Lastly, the short poems incorporated in the plays deserve brief notice. In a way they are part of the plots in which they are embedded; but they may also be considered as separate lyrics. Several sonnets and verses in stanza form occur inRomeo and Julietand in the early comedies. Three of these were printed as separate poems inThe Passionate Pilgrim. Far more important than the above, however, are the songs which are scattered through all the plays early and late. Their merit is of a supreme quality; some of the most famous musical composers, inspired by his works, have graced them with admirable music. One of the most attractive features in his lyrics is their spontaneous ease of expression. They seem to lilt into music of their own accord, as naturally as birds sing. The best of these are found in the comedies of the Second Period and in the romantic plays of the Fourth. "Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more" inMuch Ado About Nothing; "Blow, blow, thou winter wind" inAs You Like it; "Hark, hark, the lark at heaven's gate sings" inCymbeline; and "Full fathom five thy father lies" inThe Tempest,—these and others like them show that the author, though primarily a dramatist, could be among the greatest of song writers when he tried.
The following lines taken from the little-read play,The Two Gentlemen of Verona, may serve to illustrate the perfection of the Shakespearean lyric.
SONG
Who is Sylvia? what is she,That all our swains commend her?Holy, fair, and wise is she;The heaven such grace did lend her,That she might admired be.
Is she kind as she is fair?For beauty lives with kindness:Love doth to her eyes repairTo help him of his blindness,And being helped, inhabits there.
Then to Sylvia let us sing,That Sylvia is excelling;She excels each mortal thingUpon the dull earth dwelling;To her let us garlands bring.
Such are Shakespeare's nondramatic writings. Two narrative poems with the faults of youth but with many redeeming virtues; one hundred and fifty-four sonnets, very unequal in merit but touching at their best the high-water mark of English verse; a few stray fragments of disputed authorship and doubtful value; and finally a handful of scattered songs, short, but almost perfect of their kind,—this is what we have outside of the plays. Neither in quantity nor quality can this work compare with the poetic value of the great dramas; but had it been written by any other man, we should have thought it wonderful enough.
On the sonnets, the appendix to Mr. Sidney Lee's book,A Life of William Shakespeare, 1909, is particularly valuable.
[1] Shakespeare in his dedication calls it "the first heir of my invention"; but opinions differ as to what he meant by this.
[2] Ovid'sMetamorphoses, Book X.
[3] That is, the common, or standard, line has ten syllables with an accent on every even syllable, as in the following line:—
12345678910The NIGHT of SORrow NOW is TURN'D to DAY.
[4] From hisFasti.
[5] The rime scheme of the Italian type divided each sonnet into two parts, the first one of eight lines, the second of six. In the first eight lines the rimes usually went a, b, b, a, a, b, b, a; but sometimesa, b, a, b, a, b, a, b: in both cases using only two rimes for the eight lines. In the second or six-line part there were several different arrangements, of which the following were the most common: (1)c, d, e, c, d, e; (2)c, d, c, d, c, d; (3)c, d, e, d, c, e. All of these rime-schemes alike were intended, by their constant repetition and interlocking of the same rimes, to give the whole poem an air of exquisite workmanship, like that of a finely modeled vase. Here is an English sonnet of Milton's, imitating the form of Petrarch's and illustrating its rime scheme:—
"When I consider how my light is spent (a)Ere half my days in this dark world and wide, (b)And that one talent which is death to hide (b)Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent (a)To serve therewith my Maker, and present (a)My true account, lest He returning chide, (b)Doth God exact day-labour, light denied? (b)I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent (a)That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need (c)Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best (d)Bear his mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state (e)Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed, (c)And post o'er land and ocean without rest; (d)They also serve who only stand and wait." (e)
[6] See p.113.
[7] Including at least three which do not have in all respects the regular sonnet form.
[8] Southampton's chief rival for this position in the opinion of scholars has been William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. One point in his favor has been that the initials W. H. (supposed to stand for William Herbert) are given as those of the person to whom the dedication of the volume was addressed by its publisher. Mr. Sidney Lee thinks, however, that this is a dedication by the printer to the printer's friend, not by Shakespeare to Shakespeare's friend,—a possible, though not wholly convincing, explanation. The First Folio was dedicated to Herbert after Shakespeare's death, but we have no evidence that the two men were intimate friends while living. Meres mentions the sonnets of Shakespeare in 1598, so part of them at least must have been written before that year; but Herbert did not have a permanent residence in London until 1598, and was then only eighteen years old.
The most profitable method of studying any writer is to take up his works in the order in which they were written. More and more this method is being adopted toward all authors, ancient and modern, Virgil or Milton, Dante or Tennyson. We are thus enabled to trace the gradual growth of the poet's mind from one production to another,—his constant increase in skill, in judgment, in knowledge of mankind. The great characteristic of the genius is, not simply that he knows more than other men at first, but that he has in him such vast possibilities of growth, of improving with time, and learning by his own mistakes. Consequently, it is very important to know that a certain play or poem is faulty because it was its author's first crude attempt; that a second is better because it was written five years later in the light of added experience; and that a third is better still because it came ten years after the second, at the climax of the writer's powers.
Besides showing the author's growth, this method also shows his relation to the great literary movements of his time. As fashions in dress and sports keep shifting, fashions in literature are changing just as constantly, and the dominant type may alter two orthree times during one man's life. If an author changes to meet these demands, it is important to know that one of his plays was merry comedy because written at a time when merry comedies filled all the playhouses; and that another is sober tragedy because composed while most of the theaters were acting and demanding sober tragedy.
Now Shakespeare not only improved a great deal while composing his plays, but also conformed, to some extent at least, to the different tastes of his audience at different periods of his life. Hence, a knowledge of the order in which his plays were written is very valuable, and should form the first step in a careful study of his writings.
Unfortunately, when we attempt to arrange Shakespeare's plays in chronological order, we encounter many practical difficulties in finding just what this order is. We know that Tennyson developed a great deal as a poet between the ages of eighteen and thirty-three; and we can show this by pointing to four successive volumes of his poems, published respectively at the ages of eighteen, twenty-one, twenty-three, and thirty-three, and each rising in merit above the one before it. We know definitely in what order these volumes come, for we find on the title-page of each the date when it was printed. But scarcely half of Shakespeare's plays were printed in this way during his life. The others, some twenty in all, are found only in one big folio volume which gives no hint of their proper order or year of composition, and which bears on its title-page the date of the printing, 1623, seven years after Shakespeare died. Many plays, too, publishedearly, were written some years before publication, so that the date of printing on the flyleaf of the quarto, even where a quarto exists, simply shows that the play was written sometime before that year but does not tell at allhow longbefore. How, then, are we to trace Shakespeare's growth from year to year, through his successive dramas, when the quartos help us so little and when the majority of these dramas are piled before us in one volume by the editors of the First Folio, without a word of explanation as to which plays are early attempts and which mature work?
At first sight the above problem seems almost hopeless. The researches of scholars for over a century, however, have gathered together a mass of evidence which determines pretty accurately the order in which these different plays were written.
This evidence is of two kinds, external and internal. By external evidence we mean that foundoutsideof the play, references to it in other books of the time, and similar material. By internal evidence we mean that foundinsideof the play itself.
External Evidence.—This is of several kinds. In the first place, every play which was to be printed had to be entered in the Stationers' Register, and all these entries are dated. Hence we know that certain plays were prepared for publication by the time mentioned. For instance, "A Book called Antony and Cleopatra" was entered May 20, 1608; and although apparently the book was not finally printed at that time, and although our only copy ofAntony and Cleopatrais that in the Folio of 1623, yet we feel reasonably certain from this entry that this play must have been written eitherin 1608 or earlier. In addition to the record of the Stationers' Register, we have the dates on the title-pages of such plays as appeared in Quarto. These evidences, it must be remembered, determine only the latest possible date for the play, as many were written long before they were printed, or even entered.
Again, other men sometimes used in their books expressions borrowed from Shakespeare or remarks which sound like allusions to something of his. Here, if we know the date of the other man's book, we learn that the play of Shakespeare from which he borrowed must have been in existence before that date. Thus, when the poet Barksted prints a poem in 1607 and borrows a passage in it fromMeasure for Measure, we conclude thatMeasure for Measuremust have been produced before 1607, or Barksted could not have copied from it. This form of evidence has its dangers, since occasionally we cannot tell whether Shakespeare borrowed from the other man or the other man from him; nevertheless it is often valuable.
Furthermore, we sometimes find in contemporary books or papers, which are dated, an account of the acting of some play. A law student named John Manningham left a diary in which he records that on February 2, 1602 he saw a play calledTwelfth Night or What You Willin the Hall of the Middle Temple; and his account of the play shows that it was Shakespeare's. Dr. Simon Forman, in a similar diary, describes the performance of three Shakespearean plays, two of the accounts being dated. Still more important in this class is the famous allusion, already quoted, by Francis Meres in hisPalladis Tamia, abook published in 1598. In this he mentions with high praise six comedies of Shakespeare:The Two Gentlemen of Verona,The Comedy of Errors,Love's Labour's Lost,Love's Labour's Won,[1]A Midsummer Night's Dream, andThe Merchant of Venice; and six "tragedies":Richard II,Richard III,Henry IV,King John,Titus Andronicus, andRomeo and Juliet.[2] Hence, we know that all these plays were written and acted somewhere before 1598, although three of them did not appear in print until 1623.
The above list does not exhaust all the forms of external evidence, but merely shows its general nature. External evidence, as can be seen, is not something mysterious and peculiar, but simply an application of common sense to the problem in hand.
Frequently two pieces of external evidence will accomplish what neither one could do alone. Often one fact will show that a play came somewhere before a certain date, but not show how long before, and another will prove that the play came after another date, without telling how long after. For example,King Learwas written before 1606, for we have a definite statement that it was performed then. It was written after 1603, for it borrowed material from a book printed in that year. This method of hemming in a play between its earliest and its latest possible date is common and useful, both with Shakespeare and with other writers.
Internal Evidence.—By the above methods a few plays have been dated quite accurately, and many others confined between limits only two or three yearsapart. But many plays are still dated very vaguely, and some are not dated at all. For further results we must fall back on internal evidence. The first, though by no means the most important, form of this consists of allusionswithin the play to contemporary events. If a boy should read in an old diary of his grandmother's that she had just heard of the fight at Gettysburg, he would feel certain that the words were written a few days after that great battle, even if there were no date anywhere in the manuscript. In the same way, when the Prologue of Shakespeare'sHenry Valludes to the fact that Elizabeth's general (the Earl of Essex) is in Ireland quelling a rebellion, we know that this was written between April and September of 1599, the period during which Essex actually was in Ireland. Similarly, certain details inThe Tempestappear to have been borrowed from accounts of the wreck of Sir George Somers's ship in 1609. As Shakespeare could not have borrowed from these accounts before they existed, he must have written his comedy sometime after 1609.[3]
But the main form of internal evidence, what is usually meant by that term, is the testimony in the character and style of the plays themselves as to the maturity of the man who wrote them. Just as the stump of a tree sawn across shows its age by its successive rings of growth, so a poem, if carefullyexamined, shows the rings of growth in the author's style of thought and expression.
The simplest and most tangible form of this evidence is that which is found in meter. If we read in order of composition those plays which we have already succeeded in dating, we shall find certain habits of versification steadily growing on the author, as play succeeded play.
In the first place, most of the lines in the early plays are 'end-stopped'; that is, the sense halts at the close of each line with a resulting pause in reading. In the later plays the sense frequently runs over from one line into another, producing what is called a 'run-on' line instead of an 'end-stopped' one. By comparing the following passages, the first of which contains nothing but end-stopped lines and the second several run-on lines, the reader can easily see the difference.
(a) From an early play:—
"I from my mistress come to you in post:If I return, I shall be post indeed,For she will score your fault upon my pate.Methinks your maw, like mine, should be your clock,And strike you home without a messenger."—Comedy of Errors, I, ii, 63-67.
(b) From a late play:—
"Mark your divorce, young sir, [end-stopped]Whom son I dare not call. Thou art too base [run-on]To be acknowledg'd. Thou, a sceptre's heir, [end-stopped]That thus affects a sheep-hook! Thou old traitor, [end-stopped]
I am sorry that by hanging thee I can [run-on]But shorten your life one week. And thou, fresh piece [run-on]Of excellent witchcraft, who of force must know [end-stopped]The royal fool thou cop'st with...—"—Winter's Tale, IV, iv, 427-434.
Since Shakespeare keeps constantly increasing his use of run-on lines in plays for which dates are known, it seems reasonable to assume that he did this in all his work, that it was a habit which grew on him from year to year. Hence, if we sort out his plays in order, putting those with the fewest run-on lines first and those with the greatest number last, we shall have good reason for believing that this represents roughly the order in which they were written.
A second form of metrical evidence is found in the proportion of 'masculine' and 'feminine' endings in the verse. A line has a masculine ending when its last syllable is stressed; when it ends, for example, on words or phrases likebehold',control',no more',begone'. On the other hand, if the last stressed syllable of the line is followed by an unstressed one, the two together are called a feminine ending. Instances of this would be lines ending in such words or phrases as,unho'/ly,forgive' /me,benight'/ed. Notice the difference between them in the following passage:—
"Our revels now are ended. These our actors [feminine]As I foretold you, were all spirits, and [masculine]Are melted into air, into thin air; [masculine]And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, [feminine]The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, [feminine]
The solemn temples, the great globe itself, [masculine]Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, [masculine]And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, [feminine]Leave not a rack behind."—Tempest, IV, i, 147-166.
In the main, although with some exceptions, the number of feminine endings, like the number of run-on lines, increases as the plays become later in date.
A third form of ending, which practically does not appear at all in the early plays, and which recurs with increasing frequency in the later ones, is what is called a 'weak ending.'[4] This occurs whenever a run-on line ends in a word which according to the meter needs to be stressed, and according to the sense ought not to be. Here there is a clash between meter and meaning, and the reader compromises by making a pause before the last syllable instead of emphasizing the syllable itself. Below are two examples of weak endings:—
"It should the good ship so have swallowed, andThe fraughting souls within her."
"I will rend an oakAnd peg thee in his knotty entrailstillThou hast howled away twelve winters."
Lastly, we have the evidence of rime. Run-on lines, feminine endings, and weak endings constantly increase as Shakespeare grows older. Rime, on the other hand, in general decreases. The early plays arefull of it; the later ones have very little. It does not follow that the chronological order of the individual plays could be exactly determined by their percentage of riming lines, for subject matter makes a great difference. In a staged fairy story, likeA Midsummer Night's Dream, the poet would naturally fall into couplets. But, other things being equal, a large amount of rime is always a sign of early work. This is especially true when the rimes occur, not in pairs, but in quatrains or sonnet forms, or (as they sometimes do in the first comedies) in scraps of sing-song doggerel.
Such is the internal evidence from the various changes in versification. Its value, as must always be remembered, lies in the fact that the results of these different tests in the main agree with each other and with such external evidence as we have.
Then, wholly aside from metrical details, there is a large amount of internal evidence of other kinds,—evidence which cannot be measured by the rule of thumb, but which every intelligent reader must notice. We feel instinctively that one play mirrors the views and emotions of youth, another those of middle age. A man's face does not change more between twenty-five and forty than his mind changes during the same interval; and the difference between his thoughts at those periods is as distinct often as the difference between the rounded lines of youth and the stern features of middle age. This is a subject which will be better understood in the light of the next chapter.
The Order of the Plays.—Upon such evidence as has been described, a list of Shakespeare's plays in theirchronological order can now be presented. The details of evidence on date may be found in the account of the plays which appears in Chapters X-XIII.
Love's Labour's Lost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1590-1591The Comedy of Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1590-1591II and III Henry VI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1590-1592Richard III . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1592-1593Two Gentlemen of Verona . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1592King John . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1592-1593Richard II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1593-1594Titus Andronicus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1593-1594Midsummer Night's Dream . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1593-1596Romeo and Juliet . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1591, revised 1597The Merchant of Venice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1594-1596The Taming of the Shrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1596-1597I Henry IV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1597II Henry IV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1598Henry V . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1599Merry Wives of Windsor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1599Much Ado about Nothing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1599As You Like It . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1599-1600Julius Caesar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1699-1601Twelfth Night . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1601Troilus and Cressida . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1602All's Well That Ends Well . . . . . . . . . . . . 1602Hamlet . . . . . . . . . . . 1602, 1603-1604 (two versions).Measure for Measure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1603Othello . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1604King Lear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1604-1605Macbeth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1605-1606Antony and Cleopatra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1607-1608Timon of Athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1607-1608Pericles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1608Coriolanus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1609Cymbeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1610The Winter's Tale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1610-1611
The Tempest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1611King Henry the Eighth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1612-1613
Among the many books and articles on the subject of this chapter, the following may be mentioned:Shakespeare Manualby F. L. Fleay (Macmillan and Co., London, 1876);Shakspere, by E. Dowden (American Book Co., New York);Cartae Shakespearianteby D. Sambert.
[1] This play is either lost, or preserved under another title.
[2] Quoted in full in Chapter I, p.10.
[3] This form of evidence is usually weak and unreliable. Most of the supposed allusions are much more vague than the two given. Where there have been similar events in history, the allusion might be to one which we had forgotten when we thought it was to a similar one which we knew.
[4] Mr. Ingram makes a distinction between "light" and "weak" endings. Both are classed together as weak endings above. The distinction seems to us too subtle for any but professional students.
As the reader will remember, our main aim in attempting to date Shakespeare's plays was to trace through them his development as a dramatist and poet. Just as the successive chambers of the nautilus shell show the stages of growth of its dead and vanished tenant, so the plays of Shakespeare show how
"Each new temple, nobler than the last,Shut him from heaven with a dome more vast."
The great thing which distinguishes the genius from the ordinary man, we repeat, is his power of constant improvement; and we can trace this improvement here from achievements less than those of many a modern writer up to the noblest masterpieces of all time.
Much of the material connected with this development has already been discussed in another connection under Internal Evidence. Internal evidence, however, that one play is later than another, is nothing else than the marks of intellectual growth in the poet's mind between those two dates. We arrange the plays in order according to indications of intellectual growth, just as one could fit together again the broken fragments of a nautilus shell, guided by the relative size of the ever expanding chambers. So, indiscussing Shakespeare's development, we must bring up much old material, examining it from a different point of view.
Meter.—In the first place, the poet develops wonderfully in the command of his medium of expression; that is, in his mastery of meter. What is meant by the fact that as Shakespeare grew older, wiser, more experienced, he used more run-on lines, more weak endings, more feminine endings? Simply this, that by means of these devices he gained more variety and expressiveness in his verse. A passage from his early work (in spite of much that is fine) with every ending alike masculine and strong, and with every line end-stopped, harps away tediously in the same swing, like one lonely instrument on one monotonous note. His later verse, on the other hand, with masculine and feminine endings, weak ones and strong, end-stopped and run-on lines, continually relieving each other, is like the blended music of a great orchestra, continually varying, now stern, now soft, in harmony with the thought it expresses. Below are given two passages, the first from an early play, the second from a late one. In print one may look as well as the other; but if one reads them aloud, he will see in a moment how much more variety and expressiveness there is in the second, especially for the purposes of acting.
"Urge not my father's anger, Eglamour,But think upon my grief, a lady's grief,And on the justice of my flying hence,To keep me from a most unholy match,Which heaven and fortune still rewards with plagues.I do desire thee, even from a heart.As full of sorrows as the sea of sands,To bear me company and go with me;If not, to hide what I have said to thee,That I may venture to depart alone."—Two Gentlemen of Verona, IV, iii, 27-36.
"By whose aid,Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimm'dThe noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,And 'twixt the green sea and the azur'd vaultSet roaring war; to the dread rattling thunderHave I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oakWith his own bolt; the strong-bas'd promontoryHave I made shake, and by the spurs plucked upThe pine and cedar; graves at my commandHave wak'd their sleepers, op'd, and let 'em forthBy my so potent art. But this rough magicI here abjure, and, when I have requir'dSome heavenly music, which even now I do,To work mine end upon their senses thatThis airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,And deeper than did ever plummet soundI'll drown my book."—Tempest, V, i, 40-57.
The same reason shows why Shakespeare used less and less rime as his taste and experience ripened. Rime is a valuable ornament for songs and lyric poetry generally; but from poetry which is actually to be acted on the English stage it takes away the most indispensable of all qualities, the natural, life-like tone of real speech. Notice this in the difference between the two extracts below. Observe how stilted and artificial the first one seems; and see how the second combines the melody and dignity of poetry with the simple naturalness of living language.
"This fellow pecks up wit as pigeons pease,And utters it again when God doth please.He is wit's pedler, and retails his waresAt wakes and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs;And we that sell by gross, the Lord doth know,Have not the grace to grace it with such show.This gallant pins the wenches on his sleeve;Had he been Adam, he had tempted Eve."—Love's Labour's Lost, V, ii, 315-321
"I was not much afeard; for once or twiceI was about to speak and tell him plainlyThe self-same sun that shines upon his courtHides not his visage from our cottage, butLooks on all alike. Will't please you, sir, be gone?I told you what would come of this. Beseech you,Of your own state take care. This dream of mine—Being now awake, I'll queen it no inch farther,But milk my ewes and weep."—Winter's Tale, IV, iv, 452-400.
I do not mean to imply by the above that Shakespeare's early verse is poor according to ordinary standards. It is not; it contains much that is fine. But it is far inferior to his later work, and it is inferior in those very details which time and experience alone can teach.
An important point to remember is that while Shakespeare was growing in metrical skill, he was not growing alone. A crowd of other authors around him were developing in a similar way; and he was learning from them and they from him. The use of blank verse in English when Shakespeare began to write was a comparatively new practice, and, like all new inventions, for a time it was only imperfectly understood. Menhad to learn by experiments and by each other's successes and failures, just as men in recent years have learned to fly. Shakespeare surpassed all the others, as the Wright brothers in their first years surpassed all their fellow-aeronauts; but like the Wright brothers he was only part of a general movement. No other man changed as much as he in one lifetime, but the whole system of dramatic versification was changing.
Taste.—But wholly aside from questions of meter, Shakespeare improved greatly in taste and judgment between the beginning and middle of his career. This is shown especially in his humor. To the young man humor means nothing but the cause for a temporary laugh; to a more developed mind it becomes a pleasant sunshine that lingers in the memory long after reading, and interprets all life in a manner more cheerful, sympathetic, and sane. The early comedies give us nothing but the temporary laugh; and even this is produced chiefly by fantastic situations or plays on words, clever but far-fetched, puns and conceits so overworked that their very cleverness jars at times. On the other hand, in the great humorous characters of his middle period, like Falstaff and Beatrice, the poet is opening up to us new vistas of quiet, lasting amusement and indulgent knowledge of our imperfect but lovable fellow-men.
The same growth of taste is shown in the dramatist's increasing tendency to tone down all revolting details and avoid flowery, overwrought rhetoric. Nobody knows whether Shakespeare wrote all ofTitus Andronicusentire or simply revised it; but we feel sure that the older Shakespeare would have been unwilling, even asa reviser, to squander so much that is beautiful on such an orgy of blood and violence.Romeo and Julietis full of beautiful poetry; but even here occasional lapses show the undeveloped taste of the young writer. Notice the flowery and fantastic imagery in the following passage, where Lady Capulet is praising Paris, her daughter's intended husband:—
"Read o'er the volume of young Paris' faceAnd find delight writ there with beauty's pen;Examine every married lineamentAnd see how one another lends content,And what obscur'd in this fair volume liesFind written in the margent of his eyes.This precious book of love, this unbound lover,To beautify him, only lacks a cover.The fish lives in the sea, and 'tis much prideFor fair without the fair within to hide.That book in many's eyes doth share the glory,That in gold clasps locks in the golden story."—Romeo and Juliet, I, iii, 81-92.
If we try to picture to ourselves the post-wedlock edition of Paris described above, we shall see how a young man's imagination may run away with his judgment. There are passages in this play as good, perhaps, as anything which the author ever wrote; but if we compare such fantastic imagery with the uniform excellence of the later masterpieces, we shall see how much Shakespeare unlearned and outgrew.
Character Study.—Still more significant is the poet's development in the conception of character. In no other way, probably, does an observant mind change and expand so much as in this. For the infant all men fall into two very simple categories:—people whom he likesand people whom he doesn't. The boy of ten has increased these two classes to six or eight. The young man of twenty finds a few more, and begins to suspect that men who act alike may not have the same motives and emotions. But as the keen-eyed observer nears middle age, he begins to realize that no two souls are exact duplicates of each other; and that behind every human eye there lies an undiscovered country, as mysterious, as fascinating, as that which Alice found behind the looking-glass,—a country like, and yet unlike, the one we know, where dreams grow beautiful as tropic plants, and passions crouch like wild beasts in the jungle.
Great as he was, Shakespeare had to learn this lesson like other men; but he learned it much better. InLove's Labour's Lost, generally considered his earliest play, he has not led us into the inner selves of his men and women at all, has not seemed to realize that they possess inner selves. At the conclusion we know precisely as much of them as we should if we had met them at a formal reception, and no more. The princess is pretty and clever on dress parade; but how does the real princess feel when parade is over and she is alone in her chamber? The later Shakespeare might have told us, did tell us, in regard to more than one other princess; but the young Shakespeare has nothing to tell.
Richard III, which is supposed to have come some three years later, is a marked advance in characterization, but still far short of the goal. Here the dramatist attempts, indeed, to analyze the tyrant's motives and emotions; but he does not yet understand whathe is trying to explain, and for that reason the being whom he creates is portentous, but not human. To understand this, you need only compare Richard with Macbeth. In Macbeth we have a host of different forces—ambition, superstition, poetry, remorse, vacillation, affection, despair—all struggling together as they might in you or me; and it is this mingling of feelings with which we all can sympathize that makes him, in spite of all his crimes, a human being like ourselves. But in Richard there is no human complexity. His is the fearful simplicity of the lightning, the battering-ram, the earthquake, forces whose achievements are terrible and whose inner existence a blank. Richard hammers his bloody way through life like the legendary Iron Man with his flail, awe-inspiring as a destructive agency, not as a human being.
Two or three years later we find Shakespeare in his conception of Shylock capable of greater things as a student of character. In this pathetic, lonely, vindictive figure, exiled forever from the warm fireside of human friendship by those inherent faults which he can no more change than the tiger can change his claws, the long tragedy which accompanies the survival of the fittest finds a voice. Yet even in Shylock the dramatist has not reached his highest achievement in character study. The old Jew is drawn splendidly to the life, but he is a comparatively easy character to draw, a man with a few simple and prominent traits. Depicting such a man is like drawing a pronounced Roman profile, less difficult to do, and less satisfactory when done, than tracing the subdued curves of a more evenly rounded face. Still greater will be the triumphwhen Shakespeare can draw equally true to life a many-sided man or woman, in whose single heart all our different experiences find a sympathetic echo.
And this final triumph is not long in coming. Between his thirty-fourth and thirty-eighth years, in Falstaff and Hamlet the poet produced the greatest comic and the greatest tragic character of dramatic history. The man who has readHamletunderstandingly has found in the young prince a lifelong companion. Has he been unjustly treated? Hamlet, too, had suffered and hated. Has he loved? So had Hamlet. Has he had a bosom friend? The most sacred and beautiful of college friendships was that between Hamlet and Horatio. Has he been bored by some stupid old adviser? So had Hamlet by Polonius and similar "tedious old fools." Has he been thrilled by some beautiful landscape? Hamlet, too, had admired "this goodly frame, the earth" and the sky, "that majestical roof fretted with golden fire." Has he had a parent whom he loved and admired? So had Hamlet in his father. Has he had a friend for whom his love was mixed with shame? So felt Hamlet toward his mother. Has he felt the pride of a great deed bravely accomplished? So did Hamlet in dying. Has he felt the shame and remorse of a duty unperformed? So did Hamlet while his father was still unrevenged. Has he shuddered at the mystery of death? So had Hamlet shuddered at "that undiscovered country." Or has he been racked, as all good men are in practical life, by the doubt as to what is his duty? So had Hamlet been racked by the same terrible responsibility. And thus we might go on indefinitely. Theexperience of a lifetime is packed into this play. Shakespeare never surpassedHamlet, though he wrote for nine or ten years after; but when he had once reached this high level, he maintained it, with only occasional lapses, to the end.
Dramatic Technique.—Lastly, Shakespeare developed greatly in dramatic technique. By dramatic technique we mean the method in which the machinery of the story is handled. The dramatist, to do his duty properly, must accomplish at least five things at once. He must make his play lifelike and natural; he must keep his hearers well informed as to what is happening; he must bring in different events after each other in rapid succession to hold the interest of his audience; he must make the different characters influence each other so that the whole becomes one connected story, not several unrelated ones; and he must make the audience feel that the play is working toward a certain inevitable end, must bring it to that end, and must then stop. The lack of any one of these factors may make a play either dull or disappointing. It takes ability to get any one of these alone. It takes years of training before even a born genius can work them all in together. Of course, these details are much easier to handle in dramatizing some subjects than others; and we find Shakespeare succeeding comparatively early in easy subjects and making mistakes later in harder ones; but, on the whole, in dramatic technique as in other things, his history is one of increasing power and judgment.
Here, again, as in his metrical development, Shakespeare was merely one leading figure in a popularmovement. Through a long evolution the English drama had just come into existence when he began to write. There were no settled theories about this new art, no results of long experience such as lie at the service of the modern dramatist. All men were experimenting, and Shakespeare among the rest.
His early play ofLove's Labour's Losthas already been used to illustrate lack of characterization. In technique, also, in spite of many marks of natural brilliance, it shows the faults of the beginner. The story in the first three acts does not move on fast enough; there is a lack of that rapid series of connected events which we mentioned above and which adds so much to the interest of the later plays, likeMacbeth. Likewise, the characters in the prose underplot (except Costard) have too little connection with the story of the king and his friends. In very badly constructed plays this lack of connection sometimes goes so far that the main and under plots seem like two separate serial stories in a magazine, in which the reader alternates from one to the other, but never thinks of them as one. This obviously is bad, for just when the reader is most interested in one, he is interrupted and has to lay it aside for the other. No play of Shakespeare's errs so far as that; but the defect inLove's Labour's Lostis similar in a very modified form. Neither is this comedy as successful as the author's later plays in preparing us for a certain ending as the inevitable outcome and then placing that ending before us. We are led to expect that all four love affairs must be successful, and shall feel disappointed if the sympathetic dreams which we have woven around that ideaare not satisfied. Yet the play ends hurriedly in a way which leaves us all in doubt, and disappointed, like guests who have been invited to a wedding and find it indefinitely postponed. There is a wonderful amount of clever dialogue in this comedy, but its structure shows how much the author had yet to learn.
The Two Gentleman of Verona, probably written a little later, shows improvement, but by no means perfect mastery. The first two acts still drag, although the play moves more rapidly when it is under way. The inability to lead up naturally to an inevitable end still persists. The young author, well as he has managed the middle of the play, does not wait for events to take their logical course. He winds up everything abruptly like a man who has just changed his mind or become tired of his task, and marries the most lovable girl in the play to a rascal who is scarcely given time for even a pretense of reformation.
The Merchant of Venice, two or three years later, shows a great advance in technique as in other ways. Notice how skillfully the dramatist makes the different characters all influence each other's lives, so that the interest in one becomes the interest in all. There is one story in the relations of Shylock and Antonio, another in the love affair of Lorenzo and Jessica, and a third in Bassanio's courtship of Portia. There is also a fourth, a sequel to Bassanio's courtship, in the trick which his wife plays on him with regard to the rings after they are married. Yet we never feel an unpleasant interruption when we are stopped in one story and started in one of the others, because the interest of the first lives on in the second,owing to the interrelation of the people taking part in both. We leave Shylock's story to take up Jessica's, but Jessica is Shylock's child, and our interest in the fate of his ducats and his daughter, which began in his story, goes on in hers. We leave Antonio's story to take up Bassanio's; but Antonio's story was that of sacrifice for a friend, and in Bassanio's we see the fruit of that sacrifice in his friend's joy. Moreover, all four of the above threads of action are knotted together in one scene where Bassanio chooses the right casket. Of the swift succession of exciting scenes of the natural way in which these lead up to the final end, of the lifelike truthfulness with which each little event is made to work itself out, there is no need to speak here.
Though Shakespeare was not a third through his literary career when he wroteThe Merchant of Venice, he had by this time mastered the technique of comedy; and we need trace his course in it no farther.Much AdoandTwelfth Nightsomewhat later, andThe Tempestlong years after, are simply repetitions so far as technique is concerned, of this early triumph. Let us turn now from comedy to those plays which deal with the sterner side of life. Here the development in technical skill is similar, but much slower, requiring nearly a lifetime before it reaches perfection, for the poet is grappling with a problem so difficult that it taxed all the resources of his great genius.
Before 1599 nearly all Shakespeare's plays which were not comedies were histories. By a history or chronicle play we mean a play which pictures some epoch in the past of the English nation. In one senseof the word, most of them are tragedies, since they frequently result in death and disaster; but they are always separated as a class from tragedy proper, because they represent some great event in English national life centering around some king or leader; while tragedy proper deals with the misfortunes of some one man in any country, and regards him as an individual rather than as a national figure. They differ also in purpose, since the chronicle play was intended to appeal to Anglo-Saxon patriotism, the tragedy to our sympathy with human suffering in general.
The first and crudest of Shakespeare's histories written at about the same time as his first comedy is the triple play ofHenry VI.[1] We should hesitate to judge him by this, since he wrote it only in part; but it is a woefully rambling production in which we no sooner become interested in one character than we lose him, and are asked to transfer our sympathies to another.Richard IIIis a great step forward in this respect; for the excitement and interest focuses uninterruptedly on the one central figure; and his influence on other men and theirs on him bind all the events of the drama into one coherent whole. Also, it moves straight on to a definite end which we know and wish and are prepared for beforehand. We feel, even in the midst of his success, that such a bloody tyrant cannot be tolerated forever; and like men in a tiger hunt we thrill beforehand at the dramatic catastrophe which we know is coming.Richard III, though, a powerful play, isstill crude in many details. The scenes where Margaret curses her enemies, though strong as poetry, lack action as drama. In a wholly different way, they clog the onward movement of the story almost as much as some scenes inLove's Labour's Lost. Then again, one of the most important requirements for good technique is that everything shall be true to life. When Anne, for the sake of a little bare-faced flattery, marries a man whom she loathes, we feel that no real woman would have done this. From that moment Anne becomes a mere paper automaton to us, and we can no longer be interested in her as we would in a living woman. The motivation, as it is called, the art of showing adequately why every person should act as he or she does, is sadly lacking.
Moving onward a few years, we find marked improvement inI Henry IV. It is indeed not technically perfect,—in fact, Shakespeare in the chronicle play never attained what seems to modern students technical perfection,—but its minor defects are thrown into shadow by its splendid virtues. The three stories of Hotspur, the King, and the Falstaff group, though partially united by their common connection with Prince Hal, do not blend together as perfectly as the different plots inThe Merchant of Venice, and there is some truth in the idea that the play has four heroes instead of one. But in spite of this, its general impression as a great panorama of English life is remarkably clear and delightful; and it improves onRichard IIIin its swift succession of incident, and vastly surpasses it in the lifelike truth of its motivation.
In the middle of his career Shakespeare droppedthe chronicle play, and instead began the writing of tragedies proper. He carried into this, however, the lessons learned from his experience with histories, and continued to improve.Julius Caesarmarks the transition from chronicle play to tragedy. The lack of close connection between the third and fourth acts and the absence of one central hero are characteristic defects of the chronicle play which the dramatist had not yet outgrown.Hamlet, coming next, has shaken off all the lingering relics of the older type. Of its general excellence there is no need to speak. Yet even inHamletthe action at times halts and becomes disjointed.CaesarandHamletare great plays, the latter, perhaps, the greatest of all plays; but, transfigured as they are by genius, they show that in the difficult problem of tragic technique the author was learning still. At the age of forty, approximately, and a year or two afterHamlet, Shakespeare producedOthello, the most perfect, although not necessarily the greatest, of all his great tragedies. It is less profoundly reflective thanHamletand less passionately imaginative thanKing LearorMacbeth; but no other of his masterpieces shows such perfect balance of taste and judgment, or is so free from any jarring note. Hence, through the histories and tragedies taken together, we see the same growth in technical skill which we have already found in his comedies, save that it took longer here because the poet was working in a more difficult field. It would not be true to say that each play up toOthellois superior to its immediate predecessor in technique, still less that it is so in absolute merit; but the general upward tendency is there.