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and Miranda; Olivia, stately, but perfectly human; Maria, not
elaborately, but sufficiently, drawn in the other vein for contrast,
form an extraordinary triad even for Shakespeare; and it is afflict-
ing that some commentators should forget that 'the youngest wren
of nine' was no 'waiting maid’ in the modern sense. On the other
side, Sir Toby Belch is one of those doubles that are no doubles,
over which nearly all artists stumble. He is of the same genus as
Falstaff, but of a different species; and almost entirely different as
an individual; just as Sir Andrew is of the tribe of Silence and
Slender, but quite other than they. As for Malvolio, he has no
parallel anywhere save Molière's Alceste, who, like him but more
commonly, has been travestied into a persona tragica by incom-
petent criticism. A gentleman, a man of honour and of his duty,
of parts and of merit, his comic åpapria is compounded of vanity,
sourness of temper, lack of humour, a little jack-in-officeship, much
ambition and, probably, not a little downright jealousy-and it
brings the comic punishment upon him most completely and con-
dignly. Sebastian, no doubt, has extraordinary, but not impos-
sible, luck.
From this point, we may take a liberty—of which we have
already given warning with the folio arrangement. The Winter's
Tale would come next, according to the division of 'Comedies,
Histories and Tragedies,' and several histories, earlier according
to the Meres point de repère, would come next after that. But,
according to that class of internal evidence which we have allowed,
The Winter's Tale is distinctly later; some more plays regarded
as ‘histories' in Shakespeare's time are, not merely to us, but
essentially, romantic tragedies; and the arrangement, according to
logic and literature must, in other ways, be altered. We shall
rearrange the scene from this point, therefore, recording all certain,
or even probable, data as to individual plays as they arise, under
four heads—the remaining English histories, the classical plays
subsequent to Titus Andronicus, the romantic tragedies and the
three final drames.
The first of the histories is Henry V, which was partly drawn
from the same originals as Henry IV, and followed it closely. It
was published (imperfectly) and 'stayed'in 1600; and is supposed
to have been acted the year before. The magnificent death of
Falstaff almost necessitated the previous turning upon him of the
king, which, indeed, had been foreshadowed in Henry IV. Partly
this, and partly other things, have prejudiced some critics against
this 'patriot king,' who, nevertheless, is one of the greatest, if not
>


## p. 195 (#219) ############################################

.
Henry VIII.
Troilus and Cressida 195
the most attractive, of Shakespeare's creations. The fresh present-
ment of Pistol and the addition of Fluellen demonstrate the in-
exhaustibleness of the poet's comic prosopopoeia, and, besides the
fine tirades which figure in all the extract books, there are in-
numerable passages of literary excellence. But, in a panoramic
survey of Shakespeare's plays, Henry V, perhaps, with one excep-
tion to be dealt with presently, stands forth most conspicuously as
almost the deftest of his spiritings up of chronicles—as a pattern
of the difficult accomplishment of vitalising chronicle by character.
Here, it is by character diffuse rather than compact—by the
extraordinary vivacity of the different personages rather than by
interest concentrated in a hero. So far as he is concerned, it is
the triumph of Henry of England, rather than that of Harry of
Monmouth, in which we rejoice.
The last remaining, and, probably, the last written, of the English
group, Henry VIII, presents remarkable peculiarities; and it has
been usual to take it as Shakespeare's only in parts-Fletcher's,
and, perhaps, Massinger's, in others. A play on Henry VIII was
represented in 1613 and interrupted by the burning of the play-
house. The piece which, ten years later, appeared in the folio is a
loose composition (though, perhaps, not much looser than Cymbe-
line); and, though there are points of great and truly Shakespearean
interest of character in the king and, still more, in Wolsey and
queen Katharine, it cannot be said that the character in any one
instance, or in all put together, unifies the play as it generally does
with Shakespeare. Still, there is no doubt about his authorship in
whole or part. No reasonable critic will attempt to go behind the
folio as regards plays—though no such critic need accept either
the whole folio' as regards passages or ‘nothing but the folio'
in any way. The play is patchy, and some of the patches are
inferior; while there are hardly any marks in it of that early and
‘first draft' character which we have detected in others.
With the classical plays, we come to a new and very interesting
group.
In a sense, of course, Titus Andronicus belongs to it; but
nothing like the extreme earliness of that piece belongs to any of
the others, and none of them is mentioned by Meres. Two of them,
however, are, internally as well as externally, of very uncertain
date; the other three are of Shakespeare's very meridian.
For Troilus and Cressida, a licence to print was obtained in
1602/3; but the players objected, and it was not published till half
a dozen years later, and then surreptitiously. It is extremely
difficult not to believe that it is much older than the earlier date
)
>
13-2


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196
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would show. Some of the blank verse, no doubt, is fairly mature:
but the author may have furbished this up, and much of it is not
mature at all. Instead of transcending his materials, as Shake-
speare almost invariably does, he has here failed almost entirely to
bring out their possibilities; has not availed himself of Chaucer's
beautiful romance so fully as he might; and has dramatised the
common Troy-books with a loose yet heavy hand utterly un-
suggestive of his maturer craftsmanship. If it were not for certain
speeches and touches chiefly in the part of Ulysses, and in the
parts of the hero and heroine, it might be called the least Shake-
spearean of all the plays.
Timon of Athens, again a puzzle, is a puzzle of a different kind.
It is usual to resort to the rather Alexandrine suggestion of
collaboration and then to put it as late as 1607. To the present
writer, the first theory seems unnecessary and the last impossible.
There is nothing in Timon that Shakespeare, at one time or another,
may not have written; there are some things which hardly anybody
but Shakespeare can have written; but that he wrote this piece just
after Lear, even with somebody, not to help, but to hinder, him, is
not, from the point of view from which the present survey is
written, conceivable. The play is as chaotic as Troilus, or more
so; and, except Timon himself, it has no character of interest in it.
But Timon himself must be Shakespeare's own; he has so much
of good in him, and might have been made so much better, that it
is impossible to imagine Shakespeare, in his maturity, turning over
such a character to be botched by underlings, and associated with
third rate company. On the other hand, he might have written the
whole play in his nonage and-as in the other case—have thrown in
some 'modern touches' to freshen it up and get it off his hands. At
any rate, the two plays (which may be called Greek) stand in the
sharpest contrast to the great Roman trio, based, in Shakespeare's
most easy-going fashion, on North’s Plutarch for matter, and,
sometimes, even for words, but made his own, absolutely and
for ever.
None of the three was printed till the folio appeared, though
licence appears to have been obtained for Antony and Cleopatra
in 1608. It is usual to select that date for it and for Coriolanus,
and to put Julius Caesar seven years earlier, because of an apparent
allusion to it in that year. Internal evidence does not, perhaps,
supply any valid reason for such a separation in date; and, as they
are all taken from the same source, they may very well all have
been written about the same time. This could not have been very


## p. 197 (#221) ############################################

The Roman Plays : Julius Caesar 197
early, from the complete mastery of the blank verse, but might be
anywhere after the close of the sixteenth century. All three are
masterpieces, but curiously different in kind; though there is an
equally curious agreement between them in the manner in which
the author, at one time, simply arranges the very words not merely
of Plutarch but of North, while, at another, he will add or substi-
tute passages of absolute originality.
Julius Caesar has, at least, this mark of an earlier date that
its interest is of a diffused character, and that there is a certain
prodigality of poetic passages put in everybody's mouth. The
titular hero perishes before half the play is done; and his place is
taken, first by Antony and then by Brutus. Nor does he make any
very copious appearance even before his murder. Further, the
marvellous Shakespearean impartiality seems to take delight in
doing the best for each of these heroes in turn; while the pro-
digality above referred to furnishes not merely the three, Cassius,
who is all but a fourth hero,and Portia, but quite insignificant people
- Marullus, Casca, Calpurnia-with splendid poetical utterance.
The magnificent speech of Antony-all Shakespeare's own; the
great exchange of mind between Brutus and Cassius, both as friends
and as (almost) foes; the dialogue of Brutus and Portia: these,
and many other things, with the surpassing majesty and interest of
the theme, have always made the play a great favourite, and
deservedly so. Moreover, its central interest from the point of
view of romance--the death and revenging of Caesar-is perfect.
But, from the point of view of unity of character, which is
Shakespeare's general appeal, it may be thought somewhat lacking.
Brutus is the only person whose character can supply a continuous
tie rod-and, except to those who take the old French Revolution
or Roman declamation line of admiration for tyrannicide per se,
Brutus, admirably as he develops, is rather thin at first.
plausibly be argued that either he should not have required
Cassius's blend of personal and pseudo-patriotic hatred of Caesar
to ferment his own patriotism, or he should have detected the
insufficiency of the ‘lean and hungry' conspirator. Practically,
however, Julius Caesar is of the panoramic, if not of the kalei-
doscopic, order of drama-its appeal is of sequence rather than
of composition.
With the other two Roman plays, it is quite different. Coriolanus
is certainly not deficient in variety of incident, or of personage,
but every incident and every personage is, in a way, subservient to
the hero. The ordinary descriptions of the dramatis personae-
It may


## p. 198 (#222) ############################################

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Shakespeare
>
'friend to Coriolanus,''mother to Coriolanus,''wife to Coriolanus '--
acquire a new appositeness from this feature. Menenius and
Volumnia are no shadows; the 'gracious silence' herself is all the
more gracious for her unobtrusiveness. But it is in relation to
Coriolanus that they interest us most. The sordid spite of the
tribunes—types well known at this time and at all times—helps to
bring out the arrogance, at its worst not sordid, of Caius Martius.
The inferior generals set him off. And that interesting, and not very
easy, character, Tullus Aufidius, whose psychical evolution Shake-
speare has left in obviously intentional uncertainty, furnishes yet
another contrast in his real changes from enmity to friendship,
and then from hospitality to treachery, with the changes of
Coriolanus from the height of Roman patriotism to actual hostility
against his ungrateful and degraded country, and from that hostility
to semi-reconciliation, at least to the foregoing of his vengeance in
obedience to his mother. Most of all do the various mobs—the
mob of Rome above all, but, also, the rank and file of the army,
the Volscian conspirators, the officers, the senators, the very servants
of Aufidius--throw up against their own vulgar variety and charac-
terless commonness the ‘headstrong beauty of the great soldier's
mind and will—his hatred of the vulgus itself, of its malignity, of
its meanness, of its ingratitude. He is, of course, no flawless
character: he need not have been rude to the people (one cannot
blame him for being so to their misguiders); and, because they
committed virtual treason to Rome by banishing its defender, he
was certainly not justified in himself committing the overt act.
But he remains one of the noblest figures in literature, and his
nobility is largely the work of Shakespeare himself. What is more,
he has provided Shakespeare with the opportunity of working
out a 'one-man' drama, as, except in inferior specimens like
Timon, he has done nowhere else. For, even in Hamlet, the single
and peculiar life of the hero does not overshadow all the others,
as is done here.
Great as Coriolanus is, however, it is not nearly so great as
Antony and Cleopatra. Coriolanus, personally, is a great figure,
but rather narrowly great and hardly as provocative of delight as of
admiration. The interest of his story is somewhat lacking in variety,
and, cunningly as the comic or serio-comic aspects and interludes
are employed to lighten it up, the whole play is rather statuesque.
Antony and Cleopatra has nearly as infinite a variety as its
incomparable heroine herself: its warmth and colour are of the
liveliest kind; its character drawing is of the Shakespearean best;


## p. 199 (#223) ############################################

Antony and Cleopatra. Hamlet 199
the beauties of its versification and diction are almost unparalleled
in number, diversity and intensity; and, above all, the powers of
the two great poetic motives, love and death, are utilised in it to
the utmost possible extent. Even this long list of merits does not
exhaust its claims. From the technical side, it is the very type and
triumph of the chronicle play-of the kind which dramatises whole
years of history, solid portions of the life of man, and keeps them
dramatically one by the interwoven threads of character interest,
by individual passages of supreme poetry and by scenes or sketches
of attaching quality. Here, again, Shakespeare follows North, at
times very closely indeed ; and here, more than ever, he shows how
entirely he is able not to follow his leader when he chooses. The
death of Cleopatra, with the ineffable music of the words that
follow 'Peace, Peace,' is only the strongest example of a pervading
fact. But the central interest of character and the side portraits
which accompany and enforce it are the greatest points about the
play. Nowhere has even Shakespeare given such a pair, hero and
heroine, as here. Antony, at once ruined and ennobled by the
passion which is both his á papria and his abiding title to sympathy,
which completes his friendship for Caesar in the earlier play;
Cleopatra, her frailty sublimated into the same passion—both
heroic in their very weakness and royal in the way in which they
throw away their royalty : there is nothing like them anywhere.
There is no palliation of fault or of folly ; both are set as plainly
before the spectator as may be, and he will imitate them at his
peril. But the power of romantic tragedy in this direction can go
no further.
It might be questioned whether this power actually went further
in any other direction. But, possibly, between Julius Caesar and
the other two Roman plays--certainly in the same general period,
and, according to popular reckoning, between 1602 and 1605–
Shakespeare produced, it is thought in the order to be named,
what are pre-eminently the four wheels of his chariot, the four
wings of his spirit, in the tragic and tragicomic division,
Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and Lear. To condense the enormous
mass of discussion on these, and especially on the first, were
here impossible. The puzzles of the text of Hamlet (which differs
most remarkably in the quarto of 1602, apparently pirated, in
that of 1604, which at least claims authenticity, and in that of the
folio), though perhaps less than they seem, and much less than
they have been thought to be, are considerable ; and the problems
of the play are infinite. Its immediate, lasting and now world-wide


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200
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popularity is not surprising. For, though Hamlet himself is capable
of being problematised to the nth, he is a sufficiently taking figure
(especially as introduced by the ghost scenes) to persons who care
little indeed for problems. The enormous length of the play is
diversified by the most varied, and, at times, most exciting, action.
In the common phrase, there is something for everyone-the
supernatural, the death of Polonius, that of Ophelia, the fight
or almost fight in the churchyard, the duel, the final slaughter
scene (simply an exciting moment for the mere vulgar)—the pity
of all these things for the sentimental, the poetry of them for those
who can appreciate it. And, above all, and with all, there is the
supreme interest of the character presentment, which informs and
transforms the incidents, and which, not merely in the central
figure, is the richest and most full to be found in Shakespeare.
This may be developed in one instance.
It has been impossible, in the scale and range of the present
notice, to dwell on individual characters. But, putting sheer
poetical expression aside, the Shakespearean character is the Shake-
spearean note; and, for more reasons than one, it would be an
incorrectness not to offer a specimen of dealing with this feature.
No better suggests itself than the character of Claudius. For it
seems to have escaped even some elect wits; and it is very
typical. There were at least two ways in which an ordinary, or
rather more than ordinary, dramatist might have dealt with
this other 'majesty of Denmark. ' He could have been made a
crude dramatic villain—a crowned 'Shakebag' or 'Black Will,' to
use the phraseology of his creator's own day. He could have
been made pure straw-a mere common usurper. And it would
appear that he has actually seemed to some to be one or other of
these two. Neither of them is the Claudius which Shakespeare
has presented; and those who take him as either seem to miss the
note which, putting sheer poetic faculty once more aside, is the
note of Shakespeare. It is not to be supposed that Shakespeare
liked Claudius ; if he did, and if he has produced on respectable
readers the effect above hinted at, he certainly was as ineffectual
a writer as the merest crétin, or the merest crank, among his critics
could imagine. But neither did he dislike Claudius; he knew that,
in the great Greek phrase, it was the duty of creators to see fair'-
Tàľoa véuelv—in the handling of their creations. It would appear
that the successor of Hamlet I might have been a very respectable
person, if his brother had not possessed a kingdom and a queen that
he wanted for himself. But this brother did, unluckily, possess these


## p. 201 (#225) ############################################

Hamlet
201
>
things and the Claudian-not åmapria, not 'tragic frailty,' but out-
rageous, unforgivable, fully punished—crime was that he would not
tolerate this possession. He put an end to it, and let those laugh
—
at him who like—he seems to have thought that he could trammel
up the consequence. Macbeth was wiser. If it were not for the
ugly circumstances and the illegitimate assistance of the ghost, we
might be rather sorry for Claudius at first. There was nothing
out of the way in the succession of brother before son. There was
nothing (except, perhaps, undue haste) out of the way, under the dis-
pensation of dispensations, in the successive marriage of one woman
to two brothers. Fifty years before Shakespeare's birth, queen
Katharine did it, and few people thought or think her other than
a saint. A hundred years after Shakespeare's birth, Louise de
Gonzague, queen of Poland, did it, and nobody thought the worse
of her at all. It is clear that there was not much likelihood of
offspring from the second marriage : even Hamlet himself, in the
very scene where his abusive description of the king ('not evidence,
if ever anything was not) has prejudiced many against Claudius,
seems to admit this. Claudius himself would probably-his very
words could be cited-have been most happy to regard Hamlet as
crown prince, would not have objected to receive Ophelia (perhaps
with a slight protest against derogation) as crown princess and,
after a due enjoyment of his kingdom and his wife, to assign the
former to them and die quite comfortably.
But this could not be: the gods would not have seen fair' if they
had allowed it, and the potapxos ämn of the crime in the orchard
bears its fruit. Yet Claudius behaves himself by no means ill. He
meets Hamlet's early, and, as yet, ungrounded, or only half grounded,
sulks with a mixture of dignity and kindness which is admirable
in a difficult situation. There does not appear any prejudice against
Hamlet (though, of course, guilt makes the king uneasy) when
Polonius first tells him of the prince's antics. When he has eaves-
dropped, a proceeding fully justified by the statecraft of the time,
his desire to get rid of Hamlet, somehow, is natural, and it does
not yet appear that he has any design to‘get rid of him in criminal
kind. · Even after the play-an outrageous insult in any case
there is no sign of murderous purpose either in his words to
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern or in the prayer soliloquy. Only
after the killing of Polonius, which might have alarmed an innocent
man, does he decide on the literae Bellerophontis. Few who have
paid any attention to it have denied the combined courage and
skill with which he meets the émeute headed by Laertes. Even


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202
Shakespeare
a
a
thenceforward, he is not pure villain, and, though it endangers all
his plans, he tries to save the queen, between whom and himself it
is quite certain that a real affection exists. He is a villain, but he
is a man; and there are probably lesser villains who are rather
poorer personages as men. Now, is this mere whitewashing on the
critic's part, or the puerile and sneaking kindness for villany which
is not quite unknown in men of letters? Not at all. No better
deserved swordthrust was ever given than Hamlet's last; and
Shakespeare never palliates the crime of Claudius in the very
least degree. But he knows that a criminal is not necessarily bad
all through; and he knows that there is no cheaper or falser
morality than that which thinks that you must represent a criminal
as bad all through lest you tempt people to sympathise with his
crime. May it be added that, at this time of his career, he simply
could not 'scamp' his work in the direction of character any more
than in the direction of poetry? Others might throw in ‘supers'
to fill up a play-he would not. Claudius, of course, in no way
disputes the position of hero; but there is stuff in him, as he is
presented, for half a dozen heroes of the Racinian type.
Of Ophelia, and Polonius, and the queen and all the rest, not
to mention Hamlet himself (in whose soul it would be absurd
to attempt to discover new points here), after this we need not say
anything. But it is observable that they are not, as in the case of
Coriolanus, interesting merely or mainly for their connection with
the hero, but in themselves. And it must be added that, not merely
in the soliloquies and set speeches, but in the dialogue, even in its
least important patchwork, Shakespeare's mastery of blank verse
has reached complete perfection.
If Othello came next, as it may very well have done-it has
been asserted, on the faith of a document not now producible,
to have been acted at court on 1 November 1604—there was
certainly no falling off. The pity, if not the terror, is made more
intense than even in Hamlet. And, though for complexity lago
cannot approach Hamlet, he is almost as interesting. Once more,
the Shakespearean impartiality is shown in this character. Iago,
in the ordinary sense, is a much 'worse' man than Claudius;
and, unlike Claudius, he has no compunction. But you see his
point of view. It is by no means so certain as some critics have
thought that his suspicions of Othello and Emilia are merely pre-
tended; it is quite certain that he has never forgiven, and never
will forgive, Othello or Cassio for the preference accorded by the
former to the latter. Against Desdemona, he probably has no


## p. 203 (#227) ############################################

-
Othello. Macbeth
203
personal spite whatsoever; but she is the most convenient instru-
ment that suggests itself for embroiling his two foes with each
other and plaguing them both; so he uses her, once more without
compunction of any kind. Roderigo is another instrument and
a useful pigeon as well. But this newer 'ancient’-very different
'
from Pistol 1-has an admirable intellect, a will of steel and a
perfectly dauntless courage. 'I bleed, sir; but not killed' is one
of the greatest speeches in Shakespeare, and the innocent com-
mentators who have asked whether Shakespeare did not hate
lago' can never have apprehended it. As for Desdemona herself,
an interesting point arises in connection with another of Shake-
speare's most pity-claiming figures, Cordelia, and may be noticed
when we come to her.
Those who (if there be any such) believe that Shakespeare
wrote the whole of Macbeth and that he wrote it about 1605, must
have curious standards of criticism. To believe that he wrote the
whole of it is quite easy-indeed, the present writer has little or
no doubt on the matter; but the belief is only possible on the
supposition that it was written at rather different times. The
second scene, that in which the ‘bleeding sergeant' appears, and
some few other passages, are, in verse and phrase, whole stages
older than the bulk of the play, which, in these respects, is fully
equal to its great companions. The character interest is limited
to the hero and heroine. But in the thane and king—who is
a marvellous variant sketch of Hamlet, except that he can never
leave off, while Hamlet can never begin, and that, also, he can never
leave off metaphysicalising on the things he does, while Hamlet's
similar self-indulgence is confined to those he does not do-its
intensity and variety yield only to that of Hamlet himself; while
Lady Macbeth is quite peerless. And the fresh handling of the
supernatural illustrates, fortunately not for the last time, the
curious fertility of the writer in a direction where, especially
when it is blended with events and motives not supernatural,
failure is not so much the usual, as the invariable, result. That the
Shakespeare of one play, or part, should be the Shakespeare of
another, is a constantly repeated marvel; but it is scarcely any-
where more marvellous than in the fact that the same writer
wrote A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Macbeth and The
Tempest.
Early British history seems at this moment to have had a
fascination for Shakespeare; for Macbeth appears to have been
followed pretty quickly by King Lear, and the date of Cymbeline
>


## p. 204 (#228) ############################################

204
Shakespeare
cannot have been very distant as it was certainly a stage play in
1610. King Lear, like its companions in the great quatuor, has
special virtues, but it resembles them and Antony and Cleopatra
in a certain regality of tone which hardly appears elsewhere. It
resembles Othello, also, in being a tragedy of pity above all
things; and it offers, perhaps, the most notable opportunity for the
examination of the Shakespearean åpapria, which at once agrees
and contrasts strikingly with the Aristotelian. The terrible fate
of Lear-which the poet wisely introduced instead of the happy (or
differently unhappy) ending which occurs in the chronicles and in
a worthless contemporary play, a little earlier than his own-may
seem excessive. As a punishment for his selfish abandonment and
parcelling out of the kingdom, his general petulance and his blind
misjudgment of his daughters, it may be so; as the consequence of
his frailty, not. So, too, Cordelia's disinheritance and her ultimate
fate are caused (whether deserved or not is, as before, a different
question) by her self-willed and excessive want of compliance with
her father's foolish, but not wholly unnatural, craving for professions
of affection. The calamities of Gloster are a little more in the way
of strict poetical justice of the ordinary kind; but they coincide
well enough. The character of Edmund is a pendant to that of
Iago, and his final speeches 'The wheel is come full circle: I am
here,' and 'Yet Edmund was beloved,' are even more revealing than
the stoical finale of the ancient. The extraordinary success of the
fool has never been denied save by his unofficial successors; nor
the superhuman poetry of the heath scenes. That the tragedy is
too tragical, may be an argument against tragedy, or against the
theatre generally; but not against this play. The one accusation
of some weight is the horror of the Gloster mutilation scene,
a survival of the old Andronicus days which, in a way, is interesting,
but which, perhaps, could have been spared. The fact that it
actually is a survival is the most interesting thing about it, except
the other fact that it shocks, as, in an earlier play, it certainly
would not. Nothing can show better the enormous lift which
Shakespeare had himself given to the stage in, at most, some fifteen
years, than the demand made on him, by modern criticism, not to
do what everyone had been doing.
Last come the famous three: Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale
and The Tempest, where no idle fancy has seen the calmed and
calming mens adepta' of which one of all but the greatest of Shake-
speare's contemporaries, Fulke Greville, speaks in a great passage
of prose. The first and second were seen by Simon Forman, an


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Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale
205
astrologer of the day, in 1610 and 1611; The Tempest was certainly
performed in 1613, and may have been written one or two years
earlier-a theory which makes it not a late play at all is absurd
and rebutted by the whole internal evidence. But internal
coincides with external in allotting the three to the latest period
possible: the versification supporting the general tone, and the
intense romantic influence corroborating both. In respect of
construction, however, there is a remarkable difference between
Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale, on the one hand, and The
Tempest, on the other.
Cymbeline has by some been reproached with being, and by
others regretfully admitted to be, the loosest and most disorderly
play in Shakespeare. Not only does he take his largest romantic
licence of neglecting unity of time and place-to that the reader
must long have been accustomed. Not only does he mix plots
and interests with the most insouciant liberality, as if he were
making a salad of them. But he leaves his materials, his person-
ages, his incidents, at a perfect tangle of loose ends. Still, the
interest is maintained, partly because of the actual attraction of
many of his episodes; partly because of the exquisite poetry
which is showered upon the play in every direction; but, most
of all, because of the perfect. charm of the character of the
heroine. That Shakespeare has equalled Imogen is certainly
true; but he has never surpassed her, and he has never repeated
or anticipated her.
Perhaps there is nothing more remarkable in these three plays,
even among Shakespeare's work, than the extraordinary beauty-
both in phrase, passage and scene-of their separate parts. The
word beauty is used advisedly. Here, in Cymbeline, for instance,
fault may be found-irrelevantly, perhaps, but not ungroundedly
-with construction, with connection of scenes and so forth. But
those who look, not at the skeleton, but at the body, not at the
mathematical proportion of features, but at the countenance, will
hardly be disturbed by this. The two Imogen and lachimo scenes;
the whole episode of Belarius and his supposed sons; the miraculous
song dirge which Collins, though he made a pretty thing of it, merely
prettified—these are things impossible to conceive as bettered,
difficult to imagine as equalled, or approached.
The Winter's Tale has something, but less, of the same sublime
neglect of meticulous accuracy of construction; it has, perhaps,
a more varied interest; it has even more lavishness of poetical
appeal. The 'sea coast of Bohemia' is nothing; but the story,


## p. 206 (#230) ############################################

206
Shakespeare
merely as a story, is certainly more romantic than dramatic. There
is no character that approaches Imogen; for Perdita, exquisite as
she is, has no character, properly speaking.
The jealousy of Leontes,
though an interesting variant on that of Othello and that of
Posthumus, not to say on that of Master Ford, has a certain touch
of ferocious stupidity, which Shakespeare probably intended, but
which is not engaging. Hermione, admirable so far as she goes, is
,
not quite fully shown to us; and, though Paulina is a capital
portrait of what Ben Jonson declared his own wife to be-'a
shrew but honest'-she does not go far. Autolycus, perhaps, is
the only figure who fully displays the Shakespearean completeness.
But the fascination of the play is quite independent of these knots
in the reed. The abundance of it—the cheerful' beginning and
sombre close of the first Sicilian scenes; the partly tragic opening
and pastoral continuation of the Bohemian; the tragicomedy and
coup de théâtre of the end-is very great. But the suffusion of the
whole with quintessenced poetry in the fashion just mentioned is
greater. It appears chiefly in flash of phrase for the first three
acts till the great storm scene at the end of the third, with the
rather severe punishment of Antigonus and the contrasted farce
of the shepherds. But, in the fourth, where comedy and romance
take the place of farce and tragedy, and especially in Perdita's
famous flower speech, it overflows; and there is plenty of it in the
fifth. Had Greene lived to see this dramatising of his story, he
might have been more angry than ever with the upstart crow;
if, as sometimes, though too seldom, happens, his stormy spring
had settled into a mellow early autumn, he ought to have been
reconciled.
But, while the charms of Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale
appear in even greater measure in The Tempest, this astonishing
swan song is open to none of the objections which, from some points
of view, may lie against them. It is almost regular, so far as 'time'
is concerned; its violation of 'place' is very small, being confined
to the limits of one little island; and its 'action' though, of course,
of the English multiple kind, can be plausibly argued to be almost
single in its multiplicity. The working of the spells of Prospero
on all the important members of the shipwrecked crew in their
diverse natures, qualities and importance—for correction on
Alonso, Antonio and Sebastian (though these last two were
probably incorrigible); for trial and reward on Ferdinand; for
well deserved plaguing on Stephano and Trinculo-might have
given more pause to Aristotle 'if he had seen ours,' as Dryden


## p. 207 (#231) ############################################

The Tempest
207
says, than anything else. The contrast of Caliban and Ariel is
almost classical in conception, though ultraromantic in working
out. The loves of Ferdinand and Miranda at once repair and
confirm according to justice the acquisition of Milan by Naples,
which has been unjustly accomplished before the opening. In
the management of the supernatural, too, Shakespeare once more
shows that unique combination of power and economy which has
been noted. But he has not, because of this extra expenditure-if,
indeed, it was an extra expenditure-of trouble, in the very least
stinted the outpouring of beauty on individual character, scene,
passage, phrase or line. Ariel and Caliban among super- or extra-
natural personages, and Miranda, even among Shakespeare's women,
occupy positions of admitted supremacy. Prospero is of extra-
ordinary subtlety; the butler and the jester are among the best
of their excellent class. It is curious that this play makes a
kind of pendant to Much Ado About Nothing in the nearness
with which comedy approaches tragedy, though the supernatural
element relieves the spectator of the apprehension which, in
the other case, is not unjustified. The inset masque, too (to
which there is a faint parallel in Cymbeline), is a remarkable
feature, and adds to the complicated, and yet not disorderly,
attractions of the piece. But these attractions are all-pervading.
The versification, though in part of Shakespeare's latest style, is
of his best, in song and dialogue alike, throughout; and there are
curious side interests in Gonzalo's citation of Montaigne, and in
other matters. But the main charm is once more in the poetry, to
which the prose adds not a little. The vividness of the storm; the
admirable protasis of Miranda and Prospero; Ariel, whenever he
speaks, and Caliban not seldom-give this charm, while Prospero
himself is always a master of it. Indeed, in the great parallel
with Calderon of 'life's a dream,' led up to by the picture of the
vanishing universe, it reaches one of the 'topless towers' of poetry.
To refuse to see an actual leavetaking in this perfect creation with
its (to say the least) remarkable prophecy of the 'burial of the
book’ is, surely, an idle scepticism, considering the weight of
positive evidence of all kinds which supports the idea. At any
rate, if it were not the last, it ought to have been; and, though
there are too many instances of non-coincidence between what
ought to be and what is, we need hardly lay it down as a rule that
what ought to have been could not be. The Tempest is not all
Shakespeare: only all Shakespeare is that. But it may, at least,
be pronounced a diploma piece of Shakespeare's art.
a


## p. 208 (#232) ############################################

208
Shakespeare
>
The foregoing survey of Shakespeare's plays has been made
rather from the results of a long and intimate familiarity with
their contents, than in reference to traditional opinion in their
favour, or to recent efforts in the opposite direction. Some of these
latter, such as the attacks of the very remarkable young Breton
critic Ernest Hello not long since, and those of Tolstoy, only the
other day, have been made, seriously and in good faith, from points
of view wbich, when allowed for, deprive them of most of their
effect. Others have come from mere mountebankery, or from the
more respectable, but not much more valuable, desire to be unlike
other people. But, apparently, they have had the effect of inducing
some critics who are nearer to the truth to make provisos and
qualifications—to return, in fact, to something like the attitude of
George III, that 'a great deal of Shakespeare is sad stuff, only one
must not say so,' but to put on more show of courage than the
king and dare to 'say so,' with more or less excuse for theatrical
necessities, 'faults of the time,' journeyman's work executed as a
mere matter of business and the like. Perhaps this is only a new
form of cant. For the characteristics of the time something, of
course, must be allowed; with, however, the remembrance that, after
all, they may not be faults when brought sub specie aeternitatis.
But, except in the very earliest plays—not half a dozen out of the
a
whole seven and thirty-and in passages of the middle division, it
may almost be said that there is no 'sad stuff' in Shakespeare,
though there is a great deal of very sad stuff in what has
been written about him. In particular, both the impugners and
the defenders on the theatrical side seem to protest too much.
It is, of course, quite true that all Shakespeare's plays were
written to be acted; but it may be questioned whether this is
much more than an accident, arising from the fact that the drama
was the dominant form of literature. It was a happy accident,
because of the unique opportunity which this form gives of
employing both the vehicles of poetry and of prose. But, though
in a far milder degree, it was unlucky, because nothing has varied
more or more quickly than the popular taste in drama, and, there-
fore, dramatic work has been exposed to even greater vicissitudes
than those which necessarily await all literary performance. Even
here, its exceptional excellence is evidenced curiously enough by
the fact that there has been no time—the last forty years of the
seventeenth century are not a real exception-at which Shake-
speare has not (sometimes, it is true, in more or less travestied
forms) retained popularity even on the stage.
>
2


## p. 209 (#233) ############################################

Shakespeare's Censors
209
a
But, if we regard his work from the far more permanent, and
less precarious, standpoint of literary criticism, his exceptional
greatness can be shown in divers and striking ways. The chain of
literary dictators who have borne witness to it in their several
fashions and degrees-Ben Jonson, Dryden, Pope, Samuel Johnson,
Coleridge—has been pointed out often enough. It has not, per-
.
haps, been pointed out quite so often that the reservations of
these great critics, when they make them, and the more or less
unqualified disapproval of others, can always be traced to some
practically disabling cause. Ben Jonson held a different theory of
the drama; Dryden, for a time, at least, was led aside by the heroic
play and, for another time, by the delusion that the manners,
language and so forth of the present day' must be an improve-
ment on those of yesterday; Pope, by something not dissimilar to
that which worked in Dryden's case, and Johnson, by something
not dissimilar to that which worked in Jonson's; Coleridge, by
‘his fun'—that is to say, by occasional crotchet and theory.
On the other hand, Voltaire, with all who followed him, differed
partly in point of view, and partly was influenced by the half
concealed, half open conviction that French literature must be
supreme. Patriotism worked in another way on Rümelin, vexed
at the way in which his countrymen, led by the Schlegels (from
the earlier, and too much forgotten, John Elias onwards) and
Goethe, had deified foreigners. Hello was affected by that strange
dread and distrust of great human art which has influenced the
Roman Catholic church almost as much as the extreme protestant
sects, and which descends from Plato through the Fathers. The
mere dissident for the sake of dissent need hardly be noticed; still
less the mountebanks. But it is a certificate of genuineness to
have mountebanks against you; and the heretic, by the fact of
his heresy, goes further than he knows to establish the orthodox-
ness of orthodoxy.
Except from the historical side, however, it is unnecessary to
dwell on this part of the matter. What establishes the greatness
of Shakespeare is the substance of Shakespeare's work. "Take
and read is the very best advice that can be given in reference to
him. It is not necessary, nor at all desirable, to disparage at least
part of the enormous labour that has been spent upon him by
others. But it is quite certain that anyone who, with fair
education and competent wits, gives his days and nights to the
reading of the actual plays will be a far better judge than
anyone who allows himself to be distracted by comment and
14
E. L. V.
CH. VIII.


## p. 210 (#234) ############################################

210
Shakespeare
controversy. The important thing is to get the Shakespearean
atmosphere, to feel the breath of the Shakespearean spirit. And
it is doubtful whether it is not much safer to get this first, and at
first hand, than to run the risk of not getting it while investigating
the exact meaning of every allusion and the possible date of every
item. The more thoroughly and impartially this spirit is observed
and extracted, the more will it be found to consist in the sub-
jection of all things to what may be called the romantic process of
presenting them in an atmosphere of poetical suggestion rather
than as sharply defined and logically stated. But this romantic
process is itself characterised and pervaded by a philosophical
depth and width of conception of life which is not usually asso-
ciated with romance. And it is enlivened and made actual by
the dramatic form which, whether by separable or inseparable
accident, the writer has adopted. Thus, Shakespeare-as no one
had done before him, and as people have done since far more
often in imitation of him than independently-unites the powers
and advantages of three great forms: the romance (in verse
or prose), pure poetry and the drama. The first gives him variety,
elasticity, freedom from constraint and limit. The second enables
him to transport. The third at once preserves his presentations
from the excessive vagueness and vastness which non-dramatic
romance invites, and helps him to communicate actuality and
vividness.
It is in the examination of his treatment, now of individual
incidents and personages, now of complicated stories, by the aid of
these combined instruments, that the most profitable, as well as
the most delightful, study of Shakespeare consists. But there is
no doubt that, as a result of this study, two things emerge as his
special gifts. The first is the coinage of separate poetic phrases ;
the second is the construction and getting into operation of indi-
vidual and combined character. In a third point-the telling of
a story or the construction of a drama-he is far greater than is
often allowed. After his earliest period, there is very little in any
play that does not directly bear upon the main plot in his sense of
that word. Even in so very long, so very complicated, a piece
.
as Hamlet, it is almost impossible to 'cut' without loss—to the
intelligent and unhasting reader, at any rate, if not to the eager
or restless spectator. But plot, in his sense, means, mainly-not
entirely—the evolution of character; and so we may return to
that point.
Two features strike us in Shakespearean character drawing


## p. 211 (#235) ############################################

Shakespeare's 'Palace of Truth' 2 II
which are not so prominent in any other. The one is its astonishing
prodigality, the other its equally astonishing thoroughness, regard
being had to the purpose of the presentation. On this latter
head, reference may be made to the examination of the character
of Claudius above given; but it would be perfectly easy to
supplement this by scores, nay, literally, by hundreds, of others,
were there space for it. Shakespeare never throws away a cha-
racter; but, at the same time, he never scamps one that is in any
way necessary or helpful to his scheme. But this thoroughness, of
course, shows itself more fully still in his great personages. It has
been almost a stumblingblock—the bounty of the describing
detail being so great that interpreters have positively lost them-
selves in it. Nor was this probably unintended; for Shakespeare
knew human nature too well to present the narrow unmistakable
type character which belongs to a different school of drama. His
methods of drawing character are numerous. The most obvious
of them is the soliloquy. This has been found fault with as un-
natural—but only by those who do not know nature. The fact is
that the soliloquy is so universal that it escapes observers who
are not acute and active. Everybody, except persons of quite
abnormal hebetude, 'talks to himself as he walks by himself, and
thus to himself says he. ' According to temperament and intellect,
he is more or less frank with himself; but his very attempts to
deceive himself are more indicative of character than his bare
actions. The ingenious idea of the 'palace of truth' owes all its
ingenuity and force to this fact. Now, Shakespeare has consti-
tuted his work, in its soliloquies, as a vast palace of truth, in
which those characters who are important enough are compelled
thus to reveal themselves. Nothing contributes quite so much to
the solidity and completeness of his system of developing plot by
the development of character; nor does anything display more fully
the extraordinary power and range, the ‘largeness and universality,'
of his own soul. For the soliloquy, like all weapons or instruments
which unite sharpness and weight, is an exceedingly difficult and
dangerous one to wield. It may very easily be overdone in the
novel (where there are not the positive checks on it which the
drama provides) even more than in the drama itself. It is very
difficult to do well. And there is a further danger even for those
who can do it well and restrain themselves from overdoing it:
that the soliloquies will represent not the character but the author;
that they will assist in building up for us, if we desire it, the nature
of Brown or Jones, but will not do very much for the construction
1442


## p. 212 (#236) ############################################

2 12
Shakespeare
or revelation of that of Brown's or Jones's heroes and heroines.
Shakespeare has avoided or overcome all these points. His
soliloquies, or set speeches of a soliloquial character, are never, in
the mature plays, overdone; they are never futile or unnatural;
and, above all, they are so variously adapted to the idiosyncrasies of
the speakers that, while many people have tried to distil an
essence of Shakespeare out of them, nobody has succeeded. From
Thackeray's famous parabases (even when they are put in the
mouths of his characters as they sometimes are) we learn very little
more about these characters than he has told us or will tell us in
another way; but we learn to know himself almost infallibly. From
Shakespeare's soliloquies we hardly see him even in a glass darkly;
but we see the characters who are made to utter them as plain
as the handwriting upon the wall.
It remains, before concluding with a skeleton table of dates
and facts which may serve to vertebrate this chapter, to consider
three points of great, though varying, importance-Shakespeare's
morality in the wide sense, his versification and his style.
In dealing with the first, there is no necessity to dwell much on
the presence in his work of 'broad' language and 'loose' scenes.
That he exceeds in this way far less than most of his contempo-
raries will only be denied by those who do not really know the
Elizabethan drama. Of the excess itself, it seems rather idle to
say much. The horror which it excites in some cases is, perhaps,
as much a matter of fashion as the original delinquency. But this
is only a miserable specialisation and belittlement of the word
'morality. In the larger sense, Shakespeare's morals are dis-
tinguished and conditioned almost equally by sanity, by justice
and by tolerance. He is not in the least squeamish-as has been
said, he shocks many as not being squeamish enough—but he
never, except in All's Well that Ends Well, and, perhaps, Measure
for Measure, has an unhealthy plot or even an unhealthy situation.
His justice is of the so-called 'poetical' kind, but not in the least
of the variety often so misnamed. In fact, as a rule, he is rather
severe—in some cases, decidedly so—and, though too much of an
artist to court the easy tragedy of the unhappy ending, is, except
in his last three plays, equally proof against the seductions of the
happy sort. But this severity is tempered by, and throws into
relief, the third quality of tolerance in which he excels every other
author. This tolerance is not complaisance: justice prevents
that, and sanity too. Shakespeare never winks at anything.
But, as he understands everything, so, without exactly pardoning it


## p. 213 (#237) ############################################

Justice and Tolerance
213
('that's when he's tried above '), he invariably adopts a strictly
impartial attitude towards everything and everybody. In this, he
stands in marked contrast to Dante, who, with almost equal sanity
and fully equal justice, is not merely unnecessarily inexorable, but
distinctly partisan—not merelya hanging judge, but a hanging judge
doubled with an unsparing public prosecutor. It was once observed
as an obiter dictum by a Dante scholar of unsurpassed competence
that 'Dante knows he is unfair. ' It might be said that the extraor-
dinary serenity and clarity of Shakespeare's mind and temper make
it unnecessary for him to think whether he is fair or not. He gives
the character as it is—the other characters and the reader may
make what they can of it. He allows Malcolm to call Macbeth
a 'dead butcher' and Lady Macbeth a 'fiendlike queen,' because
it is what Malcolm would have done. But he does not attach
these tickets to them; and you will accept the said tickets at your
own risk. Another contrast which is useful is, again, that of
Thackeray. The author of Vanity Fair and The Newcomes has
a power of vivifying character not much inferior to Shakespeare's.
But, when he has vivified his characters, he descends too much
into the same arena with them; and he likes or dislikes them, as
one likes or dislikes fellow creatures, not as the creator should be
affected towards creations. Becky Sharp is a very fallible human
creature, and Barnes Newcome is a detestable person. But
Thackeray is hard on Becky; and, though he tries not to be
hard on Barnes, he is. Shakespeare is never hard on any of his
characters-not merely in the cases of Lady Macbeth and Cleo-
patra, where there is no difficulty; but in those of Iago and
Edmund, of Richard and of John, where there is. The difficulty
does not exist for him. And yet he has no sneaking kindness for
the bad, great person as Milton has. The potter has made the pot
as the pot ought to be and could not but be; he does not think it
necessary to label it 'caution' or 'this is a bad pot,' much less
to kick it into potsherds. If it breaks itself, it must; in the
sherds into which it breaks itself, in those it will lie; and 'there is
namore to seyn. "
Equally matter subject to opinion, but matter much more
difficult to pronounce upon with even tolerable distinctness and
trenchancy, is the feature of style. It is, perhaps, in this point
that Shakespeare is most distinguished from the other greatest
writers. He has mannerisms; but they are mostly worn as clothes -
adopted or discarded for fashion's or season's sake. He has no
mannerism in the sense of natural or naturalised gesture which is
1 (A. J. Butler. ]


## p. 214 (#238) ############################################

214
Shakespeare
recognisable at once. When we say that a phrase is Shake-
spearean, it is rather because of some supreme and curiously simple
felicity than because of any special 'hall-mark,' such as exists in
Milton and even in Dante. Even Homer has more mannerism
than Shakespeare, whose greatest utterances-Prospero's epilogue
to the masque, Cleopatra's death words, the crispest sayings of
Beatrice and Touchstone, the passion of Lear, the reveries of
Hamlet, others too many even to catalogue-bear no relation to
each other in mere expression, except that each is the most appro-
priate expression for the thought. Euphuism and word play, of
course, are very frequent-shockingly frequent, to some people,
it would seem.
But they are merely things that the poet plays
at—whether for his own amusement or his readers', or both, is
a question, perhaps of some curiosity, but of no real importance.
The well ascertained and extraordinary copiousness of his voca-
bulary is closely connected with this peculiar absence of peculiarity
in his style. The writer given to mannerism necessarily repeats, if
not particular words, particular forms of phrases--notoriously, in
some cases, particular words also. The man who, in all cases, is to
suit his phrase to his meaning, not his meaning to his phrase,
cannot do this. Further, Shakespeare, like almost all good English
writers, though to the persistent displeasure of some good English
critics, coins words with the utmost freedom, merely observing
sound analogy. He shows no preference for 'English' over ‘Latin’
vocabulary, nor any the other way. But, no doubt, he appreci-
ates, and he certainly employs, the advantages offered by their
contrast, as in the capital instance of
>
The multitudinous seas incarnadine
Making the green one red,
where all but the whole of the first line is Aristotle's xenon and the
whole of the next clause his kyrion. In fact, it is possible to talk
about Shakespeare's style for ever, but impossible in any way to
define it. It is practically 'allstyle, as a certain condiment is
called 'allspice'; and its universality justifies the Buffonian
definition-even better, perhaps, that earlier one of Shakespeare's
obscure Spanish contemporary Alfonso Garcia Matamoros as
habitus orationis a cujusque natura fluens.
There is no need to acknowledge defeat, in this way, as regards
the last point to be handled, Shakespeare's versification. This,
while it is of the highest importance for the arrangement of his
work, requires merely a little attention to the prosody of his prede-


## p. 215 (#239) ############################################

215
a
His Progress in Versification
cessors, and a moderate degree of patient and intelligent observation,
to make it comparatively plain sailing. In no respect is the Meres
list of more importance than in this; for, though it does not arrange
its own items in order, it sets them definitely against the others
as later, and enables us, by observing the differences between the
groups as wholes, to construct the order of sequence between in-
dividual plays. Hardly less valuable is the practical certainty that
The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline and The Tempest are the latest plays,
and, to say the least, the extreme probability of the grouping of
the greatest of the others as belonging to a short period im-
mediately before and a rather longer period immediately after the
meeting of the centuries.
Putting these facts together with the certain conditions of
prosody in the plays of the Marlowe group, and in the nondescripts
of the third quarter of the sixteenth century, we are in a condition
to judge Shakespeare's progress in versification with fair safety.
For the earliest period, we have pieces like Love's Labour's Lost
and The Comedy of Errors on the one hand, like Titus Andronicus
on the other. In this last, we see an attempt to play the game of
the Marlowe heroic, the unrimed'drumming decasyllabon,' strictly
and uncompromisingly. The verses are turned out like bullets,
singly from the mould; there is little condescendence (though there
is some) to rime, even at the end of scenes and tirades; there is no
prose proper. But there is considerable variation of pause; and,
though the inflexibility of the line sound is little affected by it,
there is a certain running over of sense in which, especially when
conjoined with the pause, there is promise for the future.
The two other plays represent a quite different order of experi-
ment. Love's Labour's Lost, especially, is a perfect macédoine of
metres. There is blank verse, and plenty of it, and sometimes
very good, though always inclining to the ‘single-mould. ' But
there is also abundance of rime; plenty of prose; arrangement
in stanza, especially quatrain; doggerel, sometimes refining itself to
tolerably regular anapaests; fourteeners; octosyllables or, rather,
the octosyllable shortened catalectically and made trochaic; finally,
pure lyric of the most melodious kind. The poet has not made up
his mind which is the best instrument and is trying all-not, in
every case, with a certain touch, but, in every case, with a touch
which brings out the capacities of the instrument itself as it has
rarely, if ever, been brought out before.
In the other early plays, with a slight variation in proportion to
subject, and with regard to the fact whether they are adaptations


## p. 216 (#240) ############################################

216
Shakespeare
or not, this process of promiscuous experiment and, perhaps, half
unconscious selection continues. The blank verse steadily improves
and, by degrees, shakes off any suggestion of the chain, still more
of the tale of bullets, and acquires the astonishing continuity and
variety of its best Shakespearean form. Still, it constantly relapses
into rime-often for long passages and, still oftener, at the ends
or breaks of scenes and at the conclusion of long speeches ; some-
times, perhaps, merely to give a cue; sometimes, to emphasise
a sentiment or call attention to an incident or an appearance.
The very stanza is not relinquished; it appears in Romeo and
Juliet, in A Midsummer Night's Dream, even in The Merchant
of Venice. The doggerel and the fourteeners, except when the
latter are used (as they sometimes are) to extend and diversify
the blank verse itself, gradually disappear; but the octosyllabic,
and more directly lyrical, insets are used freely. The point, how-
ever, in that which is, probably, the latest of this batch, and in the
whole of the great central group of comedies and tragedies, is the
final selection of blank verse itself for reliance, and its development.
Not only, as has just been noticed, do the deficiencies of the form
in its earlier examples-its stiffness, its want of fluency and sym-
phony, the gasps, as it has been put, of a pavior with the lifting
and setting down of his rammer-not only do these defects
disappear, but the merits and capabilities of the form appear con-
trariwise in ways for which there is no precedent in prosodic
history. The most important of these, for the special dramatic
purpose, if also the most obvious, is the easy and unforced breaking
up of the line itself for the purpose of dialogue. But this, of course,
had been done with many metres before; even medieval octo-
syllable writers had had no difficulty with it, though the unsuitable-
ness of rime for dialogue necessarily appeared. But Shakespeare
enlarged greatly and boldly on their practice. In all his mature
plays—Hamlet is a very good example to use for illustration—the
decasyllabic or five-foot norm is rather a norm than a positive
rule. He always, or almost always, makes his lines, whether single,
continuous, or broken, referable to this norm. But he will cut
them down to shorter, or extend them to greater, length without
the least hesitation. Alexandrines are frequent and fourteeners
not uncommon, on the one hand; octosyllables and other fractions
equally usual. But all adjust themselves to the five-foot scheme;
and the pure examples of that scheme preponderate so that there
is no danger of its being confused or mistaken.
Secondly, the lines, by manipulation of pause and of enjambe-
a
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Shakespearean Blank Verse
217
ment or overrunning, are induced to compose a continuous sym-
phonic run-not a series of gasps. In some passages—for instance,
the opening lines of Antony and Cleopatra—the pause will hardly
be found identical in any two of a considerable batch of verses.
As to its location, the poet entirely disregards the centripetal rule
dear to critics at almost all times. He sometimes disregards it to
the extent-horrible to the straiter sect of such critics—of putting
a heavy pause at the first or at the ninth syllable. Always, in
his middle period, he practises what he taught to Milton-the
secret of the verse period and paragraph-though in drama he has
a greater liberty still of beginning this and ending it at any of his
varied pause places, without troubling himself whether these places
begin and end a line or not. Sometimes, indeed, he seems to prefer
that they should not coincide.
But the third peculiarity which distinguishes the accomplished
blank verse of Shakespeare is the most important of all. It is the
mastery-on good principles of English prosody from the thirteenth
century onwards, but in the teeth of critical dicta in his own day
and for centuries to follow-of trisyllabic substitution. By dint of
this, the cadence of the line is varied, and its capacity is enlarged,
in the former case to an almost infinite, in the latter to a very
great, extent. Once more, the decasyllabic norm is kept-is, in fact,
religiously observed.