Chapter VIII: Part I: “these Three Hundred Years” (4)

See also “Shakspere’s English Kings,” _ib._, pp. 201-2.

MATTHEW ARNOLD, 1879

(1822-1888)

Let me have the pleasure of quoting a sentence about Shakespeare, which I met with by accident not long ago in the _Correspondant_, a French review which not a dozen English people, I suppose, look at. The writer is praising Shakespeare’s prose. “With Shakespeare,” he says, “prose comes in whenever the subject, being more familiar, is unsuited to the majestic English iambic.” And he goes on: “Shakespeare is the king of poetic rhythm and style, as well as the king of the realm of thought; along with his dazzling prose, Shakespeare has succeeded in giving us the most varied, the most harmonious verse which has ever sounded upon the human ear since the verse of the Greeks.” M. Henry Cochin, the writer of this sentence, deserves our gratitude for it; it would not be easy to praise Shakespeare, in a single sentence, more justly. And when a foreigner and a Frenchman writes thus of Shakespeare, and when Goethe says of Milton, in whom there was so much to repel Goethe rather than to attract him, that “nothing has ever been done so entirely in the sense of the Greeks as _Samson Agonistes_,” and that “Milton is in very truth a poet whom we must treat with all reverence,” then we understand what constitutes a European recognition of poets and poetry as contradistinguished from a merely national recognition, and that in favour both of Milton and of Shakespeare the judgment of the high court of appeal has finally gone.

_Essays in Criticism._ Second Series: Wordsworth.
1888, pp. 129-31. Reprinted from Preface to
_The Poems of Wordsworth_, chosen and edited
by Matthew Arnold. 1879.

For a comment on Shakespeare’s double faculty of interpreting
the physiognomy and movement of the outward world, and the
ideas and laws of man’s moral and spiritual nature, see _Essays
in Criticism_, 1865, p. 108.

ANONYMOUS ?_c._ 1880

So much has been written, so much spoken about Shakespeare, that it would seem a needless, almost a presumptuous superfluity to say more, and yet from another point of view, the man is as strange to us to-day as though we had never heard his name. Johnson and Pope, Warburton, Steevens, Malone and Theobald, Chalmers, Dyce, and a host of foreign exegetes, have edited and annotated, emendated and obelised; but the figure of Shakespeare is clothed in mist, and whilst we laugh and wonder at the vanity and versatility of a Cicero, and stroll lovingly with a Horace about his Sabine farm, dead both of them two millennia, we still grope about in the dark for the meaning, the character, and the inner life of our wondrous poet. Like the ghost in Hamlet, he arose, and, having uttered his pregnant message, disappeared, unregarded at the time but by a few, and still unrealised by the many.

. . . . . . .

There is a grandeur about the poets of the world, and a reward for those that study them aright. Amid the hurricane of battle and the crash of empires, the calm pulse of life and the glories of the drama remain the same. Men are inclined to gaze upon the outward symbols of existence as though they were primary causes, when they are only the emblems of a deeper power. We have had our Constitution-builders, but where are they? Our Tamerlanes and our Attilas, but whither are they departed? The intellect that revolves a kingdom pales before a heart that speaks to the soul of man. All nations turn their faces toward a Hamlet, a Lear, or a Catherine of Aragon. The influence of these through the genius of the poet will spread and yield abundant fruit, when the havoc of a Cannæ or an Austerlitz is but dimly discernible in the skeleton of history.

The study of our finer literature is therefore the study of the soul; and the progress made will be upward and inward, and the result a purifying of the ideals and a chastening of the chords of man. Shakespeare gives us all this, he is ennobling as well as instructive; without paying homage in a measure to his memory by the maintenance of a certain form of excellence, no poet since his time has succeeded in being appreciated as great. For they all bear his mark, and although much below him, all dramatic writers since his day are modelled upon his plan.

Manuscript Note inserted before fly-leaf of copy
of the 1602 quarto of _Merry Wives of
Windsor_, now in Rowfant Library. Printed in
_A Catalogue of the Printed Books, etc.,
collected since 1886 by the late Frederick
Locker Lampson_. 1900, pp. 28-30.

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE, 1880

(_b._ 1837)

In his first stage Shakespeare had dropped his plummet no deeper into the sea of the spirit of man than Marlowe had sounded before him; and in the channel of simple emotion no poet could cast surer line with steadier hand than he. Further down in the dark and fiery depths of human pain and mortal passion no soul could search than his who first rendered into speech the aspirations and the agonies of a ruined and revolted spirit. And until Shakespeare found in himself the strength of eyesight to read, and the cunning of handiwork to render those wider diversities of emotion and those further complexities of character which lay outside the range of Marlowe, he certainly cannot be said to have outrun the winged feet, outstripped the fiery flight of his forerunner. In the heaven of our tragic song, the first-born star on the forehead of its herald god was not outshone till the full midsummer meridian of that greater godhead before whom he was sent to prepare a pathway for the sun. Through all the forenoon of our triumphant day, till the utter consummation and ultimate ascension of dramatic poetry incarnate and transfigured in the master-singer of the world, the quality of his tragedy was as that of Marlowe’s, broad, single, and intense; large of hand, voluble of tongue, direct of purpose. With the dawn of its latter epoch a new power comes upon it, to find clothing and expression in new forms of speech and after a new style. The language has put off its foreign decorations of lyric and elegiac ornament; it has found already its infinite gain in the loss of those sweet superfluous graces which encumbered the march and enchained the utterance of its childhood. The figures which it invests are now no more types of a single passion, the incarnations of a single thought. They now demand a scrutiny which tests the power of a mind and tries the value of a judgment; they appeal to something more than the instant apprehension which sufficed to respond to the immediate claim of those that went before them. Romeo and Juliet were simply lovers, and their names bring back to us no further thought than of their love and the lovely sorrow of its end; Antony and Cleopatra shall be before all things lovers, but the thought of their love and its triumphant tragedy shall recall other things beyond number—all the forces and all the fortunes of mankind, all the chance and all the consequence that waited on their imperial passion, all the infinite variety of qualities and powers wrought together and welded into the frame and composition of that love which shook from end to end all nations and kingdoms of the earth.

_A Study of Shakespeare._ 1880, pp. 77-9.

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE, 1882

(_b._ 1837)

“_William Shakespeare._”

Not if men’s tongues and angels’ all in one
Spake, might the word be said that might speak thee.
Streams, winds, woods, flowers, fields, mountains, yea the sea,
What power is in them all to praise the sun?
His praise is this,—he can be praised of none.
Man, woman, child, praise God for him; but he
Exults not to be worshipped, but to be.
He is; and, being, beholds his work well done.
All joy, all glory, all sorrow, all strength, all mirth,
Are his: without him, day were night on earth.
Time knows not his from time’s own period.
All lutes, all harps, all viols, all flutes, all lyres,
Fall dumb before him ere one string suspires.
All stars are angels; but the sun is God.

_Tristram of Lyonesse and other Poems._
1882, p. 280.

See also Mr. Swinburne’s _An Autumn Vision, October 31, 1889_.

GEORGE MEREDITH, 1883

(_b._ 1828)

“_The Spirit of Shakespeare._”

Thy greatest knew thee, Mother Earth; unsoured
He knew thy sons. He probed from hell to hell
Of human passions, but of love deflowered
His wisdom was not, for he knew thee well.
Thence came the honeyed corner of his lips,
The conquering smile wherein his spirit sails
Calm as the God who the white sea-wave whips,
Yet full of speech and intershifting tales,
Close mirrors of us: thence had he the laugh
We feel is thine: broad as ten thousand beeves
At pasture! thence thy songs, that winnow chaff
From grain, bid sick Philosophy’s last leaves
Whirl, if they have no recompense—they enforced
To fatten Earth when from her soul divorced.

How smiles he at a generation ranked
In gloomy noddings over life! They pass.
Not he to feed upon a breast unthanked,
Or eye a beauteous face in a cracked glass.
But he can spy that little twist of brain
Which moved some mighty leader of the blind,
Unwitting ’twas the goad of personal pain,
To view in curst eclipse our Mother’s mind,
And show us of some rigid harridan
The wretched bondman till the end of time.
O lived the Master now to paint us Man,
That little twist of brain would ring a chime
Of whence it came and what it caused, to start
Thunders of laughter, clearing air and heart.

_Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth._
1883, pp. 161-2.

ROBERT BROWNING, 1884

(1812-1889)

“_The Names._”

Shakespeare!—to such name’s sounding, what succeeds
Fitly as a silence? Falter forth the spell,—
Act follows word, the speaker knows full well,
Nor tampers with its magic more than needs.
Two names there are: That which the Hebrew reads
With his soul only: if from lips it fell,
Echo, back thundered by earth, heaven and hell,
Would own, “Thou didst create us!” Nought impedes
We voice the other name, man’s most of might,
Awesomely, lovingly: let awe and love
Mutely await their working, leave to sight
All of the issue as below—above—
Shakespeare’s creation rises: one remove
Though dread—this finite from that infinite.

_Complete Poetic and Dramatic Works of Robert
Browning._ Cambridge edition, U.S.A.
1895.

Browning wrote this sonnet as a contribution to the
_Shakespearean Show-Book_ issued at the “Shakespearean Show”
held in the Albert Hall, London, 29-31 May 1884, in aid of the
Hospital for Women in Fulham Road. The sonnet is dated 12 March
1884.

WILLIAM WETMORE STORY, 1886

(_b._ 1819)

“_The Mighty Makers._”

Whose are those forms august that, in the press
And busy blames and praises of to-day,
Stand so serene above life’s fierce affray
With ever youthful strength and loveliness?
Those are the mighty makers, whom no stress
Of time can shame, nor fashion sweep away,
Whom Art begot on Nature in the play
Of healthy passion, scorning base excess.
Rising perchance in mists, and half obscure
When up the horizon of their age they came,
Brighter with years they shine in steadier light,
Great constellations that will aye endure,
Though myriad meteors of ephemeral fame
Across them flash, to vanish into night.

Such was our Chaucer in the early prime
Of English verse, who held to Nature’s hand
And walked serenely through its morning land,
Gladsome and hale, brushing its dewy rime.
And such was Shakespeare, whose strong soul could climb
Steeps of sheer terror, sound the ocean grand
Of passions deep, or over Fancy’s strand
Trip with his fairies, keeping step and time.
His too the power to laugh out full and clear,
With unembittered joyance, and to move
Along the silent, shadowy paths of love
As tenderly as Dante, whose austere
Stern spirit through the worlds below, above,
Unsmiling strode, to tell their tidings here.

_Poems._ 1886, vol. ii. pp. 273-4.

THOMAS SPENCER BAYNES, 1886

(1823-1887)

Shakespeare’s work alone can be said to possess the organic strength and infinite variety, the throbbing fulness, vital complexity, and breathing truth of Nature herself. In points of artistic resource and technical ability—such as copious and expressive diction, freshness and pregnancy of verbal combination, richly modulated verse, and structural skill in the handling of incident and action—Shakespeare’s supremacy is indeed sufficiently assured. But, after all, it is of course in the spirit and substance of his work, his power of piercing to the hidden centres of character, of touching the deepest springs of impulse and passion, out of which are the issues of life, and of evolving those issues dramatically with a flawless strength, subtlety, and truth, which raises him so immensely above and beyond not only the best of the playwrights who went before him, but the whole line of illustrious dramatists that came after him. It is Shakespeare’s unique distinction that he has an absolute command over all the complexities of thought and feeling that prompt to action and bring out the dividing lines of character. He sweeps with the hand of a master the whole gamut of human experience, from the lowest note to the very top of its compass, from the sportive childish treble of Mamilius, and the pleading boyish tones of Prince Arthur, up to the spectre-haunted terrors of Macbeth, the tropical passion of Othello, the agonised sense and tortured spirit of Hamlet, the sustained elemental grandeur, the Titanic force, the utterly tragical pathos of Lear.

_Encyclopædia Britannica._ 9th edition. Art.
“Shakespeare.” Vol. xxi. 1886, p. 763.

GERALD MASSEY, 1888

(_b._ 1828)

Our Prince of Peace in glory hath gone,
With no Spear shaken, no Sword drawn,
No Cannon fired, no flag unfurled,
To make his conquest of the World.

For him no Martyr-fires have blazed,
No limbs been racked, no scaffolds raised;
For him no life was ever shed,
To make the Victor’s pathway red.

And for all time he wears the Crown
Of lasting, limitless renown:
He reigns, whatever Monarchs fall;
His Throne is in the heart of all.

_The Secret Drama of Shakespeare’s Sonnets._ 1888.

WALT WHITMAN, 1890

(1819-1892)

The inward and outward characteristics of Shakespeare are his vast and rich variety of persons and themes, with his wondrous delineation of each and all—not only limitless funds of verbal and pictorial resource, but great excess, superfœtation—mannerism, like a fine aristocratic perfume, holding a touch of musk (Euphues, his mark)—with boundless sumptuousness and adornment, real velvet and gems, not shoddy nor paste—but a good deal of bombast and fustian—(certainly some terrific mouthing in Shakespeare!).

Superb and inimitable as all is, it is mostly an objective and physiological kind of power and beauty the soul finds in Shakespeare—a style supremely grand of the sort, but in my opinion stopping short of the grandest sort, at any rate for fulfilling and satisfying modern and scientific and democratic American purposes. Think, not of growths as forests primeval, or Yellowstone geysers, or Colorado ravines, but of costly marble palaces, and palace rooms, and the noblest fixings and furniture, and noble owners and occupants to correspond—think of carefully built gardens from the beautiful but sophisticated gardening art at its best, with walks and bowers and artificial lakes, and appropriate statue groups, and the finest cultivated roses and lilies and japonicas in plenty—and you have the tally of Shakespeare. The low characters, mechanics, even the loyal henchmen—all in themselves nothing—serve as capital foils to the aristocracy. The comedies (exquisite as they certainly are), bringing in admirably portrayed common characters, have the unmistakable hue of plays, portraits, made for the divertisement only of the élite of the castle, and from its point of view. The comedies are altogether non-acceptable to America and Democracy.

But to the deepest soul, it seems a shame to pick and choose from the riches Shakespeare has left us—to criticise his infinitely royal, multiform quality—to gauge, with optic glasses, the dazzle of his sun-like beams.

From _Poet-Lore_, July 1890. _Complete Prose Works._
Boston, Mass., 1898, p. 394.

Walt Whitman, when he says that “the comedies are altogether
non-acceptable to America and Democracy,” states rather what
he considers ought to be, than what actually is. In his essay,
“Poetry To-day in America,” he says of Shakespeare, “In
portraying mediæval European lords and barons, the arrogant
poet, so dear to the inmost human heart (pride! pride! dearest,
perhaps, of all—touching us, too, of the States closest of
all—closer than love), he stands alone, and I do not wonder he
so witches the world.”—_Prose Works_, Boston, 1898, p. 283.

RICHARD WATSON GILDER, 1891

(_b._ 1844)

“_The Twenty-Third of April._”

A little English earth and breathèd air
Made Shakespeare the divine; so is his verse
The broidered soil of every blossom fair;
So doth his song all sweet bird-songs rehearse.
But tell me, then, what wondrous stuff did fashion
That part of him which took those wilding flights
Among imagined worlds; whence the white passion
That burned three centuries through the days and nights!
Not heaven’s four winds could make, nor round the earth,
The soul wherefrom the soul of Hamlet flamed;
Nor anything of merely mortal birth
Could lighten as when Shakespeare’s name is named.
How was his body bred we know full well,
But that high soul’s engendering who may tell!

“Five Books of Song.” IV. _The Two Worlds._
1894, p. 154.

MATHILDE BLIND, _c._ 1894

(1841-1896)

“_Shakespeare._”

Yearning to know herself for all she was,
Her passionate clash of warring good and ill,
Her new life ever ground in Death’s old mill,
With every delicate detail and _en masse_,—
Blind Nature strove. Lo, then it came to pass,
That Time, to work out her unconscious will,
Once wrought the mind which she had groped to fill,
And she beheld herself as in a glass.

The world of men, unrolled before our sight,
Showed like a map, where stream and waterfall,
And village-cradling vale and cloud-capped height
Stand faithfully recorded, great and small,
For Shakespeare was, and at his touch with light
Impartial as the sun’s, revealed the All.

“Shakespeare Sonnets, VII.” _Poetical Works._ Ed.
Arthur Symons. 1900, p. 443.

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON, BEFORE 1892

(1809-1892)

There are three repartees in Shakespeare which always bring tears to my eyes from their simplicity.

One is in _King Lear_, when Lear says to Cordelia, “So young and so untender,” and Cordelia lovingly answers, “So young, my lord, and true.” And in _The Winter’s Tale_, when Florizel takes Perdita’s hand to lead her to the dance, and says, “So turtles pair that never mean to part,” and the little Perdita answers, giving her hand to Florizel, ”I’ll swear for ’em.” And in _Cymbeline_, when Imogen in tender rebuke says to her husband:

“Why did you throw your wedded lady from you?
Think that you are upon a rock; and now,
Throw me again!”

and Posthumus does not ask forgiveness, but answers, kissing her:

“Hang there like fruit, my soul,
Till the tree die.”

_Life and Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson._ Ed.
Hallam, Lord Tennyson. 1898, vol. iv. pp.
39 _et seq._

See also _ib._, pp. 39-43.

SIDNEY LEE, 1899

(_b._ 1859)

Shakespeare’s mind, as Hazlitt suggested, contained within itself the germs of all faculty and feeling. He knew intuitively how every faculty and feeling would develop in any conceivable change of fortune. Men and women—good or bad, old or young, wise or foolish, merry or sad, rich or poor—yielded their secrets to him, and his genius enabled him to give being in his pages to all the shapes of humanity that present themselves on the highway of life. Each of his characters gives voice to thought or passion with an individuality and a naturalness that rouse in the intelligent playgoer and reader the illusion that they are overhearing men and women speak unpremeditatingly among themselves, rather than that they are reading written speeches or hearing written speeches recited. The more closely the words are studied, the completer the illusion grows. Creatures of the imagination—fairies, ghosts, witches—are delineated with a like potency, and the reader or spectator feels instinctively that these supernatural entities could not speak, feel, or act otherwise than Shakespeare represents them. The creative power of poetry was never manifested to such effect as in the corporeal semblances in which Shakespeare clad the spirits of the air.

So mighty a faculty sets at nought the common limitations of nationality, and in every quarter of the globe to which civilised life has penetrated, Shakespeare’s power is recognised. All the world over, language is applied to his creations that ordinarily applies to beings of flesh and blood. Hamlet and Othello, Lear and Macbeth, Falstaff and Shylock, Brutus and Romeo, Ariel and Caliban are studied in almost every civilised tongue as if they were historic personalities, and the chief of the impressive phrases that fall from their lips are rooted in the speech of civilised humanity. To Shakespeare the intellect of the world, speaking in divers accents, applies with one accord his own words: “How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in apprehension how like a god!”

_Life of William Shakespeare._ 1899, chap. xxi.