Which naturally starts the question, how or why the Shakespearian
Drama came to take on a form so very different from that of the
Classic Drama. This question has been partly disposed of already, in
speaking of the freedom and variety which the historical branch
imported into the sphere of dramatic production. Still it may be asked
how, if the Classic form is right, as all admit it to be, can we avoid
concluding the Shakespearian form to be wrong? The answer of course
is, that the form differs, and ought to differ, just as much as the
life does; so that both forms may be right, or at least equally so.
Formerly it was the custom to censure the Poet greatly, if not to
condemn him utterly, because, in his dramatic workmanship, he did not
observe what are called the Minor Unities, that is, the Unities of
Time and Place. The controversy indeed is now all out of date, and
there need not a word be said by way of answering or refuting that old
objection: no interest attaches to the question, nor is it worth
considering at all, save as it may yield light and illustration in the
philosophy of Art, and in the general matter of art criticism. On this
account, it may be worth the while to look a little further into the
reason of the difference in question.
I have already said that religion or religious culture has always been
the originating and shaping spirit of Art. There is no workmanship of
Art in which this holds more true than in the English Drama. Now the
religious culture of Christian England was essentially different from
that of Classic Greece; the two being of quite diverse and
incommunicable natures; so that the spirit of the one could not
possibly live in the dramatic form of the other. In other words, the
body of the Classic Drama was not big enough nor strong enough to
contain the soul of Christian England. The thing could no more be,
except in a purely mechanical and arbitrary way, than an acorn could
develop itself into a violet, or the life of an eagle build itself
into the body of a trout, or the soul of a horse put on the organism
of a dove. Moreover the Greek religion was mythical or fabulous, and
could nowise stand the historic method: the Christian religion is
historical both in origin and form; as such it has a natural sympathy
and affinity with the historic method, the hardest facts being more in
keeping with its spirit than the most beautiful and ingenious fables
and myths. Not indeed but that Christianity has its own ideal, or
rather its sphere of ideality, and this in a much higher and purer
kind than any mythology ever had; but its nature is to idealize from
fact; its ideality is that of the waking reason and the ruling
conscience, not that of the dreaming fancy and the dominating senses;
and even in poetry its genius is to "build a princely throne on humble
truth": it opens to man's imaginative soul the largest possible
scope,--"Beauty, a living Presence, surpassing the most fair ideal
forms which craft of delicate spirits hath composed from earth's
materials"; a world where imagination gathers fresh life and vigour
from breathing the air of reason's serenest sky, and where it builds
the higher and nobler, that it rests on a deep and solid basis of
humility, instead of "revolving restlessly" around its own airy and
flitting centre. The Shakespearian Drama works in the order and spirit
of this principle; so that what the Poet creates is in effect
historical, has the solidity and verisimilitude of Fact, and what he
borrows has all the freedom and freshness of original creation.
Therewithal he often combines the two, or interchanges them freely, in
the same work; where indeed they seem just as much at home together as
if they were twins; or rather each is so attempered to the other, that
the two are vitally continuous.
But let us note somewhat further the difference of structure. Now the
Classic Drama, as we have it in Sophocles, though exquisitely clear
and simple in form, and austerely beautiful withal, is comparatively
limited in its scope, with few characters, little change of scene, no
blending or interchanging of the humourous and the grave, the tragic
and the comic, and hardly exceeding in length a single Act of the
Shakespearian Drama. The interest all, or nearly all, centres in the
catastrophe, there being only so much of detail and range as is
needful to the evolving of this. Thus the thing neither has nor admits
any thing like the complexity and variety, the breadth, freedom, and
massiveness, of Shakespeare's workmanship. There is timber enough and
life enough in one of his dramas to make four or five Sophoclean
tragedies; and one of these might almost be cut out of _Hamlet_
without being missed. Take, for instance, the _Oedipus at Colonos_ of
Sophocles and _King Lear_, each perhaps the most complex and varied
work of the author. The Greek tragedy, though the longest of the
author's pieces, is hardly more than a third the length of _King
Lear_. The former has no change of scene at all; the first Act of the
other has five changes of scene. The Sophoclean drama has eight
characters in all, besides the Chorus; _King Lear_ has twenty
characters, besides the anonymous persons. To be sure, quantity in
such things is no measure of strength or worth; but when we come to
wealth, range, and amplitude of thought, the difference is perhaps
still greater.
And so, generally, the Classic Drama, like the Classic Architecture,
is all light, graceful, airy, in its form; whereas the Gothic is in
nature and design profound, solemn, majestic. The genius of the one
runs to a simple expressiveness; of the other to a manifold
suggestiveness. That is mainly statuesque, and hardly admits any
effect of background and perspective; this is mainly picturesque, and
requires an ample background and perspective for its characteristic
effect. There the mind is drawn more to objects; here, more to
relations. The former, therefore, naturally detaches things as much as
possible, and sets each out by itself in the utmost clearness and
definiteness of view; while the latter associates and combines them in
the largest possible variety consistent with unity of interest and
impression, so as to produce the effect of indefiniteness and mystery.
Thus a Shakespearian drama is like a Gothic cathedral, which, by its
complexity of structure, while catching the eye would fain lift the
thoughts to something greater and better than the world, making the
beholder feel his littleness, and even its own littleness, comparison of
what it suggests. For, in this broad and manifold diversity struggling
up into unity, we may recognize the awe-inspiring grandeur and
vastness of the Gothic Architecture, as distinguished from the
cheerful, smiling beauty of the Classic. Such is the difference
between the spirit of Classic Art and the spirit of Gothic Art.[13]
[13] Schlegel has a passage that hits the core of the matter:
"Rousseau recognized the contrast in Music, and showed that
rhythm and melody was the ruling principle of ancient as harmony
is of modern music. On the imaging arts, Hemsterhuys made this
ingenious remark, that the ancient painters were perhaps too
much of sculptors, modern sculptors too much of painters. This
touches the very point of difference; for the spirit of
collective ancient art and poetry is plastic, as that of the
modern is picturesque." And again: "The Pantheon is not more
different from Westminster Abbey or the Church of St. Stephen at
Vienna than the structure of a tragedy of Sophocles from a drama
of Shakespeare. The comparison between these two wonderful
productions of poetry and architecture might be carried still
further." Coleridge also has some very choice remarks on the
subject: "I will note down the fundamental characteristics which
contradistinguish the ancient literature from the modern
generally, but which more especially appear in prominence in the
tragic drama. The ancient was allied to statuary, the modern
refers to painting. In the first there is a predominance of
rhythm and melody; in the second, of harmony and counterpoint.
The Greeks idolized the finite, and therefore were masters of
all grace, elegance, proportion, fancy, dignity, majesty,--of
whatever, in short, is capable of being definitely conveyed by
defined forms and thoughts; the moderns revere the infinite, and
affect the indefinite as a vehicle of the infinite; hence their
passions, their obscure hopes and fears, their wandering through
the unknown, their grander moral feelings, their more august
conception of man as man, their future rather than their
past,--in a word, their sublimity."
Now, taking these two things together, namely, the historic spirit and
method, and also the breadth and amplitude of matter and design, both
of which belong to the Gothic Drama, and are indeed of its
nature;--taking these together, it cannot but be seen, I think, that
the work must have a much larger scope, a far more varied and
expansive scene, than is consistent with the Minor Unities. If, for
example, a man would _represent_ any impressive course or body of
historical events, the historic order and process of the thing plainly
necessitate a form very different from that of the Classic Drama: the
work must needs use considerable diversity of time and place, else
narrative and description will have to be substituted, in a great
measure, for representation; that is, the right dramatic form must be
sacrificed to what, after all, has no proper coherence or
consanguinity with the nature and genius of the work. As to which of
the two is better in itself, whether the austere and simple beauty of
the Sophoclean tragedy, or the colossal grandeur and massiveness of such a
drama as _King Lear_, this is not for me to say: for myself, however,
I cannot choose but prefer the latter; for this too has a beauty of
its own; but it is indeed an _awful_ beauty, and to my sense all the
better for being so. Be this as it may, it is certain that the human
mind had quite outgrown the formal limitations of the Classic
Drama.[14]
[14] Two thousand years lie between Shakespeare and the
flourishing period of the ancient tragedy. In this interval
Christianity laid open unknown depths of mind: the Teutonic
race, in their dispersion, filled wide spaces of the Earth; the
Crusaders opened the way to the East, voyages of discovery
revealed the West and the form of the whole globe; new spheres
of knowledge presented themselves; whole nations and periods of
time arose and passed away; a thousand forms of life, public and
private, religious and political, had come and gone; the circle
of views, ideas, experiences, and interests was immensely
enlarged, the mind thereby made deeper and broader, wants
increased, passions more various and refined, the conflict of
human endeavours more diversified and intricate, the resources
of the mind immeasurable; all in a way quite foreign to the
childish times of antiquity. This abundance of external and
internal material streamed into the sphere of Art on all sides:
poetry could not resist it without injury, and even
ruin.--GERVINUS.
But what are the conditions of building, in right artistic order, a
work of such vastness and complexity? As the mind is taken away from
the laws of time and place, it must be delivered over to the higher
laws of reason. So that the work lies under the necessity of
proceeding in such a way as to make the spectator live in his
imagination, not in his senses, and even his senses must, for the time
being, be made imaginative, or be ensouled. That is, instead of the
formal or numerical unities of time and place, we must have the
unities of intellectual time and intellectual space: the further the
artist departs from the local and chronological succession of things,
the more strict and manifest must be their logical and productive
succession. Incidents and characters are to be represented, not in the
order of sensible juxtaposition or procession, but in that of cause
and effect, of principle and consequence. Whether, therefore, they
stand ten minutes or ten months, ten feet or ten miles, asunder,
matters not, provided they are really and evidently united in this
way; that is, provided the unities of action and interest are made
strong enough and clear enough to overcome the diversities of time and
place. For, here, it is not _where_ and _when_ a given thing happened,
but how it was produced, and why, whence it came and whither it
tended, what caused it to be as it was, and to do as it did, that we
are mainly concerned with.
The same principle is further illustrated in the well-known nakedness
of the Elizabethan stage in respect of furniture and scenic
accompaniment. The weakness, if such it were, appears to have been the
source of vast strength. It is to this poverty of the old stage that
we owe, in part, the immense riches of the Shakespearian Drama, since
it was thereby put to the necessity of making up for the defect of
sensuous impression by working on the rational, moral, and imaginative
forces of the audience. And, undoubtedly, the modern way of glutting
the senses with a profusion of showy and varied dress and scenery has
struck, as it must always strike, a dead palsy on the legitimate
processes of Gothic Art. The decline of the Drama began with its
beginning, and has kept pace with its progress. So that here we have a
forcible illustration of what is often found true, that men cannot get
along because there is nothing to hinder them. For, in respect of the
moral and imaginative powers, it may be justly affirmed that we are
often assisted most when _not_ assisted, and that the right way of
helping us on is by leaving us unhelped. That the soul may find and
use her wings, nothing is so good as the being left where there is
little for the feet to get hold of and rest upon.
To answer fully the conditions of the work, to bring the Drama fairly
through the difficulties involved therein, is, it seems to me, just
the greatest thing the human intellect has ever done in the province
of Art. Accordingly I place Shakespeare's highest and most peculiar
excellence in the article of Dramatic Composition. He it was, and he
alone, that accomplished the task of _organizing_ the English Drama.
Among his predecessors and senior contemporaries there was, properly
speaking, no dramatic artist. What had been done was not truly Art,
but only a preparation of materials and a settlement of preliminaries.
Up to his time, there was little more than the elements of the work
lying scattered here and there, some in greater, some in less
perfection, and still requiring to be gathered up and combined in
right proportions, and under the proper laws of dramatic life. Take
any English drama written before his, and you will find that the
several parts do not stand or draw together in any thing like organic
consistency: the work is not truly a _concrescence_ of persons and
events, but only, at the best, a mere succession or aggregation of
them; so that, for the most part, each would both be and appear just
as it does, if detached from the others, and viewed by itself.
Instead, therefore, of a vital unity, like that of a tree, the work
has but a sort of aggregative unity, like a heap of sand.
Which may in some fair measure explain what I mean by dramatic
composition. For a drama, regarded as a work of art, should be in the
strictest sense of the term a _society_; that is, not merely a
numerical collection or juxtaposition, but a living contexture, of
persons and events. For men's natures do not, neither can they, unfold
themselves severally and individually; their development proceeds
from, through, and by each other. And, besides their individual
circulations, they have a common circulation; their characters
interpenetrating, more or less, one with another, and standing all
together in mutual dependence and support. Nor does this vital
coherence and reciprocity hold between the several characters merely,
but also between these, taken collectively, and the various
conditions, objects, circumstances, and influences, amidst which they
have grown. So that the whole is like a large, full-grown tree, which
is in truth made up of a multitude of little trees, all growing from a
common root, nourished by a common sap, and bound together in a common
life.
Now in Shakespeare's dramas--I do not say all of them, for some were
but his apprentice-work, but in most of them--the several parts, both
characters and incidents, are knit together in this organic way, so as
to be all truly members one of another. Each needs all the others,
each helps all the others, each is made what it is by the presence of
all the others. Nothing stands alone, nothing exists merely for
itself. The persons not only have each their several development, but
also, besides this, and running into this, a development in common. In
short, their whole transpiration proceeds by the laws and from the
blood of mutual membership. And as each lives and moves and has his
being, so each is to be understood and interpreted, with reference,
explicit or implicit, to all the others. And there is not only this
coherence of the characters represented, one with another, but also of
them all with the events and circumstances of the representation. It
is this coefficient action of all the parts to a common end, this
mutual participation of each in all, and of all in each, that
constitutes the thing truly and properly a work of art.
So then a drama may be fitly spoken of as an _organic_ structure. And
such it must be, to answer the conditions of Art. Here we have a thing
made up of divers parts or elements, with a course or circulation of
mutual reference and affinity pervading them all, and binding them
together, so as to give to the whole the character of a multitudinous
unit; just as in the illustration, before used, of a large tree made
up of innumerable little trees. And it seems plain enough that, the
larger the number and variety of parts embraced in the work, or the
more diversified it is in matter and movement, the greater the
strength of faculty required for keeping every thing within the terms
of Art; while, provided this be done, the grander is the impression
produced, and the higher is the standing of the work as an
intellectual achievement of man.
This, then, as before observed, is just the highest and hardest part
of dramatic creation: in the whole domain of literary workmanship
there is no one thing so rarely attained, none that so few have been
found capable of attaining, as this. And yet in this Shakespeare was
absolutely--I speak advisedly--without any teacher whatever; not to
say, what probably might be said without any hazard, that it is a
thing which no man or number of men could impart. The Classic Drama,
had he been ever so well acquainted with it, could not have helped him
here at all, and would most likely have been a stumbling-block to him.
And, in my view of the matter, the most distinguishing feature of the
Poet's genius lies in this power of broad and varied combination; in
the deep intuitive perception which thus enabled him to put a
multitude of things together, so that they should exactly fit and
finish one another. In some of his works, as _Titus Andronicus, The
Comedy of Errors_, and the three Parts of _King Henry the Sixth_,
though we have, especially in the latter, considerable skill in
individual character,--far more than in any English plays preceding
them,--there is certainly very little, perhaps nothing, that can be
rightly termed dramatic composition. In several, again, as _The Two
Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labour's Lost_, and _King John_, we have
but the beginnings and first stages of it. But in various others, as
_The Tempest, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, King Henry the
Fourth, Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear_, and _Othello_, it is found, if
not in entire perfection, at least so nearly perfect, that there has
yet been no criticism competent to point out the defect.
All which makes a full and conclusive answer to the charge of
irregularity which has been so often brought against the Poet. To be
regular, in the right sense of the term, he did not need to follow the
rules which others had followed before him: he was just as right in
differing from them as they were in differing from him: in other
words, he stands as an original, independent, authoritative legislator
in the province of Art; or, as Gervinus puts it, "he holds the place
of the revealing genius of the laws of Art in the Modern Drama"; so
that it is sheer ignorance, or something worse, to insist on trying
him by the laws of the ancient Tragedy. It is on this ground that
Coleridge makes the pregnant remark,--"No work of true genius dares
want its appropriate form, neither indeed is there any danger of this.
As it must not, so genius cannot, be lawless; for it is even this that
constitutes it genius,--the power of acting creatively under laws of
its own origination." So that I may fitly close this branch of the
subject by applying to Shakespeare a very noteworthy saying of
Burke's, the argument of which holds no less true of the law-making
prerogative in Art than in the State: "Legislators have no other rules to
bind them but the great principles of reason and equity, and the general
sense of mankind. These they are bound to obey and follow; and rather
to enlarge and enlighten law by the liberality of legislative reason,
than to fetter and bind their higher capacity by the narrow
constructions of subordinate, artificial justice."[15]
[15] Aristotle himself was very far from setting up the form and
extent of the drama of his day as a rule for all time. He
declared that, "as regards the natural limit of the action, the
more extended will always be the more beautiful, so long as it
is easily surveyed." Shakespeare's practice is strictly
correspondent to this rule. But with this rule in mind, he went
to the very verge of these limits. He chose his matter as rich
and full as possible; he extended its form according to its
requirements, but no further: it will not be found, in any of
his dramas, that the thought is exhausted before the end; that
there is any superfluous extension of the form, or any needless
abundance of the matter. To arrange the most ample materials in
the amplest form without overstepping its fair proportions, is a
task which no one has accomplished as he has done. Therein lies
a large part of his artistic greatness. No poet has represented
so much in so little space; none has so widely enlarged the
space without exceeding the poetical limitations. In this he did
not suffer himself to be perplexed by the example of the ancient
tragedy. He felt that the peculiar poetic material of the new
world would perish in those old forms, and that it was therefore
better to mould them afresh. He knew right well that the poet's
task was to represent the very substance of his times, to
reflect the age in his poetry, and to give it form and stamp: he
therefore created, for the enlarged sphere of life, an enlarged
sphere of Art: to this end he sought, not a ready-made rule, but
the inward law of the given matter,--a spirit in the things,
which in the work of art shaped the form for itself. For there
is no higher worth in a poetical work than the agreement of the
form with the nature of the matter represented, and this
according to its own indwelling laws, not according to external
rule. If we judge Shakespeare or Homer by any such conventional
rule, we may equally deny them taste and law: measured, however,
by that higher standard, Shakespeare's conformity to the inner
law outstrips all those regular dramatists who learned from
Aristotle, not the spirit of regularity, but mechanical
imitation.--GERVINUS.