No More Learning

However that
may be, Voltaire was convinced that the best means of conveying
some knowledge of the English form of tragedy to his countrymen
was by a Roman drama. He began by writing Brutus, which was
played towards the end of 1730, and published in the following
year with a lengthy preface addressed to his friend Bolingbroke.
Here, his earlier assertions about Shakespeare were repeated with
more emphasis and point. A more direct attempt to familiarise
France with Shakespeare was La Mort de César (published in
1735, but written in 1731), in which, within the space of three acts,
he reproduced the gist, and at least some of the glaring 'impro-
prieties,' of the Shakespearean tragedy. After Julius Caesar, the
play which seems to have attracted Voltaire most—his knowledge
of Shakespeare, it must be remembered, was exceedingly limited-
was Hamlet. And just as the crowd in the former play had a
peculiar fascination for him, so the ghost scenes in Hamlet
suggested to him another means of widening the conventions of
the pseudo-classic stage by what was, after all, a return to a
favourite element of the early renascence tragedy on the Senecan
model. He introduced a ghost into the unsuccessful tragedy
Ériphyle (1732), and, again, into Sémiramis (1748). It was the
latter that gave Lessing the opportunity for his famous criticism,
in which he proved what might surely have occurred to Voltaire
himself, that the introduction of the supernatural was inconsistent
with the canons of French classic art, and only possible in the
chiaroscuro of a naturalism untrammelled by artificial rules. In
his Zaïre (1733), Voltaire endeavoured to utilise Othello for the
purposes of classic tragedy; and, in Mahomet (1742), he laid some
scenes of Macbeth under contribution.
For a time, Voltaire had it almost entirely his own way with
regard to Shakespeare on the continent. He had awakened
. curiosity; and, henceforth, every one who crossed the channel -
Montesquieu among others—was expected to bring back with
him impressions of England's interesting poet. In prefaces to
his tragedies and in his correspondence, Voltaire rang the changes
on the views he had already expressed in his Lettres philo-
sophiques, with more or less piquant variety. These views were
familiar to the entire continent, and the periodical press, especially
in France and in Holland, felt obliged to take up a critical attitude
towards them, either refuting Voltaire's modest claims in the


## p. 289 (#313) ############################################

able
trek
ale
1-
ܫܓeli
French and Italian Interest in Shakespeare 289
interests of 'good taste,' or espousing Shakespeare's cause with
a warmth which awakened mixed feelings in Voltaire himself.
Voltaire's dramas, too, were played on all stages that made any
pretension to be in touch with literature; and, although the
author himself was by no means ready to acknowledge his in-
debtedness, his Mort de César was generally regarded as the one
accessible specimen of a Shakespearean tragedy.
Among French admirers of Shakespeare, however, there was
one, abbé Prévost, whose knowledge of England and the English
was more profound than Voltaire's and whose enthusiasm was
much less equivocal. He visited England in 1728; he wrote
of the English theatre with warm appreciation in his Memoirs;
and, in 1738, he devoted several numbers of his journal Le Pour
et Contre solely to Shakespeare, whom he discussed with a
freedom from classic prejudice to be found in no other conti.
nental writer at that time. But Prévost seems to have been a
little in advance of his age, and his views made little impression
compared with the interest shown everywhere in Voltaire's utter-
ances on the subject of English tragedy. Louis Riccoboni, however,
in his Réflexions historiques et critiques sur les différents Théâtres
de l'Europe (1738), a book that was widely read throughout the
continent, gave Shakespeare——in spite of a rather distorted account
of the poet's life--his place at the head of English dramatic
literature. Abbé Le Blanc devoted a number of his Lettres d'un
Français (1745) to Shakespeare; and, although his views are
essentially bounded by the pseudo-classic horizon, he at least, as
Jusserand has pointed out, attempted to do justice to the charm
of Shakespeare's style. Lastly, mention should be made of Louis
Racine, son of the poet, who, in an essay on his father's genius
(1752), vindicated the greatness of the classic drama by a com-
parison of Shakespeare with Sophocles.
In Italy, so far as the Italy of this period had any views
about Shakespeare at all, Voltaire's opinions dominated. Abbé
Conti's Cesare has already been mentioned, and, in the intro-
ductory epistles to that tragedy, he acknowledged his indebtedness,
through the duke of Buckingham, to the famous English poet
Sasper'; Scipione Maffei referred to Shakespeare in 1736, while
Francisco Quadrio, who first really introduced Shakespeare to
the Italians, merely repeated in his Della Storia e della Ragione
ď ogni Poesia (1739—52) what Voltaire had written. In Germany,
on the other hand, there were some attempts, if not to subvert, at
least to modify, the Voltairean dogma. In fact, Germany stole a
19
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6
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​E. L. V.
CA. XII,


## p. 290 (#314) ############################################

290
Shakespeare on the Continent
march on France, in so far as she possessed, as early as 1741,
a real translation—the first translation of a Shakespearean drama
into any language-of Julius Caesar. The author, Caspar Wilhelm
von Borck, was Prussian ambassador in London between 1735 and
1738, and, doubtless, like Voltaire himself, experienced the piquant
charm of English representations of that tragedy. Possibly, the
translation may have been, in some measure, due to a desire on
Borck's part to show his countrymen that Voltaire's Mort de
César, in spite of its author's protestations, gave a very imperfect
idea of the original. But it is not to be supposed that, at heart,
Borck was at variance with the standard of dramatic excellence
set up by Voltaire, and he conformed to that standard by
translating Shakespeare into the German alexandrines which did
service for translations of Voltaire's tragedies. This version, Der
Tod des Julius Caesar, however, not merely gave men like
Lessing, and, doubtless, Herder also, their first glimpse of the
English poet, but it also led to the earliest German controversy
on Shakespeare's art. Johann Christoph Gottsched, the repre-
sentative of classicism in Germany at that time, asserted the
superior standpoint of Voltaire, with an intellectual arrogance be-
yond even that which distinguished the French critic's methods ;
but, in so doing, he awakened a certain respect for the 'drunken
savage' in one of his own disciples, Johann Elias Schlegel. This
young writer-Voltairean as he was-presumed to detect merits
in Shakespeare which, although admittedly at variance with the
requirements of French classicism, were at least justified by the
practices of a German dramatist of an older generation, Andreas
Gryphius. In Switzerland, about the same time, Johann Jakob
Bodmer instinctively felt that the 'Sasper' with whom his Italian
authorities had acquainted him, and whom he had found praised
in The Spectator, might be a useful ally in his controversy with
the Leipzig classicists concerning the legitimacy of the 'marvellous'
in poetry; but of Shakespeare's works, Bodmer, at this time, seems
to have known little or nothing.
A new development of the Shakespeare question on the con-
tinent began with the publication of the earliest French translation
of his works. In 1745, the year in which Le Blanc's letters ap-
peared, Pierre Antoine de La Place began his series of translations
of English plays by publishing two volumes containing Othello,
The Third Part of Henry VI, Richard III, Hamlet and Macbeth.
So acceptable were these volumes to the public that they were
followed by other two, containing Cymbeline, Julius Caesar,


## p. 291 (#315) ############################################

Translations of La Place 291
Antony and Cleopatra, Timon of Athens (according to Shadwell)
and The Merry Wives of Windsor. In but one case, however,
did he translate the entire play, namely Richard III; for the
rest, he was content to summarise in a connecting narrative what
seemed to him the less important scenes. He also gave an
abstract of the plots of twenty-six other Shakespearean plays.
Moreover, he prefaced his translation with an introduction on the
English stage, in which he expressed very liberal views on the
legitimacy of Shakespeare's art. This work attracted wide at-
tention, not merely in France, but on the continent generally,
and the Mémoires de Trévoux devoted no less than seven articles
to its discussion. In one respect, La Place's translation brought
about an immediate effect; it awakened Voltaire's resentment.
Always sensitive where his personal vanity was concerned, he was
hurt to the quick by the presumption of this unknown author,
who wrested from him his laurels as the European authority
on Shakespeare and the sole judge of how much the continent
ought to know of the barbarian poet, and—what was worse
who ventured to speak of Shakespeare in terms of praise which he,
Voltaire, regarded as dangerous. As a matter of fact, La Place's
translation helped materially to undermine Voltaire's authority as
a Shakespearean critic; henceforth, Voltaire fell more and more
into the background, and was looked upon, even in otherwise
friendly quarters, as cherishing an unreasonable prejudice against
the English poet. And, as the years advanced, his antagonism to
Shakespeare became increasingly embittered and violent.
A more liberal spirit—thanks, mainly, to the initiative of
Voltaire himself—was making itself felt in French criticism ; and,
from about the middle of the century onwards, there was an ap-
preciable body of educated opinion, especially among the younger
writers, which regarded Shakespeare in a favourable light, and
cherished the hope that his example might break the stiffening
bonds of the classic canon. The anglomanie which set in with
considerable force after the middle of the century, the frequent
visits to England of Frenchmen interested in literature, and the
fame of Garrick, who had many French friends and correspondents,
were all in favour of a sympathetic attitude towards Shakespeare, or,
at least, ensured that the controversy about him should be carried
on with some kind of mutual understanding. On the whole, however,
the French standpoint towards the English poet held its own in
these years, and the drawing together of the two countries had
resulted in a nearer approach of English criticism to that of France,
19-2


## p. 292 (#316) ############################################

292 Shakespeare on the Continent
6
rather than the reverse. Still, Frenchmen began now to study
the English theatre historically ; Le Nouveau Dictionnaire his-
torique (a supplement to Bayle) devoted, in 1756, no less than
six pages to an article on Shakespeare, and the authors of the
Encyclopédie mentioned him repeatedly. It was thus no wonder
that a few bold spirits had even the temerity to prefer Shake-
speare to Corneille. Such, at least, was the implication in an
anonymous article, professedly translated from the English, entitled
'Parallèle entre Shakespear et Corneille,' which appeared in Le
Journal Encyclopédique in 1760. This article, together with a
second one in which Otway was held up as superior to Racine,
offended Voltaire deeply; he felt that the honour of France must
be vindicated at all costs, and, in the following year, he launched
his Appel à toutes les Nations de l'Europe. This appeal' does
not appear, however, either then or in 1764, when it was re-
published under the pseudonym of 'Jérôme Carré,' to have
awakened any widespread desire among the nations to bring the
rival poets before a French tribunal of Voltaire's making.
Meanwhile, the sentimental movement, which set in in full
force with Rousseau, was distinctly favourable to Shakespeare's
reputation in France; Diderot felt the power of the 'Gothic
colossus' and expressed his views with that fervent emphasis
which was characteristic of him; and, in Sébastien Mercier, there
arose a critic of power and originality, whose influence was not
restricted to France. Mercier's treatise Du Théâtre, ou Nouvel
Essai sur l'Art dramatique (1773), in fact, put the entire Shake-
speare question in a new light; and, while Voltaire was still
fencing with Horace Walpole and others about La Place and
that translator's shortsighted policy in undermining good taste
by making the English ‘Gille de la foire' unnecessarily accessible
to French readers, another blow fell on him which kindled his
wrath anew. This was a new and much more ambitious translation
of Shakespeare by Pierre Félicien Le Tourneur; with this publica-
tion, the French appreciation of the poet entered upon a new
phase.
The first volume of Le Tourneur's work appeared in 1776; it is
a sumptuous quarto and opens with an imposing list of subscribers
headed by the king and queen. The quality of the translation-
which is in prose-is not of a very high order; but, compared
with that of La Place and other contemporary efforts, it marks a
very considerable advance. The introduction expatiates in no
measured terms on the greatness and universality of Shakespeare's


## p. 293 (#317) ############################################

Voltaire's Last Attacks on Shakespeare 293
genius, on his insight into the human heart and his marvellous
powers of painting nature. In this eulogy, Le Tourneur had not
omitted to mention as Shakespeare's equals the French masters of
the seventeenth century, Corneille, Racine and Molière ; but not a
word was said of the French theatre of the translator's own time.
Voltaire was not merely indignant at the disgrace to France
implied in placing Shakespeare on this pinnacle : he was incensed
that his own name should not even have been mentioned on the
French roll of dramatic fame. The Appeal to all the Nations
of Europe had failed; he felt he must now approach the custodian
1
of the nation's good name, the Academy. D'Alembert, secretary
of the Academy, was not unwilling to meet Voltaire's wishes; and
it was ultimately agreed that d'Alembert should read before a
public meeting a letter by Voltaire on the dangers of Shakespeare
to French taste. This actually took place on 25 August 1776.
The old battery was drawn up anew, and once more the untutored
mountebank was successfully routed ; d'Alembert's eloquent de-
livery of his friend's appeal to the good sense of France was
received with acclamation (broken only by an English boy of
twelve who wanted to hiss Voltaire). But to Voltaire even
this protest did not seem sufficient. A second letter followed on
7 October, and was published as the preface to his last tragedy,
Irène, the performance of which had been Voltaire's final triumph
in Paris. 'Shakespeare is a savage with sparks of genius which
shine in a horrible night. ' This was Voltaire's last word on the
Shakespeare controversy. As Jusserand finely remarks, he who,
all his life long, had been the champion of every kind of liberty
refused it to tragedy alone.
The dust raised by Voltaire's last skirmish was long in subsiding.
From England, naturally, came several protests : Mrs Montague,
who had been present at the meeting of the Academy when
Voltaire's letter was read, had her Essay on the Writings and
Genius of Shakespear (1764) translated into French, with a reply
to Voltaire; Giuseppe Baretti, an Italian residing in London, wrote
his Discours sur Shakespeare et M. Voltaire (1777); Lessing's
Hamburgische Dramaturgie was translated in the interests of
Voltaire's opponents, while La Harpe, on the other side, staunchly
upheld the classic faith. But nothing could now undo the effects of
the new force which had made itself felt in the French theatre, and
even dramatists of unimpeachable 'taste,' who abhorred irregulari-
ties, introduced elements—death on the stage, infringements of the
unities and the like-which pointed unmistakably to Shakespeare.
6


## p. 294 (#318) ############################################

294 Shakespeare on the Continent
In the later years of the eighteenth century, his plays were adapted
to the French stage by several hands and in many different ways;
but only one of these adapters need be mentioned here, Jean
François Ducis, who occupied Voltaire's seat in the Academy,
In his Hamlet (1769), Roméo et Juliette (1772), Le Roi Lear
(1783), Macbeth (1784), Jean sans Terre (1791) and Othello (1792),
Ducis succeeded in reconciling a very genuine enthusiasm for
Shakespeare with what now seems to us an extraordinary lack of
taste, in adapting him for presentation to the French theatre-goer.
He was himself, however, ignorant of English and obliged to draw
exclusively from French translations. But, in spite of these disad-
vantages, Ducis succeeded where no one had succeeded before
him: he made Shakespeare-mutilated, it may be, but still Shake-
speare-popular on the French and on the Italian stage; and it
was in the Othello of Ducis that Talma achieved one of his greatest
triumphs. However we may condemn these distorted adaptations,
we should at least remember to the credit of Ducis that his stage
versions of Shakespeare's plays outlived the French revolution,
were still popular under the first empire and were remembered
when Marie-Joseph Chénier's Brutus et Cassius (1790), a play that
may be described as the last attempt to reduce Julius Caesar to
the law and order of classic taste, was forgotten.
In the years when the French literary world was torn asunder
by controversies as to what should be admired and imitated in
Shakespeare, Germany was rapidly outdistancing France as the
real leader of continental appreciation of Shakespeare. A critic
had arisen here-a greater than Voltaire- who not merely made
Shakespeare a power of the first magnitude in his own literature,
but also discovered the formula which was to reconcile the un-
classic art of Shakespeare with the classic and humanitarian
strivings of the eighteenth century. This was Gotthold Ephraim
Lessing. We must, however, avoid the mistake of overestimating
either Lessing's services to the appreciation of Shakespeare in
Germany, or his originality in judging the English poet. It is
usual to scoff at the slender knowledge with which Voltaire pre-
sumed to pass judgment on Shakespeare ; but, so far as Lessing's
printed work is concerned, he, also, gave no proof of any intimate
familiarity with the poet's works. To begin with, there is no
doubt that, until at least the year 1753, Lessing's actual acquaint-
ance with Shakespeare was limited to Borck's translation of
Julius Caesar ; of critical judgments of Shakespeare he had read
nothing more authoritative than Voltaire's Lettres philosophiques,


## p. 295 (#319) ############################################

2
Lessing and Shakespeare 295
of which he had just translated and published in his journal,
Beiträge zur Historie und Aufnahme des Theaters, the two letters
on tragedy and comedy. From about the year 1753, however,
Germany made rapid strides in her knowledge of Shakespeare;
indeed, this was inevitable, considering how carefully Germans, in
these years, followed the opinions of French writers and the French
press. An article vigorously remonstrating against Gottsched's
standpoint appeared in Neue Erweiterungen der Erkenntnis und
des Vergnügens, in 1753, and was followed, three years later, by
a prose translation of Richard III; while, in 1755, Lessing's friend
and later colleague, Nicolai, boldly put in a plea for the irregu-
larity of the English stage in preference to the artificial regularity
of the French stage. Lessing was willing enough to subscribe
to these opinions and to echo them in his writings; his own
interest in the English theatre at this time, however, was directed
not to Shakespeare, but to the tragedy of common life’; and, when,
in the winter of 1756—7, he devoted himself seriously to the study
of tragedy and its aesthetic basis, it was to Aristotle and to
Sophocles he turned in the first instance. Lessing's acquaintance
with Shakespeare in the original seems to date from the year 1757,
and fragments of dramas which have been preserved from that
period bear testimony to the deep impression which Shakespeare
had then made upon him. By 1759, Lessing had arrived at two
conclusions of far-reaching significance with regard to the English
poet. Neither was altogether new; but they were both expressed
with a vigour and piquancy which at once riveted the attention
of his contemporaries. One of these was that the drama of
Shakespeare was akin to the German Volksdrama; and, on the
ground of this affinity, Lessing hoped that Germany might be
assisted to a national drama of her own by imitating Shakespeare.
The other conclusion, which was similar to opinions that were
being freely expressed by iconoclasts in France itself, was parti-
cularly attractive to the German literary world, weary as it was of
the tyranny of classicism : it was to the effect that Shakespeare, in
spite of his irregularities, was a greater and more Aristotelian poet
in other words, more akin to Sophocles—than the great Corneille.
‘After the Oedipus of Sophocles, no piece can have more power
over our passions than Othello, King Lear, Hamlet. These bold
assertions, which form a landmark in the history of German Shake-
speare appreciation, are to be found in number 17 of Briefe die
neueste Literatur betreffend, published on 16 February 1759.
With this famous letter, Lessing's significance as a pioneer of
a


## p. 296 (#320) ############################################

296 Shakespeare on the Continent
Shakespeare in Germany reaches its climax. After 1759, he
occasionally turned to Shakespeare to demonstrate a point of
dramatic theory, or to clinch an argument, or to discredit the
French ; in the Hamburgische Dramaturgie, which has disap-
pointingly little to say about Shakespeare, he insisted on Shake-
speare's mastery as a delineator of character, on his kinship with
the Greeks and on his essential observance of the Aristotelian canon;
not for a moment would Lessing have admitted that Aristotle was
a critic for all time because his theory of tragedy could be shown
to be equally applicable to Sophocles and Shakespeare; rather,
Shakespeare was a great poet because he could be proved to have
obeyed the Greek lawgiver instinctively. In his later years, how-
ever, Lessing--as his own Nathan der Weise shows—was, at heart,
more in sympathy with Voltaire's conception of tragedy than with
Shakespeare's. Leadership in matters of Shakespearean criticism
passed rapidly into other and younger hands.
A very few years after Lessing's famous letter, the Germans were
A
themselves in a position-and in a better position than their French
neighbours-to form some idea of the English poet. Between 1762
and 1766, appeared Christoph Martin Wieland's translation of
Shakespeare into prose. It was very far from being adequate; it
;;
was suggested, doubtless, in the first instance, by La Place's
French translations, and, like these, was in clumsy prose; but,
compared with what had preceded it in Germany-Borck's Caesar,
a few fragmentary specimens of Shakespeare's work in periodicals
and a bad iambic translation of Romeo and Juliet--it was an
achievement no less great than Le Tourneur's French translation
at a somewhat later date. And, in one respect, no subsequent
translation could vie with Wieland's, namely, in its immediate
influence upon German literature. Its faults are obvious enough ;
it is ludicrously clumsy, often ludicrously inaccurate. Wieland
was himself too good a Voltairean to extend a whole-hearted
sympathy to Shakespeare's irregularities and improprieties, and he
grasped at every straw which contemporary French criticism
or the notes of Pope and Warburton offered him, to vindicate
the superiority of classic taste. At the same time, his private
correspondence would seem to indicate that his feelings for Shake-
speare were considerably less straitlaced than his commentary
would imply. The consequences of the translation were more far-
reaching than Wieland had anticipated ; indeed, he, no less than
Lessing, was filled with dismay at the extravagances which followed
the introduction of Shakespeare to the German literary world-


## p. 297 (#321) ############################################

Shakespeare in the Sturm und Drang 297
perhaps this is even a reason why, in his Dramaturgie, Lessing
is reserved on the subject of Shakespeare. In that work, Lessing
had published a kindly recommendation of Wieland's translation ;
but, a few months earlier, another and more subversive critic,
Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg, under the stimulus of the new
ideas of genius propounded in England by Young and Home, had
made claims for Shakespeare of which Lessing could not have
approved.
The new generation was no longer, like the latter critic,
interested in 'Shakespeare the brother of Sophocles': 'Shake-
speare the voice of nature' was the new watchword. The young
writers of the German Sturm und Drang did not criticise at all;
they worshipped ; they sought to 'feel' Shakespeare, to grasp his
spirit. They had not patience to study his art, to learn how to
write from him, as Lessing had recommended them to do, when, in
the Dramaturgie, he had lectured his quondam friend Weisse on
the lessons to be learned from Richard III. The five letters on
Shakespeare in Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg's Briefe über
Merkwürdigkeiten der Literatur are, perhaps, the most important
contribution to continental Shakespearean criticism of the entire
eighteenth century. It is not that much real critical discrimination
is to be found in them; but Gerstenberg's whole attitude to Shake-
n
peare's works is new; he regards them as so many 'Gemälde der
sittlichen Natur'-as things that we have no more business to
question than we should question a tree or a landscape. Judged
purely as criticism, Gerstenberg's letters on Shakespeare could not
have carried much weight in circles unaffected by the Sturm und
Drang; but his ideas fell on fruitful ground in Herder's mind, and
Herder, stripping them of their excesses and extravagances, made
them acceptable even beyond the pale of the literary revolution. His
essay on Shakespeare was one of the chief constituents of the little
pamphlet entitled Von deutscher Art und Kunst (1773), with which
the new movement was ushered in. Herder had an advantage
over Gerstenberg in not approaching the subject in quite so naïve
a frame of mind; he had studied the Hamburgische Dramaturgie;
and, from 1769 to 1772, he had busied himself zealously with the
English poet. Unlike Lessing, who attempted unconditionally to
reconcile Shakespeare with the Aristotelian canon, Herder brought
his conception of historical evolution to bear on the Greek, and
on the English, drama; he showed that, while both Sophocles and
Shakespeare strove to attain the same end, they necessarily chose
very different ways; the historical conditions under which they


## p. 298 (#322) ############################################

298
Shakespeare on the Continent
worked were totally unlike. In this way, Herder sowed the seeds
of the German romantic criticism of a later date.
Meanwhile, however, the younger dramatists of the day were
moved to enthusiasm by Gerstenberg. Goethe expressed their
views in his perfervid oration Zum Schäkespears Tag ; Lenz, in
his Anmerkungen übers Theater, developed Gerstenberg's ideas;
and later critics joined hands with Sébastien Mercier. When
Wieland had led the way, the translating of Shakespeare became
more and more common; Christian Weisse, who has just been
mentioned, produced in 1768 his German version (in alexandrines)
of Richard III-or, rather, of Cibber's adaptation of Richard III
-and, in the same year, he converted Romeo and Juliet into
a 'tragedy of common life. ' Versions of Othello and Cymbeline by
other hands followed; while, in Vienna, Hamlet and Macbeth,
A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Merry Wives of Windsor,
were adapted to the stage with a freedom which rendered them
almost unrecognisable. In 1775—7, the naturalisation of Shake-
speare in Germany was advanced another important stage by
the publication of William Shakespear's Schauspiele, in twelve
volumes, by Johann Joachim Eschenburg, professor in the Caro-
linum at Brunswick and one of the most active workers of his
day in introducing English literature to the Germans. Eschen-
burg's Shakespear is a revised and completed edition of Wieland's
translation; but so thorough was the revision that it is practically
a new work.
The chief importance of the age of Sturm und Drang for the
history of Shakespeare on the continent lies in the fact that it led
to the permanent incorporation of his plays in the répertoire of the
German national stage. Wieland had made the earliest beginning,
by arranging a performance of The Tempest in Biberach in 1761;
but the most memorable date in this connection is 20 September
1776, when Germany's greatest actor, Friedrich Ludwig Schröder,
produced Hamlet in Hamburg, he himself playing-like Garrick in
England in 1741—the ghost. This was followed in the same year
by a production of Othello; in 1777, by The Merchant of Venice and
Measure for Measure; and, in 1778, by King Lear, Richard II
and Henry IV; Macbeth was produced in 1779 and Much Ado
about Nothing in 1792. The chief impression we obtain from
Schröder's Shakespeare versions nowadays is their inadequacy to
reproduce the poetry of the originals; but it would be unfair to
condemn them. Compared with the travesties of Ducis, a little
later, they are masterpieces of reverent translation. The fact


## p. 299 (#323) ############################################

11
Schröder's Adaptations. The Romantic School 299
must be recognised that the real Shakespeare, that is to say, the
Shakespeare Schlegel gave to Germany twenty years later, would
have been impossible on Schröder's stage; and it was Schröder's
unquestionable merit-just as it was that of Ducis in France-
that he realised clearly in what form Shakespeare could be made
palatable to the theatre-goers of his time. In fact, the extra-
ordinary success of Schröder's Shakespeare over the German
speaking continent from Hamburg to Vienna--in the latter city,
the performance of Lear on 13 April 1780 was again a landmark
in the history of the theatre—is the best justification of his method
of treating Shakespeare; and we have only to compare his work
with the versions in which, before his time, German theatres had
ventured to perform Shakespeare, to appreciate the magnitude
of Schröder's achievement. In these years, the English poet was
accepted by the Germans as one of the chief assets of their national
stage, and he has never since lost his commanding position in the
German répertoire.
There is little to record in the history of Shakespeare in
Germany between Schröder's first triumphs and the publication of
Shakespeare's works in what may be called their permanent and
final form, the translation of August Wilhelm Schlegel and his
fellow-workers. The starting-point for the preoccupation of the
romantic school with Shakespeare was the famous criticism of
Hamlet which Goethe put into the mouth of his hero in Wilhelm
Meister: Lehrjahre. The fine comparison of Hamlet to an oak-tree
in a costly jar kindled the new criticism as with an electric spark,
and contained implicitly, one might say, the whole romantic attitude
to Shakespeare. Like its predecessors of the Sturm und Drang,
the romantic school looked up to Shakespeare with unbounded
reverence; like them, it recognised the impossibility of applying
the old canons of a priori criticism ; but an advance is to be seen
in the fact that the members of the school were not satisfied with
mere open-eyed wonder: they endeavoured to interpret and under-
stand. In 1796, Ludwig Tieck made a prose version of The Tempest;
and, in the same year, August Wilhelm Schlegel published, in Schiller's
Horen, his essay Etwas über William Shakespeare bei Gelegenheit
Wilhelm Meisters, and also specimens of the new translation of
Shakespeare which, with the help of his gifted wife Caroline, he
had just begun. The translation itself, Shakespeare's Dramatische
Werke, übersetzt von August Wilhelm Schlegel, began to appear in
1797; and, between that year and 1801, eight volumes were
published containing the following dramas : Romeo and Juliet,
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300 Shakespeare on the Continent
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Julius Caesar, Tuelfth Night, The
Tempest, Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It,
King John, Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V and Henry VI.
The ninth volume, Richard III, did not appear till 1810. With
this marvellous translation, which has been deservedly called the
greatest literary achievement of the romantic school, German
labours to naturalise the English poet, which had been going on
since 1741, reach their culmination. Whatever has been said to
impugn the accuracy and faithfulness of Schlegel's work, the fact
remains that no translation of Shakespeare can vie with this in the
exactitude with which the spirit and the poetic atmosphere of the
original have been reproduced; to Schlegel, in the main, belongs
the credit of having made Shakespeare the joint possession of two
nations. A word remains to be said about the attitude of Germany's
two greatest poets to Shakespeare at the turn of the century. The
period in Goethe's life which followed the publication of Wilhelm
Meister was not favourable to a sympathetic understanding of
Shakespeare, and Schiller was even less accessible. In the course
of their friendship, the two poets had arrived at a theory of classi-
cism, which, although less dominated by rules than the French
classicism of earlier times, was no less opposed to the irregularities
and subjectivity of Shakespeare's art; their attitude is to be seen
most clearly from the carefully pruned and polished versions of
Macbeth by Schiller, and Romeo and Juliet by Goethe, produced
in Weimar in 1800 and 1812 respectively. Goethe's own most de-
finite pronouncement on the subject of Shakespeare in these later
years was his essay entitled Shakespeare und kein Endel published
in 1815, a kind of apology for his adaptation of Romeo and Juliet.
The foregoing account of Shakespeare's gradual naturalisation
in Germany in the eighteenth century would be incomplete with-
out some indication of what Shakespeare meant for the develop-
ment of German literature itself. His influence in Germany from
Borck to Schlegel can hardly be exaggerated; and it may be said
without paradox that the entire efflorescence of German eigh-
teenth century literature would have been otherwise-have stood
much nearer to the main movement of European literature in that
century-had it not been for Shakespeare. It was he who
awakened the Germanic spirit in modern German literature and
pointed out to Germany how the traditions of the renascence poetics
might be abandoned; it was he who freed the intellectual growth of
northern Europe from the clogging presence of influences Latin in
their origin. With Lessing, Shakespeare first became a mighty force


## p. 301 (#325) ############################################

Influence on the French Romantic School
301
in Germany, and,with Goethe, whose Götz von Berlichingen appeared
in 1773, and the group of gifted playwrights who followed in Goethe's
footsteps, he brought the tyranny of the rules' in Germany to an
end. Wieland's translation, with all its defects, gave the German
theatre a new language and a new form of expression ; and, under
Shakespeare's guidance, the drama found its way into a romantic
fairy-world of which the French classic stage knew nothing—above
all, plays like Romeo and Juliet, Othello and The Merchant of
Venice first revealed to the Germans the poetic charm of Italy.
There was thus hardly a question round which controversy raged
in the German literature of the eighteenth century with which the
English poet was not in some way bound up.
If we turn to the nineteenth century, a certain analogy to the
influence of Shakespeare in Germany just discussed is to be found
in his influence on the French romantic school; in this period,
Shakespeare might be said to have deflected for a time the
literature of France from its normal development, or, at least,
from the development defined by the literary history of previous
centuries. It might have been expected that the precursors of the
école romantique, the representatives of the so-called emigrant
literature, should have had a special sympathy for the sombre,
misty side of Shakespeare's genius. But this was only the case in
a limited degree; there was no question of his seizing them and
bending them, as it were, to his will, as in the contemporary
literary movement in Germany; indeed, in Chateaubriand (Shake-
speare, 1801), we find a revival of the old Voltairean standpoint.
On the other hand, Madame de Staël (De la littérature, 1800)
wrote with a certain enthusiasm of Shakespeare, and Charles
Nodier, in his Pensées de Shakespeare (1801), reflected the attitude
of his German masters. Meanwhile, on the stage, Nepomucène
Lemercier borrowed freely from the English dramatist, and the
mutilations of Ducis found even less scrupulous imitators than
Ducis himself. It seemed as if the labours of the anglomanes of
the eighteenth century were to be wholly undone; the gulf between
French and English taste was wider than ever; and, in the summer
of 1822, English actors, who attempted to present Hamlet and
Othello in Paris, were actually hissed off the stage. But a better
time was not far off; in the very next year, Stendhal (Henri Beyle)
published his Racine et Shakespeare, and took his side very em-
phatically against the classicists. Guizot, together with other
fellow workers, had, in 1821, resuscitated Le Tourneur, repub-
lishing his translation in a revised form, and thus enabling the


## p. 302 (#326) ############################################

302
Shakespeare on the Continent
younger generation of poets and critics to put to the test those
enthusiastic eulogies of English poets which they found in German
romantic writers. In the following year, Guizot vindicated the
English poet in his essay De Shakspear et de la Poésie dramatique.
In 1827, the attempt to produce Shakespeare in English in the
French capital was renewed, this time with the cooperation of
Charles Kemble, Macready and Edmund Kean, and awakened the
enthusiasm of all literary Paris ; and, under the influence of these
impressions, Victor Hugo wrote his famous manifesto of the new
movement, the preface to Cromwell (1827). It seemed as if the
intoxication to which the English poet had given rise more than a
generation earlier in Germany were about to repeat itself in France.
Alfred de Vigny, in an admirable translation, transferred the
English triumphs of Othello to the stage of the Théâtre Français
itself (1829); Alexandre Dumas translated Hamlet (played 1847);
while Alfred de Musset's whole dramatic work is permeated and
coloured by Shakespearean influence. The press of the day echoed
the emotional interest which the romantic school felt in Shakespeare;
and the enthusiasm of Charles Magnin (in Le Globe, 1827—8)
and of Jules Janin helped to counteract such spasmodic attempts
as, for instance, were made by Paul Duport (Essais littéraires sur
Shakespeare, 1828), to resuscitate the antagonistic criticism of
Voltaire and La Harpe. The peculiarly emotional nature of this
enthusiasm of 1827 distinguished it from the anglomanie of the
previous century, and it shows itself still more clearly in the
remarkable influence of the English poet on French romantic art-
for example, on Eugène Delacroix-and on French music as repre-
sented by Hector Berlioz. From this time, the supremacy of
Shakespeare in modern literature was not seriously questioned in
France; the romantic fever passed, romanticism assumed other
forms, but the controversies which Shakespeare had stirred up in
the previous century were no longer possible. Except in the case
of Victor Hugo, who, so late as 1864, repeated the old fervid notes
of Cromwell in an essay inspired by his son's success as a translator
of Shakespeare, romantic criticism ripened and matured as time
went on. Guizot, towards the end of his career, devoted another
volume to Shakespeare (Shakespeare et son temps, 1852); a work
by Alfred Mézières, Shakespeare, ses oeuvres et ses critiques, ap-
peared in 1860. Lamartine published his Shakespeare et son oeuvre
in 1865. Translations of Shakespeare's works were published by
Francisque Michel in 1839, by Benjamin Lariche in 1851, by Émile
Montegut in 1867 and, as already mentioned, by François Victor


## p. 303 (#327) ############################################

Games
-
Fs
TI:
Shakespeare in Germany in the 19th Century 303
Hugo from 1859 to 1866. And yet, in spite of the continued occu-
pation with Shakespeare on the part of literary classes, it must be
confessed that the interest in him in France, otherwise than in
Germany, where Shakespeare was completely naturalised, remains
a matter only of intellectual curiosity. French criticism of Shake-
speare cannot belie the fact-and, perhaps, the absence of any
attempt on its part to do so may attest its justness of perception-
that his kind of greatness lies outside the pale of the national ideas
and the national taste. He has won no permanent place in the
national theatre, and the many performances of Shakespearean
dramas which have taken place from time to time in Paris have
been viewed as literary experiments appealing to the cultured
few, rather than as dramatic fare for the general public.
The role which Shakespeare played in the Germany of the
nineteenth century was much more important, but, so far as
literary history is concerned, perhaps less interesting, than that
which he played in France. A kind of zenith had been reached in
German appreciation of Shakespeare at the close of the eighteenth
century. The translation then begun by Schlegel, was, in later
years, completed under the direction of Ludwig Tieck, with the
help of his daughter Dorothea and of count Baụdissin; and it may
at least be said that these later translations, although inferior, are
not unworthy to stand beside Schlegel's. Germany, like France,
went on producing new translations-a complete Shakespeare, for
instance, was published by the poet Johann Heinrich Voss and
his two sons in nine volumes in 1818–29, and another by Friedrich
von Bodenstedt, with the cooperation of Ferdinand Freiligrath,
Otto Gildemeister, Paul Heyse and others, in 1867—but the
romantic translators had done their work so well that these new
productions could only have a subordinate and supplementary
value. In German literature, Shakespeare has remained a vital
and ever-present force. The problem which Schiller had first
tentatively approached, namely, the reconciliation of Shakespeare
with the antique, could not be evaded by his successors; Heinrich
von Kleist took it up with abundant zeal and solved it in an
essentially romantic way; and, notwithstanding the romantic ten-
dency to place Calderon on a higher pinnacle than Shakespeare,
the romantic dramatists were all, in the first instance, Shake-
speareans. Christian Grabbe was as zealous a Shakespeare wor-
shipper as the Lenzes and Klingers of earlier days; and even
Franz Grillparzer- with all his love for the Spaniards—had
moments when he saw eye to eye with the English dramatist.
mi
TV


## p. 304 (#328) ############################################

304 Shakespeare on the Continent
It was not before Christian Friedrich Hebbel, about the middle of
the century, that the German drama began to feel its way to a
conception of dramatic poetry more essentially modern than Shake-
speare's; and even Hebbel sought to justify by the example of Shake-
speare that accentuation of the psychological moment in which his
own peculiar strength lies.
On the other hand, Hebbel's brother-
in-arms, Otto Ludwig, was a more uncompromising Shakespearean
than any German before him; he not merely Shakespeareanised
his own dramas, but struck an original note of Shakespeare
criticism in essays unfortunately not printed until several years
after his death. On the whole, however, Shakespeare had ex-
pended his fructifying influence on German literature in the
previous century; to none of these later writers did he bring-
as to Goethe and Herder—a new revelation; and the subversive
forces of the modern German drama have little in common with
Elizabethan ideals
The consideration of Shakespeare in Germany in the nineteenth
century falls into two main divisions : German Shakespearean
scholarship and the presentation of Shakespeare on the German
stage. The former of these is a long and difficult chapter which
has still to be written; in the present survey, it is only possible
to indicate its general features. The beginnings of German
scholarly work on Shakespeare might be traced to Wieland's
investigation of the source of Othello, in 1773; but this was more
or less isolated; what men like Eschenburg had to say, somewhat
later, was little more than a reproduction of English criticism.
A significant moment in the development was Goethe's analysis
of Hamlet in Wilhelm Meister, to which reference has already
been made. Then came Friedrich Schlegel, with his marvellous
insight into the workings of genius, and kindled a new light on
the poet; Tieck laboriously and patiently investigated the whole
Shakespearean world-defining that world, perhaps, too vaguely
and loosely—and it is assuredly a loss that the life of Shakespeare
which he planned was never written; lastly, August Wilhelm
Schlegel, in his famous lectures Über dramatische Kunst und Lite-
ratur (1809—11), popularised the romantic criticism of Shakespeare,
and, in this form, it reacted on our own Coleridge and influenced
profoundly the theory of the drama in France, Italy and Spain.
As the romantic movement passed away, the place of its followers
was taken by a new race of critics, who followed the dictates of
Hegel; and, during the first half of the nineteenth century, Hegel-
ianism lay particularly heavy on German Shakespeare scholarship,
>


## p. 305 (#329) ############################################

Shakespearean Scholarship in Germany 305
one obvious reason being that Shakespeare's life offered no oppor-
tunity for that pragmatic investigation and criticism which, for
instance, was the saving element in extricating Goethe from
Hegelian metaphysics. The influence of Hegel's aesthetics, which
was essentially anti-romantic in its tendency, is to be seen in
Hermann Ulrici's Über Shakespeares dramatische Kunst und sein
Verhältnis zu Calderon und Goethe (1839), and, in a less accen-
tuated form, in Georg Gottfried Gervinus's Shakespeare (1849—52),
in Friedrich Kreyssig's Vorlesungen über Shakespeare und seine
Werke (1858) and in the recently published Shakespeare-Vorträge
of the famous Swabian Hegelian, Friedrich Theodor Vischer. On
the whole, the influence of Hegelianism on German Shakespeare
criticism has not been favourable; it has led to an excessive
preoccupation with metaphysical theories of tragic guilt and tragic
purpose, to a misleading confusion of moral and aesthetic standards
and to a too confident reliance on a priori theories of literary genius.
It has also made it difficult for Shakespeare's countrymen to ap-
preciate at their true value the learning and scholarship which lay
behind the metaphysical veil. With the labours, however, of
Karl Simrock, Gustav Rümelin, Karl Elze, whose biography,
William Shakespeare, appeared in 1876, Nikolaus Delius and
Alexander Schmidt, not to mention more recent workers, the
speculative method has been in great measure discarded in favour
of scientific investigation of facts. Germans can now point to a
magnificent record of patient and careful work, to which, since
1865, the Shakespeare Jahrbuch has borne eloquent testimony.
The importance of Shakespeare for the history of the German
theatre in the nineteenth century can hardly be overestimated; it
might, indeed, be said that (with the single exception of the Bayreuth
festival, dating from 1876) Shakespeare has been associated with
every advance that the national theatre has made. Shakespearean
types of character have formed an important factor in the staff
organisation of theatres and, in large measure, have supplanted in
poetic drama the French distribution of roles; Shakespearean repre-
sentations are the test of dramaturgic ability of every régisseur,
and Shakespearean impersonations the keystone of every actor's
reputation. The schemes of a reformed stage with which Tieck
busied himself and which he outlined in his novel Der junge Tischler-
meister were based on the requirements of the English drama;
plays by Shakespeare were included in the remarkable representa-
tions at Düsseldorf with which Karl Immermann endeavoured to
stay the decay of the post-classical stage; and, in the golden days of
20
E. L. V.
CH, XII.


## p. 306 (#330) ############################################

306 Shakespeare on the Continent
the Vienna Hofburgtheater, under Heinrich Laube's direction, and
with actors like Sonnenthal, Lewinsky, Bauermeister and Charlotte
Wolter, Shakespeare was acted as probably never before in any land. .
At the Shakespeare tercentenary in 1864—the occasion of the
founding of the German Shakespeare-Gesellschaft—Franz Dingel-
stedt, then intendant of the court theatre in Weimar, produced the
first complete cycle of Shakespeare's Königsdramen, that is to
say, dramas from English history, and it was with Shakespeare
that Duke George II of Saxe-Meiningen, from 1874 onwards,
attracted the attention not only of all Germany but of other
lands, to stage representations of rare pictorial beauty and
historical accuracy. The Meiningen “reforms,' which gave a great
stimulus to the representation of classic dramas in Germany, were
akin to what was being done, much about the same time, by Henry
Irving in London; but they had an advantage over the English
performances due to the stronger bond which has always united
theatre and literature in modern Germany. In 1889 King Lear
served for the inauguration of the Shakespeare-Bühne in Munich,
which, notwithstanding other recent attempts in England, Germany
and France, remains the only experiment of the kind which avoided
the temptation to be only antiquarian, and succeeded in winning
the approval of a wider public over a period of many years.
The question of Shakespeare's influence and appreciation in
continental lands, other than France and Germany, is, necessarily,
one of minor interest. The Latin peoples followed more or less
in the footsteps of France, the Germanic peoples of the north of
Europe in those of Germany. What Italy knew of Shakespeare in
the eighteenth century, as has been shown, was drawn exclusively
from Voltaire, and the same is true of Spain; and both countries
made their first acquaintance with the poet as an acted dramatist
through the medium of the mutilated French versions by Ducis.
The real work of translating and studying Shakespeare was not
begun in either land until the nineteenth century. A translation
of Shakespeare's tragedies into Italian verse by Michele Leoni was
published at Pisa in 1814–5; this was followed by the complete
works in Italian prose by Carlo Rusconi (1831), and selected plays
by the Milanese poet, Giulio Carcani (1857–9), ultimately increased
to a complete edition (1874–82). Spain, on the other hand, has
had to wait until comparatively recently for satisfactory transla-
tions of Shakespeare's works. Considering the kinship between
Shakespeare and the masters of the Spanish drama-a kinship
which Germans recognised at an early date-it seems strange that


## p. 307 (#331) ############################################

120
ma
Influence of Shakespeare on Other Lands
307
Spaniards should have been thus late in showing a curiosity about
the English poet. It should be added that Italy has contributed
in no small degree to the interpretation and popularisation of the
greater tragedies by the impersonations of Salvini and Rossi, of
Adelaide Ristori and Eleanora Duse, while Italian music has drawn
extensively on Shakespeare for the subjects of operas.
It is only natural to find in Germanic lands a more intense
interest in Shakespeare, and a higher development in the trans-
lation and interpretation of his works. Here, the influence of
Germany is paramount. Even Holland, which, at an earlier stage,
had been immediately influenced by England, fell back ultimately
almost wholly on German sources. The difficulty of naturalising
English drama in languages like Dutch, Danish and Swedish is
more subtle than appears at first glance; there was no want of
interest or will at a comparatively early period, but Shakespeare's
language and style presented obstacles that were not easy to
surmount. This aspect of the question did not concern Latin
peoples in the same degree, for the only method of translation
which the genius of their tongues allowed them to follow was to
bend and adapt Shakespeare to their own style. But, as has been
seen in the case of German itself, where Wieland first succeeded in
overcoming the difficulty of creating a language and style suited
to Shakespeare, and where Schlegel first made the German tongue
Shakespeare-ripe,' this initial problem was a serious one. Just
as the south of Europe learned from Voltaire, Ducis and Talma,
so Holland and Scandinavia learned the art of translating Shake-
speare from Wieland and Schlegel, and the art of playing him
from Schröder. Between 1780 and the end of the century, more
than a dozen dramas had appeared in Dutch, but it was late in
the nineteenth century before Holland possessed satisfactory and
complete translations, namely, those by Abraham Kok (1873–80)
and Leendert Burgersdijk (1884–8). What had happened in
Hamburg in 1777 virtually repeated itself in Copenhagen in
1813, that is to say, Shakespeare first won a firm footing on the
Danish stage with Hamlet. The translator was the actor Peter
Foersom, who was naturally influenced strongly by Schröder. At
his death in 1817, he had published four volumes of what was
intended to be a complete translation of Shakespeare, and it was
completed at a later date by Peter Wulff and Edvard Lembcke.
The chief Swedish translation of Shakespeare's works is that by
Carl August Hagberg (12 volumes, 1847-51). Scandinavia's contri-
bution to Shakespearean literature is much more important than
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## p. 308 (#332) ############################################

308
Shakespeare on the Continent
that of Holland ; mention need only be made here of the admirable
Swedish life of Shakespeare by Henrik Schück (1883), and William
Shakespeare (1895) by the industrious Danish critic Georg
Brandes. The latter work, in spite of a desire to reconstruct
Shakespeare's life and surroundings on insufficient materials, is,
unquestionably, one of the most suggestive biographies of the poet.
In Russia and Poland, the interest in Shakespeare is no less
great than in the more western countries of Europe. Here, the
influence of France seems to have predominated in the earlier
period, Ducis introducing the English poet to the Russian and
the Polish stage. Several plays were translated into Russian in
the eighteenth century, and the empress Catherine II had a share
in adaptations of The Merry Wives of Windsor and Timon. The
standard Russian translation is that of Gerbel (1865). In Poland,
where Shakespeare is a favourite dramatist both with actors and
public, the best translation is that edited by the poet Józef Ignacy
Kraszewski (1875). Reference must be made, in conclusion, to
the great interest which Hungarians have always shown in the
English poet, and the powerful influence he has exerted on their
literature. A very high rank among translations of Shakespeare
is claimed for those by the eminent poet Michael Vörösmarty.
especially for that of Julius Caesar.
It seems supererogatory to add to this survey of Shakespeare
abroad a word on Shakespeare in America; so far as our literature
is concerned, America is not, and never has been, abroad,' and, in
the case of Shakespeare especially, it would be invidious to set up
any limits within the area of the earth's surface where the English
tongue is spoken. But some tribute ought at least to be paid to
the independence and originality of American contributions to
Shakespearean criticism and research. By borrowing the best
elements in English critical methods and combining them with
German thoroughness and patience, American scholars, in recent
years, have thrown much light on dark places and contributed
very materially to our understanding of Shakespeare's work. In
the first line stands the admirable Variorum Edition of Shake-
speare's plays founded by Howard Furness in 1873. The leading
American actors, too, such as Edwin Booth, J. B. Booth and
Edwin Forrest have distinguished themselves by fresh and stimu-
lating interpretations of Shakespeare's greater tragedies on the
stage.
a


## p. 309 (#333) ############################################

CHAPTER XIII
LESSER ELIZABETHAN DRAMATISTS
THE Elizabethan drama emerges as a distinct form of imagina-
tive art shortly after the defeat of the Armada, and its first
masterpieces are the work of a group of university writers of
whom Marlowe and Greene are the greatest. There are no 'lesser
dramatists' of this date. The lesser dramatist is the result of the
extraordinary interest in the drama which these authors created,
and the assiduous effort made by patrons, managers and players
to produce plays in the new style which took the town. Moreover,
we have to wait some years before the work of lesser writers
survives sufficiently to enable us to appraise it. As a consequence,
the lesser Elizabethan dramatists, as a group, belong to the last
years of Elizabeth's reign; and we owe it to the lucky chance of
the survival of Henslowe's diary that we can eke out our know-
ledge of a few extant plays by the notices in that diary of the
large mass of work done by the writers of them. It'is important
that the student of Elizabethan drama should appreciate justly the
meaning and the value of Henslowe's record. We have no such
light upon the proceedings of the company for which Shakespeare
wrote and played. But it seems quite clear that Shakespeare
was never under the harrow of a Henslowe.
The players of his company obtained the control of their own
affairs and managed their business on cooperative principles. The
system of the Chamberlain's men tended to produce a limited
number of dramatists of proved ability, who were encouraged to
write plays of a quality that would ensure a run at their first
production and justify reproduction afterwards. The system of
Henslowe's company, on the contrary, tended to produce quantity
rather than quality. The public was attracted by variety and
novelty rather than by excellence, and, in order that new plays
might be produced quickly, very imperfect revision of old plays
was allowed to pass, and the system of collaboration between three


## p. 310 (#334) ############################################

310
Lesser Elizabethan Dramatists
or four writers was freely encouraged. For these reasons, we may
feel some confidence that the group of lesser dramatists who wrote
for Henslowe during the years covered by his diary is representa-
tive of the body of lesser dramatists writing during those years
for the London stage.
But, before we fix our attention upon individual writers whose
plays have come down to us, two facts must be noticed which
affect them as a body. In the first place, because they were
lesser dramatists, and because the printing of a play, in those
days, was an altogether secondary matter to the acting of it,
their work can hardly be said to have survived. The fragments
that have come down to us are so few and so mutilated that, in
many cases, we are not justified in regarding them as character-
istic. It is impossible, for instance, to decide whether The
Tragedy of Hoffman is truly representative of the large dramatic
output of Henry Chettle. We may feel reasonably sure that no
important play of Shakespeare has been lost. We cannot be sure
that the substance of Chettle's or Munday's work has survived.
What we have of it may not be in any sense characteristic. The
second fact that has to be reckoned with by the critic of the
lesser dramatists in Henslowe's employ is the system of collabora-
tion under which they wrote. Not the least of the fascinations of
the Elizabethan era is that it affords remarkable instances of a
collaboration by which two writers of genius stimulate and supple-
ment each other's powers. But the collaboration which is possible
because the minds of those taking part in it are commonplace is a
different matter altogether. Among lesser writers, collaboration
tends to suppress individuality and distinction of style, and makes
still more confusing and difficult the task of ascribing to individual
writers any qualities truly their own. Moreover, all Elizabethan
dramatists may be said to have collaborated in a special sense
with their predecessors. Broadly speaking, the Elizabethan drama
was a process of re-writing and re-constructing old plays. The
Elizabethan author stood in much closer relation to his 'origins'
and sources than did later English writers. But this, again, tended
to suppress the individuality of second-rate poets. The lesser
dramatist does not set his own stamp on the old play' as Shake-
speare does. There is no vital connection between King Lear and
The True Chronicle History of King Leir : Shakespeare's play is a
new thing. But, in reading Munday's Downfall of Robert, Earle
of Huntington, the question continually suggests itself whether
the play is much more than an alteration-an alteration which


## p. 311 (#335) ############################################

Dependence of Lesser Elizabethan Dramatists 31 1
6
remains at the same artistic and imaginative level as the thing
altered. The conclusion is that the student must not expect
to distinguish lesser dramatists from each other as greater
dramatists are distinguished. The attempt to characterise them
involves the use of a critical microscope which magnifies their
merits.
At the same time, it must be allowed that the lesser dramatist
whose main work belongs to the last years of Elizabeth's reign
has an individuality of his own which he loses after Shakespeare
and Ben Jonson have impressed their age. A lesser dramatist,
however rough, formless and incoherent, is more interesting when
he is himself, or when he is the product of the general mind of
his time, than when he is a 'son' of Ben Jonson or, palpably,
a student of some particular aspect of the art of Shakespeare.
The lesser Jacobean dramatist nearly always derives from some
acknowledged master, and is an echo as well as an inferior. The
Elizabethan lesser dramatist, on the contrary, does not interest us
as an echo, but very much more deeply as the commonplace com-
panion of the great master, his surrounding and background. It
is much more interesting to find in Munday's John a Kent and
John a Cumber clumsy work on a theme which, in Shakespeare's
hands, is magically effective, than to notice how patiently and even
skilfully 'Dick' Brome follows the manner of Jonson. And, there-
fore, it is disappointing to the student that, because of the con-
ditions under which they respectively worked, much more of
Brome should be extant than of Munday.
Henslowe’s diary begins to record payments made to authors for
writing plays at the end of 1597. The entries come to an end, for
the most part, in 1603. During this time, twenty-seven authors
are named as composers of plays or parts of plays. The work of
ten of these is trifling. Of the remaining seventeen, six are writers
of force and distinction, not to be reckoned as 'lesser. ' These are
Chapman, Dekker, Heywood, Jonson, Middleton, Webster? We
may note that, of these six, only Chapman refuses to collaborate
with inferior men ; that none of Jonson's work done in collabo-
ration is extant, except his additions to Jeronimo; and that
Middleton and Webster do not occur in the diary till 1602.
Eleven writers are left whom we may describe as the main group
of Elizabethan lesser dramatists. These, in alphabetical order, are
Henry Chettle, John Day, Michael Drayton, Richard Hathwaye,
William Haughton, Anthony Munday, Henry Porter, William
1 Perhaps Maxton, 'the new poete,' is John Marston.
6


## p. 312 (#336) ############################################

312
Lesser Elizabethan Dramatists
Rankins, Samuel Rowley, Wentworth Smith, Robert Wilson.
Rowley and Smith begin writing in 1601 ; Rankins is mentioned
only in 1599 and 1601; the remaining eight constitute the main
group of lesser men who were writing for the Elizabethan stage
between the end of 1597 and the beginning of 1603.
The comments of Francis Meres, in 1598, upon English con-
temporary writers, give us some means of checking the results of
an examination of Henslowe's records. Of Henslowe's men, Meres
names, among our best for tragedy,' Drayton, Chapman, Dekker,
Jonson; among the best for comedy,' Heywood, Munday, Chap-
man, Porter, Wilson, Hathwaye, Chettle. From his place in the
list, we conjecture that Wilson-son of the more famous Robert
Wilson, the elder-is the writer for Henslowe. One writer,
Chapman, shares with Shakespeare the honour of occurring in
both lists. All the writers whom we have noted as doing a
substantial amount of work for Henslowe's companies are men-
tioned by Meres, except Day and Haughton.
In considering the work of these men, upon whose output
for six years a sudden light is thrown by Henslowe's papers, we
propose to follow a chronological order so far as may be, and
to begin with the older men who were practised hands at the date
when Henslowe's payments are first recorded. Fortunately, there
is one whom we may safely look upon as the senior of our group, and
choose as a natural centre round which the work of the rest may be
grouped, or from which it may be derived. This is the comedian
Anthony Munday, spoken of by Meres as 'our best plotter,' per-
haps because of his seniority and experience as a hewer and
trimmer of plays rather than with any reference to his faculty for
conducting a plot in the modern sense of the term. Of the lesser
Elizabethan dramatists, Munday is the most considerable, interest-
ing and typical. In his general versatility, his copiousness and
his reliance upon himself and upon life for his learning and
culture, he corresponds, on his own level, to Shakespeare and
Ben Jonson on the heights. His long life, moreover, of eighty
years (1553-1633) covers the whole of the Elizabethan and Jaco-
bean era of dramatic activity. He was born before Shakespeare ;
Jonson survived him only by four years. He was a Londoner, and
had some experience as an actor before his apprenticeship, in 1576,
to John Allde, stationer and printer. In 1578, he undertook a
journey to Rome, to see foreign countries and to learn their
languages, according to his own account; but, also, with the less
creditable object of spying upon English Catholics abroad, and


## p. 313 (#337) ############################################

9
Anthony Munday's Early Life 313
getting together materials for popular pamphlets against them on
his return to England. After interesting adventures on the way,
he reached Rome, and was entertained at the English college,
so that he came to describe himself as 'sometime the Pope's
scholar. His experiences were detailed in a pamphlet published
'
in 1582, with the title The English Romayne Life. This was a
rejoinder to a tract, printed in 1581, in the Catholic interest, from
which we get some interesting lights upon Munday's early con-
nection with the stage. He was ‘first a stage player,' says the
pamphlet, “after' (i. e. afterwards) 'an apprentice. ' On his return
from Italy, 'this scholar did play extempore' and was ‘hissed from
his stage,' 'Then being thereby discouraged he set forth a ballad
against plays; but yet (0 constant youth) he now again begins to
ruffle upon the stage? '
This is to say that Munday attempted to achieve fame in that
special department of the Elizabethan player's art of which Robert
Wilson and Richard Tarlton ? were the most distinguished orna-
ments. The extemporising clown not only supplied the humorous
element of the interlude, but, also, he was frequently called for
after the play was over, when he performed a jig, accompanied
by some kind of recitative of his own composing in prose or
The audience might challenge him to rime on any subject,
and Tarlton's facility was so remarkable that 'Tarletonising is
used as equivalent to extemporising. There is extant a 'platt' or
programme of the second part of The Seven Deadly Sins, which is
said to have been the composition of Tarlton; and, probably,
such skeleton plays, in which actors were expected to fill in their
parts extempore, were not uncommon in the early days of the Eliza-
bethan drama. Tarlton's successor in the esteem of the public as
a clown actor was William Kemp. It is easy to see from 'Kemp's
applauded Merriments of the Men of Gotham,' which is inserted in
A Knack to Know a Knave, how inevitably the improvising clown,
with his licence to introduce his own additions, was a discordant
2
verse.
>
1 Consult 'A Caveat to the Reader touching A. M. his discovery,' printed at the
end of the pamphlet. The interesting theory (cf. post, vol. vi, chap. XIV) attributing to
Munday the anonymous authorship of The Third Blast of Retreat from Plays and
Theatres (1560) has to meet the difficulty that its author declares himself to bave
'bene a great affecter of that vaine art of Plaie-making, insomuch that I have thought
no time so wel bestowed, as when exercised in the invention of these follies. ' The
writer of the preface, Anglo-phile Eutheo, quotes these words and confirms them-
‘yea, which I ad, as excellent an Autor of these vanities, as who was best. ' We must
revise existing opinion on the subject altogether, if we are to treat Munday as a well
known writer of plays so early as 1580.
? As to Tarlton, cf. ante, vol. iv, p. 360, and ibid. , bibl. , p. 531.
9


## p. 314 (#338) ############################################

314
Lesser Elizabethan Dramatists
career.
and incalculable element in the play, and hindered the develop-
ment of artistic drama. The extempore clown of real genius
usually failed as an author; but Robert Wilson was a remarkable
exception. His two interludes, The Three Ladies of London, and
The Three Lords and Three Ladies of London, are specimens of
belated interludes modified in the direction of true drama by
the life and the reality imported into the interlude by the ex-
tempore actor. It is from these interludes that Munday's work
derives.
Munday's ballad writing is an important part of his earlier
It put him into contact with the folklore of England, and
had an appreciable influence on his dramatic work. It was so
energetic that, by 1592, he looked upon himself as having some
sort of monopoly of the art. Another of his activities, which was
not without its influence upon the dramatists of the age, was his
diligent translation of French romances, such as Amadis de Gaule
and Palmerin of England. When Ben Jonson satirises him as
Balladino, there is a double allusion to his ballad writing and to
his Palladino of England, translated from the French.
A translation from the Italian may be given as the beginning
of Munday's work as a dramatist, although it must be borne in
mind that his authorship is not more than highly probable. This
is Fedele and Fortunio, The Deceits in Love discoursed in a
Comedy of two Italian Gentlemen : translated into English,
printed in 1584? This play must have had some vogue, for one of
the characters, captain Crackstone, is alluded to by Nashe as
well known in a tract printed in 15962; and its influence as an
admirably translated example of Italian comedy must have been
considerable upon English drama. It is annoying, therefore, that
the piece, which both Collier and Halliwell-Phillipps saw and quoted,
has disappeared, and that we must judge of it by Halliwell's
meagre extracts". These present the humorous low life of the play
rather than the romantic part, which was clearly of the character
of Shakespeare's earlier comedies, in which pairs of lovers are
fantastically at cross purposes :
Lo! here the common fault of love, to follow her that flies,
And fly from her that makes pursuit with loud lamenting cries.
Fedele loves Victoria, and she hath him forgot;
Virginia likes Fedele best, and he regards her not.
1 In Stationers' register, 12 November 1584; Arber, vol. 11, p. 202.
? Have with you to Saffron Walden.
3 (See, however, bibliography, post, p. 474. ]
4 Halliwell(-Phillipps), J. O. , The Literature of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries, 1851, No. 2, pp. 18, 19, 24.


## p. 315 (#339) ############################################

The Translation of Fedele and Fortunio 315
Victoria's song at her window and Fedele's in answer are of real
poetic charm, and Fedele's denunciation of woman's fickleness is
exactly in the strain, as it is in the metre, of the riming rhetoric
of Love's Labour's Lost. But the comic scenes are not less
interesting. Their combination with the romantic intrigue is
organic, and, in clear strong outlines, the play gives us two
motives which receive elaborate development in English drama.
Crackstone is the prototype of Bobadill and Tucca and all the
braggadocios of the Elizabethan stage—but of Falstaff, also, for
every one is glad of his company: 'I have such a wild worm in my
head as makes them all merry. And, secondly, the witchcraft
scenes of the play deserve careful notice' Medusa, the witch, is
capable of development, either romantically and tragically, or
humorously and by the method of realism. The witches of Mac-
beth, as well as the charlatans of Jonson and Brome, may be derived
from this germ ; but, in the main, the witchcraft, in Munday's
play, is realistic, in actual connection with the vigorous low life
characters. Victoria's maid Attilia, who is wooed by Pedante and
Crackstone, and is the confidante and champion of her mistress, is
put before us in clear English speech, and, of course, stands at the
beginning of a long gallery of familiar creations. She is indis-
pensable in nearly all ensuing species of the drama.