Chapter IX: Act I: scene iii. has the characteristics of Shakspere. It is (4)

Poetry, as we have seen, and dramatic poetry more strictly than any other species, must be judged primarily as a representation of passion and feeling; and when it is defective as such, it has failed in its proper end. Its prosecution of that end, however, is subject to two important limitations. [Sidenote: But 1. it must show human nature entirely, both its moving and hindering forces; man's mind as well as his passions; 2. it must do this impressively, must have a high standard of character.] First, if it is to be in any sense a _true_ representation of human action, it must represent human nature not partially, but entirely; it must exhibit not only the moving influences which produce action, but also the counteracting forces which in real life always control it. It must be a mirror of the intellectual part of the human mind, as well as of the passionate. Secondly, if, possessing the first requisite, truth, it is to be also an _impressive_ representation, (that is, such a representation as shall effect the ends of poetical art,) it must set up an ideal and elevated standard to regulate its choice of the class of intellectual endowment which is to form the foundation of the characters which it portrays. [Sidenote: Ben Jonson faild in (2), the other Elizabethans in (1).] We discover the cause of Jonson's inferiority in his failure in obedience to the latter of these rules, though he scrupulously complied with [95:1]the first: we discover the prevailing defect of all the other dramatic writers of that period, to consist in their neglect even of the first and subsidiary rule, which involved a complete disregard to the other.--These latter have, as well as Shakspeare, been proposed as models, from their close imitation of nature. [Sidenote: Shakspere's contemporaries don't imitate Nature, they distort it, give Passion, and no Reason.] The merit of truth to nature belongs to them only in a very confined sense. They seize one oblique and partial aspect of human character, and represent it as giving a true and direct view of the whole; they are the poets of the passions, and no more; they have failed to shadow forth that control which the calmer principles of our nature always exert over the active propensities. Their excellence consequently is to be looked for only in scenes which properly admit the force of unchecked passion, or of passions conflicting with each other; and in those scenes where the more thoughtful spirit ought to work, we must be prepared to meet either exaggeration of feeling or feebleness of thought, either the operation of an evil principle, or, at best, a defect of the good one. [Sidenote: They like to show the mind in delirium.] Even in their passionate scenes, the vigour of the drawing is the merit oftener than the faithfulness of the portrait; they delight to figure the human mind as in a state of delirium, with the restraining forces taken off, and the passions and the imagination boiling, as if the brain were maddened by opiates or fever. Fierce and exciting visions come across the soul in such a paroxysm; and in the intensity of its stimulated perceptions, it gazes down into the abysses of nature, with a profound though transitory quickness of penetration. It is a high merit to have exhibited those partial views of nature, or even this exaggerated phasis of the mind; and the praise is shared by no dramatic school whatever; (for the qualities of the ancient are different;) but it must not be assumed that the drama fulfils its highest purposes, by representations so partial, so distorted, or so disproportioned. [Sidenote: They are poets of impulse.] As these poets of impulse bestowed no part of their attention on the intellect in any view, they produced their peculiar effect, such as it was, without any attempt at that higher task of selection and elevation in intellectual character for which the universality of views which they wanted must always serve as the foundation. [Sidenote: Ben Jonson as broad in aim as Shakspere.] They had accordingly little scope for the due introduction of reflection in their works; and their turn of mind inclined them little to [96:1]search for it when it did not naturally present itself.--Jonson resembled Shakspeare in wideness of aim: he is most unlike him in the method which he adopted in the pursuit of his end. [Sidenote: Ben Jonson tried at truth to nature,] The two stood alone in their age and class, as alone aiming at truth to nature in any sense; both wished to read each of the opposite sides of the scroll of human character: but the one read correctly the difficult writing in which intellectual character is traced, while the other misapprehended and misinterpreted its meaning, and even allowed the eagerness with which he perused this perplexing page, to withdraw his attention from the more easy meaning of the other. [Sidenote: but drew individuals only, portraits of reality, but no types,] The fault of his characters as intellectual beings, is that they are individuals and no more; faithful or grotesque portraits of reality, they are not touched with that purple light which affords insight into universal relations and hidden causes. [Sidenote: not poetic creations.] His failure is shewn by its effect: his characters are not so conceived as to lead the mind to the comprehension of anything beyond their own individual peculiarities, or to elevate it into that region of active and conceptive contemplation into which it is raised by the finest class of poetry: he exhibited reality as reality, and not in its relation to possibility; he even diverges into the investigation of causes, instead of seeing them at a glance, and indicating them by effects; he anatomised human life, and hung up its dry bones along the walls of his study.

In the close obedience which Shakspeare rendered to each of these two canons, borne in upon his mind by the instantaneous suggestions of his happy genius, we may discover the origin of his tremendous power. [Sidenote: Shakspere's power lay in subordinating Fancy and Passion to Intellect.] To commence at the point where his adherence to the first and subsidiary rule is most slightly manifested, it is to be noticed, that his works are marked throughout by a predominance of the qualities of the understanding over the fancy and the passions. This is not true of the fundamental conception of the work, nor of the relations by which his characters are united into the dramatic groupes; in these particulars the poetical faculty is allowed to work freely: but it is after the initial steps have been taken under her guidance, that the rule is committed to the sterner power of intellect. The stir of fancy often breaks through the restraints which hold it in check; the warmth of feeling effervesces very unfrequently. [Sidenote: All his characters have quiet good sense.] [Sidenote: Shakspere's shrewdness in his minor scenes.] The poet's personages [97:1]are all more or less marked by an air of quiet sense, which is extremely unusual in poetry, and incompatible with the unnecessary or frequent display of feeling; and accordingly, his less important scenes, whether they be gay or serious, occupied in the business of the drama, or devoted to an exchange of witty sallies, possess, where they aim at nothing higher, at least a degree of intellectual shrewdness, which very often savours of worldly coldness. [Sidenote: His soberness gives force to his passion.] Viewed merely as increasing the effect of his passionate scenes, this prevailing sobriety of tone gives him an incalculable advantage: passion in his works bursts out when it is let loose, like the spring of a mastiff unchained. [Sidenote: Shakspere's sober rationality.] It is of this quality, his sober rationality, that we are apt to think when we acknowledge his truth of representation; and the excellence is indispensable to truth in any sense, because the want of it gives birth to imperfection and distortion of views; but I apprehend that it is to his aiming at a higher purpose that we have to look for the genuine source of his power. [Sidenote: But he didn't reproduce the bare reality.] While we mark the gradual rise of the intellectual element of poetical character upwards from its lowest stage, we are in truth approximating to a rule which issues in something beyond a bare and unselected reproduction of reality. [Sidenote: Poetry aims at general truth, brings out the relation of one mind to universal nature; it idealizes and ennobles realities.] Poetry aims at representing the whole of man's nature; and yet a picture of human character, embracing all its features, but neither skilfully selecting its aspect nor majestically combining its component parts, would not effect the ends of poetry: for that art contemplates not individual but general truth, not that which is really produced, but that which may be conceived without doing violence to acknowledged principles; instead of presenting a bare portraiture of mental changes, it exhibits them in an aspect which teaches their relation to the system of universal nature; it is seemingly conversant with facts, but it imperceptibly hints at causes; it aims at exciting the imagination to frame pictures for itself, and for that reason, if for no other, it must be permitted to idealize and ennoble the individual realities from which its materials are collected. [Sidenote: A Painting pictured a soldier in the midst of foes, yet showd him alone.] The mode in which poetry affects the mind is illustrated by the description which we read of a certain ancient painting. That piece represented a young soldier surrounded by several enemies and desperately defending himself; but his own figure alone was [98:1]admitted into the field of view, and the motions and place of his unseen enemies were indicated solely by the life, energy, and significance of the attitude in which he was drawn. Shakspeare's attachment to truth of representation never tempted him to forget the true purpose of his art. [Sidenote: Shakspere is true to nature in Poetry's way.] [Sidenote: His characters are not monsters of evil,] While he is true to nature by attempting the treatment of his whole subject, he is true to it in the manner and with the restrictions which the nature of poetry requires; he is true to principles which admit of being conceived as producing effects, not to effects individually observed as resulting; the creatures of his conception possess no qualities which unfit them for exciting the mind as poetical character should excite it; they are not repulsive by the unexampled and unatoned for congregation of evil qualities, not mean by the absence of lofty thought, not devoid of poetical significance by confining the imagination to the qualities by which they are individually marked. [Sidenote: nor are they above the influence of evil.] You will particularly remark, that, while he had to bring out the features of his characters by subjecting them to tragic and calamitous events, he was careful not to figure them as unsusceptible of the influence of those external evils. [Sidenote: Brutus is his one stoical character.] The lofty view which he took of human nature did indeed admit the idea of a resistance to calamity, and a triumph over it, based on internal and conscious grandeur; but this is an aspect in which he does not present the human mind; the stoical Brutus is the only character in which he has attempted such a conception, which he has there developed but partially. But while he was contented, even in his noblest characters, to represent passion in all its strength and directed towards its usual objects, he had open to him sources of tragic strength unknown to those poets who describe passion only. Where passion alone is represented, no spectacle is so agitating as the conflict of contending passions; and the narrowness of such views of nature permits that tragic opposition to be no further exhibited. [Sidenote: Shakspere dealt not with the conflict of Passions only, but with the strife between the Passions and the Reason,] Shakspeare had before him a wider field of contrast--the conflict between the passions and the reason--a struggle between powers inspired with deadly animosity, and each, as he conceived them, possessed of gigantic strength. [Sidenote: convulsing the whole being of man.] He has worthily represented that terrible encounter, engaging every principle and faculty of the soul, and shaking the whole kingdom of man's being with [99:1]internal convulsions. It is in such representations that his power is mainly felt; and his pictures are at the same time truest to nature and most faithful to the ends of tragic art, by the subjugation of the intellectual principle which is the catastrophe of the strife. The reason is assaulted by calamity from without, and borne down by an host of rebellious feelings attacking it internally. [Sidenote: Characters showing this mental strife, are specially dear to Shakspere.] It is to the delineation of such characters as afford scope for this exhibition of mental commotion that Shakspeare has especially attached himself: the thoughtful and reflective in character is at once his favourite resort, and the field of his triumph.

[Sidenote: He chose the intellectual and reflective in character.]

The poet's selection of the intellectual and reflective in character, as the subject of his art, is thus indicated as his guiding principle, to whose operation all other principles and rules are but subservient. The reflective element however is in excess with Shakspeare, and its undue prevalence is not destitute of harmony with the principle which produces its legitimately moderated effects. [Sidenote: He's a Gnomic Poet.] He is a Gnomic Poet; and he is so, because he is emphatically the poet of man. [Sidenote: The solemnity of meditation is thro' all his soul.] He pauses, he reflects, he aphorizes; because, looking on life and death as he looked on them, viewing the nature of man from so lofty a station, and with a power of vision so far-reaching, so acute, and so delicate, it was impossible but the deepest solemnity of meditation should diffuse itself through all the chambers of his soul. [Sidenote: He makes his people hint the principles beneath the shews.] His enunciations of general truth are often serious and elevated even in his gayer works; and where the scene denied him an opportunity of introducing these in strict accordance with the business of the drama, he makes his personages, as it were, step out of the groupe, to meditate on the meanings of the scene, to hold a delicately implied communication with the spectator, and to hint the general maxims and principles which lurk beneath the tragic and passionate shews. He has gone beyond this: he has brought on the stage characters whose sole task is meditation, whose sole purpose in the drama is the suggesting of high and serious reflection. [Sidenote: Jaques, in _As You Like It_, is like a Greek chorus, which] Jaques is the perfection of such a character; and the office which he discharges bears more than a fanciful likeness in conception to the task of the ancient chorus. [Sidenote: gave the key-note to the audience.] That forgotten appendage of the Grecian drama originated indeed from incidental causes; but, being continued as a part of the dramatic plan, [100:1]it had a momentous duty assigned to it: it suggested, it interpreted, it sympathised, it gave the key-note to the reflections of the audience. [Sidenote: The highest art made Shakspere insert his reflective passages in his plays.] A profound sense of the highest purposes and responsibilities of the art prompted this employment of the choral songs; and no way dissimilar was the impression which dictated to Shakspeare the introduction of the philosophically cynical lover of nature in that one play, and the breaks of reflection so frequent with him in many others.--It is worthy of remark, that this spirit of penetrating thought, ranging from every-day wisdom to philosophical abstraction, never becomes morose or discontented.[101:1] Man is a selfish being, but not a malignant one; yet the acts resulting from the two dispositions are often very similar, and it is the error of the misanthrope to mistake the one for the other. [Sidenote: Shakspere never made the misanthrope's mistake.] [Sidenote: His sarcasm did not spring from envy.] Shakspeare's well-balanced mind was in no danger of this mistake; his keen-sightedness often makes him sarcastic, but the sarcasm forced on a mind which contrasts the poorness of reality with the splendours of imagination, is of a different temper from that which is bred from lowness of thought and fretful envy. [Sidenote: _Timon's_ sternness is softened by tenderness.] Shakspeare has devoted one admirable drama to the exhibition of the misanthrophic spirit, as produced by wrongs in a noble heart; but the sternness which is the master-note of that work is softened by the most beautiful intervals of redeeming tenderness and good feeling. [Sidenote: _Troilus_ is Shakspere's only bitter play.] The only work of his evidently written in ill humour with mankind, is the Troilus, which, both in idea and execution, is the most bitter of satires.

The application of the distinctive qualities of Shakspeare's tone of thought to the spirit of 'The Two Noble Kinsmen', is a task for your own judgment and discrimination, and would not be aided by suggestions of mine. I have stated the result to which I have been led by such an application; and I am confident that you will be able to reach the same conclusion by a path which may be shorter than any which I could clear for you. In connection however with this inquiry, I would direct your attention to one other truth possessing a clear application here. [Sidenote: Shakspere's thoughtfulness a Moral distinction.] Shakspeare's thoughtfulness goes the length of becoming a Moral distinction and excellence. [Sidenote: His part of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ is of higher tone, and purer, than Fletcher's.] That such a difference does exist between Shakspeare and Fletcher, is denied by no one; and the moral tone of this play, in those parts which I have [101:2]ventured to call Shakspeare's, is distinctly a higher one than Fletcher's. It is uniform and pure, though the moral inquisition is less severe than Shakspeare's often is. [Sidenote: Massinger and Ben Jonson too more moral than Fletcher.] If Massinger or Jonson had been the poet alleged to have written part or the whole of the work, it would have been difficult to draw any inference from this circumstance by itself; but when the question is only between Shakspeare and Fletcher, even an abstinence from gross violation or utter concealment of moral truth is an important element in the decision; and the positively high strain here maintained is a very strong argument in favour of the purer writer.

[Sidenote: Are Johnson, &c. right in condemning Shakspere's morality.]

I am tempted, however, to carry you somewhat further on this head, because I must confess that I cannot see the grounds on which Johnson and others have rested their sweeping condemnation of Shakspeare's morality. There is, it must be admitted, much to blame, but there is also something worthy of praise; and praise on this score is what Shakspeare has scarcely ever received. [Sidenote: He admits licentiousness] He has been charged with licentiousness, and justly; but even in this particular there are some circumstances of palliation, besides the equivocal plea of universal example, and the doubt which exists whether most of his grosser dialogues are not interpolations. [Sidenote: and coarse speech.] Mere coarseness of language may offend the taste, and yet be so used as to give no foundation for any heavier charge. [Sidenote: But who can be tainted by Othello's words?] There surely never was a mind which could receive one evil suggestion from the language wrung from the agonized Othello. Even where this excuse does not hold, Shakspeare preserves one most important distinction quite unknown to his contemporaries. [Sidenote: Shakspere's contemporaries make their heroes loose livers.] By them, looseness of dialogue is introduced indifferently anywhere in the play, licentiousness of incident is admitted in any part of the plot, and debauchery of life is attributed without scruple to those persons in whom interest is chiefly meant to be excited. [Sidenote: He doesn't,] It may be safely stated that Shakspeare almost invariably follows a rule exactly opposite. His inferior characters may be sometimes gross and sensual; his principal personages scarcely ever are so: these he refuses to degrade needlessly, by attributing to them that carelessness of moral restraint of which Fletcher's men of pleasure are so usually guilty. [Sidenote: except in two plays.] There are only two plays[102:1] in which he [102:2]has violated this rule, exclusively of some unguarded expressions elsewhere.

But the language which has been held on this question would lead us to believe that his guilt extends further,--that he is totally insensible to any moral distinctions, and blind to moral aims and influences. [Sidenote: Most of Shakspere's contemporaries made pleasure the law of their heroes' lives.] Of most dramatic writers of his time this charge is too true. Their characters act because they will, not because they ought,--for happiness, and not from duty:--the lowness of their aim may be disguised, but it is inherent, and cannot be eradicated. We might read every work of Fletcher's without discovering (if we were ignorant of the fact before) that there exists for man any principle of action loftier in its origin than his earthly nature, or more extended in its object than the life which that nature enjoys. But nothing of this is true as to Shakspeare. [Sidenote: Shakspere's morality not of the loftiest, not like Milton's and] That his morality is of the loftiest sort cannot be asserted. [Sidenote: Michel Angelo's.] He does not, like Milton, look out on life at intervals from the windows of his sequestered hermitage, only to turn away from the sight and indulge in the most fervent aspirations after immortal purity, and the deepest adoration of uncreated power; nor does he grovel in the dust with that ascetic humiliation and religious sense of guilt which overcame the strong spirit of Michel Angelo. But he shares much of the solemnity of moral feeling which possesses all great minds, though in him its influence was restrained by external causes. [Sidenote: He was in the world, and often of it,] He moves in the hurried pageant of the world, and sometimes wants leisure to moralize the spectacle; and even when he does pause to meditate, the world often hangs about his heart, and he thinks of life as men in action are apt to think of it. [Sidenote: but evil, to him, was evil, moral law was always shown supreme. Note the general moral truth in his Tragedies.] But moral truth, seldom lost sight of, is never misrepresented: evil is always described as being evil: the great moral rule, though often stated as inoperative, is always acknowledged as binding. Read carefully any of his more lofty tragedies, and ponder the general truths there so lavishly scattered; and you will find that an immense proportion of those apophthegms have a moral bearing, often a most solemn and impressive one. [Sidenote: Even in Comedy his reflections are moral.] Even in his lighter plays there is much of the same spirit: in all he is often thoughtful, and he is never long thoughtful without becoming morally didactic. This is much in any poet, and especially in a drama[103:1]tist, who exhibits humanity directly as active, and is under continual temptations to forget what action tempts men to forget in real life. [Sidenote: Shakspere right in letting evil prevail, so long as he shows it evil.] His neglect of duly distributing punishment and reward is no moral fault, so long as moral truth is kept sight of in characterizing actions, while that neglect is borrowed closely from reality. And the same thing is true of his craving wish for describing human guilt, and darkening even his fairest characters with the shadows of weakness and sin. [Sidenote: Dramatic poetry is truest when it shows man most the slave of evil.] The poetry which depicts man in action is then unfortunately truest when it represents him as most deeply enslaved by the evil powers which surround him. [Sidenote: Shakspere bared man's soul,] Different poets have proceeded to different lengths in the degree of influence which they have assigned to the evil principle: most have feared to draw wholly aside the veil which imagination always struggles to keep before the nakedness of man's breast; and Shakspeare, by tearing away the curtain with a harsher hand, has but enabled himself to add a tremendously impressive element of truth to the likeness which his portrait otherwise bears to the original. [Sidenote: and probed it to its depth.] [Sidenote: This is why we hold to him.] His view of our state and nature is often painful; but it is its reality that makes it so; and he would have wanted one of his strongest holds on our hearts if he had probed them less profoundly; it is by his unflinching scrutiny of mortal infirmity that he has forged the very strongest chain which binds us to his footstool. [Sidenote: He durst not paint good triumphant over evil, because he knew in life it was not so.] He reverences human nature where it deserves respect: he knows man's divinity of mind, and harbours and expresses the loftiest of those hopes which haunt the heart like recollections: he represents worthily and well the struggle between good and evil, but he feared to represent the better principle as victorious: he had looked on life till observation became prophetical, and he could not fable that as existing which he sorrowfully saw could never be. [Sidenote: Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet, sink under their temptations.] The milk of human kindness in the bosom of Macbeth is turned to venom by the breath of an embodied fiend; the tempered nobility and gentleness of the Moor are made the craters through which his evil passions blaze out like central fires; and in the wonderful Hamlet, hate to the guilty pollutes the abhorrence of the crime,--irresolution waits on consciousness,--and the misery of doubt clings to the solemnity of meditation. [Sidenote: And so do we.] This is an awful representation of the human soul; but is it [104:1]not a true one? [Sidenote: Man's history is written in blood and tears.] [Sidenote: Shakspere's view of life the fittest to give us to the truth.] The sibylline volume of man's history is open before us, and every page of it is written in blood or tears. And not only are such views of human fate the truest, but they are those which are most fitted to arouse the mind to serious, to lofty, even to religious contemplation,--to guide it to the fountains of moral truth,--to lead it to meditations on the dark foundations of our being,--to direct its gaze forward on that great journey of the soul, in which mortal life is but a single step.

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[Sidenote: Analogy of this inquiry.]

Oftener than once in this inquiry, I have acted towards you like one who, undertaking to guide a traveller through a beautiful valley, should frequently lead him out of the beaten road to climb precipitous eminences, promising that the delay in the accomplishment of the journey should be compensated by the pleasure of extensive prospects over the surrounding region. Conduct like this would be excusable in a guide, if the person escorted had leisure for the divergence, and it would be incumbent on him if the acquisition of a knowledge of the country were one of the purposes of the journey; but in either case the labour of the ascents would be recompensed to the traveller, only if the landscapes presented were interesting and distinctly seen. [Sidenote: Aims of this treatise;] For similar reasons, my endeavour to propose wider views than the subject necessarily suggested, has, I conceive, been fully justifiable; but it is for you to decide whether the attempt has been so far successful as to repay your exertions in attending my excursive steps. [Sidenote: 1. from Shakspere's studies, to distinguish between him and his coevals.] The first of our lengthened digressions has allowed us to combine the known facts as to the kind and amount of Shakspeare's studies, and to draw from them certain conclusions, which I cannot think altogether valueless, as to some distinctions between him and his dramatic coevals, and as to the source of some peculiarities of his which have been visited with heavy censure. [Sidenote: 2. to trace the most characteristic qualities of his thought.] In the second instance in which we have branched off from the main argument, we have been led to reflect on the most characteristic qualities of the poet's mode of thought. [Sidenote: Shakspere's variety of faculty.] If there be any truth or distinctness in the hints which have been imperfectly and hastily thrown out on this head, your own mind will classify, modify, or extend them; and, never forgetting what is [105:1]the fundamental principle of the great poet's strength, you will regard that essential quality with the more lively admiration, when you discriminate the operations of the power from the working of those other principles which minister to it, and when you remark the number, the variety, the opposition of the mental faculties, which are all thus enlisted under the banners of the one intense and almost philosophical Perception of Dramatic Truth. [Sidenote: He, the stern inquisitor into man's heart,] That stern inquisition into the human heart, which the finest sense of dramatic perfection elevates into the ideal, and the richest fancy touches with poetical repose, will awaken in your mind a softened solemnity of feeling, like that under whose sway we have both wandered in the mountainous forests which skirt our native river; the continuous and gloomy canopy of the gigantic pines hanging over-head like a dungeon roof, while the green sward which was the pavement of the woodland temple, and the lines of natural columns which bounded its retiring avenues, were flooded with the glad illumination of the descending sunset. [Sidenote: the anxious searcher into truth, is yet the happiest creator of beauty: the 'maker' of Ric. III. and Iago as well as Juliet and Titania; of Macbeth as well as Hamlet.] We reflect with wonder that the most anxious of all poetical inquirers into truth, is also the most powerful painter of unearthly horrors, and the most felicitous creator of romantic or imaginary beauty; that the poet of Richard and Iago is also the poet of Juliet, of Ariel, and of Titania; that the fearfully real self-torture, the judicially inflicted remorse, of Macbeth, is set in contrast with the wildest figures which superstitious imagination ever conceived; that on the same canvas on which Hamlet stands as a personification of the Reason of man shaken by the assaults of evil within him and without, the gates of the grave are visibly opened, and the dead ascend to utter strange secrets in the ear of night. [Sidenote: His faculties early expanded consistently, and workt thro' all his life actively.] But even this union is less extraordinary than the regular and unparalleled consistency with which the poet's faculties early expanded themselves, and the full activity with which through life all continued to work. [Sidenote: Homer ebbd,] Even the dramatic soul of Homer ebbed like the sea, sinking in old age into the substitution of wild and minutely told adventure for the historical portraiture of mental grandeur and passionate strength. [Sidenote: Milton sank poetry in polemics.] The youth of Milton brooded over the love and loveliness of external nature; it was not till his maturity of years that he soared into the empyrean or descended sheer into the secrets of the abyss; and [106:1]advancing age brought weakness with it, and quenched in the morass of polemical disputation the torch which had flamed with sacred light. [Sidenote: Shakspere alone flowd full tide on.] [Sidenote: Experience came soon to him; Fancy abode with him to the end.] Shakspeare alone was the same from youth to age; in youth no imperfection, in age no mortality or decay; he performed in his early years every department of the task which he had to perform, and he laboured in it with unexhausted and uncrippled energies till the bowl was broken at the fountain; experience visited him early, fancy lingered with him to the last; the rapid developement of his powers was an indication of the internal strength of his genius; their steady continuance was a type and prognostic of the perpetual endurance of his sway. [Sidenote: Gloster (Ric. III.) was early, Shylock and Hamlet of middle time, Lear in ripe age, _The Tempest_, near his death.] The cold and fiendish Gloster was an early conception; the eager Shylock and the superhuman Hamlet were imagined simultaneously not long afterwards; the tenderness of Lear was the fruit of the poet's ripest age; and one of the closing years of his life gave birth to the savage wildness and the youthful and aerial beauty of 'The Tempest.'

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[Sidenote: Are you convinc't that Shakspere wrote much of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_?]

Our last words are claimed by the proper subject of our inquiry. Have I convinced you that in the composition of 'The Two Noble Kinsmen', Shakspeare had the extensive participation which I have ascribed to him? It is very probable that my reasoning is in many parts defective; but I place so much confidence in the goodness of the cause itself, that I would unhesitatingly leave the question, without a word of argument, to be determined by any one, possessing a familiar acquaintance with both the poets whose claims are to be balanced, and an ordinarily acute discernment of their distinguishing qualities. [Sidenote: I'm sure the question needs only attention.] I am firmly persuaded that the subject needs only to have attention directed to it; and my investigation of it cannot have been a failure in every particular. [Sidenote: The external evidence doesn't include the internal.] The circumstances attending the first publication of the drama do not, in the most unfavourable view which can with any fairness be taken of them, exclude us from deciding the question of Shakspeare's authorship by an examination of the work itself: and it is unnecessary that the effect of the external evidence should be estimated one step higher. [Sidenote: Does that give all the play to Fletcher?] Do the internal proofs allot all to Fletcher, or assign any share to Shakspeare? [Sidenote: The Story is alien to Fletcher] The Story is ill-suited for the dramatic purposes [107:1]of the one poet, and belongs to a class of subjects at variance with his style of thought, and not elsewhere chosen by him or any author of the school to which he belonged; both the individual and the class accord with the whole temper and all the purposes of the other poet, and the class is one from which he has repeatedly selected themes. [Sidenote: Fletcher can't have chosen the subject of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_; nor was its plan his.] It is next to impossible that Fletcher can have selected the subject; it is not unlikely that Shakspeare may have suggested it; and if the execution of the plan shall be thought to evince that he was in any degree connected with the work, we can hardly avoid the conclusion that it was by him that the subject was chosen. The proof here, (which I think has not been noticed by any one before me,) seems to me to be stronger than in any other branch of the argument. [Sidenote: Its Scenical Arrangement is like Shakspere's.] The Scenical Arrangement of the drama offers points of resemblance to Shakspeare, which, at the very least, have considerable strength when they are taken together, and are corroborative of other circumstances. [Sidenote: Its Execution is, in great part, so like his,] The Execution of that large proportion of the drama which has been marked off as his, presents circumstances of likeness to him, so numerous that they cannot possibly have been accidental, and so strikingly characteristic that we cannot conceive them to be the product of imitation. [Sidenote: that many passages must be set down to him.] Even if it should be doubted whether Shakspeare chose the subject, or arranged any part of the plot, it seems to me that his claim to the authorship of these individual parts needs only examination to be universally admitted; not that I consider the proof here as stronger than that which establishes his choice of the plot, but because it is of a nature to be more easily and intuitively comprehended.

[Sidenote: Look at all the circumstances together,]

In forming your opinion, you will be careful to view the circumstances, not singly, but together, and to give each point of resemblance the support of the others. [Sidenote: and see whether the many probabilities do not make a certainty.] It may be that every consideration suggested may not affect your mind with equal strength of conviction; but numerous probabilities all tending the same way are sufficient to generate positive certainty: and it argues no imperfection in a result that it is brought out only by combined efforts. In those climates of the New World which you have visited, a spacious and lofty chamber receives a diffusive shower of light through a single narrow aperture, while in our cloudy region we can gather sufficient light for our apart[108:1]ments only by opening large and numerous windows: the end is not gained in the latter case without greater exertion than that which is required in the former, but it is attained equally in both; for the aspect of our habitations is not less cheerful than that of yours.

On the absolute merit of the work, I do not wish to anticipate your judgment. [Sidenote: Shakspere's part in _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, is but a sketch; yet it's better than some of his finisht works.] So far as Shakspeare's share in it is concerned, it can be regarded as no more than a sketch, which would be seen to great disadvantage beside finished drawings of the same master. Imperfect as it is, however, it would, if it were admitted among Shakspeare's acknowledged works, outshine many, and do discredit to none. It would be no unfair trial to compare it with those works of his in which he abstains from his more profound investigations into human nature, permitting the poetical world actively to mingle with the dramatic, and the radiant spirit of hope to embrace the sterner genius of knowledge. [Sidenote: Compare it with the _Midsummer Night's Dream_; the colouring and outline are from the same hand. But best, set it beside _Henry VIII._] We may call up before us the luxurious fancies of the 'Midsummer Night's Dream', or even the sylvan landscapes of the Forest of Ardennes, and the pastoral groupes which people it; and we shall gladly acknowledge a similar though harsher style of colouring, and a strength of contour indicating the same origin. But perhaps there is none of his works with which it could be so fairly compared as 'Henry VIII'. [Sidenote: It's more like that, and nearly as good.] In the tone of sentiment and imagination, as well as in other particulars, I perceive many circumstances of likeness, which it will gratify you to trace for yourself. The resemblance is more than a fanciful one, and the neglected play does not materially suffer by the comparison.

[Sidenote: _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ ought to be in every '_Shakspere's Works_.']

This drama will never receive the praise which it merits, till it shall have been admitted among Shakspeare's undoubted works; and, I repeat, it is entitled to insertion if any one of the conclusions to which I have attempted to lead you be sound,--if it be true that he wrote all, or most, or a few, of those portions of it, which more competent judges than I have already confidently ascribed to him. Farewell.

W. S.

_Edinburgh, March 1833._

[In his article on 'Recent Shaksperian Literature' in No. 144 of the _Edinburgh Review_, July, 1840, page 468, Prof. Spalding states that on Shakspere's taking part in _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, his "opinion is not now so decided as it once was."--F.]

FOOTNOTES:

[1:1] Locrine--Sir John Oldcastle--Lord Cromwell--The London Prodigal--The Puritan--The Yorkshire Tragedy.

[1:2] page 2

[2:1] page 3

[3:1] page 4

[4:1] "The Two Noble Kinsmen: presented at the Blackfriers, by the Kings Majesties servants, with great Applause: written by the memorable Worthies of their Time, Mr John Fletcher and Mr William Shakspeare, Gent. Printed at London by Tho. Cotes, for John Watersone; and are to be sold at the signe of the Crowne, in Pauls Church-yard: 1634."

[4:2] page 5

[5:1] Gifford's Massinger, vol. i. p. xv. [Moxon's ed. p. xxxix, and _B. and Fl._ i. xiii. The letter is from Nat. Field, Rob. Daborne, and Philip Massinger, to Henslowe the manager: "You know there is x. _l._ more at least to be receavd of you for the play. We desire you to lend us v _l._ of that, which shall be allowd to you. Nat. Field." "The money shall be abated out of the money remayns for _the play of Mr. Fletcher and ours_. Rob. Daborne."--F.]

[5:2] page 6

[6:1] page 7

[7:1] page 8

[8:1] Act II. Scene 4. The plucking of the roses.

[8:2] page 9

[9:1] page 10

[10:1] Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature. It would ill become me to carp at an author whom I have expressly to thank for much assistance in this inquiry, and to whom I am perhaps indebted for more than my recollection suggests. But it must be owned, that M. Schlegel's opinion loses somewhat of its weight from the fact, that he also advocates Shakspeare's authorship of some of Malone's plays, a decision in which it is neither desirable nor likely that the poet's countrymen should acquiesce.

[10:2] page 11

[11:1] Weber's Beaumont and Fletcher, vol. xiii., and Lamb, as there quoted.

[11:2] page 12

[12:1] Sonnet 76.

[12:2] page 13

[13:1] page 14

[13:2] There are numerous instances of both these effects in the play before us. "_Counter-reflect_ (a noun); _meditance_; _couch_ and _corslet_ (used as verbs); _operance_; _appointment_, for military accoutrements; _globy eyes_; _scurril_; _disroot_; _dis-seat_," &c. _Weber._

[14:1] page 15

[15:1] t. i. _mourn them ever_

[15:2] page 16

[15:3] _ownest_

[16:1] page 17

[17:1] page 18

[18:1] page 19

[19:1] Farmer's Essay on the Learning of Shakspeare.

[19:2] A singularly rich and energetic piece of colouring in this sort is near the beginning of the poem, commencing,

I have been wooed, as I entreat thee now,
Even by the stern and direful God of War--

and extending through three stanzas.

[19:3] page 20

[20:1] page 21

[21:1] page 22

[22:1] page 23

[23:1] page 24

[24:1] The | is to show the double endings.

[24:2] page 25

[25:1] page 26

[26:1] page 27

[27:1] page 28

[28:1] page 29

[29:1] page 30

[29:2] Perhaps it is worth while to direct attention to this form of speech. Verbal names expressing the agent occur, it is true, in Fletcher and others, but they are in an especial manner frequent with Shakspeare, who invents them to preserve his brevity, and always applies them with great force and quaintness.

[29:3] Probably Fletcher would not have committed this false quantity.

[30:1] page 31

[30:2] 3 middle-rymes, _key_, _three_, _knee_.

[30:3] _in her eyes_

[31:1] page 32

[32:1] page 33

[33:1] page 34

[33:2] The remainder of this speech, an extremely fine one, has been quoted incidentally in page 26. Its richness of fancy is wonderful and most characteristic.

[34:1] page 35

[34:2] page 36

[35:1] page 37

[37:1] page 38

[37:2] This allusion is repeatedly found in Fletcher. Here the expression of it is defective in precision.

[37:3] page 39

[38:1] page 40

[39:1] page 41

[40:1] page 42

[41:1] page 43

[42:1] page 44

[43:1] page 45

[44:1] page 46

[45:1] In Philaster, Act IV. last scene.

Place me, some god, upon a Piramis,
Higher than hill of earth, and lend a voice,
Loud as your thunder, to me, that from thence
I may discourse, to all the under world,
The worth that dwells in him.

Shakspeare, too, was not the most likely person to have given the true meaning of the {boôpis potnia Hêrê}. I am not aware that either Hall or Chapman shewed him the way. Chapman in the First Book (v. 551) has it; "She with the cowes fair eyes, Respected Juno."

[45:2] page 47

[45:3] _2 N. K._, Act V. sc. i, ii, iii. Weber, are V. i. Littledale.

[46:1] This beautiful address has been spoken of already.

[46:2] page 48

[47:1] page 49

[48:1] page 50

[49:1] Romeo and Juliet:--Midsummer Night's Dream:--also in Don Quixote, Parte II. capit. xi.: "Los ojos de Dulcinea deben ser de _verdes esmeraldas_."

[49:2-49:2] This is the character of Emilia, by Chaucer and Shakspere, but not by Fletcher of IV. ii., and the author of V. v. (or iii. Littledale)--if he is not Fletcher--with their inconsistencies of Emilia's weak balancing of Palamon against Arcite, now liking one best, then the other, and being afraid that Palamon may get his _figure spoilt_! F. J. F.

[49:3] page 51

[50:1] page 52

[50:2] The thought here is frequent in Shakspeare's dramas: and the expression of it closely resembles some stanzas in the Lucrece, especially those beginning, "Oh, comfort-killing night!"

[51:1] Cp. Beatrice on Don John and Benedick, in _Much Ado_ II. i.

[51:2] page 53

[52:1] page 54

[52:2] It may be well to mention, that this scene contains allusions, extending through several lines, to the every-way luckless jailor's daughter. If I conceal the fact from you, you will, on finding it out for yourself, suspect that I consider it as making against my hypothesis, which assigns those episodical adventures to a different author from this scene. Be assured that I do not regard it in that light. It is plain that the underplot, however bad, has been worked up with much pains; and we can conceive that its author would have been loth to abandon it finally in the incomplete posture in which the fourth scene of this act left it. Ten lines in this scene sufficed to end the story, by relating the cure of the insane girl; and there can have been no difficulty in their introduction, even on my supposition of this scene being the work of the other author. If the two wrote at the same time, the poet who wrote the rest of the scene may have inserted them on the suggestion of the other; or if the drama afterwards came into the hands of that other, (which there seems some reason to believe,) he could easily insert them for himself. In any view these lines are no argument against my theory.

[53:1] ? Shakspere and one daughter.

[53:2] Cf. p. 54-5.

[53:3] page 55

[53:4] The description which we have read of Mars's attributes reminds one strongly and directly of the fine speech in the poem, where old Saturn, the god of time, enumerates his own powers of destruction. It is far from unlikely that the one passage suggested the other. The rich can afford to borrow.

[54:1] page 56

[55:1] page 57

[56:1] page 58

[57:1] Beaumont's style is unluckily not characterized. F.

[57:2] page 59

[58:1] page 60

[59:1] page 61

[60:1] page 62

[61:1] page 63

[62:1] page 64

[63:1] page 65

[64:1] page 66

[65:1] page 67

[66:1] The Knight of the Burning Pestle.

[66:2] page 68

[66:3] Weber's Beaumont and Fletcher. Henslowe MSS. published by Malone:--Boswell's Shakspeare, vol. iii. p. 303. [See Appx. I. to my Harrison _Forewords_.]

[67:1] page 69

[68:1] page 70

[68:2] N.B. The Gower choruses in _Pericles_ are NOT Shakspere's.--F.

[69:1] page 71

[69:2] With Knowledge comes the retreat to Invention.

[70:1] page 72

[71:1] page 73

[72:1] page 74

[73:1] page 75

[74:1] page 76

[75:1] page 77

[76:1] page 78

[77:1] page 79

[78:1] page 80

[79:1] page 81

[80:1] page 82

[81:1] page 83

[82:1] page 84

[82:2] page 85

[83:1] It would be unfair not to state, that I quote and refer to the translation of the Laocoon published by Mr. De Quincey, in Blackwood's Magazine for November 1826; and that I am not otherwise acquainted with that or any other work of Lessing.

[83:2] page 86

[84:1] page 87

[85:1] page 88

[86:1] page 89

[87:1] page 90

[88:1] page 91

[89:1] The theory which, denying to the Beautiful any capacity of giving pleasure through its innate qualities, ascribes its effects exclusively to the associated ideas which the contemplation of it calls up, proceeds wholly on the assumption, that the sentiment awakened by Beauty when it is beheld bodily present, is the same with that which flows from a poetical description of it. If it be true (as I must believe it is) that the feelings in the two cases are essentially different, the hypothesis falls to the ground. Its maintainers seem in truth to have drawn their conclusions altogether from reflection on the effects produced by Beauty when it is represented in poetry, where association is undoubtedly the source of the enjoyment; and an attention to the working of the fine arts would have taught other inferences.

[90:1] page 92

[90:2] page 93

[91:1] page 94.

[91:2]

[Sidenote: Invention is making a _new_ thing out of a thing already made.]

Alfieri appears to have himself perceived accurately wherein it is that his power lies, when he says, with his usual self-reliance: "Se la parola 'invenzione' in tragedia si restringe al trattare soltanto soggetti non prima trattati, nessuno autore ha inventato meno di me." "Se poi la parola 'invenzione' si estende fino al _far cosa nuova di cosa già fatta_, io son costretto a credere che nessuno autore abba inventato piu di me."

[92:1] page 95

[93:1] page 96

[94:1] page 97

[95:1] page 98

[96:1] page 99

[97:1] page 100

[98:1] page 101

[99:1] page 102

[100:1] page 103

[101:1] ? in Jaques.

[101:2] page 104

[102:1] ? _All's Well_, Bertram; _Othello_, Cassio; _Meas. for Meas._ Claudio; _Ant. & Cleop._ Antony; _Timon_, Alcibiades.--F.

[102:2] page 105

[103:1] page 106

[104:1] page 107

[105:1] page 108

[106:1] page 109

[107:1] page 110

[108:1] page 111

A FEW INSTANCES OF SHAKSPERE'S PECULIARITIES AS NOTED BY SPALDING.

=Repetition=, p. 12. 1. Prologue to _Henry V._:

'And at his heels,
Leashed in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire,
Crouch for employment.'

Compare _Antony and Cleopatra_, Act I. scene iv.:

'Where thou slew'st, Hirtus and Pausa, consuls, at thy heel
Did famine follow.'

2. _Macbeth_, Act V. scene vii.:

'They have tied me to a stake: I cannot fly,
But, bear-like, I must fight the course';

and _Lear_, Act III. scene vii.:

'I am tied to the stake, and I must stand the course.'

=Conciseness verging on obscurity=, p. 13. _Macbeth_, Act I. scene iii.:

'Present fears are less than horrible imaginings:
My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man, that function
Is smothered in surmise, and nothing is
But what is not.'