Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 i https://archive.org/details/shakespeareswork00quil_0 > , SHAKESPEARE’S WORKMANSHIP Demy 8vo., cloth, 10s. 6d. net SHAKESPEARE AND CHAPMAN: A Thesis of Chapman's authorship of “A Ldver’s Complaint” and his origination of “ Timon of Athens " : with indica- tions of further problems. By the Right Hon. J. M. Robertson, M.P. “A very able essay in higher criticism applied to literature.” — Daily News. “ Mr. J. M. Robertson stands, professionally, outside the guild of Elizabethan scholars . . . but his freshness of insight, wide reading, and critical acuteness have given him an inde- feasible place. . . . Mr. Robertson has evolved for the purpose of these inquiries a critical method of his own, or at least has carried it out with more thoroughness and judgment than any predecessor. . . . We can only express cordial recognition of the general soundness of Mr. Robertson’s method and the im- portance of his results.” — Manchester Guardian. LONDON : T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD. SHAKESPEARE’S WORKMANSHIP SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH, M.A. FELLOW OF JESUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE ; KING EDWARD VII. PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD. LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE f ,Qp- l < 3* First published, October 1918 Second impression, October, 1918 i x NOV 2 4 1987, {All rights reserved BOSTON COLLEGE LIBRARY CHESTNUT Hill, MA 02167 TO PROFESSOR BARRETT WENDELL IN GRATITUDE FOR MANY PLEASURES OF INSIGHT DIRECTED BY HIS ILLUMINATING COMMON SENSE V % ♦ PREFACE The following papers were first written as Lectures and so spoken before an audience in the University of Cambridge. Being shy of repeating myself too often in print in the guise of a lecturer, I have turned my second persons plural into third persons singular. But I am sensible that the change will only commend itself by help of the reader’s good-will in his remembering all the while that these are familiar discourses rather than learned inquiries. They seek to discover, in some of his plays, just what Shakespeare was trying to do as a playwright. This has always seemed to me a sensible way of ap- proaching him, and one worth reverting to from time to time. For it is no disparagement to the erudition and scholarship that have so piously been heaped about Shakespeare to say that we shall sometimes find it salutary to disengage our minds from it all, and recol- lect that the poet was a playwright. I must thank my brother-in-law, Mr. John Hay Lobban, for reading these pages in proof and making an index for me. ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH. 7 CONTENTS CHAPTER I MACBETH I PAGES Ways of studying Shakespeare — Method proposed for these notes — Macbeth to be considered as a piece of workman- ship — The Elizabethan theatre, its audience and its stage — Shakespeare’s “ conditions’’ — His “material ” — The * £ material ’ ’ of Macbeth — The capital difficulty of Macbeth as a tragedy — How Shakespeare might- have extenuated it — How, rather, before setting to work, he made his problem as hard as possible - - 17 — 36 CHAPTER II MACBETH II The criminal hero — Hallucination — What is witchcraft? — Dr. Johnson on the witches in Macbeth — “ Evil, be thou my good” — The use of darkness and its suggestions in Shakespeare’s tragedies — Schiller and Schlegel — Vague- ness of the witches — “ A deed without a name ” — Deliberate enfeebling of all characters, save in the two protagonists — The critical word in this drama — The knocking at the gate ... - 37 — 55 9 IO Contents % CHAPTER III MACBETH l III PAGES De Quincey on the knocking at the gate — Dramatic effect of the “ closed door ” — Inside and outside — The porter — of Gamelyn — ;The Forest of Arden — Its site on the Avon — A fantasy in colour— Jacques and Touchstone — A fantastic criticism of life — Playing at Robin Hood — Swinburne and George Saiid — The influence of Lyly — A patch of botchwork - 117 — 133 CHAPTER VII THE STORY OF FALSTAFF An innovation — A permanent artistic principle in the treat- ment of history by fiction — An Aristotelian induction — A tetralogy and a pageant — Its unity of theme and treatment — The tradition of Chaucer — Falstaff and the Interludes — Meaning of Interlude — Falstaff in The Merry Wives — Prince Hal and Henry the Fourth — Characters and theif creators — David Coffer-field — Johnson on Falstaff — The dismissal of Falstaff — Why Shakespeare killed him — The scenes at the Boar’s Head — The apotheosis of good-fellowship - - 134 — 158 CHAPTER VIII HAMLET I A factitious mystery — A drama, not a problem — The evidence of its perennial popularity — Every “star” his own Hamlet — Highest art never unintelligible — Some imper- fect diagnoses of Hamlet — The opening scene — Superb- ness of diction — A flaw of construction - - 159 — 17S 12 Contents CHAPTER IX HAMLET II PAGES Polonius and Laertes — A family failing — The loneliness of Ophelia — The cause of Hamlet’s horror — The two keys to Hamlet’s soul — Criticism divorced from knowledge of life — Beatrice Cenci — Hamlet’s “madness” and hesi- tancy — The Queen’s insight into Hamlet — Shakespeare’s passing misogyny — Hamlet’s affected madness before fools — His moral scrupulousness — A self-explanatory soliloquy - - - - - 179 — 200 CHAPTER X HAMLET III The simple secret of the critics — Coleridge and another — “ It is we who are Hamlet,” the key is in every man’s breast — An old play furbished and refurbished — How this explains Ophelia and Hamlet’s brutality to her — Blank verse as a vehicle for drama — Dryden’s examina- tion examined — Milton and the caesura — Dryden’s own practice versus his theory — How blank verse helps the actor ------ 201 — 22a CHAPTER XI Shakespeare’s later workmanship The last group of plays — General characteristics — Some family resemblances — One common theme, a woman wrongfully used — Neglect of Unity of Time — Alleged decline in power — The agony of Imogen — The recon- ciliation of man withvman — The artist’s last infirmity — - 1 Contents I'AGES Shakespeare’s theme and stage limitations — Probable development of scenic resources in the Elizabethan stage — Influence of the masque — Sea-scenes — Recon- ciliation through the young and for the young — Blending of tragedy and comedy - 221 — 240 CHAPTER XII PERICLES AND KING HENRY VIII. Popularity of Pericles — A new sensation — Epic in terms of drama — The authorship of the first two acts — The evi- dence of workmanship — Verse tests — Authenticity of the brothel scenes — The recognition scene — The different verdict of the library and of the stage — Historical plays as pageants — The authorship of Henry Vll. — Moral unity the highest - 241 — 258 CHAPTER XIII CYMBELINE Johnson on the plot of Cymbeline — Imperfect sympathies — Truth of imagination, of emotion, and of fact — A critical disability — Shakespeare’s magic — His work conditioned by the Elizabethan stage — The theme of Cymbeline — —The glory of Imogen — Shakespeare to Johnson — Echoes in Cymbeline — The whole greater than the parts — Complexity of the plot - 259 — 281 CHAPTER XIV THE WINTER’S TALE The Winter’* Tale — Echoes of Pericles — Fusion of tragedy and comedy — Futility of hard -definitions — False criti- cism of its structure — The author’s aim — An honest failure — The jealousy of Leontes — Some careless I 4 Contents PAGES workmanship — The fate of Antigonus — The part of Autolycus — The recognition scene — Deliberate faery — Weakness of the plot as a whole— The unapproachable love-scene .... - 282 — 299 V CHAPTER XV THE TEMPEST i I Date of The Tempest — Cunningham’s discovery — Discredit and rehabilitation — Dr. Garnett’s theory — Elizabeth of Bohemia — Probability of ' the play’s revision for a nuptial ceremony 300 — 315 CHAPTER XVI THE TEMPEST • \ II Workmanship is evidence of date of The Tempest — Compari- . son with The Winter’s Tale — Gonzalo’s commonwealth — Youthful love stronger than Prospero’s magic- — An ex- quisite surprise — -The most beautiful love-scene in Shake- speare — Supposed sources of the play — Its central theme — Difficulty of handling reconciliation in a three-hours’ play — Shakespeare’s attempts to overcome it — The Unities not laws but graces — Shakespeare’s “ royal ease” - - - - - 316— 336 CHAPTER XVII THE TEMPEST III Argument for The Tempest being a marriage play — Its posi- tion in the Folio — An imagined first night — The uses of the inner stage — The realistic accuracy of the opening Contents V AGE* scene — Landlubber criticisms — Coleridge on Prospero’s “retrospective narration’ ’ — The dignity of Perdita and Miranda — Shakespeare’s sympathy extending to Caliban — The contribution of Stephano — Comparison of The Tempest and A M id summer -N i ght } s Dream — Prospero — Danger of supposing autobiography — A play for all time ------ 337—362 Index 363 — 3 6 ® SHAKESPEARE’S WORKMANSHIP CHAPTER I MACBETH I Ways of studying Shakespeare — Method proposed for these notes ^ — Macbeth to be considered as a piece of workmanship — The Elizabethan Theatre, its audience and its stage — Shakespeare’s “ conditions ” — His “ material ” — The “material” of Macbeth — The capital difficulty of Mac- beth as a tragedy — How Shakespeare might have extenuated it — How, rather, before setting to work, he made his problem as hard as possible. ( 0 . I PROPOSE to take a single work of art, of ad- mitted excellence, and consider its workmanship. I choose Shakespeare’s tragedy of Macbeth as being eminently such a work : single or complete in itself, strongly imagined, simply constructed, and in its way excellent beyond any challenging. There are, of course, many other aspects from which so unchallengeable a masterpiece deserves to be studied. We may seek, for example, and seek use- fully, to fix its date and define its place in order of time among Shakespeare’s writings ; but this has been done 1 7 2 1 8 Shakespeare's Workmanship for us, nearly enough. Or we may search ‘it for light on Shakespeare, the man himself, and on his history, so obscure in the main, though here and there lit up by flashes of evidence, contemporary and convincing so far as they go. For my part, while admitting such curiosity to be human, and suffering myself now and again to be intrigued by it, I could never believe in it as a pursuit that really mattered. All literature must be personal : yet the artist — the great artist — dies into- his work, and in that survives. What dread hand de- signed the Sphinx ? What dread brain conceived its site, there, overlooking the desert ? What sort of man was he who contrived Memnon, with a voice to answer the sunrise ? What were the domestic or extra-domestic habits of Pheidias ? Whom did Villon rob or Cellini cheat or Moliere mock ? Why did Shakespeare bequeath to his wife his second-best bed ? These are questions which, as Sir Thomas Browne would say, admit a wide solution, and I allow some of them to be fascinating. “ Men are we,” and must needs wonder, a little wistfully, concerning the fore- runners, our kinsmen who, having achieved certain things we despair to improve or even to rival, have gone their way, leaving so much to be guessed. “How splendid,” we say, “to have known them! Let us delve back and discover all we can about them!” Brave lads in olden musical centuries Sang, night by night, adorable choruses, Sat late by alehouse doors in April, Chaunting in joy as the moon was rising. Macbeth 19 Moon-seen and merry, under the trellises, Flush-faced they played with old polysyllables ; Spring scents inspired, old wine diluted, Love and Apollo were there to chorus. Now these, the songs, remain to eternity, Those, only those, the bountiful choristers Gone — those are gone, those unremembered Sleep $.nd are silent in earth for ever. No : it is no ignoble quarrel we hold with Time over these men. But, after all, the moral of it is but summed up in a set of verses ascribed to Homer, in which he addresses the Delian Women. “ Farewell to you all,” he says, “ and remember me in time to come : and when any one of men on earth, a stranger from afar, shall inquire of you, ‘ O maidens, who is the sweetest of minstrels here about ? and in whom do you most delight ?’ then make answer modestly, ‘ Sir, it is a blind man, and he lives in steep Chios.’ ” But the shutters are up at The Mermaid: and, after all, it is the masterpiece that matters^— the Sphinx herself, the Iliad, the Parthenon, the Perseus, the song of the Old Heaulmieres, Tartufe > Macbeth. Lastly, I shall not attempt a general criticism of Macbeth, because that work has been done, ex- quisitely and (I think) perdurably, by Dr. Bradley, in his published Lectures on Shakespearean Tragedy, a book which I can hardly start to praise without using the language of extravagance : a book which I hold to belong to the first order of criticism, to be a true ornament of our times. Here and there, to be sure ' 20 Shakespeare' s Workmanship I cannot accept Dr. Bradley’s judgment : but it would profit my readers little to be taken point by point through these smaller questions at issue, and (what is more) I have not the necessary self- confidence. If, however, we spend a little while in considering Macbeth as a piece of workmanship (or artistry, if you prefer it) , we shall be following a new road which seems worth a trial — perhaps better worth a trial just be- cause it lies off the trodden way ; and whether it hap- pen or not to lead us out upon some fresh and lively view of this particular drama, it will at least help us by the way to clear our thoughts upon dramatic writing and its method : while I shall not be false to my belief in the virtue of starting upon any chosen work of literature absolutely , with minds intent on discover- ing just that upon which the author’s mind was intent. I shall assume that Macbeth is an eminently effec- tive play ; that, by consent, it produces a great, and intended, impression on the mind. It is the shortest of Shakespeare’s plays, save only The Comedy of Errors. It is told in just under 2,000 lines — scarcely more than half the length of Hamlet. We may attribute this brevity in part — and we shall attribute it rightly- — to its simplicity of plot, but that does not matter ; or, rather, it goes all to Macbeth's credit. The half ,of artistry consists in learning to make one stroke better than two. The more simply, econo- mically, you produce the impression aimed at, the better workman you may call yourself. Macbeth 21 Now what had Shakespeare to do ? He — a tried and competent dramatist — had to write a play : and if it be answered that everybody knew this without my telling it, I reply that it is the first thing some com- mentators forget. This play had to be an “ acting play ” : by which of course I mean a play to succeed on the boards and entertain, for three hours or so , 1 an audience which had paid to be entertained. This differentiates it at once from a literary composition meant to be read by the fireside, where the kettle does all the hissing. Therefore, to understand what Shakespeare as a workman was driving at, we must in imagination seat ourselves amid the audience he had in mind as he worked. Moreover we must imagine ourselves in the Globe Theatre, Southwark, different in so many respects from the playhouses we know : because at every point of difference we meet with some condition of which Shakespeare had to take account. The stage, raised pretty much as it is nowadays, was bare and ran out for some way into the auditorium, the central area of which was unroofed. Thus — the fashionable time for the theatre being the afternoon — the action, or a part of it, took place in daylight. When daylight waned, lanterns were called in, and some may agree with me, after studying Shakespeare’s sense of darkness and its artistic value, that it were worth while, with this in mind, to tabulate the times of year, so far as we can 1 In the Prologue to Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare talks of “ the two hours’ traffic of our stage.” But the actual perform- ance must have taken longer than two hours. 22 Shakespeare' s Workmanship ascertain them, at which his several plays were first performed. For my part, I am pretty sure that, among other conditions, he worked with an eye on the almanac. To return to the stage of the Globe Theatre. — Not only did it run out into the auditorium : the audience returned the compliment by overflowing it. Stools, ranged along either side of it, were much in demand by young gentlemen who wished to show off their fine clothes. These young gentlemen smoked — or, as they put it, “ drank ” — tobacco in clay pipes. So the atmosphere was free and easy ; in its way (I sus- pect) not much unlike that of the old music-halls I frequented in graceless days, where a corpulent chair- man called for drinks for which, if privileged to know him and sit beside him, you subsequently paid ; where all joined companionably in a' chorus ; where a wink from the singer would travel — I know not how — around four-fifths of a complete circle. The Elizabethan theatre had no painted scenery j 1 or little, and that of the rudest. At the back of the stage, at some little height above the heads of the players, projected a narrow gallery, or platform, with (as I suppose) a small doorway behind it, and a “ prac- 1 “ The Elizabethan Stage,” “ the Elizabethan Drama,” are terms which actually cover a considerable period of time. It is certain that — say between 1550 and 1620 — the theatre enor- mously improved its apparatus : upon the masques, as we know, very large sums of money were spent ; and I make no doubt that before the close of Shakespeare’s theatrical career, painted scenes and tapestries were the fashion. Macbeth 23 ticable ” ladder to give access to it or be removed, as occasion demanded. Fix the ladder, and it became the stairway leading to Duncan’s sleeping-chamber : take it away, and the gallery became the battlements of Dunsinane, or Juliet’s balcony, or Brabantio’s win- dow, or Shylock’s from which Jessica drops the coffer, or Cleopatra’s up to which she hales dying Antony. From the floor of this gallery to the floor of the stage depended draperies which, as they were drawn close or opened, gave you the arras behind which Falstaff was discovered ip slumber, or Polonius stabbed, the tomb of Juliet, Desdemona’s bed, the stage for the play-scenes in Hamlet and the Midsummer-Night’ s Dream , the cave of Prospero or of Hecate. To right and left of this draped alcove, beyond the pillars supporting the gallery, were two doors giving on the back and the green-room — mimorum aedes — •_ for the entrances and exits of the players. Such was the Elizabethan theatre, with an audi- ence so disposed that, as Sir Walter Raleigh puts it, “ the groups of players were seen from many points of view, and had to aim at statuesque rather than pic- torial effect.” When we take the arrangements into account with the daylight and the lack of scenic back- ground, we at once realise that it must have been so, and that these were the conditions under which Shake - s peare wrought for success . I must add another, though without asking it to be taken into account just here. I must add it because, the more we consider it, the more we are likely to count it the heaviest handicap of all. All female parts 24 Shakespeare's Workmanship were taken by boys. Reflect upon this, and listen to Lady Macbeth : I have given suck, and know How tender ’tis to love the babe that rnilks me : I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you Have done to this. That in the mouth of a boy ! Shakespeare’s triumph over this condition will remain a wonder, however closely it be studied. Nevertheless, there it was : a condition which, having to lay account with it, he magnificently over-rode. It were pedantic, of course, to lay upon a modern man the strain of constantly visualising that old theatre on the Bankside when reading Shakespeare, or, when seeing him acted, of perpetually reminding himself. He did not write it for this.” He did not, to be sure. But so potent was his genius that it has carried his work past the conditions of his own age to rein- carnate, to revive, it in unabated vigour in later ages and under new conditions, even as the Iliad has survived the harp and the warriors’ feast. This adaptable vitality is the test of first-rate genius ; and, save Shakespeare’s, few dramas even of the great Eliza- bethan age have passed it. But, as for Shakespeare, I verily believe that, could his large masculine spirit revisit London, it would — whatever the dilettante and the superior person may say — rejoice in what has been done to amplify that cage against which we have his own word that he fretted, and would be proud of the Macbeth 25 care his countrymen, after three centuries, take to interpret him worthily : and this although I seem to catch, together with a faint smell of brimstone, his comments on the “ star ” performer of these days, with the limelight following him about the stage and analysing the rainbow upon his glittering eye. These things, however, Shakespeare could not foresee : and we must seek back to the limitations of his theatre for our present purpose, to understand what a workman he was. (2) We pass, then, from the conditions under which he built his plays to the material out of which he had to build this particular one. The material of Macbeth, as we know, he found in Raphael Holinshed’s Chroni- cles of Scotland, first published in 1578 (but he appears to have read the second edition, of 1587). It lies scattered about in various passages in the separate chronicles of King Duncan, King Duff, King Kenneth, King Macbeth ; but we get the gist of it in two pas- sages from the Chronicle of King Duncan. There is no need to quote them in full : but the purport of the first may be gathered from its opening : — Shortly after happened a strange and uncouth wonder. ... It fortuned as Macbeth and Banquho journeyed towards Fores, where the king as then lay, they went sporting by the way to- gether without other companie save only themselves, passing through the woodes and fieldes, when sodenly, in the middes of a launde, there met them 3 women in strange and ferly apparell, resembling creatures of an elder worlde; whom they attentively behelde, wondering much at the sight. 2 6 Shakespeare's Workmanship Then follow the prophecies : ‘‘All hayle, Mak- beth, Thane of Glamis,” etc., with the promise to Banquho that “ contrarily thou in deede shall not reigne at all, but of thee shall be borne which shall governe the Scottish Kingdome by long order of con- tinuall descent.” I pause on that for a moment, merely because it gives a reason, if a secondary one, why the story should attract Shakespeare : for James I., a descendant of Banquho, had come to be King of , England : actors and playwrights have ever an eye for “ topical ” opportunity, and value that opportunity none the less if it be one to flatter a reigning house. I take up the quotation at a later point : - — The same night at supper Banquho jested with him and sayde, Nowe Makbeth thou hast obtayned those things which the two former sisters prophesied, there remayneth onely for thee to purchase that which the thyrd sayd should come to passe. Where- upon Makbeth, revolving the thing in his mind even then, began to devise how he mighte attayne to the kingdome. Next we read that Duncan, by appointing his young son, Malcolm, Prince of Cumberland, “ as it were thereby to appoint him his successor in the King- dome,” sorely troubled Macbeth’s ambition, insomuch that he now began to think of usurping the kingdom by force. The Chronicle goes on : — The wordes of the three weird sisters also (of whome before ye have heard) greatly encouraged him hereunto, but specially his wife lay sore upon him to atteippt the thing, as she that was very ambitious burning in unquenchable desire to beare the name of a Queene. At length, therefore, communicating his proposed in- Macbeth 27 tent with his trustie friendes, amongst whom Banquho was the chiefest, upon confidence of their promised ayde, he slewe the king at Envernes (or as some say at Botgosuane) in the VI year of his reygne. The Chronicle proceeds to tell how Macbeth had himself crowned at Scone; how he reigned (actually for a considerable time) ; how he got rid of Banquho ; how Banquho’ s son escaped ; how Birnam Wood came to Dunsinane, with much more that is handled in the tragedy ; and ends (so far as we are concerned) as the play ends : — A s J \ But Makduffe . . . answered (with his naked sworde in his hande) saying : it is true, Makbeth, and now shall thine insatiable crueltie have an ende, for I am even he that thy wysards have tolde thee of, who was never borne of my mother, but ripped out of her wombe : therewithall he stept unto him, and slue him in the place. Then cutting his heade from the shoulders, he set it upon a poll, and brought it into Malcolme. This was the end of Makbeth, after he had reigned XVII years over the Scottish- men. In the beginning of his raigne he accomplished many worthie actes, right profitable to the common wealth (as ye have heard), but afterwards, by illusion of the Divell, he defamed the same with most horrible crueltie. There, in brief, we have Shakespeare’s material : and patently it holds one element on which an artist’s mind (if I understand the artistic mind) would by at- traction at once inevitably seize. I mean the element of the supernatural. It is the element which almost every commentator, almost every critic, has done his best to belittle. I shall recur to v it, and recur with stress upon it ; because, writing as diffidently as a man may who has spent thirty years of his life in learning k 28 Shakespeare's Workmanship to understand how stories are begotten, and being old enough to desire to communicate what of knowledge, though too late for me, may yet profit others, I can make affidavit that what first arrested Shakespeare’s mind as he read the Chronicles was that passage con- cerning the ” three weird sisters “ All hayle, Mak- beth, Thane of Glamis ! ” and the rest. Let us consider the Chronicle with this supernatural element left out, and what have we ? An ordinary sordid story of a disloyal general murdering his king, usurping the throne, reigning with cruelty for seven- teen years, and being overcome at length amid every- one’s approval. There is no material for tragedy in that. “ Had Zimri peace, who slew his master?” Well (if we exclude the supernatural in the Chron- icle ), yes, he had; and for seventeen years : which, for a bloody tyrant, is no short run. Still, let us exclude ‘the supernatural for a moment. Having excluded it, we shall straightway perceive that the story of the Chronicle has one fatal defect as a theme of tragedy. For tragedy demands some sym- pathy with the fortunes of its hero : but where is there room for sympathy in the fortunes of a disloyal, self- seeking murderer ? Just there lay Shakespeare’s capital difficulty. (3) Before we follow his genius in coming to grips with it, let us realise the importance as well as the magni- tude of that difficulty. “ Tragedy [says Aristotle] is the imitation of an action : and an action implies Macbeth 29 personal agents, who necessarily possess certain qual- ities both of character and thought. It is these that determine the qualities of actions themselves : these — thought and character — are the two natural causes from which actions spring : on these causes, again, all success or failure depends .” 1 But it comes to this — the success or failure of a tragedy depends on what sort of person we represent ; and principally, of course, on what sort of person we make our chief tragic figure, our protagonist. Every- thing depends really on our protagonist : and it was his true critical insight that directed Dr. Bradley, examining the substance of Shakespearian tragedy, to lead off with these words : Such a tragedy brings before us a considerable number of persons (many more than the. persons in a Greek play, unless the members of the Chorus are reckoned among them) ; but it is pre- eminently the story of one person, the £ 1 hero, ” or at most of two, the “hero” and “ heroine.” Moreover, it is only in the love- tragedies, Romeo and Juliet , Antony and Cleopatra, that the heroine is as much the centre of the action as the hero. The rest, including Macbeth , are single stars. So that, having noticed the peculiarity of these two dramas, we may henceforth, for the sake of brevity, ignore it, and may speak of the tragic story as being concerned primarily with one person. So, it makes no difference to this essential of tragedy whether we write our play for an audience of Athenians or of Londoners gathered in the Globe 1 I quote from Butcher’s rendering, which gives the sense clearly enough; though, actually, Aristotle’s language is simpler, and for “ thought ” I should substitute “ understanding ” as a translation of Scavoia. 30 Shakespeare s Workmanship Theatre, Southwark : whether we crowd our dramatis personse or are content with a caste of three or four. There must be one central figure (or at most two), and on this figure, as the story unfolds itself, we must concentrate the spectators’ emotions of pity or terror, or both. Now, I am going, for handiness, to quote Aristotle again, because he lays down very succinctly some rules concerning this “ hero ” or protagonist, or central figure (call him what: we will — I shall use the word ‘ ‘ hero ’ ’ merely because it - is the shortest) . But let us understand that though these so-called “ rules ” of Aristotle are marvellously enforced — though their wisdom is marvellously confirmed — by Dr. Bradley’s examination of the “ rules ” which Shake- speare, consciously or unconsciously, obeyed, they do no more than turn into precept, with reasons given, certain inductions drawn by Aristotle from the ap- proved masterpieces of his time. There is no reason to suppose that Shakespeare had ever heard of them ; rather, there is good reason to suppose that he had not. But Aristotle says this concerning the hero, or protagonist, of tragic drama, and Shakespeare’s practice at every point supports him : — (1) A Tragedy must not be the spectacle of a perfectly good man brought from prosperity to adversity. For this merely shocks us. (2) Nor of course, must it be that of a bad man passing from adversity to prosperity : for that is not tragedy at all, but the perversion of tragedy, and revolts the moral sense. j Macbeth 3 1 (3) Nor, again, should it exhibit the downfall of an utter villain : since pity is aroused by undeserved misfortunes, terror by misfortunes befalling a man like ourselves. (4) There remains, then, as the only proper subject for Tragedy, the spectacle of a man not absolutely or eminently good or wise, who is brought to disaster not by sheer depravity but by some error or frailty. (5) Lastly, this man must be highly renowned and prosperous — an CEdipus, a Thyestes, or some other illustrious person. Before dealing with the others, let us get this last rule out of the way ; for, to begin with, it presents no difficulty in Macbeth , since in the original — in Holin- shed’s Chronicles — -Macbeth is an illustrious warrior who makes himself a king ; and moreover the rule is patently a secondary one, of artistic expediency rather than of artistic right or wrong, ft amounts but to this, that the more eminent we make our persons in Tragedy, the more evident we make the disaster — the dizzier the height, the longer way to fall, and the greater shock on our audience’s mind. Dr. Bradley goes further, and remarks, “ The pangs of despised love and the anguish of remorse, we say, are the same in a peasant and a prince : but (not to insist that they cannot be so when the prince is really a prince) the story of the prince, the triumvir, or the general, has a greatness and dignity of its own. His fate affects the welfare of a whole ; and when he falls suddenly from the height of earthly greatness to the dust, his fall produces a sense of contrast, of the powerlessness of man, and of the omnipotence— perhaps the caprice — of Fortune or Fate, which no tale of private life can possibly rival.” In this wider view Dr. Bradley may 32 Shakespeare's Workmanship be right, though some modern dramatists would dis- agree with him. But we are dealing more humbly with Shakespeare as a workman; and for our purpose it is more economical, as well as sufficient, to say that downfall from a high eminence is more spectacular than downfall from a low one ; that Shakespeare, who knew most of the tricks of his art, knew this as well as ever did Aristotle, and those who adduce to us Shakespeare’s constant selection of kings and princes for his dramatis personae , as evidence of his having been a “ snob,” might as triumphantly prove it snob- bish in a Greek tragedian to write of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, or of Cadmus and Harmonia, because The gods had to their marriage come, And at the banquet all the Muses sang. But, touching the other and more essential rules laid down by Aristotle, let me — very fearfully, know- ing how temerarious it is, how imprudent to offer to condense so great and close a thinker — suggest that, after all, they work down into one : — that a hero of Tragic Drama must, whatever else he miss, engage our sympathy ; that, however gross his error or grievous his frailty, it must not exclude our feeling that he is a man like ourselves ; that, sitting in the audi- ence, we must know in our hearts that what is befalling him might conceivably in the circumstances have befallen us, and say in our hearts, “ There, but for the grace of God, go I.” I think, anticipating a little, I can drive this point home by a single illustration. When the ghost of Macbeth 33 Banquo seats itself at that dreadful supper, who sees it? Not the company. Not even Lady Macbeth. Whom does it accuse? Not the company, and, again, not even Lady Macbeth. Those who see it are Macbeth and you and I. Those into whom it strikes terror are Macbeth and you and I. Those whom it accuses are Macbeth and you and I. And what it accuses is what, of Macbeth, you and I are hiding in our own breasts. So, if this be granted, I come back upon the capital difficulty that faced Shakespeare as an artist. (1) It was not to make Macbeth a grandiose or a conspicuous figure. He was already that in the Chronicle. (2) It was not to clothe him in something to illude us with the appearance of real greatness. Shake- speare, with his command of majestic poetical speech, had that in his work-bag surely enough, and knew it. When a writer can make an imaginary person talk like this : — She should have died hereafter; There would have been a time for such a word. To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time ; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death — I say, when a man knows he can make his Macbeth talk like that, he needs not distrust his power to drape his Macbeth in an illusion of greatness. Moreover, Shakespeare — artist that he was — had other tricks up 3 34 Shakespeare's Workmanship his sleeve to convince us of Macbeth’s greatness. One of these I hope to discuss in a subsequent chapter. But (here lies the crux) how could he make us sym- pathise with him — make us, sitting or standing in the Globe Theatre some time (say) in the year 1610, feel that Macbeth was even such a man as you or I ? He was a murderer, and a murderer for his private profit — a combination which does not appeal to most of us, to unlock the flood-gates of sympathy or (I hope) as striking home upon any private and pardon- able frailty. The Chronicle does, indeed, allow just one loop-hole for pardon. It hints that Duncan, nominating his boy to succeed him, thereby cut off Macbeth from a reasonable hope of the crown, which he thereupon (and not until then) by process of murder usurped, “ having,” says Holinshed, “ a juste quarrell so to do (as he took the mater) . 5 ’ Did Shakespeare use that one hint, enlarge that loop-hole ? He did not. The more we study Shakespeare as an artist, the more we must worship the splendid audacity of what he did, just here, in this play of Macbeth. Instead of using a paltry chance to condone Mac- beth’s guilt, he seized on it and .plunged it threefold deeper, so that it might verily the multitudinous seas incarnadine. Think of it : — He made this man, a sworn soldier, murder Duncan, his liege-lord. Macbeth 35 He made this man, a host, murder Duncan, a guest within his gates. He made this man, strong and hale, murder Duncan, old, weak, asleep and defenceless. He made this man commit murder for nothing but his own advancement. He made this man murder Duncan, who had steadily advanced him hitherto, who had never been aught but trustful, and who (that no detail of reproach might be wanting) had that very night, as he retired, sent, in most kindly thought, the gift of a diamond to his hostess. To sum up : instead of extenuating Macbeth’s criminality, Shakespeare doubles and redoubles it. Deliberately this magnificent artist locks every door on condonation, plunges the guilt deep as hell, and then — tucks up his sleeves. There was once another man, called John Milton,, a Cambridge man of Christ’s College ; and, as most of us know, he once thought of rewriting this very story of Macbeth. The evidence that he thought of it — the entry in Milton’s handwriting — may be ex- amined in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. Milton did not eventually write a play on the story of Macbeth. Eventually he preferred to write an epic upon the Fall of Man, and of that poem critics have been found to say that Satan, “ enemy of man- kind,” is in fact the hero and the personage that most claims our sympathy. Now (still bearing in mind how the subject of 36 Shakespeare's Workmanship Macbeth attracted Milton) let us open Paradise Lost at Book IV. upon the soliloquy of Satan, which be- tween lines 32-113 admittedly holds the clou of the poem : 0 ! thou that, with surpassing glory crown’d — Still thinking of Shakespeare and of Milton — of Satan and of Macbeth — let us ponder every line : but es- pecially these : — Lifted up so high, 1 ’sdain’d subjection, and thought one step higher Would set me highest, and in a moment quit The debt immense of endless gratitude, So burdensome, still paying, still to owe : Forgetful what from him I still receiv’d; And understood not that a grateful mind By owing owes not, but still pays at once Indebted and discharg’d. . . . And yet more especially this : — Farewell, remorse ! All good to me is lost : Evil, be thou my good. CHAPTER II MACBETH II The criminal hero — Hallucination — What is witchcraft? — Dr. Johnson on the witches in. Macbeth — “ Evil, be thou my good ” — The use of darkness and its suggestions in Shake- speare’s tragedies — Schiller and Schlegel — Vagueness of the witches — 11 A deed without a name ” — Deliberate enfeebling of all characters, save in the two protagonists — The critical word in this drama — The knocking at the gate. (!) We left off upon the question, How could it lie within the compass even of Shakespeare, master- workman though he was and lord of all noble per- suasive language, to make a tragic hero of this Mac- beth— traitor to his king, murderer of his sleeping guest, breaker of most sacred trust, ingrate, self- seeker, false kinsman, perjured soldier ? Why, it is sin of this quality that in Hamlet , for example, outlaws the guilty wretch beyond range of pardon — our pardon, if not God’s. Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole. . . . Why, so did Macbeth upon Duncan’s. Hear the wretch himself on his knees : Forgive me my foul murder? That cannot be; since I am still possess’d Of those effects for which I did the murder. . . . 37 ) ' i 38 Shakespeare s Workmanship Why, so was Macbeth again. O bosom black as death ! O limed soul, that, struggling to be free, Art more engag’d ! How could Shakespeare make his audience feci pity or terror for such a man ? Not for the deed, not for Duncan ; but for Macbeth, doer of the deed ; how make them sympathise, saying inwardly, “ There, but for the grace of God, might you go, or I ” ? He could, by majesty of diction, make them feel that Macbeth was somehow a great man : and this he did. He could conciliate their sympathy at the start by presenting Macbeth as a brave and victorious soldier : and this he did. He could show him drawn to the deed, against will and conscience, by persuasion of another, a woman : and this — though it is ex- tremely dangerous, since all submission of will forfeits something of manliness, lying apparently on the side of cowardice, and ever so little of cowardice forfeits sympathy — this, too, Shakespeare did. He could trace the desperate act to ambition, “ last infirmity of noble minds ” : and this again he did. All these artifices, and more, Shakespeare used. But yet are they artifices and little more. They do not begin — they do not pretend — to surmount the main difficulty which I have indicated, How of such a criminal to make a hero ? Shakespeare did it : solutum est agendo. How ? There is (I suppose) only one possible way. It is to make our hero — supposed great, supposed brave, Macbeth 39 supposed of certain winning natural gifts — proceed to his crime under some fatal hallucination. It must not be an hallucination of mere madness : for that merely revolts. In our treatment of lunatics we have come to be far tenderer than the Elizabethans. (We recall Malvolio in the dark cellar.) Still, to us madness remains unaccountable ; a human breakdown, out of which anything may happen. No : the hallucination, the dreadful mistake, must be one that can seize on a mind yet powerful and lead it logically to a doom that we, seated in the audience, understand, awfully fore- bode, yet cannot arrest — unless by breaking through the whole illusion heroically, as did a young woman of my acquaintance who, on her second or third visit to the theatre, arose from her seat in the gallery and shouted to Othello, “Oh, you great black fool ! Can’t you see ?” Further, such an hallucination once established upon a strong mind, the more forcibly that mind reasons the more desperate will be the conclusion of its error ; the more powerful is the will, or combination of wills, the more irreparable will be the deed to which it drives, as with the more anguish we shall follow the once-noble soul step by step to its ruin. Now, of all forms of human error, which is the most fatal ? Surely that of exchanging Moral Order, Righteousness, the Will of God (call it what we will) for something directly opposed to it : in other words, of assigning the soul to Satan’s terrible resolve, “ Evil, be thou my good.” By a great soul such a resolve cannot be taken 40 Shakespeare's Workmanship save under hallucination. But if Shakespeare could fix that hallucination upon Macbeth and plausibly estab- lish him in it, he held the key to unlock his difficulty. I have no doubt at all where he found it, or how he grasped it. ( 2 ) What is Witchcraft ? Or first let us ask, What was Witchcraft ? Well, to begin with, it was something in which the mass of any given audience in the Globe Theatre de- voutly believed ; and of the educated few less than one in ten, perhaps, utterly disbelieved. I shall not here inquire if Shakespeare believed in it ; or, if at all, how far : but if Shakespeare did utterly disbelieve when he wrote (if he wrote) the First Part of' Henry VI., then it adds — what we could thankfully spare — one more feature of disgrace to his treatment of Joan of Arc, Women were burnt for witches in Shakespeare’s time, and throughout the seventeenth century and some way on into the eighteenth. We may read (and soon have our fill) in the pious abominable works of Cotton and Increase Mather of what these poor women suffered publicly, in New England and Mas- sachusetts, at the hands of Puritan Fathers. We may find in Sinclair’s Satan's Invisible World Dis- covered more than any Christian should bargain for concerning our home-grown beldames, and specially those of Scotland. To go right back to Shake- speare’s time, we may study the prevalent, almost ‘ Macbeth 4 * general, belief in Reginald Scot’s Discovery of Witchcraft (1584). To the Elizabethans witchcraft was an accepted thing : their drama reeks of it. We need only call to mind Marlowe’s Faustus, Greene’s Friar Bacon , Middleton’s Witch, Dekker’s Witch of Edmonton. I shall not labour this, because it has been seized on by Dr. Johnson with his usual straight insight and expounded with his usual common sense. This play of Macbeth peculiarly attracted him. In 1745, long before he annotated the complete Shakespeare, he put forth a pamphlet entitled Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth, with Remarks on Sir T. H/s (Sir Thomas. Hanmer’s) Edition of Shake- speare. To that pamphlet (says Boswell) he affixed proposals for a new edition of his own : and though no copy survives which contains them, he had cer- tainly advertised his intention somehow and some- where. As all the world knows, twenty years elapsed before, in October 1765, his constitutional lethargy at length overcome, there appeared his edition of Shakespeare in eight volumes. Now what has Johnson to tell us of this his favour- ite play ? He begins on Act i., Scene 1, line 1 — nay, before it : on the stage direction, “ Enter Three Witches.” Says he : In order to make a true estimate of the abilities and merits of a writer, it is always necessary to examine the spirit of his age and the opinions of his contemporaries. A poet who should now make the whole action of his tragedy depend upon enchantment,- 42 Shakespeare's Workmanship and produce the chief events by the assistance of supernatural spirits, would be censored as transgressing the bounds of prob- ability, be banished from the theatre to the nursery, and con- demned to write fairy-tales instead of tragedies. Here I submit that Johnson talks too loudly. I may not actually believe in Jove or Apollo or Venus, “ mother of the y£neid race divine,” any more than I believe in Puck or in Oberon, or in ghosts as vulgarly conceived. Yet Jove, Apollo and Venus remain for me symbols of things in which I do firmly and even passionately believe : of things for which neither Christian doctrine nor modern Natural Science pro- vides me with symbols that are equivalent or even begin to be comparable. Tradition has consecrated them : and an author to-day may invoke these names of gods once authentic ; as an author to-day may employ ghosts, fairies, even witches, to convey a spiritual truth, without being suspected by anyone, not a fool, of literal belief in his machinery, of prac- tising Walpurgis or Corybantic dances in his closet or drenching his garden at night with the blood of black goats. But a survey [proceeds Johnson] of the notions that pre- vailed at the time when this play was written, will prove that Shakespeare was in no danger of such censors, since he only turned the system that was then universal to his advantage, and was far from overburthening the credulity of his audience. Some learned observations follow, on the Dark Ages and their credence in witchcraft ; among which is introduced a story from Olympiodorus, of a wizard, one Libanius, who promised the Empress Placidia to Macbeth 43 defeat her enemies without aid of soldiery, and was promptly on his promise put to death by that strong- minded lady : “ who,” adds Johnson, “ shewed some kindness in her anger, by cutting him off at a time so convenient for his reputation.” He continues : — The Reformation did not immediately arriye at its meridian, and tho’ day was gradually increasing upon us, the goblins of witchcraft still continued to hover in the twilight. In the time of Queen Elizabeth was the remarkable trial of the witches of Warbois, whose conviction is still commemorated in an annual sermon at Huntingdon. But in the reign of King James , in which this tragedy was written, many circumstances concurred to propagate and confirm this opinion. The King, who was much celebrated for his knowledge, had, before his arrival in England , not only examined in person a woman accused of witch- craft, but had given a very formal account of the. practices and illusions of evil spirits, the compacts of witches, the ceremonies used by them, the manner of detecting them, and the justice of punishing them, in his Dialogues of Dcemonologie, written in the Scottish dialect, and published at Edinburgh. This book was, soon after his accession, reprinted in London, and as the ready way to gain King James’s favour was to flatter his speculations, the system of Dcemonologie was immediately adopted by all who desired either to gain preferment or not to lose it. Thus the doctrine of witchcraft was very powerfully inculcated ; and as the greatest part of mankind have no other reason for their opinions than that they are in fashion, it cannot be doubted but - this persuasion made a rapid progress, since vanity and credulity co-operated in its favour. The infection soon reached the parlia- ment, who in the first year of King James , made a law by which it was enacted, chap, xii., that “ if any person shall use any invo- cation or conjuration of any evil or wicked spirit ; 2, or shall consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, fee or reward any evil or cursed spirit to or for any intent or purpose ; 3, or take up 44 Shakespeare' s Workmanship any dead man, woman or child out of the grave — or the skin,, bone, or any part of the dead person — to be employed or used in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment; 4, or shall use, practise or exercise any sort of witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment; 5, whereby any person shall be de- stroyed, killed, wasted, consumed, pined, or lamed in any part of the body ; 6, that every such person being convicted shall suffer death.’ ’ This law was repealed in our own time. Thus, in the time of Shakespeare, was the doctrine of witch- craft at once established by law apd by the fashion, and it be- came not only unpolite, but criminal, to doubt it. Upon this general infatuation Shakespeare might be easily allowed to found a play, especially since he has followed with' great exactness such histories as were then thought true ; nor can it be doubted that the scenes of enchantment, however they may noW be ridiculed, were both by himself and his audience thought awful and affecting. Thus wrote Johnson in the middle of the eighteenth century, “ the age of reason ” ; and, assuming that he talks sense, I put the further, more important question : “ What is, or was, Witchcraft ?” “ What did men hold it, essentially and precisely, to mean ?” It meant, essentially and precisely, that the per- son who embraced witchcraft sold his soul to the devil, to become his servitor ; that, for a price, he committed himself to direct reversal of the moral order ; that he consented to say, “ Evil, be thou my good .’ 5 “Satan, be thou my God.” It meant this, and nothing short of this. Now let us return to Holinshed. The Chronicler relates that Macbeth and Banquo “ went sporting by the way together without other companie save only Macbeth 45 themselves, passing the woodes and fieldes, when sodenly, in the middes of a launde there met them 3 women in strange and ferly apparell, resembling crea- tures of an elder world ’ ’ : and it adds that by common opinion these women “ were eyther the weird sisters, thaf is (as ye would say) y e Goddesses of destinee, or else some N implies or Faieries.” L have already announced my readiness to make affidavit that Shake- speare’s mind, as he read, seized on this passage at once. Follov/ing this up, I will suggest (as a diver- sion from my main argument) a process — rough in- deed, yet practical — by which a dramatist’s mind would operate. He would say to himself, “ I have to treat of a murder ; which is, of its nature, a deed of darkness. Here to my hand is a passage which, whether I can find or not in it the motive of my plot, already drapes it in the supernatural, and so in mystery, which is next door to darkness / 9 Let us pause here and remind ourselves how con- stantly Shakespeare uses darkness to aid the effect of his tragedies upon the spectator. To omit Romeo and Juliet — of which the tragic action really starts under a moonlit balcony and ends in a vaulted tomb — of the four tragedies by general consent preferred as greatest, Hamlet opens on the dark battlements of Elsinore, with a colloquy in whispers, such as night constrains, between sentinels who report a ghost visit- ing their watch : Othello opens with the mutter of voices in a dark street, and ends by the bedside lit by one candle : the total impression of Lear is of a dark 46 Shakespeare's Workmanship heath upon which three or four men wander blindly, lit only at intervals by flashes from the dark elements ; and the physical blindness of Kent (the one morally sane character in the piece) enhances our sense of impotent moral groping. Of Macbeth I cannot do better than quote Dr. Bradley : — Darkness, we may even say blackness, broods over this tragedy. It is remarkable that almost all the scenes which at once recur to the memory take place either at night or in some dark spot. The vision of the dagger, the murder of Duncan, the murder of Banquo, the sleep-walking of Lady Macbeth, all come in night-scenes. The witches dance in the thick air of a storm, or “ black and midnight hags ” receive Macbeth in a cavern. The blackness of night is to the hero a thing of fear, even of horror; and that which he feels becomes the spirit of the play. The faint glimmerings of the western sky at twilight are here menacing : it is the hour when the traveller hastens to reach safety in his inn, and when Banquo rides homeward to meet his assassins : the hour when “ light thickens,” when “ night’s black agents to their prey do rouse,” when the wolf begins to howl, and the owl to scream, and withered murder steals forth to his w T ork. Macbeth bids the stars hide their fires that his “ black ” desires may be concealed : Lady Macbeth calls on thick night to come, palled in the dunnest smoke of hell. The moon is down and no stars shine when Banquo, dreading the dreams of the coming night, goes unwillingly to bed, and leaves Macbeth to wait for the summons of the little bell. When the next day should dawn, its light is “ strangled ” and “ darkness does the face of earth en- tomb.” In the whole drama the sun seems to shine only twice : first, in the beautiful but ironical passage w’here Duncan sees the swallows flitting round the castle of death ; and afterwards, when at the close the avenging army gathers to rid the earth of its shame. Of the many slighter touches which deepen this effect I notice only one. The failure of nature in Lady Macbeth is marked by her fear of darkness; “she has light by her con- Macbeth 47 tinually.’ , And in the one phrase of fear that escapes her lips even in sleep, it is of the darkness of the place of torment that she speaks. “ Hell is murky.” Yes, and upon the crucial test of the guilty king’s soul in Hamlet — the play- scene-^-what is the cry ? King. Give me some light — away ! All. Lights, lights, lights ! What, again, is the scene that gives quality to Julius Caesar but the brooding night in Brutus’ gar- den ? What, again (to go back among the plays), retrieves The Merchant of Venice from tragedy — from the surcharged air of the trial scene — to comedy, but the Fifth Act, with placid night shimmering to- wards dawn, and the birds starting to sing in the shrubberies, as Portia, mistress of the house and the play, says in four words what concludes all ? — It is almost morning. It may well be that Shakespeare, as a stage- manager, had means of employing darkness at will, say by a curtain pulled overhead across the auditorium, or part of it. If he had not — and the first account of the play by a spectator is by one Dr. Forman, an astrologer, who paid for his seat . in the Globe on Saturday, April 20th, 1610 — that is, at a time of year, when the sky over the theatre would be day-lit — I frankly confess my ignorance of how it was managed. But that Shakespeare saw the play in darkness, no one who has studied it can have any doubt at all. He saw the whole thing in darkness, or at best in 48 , Shakespeare's Workmanship / the murk light of the Scottish highlands. He saw it (as the play proves) a thing of night. Now, always and everlastingly, amongst men, as day typifies sight and sanity, night typifies blindness and evil. In the night-time murder stalks, witches ride, men doubt of God in their dreams — doubt even, lying awake — and wait for dawn to bring reassurance. In darkness — in a horror of darkness only — can one mistake and purchase evil for good. So, as I reason, Shakespeare saw his chance. I am weary, and over-weary, of commentators who dis- pute whether his witches were real witches or fates or what-not. Schiller, as all know, adapted Macbeth ; and Schiller was a poet : but Schiller was no Shake- speare, and by philosophising Shakespeare’s watches, as by other means, he produced a Macbeth remark- ably unlike Shakespeare’s Macbeth . Why, when he came to the knocking at the gate, Schiller omitted the Porter — in deference (I believe) to the genteel taste of his age — and substituted a Watchman, with a song to the rising dawn ; and a charming song, too, with the one drawback that it ruins the great dramatic moment of the play. Schlegel rates Schiller roundly for his witches ; and Gervinus says that Schlegel’ s censure is not a half-penny worth too harsh. But Schlegel proceeds to evolve out of his inner conscious- ness a new kind of witch of his own ; and this too has the merit of being a witch of Schlegel’ s own with the defect of being as much like Shakespeare’s as any other camel. Thereupon starts up Gervinus, and says that Schlegel “ gives throughout an opposite Macbeth 49 idea of Shakespeare’s meaning ” ; and forthwith pro- ceeds in his turn to evolve his own camel, leading off with the observation that “ the poet, in the actual text of the play, calls these beings ‘ witches ’ only derogatorily : they call themselves weird sisters . ’ ’ Profoundly true ! — and has anyone, by the way, ever known a usurer who called himself a usurer, or^ re- ceiver of stolen goods who called himself a receiver, or a pandar who called himself a pandar, or a swindler who called himself anything but a victim of circum- stances ? A few days ago, some enterprising firm sent me a letter which began (as I thought with gratu- itous abruptness) u We are not money-lenders ” — and went on to suggest that if, however, I should need “ temporary financial accommodation,” they were prepared to advance any sum between ^5 and ^5°,°oo. But, as everybody knows who has studied the etiquette of traffic with Satan, it is the rule never to mention names. If Professor Gervinus had never, to ponder it, studied the tale of Rump elstilt skin, he might at any rate have remembered the answer given to Macbeth’s salutation in Act iv., Scene 1 : — Macbeth. How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags ! What is’t you do? All. A deed without a name. — and if the deed be nameless, why not the doer? But if the reader insist on my being definite, when a lady wears a beard on her chin, and sails to Aleppo in a sieve, and sits at midnight boiling a ragout of poisoned 4 50 Shakespeare's Workmanship entrails, newt’s eyes, frog’s toes, liver of blaspheming jew, nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips, finger of birth- strangled babe, to make a gruel thick and slab for a charm of powerful trouble — I say, if he insist on my giving that lady a name, I for one am content with that given in the stage-direction, and to call her ” witch.” But if these philosophising critics would leave their talk* about Northern Fates, Norns, Valkyries — beings of which it is even possible that, save for the hint in Holinshed, Shakespeare had never heard, and certain that not one in ten of the Globe audience had Ever heard — and would turn their learned attention to what Shakespeare as a workman had to do, could they miss seeing that a part of his very secret of success lay in leaving these creatures vague, the full extent of their influence dreadfully indeterminate ? Coleridge on this, as not seldom, has the right word : — The Weird Sisters are as true a creation of Shakespeare’s as his Ariel and Caliban — fates, furies, and materialising witches being the elements. They are wholly different from any repre- sentation of witches in the contemporary writers, and yet pre- sented a sufficient external resemblance to the creatures of vulgar prejudice to act immediately on the audience. Their character consists in the imaginative disconnected from the good ; they are the shadowy obscure and fearfully anomalous of physical nature, the lawless of human nature — elemental avengers without sex or kin. 11 Fair is foul, and foul is fair; Hover through the fog and filthy air.” I will put it in another way. Suppose that Shake- speare as a workman had never improved on what Macbeth 5 1 Marlowe taught. Suppose, having to make Macbeth choose evil for good, he had introduced Satan, definite, incarnate, as Marlowe did. Suppose he had made the man assign his soul, by deed or gift, on a piece of parchment and sign it with his blood, as Marlowe made Faustus do. What sort of play would Macbeth be ? But we know, and Shakespeare has helped to teach us, that the very soul of horror lies in the vague, the impalpable : that nothing in the world or out of it can so daunt and cow us as the dread of we know not what. Of darkness, again — of such darkness as this tragedy is cast in — we know that its menace lies in suggestion of the hooded eye watching us, the hand feeling to clutch us by the hart. No ; Shakespeare knew what he was about when he left his witches vague . Can we not see that very vagueness operating on Macbeth’s soul ? For a certainty, standing near in succession to the throne, he has, before ever the action begins, let his mind run on his chances. We need not say, with Coleridge, that “ he who wishes a tem- poral end for itself does in truth will the means : ’ ’ but at least Macbeth has let his mind toy with the means. He has been on the stage scarce two minutes when, at the Third Witch’s salutation — “ All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter ” — he starts, “ betrayed by what is false within.” Good sir,” says Banquo, “ why do you start, and seem to fear Things that do sound so fair?” 52 Shakespeare's Workmanship If we read and ponder Macbeth’s letter to his wife ; if we read and ponder what they say — yes, and specially ponder what they omit to say — when she greets his return ; we see beyond shadow of doubt that certain things are understood between them. They had talked of the chance, even if, until this moment, they had forborne to speak of the way to it. These are things which, until the necessary moment arrives — the moment that summons action, now or never — cannot be uttered aloud, even between husband and wife. Let us pause here, on the brink of the deed, and summarise : (1) Shakespeare, as artificer of this, play, meant the Witches, with their suggestions, to be of capital importance. (2) Shakespeare, as a workman, purposely left vague the extent of their influence ; purposely left vague the proportions of their influence and Macbeth’s own guilty promptings, his own acceptance of the hallu- cination, contribute to persuade him ; vague as the penumbra about him in which — for he is a man of imagination — he sees that visionary dagger. For (let us remember) it is not on Macbeth alone that this horrible dubiety has to be produced ; but on us also, seated in the audience. We see what he does not see, and yearn to warn him ; but we also *see what he sees — the dagger, Banquo’s ghost — and understand why he doubts. (3) As witchcraft implies a direct reversal of the moral order, so the sight and 'remembrance of the Macbeth i 53 witches, with the strange fulfilment of the Second Witch’s prophecy, constantly impose the hallucination upon him — “ Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” “ Evil, be thou my good.” (3) And now let us mark the daring of the great work- man ! So far he has carefully piled up shadows, doubts, darkness, half-meanings upon the distraught mind of Macbeth. Now, of a sudden, he confronts him with a will that has no doubts at all, but is all for evil : this in his wife, his “ dearest partner of great- ness.” She, poor soul, is to suffer hereafter: but for the moment she sees the way — which is the evil way — with absolute conviction. May I, without un- due levity, illustrate her clearness of purpose by this comparison ? — “Dearest Emma” (wrote a young lady), “you will con- gratulate me when I tell you that Papa has this morning been offered the Bishopric of . It was quite unexpected. He is even now in the library, asking for guidance. Dear Mamma is upstairs, packing.” So before the First Act closes — for actually, though our reluctant horror drags upon it, the action moves with a curious (nay, for an Elizabethan drama, with a singular) rapidity — the hallucination is estab- lished, the scene is set, and we behold this man and this woman groping their road to certain doom. So cunningly has Shakespeare, 'to heighten our interest in these, flattened down the other figures in the drama that none of them really matter to us. Duncan’s 54 Shakespeare' s Workmanship murder matters, but not Duncan. He sleeps, and anon after life’s fitful fever he is to sleep well : but the only fever we feel burns or shivers in that tremen- dous pair. The thick walls of Inverness Castle fence in the stealthy, damnable work. The gate is closed, barred. Around and outside broods darkness ; yet even this is aware of something monstrous at work within. An owl screams : “ there’s husbandry in heaven ” : the stars, “ as troubled by man’s act,” dare but peer through it as through slits in a covering blanket : in the stables the horses catch a panic and gnaw each other’s flesh in their madness. For within, up the stair, past the snoring grooms, a mur- derer creeps to his deed, a woman prompting. In part, no doubt — mostly, if we will — themselves have betrayed themselves : but the powers of evil have their way and reign in that horrible house. So ! and so — when it is done — as Lady Macbeth takes the dagger and Macbeth still stares at his bloody hands, the hour strikes and the word is spoken. What word ? It is the critical word of the drama : and yet no voice utters it. As befits the horrible, impalpable, enclosing darkness, it is no articulate word at all. What is it? It is this : — Knock! knock! knock! knock! A knocking at the gate — but who knocks ? Can we suppose it is Macduff or Lennox? Who cares more than a farthing for Macduff ? Who cares even less than a farthing for Lennox ? Then who is it — or, shall I say, what is it — stands without, on the other side of the gate, in the breaking Macbeth 55 dawn, clamouring to be admitted ? What hand is on the hammer ? Whose step on the threshold ? It is, if we will, God. It is, if we will, the Moral Order. It is, whatever be our religion, that which holds humankind together by law of sanity and right- eousness. It is all that this man and this woman have outraged. It is daylight, revealing things as they are and evil different from good. It is the tread of vengeance, pede claudo, marching on the house. Macbeth is king, or is to be. But that knock insists on what his soul now begins to know, too surely. Evil is not good ; and from this moment the moral' order asserts itself to roll back the crime to its fast expiation . Knock , knock ! “ Here’s a knocking indeed!” growls the Porter as he tumbles out. If a man were porter of hell-gate, he should have old turning the key. . . .” ‘ ‘Ay, my good fellow: and that is precisely what you are!” CHAPTER III f MACBETH III De Quincey on the knocking at the gate — Dramatic effect of the “ closed door ” — Inside and outside — The porter — “ Flat- tering ” of minor characters — Banquo’s part in the drama — The point of rest in art — Macduff, Lady Macduff, and the child — Lady Macbeth and the broken spring — Tragic “irony” — Peculiar “irony” of Macbeth — Relation of this play to Greek tragedy — Its greatness. (i) We have examined at some length the means by which Shakespeare overcame his main difficulty — that of reconciling Macbeth as hero or protagonist with the “ deep damnation ” of Duncan’s taking-off. I do not think we have extenuated that damnation, as I am sure that Shakespeare has not extenuated it. Rather — -to use a favourite word of Johnson’s — he has “ inspissated ” it, like a strong man glorying in his strength. If now we see how, accepting the murder, and all the murder, he has forced us into terrified sympathy — into actual fellow-feeling with the mur- derer — we hold the artistic secret of the drama. I propose in this third chapter to take some speci- mens of his workmanship in this play and attempt to show how excellent it is in detail ; not pretending to be 56 Macbeth 57 exhaustive ; choosing more or less at random from the heap of excellence, seeing that, in Dry den’s phrase, “ here is God’s plenty.” Nevertheless let us preserve the semblance of good order by starting afresh just where we left off — with the knocking at the gate. Embedded in the works of De Quincey, like a prize in a bran-pie (the late William Ernest Henley used to call him, unjustly yet with some justice, “ De Saw- dust”), there is to be found a little paper six pages long, and prolix at that, which contains the last word of criticism on this knocking at the gate. De Quincey starts by confessing that “ from his boyish days ’ ’ this knocking produced an effect on his mind for which he could never account. “ The effect was, that it reflected back upon the murderer a pecu- liar awfulness and depth of solemnity.” He goes on to tell us (as he told us elsewhere, in his Murder Con- sidered as One of the Fine Arts) how in the dreadful business of the murders in the Rat cliff e Highway — a series of crimes so fiendish that nothing like them again thrilled London until the days of Jack the Ripper — there did actually happen what the genius of Shake- speare had invented two hundred years before. The murderer, one Williams, who had entered the house of the Marrs and locked the door behind him, was startled, right on the close of his bloody work, as he had butchered the last member of the family, by the knocking of a poor little servant-girl, the Marrs’ maid- of-all-work, who had been sent out on an errand. De / Quincey draws a wonderful picture of these two, one 58 Shakespeare's Workmanship on either side of that thin street door, breathing close and listening : the little maid on the pavement, the stealthy devil in the passage, with his hand on the key, which, mercifully, he did not turn. And here let us note, in parenthesis, how fashion- able this effect of the closed door has since become with dramatists . If we study M aeterlinck , for example , we shall find it his favourite master-trick. It is the whole secret of L’Intruse, of The Death of Tintagiles — the door with something dark, uncanny, foreboding, something that threatens doom on the other side. Maeterlinck has variants, to be sure. In Les Aveugles he makes it the shutter of physical darkness in a company of old people, all blind. Sometimes, as in Interieur and Les Sept Princesses , he rarefies the par- tition to a glass screen through which one set of char- acters, held powerless to interfere, watches another set unconscious of observation. But in one way or an- other always the dramatic effect hangs on our sense of this barrier, whether impalpable or solid, whether transparent as glass or dense as a door of oak, locked, bolted, barred. Now let De Quincey go on. In what happened to the Marrs 5 murderer he says he found ‘the solution of what had always puzzled him — the effect wrought on his feelings by the knocking in Macbeth. A murderer — even such a murderer as a poet will condescend to — exhibits human nature in its most abject and humiliat- ing attitude. Yet if, as in Macbeth , the murderer is to be the protagonist, upon him our interest must be thrown. But how? Macbeth 59 In Macbeth , for the sake of gratifying his own enormous and teeming faculty of creation, Shakespeare has introduced two murderers : and, as usual in his hands, they are remarkably dis- criminated ; but, though in Macbeth the strife of mind is greater than in his wife, the tiger spirit not so awake, and his feelings caught chiefly by contagion from her — yet, as both were finally involved in the guilt of murder, the murderous mind of necessity is finally to be presumed in both. This was to be expressed. . . . And, as this effect is marvellously accomplished in the dialogues and soliloquies themselves, so it is finally consummated by the expedient under consideration; and it is to this that I now solicit the reader’s attention. If the reader has ever witnessed a wife, daughter, or sister in a fainting-fit, he may chance to have ob- served that the most affecting moment in such a spectacle is that in which a sigh and a stirring announce the recommencement of suspended life. Or, if the reader has ever been present in a vast metropolis on the day when some great national idol was carried in funeral pomp to his grave, and, chancing to walk near the course through which it passed, has felt powerfully in the silence and desertion of the streets, and in the stagnation of ordinary busi- ness, the deep interest which at that moment was possessing the heart of man — if, all at once, he should hear the death-like still- ness broken up by the sound of wheels rattling away from the scene, and making known that the transitory vision was dissolved, he will be aware that at no moment was his sense of the complete suspension and pause in ordinary human concerns so full and affecting as at that moment when the suspension ceases and the goings-on of human life are suddenly resumed. All action in any direction is best expounded, measured, and made apprehen- sible, by reaction. Now apply this to the case in Macbeth. Here, as I have said, the retiring of the human heart, and the entrance of the fiendish heart, was to be expressed and made sensible. Another world has stept in ; and the murderers are taken out of the region of human beings, human purposes, human desires. Macbeth has forgot that he was born of woman ; both -are conformed to the image of devils ; and the world of devils is suddenly revealed. But how shall this be conveyed and made 60 Shakespeare's Workmanship palpable? In order that a new world may step in, this world must for a time disappear. The murderers and the murder must be insulated — cut off by an immeasurable gulf from the ordinary tide and succession of human affairs — locked up and sequestered in some deep recess ; we must be made sensible that the world of ordinary life is suddenly arrested — laid aside — tranced — racked into a dread armistice. [Time must be annihilated; relation to things without abolished ; and all must pass self -withdrawn into a deep syncope and suspension of earthly passion.]. Hence it is that when the deed is done, when the work of darkness is perfect, then the world of darkness passes away like a pageantry in the clouds : the knocking at the gate is heard ; and it makes known audibly that the reaction has commenced ; the human has made its reflux upon the fiendish; the pulses of life are beginning to beat again ; and the re-establishment of the goings-on of the world in which we live first makes us profoundly sensible of the awful parenthesis that had suspended them. We perceive, then, with how right an artistry Shakespeare throws all the effect of this knocking upon the souls within. Suppose an inferior artist at, work writing a play on this theme. Suppose he sets the scene on the outside of the door. Suppose Mac- duff and Lennox to arrive in the dawn, after the night of tempest, and to stand there, Macduff with his hand on the knocker, the pair chatting lightly before they ask admission. That were a situation with no little of tragic irony in it, since we, the spectators, know upon what they are to knock. Suppose the door to open upon a sudden cry and the sight of Duncan’s body borne down by his sons into the daylight of the- courtyard. That were a “ situation ” indeed ; yet how flat in comparison with Shakespeare’s ! Let me give a special reason, too, why it would' Macbeth 61 have been flat : for this also illustrates workmanship. It is that, excepting only Banquo (and I am to talk of Banquo), he has deliberately flattened down every other character to throw up Macbeth and Lady Mac- beth into .high relief. For why ? Because he had, against odds, to interest us in them, and only in them. As I demanded before, who cares more than a farthing for Macduff or even less than a farthing for Lennox ? Says Dr. Bradley of the Macduffs, “ Neither they, nor Duncan, nor Malcolm, nor even Banquo himself have been imagined intensely, and therefore they do not produce that sense of unique personality which Shakespeare could convey in a much smaller number of lines than he gives to most of them. And this is, of course, even more the case with persons like Ross, Angus and Lennox, though each of these has dis- tinguishable features. I doubt if any other great play of Shakespeare’s contains so many speeches which a student of the play, if they were quoted to him, would be puzzled to assign to the speakers. Let the reader turn, for instance, to the Second Scene of the Fifth Act, and ask himself why the names of the persons should not be interchanged in all the ways mathemati- cally possible.” To be sure they could : because Shakespeare was taking good care all the time that not one of these puppets should engage our interest, to compete in it for one moment with the two great figures of guilt in whom (as I have tried to show) he had so jealously to keep us absorbed. 62 Shakespeare's Workmanship ( 2 ) I wish to pursue a little further this effect of flattening (as I call it) the subsidiary characters. But first let me deal with the Porter, and so get this busi- ness of the knocking out of the way. There are critics who find the Porter’s humour offensive and irrelevant : who complain (Heaven help them !) that it is a low humour and ordinary. As Charles Lamb said of the Surveyor, “ O, let me feel the gentleman’s bumps — I must feel his bumps.” For answer to these critics (if answer be seriously re- quired) I would refer them to a play entitled Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, written about the same time as Macbeth and, oddly enough, by the same author, and invite them to explain why this same Prince of Den- mark, after an agonising colloquy with his father’s ghost, should break out into shouting back on it, “Art thou there, true-penny?” “Well said, old mole ! ’ ’ and swearing his comrades to secrecy upon the profound remark that “ There’s ne’er a villain dwelling in all Denmark " , ‘ But he’s an arrant knave. This is the laughter in which surcharged hysteria breaks and expends itself. I have scarce patience to enlarge that explanation. Some who read these lines are too young, perhaps, to have yet suffered a great tension such as must sooner or later befall every man, though his life be ever so happy. He who has not. Macbeth 63 known that tension stretched maybe over weeks, say by the almost desperate illness of a wife or a child, cannot know upon what sheer craziness the delivered soul recoils. Yet he may guess , as, alas ! he will assuredly learn, and as Shakespeare knew. To be brief, the Porter’s speech is just such a dis- charge, vicarious, of the spectator’s overwrought emotion ; and it is quite accurately cast into low, everyday language, because that which knocks at the gate is not any dark terrific doom — for all the dark- ness, all the terror, is cooped within — but the sane, clear, broad, ordinary, common workaday order of the world reasserting itself, and none the more relent - ingly for being workaday, and common, and ordinary, and broad, clear, sane. (3) Let us now return to Shakespeare’s clever — as it seems to me, his immensely clever — flattening of the virtuous characters in this play. I have suggested the word for them — for your Rosses and Lennoxes. They are ordinary, and of purpose ordinary. If we consider this carefully, we shall see that one or two consequences flow from it. To begin with a very practical piece of workman- ship — the Elizabethan stage, as I have remarked, had not a straight-drawn front, with footlights, but thrust forward from its broad platform a sort of horn upon the auditorium. Along this horn, or isthmus, a player who had some specially fine passage to 64 Shakespeare’s Workmanship declaim advanced and began, laying his hand to his heart — “ All the world’s a stage . . or “ The quality of mercy is not strained . . .” or (raising his hand to his brow) “ To be, or not to be : that is the question ” — and, having delivered himself, pressed his hand to his heart again, bowed to the discriminating applause, and retired into the frame of the play. An Elizabethan audience loved these bravuras of conscious rhetoric, and in most of his plays Shakespeare was careful to provide opportunities for them. But we shall hardly find any in Macbeth. Here, by flattening the virtuous characters almost to figures on tapestry, Shakespeare flattened back his whole stage. Obviously, neither Macbeth nor his lady, with their -known antecedents, were the kind of persons to stalk forward and spout virtue : and the virtuous receive no chance, because virtue has all the while to be kept uninteresting. Further, this flattening of the virtuous characters gives Macbeth (already Greek in its simplicity of plot) a further resemblance to Greek tragedy in its sense of fatality. I reiterate that nobody can care more than a farthing for Macduff on his own account. He had, to be sure, an unusual start in the world ; but he has not quite lived up to it. His escape, which leaves his wife and children at Macbeth’s merciless mercy, is (to say the least) unheroic. Here again I suggest that Shakespeare’s workmanship was sure. By Macbeth 65 effecting Macbeth’s discomfiture through such men of straw, he impresses on us the conviction — or, rather, he leaves us no room for anything but the con- viction — that Heaven has taken charge over the work of retribution ; and the process of retribution is made the more imposing as its agents are seen in themselves to be naught. (4) I come now to Banquo, who really has individual character : and the more we study Banquo (limned for us in a very few strokes, by the way), the more, I think, we find cause to wonder at Shakespeare as a workman. The Chronicle makes Banquo guilty as an accomplice before the fact. Here are Holinshed’s words : — At length therefore communicating his purposed intent with his trustie friendes, amongst whom Banquho was the chiefest, upon confidence of theyr promised ayde, he (Macbeth) slewe the King at Envernes, etc. Now, in the play, on the eve of the murder, Macbeth does seem to hang for a moment on the edge of imparting his purpose to Banquo, who has just brought him the King’s diamond. “I dreamt,’" says Banquo, “ I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters; — To you they have showed much truth.” Macbeth returns : “ I think not of them : Yet, when we can extract an hour to serve, We would spend it in some words upon this business, if you would grant the time.” 5 66 Shakespeare's Workmanship And Banquo replies : “At your kindest leisure.” His leisure ! Macbeth’s “ kindest leisure ” at that moment ! Let the reader remember it when I come to say a word on the all-pervading irony of this play. The dialogue goes on : — Macbeth. If you should cleave to my consent, when ’tis, It shall make honour for you. Banquo. So I lose none In seeking to augment it, but still keep My bosom franchis’d and allegiance clear, I shall be counsell ’d. Macbeth. Good repose the while ! Banquo. Thanks, sir : the like to you ! Now, why did Shakespeare avoid the Chronicle at this point and send Banquo to bed with a clear con- science ? The commentators are ready, as usual. Why, don’t you see ? Banquo was to be father to a line of kings, the last of whom, in 1603, had inherited the throne of England also, ‘ and two-fold balls and treble sceptres swayed.’ It would never do, in a play written some time before 1610 for performance by His Majesty’s Servants, to depict His Majesty’s Scottish forbear as an accomplice in treason.” O Tweedledum ! O Tweedledee ! how near we came to forget something so profoundly true ! Yet, though profoundly true, and even illuminating in its way, it scarcely illustrates the way in which dramatic masterpieces are constructed. At least, I think not. Let us try again, and we shall find two most potent artistic reasons — one simple, the other subtler, but Macbeth 67 both (as I say) potent — why Shakespeare did not in- volve Banquo in Macbeth’s guilt. In the first place, it is surely obvious that by sharing the plot up with Banquo and other “ trustie friendes ” (in Holinshed’s phrase) Shakespeare would have destroyed the impressiveness of Macbeth and his wife. In proportion as he dragged in that crowd, and just so far, would he have shortened the stature, blurred the outlines, marred the effect of that tre- mendous pair, who, as it is, command us by the very isolation of their grandeur in guilt. The second reason is subtler, though scarcely less strong. In all great literature there is always a sense of the norm. Even in Shakespeare’s most terrific and seismic inventions — when, as in Hamlet or in Lear , he seems to be breaking up the solid earth under our feet — there is always some point and standard of sanity to which all enormities and passionate errors are referred by us, albeit unconsciously, for correction ; on which the agitated mind of the spectator settles back as upon its centre of gravity. It was Coventry Patmore who first taught me to see this clearly, in his little book Principle in Art. He calls it the punctum indifferens, or Point of Rest. In a painting (he shows) it may be — often is — something apparently insignificant : a sawn-off stump in a land- scape of Constable’s ; in the Dresden Madonna of Raphael, the heel of the Infant — which yet, as we know, was to bruise, yea, to crush, the Serpent’s head. “Cover these from sight,’’ says he, “and, to the moderately sensitive and cultivated eye, the 68 Shakespeare's Workmanship whole life of the picture will be found to have been lowered.” But, he continues, it is in the most elaborate plays, of Shakespeare that we find this device in its fullest value; and it is from two or three of these that I shall draw my main illustration of a little noticed but very important principle of art. In King Tear it is by the character of Kent; in Romeo and Juliet by Friar Laurence.; in Hamlet by Horatio; in Othello by Cassio, and in The Merchant of Venice by Bassanio , 1 that the point of rest is supplied. . . . Thus Horatio is the exact punctum indifferens between the opposite excesses of the characters of Hamlet and Laertes — over -reasoning inaction and unreasoning action— between which extremes the whole interest of the play vibrates. The unobtrusive character of Kent is, as it were, the eye of the tragic storm which rages round it ; and the departure, in various directions, of every char- acter more or less from moderation, rectitude or sanity, is the more clearly understood or felt from our more or less conscious reference to him. So with the central and comparatively unim- pressive characters in many other plays — characters unimpressive on account of their facing the exciting and trying circumstances of the drama with the regard of pure reason, justice, and virtue. Each of these characters is a peaceful focus radiating the calm of moral solution throughout all the difficulties and disasters of surrounding fate; a vital centre, which, like that of a great wheel, has little motion in itself, but which at once transmits and controls the fierce revolution of the circumference. Now in Macbeth Banquo supplies this Point of Rest. He is — though on an enlarged scale, having to stand beside the “hero” — the Ordinary Man. Like Macbeth, he is a thane, a general, a gallant soldier. The two have fought side by side for the same liege-lord and, without jealousy, have helped one another to conquer. They are brought upon the stage together, two equal friends returning from 1 But no : by Antonio surely.— A. Q. C. Macbeth 69 victory. To Banquo as to Macbeth the witches’ pre- dictions are offered. Macbeth shall be King of Scotland : Banquo shall beget kings. But whereas Macbeth, taking evil for good and under persuasion of his wife as well as of the supernatural, grasps at the immediate means to the end, Banquo, like an ordinary, well-meaning, sensible fellow, doesn't do it, and there- fore on the fatal night can go like an honest man to his dreams. This is not to say that Banquo did not feel the temptation. To be sure he did : and Shakespeare would not have been Shakespeare if he had not made Banquo feel it. The point is that, feeling it (I do not say strongly — it may have been lethargically, as ordinary decent men do feel the spur to emprises which mean the casting-off of honour), Banquo did not yield to it : and (as it seems to me) Dr. Bradley wastes a great deal of subtlety in trying to show him an accessory after the event, since he apparently acquiesces in Mac- beth’s attainment of the crown, while suspecting his guilt. For or against this I shall only quote Banquo ’s own words when the murder is discovered — “ Fears and scruples shake us : In the great hand of God I stand, and thence Against the undivulged pretence I fight Of treasonous malice” — and leave the reader to determine. For what does it matter ? What does matter is that, of the two soldiers, one is tempted and yields, the other is tempted but does not yield. Jo Shakespeare’ s Workmanship And it matters in this way : that from the moment Macbeth yields and apparently succeeds, Banquo, who has not yielded, becomes a living reproach to him. He is the shadowiest of dangers, but a very actual reproach : and therefore Macbeth’s first instinct is by removing Banquo to obliterate the standard of decency, of loyalty — if that loyalty were partial only, why, then, the more credit for obeying it — which survives to accuse him. So Banquo becomes natur- ally the first sacrifice to be paid to a guilty conscience, and Banquo is murdered. But now let us mark this : We are scarcely yet midway in Act iii. : a half of the play has to come and we have done away with the one man who, on the principle we have been examining, is the touchstone to test the wrong from the reasonably right. All the other characters are mere shadows of men, painted on the flat. Macduff survives to be the avenger, but he is to be the avenger by no strength of his own, and he survives (as we have seen) by a pretty base action ; fleeing the country and leaving his wife and children behind, unprotected. -The answer is that Banquo survives in his ghost : and that the accusing sanity is still carried forward in the next victim, little Macduff — one of those gallant, precocious, straight-talking children in whom Shake- speare delighted — it may be because he had lost such a son, at just such an age. Be it noted how this boy is introduced close after Macbeth’s purposed visit to the Witches — he seeking them, this time. (Another touch of insight : it is always the Devil who first Macbeth 7 1 accosts, and the lost soul that later pays the visits, seeking ways of escape.) Straight upon that foul scene in the cavern light breaks, for the last time in the drama, in the sunny wisdom of a child. Good gospel,, too, as I take it — “ Was my father a traitor, mother?” “ Ay, that he was.” “ What is a traitor?” - — and so on. “ Now God help thee, poor monkey ! ” says his mother at length (irony again), even while the Murderer is at the gate, being admitted. “ Where is your husband ? . . . He’s a traitor,” are the words in the Murderer’s mouth. “ Thou liest, thou shag-hair ’d villain,” answers up the proud, plucky boy, a moment before he is stabbed. All these pretty ones end tragically in Shake- speare : but surely this one in this play lives his few moments not wholly in vain. ( 5 ) The wonderful counterpoise of will and character between Macbeth and his wife has been so often and on the whole so well discussed that I shall take leave to say very little about it, on the understanding that there, at any rate, the marvels of the workmanship are accepted. But two brief notes I will make : — (i) Looking into the matter historically, I can- not find that criticism even began to do Lady Macbeth justice until Mrs. Siddons taught them. Johnson, for example, wrote that “ Lady Macbeth is merely de- 72 Shakespeare's Workmanship tested.” An amazing judgment, truly, to one who saw Ellen Terry rehearsing the part, and sat and watched John Sargent painting her, in her green robe of beetles’ wings, as she stood in the act of lifting the crown to her brow ! Exquisitely chosen moment ! For, reading the play carefully, let us observe how, for her, everything ends in that achievement. Up to it, hers has been the tiger nature, with every faculty glued, tense on the purpose, on the prey : her husband but a half- hearted accomplice. The end achieved, it would seem that the spring bf action somehow breaks within her. It is Macbeth who, like a man, shoulders the weight of moral vengeance. She almost fades out. She is always the great lady ; and while she can, she helps. They are both great : never one vulgar word of reproach or recrimination passes between them. But they drift apart. Macbeth no longer relies on her. Uncounselled by her he seeks the Witches again ; solitary he pursues his , way ; and her mental anguish is left to be watched by a Doctor and a Gentle- woman. It is but reported to her husband. When the wail of the waiting-woman announces her death, he is busy arming himself for his doom. All he finds to say on the word ‘ ‘ dead ’ ’ is : “ She should have died hereafter : There would have been a time for such a word.” ( 6 ) Through its strong simplicity of plot, its flattening of the stage as of all the subsidiary characters, its Macbeth 73 working out of vengeance by agents who are carefully kept as mere puppets in the hand of Heaven, Macbeth bears a resemblance unique among Shakespeare’s writings to Greek Tragedy ; nor can it by accident be full of that irony in which the Greek tragedians— say Sophocles — delighted . But it is to be observed that the irony most preva- lent in Macbeth is, if not an invention of Shakespeare’s own, at least different from the usual tragic irony, that consists in making the protagonist utter words which, coming on the momentary occasion to his lips, convey to the audience (who know what he does not) a second- ary, sinister, prophetic meaning. There is, to be sure, some of this traditional tragic irony in Macbeth : but its peculiar irony is retrospective rather than prophetic. It does not prepare the spec- tator for what is to come ; but rather, when it comes, reminds him as by an echo that it has been coming all the while. Thus, when Macbeth and Lady Macbeth stare — how differently ! — at their bloodied fingers, he says “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand?” She says confidently, “A little water clears us of this deed.” The irony is not yet. It comes in after-echo, in the sleep-walking scene, when (he having passed beyond account of it) she says, “ Here’s the smell of blood still ! All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.” 74 Shakespeare's Workmanship So when the ghost of Banquo seats itself at the feast, we catch, as by echo, the insistent invitation, “ Fail not at our feast,” with the promise, “ My lord, I will not ” : as, when Macbeth calls out on the same ghost, “ What man dares, I dare : Take any shape but that 1” we hear again, ‘ ‘ I dare do all that may become a man : Who dares do more is none.”. Again, when Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane, do we not catch again the whipser, “ Stones have been known to move and trees to speak ” ? The whole play, as it were a corridor of dark Inver- ness Castle, resounds with such echoes : and I know no other tragedy that so teems with these peculiar whispers (as I will call them) of reminiscent irony. Macbeth (as I have said and as others have said before me) curiously resembles Greek tragedy in a dozen ways, of which I will mention but one more. Though it is full of blood and images of blood, the important blood-shedding is hidden, removed from the spectator’s sight. There is, to be sure, a set scene for Banquo’ s murder : but it can be omitted without detriment to the play, and, in fact, always is omitted. Duncan is murdered off the stage ; Lady Macbeth dies Macbeth 75 off the stage ; Macbeth makes his final exit fighting, to be killed off the stage. There is nothing here like the blood-boltered culmination of Hamlet. Lastly — for there is no space left to argue it — I must proclaim my conviction that this tragedy, so curiously resembling classical tragedy, does, in fact overpass in its bold workmanship any classical tragedy . As we remember, Milton once proposed to rewrite Macbeth. The entry in his list of projects runs : " Macbeth , beginning at the arrival of Malcolm at Macduff. The matter of Duncan may be expressed by the appearing of his ghost.” Milton, in effect, wished to cast Macbeth in the strict form of classical tragedy, as he afterwards cast Samson Agonistes. And another Cambridge man, Professor Richard Moulton, has actually taken Shake- speare’s Macbeth and, by one of the most brilliant tours de force in modern criticism, recast it, with a Chorus and all, step by step back into a Greek tragedy. Yes, and he uses scarcely anything that cannot be found in Shakespeare. It is an uncannily clever per- formance. But his permanent scene is, of course, Dunsinane Castle, not Inverness. That is to say, the play begins when all but the slow retribution — all that we first think of in Macbeth — is concluded. “ I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise?” 11 Infirm of purpose , Give me the daggers .” ( Knock , knock , knock.) 7 6 Shakespeare's Workmanship And he begins with a Prologue spoken by Hecate. Hecate ! — I have said nothing of her because (to be quite frank) I do not yet understand her. The com- mentators, ready as usual, surmise that Middleton, or somebody like Middleton, interpolated Hecate. I hesitate to accept this. It does not appear likely to me that a whole set of foolish men (though Middleton in itself seems a well-enough-invented name) were kept permanently employed to come in and write something whenever Shakespeare wanted it foolish. But . . . Hecate ! It is permissible, I hope, to the meanest of us to think to himself, at one time or another, “ Now which in the world among masterpieces should I be proudest (God giving me grace) to have written ?” My own choice would riot be Macbeth , nor, indeed, any tragedy : nor the Divina Commedia, nor Paradise Lost (since, divine as are the accents of Dante and Milton, their religious systems, so diverse, yet both based on hatred rather than on charity, do not attract me). I think I would rather have written The Tem- pest or Don Quixote, and can never decide between them. Yes, in The Tempest the amazing craft which had imagined and designed Macbeth has beaten out of darkness to anchor in a fair haven of peace and sanity. But for an operation of genius and skill, beat- ing through the dark and never losing one inch of a tack, I know nothing to equal this marvellous drama. CHAPTER IV A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT’S DREAM Shakespeare’s and Dickens’s use of pet devices — Women in male disguise — Shipwrecks — Influence of Lyly and Plautus — Advance from stagecraft to characterisation — The stig- mata of a court play — The value of inquiring How was the thing done ? — The import of the fairies and the clowns — An ideal setting for the play. (i) Dr. Jowett, famous Master of Balliol — But in the manner of Sterne I must break off, here at the outset, to recall that figure, so familiar to me in youth, as every morning he crossed the quad beneath my bedroom window in a contiguous college for an early trot around its garden ; a noticeable figure, too — small, rotund, fresh of face as a cherub, yet with its darting gait and in its swallow-tailed coat curiously suggestive of a belated Puck surprised by dawn and hurrying to hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear. — Dr. Jowett used to maintain that after Shakespeare the next creative genius in our literature was Charles Dickens. As everybody knows, Dickens left an unfinished znovel behind him ; arid a number of ingenious writers 77 78 Shakespeare's Workmanship from time to time have essayed to finish the story of Edwin Drood, constructing the whole from the frag- ment — yet not from the fragment only, since in the process they are forced into examining the plots of other novels of his ; so into recognising that his inven- tion had certain trends — certain favourite stage-tricks, artifices, cliches — which it took almost predicably and so to argue, from how T he constructed by habit, how he probably would have constructed this tale. I do not propose, in a paper on A Midsummer- Night's Dream , to attempt an ending for Edwin Drood , but I suggest that if inventive criticism, driven up against such an obstacle as Drood , turns perforce to examine Dickens’s habitual trends of invention, his favourite artifices and cliches , the same process may be as serviceable in studying the workmanship of the greater artist, Shakespeare. For example, no careful reader of Dickens can fail to note his predileption for what I will call denoue- ment by masked battery*. At the critical point in story after story, and at a moment when he believes him- self secure, the villain is “ rounded Pn ” by a sup- posed confederate or a supposed dupe ; a concealed battery is opened, catches him unawares, levels him with his machinations to the ground. Thus Monks brings about the crisis of Oliver Twist; thus Ralph Nickleby and Uriah Heep come to exposure ; thus severally Jonas and Mr. Pecksniff in Martin C huz de- wit ; thus Quilp and Brass in The Old Curiosity Shop . Thus Haredale forces the conclusion of Barnaby Rudge ; thus in Bleak House Lady Dedlock (though 79 A Midsummer-Night’ s Dream she, to be sure, cannot be reckoned among the vil- lains) is hunted down. Hunted Down , in fact, the name of one of Dickens’s stories, might serve for any other . of a dozen. Sometimes the denouncer — old Chuzzlewit, Mr. Micawber, Mr. Boffin — reaches his moment after a quite incredibly long practice of dis- simulation. But always the pursuit is patient, hidden ; always the coup sudden, dramatic, enacted before witnesses ; always the trick is essentially the same — and the guilty one, after exposure, usually goes off and in one way or another commits suicide. I instance one only among Dickens’s pet devices. But he had a number of them : and so had Shake- speare. Take the trick of the woman disguised in man’s apparel. It starts with Julia in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. It runs (and good reason why it should, when we consider that all women’s parts were acted by boys) right through the comedies and into Cym- heline. Portia, Nerissa, Jessica (these three in one play) ; Rosalind, Viola, Imogen — each in turn mas- querades thus, and in circumstances that, unless we take stage convention on its own terms, beggar credulity. The bridegroom may forget the bride Was made his wedded wife yestreen, but not in the sense that Bassanio and Gratiano forget. Is it credible that Bassanio shall catch no accent, no vibration, to touch, awaken, thrill his memory during all that long scene in the Doge’s court, 80 Shakespeare's Workmanship or afterwards when challenged to part with his ring ? Translated into actual life, is it even conceivable ? Let us take another device — L that of working the plot upon a shipwreck, shown or reported. (There is, perhaps no better way of starting romantic adven- tures, misadventures, meetings, recognitions ; as there is no better way to strip men more dramatically of all trappings that cover their native nobility or baseness.) The Comedy of Errors and Pericles are pivoted on shipwreck ; by shipwreck Perdita in The Winter's Tale is abandoned on the magical seacoast of Bohemia. Twelfth Night takes its intrigue from shipwreck, and, for acting purposes, opens with Viola’s casting- ashofe : — Viola. What country, friends, is this? Captain. Illyria, lady. Viola. And what should I do in Illyria? My brother he is in Elysium. Perchance he is not drown’d — what think you, sailors ? Captain. It is perchance that you yourself were sav’d. The Tempest opens in the midst of shipwreck. In The Comedy of Errors and in Twelfth Night ship- wreck leads on to another trick — that of mistaken identity, as it is called. In The Comedy of Errors (again) and Pericles it leads on to the trick of a long- lost mother, supposed to have perished in shipwreck, revealed as living yet and loving. From shipwreck the fairy Prince lands to learn toil and through it to find his love, the delicate Princess to wear homespun and find her lover. A Midsummer-Night’ s Dream 81 One might make a long list of these favourite themes ; from Shakespeare’s pet one of the jealous husband or lover and the woman foully misjudged (Hero, Desdemona, Hermione), to the trick of the potion which arrests life without slaying it (Juliet, Imogen), or the trick of the commanded murderer whose heart softens (Hubert, Leonine, Pisanio). But perhaps enough has been said to suggest an inquiry by which any reader may assure himself that Shake- speare, having once employed a stage device with some degree of success, had never the smallest scruple about using it again. Rather, I suppose that there was never a great author who repeated himself at once so lavishly and so economically, still husbanding his favourite themes while ever attempting new variations upon them. In the very wealth of this variation we find “ God’s plenty,” of course. But so far as I dare to understand Shakespeare, I see him as a magnifi- cently indolent man, not agonising to invent new plots, taking old ones as clay to his hands, breathing life into that clay ; anon unmaking, remoulding, rein- spiring it. We know for a fact that he worked upon old plays, old chronicles, other men’s romances. We know, too, that men in his time made small account of what we call plagiarism, and even now define it as a misdemeanour quite loosely and almost capriciously. 1 1 For instance, any poet or dramatist may take the story of Tristram and Iseult and make what he can of it; whereas if I use a plot of Mr. Hall Caine’s or of Mrs. Humphry Ward’s, I am a branded thief. The reader will find an amusing attempt to delimit the offence of plagiarism in an appendix to Charles Reade’s novel The Wandering Heir. 6 82 Shakespeare's Workmanship * Shakespeare, who borrowed other men’s inventions sa royally, delighted in repeating and improving his own. ( 2 ) It has been pretty well established by scholars that the earlier comedies of Shakespeare run in the following chronological order : Love's Labour's Lost, The Comedy of Errors, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, A Midsummer-Night' s Dream. It may, in- deed, be argued that The Comedy of Errors came before Love's Labour's Lost, but whether it did or did not matters very little to us . So let us take the four in the order generally assigned by conjecture. In the 1598 Quarto of Love's Labour's Lost we are informed that it was presented before her High- ness this last Christmas and is now ‘ ‘ newly corrected and augmented by W. Shakespeare.” It was a court play, then, and indeed it bears every mark of one. It is an imitative performance, after the fashionable model of John Lyly, but it imitates with a high sense of humour and burlesques its model audaciously. All young artists in drama are preoccupied with plot or “ construction.” “ Character ” comes later. The plot of Love's Labour's Lost turns on ” confusion of identity,” the Princess and her ladies masking themselves to the perplexity of their masked lovers. For the rest, in its whole conception, as in its diction, the thing is consciously artificial and extravagant from first to last. The Comedy of Errors is an experiment on a dif- ferent model ; not Lyly now, but Plautus, and Plautus A Midsummer -Night’ s Dream 83. out-Plautus’d. Again we have confusion of identity for the motive, but here confusion of identity does not merely turn the plot, as in Love’s Labour’s Lost; it means all the play, and the play means nothing else. Where Plautus had one pair of twin brothers so featured that they cannot be told apart, Shakespeare adds another pair, and the fun is drawn out with astonishing dexterity. Let four things, however, be observed : (1) The feat is achieved at a total sacrifice of character — and indeed he who starts out to confuse identity must, consciously or not, set himself the task of obliterating character. (2) Unless a convention of pasteboard be accepted as substitute for flesh and blood, the events are incredible. (3) On the stage of Plautus the convention of two men being like enough in feature to deceive even their wives might pass. It was actually a convention of pasteboard, since the players wore masks. Paint two masks alike, and (since masks muffle voices) the trick is done. But (4) Shakespeare, dispensing with the masks, doubled the confusion by tacking a pair of Dromios on to a pair of Antipholuses ; and to double one situation so improbable is to multiply its improbability by the hundred. It is all done, to be sure, with such amazing re- source that, were ingenuity of stagecraft the test of great drama, we might say, “ Here is a man who has little or nothing to learn.” But ingenuity of stage- craft is not the test of great drama ; and in fact Shake- speare had more than a vast deal to learn. He had a vast deal to unlearn. 84 Shakespeare's Workmanship A dramatic author must start by mastering certain stage-mechanics. Having mastered them, he must — to be great — unlearn reliance on them, learn to cut them away as he grows to perceive that the secret of his art resides in playing human being against human being, man against woman, character against char- acter, will against will — not in devising “situations ” or “curtains” and operating puppets to produce these. His art touches climax when his “ situations ” and “ curtains ” so befall that we tell ourselves, “ It is wonderful — yet what else could have happened?” Othello is one of the cleverest stage plays ever written. What does it leave us to say but, in an awe of pity, “This is most terrible, but it must have happened so ” ? In great art, as in life, character makes the bed it lies on, or dies on. So in the next play, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, ' we find Shakespeare learning and, perhaps even more deliberately, unlearning. The Two Gentle- men of Verona is not a great play : but it is a curious one, and a very wardrobe of “effects” in which Shakespeare afterwards dressed himself to better advantage. In The Two Gentlemen of Verona Shakespeare is feeling for character, for real men and women. Tricks no longer satisfy him. Yet the old tricks haunt him. He must have again, as in The Comedy of Errors, two gentlemen with a servant apiece — though the opposi- tion is discriminated and more cunningly weighted. For stage effect Proteus (supposed a friend and a gentleman) must suddenly behave with incredible base- A Midsummer -N ight' s Dream 85 ness. For stage effect Valentine must surrender his true love to his false friend with mawkish generosity that deserves nothing so much as kicking : All that was mine in Silvia I give thee. And what about Silvia ? Where does Silvia come in ? That devastating sentence may help the curtain. But it blows all character to the winds, and it leaves no gentlemen in Verona. (3) We come to A Midsummer-Night' s Dream , and, with the three earlier comedies to guide us, will at- tempt to conjecture how the young playwright would face this new piece of work. First we shall ask, “What had he to do ?" Nobody knows precisely when, or precisely where,, or precisely how A Midsummer-Night' s Dream was first produced. But it is evident to me that, like Love's Labour's Lost and The Tempest , it was written for performance at court ; and that its particular occa- sion, like the occasion of The Tempest , was a court wedding. It has all the stigmata of a court play. Like Love's Labour's Lost and The Tempest , it con- tains an interlude ; and that interlude — Bully Bottom’s Pyramus and Thisbe — is designed, rehearsed, enacted for a wedding. Can anyone read the opening scene, or the closing speech of Theseus, and doubt that the occasion was a wedding ? Be it remembered, more- over, how the fairies dominate this play ; and how 86 Shakespeare's Workmanship constantly and intimately fairies are associated with weddings in Elizabethan poetry, their genial favours invoked, their malign caprices prayed against. I take a stanza from Spenser’s great Epithalamion : Let no deluding dreames, nor dreadfull sights Make sudden sad affrights ; / Ne let diouse-fyres, nor lightnings helpelesse harmes, Np let the Pouke nor other evill sprights, Ne let mischivous witches with theyr charmes, Ne let hob-Goblins, names whose sense we see not, Fray us with things that be not : Let not the shriech Oule nor the Storke be heard, Nor the night Raven that still deadly yels; Nor damned ghosts cald up with mighty spels, Nor griesly Vultures, make us once afeard, Ne let th’ unpleasant Quyre of Frogs still croking Make us to wish the’r choking. Let none of these theyr drery accents sing; Ne let the woods them answer, nor theyr eccho ring. And I compare this with the fairies’ last pattering ditty in our play : Now the wasted brands do glow, Whilst the screech-owl, screeching loud, Puts the wretch that lies in woe In remembrance of a shroud. Now it is the time of night That the graves, all gaping wide, Every one lets forth his sprite, In the church-way paths to glide : And we fairies, that do run By the triple Hecate’s team, From the presence of the sun, Following darkness like a dream, ^ A Midsummer-Night’ s Dream 87 Now are frolic; not a mouse Shall disturb this hallow’d house; I am sent, with broom, before, To sweep the dust behind the door. ***** To the best bride-bed will we, Which by us shall blessed be. . . . ***** And each several chamber bless, Through this palace, with sweet peace. Can anyone set these two passages together and doubt A Midsummer-Night’ s Dream to be .intended for a merry Tcdtfapcns, a pretty purgation of those same goblin terrors which Spenser would exorcise from the bridal chamber ? For my part, I make little doubt that Shakespeare had Spenser’s very words in mind as he wrote. Here, then, we have a young playwright com- missioned to write a wedding play — a play to be pre- sented at court. He is naturally anxious to shine ; and, moreover, though his fellow-playwrights already pay him the compliment of being a little jealous, he still has his spurs to win. As I read the play and seek to divine its process of construction, I seem — and the reader must take this for what it is worth — to see Shakespeare's mind working somewhat as follows : He turns over his repertory of notions, and takes stock. “ Lyly’s model has had its day, and the bloom is off it ; I must not repeat the experiment of Love's 88 Shakespeare's Workmanship Labour's Lost. ... I have shown that I can do great things with mistaken identity, but I cannot pos- sibly express the fun of that further than I did in The Comedy of Errors ; and the fun there was clever, but a trifle hard, if not inhuman. . . . But here is a wedding ; a wedding should be human ; a wedding calls for poetry — and I long to fill a play with poetry. (For I can write poetry— look at Venus and Adonis!) . . . Still, mistaken identity is a trick I know, a trick in which I am known to shine. ... If I could only make it poetical ! . . . A pair of lovers ? For mis- taken identity that means two pairs of lovers. . . . Yet, steady ! We must not make it farcical. It was all very well to make wives mistake their husbands. That has been funny ever since the world began ; that is as ancient as cuckoldry, or almost. But this is a wedding play, and the sentiment must be fresh. Lovers are not so easily mistaken as wives and hus- bands — or ought not to be — in poetry. “I like, too” — we fancy the young dramatist continuing— “ that situation of the scorned lady fol- lowing her sweetheart. ... I did not quite bring it off in The Two Gentlemen of Verona; but it is none the less a good situation, and I must use it again. 1 . . . Lovers mistaking one another . . . scorned lady following the scorner . . . wandering through a wood (that is poetical, anyhow). ... Yes, and by night ; this play has to be written for a bridal eve. . . . A night for lovers — a summer’s night — a midsummer’s 1 And he did : not only here, but in All's Well That Ends Well , for instance. A Midsummer-Night’ s Dream 89 night — dewy thickets — the moon .... The moon ? Why, of course, the moon ! Pitch-darkness is for tragedy, moonlight for softer illusion. Lovers can be pardonably mistaken — under the moon. . . . What besides happens on a summer’s night, in a woodland, under the moon ? “ Eh ? . . . Oh, by Heaven! Fairies! Real Warwickshire fairies ! Fairies full of mischief — Robin Goodfellow and the rest. Don’t I know about them? Fairies full of mischief — and for a wedding, too ! How does that verse of Spenser’s go ? Ne let the Pouke — “ Fairies, artificers and ministers of all illusion . . . the fairy ointment, philters, pranks, ‘the little western flower ’ — Before milk-white, now purple with Love’s wounds, And maidens call it Love-in-Idleness. These and wandering lovers, a mistress scorned — why, we scarcely need the moon, after all ! ” Then— for the man’s fancy never started to work but it straightway teemed — we can watch it opening out new alleys of fun, weaving fresh delicacies upon this central invention. “How, for a tangle, to get one of the fairies caught in the web they spin ? Why not even the Fairy Queen herself ? . . . Yes ; but the mortal she falls in with ? Shall he be one of the lovers? ... Well, to say the truth, I haven’t given any particular character to these lovers. The abso- lute jest would be to bring opposite extremes into the go Shakespeare's Workmanship illusion, to make Queen Mab dote on a gross clown. ... All vefy well, but I haven't any clowns. . . . The answer to that seems simple : if I haven’t, I ought to have. . . . Stay ! I have been forgetting the Interlude all this while. We must have an Interlude ; our Interlude in Love's Labour's Lost proved the making of the play. . , . Now suppose we make a set of clowns perform the Interlude, as in Love's Labour's Lost , and get them chased by the fairies while they are rehearsing ? Gross flesh and gossamer — that’s an idea ! If I cannot use it now, I certainly will some day . 1 . . . But I can use it now ! What is that story in Ovid, about Midas and the ass’s ears ? Or am I confusing it with another story — which I read the other day, in that book about witches — of a man transformed into an ass?” Enough ! I am not, of course, suggesting that Shakespeare constructed A Midsummer-Night' s Dream just in this way. (As the provincial mayor said to the eminent statesman, “Aha, sir! that’s more than you or me knows. That’s Latin !") But I do suggest that we can immensely increase our de- light in Shakespeare and strengthen our understanding of him if, as we read him again and again, we keep asking ourselves how the thing was done. I am sure that — hopeless as complete success must be — by This method we get far nearer to the to tl fjv elvai of a given play than by searching among ‘ ‘ sources ’ ’ and “origins,” by debating how much Shakespeare took from Chaucer’s Knight's Tale, or how much he bor- 1 He did. See the last act of The Merry Wives of Windsor. A Midsummer- Night’ s Dream 91 rowed from Golding’s Ovid, or how much Latin he learned at Stratford Grammar School, or how far he anticipated modern scientific discoveries, or why he gave the names ‘ ‘ Pease-blossom , ” “ Cobweb , ’ ’ “Moth,” “Mustard-Seed” to his fairies. I admit the idle fascination of some of these studies. A friend of mine — an old squire of Devon — used to demonstrate to me at great length that when Shakespeare wrote, in this play, of the moon looking “ with a watery eye ” — And when she weeps, weeps every little flower, Lamenting some enforced chastity — he anticipated our modern knowledge of plant-fertilisa- tion. Good man, he took “enforced” to mean * ‘ compulsory ’ ’ ; and I never dared to dash his en- thusiasm by hinting that, as Shakespeare would use the word “ enforced,” an “ enforced chastity ” meant a chastity violated. (4) , Let us note three or four things that promptly fol- low upon Shakespeare’s discovering the fairies and pressing them into the service of this play. (1) To begin with, Poetry follows. The springs of it in the author’s Venus and Adonis are released, and for the first time he is able to pour it into drama : And never, since the middle summer’s spring, Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead, By paved fountain, or by rushy brook, Or in the beached margent of the sea To dance. our ringlets to the whistling wind. . . . 92 Shakespeare's Workmanship I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows, Where oxslips, and the nodding violet grows Quite over-canopied with lush woodbine, With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine : There sleeps Titania some time of the night, Lull’d in these flowers. . . . 'The honey-bags steal from the humble bees, And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs, And light them at the fiery glow-worm’s eyes To have my love to bed, and to arise : And pluck the wings from painted butterflies To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes. Never so weary, never so in woe, Bedabbled with the dew and torn with briars — 1 The overstrained wit of Love's Labour's Lost , the hard gymnastic wit of The Comedy of Errors, allowed no chance for this sort of writing. But the plot of A Midsummer-Night' s Dream invites poetry, and poetry suffuses the play, as with potable moonlight. (2) The logic-chopping wit of Love's Labour's Lost had almost excluded humour. Hard, dry wit had cased The Comedy of Errors against it. With Lance in The Two Gentlemen of Verona we have an incidental, tentative experiment in humour ; but Lance is no part of the plot. Now, with Bottom and his men, we have humour let loose in a flood. In the last Act it ripples and dances over the other flood of poetry, Echoed from Venus and Adonis: The bushes in the way Some catch her by the neck, some kiss her face, Some twine about her thigh to make her stay. 93 A Midsummer-Night' s Dream until demurely hushed by the elves. The two greatest natural gifts of Shakespeare were poetry and humour ; and in this play he first, and simultaneously, found scope for them. (3) As I see it, this invention of the fairies — this trust in an imaginative world which he understands — suddenly, in A Midsummer-Night’ s Dream , eases and dissolves four-fifths of the difficulties Shakespeare has been finding with his plots. I remember reading, some years ago, a critique by Mr. Max Beerbohm on a per- formance of this play, and I wish I could remember his exact words, for his words are always worth exact quotation. But he said in effect, “ Here we have the Master, confident in his art, at ease with it as a man in his dressing-gown, kicking up a loose slipper and catch- ing it on his toe.” A Midsummer-Night’ s Dream is the first play of Shakespeare’s to show a really careless grace — the best grace of the Graces . By taking fairy- land for granted, he comes into his inheritance; by assuming that we take it for granted, he achieves just that easy probability he had missed in several plays before trusting his imagination and ours. (4) Lastly, let the reader note how the fairy busi- ness and the business of the clowns take charge of the play as it proceeds, in proportion as both of them are more real — that is, more really imagined — than the business of Lysander and Hermia, Demetrius and Helena. The play has three plots interwoven : (a) the main sentimental plot of the four Athenian lovers ; ( b ) the fairy plot which complicates (a) ; and (c), the grotesque plot which complicates ( b ). Now when we 94 Shakespeare's Workmanship think of the play the main plot (a) comes last in our minds, for in ( b ) and (c) Shakespeare has found himself. ^ ( 5 ) I once discussed with a friend how, if given our will, we would have A Midsummer-Night's Dream presented. We agreed at length on this : The set scene should represent a large Elizabethan hall, panelled, having a lofty oak -timbered roof and an enormous staircase. The cavity under the staircase, occupying in breadth two-thirds of the stage, should be fronted with folding or sliding doors, which, being opened, should reveal the wood, recessed, moonlit, with its trees upon a flat arras or tapestry. On this secondary remoter stage the lovers should wander through their adventures, the fairies now conspiring in the quiet hall under the lantern, anon withdrawing into the woodland to befool the mortals straying there. Then, for the last scene and the interlude of Py ramus and Thishe, the hall should be filled with lights and company. That over, the bridal couples go up the great staircase. Last of all — and after a long pause, when the house is quiet, the lantern all but ex- tinguished, the hall looking vast and eerie, lit only by a last flicker from the hearth — the fairies, announced by Puck, should come tripping back, swarming forth from cupboards and down curtains, somersaulting downstairs, sliding down the baluster rails ; all hushed as they fall to work with their brooms — hushed, save A Midsummer -Night’ s Dream 95 for one little voice and a thin, small chorus scarcely more audible than the last dropping embers : Through this house give glimmering light, By the dead and drowsy fire; Every elf and fairy sprite Hop as light as bird from brier. . . . \ Hand in hand, with fairy grace, Will we sing and bless this place. Trip away, Make no stay, Meet me all by break of day. CHAPTER V THE MERCHANT OF VENICE % Its juvenile appeal — The difference between setting and atmo- sphere — Unsympathetic characters — Bassanio and Antonio — Bad workmanship — A vital flaw — Two sides of the Renaissance — Three plots of intrigue — Plot versus char- acter — The humanising of Shylock- — Exaggerated esti- mate of the Trial Scene — An amateur stage manager’s tribute to the workmanship of the play — Johnson on the “ holy hermit ” — The fifth Act. (0 Since in the end it taught me a good deal, and since the reader too may find it serviceable, let me start by shortly rehearsing my own experience with The Merchant of Venice. I came first to it as a schoolboy, and though I got it by heart I could not love the play. I came to it (as I remember) straight from the woodland enchantments of As You Like It, and somehow this was not at all as I liked it. No fairly imaginative youngster could miss seeing that it was picturesque or, on the face of it, romantic enough for anyone, as on the face of it no adventure should have been more delightful than to come out of the green Forest of Arden into sudden view of Venice, spread in the wide sunshine, with all Vanity Fair, all the Carnival de Venise, in full swing 97 The Merchant of Venice on her quays ; severe merchants trafficking, porters sweating with bales, pitcher-bearers, flower-girls, gal- lants ; vessels lading, discharging, repairing ; and up the narrower waterways black gondolas shooting under high guarded windows, any gondola you please hood- ing a secret — of love, or assassination, or both — as any shutter in the line may open demurely, discreetly, giying just room enough, just time enough, for a hand to drop a rose ; Venice again at night — lanterns on the water, masqued revellers taking charge of the quays with drums, hautboys, fifes, and general tipsi- ness ; withdrawn from this riot into deep intricacies of shadow, the undertone of lutes complaining their love ; and out beyond all this fever, far to southward, the stars swinging, keeping their circle— as Queen Eliza- beth once danced — “high and disposedly ” over Belmont, where on a turfed bank — Peace ho ! the moon sleeps with Endymion, And would not be awak’d, though the birds have already started to twitter in Portia’s garden. Have we not here the very atmo- sphere of romance ? Well, no. . . . We have a perfect setting for romance ; but setting and atmosphere are two very different things. I fear we all suffer temptation in later life to sophisticate the thoughts we had as chil- dren, often to make thoughts of them when they were scarcely thoughts at all. But fetching back as honestly as I can to the child’s mind, I seem to see that he found the whole thing heartless, or (to be more 7 98 Shakespeare's Workmanship accurate) that he failed to find any heart in it and was chilled : not understanding quite what he missed, but chilled, disappointed none the less. Barring the Merchant himself, a merely static figure, and Shylock, who is meant to be cruel, every- one of the Venetian dramatis personae is either a “waster” or a “rotter ” or both, and cold-hearted at that. There is no need to expend ink upon such parasites as surround Antonio — upon Salarino and Salanio. Be it granted that in the hour of his ex- tremity they have no means to save him. Yet they see it coming ; they discuss it sympathetically, but always on the assumption that it is his affair not theirs — Let good Antonio look he keep his day, Or he shall p^y for this, and they take not so much trouble as to send Bassanio word of his friend’s plight, though they know that for Bassanio’ s sake his deadly peril has been incurred ! It is left to Antonio himself to tell the news in that very noble letter of farewell and release : Sweet Bassanio : My ships have all miscarried, my creditors grow cruel, my estate is very low, my bond to the Jew is forfeit; and since in paying it it is impossible I should live, all debts are cleared between you and I, if I might but see you at my death. Notwithstanding, use your pleasure : if your love do not persuade you to come, let not my letter. — a letter which, in good truth, Bassanio does not too extravagantly describe as “ a few of the unpleasant ’st words that ever blotted paper.” Let us compare it with Salarino ’s account of how the friends had parted : 99 [ ' The Merchant of Venice I saw Bassanio and Antonio part : Bassanio told him he would make some speed Of his return : he answer’d, “ Do not so; Slubber not business for my sake, Bassanio, But stay the very riping of the time ; And for the Jew’s bond which he hath of me, Let it not enter in your mind of love : Be merry ; and employ your cheerful thoughts To courtship, and such fair ostents of love As shall conveniently become you there ’ ’ : And even there , 1 his eye being big with tears, Turning his face, he put his hand behind him, And with affection wondrous sensible He wrung Bassanio’s hand : and so they parted. But let us consider this conquering hero, Bassanio. When we first meet him he is in debt, a condition on which — having to confess it because he wants to borrow more money — he expends some very choice diction. ’Tis not unknown to you, Antonio, (No, it certainly was not !) How much I have disabled mine estate By something showing a more swelling port Than my faint means would grant continuance. That may be a mighty fine way of saying that you have chosen to live beyond your income ; but, Shake- speare or no Shakespeare, if Shakespeare mean us to hold Bassanio for an honest fellow, it is mighty poor poetry. For poetry, like honest men, looks things in 1 Let the reader note this 4 ‘ there, ’ ’ so subtly repeated that we see the man turning on the spot and on the word together. ioo Shakespeare's Workmanship the face, and does not ransack its wardrobe to clothe what is naturally unpoetical. Bassanio, to do him justice, is not trying to wheedle Antonio by this^sort of talk ; he knows his friend too deeply for that. But he is deceiving himself , or rather is reproducing some of the trash with which he has already deceived himself. He goes on to say that he is not repining ; his chief anxiety is to pay everybody, and To you, Antonio, I owe the most, in money and in love; v and thereupon counts on more love to extract more money, starting (and upon an experienced man of business, be it observed) with some windy nonsense about Shooting a second arrow after a lost one. You know me well; and herein spend but time To wind about my love with circumstance ; says Antonio ; and, indeed, his gentle impatience throughout this scene is well worth noting. He is friend enough already to give all ; but to be preached at, and on a subject — money — of which he has for- gotten, or chooses to forget, ten times more than Bassanio will ever learn, is a little beyond bearing. And what is Bassanio’ s project ? To borrow three thousand ducats to equip himself to go off and hunt an heiress in Belmont. He has seen her ; she is fair ; and Sometimes from her eyes I did receive fair speechless messages. . . . Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth; For the four winds blow in from every coast Renowned suitors; and her sunny locks Hang on her temples like a golden fleece ; ior The Merchant of Venice Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchos’ strand, And many Jasons come in quest of her. 0 my Antonio, had I but the means To’ hold a rival' place with one of them, 1 have a mind presages me such thrift That I should questionless *be fortunate ! Now this is bad workmanship and dishonouring to Bassanio. It suggests the obvious question, Why should he build anything on Portia’s encouraging glances, as why should he “ questionless be fortun- ate/* seeing that — as he knows perfectly well, but does not choose to confide to the friend whose money he is borrowing — Portia’s glances, encouraging or not, are nothing to the purpose, since all depends on his choos- ing the right one of three caskets — a two to one chance against him ? But he gets the money, of course, equips himself lavishly, arrives at Belmont ; and here comes in worse workmanship. For I suppose that, while character weighs in drama, if one thing be more certain than another it is that a predatory young gentleman such as Bassanio would not have chosen the leaden casket. I do not know how his soliloquy while choosing affects the reader : The world is still deceiv’d with ornament, In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt, But, being season’d with a gracious voice. Obscures the show of evil? In religion. What damned error, but some sober brow Will bless it, and approve it with a text. — but I feel moved to interrupt: “Yes, yes — and what about yourself, my little fellow ? What has 102 Shakespeare's Workmanship altered you, that you, of all men, start talking as though you addressed a Young Men’s Christian Association ?” And this flaw in characterisation goes right down through the workmanship of the play. For the evil opposed against these curious Christians is specific ; it is Cruelty ; and, yet again specifically, the peculiar cruelty of a Jew. To this cruelty an artist at the top of his art would surely have opposed mansuetude, clemency, charity, and, specifically, Christian charity. Shakespeare misses more than half the point when he makes the intended victims, as a class and by habit, just as heartless as Shylock without any of Shylock’s passionate excuse. It is all very well for Portia to strike an attitude and tell the court and the world that The quality of mercy is not strain’d : It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven. ... \ But these high-professing words are words and no more to us, who find that, when it comes to her turn and the court’s turn, Shylock gets but the ‘‘mercy ” of being allowed (i) to pay half his estate in fine, (2) to settle the other half on the gentleman That lately stole his daughter, and (3) to turn Christian. (Being such Christians as the whole gang were, they might have spared him that ignominy !) Moreover, with such an issue set out squarely in open court, I do not think that any of us can be satisfied with Portia’s victory, won by legal quibbles as fantastic as anything in Alice in Wonder - The Merchant of Venice 103 land; since, after all, prosecution and defence have both been presented to us as in deadly earnest. And I have before now let fancy play on the learned Bel- lario’s emotions when report reached him of what his impulsive niece had done with the notes and the gar- ments he had lent to her. Indeed, a learned Doctor of another University than Padua scornfully summed up this famous scene to me, the other day, as a set-to between a Jew and a Suffragette. Why are these Venetians so empty-hearted ? I should like to believe — and the reader may believe it if he will — that Shakespeare was purposely making his Venice a picture of the hard, shallow side of the Renaissance, even as in Richard III. he gives us a finished portrait of a Renaissance scoundrel (“I am determined to be a villain ”), of the Italianate English- man who was proverbially a devil incarnate. He cer- tainly knew all about it ; and in that other Venetian play, Othello , he gives us a real tragedy of two pas- sionate, honest hearts entrapped in that same milieu of cold, practised, subtle malignity. I should like to believe, further, that against this Venice he consciously and deliberately opposed Belmont (the Hill Beautiful) as the residence of that better part of the Renaissance, its “humanities,” its adoration of beauty, its wistful dream of a golden age. It is, at any rate observable in the play that — whether under the spell of Portia or from some other cause — nobody arrives at Belmont who is not instantly and marvellously the better for it ; and this is no less true of Bassanio than of Lorenzo and Jessica and Gratiano. All the suitors, be it re- 104 Shakespeare's Workmanship marked — Morocco and Aragon no less than Bassanio —address themselves nobly to the trial and take their fate nobly. If this be what Shakespeare meant by Belmont, we can read a great a deal into Portia’s first words' to Nerissa in Act. v. as, reaching home again, she emerges on the edge of the dark shrubbery — That light we see is burning in my hall. How far that little candle throws his beams ! So shines a good deed in a naughty world — a naughty world : a world that is naught, having no heart. It were pleasant (I say) to suppose this naughti- ness, this moral emptiness of Venice, deliberately intended. But another consideration comes in. (2) Any school manual will recite for us the ‘ ‘ sources ’ ’ of The Merchant of Venice. Briefly, we all know that it intertwists three plots of intrigue ; and we need not vex ourselves here with their origins, because they are nothing to our purpose. We have : Plot I. The story of the Jew and the pound of flesh. Plot II. The story of the caskets. Plot III. The intrigue of the exchanged rings. To this summary I but append two remarks. The first, obvious to anybody, is that Plots I. and II., the pound of flesh and the caskets, are monstrous and incredible ; the pound of flesh business starkly inhuman, the casket business scarcely more plausible when we The Merchant of Venice 105 examine it. Be it granted that, as Nerissa says, “holy men at their death have good inspirations.” Yet this profound explanation scarcely covers Portia’s father, since in point of fact his devise gave his daughter to a lucky fortune-hunter. Ulrici, like Portia’s father, had a good inspiration ; he divined that Shakespeare ‘ c showed consummate art in intro- ducing one improbability, that of the caskets, to balance and, as it were, excuse the other improb- ability, that of the pound of flesh ”( !) The third in- trigue— that of the exchanged rings — is mere light comedy. For my other remark : In Stephen Gosson’s Schoole of Abuse , an incentive against stage-plays by a playwright turned Puritan, published in 1579 — when Shakespeare was a boy of fifteen and before he had written a line — there occurs an allusion to a play called The Jew , and described as “representing the greedi- ness of worldly chosers and bloody mind of usurers . ’ ’ These coincident phrases — “The Jew,” “the greediness of worldly chosers,” “the bloody mind of usurers” — indicate a play on the very lines of The Merchant of Venice, and tell us, as well as such casual evidence can, (1) that Shakespeare was refurbishing an old play, (2) that the two themes of the pound of flesh and the caskets had already been combined in that play before Shakespeare ever took it in hand to improve it. Reading this into Gosson’s allusion, we see Shake- speare tackling, as a workman, an old piece of work which already included two monstrous, incredible io6 Shakespeare's Workmanship stories. Even if we rule out Gosson, we see Shake- speare about to combine in one play these two monstrous, incredible stories, plus a third which is an intrigue of light comedy separate from both. It does not matter to which alternative we incline. With either of them Shakespeare’s first task as an artist was to distract attention from the monstrosities and absurdities in the plot. I shall return to this. ( 3 ) For the moment I postpone it, to consider another necessity. Every artist knows, and every critic from Aristotle down, that the more you complicate your plot — the more threads you tie together in your nexus — the less room you leave yourself for invention and play of character. That is A.B.C. ; and it is almost A.B.C. that with three entanglements in hand — one inhuman, two incredible, one fantastic — and three hours to do your trick in — you almost exclude your chance of working seriously upon character. Shakespeare had two outlets only, and he took full advantage of both. I rule out Antonio, who, as I said, is merely static. He is made, and rightly, the pivot of the action (and drama is by its very name dynamic). But the pivot is inert ; he himself scarcely lifts a hand. There remain Shylock and Portia, who do the work. I am going to say very little upon Shylock, who, The Merchant of Venice 107 to my thinking, has been over-philosophised and yet more drearily over-sentimentalised. Charles Kean or Macklin began it. Irving completed (I hope) what they began. Heine, himself a Jew, tells how in a box at Drury Lane he sat next to “ a pale, fair Briton who at the end of the Fourth Act fell a-weeping pas- sionately, several times exclaiming, ‘ the poor man is wronged ’ 5 ’ ; and Heine goes on to return the com- pliment in better coin, with talk about “a ripple of tears that were never wept by eyes ... a sob that could come only from a breast that held in it the martyrdom endured for eighteen centuries by a whole tortured people.’ ’ That is all very well. Few of us doubt that Shake- speare often wrote greater than he knew ; that he is what we can read into him. But the point is that he started out to make Shylock such a cruel, crafty, villainous Hebrew as would appeal to an audience of Elizabethan Christians. The very structure of the plot shows that. But every author knows how a character of his invention will sometimes take charge of him ; as every reader must recognise and own in Shakespeare an Imagination so warm, so large, so human, so catholic, that it could not, creating even a Caliban, help sym- pathising with Caliban’s point of view. So it is with Falstaff ; and so it is with Shylock. As I see Shy- lock, he takes charge of his creator, fenced in by intricacies of plot and finding outlets for his genius where he can. Shakespeare so far sympathises that, even in detail, the language of Shylock is perfect. .1 108 Shakespeare' s Workmanship think it was Hazlitt who noted the fine Hebraism of his phrase when he hears that his runaway daughter has given in Genoa a ring to purchase a monkey : Thou torturest me, Tubal ! It was my turquoise : I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor : I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys . Let us open our Bible for comparison, say, at the first chapter of Isaiah : And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard,, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. Supposing ourselves lodged in a garden of cucumbers, what could we more appropriately overlook, beyond its fence, than a wilderness of monkeys ? It is curious to reflect that Shakespeare most likely had never seen a Jew in his life. (4) Let us turn to Portia, the only other character on whom the pleached fence of the plot permits Shake- speare to expatiate. Hazlitt says, “Portia is not a very great favourite with us. . . . Portia has a cer- tain degree of affectation and pendantry about her, which is very unusual in Shakespeare's women.” Pedantry, or a touch of it, she must have in the trial scene. It is a part of the plot. But — “affecta- tion ’ ’ ? Let us for a moment dismiss that importun- ate trial scene from our minds and listen to these lovely lines, in which she gives herself, utterly, without low bargaining, as Shakespeare’s adorable women always The Merchant of Venice 109 *do, out of confessed weakness springing to invinci- bility : You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand, Such as I 3m : though for myself alone I would not be ambitious in my wish, To wish myself much better; yet, for you, I would be trebled twenty times myself ; A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times More rich; That only to stand high in your account, I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends, Exceed account ; but the full sum of me Is sum of — something : which, to terms in gross, Is an unlesson’d girl, unschool’d, unpractis’d ; Happy in this, she is not yet so old But she may learn : happier than this, She is not bred so dull but she can learn; Happiest of all is that her gentle spirit Commits itself to yours to be directed As from her lord, her governor, her king. Myself and what is mine to you and yours Is now converted : but now I was the lord Of this fair mansion, master of my servants, Queen o’er myself : and even now, but now, This house, these servants, and this same myself Are yours, my lord ; I give them with this ring — This, by the way, is the first we hear of the ring ; and we may observe how cunningly Shakespeare foists on ns this new card, a moment after he has finished with the caskets. For though he runs three plots in The Merchant of Venice, he runs but two at a time. In- deed, he does not actually get to work on this plot of the ring (or, rather, of the rings) until Act iv., Scene 1 , line 426, at the very moment again when the pouild of no Shakespeare's Workmanship flesh plot is played out and done with. But here we are prepared for it : I give them with this ring : Which when you part from, lose, or give away, Let it presage the ruin of your love, And be my vantage to exclaim on you. “A girl’s fancy? — a caprice?” we ask ourselves, noting a thought too much of emphasis laid on this trifle. Yet, after all, if Portia choose to make it a token of the much she is giving, why should she not ? So we let it pass, to remember it later on. But when we consider the body of this speech of Portia’s (far more beautiful, with the reader’s leave, than her more famous one on the quality of mercy, line by line flowing straight from a clean heart) and compare it with Bassanio’s trash about his debts, surely our instinct discriminates between things that poetic language can, and things it cannot, dignify. I regret to add that William Collins, author of the Ode to Evening (a poem which I worship “on this side idolatry”), uttered, comparing him with Fletcher, the most fatuous observation pronounced upon Shakespeare by any critic, living or dead or German. In his Epistle to Sir Thomas Hanmer he actually wrote : Of softer mould the gentle Fletcher came, The next in order as the next in name. - With pleas’d attention ’midst his scenes we find Each glowing thought that warms the female mind ; Each melting sigh, and every tended tear, The lover’s wishes and the virgin’s fear, 1 1 1 The Merchant of Venice His every strain the Smiles and Graces own : But stronger Shakespeare felt for men alone. A man who has said that deserves, on either side of the grave, the worst he can get, which is to have it re- peated. Portia, indeed, is the earliest portrait in Shakespeare’s long gallery of incomparable women. We can feel her charm at the full only if we get the Trial Scene back to its right focus. We then see what was amiss with Hazlitt, for instance, when he grumbled over ‘ ‘ a certain degree of affectation and pedantry about her . . . which perhaps was a proper qualification for the office of a civil doctor.” He had the Trial Scene in his eye. Now all star actors and actresses tend to exaggerate the significance of this scene, because it gives them an unrivalled occasion to exploit, as Portia or as Shylock, their personalities, their picturesqueness, their declamatory powers — Shylock whetting his knife on his boot, Portia pub- licly outmanning man, yet in garments decorously ample. Worse, far worse ! it has become the hap- piest hunting-ground of the amateur. There ought to be a close time for this scene. I grant it to be the crisis of the action. But it has been sentimentalised and sophisticated until we can scarcely see the rest of the play ; and I, for one, long hated the rest of the play for its sake. (5) Here I take up and continue the personal confes- sion. Some four or five years ago I had to stage- . 1 12 Shakespeare's Workmanship manage The Merchant of Venice. This meant that for two good months I lived in it and thought about little else. Having once ' achieved the difficult but necessary feat of getting the Trial Scene back into focus, I found a sense of the workmanship growing in me, and increasing to something like amazement : in the midst of which certain things new to me emerged and became clear. Of these I beg to offer my report. (1) To begin with, for purpose of the report — though in fact and in time it came about last of my little discoveries — Shakespeare was working upon that old play alluded to by Gosson, which combined the tw r o incredible stories of the pound of flesh and the caskets. He started with his hands tied. (2) He started, as in such hap every artist must, with one paramount object — to distract our attention from the monstrous absurdity of the story. Now let us mark with what ingenuity he does it. All artists know it for an axiom that if you are setting out to tell the' incredible , nothing will serve you so well as to open with absolute realism. Then, with this axiom in mind, let us consider the first scene of this play. There is nothing about any pound of flesh in it. Still more astonishing, while the adventure to win Portia is propounded and discussed, there is not a word about caskets ! By the end of the scene Shakespeare has impressed on our minds : — (a) That we are dealing with people as real as ourselves ; The Merchant of Venice 113 ( b ) that Antonio, a rich merchant, has so deep an affection for young Bassanio that he will forget all business caution to help him ; and (c) — cunningest of all, when later we look back — that this man of affairs, rather deeply in- volved, gets very anxious without knowing quite why. The reader goes on to note how it in- creases Antonio’s hold on us when he shakes off all his own melancholy at the first hint of helping his friend. As for the pound of flesh, we next observe how Shylock in Scene 3 slides it in under cover of a jest. By this time Shakespeare has us at his mercy ; all the characters are so real to us that we have no choice but to accept all the incredibilities to come. And meanwhile and moreover all the stage for those in- credibilities has been set in Antonio’s opening con- fession : In sooth I know not why I am so sad; and Bassanio ’s other premonition, as with a start of fear — I like not fair terms and a .villain’s mind. “Come on,” Antonio reassures him heartily — he is the cheerful one now, forgetful of self and his own premonitions — Come on ! in this there can be no dismay : My ships come home a month before the day. (3) Launcelot Gobbo is patently own brother and twin to Launce of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 8 1 1 14 Shakespeare's Workmanship and I think him no improvement on Launce. But if we follow back that hint and turn the pages of the earlier play, we soon begin to rub our eyes. Inured as we are to Shakespeare’s habit of economising his material, of turning old plots, tricks, situations to new uses, his “ rifacciamenting ” (if I may coin the word) of The Two Gentlemen of Verona in The Merchant of Venice is audacious. For a sample, compare the two early scenes in which the two heroines discuss their lovers ; while, as for the main device of The Two Gentlemen of Verona — the heroine in mannish dis- guise — in The Merchant of Venice there are but three female characters, and they all don man’s clothes ! (4) “This is a play,” wrote Hazlitt, “that in spite of the change of manners still holds undisputed possession of the stage.” It does to-day ; and yet on the stage, sophisticated by actors, it had always vexed me, until, coming to live with an acting version, I came to track the marvellous stage-cleverness of it all ; when, in revulsion, I grew impatient with all judgments of Shakespeare passed on the mere reading of him. This had happened to me before with The Taming of the Shrew — a play noisier in the study than on the stage ; strident, setting the teeth on edge ; odious, until acted ; when it straightway becomes not only tolerable, but pleasant, and not only pleasant, but straightforwardly effective. In particular, I had to own of The Merchant of Venice that the lines which really told on the stage were lines the reader passes by casually, not pausing to take their impression. It fairly surprised me, for an example, that Lorenzo’s The Merchant of Venice 115 famous speech in the last Act — about the music and the moonlight and the stars — though well delivered, carried less weight than four little words of Portia’s. (5) And this brings me to the last Act, so often discussed. It became plain to me that Shakespeare had made at least one attempt at it before satisfying himself ; as plain as that, if we resolutely hold the Trial Scene back to focus, this finish becomes the most delightful Act in the play. That Shakespeare tried other ways is made evi- dent by one line. Upon Lorenzo’s and Jessica’s lovely duet there breaks a footfall. Lorenzo, startled by it, demands — Lorenzo. Who comes so fast in the silence of the night? Voice. A friend. Lorenza. A friend? What friend? Your name, I pray you. Friend? \Stephano enters . ] Stephano. Stephano is my name; and I bring word My mistress will before the break of day Be here at Belmont ; she doth stray about By holy crosses, where she kneels and prays For happy wedlock hours. Lorenzo. Who comes with her? None but a holy hermit, and her maid. . . . Nothing loose in literature — in play or in poem — ever caught Dr. Johnson napping. “I do not perceive/' says Johnson, in his unfaltering accent, “the use of this hermit, of whom nothing is seen or heard after- wards. The Poet had first planned his fable some other way ; and inadvertently, when he changed his scheme, retained something of the original design.” But the Fifth Act, as Shakespeare finally gives it 1 1 6 Shakespeare's Workmanship to us, is lovely past compare, even after professionals have done their worst on the Trial Scene. Nay, whatever they did or omitted, the atmosphere of the Doge’s court was thunderous, heavily charged ; after all, a good man’s life was at stake, and we have hung on the lips of the pleaders. We have to be won back to a saner, happier acceptance of life ; and so we are, by gracious, most playful comedy. It is all absurd, if we please. The unsealing of a letter telling Antonio, to make joy complete, that Three of your argosies Are richly come to harbour suddenly, is unbelievable. “You shall not know,’’ Portia adds — You shall not know by what strange accident I chanced on this letter. No ; nor anyone else ! It is absurd as the conclusion of The Vicar of Wakefield. Yet it is not more absurd than the ending of most fairy-tales. And while all this has been passing, the moon has sunk and every thicket around Belmont has begun to thrill and sing of dawn. Portia lifts a hand. It is almost morning. . . . Let us go in. CHAPTER VI AS YOU LIKE IT Lodge’s Rosalynde , and The Tale of Gamelyn — The Forest of Arden — Its site on the Avon — A fantasy in colour — Jacques and Touchstone — A fantastic criticism of life — Playing at Robin Hood — Swinburne and George Sand — The influence of Lyly — An incongruous patch. (0 For the actual plot of As You Like It we have not to seek very far. Shakespeare took his story from a contemporary novel, Rosalynde , Euphues Golden Legacie, written by Thomas Lodge and first pub- lished in 1590. Lodge derived a good part of his story from The Tale of Gamelyn , included in some MSS. of the Canterbury Tales , but certainly not written by Chaucer and probably packed by him among his papers as material for the Yeoman s Tale which he never wrote. 1 1 On this I cannot do better than quote Professor Skeat : “ Some have supposed, with great reason, that this tale occurs among the rest because it is one which Chaucer intended to recast, although, in fact, he did not live to rewrite a single line of it. This is the more likely because the tale is a capital one in itself, well worthy of being rewritten even by so great a poet ; indeed, it is well known that the plot of the favourite play known to us all by the title of As you Like It was derived 117 1 1 8 Shakespeare's Workmanship The Tale of Gamely n (as the reader may remem- ber) runs in this fashion : Litheth and lesteneth || and herkeneth aright, And ye schulle heere a talking || of a doughty knight ; Sire Johan of Boundys || was his righte name . . . and he leaves three sons. The eldest, succeeding to the estate, misuses the youngest brother, who triumphs in a wrestling-bout and, escaping to the greenwood with an old retainer, Adam the Spencer, becomes an outlaw. The eldest brother, Johan, as sheriff, pursues him — just as the proud sheriff of Not- tingham pursues Robin Hood. He is taken, and bailed ; returns, in ballad-fashion (like the Heir of Linne, for example), just in time to save his bail, and the wicked Johan is sent to the gallows. Upon this artless ballad Lodge tacked and em- broidered a love-story — of an exiled King of France and of his daughter, Rosalind, who falls in love with the young wrestler, and escapes with the usurper’s daughter Alieda (Celia) to the greenwood. As in the from it at second-hand. But I cannot but protest against the stupidity of the botcher whose hand wrote above it, ‘ The Coke’s Tale of Gamelyn.’ This was done because it happened to be found next qfter the ‘ Coke’s Tale. . . . The fitness of things ought to show at once that this ‘ Tale of Gamelyn,’ a tale of the woods in true Robin Hood style, could only have been placed in the mouth of him 1 who bare a mighty bow,’ and who knew all the ways of wood-craft ; in one word, of the Yeo- man. . . . And we get hence the additional hint, that the Yeoman’s Tale was to have followed the Coke’s Tale, a tale of fresh country life succeeding one of the close back-streets of the city. No better place could be found for it.” As You Like It 119 play, the usurper’s daughter becomes “Aliena ” and Rosalind disguises herself as a page and calls herself “ Ganymede.” The name of the faithful old retainer, “Adam,” persists down from The Tale of Gamelyn to As You Like It, and is the name of the character which (tradition says) Shakespeare as an actor per- sonated in his own play. ( 2 ) So much for the source of the plot. But the plot of As You Like It is no great matter. Ihdeed, I would point out that by the end of Act i. it is prac- tically over and done with. With the opening of Act ii. we reach the Forest of Arden ; and thenceforth, like the exiled Duke and his followers, we “fleet the fime carelessly, as they did in the golden world.” But let me quote the whole of Charles the Wrestler’s answer to Oliver’s question, ‘ ‘ Where will the old Duke live?” for in some five lines it gives us not only the Robin Hood and Gamelyn tradition of the story, but the atmosphere in which Shakespeare is to clothe it : They say he is already in the forest of Arden, and a many merry men with him; and there they live like the old Robin Hood of England : they say many young gentlemen flock to him every day, and fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world. “They say . . . they say” — I note those two they says, to return to them anon. For the moment let us be content to mark that no sooner do we arrive at the fringe of this forest with the other fugitives (and 120 Shakespeare's Workmanship I break off to remark that they all in turn reach it dead-beat. Sighs Rosalind, “O Jupiter, how weary are my spirits !” invoking Jupiter as a Ganymede should. Touchstone retorts, “I care not for my spirits, if my legs were not weary” ; and Celia en- treats, “I pray you, bear with me; I cannot go further” : as, later on, old Adam echoes, “Dear master, I can go no further” ; and again, we remem- ber, Oliver arrives footsore, in rags, and stretches himself to sleep, so dog-tired that even a snake, coil- ing about his throat, fails to awaken him. It is only the young athlete Orlando who bears the journey well) — I say that the fugitives, and we too, no sooner win to the forest than life is found to have changed its values for us, as it has awhile already for the Duke and his followers. Henceforth we hear next to nothing of the usurping Duke Ferdinand and his court, and we care less. We have left him behind. , He is not suffered again to obtrude his person, and in the last Act we learn of his repentance but by report : Duke Frederick, hearing how that every day Men of great worth resorted to this forest, Address’d a mighty power; which were on foot, In his own conduct, purposely to take His brother here and put him to the sword : And to the skirts of this wild wood he came ; Where meeting with an old religious man, After some question with him, was converted Both from his enterprise and from the world ; His crown bequeathing to his banish’d brother, And all their lands restor’d to them again That were with him exil’d. As You Like It 121 “ I do not perceive the use of this hermit/’ says Dr. Johnson of the holy man introduced with very similar abruptness into the last Act of The Merchant of Venice. I venture to echo it of this intruder upon the last Act of As You Like It. Whoso lists may believe in him. But who care§ ? The wicked brother Oliver is even more violently converted to a right frame of mind, by means of a snake and a lion. We are not shown it. We don’t want to see it. We take his word for it, and quite cheerfully, in spite of its monstrous improbability. For, again, who cares ? We are fleeting the time carelessly; we are “not at home’’ to him, but en- gaged with Rosalind’s wooing, Touchstone’s amorous vagaries with his Audrey, the pure pastoral of Silvius and Phebe, Jaques’ moralising, the killing of the deer, food and song beneath the bough. ( 3 ) Some years ago, in hope to get a better under- standing of Shakespeare, a friend and I tracked the Warwickshire Avon together, from its source on Naseby battlefield down to Tewkesbury, where, by a yet more ancient battlefield, it is gathered to the greater Severn. From Naseby, where we found its source among the “good cabbage ’’ of an inn-garden, we followed it afoot through “wide-skirted meads,” past “poor pelting villages, sheep-cotes and farms,” to Rugby. This upper region of Avon undulates in long ridge and furrow divided by stiff ox-fences (the ‘ 4 bull-finches ’ ’ of the fox-hunter — for this is the 122 Shakespeare's Workmanship famous Pytchley country) ; and in Shakespeare’s time these same ridges and furrows were , mainly planted with rye. We went down through this pastoral heart of England, where yet (as Avon draws the line be- tween her north and her south) so many of her bloody internal battles have been decided — Bosworth and Naseby by her headwaters, Evesham and Tewkes- bury by her lower fords — and at Rugby we took ship : that is to say, we launched a canoe — a “ canader.” I am pretty sure she was the first 1 ever launched upon Avon from Rugby. A small curious crowd bore murmured testimony to this. The Avon is not — or was not in those days — a pleasure stream. You might meet a few boats above Warwick, a few at Stratford. Far lower down, below Stratford, the river was made navigable in 1637. But the locks are decayed, and the waterway disused. I suppose that along its extent, half the few houses by this most lonely river resolutely turn their back gardens on it. On the second day, after much pulling through reed beds and following for many miles Avon’s always leisurely meanders, we came to the upper bridge of Stoneleigh Deer Park. A line of swinging deer-fences hung from the arches of the bridge, the river trailing through their bars. We, having permission, pushed cautiously under these — which in a canoe was not easy. Beyond the barrier we looked to right and left, amazed. We 1 The first Canadian canoe. I learn that in the dim past, early in the second half of the nineteenth century, two “ Rob Roys ” m ight have been observed threading the Avon below Rugby. As You Like It 123 had passed from a sluggish brook, twisting among water-plants and willows, to a pleasant, expanded river, flowing between wide lawns, by slopes of bracken, by th£ roots of gigantic trees — oaks, Spanish oaks, wych- elms, stately firs, sweet chestnuts, backed by filmy larch coppices. This was Arden, the forest of Arden, actually Stoneleigh-in- Arden, and Shakespeare’s very Arden. Actually, as we rested on our paddles', down to a shallow ahead — their accustomed ford, no doubt — a herd of deer tripped daintily and charged across, splashing ; first the bucks, in single file, then the does in a body. The very bed of Avon changes just here : the river now brawling by a shallow, now deepening, and anon sliding over slabs of sandstone. This (I repeat) is verily and historically Arden. We know that Arden — a lovely word in itself — was endeared to Shakespeare by scores of boyish memo- ries ; Arden was his mother’s maiden name. I think it arguable of the greatest creative artists that, how- ever they learn and improve, they are always trading on the stored memories of childhood. I am sure that, as Shakespeare turned the pages of Lodge’s Rosalynde — as sure as if my ears heard him — he cried to himself, ‘ ‘ Arden ? This made to happen in a Forest of Arden, in France ? But I have wandered in a Forest of Arden ten times lovelier ; and, translated thither, ten times lovelier shall be the tale ! ’ ’ And he is in such a hurry to get to it ! The opening Act of As You Like It (we shall find) abounds in small carelessness of detail. Rosalind is taller than Celia in one passage, shorter in another. 124 Shakespeare' s Workmanship A name, “Jaques,” is bestowed on an unimportant character, forgotten, and later used again for an im- portant one. In one passage there is either confusion in the name of the two Dukes, exiled and regnant, or the words are given to the wrong speaker. Orlando’s protasis is a mere stage trick. The persiflage between Rosalind and Celia has a false sparkle. Actually it is dull, level, chop-logic, repetitive in the rhythm of its sentences. In fact, the whole of the language of this Act, when we weigh it carefully, is curiously monotonous. It affects to be sprightly, but lacks true wit. Until he gets to Arden, Touchstone never finds himself. All goes to show that Shake- speare, while laying out his plot, was impatient of it and ardent for Arden. Now, in Stoneleigh Deer Park, in Arden, I saw the whole thing, as though Corin’ s crook moved above the ferns and Orlando’s ballads fluttered on the boles. There was the very oak beneath which Jaques moral- ised on the deer — a monster oak, thirty-nine feet around (for I measured it) — not far above the ford across which the herd had splashed, its “antique roots” writhing over the red sandstone rock down to the water’s brim. And I saw the whole thing for what the four important Acts of it really are — not as a drama, but as a dream, or rather a dreamy delicious fantasy, and especially a fantasy in coiour. ( 4 ) I want to make this plain : and that the play, not my criticism, is fanciful. I had always thought of. As You Like It I2 5 As You Like It — most adorable play of boyhood, in those days not second even to The T empest — in terms of colour, if I may so put it. Shakespeare, improv- ing on Lodge, invented Jaques and Touchstone. Both are eminently piquant figures under the forest boughs ; both piquantly out of place, while most pic- turesquely in place ; both critics, and contrasted critics, of the artificial-natural life (“the simple life” is our term nowadays) in which the exiled Duke and his courtiers profess themselves to revel. Hazlitt says of Jaques that “he is the only purely contem- plative character in Shakespeare.’ ’ Well, with much more going on about him, Horatio, in Hamlet , is just as inactive — the static, philosophical man, the punc- tum indiff evens set in the midst of tragic aberrations. This function of the critic amid the comic aberrations of As You Like It, Jaques and Touchstone share between them. Jacques moralises ; Touchstone com- ments and plays the fool, his commentary enlighten- ing common sense, his folly doing common sense no less service by consciously caricaturing all prevalent folly around it. As contrast of character indicated by colour, can we conceive anything better than Jaques’ sad-coloured habit opposed to Touchstone’s gay motley ? With what a whoop of delight the one critic happens on the other ! — Jaques. A fool — a fool ! I met a fool i’ the forest, A motley fool ; a miserable world ! As I do live by food, I met a fool ; Who laid him down and bask’d him in the sun. 126 Shakespeare's Workmanship And rail’d on Lady Fortune in good terms, In set good terms, and yet a motley fool. “Good morrow, fool,” quoth I. “No, sir,” quoth he,. “ Call me not fool till heaven hath sent me fortune ” : And then he drew a dial from his poke, And looking on it with lack-lustre eye, Says very wisely, “ It is ten o’clock : Thus we may see,” quoth he, “ how the world wags;. ’Tis but an hour ago since it was nine ; And after one hour more, ’twill be eleven ; And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe, And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot ; And thereby hangs a tale.” When I did hear . The motley fool thus moral on the time My lungs began to crow like chanticleer, That fools should be so deep contemplative; And I did laugh sans intermission An hour by his dial. O noble fool ! A worthy fool ! Motley’s the only wear. Duke S. What fool is this? J agues. . . . One that hath been a courtier,. And says, if ladies be but young and fair, They have the gift to know it : and in his brain, Which is as dry as the remainder biscuit After a voyage, he hath strange places cramm’d With observation, the which he vents In mangled forms. O that I were a fool ! I am ambitious for a motley coat. Well then, to pass from Jacques’ to our own appre- ciation of motley, can we not see Touchstone’s suit — scarlet, we will say, down one side, and green down the other — illustrating his own contrast of wit and conduct, in speech, after speech ! Take, for example, his answer to Corin’ s query, “And how like you this shepherd’s life, Master Touchstone?” and As You Like It 127 see him exhibiting one side of himself, then the other : Truly, shepherd, in respect of itself, it is a good life; but in respect that it is a shepherd’s life, it is naught. In respect that it is solitary, I like it very well ; but in respect that it is private, it is a very vile life. Now, in respect it is in the fields, it pleaseth me well ; but in respect it is not in the court, it is tedious. As it is a spare life, look you, it suits my humour ; but as there is no more plenty in it, it goes much against my stomach. The comedy, then, is less a comedy of dramatic event than a playful fantastic criticism of life : wherein a courtly society being removed to the greenwood, to picnic there, the Duke Senior can gently moralise on the artificiality he has left at home, and his courtiers — being courtiers still, albeit loyal ones — must ape his humours. But this in turn, being less than sincere, needs salutary mockery : wherefore Shakespeare invents Jaques and Touchstone, critics so skilfully opposed, to supply it. But yet again, Jaques’ cyni- cism being something of a pose, he must be mocked at by the Fool ; while the Fool, being professionally a fool, must be laughed at by Jaques, and, being be- trayed to real folly by human weakness, laughed at by himself. Even Rosalind, being in love, must play with love. Even honest Orlando, being in love, must write ballads and pin them on oaks ; but he writes them so very ill that we must allow him honest. Otherwise I should maintain his ancient servant Adam (whose part Shakespeare himself enacted) to be the 128 Shakespeare's Workmanship one really serious figure on the stage. It is at any rate observable that while, as we should expect, the play contains an extraordinary number of fanciful and more or less rhetorical moralisings — such as the Duke’s praise of a country life, Jaques’ often-quoted sermon on the wounded deer and his “All the world’s a stage,” Rosalind’s lecture on the marks of a lover, Touchstone’s on the virtue in an “If,” on the Lie Circumstantial, and on horns (to name but a few), it is Orlando who speaks out from the heart such poetry as : . . . whate’er yoif §iie That in this desert inaccessible, Under the shade of melancholy boughs, Lose and neglect the creeping hours of time ; If ever you have look ’ dr orf^better days, If ever been where bells* haye knoll’d to church, If ever sat at any good matf s feast, If ever from your eyelids wip’d a tear And know what ’tis to pjty and be pitied, Let gentleness my strong' enforcement be . . . mm while to Adam it falls to utter the sincerest, most poignant, line in the play : And unregarded age in corners thrown. V An exquisite instance of Shakespeare’s habitual stroke! — with which the general idea, “unregarded age,” is no sooner presented than (as it were) he stabs the concrete into it, drawing blood : “unregarded age in corners thrown . ” But in truth all the rest of our bright characters are not in earnest. They do but play at life in Arden. As You Like It 129 As Touchstone knew, “ cat will after kind ” ; and, as Shakespeare knew, the world is the world as man made it for man to live in. These courtiers are not real Robin Hoods. When the ducdame, ducdame has been played out, yet not so as to over-weary, Shakespeare gathers up his “ fashionables 5 ’—as after- wards in The Tempest he gathers up the Neapolitan courtiers — and restores them, like so many fish, to their proper element ; evefi as he himself, after living with shows and making himself a motley to the view, re- turned to his native Stratford, bought land, and lived doucely. The Duke regains his dukedom, his fol- lowers are restored to their estates. By a pretty turn of workmanship, Orlando, who started with a patri- mony of “poor a thousand crowns,” dependent on an unjust brother, returns as heir-apparent and that brother’s prospective liege-lord. By an equally pretty turn of irony, the one man — the usurping Duke — who reaches Arden on his own impulse, moved by a ferocious idea to kill somebody, is the only one left there in the end, when the sentimental moralists have done with the Forest, to use it as a school of religious contemplation. Some critics have held it for a blot on the play that Oliver, his brotherly crime condoned, is allowed to marry a Celia. Shakespeare merely neglects the excuse found for it in Lodge’s story, where the re- pentant elder brother helps to rescue Aliena (Celia) from a band of robbers. It is unsatisfactory, if we will. The play, according to Swinburne, would be perfect ‘ ‘ were it not for that one unlucky slip of the / : 9 130 Shakespeare's Workmanship brush which has left so ugly a little smear in one corner of the canvas as the betrothal of Oliver to Celia. ” And George Sand, in her French adaptation, like the bold woman she was, married Celia to — Jaques ! ( 6 ) But “ perfect,” after all, is a word we should keep in hand for perfection : and full though As You Like It is of life and gaiety and exquisite merriment, on other points than Oliver’s betrothal (I have instanced the mechanical introduction, and the rather pointless chop-logic of the First Act), it does not quite reach perfection. And, after all, a fantasy is a fantasy, and forgiveness Christian. I cannot feel my soul greatly perturbed over the mercy shown to Oliver ; and I will give Celia to him, any day of the week, to save her from Jaques. The only possible wife for Jaques was one that Shakespeare omitted to provide. She should have to be an arrant shrew, to talk him dumb : and so he and Touchstone might have expiated their criticism together on a fair balance of folly. Rosalind herself would have cured him ; but Rosalind, of course, is by miles too good for Jaques. She is reserved to be loved by an honest man his life through ; and, like many another dear woman, to nag him his life through. Rosalind herself is not perfect ; but she is in a way the better for it, being adorable : at once honest and wayward, “true brow and fair maid,” and infinitely tantalising. She means to be the Nut Brown Maid of the Greenwood, as the whole play seems trying, over and again, to be a Robin Hood play. She As You Like It 131 means this, I repeat ; but being courtly bred she has to play with it before admitting it. Yet she is honest, and confesses her love almost from the first, to herself and to Celia. She does not, as Imogen does, lift the heart out of us, ready to break for her : but she be- witches us, and hardly the less because all the while she allows us to know that the witchery is conscious and intentional. The play is — “ as you like it ” — a woodland play treated courtly-wise, or a courtly play treated woodland-wise. It plainly derives, through Love's Labour's Lost , from John Lyly ; whose polite come- dies, highly artificial, but in one way or another a wonderful artistic advance, held the ear of Court and of City at the moment when Shakespeare set up as a play- wright : and I hold that Mr. Warwick Bond, Lyly’s learned and devoted editor, makes out unanswerably Shakespeare’s debt to Lyly during his apprenticeship in dramatic architecture. Mr. Bond says : That Shakespeare was his [Lyly’s] disciple in this respect is beyond a doubt. ... To the fundamental brainwork which Lyly put into his plays, the greater poet and the Shakespearean stage in general are almost as much indebted as they are to his introduction of a lively, witty and coherent dialogue. Lyly’s notion of a lively and witty dialogue, though begotten (I make no doubt) of an instinct for reform, resulted — like many another innovation — in a tyranny of its own making ; and to my taste the dreariest pas- sages in Shakespeare are those in which his ladies and courtiers exchange “wit.” But it remains true that if we would understand Shakespeare’s workmanship 132 Shakespeare's Workmanship in the early Comedies, and trace how Love's Labour's Lost grew into As You Like It, we must study Lyly’s Campaspe, his Endymion, and his Galatea. The main point to grasp is that As You Like It, however much improved by genius, belongs to the Lyly line of - descent and to the order of the court-pastoral. The “pastoral” being .granted, -we may recog- nise excellent workmanship in the Silvius and Phebe episode. To have garbed Rosalind as a boy without making a girl fall in love with him would have been to miss a plain opportunity — almost as plain a one as the sight of the bloody cloth at which Rosalind faints. It doubles the intrigue, and it provides with due irony one of the most charming chiming quartets in all Comedy : Phebe. Good shepherd, tell this youth what ’tis to love. Silvius. It is to be all made of sighs and tears ; And so am I for Phebe. Phebe. And I for Ganymede. Orlando. And I for Rosalind. Rosalind. And I for no woman. And so on, and so on. The genre and the convention of it granted, nothing could be prettier than the inter- chime and the counter-chime. It is Lyly carried to the wth power. Having said this in praise of a piece of good work- manship, I must in fairness mention a piece of sheer botchwork. I mean the introduction of Hymen in the last Act. To explain away this botch as an imposi- tion upon Shakespeare by another hand — to conjec- ture it as some hasty alternative to satisfy the public ^4s You Like It 133 censor, who objected to Church rites of marriage on the stage — would be as easy as it were accordant with the nice distinctions of critical hypocrisy, were it not that Shakespeare, almost if not quite to the end of his days, was capable of similar ineptitudes, such as the vision of Posthumus and the scroll dropped into his lap. You can explain away one such lapse by an accident ; but two scarcely, and three or four not at all. That kind of artistic improbability runs almost in harmonical progression. Hymen in As You Like It is worse than Hecate in Macbeth. % CHAPTER VII THE STORY OF FALSTAFF An innovation — A permanent artistic principle in the treatment of history by fiction — An Aristotelian induction — A tetra- logy and a pageant — Its unity of theme and treatment — The tradition of Chaucer — Falstaff and the Interludes — Meaning of Interlude — Falstaff in The Merry Wives — Prince Hal and Henry V. — Characters and their creators — David Coffer-field — Johnson on Falstaff — The dismissal of Falstaff — Why Shakespeare killed him — The scenes at the Boar’s Head — The apotheosis of good-fellowship. (0 Anyone, coming to the two parts of King Henry IV. — which in fact make one — can see that here is something new. Though his acquaintance with other history plays of the time be slight ; even though it be confided to the other history plays of Shakespeare, he cannot miss to perceive, in the mixture and blend of high political intrigue, of royalties, proud nobles and rebellious wars, with footpads, tapsters, bawds and all the fun of the fair on Gad’s Hill and in East- cheap, an innovation upon the old method of chronicle drama. I am not pretending, of course, that the innovation has come at a stroke ; that, as Pallas Athene from the head of Zeus, the invention sprang upon the world fully armed and complete out of Shake- 134 35 The Story of Falstaff speare’s brain. For (i) as a matter of history, when a new and strong idea, such as Elizabethan drama, starts fermenting, all manner of men bring their grapes to the vat ; (2) as a matter of history, the germ of the Gad’s Hill frolic is to be found in an old play, The Famous Victories of King Henry the Fifth, on which Shakespeare undoubtedly worked ; and (3) again, as a matter of history, Prince Hal’s youthful follies were a tradition so fixed in men’s minds that no play about him could dispense with them. But when all this has been granted, when we note how Falstaff is no sooner introduced than he takes charge and establishes himself as the real hero of the play ; how he compels everyone into his grand circum- ference ; what a globe this earthy carnal man is, and how like a globe of earth he rolls ; how, from his first merry encounter with Henry to his last sorrowful one, he is and remains (as Hazlitt said) the better man of the two ; why, then, as we go on to read Scott, Dumas, Thackeray or any great historical novelist, we cannot miss to observe how powerful an innovation Shakespeare made of it. It has set up a permanent artistic principle in the treatment of history hy fiction ; the principle that, in drama or novel of this kind- your best protagonists, and the minor characters you can best treat with liveliness as with philosophy, are not those concerning whose sayings and doings you are circumscribed by known fact and documentary evi- dence, but rather some invented men or women — pawns in the game — upon whose actions and destinies you can make the great events play at will. Thus 136 Shakespeare's Workmanship not only does Falstaff give Scott the trick of Dugald Dalgetty, Dumas the trick of The Three Musketeers, Charles Reade the trick of Denis the Burgundian ; not only is Mistress Quickly the artistic mother of Madame Sans Gene ; but if we take almost any his- torical novel of the first class — Esmond , or L’ Homme Qui Rit, or The Cloister and the Hearth , or La Chartreuse de Parme, or The Tale of Two Cities, or Tolstoy’s War and Peace — we shall find the pro- tagonists of the story to be figures evoked from the vaguest shadows of history, when they are not (as more often happens) pure figments of the author’s brain. I touched upon this principle in my first paper, on Macbeth. It was Aristotle, of course, who first laid hold of the, secret, when he asserted that “ poetry is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history ; for poetry occupies itself in expressing the universal, history the particular. The particular is, for ex- ample, what Alcibiades did or suffered.” And this (let me say) was a very remarkable discovery for Aristotle to make by induction from the Greek dram- atists, who concerned themselves mainly with the \ dooms of kings and royal houses — Sometime let gorgeous tragedy In seep ter’ d pall come sweeping by, Presenting Thebes’ or Pelops’ line. . . . But these, to be sure, were mythical, or, at most, legendary, allowing ^Eschylus or Sophocles to choose a great deal and to invent no little. So with Shake- speare — There had, once upon a time, been an actual 1 3T The Story of Falstaff Lear, an actual Cymbeline, and both were kings ; an actual Hamlet, Prince of Denmark ; an actual,. Mac- beth, who made himself king. These, however, are legendary figures, evoked from the penumbra of Holinshed or Saxo Grammaticus ; and Shakespeare calls them up almost in what shape he wills, to be reinspired with life and played with as his genius may choose. Obviously he could not play thus with the houses of York and Lancaster, whose rivalries were not only ' documented but fresh in men’s memories. Red, or white, or parti-coloured — if I may adapt Cowper — The rose was just washed, just washed by the shower, Which Henry to Edward conveyed — and Richard to another Henry, and a third Henry to another Edward, to Mary, and to Elizabeth. The blood and the tears that had washed it alternate red and white were too recent. The Elizabethan audi- ence knew these champions of York and Lancaster — these cousins, making young men bleed for their sordid domestic quarrel. — And Abner said to Joab, “ Let the young men now arise and play before us.” And Joab said, “ Let them arise.’ * Then there arose and went over by number twelve of the servants of Benjamin, which pertaineth to Ishbosheth the son of Saul, and twelve of the servants of David. And they caught everyone his fellow by the head, and thrust his sword into his fellow’s side : so they fell down together, wherefore that place was called Helkathhazzurim (or the Field of Strong Men) unto this day. The many men so beautiful ! And they all dead die lie. . . . 138 Shakespeare's Workmanship An Elizabethan audience, at any rate, knew all about Civil War, or their fathers had told them. Let the reader recall the two little vignettes that Shakespeare introduced into the Third Part of King Henry VI. , “Enter a Son that hath killed his Father, with the dead body," and its pendant, “Enter a Father, that hath killed his Son, with the body in his arms." How poignant they are, for all their conventionality ! I confess that to me the sad but yet selfish comment of Henry VI. — Sad-hearted men, much overgone with care, Here sits a king more woeful than you are, seems little if at all less hollow, as it holds far less sophistry, than the famous but sentimental, selfish, sophistical meditations of Henry V. after the honest soldier Williams has floored him in argument. But this is a matter of opinion touching, in these times, upon politics : I will not press it. (2) Coming back to our business, which is Shake- speare’s workmanship, I will ask the reader to peruse King Richard 11 ., King Henry IV. (both parts), and King Henry V. in succession, and note — (1) that, as a pageant, they follow in straight and almost undivided succession — as all the evidence of data goes to show they were com- posed in fairly rapid succession ; (2) that they carry the house of Lancaster from its usurpation to its highest point of prosperity ; i39 The Story of Falstaff (3) that the progress of this climb to the greatest fortune is dogged throughout by a sense of fate, an apprehension that what has been evilly won cannot endure, a tedium upon each success and an incapacity for joy in it. “Vaulting Bolingbroke has no sooner won the crown than we see him a care-weary man, fearful of the future, haunted by the past. So shaken as we are, so wan with care. That is the first line of the play : and at the back of his mind plays a notion to make it all right with God in some other way than by straight restitution. He will (when his enemies at home give him leisure) raise an English Crusade — To chase these pagans in those holy fields Over whose acres walk’d those blessed feet Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail’d For our advantage on the bitter cross. But “ now 5 ’ will never come : for this service to Christ must wait till Henry’s own kingdom is secure. He does not greatly care for himself : for himself royalty has lost savour as soon as tasted : but alas ! the heir-apparent is a madcap, and cannot be trusted to secure and enjoy the precious Dead Sea fruit. This fear poisons him : at the opening of Part 2 we see him a broken man and a dying one. He dies unhappy. He has never known joy. Prince Henry, who has known joy, succeeds him, to renounce joy, to become an ingrate to those who taught him joy ; to be 140 Shakespeare's Workmanship a soldier and fight Agincourt, yet still to know that he in his turn is but fending off retribution — Not to-day, O Lord ! O ! not to-day, think not upon the- fault My father made in compassing the crown. Yes, we must take the four plays as a tetralogy, not as separate pageants. So taken, they carry a single sense of doom ; not insisted upon, as it is in the Oresteia, but scarcely the less haunting because inter- mittent, recurrent, a sense of a doom that is delayed but for a while. Into this procession of doom, then ; of stately, somewhat wooden personages following high selfish ambitions ; Shakespeare thrusts the jollity of common folk ; real irresponsible wantoning of flesh and blood, and all as English as Chaucer — for he who cannot read the racy tradition of Chaucer into Falstaff must be blind as a bat. Now just how did that happen ? (3) I have spent some time in presenting Falstaff as an innovation. Let us consider him for a while on the reverse side, as an archaism. If we turn to the end of King Henry IV., Part 2, we shall find there an Epilogue, “spoken by a Dancer.” It closes thus : One word more, I beseech you. If you be not too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katharine The Story of Falstaff 141 of France; when, for anything I know, Falstaff shall die of a swe^t, unless already ’a be killed with your hard opinions : for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man. My tongue is weary : when my legs are too, I will bid you good-night : and so kneel down before you ; but, indeed, to pray for the Queen. Now I will wager the reader supposes me to be on the point of telling him how Sir John Oldcastle became converted into Sir John Falstaff ; which is what every one of our little text-books will laboriously explain, saving me the trouble. I am going to do nothing of the sort. I merely direct attention to those last very simple words — My tongue is weary ; when my legs are too, I will bid you good-night : and so kneel down before you ; but, indeed, to pray for the Queen. [Why do I lay stress on words so simple ? Because, while the old miracle plays and moralities are some- times ended with a general prayer for the spiritual welfare of “ sofereyns,” “ lor dings,” and the rest of the audience, 1 this particular prayer for the reigning sovereign and sometimes the estates of the realm is a particular characteristic, or stigma , of a particular kind of play called Interlude. In dealing with the text of one of these Interludes we may often get the date of its first presentation from the prayer at the close. What, precisely, was an Interlude ? Well, the Interlude passed through several phases. Moreover the outlines of these phases were not distinct in their sequence, but interfused and blurred : so that at rio 1 E. K. Chambers, The Mediceval Stage, vol. ii., p. 189. 142 Shakespeare's Workmanship given date can we say ‘ ‘ the Interlude was just this or “ just that." Therefore I must be understood, in what follows, to pretend no more than rough-and- ready accuracy. The New English Dictionary defines Interlude ” as “a dramatic or mimic presentation, usually of a light or humorous character, such as was commonly introduced between the acts of the long mystery-plays or moralities, or exhibited as part of an elaborate entertainment.” Sir Adolphus Ward gives a some- what different account. The name, says he, “ seems to have been applied to plays performed by profes- sional actors from the time of Edward IV. onwards. Its origin is doubtless to be found in the fact that such plays were occasionally performed in the intervals of banquets and entertainments.” Mr. Chambers in his Mediaeval Stage gives reasons for holding neither one nor the other of these explanations to be satisfactory : and my own hypothesis (with the grounds of which I will not here interrupt my argument) is that ‘ ‘ Inter- lude ” meant, or came to mean, a play of a sort com- monly presented indoors, in banqueting-halls, in the interval between the theatrical seasons — that is, dur- ing the winter ; or, in other words, the sort of play to amuse a Christmas or Twelfth Night audience. Whichever of us be right matters very little in com- parison with these points, which can be established — (1) It was brief. (2) It aimed to amuse, and was traditionally comic. The Interludium de Clerico et Puella , The Story of Foist aff 143 for instance, is (as its name suggests) mere farce. (3) It started by borrowing abstract vices from the Moralities — vices such as gluttony, lechery, avarice — and personifying them so as to exhibit their comic side. Now, to do this (it is a rule of art), you must turn the abstrac- tions into real people. Here I quote Mr. Chambers again : — From the Moral the Interlude drew abstractions; from the farce, social types. The possibility of vital drama lay in an advance to the 'portraiture of individuals. (4) In the course of this progress the In- terlude took a queer turn. Its patrons — the great nobles who invited it to amuse them in their banque ting-halls — were, as we all know, sharply and hotly divided over the Old and Reformed Religions. The actors took their cues. Soon, for its patrons’ delectation after dinner, the Interlude became a farcical present- ment of venal priests or of sour puritans , as this or that lordly midruff demanded to be tickled. We may follow this queer development in any history of the drama. And now can we not see the point of Sir John Oldcastle, the Lollard , and how he came to he mixed up in this affair, and why Shakespeare, adapting the play for a mixed audience, had to change the name to Falstaff and apologise ? (5) — and lastly — the Interlude ended by 144 Shakespeare' s Workmanship custom with a prayer for the reigning Sovereign ; to send its audience away, no doubt, with the assurance that its loyalty was in the right place, and that, in spite of appearances, it had not gone too far. Now let us apply all this to King Henry IV., and we shall see, past all that has been so wonderfully changed in the process, back to the original device of it. I am occupied for the moment less with the fer- tility of Shakespeare’s genius in execution (I shall come to that by-and-by) than with the genius that originated the design, that devised the anatomy of a new thing in art by taking the stiff conventional bones of the old chronicle play and articulating them into the minor but equally conventional bones of the In- terlude. I defer for the moment to consider how Shakespeare superinduced the live flesh and infused the live blood. For the moment I am concerned only with the anatomy of the thing and how he made it flexible. ( 4 ) I must pursue this convention of the Interlude for a while, because it leads us on to another discovery. Everyone knows the tradition that Shakespeare wrote The Merry Wives of Windsor because Queen Elizabeth expressed a desire to see Falstaff in love. Well, I believe in that tradition. It combines all one might expect of a royal command in general with all one might expect in particular of a command by a Virgin Queen. We know also that Shakespeare is The Story of Falstaff 145 reputed to have, obeying it, written The Merry Wives of Windsor in a fortnight. That again is easily credible. I have the author’s word for it that one of the most brilliant plays of our time — The Admirable Crichton — was written in about that time. The evidence that Shakespeare was a rapid writer — an extremely rapid writer— cannot be contested. But I suggest that the real reason why we are troubled in reading The Merry Wives is that we cannot recognise Falstaff as the same man. He has obvious similarities with the Falstaff of King Henry IV. : but he is somehow not our Falstaff. For an instance (and it lies at the root) , the Falstaff that we know was easy enough with Doll Tearsheet : he would simply not have troubled to intrigue with Mistress Ford or with Mistress Page. He is too English, moreover, to be at home in an Italian comedy (and the plot of the Merry Wives is pure Italian). Again, though Bardolph, Pistol, Nym, wear their old names, they are not quite the same people ; while Dame Quickly, but for tricks of resemblance in her chatter, is a different Dame Quickly altogether ; and Master Silence has become Master Slender without a word to tell us why. Now, in King Henry IV. these characters had become so individual to us that we cannot understand what has happened. Again I suggest that we shall understand better by casting back and remembering that, to the playwright, these figures — all of them — were, first of all, types ; types of the old Interlude : the Clown, the Pantaloon, Harlequin, Columbine ; Pierrot, Pierrette, Punch, Judy; Falstaff (Gluttony) with 10 a 146 Shakespeare s Workmanship fat paunch ; Bardolph (Drunkenness) with a red nose ; Mistress Quickly the conventional Hostess, Shallow the conventional Country Justice, Slender — or Silence — the conventional awkward country Booby — all types — “Here we are again!” in fine. Shakespeare’s mind is working ; but the whole Eliza- bethan drama is in ferment too, yeasting up from type to individual; to I ago from Richard III., who is “ determined to be a villain ” ; to Shylock from Judas with a red beard ; from “ the old Vice with his dagger of lath ’ ’ to tragedy in which passion spins the plot and We are betrayed by what is false within. (5) I return to King Henry IV., and to the question which ever recurs in these pages— “ What was Shake- speare trying to do ?” Well, that for once has an answer staring us in the face. Prince Hal has to become King Harry ; since (as Dr. Johnson puts it) “ Shakespeare has apparently designed a regular connection of these dramatic histories from Richard the Second to Henry the Fifth.” Prince Hal has to become King Harry : to start, as a matter of history, by being a scapegrace and be converted into the ideal warrior-king. We observe then how deftly from the beginning he is poised on the balance. In the one scale is Hotspur, challenging him to honour with a provocation purposely made exorbitant : in the other, packed into Falstaff, 147 The Story of Falstaff all that is sensual — this also exorbitant, the very bulk of the man helping our impression of the weight that would drag the Prince down. Each challenge is ex- treme. We have only to oppose Hotspur’s high rant about honour with Falstaff’s low appraisement of it, and we have two cross-lights that illumine the whole play. Here are the two in sample : Hotspur. By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap To pluck bright honour from the pale-fac’d moon, Or dive into the bottom of the deep Where fathom-line could never touch the ground r And pluck up drowned honour by the locks, So he that doth redeem her thence might wear Without corrival all her dignities. Falstaff: “ Honour [ . . . Can honour set to a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery then? No. What is honour? a word. What is that word “honour’ 5 ? air. Who hath it? he that died o 5 Wednesday. I)oth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. 5 Tis insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I’ll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon : and so ends my catechism.' That leaves no more to be said. Scarcely less obvious, as master-strokes, are the two great shocks by which Shakespeare works con- version on the Prince’s character — (i) the call to arms for the Shrewsbury campaign (2) the scene of the crown, with the reconciliation that follows, in the dying King’s bed-chamber. These patent strokes have been applauded by critic 148 Shakespeare's Workmanship after critic. It remains for one mainly intent upon workmanship to point out how the whole of the busi- ness is built on the old Morality structure imported through the Interlude. Why, it might almost be labelled, after the style of a Morality title, Contentio inter Virtutem et Vitium de anima Principis. But “ Falstaff ! ” it will be said. “Could Shake- speare have fashioned and developed such an in- dividual, total, full-bodied, full-blooded, teeming and gigantic man as this Falstaff out of a mere figure in an interlude ? * ’ I begin my answer with a request of the reader. Let him get out of his mind all the solemn discussions of all the commentators who never created a play or a novel or a scene or a character in their lives, and no more know how it happens than how a child comes to birth. No true artist develops or fashions a real char- acter, once brought to birth, any more than a mother thenceforth develops or fashions a child. It has a separate life : it takes charge ; the older it grows the more it takes charge. Which are we to suppose ? — that, delivered of his partus mas cuius, Shakespeare took charge of Falstaff, or that Falstaff ran away with Shakespeare ? I think we may say of Falstaff and Shakespeare precisely what Maurice Morgann (who published a Study of Falstaff in 1777) says of Shakespeare and us : The Story of Falstaff 149 ce Him we may profess rather to feel than to understand ; and it is safer to say on many occasions that we are possest by him than that we possess him .” 1 Artists do not develop or fashion these characters to any extent of which those verbs are descriptive. It is not the process : it is not how the thing happens. Searching to convince of this, I hit on an illustration. Many women nowadays are daily parting with sons, brothers, lovers, husbands, bound for the War. Shake- speare has to write down the words of many a woman at such a parting. Let us hear now what Volumnia says to Coriolanus : Thou hast never in thy life Show’d thy dear mother any courtesy : When she, poor hen, fond of no second brood, Hath cluck’d thee to the wars, and safely home Laden with honour. Now let us to Lady Percy, clinging on Hotspur’s strong hand : But if you go — Come, come, you paraquito, answer me Directly unto this question that I ask : — In faith, I’ll break thy little finger, Harry, An if thou wilt not tell me all things true. And lastly let us hear how poor Doll Tearsheet puts it, seated on Falstaff ’s knee : Come, I’ll be friends with thee, Jack : thou art going to the wars; and whether I shall eyer see thee again or no, there is nobody cares. 1 An Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff : London. Printed for T. Davies, in Russel-street, Covent Gar- den : MDCCLXXVII. 150 Shakespeare's Workmanship These three speeches will suffice ; all so different, each! so appropriate, and so poignant on the lips of the speaker. Surely we cannot conceive of Shakespeare, that rapid writer, as seated, with the end of a quill in his mouth, thinking out these differences ! It simply does not happen like that. Volumnia, Lady Percy, Doll Tear sheet — though two of the three are minor characters-v-each in her turn has charge of Shake- speare : and as she dictates, he writes. If this seem an arbitrary pronouncement, let us take evidence for it, and from an artist of genius, Charles Dickens ; just pausing to remind ourselves how the in- comparable Mr. Pickwick grew out of an engagement to provide ‘ ‘ letterpress ’ ’ for a series of comic sport- ing prints. This is how Dickens commended another masterpiece — David Copper field— to the world : It would concern the reader little, perhaps, to know how sorrowfully the pen is laid down at the end of a two-years* imaginative task; or how an Author feels as if he were dismiss- ing some portion of himself into the shadowy world, when a crowd of all the creatures of his brain are going from him for ever. Yet I had nothing else to tell, unless indeed I were to confess (which might be of less moment still) that no one can ever believe this Narrative in the reading more than I believed it in the writing. That is how a great character in fiction — be he Pick- wick or Don Quixote or my Uncle Toby or Falstaff — grows : grows as a plant, its creator tending it and watching, as it puts forth its own leaf, flower, fruit. If I may apply the words reverently, “that which thou sowest is bare grain, it may chance of wheat , or of some other grain.’ * The Story of Falstaff 151 ( 7 ) In this short study I shall not indulge in any panegyric upon Falstaff : and I ask the reader to credit this to a Roman fortitude, since they say that all who write about Falstaff, loving him, write well. The performance I like best is Dr. Johnson’s singular outburst beginning, “ But Falstaff — unimitated, in- imitable Falstaff — how shall I describe thee ?” because it breaks from the heart of a moralist who, being human, could not help himself. Let us, to set beside it, recall that passage in Boswell which relates how his two rowdy young friends, Topham Beauclerk and Bennet Langton, knocked up the Doctor at dead of night : — One night when Beauclerk and Langton had supped at a tavern in London, and sat till about three in the morning, it came into their heads to go and knock up Johnson, and see if they could prevail on him to join them in a ramble. They rapped violently at the door of his chambers in the Temple, till at last he appeared in his shirt, with his little black wig on the top of his head, instead of a nightcap, and a poker in his hand, imagining probably that some ruffians were coming to attack him. When he discovered who they were, and was told their errand, he smiled and with great good humour agreed to their proposal. “ What, is it you, you dogs? I’ll have a frisk with you.” He was soon drest and they Sallied forth together into Covent Garden where the greengrocers and fruiterers were beginning to arrange their hampers, just come in from the country. Johnson made some attempts to help them : but the honest gardeners stared so at his figure and manner and odd interference that he soon saw that his services were not relished. They then repaired to one of the neighbouring taverns and made -a bowl of that liquor called Bishop, which Johnson had always 152 Shakespeare’s .Workmanship liked ; while in joyous .contempt of sleep, from which he had been roused, he repeated the festive lines — Short, O short then be thy reign And give us to the world again ! They did not stay long, but walked down to the Thames, took a boat, and rowed to Billingsgate. Beauclerk and Johnson were so pleased with their amusement that they resolved to persevere in dissipation for the rest of the day : but Langton deserted them, being engaged to dine with some young ladies. Johnson scolded him for “leaving his social friends to go and sit with a set of wretched unidea 1 d girls .' 1 Garrick, being told of this ramble, said to him smartly, “ I heard of your frolic t’other night. You’ll be in The Chronicle .” Upon which Johnson afterwards observed, “ He durst not do such a thing. His wife would not let him.” I think this passage explains why Johnson could not help loving Falstaff. They were both men of extrava- gant bulk, too, and both good Londoners. ( 8 ) The story of Falstaff can be extricated from the chronicle portion of the three plays and presented in a play by itself. In fact I have visited the Cambridge University Library, and seeking out a volume of Mis- cellaneous Plays marked Q, 28, 58, found it done (and not badly done, though sadly Bowdlerised) in 1822 by an author, unknown to me, who signs himself C. S. It will, at any rate, reward curiosity in a spare hour : but I do not want to see it on the stage ; because in proportion as Falstaff dominates all the scene and makes himself the hero, with no historical pageantry to divert us, the end of the story works out into pathos,. i53 The Siory of Falstaff with “ Put not your trust in princes ” for its moral. I grant the artistry of Scenes 4 and 5 of the last Act of King Henry IV Part 2 . . . Enter Beadle dragging in Mistress Quickly and Doll Tear sheet, this little scene ironically preparing us for the next, wherein Falstaff, who knows nothing of what has befallen the women, appears hot-foot from Gloucestershire, with Justice Shallow, just in time for the Coronation show as it returns from the Abbey : — Stand here by me, Master Robert Shallow : I will make the King do you grace ; I will leer upon him as ’a come by ; and do but mark the countenance that he will give me. Now for the event : — Shouts within and the trumpets sound . Enter the King and his train , the Lord Chief Justice among them. Fal. God save thy grace, King Hal ! my royal Hal ! Pist. The heavens thee guard and keep, most royal imp of fame ! Fal. God save thee, my sweet boy ! King, {recognising him) My Lord Chief Justice, speak to that vain man. Ch. ] . Have you your wits? Know you what ’tis you speak? Fal. My King ! my Jove ! I speak to thee, my heart ! King. I know thee not, old man. Fall to thy prayers. How ill white hairs become a fool and a jester ! I have long dream’d of such a kind of man, So surfeit-swell’d, so old, and so profane; But, being awake, I do despise my dream. —and so forth. I have not the stomach to follow the rest of that speech. White hairs may not become a fool and a jester, but no more does a growing beard excuse a cold prig. There is an obvious error in the 154 Shakespeare's Workmanship stage directions, which the Cambridge editors have omitted to correct. Henry V. was not crowned at Westminster Abbey ; the ceremony took place at Exeter Hall. When the King has done, Falstaff turns to Master Shallow with a wrung face : — Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pound. And — the mischief of it — there cracks a great heart. (9) I have often tried to make excuses for this scene. To be sure, no excuses are needed : for a king must be a king, and no decent king can have a Falstaff about him. And yet ... it is curious to observe that just at this time — almost, as accurately as one can fix it, when he handed Doll Tearsheet over to the beadles and dismissed Falstaff to the Fleet — Shakespeare was preparing to leave London, buying property in Strat- ford, applying for a coat-of-arms, and generally (as they say) turning respectable. It may be no more than a coincidence : I hope that it is. But anyhow I would see him relieved of the most damnable piece of workmanship to be found in any of his plays. I mean Prince Hal’s soliloquy at the close of the very first' Act of The First Part of King Henry IV. “I know you all, ” says he, when Falstaff, Poins, and the rest have gone out — I know you all, and will a while uphold The unyok’d humour of your idleness : Yet herein will I imitate the sun, *55 The Story of Falstaff Who doth permit the base contagious clouds To smother up his beauty from the world, That, when he please again to be himself, Being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at. This, if we accept it, poisons what follows, poisons the madcap Prince in our imagination for good and all. Most of us can forgive youth, hot blood, riot : but a prig of a rake, rioting on a calculated scale, confessing that he does it coldly, intellectually, and that he pro- poses to desert his comrades at the right moment to better his own repute — that kind of rake surely all honest men abhor. Yet the lines are pretty obviously written by Shake- speare. I should like to think — as I have brought myself to feel sure — that Shakespeare wrote the play without them, and with no idea of them : that by and by Burbage (or whoever it was) came to him with a ‘ ‘ Look here ! We have later on, you know, to turn Prince Hal to respectability : and our fool of an audience always wants that sort of thing to be made a x h = ab to it from the first 5 ’ : and that so Shakespeare obediently inserted those lines in his opening Act. (io) We cannot keep them and keep any opinion of Henry as a decent fellow. But even if we omit them his conduct is cruel enough ; which brings me to my last consideration — “Why did Shakespeare kill Fal- staff?” Well, he had to. He had made the King kill 156 Shakespeare's Workmanship Falstaff ’s heart. The heart broken, the man dies, and there’s an end. But let us wait a moment, and go a little deeper. Shakespeare killed Falstaff because he couldn’t help it. He tells us of his death, but he could not bring him upon the stage in King Henry V ., because he dared not. How ? Why ? Because, as between two mortal men of this world, Henry was the wronger, Falstaff the wronged. Falstaff had never consciously hurt Henry, had never — so far from unkindness — thought of him but kindly. Wisely or not — wisely, if we will — Henry had hurt Falstaff to death : and not for any new default, sin or crime ; but for continuing to be, in fault and foible, the very same man in whose faults and foibles he had delighted as a friend. Then, if the object of the new play be — as all will admit — to present King Harry as our patriotic darling, henceforth Bates and Williams are good enough for him to practise his talk upon, and he may rant about St. Crispin’s Day until the lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea. But he must not be allowed to meet Falstaff. As he once very prettily said of Hotspur — Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere and therefore he must not be allowed to meet Falstaff. For Falstaff can kill him with a look. (“) In their daily life, in business, in affairs of State, men constantly do wrong and are able as constantly The Story of Falstaff 157 to justify the wrong in their own eyes — nay, boldly to justify it before the world — with excuses. As I write this, I see the reader’s mind fly off to such things as “ scraps of paper,” to the man who pleaded necessity ’ ’ for murdering Belgium — So spake the Fiend, and with necessity , The tyrant’s plea, excused his devilish deeds. But I have known an Archbishop from a University pulpit excuse a war with a weaker nation not because our cause was just (which, though quite arguable, he made no attempt to argue), but because we were a greater, more enlightened, more progressive race than they, with a great literature, too — for in his fervour the preacher even dragged in literature — and therefore (argued he) God, who encourages and presides over the evolution of mankind, must be on our side ! At the time I thought this a blasphemous argument, and that if a true word of the Gospel had dropped from Heaven like a bomb, interrupting it, there would not, as Thoreau once said, have been left one stone of that meeting-house upon another. For of course you cannot righteously kill or maim a man or swindle him, on the ground that you are godlier than he, or cleanlier, or better. The whole point rests on the justice of the particular quarrel. ‘ ‘ Are you, or is he, in the right ?” Even if you be in the right, there still remain the questions of patience, charity, elemen- tary forgiveness. 4 ‘ Do these not rest on you as a duty towards your neighbour by your very claim to be better than he?” 158 Shakespeare’s Workmanship Poetry — which I suspect therefore , as well as for other reasons, to be divine — will have nothing to do with such ointments of conscience. In Poetry, if one man wrong another, that other becomes ipso facto the better man. It was Henry (plead what excuses of State you will) who wronged Falstaff and killed his heart : Falstaff had never a thought of hurting Henry : and therefore, or ever you can present Harry of Agin- court as your heau ideal of a warrior king, you must kill Falstaff somehow and get his poor old body behind the arras : for, as Hazlitt said, he is the better man of the two . (12) I have (as I promised) left myself no space for the customary panegyric on Falstaff. I am sorrier that I have left myself no space to show how wonderfully in these Eastcheap scenes Shakespeare, to give an old Interlude life, sought back, recaptured the very spirit of Chaucer and improved it. In all the great sweep of the plays there is nothing so racy, so English. But, for a last word : — Falstaff — with all his imper- fections on his head and all his offences rank — has, and has to the nth degree, what we mean when we call So- and-so ‘ ‘ a good fellow. ’ ’ He may have led Prince Hal astray : but Shakespeare invented him some two hundred years later, since when, for three hundred years, he has been doing nothing but good to man, woman, or child. His laugh at its grossest is salutary, refreshing ; and, as for us, we laugh with him or at; him, but we usually do both together. CHAPTER VIII HAMLET I A factitious mystery-; — A masterpiece, not a problem — The evidence of its perennial popularity — Every “ star ” his own Hamlet — Highest art never unintelligible — Some im- perfect diagnoses of Hamlet — A masterly opening — Superb- ness of diction — A flaw of construction. (0 So much has been written upon Hamlet , that one can hardly descry the play through the rolling cloud of witness. The critical guns detonate with such uproar, and, exploding, diffuse such quantities of gas, as to im- # pose on us that moral stupor which I understand to be one of the calculated effects of heavy artillery in war- fare. The poor infantryman — if I may press the similitude — discerns not, in the din, that half of these missiles are flying in one direction, half in another, still less how large a proportion of both hit no mark at all. He can scarcely command nerve for a steady look at the thing itself. This loud authority confuses us all. It starts us thinking of Hamlet not as an acted play but as a mystery, a psychological study, an effort of genius so grandiose, vast, vague, amorphous, nebulous, that other men of admitted genius — even such men as 1 59 160 Shakespeare's Workmanship Coleridge and Goethe — tracking it, have lost their way in the profound obscure. (2) Now, with all the courage of humility, I say that this is, nine-tenths of it, rubbish. I insist that we take Shakespeare first and before any of these imposing fellows. At all events he wrote the play* and they did not. Moreover, he wrote it as a play — to be acted on a stage, before an audience. Moreover, he wrote it, not for an audience of Goethes and Coleridges, but for an audience of ordinary men and women. And yet further, if pressed, I am ready to maintain that any work of art which is shapeless, nebulous ; any work of art which from its artistic purpose naturally falls to be the prey of pedants and philosophers, to that extent lies suspect as a piece of art. And I hope to demonstrate that Hamlet is no such thing, but a master- piece. All this may seem brazenly bold : but having gone so far I will go yet one more step further and say that while, to understand Hamlet , the best way is to see it acted on a stage, a second-best way is to read it by ourselves, surrendering ourselves to it as a new thing, as childishly as anyone pleases. As Emerson wrote, “All that Shakespeare says of the king, yonder slip of a boy that reads in a corner feels to be true of him- self.” In this chapter I shall ask the reader to take Hamlet by itself, as a new thing. Let us renew our I Hamlet 161 courage from a sentence of Bacon’s: (( Regnum Scientise ut regnum Coeli non nisi sub persona inf antis intratur — Into the Kingdom of Knowledge, as into the Kingdom of Heaven, whoso would enter must become as a little child.” ( 3 ) The earliest printed copy of Hamlet , known to us, was discovered in 1823 — a little, horribly cropped quarto bearing date 1603, and entitled : The | Tragicall Historie of Hamlet | Prince of Denmark | By William Shake-speare. [ As it hath beene diverse times acted by his Highnesse ser | vants in the Cittie of London : as also in the two U [ niversities of Cambridge and Oxford, and elsewhere | At London printed for N.L., and John Trundell | 1603. It was a drama , then ; written by a real playwright, whose name was Shakespeare : and not by Hegel nor by Werder . ‘ ‘ As it hathe beene diverse times acted by his Highnesse servants in the Cittie of London : as also in the two Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. ...” It would seem from that to have been a popular play. Can we suppose that it would have been a popular play had it been a mystery, a problem, or anything like the psychological enigma that Coleridge and Goethe and their followers have chosen to make of it ? Let us ask ourselves as men — Does that sort of thing happen ? But I will tell what does happen. To this day a travelling company of actors, thrown on their beam- ends for lack of money, having acted this or that to empty houses, always* as a last resort advertise Hamlet. It can be counted upon, above any other play, to fill the treasury. Again, when an actor takes a benefit, what 11 1 62 Shakespeare's Workmanship is the piece most commonly chosen ? — Hamlet. Why ? “Because,’ ’ it may be answered, “Hamlet himself is notoriously a ‘star’ part, with plenty of soliloquies, with plenty of what I believe is called ‘ fat ’ in the Pro- fession ; and moreover because the part has become consecrated somehow, invested by tradition with a certain aura of greatness and crowned as with a halo.” I applaud the answer : it is an excellent one so far as it goes. But why does the gentleman who enacts the First Gravedigger also choos e Hamlet for his “benefit night”? Now that question happens to be more searching than for a moment it may seem. I was once assisting at a dress rehearsal of Hamlet , when the First Gravedigger came off the stage in a passion. In the green-room it exploded. ‘ ‘ Why, ’ ’ he wished to know, “should I be treated like a dog by that conceited fool?” — meaning our Hamlet, of course. “His temper gets viler at every rehearsal. Surely, after air- ing his vanity through four Acts, he might be quiet while I have my little say!” “Bless you, sir,” answered an old dresser, “it’s always like that. In these forty years, I’ve helped dress (I dare say) all that number of Hamlets : and Hamlet and the First Gravedigger always fall out. It’s a regular thing. I ’ve known ’em come to blows. ’ ’ The old man allowed that he could not account for it at all. Hamlet, he said, was a great play — a wonderful play — and there it just was, “Hamlet and First Gravedigger : when you’ve said that, you’ve said oil and vinegar.” Well, while engaged in denying that Hamlet is a mystery in the sense in which Coleridge, Goethe, and the rest would Hamlet 1 63 make it a mystery, I fairly admit there are mysteries about it. But why the First Gravedigger should choose for his benefit night the great and wonderful drama which gives his hated rival such opportunity for display is neither beyond conjecture nor even a puzzling ques- tion. It fills the cash-box. Let me illustrate my argument from another side, using another tradition of the theatre. We all know that to play Hamlet, and play him successfully, is the crown of every young actor’s ambition. But here comes in another mystery — which yet is no mystery at all, unless the critics have fogged us. When he comes to it, he always plays it successfully . An actor, about to play Hamlet for the first time, once assured me (and from boyhood he had known the theatre, as we say, “from the inside ’’) — “If I make a mess of this, I shall be either a complete fool or too good to live ; and I am neither. ’ ’ Well, he did not make a mess of it, and so I escaped choosing between those dismal alternatives. But when reading the play I have often pondered his words, and it is not in any love of paradox that I suggest this question. It is the fashion, and was the fashion before we were born, so that we may call it the custom — it is the custom to talk of So-and-so’s Hamlet : of Garrick’s Hamlet, Kemble’s Hamlet, Kean’s Hamlet ; Macready’s, Salvini’s, Phelps’, Irving’s Hamlets; Sir Herbert Tree’s Hamlet, Mr. Forbes Robertson’s Hamlet. This custom of speech, if it mean anything, would seem to imply that each of these gifted interpreters has given the world a different resolution of that mystery ; 164 Shakespeare's Workmanship and that each has made an individual success of it : which, when we come to think of it, approaches the miraculous, if not the absurd. By various paths they all arrive at the core of the great secret : and yet there would seem to be some mystery about a mystery which turns out to be a different one every time it is explained. (4) Now I suggest that all these fine fellows in their turn have made a success in Hamlet simply because it was there all the time : ready-made by a man who had been beforehand with them, and, having a capital interest in the play, had unconsciously taken care that their self-conscious displays should never attain to spoiling it. I suggest that all those critics, too (Cole- ridge, Goethe, Klein, Werder, and the rest), have been plucking different hearts out of the mystery and ex- hibiting them, simply because there was never any mystery in Hamlet, and consequently no secret heart to pluck out. I know that this is a bold thing to say. But I say it and shall support it (1) with a monumental principle of all great art and (2) with an ordinary piece of evidence, as common as our daily Times and Morning Post. (1) For the principle. — It is never a test of the highest art that it is unintelligible. It is rather the last triumph of a masterpiece — the triumph definitely passing it for a classic — that all men in their degree can understand and enjoy it. Of course they will understand and enjoy in Hamlet 165 varying degrees according to their intelligence and sensibility. But all the great masterpieces we rank in the first class have this essential note — a noble and naked simplicity. The Odyssey , the Venus of Milo, a passage of Virgil, or of Dante, or of Milton, Botticelli’s Prima Vera, Velasquez’ Surrender of Breda , Othello , The Tempest , a lyric of Hugo’s, Lincoln’s peroration on the dead of Gettysburg, a preface of Plato’s, or a parable of Christ’s — all these hold you with a wonder at what they show, not of what they may perchance hide . To be sure, we come to them again and again, to dis- cover fresh beauties. But our delight is to have our eyes unsealed ; to feel ourselves alive in a world where this thing has been shown us. It is your stained-glass window critics that great art has no use for. Do we, knowing Shakespeare, suppose that he wrote the longest of his plays to hide what he meant ? If so, on every ground of presupposi- tion, ‘ ‘ the less Shakespeare he ! ” (2) For my piece of ordinary evidence — I have already given it. Hamlet is the most popular of his plays. The man we pass in the street eagerly pays his money to see it. Can we suppose that he pays to see something he cannot understand ? Is that the way of men who make up an audience ? I, for my part, believe that he goes to it because it is an amazingly fine play. 1 66 Shakespeare's Workmanship ( 5 ) In a later chapter I propose to examine some theories about Hamlet put' 1 forward by men whose names compel one to treat whatever they may preach with respect. But it is permissible here, as it is convenient, to enter a plea that, although I *may prove foolish in attempting to analyse it as a simple, straightforward piece of workmanship, at any rate I have been precedently matched — if not overmatched — in folly by the extreme mystifiers. A certain Mr. Edward P. Vinting, in the Mystery of Hamlet (Philadelphia, 1881) , has demonstrated that the Prince of Denmark was a woman in disguise, and in love with Horatio ! — another injustice to Ophelia ! A previous American researcher had found the key in the line “He’s fat and scant of breath.” 1 A German critic, Loening (as quoted by Tolman), thinks that the evidence points to an internal fatness, fatness of the heart ; and he believes that this physical infirmity helps to explain the inactivity of the hero ! ( 6 ) Let us dismiss these and far more respectable theories from our minds for a while, and suppose that we are seated in a theatre, expectant but knowing no more of what is to come than the play-bill promises : that his Highness’s servants are to enact The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark , written by 1 Popular Science Monthly , May, i860 — article entitled The Impediment of Adipose — a Celebrated Case (“case” being Hamlet). Hamlet 167 (William Shakespeare, an author in whom we have some confidence. I know that this is to ask a great deal : since, as Hazlitt says, “we have been so used to this tragedy that we hardly know how to criticise it any more than we should know how to describe our own faces ’ 5 — and Hazlitt had the luck to be a good-looking man. I know that this is to risk a good deal. The reader will pardonably think to himself, recalling the sentence I quoted just now, that in practice the effort to become as children is apt to result in being merely childish. Well, let us take that risk ! It shall suffice me here to lay the scene and indicate some of the characters as they are first presented to us : figures of men and women that we see with our eyes and hear talking : but men and women of whose business in life up to this point we know nothing, as we must listen to learn what thoughts and emotions are at work within them, as we must watch to discover how, in the space of three hours or so, they will work out their dooms. (7) The scene opens upon the battlements before the Castle of Elsinore. It is night — midnight — and freez- ing hard ; the air still as it is cold. The stars are out. Under them, on the terrace — the wash of the waves just audible far below — a single sentry keeps guard. To him enters the relief guard, but so noiselessly, whether because of the snow on the platform or by his own stealth along it, that it is this new-comer who antici- pates the challenge. 8 Shakespeare's Workmanship Bernardo. Who’s there? Francisco. Nay, answer me : stand and unfold yourself. Bern. Long live the King i Fran. Bernardo ? Bern. He. Fran. You come most carefully upon your hour. Bern. ’Tis now struck twelve : get thee to bed, Francisco. Fran. For this relief much thanks : ’tis bitter cold, And I am sick at heart. Bern. Have you had quiet guard ? Fran. Not a mouse stirring. Bern. Well, good -night . . . {then as Francisco begins to move off) If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus, The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste. Fran. { halting and listening). I think I hear them. {In the act of changing guard , having stepped a little forward, he challenges) Stand ho ! Who is there ? Now here already, in fifteen broken lines (or eleven, as we choose to count), we have conveyed to us (the hushed voices helping) the place, the freezing cold, the night, the very hour of the night, and withal a kind of creeping expectancy. We are on the watch : the mere figure of the sentinel — stiff, in his armour, under the stars — means that. But we are on the watch against something unusual, something fearful. This is not the usual relief of guard : the inverted challenge proves it. And the* men know something. Bern. Have you had quiet guard? Fran. Not a mouse stirring. What is it they know, or suspect ? Why is Bernardo* Hamlet 169 eager and prompt on time, at once so anxious that Horatio and Marcellus shall not be late ? Doubtless we shall know in a moment. . . . But already we, seated in the audience — we, fairly familiar with William Shakespeare as a playwright — know, if we can think of it above this wonderful arrest of our attention, that he is bringing off his opening scene magnificently. He is sometimes a little careless with these openings. We are not old enough to have witnessed the opening — but for this, unparalleled — of The Tempest. That is a marvel to come. But the quarrel which started Romeo and Juliet was brisk and went with a swing : as the first Scene of King Henry IV., Part 1, and the first Scene of A Mid- summer-Night's Dream, both courtly and noble, led us exquisitely up to the plunge, with Scenes 2, into Mistress Quickly’ s tavern, Peter Quince’s back shop. The Merchant of Venice — not bad : Henry V ., if we allow prologues, good enough : The Merry Wives, admirable chatter : The Taming of the Shrew, original and first-class — original, that is, to us, who don’t happen to have read the Arabian Nights' Enter- tainments. But As You Like It, as poor as could be . . . “ As I remember, Adam, it was in this fashion bequeathed me by will, etc.” — somebody telling some- body else, for the audience’s instruction, something which somebody else had known perfectly well for years. In Macbeth, to be sure, the other day, he scarified us with those three hags on a desert heath — When shall we three meet again — In thunder, lightning, or in rain? 170 Shakespeare's Workmanship But this promises to be still better. What is the dread something that makes these men — soldiers too — talk so hoarsely, breathe so tensely, their breath a vapour on the night air ? Stand, ho ! Who is there? Hor. Mar. Fran. Mar. Fran. Mar. Bern. {Enter Horatio and Marcellus) Friends to this ground. And liegemen to the Dane. Give you good-night. 0 . . . farewell, honest soldier ! {'peering) Who hath relieved you? {indicating Bernardo , who has tahen up post in the shadow ) Bernardo hath my place. Give you good -night. {Exit) Holla ! Bernardo ? Say, What, is Horatio there? Hor. {shivering, feeling himself for cold) A piece of him. Mar. What, has this — thing — appear’d again to-night? Bern. I have seen nothing. Mar. Horatio says’tis but our phantasy, And will not let belief take hold of him Touching this dreadful sight, twice seen of us : Therefore I have entreated him along With us to watch the minutes of this night, That if again this apparition come, He may approve our eyes and speak to it. Hor. Tush, tush, ’twill not appear. We begin to keep our eyes for this Horatio, this sane, sceptical man : for in truth we, who by report know something less about it than he, turn with a certain trust to one who refuses to take seriously that Hamlet I 7 I which we are coming gradually to dread : that which, In less than thirty lines, has been successively insinu- ated into our fears as “this thing,” “this dreaded sight,” “this apparition.” . . . Says Bernardo, Sit down awhile ; And let us once again assail your ears That are so fortified against our story, What we have two nights seen. Well, sit we down, And let us hear Bernardo speak of this. Last night of all, When yond same star that’s westward from the pole Had made his course to illume that part of heaven Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself, The bell then beating one, — (The Ghost enters ) Peace ! . „ . break thee off ! Look where it comes again ! There is our opening, and it closes on that unforget- table note of the half line — The bell then beating one — closes and reopens upon this apparition which, awfully lambent out of darkness, chokes Bernardo’s tale and in the same moment tells it out, answering the expectancy up to which — though the play is as yet but forty lines old — we have been gradually strung since midnight was. The bell then beat one,- — Wow we know why Bernardo, relieving guard at twelve, would have word carried to the others to make haste. Hor. Bern. Mar. 172 Shakespeare's Workmanship It — the thing — is a ghost crossing the terrace, tall,, pale, majestical, with frosty glints on its eyes, beard,, armour : as Bernardo whispers, quavering back, In the same figure as the King that’s dead. The two soldiers, as the apparition stalks by, turn to Horatio and beg him to question it. Their depend- ence helps our steadily growing respect for him as he pulls his wits together and challenges. This sceptical fellow has courage. But the Ghost passes on. It will have none of his challenge. Now let us mark how the men take it : — Mar. Is it not like the King ? Hot. (musing). As thou art to thyself : Such was the yery armour he had on When he the ambitious Norway combated ; So frown’d he once, when, in an angry parle, He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice. ’Tis strange . . . Mar. (the inferior man, still eager — as inferior men always are — to constate the unimportant evidence ) Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour, With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch. . . . I shall hereafter spare to worry the reader with* details : but here at the beginning will ask him to note' the superb diction already closing us in its grip . . . He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice — the ice — that picture at once recalled by the silverj glitter shed about the spectre . . . Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour. Hamlet 173 Your second-rate man would have written “ prompt,” or “ right,” or “pat,” or “lo ! at this dead hour,” even if he had the wit to make the hour dead. But ‘ ‘ jump at this dead hour 5 ’ — whose stroke was that ever but a Shakespeare’s ? The rest of the scene, even the Ghost’s return, I find inferior. There is too much about Fortinbras, of whom we are thus led to expect that he will have great effect upon what is to follow. Actually he has next to none, though the dramatist seems to start by intend- ing that he should. Moreover some thirty lines are wasted on the old protasis trick I mentioned just now : Horatio, with an eye on the , audience, informing iMarcellus of what Marcellus must be supposed to know beforehand. ( 8 ) But in Scene 2 we come to the real protasis, and to a great feat of artistry which (although we are not for the moment supposed to know it) Shakespeare was to bring to perfection in The Tempest: the feat, having opened with an astounding shock, of making his second scene quietly and naturally explain it, unravelling a knot so that all the threads reach out separately, in- telligibly, ready for the predestined new ravel. If we except Ophelia, all the main characters are gathered in the state-room : King Claudius, the Queen, Hamlet himself, Polonius, Laertes, Horatio, Marcellus. Bernardo enters before the scene is done. The King acquaints us with the main situation in a 174 Shakespeare's Workmanship speech which, as a public one, addressed to full Court, is not recapitulatory beyond reason. Recital of things known to everybody is generally allowed in a public speech, else where should many of us be ? The situa- tion, as explained by King Claudius, comes to this : — The late King, his brother, is dead, (how, it is not suggested), and his memory yet green. But there is no use crying over spilt milk ; it is bad for the common- wealth ; and meanwhile, and moreover, he, Claudius, has somewhat hastily married his brother’s widow. As he prefers to put it — Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature That we with wis^t sorrow think on him, Together with remembrance of ourselves. Therefore our sometime sister, now our Queen, The imperial jointress to this warlike state, Have we, as ’twere with a defeated joy — With an auspicious and a dropping eye, With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage, In equal scale weighing delight and dole, — Taken to wife. [What he does not explain, by the way — and what the commentators conspire with him and with Shake- speare to overlook — is the small difficulty that, Ham- let’s father deceased, Hamlet should ipso facto have inherited the throne. From the commentators, dis- creetly silent over this hitch in workmanship, I turn to Charles Lamb, who, of course, has noted it, but slides it over ; telling us in his tale of the play merely that Claudius took the crown “to the exclusion of young Hamlet, the son of the buried king and lawful successor' Hamlet 175 to the throne. ’ ’ But this will not quite do. Hamlet is not “ young Hamlet ” : for in the graveyard scene his age is accurately made out to be thirty. Unless some strange law of succession be hinted at in the line de- scribing Hamlet’s mother as The imperial jointress of this warlike state, there is a flaw of construction here.] But, Shakespeare overlooking this trifle, Hamlet does not seem to mind or indeed to think about it first or last. We turn our eyes to him. He — a man of thirty, or nearly thirty — a student, but a paragon of youth when he has ever asserted himself — is not think- ing of himself, or of title and royalty. He is occupied with something very much more human and essential — the awful haste with which his mother has married again, with her husband’s brother, too. He loves his mother : but he has adored his father ; and how his mother can have so quickly shifted from such a man to this Claudius ... O, most horrible, this lust in a woman, and that woman his own mother ! He idolises his father’s memory, and amid the factitious rejoicings wears black, in a Court he loathes. He craves leave to be dismissed from it, to go back to his old University, Wittenberg. This being denied him, he consents, but when the Court has withdrawn, he breaks out — That it should come to this ! But two months dead ! Nay, not so much, not two : So excellent a king ; that was, to this, Hyperion to a satyr : so loving to my mother, That he might not beteem the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth ! 176 Shakespeare’s Workmanship Must I remember? why, She would hang on him, As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on : and yet, within a month — Let me not think on’t — Frailty, thy name is woman ! — A little month, or ere those shoes were old With which she follow’d my poor father’s body, Like Niobe, all tears why she, even she, — O God ! a beast that wants discourse of reason . Would have mourn’d longer — married with my uncle, My father’s brother, but no more like my father Than I to Hercules : within a month ; Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in her galled eyes, She married. Now let us mark that at this point Hamlet suspects not at all any foul play in the manner of his father’s taking-off. But the very scurf of what he knows is so loathsome that he cannot help suspecting a putridity deeper still. On the acute moment of this suspicion comes Horatio — the sound, sane, sceptical friend Horatio — to report (two solid soldiers, Bernardo and Marcellus, confirming) the vision seen haunting the Castle plat- form. “I knew your father,” says the grave man, Horatio . ‘ ‘ These hands are not more like. ’ ’ Ham. ’Tis very strange. Bor. As I do live, my honour’d lord, ’tis true, And we did think it writ down in our duty To let you know of it. Ham. Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me. Hold you the watch to-night? We do, my lord. Hamlet Arm’d, my lord. Ham. Arm’d, say you? Mar. [ Ber. I Ham. ^ a J r | My lord, from head to foot. Ham. Then saw you not his face? Hor. 0, yes, my lord ; he wore his beaver up. Ham. What, look’d he frowningly ? Hot. A countenance more in sorrow than in anger. Pale, or red? 177 From top to toe ? Ham. Hot. Ham. Hot. Ham. Hot . Ham. Hot. Mar. Ber. ) Hor. Ham. Hot. Nay, very pale. Most constantly. And fix’d his eyes upon you ? I would I had been there. It would have much amaz’d you. Very like, very like. Stay’d it long? While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred. \ Longer, longer. Not when I saw ’t. His beard was grizzled? no? It was, as I have seen it in his life, A sable silver’d. I will watch to-night ; Perchance ’twill walk again. I warrant it will. Ham. If it assume my noble father’s person, / I’ll speak to it, though hell itself should gape And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all, If you have hitherto conceal’d this sight, Let it be tenable in your silence still. And whatsoever else shall hap to-night, Give it an understanding, but no tongue : I will requite your loves. So fare you well : Upon the platform, ’twixt eleven and twelve, I’ll visit you. Ham. Hor. 12 178 Shakespeare's Workmanship All. Our duty to your honour. Ham. Your loves, as mine to you : farewell. [ Exeunt all but Hamlet. My father’s spirit in arms ! all is not well ; I doubt some foul play : would the night were come l Till then sit still, my soul : foul deeds will rise, Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes. So we leave him on the eve of discovery. [Note.— I must apologise for the length of some of these passages from a play so universally known. But as I proceeded with the lectures on which these chapters are based, the reading of long passages aloud grew to be part of the method, and from the Hamlet chapters I find it difficult to excise them. This, the longest of Shakespeare’s plays, abounds in lines and half-lines which have passed into common proverbs and suffered so much defacement by use that one can only get them back to their true meaning by restoring them to their full context. — A.Q.-C.] / CHAPTER IX HAMLET II Polonius and Laertes — A family failing — The loneliness of Ophelia — The cause of Hamlet’s horror — The two keys tc Hamlet’s soul — Criticism divorced from knowledge of life — Beatrice Cenci — Hamlet’s “madness” and hesitancy — The Queen’s insight into Hamlet — Shakespeare’s passing misogyny — Hamlet’s affected madness before fools — His moral scrupulousness — A self-explanatory soliloquy. (0 In Scene 3 we improve our small acquaintance with Laertes, who has leave to return to France after the coronation and is now on the eve of sailing. In bidding farewell to his sister Ophelia, to whom Prince Hamlet has made certain protestations of love, he takes occa- sion to give her a quantity of advice touching the regulation of her conduct. We soon begin to suspect this sententious young man of being a fairly accom- plished prig, and, when he has done, applaud the gentle irony and the spirit in his sister’s retort. I shall the effect of this good lesson keep As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother. Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, 179 /r 180 Shakespeare's Workmanship Whiles, like a puff’d and reckless libertine, Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads And recks not his own rede.