WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

[1]Tempestuous seas and haunting fear which had kept her waking for days now gave place to a feeling of security: deep in the forest and removed from care and noise, Olympia clasped her lover to her breast and fell into sleep as deep as that of bears and dormice.

[2]As two fair generous leopards issuing simultaneouly from the slips return full of shame and repentance as though weighed down by the disgrace of having vainly pursued the lusty goats or stags which had tempted them to the chase: So returned the two damsels sighing when they saw the Pagan was saved.

[3]Wherever Julia Gonzaga sets her foot or turns her serene gaze, not only does she excel all in beauty but compels adoration like a Goddess.

[4]And the painters who lived in former days as well as those still with us:—Leonardo, A. Mantegna, Gian Bellino, the two Dossi and Michael who sculptures and portrays with more than mortal skill.

[5]Oh powerful contrast in the breast of youth aflame with desire for valorous renown and the passion of love; nor can one say which is the more delectable, since each lays claim alternately to superiority.

[6]An aged man goes to encounter the Duke along the bright vestibule of that fortunate house: the sage is clad in red cloak and white robe, the former white as milk, the latter vermilion, vivid as a rose. His hair is white and his chin snowy with the thick beard flowing over his chest.

[7]Olympia's loveliness was of rarest excellence: not only was she fair of face with forehead, eyes, cheeks glowing amidst the hair which waved over her shoulders: all else was perfection.

[8]Medoro's cheek showed white and red in the fresh flourish of youth.

[9]The novel feeling of fear caused her heart to tremble, doubly terrified.

[10]As she saw them enter without joyous exultation over so great a victory, with no announcement or any direct word of it, she was aware her Brandimarte had been slain.

[11]On the return of the Paladin, the cry arose more loudly and the wail redoubled.

From these last words, there can be no difficulty in seeing what must be our opinion as to the confrontations and comparative judgments instituted between Ariosto and Pulci or Boiardo, and even Cieco da Ferrara, and all the other Italian poets of chivalry. These have sometimes been extended so as to include poetical humourists, such as Folengo and Rabelais, or burlesque writers like Berni, Tassoni, Forteguerri, or neo-epical poets, like Tasso and Camoens, and finally to Cervantes, that direct and fully conscious ironist of chivalry. This is as perfectly admissible as it is natural that classes of "poems of chivalry" or "narrative poems" or "romances," should be formed, when once rhetoricians and writers of treatises have invented the genus and that these should be disposed in a series under such headings, thus forming a sort of artificial history, with no real foundation beyond the accidents of certain abstract literary forms, which are really representative of certain social tendencies and institutions. And it is equally, indeed moreadmissible, because relating to more nearly connected problems, that these documents afforded by poems of chivalry should be made use of among other documents in the investigation of the gradual dissolution of the ideal of chivalry in the first period of modern society. Salvemini has not neglected to do this in a temperate manner, in his monograph relating to "knightly dignity" in the commune of Florence. But the aesthetic judgment, which they strive to deduce from these comparisons, is inadmissible and illegitimate: when for instance they bestow the palm on this or that poet for having better observed than others the "genus" or a particular "species" and "variety" of the genus; or because chivalry or anti-chivalry has been better represented by one than by another. We can explain the fact that De Sanctis was sometimes entangled in this sociological net, in spite of his exquisite sense of individuality and poetry, when we consider the condition of studies in his time and his philosophical origins; but it is none the less true that the judgments which he pronounced upon this matter, deviate from true and proper aesthetic criticism, and carry with them the bad effects of every deviation.

Having ourselves refused to be among those whose feet are caught in the insidious net of Caligorante, we shall have nothing further to say as to comparisons with Ariosto, because the poet of theFuriosohas always come out of those maladroit confrontations and the arbitrary judgments of merit which result from them, crowned above all others with the sign of victory, or at least unconquered by any other, and admitting but a very few as his equals. The preference accorded by romantic German men of letters to Boiardo (recently revived to some extent in Italy, by Panzini) belongs rather to the domain of anecdote than to the history of criticism: Boiardo is looked upon by them as the poet of grand heroic dreams, while Ariosto is a mere citizen poet; or Boiardo again is lauded for having better represented the logical form of the Italian poem of chivalry, prescribed according to a chemical combination drawn up in the philological laboratory of the anti-Ariostesque Professor Rajna, who is in other respects a most worthy and well-deserving person. But there is no denying that the peculiar beauty of Ariosto has often injured Boiardo, Pulci, Tasso and other poets, who have been illegitimately compared withhim; and therefore, without talking of Tasso—who has now won his case, although he numbered a Galilei among the ranks of those who under-estimated him when making the above-mentioned confrontation,—it will not be inopportune to cast a rapid glance upon Pulci and Boiardo.

Looking at Pulci in Pulci and not at Ariosto, since to place one physiognomy on the top of another is not a good way of seeing, what do we find? What is theMorgante?It is above all a whimsicality, one of those works, born of a caprice or a bet, to which the author neither devotes himself after the necessary previous meditations, nor works at with the scrupulosity of the artist, who expends his powers and employs his utmost endeavour to do the best he can everywhere. But the occasion or the inspiration is never the substance of a work, which on the contrary always consists of what the author really brings to it in the course of his labour; and the mention of the occasional origin of theMorganteonly avails here to account for its ill-digested and undoubtedly chaotic nature. Nor is it to the purpose to recall what certainly seems to have been Pulci's intention, namely, to satisfy in hisown way a wish of the pious Lucrezia Tornabuoni, by composing or re-writing a Christian poem of chivalry, for this in its turn only explains certain superficialities and extrinsicalities, such as the general plan of the poem and the parts of it possessing religious tone, which are successful to the extent that they could be successful with such a brain as Pulci's. A commencement will have been made towards a proper understanding of the substance of theMorgante,its proper and intrinsic inspiration, by referring it first to the curiosity with which educated Florentine citizens observed and reproduced the customs and the psychology of the people of the city and the surrounding districts, productive of the poetry of Politian, of Lorenzo and of Pulci himself, author of theBeca di Dicomano,each with its various popular appeal. That inspiration contains something both of the sympathetic and of the ironical, as we observe in all poetry based upon popular themes and use of dialect, in the German romanticLiederandBalladenand in the dialect literature of the Italy of to-day (one feels inclined to call theMorgante"dialect" and not "Italian"): and in Pulci there vibrated a sympathetic-ironic chord, peculiar to himself andtherefore naturally not exactly the same as in Lorenzo, or still less in Politian. But it did not vibrate pure and clear, being prevented from doing so, not so much owing to initial eccentricity and to the intention above-mentioned, as to the accumulation of other inspirations, arising in the fertile spirit of Pulci. For Pulci had in mind, in addition to the reconstruction of a sympathetic-ironic popular poem of the popular story-tellers, something that might be called a "Picaresque romance," understanding thereby not only tales of the sort to be found in Spanish literature, but also certain other tales of Boccaccio and a great part of Folengo'sBaldus.Picaresque romance asked in its turn sympathy and irony, but of a different sort to the preceding, no longer sympathy for popular ingenuity, but for cleverness, trickiness, for an irony, which should no longer be simply that of superior culture, but also of superior morality; and this too was in some measure and in his own way in Pulci; but he often spoilt this disposition of mind by inadvertently passing, like a person lacking refinement of education, from Picaresque romance to Picaresque intonation, from the representation of a blackguard to the blackguard himself. And there is somethingelse also in theMorgante: the imaginings and caprices of Pulci himself, his own personal moral opinions, religious or philosophical; things that are sometimes thought about even by those who do not think much about them, and which, owing to this casual hasty thinking, become nevertheless opinions or semi-opinions. Finally theMorganteis a skein formed of strands of different colour and make, some of them thicker or thinner than others: it is a poem that is not in tune with a single dominant inspiration, and if we take one of those elements that we have described and transport it to the principal place, we immediately have the feeling that we are depriving the complex nature of the work of its vigour. Nevertheless theMorgantemust be looked upon as one of the most richly endowed works of our literature, where we meet at every step with delightful figures and traits of expression: Morgante, Margutte, Fiorinetta, Astarotte, Farfarello, Archbishop Turpin, certain touches of character in Orlando, and especially in Rinaldo, and also in Antea, together with certain descriptions, anecdotes and acute remarks. Margutte, plunged deep in vice, but quite shameless and aware that he cannot be other than whatnature made him, is also human, incapable of treachery, capable of affection for Morgante and of enduring his all-consuming voracity; so that when his companion dies, he never ceases recalling him to mind, and talking about him even with Orlando:

E conta d'ogni sua piacevolezza,E lacrimava ancor di tenerezza.[1]

Rinaldo, ardent and furious for revenge, seeks to slay Carlo Magno, who has been hidden from him; but after a few days Orlando leads him to believe that the Emperor has died of desperation, and tells him that he has appeared to him in vision, whereupon Rinaldo changes countenance and begins to wish him alive again, to feel pity for him, to repent him of his fury, so that in this way peace and reconciliation are effected. After a great battle, the conquered as they leave the field, recognise their dead ones where they lie, and we hear them lamenting a father, a brother or a friend:

Eravi alcun che cavava l'elmettoal suo figliolo, al suo cognato, o padre;poi lo baciava con pietoso affetto,E dicea: "Lasso, fra le nostre squadrenon tornerai in Soria più, poveretto;che dirén noî alla tua afflitta madre,o chi sarà più quel che la conforti?Tu ti riman cogli altri al campo morti."[2]

And this is an apology, by means of which Orlando explains to Rinaldo that he has remarked his new affection, and that it is of no use that he should try to deceive him with words:

Rispose Orlando:—Noi sarem que' fratiche mangiando il migliaccio, l'un si cosse;l'altro gli vede gli occhi imbambolati,e domando quel che la cagion fosse.Colui rispose: "Noi sián due restatia mensa, e gli altri sono or per le fosse,ché trentatré fummo e tu lo sia:Quand' io vi penso, io piango sempre mai."Quell' altro, che vedea che lo 'ngannava,finse di pianger, mostrando dolore;e disse a quel che di ciò domandava:"E anco io piango, anzi mi scoppia il core,che noi sián due restati"; e sospirava,"Ed è già l'uno all' altro traditore."Cosi mi par che faccian noi, Rinaldo:"che nol di tu che'l migliaccio era caldo?"[3]

And here is an octave in which Pulci makes it psychologically clear why King Carlo allowed himself to be led astray and deceived by Gano:

Molte volte, anzi spesso, c'intervieneche tu t'arrecchi un amico e fratello,e ciò che fa ti par che facci bene,dipinto e colorito col pennallo.Questo primo legame tanto tiene,che, s' altra volta ti dispiace quello,e qualcha cosa ti parà molesta,sempre la prima impression pur resta.[4]

"These are not the octaves of Ariosto ": we have said as much. Certainly they are not, just as the octaves of Ariosto are not those of Pulci, and Ariosto, whatever trouble he might have taken, could never have attained to the inventions, the emotions, the clevernesses and the accents of theMorgante,which are just as inimitable in their way as are the graces of theFurioso.And it is really unjust and almost odious that the reader, face to face with the treasures of fresh and original poetry, which Pulci throws without counting into his lap, should pull a wry face and ungratefully remark that Pulci's poetry is not that other poetry which he is now thinking about, and that it should be abolished, or made perfect by the other poetry!

Almost the same thing is to be repeated about the author of theInnamorato,who has also been tormented, condemned and executed by means of a comparison with the author of theFurioso,sometimes conducted with such a refinement of cruelty that the strophes of the one are printed facing the strophes of the other, and selected as bearing upon similar situations, so that every word and syllable may be weighed; as though the strophesof a poet are not to be considered solely in themselves and in the poem of which they form part, and to be condemned, if occasion arise for condemnation, within that circle to which are confined the real conditions of judgment. Boiardo, to one who reads him without any sort of preconception and abandons himself to the simple impressions of reading, immediately shows himself to be altogether different from what some critics maintain, the pedantic singer of chivalry taken seriously, who gives way now and then to involuntary laughter and to a harsh intonation which should be toned down and softened by the skill of an Ariosto. He is quite other also than the epic bard, which some people have imagined him to be; he could not be epic, because he had no national sentiment, no feeling for class or religion, and the marvellous in him is all fancy, a marvel of the fairies; nor was he a pedant, for he obviously follows his own spontaneous inclinations, without any secondary purpose. No, Boiardo was on the contrary a soul passionately devoted to the primitive and the energetic, his was the energy of the lance-thrust, of the brand wielded, but also the energy of a proud will, of ferocious courage, of intransigent honour, ofmarvellous devices. And it is owing just to this energy, which has a value of its own, that he lives to unite poetically the cycles of Charlemagne and of Arthur, the Carlovingian and the Breton traditions, arms and adventures and love, both of them primitive cycles, the second being remarkable for the extraordinary nature of its adventures and the violence of its loves; whereas, if that heroism had continued to be full and substantial, it would have been difficult to make it a theme for erotic treatment, representing a different and opposed sentiment. To ask of him delicacy of treatment in the representation of his knights, or delicacy of thoughts and words in his treatment of women and love, and in general, beauty of sentiment, is to ask of him what is external to his fundamental motive. To be astonished that he sometimes laughs or smiles, is to be astonished at what happens every day among the people (and there are traces of it in the ingenuous epic) when they are listening to the recital of great deeds, which do not forbid an occasional comic remark. To lament his supposed neglect of art, his lack of polish of language and versification, is to censure him as a grammarian who employs pre-established modelsor dwells upon minute details to which he attributes sovereign importance. How on the other hand can it be forgotten, when praise of his rich fancy and robust frankness of style and composition is opposed to censures or interlarded among them, that we must explain whence came to him these merits, for they are not to be snatched, but are born only of the soul. Whence came they, if not from true poetical inspiration and from his already mentioned passion for the energetic and the primitive? Hence the admiration aroused by his vast canvases, his vivid narratives:—Angelica, who by merely appearing at Carlo's banquet, makes everyone fall in love with her, and whom even the Emperor himself cannot refrain from admiring, though with discretion, lest he should compromise his gravity, Angelica, whom the greatest champions of Christianity and Paganism follow with admiration, refusing herself to all and loving only him who alone abhors her;—the solemn council of war, held by Agramante previous to entering France, with the speeches of the kings who surround him, courageous or prudent, the sudden appearance of the youthful Rodomonte, who dominates all with his tremendous energy;—the joyful courageof Astolfo, never disconcerted by headlong mishaps, whom fortune succours by furnishing him with a lance, by means of which, to the astonishment of all, he accomplishes prodigies, while he himself remains unastonished;—Brunello, as to whose doings one would like to apply Vico's phrase about "heroic thieving," Brunello, who wanders about the earth, stealing the most carefully guarded objects, with an audacious dexterity and so comic an imagination, Brunello, revelling in his joyous virtuosity and vainly-pursued over the whole world by Marfisa of the viper's eye, which spirts venom, Marfisa who wishes to put him to death; but he flies from her, turning from time to time in his flight to laugh in her face and make gestures of mockery;—Then again there are the colloquies of Orlando and Agricane, during the pauses in their bitter duel, which must end in the death of one of them; Rinaldo's caustic reply to Orlando, who has reproved him for wishing to carry away the golden couch from the fairy's garden; and that other no less caustic repartee of the courageous highway robber to Brandimarte; and many and many another most beautiful passage?—Yet theInnamorato,notwithstanding its poetical abundance, has neverbeen numbered among really classical works, so that after the vogue which for ephemeral reasons it enjoyed in its own day, it has not received and does not receive the affection and homage of any but those who love what is little loved and prize what is pure, spontaneous and rude. The poem does not conclude in itself; it is not satisfied with itself: there is a break somewhere in the circle: the representation of the energetic and primitive, which is a sort of formal epicity, has something in it of the monotonous and arid, and the pleasure derived from it has something of the solitary and sterile. Like the charger that sniffs the battle, so says Boiardo:

Ad ogni atto degno e signorile,Quai se raconti di cavalleria,sempre se allegra l'animo gentile,come nel fatto fusse tuttavia,manifestando fuore il cor virile....[5]

That is well, but the manly heart is not slow to express a certain feeling of delusion, when it recognises that the images in question are all body, without depth of soul, and without the guidance and inspiration of a superior spirit. He says somewhere else:

Già molto tempo m'han tenuto a badaMorgana, Alcina e le incantazioni,Nè ve ho mostrato un bel colpo di spada,E pieno il cel de lancie e de tronconi....[6]

But there are too many lances that meet and clash, too many limbs flying about without our ever seeing the cause, the meaning or the justification of all that fighting—even Boiardo himself becomes melancholy, when he thinks of those blows exchanged in a spiritual void, exclaiming in one of those frequent purely spontaneous epigrams, which invest his noble person with sympathy:

Fama, seguace degli imperatori,Ninfa, che e' gesti a' dolci versi canti,che dopo morte ancor gli uomini onori,e fai coloro eterni, che tu vanti,ove sei giunta? a dir gli antichi amori,e a narrar battaglie de' giganti;mercè del mondo, che al tuo tempo è tale,che più di fama o di virtù non cale.Lascia a Parnaso quella verde pianta,che da salvivi ormai perso è il cammino,e meco al basso questa istoria cantadel re Agramante, il forte Saracino....[7]

Pulci and Boiardo then, not to mention others, are to be placed neither above nor below Ariosto, for they are not even related to him. Proof of this is to be found in the fact that thought has gone to other artists, to Ovid for example, in the search for his parallel in literature among the Latins, to Petrarch and to Politian among Italians, or to architects like Bramante and Leon Baptista Alberti, and yet more to painters, like Raphael, Correggio and Titian, comparisons having been instituted with all of these and with others whom it is unnecessary to mention. Now as regards quality of artistic inspiration, affinity is certainly more intrinsic than are relations established from the use of similar abstract material; yet it is itself abstract and extrinsic, because it always accepts one or certain aspects of inspiration, not the full inspiration. Thus, for example, when a comparison is drawn between Ariosto and Ovid, who was a story-teller, lacking altogetherin religious feeling for mythological fables and attracted to them solely by their beauty and variety, we must immediately hasten to add that with the exception of this side, which they share in common, Ariosto is different and superior to the Latin poet in every other, for Ovid had not a delicate taste in art, being merged altogether in his pleasing and delightful themes. He improvised and overflowed, owing to his incapacity for firm design and lack of control: he would be better described as the model of the luxurious Italian versifiers of the seventeenth century than as the model of Ariosto, whose art was most chaste. If again he be superficially compared with Politian, the comparison breaks up immediately, because theStanzeare inspired by the voluptuousness of the sensible world, contemplated in all its fugitive brilliance and with that trembling accompaniment of anxiety and suffering, inseparable from it, while Ariosto soars above the pathos of voluptuousness. To note affinities is of avail in a work introductory to the general study of literature, and to draw comparisons and point out contrasts and successive approximations may also serve as a useful aid to the accurate description of an artist's special character. Butwe do not propose to supply here such a didactic introduction, for the use of such a method is superfluous, as we have already described Ariosto's characteristics in the manner proposed. We shall not therefore form a group of artists, as related to him in this or that respect, for such cannot be expected of us, nor has it for us any special attraction.

Observations as to affinities have another use also, as providing a basis for sparkling and resonant metaphors, as when it is observed of an artist that he is the "Raphael of poetry," of another that he is "the Dante of sculpture," or of a third that he is "the Michael Angelo of sound," or as was said (by Torquato Tasso, perhaps as a witticism, and certainly with little truth), that Ariosto is "the Ferrarese Homer." We already possess many pages of magnificent metaphors to the honour and glory of the author of theFurioso,nor do we intend to depreciate their merit; but the present writer begs to be excused from the labour of increasing their number, since he is in general little disposed to oratory and has allowed what slight gift of the sort he might have possessed to flow away and lose itself, while conversing with so unrhetorical and so conversational a poet as was Ludovico Ariosto.

[1]Saying how delightful he was and still weeping for tender recollection.

[2]Sometimes one would remove the helmet from his son, his cousin, or his father, kissing him with pious affection, and saying "alas, poor fellow, never again will he return to our ranks in Soria; what shall we say to his afflicted mother, who among us can comfort her? But thou remainest with the others who lie dead on the field."

[3]Orlando answered:—We shall be like the friars one of whom burnt himself in eating his gruel; the other seeing his eyes watering asked the reason. His neighbour replied: "Here we are, two of us remained sitting at table, while the others are in the tomb; well thou knowest that we were thirty-three; it always makes me weep to think of it." The other, who saw the deception, in his turn made belief to lament and grieve and when asked the reason: "Yea, I also weep; my heart indeed is bursting to think that we two remain"; then sighing he continued, "And that one of us two is betraying the other. We seem to be doing much the same thing, Rinaldo: why won't you confess that the gruel was hot?"

[4]It often happens that a friend becomes like a brother to you, and whatever he does seems to be so well done as to deserve being made a picture. This first bond holds so firmly that when he finally does something you do not like—injures you in some way—nevertheless the first impression remains the same.

[5]The gentle soul rejoices at every worthy, noble deed recounted of knighthood, as it does when the deed was accomplished, which revealed the manly heart.

[6]Morgana, Alcina and their incantations have long held me in their chains, so that I have been unable to show you aught of fine sword play, the sky full of lances and limbs....

[7]Where art thou gone, O fame that followest emperors and singest their brave deeds in gentle verse, thou that honorest men after death and conferrest eternity upon those thou vauntest? This is the fault of the world. Thou art gone to sing of ancient loves and to tell of the battles of the giants, thanks to this world of ours that cares no longer for courage or for fame. Leave upon Parnassus that growth of green, since none knows now the upward path that leadeth thither, and sing here below with me this history of King Agramante, the mighty Saracen....

To state at the outset, that the practical personality of Shakespeare is not the object of study for the critic and historian of art, but his poetical personality; not the character and development of his life, but the character and development of his art, will perhaps seem to be superfluous, but as a matter of fact it will aid us in proceeding more rapidly.

We do not aim at forbidding the natural curiosity, which leads to the enquiry as to what sort of men in practical life were those whom we admire as poets, thinkers and scientists. This curiosity often leads to delusion, because there is nothing to be found behind the poet, the philosopher, or the man of science, which can arouse interest, though it is sometimes fruitful. It would certainly be agreeable to raise that sort of mysterious veil that surrounds Shakespeare. We should like to know what sort ofpassions, what ethical, philosophical and mental experiences were his, and above all what he thought about himself—whether, as appeared to those who rediscovered him a century or so later, he were really without feeling the greatness of his genius and of his own work. For what reason, too, if there were a special reason, did he not take the trouble to have his plays printed, but exposed them to the risk of being lost to posterity? Was it due to the ingenuousness and innocence of the poet, or to proud indifference on the part of a man, who disdains the world's applause and the mirage of glory, because he is completely satisfied with the greatness of his work? Or was it due to simple indolence, or to a settled plan, or to the web of events? Did he suppose, as has been suggested, that those plays, written for the theatre, would have continued ever to live in the theatre, under the care of his companions in art, in accordance with his intentions and in a manner suitable to their merit? But it is clear that these and such like questions concern the biography, rather than the artistic history of Shakespeare, which gives rise to an altogether different series of researches.

We do not however wish to assert that thesetwo series of different questions are without relation: even different things have some relation to one another, which resides in their diversity itself and is connected above them. The critic and historian of art would certainly find it advantageous for the studies that he was about to undertake, to know the chronology, the circumstances, the details, the compositions, the recompositions, the recastings and the collaborations of the Shakespearean drama. He would thus avoid the obligation of vexing his mind as to certain interpretations, and of remaining more or less perplexed for a greater or lesser space of time, before certain peculiarities, discordances and inequalities, doubtful, that is to say, as to whether they be errors in art, or art forms of which it is difficult to seize the hidden connection. But he would gain nothing more from this advantage (with the conjoined admonition, to beware of the prejudices that such information is apt to cause). His judgment would of necessity be founded, in final analysis, upon intrinsic reasons of an artistic nature, arising from an examination of the works before him. The chronology that he will succeed in fixing, will not be a real or material chronology, but an ideal and anaesthetic one, for these are two forms of chronology which only coincide approximately and sometimes altogether diverge from one another. Were the authenticity of the works all clearly settled, the critic would be preserved from proclaiming that certain works or parts of works are Shakespeare's, when they are really, say, Greene's or Marlowe's, which is an inexactitude of nomenclature, as also is the treating of Shakespeare's work as being by someone else or anonymous. But this onomastic inexactitude is already corrected by the presumption that the critic has his eye fixed, not on the biographical and practical personage of Shakespeare, but on the poetical personage. He is thus able to face with calmness the danger, which is not a danger and is extremely improbable, of allowing to pass under the colours of Shakespeare a work drawn from the same or a similar source of inspiration, which stands at an equal altitude with others, or of adding another work to those of inferior quality and declining value assigned to the same name, because he is differentiating aesthetic values and not title-deeds to legal property.

As we have said, it has not seemed superfluous to repeat these statements, because inthe first place, the silent and tenacious, though erroneous conviction, as to the unity and identity of the two histories, the practical and the poetical, or at least the obscurity as to their true relation, is the hidden source of the vast and to a large extent useless labours, which form the great body of Shakespearean philology. This in common with the philology of the nineteenth century in general, is unconsciously dominated by romantic ideas of mystical and naturalistic unity, whence it is not by accident that Emerson is found among the precursors of hybrid biographical aesthetic, and the romanticizing Brandes among its most conspicuous supporters. These labours are animated with the hope of obtaining knowledge of the poetry of Shakespeare in its full reality, by means of the discovery of the complete chronology, of biographical incidents, of allusions, and of the origin of his themes. The ranks of the seekers are also swollen by those who are animated with like hopes and wish to exhibit their cleverness in the solution of enigmas, or are urged by the professional necessity of producing dissertations and theses. Unfortunately, the documents and traditions relating to the life of Shakespeare are veryfew. All or nearly all, relate to external and insignificant details. We are without letters, confessions or memoirs by the author, and also without authentic and abundant collections of facts relating to him. Although almost every year there appears some newLife of Shakespeare,it is now time to recognise with resignation and clearly to declare that it is not possible to write a biography of Shakespeare. At the most, an arid and faulty biographical chronicle can be composed, rather as proof of the devotion of posterity, longing to possess even a shadow of that biography, than as genuinely satisfying a desire for knowledge. Owing to this lack of documents, the above-mentioned philological literature consists, almost altogether, of an enormous and ever increasing number of conjectures, of which the one contests, impugns, or varies the other, and all are equally incapable of nourishing the mind. It suffices to glance through a few pages of a Shakespearean annual or handbook, to hear of the "Southampton theory," the "Pembroke theory," and of other theories, in relation to theSonnets;that is to say, whether the person concealed beneath the initials W. H. in the printer's dedication, is the Earl of Southampton,or the Earl of Pembroke, or a musician of the name of Hughes, or even William Harvey, the third husband of Southampton's mother, or the retail bookseller, William Hell, or an invention of the printer, or a joke of the poet, who should thus indicate himself (William Himself); and so on, with the "Fitton theory," the "Davenant theory," and the like, that is to say, whether the "dark lady," celebrated in some of the sonnets, be a court lady of the name of Mary Fitton, or the hostess by whom Shakespeare is said to have become the father of the poet Davenant (and one of the critics has dared admit that he spent fifteen years in research and meditation on this point alone), or the French wife of the printer Field, or finally a conventional and imaginary personage of Elizabethan sonneteering, which was based upon the manner of Petrarch. And in the same way as with theSonnets,there have been conjectures of the most varied sorts as to Shakespeare's marriage, his relations with his wife, the incidents of his family and of his profession. Passing to the plays, there are and have been discussions without apparent end, as to whetherTitus Andronicusbe an original work, or has been patched up by him; as towhetherHenry VIbe all of it his, or only a part, or revised and enlarged by him; as to which portions ofHenry VIIIand ofPericlesare his and which Fletcher's, or whether by other hands; as to whetherTimonbe a sketch finished by others or a sketch by others finished by Shakespeare; whether and to what extent there persists inHamleta previousHamletby Kyd or by another author; whether certain of the so-called "apocryphas," such asArden of FevershamandEdward III,are on the contrary to be held to be authentic. In like manner, the difficulties connected with the chronology are great and conjectures numerous. TheDream,for instance, is by some placed in the year 1590, by others in 1595,Julius Caesarnow in 1606, now in 1599,Cymbelinein 1605 and 1611,Troilus and Cressida,by some in 1599, by others in 1603, by others still in 1609, by yet others resolved into three parts or strata, form 1592 to 1606, and 1607, with additions by other hands. For the majority, theTempestbelongs to the year 1611, but is by others dated earlier, and as regardsHamletagain, in its first form, there are some who believe that it was composed, not by any means in 1602, but between 1592 and 1594. And so on, withoutadvantage being taken of the few sure aids offered by stylistic or metrical measurements, as one may prefer to call them. Now conjectures are of use as heuristic instruments, only in so far as it is hoped to convert them into certainties, by means of the documents of which they aid in the search and the interpretation. But when this is not possible, they are altogether vain and vacuous, and consequently, were they convertible into certainties, would not give the solution or the criterion of solution of the critical problems relating to the poetry of Shakespeare. When they are not to be so converted and remain mere vague imagining, they do not even supply the practical and biographical history, which others delude themselves with the belief that they can construct piecemeal by means of them. Hence it has happened that careful writers, who have wished to give the character and life of Shakespeare, as far as possible without hypotheses and fancies, have been obliged to retail a series of general assertions, in which all individualisation is lost, even if Shakespeare be pronounced good, honest, gentle, serviceable, prudent, laborious, frank, gay, and the like.

But the majority convert the less probableconjectures into certainties, and proceed from conjecture to conjecture and from assertion to assertion, finally producing, under the title,Life of Shakespeare,nothing but a romance, which, however, always turns out to be too colourless to be called artistic. A rapacious hand is stretched out to seize the poetical works themselves, with the view of writing this sort of fiction since (to quote the author of one of these unamusing fictions, Brandes) it cannot be admitted that it is impossible to know by deducing them from his writings, the life, the adventures, and the person of a man who has left about forty plays and poems. And it is certainly possible to deduce all these things from the poetical writings, but the life, and the poetical adventures and personages, not the practical and biographical; save in the case (which is not that of Shakespeare,) where definitely informative, autobiographical statements and excursions are to be found among the poems, that is to say, passages that are not poetical, but prosaic. In every other instance, the poetical emotion does not lead to the practical, because the relation between the two is notdeterministic,from effect to cause, butcreative,from material to form, and thereforeincommensurable. The moment it is raised to the sphere of poetry, a sentiment that has really been experienced is plucked from its practical and realistic soil, and made the motive of composition for a world of dreams, one of the infinite possible worlds, in which it is as useless to seek any longer the reality of that sentiment, as it is vain to seek a drop of water poured into the ocean, and transformed from what it was previously by ocean's vast embrace. One feels almost inclined to repeat as warning that strophe from theSonnets,where the poet said of his mistress to his friend:

"Nay, if you read this line, remember notThe hand that writ it; for I love you so,That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,If thinking on me then should make you woe."

For this reason, when we read in Brandes's book (which we select for quotation here, because it has been widely circulated), such statements as that Richard III, the deformed dwarf, whom we feel to be superior in intellect, adumbrates Shakespeare himself, obliged to adopt the despised profession of the actor, but full of the pride of genius, it is not a case of rejectingor accepting his statements, but of simply looking upon them as so many conjectures founded upon air and as such, devoid of interest. This criterion can also be applied in the following cases: that the pitiful death of the youthful Prince Arthur, inKing John,shows traces of the loss of one of his sons, sustained by the author at the moment when he was composing that drama; that the riotous youth of Henry V is a symbol of the youth of Shakespeare during his first years in London; that Brutus, inJulius Caesar,has reference to the persons of Essex and Southampton, protectors of the poet and unsuccessful conspirators against the queen; that Coriolanus, disdainful of praise, is Shakespeare in the attitude that it suited him to take up towards the public and the critics; that the feeling of King Lear, appalled with ingratitude, is that of the poet, appalled at the ingratitude he experienced at the hands of his colleagues, of the impresarii and of his pupils; and finally that Shakespeare must have written those terrible dramas in the nocturnal hours, although he most probably worked as a rule in the early morning; together with many other fancies of a similar sort; it is not a case of accepting or of confuting them, but of just taking them forwhat they are, conjectures based upon air, and as such of no interest.

The like may be said of another volume, which has also been much discussed, that of Harris. Here, in a view based upon the inspection of his lyrics and dramas, he is represented as sensual and neuropathic, almost affected with erotic mania, weak of will, attracted and tyrannised over during almost the whole of his life, by a fascinating and faithless dark lady, named Mary Fitton. Hence the origin of his most poignant tragedies, and the mystery that conceals his last years, when he withdrew to Stratford, by no means with the intention of there enjoying the peace of the country as afoenerator Appuis,but because, ruined in body and soul, he wished there to nurse his ills, or rather to die there, as soon afterwards he did.

The period of the great tragedies, especially, has been connected with circumstances in the private life of the author and with events in English public life. This too may or may not be true: Shakespeare may or may not have been extremely excitable, both in personal and practical matters; he may on the other hand have remained perfectly calm and watched the tossing sea from the shore, with that tone offeeling proper to artists, described by psychologists asScheingefühle,a feeling of appearance and dream. No value also is to be attributed to conjectures as to the models that Shakespeare sometimes had before him: for Shylock in the shape of some adventurer of his time, or for Prospero in the person of the Emperor Rudolph II, who was interested in science and magic, and the like, because the relation between art and its model is incommensurable. In reading the works of Shakespeare, one is sometimes inclined to think (as for that matter in the case of other poets), that some affection or incident of the life of the author is to be found in the words of this or that character, as for example inCymbeline,where Posthumus says,

"Could I find outThe woman's part in me! But there's no motionThat tends to vice in man, but I affirmIt is the woman's part!"

or in those others ofTroilus and Cressida:

"Lechery, lechery; still, wars and lechery; nothingelse holds fashions: a burning devil take them!"

in the same way as some have suspected a personal memory in the case of Dante, in theFrancesca episode of the reading and inebriation. But there is nothing to be done with this suspicion and the thought that suggested it. Nor is there anything to be built upon in those rare passages, where it may seem that the poet breaks the coherence and aesthetic level of his work, in order to lay stress upon some real or practical feeling of his own, by over-accentuation; because, even if we admit that there are such passages in Shakespeare, it always remains doubtful whether for him, as for other poets, the true motive for this inopportune emphasis, is to be found in the eruption of his own powerful feelings, or rather in some other accidental motive.

We may also save ourselves from wonder and invective of the "Baconian hypothesis," by means of this indifference of the poetical work towards biography. This hypothesis maintains that the real author of the plays, which pass under the name of Shakespeare, was Francis Bacon. We are likewise preserved from those others of more recent date and vogue, which maintain that the author was Roger, fifth Earl of Rutland, or that Rutland collaborated with Southampton, or that there really existed a society of dramatic authors,(Chettle, Heywood, Webster, etc.) with the final revision entrusted to Bacon, or finally (the latest discovery of the sort) that he was William Stanley, sixth Earl >of Derby. A thousand or more volumes, opuscules and articles have been printed to deal with these conjectures, and although—to the severe eye of the trained philologist—they may justly seem to be extravagant, yet they retain the merit of being a sort of involuntarilyironic treatmentof the purely philological method and of its abuse of conjecture.

But even if we grant the unlikely contention that in the not very great brain of the philosopher Bacon, there lodged the brain of a very great poet, from which proceeded the Shakespearean drama, nothing would thereby have been discovered or proved, save a singular marvel, a joke, a monstrosity of nature. The artistic problem would remain untouched, because that drama remains always the same; Lear laments and imprecates in the same manner, Othello struggles furiously, Hamlet meditates and wavers before the problem of humanity and the action that he is called upon to take, and in the same manner, all are enwrapped in the veil of Eternity,It is a good thing to shake off this weight of erroneous philology (another philology exists alongside of it, which is not erroneous, since it preserves the probably genuine text, and interprets the vocabulary and the historical references with a genuine feeling for art), not only because, whether or no it attain the end of biography, it distracts attention from the right and proper object of artistic criticism, but also because it employs the biography, true or false, for the purpose of clouding and changing the artistic vision. Confounding art and document, it transports into art whatever it has discovered or believes itself to have discovered by means of research, turning the serene compositions of the poet into a series of shudders, cries, restless motions, convulsions, ferocious springs, manifestations, now of sentimental rapture, now of furious desire.

We know that it is necessary to make an effort of abstraction, to forget biographical details concerning the poets, in those cases where they abound, if we wish to enjoy their art, in what it possesses of ideality, which is truth. We know, too, that poets and artists have always experienced dislike and contempt for those gossip-mongers, who investigate andrecord the private occurrences of their lives, in order to extract from them the elements of artistic judgment. This is the reason why a poet's contemporaries and his fellow-countrymen and fellow-townsmen are said not to be good judges and that no one is a poet or prophet among his familiars and in the place of his birth.

The advantage of the lack of a bar to artistic contemplation, one of the good consequences of this lack of biographical detail relating to Shakespeare, is thrown away by these conjecturers, who, like the mule of Galeazzo Florimonte, bring stones to birth that they may stumble upon them.

We can observe the re-immersion of Shakespearean poetry in psychological materiality in the already mentioned book of Brandes (and also to some extent in the more subtle and ingenious work of Frank Harris) and in the case of Brandes, the readjustment of values that is its consequence, as withKing LearandTimon,both documents of misanthropy induced by ingratitude; and even the sinking of values into non-values, when he fails to effect his psychological reduction, even by means of those extravagant methods, as in the case ofMacbeth,where he declares that this play, which is one of the dramatic masterpieces, appears to him to possess but "slight interest," because he does not feel "the heart of Shakespeare beating there," that is to say, of the Shakespeare endowed with certain practical objects and interests by his imagination.

This error is also to be found in the so-called "pictures of the society of the time," by means of which another group has striven to interpret the art of Shakespeare. These are not less extrinsic and disturbing than the others, assuming that they are composed with like historical ignorance. Taine, for instance, having got it into his head that the English of the time of Elizabeth were "des bêtes sauvages," describes the drama of the time as a reproduction "sans choix" of all "les laideurs, les bassesses, les horreurs, les détails crus, les mœurs déréglées et féroces" of that time, and the style of Shakespeare as "un composé d'expressions forcenées," in such wise that when one reads the famousHistoire de la littérature anglaise,it is difficult to say whether poets or assassins are passing across the stage, whether these be artistic and harmonious contests, or dagger-thrust struggles. The opinion ofGoethe is opposed to all these deformations, to the Shakespeare who moans and shrieks on the wind of the wild passions of his time, to that other Shakespeare who reveals the wounds of his own sickly soul with bitter sarcasm and disgust. In the conversations with Eckermann, he gives as his impression that the plays of Shakespeare were the work "of a man in perfect health and strength, both in body and spirit"; he must indeed have been healthy and strong and free, when he created something so free, so healthy and so strong as his poetry.

In a calmer sphere of considerations, those who make the personages and the action of the plays depend upon the political and social events of the time commit a similar deterministic error—upon the victory over the Armada, the conspiracy of Essex, the death of Elizabeth, the accession of James, the geographical discoveries and colonisation of the day, the contests with the Puritans, and the like.

Others err in tracing the different forms of the poetry to the course of his reading, to the Chronicle of Holinshed, to Italian novels, to the Lives of Plutarch, and especially to theEssaisof Montaigne (where Chasles and others of more recent date have placed theorigin of the new great period of his poetical work); others again have found it in the circumstances of the English stage of the time, and in the various tastes of the "reserved" and "pit" seats, as in the so-called "realistic" criticism of Rümelin.

The poetry, then, should certainly be interpreted historically, but in the proper sense, disconnected, that is to say from a history that is foreign to it and with which its only connection is that prevailing between a man and what he disregards, puts away from him and rejects, because it either injures him or is of no use, or, which comes to the same thing, because he has already made sufficient use of it.

Everyone possesses at the bottom of his heart, as it were, a synthetic or compendious image of a poet like Shakespeare, who belongs to the common patrimony of culture, and in his memory the definitions of him that have been given and have become current formulae. It is well to fix the mind upon that image, to remember these formulae, and to extract from them their principal meanings, with the view of obtaining, at least in a preliminary and provisory manner, the characteristic spiritual attitude of Shakespeare, his poetical sentiment.

The first observation leaps to the eye and is generally admitted: namely, that no particular feeling or order of feelings prevails in him; it cannot be said of him that he is an amorous poet, like Petrarch, a desperately sad poet like Leopardi, or heroic, as Homer. His name is adorned rather with such epithets asuniversalpoet, as perfectlyobjective,entirelyimpersonal,extraordinarilyimpartial.Sometimes even hiscoldnesshas been remarked—a coldness certainly sublime, "that of a sovran spirit, which has described the complete curve of human existence and has survived all sentiment" (Schlegel).

Nor is he a poet ofideals,as they are called, whether they be religious, ethical, political, or social. This explains the antipathy frequently manifested towards him by apostles of various sorts, of whom the last was Tolstoi, and the unsatisfied desires that take fire in the minds of the right thinking, urging them always to ask of any very great man for something more, for a supplement. They conclude their admiration with a sigh that there should really be something missing in him—he is not to be numbered along those who strive for more liberal political forms and for a more equable social balance, nor has he had bowels of compassion for the humble and the plebeian. A certain school of German critics (Ulrici, Gervinus, Kreyssig, Vischer, etc.), perhaps as an act of opposition to such apparent accusations (I would not recommend the reading of these authors, whom I have felt obliged to peruse owing to the nature of my task) began torepresent Shakespeare as a lofty master of morality, a casuist most acute and reliable, who never fails to solve an ethical problem in the correct way, a prudent and austere counsellor in politics, and above all, an infallible judge of actions, a distributor of rewards and punishments, graduated according to merit and demerit, paying special attention that not even the slightest fault should go unpunished. Now setting aside the fact that the ends attributed to him were not in accordance with his character as a poet and bore evidence only to the lack of taste of those critics; setting aside that the design of distributing rewards and punishments according to a moral scale, which they imagine to exist and praise in him, was altogether impossible of accomplishment by any man or even by any God, since rewards and punishments are thoughts altogether foreign to the moral consciousness and of a purely practical and judicial nature; setting aside these facts, which are generally considered unworthy of discussion and jeered at in the most recent criticism, as the ridiculous survivals of a bygone age, even if we make the attempt to translate these statements into a less illogical form,and assume that there really existed in Shakespeare an inclination for problems of that sort, they shew themselves to be at variance with simple reality. Shakespeare caressed no ideals of any sort and least of all political ideals; and although he magnificently represents political struggles also, he always went beyond their specific character and object, attaining through them to the only thing that really attracted him; life.

Thissense of lifeis also extolled in his work, which for that reason is held to be eminentlydramatic,that is to say, animated with a sense of life considered in itself, in its eternal discord, its eternal harshness, its bitter-sweet, in all its complexity.

To feel life potently, without the determination of a passion or an ideal, implies feeling it unilluminated by faith, undisciplined by any law of goodness, not to be corrected by the human will, not to be reduced to the enjoyment of idyllic calm, or to the inebriation of joy; and Shakespeare has indeed been judged in turn not religious, not moral, no assertor of the freedom of the will, and no optimist. But no one has yet dared to judge him to be irreligious,immoral, a fatalist, or a pessimist, for these adjectives are seen not to suit him, as soon as they are pronounced.

And here too were required the strange aberration of fancy of a Taine, his singular incapacity for receiving clear impressions of the truth, in order to portray the feeling of Shakespeare towards man and life as being fundamentally irrational, based on blind deception, a sequence of hasty impulses and swarming images, without an autonomous centre, where truth and wisdom are accidental and unstable effects, or appearances without substance. These are simply exercises in style, repeated with variants from other writers; they do not even present a caricature of the art of Shakespeare, since even for this, some connection with fact is necessary. Shakespeare, who has so strong a feeling for the bounds set to the human will, in relation to the Whole, which stands above it, possesses the feeling for the power of human liberty in equal degree. As Hazlitt says, he, who in some respects is "the least moral of poets," is in others "the greatest of moralists." He who beholds the unremovable presence of evil and sorrow, has his eye open and intent in an equal degree uponthe shining forth of the good, the smile of joy, and is healthy and virile as no pessimist ever was. He who nowhere in his works refers directly to a God, has ever present within him the obscure consciousness of a divinity, of an unknown divinity, and the spectacle of the world, taken by itself, seems to him to be without significance, men and their passions a dream, a dream that has for intrinsic and correlative end a reality which, though hidden, is more solid and perhaps more lofty.

But we must be careful not to insist too much upon these positive definitions and represent his sentiment as though it were one in which negative elements were altogether overcome. The good, virtue, is without doubt stronger in Shakespeare than evil and vice, not because it overcomes and resolves the other term in itself, but simply because it is light opposed to darkness, because it is the good, because it is virtue. This is because of its special quality, which the poet discerns and seizes in its original purity and truth, without sophisticating or weakening it. Positive and negative elements do really become interlaced or run into one another, in his mode of feeling, without becoming reconciled in a superior harmony. Their naturallogic can be expressed in terms of rectitude, justice and sincerity; but their logic and natural character also finds its expression in terms of ambition, cupidity, egoism and satanic wickedness. The will is accurately aimed at the target, but also, it is sometimes diverted from it by a power, which it does not recognise, although it obeys it, as though under a spell. The sky becomes serene after the devastating hurricane, honourable men occupy the thrones from which the wicked have fallen, the conquerors pity and praise the conquered. But the desolation of faith betrayed, of goodness trampled upon, of innocent creatures destroyed, of noble hearts broken, remains. The God that should pacify hearts is invoked, his presence may even be felt, but he never appears.

The poet does not stand beyond these struggling passions, attraction and repugnance, love and hate, hope and despair, joy and sorrow; but he is beyond being on the side of one or the other. He receives them all in himself, not that he may feel them all, and pour tears of blood around them, but that he may make of them his unique world, the Shakespearean world, which is the world of those undecided conflicts.

What poets appear at first sight more different than Shakespeare and Ariosto? Yet they have this in common, that both look upon something that is beyond particular emotions, and for this reason it has been said of both of them, more than once, that "they speak but little to the heart." They are certainly sentimental and agitated by the passions to a very slight degree; the "humour" of both has been referred to, a word that we avoid here, because it is so uncertain of meaning and of such little use in determining profound emotions of the spirit. Ariosto veils and shades all the particular feelings that he represents, by means of his divine irony; and Shakespeare, in a different way, by endowing all with equal vigour and relief, succeeds in creating a sort of equilibrium, by means of reciprocal tension, which, owing to its mode of genesis, differs in every other respect from the harmony in which the singer of theFuriosodelights. Ariosto surpasses good and evil, retaining interest in them only on account of the rhythm of life, so constant and yet so various, which arises, expands, becomes extinguished and is reborn, to grow and again to become extinguished. Shakespeare surpasses all individual emotions, but he doesnot surpass, on the contrary, he strengthens our interest in good and evil, in sorrow and joy, in destiny and necessity, in appearance and reality, and the vision of this strife is his poetry. Thus the one has been metaphorically called "imaginative"; the other "realistic," and the one has been opposed to the other. They are opposed to one another, yet they meet at one point, not at the general one of both being poets, but at the specific point of being cosmic poets, not only in the sense in which every poet is cosmical, but in the particular sense above explained. Let us hope that it is not necessary to recommend that this should be understood with the necessary reservations, that is to say, as the trait that dominates the two poets in a different way and does not exclude the other individual traits of feature, above all not that which belongs to all poetry whatsoever. The limits set to every critical study, which should henceforth be known to all, are laid down by the impossibility of ever rendering in logical terms the full effect of any poetry or of other artistic work, since it is clear that if such a translation were possible, art would be impossible, that is to say, superfluous, because admitting of a substitute. Criticism,nevertheless, within those limits, performs its own office, which is to discern and to point out exactly where lies the poetical motive and to formulate the divisions which aid in distinguishing what is proper to every work.

For the rest, if Ariosto has often been compared to contemporary painters, with the object of drawing attention to his harmonic inspiration, Ludwig has been unable to abstain from making similar comparisons for Shakespeare. He found the most adequate image for his dramas in the portraits and landscapes of Titian, of Giorgione, of Paul Veronese, as contrasting with the amiability of Correggio, the insipidity of the Caracci, the affected manner of Guido and of Carlo Dolce, the crudity of the naturalists Caravaggio and Ribera. In Shakespeare, as in those great Venetians, there is everywhere "existence," life upon earth, transfigured perhaps, but devoid of restlessness, of aureoles and of sentimentalisms, serene even where tragic.

This sense of strife in vital unity, this profound sense of life, prevents the vision from becoming simplified and superficialised in the antitheses of good and evil, of elect and reprobate beings, and causes the introduction ofconflict, in varying measure and degree, in every being. Thus the battle is fought at the very heart of things. Hence the aspect of mystery that surrounds the actions and events portrayed by Shakespeare, which is not to be understood in the general sense that every vision of art is a mystery, but rather in the special sense of a course of events of which the poet not only does not possess (and could not possess) the philosophical explanation, but never discovers the reposeful term, peace after war, the acceptance of war as a means to a more lofty peace. For this reason is everywhere diffused the terror of the Unknown, which surrounds on every side and conceals a countenance that may be more terrible than terrible life itself, in the development of which human beings are involved—a countenance terrible for what it will reveal, and perhaps sublime and ecstatic, giving in its very terribleness, terror and rapture together. The mystery lies not only in the occasional appearance of spectres, demons, witches, in the poetry, but in the whole atmosphere of which they form only a part, assisting by their presence in a more direct determination. This mystery was well expressed by the first great critics who penetrated into theworld of Shakespearean poetry, Herder and Goethe, to the second of whom belongs the simile of the Shakespearean drama as "open books of Destiny, in which blows the wind of emotional life here and there stripping their leaves in its violence." In Shakespeare's musicality we are everywhere sensible of a voluptuous palpitation before the mystery which at times reflects upon itself and supplies the link between music and love, music and sadness, music and unknown Godhead.

We must insist upon the word "sentiment," which we have adopted for the description of this spiritual condition, in order that it may not be mistaken for a concept or mode of thought Or philosopheme, which occurs when the word "conception" or "mode of conceiving life" is taken in a literal and material manner as applied to Shakespeare and in general to the poets—when, for instance, it is asked by what special quality does Shakespeare's "conception of tragedy" differ from Greek and French tragedy, and the like, as though in such a case, it were a question of concepts and systems. Shakespeare is not a philosopher: his spiritual tendency is altogether opposed to the philosophic, which dominates both sentiment and thespectacle of life with thought that understands and explains it, reconciling conflicts under a single principle of dialectic. Shakespeare, on the contrary, takes both and renders them in their vital mobility—they know nothing of criticism or theory—and he does not offer any solution other than the evidence of visible representation. For this reason, when he is characterised and receives praises for his "objectivity," his "impersonality," his "universality," and those who do this are not satisfied even with their incorrect description of the real psychological differences noted above, but proceed to claim a philosophical character for his spiritual attitude, it is advisable to reject them all, confronting his objectivity with his poetic subjectivity, his impersonality with his personality, his universality with his individual mode of feeling. The cosmic oppositions, in imagining which he symbolises reality and life, not only are not philosophical solutions for him in his plays, but they are not even problems of thought; only rarely do they tend to take the form of bitter interrogations, which remain without answer. Equally fantastic and arbitrary are the attempts to compose a philosophical theory from the work of Shakespeare whois alternately, theistic, pantheistic, dualistic, deterministic, pessimistic and optimistic, by extracting it from his plays in the same manner as that employed in the case of the philosophy implied in a historical or political treatise; because there is certainly a philosophy implied in these latter cases, embodied in the historical and political judgments which they contain. In the case of Shakespeare, however, which is that of poets in general, to extract it means to place it there, that is, to think and to draw conclusions ourselves under the imaginative stimulus of the poet, and to place in his mouth, through a psychological illusion, our own questions and answers. It would only be possible to discuss a philosophy of Shakespeare if, like Dante, he had developed one in certain philosophical sections of his poems; but this is not so, because the thoughts that he utters fulfil no other function than that of poetical expressions, and when they are taken from their contexts, where they sound so powerful and so profound, they lose their virtue and appear to be indeterminate, contradictory or fallacious.

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