In 1718, Bysshe, in compiling his “Art of Poetry,” which consists of mere extracts, passed by “Spenser and the poets of his age, because their language has become so obsolete that most readers of our age have no ear for them, and thereforeShakespeareis so rarely cited in this collection.”
Rowe silently corrected his unostentatious edition; when fifteen years had elapsed, Tonson called on a greater poet to succeed to the editorial throne. The classical taste of Pope was disturbed and rarely sympathised with “the choice of the subjects, the wrong conduct of the incidents, false thoughts, forced expressions:” in tenderness to Shakespeare these he held to be “not so much defects, but superfœtations,” which are to be ascribed to the times, to interpolation, to the copyists; and contemning “the dull duty” of editorship, he initiated himself into the novel office of expurgator; striking out or inserting at pleasure—not only pruning, but grafting. Schlegel exclaims in agony, that Pope would have given us a mutilated Shakespeare! but Pope, to satisfy us that he was not insensible to the fine passages of Shakespeare, distinguished by inverted commas all those which he approved! So that Pope thus furnished for the first time what have beencalled “TheBeautiesof Shakespeare!” but amid such a disfigured text, thefaultsof Shakespeare must have been too apparent! Pope but partially relished and often ill understood his Shakespeare; yet in the liveliest of prefaces he offers the most vivid delineation of our great bard’sgeneral characteristics. Thegenius of Shakespearewas at once comprehended by his brother poet; butthe texthe was continually tampering with ended in a fatal testimony thatPopehad no congenial taste for the style, the manner, and the whole native drama of England.25Popelaid himself open to the investigating eye ofTheobald.
The attention ofTheobaldhad been drawn to our old plays byThomas Coxeter, an enthusiast of our ancient dramatists. This Coxeter was the original projector of their revival, but having communicated his plan, he witnessed the incompetentDodsleyappropriate this fond hope of his dreamy life, and he has left us his indignant groans.26
After an interval of seven years Theobald gave his edition. His attempts were limited to the emendation ofcorrupt passages and the explanation of obscure ones: the more elevated disquisitions to develope the genius of his author, by principles of criticism applied to his beauties or his defects, he assigned to “a masterly pen.” This at least was not arrogant; the man who is sensible of his own weakness, is safe by not tasking it to the proof. His annotations are amusing from the self-complacency of the writer, who at times seems to have been struck by his own felicitous results; and in truth he was often successful, more than has been honestly avowed by those who have poached on his manor. Theobald exulted over Pope, but he read his triumph in “The Dunciad.”
The Popeians now sunk the sole merit of the laborious sagacity of “the restorer,” as Mr. Pope affectionately called him, to that of “a word-catcher.” But “piddling Theobald,” branded in the forehead by the immortal “Dunciad,” was the first who popularised the neglected writings of Shakespeare.27His editions dispersed thirteen thousand copies, while nearly a third of Pope’s original subscription edition, of seven hundred and fifty copies, were left unvendible.28
It is an evidence of the spread of Shakespeare’s celebrity, that a fashionable circle had formed themselves into a society under the title of “The Shakespeare Club.” Every week they bespoke some favourite play; but, unexpectedly, theacted playsof Shakespeare seemed to lose greatly of their secret magic: this failure was charged upon the unhappy performers, whose skill appeared all unequal to raisethe emotions which the bard had inspired in the closet. Certain it is, that for the full comprehension of the genius of this great poet, we must learn to think, to reflect, to combine, for what has passed is a part of what is going on; and this is a labour more adapted for the repose of the closet than the business of the theatre. Much is written which must remain in the mind, and cannot come within the province of acting. The dramas of Shakespeare, as they have descended to us, modern taste also has always required to be altered and adapted; they are less calculated for performance on the stage than those of almost any other dramatist who has become classical in the theatre. Unquestionably, the great poet had retained much of the barbarism of the old plays which he re-wrote without remodelling; bustle which hurries on our attention without stimulating our feelings; some flagrant indecorums and some absolute nonsense to the taste of “the groundlings of the Globe.” In the reverie of the poet’s pages, the eye glides silently over the offending passages which cannot detain it. It was these prominent defects which provoked so many modern alterations; and no doubt Tate and Cibber, and all that race, exulted like Shadwell, who in his dedication to his alteration ofTimon of Athensexclaims, “I can truly say I have made it into a play.” When Sir James Mackintosh observed, that “Massinger’s taste, as Shakespeare’s genius, is displayed with such prodigal magnificence in theparts, but never employed in the construction of the whole,” he was perhaps not aware of the real cause, which was that of our great poet following the construction of old plays, without altering their ordonnance. It is true also, that the characters of Shakespeare require something of his own genius in their personifiers to sustain the perfect illusion; great actors seem always to have felt the deep emotions they raised; they studied, they meditated, till at length they personified the ideal character they represented. We are told this of Burbage and Betterton, and we know it of Garrick and Mrs. Siddons.
A novel fate was now to befal Shakespeare. Theobald had made his volumes useful for all hands; a man of rank, who had been the Speaker of the House of Commons, set the first example of literary magnificence. SirThomas Hanmerhad cradled his fancy in the idealism of publication;his edition was to be not only “the fairest impression, beautified with the ornaments of sculpture,” but it was not to besoldby booksellers! The Shakespeare of Sir Thomas Hanmer seemed to be a sacred thing, like the shew-bread of ancient Israel, to be touched by no profane hand, nor eaten but by an exclusive class. He made a gratuitous donation of his “sculptured” edition to his Alma Mater, to issue from the university press, at a very moderate subscription price. The embroidered mantle, however, but ill concealed the trifler. Sir Thomas had vigorously attacked the grammatical errors of the poet, which, in fact, was often a violation of the text, for Shakespeare wrote ungrammatically; the other editorial effort was a metrical amusement, gently lopping a redundant, or straightening a limping line; the only harm of his edition was his modesty in adopting all the innovations of his predecessors, for his own were quite innocent. On the whole, Sir Thomas appears to have edited his Shakespeare, wearing all the while his “white kid gloves,” which the Mad Tom Hervey, who ran away with his lady, by information which he ought not to have divulged, assured the world that the baronet always slept in.
Under the veil of giving “dear Mr. Pope’s” edition, which no one craved, the great author of “The Divine Legation” now edited Shakespeare. It must have occurred to the readers of this edition, that hitherto no one had entered into any right conception of a great portion of the poet’s writings. Many passages with which our memory is familiar were wrested into the most whimsical readings; plain matters were for ever obscured by perverse but ingenious interpretations; not only the words, but the thoughts of the author were changed; here a line was to be wholly rejected, and there an interpolation was to clear an imperfect sense; but the most prominent feature of the commentary was that learned fancy which struck out allusions to the most recondite circumstances of learned antiquity.29
In this great commentator on Shakespeare there was always a contest between his learning and his fancy; the one was copious, and the other was exuberant; neithercould yield to the other; and the reader was sure to be led astray by both. His fervid curiosity was absolutely creative; all things crowded to bear on his point; in the precipitancy of his pen, his taste or his judgment was not of that degree which could save him even from inglorious absurdities. But the ingenious follies of his literature were such that they have often been preserved, for the sake of all that learning which it required for their refutation.
When all was over, and the battle was fought and lost, the friends of the great man acknowledged that the editor’s design had never been to explain Shakespeare! and that he was even conscious that he had frequently imputed to the poet meanings which had never entered the mind of the bard! Our critic’s grand object was to display his own learning in these amusements of his leisure. Warburton wrote for Warburton, and not for Shakespeare; and the literary confession almost rivals those of Lauder or Psalmanazar.
There is one more remarkable object in the Shakespeare of Warburton. He not only preserved that strange device of Pope to distinguish the most beautiful passages byinverted commas, but carried on that ridiculous process on his own separate account, by marking his favourites bydouble commas. It is evident that these great editors judged Shakespeare by these fragmentary and unconnected passages, which could not indicate the harmonious and gradual rise of the thoughts, nor the fine transitions of emotions, and less the comprehensive genius of the inventor. They were scattering the living members which must be viewed whole with all their movements, and at last must be sought for by the reader in his own mind. The truest mode of discovering the beauties of an author is first to be conversant with the beautiful, otherwise it is possible that the beauties may escape the readers, even should they be marked by a Pope or a Warburton.
The acknowledged failure of the preceding editions invited to a fresh enterprise, and it was the edition of Johnson, in 1765, which conferred on Shakespeare the stability of a classic, by the vigour and discrimination of his criticism, and the solemnity of his judicial decisions.
When Johnson had issued his proposals twenty years before for an edition of Shakespeare, he pointed to a greatnovelty for the elucidation of the poet. His intuitive sagacity had discerned that a poet so racy and native required a familiarity both with the idiom and the manners of his age. He was sensible that a complete explanation of an author, not systematic and consequential, but desultory and vagrant, abounding in casual allusions and slight hints, is not to be expected from any single scholiast. He enumerates, however, the desiderata for this purpose; among which we find that of reading the books which Shakespeare read, and to compare his works with those of writers who lived at the same time, or immediately preceded, or immediately followed him. This project, happily conceived, inferred comprehensive knowledge in the proposer; but it was only a reverie; a dim Pisgah view which the sagacity of the great critic had taken of that future Canaan, which he himself never entered. With this sort of knowledge, and these forgotten writers, which the future commentators of Shakespeare revelled in, Johnson remained wholly unacquainted.
But what proved more fatal to the editorial ability ofJohnsonthan this imperfect knowledge of the literature and the manners of the age of Shakespeare, was that the commentator rarely sympathised with the poet, for his hard-witted and unpliant faculties, busied with the more palpable forms of human nature, when thrown amid the supernatural and the ideal, seemed suddenly deserted of their powers; the magic knot was tied, which cast our Hercules into helpless impotence; and in the circle of imaginative creation, we discover the baffled sage resisting the spell, by apologising for Shakespeare’s introduction of his mighty preternatural beings! a certain evidence that the critic had never existed for a moment under their influence. “Witches, fairies, and ghosts, would not now be tolerated by an audience;” such was the grave and fallacious assumption of the unimaginative critic, which seems something worse than Voltaire’s raillery; for though that wit ridiculed the ghost in Hamlet, he afterwards had the poetic agility to transfer its solemnity to his own Semiramis,—though, like all rapid inlayers, the appliqué did not fit to his work.30
We may even suspect the degree of our great critic’s susceptibility of the infinitely-varied emotions flowing in the inexhaustible vein of the poet of nature. In those judicial summaries at the close of each drama, his cold approbation, his perplexing balancings, his hazarded doubts, or his positive censures, all alike betray the uncertainty and the difficulties of a critical mind, which misapplied its energies to themes adverse to its habits.
Johnson’s preface to his Shakespeare was long held as a masterpiece; and several splendid passages, after more than half a century, remain to remind us of his nervous intellect. If we now read that preface with a different understanding than that of most of his contemporaries, it is because Johnson himself has revealed his poetical confessions in certain “Lives of the Poets.” We now look on that famed preface much more as a labour of pomp than a labour of love. Far from me be any irreverence to our master-genius of the passed century, whose volumes were read by all readers, and imitated by all writers; my first devotion to literature was caught from his pages; and the fire still burns on that altar. But the literary character ofJohnson, with his enduring works, is no longer a subject of inquiry, but of history; of truths established, and not of opinions which are mutable.
Can we imagine that Johnson himself experienced a degree of conviction, some perplexing consciousness, that his spirit was not endowed with the sensibility of Longinus? A profound thinker, acutely argumentative and analytical, though clothed in the purple of his cumbrous diction, and the cadences of his concatenated periods, when he touched on themes of pure imagination, and passions not merely declamatory, had nothing left to him but the solitary test of his judgment, to decide on what lies out of the scope of daily life. He interpreted the pathetic and the sublime, till they ceased to be either by the forceof his reasoning and the weakness of his conceptions; he cross-examined shadowy fancies, till they vanished under the eye of the judge. He had no wing to ascend into “the heaven of invention.”
InJohnson’s Shakespeare, therefore, we may trace that deficient sympathy which subsequently betrayed itself in his revolting decisions on Collins, on Gray, on Milton, and on others. It was his hard fate to be called on to deliver his solemn decisions on two of our greatest poets; from Spenser he had fortunately escaped, having wholly forgotten the Muse of Mulla, while his piety and his taste had remembered Blackmore, in the collection of English poets. It is curious to detect the mode by which our great critic extricated himself from the difficulties of his judicial function on Shakespeare and on Milton, by his prudential sagacity, and his passive obedience to established authorities. Johnson’s preface to Shakespeare was grafted on Pope’s, as afterwards, when he came to Milton, he followed the track of Addison. But Johnson was too honest to disguise the reality of his own conviction: it was legitimate to adopt theirs, but it was independent to preserve his own; in this dissonance he has left a lesson and a warning for some who are eminent, and who travel in the high-road of criticism.
It is thus that we find in this famous preface to Shakespeare that he is hailed as the poet of nature, and is placed by the side of Homer; and of this Pope had instructed the critic; but in the sudden change the noble qualities of the bard are minutely reversed; the antithesis was too often in the critic’s own taste; and the characteristic excellence ascribed to Shakespeare seems hardly compatible with the number and the grossness of his faults. Every work of note bears the impression of its times; and we learn from the faithful chronicler of Johnson the real occasion which gave rise to this remarkable preface. “A blind and indiscriminate admiration of Shakespeare had exposed the British nation to the ridicule of foreigners; and this preface was considered as a grave, well-considered, and impartial opinion of the judge.” Such was the defence of the logical critic, who so diligently enumerated the defects of his author, that Voltaire, who could never understand the language nor comprehend the genius of Shakespeare, mightsometimes have referred to Johnson to confirm his own depreciating notions.
The extensive plan for the illustration of the poet, imperfectly projected by Johnson, was finally executed through a series of editions, which gave rise to a new class of literary antiquaries.
Shortly after the first edition of Johnson, Dr.Farmerled the way to the disclosure of a new lore in our old books. Farmer had silently pursued an untired chase in this “black” forest, for he had a keengustofor the native venison, and, alluding to his Shakespearian pursuits, exclaimed in the inspiring language of his poet—
Age cannot wither them, nor custom staleTheir infinite variety.
Age cannot wither them, nor custom stale
Their infinite variety.
His vivacity relieved the drowsiness of mere antiquarianism. This novel pursuit once opened, an eager and motley pack was hallooed up, and Shakespeare, like Actæon, was torn to pieces by a whole kennel of his own hounds, as they were typified, with equal humour and severity. But to be severe and never to be just is the penury of the most sordid criticism; and among these
Spirits black, white, and grey,
are some of the most illustrious in English literature.
The original edition of Johnson consisted only of eight volumes; had not the contriving wisdom of the printers impressed the last into twenty and one huge tomes, they might easily have been expanded into forty.
When we survey the massivevariorumedition of Shakespeare, we are struck by the circumstance that nothing similar has happened to any other national author. It was not to be expected that, after the invention of the art of printing, an author could arise, whose works should be disfigured by treacherous transcribers, corrupted by interpolations, and still more by a race of men whose art was unknown to the ancients, subjecting his text to the mercy of contending commentators and conjectural critics. But a singular combination of untoward circumstances attached to this poet and his works, produced this remarkable result. The scholiasts among the ancient classics had rejoiced in some rare emendation of the text, or the rhetoricalcommentator had flourished in the luxuriance of the latent beauties of some favourite author. But a far wider and deeper source of inquiry was now to be attempted, historical or explanatory—comments to clear up obscure allusions; to indicate unknown prototypes; to trace the vicissitudes of words as well as things; to picture forth the customs and the manners which had faded into desuetude; and to re-open for us the records of our social and domestic life, thus at once to throw us back into that age, and to familiarize us with that language, of Shakespeare which had vanished. Shakespeare, it may be said, suddenly became the favourite object of literary inquiry. Every literary man in the nation conned over and illumined “the infinite variety” of the bard. And assuredly they enriched our vernacular literature with a collection of historical, philological, and miscellaneous information, unparalleled among any other literary people. In 1785,Isaac Reed, in one of his prefaces, informs us, that “the works of Shakespeare, during the last twenty years, have been the object of public attention.”
All this novel knowledge was, however, not purchased at a slight cost. It was not only to be snatched up by accidental discovery, but it was more severely tasked by what Steevens called “a course of black-letter!”—dusty volumes, and fugitive tracts, and the wide range of antiquarian research. The sources whence they drew their waters were muddy; andSteevens, who affected more gaiety in his chains than his brothers in the Shakespearian galley, with bitter derision reproached his great coadjutorMalone, whom he looked on with the evil eye of rivalry for drawing his knowledge from “books too mean to be formally quoted.”
The commentators have encumbered the poet, who often has been but a secondary object of their lucubrations, for they not only write notes on Shakespeare, but notes, and bitter ones too, on one another. This commentary has been turned into a gymnasium for the public sports of friendly and of unfriendly wrestlers; where some have been so earnest, that it is evident that, in measuring a cast, they congratulated themselves in the language of Orlando, “If ever he goes alone again, I’ll never wrestle for prize more.”
Thomas Wartononce covered with his shield some of the minor brotherhood: “If Shakespeare is worth reading, he is worth explaining; and the researches used for so valuable and elegant a purpose merit the thanks of genius and candour, not the satire of prejudice and ignorance.” But this serves not as an apology for abusing the privilege of a commentator; elucidating the poet into obscurity by information equally contradictory and curious; racking us by fantastic readings which no one imagined before or since; and laying us open to the mercy of some who never ventured to sharpen their pens but on our irresistible Shakespeare. What has been the result of the petty conflicts between the arch maliciousness of Steevens and the fervent plodding of Malone, which raised up two parties among the Shakespearian commentators, till they became so personal, that a Steevenite and a Malonist looked on each other suspiciously, and sometimes would drop the ordinary civilities of life? At length, strange to tell, after Steevens had laboured with zeal equal to the whole confraternity, it became a question with him, In what manner the poetCOULDbe read? Are we to con over each note appended to each word or passage?—but this would be perpetually to turn aside the flow of our imagination; or are we to read a large portion of the text uninterruptedly, and then return to the notes?—but this would be breaking the unity of the poet into fragments; or, for a final decision, and the avowal must have mortified the ingenuous illustrator, according to a third class of readers, were these illustrations to be altogether rejected? must the poet or the commentator be at continual variance? or shall we endure to see “Alcides beaten by his page?”
Might I be allowed to offer an award on a matter so involved and delicate as this union between the genius of Shakespeare and the genius of his commentators, I would concede the divorce, from the incompatibility of temper between the parties; but I would insist on a separate maintenance, to preserve the great respectability attached to the party most complained of. The true reader of Shakespeare may then accommodate himself with two editions; the one for his hand, having nothing but what the poet has written; the other for the shelf, having allthe commentators have conjectured, confuted, and confounded.31
The celebrity of Shakespeare is no longer hounded by his nationality. Even France responds, though the voice of Parisian critics is muffled, confused, and ambiguous; they have not yet solved the great problem, why Shakespeare is an omnipotent dramatist.32The school of Corneille and Racine are perplexed, like Quin, who could not be brought to acknowledge the creative acting of Garrick, observing that, “If that young man were right, all which they had hitherto done was wrong.”
Voltaire, in early life, to compose theHenriade, to escape from the Bastile, or to conceal his espionage—for he appears to have been a secretemployéof the French ministry—resided a considerable time in England. Heacquired an unusual knowledge of our language, and published an essay on the epic poets in English.33He discovered a new world among our writers, and was the first who introduced the Literature of England into France. Voltaire expounded to his nation the philosophy of Newton; but unhappily he criticized and translated Shakespeare, whose idiomatic phrases and metaphorical style did not admit of the demonstrations of the Newtonian system. To the author of theHenriade, who had ever before his eyes the two great masters whom he was one day to rival, the anti-classical and “Gothic” genius of a poet of the Elizabethan period, scorning the unities, following events without the contrivance of an intrigue artfully developed, mingling farce with tragedy, buffoons with monarchs, and preternatural beings stalking amid the palpable realities of life—such irregular dramas seemed to the Aristotelian but “des farces monstrueuses,” as we see they appeared to Rymer and Shaftesbury; but Voltaire was too sagacious to be wholly insensible that “these monstrous farces, which they call tragedies, had scenes grand and terrific.” Voltaire, then meditating on his future dramas, in passing over the surface of the soil, discovered that a mine lay beneath—
Some oreAmong a mineral of metals base,
Some ore
Among a mineral of metals base,
and the embedded treasure was worked with more diligence than with gratitude to the owner. If Voltaire ridiculed what he had found, it was partly with the desire of its concealment, but not wholly; for it was impossiblefor any foreigner to interpret sweet words, and idiomatic phrases, not to be found in dictionaries; or to make way through the bewilderment of the perpetual metaphorical diction of the daring fancy of the great poet; but the deformities of the bard would be too intelligible; all those parts which Pope would have struck out as “superfœtations.” A bald version, or a malicious turn, would amuse the world by those amazing absurdities, which the wit, too famous for his ridicule, rejoiced to commit, and Europe yet knew nothing of Shakespeare, and lay under the sway of this autocrat of Literature.34
Mrs.Montaguewas the Minerva, for so she was complimented on this occasion, whose celestial spear was to transfix the audacious Gaul. Her “Essay on the Writingsand Genius of Shakespeare, compared with the Greek and French dramatic poets,” served for a popular answer to Voltaire. This accomplished lady, who had raised a literary coterie about her, which attracted such fashionable notice that its title has survived its institution, found in “the Blue-stocking Club” choral hymns and clouds of incense gathering about the altar in Portman Square! The volume is deemed “a wonderful performance,” by those echoes of contemporary prepossessions, the compilers of dictionary-biography; even the poet Cowper placed Mrs. Montague “at the head of all that is called learned.”
This lady’s knowledge of the English drama, and the genius of our ancient Literature, is as vague and indistinct as that of the Greek tragedians, to whom she frequently refers, without, we are told, any intimacy with the originals. She discovers many bombast speeches even inMacbeth, but she triumphantly exclaims, “Shakespeare redeems the nonsense, the indecorum, the irregularities of his plays;” irregularities which seem to her incomprehensible. Her criticisms are the random reflections of her feelings; but trusting to our feelings alone, unaccompanied by that knowledge on which they should be based, is confiding in a capricious, and often an erring dictator, governed by our own humours, or by fashionable tastes.
Thus have we viewed our bard through distinct eras, from the time in which he was not yet pre-eminently distinguished among his numerous peers; the Shakespeare of his own day could not be the Shakespeare of posterity; his rivals could only view that genius in its progress, and though there was not one who was a Shakespeare, yet, in that bursting competition of genius, there were many who were themselves Shakspearian. In a succeeding era, novel and unnational tastes prevailed; to the Drydenists who, dismissing the language of nature, substituted a false nature in their exaggerated passion, Shakespeare might have said of himself—
I dare do all that may become a man,Who dares do more is none;—
I dare do all that may become a man,
Who dares do more is none;—
and when tried by the conventional code of criticism, andcondemned; the poet of creation, might have exclaimed to Rymer and to Shaftesbury—
The poet’s eye,Bodying forth the forms ofTHINGS UNKNOWN,gives to airy nothingA local habitation and a name.
The poet’s eye,
Bodying forth the forms ofTHINGS UNKNOWN,
gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Emerging into light through his modern editors, the volume in the hands of all men; the English public, with whom the classical model was held as nothing, received him as their national bard; for every one read in “the chance” that could only “hit suddenly,” as Butler has described the genius of Shakespeare, revelations about himself. It seemed as if the poet had served in all professions, taking every colour of public and domestic life. Lawyers have detected their law-cunning in the legal contrivances of the poet; physicians have commented on the madness of Lear, and the mystery of Hamlet; statesmen have meditated on profound speculations in civil polity; the merchant and the mechanic, the soldier and the maiden—all, from the crowned head to the sailor-boy, found that in the cursory pages of the great dramatist, he had disclosed to all the tribes of mankind the secrets of their condition. The plenitude and the pliancy of the Shakespearian mind may be manifested by a trivial circumstance. We are a people of pamphleteers; a free country has a free communication; and many, for interest or vainglory, rush to catch the public ear. To point out the drift of their effusions, and aid a dubious title by an unquestioned authority, the greater number of these incessant fugitives, coming in all shapes, will be usually found to have recourse for this apposite thought, and crowning motto, to the prodigal pages of Shakespeare, who, thus pressed into their service, has often made the drift of the pamphleteer intelligible, vainly sought in his confused pamphlet.
When the strange condition of his works made the poet the noble prey of a brood of commentators, antiquarian and philological, from that generation he derived nothing of that abstract greatness with which we are now accustomed to contemplate a genius which seems universal. It was not by new readings, contested restorations, conjectural emendations, and notes explanatory of customsand phrases, however useful, that we could penetrate into the depths of a genius profound as nature herself, and it was only when philosophical critics tested this genius by their own principles, that the singularity was discovered to Europe.
Hitherto the critical art had been verbal, or didactic, or dogmatic; but when the mind engaged itself in watching its own operations, by analysis and combination, and when the laws of its constitution formed a science, educing principles, and exploring the sources of our emotions, all arbitrary conventions were only rated at their worth, while the final appeal was made to our own experience: these nobler critics founded the demonstrations of their metaphysical reasonings on our consciousness. This novel philosophy was more surely and more deeply laid in the nature of man, and whatever concerns man, than the arbitrary code of the Stagyrite, who had founded many of his laws on what had only been customs. We were passing from the history of the human understanding to the history of the imagination; and the whole beautiful process of the intellectual faculties was a new revelation. Theories of taste and systems of philosophy multiplied our sympathies, and amplified our associations; the intellectual powers had their history, and the passions were laid bare in their eloquent anatomy. But in these severe investigations, this new school had to seek for illustrations and for examples which might familiarize their abstract principles; and these philosophical critics appealed to nature, and drew them from her poetic interpreter.
It was the philosophical critics who, by trying Shakespeare by these highest tests, fixed him on his solitary eminence. From Lord Kaimes, through a brilliant succession of many a Longinus, the public has been instructed. The strokes of nature and the bursts of passion, the exuberance of his humour and the pathos of his higher mood, untutored minds had felt more or less, and Shakespeare was lauded for what they considered to be his “natural parts;” and it was parts only on which they could decide, for the true magnitude they could not yet comprehend. The loneliness of his genius, in its profundity or its elevation, and the delicacy of its delineations, the mighty space his universal faculty extends before us,these they could never reach! The phenomenon had not been explained—the instruments had not yet been invented which could fathom its depths, or take the admeasurement at the meridian.
But if philosophical criticism has been so far favourable to develope the truth of nature in the great poet, it is not a consequence that Shakespeare himself produced his poetry on those revolving systems of metaphysics by which some late æsthetic and rhetorical German critics have somewhat offuscated the solitary luminary. They have developed such a system of intricate thinking in the genius of the poet, such a refined connexion between his conceptions and the execution of his dramatic personages—they have so grafted their own imagination upon his, that at times it becomes doubtful whether we are influenced by the imagination of the critic, or that of the poet. In this seraphic mode of criticism, the poem becomes mythic, and the poet a myth; in the power of abstraction, these critics have passed beyond the regions of humanity. We soar with them into the immensity of space, and we tremble as if we stood alone in the universe; we have lost sight of nature, as we seem to have passed her human boundaries. The ancient divinity of poetry itself, even Homer, is absorbed in the Shakespearian myth; for Shakespeare, to snatch a feather from the fiery wing of Coleridge, is “the Spinosistic deity, an omnipresent creativeness.”
Thou whose rapt spirit beheld the vision of human existence, “the wheel in the middle of the wheel, and the spirit of the living creature within,” and wrotest thy inspirations, how shall we describe thy faculty? To paint lightning, and to give it no motion, is the doom of the baffled artist. Something, however, we may conceive of the Shakespearian faculty when we say that it consisted in a facility of feeling, an aptitude in following those trains of thought which constitute that undeviating propriety, in the consonance of the character with its action, and the passion with its language. Whether the poet followed the romancer or the chronicler in his conception of a dramatic character, he at the first step struck into that undeviating track of our humanity amid the accidents of its position. The progress of each dramaticpersonage was therefore a unity of diction and character, of sentiment and action; all was direct, for there was no effort where all was impulse; and the dramatic genius of Shakespeare, as if wholly unstudied, seems to have formed the habit of his intellectual character. Was this unerring Shakespearian faculty an intuitive evidence, like certain axioms; or may we venture to fancy that our poet, as it were, had discovered the very mathematics of metaphysics?
Besides this facility of feeling appropriating to itself the whole sphere of human existence, there is another characteristic of our national bard. He struck out a diction which I conceive will be found in no other poet. What is usually termed diction would, applied to Shakespeare, be more definite, and its quality more happily explained, if we call itexpression, and observed in what magic the Shakespearian expression lies. This diction has been subject to the censure of obscurity. Modern critics have ascribed the invention of our dramatic blank verse to Shakespeare; but Shakespeare was no inventor in the usual acceptation of the term, and assuredly was not of unrhymed metre: what, indeed, are imperfectly or rarely found among his tuneful predecessors and contemporaries, are the sweetness of his versification, combined with ceaseless imagery; we view the image through the transparency of the thought never disturbing it; it is neither a formal simile nor an expanded metaphor—it is a single expression, a sensible image combined with an emotion.
1Posterity is even in some danger of losing the real name of our great dramatic poet. In the days of Shakespeare, and long after, proper names were written down as the ear caught the sound, or they were capriciously varied by the owner. It is not therefore strange that we have instances of eminent persons writing the names of intimate friends and of public characters in a manner not always to be recognised. Of this we are now furnished with the most abundant evidence, which was not sufficiently adverted to in the early times of our commentators.The autographs we possess of our national bard are unquestionably writtenShakspere, according to the pronunciation of his native town; there the name was variously written,—even in the same public document,—but always regulated by the dialectical orthoepy. The marriage license of the poet, recovered in the “Gentleman’s Magazine” for September, 1836, offers a striking evidence of the viciousness of the pronunciation and the utter carelessness with which names were written, for there we find itShagspere.That the poet himself considered that the genuine name wasShakespeare, accordant with his own (a spear, the point upward), seems certain, notwithstanding his compliance with the custom of his country; for his “Rape of Lucrece,” printed by himself in 1594, in the first edition bears the name ofWilliam Shakespeare, as also does the “Venus and Adonis,” that first heir of his invention; these first editions of his juvenile poems were doubtlessly anxiously scrutinised by the youthful bard. In the literary metropolis the name was so pronounced. Bancroft has this allusion in his Epigrams—“To Shakespeare:”—“Thou hast so used thy pen, or shook thy speare,That poets startle.”The well-known allusion of Robert Greene, to a shake-scene, confirms the pronunciation. I now supply one more evidence—that of Thomas Heywood, the intimate of Shakespeare and his brother dramatists; he, like some others, has printed the name with a hyphen, which I transcribe from the volume open before me,—“Mellifluous Shake-speare,”Hierarchie of Angels, 206.The question resolves itself into this—Is the name of our great bard to descend to posterity with the barbaric curt shock ofShakspere, the twang of a provincial corruption; or, following the writers of the Elizabethan age, shall we maintain the restoration of the euphony and the truth of the name ofShakespeare?2Mr. J. Payne Collier, in his “New Facts regarding the Life of Shakespeare.”3Roscius Anglicanus.—They were Richard Burbage and John Lowin.4Greene was then lying on his last pallet of rhyme and misery, dictating this sad legacy of “a groat’s worth of wit bought with a million of repentance.”5Bombastis not here used in the present application of the term, in a depreciating sense, but is a simile derived from the cotton used in stuffing out or quilting the fashionable dresses.6Collier’s “New Facts,” 13. Dyce’s edition of “Greene’s Dramatic Works.”7Heywood’s “Apology for Actors.”—The Epistle to his bookseller at the end.8In the comedy ofEastward Ho!the joint production of Jonson, Marlowe, and Chapman,—Shakespeare is ridiculed, particularly the madness of Hamlet and Ophelia.9Robert Chester, a fantastical versifier, whose volume is priced in the “Bib. Anglo-Poetica” at 50l., but this price was too moderate; for, at the sale of Sir M. Sykes, some ingenious lover of absurd poetry willingly gave 61l.19s.I have not yet seen this extraordinary production, and derive my knowledge only from a specimen in the catalogue.10In 1612 or 13.11Most of our old plays come before us in a corrupt and mangled state. They were often imperfectly caught by the scribe, or otherwise surreptitiously obtained; hurried through the press from some illegible manuscript by a careless printer, who would throw three distinct speeches into the mouth of one character, transpose the names of the dramatis personæ, and omit the change of scene; while others again with indiscriminate fidelity, from a stolen transcript of the prompter’s book, preserved his private memorandums and directions in the stage-copy. Even in the first folio of Shakespeare, so absent from their work were the player-editors, that “tables and chairs” are introduced to direct the property-man, or the scene-shifters, to be in readiness. Verse is printed as prose, to save the expenditure of those small blank spaces which divide those two regions of genius. The dramatists themselves, who probably conceived that they had consigned all their property in their vended plays, never read their own proof-sheets. The reader may form a clear conception of the injuries inflicted on these writers by the existing presentation copy of Massinger’s “Duke of Milan,” in which may be seen how the poet, after its publication, indignantly corrected the multiplied and the strange errata. The printer gave this text—“Observe and honour her as if theSEALOf woman’s goodness only dwelt in hers.”The poet corrected this to “theSoul.” The sagacity of an English Bentley could hardly have conjectured the happy emendation; only the poet himself could have supplied it.Again the printer’s text runs—“From any lip whoseHonourwrit not Lord.”The poet corrected this also to “whoseOwner.”These errors of the press are far more important to the readers of Shakespeare than many suspect. “Who knows,” exclaimed the acute Gifford, “whether much of the ingenious toil to explain nonsense in the variorum edition of Shakespeare is not absolutely wasted upon mereerrors of the press?” Not long after this was said, an actual experiment of the kind was made by a skilful printer. This person, during the leisure of eleven years of a French captivity, had found his most constant companion in a Shakespeare.* By his own experience of the blunders and the mischances of the typographer, to which we may add also a little sagacity, he recovered some of the lost text. His new readings were accompanied by an explanation of those mechanical accidents which had caused these particular errata. The practical printer mortified the haughty commentator by several felicitous and obvious emendations. The grave brotherhood of black-letter looked askance on such humble ingenuity, and turned against the simple printer. Unluckily forZachary Jackson, he had the temerity, in the flush of success, of abandoning his type-work to err in “the dalliance of fancy” into an ambitious Commentary of “seven hundred passages,” when seventy had exceeded his fair claim. The commentating printer therefore met with the fate of the immortalised cobbler who ventured to criticise beyond the right measure of his last.* So numerous were the English prisoners in France during the persecuting war of Napoleon, and so general was the demand for a Shakespeare, that more than one edition, I think, was printed by the French booksellers, which I have seen on their literary stalls.12Collier’s “Poetical Decameron,” i. 52.SteevensthoughtThe Yorkshire Tragedyto be Shakespearian; and the Rev.Alexander Dyce, struck by the Shakespearian soliloquy of the wife, decides that “it contains passages worthy of his pen.”—Dyce’s Mem. of Shakespeare, xxxi.13That Shakespeare was the favourite poet of Charles the First is confirmed to the eyes of posterity; for on the copy the king used, he has written his own name, and left other traces of his pen; the volume now bears also the autograph of George the Third. It is preserved, it is hoped, in the library of the sovereigns of England.14Milton, however, has been misinterpreted by some modern critics; when, on this occasion, having quoted that passage inRichard the Thirdwhich displays his hypocrisy, Milton adds—“Other stuff of this sortmay be read throughout the whole tragedy, wherein the poet used not much license in departing from the truth of history.” Pye, in his “Commentary on the Poetic of Aristotle,” is indignant at the language of Milton. He takes the term “stuff” in its modern depreciating sense; but it had no such meaning with Milton, it merely signifiedmatter. Pye exclaims—“Could Milton have imagined thatthe stuffof Mr. William Shakespeare would be preferred to ‘Comus’ and the ‘Samson Agonistes?’”—212.15I derive my knowledge from the “Roscius Anglicanus” ofDownes, the prompter; it is a meagre chronicle, and the scribe is illiterate; but the edition byF. Waldron, 1784, is an addition to our literary history. Though chiefly dramatic, it abounds with some curious secret history. Waldron, himself an humble actor, was, however, a sagacious literary antiquary; but his modesty and failure of encouragement impeded his proposed labours. Gifford found him intelligent when that critic was busied on Jonson; and I possess an evidence of his acute emendations.By this chronicle of our drama, it appears that in a list of fifteen stock plays there are seven of Beaumont and Fletcher, three of Jonson, and three of Shakespeare. In another list of twenty-one plays there arefiveof Jonson, and butoneof Shakespeare and thatTitus Andronicus.16Butler’s “Genuine Remains,” ii. 494.17Rollo, King and no King, andThe Maid’s Tragedy.18We may listen to Pope:—S. “Rymer is a learned and strict critic!”—P. “Ay, that’s exactly his character. He is generally right, though rather too severe in his opinion of the particular plays he speaks of; and is, on the whole, one of the best critics we ever had.”—Spence’s “Anecdotes,” 172.19“Edinburgh Review,” Sept. 1831.20The fate of Rymer’s Tragedy has been illustrated by the inimitable humour of Addison in No. 592 of “The Spectator.” Describing different theatrical properties, he says—“They are provided with above a dozen showers of snow, which, as I am informed, are the plays of many unsuccessful poets artificially cut and shredded for that use. Mr. Rymer’sEdgaris to fall in snow at the next acting ofKing Lear, in order to heighten, or rather to alleviate, the distress of that unfortunate prince, and to serve by way of decoration to a piece which that great critic has written against.”21On the play-bills of that day I find the modern dramas ofCato,The Conscious Lovers, and Cibber’s and Farquhar’s plays are simply announced, while the elder dramatists have accompanying epithets, which show the degree of their celebrity according, at least, to the director of the bills; and perhaps indicate the necessity he was under to remind the public, who were not familiar with the titles of these old plays. Thus appear “The Silent Woman, a Comedy by thefamousBen Jonson;” “Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, written by theimmortalShakespeare;” “The Soldier’s Fortune, written by the lateingeniousMr. Otway.” Though Shakespeare bears away the prize among these epithetical allotments, I suspect that hisimmortality—here positively assigned to him—was owing to the honour of the recent edition by Rowe.In 1741 the theatre seems to have recommended the dramas of Shakespeare for the variety of theirhistorical subjects. On one of these billsRichard the Thirdis described as “containing the distresses of King Henry the Sixth; the murder of young King Edward the Fifth and his brother in the Tower; the landing of the Earl of Richmond, and the death of King Richard in the memorable battle of Bosworth, being the last that was fought between the Houses of York and Lancaster; with many other true historical passages.”22“Tatler”—42.23“Spectator”—39, 285.24V. iv. 186.25Pope said that “it was mighty simple in Rowe to write a play now, professedly in Shakespeare’s style, that is, the style of a bad age!” He relished as little Milton’s “high style,” as he called it. “The high style would not have been borne even in Milton, had not his subject turned so much on such strange out-of-the-world things as it does.” Lord Shaftesbury would furnish a code of criticism in the days of Pope, when the “Gothic model” was proscribed by such high authorities. But Pope expressed unqualified approbation for the stately but classical “Ferrex and Porrex,” and occasioned Spence to reprint it;—a tragedy in the unimpassioned style and short breathings of the asthmatic Seneca.26Coxeter, after a search of thirty years, faithfully collating the best of our old plays, tells us he happened to communicate his scheme to one who now invades it; but for what mistakes and confusion may be expected from the medley now advertising in ten volumes, he appeals to the “Gorboduc” which Spence had published by the desire of Pope; both these wits, and the future editor of “Old Plays,” Dodsley, had used the spurious edition! Coxeter’s judgment was prophetic in the present instance. “Dodsley’s Collection” turned out to be a chance “medley;” unskilled in the language and the literature and the choice of his dramatists, he, as he tells us, “by the assistance of a little common sense set a great number of these passages right;” that is, the dramatist of the dull “Cleone” brought down the ancient genius to his own, and, if he became intelligible, at least he was spurious. If, after all, some parts were left unintelligible, the reader must consider how many such remain in Shakespeare.27A third edition lies before me, 1757. The preface of the first edition of 1733 was much curtailed in the second of 1740, as well as the notes—particularly those which Theobald describes as “rather verbose and declamatory, and so notes merely of ostentation.” The candour is admirable. The third edition seems a mere reprint of the second. The first edition is also curious for its plates preserving thecostumeor dress of the characters at the time.28This was one of those literary secrets which are only divulged on that final day of judgment which happens to authors when, on the decease of their publishers, those literary cemeteries, their warerooms, open for the sale of what are called “their effects;” but which, in this instance of literary property, may be deemed “the ineffectual effects.” At the sale of “the effects” of Tonson, the great bibliopolist, in 1767, one hundred and forty copies of Pope’s “Shakespeare,” in six volumes quarto, for which the original subscribers paid six guineas, were disposed of at sixteen shillings only per set.—“Gent. Mag.,” lvii. 76.29See “Quarrels of Authors.”30Laharpe, in a paroxysm of criticism, had both to defend and to censure his great master, Voltaire, on the subject of the Marvellous in Tragedy; and, strange to observe, in the coldness of the Aristotelian-Gallic Poetic, our “monster-poet” carries away the palm. The critic acknowledges that, though he is loath to compare “Semiramis” to that “monster of a tragedy”—“Hamlet,” the Ghost there acts as a ghost should do, showing himself but to one person, and revealing a secret unknown to all but himself; while the Ghost of Ninus appears in a full assembly, only to tell the hero to listen to somebody else who knows the secret as well as the Ghost.—“Cours de Littérature.”31Much, if not all, that is valuable in this great body of varied information, has been alphabetically arranged in “A Glossary, or Collection of Words, Phrases, Names, and Allusions to Customs, Proverbs, &c., which have required illustration in theworks of English Authors, particularlyShakespeare and his Contemporaries,” by Archdeacon Nares, 4to, 1822: a compilation as amusing as it is useful, and which I suspect has not been justly appreciated. It is a substitute for all these commentators; and with this volume, at an easy rate, we are made free of the whole Shakespearian corporation.32MonsieurVillemain, who possesses a perfect knowledge of our English writers on historical subjects, and many years since composed a life of Cromwell, has drawn up an elaborate article onShakespearein the “Biographie Universelle.” The perplexities of his taste, and the contradictory results of his critical decisions, are amusing; but it must have been a serious labour for a person of his strict candour. Our critic remains astonished at Johnson’s preference of Shakespeare’s comic to his tragic genius, which never can be, he adds, the opinion of foreigners. Monsieur Villemain is perfectly right; for no foreigner can comprehend the humour, not always delicate but strong, which often depends on the phrase, as well as on the character; but he errs when he can only discover in the comedy of Shakespeare merely a drama of intrigue, and not a picture of manners. Our critic has formed no conception of the poet’s ideal standard and universal nature; insomuch that to this day we continue to apply among ourselves those exquisite personal strokes of the comic characters of Shakespeare. Our critic, who cannot perceive that which perhaps only a native can really taste, is indignant at the enthusiastic critic who has decided thatMolièreonly gave “a prosaic copy of human nature, and is merely a faithful or a servile imitator.” I suppose this critic is Schlegel, a prejudiced critic on system. I beg leave to add, that it is not necessary to decry the French Shakespeare to elevate our own. Molière is as truly an original genius as any dramatist of any age.33This rare tract, which I once read in a private library which had been collected in the days of Pope, was apparently Voltaire’s entire composition; for the Gallicisms bear the impression of a foreigner’s pen, and of one determined to prove the authenticity of its source. “Voltaire, like the French in general,” said Dr. Young, “showed the greatest complaisance outwardly, and had the greatest contempt for us inwardly.” He consulted Dr. Young about his Essay in English, and begged him to correct any gross faults. The doctor set himself very honestly to work, marked the passages most liable to censure, and when he went to explain himself about them, Voltaire could not avoid bursting out and laughing in his face!—Spence.Had Voltaire accepted the doctor’s verbal corrections, or the opinions suggested by him, something else than the “laughing in the face” had been recollected.34Two specimens of the criticism of Voltaire may explain his involuntary and his voluntary blunders:—InHamlet, when one sentinel inquires of the other—“Have you had quiet guard?” he is answered—“Not a mouse stirring!” which Voltaire translates literally—“Pas un souris qui trotte!” How different is the same circumstance described by Racine—“Tout dort, et l’armée, et le vents, et Neptune!” A verse Kaimes had condemned as mere bombast! To every people who had not associated with the general night-stillness of a castle the movement of a mouse, this description would appear ludicrously puerile; while, with us, the familiar idiom is most happily appropriate to the speaker; but this natural language no foreigner can acquire by study or reflection; we imbibe our idioms as we did the milk of the nurse’s breast.InJulius Cæsar, when Voltaire translates Cæsar’s reply to Metellus, who would fall at his feet to supplicate for the repeal of his brother’s banishment, the Cæesar of Shakespeare uses metaphorical expressions. He would not yield to“That which melteth fools; I mean sweet words,Low-crooked curt’sies, and basespaniel-fawning.If thou dost bend, and pray, and fawn for him,I’d spurn thee like a cur out of my way.”This natural style was doubtless “trop familier” for the polished Frenchman, and his version is malicious, and he delights to detail every motion of a spaniel, even to the licking of the feet of his master!—“Les airs d’un chien couchantpeuvent toucher un sot;Flatte, prie à genoux, etlèche-moi les pieds—Va, je terosseraicomme un chien.”Rossercan only be translated by so mean a phrase as “a sound beating;” while to spurn is no ignoble action, and is used rather in a poetical than familiar style.
1Posterity is even in some danger of losing the real name of our great dramatic poet. In the days of Shakespeare, and long after, proper names were written down as the ear caught the sound, or they were capriciously varied by the owner. It is not therefore strange that we have instances of eminent persons writing the names of intimate friends and of public characters in a manner not always to be recognised. Of this we are now furnished with the most abundant evidence, which was not sufficiently adverted to in the early times of our commentators.
The autographs we possess of our national bard are unquestionably writtenShakspere, according to the pronunciation of his native town; there the name was variously written,—even in the same public document,—but always regulated by the dialectical orthoepy. The marriage license of the poet, recovered in the “Gentleman’s Magazine” for September, 1836, offers a striking evidence of the viciousness of the pronunciation and the utter carelessness with which names were written, for there we find itShagspere.
That the poet himself considered that the genuine name wasShakespeare, accordant with his own (a spear, the point upward), seems certain, notwithstanding his compliance with the custom of his country; for his “Rape of Lucrece,” printed by himself in 1594, in the first edition bears the name ofWilliam Shakespeare, as also does the “Venus and Adonis,” that first heir of his invention; these first editions of his juvenile poems were doubtlessly anxiously scrutinised by the youthful bard. In the literary metropolis the name was so pronounced. Bancroft has this allusion in his Epigrams—“To Shakespeare:”—
“Thou hast so used thy pen, or shook thy speare,That poets startle.”
“Thou hast so used thy pen, or shook thy speare,
That poets startle.”
The well-known allusion of Robert Greene, to a shake-scene, confirms the pronunciation. I now supply one more evidence—that of Thomas Heywood, the intimate of Shakespeare and his brother dramatists; he, like some others, has printed the name with a hyphen, which I transcribe from the volume open before me,—
“Mellifluous Shake-speare,”Hierarchie of Angels, 206.
“Mellifluous Shake-speare,”
Hierarchie of Angels, 206.
The question resolves itself into this—Is the name of our great bard to descend to posterity with the barbaric curt shock ofShakspere, the twang of a provincial corruption; or, following the writers of the Elizabethan age, shall we maintain the restoration of the euphony and the truth of the name ofShakespeare?
2Mr. J. Payne Collier, in his “New Facts regarding the Life of Shakespeare.”
3Roscius Anglicanus.—They were Richard Burbage and John Lowin.
4Greene was then lying on his last pallet of rhyme and misery, dictating this sad legacy of “a groat’s worth of wit bought with a million of repentance.”
5Bombastis not here used in the present application of the term, in a depreciating sense, but is a simile derived from the cotton used in stuffing out or quilting the fashionable dresses.
6Collier’s “New Facts,” 13. Dyce’s edition of “Greene’s Dramatic Works.”
7Heywood’s “Apology for Actors.”—The Epistle to his bookseller at the end.
8In the comedy ofEastward Ho!the joint production of Jonson, Marlowe, and Chapman,—Shakespeare is ridiculed, particularly the madness of Hamlet and Ophelia.
9Robert Chester, a fantastical versifier, whose volume is priced in the “Bib. Anglo-Poetica” at 50l., but this price was too moderate; for, at the sale of Sir M. Sykes, some ingenious lover of absurd poetry willingly gave 61l.19s.I have not yet seen this extraordinary production, and derive my knowledge only from a specimen in the catalogue.
10In 1612 or 13.
11Most of our old plays come before us in a corrupt and mangled state. They were often imperfectly caught by the scribe, or otherwise surreptitiously obtained; hurried through the press from some illegible manuscript by a careless printer, who would throw three distinct speeches into the mouth of one character, transpose the names of the dramatis personæ, and omit the change of scene; while others again with indiscriminate fidelity, from a stolen transcript of the prompter’s book, preserved his private memorandums and directions in the stage-copy. Even in the first folio of Shakespeare, so absent from their work were the player-editors, that “tables and chairs” are introduced to direct the property-man, or the scene-shifters, to be in readiness. Verse is printed as prose, to save the expenditure of those small blank spaces which divide those two regions of genius. The dramatists themselves, who probably conceived that they had consigned all their property in their vended plays, never read their own proof-sheets. The reader may form a clear conception of the injuries inflicted on these writers by the existing presentation copy of Massinger’s “Duke of Milan,” in which may be seen how the poet, after its publication, indignantly corrected the multiplied and the strange errata. The printer gave this text—
“Observe and honour her as if theSEALOf woman’s goodness only dwelt in hers.”
“Observe and honour her as if theSEAL
Of woman’s goodness only dwelt in hers.”
The poet corrected this to “theSoul.” The sagacity of an English Bentley could hardly have conjectured the happy emendation; only the poet himself could have supplied it.
Again the printer’s text runs—
“From any lip whoseHonourwrit not Lord.”
The poet corrected this also to “whoseOwner.”
These errors of the press are far more important to the readers of Shakespeare than many suspect. “Who knows,” exclaimed the acute Gifford, “whether much of the ingenious toil to explain nonsense in the variorum edition of Shakespeare is not absolutely wasted upon mereerrors of the press?” Not long after this was said, an actual experiment of the kind was made by a skilful printer. This person, during the leisure of eleven years of a French captivity, had found his most constant companion in a Shakespeare.* By his own experience of the blunders and the mischances of the typographer, to which we may add also a little sagacity, he recovered some of the lost text. His new readings were accompanied by an explanation of those mechanical accidents which had caused these particular errata. The practical printer mortified the haughty commentator by several felicitous and obvious emendations. The grave brotherhood of black-letter looked askance on such humble ingenuity, and turned against the simple printer. Unluckily forZachary Jackson, he had the temerity, in the flush of success, of abandoning his type-work to err in “the dalliance of fancy” into an ambitious Commentary of “seven hundred passages,” when seventy had exceeded his fair claim. The commentating printer therefore met with the fate of the immortalised cobbler who ventured to criticise beyond the right measure of his last.
* So numerous were the English prisoners in France during the persecuting war of Napoleon, and so general was the demand for a Shakespeare, that more than one edition, I think, was printed by the French booksellers, which I have seen on their literary stalls.
12Collier’s “Poetical Decameron,” i. 52.SteevensthoughtThe Yorkshire Tragedyto be Shakespearian; and the Rev.Alexander Dyce, struck by the Shakespearian soliloquy of the wife, decides that “it contains passages worthy of his pen.”—Dyce’s Mem. of Shakespeare, xxxi.
13That Shakespeare was the favourite poet of Charles the First is confirmed to the eyes of posterity; for on the copy the king used, he has written his own name, and left other traces of his pen; the volume now bears also the autograph of George the Third. It is preserved, it is hoped, in the library of the sovereigns of England.
14Milton, however, has been misinterpreted by some modern critics; when, on this occasion, having quoted that passage inRichard the Thirdwhich displays his hypocrisy, Milton adds—“Other stuff of this sortmay be read throughout the whole tragedy, wherein the poet used not much license in departing from the truth of history.” Pye, in his “Commentary on the Poetic of Aristotle,” is indignant at the language of Milton. He takes the term “stuff” in its modern depreciating sense; but it had no such meaning with Milton, it merely signifiedmatter. Pye exclaims—“Could Milton have imagined thatthe stuffof Mr. William Shakespeare would be preferred to ‘Comus’ and the ‘Samson Agonistes?’”—212.
15I derive my knowledge from the “Roscius Anglicanus” ofDownes, the prompter; it is a meagre chronicle, and the scribe is illiterate; but the edition byF. Waldron, 1784, is an addition to our literary history. Though chiefly dramatic, it abounds with some curious secret history. Waldron, himself an humble actor, was, however, a sagacious literary antiquary; but his modesty and failure of encouragement impeded his proposed labours. Gifford found him intelligent when that critic was busied on Jonson; and I possess an evidence of his acute emendations.
By this chronicle of our drama, it appears that in a list of fifteen stock plays there are seven of Beaumont and Fletcher, three of Jonson, and three of Shakespeare. In another list of twenty-one plays there arefiveof Jonson, and butoneof Shakespeare and thatTitus Andronicus.
16Butler’s “Genuine Remains,” ii. 494.
17Rollo, King and no King, andThe Maid’s Tragedy.
18We may listen to Pope:—S. “Rymer is a learned and strict critic!”—P. “Ay, that’s exactly his character. He is generally right, though rather too severe in his opinion of the particular plays he speaks of; and is, on the whole, one of the best critics we ever had.”—Spence’s “Anecdotes,” 172.
19“Edinburgh Review,” Sept. 1831.
20The fate of Rymer’s Tragedy has been illustrated by the inimitable humour of Addison in No. 592 of “The Spectator.” Describing different theatrical properties, he says—“They are provided with above a dozen showers of snow, which, as I am informed, are the plays of many unsuccessful poets artificially cut and shredded for that use. Mr. Rymer’sEdgaris to fall in snow at the next acting ofKing Lear, in order to heighten, or rather to alleviate, the distress of that unfortunate prince, and to serve by way of decoration to a piece which that great critic has written against.”
21On the play-bills of that day I find the modern dramas ofCato,The Conscious Lovers, and Cibber’s and Farquhar’s plays are simply announced, while the elder dramatists have accompanying epithets, which show the degree of their celebrity according, at least, to the director of the bills; and perhaps indicate the necessity he was under to remind the public, who were not familiar with the titles of these old plays. Thus appear “The Silent Woman, a Comedy by thefamousBen Jonson;” “Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, written by theimmortalShakespeare;” “The Soldier’s Fortune, written by the lateingeniousMr. Otway.” Though Shakespeare bears away the prize among these epithetical allotments, I suspect that hisimmortality—here positively assigned to him—was owing to the honour of the recent edition by Rowe.
In 1741 the theatre seems to have recommended the dramas of Shakespeare for the variety of theirhistorical subjects. On one of these billsRichard the Thirdis described as “containing the distresses of King Henry the Sixth; the murder of young King Edward the Fifth and his brother in the Tower; the landing of the Earl of Richmond, and the death of King Richard in the memorable battle of Bosworth, being the last that was fought between the Houses of York and Lancaster; with many other true historical passages.”
22“Tatler”—42.
23“Spectator”—39, 285.
24V. iv. 186.
25Pope said that “it was mighty simple in Rowe to write a play now, professedly in Shakespeare’s style, that is, the style of a bad age!” He relished as little Milton’s “high style,” as he called it. “The high style would not have been borne even in Milton, had not his subject turned so much on such strange out-of-the-world things as it does.” Lord Shaftesbury would furnish a code of criticism in the days of Pope, when the “Gothic model” was proscribed by such high authorities. But Pope expressed unqualified approbation for the stately but classical “Ferrex and Porrex,” and occasioned Spence to reprint it;—a tragedy in the unimpassioned style and short breathings of the asthmatic Seneca.
26Coxeter, after a search of thirty years, faithfully collating the best of our old plays, tells us he happened to communicate his scheme to one who now invades it; but for what mistakes and confusion may be expected from the medley now advertising in ten volumes, he appeals to the “Gorboduc” which Spence had published by the desire of Pope; both these wits, and the future editor of “Old Plays,” Dodsley, had used the spurious edition! Coxeter’s judgment was prophetic in the present instance. “Dodsley’s Collection” turned out to be a chance “medley;” unskilled in the language and the literature and the choice of his dramatists, he, as he tells us, “by the assistance of a little common sense set a great number of these passages right;” that is, the dramatist of the dull “Cleone” brought down the ancient genius to his own, and, if he became intelligible, at least he was spurious. If, after all, some parts were left unintelligible, the reader must consider how many such remain in Shakespeare.
27A third edition lies before me, 1757. The preface of the first edition of 1733 was much curtailed in the second of 1740, as well as the notes—particularly those which Theobald describes as “rather verbose and declamatory, and so notes merely of ostentation.” The candour is admirable. The third edition seems a mere reprint of the second. The first edition is also curious for its plates preserving thecostumeor dress of the characters at the time.
28This was one of those literary secrets which are only divulged on that final day of judgment which happens to authors when, on the decease of their publishers, those literary cemeteries, their warerooms, open for the sale of what are called “their effects;” but which, in this instance of literary property, may be deemed “the ineffectual effects.” At the sale of “the effects” of Tonson, the great bibliopolist, in 1767, one hundred and forty copies of Pope’s “Shakespeare,” in six volumes quarto, for which the original subscribers paid six guineas, were disposed of at sixteen shillings only per set.—“Gent. Mag.,” lvii. 76.
29See “Quarrels of Authors.”
30Laharpe, in a paroxysm of criticism, had both to defend and to censure his great master, Voltaire, on the subject of the Marvellous in Tragedy; and, strange to observe, in the coldness of the Aristotelian-Gallic Poetic, our “monster-poet” carries away the palm. The critic acknowledges that, though he is loath to compare “Semiramis” to that “monster of a tragedy”—“Hamlet,” the Ghost there acts as a ghost should do, showing himself but to one person, and revealing a secret unknown to all but himself; while the Ghost of Ninus appears in a full assembly, only to tell the hero to listen to somebody else who knows the secret as well as the Ghost.—“Cours de Littérature.”
31Much, if not all, that is valuable in this great body of varied information, has been alphabetically arranged in “A Glossary, or Collection of Words, Phrases, Names, and Allusions to Customs, Proverbs, &c., which have required illustration in theworks of English Authors, particularlyShakespeare and his Contemporaries,” by Archdeacon Nares, 4to, 1822: a compilation as amusing as it is useful, and which I suspect has not been justly appreciated. It is a substitute for all these commentators; and with this volume, at an easy rate, we are made free of the whole Shakespearian corporation.
32MonsieurVillemain, who possesses a perfect knowledge of our English writers on historical subjects, and many years since composed a life of Cromwell, has drawn up an elaborate article onShakespearein the “Biographie Universelle.” The perplexities of his taste, and the contradictory results of his critical decisions, are amusing; but it must have been a serious labour for a person of his strict candour. Our critic remains astonished at Johnson’s preference of Shakespeare’s comic to his tragic genius, which never can be, he adds, the opinion of foreigners. Monsieur Villemain is perfectly right; for no foreigner can comprehend the humour, not always delicate but strong, which often depends on the phrase, as well as on the character; but he errs when he can only discover in the comedy of Shakespeare merely a drama of intrigue, and not a picture of manners. Our critic has formed no conception of the poet’s ideal standard and universal nature; insomuch that to this day we continue to apply among ourselves those exquisite personal strokes of the comic characters of Shakespeare. Our critic, who cannot perceive that which perhaps only a native can really taste, is indignant at the enthusiastic critic who has decided thatMolièreonly gave “a prosaic copy of human nature, and is merely a faithful or a servile imitator.” I suppose this critic is Schlegel, a prejudiced critic on system. I beg leave to add, that it is not necessary to decry the French Shakespeare to elevate our own. Molière is as truly an original genius as any dramatist of any age.
33This rare tract, which I once read in a private library which had been collected in the days of Pope, was apparently Voltaire’s entire composition; for the Gallicisms bear the impression of a foreigner’s pen, and of one determined to prove the authenticity of its source. “Voltaire, like the French in general,” said Dr. Young, “showed the greatest complaisance outwardly, and had the greatest contempt for us inwardly.” He consulted Dr. Young about his Essay in English, and begged him to correct any gross faults. The doctor set himself very honestly to work, marked the passages most liable to censure, and when he went to explain himself about them, Voltaire could not avoid bursting out and laughing in his face!—Spence.
Had Voltaire accepted the doctor’s verbal corrections, or the opinions suggested by him, something else than the “laughing in the face” had been recollected.
34Two specimens of the criticism of Voltaire may explain his involuntary and his voluntary blunders:—
InHamlet, when one sentinel inquires of the other—“Have you had quiet guard?” he is answered—“Not a mouse stirring!” which Voltaire translates literally—“Pas un souris qui trotte!” How different is the same circumstance described by Racine—“Tout dort, et l’armée, et le vents, et Neptune!” A verse Kaimes had condemned as mere bombast! To every people who had not associated with the general night-stillness of a castle the movement of a mouse, this description would appear ludicrously puerile; while, with us, the familiar idiom is most happily appropriate to the speaker; but this natural language no foreigner can acquire by study or reflection; we imbibe our idioms as we did the milk of the nurse’s breast.
InJulius Cæsar, when Voltaire translates Cæsar’s reply to Metellus, who would fall at his feet to supplicate for the repeal of his brother’s banishment, the Cæesar of Shakespeare uses metaphorical expressions. He would not yield to
“That which melteth fools; I mean sweet words,Low-crooked curt’sies, and basespaniel-fawning.If thou dost bend, and pray, and fawn for him,I’d spurn thee like a cur out of my way.”
“That which melteth fools; I mean sweet words,
Low-crooked curt’sies, and basespaniel-fawning.
If thou dost bend, and pray, and fawn for him,
I’d spurn thee like a cur out of my way.”
This natural style was doubtless “trop familier” for the polished Frenchman, and his version is malicious, and he delights to detail every motion of a spaniel, even to the licking of the feet of his master!—
“Les airs d’un chien couchantpeuvent toucher un sot;Flatte, prie à genoux, etlèche-moi les pieds—Va, je terosseraicomme un chien.”
“Les airs d’un chien couchantpeuvent toucher un sot;
Flatte, prie à genoux, etlèche-moi les pieds—
Va, je terosseraicomme un chien.”
Rossercan only be translated by so mean a phrase as “a sound beating;” while to spurn is no ignoble action, and is used rather in a poetical than familiar style.