"This was the noblest Roman of them all:All the conspirators, save only he,Did that they did in envy of great Caesar;He only in a general honest thoughtAnd common good to all, made one of them.His life was gentle and the elementsSo mix'd in him that nature might stand upAnd say to all the world 'This was a man.'"
Octavian, when he hears of the death of Anthony, exclaims:
"O Anthony!... We could not stall together; but yet let me lament,With tears as sovereign as the blood of hearts,That thou, my brother, my competitorIn top of all design, my mate in empire,Friend and companion in the front of war,Unreconciliable should divideWhere mine his thoughts did kindle, that our starsUnreconciliable should divideOur equalness to this."
It is above all inHenry VIIIthat this feeling for justice widens into a feeling towards oneself and others. We find a particularly good instance of it in the dialogues between Queen Catherine and her great enemy Wolsey. When the queen has mentioned all the grave misdeeds of the dead man in her severe speech, Griffith craves permission to record in his turn all the good there was in him; and with sopersuasive an eloquence does he record this good, that the queen, when she has heard him, concludes with a sad smile:
"After my death I wish no other herald,No other speaker of my living actions,But such an honest chronicler as Griffith.Whom I most hated living thou hast made me,With thy religious truth and modesty,Now in his ashes honour: peace be with him!"
One who feels justice in this way, is inclined to be indulgent, and in Shakespeare we find the song of indulgence, in theTempest:a lofty indulgence, for his discernment of good and evil was acute, his sense alike for what is noble and for what is base, exquisite. He could never be of those who slip into some form of false indulgence, which lowers the standard of the ideal, in order to approach the real, cancelling or rendering uncertain, in greater or lesser measure, the boundaries between virtue and vice. Prospero it is, who is indulgent in theTempest,the sage, the wise, the injured, the beneficent Prospero.
TheTempestis an exercise of the imagination, a delicate pattern, woven perhaps as a spectacle for some special occasion, such as a marriage ceremony, for it adopts the procedureof some fanciful, jesting scenario from the popular Italian comedy. Here we find islands unknown, aerial spirits, earthly beings and monsters; it is full of magic and of prodigies, of shipwrecks, rescues and incantations; and the smiles of innocent love, the quips of comical creatures, variegate pleasantly its surface. We have already noted the traces of Shakespeare's tendency toward the romantic, and those echoes of the comedy of love, of Romeo and Juliet, who are not unfortunate but fortunate, when they are called Ferdinand and Miranda, with their irresistible impulse towards love and joy. But although the work has a bland tone, there are yet to be found in it characters belonging to tragedy, wicked brothers, who usurp the throne, brothers who meditate and attempt fratricide. In Caliban we find the malicious, violent brute, abounding in strength and rich in possibilities. He listens ecstatically to the soft music, with which the isle often resounds, he knows its natural secrets and is ready to place himself at the service of him who shall aid him in his desire for vengeance and shall redeem him from captivity. Henceforth Prospero has all his enemies in his power; he can do with them what he likes. But he isnot on the same plane with them, a combatant among combatants: meditation, experience and science have refined him: he is penetrated with the consciousness of humanity, of its instability, its illusions, its temptations, its miseries. Where others think they see firm foothold, he is aware of change and insecurity; where others find everything clear as day, he feels the presence of mystery, of the unsolved enigma:
"We are such thingsAs dreams are made of and our little lifeIs rounded with a sleep."
Will he punish? Finally, even his sprite Ariel, his minister of air, feels compassion for those downcast prisoners, and when asked by Prospero, does not withhold from him, that in his place he would be human.
"And mine shall.Hast thou, which are but air, a touch, a feelingOf their afflictions, and shall not myself,One of their kind, which relish all as sharply,Passion as they, be kindlier moved than thou art?"
The guilty are pardoned, and finally Caliban, the monstrous Caliban, is pardoned also, promising to behave himself better from that moment onward. Prospero divests himself ofhis magic wand, which gave him so absolute a power over his like, and while yet in his possession, caused him to incur the risk of behaving towards them in a more than human, perhaps an inhuman way.
Shakespeare can and does attain to indulgence towards men; but since in him the contest between good and evil, positive and negative, remains undecided, he is unable to rise to a feeling of cheerful hope and faith, nor, on the other hand, to submerge himself in gloomy pessimism. In his characters, the love of life is extraordinarily vigorous and tenacious; all of them are agitated by strong passions; they meditate great designs and pursue them with indomitable vigour; all of them love infinitely and hate infinitely. But all of them, almost without exception, also renounce life and face death with fortitude, serenity, and as though it were a sort of liberation. The motto of all is uttered by Edgar, inKing Lear,in reply to his old father, Gloucester, who loses courage and wishes to die, when he hears of the defeat of the king and of Cordelia. Edgar reminds his father that men must face "their coming here even as their going hence," and that"ripeness is all."They die magnificently,either in battle, or offering their throats to the assassin or the executioner, or they transpierce themselves with their own hands, when nothing is left but death or dishonour. They know how to die; it seems as though they had all"studied death,"as says a character inMacbeth,when describing one of them.
And nevertheless the ardour of life never becomes lessened or extinguished. Romeo indeed admired the tenacity of life and the fear of death in him who sold him the poison; miserable, hungry, despised, suspected by men and by the law, as he was. InMeasure for Measure,in the scene where Claudio is in prison and condemned, the usual order is inverted; first we have the prompt persuasion and decision to accept death with serenity, and a few moments later the will to live returns with furious force. The make-believe friar, who assists the condemned man, sets the nullity of life before him in language full of warm and rich imagery: it is troublous and such as "none but fools would keep," a constant heart-ache for the fear of losing it, a craving after happiness never attained, a falsity of affections, a crepuscular condition, without joy or repose; and Claudio drinks in these words and images, feelingthat to live is indeed to die, and wishes for death. But his sister enters, and when she tells him how she has been offered his life as the price of her dishonour, he instantly clutches hold again of life at that glimmer of hope, of hope stained with opprobrium, and dispels with a shudder of horror the image of death:
"To die and go we know not where;To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;This sensible and warm motion to becomeA kneaded clod; 'tis too horrible!The weariest and most loathed worldly lifeThat age, ache, penury and imprisonmentCan lay on nature is a paradiseTo what we fear of death...."
And in the same play the singular personage of Barnadine is placed before us, perfect in a few strokes, Barnadine, the criminal and almost animal, indifferent to life and death, but who yet lives, gets drunk and then stretches himself out and sleeps soundly, and when he is awakened and called to the place of execution, declares firmly, that he is not disposed to go there that day, so they had better leave him alone and not trouble him; he turns his shoulders on them and goes back to his cell, where they can come and find him, if they haveanything to say. Here too the feeling of astonishment at an eagerness for life, which does not exclude the tranquil acceptance of death, is accentuated almost to the point of becoming comic and grotesque.
It is clear that in considering the principal motives of Shakespeare's poetry and arranging them in series of increasing complexity, we have not availed ourselves of any quantitative criterion or rule of measurement, but have considered only the philosophical concept of the spirit, which is perpetual growth upon itself, and of which every new act, since it includes its predecessors, is in this sense more rich than they. We declare in the same way, that prose is more complex than poetry, because it follows poetry, assumes and dominates, while making use of it, and that certain concepts and problems imply and presuppose certain others; we further declare that a particular equality in poetry presupposes other poetry of a more elementary quality, and that a pessimistic song oflove or sorrow, presupposes a simple love-song.
Thus, in the succession of his works as we have considered them, which might be more closely defined and particularised, we have nothing less than the ideal development of Shakespeare's spirit, deduced from the very quality of the poetical works themselves, from the physiognomy of each and from their reciprocal relations, which cannot but appear in relations which are serial and evolutionary. The comedies of love and the romantic comedies have the vagueness of a dream, followed by the hard reality of the historical plays, and from these we pass to the great tragedies, which are dream and reality and more than dream and reality. The general line followed by the poet even offered the temptation to construct his development by means of the dialectic triad of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. But we do not recommend this course, or if followed, it should only be with the view of reaching and adopting a compendious and brilliant formula, without suppressing in any way the consciousness of complexity and variety of many effective passages, much less the positive value of individual expressions.
This development does not in any casecoincide with the chronological order, because the chronological order takes the works in the order in which they are apprehensible from without, that is to say, in the order in which they have been written, acted or printed, and arranges them in a series that is qualitatively irregular, or in other words, chronicles them. Now this arrangement must not be opposed to or placed on a level with the other, as though it were the real opposed to the ideal development, for the ideal is the only truly real development, while the chronological is fictitious or arbitrary, and thus unreal; that is to say, in clear terms, it does not represent development, but simply a series or succession. To make this point yet more clear, by means of an example taken from common experience, we have all known men, who in their youth have practised or tried to practise some form of activity (music, versification, painting, philosophy, etc.) which they have afterwards abandoned for other activities, more suitable, because in them susceptible of richer development. These men, later on, in their maturity, or when old age is approaching, revert to those earlier occupations, and take delight in composing verses or music, in painting or in philosophising,returning, as they say, to their old loves. Such returns are certainly never pure and simple returns: they are always coloured to some extent by what has occurred in the interval. But they really and substantially belong to the anterior moment; the differences that we observe in them some part of that particular consideration which we have disregarded in considering the development of Shakespeare, while recommending it as a theme for special study. As we find in works which represent a return to the period of youth, echoes of the mature period, so in youthful works we sometimes find anticipations and suggestions of the mature period. This is the case with Shakespeare, not only in certain situations and characters of the historical plays, but also in certain effects of theDream,theMerchant of VeniceandRomeo and Juliet.
As the result of our argument, we cannot pass from the ideal to the extrinsic or chronological order, and therefore it could only indicate caprice, were we to conclude from the fact thatTitus Andronicusrepresents a literary Shakespeare or a theatrical imitator, that it must chronologically precedeRomeo and Juliet,or evenLove's Labour's Lost.The sameapplies to the argument that becauseCymbeline,theWinter's TaleandPericlesare composed of romantic material similar to that ofAll's Well,ofMuch Adoand ofTwelfth Night(where we find innocent maidens falsely accused and afterwards triumphant, dead women, who turn out to be alive, women dressed as men, and the like), that they must all have been written at the same time. The same holds good of the historical plays: we cannot argue from the fact that these plays represent a more complex condition of the soul than the love comedies and the romantic plays, that the historical plays are all of them to be dated later than the two groups above-mentioned; or that for the same reasons,Hamlet,the firstHamlet,could not by any means have been composed by Shakespeare in his very earliest period, about 1592, as Swinburne asserts, swears and takes his solemn oath is the case: and who knows but he is right?
In like manner, we cannot pass from the chronological to the ideal order, and since the chronology, documentary or conjectural, placesCoriolanusafterHamlet,and also afterOthello, Macbeth, LearandAnthony and Cleopatra,must not, therefore, insist upon findingin it profound thoughts, which it does not contain, or deny that it belongs to the period of the "historical plays" with which it has the closest connection. Again, although the chronology placesCymbelineand theWinter's Tale,as has been said, in the last years of Shakespeare's life, we must not insist upon finding profound meanings in those works, or talk, as some have done, of a superior ethic, a "theological ethic," to which Shakespeare is supposed at last to have attained, or dwell upon the gracious idyllic scenes to be found in them, weighing them down with non-existent mysteries, making out that the Imogens and Hermiones are beings of equal or greater poetic intensity than Cordelia, or Desdemona, or take Leontes for Othello, Jacques for Iago, whereas, in the eyes of those possessed of poetic sentiment, the former stand to the latter in the relation of little decorative studies compared to works by Raphael or Giorgione. Proof of this is to be found in the fact that the latter have become popular and live in the hearts and minds of all, while the former please us, we admire them, and pass on.
All that can be admitted, because comformable to logic and experience, is that the twoorders in general—but quite in general, and therefore with several exceptions and disagreements—big and little—correspond to one another. Indeed, if we take the usual chronological order, as fixed by philologists and to be found in all Shakespearean manuals and at the head of the plays, with little variation, we see that the first comedies of love and the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, including the romantic element, which is common to all of them, belong to the first period, between 1591 and 1592. We next find the historical plays, the comedies of love and the romantic dramas, closely associated; then begins the period of the great tragedies,Julius CaesarandAnthony and Cleopatra;then again,—after a return to anterior forms withCoriolanus, Cymbelineand theWinter's Tale,—we reach theTempest,which seems to be the last, or among the last of Shakespeare's works.
Biographers have tried to explain the last period of Shakespeare's poetry in various ways, sometimes as the period of his"becoming serene,"sometimes as that of his"poetical exhaustion"sometimes as"an attempt after new forms of art"; but with such utterances as these, we find ourselves among thoseconjectural constructions, which we have purposely avoided, if for no other reason than that so many people, who are good for nothing else, make them every day, and we do not wish to deprive them of their occupation.
Thebiographicalcharacter of that period can be interpreted, as we please, as one of repose, of gay facility, of weariness, of expectation and training for new works, and so on: but thepoeticalcharacter of the works in question, is such as we have described, and such as all see and feel that it is. It is too but a biographical conjecture, however plausible,—but certainly most graceful and pleasing—, which maintains that the magician Prospero, who breaks his wand, buries his book of enchantments, and dismisses his aerial spirit Ariel, ready to obey his every nod, symbolizes William Shakespeare himself, who henceforth renounces his art and takes leave of the imaginary world, which he had created for his own delight and in obedience to the law of his own development and where till then he had lived as sovereign.
The motives of Shakespeare's poetry having been described, there is no occasion for the further question as to the way in which he has made of them concrete poetry, in other words, as to theformhe gave to that affective content. Form and content cannot be separated from one another and considered apart. For this reason, everything remarked of Shakespeare's poetry, provided that it is something real and well observed, must be either a repetition applied to Shakespeare of the statement as to the characteristics, that is to say, the unique character of all poetry, or a description in language more or less precise, beneath the title of "formal characteristics," of what constituted the physiognomy of the sentiment or sentiments of Shakespeare, thus returning to that determination of motives, of which we have treated above. Still less can we engage in an enquiry as to thetechniqueofShakespeare, because the concept of technique is to be altogether banished from the sphere of aesthetic criticism, technique being concerned solely with the practical purposes of extrinsication, such as for poetry would be the training of a reciter's voice, or the making of the paper and the type, with which it is printed. There is no trade secret in Shakespeare, which can be communicated, no "part" that "can be taught and learned" (as has been maintained); in the best sense "technique" has value as a synonym of artistic form and in that way returns to become part of the dilemma above indicated.
Easy confirmation of this fact is to be found in any one of the many books that have been written on the "form" or on the "technique" of Shakespeare. Take for example the most intelligent of all, that by Otto Ludwig, written with much penetration of art in general and of Shakespearean art in particular, which contains the words that have been censured above. There we read, that in Shakespeare "everything is individualised, and at the same time idealised, by means of loftiness and power: every speech accords with the sentiment that has called it forth, every action with thecharacter and situation, every character and situation depends upon every other one, and both upon the individuality of the time; every speech and every situation is yet more individualised by means of time and place, even by means of natural phenomena; in such a way that each one of his plays has its own atmosphere, now clearer, now more dark."
But of what poetry that is poetry cannot this individuated idealisation be affirmed or demanded? We read in the same volume that Shakespeare "is never speculative, but always holds to experience, as Shylock to the signature on the bond." But what poetry that is poetry ever does abandon the form of the sensible for the concept or for reasoning? The "supreme truth" of every particular of the representation is praised, but this does not exclude the use of the "symbolical," that is, of particulars which are not found in nature, but mean what they are intended to mean, and "give the impression of the most persuasive reality, although, indeed precisely because, not one word of them can be said to be true to nature." With such a statement as this, the utmost attained is a confutation of the pertinacious artistic heresy as to imitation of nature. We find"Shakespearean totality" exalted, by means of which "a passion is like a common denominator of the capital sum, and the capital sum becomes in its turn the general denominator of the play." This "totality" is clearly synonymous with the lyrical character, which constitutes the poetry of every poem, including those that are called epic and dramatic, or narrative, and those in the form of dialogue. We find here too that nearly all the tragedies assume in a sense the "form of a sonata," which contains in close relation and contrast the theme, the idea of the hero and the counter-theme, and in the passages aforesaid develops the motives of the theme with "harmonious and contrapuntal characteristics" and "in the third part resumes the whole theme in a more tranquil manner, and in tragedy in a parallel minor key." But this imaginary technical excellence is nothing but the "musical character" of all art, which, like the "lyrical character," is certainly worth insisting upon as against the materially figurative and realistic interpretation of artistic representations. Analogous observations avail as to the "ideality" of "time" and "place," which Ludwig discovers in Shakespeare, and which are to be found in every poem, whererhythm and form obey rules, which are by no means arithmetical or geometrical, but solely internal and poetic. They also avail against all the other statements of Ludwig and other critics as to typicity, impersonality, constancy of characteristics, which is also variability, and the like. These are all similes or metaphors for poetry, which is unique. It is true that some of these things are noted, just with a view to differentiate Shakespeare from other poets, and therefore assume a proper individual meaning, when we take truth as being the particular Shakespearean truth, his vision of things, and the sense which he reveals for the indivisible tie between good and evil existing in every man; for "impersonality," his attitude of irresolute but energetic dialectic, and so on; but in certain other cases, it is not a question of the form of Shakespeare, but, as has been said, of his own sentiment and of his motives of inspiration.
In one case only is it possible to separate form from content and to consider it in itself; that is to say, when the rhetorical method is applied to Shakespeare or to any other artist. This consists in separating form from content and making of it a garment, whichbecomes just nothing at all without the body with which it grew up, or gives rise to pure caprice and to the illusion that anyone can appropriate and adopt it to his own purposes. In romantic parlance (for there existed a romantic manner of speech) what was known as a mixture of comic and tragic, of prose and verse, what was called the "humorous, the grotesque, the fanciful," such as apparitions of mysterious and supernatural beings, and again the method that Shakespeare employed in production of his plays, his manner of treating the conflict and determining the catastrophe, the way in which he makes his personages speak, the quality and richness of his vocabulary, were enumerated as "characteristics of his art," things that others could employ if they wished to do so, and indeed they were so employed, with the poor results that one can imagine. This is the source of the anticritical terminology employed for Shakespeare and other poets, which discovers and magnifies his "ability," his "expedients," his "conveying of the necessary information without having the air of doing so," as though he were a calculator or constructor of instruments with certain practical ends, not a divine imagination. But enough of this.
Certainly, it would be possible to take one of the plays of Shakespeare, or all of them, one after the other, and having exposed their fundamental motive (this has been done), to illustrate their aesthetic coherence and to point out the delicacy of treatment, bit by bit, scene by scene, accent by accent, word by word. InMacbeth,for instance, might be shown the robust and potent unity of the affective tragical representation, which bursts out and runs like a lyric, all of a piece, everywhere maintaining complete harmony of parts, and each scene seeming to be a strophe of the poem, from its opening, with the sudden news of Macbeth's victories, and the joy and gratitude of the old king, immediately followed by the fateful meeting with the witches and by the kindling of the voracious desire, against which Macbeth struggles; down to the coming of the king to the castle, where ambush and death await his unsuspecting confidence; then the scene darkens, the murder takes place on that dread night, and Macbeth becomes gradually involved in a crescendo of crimes, up to the moment when the terrible tension ends in furious combat and the slaying of the hero. King Duncan, when he arrives at the gate of the castle, serene andhappy as he is, in the event which has given peace to his kingdom, lingers to enjoy the delicate air and to admire the amenity of the spot. Banquo echoes him, and abandons himself to innocent pleasure, in whole-hearted confidence, repeating that delicious little poem about the martlet, which has suspended everywhere on the walls of the castle its nest and fruitful cradle,
"This guest of summer,The temple-haunting martlet,"
whose presence he has always observed, implies that the "air is delicate." In the whole of that quiet little conversation, we feel sympathy for the good old man, we shudder for what is coming and are sensible of the piteous wrong in things. When Macbeth crosses swords with Macduff, he remembers the last words of the witches' prophecy, which he believes to be favourable to himself; but when it becomes suddenly evident that Macduff it is, who shall slay him, he shudders and bursts out as before, with: "I will not fight with thee." This ejaculation reveals the violence of the shock and an instinctive movement of the will to live, which would elude its destiny. And we can pause atany part ofOthello,for instance, at the moment when Desdemona intercedes for Cassio, with the gentleness and coquetry of a woman in love, who knows that she is loved, and talks like a child, who knows it has the right to be a little spoilt; or at the moment when Desdemona is in the act of being slain, when she does not break into the complaints of innocence calumniated, nor assumes the attitude of a victim unjustly sacrificed, but like a poor creature of flesh and blood that loves life, loves love, and with childish egoism has abandoned her father for love, and now breaks out into childish supplications, trying to postpone and to retard death, at least for a few moments.
"O, banish me, my lord, but kill me not!...Kill me to-morrow; let me live to-night!...But half an hour!...But while I say one prayer!"
We could in like manner enable anyone to understand the fabulous-human character ofKing Lear,who did not at once understand it for himself, by analysing the great initial scene between Lear and his three daughters, where, at the poet's touch, the story and the fabulous personages assume at one stroke a reality thatis the very strength of our abhorrence of dry egoism cloaking itself in affectionate words and also the very strength of our tender admiration for the true goodness, which conceals itself and does not speak ("What shall Cordelia do? Love and be silent").
This insistence upon analysis and eulogy will be of special value to those who do not immediately understand of themselves, owing either to preconceptions, to habitual lack of attention, to their slight knowledge of art or to their lack of penetration. It will be of use in schools, to promote good reading, and outside them, it may assist in softening those hard heads which belong sometimes to men of letters. But it does not form part of our object in writing this treatise, nor does it appear to form part of the duty of Shakespearean criticism, for Shakespeare is one of the clearest and most evident of poets, capable of being perfectly understood by men of slight or elementary culture. We run with impatience through the many prolix, aesthetic commentaries which we already possess on his plays, as we should certainly listen with impatience to anyone who should draw our attention to the fact that the sun is shining brightly in the sky at midday,that it is gilding the country with its light, making sparkle the dew, and playing with its rays upon the leaves.
On the other hand, it is not inopportune to record that excellence in his art was long denied or contested to Shakespeare. This was the general view of his contemporaries themselves, because we now know what we are to think of the words of praise, which we find relating to him in the literature of his time. These had been diligently traced and collected by scholars, but had been more or less deliberately misunderstood, and interpreted in a sense opposed to their correct meaning, which was that of benevolent sympathy and condescending praise for a poet of popular appeal, approximately what we should employ now for a lively and pleasing writer of romantic adventures. Similar judgments reappeared in a different style and at a different time in the famous utterances of Voltaire, which vary in their intonation according to his humour: such arebarbare aimable, fou séduisant, sauvage ivre,and the like. They do not appear to have lost their weight especially in France, where a certain Monsieur Pellissier has filled a large volume with them, coming to the conclusion thatthe work of Shakespeare, "malgré tant de beautés admirables est un immense fouillis," and that it generally seems to be, "celle d'un écolier, d'un écolier génial, qui n'ayant ni expérience, ni mesure, ni tact, gaspille prématuré son génie abortif." Finally (and this has greater weight), Jusserand, a learned historian of English literature, treating of Shakespeare with great display of erudition, presents him as "un fidèle serviteur" of his theatrical public, and speaks of his "défauts énormes." Chateaubriand, in his essay of 1801, playing the Voltaire in his turn, attributed to him "le génie," while he denied to him "l'art," the observance of the "règles" and "genres," which are "nés de la nature même"; but later he recognises that he was wrong to "mesurer Shakespeare avec la lunette classique." Here he put his finger on the fundamental mistake of that sort of criticism, which judges art, not by its intrinsic qualities, but by comparison with other works of art, which are taken as models. The same mistake was renewed, when French tragedy was not the model, but the art of realistic modern drama and fiction. The principal document in support of this is Tolstoi's book, where at every word or gesture ofShakespeare's characters, he exclaims that men do not speak thus, that is to say, the men who are not man in universal, but the men of Tolstoi's romances, though these latter happen to be far nearer to the characters of Shakespeare than their great, but unreasonable and quite uncritical author suspected. Tolstoi arrives at the point of preferring the popular and unpoetical playKing Lear,to theKing Learof Shakespeare, because there is more logic in the conduct of the plot in the former, thus showing that he prefers minute prosaic details to sublime poetry.
An attenuated form of these views as to the lack of art in Shakespeare is the theory maintained better by Rümelin than by others, to the effect that the characters in Shakespeare are worth a great deal more than the action or plots, which are disconnected, intermittent, contradictory and without any feeling for verisimilitude. He also holds that Shakespeare works on each scene, without having the power of visualising the preceding scene, or the one that is to follow, and also that the characters themselves do not respect the truth of dialogue and of the drama, in their manner of speech, which is always fiery, imaginative and splendid.Finally, it might be said of him that he composes beautiful music for libretti, which are more or less ill constructed. Now if this theory had for its object to assert, though with emphasis and exaggeration, that in a poetical work the material part of the story, the web of events, does not count, and that the only thing of importance is the soul that circulates within it, just as in a picture, it is not the material side of the things painted (which is called by critics of painting "the literary element," or that which taken in itself is external and without importance), but the rhythm of the lines and of the colours, what he maintained would be correct, if only as a reaction. Coleridge has already noted the independence of the dramatic interest from the intrigue and quality of the story, which in the Shakespearean drama, was obtained from the best known and commonest sources. But the object with which this theory was conceived by Rümelin and with which it is generally maintained, has for its object to establish a dualism or contradiction in the art of Shakespeare, by proving him to be "strong" in one domain of the spirit and "weak" in another, where strength in both is "necessary," in order to produce a perfect work.
We are bound to deny with firmness this assumption: we refuse to admit the existence of any such dualism and contradiction, because the distinction between characters and actions, between style and dialogue and style and work, is arbitrary, scholastic and rhetorical. There is in Shakespeare one poetical stream, and it is impossible to set its waters against one another—characters against actions, and the like. So true is this, that save in cold blood, one does not notice his so-called contradictions, omissions and improbabilities, that is to say, when we leave the poetical condition of the spirit and begin to examine what we have read, as though it were the report of an occurrence. Nor is the imputation cast upon the speech of Shakespeare's characters, which is perfectly consonant with the nature of the poems, admissible. Hence from the lips of Macbeth and of Lady Macbeth, of Othello and of Lear, came true and proper lyrics. These are not interruptions and dissonances in the play, but motions and upliftings of the play itself; they are not the superposition of one life upon another, but the outpouring of that life, which is continued in the central motive. These witticisms, conceits and misunderstandings inRomeo and Juliet,which have so often been blamed, are to be explained, at least in great measure, in a natural way, as the character of the play, as the comedy, which precedes and imparts its colour to the tragedy, and is brilliant with the fashionable and gallant speech of the day.
In making the foregoing statement, we do not wish to deny that in the drama of Shakespeare are to be found (besides historical, geographical, and chronological errors, which are indifferent to poetry but not necessary and for that reason avoidable or to be avoided) words and phrases, and sometimes entire scenes, which are not justifiable, save for theatrical reasons. We do not know to what extent they had his assent and to what extent they are due to the very confused tradition, under the influence of which the text of his works has descended to us. We also do not wish to deny that he was guilty of little over-sights and contradictions, and that he was perhaps generally negligent. But it is important in any case to understand and bear in mind the psychological reasons for this negligence, inspired with that sort of indifference and contempt for the easy perfecting of certain details, of those engaged upon works of greatmagnitude and importance. Giambattista Vico, a mighty spirit who resembles Shakespeare, both in his full, keen sense of life and in the adventures of his work and of his fame, was also apt frequently to overlook details and to make slight mistakes, and was convinced "that diligence must lose itself in arguments, which have anything of greatness in them, because it is a minute, and because minute a tardy virtue." Thus he openly vindicated the right of rising to the level of heroic fury, which will not brook delay from small and secondary matters.
As Vico was nevertheless most accurate in essentials, never sparing himself the most lengthy meditations to sound the bottom of his thoughts, so it is impossible to think that Shakespeare did not give the best and greatest part of himself to his plays, that he was not continually intent upon observing, reflecting comparing, examining his own feelings, seeking out and weighing his expressions, collecting and valuing the impressions of the public and of his colleagues in art, in fact, upon the study of his art. The precision, the delicacy, the gradations, the shading of his representations, are an irrefragable proof of this. The sense of classic form is often denied to him, even by hisadmirers, that is to say, of a partial and old-fashioned ideal of classical form, consisting of certain external regularities. But he was a classic, because he possessed the strength that is sure of itself, which does not exert itself, nor proceed in a series of paroxysmal leaps, but carries in itself its own moderation and serenity. He had that taste which is proper to genius and commensurate with it, because genius without taste is an abstraction to be found only in the pages of treatises. The various passages, where he chances to find an opportunity for theorizing on art, show that he had profoundly meditated the art he practised. In one of the celebrated passages of theDream,he makes Theseus say,
"The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;And as imagination bodies forthThe forms of things unknown, the poet's penTurns them to shape, and gives to airy nothingA local habitation and a name."
And that a powerful imagination, if it is affected by some joy, imagines someone as the bringer of that joy, and if it imagine some nocturnal terror, it changes a bush into a wild beast withgreat facility. That is to say, he shows himself conscious of the creative virtue of poetry and of its origin in the feelings, which it changes into persons, endowed with ethereal sentiment. But in the equally celebrated passage ofHamlet,he dwells upon the other aspect of artistic creation, upon its universality, and therefore upon its calm and harmony. What Hamlet chiefly insists upon in his colloquy with the players, is "moderation," "for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness." To declare Shakespeare to be a representative of the frenzied and convulsed style in poetry, as has been done several times, is to utter just the reverse of the truth. In this respect, it is well to read the contemporary dramatists, with a view to measuring the difference, indeed the abyss between them. In the famousSpanish Tragedyof Kyd, there is a scene (perhaps due to another hand) in which Hieronymus asks a painter to paint for him the assassin of his own son, and cries out:
"There you may show a passion, there you may show a passion....Make me rave, make me cry, make me mad,Make me well again, make me curse hell,Invocate, and in the end leave meIn a trance, and so forth."
The same character is attacked by doubt and asks with anxiety: "Can this be done?" and the painter replies: "Yes, Sir."
Such was not the method of Shakespeare, who would have made the painter reply, not with a yes, but with a yes and a no together.
His art, then, was neither defective nor vitiated in any part of its own constitutive character, although certain works are obviously weak and certain parts of other works, in the vast mass that goes under his name. Such youthful plays asLove's Labour's Lost, The Two Gentlemen,theComedy of Errors,are not notable, save for a certain ease and grace, only manifesting in certain places the trace of his profound spirit. The "historical plays," are as we have already shown, fragmentary and do not form complete poems animated with a single breath of passion. Some of them, and especially the first part ofHenry VI,have about them an arid quality and are loosely anecdotal; in others, such asHenry IVandHenry V,is evident the desire to stimulate patriotic feelings, and they are further burdened with scenesof a purely informative nature.Coriolanustoo, which was apparently composed later and is derived from a different source, also lacks complete internal justification, for it consists of a study of characters.Timon(assuming that it was his) is developed in a mechanical manner, although it is full of social and ethical observations and possesses rhetorical fervour.Cymbelineand theWinter's Talecontain lovely scenes, but are not as a whole works of the first order; the idyllic and romantic Shakespeare appears in them to have rather declined in comparison to the author of the earlier plays of the same sort, inspired with a very different vigour.Measure for Measurecontains sentiments and personages that are profoundly Shakespearean, as the protagonist Angelo, the meter out of inexorable justice, so sure of his own virtue, who yields to the first sensual temptation that occurs, in Claudius, who wishes and does not wish to die, and in the Barnadine already mentioned. This play, which oscillates between the tragic and the comic, and has a happy ending, instead of forming a drama of the sarcastic-sorrowful-horrible sort, fails to persuade us that it should have been thus developed and thus ended. There is somethingof the composite in the structure of the wonderfulMerchant of Venice,and certain of the scenes ofTroilus and Cressida,such as those of the speeches of Ulysses and those on the other side of Hector and Troilus, seem to be echoes or even entire pieces taken from historical plays and transported with ironic intention into comedy. Points of this sort are to be found even in the great tragedies. InLear,for instance, the adventures of Gloucester and his son are not completely satisfactory, grafted as they are upon those of the king and his daughters, either because they introduce too realistic an element into a play with an imaginary theme, or because they create a heavy parallelism, much praised by an Italian critic, who has attempted to expressKing Learin a geometrical form; but the origin for this parallelism may perhaps be really due to the need for theatrical variety, complication and suspense, rather than to any moral purpose of emphasising horror at ingratitude. The clown, who accompanies the king, abounds in phrases, which are not all of them in place and significant. But if to set about picking holes in the beauties of Shakespeare's plays has seemed to us a superfluous and tiresome occupation, such too, fromanother point of view and in addition pedantic and irreverent, seems to be the investigation of defects that we observe in them; they are opaque points, which the eye does not observe in the splendour of such a sun.
Another judgment which also has vogue refers to a constitutive or general defect in Shakespeare's poetry, a certain limit or barrier in it, a narrowness, albeit an ample and a rich narrowness. We must distinguish two forms of this judgment, the first of which might be represented by the epigrams of Platen, who, while recognising Shakespeare's power to move the heart and the strength of his characterisation, declared that "so much truth is a fatal gift," and that Shakespeare draws so incisively, only because he cannot veil his personages in grace and beauty. He greatly admired even what is painful in Shakespeare, looking upon it as beautiful, and was full of admiration for his comical figures, such as Falstaff and Shylock, "an incomparable couple"; but he denied to Shakespeare true tragic power, which "must open the deepest of wounds and then heal them." The second of these forms is the commonest, and Mazzini may stand as its representative. He maintained that Shakespearewas a poet of the real, not of the ideal, of the isolated individual, not of society; that he was not dominated by the thought of duty and responsibility towards mankind, as expressed in politics and history, that his was a voice rather of the Middle Ages than of modern times, which found their origin in Schiller, the poet of humanity and Providence.
Even Harris's book concludes with a series of reservations: he says that Shakespeare was neither a philosopher nor a sage; that he never conceived a personage as contesting and combating his own time; that he had only a vague idea of the spirit by which man is led to new and lofty ideals in every historical period; that he was unable to understand a Christ or a Mahomet; that instead of studying, he ridiculed Puritanism and so remained shut up in the Renaissance, and that for these reasons, in spite ofHamlet;he does not belong to the modern world, that the best of a Wordsworth or of a Tolstoi is outside him, and so on. We may perfectly admit all this and it may even be of use in putting a curb upon such hyperbole and such superlatives as those of Coleridge, to the effect that Shakespeare wasanér myriónous,the myriad-minded man (although even thismyriad-mindedness may seem to be but a very ample narrowness, if myriads be taken as a finite number).
Shakespeare could never have desired to possess the ideal of beauty, which visited the soul of the hirsute and unfortunate Platen, the social or humanitarian ideals of the Schillers and Tourgueneffs. But he had no need whatever of these things to attain the infinite, which every poet attains, reaching the centre of the circle from any point of the periphery. For this reason, no poet, whatever the historical period at which he was born and by which he is limited, is the poet of only one historical epoch. Shakespeare formed himself during the period of the Renaissance, which he surpasses, not with his practical personality, but with his poetry. There is nothing, then, for these limiters to do, save to manifest their dissatisfaction with poetry itself, which is always limited-unlimited. This, I think, was also the case with Emerson, who lamented that Shakespeare (whom he nevertheless placed in the good company of Homer and of Dante) "rested in the beauty of things and never took the step of investigating the virtue that resides in symbols," which seemed to be inevitable for sucha genius, and that "he converted the elements awaiting his commands," into a diversion, and gave "half truths to half men": whereas, according to Emerson, the entire truth for entire men could only be given by a personage whom the world still awaits. To Emerson, this personage seemed most attractive, but to others he may possibly perhaps seem as little amiable as Antichrist: he called him "the poet-priest."
Criticism of Shakespeare, like every criticism, has followed and expressed the progress and alternations of the philosophy of art, or aesthetic; it has been strong or weak, profound or superficial, well-balanced or one-sided, according to the doctrines that have there been realised. Their history would form an excellent History of Aesthetic, because the fame of Shakespeare became widespread, concurrently with the spread of aesthetic theory, with its liberation from external norms and concepts, and its penetration to the heart of its subject. Shakespeare's poetry in its turn stimulated this deepening of the theory of aesthetic, by its revelation of a poetic world, for emotion and admiration, in appearance at least, very different from what had previously passed as its sole and perfect example. But since we are occupied at the present moment with Shakespeare and not with aesthetic theory, we shall touchonly upon certain points of this criticism, in order the more firmly to establish by indirect proof the judgment expressed above, and to indicate certain obstacles, which the student of Shakespeare will meet with in critical literature relating to that poet. Our description and definition of them may render avoidable certain of the most common errors.
Among these must be included (not in the seat of criticism, but in the entrance-hall and at the gates) what may be calledexclamatorycriticism, which instead of understanding a poet in his particularity, his finite-infinity, drowns him beneath a flood of superlatives. This is the method employed by English writers towards Shakespeare (I am bound to admit that the Italians do the same as regards Dante). An example of this habit, selected from innumerable others, is Swinburne's book, from which we learn that "it would be better that the world should lose all the books it contains rather than the plays of Shakespeare"; that Shakespeare is "the supreme creator of men"; that he "stands alone," and at the most might admit "Homer on his right and Dante on his left hand"; then, as to individual plays, we learn that the trilogy ofHenry IV-Vsufficesto reveal him as "the greatest playwright of the world," that theDreamstands "without and above any possible or imaginable criticism." Thus he continues, puffing out his cheeks to find hyperboles, which themselves finally turn out to be inferior to hyperbolic requirements. Sometimes such exclamations not only border on the ridiculous, but fall right into it, as is the case with Carlyle, who stood in perplexity before the hypothetical dilemma, as to whether England could better afford to lose "the empire of India or Shakespeare." Victor Hugo, more generous, and an admirer of the ocean, constituted a series ofhommes océans,where the tragic poet of Albion found a place alongside of Aeschylus, Dante, Michael-Angelo, Isaiah and Juvenal.
Another style of criticism,by imagesto be found in works that are estimable in other respects, is somewhat akin to this criticism without criticism, besides being far more justifiable, because, if it does not explain, it tries at least to give, as though in a poetical translation, a synthetic impression of Shakespeare's art and of the physiognomy of his various works. It describes the works of Shakespeare by means of landscapes and other pictures, as Herderand other writers of theSturm and Drangperiod delighted in doing. Coleridge too did likewise and Hazlitt even more often, as may be shown by an extract from the letter of a certain Miss Florence O'Brien, onKing Lear,to be found in well-nigh all books that deal with this tragedy. She begins: "This play is like a tempestuous night: the first scene is like a wild sunset, grandiose and terrible, with gusts of wind and rumblings of thunder, which announce the imminence of the hurricane: then comes a furious tempest of madness and folly, through which we see darkly the monstrous and unnatural figures of Goneril and Regan"; et cetera. The danger of such poetical variations is that of superimposing one art on another, and of leading astray or of distracting the attention from the genuine features of the original to be enjoyed and understood, in the attempt to render its effect.
Let us pass overbiographical-aestheticcriticism: its fundamental error and the arbitrary judgments with which it disturbs both biography and the criticism of art have already been sufficiently illustrated; and let us also pass over theaestheticcriticism ofphilologists,who imagine themselves to be interpreting andjudging poetry, when they are talking mere philology and uttering ineptitudes prepared with infinite pains. Being confined to citing but one example of their method, I would select for that purpose Furnivall's introduction to theLeopold Shakespeare.I fail to understand why this introduction is so highly esteemed and reverenced. Furnivall too, when he contrives not to lose himself in exclamations and attempts poetry, ("who could praise Falstaff sufficiently?" "who could fail to love Percy?" "the countess mother inAll's Wellresembles one of Titian's old ladies;" etc.), amuses himself by establishing links between the plays. These he discovers in the situations, in the action and elsewhere, regarding the works externally and from a general point of view. Thus he discovers a connection betweenJulius CaesarandHamlet,in the repetition of the name of "Caesar," which is found thrice in the latter play, in the mouth of Horatio, of Polonius and of Hamlet, on the occasion of both seeing a ghost, in Hamlet's feeling that he must avenge his father like Antonius Caesar, and in the likeness of character between Brutus and Hamlet's father. Thus he attains to the ridiculous, as Carlyle and Swinburne by anotherroute, when, for instance, he affirms that "in a certain sense Hotspur (the fiery Hotspur ofHenry IV) is Kate (that is to say, the shrew in theTaming of the Shrew,) become a man and bearing armour!"
We shall also not dwell uponrhetoricalcriticism, which employs the method of "styles." This method, after having rejected Shakespeare, because he does not pay attention to the different styles of writing (French criticism), and having then proceeded to reconcile him with styles as explained by Aristotle in hisPoetics,when these are well understood (Lessing), having sung his praises as the "genius of the drama," the "Homer of dramatic style" (Gervinus), is still seeking for what is "his alone and individually" in "the treatment" of the "drama." This it will never find, because such a thing as a "dramatic style" does not exist in the world of poetry: what does exist is simply and solely "poetry." These questions of literary style are now rather out of date: they survive rather in the lazy repetition of words and forms than in actual substance. It is certainly surprising to know that there still exist persons who examine what are called the "historical plays," and because they are"historical," compare them with history books, blaming the poet for not having given to Caesar the part that should have been his inJulius Caesar,and quoting in support of their argument (like Brandes) the histories of Mommsen and of Boissier. And there are also fossils who discuss in the language of the sixteenth century, verisimilitude, incongruity or multiplicity of plot, congruity or reverse of characters, crudeness of expression, and observation or failure to observe by Shakespeare the rules of dramatic composition. To German criticism of the speculative period and to the vast monographs that it produced upon Shakespeare must be given the credit of having tried to discover and determine thesoulof Shakespeare's poetry. We must also admit, as a general quality of scientific German books on literature, even when these are of the heaviest and most full of mistakes, that they do make us feel the presence of problems not yet solved, whereas other books, more easy to read, better written and perhaps less full of mistakes, are less fruitful of thoughts that arise by repercussion or reaction. Unfortunately, these German writers imagined that soul to reside in a sort ofphilosophical, moral, political and historicalteaching,upon which Shakespeare was supposed to have woven his plays. This was a flagrant offence against all sense of poetry, for not only did they forget the poetical in favour of the non-poetical; and attributed equal value to all of Shakespeare's widely differing works, whatever their real value, but also, since this non-poetical teaching had no existence, they set about creating it on their own account by means of various subtleties, and of a sort of allegorical exegesis. Thus in Ulrici, Gervinus, Kreyssig, Vischer and others like them, we read with astonishment, that inRichard III(to take a historical play) Shakespeare wished to impart "an immortal doctrine upon the divine right of kings and their intangibility," and at the same time to give warning that it does not suffice a king to be conscious of his right divine, unless he be prepared to maintain it with force against force. These writers have an almost prophetic vision that Germany will need this lesson in the case of its romantic king, Frederick William IV of Prussia! In theTempestagain (to take an imaginative play) Shakespeare is supposed by them to have desired to give his opinion upon the great question, common to our time and his, as to the right ofEuropeans to colonise and the need of subjecting the native savage by means of whip and sword, free of any scruple dictated by false sentiment. Finally (to take a last example from the great tragedies), they held that the ideal teaching ofOthellois that punishment awaits unequal marriages, marriage between persons of different race, or different social condition, or of different age; and that Desdemona deserved her cruel fate, for she was weighed down with sin, having disobeyed her old father, imprudently and over-warmly supported the cause of Cassio, and shown negligence and lack of care in handling the famous handkerchief, which she let fall at her feet! We can only reply to all this in the witty words of Riimelin,à proposof such incredible interpretations of Shakespeare's catastrophes, to the effect that this "dramatic justice," so dear to German aestheticians, is "like Draco's sanguinary code, which decreed a single penalty for all misdeeds: death."
Numberless are the shocks that the artistic consciousness receives from such a method as this. Gervinus, who professed "an even firmer belief in Shakespeare's infallibility in matters of morality than in his lack of aestheticdefects," is indignant with readers disposed to find hard and cruel Prince Henry's repulse on coming to the throne, of his old friend Falstaff, the companion of his merry adventures. He gravely declares that this proves modern readers to be "far inferior both to Prince Henry and to Shakespeare in nobility and ethical fervour"; whereas it is evident that the poor readers are right, because we have to deal here with poetical images, not with practical and moral acts, and readers justly feel that Shakespeare was on this occasion obeying certain ends outside the province of art. Falstaff is sympathetic to every reader: even Gervinus does not dare to declare him antipathetic, but sets about finding plausible explanations for this illicit attractiveness. He produces three: the artistic perfection of the representation, the logical perfection of the type, and the struggle between the will for pleasure that always stimulates Falstaff, and his old age and his paunch, which hinder or make him impotent, and according to Gervinus, are bestowed upon him, in order to appease or mitigate our shocked sense of ethical severity. But the only and obvious explanation of Falstaff's sympathetic attractiveness is the sympathy which the poet himself feltin his genial way for him as a human force. In like manner, what we have held to be an error of composition, such as the story of Gloucester and his sons forming a parallel with that of Lear, is held to be a miracle by the professors aforesaid, because, as says Ulrici, the poet wished to teach us that "moral corruption is not isolated, but diffused among the most noble families, representative of all the others." Vischer holds a similar view, to the effect that Shakespeare "intended to show that, if impiety is widely diffused, society becomes impossible, and the world rocks to its foundation; but one instance of this did not suffice, so he had to accumulate the most terrifying confirmation of the fact."
These professors are also unanimous in rejecting the interpretation of the words: "He has no sons!" uttered by Macduff, when he learns that Macbeth has caused his wife and little son to be murdered, as they are understood by the ingenuous reader, namely, that Macduff thus expresses his rage at not being able to take an equal vengeance upon Macbeth, by slaying his sons. Their reason for this is that such a thing would be unworthy of so upright and honourable a man as Macduff. Asthough such honourable men as Macduff are not subject to the impulse of anger and capable of at least momentary blindness; as though the eyes, even of Manzoni's Father Christopher did not sometimes blaze "with a sudden vivacity," though he kept them as a rule fixed on the ground, as if (in the word of the author), they were two queer-tempered horses, driven by a coachman, whom they know to be their master, yet they will nevertheless indulge in an occasional frolic, for which they immediately atone with a good pull on the bit.
That is what happens to Macduff, who assumes possession of himself when he hears Malcolm's words that immediately follow. "Dispute it like a man,"—and says: "I shall do so; but I must also feel it like a man."
Quitting psychology and returning to poetry, nothing short of Malcolm's savage outburst can express his torment, in the climax of the dialogue. Were Shakespeare himself to come forward and declare that he meant what those insipid, moralising professors declare that he meant, Shakespeare would be wrong, and whoever said that he was wrong, would be in better accordance with his genius than he himself, forhe was a genius; only upon condition of remaining true to the logic of poetry.
We could fill a large volume with the misinterpretations of moralising and philosophising Shakespearean critics, but it is hoped that having here demonstrated the absurdity of the principle, readers should be able to recognise it for themselves, in its sources and methods of approach.
But it would need a series of volumes to catalogue all the absurdities of another form of Shakespearean criticism, which differs from the preceding, in being in full flower and vigour to-day: we refer toobjectivisticcriticism. The reason for this is that few are yet fully aware that every kind and example of art is only successful to the extent that it is irradiated with a sentiment, which determines and controls it in all its parts. This used to be denied of certain forms of poetry, particularly of the dramatic; hence the false, but extremely logical deduction, of Leopardi, that the dramatic was the lowest and least noble kind of poetry, because it was the most remote and alien from pure form, which is the lyric. Shakespeare's objectivity of "representation" and the perfect "reality" of his characters, which live theirown lives independently are often praised. This can be said in a certain sense, but must not be taken literally, for it is metaphorical; because, when we would reach and handle those images of the poet's sentiment, there may not be an "explosion" (as happened when Faust threw himself upon the phantom of Helen), but in any case they will lose their shape, fall into shreds and vanish before our eyes. In their place will appear an infinite number of insoluble questions as to the manner of understanding or reestablishing their solidity and coherence. What is known as theHamlet-Litteraturis the most appalling of all these manifestations and it is daily on the increase. Historians, psychologists, lovers of amorous adventures, gossips, police-spies, criminologists investigate the character, the intentions, the thoughts, the affections, the temperament, the previous life, the tricks they played, the secrets they hid, their family and social relations, and so on, and crowd, without any real claim to do so, round the "characters of Shakespeare," detaching them from the creative centre of the play and transferring them into a pretended objective field, as though they were made of flesh and blood.
Among those inclined to such realistic and antipoetical investigation, some there are, who see in Hamlet a pleasure-seeker, called to the achievement of an undertaking beyond his powers; others find in him a scrupulous person, who struggles between the call to vengeance and his better moral conscience, or one who studies vengeance, but without staining his conscience. For others again, he is an artistic genius, inclined to contemplation, but ill-adapted to action, or a partial genius not adapted to artistic creation, or a pure soul, or an impure and diseased soul, or a decadent, or a sexual psychopath, obsessed with lust and incest. We find others able to discover that he inherited the characteristics of a father, who was tyrannical, vicious and a bad husband, and of an uncle possessed of a lofty soul and capacity for governing a kingdom. Finally, some have even suspected him of not being a man, but a woman, daughter of the king, disguised as a man, and for that reason and for no other, rejecting the beautiful Ophelia and seeking Horatio, with whom she (Hamlet) was secretly in love. And what kind of maiden was Ophelia? Was she naïve and innocent, or was she not rather a malicious little court lady? Perhaps she toohad her secret, which would explain her strange relations with Hamlet. An English enquirer has arrived at the conclusion that Ophelia was not chaste, that she had given birth to a baby, and what is more, to a baby whose father was not Hamlet, and that this was the reason why Hamlet advised her to get her to a nunnery, and the priest refused to give her body Christian burial. Her brother, Laertes, had lived in Paris, and having there learned French customs, was for this reason so ready to accept the advice of the king to use a poisoned sword. According to some, Macbeth was so powerfully restrained by his own conscience, that, save for his wife, he would never have satisfied his ambition and slain King Duncan. But according to others, he had meditated regicide for some time and had deferred his design, because he hoped to succeed in a legitimate manner, were the king to die without an heir. But he broke truce, when the king contemplated bestowing upon his son the title of Duke of Cumberland, that is to say, Crown Prince. For many, Lady Macbeth is a cold, pitiless woman, but for others she is tender and sweet by nature; for some, she is madly in love with her husband, for others, madly incensed withhim, because, judging by his undoubted military prowess, she had at first believed him to possess the great soul of a conqueror, and then, when she found him vile with human mildness, sensible of scruples and remorse perturbed at the results of his own deeds, to the extent of experiencing hallucinations and behaving rashly, she is consumed with scorn and dies of a broken heart, on the fall of that idol and which she had aspired, the perfect criminal.
Othello has been by some identified with a Moor, a Berber, a Mauritanian, for others he is without doubt a bestial negro, boiling with African blood. Iago is generally characterised as amoral and Machiavellian, a true Italian; but others deem him worthy the name of "honest Iago," because he was good, amiable, serviceable in all things—when his personal ambition was not at stake.
By some, Desdemona has been held to be desirable as a wife (others, on the other hand, would be ready to marry Cordelia or Ophelia, others Imogen or Hermione, others the nun Isabel, and finally there are some who would prefer Portia, as "an ideal woman," and a "perfect wife"); but as regards this, there are some who have divined the secret tendencies ofDesdemona and have had no hesitation in defining her as "a virtual courtesan."
Then again: what was the difference of age between Othello and Desdemona? Had Othello seen the wonderful things existing in other countries of which he speaks, or had he imagined them, or had he been told of them? Perhaps he had enjoyed the wife of Iago, which would explain the regard he has for the husband?
Brutus, until lately, passed for an idealist tormented with ideals; but more accurate investigations have revealed him to be a hypocrite in the Puritan manner, who, by means of repeated lies, ends by himself believing the noble motives to be found on his lips; however, things turn out badly and he finally receives the punishment he deserves.
Falstaff's religious origin has been discovered: he was a Lollard, and thus a declared eudemonist, convinced of the nullity of the world and of the inutility of life, living from minute to minute. He is not really a liar and a boaster, but an imaginative person; nor is he vile, save in appearance; he should be regarded rather as an opportunist.
We read these and an infinity of other notless astonishing statements in the volumes, opuscules and articles which are published every year upon the characters of Shakespeare. The effect of such discussions, even where most sensibly written, is never to clear up or decide anything, but on the contrary, to darken what appeared perfectly certain, and gave no reason for any difficulty, to render uncertain what was clearly determined. Such works give rise further to the doubt that Shakespeare was perhaps so inexpert a writer as not to be able to represent his own conceptions, nor express his own thoughts.
But when we do not allow ourselves to be caught in the meshes of these fictitious problems, of which we indicated theproton pseudos,when we resolutely banish them from the mind, and read and reread Shakespeare's plays without more ado, everything remains or becomes clear again, everything, that is to say, which should (as is natural) be clear for the ends of poetry, in a poetical work. As Grillparzer remarked in his time, that very Hamlet, whom Goethe took such trouble to explain psychologically, and over whom so many hundreds of interpreters have so diligently toiled, "is understood with perfect ease by the tailor or thebootmaker sitting in the gallery, who understands the whole of the play by raising his own feelings to its level."