his

mind, as it would have existed in reality: each several train of thought

and feeling goes on of itself, without confusion or effort. In the world

of his imagination, every thing has a life, a place, and being of its own!

Chaucer's characters are sufficiently distinct from one another, but they

are too little varied in themselves, too much like identical propositions.

They are consistent, but uniform; we get no new idea of them from first to

last; they are not placed in different lights, nor are their subordinate

_traits_ brought out in new situations; they are like portraits or

physiognomical studies, with the distinguishing features marked with

inconceivable truth and precision, but that preserve the same unaltered

air and attitude. Shakspeare's are historical figures, equally true and

correct, but put into action, where every nerve and muscle is displayed in

the struggle with others, with all the effect of collision and contrast,

with every variety of light and shade. Chaucer's characters are narrative,

Shakspeare's dramatic, Milton's epic. That is, Chaucer told only as much

of his story as he pleased, as was required for a particular purpose. He

answered for his characters himself. In Shakspeare they are introduced

upon the stage, are liable to be asked all sorts of questions, and are

forced to answer for themselves. In Chaucer we perceive a fixed essence of

character. In Shakspeare there is a continual composition and

decomposition of its elements, a fermentation of every particle in the

whole mass, by its alternate affinity or antipathy to other principles

which are brought in contact with it. Till the experiment is tried, we do

not know the result, the turn which the character will take in its new

circumstances. Milton took only a few simple principles of character, and

raised them to the utmost conceivable grandeur, and refined them from

every base alloy. His Imagination, "nigh sphered in Heaven," claimed

kindred only with what he saw from that height, and could raise to the

same elevation with itself. He sat retired, and kept his state alone,

"playing with wisdom;" while Shakspeare mingled with the crowd, and played

the host, "to make society the sweeter welcome."

The passion in Shakspeare is of the same nature as his delineation of

character. It is not some one habitual feeling or sentiment preying upon

itself, growing out of itself, and moulding every thing to itself; it is

passion modified by passion, by all the other feelings to which the

individual is liable, and to which others are liable with him; subject to

all the fluctuations of caprice and accident; calling into play all the

resources of the understanding and all the energies of the will;

irritated by obstacles or yielding to them; rising from small beginnings

to its utmost height; now drunk with hope, now stung to madness, now sunk

in despair, now blown to air with a breath, now raging like a torrent. The

human soul is made the sport of fortune, the prey of adversity: it is

stretched on the wheel of destiny, in restless ecstacy. The passions are

in a state of projection. Years are melted down to moments, and every

instant teems with fate. We know the results, we see the process. Thus

after Iago has been boasting to himself of the effect of his poisonous

suggestions on the mind of Othello, "which, with a little act upon the

blood, will work like mines of sulphur," he adds--

"Look where he comes! not poppy, nor mandragora,

Nor all the drowsy syrups of the East,

Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep

Which thou ow'dst yesterday."----

And he enters at this moment, like the crested serpent, crowned with his

wrongs and raging for revenge! The whole depends upon the turn of a

thought. A word, a look, blows the spark of jealousy into a flame; and the

explosion is immediate and terrible as a volcano. The dialogues in Lear,

in Macbeth, that between Brutus and Cassius, and nearly all those in

Shakspeare, where the interest is wrought up to its highest pitch, afford

examples of this dramatic fluctuation of passion. The interest in Chaucer

is quite different: it is like the course of a river, strong, and full,

and increasing. In Shakspeare, on the contrary, it is like the sea,

agitated this way and that, and loud-lashed by furious storms; while in

the still pauses of the blast, we distinguish only the cries of despair or

the silence of death! Milton, on the other hand, takes the imaginative

part of passion--that which remains after the event, which the mind

reposes on when all is over, which looks upon circumstances from the

remotest elevation of thought and fancy, and abstracts them from the world

of action to that of contemplation. The objects of dramatic poetry affect

us by sympathy, by their nearness to ourselves, as they take us by

surprise, or force us upon action, "while rage with rage doth sympathise:"

the objects of epic poetry affect us through the medium of the

imagination, by magnitude and distance, by their permanence and

universality. The one fill us with terror and pity, the other with

admiration and delight. There are certain objects that strike the

imagination, and inspire awe in the very idea of them, independently of

any dramatic interest, that is, of any connection with the vicissitudes of

human life. For instance, we cannot think of the pyramids of Egypt, of a

Gothic ruin, or an old Roman encampment, without a certain emotion, a

sense of power and sublimity coming over the mind. The heavenly bodies

that hang over our heads wherever we go, and "in their untroubled element

shall shine when we are laid in dust, and all our cares forgotten," affect

us in the same way. Thus Satan's address to the Sun has an epic, not a

dramatic interest; for though the second person in the dialogue makes no

answer and feels no concern, yet the eye of that vast luminary is upon

him, like the eye of heaven, and seems conscious of what he says, like an

universal presence. Dramatic poetry and epic, in their perfection, indeed,

approximate to and strengthen one another. Dramatic poetry borrows aid

from the dignity of persons and things, as the heroic does from human

passion, but in theory they are distinct.--When Richard II. calls for the

looking-glass to contemplate his faded majesty in it, and bursts into that

affecting exclamation: "Oh, that I were a mockery-king of snow, to melt

away before the sun of Bolingbroke," we have here the utmost force of

human passion, combined with the ideas of regal splendour and fallen

power. When Milton says of Satan:

"--His form had not yet lost

All her original brightness, nor appear'd

Less than archangel ruin'd, and th' excess

Of glory obscur'd;"--

the mixture of beauty, of grandeur, and pathos, from the sense of

irreparable loss, of never-ending, unavailing regret, is perfect.

The great fault of a modern school of poetry is, that it is an experiment

to reduce poetry to a mere effusion of natural sensibility; or what is

worse, to divest it both of imaginary splendour and human passion, to

surround the meanest objects with the morbid feelings and devouring

egotism of the writers' own minds. Milton and Shakspeare did not so

understand poetry. They gave a more liberal interpretation both to nature

and art. They did not do all they could to get rid of the one and the

other, to fill up the dreary void with the Moods of their own Minds. They

owe their power over the human mind to their having had a deeper sense

than others of what was grand in the objects of nature, or affecting in

the events of human life. But to the men I speak of there is nothing

interesting, nothing heroical, but themselves. To them the fall of gods or

of great men is the same. They do not enter into the feeling. They cannot

understand the terms. They are even debarred from the last poor, paltry

consolation of an unmanly triumph over fallen greatness; for their minds

reject, with a convulsive effort and intolerable loathing, the very idea

that there ever was, or was thought to be, any thing superior to

themselves. All that has ever excited the attention or admiration of the

world they look upon with the most perfect indifference; and they are

surprised to find that the world repays their indifference with scorn.

"With what measure they mete, it has been meted to them again."

Shakspeare's imagination is of the same plastic kind as his conception of

character or passion. "It glances from heaven to earth, from earth to

heaven." Its movement is rapid and devious. It unites the most opposite

extremes; or, as Puck says, in boasting of his own feats, "puts a girdle

round about the earth in forty minutes." He seems always hurrying from his

subject, even while describing it; but the stroke, like the lightning's,

is sure as it is sudden. He takes the widest possible range, but from that

very range he has his choice of the greatest variety and aptitude of

materials. He brings together images the most alike, but placed at the

greatest distance from each other; that is, found in circumstances of the

greatest dissimilitude. From the remoteness of his combinations, and the

celerity with which they are effected, they coalesce the more indissolubly

together. The more the thoughts are strangers to each other, and the

longer they have been kept asunder, the more intimate does their union

seem to become. Their felicity is equal to their force. Their likeness is

made more dazzling by their novelty. They startle, and take the fancy

prisoner in the same instant. I will mention one or two which are very

striking, and not much known, out of Troilus and Cressida. AEneas says to

Agamemnon,

"I ask that I may waken reverence,

And on the cheek be ready with a blush

Modest as morning, when she coldly eyes

The youthful Phoebus."