Chapter VII: Act I: scene iii. has the characteristics of Shakspere. It is (2)

In truth, a question of this sort is infinitely more easy of decision where Fletcher is the author against whose claims Shakspeare's are to be balanced, than it could be if the poet's supposed assistant were any other ancient English dramatist. If a drama were presented to us, where, as in some of Shakspeare's received works, he had taken up the ruder sketch of an older poet, and exerted his skill in altering and enlarging it, it would be very difficult indeed to discriminate between the original and his additions. [Sidenote: Shakspere's Histories: their fault.] He has often, especially in his earlier works, and in his histories more particularly, much of that exaggeration of ideas, and that strained and labouring force of expression, which marked the Hercules-like infancy of the English Drama. [Sidenote: Marlowe.] [Sidenote: Marlowe's magnificence like Shakspere sometimes.] The stateliness with which Marlowe paces the tragic stage, and the magnificence of the train of solemn shews which attend him like the captives in a Roman procession of triumph, bear no distant likeness to the shape which Shakspeare's genius assumes in its most lofty moods. And with those also who followed the latter, or trode side by side with him, he has many points of resemblance or identity. [Sidenote: Jonson.] [Sidenote: Massinger.] [Sidenote: Middleton.] Jonson has his seriousness of views, his singleness of purpose, his weight of style, and his "fulness and frequency of sentence;" Massinger has his comprehension of thought, giving birth to an involved and parenthetical mode of construction; and Middleton, if he possesses few of his other qualities, has much of his precision and straightforward earnestness of expression.[57:1] In examining isolated passages with the view of ascertaining whether they were written by Shakspeare or by any of those other [57:2]poets, we should frequently have no ground of decision but the insecure and narrow one of comparative excellence. [Sidenote: Fletcher and Shakspere contrasted.] [Sidenote: They differ in _kind_.] When Fletcher is Shakspeare's only competitor, we are very seldom driven to adopt so doubtful a footing; we are not compelled to reason from difference in _degree_, because we are sensible of a striking dissimilarity in _kind_. [Sidenote: Fletcher.] [Sidenote: Shakspere.] [Sidenote: Fletcher.] [Sidenote: Shakspere.] [Sidenote: Fletcher.] [Sidenote: Shakspere.] [Sidenote: Fletcher.] [Sidenote: Shakspere.] We observe ease and elegance of expression opposed to energy and quaintness; brevity is met by dilation, and the obscurity which results from hurry of conception has to be compared with the vagueness proceeding from indistinctness of ideas; lowness, narrowness, and poverty of thought, are contrasted with elevation, richness, and comprehension: on the one hand is an intellect barely active enough to seek the true elements of the poetical, and on the other a mind which, seeing those finer relations at a glance, darts off in the wantonness of its luxuriant strength to discover qualities with which poetry is but ill fitted to deal; in the one poet we behold that comparative feebleness of fancy which willingly stoops to the correction of taste, and in the other, that warmth, splendour, and quickness of imagination, which flows on like the burning rivers from a volcano, quenching all paler lights in its spreading radiance, and destroying every barrier which would impede or direct its devouring course. You will remark that certain passages or scenes in this play are attributed to Shakspeare, not because they are superior to Fletcher's tone or manner, but because they are unlike it. [Sidenote: Shakspere's work unlike Fletcher's.] It may be true that most of these possess higher excellence than Fletcher could have easily reached; but this is merely an extrinsic circumstance, and it is not upon it that the judgment is founded. [Sidenote: Test between Shakspere and Fletcher.] These passages are recognized as Shakspeare's, not from possessing in a higher degree those qualities in which Fletcher's merit lies, but from exhibiting other qualities in which he is partially or wholly wanting, and which even singly, and still more when combined, constitute a style and manner opposite to his.

Indeed, since Fletcher is acknowledged to stand immeasurably lower than Shakspeare, the excellence of some passages might perhaps in itself be no unfair reason for refusing to the inferior poet the credit of their execution. But an analysis of the means by which the excellence is produced places us beyond [58:1]the necessity of resorting, in the first instance at least, to this general ground of decision, which must, however, be taken into view, when we have been able to assume a position which entitles us to take advantage of it. [Sidenote: Shakspere's external qualities in the _Two Noble Kinsmen_.] [Sidenote: Are they imitations?] In many parts of this play we find those external qualities which form Shakspeare's distinguishing characteristics, not separately and singly present, but combined most fully and most intimately; and it is consequently indisputable that we have, either Shakspeare's own writing, or a faithful and successful imitation of it. [Sidenote: Imitation of Shakspere difficult.] It is not easy to perceive with perfect clearness why it is that imitation of Shakspeare is peculiarly difficult; but every one is convinced that it is far more so than in the case of any other poet whatever. [Sidenote: Why it is so.] The range and opposition of his qualities, the rarity and loftiness of the most remarkable of these, and still more, the coincident operation of his most dissimilar powers, make it next to impossible, even in short and isolated passages, to produce an imitation which shall be mistaken for his original composition: but there is not even a possibility of success in an attempt to carry on such an imitation of him throughout many entire scenes. [Sidenote: Given, his outside dress, ask whether his spirit is inside it.] Where the external qualities of a work resemble his, the question of his authorship can be determined in no other way than by inquiring whether the essential elements, and the spirit which animates the whole, are his also; and that inquiry is not one for logical argument; it can be answered only by reflection on the effect which the work produces on our own minds. [Sidenote: The poetic sense alone can judge.] The dullest eye can discriminate the free motions of the living frame from the convulsed writhings which art may excite in the senseless corpse; the nightly traveller easily distinguishes between the red and earthy twinkling of the distant cottage-lamp, and the cold white gleam of the star which rises beyond it;--and with equal quickness and equal certainty the poetical sense can decide whether the living and ethereal principle of poetry is present, or only its corporeal clothing, its dead and inert resemblance. [Sidenote: By the emotion it creates, must Shakspere's work be judgd.] The emotion which poetry necessarily awakens in minds qualified as the subjects of its working, is the only evidence of its presence, and the measure and index of its strength. If we can read with coldness and indifference the drama which we are now examining, we must pronounce it to [59:1]be no more than a skilful imitation of Shakspeare; but we must acknowledge it as an original if the heart burns and the fancy expands under its influence,--if we feel that the poetical and dramatic spirit breathes through all,--and if the mind bows down involuntarily before the powers of whose presence it is secretly but convincingly sensible. [Sidenote: And his part of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ witnesses for itself.] I cannot have a doubt that the parts of this work which I have pointed out as Shakspeare's will the more firmly endure this trial, the more closely and seriously they are revolved and studied.

[Sidenote: Shakspere's share of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_.]

The portions of the drama which, on such principles as these, have been set down as Shakspeare's, compose a large part of its bulk, and embrace most of the material circumstances of the story. [Sidenote: Act I.] [Sidenote: Act III. sc. i.] [Sidenote: Act V. except scene iv.] They are,--the First Act wholly,--one scene out of six in the Third,--and the whole of the Fifth Act, (a very long one,) except one unimportant scene. These parts are not of equal excellence, but the grounds on which a decision as to their authorship rests, seem to be almost equally strong with regard to each.

We have as yet been considering these scenes as so many separate pieces of poetry; and they are valuable even in that light, not less from their intrinsic merit than as being the work of our greatest poet. If it be true merely that Shakspeare has here executed some portions of a plan which another had previously fixed on and sketched, the drama demands our zealous study, and is entitled to a place among Shakspeare's works. An examination of separate details cannot enable us to form any more specific opinion as to the part which he may have taken in its composition.

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[Sidenote: Is the design of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ Shakspere's?]

But there is a further inquiry on which we are bound to enter, whatever its result may be,--whether it shall allow us to attribute to Shakspeare a wider influence over the work, or compel us to limit his claim to the subsidiary authorship, which only we have yet been able to establish for him. We must now endeavour to trace the design of the work to its origin; we must look on the parts in their relation to the whole, and investigate the qualities and character of that whole which the parts compose. Such an analysis is essential to an appreciation of the real merit of the drama, and suggests views of far-greater inte[60:1]rest than any which offer themselves in the examination of isolated passages. And it is likewise necessary as a part of the inquiry which is our object, not merely because it may tend to strengthen or modify the decisions which we have already formed, but because it will allow us to determine other important questions which we have had no opportunity of treating. [Sidenote: Yes, it is.] It will justify us, if I mistake not, in pronouncing with some confidence, that this drama owes to Shakspeare much more than the composition of a few scenes,--that he was the poet who chose the story, and arranged the leading particulars of the method in which it is handled.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The tragic-comic underplot not Shakspere's.]

Before we enter the extensive and interesting field of inquiry thus opened to us, it may be well that I explain the reasons which seem distinctly to exclude from Shakspeare's part of the work one considerable portion of it,--the whole of the tragi-comic under-plot. I have as yet assigned no ground of rejection, but inferiority in the execution; but there are other reasons, which, when combined with that, remove all uncertainty. Slightly as this subordinate story has been described, enough has been said to point out remarkable imitations of Shakspeare, both in incident and character. [Sidenote: Fletcher's borrowings in the underplot, from Shakspere.] The insane maiden is a copy of Ophelia, with features from 'Lear'; the comments of the physician on her sickness of the mind, are borrowed in conception from 'Macbeth'; the character of the fantastic schoolmaster is a repetition of the pedagogue in 'Love's Labour Lost'; and the exhibition of the clowns which he directs, resemble scenes both in that play and in the 'Midsummer Night's Dream.' All these circumstances together, or even one of them by itself, are enough to destroy the notion of Shakspeare's authorship. The likeness which is found elsewhere to Shakspeare's style, (and which is far closer in those other parts of the play than it is here,) is an argument, as I have shewn, in favour of his authorship; the likeness here in character and incident is even a stronger one against it. [Sidenote: Shakspere doesn't imitate himself in character as he does in style.] In neither of these latter particulars does Shakspeare imitate himself as he does in style. In some of his earlier plays indeed we may trace the rude outlines of characters, chiefly comic, which he was afterwards able to develope with [61:1]greater distinctness and more striking features; but though the likeness, in those cases, were nearer and more frequent than it is, the transition from the rude block to the finished sculpture is the allowable and natural progress of genius. [Sidenote: He doesn't reproduce a figure badly.] The bare reproduction of a figure or a scene already drawn with clearness and success, stands in a very different situation; and, even if it should be nearly equal to the original in actual merit, it creates a strong presumption of its being no more than the artifice of an imitator. Where the inferiority of the execution is palpable, the doubt is raised into certainty. [Sidenote: Shakspere could not have turned his Ophelia into the Jailer's daughter of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_.] In the case before us, it is impossible to receive the idea of Shakspeare sitting down in cold blood to imitate the Ophelia, and to transfer all the tenderness of her situation to a new drama of a far lower tone, in which also it should occupy only a subordinate station. He could not have been guilty of this; he neither needed it, nor would have done it of free will; and, therefore, I could not have believed it to be his, though the execution had been far better than it is. [Sidenote: This Daughter is an utter failure.] But the inferiority is decided; the imitation produces neither vigour of style nor depth of feeling; in short, Shakspeare, if he had made the attempt, could not have failed so utterly. [Sidenote: The Schoolmaster is not Shakspere's.] The comic parts are only subservient to the serious portion of this story; and if Shakspeare did not write the leading part, he was still less likely to have written the accessory; but, besides, the imitation is equally unsuccessful; and the original of the schoolmaster is said to have been a personal portrait, which was very unlikely to have been repeated by the first painter after the freshness of the jest was gone. I have been the more anxious to place in its true light the question as to this part of the drama, because, on its seeming likeness to Shakspeare, Steevens founds an ingenious hypothesis, by which he endeavours to account for the origin of the tradition as to Shakspeare's concern in the play. That this is a designed imitation of Shakspeare is abundantly clear; and it is not difficult to see why it is an unsuccessful one. [Sidenote: Fletcher's designd imitation of Shakspere.] Fletcher possesses much humour, but it is of a cast very unlike Shakspeare's, and very unfit to harmonise with it, or to qualify him for the imitation which he has here attempted. Why he made the attempt, we shall be able to discover only when the freaks of caprice, and of poetical caprice, [62:1]the wildest of all, shall be fully analyzed and fully accounted for. [Sidenote: The underplot not Shakspere's.] All that I have to prove is, that this portion of the work is not, and could not have been, Shakspeare's.

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[Sidenote: Shakspere's choice of subjects for his Plays.]

I have said that I consider as his, both the selection of the plot, and much of its arrangement. [Sidenote: He differs from his chief contemporaries and successors.] As to the Choice of the Subject, my position is, that in this particular, Shakspeare stands in unequivocal opposition to Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and those others, contemporary with him, or a little his juniors, with whom his name is generally associated. I can easily shew that this opposition to the newer school in the choice of stories exists in Shakspeare individually; and this would be enough for my purpose; but I will go a little farther than I am called on, because I conceive him to share that opposition with some other poets, and because views open to us from this circumstance, which are of some value for the right understanding of his characteristics. [Sidenote: He belongs to the old school.] I say then, that in the choice of subjects particularly, as well as in other features, Shakspeare belongs to a school older than that of Fletcher, and radically different from it. [Sidenote: Shakspere took old stories; new poets new ones.] The principle of the contrariety in the choice of subjects between the older and newer schools, is this: the older poets usually prefer stories with which their audience must have been previously familiar; the newer poets avoid such known subjects, and attempt to create an adventitious interest for their pieces, by appealing to the passion of curiosity, and feeding it with novelty of incident. [Sidenote: Early Plays founded on] The early writers may have adopted their rule of choice from a distrust in their own skill: but they are more likely to have been influenced by reflecting on the inexperience of their audience in theatrical exhibitions. [Sidenote: History and Tales of Chivalry.] By insisting on this quality in their plots, they hampered themselves much in the choice of them; and the subjects which offered themselves to the older among them, were mainly confined to two classes, history and the chivalrous tales, being the only two cycles of story with which, about the time of Shakspeare's birth, any general familiarity could be presumed. That such were the favourite themes of the infant English drama is abundantly clear, even from the lists of old lost dramas which have been preserved to us. [Sidenote: Classical fables and foreign novels.] By the time when Shakspeare stepped into [63:1]the arena, the zeal for translation had increased the stock of popular knowledge by the addition of the classical fables and the foreign modern novels; and his immediate precursors, some of whom were men of much learning, had especially availed themselves of the former class of plots. [Sidenote: Plots of Shakspere's successors.] If, passing over Shakspeare, we glance at the plots of Fletcher, Jonson, or others of the same period, we find, among a great diversity of means, a search for novelty universally set on foot. Jonson is fond of inventing his plots; Beaumont and Fletcher usually borrow theirs; but neither by the former nor the latter were stories chosen which were familiar to the people, nor in any instance perhaps do they condescend to use plots which had been previously written on. [Sidenote: Beaumont and Fletcher's.] Where Beaumont and Fletcher do avail themselves of common tales, they artfully combine them with others, and receive assistance from complexity of adventure in keeping their uniform purpose in view. [Sidenote: Historical Drama grew obsolete.] The historical drama was regarded by the new school as a rude and obsolete form; and there are scarcely half a dozen instances in which any writer of that age, but Shakspeare, adopted it later than 1600. Historical subjects indeed wanted the coveted charm, as did also the Romantic and the Classical Tales, both of which shared in the neglect with which the Chronicles were treated. [Sidenote: Plots were got from foreign novels and invention.] The Foreign Novels, and stories partly borrowed from them, or wholly invented, were almost the sole subjects of the newer drama, which has always the air of addressing itself to hearers possessing greater dramatic experience and more extended information than those who were in the view of the older writers.

[Sidenote: Shakspere belongs to the older class of dramatists.]

Shakspeare, in point of time, stood between these two classes: does he decidedly belong to either, or shew a leaning, and to which? He unequivocally belongs to the older class; or rather, the opposition to the newer writers assumes in him a far more decided shape than in any of his immediate forerunners; for in them are found numerous exceptions to the rule, in him scarcely one. He returns, in fact, to more than one of the principles of the old school, which had begun in his time to fall into disuse. [Sidenote: Compare his Histories, narrative chorus long rymed passages,] The external form of some of his plays, particularly his histories, is quite in the old taste. The narrative chorus is the most observable remnant of antiquity; and the long rhymed pas[64:1]sages frequent in his earlier works, are abundant in the older writers: Peele uses them through whole scenes, and Marlowe likewise to excess. [Sidenote: jesters, and choice of known stories.] His continual introduction of those conventional characters, his favourite jesters, is another point of resemblance to the ruder stage. [Sidenote: He's of the school of Lodge and Greene.] And his choice of subjects, when combined with the peculiarities of economy just noticed, as well as others, clearly appropriates him to the school of Lodge, Greene, and those elder writers who have left few works and fewer names. His Historical Plays are the perfection of the old school, the only valuable specimens of that class which it has produced, and the latest instance in which its example was followed; and he has had recourse to the Classical story for such subjects as approached most nearly to the nature of his English Chronicles. [Sidenote: Of new novel stories,] And you must take especial note, that, even in the class of subjects in which he seems to coincide with the new school,--I mean his Plots borrowed from Foreign Novels,--he assumes no more of conformity than its appearance, while the principle of contrariety is still retained. [Sidenote: Shakspere chose the most widely known.] The new writers preferred untranslated novels, and, where they chose translated ones, disguised them till the features of the original were lost: Shakspeare not only uses translated tales--(this indeed from necessity)--and closely adheres to their minutest circumstances, but in almost every instance he has made choice of those among them which can be proved to have been most widely known and esteemed at the time. Most of his plots founded on fanciful subjects, whether derived from novels or other sources, can be shewn to have been previously familiar to the people. [Sidenote: 6 Plays of Shakspere founded on well-known stories.] The story of 'Measure for Measure' had been previously told; that of 'As you Like It', he might have had from either of two popular collections of tales; the fable of 'Much Ado about Nothing' seems to have been widely spread, and those of 'All's Well that Ends Well', and 'The Winter's Tale'; 'Romeo and Juliet' appears in at least one collection of English novels, and in a poem which enjoyed much popularity. These are sufficient as examples; but a still more remarkable circumstance is this. [Sidenote: 12 on subjects of former Plays.] In repeated instances, about twelve in all, Shakspeare has chosen subjects on which plays had been previously written; nay more, on the sub[65:1]jects which he has so re-written, he has produced some of his best dramas, and one his very masterpiece. 'Julius Cæsar' belongs to this list; '_Lear_' does so likewise; and 'HAMLET.' Is not that a singular fact? I can use it at present only as a most valuable proof that the view which I take is an accurate one. But Shakspeare has also, oftener than once, applied to the chivalrous class of subjects, which was exclusively peculiar to the older school. Its tales indeed bore a strong likeness to his own most esteemed subjects of study; for, amidst all their extravagancies and inconsistencies, the Gothic romances and poems, the older of them at all events, professed in form to be chronicles of fact, and in principle to assume historical truth as their groundwork. [Sidenote: 3 on Classical subjects turned into romances.] 'Pericles' is founded on one of the most popular romances of the middle ages, which had been also versified by Gower, the second father of the English poetical school. The characters in 'The Midsummer Night's Dream' are classical, but the costume is strictly Gothic, and shews that it was through the medium of romance that he drew the knowledge of them; and the 'Troilus and Cressida' presents another classical and chivalrous subject, which Chaucer had handled at great length, also invested with the richness of the romantic garb and decoration.

[Sidenote: Shakspere chose the story of the _Two Noble Kinsmen_.]

Fletcher and Shakspeare being thus opposed to each other in their choice of subjects, what qualities are there in the Plot of The Two Noble Kinsmen, which may appropriate the choice of it to either? In the first place, it is a chivalrous subject,--a classical story which had already been told in the Gothic style. [Sidenote: Fletcher would neither have chosen Chaucer's classical story for his plot,] The nature of the story then could have been no recommendation of it to Fletcher. He has not a single other subject of the sort; he has even written one play in ridicule of chivalrous observances; and the sarcasm of that humorous piece[66:1], both in the general design and the particular references, is aimed solely at the prose romances of knight-errantry, a diseased and posthumous off-shoot from the parent-root, whose legitimate and ancient offspring, the metrical chronicles and tales, he seems neither to have known nor cared for. [Sidenote: nor an old story,] Secondly, this story must have been unacceptable to Fletcher, because it was a fa[66:2]miliar one in England. This fact is perhaps sufficiently proved by its being the subject of that animated and admirable poem of Chaucer, which Dryden has pronounced little inferior to the Iliad or Æneid; but it is still more distinctly shewn by a third fact, which completely clenches the argument against Fletcher's choice of it as a subject. [Sidenote: nor one on which two 16th-century plays had been written.] No fewer than two plays had been written on this story before the end of the sixteenth century; the earlier of the two, the Palamon and Arcite of Edwards, acted in 1566, and printed in 1585, and another play called by the same name, brought on the stage in 1594.[66:3]

[Sidenote: Fletcher didn't choose the subject of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_.]

It is thus, I think, proved almost to demonstration, that the person who chose this subject was not Fletcher; and what has been already said, even without the specific evidence of individual passages, creates a strong probability that the choice was made by Shakspeare rather than by any other dramatic poet of his time. If the question be merely one between the two writers,--if, assuming it to be proved that Shakspeare wrote parts of the play, we have only to ask which of the two it was that chose the subject,--we can surely be at no loss to decide. [Sidenote: Shakspere's study of chivalrous poetry.] But the presumption in Shakspeare's favour may be elevated almost into absolute certainty, while, at the same time, some important qualities of his will be illustrated,--if we inquire what was the real extent to which he attached himself to the study of the chivalrous poetry, from which this subject is taken, and the influence which that study was likely to have had, and did actually exercise on his writings.

If, being told that a dramatic poet was born in England in the latter half of the sixteenth century, whose studies, for all effectual benefit which they could have afforded him, were limited to his own tongue, we were asked to say what course his acquisitions were likely to have taken, our reply would be ready and unhesitating. English literature was of narrow extent before the time in question, and, according to the invariable progress of mental culture, had been evolved first in those finer branches which issue primarily from the ima[67:1]gination and affections, and appeal for their effect to the principles in which they have their source. [Sidenote: Shakspere certain to have first studi'd, and been influenct by, our old narrative poets,] Poetry had reached a vigorous youth, history was in its infancy, philosophy had not come into being. Had the field of study been wider, it was to poetry in an especial manner that a poet had to betake himself for an experience and skill in his art, and in the language which was to be its instrument. And it was almost solely to the narrative poets that Shakspeare had to appeal for aid and guidance; for preceding writers in the dramatic walk could teach him little. They could serve as beacons only, and not examples, and he had to search in other mines for the materials to rear his palace of thought. [Sidenote: who were of the Gothic school.] But the English poetical writers who preceded him are all more or less impressed with the seal of the Gothic school, and the most noted among them belong to it essentially. Chaucer, Lydgate, and Gower, to more than one of whom Shakspeare is materially indebted, were the heads of a sect whose subjects and form of composition were varied only as the various forms and subjects of the foreign romantic writers. [Sidenote: Britain the mother of much fine chivalrous poetry.] The rhymed romance, the metrical vision, the sustained allegorical narrative or dialogue, were but differing results of the same principle, and forms too of its original development; for Britain was the mother and nurse of much of the finest chivalrous poetry, as well as the scene where some of its most fascinating tales are laid. It is true that English poetry before the time of Elizabeth presents but few distinguished names; but there is a world of unappropriated treasures of the chivalrous class of poetry, which are still the delight of those who possess the key to their secret chambers, and were the archetypes of the earlier poets of that prolific age. It is important to recollect, that among the poets who adorn that epoch, the narrative preceded the dramatic. [Sidenote: Spenser belongs to the Gothic school.] Spenser belongs, in every view, to the romantic or Gothic school; the heroic Mort d'Arthur was the rule of his poetical faith; and it was that school, headed by him, which Shakspeare, on commencing his course and choosing his path, found in possession of all the popularity of the day. [Sidenote: Shakspere too.] Every thing proves that he allowed himself to be guided by the prevailing taste. His early poems belong in design to Spenser's school, and their style is [68:1]often imitative of his. In his dramas he has many points of resemblance to the older chivalrous poets, besides his occasional adoption of their subjects. His respect for Gower is shewn by the repeated introduction of his shade as the speaker in his choruses[68:2]; and particular allusions and images, borrowed from Gothic usages and chivalrous facts, occur at the first blush to the recollection of every one. But there is a more widely spread influence than all this. [Sidenote: Shakspere's mistakes and] Many of his most faulty peculiarities are directly drawn from this source, and his innumerable misrepresentations or mistakes are not so truly the fruit of his own ignorance, as the necessary qualities of the class of poets to which he belonged, shared with him by some of the greatest poetical names which modern Europe can cite. [Sidenote: anomalies, those of his Gothic school.] In this situation are indeed almost all the irregularities and anomalies which have furnished the unbelievers in the divinity of his genius with objects of contemptuous abuse;--his creation of geographies wholly fictitious,--his anachronisms in facts and customs,--his misstatements of historical detail,--his dukes and kings in republics,--his harbours in the heart of continents, and his journies over land to remote islands,--his heathenism in Christian lands and times, and his bishops, and priests, and masses, _in partibus infidelium_. [Sidenote: Chaucer and Spenser had the like.] We may censure him for these irregularities if we will; but it is incumbent on us to recollect that Chaucer and Spenser must bear the same sentence: and if the faults are considered so weighty as to shut out from our notice the works in which they are found, the early literature, not of our own country only, but of the whole of continental Europe, must be thrown aside as one mass of unworthy fable.

In truth, Shakspeare, in throwing himself on a style of thought and a track of study which exposed him to such errors, did no more than retire towards those principles which not only were the sources of poetry in his own country, but are the fountains from which, in every nation, her first draughts of inspiration are drunk. [Sidenote: Poetry is first a falsifying of History,] Poetry in its earlier stages is universally neither more nor less than a falsifying of history. The decoration of the Real is an exertion of the fancy which marks an age elder than the creation of the purely Ideal; it is an effort more successful than the [69:1]attempt which follows it, and the wholly fictitious has always the appearance of being resorted to from necessity rather than choice. Cathay is an older and fitter seat of romance than Utopia; and the historical paladins and soldans are characters more poetical than the creatures of pure imagination who displaced them. [Sidenote: and has Ignorance as her ally.] [Sidenote: Her errors depend on the kind of her small knowledge.] But this walk of poetry is one in which she never can permanently linger; her citadel indeed is real existence partially comprehended, but she is unable to defend the fortress after knowledge has begun to sap its outworks; she needs ignorance for her ally while she occupies the domain of history, and when that companion deserts her, she unwillingly retreats on the Possible and Invented[69:2], where she has no enemy to contest her possession of the ground.--While however she does continue in her older haunt, she must sometimes wander out of her imperfectly defined path, and her errors will depend, both in kind and in amount, on the amount and kind of her knowledge. That the qualities of poetical literature, in every nation, are dependent on the number and species of those experiences from which in each particular case the art receives its materials, is indeed too evident to need illustration; but some curious inferences are deducible from an application of this truth to the contrast which is found between the poetical literature of modern Europe, and that older school which has been called the classical. [Sidenote: And hence come distinctive qualities of the Greek and Modern school.] The inherent excellencies of the ancient Greek poetry may yet remain to be accounted for from other causes; but this one principle was adequate to produce the most distinguishing qualities of the pagan literature, while it is distinctly the very same principle, acting in different circumstances, which has given birth to the opposite character of the modern school of invention. [Sidenote: Middle-Age knowledge of vast extent, but never thorough.] During the period which witnessed the gradual rise of that anomalous fabric of poetry, from whose prostrate fragments the perfected literature of Christian Europe has been erected, knowledge (I am uttering no paradox) was of vast extent; it embraced many different ages and many distant regions: but it was also universally imperfect; much was known in part, but nothing wholly. [Sidenote: So it invested History with incongruous attributes.] Hence proceeded the specific difference of that widely-spread form of poetical invention, namely, the super-abundance and incongruity of attributes with which [70:1]it invested historical truth; and it is not very difficult to discover why many of those attributes have never thoroughly amalgamated with the principal mass. The various sources from which the materials of the romantic poetry were drawn, present themselves at once to every mind. [Sidenote: Early modern poets invented a national and original literature,] By the peculiar state of their knowledge, and the rude activity of spirit which was its consequence, the early poets of modern Europe were prepared to invent a species of literature which should be strictly national in its subjects, and in its essential parts wholly original. That new branch was exposed, however, to modifications of various kinds. One temptation to introduce foreign elements, by which its authors were assailed, was singularly strong, and can scarcely in any other instance have operated on a literature arising in circumstances otherwise so favourable to originality, as those in which they were placed. [Sidenote: but, knowing classics badly,] That temptation was offered by the imperfect acquaintance with the classical authors which formed one part of their scattered and ill-reconciled knowledge. [Sidenote: grafted on their own works excrescences from classical literature,] They were influenced by this cause, as they could not have failed to be; and the representations of feelings, habits, and thought, which they borrowed from this source, being in their nature dissimilar to the constituent parts of the system to which they were adjected, never could have harmonised with these, and, under any circumstances, must have always continued to be excrescences. Other elements of the new system were naturally neither evil in themselves, nor inconsistent with the principles with which it was attempted to combine them, but have assumed the aspect of deformity and incongruity solely from incidental and extraneous causes. [Sidenote: and on History, fictions and mistakes.] The fictions and mistakes which the ignorance of those fathers of our modern poetical learning superinduced on history ancient and modern, and on every thing which related to the then existing state either of the material world or of human society, were allowable ornaments, so long as knowledge afterwards acquired did not stamp on them the brand of falsehood; but the moment that the falsity was exposed, and the charm of possible existence broken, those adjuncts lost their empire over the imagination, and with it their appearance of fitness as materials for mental activity. [Sidenote: Supernaturalism of the Romantic Poets only believable by superstition.] In supernatural invention, the early romantic poets [71:1]were still more unfortunate; for when they endeavoured to colour with imaginary hues the awful outlines of the true faith, they attempted a conjunction of holiness with impurity, an identification of the spirit with the flesh, a marriage between the living and the dead; the purer essence revolted from the union, and the human mind could acquiesce in imagining it only while it remained bound in the darkness and fetters of religious corruption. [Sidenote: Characteristics of early Greek poetry.] Turn now to the Grecian poetry, and mark how closely the same principles have operated on it, although the difference of the circumstances has made the result different. [Sidenote: its tendency to orientalism;] The first Grecian inventors were, it is true, protected in a great measure from the influence of any foreign literature, simply by the ignorant rudeness of those ages of the world during which their task was performed; and even here I have no doubt that an influence not very dissimilar did actually operate; for there seems to be good reason for supposing that, if we had before us the wild songs of such bards as the Thracian Orpheus, or the old Musæus, we should find them strongly marked by that orientalism towards which the later Greek poetry which remains to us betrays so continual a tendency. In other respects, the spirit in which the Greeks formed their poetical system was identical with our own. [Sidenote: its falsification of History,] Their elder poets falsified historical facts, invented or disguised historical characters, and framed erroneous representations of the past in time and the distant in place, no otherwise than did the romantic fabulists; and the classical inventors continued to have sufficient faith placed in their fictions, merely because knowledge advanced too slowly to allow detection of their falsity so long as the literature of the nation continued to exist for it as a present possession. [Sidenote: its treatment of Religion.] With their religious belief, again, every attractive invention harmonised, and every splendid addition was readily incorporated as a consistent part; where all was false, a falsity the more was unperceived or uncensured, and where sublimity and beauty were almost the only objects sought, they were gladly accepted from whatever quarter or in whatever shape they came.

[Sidenote: Shakspere, for his stories and form, left his own time, and delighted in the past.]

So far as these considerations seem to elucidate the principles on which Shakspeare proceeded, they do so by exhibiting him as withdrawing from his own times as to his subjects and the ex[72:1]ternal form of his works, though not as to their animating spirit,--as placing himself delightedly amidst the rude greatness of older poetry and past ages, and viewing life and nature from their covert, as if he had sat within a solitary and ruined aboriginal temple, and looked out upon the valley and the mountains from among those broken and massive columns, whose aspect gave majesty and solemnity to the landscape which was beheld through their moss-grown vistas. [Sidenote: Thence his faults.] So far as these views have any force as a defence of faults detected in the great poet, that defence is founded on the consideration that the errors were unavoidable consequences of the system which produced so much that was admirable, and that they were shared with him by those whom he followed in his selection of subjects and form of writing. So far as all that has been said on this head has a close application to the main subject of our inquiry, its sum is briefly this. [Sidenote: Summary of reasons why Shakspere chose the plot of _Two Noble Kinsmen_.] [Sidenote: He went back to the school of Chaucer and Spenser; which Milton, after, sought.] [Sidenote: Shakspere's love of old poems.] An argument arises in favour of Shakspeare's choice of the plot of this drama, from its general qualities, as a familiar and favourite story, and one of a class which had been frequently used by the older dramatists; that argument receives additional strength from the fact of this individual subject having been previously treated in a dramatic form; and it is rendered almost impregnable when we consider the subject particularly as a chivalrous story, and as belonging and leading us back to that native school to which Shakspeare, though in certain respects infected by the exotic taste of the age, yet in essentials belonged,--the wilderness in which Chaucer had opened up the well-head of poetry, where Gower and Lydgate had drunk freely, and Sackville had more sparingly dipped his brow,--the paradise through which Spenser had joyfully wandered with the heavenly Una,--the patriarchal forest into which afterwards Milton loved to retire from his lamp-lighted chamber, to sleep at the foot of some huge over-hanging oak, and dream of mailed knights riding by his resting-place, or fairy choirs dancing on the green hillocks around,--the enchanted rose garden where Shakspeare himself gathered those garlands of beauty, which he has described as adding glory even to his thoughts of love.

[73:1]When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see description of the fairest wights,
_And beauty making beautiful old ryme_
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights;
Then in the blazon of sweet beauty's best,
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see this antique pen would have expresst
Even such a beauty as you master now.

_Sonnet 106._

In the Arrangement of the Plot also there are circumstances which point emphatically to Shakspeare's agency. [Sidenote: Shakspere seen in the simplicity of the plot.] One strong argument is furnished by a very prominent quality of the plot as it is managed,--its simplicity. [Sidenote: He relied on the execution of the parts, not the complication of the whole.] This quality is like him, as being in this case the result of a close adherence to the original story; but it is also like him in itself, since the arrangement of all his works indicates the operation of a principle tending to produce it, namely, a reliance for dramatic effect on the execution of the parts rather than on the mechanical perfection or complication of the whole. His contemporaries, in their own several ways, bestowed extreme care on their plots. [Sidenote: Beaumont and Fletcher's plots depend more on surprise and incident.] With Beaumont and Fletcher, hurry, surprise, and rapid and romantic revolution of incident are the main object, rather than tragic strength or even stage effect: their plays would furnish materials for extended novels, and are often borrowed from such without concentration or omission. Shakspeare's comparative poverty of plot is not approached by them even in their serious plays, and the lively stir of their comic adventures is the farthest from it imaginable. [Sidenote: B. Jonson's plots admirably constructed.] Jonson's plots are constructed most elaborately and admirably: one or two of them are without equal for skill of conduct and pertinency and connection of parts. This cautious and industrious poet never confided in his own capability of making up for feebleness of plan by the force of individual passages; and his distrust was well judged, for the abstract coldness of his mind betrays itself in every page of his dialogue, and his scenes need all their beauty of outline to conceal the frigidity of their filling up. Ford and Massinger agree much in their choice of plots, both preferring incidents of a powerfully tragic nature: but their modes of management are widely different. [Sidenote: Ford's gloomy plots softened by tenderness and regret.] Ford, on the gloom of whose stories glimpses [74:1]of pathos fall like moonlight, delights, when he comes to work up the details of his tragic plan, in softening it down into the most dissolving tenderness; at his bidding tears flow in situations where we listen rather to hear Agony shriek, or look to behold Terror freezing into stone; his emotion is not the rising vehemence of present passion, but the anguish, subsiding into regret, which lingers when suffering is past, and suggests ideas of eventual resignation and repose;--his verse is like the voice of a child weeping itself to sleep. [Sidenote: Massinger's stage effect by situations, and tragic design.] [Sidenote: His coldness of expression.] Massinger crowds adventure upon adventure, and his situations are wound up to the height of unmixed horror; for stage effect and tragic intensity, some of them, as for example the last scene in 'The Unnatural Combat', and the celebrated one in 'The Duke of Milan', are unequalled in the modern drama, and worthy of the sternness of the antique; but it is in the design alone that the tragic spirit works; the colouring of the details is cold as monumental marble; the pomp of lofty eloquence apes the simplicity of grief, or silence is left to interpret alike for sorrow or despair. To the carefulness in outlining the plan and devising situations, thus shewn in different ways, Shakspeare's manner is perfectly alien. [Sidenote: Shakspere's great aim to bring out character and feeling.] He never exhausts himself in framing his plots, but reserves his strength for the great aim which he had before him, the evolution of human character and passion, a result which he relied on his own power to produce from any plot however naked. He does not want variety of adventure in many of his plays; but he has it only where his novel or chronicle gave it to him: he does not reject it when it is offered, but does not make the smallest exertion to search for it. [Sidenote: Shakspere's plays with no plot:] Some of his plays, especially his comedies, have actually no plot, and those, too, the very dramas in which his genius has gained some of its most mighty victories. [Sidenote: _The Tempest._] 'The Tempest' is an instance: what is there in it? A ship's company are driven by wreck upon an island; they find an old man there who had been injured by certain of them, and a reconciliation takes place. [Sidenote: _As You Like It._] The only action of 'As You Like It' is pedestrian; if the characters had been placed in the forest in the first scene, the drama would have been then as ripe for its catastrophe as it is in the last. [Sidenote: _Midsummer Night's Dream_ has no plot.] 'The Midsummer Night's Dream' relates a midnight stroll in a wood; and the unreal na[75:1]ture of the incidents is playfully indicated in its name. It is from no stronger materials than those three frail threads of narrative that our poet has spun unrivalled tissues of novel thought and divine fancy. And, as in his lighter works he is careless of variety of adventure, so in his tragic plays he does not seek to heap horrors or griefs one upon another in devising the arrangement of his plots. [Sidenote: In the plots of Shakspere's Tragedies, details and character are the main things.] In this latter class of his works, the skill and force with which the interest is woven out of the details of story and elements of character, make it difficult for us to see how far it is that we are indebted to these for the power which the scene exerts over us. But with a little reflection we are able to discover, that there is scarcely one drama of his, in which, from the same materials, situations could not have been formed, which should have possessed in their mere outline a tenfold amount of interest and tragic effect to those which Shakspeare has presented to us. [Sidenote: He could have made more striking effect out of _Hamlet_, Acts IV. & V. 4.] 'Hamlet' offers, especially in the two last acts, some remarkable proofs of his indifference to the means which he held in his hands for increasing the tragic interest of his situations, and of the boldness with which he threw himself on his own resources for the creation of the most intense effect out of the slenderest outline. [Sidenote: _Othello_, Act III.] But no example can shew more strikingly his independence of tragic situation, and his power of concocting dramatic power out of the most meagre elements of story, than the third act of the Othello. It contains no more than the development and triumph of the devilish design which was afterwards to issue in murder and remorse; and other writers would have treated it in no other style than as necessary to prepare the way for the harrowing conclusion. In the Moor's dialogues with Iago, the act of vengeance, ever and anon sternly contemplated, and darkening all with its horror, is yet but one ingredient in the misery of the tale. [Sidenote: So in the end of _Lear_,] These scenes are a tragedy in themselves, the story of the most hideous revolution in a noble nature; and their catastrophe of wretchedness is complete when the tumult of doubt sinks into resolved and desolate conviction,--when the Moor dashes Desdemona from him, and rushes out in uncontrollable agony.--Read also the conclusion of Lear, and learn the same lesson from the economy of that most touching scene. [Sidenote: all is left clear for the one group, the father and his dead child.] The horrors which have gathered so thickly [76:1]throughout the last act, are carefully removed to the background, and free room is left for the sorrowful groupe on which every eye is turned. The situation is simple in the extreme; but how tragically moving are the internal convulsions for the representation of which the poet has worthily husbanded his force! Lear enters with frantic cries, bearing the body of his dead daughter in his arms; he alternates between agitating doubts and wishing unbelief of her death, and piteously experiments on the lifeless corpse; he bends over her with the dotage of an old man's affection, and calls to mind the soft lowness of her voice, till he fancies he can hear its murmurs. Then succeeds the dreadful torpor of despairing insanity, during which he receives the most cruel tidings with apathy, or replies to them with wild incoherence; and the heart flows forth at the close with its last burst of love, only to break in the vehemence of its emotion,--commencing with the tenderness of regret, swelling into choking grief, and at last, when the eye catches the tokens of mortality in the dead, snapping the chords of life in a paroxysm of agonised horror.

Oh, thou wilt come no more;
Never, never, never, never, never!
--Pray you, undo this button: Thank you, Sir.--
Do you see this?--_Look on her--look_--HER LIPS!
_Look there! Look there!_

The application here of the differences thus pointed out is easy enough. Fletcher either would not have chosen so bare a story, or he would have treated it in another guise. [Sidenote: Incidents of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ story] The incidents which constitute the story are neither many nor highly wrought: they are only the capture of the two knights,--their becoming enamoured of the lady,--the combat which was to decide their title to her,--and the death of Arcite after it. And no complexity of minor adventures is inserted to disturb the simplicity so presented. [Sidenote: wouldn't have suited Fletcher.] In all this there is nothing which Fletcher could have found sufficient to maintain that continuity and stretch of interest which he always thought necessary. [Sidenote: He'd have added to 'em.] He would have invented accessory circumstances, he would have produced new characters, or thrust the less important person[77:1]ages who now fill the stage, further into the foreground, and more constantly into action: the one simple and inartificial story which we have, possessing none of his mercurial activity of motion, and scarcely exciting a feeling of curiosity, would have been transformed into a complication of intrigues, amidst which the figures who occupy the centre of the piece as it stands, would have been only individuals sharing their importance with others, and scarcely allowed room enough to make their features at all distinguishable.