No More Learning

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
Shakespeare
a
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
>


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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


## p. 205 (#229) ############################################

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


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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


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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


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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


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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-


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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


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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
>


## p. 217 (#241) ############################################

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. But the play of the verse, the spring and
reach and flexibility of it, are as that of a good fishing-rod to that
of a brass curtain-pole. The measure is never really loose-it
never in the least approaches doggerel. But it has absolute
freedom: no sense that it wishes to convey, and no sound that
it wishes to give as accompaniment to that sense, meet the slightest
check or jar in their expression.
In the latest division, one of the means of variation which had
been used even before Shakespeare, and freely by him earlier,
assumes a position of paramount and, perhaps, excessive importance,
which it maintains in successors and pupils like Fletcher, and which,
perhaps, carries with it dangerous possibilities. This is what is
sometimes called the feminine, or, in still more dubious phrase,
the 'weak, ending; but what may be better, and much more
expressively, termed the redundant syllable. That, with careful,
and rather sparing, use it adds greatly to the beauty of the
measure, there is no doubt at all: the famous Florizel and Perdita
scene in The Winter's Tale is but one of many instances. But it
is so convenient and so easy that it is sure to be abused; and
abused it was, not, perhaps, by Shakespeare, but certainly by


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218
Shakespeare
Fletcher. And something worse than mere abuse, destruction
of the measure itself, and the substitution of an invertebrate mass
of lines that are neither prose nor verse, remained behind.
But this has nothing to do with Shakespeare, who certainly
cannot be held responsible for the mishaps of those who would
walk in his circle without knowing the secrets of his magic. Of
that magic his manipulation of all verse that he tried-sonnet,
stanza, couplet, lyric, what not-is, perhaps, the capital example,
but it reaches its very highest point in regard to blank verse. And,
after all, it may be wrong to use the word capital even in regard
to this. For he is the caput throughout, in conception and in
execution, in character and in story-not an unnatural, full-blown
marvel, but an instance of genius working itself up, on precedent
and by experiment, from promise to performance and from the
part to the whole.


## p. 219 (#243) ############################################

APPENDIX
TABULAR CONSPECTUS
I
BIOGRAPHICAL
1564 April 26. Shakespeare baptised.
1582 November 27. Licence granted for marriage of William Shakespeare
and Anne Whateley. 28. Bond entered into in reference to marriage
of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway.
1583 May 26. Susanna Shakespeare baptised.
1585 February 2. Hamnet and Judith Shakespeare baptised.
1587 Michaelmas Term. Shakespeare appears in deed concerning Asbies
mortgage.
1592. Referred to (? ) by Greene as 'Shake-scene. Apology by Chettle to
the person thus referred to at end of this year or beginning of next.
1593. Venus and Adonis published.
1594. The Rape of Lucrece published. Shakespeare concerned in Christmas
entertainments before the queen at Greenwich. The Comedy of Errors
simultaneously acted on Innocents' day at Gray's inn.
1596 August 11. Hamnet Shakespeare buried. Shakespeare's father applies
for coat of arms (20 October).
1597 May 4. Shakespeare buys New Place. References to him thence-
forward by citizens of Stratford. He buys land and more houses.
1598. Meres mentions certain of Shakespeare's poems and plays. He acts (? )
in Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Humour.
1599. Arms granted. Shakespeare acquires share in Globe theatre.
1601 September 8. John Shakespeare buried.
1604 March 15. Shakespeare takes part in procession at James I's entry
into London.
1605. Augustine Phillips, a brother actor, leaves Shakespeare a thirty-
shilling piece of gold in his will.
1607 June 5. Susanna Shakespeare marries John Hall.
1608 September 9. Shakespeare's mother buried. Soon afterwards, he
establishes himself at New Place and has more business transactions of
various kinds.
1609. The Sonnets published.
1616 January 25. Shakespeare makes his will, though it is not signed till
March.
February 10. Judith Shakespeare marries Thomas Quiney.
April 23. Shakespeare dies, and is buried on the 25th.
1623. Shakespeare's widow dies. The first folio is published.


## p. 220 (#244) ############################################

220
Appendix to Chapter VIII
II
:
6
LITERARY
(The order followed is that of The Cambridge Shakespeare. )
The Tempest. Probably subsequent to 1610, certainly acted in May 1613,
but not printed till first folio. References to Somers' shipwreck on the
Bermudas (1609). Plot partly found in Jacob Ayrer's Die schöne Sidea.
(This play is assigned to about 1595. )
The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Early. Story derived from Montemayor's
Diana. Not printed till folio.
The Merry Wives of Windsor. After 1598. Licensed 1601: printed in
part next year. Plot partly suggested by divers tales, Italian and other.
Measure for Measure.