Chapter III: Part 3

This is the observation of a man very recently struck with the wonders of art, and a symptom of that poetic surprise which the sight of unknown objects awakens in an imagination capable of being moved thereby. Perhaps we may conclude, from this circumstance, that the poem of "Lucrece" was composed during the early part of Shakspeare's residence in London.

But whatever may be the date of these two poems, their place among Shakspeare's works is at a period far more remote from us than any of those which filled up his dramatic career. In this career he marched forward, and drew his age after him; and his weakest essays in dramatic poetry are indicative of the prodigious power which he displayed in his last works. Shakspeare's true history belongs to the stage alone; after having seen it there, we can not seek for it elsewhere; and Shakspeare himself no longer quitted it. {65} His sonnets--fugitive pieces which the poetic and sprightly grace of some lines would not have rescued from oblivion but for the curiosity which attaches to the slightest traces of a celebrated man--may here and there cast a little light on the obscure or doubtful portions of his life; but, in a literary point of view, we have in future to consider him only as a dramatic poet.

I have already stated what was the first employment of his talents in this kind of composition. Great uncertainty has resulted therefrom with regard to the authenticity of some of his works. Shakspeare had a hand in a vast number of dramas; and probably, even in his own time, it would not have been always easy to assign his precise share in them all. For two centuries, criticism has been engaged in determining the boundaries of his true possessions; but facts are wanting for this investigation, and literary judgments have usually been influenced by a desire to strengthen some favorite theory on the subject. It is, therefore, almost impossible, at the present day, to pronounce with certainty upon the authenticity of Shakspeare's doubtful plays. Nevertheless, after having read them, I can not coincide with M. Schlegel--for whose acumen I have the highest respect--in attributing them to him. The baldness which characterizes these pieces, the heap of unexplained incidents and incoherent sentiments which they contain, and their precipitate progress through undeveloped scenes toward events destitute of interest, are unmistakable signs by which, in times still rude, we may recognize fecundity devoid of genius; signs so contrary to the nature of Shakspeare's talent, that I can not even discover in them the defects which may have disfigured his earliest essays. {66} Among the multitude of plays which, by common consent, the latest editors have rejected as being at least doubtful, "Locrine," "Thomas, Lord Cromwell," "The London Prodigal," "The Puritan," and "The Yorkshire Tragedy," scarcely present the slightest indications of having been retouched by any hand superior to that of their original author. "Sir John Oldcastle," which is more interesting, and composed with greater good sense than any of the foregoing, is animated in some scenes by a comic humor akin to that of Shakspeare. But if it be true that genius, even in its lowest abasement, gives forth some luminous rays to betray its presence; if Shakspeare, in particular, bore that distinctive mark which, in one of his sonnets, makes him say, in reference to his writings,

"That every word doth almost tell my name," [Footnote 16]

assuredly he had not to reproach himself with the production of that execrable accumulation of horrors which, under the name of "Titus Andronicus," has been foisted upon the English people as a dramatic work, and in which, Heaven be thanked! there is not a single spark of truth, or scintillation of genius, which can give evidence against him.

[Footnote 16: Sonnet 76, Knight's Library edition, vol. xii.,
p. 152.]

Of the doubtful plays, "Pericles" is, in my opinion, the only one to which the name of Shakspeare can be attached with any degree of certainty; or at least, it is the only one in which we find evident traces of his co-operation, especially in the scene in which Pericles meets and recognizes his daughter Marina, whom he believed dead. If, during Shakspeare's lifetime, any other man could have combined power and truth in so high a degree in the delineation of the natural feelings, England would then have possessed another poet. {67} Nevertheless, though it contains one fine scene and many scattered beauties, the play is a bad one; it is destitute of reality and art, and is entirely alien to Shakspeare's system: it is interesting only as marking the point from which he started; and it seems to belong to his works as a last monument of that which he overthrew--as a remnant of that anti-dramatic scaffolding for which he was about to substitute the presence and movement of vitality.

The spectacles of barbarous nations always appeal to their sense of vision before they attempt to influence their imagination by the aid of poetry. The taste of the English for those _pageants_, which, during the Middle Ages, constituted the chief attraction of public solemnities throughout Europe, exercised great influence over the stage in England. During the first half of the fifteenth century, the monk Lydgate, when singing the misfortunes of Troy with that liberty of erudition which English literature tolerated to a greater extent than that of any other country, describes a dramatic performance which, he says, took place within the walls of Troy. He describes the poet, "with deadly face all devoid of blood," rehearsing from a pulpit "all the noble deeds that were historical of kings, princes, and worthy emperors." At the same time,

"Amydde the theatre, shrowded in a tent
There came out men, gastful of their cheres,
Disfygured their faces with vyseres,
Playing by signes in the people's sight
That the poete songe hath on height."

Lydgate, a monk and poet, equally ready to rhyme a legend or a ballad, to compose verses for a masquerade or to sketch the plan of a religious pantomime, had probably figured in some performance of this kind; and his description certainly gives us an accurate idea of the dramatic exhibitions of his time. {68} When dialogue-poetry had taken possession of the stage, pantomime remained as an ornament and addition to the performance. In most of the plays anterior to Shakspeare, personages of an almost invariably emblematical character appear between the acts, to indicate the subjects of the scenes about to follow. An historical or allegorical personage is introduced to explain these emblems, _moralize_ the piece, that is, to point out the moral truths contained in it. In "Pericles," Gower, a poet of the fourteenth century--celebrated for his "Confessio Amantis," in which he has related, in English verse, the story of Pericles as told by more ancient writers--comes upon the stage to state to the public, not that which is about to happen, but such anterior facts as require to be explained, that the drama may be properly understood. Sometimes his narrative is interrupted and supplemented by the dumb representation of the facts themselves. Gower then explains all that the mute action has not elucidated. He appears not only at the commencement of the play and between the acts, but even during the course of an act, whenever it is found convenient to abridge by narrative some less interesting part of the action, in order to apprise the spectator of a change of place or a lapse of time, and thus to transport his imagination wherever a new scene requires its presence. This was decidedly a step in advance; a useless accessory had become a means of development and of clearness. But Shakspeare speedily rejected this factitious and awkward contrivance as unworthy of his art and ere long he inspired the action with power to explain itself, to make itself understood on appearance, and thus to give dramatic performances that aspect of life and reality which could never be attained by a machinery which thus coarsely displayed its wheel-works to public view. {69} Among Shakspeare's subsequent dramas, "Henry V." and the "Winter's Tale" are the only ones in which the chorus intervenes to relieve the poet in the difficult task of conveying his audience through time and space. The chorus of "Romeo and Juliet," which was retained perhaps as a relic of ancient usage, is only a poetic ornament, quite unconnected with the action of the play. After the production of "Pericles," dumb pageants completely disappeared; and if the three parts of "Henry VI." do not attest, by their power of composition, a close relationship to Shakspeare's system, nothing, at least in their material forms, is out of harmony with it.

Of these three pieces, the first has been absolutely denied to Shakspeare; and it is, in my opinion, equally difficult to believe that it is entirely his composition, and that the admirable scene between Talbot and his son does not bear the impress of his hand. Two old dramas, printed in 1600, contain the plan, and even numerous details of the second and third parts of "Henry VI." These two original works were long attributed to our poet, as a first essay which he afterward perfected. But this opinion will not bear an attentive examination; and all the probabilities, both literary and historical, unite in granting to Shakspeare, in the last two parts of "Henry VI.," no other share than that of a more important and extensive remodeling than he was able to bestow upon other works submitted to his correction. Brilliant developments, imagery conceived with taste and followed up with skill, and a lofty, animated, and picturesque style, are the characteristics which distinguish the great poet's work from the primitive production which he had merely beautified with his magnificent coloring. {70} As regards their plan and arrangement, the original pieces have undergone no change; and even after the composition of the three parts of "Henry VI.," Shakspeare might still speak of the "Venus and Adonis" as the "first heir of his invention."

But when will this invention finally display itself in all its freedom? When will Shakspeare walk alone on that stage on which he is to achieve such mighty progress? Some of his biographers place the "Comedy of Errors," and "Love's Labor Lost"--the first two works the honors and criticisms of which he has to share with no one--before "Henry VI." in order of time. In this unimportant discussion, one fact alone is certain, and becomes a new subject of surprise. The first dramatic work which the imagination of Shakspeare truly produced was a comedy; and this comedy will be followed by others: he has at last taken wing, but not as yet toward the realms of tragedy. Corneille also began with comedy, but he was then ignorant of his own powers, and almost ignorant of the drama. The familiar scenes of life had alone presented themselves to his thoughts; and the scenes of his comedies are laid in his native town, in the Galerie du Palais and in the Place Royale. His subjects are timidly borrowed from surrounding circumstances; he has not yet risen above himself, or transcended his limited sphere; his vision has not yet penetrated into those ideal regions in which his imagination will one day roam at will. But Shakspeare is already a poet; imitation no longer trammels his progress; and his conceptions are no longer formed exclusively within the world of his habits. How was it that the frivolous spirit of comedy was his first guide in that poetic world from which he drew his inspiration? {71} Why did not the emotions of tragedy first awaken the powers of so eminently tragic a poet? Was it this circumstance which led Johnson to give this singular opinion: "Shakspeare's tragedy seems to be skill; his comedy to be instinct?"

Assuredly, nothing can be more whimsical than to refuse to Shakspeare the instinct of tragedy; and if Johnson had had any feeling of it himself, such an idea would never have entered his mind. The fact which I have just stated, however, is not open to doubt; it is well deserving of explanation, and has its causes in the very nature of comedy, as it was understood and treated by Shakspeare.

Shakspeare's comedy is not, in fact, the comedy of Molière; nor is it that of Aristophanes, or of the Latin poets. Among the Greeks, and in France, in modern times, comedy was the offspring of a free but attentive observation of the real world, and its object was to bring its features on the stage. The distinction between the tragic and the comic styles is met with almost in the cradle of dramatic art, and their separation has always become more distinctly marked during the course of their progress. The principle of this distinction is contained in the very nature of things. The destiny and nature of man, his passions and affairs, characters and events--all things within and around us--have their serious and their amusing sides, and may be considered and described under either of these points of view. This two-fold aspect of man and the world has opened to dramatic poetry two careers naturally distinct; but in dividing its powers to traverse them both, art has neither separated itself from realities, nor ceased to observe and reproduce them. {72} Whether Aristophanes attacks, with the most fantastic liberty of imagination, the vices or follies of the Athenians; or whether Molière depicts the absurdities of credulity and avarice, of jealousy and pedantry, and ridicules the frivolity of courts, the vanity of citizens, and even the affectation of virtues, it matters little that there is a difference between the subjects in the delineation of which the two poets have employed their powers; it matters little that one brought public life and the whole nation on the stage, while the other merely described incidents of private life, the interior arrangements of families, and the nonsensicality of individual characters; this difference in the materials of comedy arises from the difference of time, place, and state of civilization. But in both Aristophanes and Molière realities always constitute the substance of the picture. The manners and ideas of their times, the vices and follies of their fellow-citizens--in a word, the nature and life of man--are always the stimulus and nutriment of their poetic vein. Comedy thus takes its origin in the world which surrounds the poet, and is connected, much more closely than tragedy, with external and real facts.

The Greeks, whose mind and civilization followed so regular a course in their development, did not combine the two kinds of composition, and the distinction which separates them in nature was maintained without effort in art. Simplicity prevailed among this people; society was not abandoned by them to a state of conflict and incoherence; and their destiny did not pass away in protracted obscurity, in the midst of contrasts, and a prey to dark and deep uneasiness. They grew and shone in their land just as the sun rose and pursued its course through the skies which overshadowed them. National perils, intestine discord, and civil wars agitated the life of a man in those days, without disturbing his imagination, and without opposing or deranging the natural and easy course of his thoughts. {73} The reflex influence of this general harmony was diffused over literature and the arts. Styles of composition spontaneously became distinguished from each other, according to the principles upon which they depended and the impressions which they aspired to produce. The sculptor chiseled, isolated statues or innumerous groups, and did not aim at composing violent scenes or vast pictures out of blocks of marble. Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides undertook to excite the people by the narration of the mighty destinies of heroes and of kings. Cratinus and Aristophanes aimed at diverting them by the representation of the absurdities of their contemporaries or of their own follies. These natural classifications corresponded with the entire system of social order, with the state of the minds of the age, and with the instincts of public taste--which would have been shocked at their violation, which desired to yield itself without uncertainty or participation to a single impression or a single pleasure, and which would have rejected all those unnatural mixtures and uncongenial combinations to which their attention had never been called or their judgment accustomed. Thus every art and every style received its free and isolated development within the limits of its proper mission. Thus tragedy and comedy shared man and the world between them, each taking a different domain in the region of realities, and coming by turns to offer to the serious or mirthful consideration of a people who invariably insisted upon simplicity and harmony, the poetic effects which their skill could derive from the materials placed in their hands.

{74}

In our modern world, all things have borne another character. Order, regularity, natural and easy development, seem to have been banished from it. Immense interests, admirable ideas, sublime sentiments, have been thrown, as it were, pell-mell with brutal passions, coarse necessities, and vulgar habits. Obscurity, agitation, and disturbance have reigned in minds as well as in states. Nations have been formed, not of freemen and slaves, but of a confused mixture of diverse, complicated classes, ever engaged in conflict and labor; a violent chaos, which civilization, after long-continued efforts, has not yet succeeded in reducing to complete harmony. Social conditions, separated by power, but united in a common barbarism of manners; the germ of loftiest moral truths fermenting in the midst of absurd ignorance; great virtues applied in opposition to all reason; shameful vices maintained and defended with hauteur; an indocile honor, ignorant of the simplest delicacies of honesty; boundless servility, accompanied by measureless pride; in fine, the incoherent assemblage of all that human nature and destiny contain of that which is great and little, noble and trivial, serious and puerile, strong and wretched--this is what man and society have been in our Europe; this is the spectacle which has appeared on the theatre of the world.

In such a state of mind and things, how was it possible for a clear distinction and simple classification of styles and arts to be effected? How could tragedy and comedy have presented and formed themselves isolatedly in literature, when, in reality, they were incessantly in contact, entwined in the same facts, and intermingled in the same actions, so thoroughly, that it was sometimes difficult to discern the moment of passage from one to the other. Neither the rational principle, nor the delicate feeling which separate them, could attain any development in minds which were incapacitated from apprehending them by the disorder and rapidity of different or opposite impressions. {75} Was it proposed to bring upon the stage the habitual occurrences of ordinary life? Taste was as easily satisfied as manners. Those religious performances which were the origin of the European theatre, had not escaped this admixture. Christianity is a popular religion; into the abyss of terrestrial miseries, its divine founder came in search of men, to draw them to himself; its early history is a history of poor, sick, and feeble men; it existed at first for a long while in obscurity, and afterward in the midst of persecutions, despised and proscribed by turns, and exposed to all the vicissitudes and efforts of a humble and violent destiny. Uncultivated imaginations easily seized upon the triviality which might be intermingled with the incidents of this history; the Gospel, the acts of martyrs, and the lives of saints, would have struck them much less powerfully if they had seen only their tragic aspect or their rational truths. The first Mysteries brought simultaneously upon the stage the emotions of religious terror and tenderness, and the buffooneries of vulgar comicality; and thus, in the very cradle of dramatic poetry, tragedy and comedy contracted that alliance which was inevitably forced upon them by the general condition of nations and of minds.

In France, however, this alliance was speedily broken off. From causes which are connected with the entire history of our civilization, the French people have always taken extreme pleasure in drollery. Of this, our literature has from time to time given evidence. This craving for gayety, and for gayety without alloy, early supplied the inferior classes of our countrymen with their comic farces, into which nothing was admitted that had not a tendency to excite laughter. {76} In the infancy of the art, comedy in France may very possibly have invaded the domain of tragedy, but tragedy had no right to the field which comedy had reserved to itself; and in the _piteous_ Moralities and _pompous_ Tragedies which princes caused to be represented in their palaces, and rectors in their colleges, the trivially comic element long retained a place which was inexorably refused to the tragic element in the buffooneries with which the people were amused. We may therefore affirm that in France comedy, in an imperfect but distinct form, was created before tragedy. At a later period, the rigorous separation of classes, the absence of popular institutions, the regular action of the supreme power, the establishment of a more exact and uniform system of public order than existed in any other country, the habits and influence of the court, and a variety of other causes, disposed the popular mind to maintain that strict distinction between the two styles which was ordained by the classical authorities, who held undisputed sway over our drama. Then arose among us true and great comedy, as conceived by Molière; and as it was in accordance with our manners, as well as with the rules of the art, to strike out a new path--as, while adapting itself to the precepts of antiquity, it did not fail to derive its subjects and coloring from the facts and personages of the surrounding world, our comedy suddenly rose to a pitch of perfection which, in my opinion, has never been attained by any other country in any other age. To place himself in the interior of families, and thereby to gain the immense advantage of a variety of ideas and conditions, which extends the domain of art without injuring the simplicity of the effects which it produces; to find in man passions sufficiently strong, and caprices sufficiently powerful to sway his whole destiny, and yet to limit their influence to the suggestion of those errors which may make man ridiculous, without ever touching upon those which would render him miserable; {77} to describe an individual as laboring under that excess of preoccupation which, diverting him from all other thoughts, abandons him entirely to the guidance of the idea which possesses him, and yet to throw in his way only those interests which are sufficiently frivolous to enable him to compromise them without danger; to depict, in "Tartuffe," the threatening knavery of the hypocrite, and the dangerous imbecility of the dupe, in such a manner as merely to divert the spectator, without incurring any of the odious consequences of such a position; to give a comic character, in the "Misanthrope," to those feelings which do most honor to the human race, by condemning them to confinement within the dimensions of the existence of a courtier; and thus to reach the amusing by means of the serious; to extract food for mirth from the inmost recesses of human nature, and incessantly to maintain the character of comedy while bordering upon the confines of tragedy--this is what Molière has done, this is the difficult and original style which he bestowed upon France; and France alone, in my opinion, could have given dramatic art this tendency, and Molière.

Nothing of this kind took place among the English. The asylum of German manners, as well as of German liberties, England pursued, without obstacle, the irregular, but natural course of the civilization which such elements could not fail to engender. It retained their disorder as well as their energy, and, until the middle of the seventeenth century, its literature, as well as its institutions, was the sincere expression of these qualities. When the English drama attempted to reproduce the poetic image of the world, tragedy and comedy were not separated. {78} The predominance of the popular taste sometimes carried tragic representations to a pitch of atrocity which was unknown in France, even in the rudest essays of dramatic art; and the influence of the clergy, by purging the comic stage of that excessive immorality which it exhibited elsewhere, also deprived it of that malicious and sustained gayety which constitutes the essence of true comedy. The habits of mind which were entertained among the people by the minstrels and their ballads, allowed the introduction, even into those compositions which were most exclusively devoted to mirthfulness, of some touches of those emotions which comedy in France can never admit with out losing its name, and becoming melodrama. Among truly national works, the only thoroughly comic play which the English stage possessed before the time of Shakspeare, "Gammer Grurton's Needle," was composed for a college, and modeled in accordance with the classic rules. The vague titles given to dramatic works, such as _play, interlude, history,_ or even _ballad_, scarcely ever indicate any distinction of style. Thus, between that which was called _tragedy_ and that which was sometimes named _comedy_, the only essential difference consisted in the _denouement_, according to the principles laid down in the fifteenth century by the monk Lydgate, who "defines a comedy to begin with complaint and to end with gladness, whereas tragedy begins in prosperity and ends in adversity."

Thus, at the advent of Shakspeare, the nature and destiny of man, which constitute the materials of dramatic poetry, were not divided or classified into different branches of art. When art desired to introduce them on the stage, it accepted them in their entirety, with all the mixtures and contrasts which they present to observation; nor was the public taste inclined to complain of this. {79} The comic portion of human realities had a right to take its place wherever its presence was demanded or permitted by truth; and such was the character of civilization, that tragedy, by admitting the comic element, did not derogate from truth in the slightest degree. In such a condition of the stage and of the public mind, what could be the state of comedy, properly so called? How could it be permitted to claim to bear a particular name, and to form a distinct style? It succeeded in this attempt by boldly leaving those realities in which its natural domain was neither respected nor acknowledged; it did not limit its efforts to the delineation of settled manners or of consistent characters; it did not propose to itself to represent men and things under a ridiculous but truthful aspect; but it became a fantastic and romantic work, the refuge of those amusing improbabilities which, in its idleness or folly, the imagination delights to connect together by a slight thread, in order to form from them combinations capable of affording diversion or interest, without calling for the judgment of the reason. Graceful pictures, surprises, the curiosity which attaches to the progress of an intrigue, mistakes, quid-pro-quos, all the witticisms of parody and travestie, formed the substance of this inconsequent diversion. The conformation of the Spanish plays, a taste for which was beginning to prevail in England, supplied these gambols of the imagination with abundant frame-works and alluring models. Next to their chronicles and ballads, collections of French or Italian tales, together with the romances of chivalry, formed the favorite reading of the people. Is it strange that so productive a mine and so easy a style should first have attracted the attention of Shakspeare? Can we feel astonished that his young and brilliant imagination hastened to wander at will among such subjects, free from the yoke of probabilities, and excused from seeking after serious and vigorous combinations? {80} The great poet, whose mind and hand proceeded, it is said, with such equal rapidity that his manuscript scarcely contained a single erasure, doubtless yielded with delight to those unrestrained gambols in which he could display without labor his rich and varied faculties. He could put any thing he pleased into his comedies, and he has, in fact, put every thing into them, with the exception of one thing which was incompatible with such a system, namely, the ensemble which, making every part concur toward the same end, reveals at every step the depth of the plan and the grandeur of the work. It would be difficult to find in Shakspeare's tragedies a single conception, position, act, or passion, or degree of vice or virtue, which may not also be met with in some one of his comedies; but that which in his tragedies is carefully thought out, fruitful in result, and intimately connected with the series of causes and effects, is in his comedies only just indicated, and offered to our sight for a moment to dazzle us with a passing gleam, and soon to disappear in a new combination. In "Measure for Measure," Angelo, the unworthy governor of Vienna, after having condemned Claudio to death for the crime of having seduced a young girl whom he intended to marry, himself attempts to seduce Isabella, the sister of Claudio, by promising her brother's pardon as a recompense for her own dishonor; and when, by Isabella's address in substituting another girl in her place, he thinks he has received the price of his infamous bargain, he gives orders to hasten Claudio's execution. Is not this tragedy? Such a fact might well be placed in the life of Richard the Third, and no crime of Macbeth's presents this excess of wickedness. {81} But in "Macbeth" and "Richard III.," crime produces the tragic effect which belongs to it, because it bears the impress of probability, and because real forms and colors attest its presence: we can discern the place which it occupies in the heart of which it has taken possession: we know how it gained admission, what it has conquered, and what remains for it to subjugate: we behold it incorporating itself by degrees into the unhappy being whom it has subdued: we see it living, walking, and breathing with a man who lives, walks, and breathes, and thus communicates to it his character, his own individuality. In Angelo, crime is only a vague abstraction, connected _en passant_ with a proper name, with no other motive than the necessity of making that person commit a certain action which shall produce a certain position, from which the poet intends to derive certain effects. Angelo is not presented to us at the outset either as a rascal or as a hypocrite; on the contrary, he is a man of exaggeratedly severe virtue. But the progress of the poem requires that he should become criminal, and criminal he becomes; when his crime is committed, he will repent of it as soon as the poet pleases, and will find himself able to resume without effort the natural course of his life, which had been interrupted only for a moment.

Thus, in Shakspeare's comedy, the whole of human life passes before the eyes of the spectator, reduced to a sort of phantasmagoria--a brilliant and uncertain reflection of the realities portrayed in his tragedy. Just when the truth seems on the point of allowing itself to be caught, the image grows pale, and vanishes; its part is played, and it disappears. In the "Winter's Tale," Leontes is as jealous, sanguinary, and unmerciful as Othello; but his jealousy, born suddenly, from a mere caprice, at the moment when it is necessary that the plot should thicken, loses its fury and suspicion as suddenly, as soon as the action has reached the point at which it becomes requisite to change the situation. {82} In "Cymbeline"--which, notwithstanding its title, ought to be numbered among the comedies, as the piece is conceived in entire accordance with the same system--Iachimo's conduct is just as knavish and perverse as that of Iago in "Othello;" but his character does not explain his conduct, or, to speak more correctly, he has no character; and, always ready to cast off the rascal's cloak, in which the poet has enveloped him, as soon as the plot reaches its term, and the confession of the secret, which he alone can reveal, becomes necessary to terminate the misunderstanding between Posthumus and Imogen, which he alone has caused, he does not even wait to be asked, but, by a spontaneous avowal, deserves to be included in that general amnesty which should form the conclusion of every comedy.

I might multiply these examples to infinity; they abound not only in Shakspeare's early comedies, but also in those which succeeded the composition of his best tragedies. In all, we should find characters as unstable as passions, and resolutions as changeful as characters. Do not expect to find probability, or consecutiveness, or profound study of man and society; the poet cares little for these things, and invites you to follow his example. To interest by the development of positions, to divert by variety of pictures, and to charm by the poetic richness of details--this is what he aims at; these are the pleasures which he offers. There is no interdependence, no concatenation of events and ideas; vices, virtues, inclinations, intentions, all become changed and transformed at every step. Even absurdity does not always continue to characterize the individual whom it distinguishes at the outset. {83} In "Cymbeline," the imbecile Cloton becomes almost proud and noble when opposing the independence of a British prince to the threats of a Roman ambassador; and in "Measure for Measure," Elbow the constable, whose nonsensicalities furnish the diversion of one scene, speaks almost like a man of sense when, in a subsequent scene, another person is appointed to enliven the dialogue. Thus negligent and truant is the flight of the poet through these capricious compositions! Thus fugitive are the light creations with which he has animated them!

But, then, what gracefulness and rapidity of movement, what variety of forms and effects, what brilliancy of wit, imagination, and poetry--all employed to make us forget the monotony of their romantic frame-work! Doubtless, this is not comedy as we conceive it, and as Molière wrote it; but who but Shakspeare could have diffused such treasures over so frivolous and fantastic a style of comedy? The legends and tales upon which his plays are founded have given birth, both before and after him, to thousands of dramatic works which are now plunged in well-merited oblivion. A king of Sicily, jealous, without knowing why, of a king of Bohemia, determines to put his wife to death, and to expose his daughter; this child, left to perish on the _shore_ of Bohemia, but saved by a shepherd from her cruel fate, becomes, after sixteen years have elapsed, a marvelous beauty, and is beloved by the heir to the crown. After all the obstacles naturally opposed to their union, arrives the ordinary _denouement_ of explanations and recognitions. This story truly combines all the most common and least probable features of the romances, tales, and pastorals of the time. {84} But Shakspeare takes it, and the absurd fable that opens the "Winter's Tale" becomes interesting by the brutal truthfulness of the jealous transports of Leontes, the amiable character of little Mamillius, the patient virtue of Hermione, and the generous inflexibility of Paulina; and, in the second part, the rural festival, with its gayety and joyous incidents, and, amid the rustic scene, the charming figure of Perdita, combining with the modesty of an humble shepherdess the moral elegance of the superior classes, assuredly present the most piquant and graceful picture that truth could furnish to poetry. What particular charm is there in the nuptials of Theseus and Hippolyta, and the hackneyed incident of two pairs of lovers rendered unhappy by one another? It is only a worn-out combination, destitute alike of interest and truth. Yet Shakspeare has made of it his "Midsummer Night's Dream;" and in the midst of the dull intrigue, he introduces Oberon with his elves and fairies, who live upon flowers, run upon the blades of grass, dance in the rays of the moon, play with the light of the morning, and fly away, "following darkness like a team," as soon as Aurora's first doubtful rays begin to glimmer in the sky. Their employments, pleasures, and tricks occupy the scene, participate in all its incidents, and entwine in the same action the mournful destinies of the four lovers and the grotesque performances of a troop of artisans; and after having fled away at the approach of the sun, when Night once more enshrouds earth in her sombre mantle, they will resume possession of that fantastic world into which we have been transported by this amazing and brilliant extravaganza.

In truth, it would be acting very rigorously toward ourselves, and very ungratefully toward genius, to refuse to follow it somewhat blindly when it invites us to a scene of such attraction. Are originality, simplicity, gayety, and gracefulness so common that we shall treat them severely because they are lavished on a slight foundation of but little value? {85} Is it nothing to enjoy the divine charm of poetry amid the improbabilities, or, if you will, the absurdities of romance? Have we, then, lost the happy power of lending ourselves complacently to its caprices? and do we not possess sufficient vivacity of imagination and youthfulness of feeling to enjoy so delightful a pleasure under whatever form it may be offered to us?

Five only of Shakspeare's comedies, the "Tempest," the "Merry Wives of Windsor," "Timon of Athens," "Troilus and Cressida," and the "Merchant of Venice," have escaped, at least in part, from the influence of the romantic taste. Some will, perhaps, be surprised to find this merit ascribed to the "Tempest." Like the "Mid-summer Night's Dream," the "Tempest" is peopled with sylphs and sprites, and every thing is done under the sway of fairy power. But after having laid the action in this unreal world, the poet conducts it without inconsistency, complication, or languor; none of the sentiments are forced, or ceaselessly interrupted; the characters are simple and well sustained; the supernatural power which disposes the events undertakes to supply all the necessities of the plot, and leaves the personages of the drama at liberty to show themselves in their natural character, and to swim at ease in that magical atmosphere by which they are surrounded, without at all injuring the truthfulness of their impressions or ideas. The style is fantastic and sprightly; but, when the supposition is once admitted, there is nothing in the work to shock the judgment and disturb the imagination by the incoherence of the effects produced.

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In the system of intrigued comedy, the "Merry Wives of Windsor" may be said to be almost perfect in its composition; it presents a true picture of manners; the _denouement_ is as piquant as it is well-prepared; and it is assuredly one of the merriest works in the whole comic repertory. Shakspeare evidently aspired higher in "Timon of Athens." It is an attempt at that scientific style in which the ridiculous is made to flow from the serious, and which constitutes _la grande comedie._ The scenes in which Timon's friends excuse themselves, under various pretexts, from rendering him assistance, are wanting neither in truthfulness nor effect. But, then, Timon's misanthropy, as furious as his confidence had previously been extravagant--the equivocal character of Apemantus--the abruptness of the transitions, and the violence of the sentiments, form a picture more melancholy than true, which is scarcely softened down enough by the fidelity of the old steward. Though far inferior to "Timon," the drama of "Troilus and Cressida" is nevertheless skillfully conceived; it is based upon the resolution taken by the Grecian chiefs to flatter the stupid pride of Ajax, and make him the hero of the army, in order to humble the haughty disdainfulness of Achilles, and to obtain from his jealousy that which he had refused to their prayers. But the idea is more comic than its execution, and neither the buffooneries of Thersites nor the truthfulness of the part played by Pandarus are sufficient to impart to the piece that mirthful physiognomy without which comedy is impossible.

These four works, which are less akin than his other comedies to the romantic system, also belong more completely to Shakspeare's invention. The "Merry Wives of Windsor" is an original creation; no tale has been discovered from which Shakspeare could have borrowed the subject of the "Tempest;" the composition of "Timon of Athens" is indebted in no respect to Plutarch's account of that misanthrope; and in "Troilus and Cressida" Shakspeare has copied Chaucer in a very few particulars.

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The story of the "Merchant of Venice" is of an entirely romantic character, and was selected by Shakspeare, like the "Winter's Tale," "Much Ado about Nothing," "Measure for Measure," and other plays, merely that he might adorn it with the graceful brilliancy of his poetry. But one incident of the subject conducted Shakspeare to the confines of tragedy, and he suddenly became aware of his domain; he entered into that real world in which the comic and the tragic are commingled, and, when depicted with equal truthfulness, concur, by their combination, to increase the power of the effect produced. What can be more striking, in this style of dramatic composition, than the part assigned to Shylock? This son of a degraded race has all the vices and passions which are engendered by such a position; his origin has made him what he is, sordid and malignant, fearful and pitiless; he does not think of emancipating himself from the rigors of the law, but he is delighted at being able to invoke it for once, in all its severity, in order to appease the thirst for vengeance which devours him; and when, in the judgment scene, after having made us tremble for the life of the virtuous Antonio, Shylock finds the exactitude of that law, in which he triumphed with such barbarity, turned unexpectedly against himself--when he feels himself overwhelmed at once by the danger and the ridicule of his position, two opposite feelings--mirth and emotion--arise almost simultaneously in the breast of the spectator. What a singular proof is this of the general disposition of Shakspeare's mind! He has treated the whole of the romantic part of the drama without any intermixture of comedy, or even of gayety; and we can discern true comedy only when we meet with Shylock--that is, with tragedy.

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It is utterly futile to attempt to base any classification of Shakspeare's works on the distinction between the comic and tragic elements; they can not possibly be divided into these two styles, but must be separated into the fantastic and the real, the romance and the world. The first class contains most of his comedies; the second comprehends all his tragedies--immense and living stages, upon which all things are represented, as it were, in their solid form, and in the place which they occupied in a stormy and complicated state of civilization. In these dramas, the comic element is introduced whenever its character of reality gives it the right of admission and the advantage of opportune appearance. Falstaff appears in the train of Henry V., and Doll Tear-Sheet in the train of Falstaff; the people surround the kings, and the soldiers crowd around their generals; all conditions of society, all the phases of human destiny appear by turns in juxtaposition, with the nature which properly belongs to them, and in the position which they naturally occupy. The tragic and comic elements sometimes combine in the same individual, and are developed in succession in the same character. The impetuous preoccupation of Hotspur is amusing when it prevents him from listening to any other voice than his own, and substitutes his sentiments and words in the place of the things which his friends are desirous to tell him, and which he is equally anxious to learn; but it becomes serious and fatal when it leads him to adopt, without due examination, a dangerous project which suddenly inspires him with the idea of glory. The perverse obstinacy which renders him so comical in his dealings with the boastful and vainglorious Glendower, will be the tragical cause of his ruin when, in contempt of all reason and advice, and unaided by any succor, he hastens to the battle-field, upon which, ere long, left alone, he looks around and sees naught but death. Thus we find the entire world, the whole of human realities, reproduced by Shakspeare in tragedy, which, in his eyes, was the universal theatre of life and truth.

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In the year 1595, at latest, "Romeo and Juliet" had appeared. This work was succeeded, almost without interruption, until 1599, by "Hamlet," "King John," "Richard II.," "Richard III.," the two parts of "Henry IV.," and "Henry V." From 1599 to 1605, the chronological order of Shakspeare's works contains none but comedies and the play of "Henry VIII." After 1605, tragedy regains the ascendant in "King Lear," "Macbeth," "Julius Caesar," "Antony and Cleopatra," "Coriolanus," and "Othello." The first period, we perceive, belongs rather to historical plays; and the second to tragedy properly so called, the subjects of which, not being taken from the positive history of England, allowed the poet a wider field, and permitted the free manifestation of all the originality of his nature. Historical dramas, generally designated by the name of _Histories_, had enjoyed possession of popular favor for nearly twenty years. Shakspeare emancipated himself but slowly from the taste of his age; though always displaying more grandeur, and gaining greater approbation in proportion as he abandoned himself with greater freedom to the guidance of his own instinct--he was nevertheless always careful to accommodate his progress to the advancement of his audience in their appreciation of his art. It appears certain, from the dates of his plays, that he never composed a single tragedy until some other poet had, as it were, felt the pulse of the public on the same subject; just as though he were conscious that he possessed within himself a superiority which, before it could be trusted to the taste of the multitude, required the exercise of a vulgar caution.

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It can not be doubted that, between historical dramas and tragedies, properly so called, Shakspeare's genius inclined in preference toward the latter class. The general and unvarying opinion which has placed "Romeo and Juliet," "Hamlet," "King Lear," "Macbeth," and "Othello" at the head of his works, would suffice to prove this. Among his national dramas, "Richard III." is the only one which has attained the same rank, and this is an additional proof of the truth of my assertion; for it is the only work which Shakspeare was able to conduct, in the same manner as his tragedies, by the influence of a single character or idea. Herein resides the fundamental difference between the two kinds of dramatic works; in one class, events pursue their course, and the poet accompanies them; in the other, events group themselves around a man, and seem to serve only to bring him into bold relief. "Julius Cæsar" is a true tragedy, and yet the progress of the piece is framed in accordance with Plutarch's narrative, just as "King John," "Richard II.," and "Henry IV." are made to coincide with Holinshed's Chronicles; but in the first-named piece, Brutus imparts to the play the unity of a great individual character. In the same manner, the history of "Richard III." is entirely his own history, the work of his design and will; whereas, the history of the other kings with whom Shakspeare has peopled his dramas is only a part, and frequently the smallest part, of the picture of the events of their time.

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This arises from the fact that events were not what chiefly occupied Shakspeare's mind; his special attention was bestowed upon the men who occasioned them. He establishes his domain, not in historical, but in dramatic truth. Give him a fact to represent upon the stage, and he will not inquire minutely into the circumstances which accompanied it, or into the various and multiplied causes which may have combined to produce it; his imagination will not require an exact picture of the time or place in which it occurred, or a complete acquaintance with the infinite combinations of which the mysterious web of destiny is composed. These constitute only the materials of the drama; and Shakspeare will not look to them to furnish it with vitality. He takes the fact as it is related to him; and, guided by this thread, he descends into the depths of the human soul. It is man that he wishes to resuscitate; it is man whom he interrogates regarding the secret of his impressions, inclinations, ideas, and volitions. He does not inquire, "What hast thou done?" but, "How art thou constituted? Whence originated the part thou hast taken in the events in which I find thee concerned? What wert thou seeking after? What couldst thou do? Who art thou? Let me know thee; and then I shall know in what respects thy history is important to me."

Thus we may explain that depth of natural truth which reveals itself, in Shakspeare's works, even to the least practiced eyes, and that somewhat frequent absence of local truth which he would have been able to delineate with equal excellence if he had studied it with equal assiduity. Hence, also, arises that difference of conception which is observable between his historical dramas and his tragedies. Composed in accordance with a plan more national than dramatic, written beforehand in some sort by events well known in all their details, and already in possession of the stage under determinate forms, most of his historical plays could not be subjected to that individual unity which Shakspeare delighted to render dominant in his compositions, but which so rarely holds sway in the actual narratives of history. {92} Every man has usually a very small share in the events in which he has taken part; and the brilliant position which rescues a name from oblivion has not always preserved the man who bore it from sinking into a nullity. Kings especially, who are forced to appear upon the stage of the world independently of their aptitude to perform their part upon it, frequently afford less assistance than embarrassment to the conduct of an historical action. Most of the princes whose reigns furnished Shakspeare with his national dramas, undoubtedly exercised some influence upon their own history; but none of them, with the exception of Richard III., wrought it out entirely for himself. Shakspeare would have sought in vain to discover, in their conduct and personal nature, that sole cause of events, that simple and pregnant truth, which was called for by the instinct of his genius. While, therefore, in his tragedies, a moral position, or a strongly conceived character, binds and confines the action in a powerful knot, from whence the facts as well as the sentiments of the drama issue to return thither again, his historical plays contain a multitude of incidents and scenes which are destined rather to fill up the action than to facilitate its progress. As events pass in succession before his view, Shakspeare stops them to catch some few details, which suffice to determine their character; and these details he derives, not from the lofty or general causes of the facts, but from their practical and familiar results. An historical event may originate in a very exalted source, but it always descends to a very low position; it matters little that its sources be concealed in the elevated summits of social order, it ever reaches its consummation in the popular masses, producing among them a widely-diffused and manifest effect and feeling. {93} At this point, Shakspeare seems to wait for events, and here he takes his stand to portray them. The intervention of the people, who bear so heavy a part of the weight of history, is assuredly legitimate, at least in historical representations. It was, moreover, necessary to Shakspeare. Those partial pictures of private or popular history, which lie far behind its great events, are brought by Shakspeare to the front of the stage, and placed in prominent relief; indeed, we feel that he relies upon them to impart to his work the form and coloring of reality. The invasion of France, the battle of Agincourt, the marriage of a daughter of France to a king of England, in whose favor the French monarch disinherits the dauphin, are not sufficient, in his opinion, to occupy the whole of the historical drama of "Henry V.;" so he summons to his aid the comic erudition of the brave Welshman, Fluellen, the conversations of the king with the soldiers, Pistol, Nym, and Bardolph, all the subaltern movement of an army, and even the joyous loves of Catharine and Henry. In the two parts of "Henry IV.," the comedy is more closely connected with the events, and yet it does not emanate from them. Even if Falstaff and his crew occupied less space, the principal facts would not be less determinate, and would not follow another course; but these facts have only supplied Shakspeare with the external conformation of the drama; the incidents of private life, the comic details, Hotspur and his wife, and Falstaff and his companions, give it life and animation.

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