CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY DATE DUE (^nn 1. fl_ 4ft^P ITrr W^P&±A JW9-^ 1 "■^«- „ .,c-:ssa. ■^^ y^B^ "^-t-i' 0E€« ^t^ytjOt" GAYLORD PRINTEDINU.S.A. The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013146604 Cornell University Library PR 2890. W81 Shakespeare studies, 3 1924 013 146 604 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES BY MEMBERS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN TO COMMEMORATE THE THREE-HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEATH OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, APRIL 23, 1616 PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY MADISON 1916 E.V. Mssna COPYRIGHT, 1916 BY THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN SHAKESPEARE STUDIES TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Sonnets on the Self of William Shakespeare, William Ellery Leonard _ - - - 9 II. Locrine and Selimus, Frank G. Hubbard 17 III. Shakespeare's Pathos, J. F. A. Pyre 36 IV. The Function of the Songs in Shakespeare's Plays, John Robert Moore 78 '' V. An Ehzabethan Defence of the Stage, Karl Young 103 VI. Some Principles of Shakespeare Staging, Thomas H. Dickinson ----- 125^ VII. The Collaboration of Beaumont, Fletcher, and MassiQger, Louis Wann ------- 147 T VIII. An Obsolete Ehzabethan Mode of Rhym- ing, R.E. Neil Dodge 174- IX. Shakespeare's Sonnets and Plays, Arthur Beatty 201 • X. Garrick's Vagary, Lily B. Campbell 215 XI. A Dutch Analogue of Richard the Third, 0. J. Campbell, Jr. 231 XII. Joseph Ritson and Some Eighteenth Cen- tury Editors of Shakespeare, Henry A. Burd - - - - - - 253 XIII. Charles Lamb and Shakespeare, Frederick W. Roe 276 SONNETS ON THE SELF OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE William Ellery Leonard They say that such thy selflessness in giving Selves to thy creatures and rich everydays. Thy self escapes us, whilst those selves be living, — They say, and saying do intend thy praise. Not so. Thou Life — most life, begetting life — So gav'st thy lineaments to king and clown. Thy pitch of voice, thy bent at love or strife. Thy tricks of walking, or of sitting down. That were some guest who knew thy progeny Met at the Mermaid with thy band and Ben, He'd know the corner-chair that compassed thee, And name the Shakespeare of those merry men. Even had he never seen thy pictured dust — The folio's graven brass, the Stratford bust. [9] 10 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES Or turn it round : what man of wit and worth. Practiced in hearts and heads, if he should meet. Some of thy offspring (known to all the earth) Unknown, unsired, upon some Neman's street. Could not contrive the lineage, could not find In tragic hero with the poet's eye. In jester with the analytic mind. Something for sure to name his father by; In lover, madman, maiden, something there Of fancy delicate, or passion free, Not even in thy next of kin, Moli^re, Involved in thy inveterate irony. Proclaiming more than blazon highest hung The great progenitor from whence they sprung. SONNETS 11 Self is the origin and end of art, 'Tis but the symbol varies: each will tell His goal of mind, his plenitude of heart, What might befall him, or before befell. Some speak the naked words, "I love, I hate;" Some as a lark surmount the setting sun; Some pour themselves in story or debate; But lyric, epic, drama, all are one. And thou art mightier, more ms(i^fest U) Than all the others, having multiplied Thyself in thought, in love, in rage, in jest. In all conditions, more than all beside: And yet that more of thee is so much more. We least can measure, where we most adore. 12 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES But thy humanity is so much ours, Such of our little is in thy so-vast. That love and kinship in essential powers Give adoration a familiar cast. There is in Aeschylus too much of sky. Of doom, of thunder, god, and precipice; Too much of Hell in Dante's awful eye. Despite its visioning of Beatrice: But thou, if thou transcend us, still art here; If prophecy, an earthly prophecy; i | A far To-morrow, a To-day how near; Thy sole self now, but all mankind to-be. And all the best the world's best artists reach. We measure by thy stature and thy speech. SONNETS 13 Near, but not common. When the times-to-come Shall breed a race, with eye as quick and wide To see each shape and hue and trace it home, Each motion, whence engendered, how applied; A race that looks with thy inerrant ken Each object through, beyond its rags and robes, And, having worked, will go to work again. And, having probed the world, forever probes; A race with memory for all behind. With hope to all ahead; a race where each Contains his fellow, mind surrounding mind; Born to thy incommunicable speech: Then shalt thou common be, with joys and tears, — Obscured amid the sanity of peers. 14 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES Musing by night on thee, this fancy came : Suppose the earth were blasted to a rind, Shent too of waters, winds, and heavenly flame, It could be clothed and peopled from thy mind: What hills and woods, and under what a sun I What streams and seas, and what a fair moon under! What prodigality of flowers begun, What winds recruited, what revived thunder! What birds would sing, and to what maiden vows; What hounds would hunt, and with what hunter's horn; What thatched roofs, what towns, what masted prows ; What merchants, rogues, and kings, and dames, re-born ! An earth so furnished, filled with such an host. The gods would scarce lament the one they lost. SONNETS 15 Indeed, 'twere goodlier to deities Than earth as now; familiars would they meet On bosky islands, under moony trees, Spirits of iris wing and fairy feet; And, finding entertainment from mankind Less niggard than when now to earth they come. Finding more dancers in the May-morn wind. More singing goodmen at the harvest-home, Moi;e awe at bridal, burial, they would then Revisit oftener than now the streams And myriad villages of mortal men. And oft'ner send their services and dreams. Nor would they mourn such engin'ry of strife As now most keeps them rearward of our life. 16 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES Three centuries 'tis since Ben, thy comrade, swore Thou wert not of an age but for all time; New states have risen, old have gone before; New knowledge come, and poets with new rhyme. But thou abidest through all change the same, — Nay, not the same; such thy mysterious growth. Thy self increaseth with increasing fame. And three large centuries are increased by both. Thy heart and head have been communicated To millions, who were after blent with thee; Thy voice, in hundred languages translated. Takes on a blending with the wind and sea. Thou art so great that thou wilt not despise This book we've wrought thee under alien skies. LOCRINE AND SELIMUS Frank G. Hubbard The chronology of the English drama between 1585 and 1595 is a tangled web, which has thus far failed to yield, to any great extent, to the efforts of investigators. Many attempts have been made to determine the dates of individual plays, but generally the result reached is either too indefinite, or based upon too slight evidence, to be of much value. The importance of accurate chronology here can hardly be overestimated, for it is within the period of these ten years, 1585-1595, that the English drama passes through a development mar- velous in its rapidity. It advances from the crud- ity of The Spanish Tragedy to the strength and beauty of Greene's James IV and Marlowe's Edward II; it develops from rough, crude power to perfection of form. In the case of any one of the dramatists whom we call the predecessors of Shakespeare, there is very little external evidence for the order of his plays; generally speaking,' the best that can be done is to arrange them in the order that seems to be de- manded by what we suppose to be the natural [17] S-2. 18 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES course of development of the writer's dramatic power. And here comes in a rather disturbing element. The development of dramatic writing is proceeding so rapidly that a playwright's style and method seldom appear the same in two of his plays. One who has forced his way through the crudities of Alphonsus of Arragon finds that his ideas of Greene's dramatic style are all upset when he reads Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay; and further, when he has enjoyed the delicate beauty of James IV, he is inclined to doubt the fact of Greene's authorship. The same is true, but in a less de- gree, of the other dramatists under consideration. There seems often to be more likeness between two plays of different authors than between the individual works of either of them. Any state- ment, therefore, that a particular characteristic belongs to Greene's style, or Peele's style, or even Marlowe's style can in general hold good for only one or, at most, two plays of the author in question. We have in this period a large number of anony- mous plays, some of which (for example, Edward III) are as good as the best work of known authors, and all of which are of much interest and signifi- cance from the standpoint of dramatic history. Much has been written concerning their author- ship and relation to other plays, but with little definite result. It is my object in this paper to discuss the relation of two of these anonymous plays, Locrine and Selimus. Locrine was entered in the Stationers' Register in 1594 and published in 1595 as "Newly set forth, LOCRINE AND SELIMUS 19 overseene and corrected by W. S." This statement caused it to be attributed to Shakespeare, and it is one of the six plays added to the Third and Fourth Folios. Its theme, taken from early British legendary history, has been treated many times in English literature, most recently by Swinburne^ The play has strongly marked Senecan character- istics, including a ghost that cries "Vindicta!"; the material is cast in the form of a double revenge action. The diction is very stilted and artificial; classical references and allusions abound on every page; extravagant ranting speech is not wanting. There are some good comic scenes. It is generally agreed that the play was written some years before publication but later than The Spanish Tragedy and Tambudaine. Selimus was published in 1594. The first part of its very long title reads The First part of the Tragical raigne of Selimus, sometime emperour of the Turkes. It is a tragedy in the style of Tambur- laine, which it seems to imitate. The hero is am- bitious, cruel, remorseless, making his way to the throne by bloody deeds of all sorts. In the course of the play eyes are put out and hands are cut off; men are poisoned; one character is thrown from a tower upon the points of a circle of spears; strang- ling is a most commonplace way of putting an end to enemies. There are bashaws and janissaries in plenty and all the other accompaniments of a supposed Turkish court. ' Cf. Theodor Erbe, Die Locrinesage und die Quellen des Pseudo-Shak- spearschen Locrine, Studien zut englischen Pbilologie, XVI. 20 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES Locrine was translated by Tieck and published in his Altenglisches Theater in 1811. He regarded it as an early work of Shakespeare and called at- tention to the fact that one passage is written in the stanza form used in Venus and Adonis. In his copy of the Third Folio he left marginal notes in- dicating that passages of Locrine had been bor- rowed from Spenser's Complaints, published in 1591. Tieck' s material was published by Rudolph Brotanek in 1900.^ Charles Crawford in 1901 re- discovered these borrowings from Spenser, and also called attention to the fact that there are many correspondences between Locrine and Seli- mus, and that some of these involve the passages borrowed from Spenser's Complaints.'^ His infer- ence from the evidence brought forward is, that Locrine borrows from Selimus. Some years ago I studied these plays in connection with another matter, and later came to the conclusion that Selimus borrows from Locrine, just the reverse of Crawford's conclusion. Shortly after this the Jahrbuch der deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, 1905, came into my hand; in this I found an article by E. Koeppel, "Locrine" und "Selimus,"^ in which he reaches the conclusion that Selimus borrows from Locrine on grounds somewhat smaller than those that had led me to the same conclusion. I later communicated the results of my investiga- ' Beiblatt zar Anglia, 11, 202 ff. « Notes and Queries, 9th Series, Vol. 7. Correspondences between Locrine and Selimus were noted by P. A. Daniel in the Athenaeum April 16, 1898, p. 512, but he published no material. Cf. Crawford Collectanea. I. 99-100 ' Vol. XLI, 193-200. LOCRINE AND SELIMUS 21 tion to Professor J. W. Cunliffe, who has set them forth in his chapter on Early English Tragedy in The Cambridge History of English Literature.^ Let us consider now the evidence that shows that Selimus borrows from Locrine. The first point is concerned with the comic scenes of the plays. In Locrine, Act IV, Sc. II,* Humber, in a starving condition, is crying out for food. This fruitless soyle, this ground, brings forth no meat. The gods, hard harted gods, yeeld me no meat. Strumbo, the chief comic character of the play, enters, and describes in a coarse, humorous way his experience with his termagant wife. He sits down to eat and is discovered by the starving Humber, who demands food. Strumbo is about to comply with his demand, when his hand is struck by the ghost of Albanact (whom Humber has slain), and the scene closes with a speech by the ghost. In Selimus, 11. 1873-1997,* we have a scene, in which Bullithrumble, a shepherd, enters and de- scribes in a humorous speech his experience with his shrewish wife. Enter Corcut and his page, who have been starving for two days. They persuade the shepherd to relieve their hunger. The correspondence between the two scenes was noted by Charles Crawford in Notes and Queries, 1 Vol. V, 95-98. ' IV, II, 18-19. References are to The Shakespeare Apocrypha, edited by C. F. Tucker Brooke. Oxford, 1908. ' References are to Grosart's edition, in The Temple Dramatists, Lon- don, 1898. 22 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES 1901/ who infers from it that Locrine copies Seli- mus. E. Koeppel, in Jahrhuch der deutschen Shake- speare-Gesellschaft, 1905, also notes this correspond- ence of scenes, but his inference is that BuUi- thrumble in Selimus is a weak copy of Strumbo in Locrine.^ He notes also that the scene 'in Selimus is the only bit of the comic in that play. Before seeing Koeppel's article I had arrived at the same conclusion, mainly on the ground that the comic character in Selimus appears only at this one place, whereas in Locrine Strumbo is a comic character who appears all through the earlier parts of the play, and his speech and action in the scene under consideration are consistent with his speech and action in the earlier comic scenes of the play. It is almost impossible to conceive that the author of Locrine developed the character Strumbo from the hints given in this scene of Selimus, but it is perfectly natural to infer that the author of Selimus copied a part of one of the comic scenes of Locrine that suited his dramatic purpose. But much stronger proof that Selimus borrows from Locrine can be drawn from a consideration of the material in the two plays that has been taken from Spenser's Complaints. There is much more of this material in Locrine than in Selimus, and a careful examination of the passages in ques- ' Ninth Series, Vol. 7, p. 102 (Collectanea I, 58-9). Crawford's article, Edmund Spenser, "Locrine," and "Selimus," has been reprinted in his Col- lectanea, Vol. I pp. 47-100. My references to Crawford are to this reprint. ' "Es kann keinem Zweitel unterliegen, dass der Pantoffelheld BuUi- thrumble eine schwachliche Kopie des mannhaften Schusters ist." Jahr- buch XLI, 196. LOCRINE AND SELIMUS 23 tion reveals the fact that Selimus has nothing from the Complaints (with the possible exception of a single line^) that is not found in Locnne, al- though Selimus draws freely irom TheFaerie Queene, from which Locrine takes nothing.^ But more than this. In one passage, made up mostly of lines borrowed from Spenser, the author of Locrine (if he has not taken them from Selimus) has in- serted lines of his own. The lines borrowed from Spenser are from two passages, not far apart, in the RuinesofRome (11 150-162, 211-216). Now Selimus has eight of these Locrine lines, three of which are Spenser's and five original with Locrine (or Seli- mus). But Selimus has them in two different places far apart, (11. 419-20, 11. 2433-38), and the second passage (2433-38) is made up of one line froih Spenser and five original with Locrine (or Selimus) ; in Locrine all the lines under consideration occur in one connected passage, II, iv, 1-18. To make the matter plainer I give be- low the passages from Locrine, Selimus, and Ruines of Rome.^ Hum. How bravely this yoong Brittain, Albanact, *Darteth abroad the thunderbolts of warre, *Beating downe millions with his furious moode, *And in his glorie triumphs over all, '■ As those old earth-bred brethren, which once Sel. 2432. Like as whilome the children of the earth Ruines of Rome, 155. Which whilom did those earth born brethren blinde Ruines of Rome, 140. 2 Cf. Crawford, p. 59. ' The lines of Locrine taken from Ruines of Rome are indicated by the asterisk. 24 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES *Mowing [text, mouing] the massie squadrons off [text, squadrants of] the ground: *Heaps hills on hills, to scale the starrie skie. As when Briareus, armed with an hundreth hands, Floong forth an hundreth mountains at great loue, And when the monstrous giant Monichus Hurld Mount Olimpus at great Mars his targe. And shot huge cedars at Minerua's shield. How doth he ouerlooke with hautie front My fleeting hostes, and lifts his loftie face Against vs all that now do feare his force, *Like as we see the wrathful! sfea from farre, *In a great mountaine heapt, with hideous noise, *With thousand billows beat against the ships, *And tosse them in the wanes like tennis balls. Locrine, II, v, 1-18. ^ I'd dart abroad the thunderbolts of war, ^ And mow their heartless squadrons to the ground. Selimus, 419-20. Were they as mighty and as fell of force As those old earth-bred brethren, which once Heap'd hill on hill to scale the starry sky, When Briareus, arm'd with a hundreth hands. Flung forth a hundreth mountains at great Jove; And when the monstrous giant Monichus Hurld mount Olympus at great Mars his targe. And darted cedars at Minerva's shield. Selimus, 2431-38. Mow'd downe themselves with slaughter mercilesse Ruines of Rome, 138. Then gan that nation, th' earth's new giant brood. To dart abroad the thunder bolts of warre. And, beating downe these walls with furious mood 149-51 Like as whilome the children of the earth Heapt hils on hils, to scale the starrie skie 155-6 The furious squadrons downe to ground did fall 160 And th' heavens in glorie triumpht over all 162 Like as ye see the wrathfuU sea from farre. In a great mountaine heap't with hideous noyse, LOCRINE AND SELIMUS 25 Eftsoones of thousand billowes shouldred narre 211-13 Tossing huge tempests through the troubled skie 216 If we assume that Selimus is copied by Locrine here, we are compelled to believe that the author of Locrine made up the passage in question of two passages from Selimus far apart, a passage from the Raines of Rome not used by the author of Selimus, and inserted lines of his own. It is surely much more probable that the author of Locrine borrowed from two passages of the Raines of Rome, inserting lines of his own, and that the author of Selimus borrowed lines from Locrine, putting them in two parts of his play. This probability becomes almost certainty when we remember that Selimus has nothing from Spenser's Complaints (with the pos- sible exception of a single line) not found in Locrine, while Locrine has much from the Complaints not found in Selimus. To put it briefly, our conclusion is, that all the borrowings from the Complaints found in Selimus come by way of Locrine. This is certainly more reasonable than Crawford's explana- tion, "The author of Locrine merely happened to discover that Selimus had obtained a small portion of its material from The Raines of Rome, and he followed suit, but with less discretion and infinitely less ability." 1 It is very strange that the author of Locrine made this discovery and failed to discover the borrowings from The Faerie Queene in Selimus, '■ Crawford, p. 57. 26 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES which are much more numerous. Locrine has nothing from The Faerie Queene.^ Additional evidence for the priority of Locrine may be found, I believe, in a case in which the author of that play has plainly borrowed from Greene's Menaphon, as he has borrowed from other prose works of Greene. The passage in Menaphon runs as follows: "As if another Alcides (the arme- strong darling of the doubled night) by wrastling with snakes,"^ etc. Locrine has (III, iv, 34) The armestrong offspring of the doubled night. Selimus has in one passage (1668-71) the epithet "armstrong" in a context, two lines of which are parallel to lines of Locrine. One of these lines in Locrine is in a context that is plainly developed from the passage taken from Menaphon. Words or phrases suggested by Greene's expression are found in, at least, two other passages of Locrine. I give below all the passages in question, using italics to bring out the parallels. The armestrong offspring of the doubled night, Stout Hercules, Alcmena's mightie sonne, That tamde the monsters of the threefold world Locrine, III, iv, 34-6. Stout Hercules, the mirrour of the world, Sonne to Alcmena and great lupiter, After so many conquests wonne in field, After so many monsters queld by force, Yeelded his valiant heart to Omphale. Locrine, IV, Prol., 3-7. 1 Cf. p. 20- ' Greene's Works, Huth Library, Vol. 6, p. 89. Arber's Reprint of Mena- phon, p. 56. Noted by Collins, The Plays and Poems of Robert Greene. T. p. 67, note. LOGRINE AND SELIMUS 27 Now sit I like the mightie god of warre. When, armed with his coat of Adament Locrine, III., iv., 6-7. Now sit I like the arm-strong son of Jove, When, after he had all his monsters quell' d He was receiv'd in heaven 'mongst the gods, And had fair Hebe for his lovely bride. Selimus, 1668-71. The perfectly natural inference to be drawn from an examination of these passages is, I maintain, that the author of Locrine borrowed from Greene, amplified the material borrowed, and passed some of it on to Selimus. It is, I believe, absolutely un- reasonable to infer that the author of Locrine de- veloped his lines from the suggestions contained in the passage from Selimus. From the evidence that has been gathered from an examination of the parallel comic scenes of the plays, the borrowings from Spenser's Complaints, and the borrowing from Greene just considered, we may maintain that Locrine is earlier than Selimus, and that, in the case of other parallel passages, Selimus has copied Locrine. Space will not permit the exhibition of the full extent of this copying; I give a few examples for illustration; others may be found in Crawford, pp. 52-58, Koeppel, Jahrbuch, XLI, pp. 194-7, Collins The Plays and Poems of Robert Greene, I, pp. 64-66. Where I may damne, condemne, and ban my fill And vtter curses to the concaue skie, Which mav infect the aiery regions. Loc. Ill, vi, 8-11. 28 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES Now Bajazet will ban another while, And utter curses to the concave sky Which may infect the regions of the air. Sel. 1800-2. And but thou better vse thy bragging blade, Then thou doest rule thy ouerflowing toong, Superbious Brittaine, thou shalt know too soone Loc. II, iv, 23-25. But thou canst better use thy bragging blade. Than thou canst rule thy overflowing tongue, Soon shalt thou know that Selim's mighty arm Sel. 2467-69. Whose only lookes did scarre his enemies Loc. I, Prol. 17. Whose only name affrights your enemies Sel. 185. Our discussion thus far has been chiefly con- cerned with parallels between Locrine and Selimus, but we have had occasion to point out parallels between the former play and other works certainly of earlier date.^ To these may be added parallels with Greene's Anatomy of Fortune (1584), The Spanish Tragedy (1585-87?), and Tamburlaine (1587?) Parallels have also been found with other plays of uncertain date, Marlowe's Massacre at Paris and Dido, Greene's Alphonsus of Arragon, Peele's Battle of Alcazar, Lodge's Wounds of Civil War, and The Tragedy of Tancred and Gismunda. Can, now, these parallel passages help us in any way to determine the date of Locrine'} I believe that they can to some extent, but the result is not so definite as one could wish. Among the many passages borrowed from Spenser's Complaints are 1 See p. 20, p. 23, LOCRINE AND SELIMUS 29 these two lines from The Ruines of Time, 11. 568-9.1 But what can long abide above this ground In state of blis, or stedfast happinesse? In this poem^ Spenser refers by name to Wat- son's Meliboeus,^ an eclogue written on the death of Sir Francis Walsingham, who died April 6, 1590. The Complaints was entered in the Stationers' Reg- ister December 29, 1590. Hence The Ruines of Time must have been written between April 6 and December 29, 1590. Locrine, which borrows from it, cannot, then, be earlier than April 6, 1590. This point was first made, I believe, by W. S. Gaud in Modern Philology, I, p. 409. But we can go one step further. Locrine, V, iv, 242, has this line. One mischiefe followes on another's necke,* which is parallel to a line of Tancred and Gismunda, One mischief brings another on his neck.^ The Tragedy of Tancred and Gismunda is founded on the old play Gismond of Salern in Love,^ which was performed in 1568. This old play was not printed, but in 1591 Robert Wilmot rewrote it in blank verse, making many changes and additions. One of the lines added is that borrowed hy Locrine. Prefixed to Wilmot's play is a commendatory 1 Locrine, I, Prol. 19-20. 2 1. 436. ' Arber's Reprints, Vol. IX. * Text omits on. 6 Dodsley-Hazlitt, Old English Plays, VII, p. 93. ' Printed by Brandl in Quellen des Weltlichen Dramas in England vor Shakespeare, pp. 539-595. 30 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES letter from William Webbe, dated August 8, 1591. ^ Locrine, then, must be later than this date. Fur- ther than this we do not seem able to go at present. We have considered above parallels between Selimus and Locrine. Crawford^ has pointed out many between Selimus and the plays of Marlowe, especially Tamburlaine; he concludes from the evidence that Selimus is an early work of Marlowe. Grosart' has found parallels between this play and the works of Greene. I have noted some with Lodge's Wounds of Civil War, and The True Chronicle Historic of King Leir. It has been shown that Selimus like Locrine borrows from many works; the two plays seem to stand in a class by themselves in this wholesale appropriation of other men's work. May they not, then, be works of the same author? Nearly all the evidence is against such a conclusion. While the two plays have this characteristic of large handed borrowing and have many lines in common, they are so absolutely dif- ferent in every other characteristic that it is almost impossible to conceive them to be the works of one author.^ The only one, I believe, who has main- tained the theory of common authorship is J. C. Collins, who says, "I maintain then that, if the question is to be argued on such evidence as is now attainable, the presumption is in favour of ' Dodsley-Hazlitt, Old English Plays, VII, 13. ' pp. 69-85. ' The Temple Dramatists, Selimus, Preface, XII-XX. * Crawford, p. 66, rejects the theory of common authorship, on the ground that Locrine has nothing from The Faerie Queene, from which Selimus takes much. LOCRINE AND SELIMUS 31 the author of Selimus having been the author of Locrine; the two plays must stand or fall together."^ On the evidence of borrowed passages we have been able to find out a little concerning the date of Locrine; we may now proceed to consider whether we can get any light on the question of the author- ship of these plays from the evidence of parallel passages. I have noted earlier in this paper^ the great difficulty of determining any general char- acteristics of style for the dramatic work of any one of the predecessors of Shakespeare (Marlowe is, to a certain extent, an exception). It will, there- fore, be very difficult, if not impossible, to trace any such general characteristics of style in anony- mous plays; for example, to find traces of Greene's style in Selimus. We may, perhaps, say that the style of parts of Locrine and Selimus is like the style of Tamburlaine, but this is very different from showing that it is like the style of Marlowe. If, now, we use the evidence of parallel passages in the cases of Locrine and Selimus, we shall surely arrive at no certain results. These plays have bor- rowed so much from so many sources, that, on the evidence of parallel passages, they can be as- signed to almost any of the predecessors of Shake- speare. And this is just what has happened. Locrine has been assigned to Marlowe,* Greene,^ ' The Plays and Poems of Robert Greene, I, 67. 2 See p. 15. ' Steevens, Supplement to Johnson and Steevens' edition of Shake- speare's Plays, 1780, Vol. II, pp. 189 ff. * Crawford, p. 85. 32 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES Peele/ and Kyd^; J. M. Robertson divides it be- tween Greene and Peele.' Selimus has met a similar fate. Grosart* has tried to prove it to be the work of Greene, but his conclusion has not been gener- ally accepted. Crawford, using the evidence of parallels, proves, to his own satisfaction, that it is an early work of Marlowe, his first attempt at a Tamburlaine play. No one else seems to have ac- cepted his conclusion. The method of proof from parallel passages has been used to a greater or less extent by almost all those who have discussed the very vexed question of the authorship of The First Part of the Conten- tion and The True Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke and the relation of these plays respectively to the Second and Third Parts of Henry VI. Mar- lowe, Greene, Peele, and Shakespeare, single or mixed in various proportions, appear in the re- sults obtained by the different investigators. In considering the evidence of parallel passages the assumption is generally made that such pas- sages indicate common authorship of the plays in which they are found. I believe that our study of Locrine and Selimus shows that such passages are much more likely to show authorship by different men. For example, if we find a line of Tambur- laine in The First Part of the Contention, this is not so likely to be evidence that Marlowe wrote The First Part of the Contention, or part of it, as it ' W. S. Gaud, Modern Philology, I, 409, ff. ' Moorman, Cambridge History of English Literature, V, 268. ' Did Shakespeare write "Titus Andronicus," p. 99. * Huth Library, Greene's Works. Temple Dramatists, Selimus. LOCRINE AND SELIMUS 33 is to be evidence that the author of that play ap- propriated a line of Tamburlaine. Another view of the matter is disclosed when we consider passages common to several plays. Too little material of this sort has yet been collected to afford any basis for a study. A few examples may, perhaps, illustrate the manner in which ma- terial is passed from hand to hand, and changed as it goes; they may, too, be suggestive of the possi- bilities that lie in the study of a large amount of such material from a given period. When she that rules in Rhamnis golden gates I. Tamburlaine, II, iii, 635*. If she that rules faire Rhamnis golden gate Locrine, II, i, 20. Chief patroness of Rhamus' golden gate Selimus, 682. thou that rulest in Ramnis golden gate Watson, Tears of Fancie, Sonnet 42. That onely luno rules in Rhamnuse towne Dido III, ii, 830. 1 hold the Fates bound fast in yron chaines, And with my hand turn Fortune's wheel about I Tamburlaine I, ii, 369-70. I clap vp Fortune in a cage of gold To make her turn her wheele as I thinke best Alphonsus of Arragon, IV, iii, 1480-81.^ Pompey, the man that made the world to stoop, And fetter'd fortune in the chains of power. Wounds of Civil War, p. 194.' Leades fortune tied in a chaine of gold Locrine, II, i, 15. Thou hast not Fortune tied in a chain Selimus, 2420. • The Works of Christopher Marlowe, edited by C. F. Tucker Brooke, Oxford, 1910. 2 Collins, The Plays and Poems of Robert Greene. ' Dodsley-Hazlitt, Old English Plays, VII. S-3. 34 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES For there [at the sword's point] sits death, there sits im- perious death, Keeping his circuit bv the slicing edge I Tamburlaine V, ii, 1892-3 Upon my sword's sharp point standeth pale Death Selimus, 665. And more: see here the dangerous trote of war. That at the point is steel' d with ghastly death Wounds of Civil War, p. 155. For Nemesis, the mistresse of reuenge, Sits arm'd at all points on our disrnall blades Locrine, V, ii, 45-6. For angry Nemesis sits on my sword to be reuenged Orlando Furioso, V, ii, 1380. Or I will make him hop without a head Chronicle History of King Leir, p. 342, 1. 5* He hops without his head and rests among his fellow rebels. True Tragedy of Richard III, p. 103, 1. 3.^ Vnlesse you headlesse mean to hoppe away James IV, II, ii, 1028. I'de reach to' th' Crowne, or make some hop headlesse First Part of the Contention (1619)'. Or ile make them hop without their crownes, that denies me True Tragedy of Richard III, p 64, 1. 6. Then let their Selim hop without the crown. Selimus, 104. Will Fortune favour me yet once again? And will she thrust the cards into my hands? Well, if I chance but once to get the deck, « To deal about and shuffle as I would; Let Selim never see the daylight spring. Unless I shuffle out myself a King. Selimus, 1538-43* ' Hazlitt, Shakespeare's Library, Part II, Vol. II. ' Hazlitt, Shakespeare's Library, Part II, Vol. I. ' Praetorius Facsimile, p. 9. Hazlitt, Shakespeare's Library, Part II, Vol. I, p. 423, note. * Crawford, p. 91, notes the parallel between Selimus and Massacre at Paris, C. F. Tucker Brooke that between Massacre at Paris and True Tragedy. See Trans. Connecticut Acad. Arts and Sciences, 17, 168 (July, 1912). LOCRINE AND SELIMUS 35 Then Guise, Since thou hast all the Gardes within thy hands, To shuffle or cut, take this as surest thing: That right or wrong, thou deale thy selfe a King. Massacre at Paris, 11 145-8. Alasse that Warwike had no more foresight, But whilst he sought to steale the single ten. The King was finelie fingerd from the decke. True Tragedy of Richard Duke of Yorke, p. 87, 11 20-22». An exhaustive collection and careful collation of such material would, I am confident, throw much light on the difficult problems of chronology and authorship in the history of the English drama from 1585 to 1595. ' Hazlitt, Shakespeare's Library, Part II, Vol. II. SHAKESPEARE'S PATHOS J. F. A. Pyre One of the pre-requisites to a sound philosophy of Shakespeare is a correct valuation of his appeals to sympathy. A dramatist is singularly liable to "short circuits" in his lines of communication. He must reckon on a considerable factor of variability when reckoning how an audience will react to present- ments of human character, situation, and passion and to many necessarily uncommented juxtaposi- tions of the same. Doubtless there is a slighter leakage in Shakespeare than in most dramatists. He understood human nature in the audience form as in others, and he understood the dramatic strokes by which an audience is kept alive and scored upon. In this unerringness of Shakespeare liesone secret of his power and lastingness. Never- theless, that even Shakespeare was not entirely wanting in a humane capacity for making himself misunderstood, criticism bears copious witness. It is not merely that every generation starts out afresh to find phrases which content it for impres- sions that, ever afresh, "break through language and escape." The difficulty is, we cannot easily satisfy ourselves that the right impression itself has not eluded us. Thus, the chase after the [36] Shakespeare's pathos 37 Shakespearean intention has the inexhaustible zest of life itself. Three centuries have not glided by without some erosions of human sympathy. The modern reader, depending for his comprehension of the Shakespearean drama upon a printed text of dub- ious sanction, supplemented, to be sure, by some stage tradition, — but this with slight claim to authen- ticity and much of it erroneous or degraded, — finds himself at several removes from his author. Special intellectual curiosities can be distinguished with reasonable definiteness and allowed for or sympathetically entered into. A few topical hints no doubt evade us, though Shakespeare's mind was of that high order which is sensitive to the vulgarity of near allusion and seldom stoops to a mere topical hit when "some necessary business of the play" is to be considered. Changes in taste and morals are more important and more difficult to cope with; but the clash of standards can usu- ally be mitigated by a slight imaginative adjust- ment. Prince Hal's black-guardisms, practical jokes, and yearnings after "that poor creature, small beer", Falstaff's grosser peccadilloes and Sir Toby's unconscionable carousings, need not give us, precisely, Mid-Victorian qualms. Most of us will not permit anachronistic sentimentalism to betray us into maudlin sympathy with a reviled and defeated Israelite and money-lender; we will rejoice boldly in the triumph of Portia's wits and the release of the wealthy and elegant Antonio. But we enter a doubtful zone. We may experience 38 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES only the requisite ruefulness in contemplating Sir Toby's bloody coxcomb, yet feel ourselves emo- tionally insecure in the presence of Elizabethan portrayals of madmen and ghosts. Of Bassanio's borrowed plumes and his fortune-hunt over against Belmont, of Valentine's cool proposal to toss Sylvia to the precious Proteus, of Julia's complaisance toward the same being and of Hero's toward the "young cub" who has despitefuUy used her, of the heartless baiting of Malvolio, of Prospero's cruelty to Caliban, Hamlet's to Ophelia, of Helena's device for binding a husband and of Isabella's surrender to one, what are we to think? Or rather, what are we expected to feel? Thus we come gradually into a realm of imagi- native predilection and moral prejudice where the placement of sympathy among blended emotional values is a delicate matter. Yet in a moral world like that created by Shakespeare's art, accuracy of discernment is of the utmost importance, A slight error near the center projects us along some radial interpretation to a peripheral conclusion far wide of the mark. Now, there are, in Shakespeare, for all his variety and so-called objectivity, a good many habitual modes of feeling, and he developed a sure instinct for the dramatic means by which to reach the consciousness and take firm and last- ing hold on the sympathies of his audience. It is mainly by sensing these — his habitual modes of feeling and his habitual devices for kindling sym- pathy — that the student of Shakespeare learns to feel his way about in the plays and becomes Shakespeare's pathos 39 more and more confident as to his author's in- tention in any given case. One of these fields of Shakespeare's habit and practice it is the object of this paper to explore, not merely because the exercise is amusing in itself, but because, even when dealing with phenomena so elusive as emo- tional values and shades of artistic effect, there is an advantage to be derived from bringing to- gether, for comparison and arrangement, all the specimens of a group. Shakespeare's pathos is one of the ground tones of his passionate genius, like his humour, his pure joyousness, his serene exaltation, his voluptuous melancholy, his sense of thrilling excitement, his stirring heroic strenuosity, his sense of weirdness and mystery, his romance, his imperious tragic grandeur. Such a list of qualities is perhaps not strictly categorical. It merely enumerates some of the dominant Shakespearean moods and might be measurably condensed or enlarged, at will. It has a different basis from the scheme of the elementary passions as they are ordinarily classi- fied. Possibly no two men would exactly coincide in their analysis or their characterization of phe- nomena which are so complex and in which sub- jective elements play so large a part. At the same time, there will be a fair agreement among educated persons as to the general effect produced by an exhibition of the passiofis in any given case. Representations of the passions may excite in us their like, but not necessarily so; the same ele- mentary passions make very different appeals ac- 40 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES cording to the conditions under which their effects are shown. The passion of fear, so terrible in Macbeth, is ludicrous in Sir Andrew Aguecheek, is both comical and prettily pathetic in Viola, and passes into the realm of supernatural awe in the ghost scenes of Hamlet, with a varied key for each character that encounters the dreaded sight. Clear- ly the passions are only working colors of the dramatist and their emotional appeal depends upon the manner in which they are blended with one another and the objects to which they are applied. We may be amused by an exhibition of anger or roused to an emotion resembling anger by an exhibition of levity; we may be frightened or appalled by a powerful presentment of rage, or we may be kindled to indignation or scorn by a dastardly exhibition of fear. The sight of grief begets in us, not a precise imitation of the passion but a modified form of it which we call pity, and the nature and intensity of our sorrow is deter- mined by the character of our sympathy. The amenities of art require, moreover, that the emo- tions awakened by such representations shall be of such nature and intensity only as make for a generally pleasurable result, and this is effected through the capacity of the representation to awaken sentiment in us: that is, emotionally modi- fied thought or fancy whereby we are guided to a perception of the causes and relations of things, their meaning, fitness, and proportion, mingled with a sense of the adequacy or beauty of the representation. Shakespeare's pathos 41 f Passion, like action, awakens emotion partly through its revelation of character, and our re- sponse is regulated by our sympathy or antipathy toward the character our conception of which it augments. We are further excited by passion on account of its bearing, through character, on fate; we feel in it an immediate or a potential force which may influence the fate, either of the char- acter in whom it is exhibited or of other characters in whose fate we are interested. Such, in part, is our state of mind while witnessing the intem- perate outbursts of Lear in his first scene, the overwrought transports of Othello when reunited with his wife in Cyprus, the first ecstasies of Romeo and Juliet, the abnormal melancholy of Hamlet, or Lady Macbeth's devouring ambition. In one respect, all these violent moods thrill us to admira- tion, exalting our sense of the powers of the human soul; but, also, they alarm us; they are "tob like the lightning"; we feel them to be charged with fatal potentialities. Action in turn excites us, not only because of its immediate occasion for the expression of human nature, that is, for demon- strations of passion and revelations of character, but, likewise, because of "some consequence yet hanging in the stars" which may produce joy or suffering in the actor himself or in the persons acted upon. We respond to representations of passion, therefore, first, as excitants, through sug- gestion and sympathy, of similar, but agreeable, activities in ourselves; second, as revelations of character; third, as consequences of previous ac- 42 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES tion or as sources of further trains of action which may, in turn, produce further consequences, to- gether with new manifestations of passion and new revelations of character. In a work of representa- tive art, in drama especially, all these dynamic elements are ultimately resolved into a static condition of feeling in which we receive, not the impact of the final scene alone, but in which the imagination turns backward upon its series of experiences and the whole related scheme of pas- sion, character, act, and consequence, streams through us like the related notes of a musical chord, leaving us, thoughtful, hushed, impressed, appalled, warmed, delighted, touched, refreshed, envigorated, exalted, or in some similarly stilled and passive mood of unified but unvolitional ex- citement, according to the nature and intensity of the representation. ' The "pathetic" mood, then, is one of the general modes of feeling, or complex states of emotion awakened by representative art, and "pathos" is a quality of the representation by which this effect is produced. The attempt to set metes and bounds to a field of emotion where all terms are variable and many of them imply the others may seem a foolhardy undertaking; and yet some fur- ther discrimination seems necessary. The most obvious process of pathos is the awakening of sympathy for suffering or misfortune, the emotion which we call pity. But pity itself is a consti- tuent of numerous moods not all of which possess the quality of pathos. In popular usage there is Shakespeare's pathos 43 a tendency to attend exclusively to the pitiful element in pathos so that almost any misfortune which awakens emotion will be referred to as "pathetic", especially if the sense of it be shar- pened by some irony of circumstance or associa- tion. This is plainly undiscriminating. The ef- fect of pathos is most frequently obtained through an appeal to the sense of misfortune combined with a further stirring of tender sentiment through the coincident revelation of some gracious or ad- mirable trait in the object of compassion. By these means there is produced a commingling of warm and sympathetic emotions which is extremely pleasurable, is allied to the passive side of our natures and is the effect of what we call "pathos". The quality of a pathos depends upon the pro- portions in which are mingled the elements of pity, on the one hand, and of other tender emotions such as affection, gratitude, admiration, or joy, on the other. An example of the interoperation of pity, admiration, and affection, is well delineated in Othello's analysis of the witchcraft by which he won Desdemona, ending She loved me for the dangers I had passed And I loved her that she did pity them. And yet, despite the touching elements in it, Othello's story of his wooing is not pathetic, for we have yet to reckon with his dignity of manner which carries the entire recital out of the domain of pathos and this, it should be noted, is in accord with Othello's main purpose as an orator, which 44 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES is, not to touch merely, but to convince. On the other hand, in some cases of true pathos, the ele- ment of compassion is so slight that the emotion appears to depend upon a response to beauty or admirableness alone, — or even to joy itself. Ruskin somewhere describes a natural landscape as possessing "pathetic beauty." It is doubtful, however, if beauty or joy are ever truly pathetic save through some (however delicate) arriere pensee of their transiency, helplessness, insecurity, or the like; as of "beauty whose action is no stronger than a flower", and "joy whose hand is ever at his lips, bidding adieu". Pathos may arise from a sense of contrast between present joy and fore- gone hardship, suffering, or peril. In these last cases, of course, the emotion of pity is deflected from the present, to a past, or an imagined con- dition, and the two emotions, of joy in the present happiness, and of pity for the contrasted condition, coalesce to produce a pathetic mood in which a feeling akin to gratitude is predominant. The converse of this situation is too commonplace to require analysis. All of these conditions of sentiment, it will be readily seen, if they become habitual or consti- tutional, or if they be too little relieved by the brighter emotions, will be depressed to the mood which we call melancholy. Pathos and melan- choly are adjacent, therefore, but not identical. They may even coalesce; but they are, in most cases, easily distinguishable. There is a rich vein of melancholy in Shakespeare; but his pathos is Shakespeare's pathos 45 not, usually, an outgrowth of his melancholy; rather is his melancholy a deepening of his pathos. Shakespeare's pathos, and it may be added his melancholy also, lies quite close to his humour; and the reason for this is manifest when we en- quire into the nature of both. Since his pathos consists largely in a conflict of agreeable and pain- ful emotions, a slight change in texture may readily give us, instead of a pathos enlivened by humour, a humour sweetened with pathos. One further important distinction remains to be made ; but, as it has been often discussed elsewhere, it may be briefly disposed of here. This is the distinction between the pathetic and the sublime. Shakespearean commentators not infrequently re- fer to the pathos of his great tragic scenes, and although this is not necessarily wrong, it can easily be misleading. Of course, no one with an eye to their total effect would think of applying the term, "pathetic" to the finales of Lear, Othello, Hamlet, or, indeed, of any of the tragedies. The fact is, that Shakespeare never, whether in comedy or tragedy, ends in the pathetic key, — a point to which I shall return later. That there is an admixture of compassion in these great scenes is true; but the passions with which it is commingled are so agitating, the action so frantic, the conse- quences so prodigious, that pity is smothered up in dismay. At the very end, to be sure, the winds fall and cease, and the waves break back on them- selves in a mighty subsidence; but it is the calm of a supreme exaltation. We ourselves, like the 46 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES hero at his last breath, seem to be snatched up out of the storm and the struggle which roll harm- lessly backward below us, and the emotion we feel, — ^if emotion that mood can be called which consists in a momentary superiority to all finite agitation, — is "that emotion of detachment and liberation in which the sublime really consists".^ The emotion of the sublime is like that of pathos in that in both cases we are totally passive; but in the one case, our passivity is that of a breathless, almost benumbing contraction, as if for a sudden spring; the passivity of the pathetic mood is re- laxed, unnerved, deep breathing, as of the languor which precedes contraction. In the one we are close to the infinite; in the other, we feel our kinship with mortality, deliciously, warm, in every cell. Thus far we have been concerned, for the most part, with the general nature of pathos as a quality of dramatic representation. I turn now to a brief consideration of the particular aspects of human life with which the Shakespearean pathos is most frequently associated. It would be tedious to catalogue methodically all of the "seven ages of man", with their varieties and activities, that appear in the theater of Shakespeare; it will be helpful to collect into somewhat orderly form such few of life's phenomena as have especial significance from our point of view, and so regard them. The stage of human life to which Shakespeare most consistently attaches a pathetic significance ■ Santayana, The Sense of Beauty, p. 239. Shakespeare's pathos 47 is, of course, childhood and early youth. The young princes in Richard III, Arthur in King John, Falstaff's page in Henry IV and Henry V, the boy, Lucius, in Julius Caesar, in Macbeth, the son of Macduff, and the youth, Fleance, over whose unconscious head a royal destiny "broods like the day", with whose escape begins the fatal ravelling of Macbeth's ill-wrought ambition, young Marcius in Coriolanus, Mamillius in The Winter's Tale, and Imogen's brothers, the stolen princes of Cymbeline, are all introduced or developed in some degree for pathetic enhancement of the scene, though in varying degrees connected with its motivation. Of the same character are the earlier and fainter sketches of "young Talbot", "pretty Rutland", "young Henry, Earl of Richmond" in the Henry VI plays, and young Lucius in Titus Andronicus. All of these, it will be noticed, are boys and nearly all are instruments of comedy as well as pathos, having about them a pretty pertness which is one of the attractive and amusing, and of the annoying, traits of forward childhood. How well Shakespeare understood the principle that life is not exclusively a serio-solemn business and that those who lay hold of our affections do so, in part, by amusing our lighter fancy, not by eternally edifying, these childhood sketches clearly demonstrate. Childhood, by its innocence and helplessness, its perilous buddings of untimely spring, its physical sweetness, its playfulness of spirit, and its invitation to the mind to look toward the coming years, — childhood, when it meets with 48 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES misfortune, suffering, or dissolution, is of the very essence of pathos. To the examples already enum- erated some would doubtless add the Fool in King Lear, as being a child in heart, at least, if not in years. And, finally, Shakespeare's awakenedness to the sympathetic promptings of tender years is shown by his exclusion from Othello of any refer- ence to the child of I ago which plays so striking a part in Cinthio's story, and by the almost hectic charm of seeming youthfulness with which he invested Romeo, his prince of lovers, and Hamlet, his most beloved of princes. Towards old age, which, in an opposite way to childhood, walks near the gates of life, Shakespeare is less uniformly tender. He is no less disposed to laugh than weep over the fatuity of years that bring the philosophizing mind, but no true grasp of life. One thinks of Polonius, Falstaff, and Shallow and of such doddering old lords as Mon- tague and Capulet, and as Leonato and his brother Antonio in Much Ado. It may be surprising to find Falstaff in this list; but I suppose, notwith- standing his creator's and our delight in him, Fal- staff, as a philosopher, stands confuted; his duel with time is a drawn battle, won by the latter through sheer waiting. There are numerous ex- amples of solitary and garrulous age in the plays totally unconnected with their motivation, but introduced for picturesque or choric effect, — de- tached and wandering fragments of humanity that drift across the scene and shake their feeble heads. At least two old men, Duncan in Macbeth and Shakespeare's pathos 49 Adam in As You Like It, seem to have been specifi- cally drawn for pathetic contrast. There are touches of the same quality in Titus Andronicus, a first sketch of Lear, and in Cymbeline. In the historical plays, the subject matter, since times succeed to times, naturally led to numerous por- traits of men past their powers: "Old John of Gaunt" and York in Richard II, Gloucester in Henry VI, and, for the women, the Duchess of York in Richard III and the Duchess of Gloucester in Richard II are early examples of old age full of sorrows and bitter memories. But none of these are precisely pathetic; they are too much in mono- tone, and they appear more or less at random in the scheme of emotional values. The character of Henry IV is more fully wrought and the failure of life in him is consistently drawn out to a specifi- cally pathetic result. The dramatist's growing deftness in the handling of pathos is particularly shown in the king's occasional flashes of his old "efficiency". It remained for Shakespeare, in midst of other woe, to bring home, once and su- premely, the pathos of age, in Lear. When enumerating the sketches of youth in the plays, I silently reserved for separate mention Shakespeare's heroines, so many of whom seem just emerging from girlhood, and so many of whom, by the way, give us enchanting glimpses of boy- ishness through the chiaroscuro of their own im- personations. More and more, as he went for- ward, Shakespeare seems to have been taught to find in the women of his stories the staple source 50 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES of his pathos. Shakespeare's heroines are not with- out initiative and courage; indeed, in many cases, these are among their most distinctive traits. But therein lies, it may be said, much of their appealing quality. It is by chance of these neces- sities, in contrast to the conventional helplessness of their position and the passive bent of their natures, that they make their exceptional claims on our admiration and our sympathy. Heroism is inspiring in Shakespeare's men; it is touching in his women. Their own gayety under hard conditions makes us no less disposed to give them our hearts. And it is curious, when one comes to look into it from this point of view, how large a proportion of his heroines Shakespeare has placed at some especial disadvantage in their coping with the world and the decision vital to women. Almost every one of them is motherless, and somehow we receive the intangible impression that most of them have long been so. Juliet alone has the full complement of parents and both of these are represented as intemperate and unsympathetic. Portia and Viola are orphans, the first with a legacy of wealth encumbered with a crotchety restriction, the second, separated by shipwreck from her brother and penniless on a strange coast. Helena in All's Well is newly orphaned, brotherless and in poverty. Isabella is a nun, with an erring brother. Perdita and Marina are castaways and grow to maturity among strangers. Rosalind follows a banished father into forest exile. Imo- gen has a cruel and wicked step-mother. Jessica, Shakespeare's pathos 51 Hero, Ophelia, Desdemona, and Cordelia are all estranged in some manner from their far from fault- less fathers. Only Miranda in the critical moment of life has the guidance of a wise and sympathetic parent. That, in a majority of cases, the special conditions surrounding the Shakespearean heroine exist for romantic as much as for pathetic toning and for the purpose of placing the heroine in situa- tions favorable to dramatic entanglement, need hardly be said. Nevertheless, these conditions are favorable to pathetic effect in proportion to the naturalism of the treatment, so that, in most of the dramas of Shakespeare's maturity, even when the interest is lodged primarily among the male characters, the heroine will be found to be central to his main scenes of pathos. Since the natural affections are the chief sources of pathetic emotion, there is a sacrifice of materials involved in the motherless condition of the Shakes- pearean heroine. Considering the exhaustiveness with which, generally speaking, Shakespeare cov- ered the range of human relations, he must be ad- mitted to have used but sparingly the motive of mother and child. Fatherhood appears in full gamut, but motherhood, especially in the relation- ship of mother and daughter, is almost, though by no means quite, absent. Possibly acting condi- tions were partially responsible for the omission, though this explanation would seem to be con- founded by the examples which the plays afford. Here again, as in the case of old age, the early histories are prolific of random examples : Margaret 52 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES in Henry VI, the women of Richard III, the Duch- ess of York in Richard II, Constance in King John, are emphatic, though not essentially pathetic, portrayals of sorrowing motherhood. It is not until the very latest plays, if we except the Count- ess in All's Well, and Mistress Page in the Merry Wives, both of whom are somewhat brusquely motherly, that we encounter any adequate inter- pretations of motherhood; for Hamlet's mother will hardly be accounted an exception and Lady Mac- beth's allusions to her children are not reassuring. But Hermione touches us notably, as Volumnia almost entirely, through the quality of her mother- hood, and the effect, in both cases, is that of a noble pathos. Katherine's last scene in Henry VIII contains some touching references to her children; but this is probably in Fletcher's part of the play. The insistence of the plays upon the relation of father and daughter has been indicated. Of the other natural bonds I will not pursue all the in- stances, for they are of the fullness of Shakespeare. The bond of father and son, of brother and sister, of husband and wife, of the lover and the beloved, of kin and country, of friendship and old acquaint- ance, in all degrees between men and between women, the affiliations of master and man, of mistress and maid, of liege lord and loving sub- ject, these natural and domestic bonds of human society furnish the bases of affections and of en- dearing expressions, in act or word, of loyalty, admiration, sacrifice, gratitude, and forgiveness, Shakespeare's pathos 53 through which the personages of Shakespeare's scene, caught in a quivering but gentle net of hours, make their appeals to our tender sympathies, loosen and set free the flow of our sweetest emo- tions. Since in the least restless moments of life the motions of the heart are most clearly and humanly felt. While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony and the deep power of joy We see into the life of things, Shakespeare skillfully associates his pathos with the leisurely pursuits and the most sensitive opera- tions of the mind : such occupations as reading, listening to music, meditation, friendly converse; such intuitive operations as are involved in shy and random reminiscence, recapitulation, or com- parison, or in half-conscious or vaguely relevant planning, premonition and presentiment. These moods fall in moments of reunion or leave-taking, of happiness after sorrow or safety after peril, of momentary release from labor or pain, in the lulls of grief or conflict, which, in tragedy, are but the suspensive pause before the blow, a momentary hush of the unexpended storm "from whose solid atmosphere, black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst" in the final cataclysm. For the accentuation of these moods, Shakes- peare frequently employs certain incidental acces- sories upon which he securely relies for the pathetic modulation of the scene. One of these accessories, 54 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES already hinted at, is music, not extraneous, usu- ally, but motived by the action and an organic part of it. The boy, Lucius, touches the lute while Brutus watches in his tent on the eve of Philippi; Ophelia's mad snatches, Desdemona's "Willow" song, the music which the Doctor prescribes for the awakening of Lear, Fidele's dirge in Cymbeline, and numerous minor instances are to the same purpose. Flowers, also, are accessories of pathetic suggestion. Nothing in the mad scenes of Ophelia, when portrayed on the stage, is more conducive to tears than her business with the flowers: Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself She turns to favour and to prettiness. Other flower passages in the plays have been fre- quently commented on, because of their exquisite poetry. Such are Perdita's "I would I had some flowers o' the spring", etc., and Arviragus's less famous or at least less frequently quoted, but hardly less beautiful With fairest flowers Whilst summer lasts and I live here, Fidele, I'll sweeten thy sad grave. Thou shalt not lack The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor The azured harebell, like thy veins, no, nor The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander, Out-sweet'ned not thy breath. Those who have lingered over the quieter scenes of Shakespeare must have been often aware of still another aspect of life which drew from him some of his wooingest and most lovable touches — I mean his references to, and his portrayals of, Shakespeare's pathos 55 sleep. Two qualities of this phase of our natural being seem to have especially impressed Shakes- peare — its pathos and its mystery. Both tones are congenial to the subdued movement of his scenes of suspense and preparation, and it is sel- dom that either is quite absent when sleep is thought of. The mystical bond between man and the secret workings of the invisible universe that clips him round, as shown in the restorative virtue of sleep, but also in "the cursed thoughts that nature gives way to in repose," the involuntary and apparently lawless, but often startlingly signifi- cant operations of the mind off guard, its recapitu- lation in dreams of the waking past, its random foreshadowings of things to come, made this do- main of experience peculiarly attractive to him as a dramatic agency. Sleep is the surprisal of the essential, the very man. It strips from the recital of his acts and the confession and analysis of his psychic life, the artificiality of studied narra- tive or of self-conscious soliloquy, and it surrounds its revelations with an aura of wonder which allies them to the supernatural. It raises them to a higher power of emotional idealization which in- tensifies their livingness just as art, just as Shakes- peare's representation itself, is more real than actuality. Again, sleep is one of the natural goods of life, beautiful in itself, like flowers, like the songs of birds. It is the touchstone of health; as the man sleepeth, so is he. Where virtue is, it is more virtuous, and where beauty is, more beautiful. 56 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES The relation to sleep therefore becomes an index of character and of psychic constitution and a means of portraying them. Such intimate revela- tions are pathetic; their very intimacy tends toward pathos. There is something magical in the mere sight of a sleeper; the sheer passivity, the immo- bility, the innocence, the helplessness, even of the strong, even of the wicked, come home to us, with- out comment, directly; the sleeper is made one with nature. And sleep has another direct effect on the imagination to which Shakespeare, like other poets, was keenly alive: it is the portrait and prognostic of the sleep that ends all. Death itself, except in association with childhood, he almost never rendered pathetically; but, in sleep, "death's counterfeit", and in the preparations for it, he seemed to find exactly that fanciful and ten- der symbol of the dread finality which harmonized with his pathos. The plays are full of these sleep scenes, some- times merely described or hinted, sometimes actu- ally represented ; usually bound up with the motiva- tion of character and action, but seldom without some direct suggestive value as spectacle and sym- bol. Such is Tyrrel's picture of the sleeping princes (Richard III, IV, iii.) girdling one another Within their alabaster innocent arms: Their lips were four red roses on a stalk, Which in their summer beauty kiss'd each other: We smothered The most replenished sweet work of nature That from the prime creation e'er she framed. Shakespeare's pathos 57 There is pathos, not quite lost in voluptuousness, in the picture of the sleeping Lucrece, with Tar- quin's ruffian face thrust toward her through the parted curtain: Showing life's triumph in the map of death And death's dim look in life's mortality: Each in her sleep themselves so beautify As if between them twain there were no strife, But that life liv'd in death, and death in life. The same group reappeared, refined and chastened, some fifteen years later in the exquisite chamber scene of Cgmbeline, where Imogen, fallen asleep over her book, is displayed to the prying eyes of lachimo. 'Tis her breathing that Perfumes the chamber thus; the flame of the taper Bows toward her, and would under-peep her lids To see the enclosed lights, now canopied Under these windows, white and azure lac'd With blue of heaven's own tint^ — On her left breast A mole cinque spotted, like the crimson drops r the bottom of a cowslip. Place beside this the coda of the great Boar's Head scene (i Henry IV, II, iv), the picture of Falstaff "fast asleep behind the arras and snorting like a horse". "Hark, how hard he fetches breath! Search his pockets". This is coming close to the gray, old sinner. His very pockets yield up their secrets. No fear of waking; the trump of doom is a mere fifth in his harmony. The sheriff and his rout have departed; England is arming; and there he lies, in a colossal slumber, the gift we may pre- 58 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES sume of much sack, over-taxed nature, and a con- science as easy "an it had been any christom child". "There let him sleep till day". And so we slip out and leave him. The man who will find pathos in this, you may say, will find pathos in anything. Well, perhaps it is not pathos precisely; but it is the very life, and pathos will come of it. A little later (2 Henry IV, III, i), we are in the palace of Westminster, and the king enters in his night- gown; he is ill, and old before his time, shaken with cares, and the fault he made in compassing the crown lies heavy on his soul; he dispatches a messenger to "call the Earls of Surrey and of Warwick", and then comes the famous "expostula- tion" : How many thousand of my poorest subjects Are at this hour asleep ! sleep ! gentle sleep ! Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee? Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains In cradle of the rude imperious surge .... It is a pathetic prelude to the painful crown scene of the ensuing act, the beginning of the end of high- mettled Bolingbroke. Similar reflections upon sleep supply the basis of the only pathetic passage in the life of the new king, the stout-hearted Henry V. After wandering about the sleeping camp and conversing with such of his soldiers as are awake on the night before Agincourt, Henry gives way in solitude to inward thought; his courage quails an instant before the responsibility Shakespeare's pathos 59 which his men have laid upon him for the mor- row's business, and it is here that he touches his high point in poetry: I know 'Tis not the balm, the sceptre and the ball, The farced title running fore the king, The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp That beats upon the high shore of this world. Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave Who with a body filled and vacant mind Gets him to rest, crammed with distressful bread. Next moment, it is to the "God of battles" that he prays, to "steel his soldiers' hearts"; but it is here that he feels the mystery of life. It would require a separate paper to trace out all the instances where Shakespeare has made sleep the monitor of one's sense of life, has used its sug- gestion for stilling in us, — as in the personages of his scene, — the hurly of the restless, active busi- ness of waking existence, so that we feel earth breathe, and hear "time flowing in the night", and "all the rivers running to the sea". Perhaps nothing in Macbeth is so piteous as the violation done to nature with respect to sleep, "the innocent sleep, sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care". For "Macbeth does murder sleep", his own above all. The theme recurs again and again, culminating in a set scene, the sleep-walking of Lady Macbeth. This scene, however, pitiful as it is, is too terrible for pathos, and probably should not be regarded as the specifically pathetic move- 60 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES ment of the play. Like Richard's terrible visit- ings on the last night of his life it is allied to the supernatural in effect and is a part of the last movement, the catastrophe. But in several of the tragedies this theme is attached to the set scene of pathos. Brutus leans over the sleeping boy and, with words of unaccus- tomed lightness and tender fancy, takes the lute from his hands, before settling himself to his book. Desdemona lets down her hair while she sings, remembering her childhood, chats sleepily, rubs her eyes, and prepares for her last rest. Lear awakens from a restoring slumber, shattered but sane, to find Cordelia standing over him with heart too near breaking to dream the word, for- giveness. The feigned death of Juliet had similar potentialities, but they are not, I think, realized; there is too little quietness; the villainous nurse breaks in; horror and confusion unroll; there is no pause over the pathetic beauty of the picture, as in these incomparable scenes. The lovely trance of Imogen, with the dwelling lyricism of her syl- van obsequies, is more like; but after all, more pretty than moving. It is in the awakening of Lear that we have Shakespeare's supreme pathos, too beautiful to bear, — almost. When, now, with a rather definite idea of the quality of Shakespeare's pathos and a conscious knowledge of the means by which he habitually produced this effect, we examine the plays as a whole, we are immediately aware of a method in the disposition of his pathetic scenes. And if, in Shakespeare's pathos 61 addition, we look at the plays with some attention to the probable order of their composition, we are further impressed by a development in this, as in other aspects of his art, which throws additional light upon his artistic intention. Not only is there an increasing command of the elements of pathos, a surer and finer touch in details; there is increasing sureness of method in his massing of them into set scenes of pathetic climax and in his emphasis of these scenes as a definite movement in the scheme of emotional values, with a sense of their due place and proportion in the total effect of the piece. As I have already noticed, in passing, Shake- speare never ends a piece in the pathetic key. This distinction of the Shakespearean drama may be well elucidated by a comparison of any of the mature tragedies with such a play as Heywood's A Woman Killed with Kindness. Here Heywood represents with much dramatic force and natural- ness a story of domestic infidelity. The wife, Mistress Frankford, is punished by her husband merely through exile from him and from their children. The concluding scene in which the re- pentant wife, now on her death-bed, beseeches and receives, among weeping relatives, her husband's heart-felt forgiveness, is treated with sincere and tender feeling and no little poetic beauty. We are deeply touched. But one sees, at once, that Shakespeare would never make such a scene the last movement of a tragic piece. He would not leave us thus emotionally unbraced. Life, in 62 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES Shakespeare, is something more heroic than this. His scheme would call for another act in which there should befall the hero some fierce calamity, much or little deserved, but tremendously en- dured. This scene of touching beauty, though it would have no less value in and for itself, would have a still greater value as an emotional prepara- tion for the grand catharsis of the finale. What we have in Shakespeare's scenes of pathos, then, is a deliberate modulation of key, somewhat analogous to the modulation of key that has been frequently noticed in his scenes of so-called "comic relief"; so that we might equally speak, if anyone likes the phrase, of his scenes of "pathetic relief". Only these scenes have, in his developed style of dramatic representation, a use beyond that of mere emotional "relief"; they have, in the tragedies especially, as already implied, a perfectly definite position just before the point where we strike into the last movement which works up to the finale, serving on the one hand to prepare us for the catastrophe by dimly fore-shadowing it, and, on the other, to increase the force of its appeal by purifying our emotions and intensifying our sym- pathy for the chief sufferers. It remains to dis- cover as well as may be, with the means at our disposal, the steps by which Shakespeare became master of this procedure. For, as I suggested a moment since, it is not to be supposed that Shakespeare came full-fledged to an appreciation of these values in dramatic representation. He found pathetic values in life Shakespeare's pathos 63 and story, just as he found comic and tragic values in them, and his massing and arrangement of these values for purposes of dramatic effect varied with his dramatic purpose and improved with exper- ience. His earliest tragedies make little appli- cation of the principle which has just been ex- pounded. The extent of his responsibility for the Andronicus is so problematical that it would be unwise to base any conclusions upon this play. Suffice it to say that, though full of the crude ma- terials of pathos, this play shows no real command of pathetic appeal and, partly for this reason per- haps, its abundant horrors fail of a genuinely tragic effect. Can one, without opening oneself to a charge of vandalism, suggest that anything might be differ- ent in so superb a success and so just a favorite as Romeo and Juliet? Certain it is that the pathetic and the tragic appeals in this play are more mingled, less distinguishable from each other than in the great central tragedies. Up to and includ- ing the parting of Romeo and Juliet, barring some juvenilities of style, the play proceeds in his best manner; the death of Mercutio is consummately managed; the tragic movement begins to disengage itself from its comic support and reaches forward right Shakespeareanly to the parting. So far so good. The fourth act is occupied exclusively with Juliet; but the difficulties which beset her afford no pause for reflection; no opportunity, there- fore, for the pathos of her situation to sink in upon us. The objurgations of her parents, the 64 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES importunities of Paris, the sensual cacklings of the Nurse, give her no peace and us no repose; even her interviews with the Friar are occupied with practical planning. She swallows the potion in a furore of grisly foreboding. The curtains re- open and show her lying upon her couch, appar- ently asleep. But the hubbub begins again. The fussy cachinnations of the Nurse, her salacious references to Paris, are followed by the bowlings of Juliet's parents, and culminate in the arrival of Paris and the wedding music. Such spiritual beauty as the Friar might be expected to impart to the scene is more than neutralized by the dis- ingenuousness of his position; his consolations are as hollow as the sorrow to which he ministers. There is no denying that the representation of all this empty raving, particularly the Nurse's absurd reverberation of the ranting parents and Capulet's ridiculous banality : Uncomfortable time, why camst thou now To murder, murder our solemnity? displays a power of sardonic realism which cannot be overestimated; but I cannot resist a feeling that, at a later period, Shakespeare would have ordered things somewhat differently at this stage of the tragedy. I feel that, in some beauteous pause at this moment of the action, he would have found means to convey to us the tender significance of the story which, as things stand, is produced in the long and somewhat tedious coda to the catastrophe. Shakespeare's pathos 65 The earlier histories are virtually tragedies, in the general sense that they deal with violent and calamitous events. In the Henry VI plays there is no law but lawlessness; if any unity prevails it is perhaps a sense of an inexorable march of events in which one unholy ambition puts up its head only to be hewed down by another which soon suffers the same fate. There are some ran- dom strokes of pathos, such as the scenes of Talbot and his son in the fourth act of Part One, which are supposed, from a contemporary allusion, to have been "embalmed with the tears of ten thou- sand spectators". A broader pathos is evidently aimed at in the figure of the sentimental and in- effectual king, who steals out of battle to sit upon a hillock and yearn for the shepherd's life; whose misapplied piety is the very source of the wounds that afflict his bleeding country and his own soul. This conception is one feature of the plays in which competent critics discern the presence of Shake- speare; its effect, however, is but feebly achieved; for the most part, terror reigns. It is toward the end of the third piece that the diffused anarchy of the series begins to gather to a head in the arch-anarch whose remorseless climb to the throne through the blood of his nearest relatives, with his ultimate destruction and the dawning of better times, provides the theme of Richard III. The impressiveness of Richard's cruelty is set off by a pathetic treatment of his victims. Clarence relates his fearful dream and then falls asleep, just before the entrance of the murderers in the S-5. 66 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES first act. The pathetic treatment of the innocent princes I have already described. But Anne is not so presented as to command our respect; while the railings and lamentations of the women in the fourth act are treated with grandiosity, not with pathos; the recapitulation of Richard's crimes through the apparition of his victims in his own and Richmond's dreams is stagey and, again, aims at the sublime rather than the pathetic. The tent scene which precedes the dream has a few intimate touches which anticipate the manner of the tent scene in Julius Caesar; but of course it is only a qualified sympathy that can be aroused for Richard. Horror and admiration toward Rich- ard, rather than pity for his victims, sets the key throughout. In King John the theme of pitiful childhood, introduced in the preceding play, is more broadly developed. The fourth act concerns itself almost entirely with the fate of Arthur. The character of the unhappy princeling has many winning nuances and the famous Hubert scene, a penetrat- ing pathos. Constance, on the other hand, rails and laments somewhat after the fashion of Rich- ard's upbraiders, and is, on the whole, ineffective. Arthur is not so associated with the king in our minds as to give the pathos of his fate a sufficiently poignant bearing on the tragedy of the latter; the Bastard further complicates our sympathies; and the play produces, at best, but a mixed effect. Richard II, in my opinion, shows evidences of an effort on the dramatist's part to remedy this defect Shakespeare's pathos 67 of the preceding play. The recent tendency is to despise the character of Richard rather more, I think, than Shakespeare intended, and possibly, also, to value more highly than he meant the qualities of Richard's successful adversary, the "efficient" and politic Bolingbroke. I am con- fident that he intended the great deposition scene which occupies most of the fourth act to produce a genuinely pathetic effect. If he fails it is be- cause the means which he employed to regain our sympathy for "Richard, that sweet lovely rose," are insufficient to cope with the contempt pre- viously aroused through his pitiless unbaring of the mixed sentimentalism and heartlessness of Rich- ard's character. I wonder, by the way, whether anyone has thought to mention the connection, implicit but not stated, between Richard's un- usual physical beauty and the frailties of his char- acter. It is profoundly done, and I do not re- member to have seen it touched upon. The matter which is vital to this discussion, however, is not the loss of our sympathies, but the means by which they are sought to be regained. The appeal to our physical senses, just alluded to, is one. Richard's charm of fancy is another. The partial failure in this respect is not due en- tirely, I believe, to a fault of intention, but to a faulty exuberance in Shakespeare's own manner at this period of which abundant examples can be found in the speech of other characters in the same play and in other nearly contemporary plays, notably Romeo and Juliet. To the same end. 68 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES Shakespeare took a considerable liberty with his- torical fact in developing Richard's child wife into the "weeping queen" of this play, obviously for the specific purpose of elaborating the pathos of Richard's history. The deposition scene is immediately preceded by that "beautiful islet of repose", as Coleridge called it, the garden scene in which the queen overhears the Gardener and his servant gossiping of Richard's overthrow while they mend the shrubs. The writing is not Shake- speare's best, but a glance at it will reveal that timing, tone, and accessories foretell his later way of doing the thing. Here and in the parting with Richard which immediately follows the de- position, the fictitious queen bears herself with the sweetness and propriety due to pathos, and very unlike the women of the preceding histories; and some of Richard's loveliest, most dignified and — though a little marred by self-pity — ^least affected words are spoken to her: Join not with grief, fair woman, do not so, To make my end too sudden : learn, good soul. To think our former state a happy dream; From which awak'd, the truth of what we are Shows us but this. I am sworn brother, sweet. To grim Necessity, and he and I Will keep a league till death. Hie thee to France And cloister thee in some religious house: Our holy lives must win a new world's crown Which our profane hours here have stricken down. His next lines have even greater simplicity and spiritual beauty, reminding us of Lear to Cordelia under somewhat similar circumstances. One more Shakespeare's pathos 69 attempt to rally our hearts to Richard is made when the groom of the stables visits him, just before his death, to talk of "roan Barbary". However these things "be overdone or come tardy off", one sees that the method pursued is that of Shakespeare. During the four or five years following Richard II, if the now accepted chronology of the plays be correct, a large share of Shakespeare's energy went into the creation of comedy and a large ele- ment of comedy invades the remaining histories. Yet, notwithstanding Falstaff and his comic re- tinue, the main upshot of these plays is not comic, nor is it precisely tragic; it is heroic. Each of the plays of the Henry V trilogy ends in some species of triumph. The "Shakespeare's ideal king" business has undoubtedly been greatly over- done with respect to Henry V; but the fact remains that he is the only one of England's "royal kings" who, in Shakespeare's portrayal, bears the brunt of the heroic life unbroken. It is in showing us the wrecks that strew the path of this royal progress that pathos finds employment, usually in an admixture with comedy. In the first piece it is Hotspur for whom our sympathy is built up through close revelations of his absurd but lovable nature, especially in the two scenes with his wife. Lady Percy's "In faith, I'll break thy little finger, Harry", when he refuses to divulge the secret of his disquiet, and her "Wouldst thou have thy head broken?" when his wagging tongue insists on inter- rupting the music, are taking reminders of this 70 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES side of our acquaintance with Hotspur. In the end he is "food for — " "For worms brave Percy", and the other Harry gently lays his colours over the mangled face. But a moment later this senseless clay is the victim of Falstaff's gross buffoonery, — a giant irony, too strong for some weak stomachs. "Did these bones cost no more the breeding, than to play at loggats with 'em?" The pathos of the next piece centers in the king and culminates in the bedsid^e scene of the fourth act, in which his weary heart receives its mortal shock. The dramatist's care to preserve the pathetic value here is shown by the nice management through which the actual death of the king is made to take place off the stage. At the end of the piece King Henry V, crowned, crosses the stage in all the panoply of costly state. This is one of the places in Shakespeare where criticism has often gone astray and where over-perception of a small point may easily lead us so ; where perception of his main dramatic intention is all-important. Falstaff is there to greet the new king. He hails him: "My king! My Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!" Then come Henry's apparently heartless words of rejection, containing not one hint of tenderness or regret for their nights and suppers of the gods. To the stinging reproaches of the king, Falstaff offers no interruption or reply; but after the king's exit, he has this line: "Justice Shallow, I owe you a thousand pound". Professor Moulton appears to see in this brief speech only another re- bound of Falstaff's irrepressible waggery. "The Shakespeare's pathos 71 meeting has come, and the blow has fallen; we turn to hear the first words of a crushed man : and what we hear is one more flash of the old humour". Surely, this is only one side of the matter and not, perhaps, the most important one. The subse- quent history of Falstaff shows he was hard hit; but (So tight he kept his lips compressed, Scarce any blood came through) You looked twice ere you saw his breast Was all but shot in two. This second look. Professor Bradley has taken, and he has given us the result of his observations in the fine lecture on The Rejection of Falstaff. And yet I am not quite satisfied. Professor Brad- ley is prone to admit that Shakespeare has made a mistake; that he has let Falstaff run away with him. I cannot think so. It is neither Falstaff's humour nor his pathos, nor is it Henry's hardness of heart which impresses me; it is the stern heroism of the moment. Harry the Fifth is crowned and what does it mean? Why, from one point of view, that his old friend Falstaff cannot or will not pay his debts. It is comic or pathetic, as you will; but what are comedy and pathos to the relentless soul whose powers are knit up for achievement? At last, England has such a king. How squalid, for the moment, seems Falstaff with his crew in the little street; the great wit and the gay heart are silenced; stern justice speaks; it is the heroic life; The sword, the mace, the crown imperial, The intertissued robe of gold and pearl sweep on and leave him blinking. 72 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES The last play of the trilogy is all triumph. No, not quite all; Shakespeare did not altogether for- get "plump Jack", though, so far as we have any evidence, Henry did; in the midst of other busi- ness, he found time to lift the curtain for one final glimpse of the banished humorist. "Lift the curtain" is a vile phrase, for that is precisely what the dramatist did not do, but veiled the scene behind Mistress Quickly's magic huddle of words. It is the chief stroke of pathos in the play and, as everyone knows, one of the great achievements of Shakespeare's art. No words can do it justice; and I will not try. The play proceeds with the triumphs of Henry, in statecraft, in war, in gambols with his men, in councils with his generals. He is the sufficient king. Finally, we are permitted to be present at a royal wooing. The situation is a droll one, in a way. Katherine is, of course, a prize of war; softness, under the circumstances, would be an offense. Katherine's sparring is a credit to her race and to her sex. And Henry carries it off well, with engaging livehness and soundness of heart. It is, none the less, a diplo- matic wooing, and when he takes his largess of her lips, it is in full presence and "the kettle drum and trumpet bray out the triumph of his pledge". he Roi boit. It is the heroic life. So ends the historic series. In Richard II, Shakespeare had been compelled to go out of his way to secure the feminine accessory to his pathetic design. He was content, in the Henry plays, to rest his pathos largely upon mas- Shakespeare's pathos 73 culine interests. In so doing he acquired, no doubt, the full compass in the presentation of male char- acter and the ease and strength in guiding the sweep and manipulating the irony of large and stern events which we feel so powerfully in the main movements of the tragedies. It was his practice in romantic comedy that taught him the softness and refinement in feminine portraiture and the noble handling of the private emotions which stood him so well in hand in the keying of his scenes of pathos. The comedies are love stories and the elaboration of them led to more delicate realiza- tions of feminine deportment and to an inter- twining and contrasting of masculine and feminine interests. Few of the tragedies are love stories, but he continues in them to attach the fate of a heroine to the fate of the hero ; the two fall together. Timon is the only exception, and its theme is one whose swift malice allows pathos no quarter. But Timon is un-Shakespearean ; he alone dies like a dog; all the others die like men, — or devils. Again, as most of the histories represent the triumphs of men, so most of the comedies repre- sent the triumphs of women. This is perhaps too whimsical; but at least Shakespeare seldom or never ends in a minor key. If he seems to do so, it is because of some lapse of sympathy between him and us. And after the earliest comedies, he is seldom contented with a mere intellectual dis- entanglement for the conclusion of a piece. His conception of the last stage of a comedy was of a revel elaborated into a full movement, a thing of 74 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES joy, of sheer delight. This conception first finds adequate expression in A Midsummer Night's Dream, which ends, first, seemingly, with the broad burlesque of the mechanics, Which when I saw rehears'd, I must confess Made mine eyes water; but more merry tears The passion of loud laughter never shed, and finally, in unparalleled contrast, with the fairies, singing and dancing trippingly and scattering through the hushed, moonlit house to bless the bridal beds. Need one mention the drench of love-making, music, and tipsy moonlight in foun- tained gardens, with which the last act of the Merchant dawns, the tinkling merriment of the ring-play, the nuptial tone of its close. "There is, sure, another flood toward, and these couples are coming to the ark" cries envious Jacques at the opening of another of these hymeneal finales. This world of beauty and radiant delight could not be half so precious, note, after two hours of mere fun. It is the dark menace escaped some few moments back, the sentience of life's capacity for pain, the knowledge of some nobleness lately revealed and underlying it all, that carries us so fuU-heartedly into this revel of pure joy, this glow of nuptial rosiness. Shakespeare's scheme of com- edy involves the subjecting of his heroine to some sharp trial which calls on her inmost qualities for its endurance or solution, and in the process of it awakens our sympathy and our admiration. Two ends are achieved: we are touched, and she wins her title to her lover. Shakespeare's pathos 75 The deepening of his pathos at this point is a marked characteristic of Shakespeare's progress in comic writing. The earlier comedies either make little attempt at pathos or are unsuccessful in achieving it. Portia's encounter with Shylock is the first set scene of importance which has this character; she touches us by her capacity and her eloquence, and the saving, not of Antonio merely, but of her own happiness from the peril that threatens it. The accusation of Hero in Much Ado is not her trial alone; it is the trial of Beatrice, in whom we are far more genuinely interested. When her loyalty to her cousin comes out arrayed in a fiery but half-humorous indignation so char- acteristic of her, the revealing moment has been met and we join Benedick in falling head over heels in love with her. So, when Rosalind swoons at the recital of Oliver and the sight of the blood- stained handkerchief, we are reassured of the deeper sentiency which underlies her sentimental persiflage; henceforth, she may "commend her counterfeiting to him" as much as she likes, we know better. In short, we are ready to conduct her to the altar. But let me not imitate those insatiate authors who pick every bone and leave their readers to feast on the grinning remnants. What I hope I have shown is : that in all the best and most char- acteristic of Shakespeare's mature plays we may be conscious of a masterly manipulation of key with a view to totality of effect, and that in this emotional scheme the effect of pathos has a dis- 76 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES tinct place; that it is usually most broadly de- veloped in the fourth act, where the effect of pathos, aside from its value in and for itself, serves as a preparation and relief for the major movement of the finale, whether that major movement be one of delight, as in comedy, of heroic triumph, as in some of the histories, or of ineffable grandeur, as in the great tragedies. I have further suggested, though I have not sought to develop this point fully, that, in the writing of his comedies and histories, Shakespeare gradually acquired both the mastery of the elements of pathos and the knowl- edge of its most effective position in the dramatic scheme which he applied in all his later tragedies. If anyone should be reluctant to accept these conclusions as impairing some dearer conception of "Fancy's child, warbling his native woodnotes wild", I recommend to him Polixenes' consola- tion to Perdita, when, in a charming revelation of youthfulness, she expresses disdain for the carnations and streak' d gillyvors, because she has heard it said that, in their breeding, the skill of man has meddled with "great creating nature": this is an art Which does mend nature, change it rather, but The art itself is nature. Because Shakespeare's pathos occupies, in a sense, a subordinate place in his scheme of dramatic representation, and perhaps of life, it is not there- fore of subordinate importance. When we com- pare the comedies of Shakespeare with those of SONGS IN SHAKESPEARE 77 Jonson, or of other powerful comic writers of his time, we find them by nothing more distinguished than by their warm and intimate appeals to our gentler affections, which, more than anything else, give them their immortal aspect of life and friend- liness. Others approach Shakespeare in shrewd- ness of observation and analysis, and, barring this one quality, in wisdom; but no one is so intimate and kindly. The same, to some degree, may be said of his tragedy. The finest parts of Webster approach the great scenes of Shakespeare in awful- ness and grandiosity, but lack their depth; they want his masterful kindness, which, in the midst of the most bewildering agitation, adds a sweet- ness to sorrow, adds, in short, the indescribable Shakespearean touch. Whether this be true or not, there is little question that this element in Shakespeare has much to do with the breadth of his appeal. Many escape his humour, and some his sublimity; there are few who do not yield their worship to his divine tenderness. THE FUNCTION OF THE SONGS IN SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS John Robert Moore. Queen. What imports this song? Ophelia. Sag you? Nay, pray you, mark. HAMLET, IV, V, 27-8. It has long been customary for enthusiastic critics to speak of the Elizabethan dramas as "a nest of singing birds," and of the songs as "exqui- site nosegays" of "charming lyrics," which we might fancy to be "the echo of a bird's voice in spring." Upon examination of the plays before 1590, we discover little reason for this adulation. Broadly speaking, there was on the Elizabethan stage no dramatic song before Shakespeare. The plays of Kyd and Marlowe (save for a stage direction in the doubtful Dido, Queen of Carthage, and a scrap of mock-liturgical chanting in Doctor Faustus) are without songs. Lodge and Greene, exquisite lyrists in their novels, have left nothing of the sort in their plays, if we except the curious Looking Glass for London and England, which has been ascribed to them jointly. The lyrics formerly attrib- uted to Lyly have, in recent years, been assigned with something like finality to a later century and [78] SONGS IN SHAKESPEARE 79 a later hand.' The songs of Peele — aside from his most famous one, which occurs in a non- dramatic poem — are found chiefly in the pastoral play, The Arraignment of Paris, and are mostly pastoral poems, echo-songs of love-lorn shepherds, essentially undramatic in character. Peele's only tragedy, like the tragedies of his contemporaries, is entirely bare of songs. True, the song, as a comic device upon the stage, is of great antiquity: The origin of song and comedy is in the English drama refer- able to much the same conditions, chief among them a desire to amuse. If we turn back as far as the moralities and interludes we shall find the few snatches of song, there indicated, commonly put into the mouth of the roisterer, the vice, or the devil; though godly songs are not altogether wanting. ^ Whether in the court and academic plays or in ^ the popular performances, and whether sung by the children of the chapel or by the clown of the innyard, the incidental lyric was looked upon as something external to the course of the action. It was considered separable from its context, to be printed in the appendix or indicated only by a stage direction, to be used in different plays at the capricious will of a popular singer or between acts at the demand of pit or gallery, or to be ex- temporized on the stage by any half-illiterate Tarleton to cap the rhymes of a bantering specta- tor. The commonest types were prosaic bits of Puritanic moralizing (before the players were ' Greg, The Authorship of the Songs in Lyly's Plays, Modern Language Review, I, No. I; and Feuillerat, John Lyly, p. 403f., note 1. ^ Schelling, English Literature During the Lifetime of Shakespeare, p. 201. 80 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES banished from Puritanic London), drinking catch- es, and songs by the clown. Between the acts dancing and singing, or both combined, were introduced. After the play the clown came to the front and gave a jig, generally to his own accompaniment upon pipe or tabor. Sometimes he had an accompaniment played for him, in which case he generally sang as he danced.' At its best, the song on the popular stage was a thing for diversion, a part of the "inexplicable dumb-shows and noise." - Noise and clamour were the regular accompaniments of all forms of entertainment. Though some writers object to the ill- manners and filth of play-houses, all assume noise to be quite in place. All the stage-manager had to do was to provide plenty of it. In Greene's "Alphonsus of Arragon" there are twenty- five separate directions for the sounding of drums and trumpets, besides some half-dozen marching entries of soldiery, of course accompanied by military music.'' So much for buffoonery and incidental music. ^ We may go a step farther, and say that until 1600 there was (outside Shakespeare) little or no func- tional use of the song, in the plays that have come down to us. Nash's Summer' s Last Will and Testa- ment is a drama only by courtesy, and the earlier plays of Jonson and Marston are without songs; Chapman was never a successful lyrist, and Flet- cher, Middleton, and Dekker had yet to achieve note in writing for the stage. But in this last , decade of the century, Shakespeare employed lyrics with uniform success in all of his plays except The Comedy of Errors, certain of the histories ( Henry VI, King John, Richard II, and Richard III), '■ Klson, Shakespeare in Music, p. 319. ' Sheavyn, The Literary Profession in the Elizabethan Age, p. 202. SONGS IN SHAKESPEARE 81 and the doubtful tragedy Titus Andronicus. Fur- thermore, all of the later plays contain songs, aside from three which deal with remote periods of ancient history (Timon of Athens, Pericles, and Corio- lanus).^ The practice of his predecessors and contem- poraries, such as it was, may have prompted his use of the dramatic lyric; the ever-increasing popu- larity of the song-books and of the art of singing assured him of an appreciative audience, if not actually one which demanded singing as a prime feature of the performance; but it was Shake- speare's unique achievement to employ the inter- spersed lyrics, hitherto superfluous or altogether irrelevant in Elizabethan drama, to advance the action, localize or enrich the scene, or depict a character, and at times to express the emotion of the noblest tragic moments. 4:^4: :{::(::(: 4f:|c:f: We have seen that Shakespeare inherited the tradition of songs by the clown, the vice, or the devil. It was expected that madmen would sing on the stage, and that the fool would cap Tom o' Bedlam's verse {King Lear, III, vi, 27ff.), all to the infinite delight of the groundlings; that fairies and witches would converse in a peculiar straih, half-incantation, half-song; and that other songs would be introduced at the will of playwright, manager, or singer, upon the one condition that '^ Henry VIII contains the song "Orpheus with his lyre"; but that is excluded from this discussion as the work, presumably, of Fletcher, since it occurs in a scene which is usually conceded to him. S-6. 82 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES there be an abundance of noise. Shakespeare ac- cepted the legacy of tradition, but developed the fool's bauble of song into a magician's wand. In the large, there are in Shakespeare no songs devoid of drama;tic function. Where the scene itself is of trivial consequence, the song serves to enliven the conversational by-play, as when the clown toys with Malvolio in the dungeon (Twelfth Night, IV, ii, 78fl.): Clown. (Singing.) "Hey, Robin, jolly Robin, Tell me how thy lady does." Malvolio. Fool! Clo. "My lady is unkind, perdy." Mai. Fool! Clo. "Alas, why is she so?" Mai. Fool, I say! Clo. "She loves another"— Who calls, ha? 'it is used by the nimble Moth to twit the heavy Don Armado with his love (Love's Labour's Lost, I, ii, 104fT.): If she be made of white and red, Her faults will ne'er be known. For blushing cheeks by faults are bred And fears by pale white shown. At times it assumes the form of flyting or of cap- ping rhymes, as in Jacques' perversion of Amiens' song (As You Like It, II, v, 52ff.), and in the wit- combat between Rosalind and Boyet (Love's La- bour's Lost, IV, i, 127ff.) ; Ros. Thou canst not hit it, hit it, hit it. Thou canst not hit it, my good man. (.Exit (Ros.) Boyet. An I cannot, cannot, cannot, An I cannot, another can. SONGS IN SHAKESPEARE 83 The comment of Costard, which follows, is suffi- ciently explanatory : By my troth, most pleasant. How both did fit it! At times the dramatist uses the song in by-play to secure the most humorous scenes, amusing not for buffoonery but for revelation of human nature. The cowardly Pistol sings (or recites songs) of the peril of war (Henry V, III, ii); the boisterous Bottom sings in the forest to show his skulking comrades that he is unafraid {A Midsummer Nighfs Dream, III, i, 128ff.)- Sir Hugh Evans, the Welsh parson, half dead with fear as he awaits his opponent at the duelling place, sings to keep up his courage, and gets Marlowe confused with the Psalter (The Merry Wives of Windsor, III, i, llff.): Evans. Pless my soul, how full of chollors I am, and trerapling of mind! I shall be glad if he have deceived me. How melan- cholies I am! .... Pless my soul! {Sings.) "To shallow rivers, to whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals; There will we make our peds of roses, And a thousand fragrant posies. To shallow"— Mercy on me! I have a great dispositions to cry. (Sings.) "Melodious birds sing madrigals"^ "When as I sat in Pabylon" — "And a thousand vagram posies. "To shallow," etc. (Re-enter Simple.) Sim. Yonder he is coming; this way, Sir Hugh. Evans. He's welcome. (Sings.) "To shallow rivers, to whose falls" — Heaven prosper the right! What weapons has he? 84 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES Indeed, to an Elizabethan audience there was something exceedingly droll about the singing of any Welshman. Peele used the device in his dis- jointed Edward I; and Shakespeare takes it up with real effectiveness in Henry IV (Part I, III, i, 233ff.), where an amusing passage, vividly por- traying Hotspur in an idle hour, fills up an other- wise tedious interval: (The music plays. Hotspur. Now I perceive the devil understands Welsh; And 'tis no marvel he is so humorous. By'r lady, he is a good musician. Lady Percy. Then should you be nothing but musical, for you are altogether governed by humours. Lie still, ye thief, and hear the lady sing in Welsh. Hot. I had rather hear Lady, my brach, howl in Irish. (Here the lady sings a Welsh song. Hot. Come, Kate, I'll have your song too. Lady P. Not mine, in good sooth. Hot. Not yours, in good sooth! Heart, you swear like a comfit-maker's wife. . . . Swear me, Kate, like a lady as thou art, A good mouth-filling oath, and leave "in sooth," And such protest of pepper-gingerbread, To velvet guards and Sunday-citizens. Come, sing. Lady P. I will not sing. Hot. 'Tis the next way to turn tailor, or be red-breast teacher. An the indentures be drawn, I'll away within these two hours; and so, come in when ye will. (Exit. It will be observed that we have as yet met with no songs by the clown. The clown songs usually serve for special purposes, and at times express the most serious thoughts. Shakespeare's clown was a good musician who sang for all occasions, and we shall be obliged to consider his songs in SONGS IN SHAKESPEARE 85 the order of their respective functions. A similar transformation may be seen in the traditional drinking-song, represented in Anthony and Cleo- patra, Henry IV {Part II), Othello, and Twelfth Night. Only the drinking-songs of Falstaff and Sir Toby are free from the powerful overtones of dramatic significance with which Shakespeare charged his music; the other Bacchic passages are prophetic of impending disaster. Even the scene in Twelfth Night (II, iii, 36ff.) serves for character- ization more than for convivial humor. There is something pathetically human about the gross old knight and his withered dupe, sitting in the drunken gravity of midnight to hear the clown sing of the fresh love of youth: Clown. Would you have a love-song, or a song of good life? Sir Toby. A love-song, a love-song. Sir Andrew. Ay, ay. I care not for good life. Clo. (Sings.) mistress mine, where are you roaming? 0, stay and hear, your true love's coming, In delay there lies no plenty; Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty. Youth's a stuff will not endure. Sir And. A mellifluous voice, as I am true knight. Sir To. A contagious breath. Sir And. Very sweet and contagious, i' faith. Sir To. To hear by the nose, it is dulcet in contagion. But shall we make the welkin dance indeed? Shall we rouse the night-owl in a catch that will draw three souls out of one weaver? Shall we do that? Sir And. An you love me, let's do't. I am dog at a catch. The song is used once as an epilogue (Twelfth Night, V, i, 398ff.), when Feste, most lyrical of 86 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES clowns, is given a chance to commend himself by his voice as well as his legs; and it serves numerous times to bring a character on or off the stage. Rosalind escapes from her word-combat with Boyet in the song quoted previously; the two witch songs in Macbeth (III, v, and IV, ii) — not the familiar chanted speeches — are solely for the purpose of facilitating exits; and Autolycus and Ariel, most musical and most unlike of Shakespeare's singers, come and go in song. At times the singing exit marks the close of a dialogue or scene, as when Feste echoes the interludes (Twelfth Night, IV, ii, 130ff.): I am gone, sir. And anon, sir, I'll be with you again. In a trice. Like to the old Vice, etc. At times the singing exit marks the conclusion of a change in one of the characters, as when Caliban has fallen completely under the influence of drink and the wiles of man (The Tempest, II, ii, 182ff.): Caliban. iSings drunkenly.) Farewell, master; farewell, farewell! Trinculo. A howling monster; a drunken monster! Cal. No more dams I'll make for fish; Nor fetch in firing At requiring; Nor scrape trenchering, nor wash dish. 'Ban, 'Ban, Cacaliban Has a new master, get a new man. Freedom, hey-day! hey-day, freedom! freedom, hey-day, freedom! Stephana. brave monster! Lead the way. {Exeunt. SONGS IN SHAKESPEARE 87 A surprisingly large number of the songs serve^ for what might be called pagan ritual, a fact which is especially conspicuous because Christian ritual is absent. This class may be said to include the two witch songs in Macbeth, and the fairy and mock-fairy songs in A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and The Tempest; but it is represented more accurately by the songs which occur in special ceremonies, as in Much Ado About Nothing (V, iii), As You Like It (V, iv), and Cymbeline (IV, ii), and The Tempest (IV, i). That fairies and witches should sing was a convention sufficiently established; but the frequent occur- rence of masque or other musical ceremonial in the middle and later plays is less easily explained. No doubt it is due, in part, to the taste of the masque-loving age, and (especially if The Tempest was written or revised for court performance) to the passion which King James and his queen enter- tained for musical pageantry. These passages must have been effective on the stage, however excrescent they may seem to a modern reader, 'j as in Much Ado (V, iii, entire scene), where Don Pedro and Claudio, with attendants, enter the church at night, bearing torches, to honor the memory of Hero, whom they consider slain by slander. An epitaph is hung on the tomb, and this song is sung: Pardon, goddess of the night, Those that slew thy virgin knight; 1 The song which follows is not without dramatic function, however, since it is part of the friar's plan for arousing remorse in Claudio (IV, i, 213). 88 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES For the which, with songs of woe, Round about her tomb they go. Midnight, assist our moan; Help us to sigh and groan. Heavily, heavily. Graves, yawn and yield your dead. Till death be uttered, Heavily, heavily. This leads us to the consideration of songs for descriptive effect and atmosphere. The duet be- tween Spring and Winter in Love's Labour's Lost (V, ii) needs no quoting. The lark song in Cym- beline (II, iii) ushers in the full beauty of dawn, strangely contrasted with the scene just preceding. As Dr. Furness remarks, it comes "laden with heaven's pure, refreshing breath after the stifling presence of lachimo in Imogen's chamber." Per- haps the most notable examples of this device are the songs in As You Like It (II, v and vii; IV, ii; and V, iii). Here we feel no lack of painted scenery. The sylvan surroundings of the exiled courtier, the character of his comrades, and the misfortunes of his noble patron are condensed into such lines as these (II, vii, 174ff.) : Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man's ingratitude; Thy tooth is not so keen, Because thou art not seen, Although thy breath be rude. Heigh-ho! sing, heigh ho! unto the green holly. Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly. Then, heigh-ho, the holly! This life is most jolly. With great frequency songs are employed chiefly for characterization. Pandarus betrays himself SONGS IN SHAKESPEARE 89 by his mock-song of love {Troilus and Cressida, III, i), and Mercutio draws fire from the old nurse by his insinuating snatches {Romeo and Juliet, II, iv). On the other hand, Benedick ridicules not love itself, but his own power of song, while he is awaiting Beatrice (Much Ado, V, ii, 26ff.): (,Sings.) The god of love, That sits above, And knows me, and knows me, How pitiful I deserve,— I mean in singing; but in loving, Leander the good swimmer, Troilus the first employer of panders, and a whole bookful of these quondam carpet-mongers, whose names yet run smoothly in the even road of a blank verse, why, they were never so truly turn'd over and over as my poor self in love. Marry, I cannot show it in rhyme. I have tried. I can find out no rhyme to "lady" but "baby," an innocent rhyme; for "scorn," "horn," a hard rhyme; "school," "fool," a babbling rhyme; very omi- nous endings. No, I was not born under a rhyming planet, nor I cannot woo in festival terms. The melancholy Duke Orsino moves to melan- choly music. At the opening of the play he is listening to a mournful air, and in the next act he calls for a despairing song of love {Twelfth Night, II, iv, 52ff.): Come away, come away, death, And in sad cypress let me be laid. Fly away, fly away, breath; I am slain by a fair cruel maid. My shroud of white, etc. The songs in As You Like It, as we have sug- gested, serve for characterization as well as de- scription. The cynical strain in Jacques is nowhere better shown than in his parody of Amiens' song of sylvan contentment (II, v, 52ff.) : 90 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES If it do come to pass That any man turn ass, Leaving his wealth and ease A stubborn will to please, Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame! Here shall he see Gross fools as he. An if he will come to me. Not infrequently the revelation of character is of this sort: the speaker shows his own nature by his comment on the song of another. Honest Benedick is frank to admit his ignorance of music (Much Ado, II, iii, 60ff.) : Bene. Now, divine air! now is his soul ravish'd! Is it not strange that sheeps' guts should hale souls out of men's bodies? Well, a horn for my money, when all's done. Cloten is bewrayed by his speech when he com- ments on the fresh lyric of love at morning, which he has caused to be sung by Imogen's apartments, in the effort to win her from her absent lord (Cym- beline, II, iii, 12ff.) : Cloten. I am advised to give her music o' mornings; they say it will penetrate. Enter Musicians. Song. Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings. And Phoebus gins arise His steeds to water at those springs On chalic'd flowers that lies; And winking Mary-buds begin To ope their golden eyes; With every thing that pretty is. My lady sweet, arise, Arise, arise. (Clo.) So, get you gone. If this penetrate, I will consider your music the better; if it do not, it is a vice in her ears, which horse-hairs and calves'-guts, nor the voice of unpaved eunuch to boot, can never amend. SONGS IN SHAKESPEARE 91 This is the language of the stable after the song of the lark — violent contrast, but surely vivid char- acterization. We are not surprised, shortly after, when the speaker plans a terrible revenge upon Imogen. The grief for the supposed death of Juliet is brought out by Peter's unsuccessful appeal to the musicians to play something to cheer him (Romeo and Juliet, IV, v, 102ff.). Othello will not hear the musicians whom Cassio has brought to his house (Othello, III, i). In similar fashion, but far more effectively, the gentler side of Brutus' nature, which distinguishes the patriot from his heartless confederate, is developed in his comment on a blank song, just before the ghost appears in the tent (Julius Caesar, IV, iii, 255ff.) : Brutus. Bear with me, good boy, I am much forgetful. Canst thou hold up thy heavy eyes a while. And touch thy instrument a strain or two? Lucius. Ay, my lord, an 't please you. Brutus. It does, my boy. I trouble thee too much, but thou art willing. {Music, and a song. Brutus. This is a sleepy tune. murderous slumber, Lay'st thou thy leaden mace upon my boy, That plays thee music? Gentle knave, good-night; I will not do thee so much wrong to wake thee. If thou dost nod, thou break' st thy instrument. I'll take it from thee; and, good boy, good-night. The ballad snatches in the mouth of Ophelia, weirdly contrasting with the secluded innocence of her life, indicate clearly the joint causes of her derangement. The objectionable ballads, doubt- 92 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES less childhood recollections of a nurse's songs, are discordant echoes of Hamlet's defection. The clown's blundering version of "The Aged Lover Renounceth Love" shows his illiteracy, besides acting as a melancholy reminder of the unfortu- nate lovers, as a barrel-organ plays old tunes that call up painful memories. The character of Ste- phano is outlined by his songs the moment he comes upon the stage (The Tempest, II, ii). His degrading influence upon Caliban is foreshad- owed; it is only a step before the poor creature reels off the stage to attempt a murder, singing of new-found freedom. The character of Ariel is re- vealed to us almost entirely through song. He is a Greek messenger, telling us of feats which he performs offstage; but he does not lift a hand in our presence, except to attire Prospero (V, i), and even that is done to music. Much the same is true of Autolycus; in two successive scenes he gives us no less than seven different songs or frag- ments, highly characteristic of his joyous roguery, which raises his whole-hearted rascality so far above the common level that it partakes of the out-door freshness of innocence {The Winter's Tale, IV, iii, 132ff.): Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way, And merrily hent the stile-a; A merry heart goes all the day, Your sad heart tires in a mile-a. When the songs were already familiar to the audience, they must have served for a naturalistic SOiSTGS IN SHAKESPEARE 93 and humanizing effect. The insane daughter of a Danish courtier seems cold and distant; but a young girl singing ballads and babbling the folk- lore of flowers must have been very comprehensi- ble to an Elizabethan audience. A similar effect must have been secured by the clown's song in Hamlet, Sir Hugh's version of "The Passionate Shepherd" in The Merry Wives, and all the frag- ments of balladry that appear in the plays. At times the song expresses, directly or indi- rectly, the judgment of characters or audience, or any pertinent truth. The pretended fairies in The Merry Wives censure the licentious Falstaff (V, v); and the Fool's songs, uttered when prose counsel would not have been tolerated, are the first emphatic hint of the king's real condition (Kiriff Lear, I, iv). Even more effective is the broken passage of folk-song put in the mouth of the pretended madman, when Lear's estate has reached its lowest, and he is forced to enter a hovel for shelter from the storm (III, iv, 187ff.) : Child Rowland to the dark tower came; His word was still," etc. There is reason to suppose that the groundlings were amused by the incoherent utterances of Edgar. If there is more in it than entertainment, the credit is Shakespeare's. The song is frequently used to incite characters to or against action. Bassanio's choice of the leaden casket is directed by the song of Fancy 94 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES (The Merchant of Venice, III, ii), as is indicated by his soliloquy, beginning (73ff .) : So may the outward shows be least themselves; The world is still deceiv'd with ornament. lago sings two songs to incite Gassio to become drunk before the brawl with Roderigo. lago re- mains sober throughout (Othello, II, iii, 66ff.): Cassio. 'Fore God, they have given me a rouse already. Montana. Good faith, a little one; not past a pint, as I am a soldier. lago. Some wine, ho! (Sings.) "And let me the canakin clink, clink; And let me the canakin clink. A soldier's a man; 0, man's life's but a span; Why, then, let a soldier drink." Some wine, boys! Cas. 'Fore God, an excellent song. Let's have no more of this; let's to our affairs. — God forgive us our sins! — Gentlemen, let's look to our business. Do not think, gentlemen, that I am drunk. This is my ancient; this is my right hand, and this is my left. I am not drunk now; I can stand well enough, and I speak well enough. And so he staggers off to his ruinous meeting with Roderigo. Two snatches are sung by Petruchio, as part of his system for breaking his wife's tem- per (The Taming of the Shrew, IV, i). Titania is put to sleep and awakened by singing (A Mid- summer Night's Dream, II, i; III, i), though the latter is the accidental result of Bottom's song to show his courage. Still, it serves as an effective introduction of the metamorphosed weaver to the enamored queen. Ariel's invisible music lulls the shipwrecked courtiers to sleep, and permits the SONGS IN SHAKESPEARE 95 conspiracy of Antonio and Sebastian to develop; his song in Gonzalo's ear arouses the old man in time to save the king (The Tempest, II, i). Indeed, as we have said, Ariel's invisible power is made manifest to us through song alone. When the drunken conspirators come to seek the life of Prospero, they attempt to sing (III, ii, 133ff.): Caliban. That's not the tune. {Ariel plays the tune on a tabor and pipe. Stephana. What is this same? Trinculo. This is the tune of our catch, played by the picture of Nobody. Cal. Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices That, if I then had wak'd after long sleep, Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, The clouds methought would open and show riches Ready to drop upon me, that, when I wak'd, I cried to dream again. Ste. This will prove a brave kingdom to me, where I shall have my music for nothing. Cal. When Prospero is destroy'd. Ste. That shall be by and by. I remember the story. Trin. The sound is going away. Let's follow it, and after do our work. So they are led into a filthy pool. Ariel draws Ferdinand from the coast to Miranda's presence, by singing "Come unto these yellow sands"; and he persuades the prince of his father's death, thus recalling his grief and preparing him for a new and unreserved affection (I, ii, 396ff.) : Ariel's Song. Full fathom five thy father lies; ab SHAKESPEARE STUDIES Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes; Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Ferdinand. This ditty does remember my drown'd father. He does hear me; And that he does I weep. Myself am Naples, Who with mine eyes, never since at ebb, beheld The King my father wreck'd. Miranda. Alack, for mercy! Prospero. At the first sight They have chang'd eyes. Delicate Ariel, I'll set thee free for this. At times the song is used to heighten the emo- tion of a special situation, as well as to incite to action, as ii\ Ophelia's ravings {Hamlet, IV, v, 164fl.): "They bore him barefac'd on the bier; Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny; And on his grave rains many a tpar," — Fare you well, my dove! Laertes. Hadst thou thy wits and didst persuade revenge. It could not move thus. Ophelia. There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember; and there is pansies, that's for thoughts. (Sings.) "And will he not come again? And will he not come again? No, no, he is dead; Go to thy death-bed; He never will come again." Laertes. Do you see this, you gods? And when Claudius suggests that Laertes kill SONGS IN SHAKESPEARE 97 Hamlet, by fair fight or by poison, the young man is ready for either means of revenge. At times the song serves for heightened emotion, without incitement to action. The songs of Edgar before the hovel serve this purpose (King Lear, III, iv, 187ff.). The serenade to Silvia is over- heard by Julia, disguised in boy's clothing, and it gives her intense pain; for it is the token of her lover's falsehood, the libation which fickle Proteus is pouring on a new shrine (The Two Gentlemen of Verona, IV, ii, 30ff.) : Host. Come, we'll have you merry. I'll bring you where you shall hear music and see the gentleman that you ask'd for. Julia. But shall I hear him speak? Host. Ay, that you shall. Jul. That will be music. {Music plays.) Host. Hark, hark! Jul. Is he among these? Host. Ay; but, peace! let's hear 'em. Song. Who is Silvia? What is she, That all our swains commend her? Holy, fair, and wise is she; The heaven such grace did lend her. That she might admired be. Host. How now! are you sadder than you were before? How do you, man? The music likes you not. Jul. You mistake; the musician likes me not. Host. Why, my pretty youth? Jul. He plays false, father. Host. How? Out of tune on the strings? Jul. Not so; but yet so false that he grieves my very heart- strings. Host. Hark, what a fine change is in the music! Jul. Ay, that change is the spite. Host. You would have them always play but one thing? Jul. I would always have one play but one thing. S-7. 98 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES The disconsolate grief of the deserted Mariana finds utterance in the song a boy sings for her at the moated grange (Measure for Measure, IV, i, Iff.): Take, 0, take those lips away, That so sweetly were forsworn; And those eyes, the break of day. Lights that do mislead the morn; But my kisses bring again, bring again; Seals of love, but seal'd in vain, seal'd in vain. Of a similar kind is the dirge for Imogen in the forest. After hastening to meet Posthumus and finding that he has ordered her death, after being pursued by Cloten and drugged into insensibility by the cordial which the queen has sent her for poison, she lies as if dead. The poignancy of the situation is intensified by the fact that the singers are disguised princes, her brothers, ignorant of her birth and theirs, and their supposed father is a banished nobleman (Cymbeline, IV, ii, 258ff.) : Fear no more the heat o' the sun, Nor the furious winter's rages; Thou thy worldly task hast done. Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages. Golden lads and girls all must. As chimney-sweepers, come to dust. Fear no more the frown o' the great; Thou art past the tyrant's stroke. Care no more to clothe and eat; To thee the reed is as the oak. Fear not slander, censure rash; Thou hast fmish'd joy and moan. Not only is the song used to heighten the scene in which it occurs, but it may at the same time SONGS IN SHAKESPEARE 99 foreshadow what is to come. The clown's song in All's Well that Ends Well (I, iii, 74ff.) possibly serves for this purpose; for Helena is the one good woman in ten. A clearer example, where frailty of the opposite sex is charged, is found in Much Ado About Nothing, where the song serves to foreshadow the jealousy of Claudio (II, iii, 64ff.) : Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever. One foot in sea and one on shore, To one thing constant never. Then sigh not so, but let them go. And be you blithe and bonny, Converting all your sounds of woe Into Hey nonny nonny. Benedick. ... I pray God his bad voice bode no mischief. I had as lief have heard the night-raven, come what plague could have come after it. Don Pedro. Yea, marry; dost thou hear, Balthasar? I pray thee, get us some excellent music; for to-morrow night we would have it at the Lady Hero's chamber-window. In Anthony and Cleopatra (II, vii, 120ff.), the drinking song is rendered, with joined hands and drunken good fellowship, shortly before the final quarrel of the triumvirs. The forced air of con- viviality but thinly covers the increasing animosity; the host of the evening is tempted to slay his guests and make himself lord of Rome, and the man who places the singers hand in hand for the song is no other than Enobarbus, who later deserts Anthony at his greatest need. Perhaps the most familiar example of this lyric foreboding is the song of Desdemona {Othello, IV, iii, 41ff.): 100 SONGS IN SHAKESPEARE Desdemona. (Singing.) "The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree, Sing all a green willow; Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee. Sing willow, willow, willow. The fresh streams ran by her, and murmur'd her moans; Sing willow, willow, willow; Her salt tears fell from her, and soft'ned the stones; Let nobody blame him, his scorn I approve," — Nay, that's not the next. — ^Hark! who is 't that knocks? Emilia. It's the wind. Des. (Singing.) "I call'd my love false love; but what said he then? Sing willow, willow, willow. If I court moe women, you'll couch with moe men." — So, get you gone; good-night. Mine eyes do itch; Doth that bode weeping? This song is beautifully echoed in the dying words of Emilia, which confirm Othello's resolution to slay himself (V, ii, 246fT.): Emilia. What did thy song bbde, lady? Hark, canst thou hear me? I will play the swan. And die in music. (Singing.) "Willow, willo'w, willow!" — Moor, she was chaste; she lov'd thee, cruel Moor; So come my soul to bliss, as I speak true; So speaking as I think, alas, I die. Equally effective dramatically, though far less not- able as poetry, are the songs of Master Silence whichjo reshadow the disgrace of Falstaff {Henry IV, Part II, V, iii, 18ff.; v, 51ff.): Silence. (Singing.) "Do nothing but eat, and make good cheer. And praise God for the merry year. When flesh is cheap and females dear, And lusty lads roam here and there So merrily, And ever among so merrily." DEFENCE OF THE STAGE 101 Falslaff. There's a merry heart! Good Master Silence, I'll give you a health for that anon. What, IS the old king dead? Pistpl. As nail in door. The things I speak are just. Fal. Away, Bardolph! saddle my horse. Master Robert Shallow, choose what office thou wilt in the land, 'tis thine .... Carry Master Silence to bed. Master Shallow, my Lord Shallow, — be what thou wilt; I am Fortune's steward — get on my boots. We'll ride all night. King. I know thee not, old man; fall to thy prayers. How ill white hairs become a fool and jester! I have long dream'd of such a kind of man. So surfeit-swell'd, so old, and so profane; But, being awak'd, I do despise my dream. We have seen that Shakespeare was virtually the first Elizabethan drainatist to make systematic employment of the song for dramatic purposes; that he used either blank, fragmentary, or com- plete songs in all of the plays but nine, of which several are, at least in part, by other hands; that his songs are inseparable from the context, and that even the few blank ones are closely imbedded in the conversation, if not indeed the action, of the scene; and that they serve not for the gross humor of boisterous clownage or of raving mad- ness, but for the subtle and delightful portrayal of human nature, the enrichment of scene or atmo- sphere, the expression of thought or mood inappro- priate for the speeches, the motivation of action, the heightening of emotional effect, and the fore- shadowing of what is to come. In at least one case the song projects our imaginations not merely into the next scene or act, but beyond the end 102 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES of the play into the future which is yet unrevealed. Ariel, never actually free during the action of The Tempest, on account of the exigencies of the situation, is allowed, after Prospero has again promised him freedom, to give us a glimpse of his fairy life in the years that are to come (V, i, 88ff .) : Where the bee sucks, there suck 1. In a cowslip's bell I lie; There I couch when owls do cry. On a bat's back I do fly After summer merrily. Merrily, merrily shall I live now Under the blossom that hangs on the bough. "The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo." AN ELIZABETHAN DEFENCE OF THE STAGE KARL YOUNG Nothing in the annals of Elizabethan literature is more familiar than the special Puritan attack upon the stage that wore on through a decade or two after the erection of The Theatre and The Curtain in the Liberties of London in 1576-77. The pamphlet invectives of Northbrooke, Gosson, and Stubbes are, indeed, greatly to be cherished, not only as capital illustrations of the perennial spirit of Puritanism, but also as invaluable com- munications concerning the type of audience and the sort of dramatic material with which Shake- speare and his early competitors were concerned. It is too often assumed, however, that the attack was directed indiscriminately against the whole dramatic species, and that for the Puritan the phrase "vain plays and interludes" was all-inclu- sive. The corrective for such a view of the matter may be illustrated from the famous Treatise of Northbrooke himself, for he can describe at least one kind of play in which there is no guile : I thinke it is lawefull for a schoolmaster to practise his schol- lers to playe comedies, obseruing these and the like cautions: first, that those comedies which they shall play be not mixt with [103] 104 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES anye ribaudrie and filthie termes and wordes (which corrupt good manners). Secondly, that it be for learning and vtterance sake, in Latine, and very seldome in Englishe. Thirdly, that they vse not to play commonly and often, but verye rare and seldome. Fourthlye, that they be not pranked and decked vp in gorgious and sumptions apparell in their play. Fiftly, that it be not made a common exercise, publickly, for profit and gaine of money, but for learning and exercise sake. And lastly, that their comedies be not mixte with vaine and wanton toyes of loue. These being obserued, I iudge it tollerable for schollers.' From such an utterance it appears that North- brooke's mind was at rest in regard to the Latin drama of the schools and universities; and it would seem natural for the earnest controversialist to assume that the plays produced in the halls of Oxford and Cambridge should be pure in purpose and effect, and that at the University, at least, one need stir no quarrel over the immorality of the drama. Such an assumption, however, was not justified by fact; for the universities not only joined hands with London Puritans in condemning the public performances of "common players"; they also developed a substantial private contro- versy over plays written and performed within their own walls "for learning and vtterance sake, in Latine." Of this controversy the most conspicuous evi- dence is from Oxford, and the narrative begins with the performance of three Latin plays of Wil- liam Gager in the hall of Christ Church at Shrove- tide, 1592: on Sunday, February 5, Ulysses Redux; on Monday, February 6, Riuales; on Tues- day, February 7, an adaptation of Seneca's Hip- ' Publications of the Shakespeare Society, London, 1843, p. 104. DEFENCE OF THE STAGE 105 polytus. To witness these performances, Dr. Thomas Thornton, a friend and colleague of Gager, had twice invited the learned Dr. John Rainolds, of Queen's College. Irritated by the repeated in- vitation, Dr. Rainolds sent to Dr. Thornton, on Monday, February 6, a letter in which he set forth his reasons for declining. Without showing this letter to Gager, Thornton merely informed him later that Rainolds had civilly declined on the ground that it was not his habit to attend plays. At the close of the third play, on Tuesday, Feb- ruary 7, Gager brought upon the stage the comic figure of Momus, who not only passed severe strictures upon Gager's three plays, but also took an extreme position in opposition to acting and plays in general. This dramatic device included an Epilogus Responsivus, in which the objections of Momus were deftly met and held up for ridicule. Although the "devyse of Momus" had been "con- ceyved and penned longe before" Rainolds wrote to Thornton, had been shown to the latter "a monthe before," and had been intended merely as "a iest to serve a turn,"^ the similarity between the main arguments advanced in Rainolds' letter and certain objections ridiculously uttered by Momus gave offence to the learned scholar of Queen's College, induced between Rainolds and Gager a correspondence of which the earlier part has been lost, and inspired a sermon by an unknown young fellow of Queen's College upon the text in ^ The quotations in this sentence are from Gager's unpublished letter to Rainolds preserved in Corpus Christi College Ms., 352, p. 42. 106 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES Deuteronomy xxii, 5, which forbids men to assume the apparel of women. It was probably these un- friendly outbursts that prompted Gager to publish, in May, 1592, the text of Ulysses Redux, including Momus and an enlarged version of the Epilogus Responsivus, and to send a presentation copy to Rainolds. In acknowledgment of his gift Gager received a long letter, dated July 10, 1592, in which Rainolds reaffirmed and amplified the ob- jections to plays previously advanced in his letter to Thornton and echoed, — derisively, as it had seemed, — from the lips of Momus. To this com- munication Gager replied, on July 31, in a long and notable letter, in which Rainolds' censorious argu- ments were met point by point with ample scholar- ship and good temper. Although Gager concluded his letter by expressing the hope that his corres- pondent would thenceforth confine the controversy to "pryvatt conference," and would desist from "furder replye in wrytinge,"^ Rainolds returned to the attack, on May 30, 1593, with a letter of por- tentous bulk and truculence. This document con- sists essentially in a minute dissection of Gager's letter, rather than in substantial additions to the matter of the argument. To this violent utterance Gager offered no reply, and with it the direct con-s troversy between the two men ceased.^ • Corpus Christi College MS. 352, p. 65. ' An admirable account of this controversy is given by F. S. Boas, Universiiy Drama in the Tudor Age, Oxford, 1914, pp. 229-251. The highly technical continuation of it by Rainolds and Albericus Gentilis is recounted by Boas, pp. 244-248. / DEFENCE OF THE STAGE 107 From this outline it appears that the chief docu- ments in the debate are the following: (1) Rainolds' letter to Thornton, dated February 6, 1592; (2) Gager's device of Momus, acted on February 7, 1592; (3) Rainolds' letter to Gager, dated July 10, 1592; (4) Gager's letter to Rainolds, dated July 31, 1592; (5) Rainolds' second letter to Gager, dated May 30, 1593. Of these writings three hgve been published. As we have observed above, the text of Gager's Momus appeared among the appendices of his Ulysses Redux, published at Oxford in May, 1592. The two letters addressed by Rainolds to Gager occupy the greater part of a little volume bearing the courageous title, Th' overthrow \ of Stage-Playes, | By the way of controversie betwixt \ D. Gager andD. Rainoldes, wherein all the reasons | that can be made for them are notably refuted ;th' ob- \ jec- tions aunswered, and the case so cleared and re- \ solved, as that the iudgement of any man, that \ is not froward and perverse, may \ easelie be satisfied. | Wherein is manifestly proved, that it is not only vnlaw- \ full to bee an Actor, but a beholder | of those vanities. \ Wherevnto are added also and annexed in th' end certeine latine I Letters betwixt the sayed Maister Rainoldes, and D. | Gentiles, Reader of the CivillLaw in Oxford, | concer- ning the same matter. | 1599. In 1600 the sheets of this volume were reissued, with a fresh title-page 108 DEFENCE OF THE STAGE that names Middleburgh as the place of publi- cation; and in 1629 a new edition appeared from the press of Oxford University Strangely enough, the first and fourth docu- ments in the controversy have never been printed. This neglect can scarcely be due to a lack of in- herent importance; for in his letter of February 6 to Thornton, Rainolds carefully defines his posi- tion, and either outlines or mentions the issues that form the frame-work of the subsequent dis- pute; and Gager's letter of July 31 to Rainolds constitutes the one explicit and substantial reply to Rainolds' attack. With inevitable interest, then, one turns to these letters themselves. Rain- olds writes as follows:^ Syr because your curteous inviting of me yesterdaye againe to your plaies dothe shewe you were not satisfied with my answer and reason therof before geven, why I might not be at them: I have thought good by writinge to open that vnto yow which, if tyme had served to vtter them by word of mouthe, I doute not but yow would haue rested satisfied therwith: ffor both I perceaued by that your selfe spake of men in wemens raiment, that some of your players were so to be attired: & that you acknowledged, that, if this were unlawfull, I might iustlie be vnwilling to approve it by my presence. Now for myne owne parte in deed I am perswaded that it is vnlawfull because the scripture saythe a woman shall not weare that whiche pertaineth 1 Corpus Christi College MS. 352, pp. 11-14. The letter is headed as follows: A Letter of Dr J. Rainolds to D' W" Gager (.LL.D.) shewing his reasons why he did not accept his invitation to see his play acted, i*' Reason taken from the unlawfulness of wearing a habitt proper to a different sex. 2^ because acted on ye Lords day. S^ufrom ye doubts of his own mind. Another hand has, very properly, deleted the words Dr. W" Gager (LL.D.) and has substituted the following: an unknown friend f arson Tho. Thornton. Bid. Ath. Oxon. 1st nol. pages 409 & 754 & Dr Rainold' answ'' to Dr Gager in his Ovthrow of Stage plays p. 1 & lb. p. 49. The same letter, with trifling va- riants, is found in Bodleian MS. Tanner 77, fol. 35''-36'', where it bears the following heading : A letter of D. Rainolds to D. Thornton who requested him to see a stage playe. In my text from C.C.C. MS. 352 I omit Rainolds' marginal references to his authorities. SHAKESPEARE STUDIES 109 to a man, nether shall a man put on ivomans raiment: for all that do so ar abhomination to the lord thy god: ffor this being spoken generally of all, and haueing no exception of plaies in the scripture (for ought that I knowe) must be taken generallie, as ment of them also : according to the rule obserued in humaine lawes, but reaching to divine by equall force of reason; that we may not distinguishe wher the lawe distinguisheth not and things being generallie set downe without distinction ar to be likwyse taken: Else as the sluggard saithe with himself, a litle sleepe, a litle slumber, a litle folding of the hands, against the generall prohibition and restraint of slouthf ullnes : so against the generall prohibition of idolatrie may the papist saye, a litle worshipping of images: of adulterie, the whoremonger, a litle single fornication of theft, the covetous wretch, a little simonie, briberie, userie. Nether am I moved by this reason onelie to think that as no breache of these commanndements is lawfuU, so nether of the other, no not in plaies and spectacles, but also by the iudgment of such christian writers, as I dare not dissent from, vnlesse I se them cleerlie convinced of error by the word: Caluin as sounde and learned an interpreter of the scriptures as anie synce the apostles times in my opinion after he had shewed the daunger of vnmodest wantonnes and wickednesse for w/iich the Lord forbideth men and wemen to chaunge rai- ment://or most true (saith he) is that profane poets saying: Quem prestare potest mulier galeata pudorem. In which, word sith Juvenal condemneth Romane wemen who wzth helmet on did learne to playe theire warlike parts in games like fensers; and Caluin saith that Moses controUeth in both sexes the proportion of that which. Juvenal doth in one: it followeth that Caluin thought men to be forbidden by the lawe of God, to weare a ffrench hoode or other habiliments of wemen, yea though in plaies and enterludes. Hyperius whose writings ar iustlie commended, as most sound and leared too, in a treatise pur- poselie made against abuses [p. 12] of these shroft-tide daliances, saith the same directlie, affirming that mens wering of wemens raiment in such sort is plainlie pronounced abhominable by 'that lawe as a greater sine then commonlie is thought:,/ In like sort doth Cyprian urge it against a stage-plaier, saying that by the lawe men ar forbidden to put on a womens garment: and such as do it are iudged accursed. In lyke sorte TertuUian not vpon occasion of anie one stage player, making a trade of it but generallie touching stage-playes. And Chrysostom en- treating of the manifold staines wherwrth the ar blemished, and rekenninge there amongst satanicall, diuelish apparrell doth 110 DEFENCE OF THE STAGE touch wj'th this sharpe and peremtorie censure men wearing wemens attire, as appeareth by the words following compared with that other wher he noteth of the lawe condemning this offence in men: FfmaUie the byshops to the number of aboue two himdred & twenty assembled in the Emperors palace at Constantinople, the sixt generall counsell not thinkinge it enough to forbid this abuse receaued then in playes and pag- eants, did decree farder {which, argueth how grevous a crime they demede it) that whatsoeuer man did put on wemens raiment, if he were of the clergie, he should be degraded: if of the laitie excommunicated. Now whatsoeuer weight this iudgment of the church shall haue in youre eyes, or whatsoeuer iudgment youre self haue of the text of scripture which I reste on: yow se that I, thinking the thinge to be vnlawfuU, shall sinne (yf I approved it) at least, in doinge of that which is not of faith if not in hauinge fellowship with the vnfruitfull workes of darknes, and this for that one circumstance which your self mentioned, and toucheth (it may be) all youre plaies. Or, if it do not, yet there ar so manie circumstances beside, some wherof do touch all cheiflie beinge set forth, with such preparation, and charge, as youres ar, that although my self perhaps might behold them- without takinge harme, yet should I feare the daunger, which by my example might be bred to others if I were present at them. The qualitie and importance of these sundrie circum- stances, some in the matter, some in the forme, some otherwise often hurtfull, as lamentable experience by effects and con- sequences hath shewed in too manie, what players what be- holders: nether doth want of laysure permit me now to open, nor is it needfull to yow, who knowe what hath beene written herof by godlie fathers not onelie those I named but also Lacfantius Basill Epiphanius, Ambrose Austin, others: for though it be true that some of their speaches reprove the Gentiles stage-plaies, and note some fawts also that oures ar free frome peradventure: yet manie [p. 13] of their reasons doe touch oures as neearlie, as may be proved as soundlie as the former of wemens raiment, nether ar reiected more iustlie by stage patrones, then scriptures and fathers reproving Idole worship ar cast of by Bellarmin, as checkinge Jewish or heathen- ish idoles not Catholike images of the Papists. Howbeit were it onelie some of the fathers iudgment grounded (as I thinke) vpon scripture: you see againe the bond of dutie in me to refraine from that which in my conscience God condemneth; Cheiflie it beinge condemned by godlie lawes of Emperours too, at least in us, and by cannons of councells yea by the canon DEFENCE OF THE STAGE 111 lawe in corrupter times, and Popish counsels of late yeares, yea seing (which is more) the verie light of reason hath taught whole common weales of heathens some to counte the actors thereof infamous persons, some to reiecte the plaies themselves: as Philosophers also and politit[i]ans haue done. That I should be affraide least St. Paules reprofe in a like matter. Doth not nature it self teach yow: wold make me to blush, if I should giue countenaunce to that wAich naturall men by the instincte of common humanitie and care of vertue haue blamed as vnfit for honest civil states. To conclud, howsoeuer these reasons and persuasions all might be repliede to, yet the daye is suche, as the profaninge of it being most offensiue in the eyes of the faithfull who call for the sanctifieinge of the Sabbat, would force me to request yow to haue me excused. The rather for that Theodosius and Valentinian with other Christian Emperours who tolerated stage-plaies, yet ordained by lawe that the should not be vsed in anie case on sundaye The Lords day as after the scripture phrase they terme it. Wherin how much ther is to be consydered by vs we shall perceaue the better, if we marke that god would not haue the worke of his owne sanctuarie to let or interrupt the Sabbat daies rest as Tremellius, & Junius well obserue; much lesse such worke, as this, which of all likly- hoode the necessarye dressing vp of youre stage & players dothe require this daye. [p. 14] Thus haue I beene bould for the care I haue of approvinge, if not my iudgment, myne action at least vnto yow, whome for manie causes I reverence & love, to seeke to satisfie yow, least yow should misdeme me to trans^ gresse the precept. Be not thou just over much, while I studie only to obserue the other Be not thou wicked over much. Which praying yow to interpret and take all in the best part as I doute not but yow will, I commend yow to the gracious blessinge of the highest, who gaue vs eyes to see what is acceptable in his sight, and willing harts to do it. Queenes college Febr: 6. 1591. The main positions taken by Rainolds appear to be the following: 1. The wearing of women's apparel by men is condemned by Scripture, by Christian writers, and by Church councils. 2. The acting of plays entails an undue waste of time and money. 112 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES 3. Plays have a vicious moral effect upon actors and audience. 4. Actors were considered "infamous persons" even by the civil law of "whole common weales of heathens." 5. The performance of plays on the Sabbath is a profanation of the day. These fundamental contentions, supported with amplitude and erudition in Rainolds' two letters to Gager, subsequently printed and reprinted, are aptly met in the substantial manuscript letter of Gager with which we are now concerned. Unhap- pily the length of this humane document precludes the full printing of it on the present occasion. An adequate conception of its tone and content, how- ever, may be formed from illustrative passages.' Following the order of the strictures in Rainolds' letter to Thornton, we observe, in the first place, that Gager was well aware of the scriptural tra- dition condemning men's wearing the apparel of women, and that he was provided with a broad interpretation of the crucial passage in Deuterono- my, xxii, 5: Wherfor my twoe examples, beinge taken as thay ought to be, and in that vnderstandinge, that I applyed them for, this consequution rightely foUowethe, Non ergo iuueni est grande simpliciter nefas, Mollem puellam induere. which proposition I assuminge to be trwe (as I thinke it is most trwe) I strayte fell to the expowndinge of the place in Deute. thus; Non ergo vestis fxminea iuueni est scelus, Sed praua mens, libido, malitia. ' These passages are here printed, so far as I know, for the first time. Other and less extensive extracts are given by Mr. F. S. Boas in The Fort- nightly Review, August, 1907, pp. 311-319, and in his University Drama in the Tudor Age, pp. 233 ft. DEFENCE OF THE STAGE 113 ac dolus, Nec habitus vllus, sed animus turpem facit. that, is that the only puttinge on of weeme[n]s rayment, is not wicked, but the lewde ende to deceyve, the rather therby, and the more safely to be in the cumpanye of weemen, to bringe some bad purpose abowte; or of an effemynate mynd, to suffer his heare to growe longe; or to fryzell it, or in speeche, colour, gate, gesture, and behaviour to become womanishe; or ordynaryly so to con- verse amonge men and weemen, agaynst the cours^ of all naturall and cyvill regarde, is an abomynation to the Lorde. other doe expownde the place, thus; that a man shall not putt on the ornamentes of a woman; nor a woman the armour of a man; and that this lawe was opposed agaynst the superstition of the Gentylls, amonge whome in the sacrifices of Venus, men clad them selves like weemen, with distaff and spindell, and suche like; and weemen in the sacrifices of Mars, putt them selves in armour, and therfor Abomynation in the Scriptures, say thay, is commonly taken for idolatrye, or for somethinge belonginge to idolatrye. all the devynes that ever I talked with of this matter, affirme the trwe meaninge of that place, to be contayned in thes senses rehearsed, wherfor though I grant, that, as you prove, (admyttinge that in case of necessytye a man may clad hym selfe in a woma[n]s habitt) he may not therfor doe ill in iest, and in a meryment. [c. c. c. ms. 352, p. 52.] He stoutly maintains, moreover, that the evils attributed to the practice have no relevance to his own dramatic productions : / / / Yet I answere, that we not offendinge agaynst the trwe vnder- ' ■' '' standinge of the Text, because we doe not so of any ill intent, or any suche mynd, or that any suche effecte hathe followed in vs therof, or may in deede be sayde at all to weare weeme[n]s apparell, because wearinge implyes a custome, and a common vse of so doeinge, wheras we doe it for an howre or twoe, or three, to represent an others person, by one that is openly knowne to be as he is in deede; it is not ill in vs to doe so, thoughe it be but in myrthe, and to delyte: and therfor all that parte of your discourse, wherin you inforce by many authorytyes, that there must be a distinction in apparell twixt men and weemen, pertaynethe not to me: for how coulde I thinke other- wise? for this my verse, Nec habitus vllus, sed animus turpem facit, was not to fetche abowte any hidden conclusion, or to delyver a rule that it is no dishonesty for a man in all places to 114 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES weare whatsoever apparell he will, if his mynd be chast, as you say; but served as a parte of that interpretation of the place, wherof I spake before, [c. c. c. ms. 352. p. 52.] Gager proceeds further in contending that the impersonation of women by the Christ Church actors was not such as to encourage licentiousness: Seeinge therfor that, as I take it, it is not proved vngodly for a boy or a yuthe, to putt on womanly rayment in owre case, it foUowethe that it is not the lesse vnlawfuU for suche a one also to imitate womanly speeche, and behaviour, howe hardly so ever you thinke good to terme it. neyther dothe my glosse vpon the Texte allowe the contrary, as you wryte. for thes verses of myne, Distincta sexum forma distindum decet, Virile non estfxminx mores sequi, etc. are also parte of my exposition of the Texte which is in controversye, and carrye no other sense then I have spoken of before, for thoughe different behavioure becummethe different sexes, and it beseemethe not men to foUowe weemens manners, in the common course of lyfe, to the pervertinge of [p. 55] the lawe of nature, honesty, and cumlynes, or for any evill purpose; yet a boy, by way of representation only, may not indecently imytate maydenly, or womanly demeannre. Ffor as for all that tracte of your discourse, concerninge the danger of wanton dansinge, of kissinge bewtifull boyes, of amatorye embracinges, and effectuall expressinge of love panges, whereby bothe the spectators in behowldinge, and the actors in the meditation of suche thinges, are corrupted, all which you prove by sondry examples and authorytyes; it is more learnedly, and eloquently handled, then iustly applyed agaynst vs. it is easy for you, or any man of learninge to wryte or speake copiously, and truly agaynst the bad effectes of Stage playes, in general!; but in owre cause, it is rather to be con- sidered, how trwly, and charitably suche thinges may be applyed agaynst vs, then howe eloquently thay may be enforced. * * * We hartely pray you. Sir, to make a greate difference betweene vs, and Nero with his Sporus, or Heliogabalus with hym selfe, or the Cananytes, Jwes, Corinthians, or them that cause their pages to weare longe heare like weemen, or Critobulus, kissinge the fayre sonne of Alcibiades, or any suche doggs. we hartely abhorr them; and if I coulde suspecte any suche thinge to growe by owre Playes, I woulde be the first that should hate them, and detest my selfe, for gyvinge suche occasion, you say owte of DEFENCE OF THE STAGE 115 Quintilian, nimium est quod intelligitur; and I may say, nimium est quod dicitur. we thanke God owre youthe doe not practyse suche thinges, thay thinke not of them, thay knowe them not. neyther can any man lyvinge, the rather for owre Playes, charge any one of vs with the leste suspition, of any suche abomynation. I have byn often moved by owre Playes to laughter, and som- tyme to teares; but I can not accuse eyther my selfe, or any other of any suche beastly thought, styrred vp by them, and ther for we should most vncharytably be wronged, if owre puttinge on of womanly rayment, or imytatinge of suche gesture, should eyther directly or indirectly be referred to the com/nandement, Thou shalte not commit adulterye. and yet if owre Eurymachus had kissed owre Melantho, thoughe Socrates had stood by, (and I would Socrates had stood by) he would perhapps have sayde he had done amysse, but not so danger- ously as Critobulus did, because he might evydently perceyve, that no suche poyson of incontinencye could be instilled therby. As for the danger to the spectators in heeringe and seeinge thinges lyvely expressed, and to the actors in the ernest medita- tion and studye to represent them; I grant that bad effectes doe fall owte in thos Playes, agaynst the which suche arguments are iustly to be amplyfyde; but there is no suche myscheefe to be feared to enswe of owres. wherin for owre penninge, we are base and meane as you see; and specialy for womanly behaviour, we weare so careles, that when one of owre actors should have made a Conge like a woman, he made a legg like a man. in sum/n; owre spectators could not gretely charge owre actors with any such diligence in medytation and care to im- prynt any passions; and so neyther of them coulde receyve any hurt therby. [c. c. c. ms. 352. pp. 54-55, 56.] One welcomes the genial observation concerning the Christ Church student who, when he "should have made a Conge like a woman, he made a legg like a man" ; for it is pleasant to infer that, unlike his opponent, Gager did not allow the earnestness of the occasion to annul his humor. In advancing to the second main charge, — of wasted time and money, — Gager is amply armed. For justifying both relaxation in general 116 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES and dancing in particular, he finds support not only in manifest common sense, but also in the sturdy Gouernour of Sir Thomas Elyot : In your answere to my defence of owre not mysspendinge tyme aboute Playes, I must needes saye, you spare vs not a whitt. if you had but sayde that owre playes, are toyes, unnecessarye, vayne, or suchelike;ithad byn no more perhapps then in strictnes, trwe. because Unum modo necessarium; and he that had tryde all thinges, of his owne wise experience pronouncethe, Vanitas vanitatum, Sc omnia vanitas, yea evne learninge, and wisdome, and all thinges ells, excepte the feare of God, which endurethe for ever, and I have harde a godly, and a learned preacher, whome you knowe, in the pulpitt aiTirme, that owre declamations, oppositions, suppositions, and suche scholasticall exercises, are no better then vayne thinges. but to compare owre Playes, to y* wickednes ofafoole committed in pastyme, to a madd mann's castinge of fyrebrandes, arrowes, and mortall thinges, as you doe before; or to the hauntinge of a dycinge house, or taverne, or stwes, as in this place; or to a schollers playinge at stooleball amonge wenches, at mumchance, at Mawe with idell lost companions, at Trunkes in Guilehalls, dansinge abowte Maypoles, riflinge in alehouses, carrowsinge in taverns, stealinge of deere, or robbinge of orchardes, as afterwarde; I say to compare owre Playes to no better then thes thinges, it ex- ceedethe the cumpasse of any tolerable resemblance. * * * ^finally, bothe you, and I agree, that relaxation from studyes is necessary in a good scholler, bothe for bodye, and mynde. and yet did I not conclude, as you make me, that therfor all recreations are honest, for I never thought any suche thinge. but as my simple assertion, that there is a needfuU tyme for sportes, dothe not therfor prove the lawfullnes of owre Playes, which before I presumed to be lawfull; so your incomparable, and harde comparisons, doe lesse argue their vnlawfuUnes. and heere amonge other vnfitt recreations, besyde Playes, you use many wordes agaynst dansinge, thoughe it be but as it weare by the waye. all which place dothe touche vs no neerer, then I have shewed before, for myn owne parte, I never dansed, nor ever coulde, and yet I can not denye, but I love to see honest dansinge. to omytt Homer's iudgment therof, an excellent observer of decorum in all thinges; that learned Knight Sir Thomas Eliote, amonge other thinges that he wrytethe in a booke of his, which I have scene, in the prayse of dansinge, I remember, comparethe the man treadinge the measures, to DEFENCE OF THE STAGE 117 [p. 61] Fortitude, and the woman on his hande, to Temperance. [C. C. C. MS. 352, pp. 58, 60-61.] Gager's discussion of expense and of the claim of the poor includes interesting disclosures in regard to the infrequency and modest scale of the Christ Church performances: r) Say you, Nero peraduenture was eyther less able, or less willinge, ^ to helpe the poore, by reason offyve or sixe thousande powndes spent for a Plaudite. what Nero's ryotts weare that way, I can not iustly accownte; likely it is, thay weare very excessyve, that he would gyve so muche mony, as you speake of, to Captaynes of bandes, only to crye, excellent, excellent; besyde the rest of his charge, in settinge his Playes owte. there is no proportion, I knowe, between Nero's abylytye, and owres. but if Nero [p. 62] cowlde have as well spared suche huge su/nms of mony, which he spent that way often, as owre House, with the cum- panye in it, and belonginge to it (thanked be God) can, ons in many yeers, thirtye powndes; Nero showlde have byn wronged greatly beinge an Emperour to have byn noted of wastfullnes, and if ever he had any suche good mynde, he mought never the lesse have releeved the poore. And therfore, ad quid ista perditio est. Here? Mala, Mome, vox est; servethe a turne well inoughe agaynst Momus. for thoughe I knowe there is an infinyte difference, betweene owres, and the action agaynst the which it was hypocrytically first vsed; yet I thinke it may also be applyed, agaynst eyther the nigardise, or the hypocrisye of any Momus, that shall condemne all expence, as cast awaye, that is somtyme, moderattly bestowed vpon honest sportes and pastymes, and not vpon the poore. A man may feast, and yet remember the affliction of Josephe toe. and monye may be spent on Playes, evne thirtye powndes, and yett the poore releeved, and no man the lesse liberall for them, or the more, if they had not byn at all. for thoughe no cost can be so well bestowed, as that was vpon owre Savioure; yet if foUoweth not, that therfor no cost is at any tyme to be imployed vpon lawfull recreations, suche as owre Playes weare, whatsoever is rather obiected, then proved, to the contrarye. [c. c. c. ms. 352, pp. 61-62. j With the next consideration, — the alleged dele- terious effect of plays upon the morals of actors 118 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES and audience, — we arrive at the very heart of the controversy. For his defence Gager depends not only upon the plain case of his own performances, but also upon the lofty tradition of ancient tragedy: In Riuales, what Cato might not be delyted to see the fonde behaviour of cuntrye wooinge, expressed by cyvill men, or the vanytye of a bragginge soldier? by the spectacle of the drunken mariners, if there were any drunkard there, why might he not the rather detest drunkennes, by seeinge the deformytye of drunken actions represented? possible it was not, that any man should be provoked to dronkennes therby. the Lacedx- monians are commended for causinge their slaves, beinge drunke in deed, to be brought before their children, that thay seeinge the beastly vsage of suche men, myght the more lothe that vyce; but we muche better expressinge the same intent, not with drunken, but with sober men, counterfettinge suche vnseemly manners, are the lesse therfor to be reprehended. In Hippolytus, what younge man did not wisshe hym selfe to be as chast as Hippolytus, if he weare not so allreadye? whoe did not detest the love of Phxdral whoe did not approve the grave counsayle of the Nurse to her in secrett? or whoe coulde be the worse for her wooinge Hippolytus, in so generall termes? the drifte wherof, if it had byn to procure an honest honorable marriage, as it was covertly to allure hym to inceste, he might very well have listned to it. whoe wisshethe not that Theseus had not byn so credulus? whoe was not sorrye for the crwell deathe of Hippolytusl thes and suche [p. 58] like, weare the passions that weare, or might be moved, in owre Playes, withowte hurte, at the leste, to any man. as in other Tragedges; whoe dothe not hate the furye of Medea, the revenge of Atreus, the treason of Clytemnesfra and Mgistus, and the crueltye of Nerol con- trarye wise, whoe dothe not pittye the rage, and the deathe of Hercules, the calamytye of Hecuba and her children, the in- fortunate valure of Oedipus, the murder of Agamemnon, the bannishment of Octauia, and suche like? and yet no man is to be reproched, for eyther affection. Wherfor as the younge men of owre house, are suche in deede, as I co/nmended them for; so for me, or for any thinge donne on the Stage, by the grace of God thay may so remayne and continwe, and I hope shall ever be so reputed, [c. c. c. ms. 352, pp. 57-58.] DEFENCE OF THE STAGE 119 The fourth consideration, — the status of actors under Roman civil law, — involves nice questions of fact and of logic that can be set forth only inadequately in brief extracts. Gager maintains, in the first place, that actors were never accounted indiscriminately infamous : Ffor first I denye, that the Romans ever iudged, omnes scenicos, infames. because Playes weare somtyme, as in a common plauge, instituted ad placandos Deos, and weare provided by greate Officers, of the common treasure; and so thay are referred ad religionem, et deuoiionem. somtyme thay weare sett owt at the pryvat cost of them that stood to the peeple for great Offices, or generally for the honor and soUace of the cytye; and so thay are referred to magnificence, for magnificentia is a goodly vertue, [p. 47] et versatur circa sumptus amplos, non turpes aut infames, because it is a vertwe; but circa qusecunque in Rem publicam honesise laudis studio conferuntur; amonge the which Aristotle reckonethe, Ludos splendide facere. neyther is it to be thought, that Msopus and Roscius, beinge bothe men of that fame, favor, wealthe, and entyre famyliarytye with the best, and wisest in theire tymes, weare reputed as infamous persons, what should I speake of so many Circi, Theatra, Amphitheatra, buylded by the greatest and bravest Romans, with so huge charge and sumptuousnes? which thoughe thay weare wonte vpon fowle abuses, or some other occasion, as you write, overthrowne by the Romans them selves, yet evne thos playes, for which thay weare abolished, weare ex eo genere, of whom thay might have sayde (as C. Tacitus dothe of Astrologers) quod in ciuiiate nostrd et vetabitur semper, et retinebitur. howsoever, I can not thinke, that eyther thay woulde have suffered suche thinges to be donne at all, if thay had iudged them ill; or to be performed by infamous personns, beinge matters of that state and magnificience, and, as thay thought, of that devotion, and necessytye. it weare not harde for me to heape vp many thinges to this purpose, but my desyre is no furder to approve theire iudgment heerin, then servethe for the necessarye defence of owre selves, and owre ooinges. [c. c. c. ms. 352, pp. 46-47.] Gager contends, moreover, for a distinction first, between histriones, — those "common players" who 120 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES act professionally for money (qusestus causa), — and amateurs like the Christ Church students, who play without compensation (sine quaestu); and secondly, between the dissolute amateurs of antiquity and the virtuous gentle folk of the Oxford colleges : Ffirst therfor wheras you denye me that the Prxtor dothe not distinguisshe, as I doe, be[t]weene thos that doe prodire in scenam quxstus causd, and not qusestus causd, but rather in expresse wordes say the the contrarye, qui in scenam prodierit infamis est; it is very trwe, and I knwe that very well before, but because Vlpian ad edidum Prsetoris, dothe so expownde the Prxtor, as it weare ex xquitate Prsetorid and ex rexponsis pru- dentum Pegasi et Neruse filij I thought it was as good lawe, and better verse, to saye, Famosus ergo est quisquis in scenaia exijt? Prsetor negabit; seeinge the meaninge of the Prxtor, and so the Prsetor hym selfe, is taken to denye it; as to saye Vlpianus, or Pegasus & Nerua filius negabunt. that Vlpian dothe approve the distinction of Pegasus and Nerua, it is evi- dent; for if he had disliked it, or not allowed it, thoughe he alleged theire authoritye, yet he woulde in expresse wordes have refused it, as in many places of the Ciuill Texte, the like appeerethe. that Pegasus and Nerua doe so distinguisshe, it is as manifest; because otherwise Vlpian showlde repeate the Praetors Edict in vayne, and not [p. 45] interprete it, which he professethe to doe. besyde that Glossa communis, Baldus, Petrus de Castro, and all that I have scene vpon this lawe, doe so vnderstand this latter parte therof. lastely, in this very Title De his qui notantur infamia, and in the same places therof. In certamen descendere, and In scenam prodire, doe as thay saye in owre lawe, ambulare sequis passibus; but it is most evident, that, qui descendit in certamen depugnaturus cum bestijis dentatis, acferis, virtutis ostendendae, non mercedis causd., non est notatus; ergo qui prodit in scenam pronuntiandi gratid, sine praemio, aui quaestu, non est notatus. and the reason of the favorable parte of the distinction, may well, me thinkes, be gathered owte of the lawe which is C. de spectaculis Li. in fine. li. xi. Neyther dothe Diongsius Gothofredus, whom you alleage, denye this distinction, but rather prove that Pegasus and Nerua filius doe so distinguisshe, in exceptinge agaynst the latter member, in his note, Immb et qui sine qusestu. whoe, to admytt your DEFENCE OF THE STAGE 121 perhapps, that he is a man more learned then Pegasus and Nerua filius, the authors of this distinction, together with Ylpian, in not disallowinge it, approvinge the same (which notwith- standinge for some reasons I can not yet thinke to be soe) yet surely he is not of so greate authorytye, as the Texte it selfe, whatsoever any man may esteeme his learninge to be. and yet in some sense, his shorte, but quick note, Imm.6 et qui sine quxstu, hurtethe not vs at all. for if he meanethe therby to taxe Laberius, Lentulus, Nero, and suche like, that did exercere historioniam, thoughe, gratuitam; his exception is most trwe, and it makethe not agaynst vs, or owre Texte. for this lawe releevethe them, that came in Scenam, to doe theire common wealthe honor, theire citizens honest pleasure and delyte, and theire Godds devowte servyce, with owte rewarde; not them that did so only to satisfye theire dissolute and lewde humors, as Lentulus, Nero, and others did, whose examples can not be applyed agaynst them, or vs; as shall be heerafter shewed. [C. C. C. Ms., 352 pp. 44-45.] Upon the final issue, as to the appropriate use of the Sabbath day, Gager comments with agree- able tartness : Wheras I sayde that there was no more tyme spent vpon owre Playes then was convenient, you replye that It may be there was, evne some tyme that shoulde have byn spent in heeringe Sermons, the very day that my Vlysses Redux came upon the Stage. It may be there was not; and for any thinge that can be proved, or for any thinge that any man needed to be hindred from Sermons that daye for my Vlysses, it was not so in deede. sure I ame, that the gentelman that playde Vlysses, was at Sermon, and divers others of the actors, as if neede were thay coulde prove, perhapps the rather, to avoyde such a scandall. if any were awaye, thay might have other cause so to doe, thoughe (the more the pittye) it is no vnvsuall thinge, for many other students, as well as owres, sometyme to mysse a sermon, and it may be, that some of them that mysliked owre Playes, weare not there them selves; it may be the same Sonday night thay were wurseoccupyed then owre actors were. [c. c. c. ms. 352, p. 59.] From the two documents examined above it appears that Gager fared well enough in a con- 122 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES troversy restricted to questions of morals; and one can but regret that the debate did not more readily broaden into issues of literary criticism, in which the humane learning of the Christ Church scholar must have displayed itself to even greater advan- tage. Of the temper and wisdom that would have characterized his essays in this direction, however, we may gain at least a glimpse, for at one point in the quarrel the dramatist strays into the con- sideration of a literary canon. In the course of his random strictures upon the drama, Momus is made to condemn Gager's Ulysses Redux in the following terms: Tragoediae plausistis alternee quoque; Nisi forte potius ilia sit Comaedia, Opima thuri prseda, scombriscjue aridis, Exanguis, atque exilis, & serpens humi, Affectuum tam vacua, tam neruis carens, Vinumque referens latice dilutum nimis, Cui vix color maneret, aut minimus sapor. Cui diua Elisa callide iniecta, vndique Plausum imperauit, sibilo dignse magis. Mendicus Irus, dedecore lambum afficit, Personse vilis; quodque sublimi nefas Summu/n est Tragaedo, Comice risum excitat.' Here is a sufficiently flat condemnation of the practice of admitting comic scenes into tragedy. In justifying this practice Gager was put to his trumps; for although he makes no substantial reply in his Epilogus Responsivus to Momus, it was in anticipation of precisely such a stricture that he composed his interesting prologue Ad Criticum, '^ Momus, 11. 60-71, printed in Ulysses Redux, Oxford, 1592, sig. F 4 recto^F 4 verso. STAGING SHAKESPEARE 123 found among the prefatory pages of Ulysses Redux (sig, A 6 recto — A 7 verso) : AD CRITICUM Qvorsum, inquis, epistola? an nos concione etiam aliqu& enecabis? parumne tibi praestatur, si versus tui legantur? cuius patienti^ erit, prsefationem quoque tolerare? ecquando ad carmina tandem ipsa licebit peruenire? quid porro hie dicturus es, quod non in Prologo tuo dixisti, aut saltern in Epilogo dicere potuisti? Recte tu quidem ista, Critice, si scriberem Epi- grammata; quibus epistolari oper^ non est opus, quia in qua- cunque paging visum est, epistolam facere solent. at Trag?dis, quibus pro se loqui non licet, pr^fari semper permissum fuit, & ego Trag^diam scribo. Imo, non est, inquis, h^c Trag^dia. Quid ita, Critice? quia, inquis, & materiae quadam mendicitate peccat, dictioneque plerumque comicS est; & risum in Iro mouet, quod in Tragsedia nefas est, atque aded piaculum; & vere tragico affectu vacat, (quis enim aut Procorum, id est hominum im- proborum interitu suspiret, aut meretricularum suspendio illachrymetur?) postremo, quia l^tum habet exitum. Profecto ipsum te esse Griticum oportet, ita es ingeniose maledicus. & quidem hand scio an vera ista sint; fortasse non multum absunt [sig. A 6 verso] a veris. Sed tamen libet ire contra. Ac primum tibi ilia Horatiana respondeo, Et tragicus plerumque dolet sermone pedesiri, Telephus Gar. Cor., Vol. I, p. 360. 222 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES however. The more aristocratic among them, including the mayor and aldermen, were ready for eager participation in the events of the Jubilee. Those who had accommodations to offer pre- pared to extort a guinea a night for a bed, however humble its pretensions to comfort. The more lowly villagers were in general merely curious, for the word Jubilee was the cause of much specu- lation among them. The Gentleman's Magazine of the month records a story expressive of the general bewilderment of the natives: "A Banbury man, indeed, employed to carry thither a double bass viol, (on which he was unable to play, but doubted not they would shew him when he got there) told them it was to be a celebration of Shakespeare's resurrection." Probably to Garrick as well as to the natives this explanation would have seemed possible of justification. Eager or suspicious as they might be, the in- habitants of Stratford were, nevertheless, bound to witness the Shakespeare Jubilee.^ And on September 5, the throng of pilgrims arrived, among them Boswell, the biographer of Johnson, wearing his Corsican costume, and Foote, the actor. Each of the visitors was presented with a ribbon stamped in rainbow hues in token of Shakespeare as Doctor Johnson had described him in the famous prologue of 1747, "Each change of many-colored light he drew." ' This account of the Jubilee is based on the accounts given in the Gen- tleman's Magazine, the Universal Magazine, and the London Magazine for September, 1769. The accounts previously referred to in the Dramatic Mirror and Dramatic Table Talk have also been consulted, together with the account of Knight, also based upon these records. garrick's vagary 223 On the morning of Wednesday, September 6, the Jubilee opened at six o'clock with the "triple discharge of seventeen pieces of cannon and twelve small mortars placed on the banks of the Avon." Garrick's and Lord Spencer's apartments were then serenaded by some of the Drury Lane actors who had got themselves up to look like rustics — not forgetting the realism of dirt. Afterward these actors went through the streets chanting ballads and accompanying them with "guitars and German flutes." The town was in gala attire. The windows of the Town Hall were covered with transparent silk on which were paintings representing the great Shakespearean characters. Shakespeare's birthplace attracted attention by being hidden under a great transparency of similar sort which represented the sun struggling through the clouds to illumine the world. The church had escaped like treatment, but the bust of Shakespeare in the church was so loaded with bays that it resembled a statue of Pan peeping through the trees, accord- ing to one commentator. At eight o'clock on this eventful day Garrick went forth amid these glories of his own creation. He hastened to the Town Hall, where a public breakfast was to be served. But at the Town Hall he was met by the mayor and aldermen of Strat- ford, who presented to him with many speeches a medallion made from the wood of the sacred mul- berry tree, engraved with the likeness of Shake- speare, and set richly in gold. This tribute Garrick 224 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES accepted with an appropriate speech. Indeed his correspondence seems to prove that the medal had been made according to his own directions and was, therefore, not altogether an unexpected gift.^ Seemingly he went through the events of the Jubi- lee days with the mulberry-tree medallion about his neck, with a mulberry-tree wand in his hand, and with his hands encased in the Shakespeare gloves of doubtful authenticity. At nine o'clock breakfast was served here in the new Town Hall, the windows hung with transpar- encies, one end of the room decorated with a pic- ture of Shakespeare, the other with Gainsborough's picture of Garrick.^ At eleven all repaired to the church, where the oratorio of Judith was given — just why Judith no one seems to know.' At three there was dinner in Shakespeare Hall, and after- wards there were toasts to Garrick and Shake- speare. Then the orchestra took up catches and glees, while the whole company joined in the choruses. And last there came a loyal, enthusiastic singing of God save the King. From nine till three 'A letter from T. Davies, July 30, 1769, to Garrick preserved in the Gar. Cor., Vol. I, p. 350, would seem to indicate that the medal was at that time being made in Birmingham according to Garrick's own directions. 2 Gower, Lord Ronald Sutherland, F. R. A., Thomas Gainsborough, 1903, pp. 46, 47, gives an account of this portrait of Garrick which is sup- posed to have been painted in 1765 or 1766 and which according to tradi- tion was presented by Garrick to the Town Hall at Stratford. "However there exists a bill in the Stratford Municipal Archives kept at the Town Hall, stating that £63 had been paid to Mr. Gainsborough for Mr. Gar- rick's picture. It is thought possible that this sum was paid for the mag- nificently carved gilt frame of the picture, which certainly is sufficiently elaborate to have cost that amount." • It would certainly have been in character for Garrick to have chosen the oratorio because of the fact that Shakespeare's younger daughter bore the name Judith. garrick's vagary 225 a wonderful ball took place, a ball which lived in the memory of the participants because of the marvelous minuet in which Mrs. Garrick danced, for Mrs. Garrick had before her marriage been the famous dancer of her day, Mile. Violette. And thus the first day of the Jubilee came to its brilliant close. On Thursday morning the elements came to the support of the murmurers against this sacrilegious Jubilee, for a drenching rain seemed to express the wrath of heaven. In spite of the rain the pilgrims went to breakfast in the Town Hall, however, and though the great procession had to be abandoned, they gathered at noon in the church to hear Gar- rick's ode to Shakespeare. The ode had been set to music by Dr. Arne and was sung in airs, choruses, and duets, the parts usually indicated as to be pronounced in recitative being spoken instead by Garrick. Those who heard the ode pronounced it excellent, but those who read it later seem to have qualified their praise with reserve and their condemnation with politeness. The first stanza gives probably a just idea of the ode. To what blest genius of the isle, Shall gratitude her tribute pay. Decree the festive day. Erect the statue, and devote the pile? Do not your sympathetic hearts accord, To own the 'bosom's Lord'? 'Tis he ! 'Tis he !— that demi-god ! Who Avon's flow'ry margin trod; While sportive fancy round him flew. Where nature led him by the hand, S— 15. 226 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES Instructed him in all she knew. And gave him absolute command I 'Tis he!— 'tis he I 'The god of our idolatry' After the performance of the ode there was din- ner, and dinner was followed again by songs, The Warwickshire Lad being the most persistent of these songs. After dinner there were to be fire- works, and fireworks there were — but damp fire- works. For the rain persisted. At twelve there was a grand masquerade. Friday morning the last and greatest day of the Jubilee was ushered in by more rain. The great pageant of Shakespeare's characters had to be abandoned. A horse race was run according to schedule, but it was run with the horses knee-deep in water. And the evening found escaping all those who could escape from the prices and hard- ships of Stratford hospitality. Thus in rain and discomfort the Jubilee ended. Nevertheless it furnished the favorite topic of the time. Accounts of it filled the current magazines. Accounts of plays, farces, and collections of songs under the titles of Shakespeare's Jubilee, The Strat- ford Jubilee, Shakespeare's Garland, Garrick's Vagary, and similar captions, occupied much of the space given to book notices in these same magazines. The Ode was published^ and distributed among Garrick's friends, and comment on it was frequent and diverse. ' An Ode upon Dedicating a Building, and Erecting a Statue to Shake- speare, at Stratford upon Avon. By David Garrick. London. 1769. To tliis Ode are subjoined "Testimonies to the Genius and Merits of Shake- speare." garrick's vagary 227 But however much Garrick might desire to pay honor to Shakespeare, he was never oblivious to the demands of his own purse, and he had spent a great deal of money on his vagary, the Jubilee. It was a day of pageants and processions in the theatre; therefore he determined to make use at Drury Lane of the frustrated pageant of the Jubilee. The manager of Covent Garden Theatre, not to be outdone, announced for October 1, Colman's comedy, Man and Wife: or the Shakespeare Jubi- lee, in the course of which a pageant was to be introduced. Garrick's pageant was not ready, but not to be out-witted by his rival, he announced, as the afterpiece for September 30, the famous Ode.^ And on October 14, the great pageant was at last presented, some lines in low-comedy style having been inserted to popularize the piece and to explain the action. The pageant was a pro- found success; it ran for ninety-two nights and made more evident than ever the profitable nature of Shakespeare idolatry. ^ Foote of the Covent Garden Theatre raged at the adulation bestowed on his rival, and when he heard of the final atrocity of pecuniary gain, he planned revenge. He planned it, too, in char- acteristic eighteenth century fashion. He would introduce a mock procession at Covent Garden, with a man dressed to represent Garrick as Stew- ard of the Jubilee — wand, medallion, gloves not ' Victor, B., The History of the Theatres of London, from the year 1760 to the Present Time. 1771. Vol. Ill, p. 154. 'Victor, I.e., Vol. II, p. 156. 228 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES forgotten. This noble creature was to be addressed by some ragamuffin of the procession in the famous words of the poet laureate, A nation's taste depends on you. Perhaps a nation's virtue too. And the Steward should make reply, clapping his arms like the wings of a cock, Cock-a-doodle-doo ! Garrick heard of the plan and feared it, for he always feared ridicule. But the Marquis of Staf- ford intervened and prevented this final break of friendship between the rival actors.^ Foote, nevertheless, introduced into his comedy of The Devil upon Two Sticks the now celebrated descrip- tion of the Jubilee: A Jubilee is a public invitation, circulated by puffing, to go post without horses, to a Borough without representatives, governed by a Mayor and Aldermen, who are no magistrates, to celebrate a Poet, whose own works have made him immortal, by an ode without poetry, music without melody, dinners with- out victuals, and lodgings without beds; a masquerade where half the people are bare-faced, a horse race up to the knees in water, fireworks extinguished as soon as they were lighted, and a gingerbread amphitheater, which, like a house of cards, tumbled to pieces as soon as it was finished. Through it all — adulation and ridicule — Garrick became more and more inseparable from Shake- speare in the public mind. He seemed the natural recipient of all sorts of Shakespeariana. Various admirers made further contributions from the wood of the mulberry tree. The most remarkable of 1 Cooke, W., Memoirs of Samuel Foote, 1805. Vol. I, p. 164. A DUTCH RICHARD III 229 curios offered, however, was a "spoted coach- dog," "spoted like a leper," said to have been in Shakespeare's family and tendered by one H. Cooper.^ The Jubilee itself was perennially popular. It was revived in 1775, again in 1777, and again in 1785. In 1776 Garrick retired from the stage. In 1779 he died and was buried in Westminster Abbey just at the foot of the Shakespeare monument. And the words of Goldsmith's Retaliation were often said as a pax vobiscum. Old Shakespeare receive him with praise and with love. But even after Garrick's death Drury Lane con- tinued the Shakespeare tradition begun by him there, and when the new Drury Lane was opened in 1794, the occasion was reminiscent of the Jubi- lee. The epilogue closed with the words. The high decree is passed — may future age, When pond'ring o'er the annals of the stage, Rest on this time, when labour rear'd this pile In tribute to the genius of our Isle. This School of Art, with British sanction grac'd. And worthy of a manly Nation's taste! And now the image of our Shakespeare view, And give the Drama's God the honor due! As the last lines were spoken, the new iron curtain rose to reveal a beautiful scene, wherein was dis- covered by an ecstatic audience the statue of Shakespeare under his mulberry tree.^ 1 Gar. Cor., Vol. I, p. 424. « Young, W. J., Memoirs of Mrs. Crouch. 1806. Vol. II, pp. 204-211. 230 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES Thus through the persistent devotion of a life- time and through the dramatic expression of that devotion in the Jubilee, Garrick united his name and fame with Shakespeare's. And the moral of the tale is simply told: that he who honors Shakespeare honors not Shakespeare but himself, in witness whereof there stands the record of Shakespeare and Garrick — and the mulberry tree. A DUTCH ANALOGUE OF RICHARD THE THIRD O. J. Campbell, Jr. In 1651 there was published in Amsterdam a play called De Roode en Witte Roos^ written by Lambert van den Bosch. ^ It was a tragedy of five acts written in rhymed hexameters contain- ing 1856 lines and treating the popular story of King Richard III of England.* Although the author does not suggest in any way that the work is not completely original, it must ultimately have had an English source. That it was founded on Shakespeare's play seems practically impossible. The two dramas are quite unlike in general con- struction and no line in the Dutch play is a trans- lation of a single line in Shakespeare's tragedy. 'Roode en Witte Roos of Lankaster en Jork/Bleijeindent Treurspel. Qui terret plus ipse timet, sors ista Tyrannis Convenit/t' Amsterdam, Gedrukt by Tymon Houthaak /voor Dirk Comelisz' Houthaak Boekver- kooper op de hock /van de Nienwezijds Kolk/MDCLI. 2 Spelt also Bos. ' This play in its relation to English drama was first discussed by Dr. H. de W. Fuller, editor of The Nation, in a paper read before the Modern Lan- guage Association in 1904. Since that time other engrossing interests have prevented him from pursuing the lines of investigation which the discovery of this play disclosed. The material, however, seemed important enough to warrant its being made accessible. The present paper is by way of an in- troduction to an annotated edition of the Dutch play which the writer pur- poses to publish in the near future. Only those who heard Dr. Fuller's paper will appreciate how fundamental is the indebtedness of the present essay to his original and brilliant investigation. [231] 232 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES In a similar fashion it can be shown not to be based directly on any other extant English play on the subject. There are certain bits of evidence, how- ever, which suggest that the Dutch play was based not on any of the Chronicles, but upon an English drama now lost which held an important place in the development of the Richard saga before the composition of Shakespeare's play. Lambert van den Bosch (1610-1698) owes his position in Dutch literature to his skillful transla- tion and adaptation of foreign works of literature. His translation of Don Quixote, for example, re- mained the classical Dutch version of the romance for two centuries. His numerous translations from the English, our particular concern for the moment, show his perfect understanding of the language and his interest in the literature. In 1648 he rendered into Dutch a curious masque-like morality called Lingua, or The Combat of the Tongue, and Five Senses for Superiority, published in London in 1607; in 1658 Sir Thomas Herbert's Travels into Divers Parts of Africa and Asia Minor; in 1661 John Dauncey's History of his Sacred Majesty Charles II, and in 1678 the anonymous treatise The True and Historical Relation of the Poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury. We know, moreover, that he had manuscripts of other English works in his possession — comedies he calls them — the translation of which he had considered. In the introduction to his Dutch version of "Lingua" he addresses the Regent of the theatre as follows: A DUTCH RICHARD III 233 Gracious Friend: Considerable time has elapsed since you gave me some English comedies, requesting that I look them over to see whether there was any worth translating. Accepting this proposal, I have chosen the morality Lingua, and have, as you requested, translated it into Dutch. I have not followed the words so much as the sense, and have here and there omitted things which, to be sure, would have made the play somewhat longer but certainly not more attractive. From this address we are able to glean the highly interesting information that Van den Bosch was supplied by the director of the theatre with a num- ber of cast-off English plays. Whether or not this collection of plays had been carried into Holland by a troupe of English actors or purchased in London by a Dutch bookseller or actor is for the moment of little importance. The point of im- mediate significance is that among these plays there might easily have been the drama upon which Van den Bosch based his Roode en Witte Roos, — a play which appeared only three years later. At least, it was a product of the same period of his literary activity as his translation of Lingua. The direct relation of this Dutch tragedy to a lost English play is purely conjectural, yet there is no little internal evidence to suggest that the Dutch play, as it stands, bears a definite relation to the English dramatic tradition of Richard III. Indeed, it seems to form a real link in the complete chain which Shakespeare forged in his Richard the Third. At any rate De Roode en Witte Roos in both language and construction of scene resembles in turn Thomas Legge's Richardus Tertius, The 234 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES True Tragedie of Richard the Third, and Shakes- peare's Richard the Third, and in points in which each of these plays differs from the chronicles and from the other two plays. Obviously such re- semblances, if they prove too elaborate to be for- tuitous, can be explained in only one of two ways. If Van den Bosch had been able to use all three of these plays as sources in addition to the chronicles, his production could have shown the three sorts of resemblances noted above. Such a situation is in- herently very improbable, and becomes practically impossible when we remember the character of Richardus Tertius. It was an academic play prob- ably never acted outside of Cambridge and never printed as far as we know until the nineteenth century. That this unprinted school play could have travelled by any method as far as Amster- dam seems on the face of it well-nigh impossible; that it should have travelled in company with two other plays on the same subject is completely impossible. We must dismiss, at once, then, the hypothesis that the Dutch play had this conven- iently multiple source. The only other explana- tion of the diverse resemblances is that the Dutch play is a very definite part of the English dramatic tradition which culminated in Shakespeare. Although for a complete establishment of this hypothesis, resemblances between this Dutch play and all the extant Richard the Third plays written in England ought to be examined, in this article I shall confine myself to the correspondences found A DUTCH RICHARD III 235 exclusively between De Roode en Witte Roos and Shakespeare's play. One of the most striking of these correspond- ences is the scene in which Richard sues Queen Elizabeth for the hand of her daughter (Shake- speare IV, xi, lines 210-454. De Roode en Witte Roos IV, vi, 1-126). The Chronicles furnish only a bare hint for the similar dramatic situation in both plays. Hall has the following, which is based directly on the Hardynge continuation. The King thus' (accordyng to his long desire) losed out of the bondes of matrimony, beganne to cast a foolyshe phantasie to Lady Elizabeth his nece, making much suite to have her ioyned with him in lawfull matrimony. But because all men, and the mayden her selfe moost of all, detested and abhorred this un- lawfull and in maner unnaturall copulacion, he determined to prolonge and deferre the matter till he were in a more quiet- nes.' The words "making much suite" are the vague suggestion from which the various authors have had to develop dramatic scenes of the king's wooing of his niece. In Legge's Richardus Tertius there is a scene of wooing between the king and his niece.* It is distinctly Senecan in character and, as Prof. G. B. Churchill has suggestedS is doubtless reminis- cent of the scene in Hercules Furens in which the tyrant Lycus wooes Megara only to be rejected with the utmost scorn. Richard frankly admits his wickednesses to the Filia, but she is none the ■ ^ By the suspiciously convenient death of his wife Anne. » Variorum Richard the Third, p. 493. ' Richardus Tertius, Tertia Actio, Actus Quartus. Hazlitt's Shakespeare's Library, Part III, Vol. 1, p. 210-211. * Richard the Third up to Shakespeare, p. 349. 236 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES less shocked by them and the new crime he is urging her to commit in marrying him. She repels him violently: Sit amor, sit odium, sit ira, vel sit fides : Non euro: placet odisse, quicquid cogitas. Tuus prius penetrabit ensis pectora, Libido quam cognata corpus polluat. When he attempts to force her by threats to ac- cept his offer, she replies : Nil minaris amplius? Mallem mori virgo, tyranno quam viro Incesta vivere, deis, hominibusque invida; and a moment later she breaks out again : Neronis umbrae, atque furiae Cleopatrae Truces resurgite, similem finem date His nuptiis, qualem tulit Oedipodae domus. Nee suffecit fratres necasses tuos principes? Et nobili foedare caede dexteram? Quin et Integra stuprare quaeras virgine Maritus? mores, nefanda tempora. In this excited state of anger and horror she flees the king. To Legge the greatest interest in this scene lay in the Filia's rhetorical assertions of her passionate devotion to purity. Shakespeare has introduced no such encounter between Richard and the Princess Elizabeth. Such a direct check as hers at this point in Rich- ard's career would have been incompatible with the principle of his dramatic construction. The tyrant's triumphs were to continue unchecked until Nemesis through the instrumentality of Richmond overtook him. Shakespeare, therefore, substitutes A DUTCH RICHARD III 237 a trenchant dialogue between Richard and the Queen in which he gradually wins from her some- thing near consent to his wooing of the Princess. The king's method is very like that which he adopted in his wooing of Anne. He adroitly kindles her anger in the hope that it will burn itself out in a series of flashes. He begins by merely mentioning the Princess : You have a daughter call'd Elisabeth Vertuous and Faire, Royall and Gracious To this the queen replies with a burst of irony and anger not all unexpected: And must she dye for this? let her live And I'll corrupt her manners, staine her beauty, etc. At first the queen bitterly attacks Richard for his crimes against her family, without provoking him, however, to any sort of defence. He treats all her personal anger with studied irrelevance, adroitly transforming an apparently frank ad- mission of guilt into skillfully reiterated pleading. For example, when she violently reproaches him with his foulest deeds, he suggests Say that I did all this for love of her. After wooing of this sort, half-ironical in method but wholly serious in intention, he breaks into speeches of sustained ardour which seem to have won the queen. Richard, at least, is convinced that she has consented to be the attorney of his love to her daughter. 238 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES In De Roode en Witte Roos Richard opens the corresponding scene with an attempt to com- fort the grieving queen which seems to her pure hypocrisy: "You are no stranger to the cause of my grief," she exclaims in a sentence which in this play is the sole equivalent of the series of re- proaches uttered by Shakespeare's queen. Then, as in Richard the Third, the king admits the grievous wrong he has done her, but suggests that he did it reluctantly, at the behest of the com- mons. At this moment he is eager to make amends: Here now I stand, nay I kneel at thy feet, ready in every way to assuage thy grief. My true love shall make recompense for all my guilt. Dry thy tears, my Lady, have more patience. Instead of sister — a name which I today will forget — henceforth thou shalt be called my mother. What if the people have transferred the crown from thee to me! I shall again confer it with all honor upon thy heritors — (/ thou wilt but consent to my desire. Give me now thy daughter Elizabeth in mar- riage.' These lines certainly recall the following lines from Shakespeare: Looke what is done, cannot be now amended : Men shall deale unadvisedly sometimes. Which after houres give leysure to repent. If I did take the Kingdom from your Sonnes, To make amends. He give it to your daughter. If I have killed the issue of your wombe. To quicken your encrease, I wUl beget Mine yssue of your blood upon your Daughter. A grandam's name is little lesse in love, Then is the doting title of a mother;* 1 De Roode en Witte Roos, IV, vi, 29-36. 2 Richard the Third, IV, iv, 308-317. A DUTCH RICHARD III 239 Go then (my mother) to thy daughter go.^ Therefore deare mother (I must call you so)i> The intellectual content of these two passages is practically the same. (l). In both plays Richard insinuates with an hypocrisy donned for a definite purpose that he repents of his crimes. (2). In both passages he offers to make amends for his theft of the crown. From the Queen's family he has stolen it; to the Queen's family he will return it through his projected marriage with her daughter. (3). In both passages Richard makes much of the new relationship which he hopes is to be established between him and the queen. He seeks to win her with the dear name he has robbed of half its sig- nificance. Only in Shakespeare, to be sure, does "mother" flash out each time Richard's diabolical humility and ironical tenderness. The Queen in the Dutch play answers the plead- ing of the King with feigned humility. "You really do us too great an honor," she says. "A person of greater power would be a stronger stay for your throne. As for us, let us enjoy but peace and oblivion." To which Richard replies: You mock me, lady. In Shakespeare's play he makes exactly the same remark to the Queen. There, to be sure, it is a reply to her savagely sarcastic advice as to the proper methods of wooing her daughter. » Ibid 1. 340. 2 Ibid 1. 435. 240 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES Send to her by the man that slew her Brothers A paire of bleeding hearts. Richard. You mock me, Madam, this is not the way To win your daughter. This bit of verbal identity between the plays is interesting; and if fortuitous, really remarkable. In spite of the hostile attitude of the Queen, in both plays Richard urges the mother to further his wishes. "Your maternal influence in the matter reassures me," he says in the Dutch play, — a speech which is a condensed equivalent of his long appeal in Shakespeare's play for the mother to serve as his active emissary. The Queen in Van Bosch's play disclaims any influence upon her daughter and urges Richard not to make an effort to win her which she knows will prove futile. Nevertheless he orders the obdurate prin- cess to come into his presence at once. She ap- pears and repels her uncle's advances with as much horror as she had shown in Richardus Tertius and more fury. She even begs for a sword to plunge into the cursed entrails of her brother's murderer. Her mother's plea that she heed her uncle only aggravates her righteous anger and she leaves threatening Richard with dire ven- geance. The Queen after reminding the rejected lover that she had warned him of the refusal, begs permission to depart. Richard, by this time irate, shouts. Go, and may the Devil curse you and all your race! A DUTCH RICHARD III 241 In Shakespeare's play the interview ends with a similar contemptuous thrust by Richard: Bear her my true loves kisse, and so farewell, Relenting Foole, and shallow-changing Woman. Except for the introduction of the Princess in an interview which might be an intensified version of the similar one in Richardus Tertius, the two scenes are alike in construction and progress of dramatic idea. The very conception of the dia- logue between the Queen and Richard on this subject, alike in both plays, yet not indicated in chronicle sources, suggests a relation of some sort between the two dramas. Moreover, Richard attempts to win the mother to his plans by the same sort of specious, insinuating flattery. The Dutch play may well represent a version which is an elaboration of Legge's simple Senecan inven- tion. If such a version had been known to Shake- speare, it is easy to see why he should have found Richard's repulse by Elizabeth inconsistent with his conception of his villain hero and the nature of his tragedy. Nemesis could not have been allowed to possess a multitude of instruments or gradually to have worn away the King's insolent power. It had to strike instantaneously and through a single human agent. Once the princess is eliminated from this scene, however, the dialogue that remains is nothing but a rudimentary form of Shakepeare's highly wrought scene. De Roode en Witte Roos is like Shakespeare in other respects in which they both differ from the S— 16. 242 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES chronicles. One of such scenes is the interview between Gloucester and the young King upon the latter's arrival in London to be crowned. The boy is greatly distressed at the cruel arrest of his uncles Rivers and Grey. Richard naturally asserts that they were dangerous traitors, seeking thereby to transform his own base conduct into disinter- ested patriotism in the eyes of his nephew and to allay his intrusive suspicions.^ In both Hall and Holinshed the rudiments of such a scene take place at Stony Stratford, whither Gloucester and Buckingham have ridden to get the King completely in their power before he reaches London. In Hall's Chronicle the events are related as follows: And then [after Rivers' arrest] they mounted on horsbacke and came in haste to Stony Stratforde, where the Kynge was goyng to horsebacke, because he would leave the lodgyng for them, for it was to straight for bothe the compaignies. And when they came to his presence, they alighted and their com- paignie aboute them and on their knees saluted hym, and he them gentely received, nothing yerthly knowyng ner mis- trusting as yet. — And therewith in the Kinge's presence they picked a quarrel to the Lord Richard Grey, the quene's sone, and brother to the lord Marquess and halfebrother to the King, saiyng that he and the Marques his brother and the lord Ryvers his uncle had compassed to rule the Kyng and realme — And towarde thaccomplishment of the same, they sayde, the lord Marques had entred into the towre of London, and thence had taken out treasure and sent men to sea, which thynges these dukes knewe well were done for a good purpose and as very necessary, appointed by the whole counsaill at London, but somewhat they muste say. Unto the whiche woordes the Kynge answered, what my brother Marques hath done I cannot say, but in good faythe I dare well answer for mine uncle Rivers and my brother here, that they be innocente of suche matters. » De Roode en Witte Roos, I, i, & Richard the Third, III, i. A PUTCH RICHARD III 243 Yee, my lieage, quod the duke of Buckyngham, they have kept the dealynge of these matters farre from the knowledge of youre good grace. — And there they sent from the Kyng whom it pleased them, and set aboute him such servantes as better pleased them then him. At which dealynge he wepte and was not content, but it booted not .... In this maner as you have heard, the Duke of Gloucester toke on him the governaunce of the younge Kynge, whom with much reverence he conveied towards London.' The scene in the True Tragedie of Richard the Third, the earliest extant dramatization of this particular part of the story, follows closely the above account. It, too, is laid in Stony Strat- ford, and in all essentials is a mere mechanical elaboration of the material in the chronicles. After Gloucester, Buckingham and "their train" have arrested Rivers, they meet the young King. Richard. Long live my Princely Nephew in all happinesse. King. Thanks unckle of Gloster for your curtesie, yet you have made hast, for we lookt not for you as yet. Then Lord Grey upon the merest pretext is accused of malice to the royal blood and arrested as traitor. The young King protests against this seizure as palpable contempt for his authority and as unjust to Lord Grey. King. I know my uncle will conceale no treason, or dangerous secresie from us. Richard. Yes, secrets that are too subtil for babes. Alasse, my Lord, you are a child, and they use you as a child; but they consult and conclude of such matters, as were we not carefuU, would prove preiudiciall to your Maiesties person. Therf ore let not your grace f eare anything by our determina- tion, for as my authoritie is only under your grace, so shall ' Edward Hall's Chronicle, etc. — carefully collated with the editions of 1548 and 1550. London, 1809. p. 349. 244 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES my loyalte deserve hereafter the just recompense of a true subiect, therfore I hauing charge from my brother, your father, and our late deceased king, during the minorite of your grace, I will use my authoritie as I see good.' In Shakespeare there is no scene exactly cor- responding to this one. The arrest of Lord Rivers and Lord Grey is reported by a messenger. The interview between the young King, Gloster, Buck- ingham, the Lord Cardinal and others, in defiance of Chronicle authority laid in London, is as follows: Buckingham. Welcome, sweete Prince to London, To your Chamber. Richard. Welcome deere Cosin, my thoughts Soueraign The wearie way hath made you MelanchoUy. Prince. No Unkle, but our crosses on the way, Haue made it tedious, wearisome, and heauie. I want more Unkles heere to welcome me. Richard. Sweet Prince, the untainted vertue of your yeers Hath not yet diu'd into the World's deceit; No more can you distinguish of a man, Then of his outward shew, which God he knowes, Seldome or never jumpeth with the heart. Those Unkles which you want, were dangerous: Your Grace attended to their Sugred words. But look'd not on the poyson of their hearts: God keepe you from them, and from such false Friends. Prince. God keepe me from false Friends, But they were none.^ In the Dutch play the scene is also laid not at Stony Stratford but in London, — a significant point of agreement. The nobles who greet the King are Gloucester and Buckingham, as in Shake- speare; but instead of the Lord Cardinal, the Arch- bishop York. This last substitution suggests that • Hazlitt's Shakespeare's Library, V, pp. 77 ff. « III, i, U. 5-22. A DUTCH RICHARD III 245 the ultimate source of De Roode en Witte Roos at this point was not Hall as in Richard the Third but Holinshed. As Professor Churchill has pointed out^ in making this change of personage Holinshed followed More, who by an historical mistake not found in the Latin version, confused the Arch- bishops of Canterbury and York. This fact in itself is sufficient to show that the source of De Roode en Witte Roos is not Shakespeare's Richard the Third. The dialogue of this scene in the Dutch play is as follows : Glocesfer. Believe me, nephew, your gracious Majesty in truth hath no cause at all for fear. Am I not of thy blood, thy nearest of kin? Was not the care of thine estate entrusted to me? Did not thy father command me to guard thy precious head? Ah, believe thine uncle and let no sus- picions be harbored in thy heart. 'Tis all to thine ad- vantage, for thy good, whatever may happen anywhere, however thy Majesty may choose to interpret it. Tis true, and ought to give thee the greatest joy that hands have been laid upon thy brother. Grey. But what, I pray thee, is the cause of such an act? Glocester. Was it not sanctioned by all the other noblemen, as a fitting penalty for the crimes of such filthy villains? King. That's not proved. Glocester. Ha! They have feigned very well. Their supreme cunning is that their deeds are easily concealed from thy royal throne. But there is proof enough. 'Tis known that they did steal away from the tower its treasure and its arms. Why did they this but to beleaguer thy youthful Majesty? They know that thou art yet in years tender and inexperienced; and that breeds plots against thy life. Such traitors fail to remember that thine uncle's heart would rather burst within its breast than be reproached by anyone with lack of €aith. * Richard the Third up to Shakespeare, p. 20f. 246 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES This dramatic version follows the account in the Chronicles rather faithfully. Yet it differs from the traditional story (1) in that the scene is laid in London, (2) in that the hypocrisy of Richard is made a little more suave and intriguing, and (3) in that the young King is made more determined in his assertion of the innocence of Rivers and Grey. Shakespeare's scene differs from the Chronicle sources in these same respects. The manner in which the Prince develops from a mere counter in expository dialogue into a figure upon whom the dramatic appeal is designedly centered is illumi- native of the true relations between the various accounts. In Hall the King defends his relatives in the following careless fashion : In good faythe I dare well answer for mine uncle Rivers and my brother here that they be innocente of suche matters. In The True Tragedie his reply is of the same mild, impersonal sort: I knowe my uncle will conceale no treason or dangerous secresie from us. In the Dutch play he vindicates his relatives with much more assurance and determination. In reply to Richard's assertion that the two have received condign punishment for their villainy, he replies sharply. That's not proved. In Shakespeare's play this courageous attitude of loyalty is made the point of the interview be- tween the King and his uncle: A DUTCH RICHARD III 247 Richard. Your Grace attended to their Sugred words, But looked not on the poyson of their hearts; God keepe you from them, and from such false Friends. Prince. God keepe me from false Friends, But they were none. All the conversation in this scene is designed to lead up to this speech. More than any other re- mark the Prince makes, this one establishes the wistful charm of his character and the utter pathos of his fate. As soon as he has made this brave speech, Shakespeare purposely diverts our atten- tion to an entirely different situation. Assuming for the moment that the Dutch scene represents a dramatic version earlier than that of Shakespeare, one could hardly find a better illus- tration of the gradual eminence of dramatic point and instantaneous revelation of character out of artless narrative, than in the successive stages of the development of this one speech of the young King. Perhaps the most interesting point of comparison between the two plays is found in the appearance of the ghosts. The Chronicles contain but the barest suggestion for such a highly complicated scene as that in Shakespeare. Hall has merely the following: The fame went that he had the same night a dreadful and a terrible dreame, for it seemed to him beynge a slepe that he saw diverse ymages lyke terrible devilles whiche pulled and haled hym, not sufferynge hym to take any quyet or rest. The whiche straunge vision not so sodeinly strake his heart with a sodeyne feare, but it stuffed his hed and troubled his mynde with many dreadfull and busy Imaginacions. For incontynent after, his heart beynge almost damped, he prognosticated before 248 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES the doubtful! chaunce of the bataille to come, not usynge the alacrite and myrthe of mynde and of countenance as he was accustomed to do before he came toward the bataille. And least that it might be suspected that he was abasshed for feare of his enemyes, and for that cause looked so piteously, he recyted and declared to his f amylyer frendes in the morenynge hys wonderfull visyon and terrible dream. But I think this was no dreame, but a punccion and pricke of his synfuU conscience. • The author of The True Tragedie, the first extant play to embody this particular material, indicated the dramatic possibilities of the "diverse ymages lyke terrible devilles which pulled and haled him" without actually dramatizing them. The follow- ing monologue of the King recounts his dreadful colloquy with the "ymages." Enters the King and Lord Lovell. King. The hell of life that hangs upon the Crowne, The daily cares, the nightly dreames. The wretched crewes, the treason of the foe. The horror of my bloodie practise past, Strikes such a terror to my wounded conscience That sleep I, wake I, whatsoever I do, Meethinkes their ghoasts comes gaping for revenge, Whome I have slain in reaching for a Croune. Clarence complaines, and crieth for revenge. My Nephues bloods. Revenge, revenge doth crie. The headless Peeres come preasing for revenge. And everyone cries, let the tyrant die. The Sunne by day shines hotely for revenge. The Moone of night eclipseth for revenge. The Stars are turned to Comets for revenge. The Planets chaunge their courses for revenge. The birds sing not, but sorrow for revenge. The silly Lambes sit bleating for revenge. The screeking Raven sits croaking for revenge. Whole herds of beasts comes bellowing for revenge. And all, yea all the world I think Cries for revenge, and nothing but revenge. But to conclude, I have deserved revenge.* > Hall's Chronicle, p. 414. ' Hazlitt's Shakespeare's Library, V, 117. A DUTCH RICHARD III 249 The author spends most of his creative energy in this scene in the rhetorical massing of the all im- portant Senecan word. Yet, in passing, as it were, he has transformed the vague "diverse ymages" into the ghosts of those Whome I have slaine in reaching for a Crowne. Part of Shakespeare's ghost scene is merely a dramatization of this suggestion. The ghost of Prince Edward, Henry the Sixth, Clarence, Rivers, Grey, Vaughan, Lord Hastings, the two young Princes, his wife Anne, and Buckingham each rises in turn to take his ominous revenge. Each one re- hearses briefly the circumstances of his death and then ends with a cry which becomes a sort of re- frain, "Despaire and dye." When the last one has vanished, Richard starts from his dream and utters his famous speech: Giue me another Horse, bind up my Wounds : Haue mercy Jesu. Soft, I did but dreame. coward Conscience! how dost thou afflict me? The Lights burn blew. It is not dead midnight. Cold fearefull drops stand on my trembling flesh. What? do I feare my Selfe? There's none else by, Richard loues Richard, that is I am I. Is there a Murtherer heere? No; Yes, I am: Then flye; What from my Selfe? Great reason: why? Lest I reuenge. What? my Selfe upon my Selfe? Alacke, I loue my Selfe. Wherefore? For any good That I my Selfe, haue done unto my Selfe? no. Alas, I rather hate my Selfe, For hatefull deeds committed by my Selfe. 1 am a Villaine: yet I Lye, I am not. Foole, of thy Selfe speake well: Foole, do not flatter. My Conscience hath a thousand seuerall Tongues, And euery Tongue brings in a seuerall Tale, 250 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES And euery Tale condemnes me for a Villaine; Periurie, in the high'st degree, Murther, sterne murther, in the dyr'st degree, All seuerall sinnes, all us'd in each degree, Thronge all to' th' Barre, crying all. Guilty, Guilty. I shall dispaire, there is no Creature loues me; And if I die, no soule shall pittie me. Nay, wherefore should they? Since that I my Selfe, Finde in my S6lfe, no pittie to my Selfe. Me thought, the Soules of all that I had murther'd Came to my tent, and euery one did threat To morrowes vengeance on the head of Richard. ^ This speech has been usually considered a mix- ture of tragical effectiveness and mere verbal quib- ble. The following sentence from Skottowe's Life of Shakespeare expresses the traditional critical opinion of the passage. "The first six lines of this soliloquy," he writes, "are deeply expressive of the terrors of a guilty conscience; but the conceits and quibbles which disfigure the remainder completely destroy the moral impression."^ I believe that a possible explanation of this psy- chologizing may be found in the ghost scene as it appears in De Roode en Witte Roos. (V. ii, 11 1-27.) Richard — Ghost. Richard. What art thou? Gracious Heaven! What terror shakes my limbs! Vain fear. I will approach it some- what nearer. Who art thou? Speak, I say. May the thunder smite thee! What is thy name? Ghost. My name is Richard. Richard. Richard? Ghost. Yes. Richard. I am startled and quake with fear. What seek'st thou here? » V, iii, 209-238. 2 II, 202. RITSON ON SHAKESPEARE 251 Ghost. Myself. Richard. God! What horror comes to pierce my heart. My mind is completely amazed, and finds no peace. There it departs and flees much lighter than the wind. What ghost or frenzy has come hither to assail me? Ghost from within. Hold, Richard! Richard. Who is there? Ghost from within. Your death is at hand. Richard. Ah me! If Shakespeare had known such a scene as this in which the ghost of Richard's own self had appeared to him, it is not improbable that he would have transformed it into an introspective soliloquy such as his character utters. His villain hero was too brave and too masterful to be reduced to a state of nervous terror by his own image. The prophecy of death appropriate enough in the mouth of the ghost himself, reiterated again and again as in Shakespeare, becomes a vast pervasive super- natural curse beneath which even a strong man might quail. Moreover, the actual appearance of Richard's ghost might have seemed over ingenious. As an excited recognition of the duality of his per- sonality, the idea was more impressive. Yet cer- tain parts of Shakespeare's scene, — notably such lines as: Is there a murderer here? No, Yes, I am. Then flye: What from my Selfe? Great reason; why? Lest I revenge. What? My Selfe upon Myself. taken by themselves are almost inexplicable. Only when we read them in relation to some such postu- lated source as that represented in the Dutch play do they become intelligible. 252 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES In this discussion I have occasionally assumed that the position of the Dutch pla^ in the Richard Saga could be fixed with some definiteness. It seems, now and then, to be best understood as representing an English version of the story ante- cedent to that of Shakespeare. My present pur- pose is not so ambitious. For the moment I am content to show that in De Roode en Witte Roos, published in Amsterdam in 1651, we have an in- teresting and illuminating analogue of Shake- speare's Richard the Third. JOSEPH RITSON AND SOME EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EDITORS OF SHAKESPEARE Henry A. Burd The eighteenth century is replete with editors and critics of Shakespeare. The increasing volume of Shakespeare literature as the century advanced represents that growing interest in the old English writers and increasing familiarity with their works which we are told was one of the "beginnings of romanticism". This rising interest was a com- plex growth. There are the bare mathematical facts of the increasing number of Shakespeare references and allusions in the literature and in the private correspondence of the century; the increasing frequency with which new editions appeared; and the rapidly growing army of anno- tators, commentators, and essayists. Then there are the less tangible but no less real facts of the changing attitude toward Shakespeare: from a patronizing view of the dramatist as an inspired barbarian, to a conception of him as the tran- scendent artist; from a blind and ignorant worship to a sane and serious study; from a heterogeneous hodge-podge of criticism to a common conception of the duties of the editor and critic. [253] 254 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES This evolution was gradual, but it was more rapid toward the close of the century than at the beginning. Some of the greatest and some of the least of England's literary men helped it along. To the lesser, oftentimes, was it given to correct the greater and to make straight the paths for feet more worthy to tread them. One of the least known of these minor agencies, though by no means the least important, was Joseph Ritson, 1752-1803, critic of Shakespeare and of Shake- speare's critics. Although his chief claim to atten- tion in the history of English letters must continue to rest upon his work with the ballads and romances, yet he deserves to be better known as a critic and emendator of Shakespeare. Unlike many, if not most, of his contemporaries, he had a profound reverence for Shakespeare and considered him the great universal genius. He had a thorough knowl- edge of the original quartos and folios, which en- abled him to detect textual mutilations and altera- tions. Through his influence these first texts re- ceived something of the consideration due them at the hands of Shakespeare's editors. Ritson pos- sessed ideas of editorship and a conception of the function of the critic which were in advance of his day, and by unremitting insistence upon them he helped to establish standards which are now recognized as inviolable. His own contributions to Shakespearean interpretation are by no means to be ignored. Most at home in the minutiae of textual correction, he was not devoid of an appre- RITSON ON SHAKESPEARE 255 elation of the characters and of the plays as a whole, and made many sound observations upon them. To these qualities the personal equation added more in the case of Ritson than in that of perhaps any one of his contemporaries. The personal, controversial flavor which was characteristic of eighteenth century criticism, but which is almost wholly wanting in our own day, lent interest to all Ritson's comments. He had a vein of acidity in his nature which could not be hidden, and much of his criticism was poignantly personal. He often put Shakespeare in the background while he lashed Steevens or Dr. Johnson or Malone, or even Reed or Farmer. But he respected these men, and in his less heated moments invariably repented of his harsh treatment of them. Such conduct brought down upon his head the scorn and ridicule of the reviewers. The Reviews may have killed Keats; they galvanized Ritson into action arid gave us one, and perhaps two, Shake- speare pamphlets we should not otherwise have had. Because they afforded the means of carry- ing on personal warfare, and because they seemed, in large measure, published for that purpose rather than for the display of Ritson's Shakespearean scholarship, the chronology of his pamphlets sepa- rates rather distinctly from the criticisms as such. In 1783 appeared a small volume of disconnected notes entitled Remarks, Critical and Illustrative, on the Text and Notes of the Last Edition of Shak- speare. It was directed against the Johnson and Steevens Shakspeare of 1778, and especially against 256 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES Steevens. Although the book was anonymous, the minute character of the notes and the tone of personal rancor with which they were set forth, left little doubt as to their author. Of the 457 notes in the volume, half are concerned with textual emendation, the remainder with errors of judgment of Steevens and his fellow commenta- tors. It was little to be expected that Steevens, whose insinuating abuse had already disposed of a brace of critical opponents, would let pass without some effort at refutation, a charge more serious against his literary reputation and more ably sustained than that of either Collins or Jennens. Under the signature of "Alciphron" (in the St. James's Chronicle, June 5, 1783) he dismissed the Remarks as trivial and insignificant, as treating not a single "important and shining passage of Shakspeare". Signing himself "Justice", Ritson replied the next week that the design of the "Remarker" had been to prove the late edition of Shakespeare "an execrable bad one; and this, I say, he has done." Such school-boy assertion and denial did nothing, of course, to establish the critical status of Ritson or his book; they served merely as means of escape for personal animus. When the edge of their rancor had grown dull, Steevens and Ritson con- tinued on friendly terms. The editor kept the critic informed of his various undertakings and was from time to time supplied by him with inter- esting notes on Shakespeare. RITSON ON SHAKESPEARE 257 It was perhaps largely owing to their continued correspondence that Ritson came eventually to feel that his published attack upon Steevens was quite unworthy of himself. More than a decade after its appearance, he wrote to his nephew, Joseph Frank, who had undertaken to make some corrections in it: "In behalf of the Remarks I have nothing to say. Indeed, I should think you much better employed in putting them into the fire, than in a vain attempt to diminish the inac- curacies of such a mass of error, both typographical and authorial." Ritson's final estimate of Steevens accords well with the judgment of posterity. As a commentator he recognized his rival as a man of acuteness and wit, whose arguments were "always ingenious and plausible, but not in every way con- vincing," but as an editor of Shakespeare he thought him deficient in true poetical feeling, and devoid of reverence for his author. The Warton controversy^ had brought Ritson into a prominence not altogether enviable as a critic and antagonist, and the reception of the Remarks by the Reviews was largely influenced by the opinion previously formed of its author. The minute accuracy in textual collations, the extensive learning displayed, the contributions to Shake- speare interpretation — all these were damned with faint praise as the reviewers hastened on to con- ' Ritson was introduced to the literary world in 1782 through the me- dium of a controversial pamphlet, Observations on the three first volumes of the History of English Poetry in a Familiar Letter to the Author. For nearly a year the correspondence columns of the literary journals were filled with letters praising or condemning, with varying degrees of ardor or violence, this pamphlet and its author. S-17. 258 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES demn the offensive assurance, the unwonted ego- tism, and the unparalleled violence of the author. Using the methods which they condemned, they turned Ritson's own weapons upon himself and accused him of plagiarizing from the Supplements of Malone and Steevens material to correct their own faults. To the arch-enemy of plagiarists and editorial defaulters, this was a serious charge; and he hastened to enter his denial. In addition to Ritson's assertion that he "was not aware of being anticipated in more than a single instance," it ap- pears from chronology that plagiarism was all but impossible.^ The logical conclusion is that the notes in question occurred simultaneously to Ritson and Malone (or Steevens), working independently. Whereas his own books were little praised and largely censured, Ritson frequently saw less ac- curate productions accorded unalloyed praise. It was impossible for him to understand why of two works, the one moderately correct but urbane in manner, the other flawless in fact but vituperative in tone, the less perfect should be the more highly commended. Quick to detect and anxious to pun- ish any personal thrust at himself, he refused to grant to others the same privilege, and indeed seemed not to know when he had spoken so sharply as to give offense. He proclaimed himself enlisted in the cause of Truth, and in her service he con- sidered everything fair. If enthusiasm for his goddess sometimes led him beyond the bounds of ' Ritson's volume went to press in October, 1782, and was published in the spring of 1783, a few weeks, at the most, after the Second Supplement. RITSON ON SHAKESPEARE 259 literary propriety, he either did not recognize it, or, recognizing, justified the means by the end. But his critics refused to take this view, and largely ignored the truth of his writings while they con- demned his manner. The reviewers seemed even to go out of their way to censure him. From this he came to believe that they were in league to de- stroy his literary character, and grew to feel that he had a personal grievance against them. In the Reed edition of the Johnson and Steevens Shakspeare, 1785, Ritson felt that he had been very unjustly dealt with, ajnd this in spite of the fact that more than two hundred of the notes in the Remarks had been appropriated by the editor. When the tardy reviews of this edition appeared, Ritson was sneered at as an "orthographic muti- neer," and as a critic he was relegated to the ranks of the "unimportant." Thus stung to action he took up the notes he had made "in turning over the revised edition immediately after its publica- tion, but had laid aside and almost forgotten," ^ and put them to the press as. The Quip Modest; a few words by way of Supplement to Remarks, Critical and Illustrative, on the Text and Notes of the Last Edition of Shakspeare; occasioned by a republica- tion of that Edition, Revised and Augmented by the Editor of Dodsley's Old Plays. There was a Preface in which he heaped scorn and invective on those "very good Christians," his "liberal and candid friends," the reviewers. 1 These notes consisted of a score of comments from the Remarks and a dozen new notes, mostly textual. 260 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES The notes in which Ritson considered himself most disrespectfully treated were signed with the editor's initials, but he chose to think them not from Reed, but from "some obliging friend who has desired to be effectually concealed under the sanc- tion of the editor's signature." That he thought this "obliging friend" to be Steevens is clear from the following comment, which was a part of the original Preface: "This worthy gentleman is probably the infamous scoundrel who published An Address to the Curious in Poetry,^ as, however little relation it may have to Shakspeare, the author has had interest enough to procure it a place in the 'List of Detatched Pieces of Criticism, &c.,' prefixed to the revised edition. A congenial- ity of disposition in the Critical Reviewers pro- cured this fellow a different reception from those literary hangmen, from that which he may one day experience from a well-known practical professor of the same mystery." After a few copies of the Quip Modest had been sold, Ritson came to feel, or, more probably, was persuaded, that this note was "too strong for the person alluded to," and he stopped the sale of the work long enough to cancel it and substitute the following — perhaps ironical — statement i^ "Above all I wish to declare that the candor, liberality. ^ A Familiar Address to the Curious in English Poetry, more particularly to the Readers of Shakspeare. By Thersites Literarius. London, 1784. This rather inconsequential tract was written in the first person as though it came from Ritson, and gave him great offense. ' Ritson was not yet far enough removed from his original quarrel with Steevens to treat him with the candor which he later exhibited. RITSON ON SHAKESPEARE 261 and politeness which distinguish Mr. Steevens, ut- terly exclude him from every imputation of this nature." But Steevens and the reviewers were not the only ones to feel Ritson's wrath in his second Shake- speare pamphlet. Reed was the ostensible editor of the work under fire, and although Ritson, rather awkwardly, attempted to exclude him from all blame, he did not succeed. These two men had been friends for several years, and both were loath to break the ties. When the Quip Modest appeared, Reed wrote to Ritson protesting their friendship as sufficient guarantee of his good intentions to- ward the critic, but omitting to disavow the notes at which Ritson had taken deep offense. John Baynes, 1758-1787, was appointed arbitrator, and after the exchange of several letters, in which Reed ultimately flatly disclaimed the objectionable notes, the breach was healed, and each man ex- pressed himself as desirous of the continued friend- ship of the other and anxious to forget the past. If Ritson really believed that his indecent slurs in the Quip Modest would cause the reviewers to. treat him with less familiarity, he was a poor judge of human nature. If, on the other hand, he was wilfully provoking them to further assaults that he might have justification for a counter- attack, he accomplished his purpose. The Quip Modest was handled by the reviewers in a half- humorous manner as the inconsequential pro- duction of an eccentric critic. The attitude of conscious superiority assumed by the reviewers 262 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES angered Ritson now more than it had done before. In Ms view it was beyond the pale of human possi- bility for any one to judge fairly, after only a casual perusal, a book which had been months — perhaps years — in preparation. The presumptuousness of the reviewers in doing this, he was bound to expose. His opportunity came in the publication of Ma- lone's Shakspeare, in 1790. After two years of preparation and delay, Ritson published a pamphlet of a hundred and four pages, entitled, Cursory Criticisms on the Edition of Shak- speare Published by Edmond Malone. He prefixed a bitterly acrimonious letter "To the Monthly and Critical Reviewers," for the purpose, he says, "to induce you, before yoli pass sentence on the follow- ing pages, to read them through: 'Strike, but hear.'" "I consider you," he cries, "as two formid- able and mischievous gangs of nocturnal banditti, or invisible footpads, equally cowardly and malig- nant, who attack where there can be no defense, and assassinate or destroy where you cannot plunder. Shakspeare's morality, in the hands of a Reviewer, is to be read backward, like a witch's prayer."^ Be it said for the reviewers that they recognized when a controversy had degenerated beneath the • Cf. Dr. John Brown's characterization of the reviewers as "two noto- rious gangs of monthly and critical book-thieves hackneyed in the ways of wickedness, who, in the rage of hunger and malice, first plunder, and then abuse, maim, or murder, every honest author who is possessed of aught worth their carrying oil; yet by skulking among other vermin in cellars and garrets, keep their persons tolerably well out of sight, and thus escape the hands of Uterary justice." An Estimate of the Manners and Princi- ples of the Times. London, 1758. Vol. II, p. 75. RITSON ON SHAKESPEARE 263 dignity of gentlemen, and dismissed Ritson and his billingsgate "without feeling one spark of re- sentment." With the gentle Malone himself, Ritson was only less severe than with the reviewers. He under- took the work with an avowed purpose "to convict Malone, not to convince him." And he would con- vict him on the following counts: with "a total want of ear and judgment"; with "replacing all the gross and palpable blunders of the first folio"; with "deforming the text, and degrading the margin with intentional corruption, flagrant misrepresentation, malignant hypercriticism, and unexampled scur- rility." Malone had treated Ritson with scant respect in his edition, referring to him as a "shallow or half -informed remarker", and alluding to his "pro- found ignorance" and "crude notions". This Rit- son considered ample justification for heaping upon the editor all manner of vilification and abuse — a course which he followed with more consistency in this than in either of the earlier pamphlets. In this controversy Malone had more at stake than the reviewers, and he did not give over the contest so readily as they. A letter in the St. James's Chronicle for March 27, 1792, defending Malone, was probably written by himself. Maga- zine warfare had proved disastrous to Ritson, from the mere superiority of the enemy's numbers, if for no other reason, and he prudently refrained from replying to this letter. This article did not fully satisfy Malone's purposes, however, and the 264 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES next month he published A Letter to Richard Farmer, relative to the Edition of Shakspeare, published in 1790, and some Criticisms on that Work, in which he vindicated his own care and industry, but failed to establish his reputation for metrical judgment. To Ritson's credit let it be said that again he made no public reply. He did, however, write boastingly to his friend Robert Harrison, apropos of Cursory Criticisms and Malone's Letter: "I flatter myself I have totally demolished the great Malone. He has attempted to answer it [Cursory Criticisms] by the most contemptible thing in nature." But Ritson was not always so sanguine of his success in demolishing his opponent. As in each preced- ing instance, when the heat of the contest had passed over, when his anger had had time to cool in thoughtful retrospection, he repented his rash act and sought in some way to make restitution. To his nephew, who followed blindly and doggedly in his footsteps, he wrote in 1796: "You will do Mr. Malone a great injustice if you suppose him to be in all respects what I may have endeavored to represent him in some. In order that he may recover your more favorable opinion, let me recom- mend to your perusal, the discussion, in his Pro- legomena, entitled 'Shakspeare, Ford and John- son', and his 'Dissertation on the three parts of King Henry Sixth' (to which I am more indebted for an acquaintance with the manner of our great dramatic poet than to anything I ever read)." It is stated, on the authority of his biographer. Sir Harris Nicolas, that Ritson carried out his RITSON ON SHAKESPEARE 265 repentance and made good his amend by buying up and destroying all the copies of Cursory Criti- cisms that remained in the hands of his publishers. These three slight volumes constitute Ritson's Shakespearean publications. They are all very much alike. Each one is an attack upon an editor and his work; the author's manner is almost in- variably over-bearing, if not insolent; and he exhibits more critical ability than good manners. But the contributions to Shakespeare knowledge are by no means inconsiderable. Of these pamph- lets the first is the largest and the most important. The Remarks contains practically all of the notes that were of real value. Quip Modest and Cursory Criticisms have few new notes and are mainly taken up with a reconsideration of those already presented. Some of them were decidedly worth defending; others were unhandsomely revived by a sensitive author whose feelings occasionally over- powered his judgment. Before considering in detail Ritson's specific contributions to Shakespearean knowledge, it will be well to understand his canons of criticism. "The chief and fundamental business of an editor", he declared at the outstart, "is carefully to collate the original and authentic editions of his author." Although all the editors, from Rowe to Malone, professed to have collated the old editions, Ritson maintained that no one of them had performed this task conscientiously, that they had not even compared the two first folios, "books indifferently common and quoted by everybody." Theobald 266 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES had done more than any one else toward a careful collation of the quartos and folios, and him Ritson adjudged the best of the editors. He quarreled with Steevens for basing his text on the quartos and with Malone for relying on the first folio. Some choice was necessary, he admitted. It was the privilege and the duty of the editor to choose one old text as a basis, but he ought to do this with a full and intimate knowledge of all the others. The folios, he maintained, were more reliable than the quartos, and of the folios the second was superior to the first. He went to great pains to assemble parallel passages from the folios to prove that Malone had, in the major- ity of cases, chosen the inferior reading. This point he had little difficulty in sustaining. But if Steevens was led into excesses and error by too close reliance on the quartos, and Malone on the first folio, Ritson, in his turn, exhibited the natural editorial tendency by too faithful adherence to his favorite text, the second folio. But Ritson knew both the quartos and the folios better than most of his contemporaries, and from his wider knowledge was able to trace back, with remark- able precision, variant readings to their ultimate sources. He thus took from contemporary editors the honor for many "proposed emendations" and exerted a healthful influence toward more careful textual collation. This influence is especially no- ticeable in Malone, although his unreasoning preju- RITSON ON SHAKESPEARE 267 dice against the second folio prevented him from making his text as reliable as it might have been.^ Eighteenth century editors generally had no exalted conception of the sacredness of an author's text. They deleted, altered, or enlarged wherever they thought necessary, and took no particular pains to distinguish their work from the original. With advanced ideas of editorship, Ritson declared it his belief that an author's text was his own property, sacred and inviolable, and not to be altered in the slightest save by his own hand. The question 'was never, what should an author have written, but what did he write? An editor ought never to feel under the necessity of apolo- gizing for his author; he ought simply to give the text as he found it. It was the privilege of every editor to alter the text where he deemed it neces- sary, but it was also his duty to designate, by some means clearly intelligible to the reader, his alteration as an alteration. On this score Ritson condemned Warton, the editors of Shakespeare, and, most of all. Bishop Percy. Although his personal opinions colored his criticism, yet he stood true to the proper function of an editor in textual matters. Here again he exerted a health- ful influence upon his century and hastened the day of "modern" editing. These were, in a measure, criticisms of Shake- speare's editors, but they reflect the solid basis ' Malone assumed an attitude of nonchalance to Ritson, but he confess- edly stood in awe of the critic's wrath, and he took special care to let it be known that he had collated dihgently the 100,000 lines of Shakespeare's text. 268 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES of most of the notes on the poet, especially of those not inspired by purely personal motives. The majority of the valuable notes were acknowledged, however grudgingly, by late eighteenth century editors, but Ritson has been all but lost sight of by modern editors, and the credit for many of his notes has gone to others. Space for but a few notes is available. Most of those selected are given because they are of intrinsic value, a few merely because they are characteristic of the man and the time. The problem of filling out the metre of certain of Shakespeare's lines was a troublesome one and gave rise to various suggestions by the commenta- tors. To the theory of Tyrwhitt and Steevens that Shakespeare arbitrarily lengthened a word in which Z or r is subjoined to another consonant, and to that of Malone that any "short" line may properly be filled out by making a dissyllable of a convenient monosyllable, Ritson was equally opposed. He immediately diagnosed Malone's case as a "total want of ear", and unmercifully castigated him for tampering with metre. ^ Tyr- whitt' s theory he ridiculed as lacking foundation in grammar and orthography. For it he wished to substitute a pet orthographical system of his own — a system based on a study of sixteenth century grammars — which he fondly believed to be the only salvation for our present "thoroughly 'Thus anticipating the spirit of the late editor of the New Variorum Shakespeare, when he said: "With my latest editorial breath I will de- nounce these dissyllables devised to supply the place of a pause." M. N. D. II, i, 259, note. RITSON ON SHAKESPEARE 269 corrupted" system of spelling. "Every verb in the English language", he declared, "gains an additional syllable by its termination in est, eth, ed, ing, or (when formed into a substantive) in er." The fact that Shakespeare did not seem to have been guided by this rule was sufficient reason for its rejection by all save its author. Although silenced, Ritson continued to believe that Shake- speare should be read according to the rules of grammar and orthography which he had pro- pounded. The knowledge of medieval literature, which stood him in such good stead in his work with the ballads and romances, Ritson used to advan- tage in criticisms on Shakespeare. He printed, for the first time, a pageant of the Nine Worthies from MS. Tanner, 407, in illustration of L. L. L. V. ii. 486. His familiarity with folk-lore enabled him to correct current misconceptions about "other world" creatures. In a long debate on the mortal- ity of fairies (M. N. D. II. i. 101.) Ritson had decidedly the better of his opponents. By a wealth of allusion to Shakespeare and his con- temporaries, he proved that fairies in general, and Shakespeare's fairies in particular, are immortal. He likewise corrected Johnson^s misleading note on "changeling" (M. N. D. H. i. 23.) by pointing out that since a fairy was speaking, "changeling" was properly used for the child taken in exchange. Ritson was a close and accurate student of the early forms of language, and he gave correct glosses to many words that had been misunderstood by 270 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES previous commentators. In the following ex- amples, culled at random, he is supported by the New English Dictionary, but is not credited in the New Variorum. L. L. L. I. ii. 5. "imp." means graff, slip, scion; and, by metonymy, a boy or child. Mac. IV. iii. 194. "latch" = catch, from A. S. laeccan. Rich. III. II. iv. 35. "parlous", a corruption of perilous, dangerous. Ant. and Cleo. III. vi. 95. "trull", a strumpet. Cymb. V. ii. 4. "carl", A. S. ceorl, a churl or husbandman. Ritson honored Dr. Johnson for the sturdy com- mon sense which enabled him to brush away from simple passages the mass of difficult interpreta- tions which more artificial thinkers had placed upon them. But this saving quality was not wholly lacking in his own criticisms. The few examples which follow (and they could be multi- plied) have been credited, in the New Variorum, to other writers from Ritson's day down to the latter half of the nineteenth century. M. N. D. II. i. 51. "aunt, in this place at least, certainly means no other than an innocent old woman." M. of V. III. iv. 72. Por. I could not do withal. "Could a lady of Portia's good sense, high station, and elegant manners, speak (or even think) so grossly? It is impossible. There is no hint of a bawdy or immoral meaning." Lear IV. ii. 83, Gon. One way I like this well. "Goneril is glad to hear of Cornwall's death, because, by her sisters, now rendered less difficult to compass, she could possess the whole kingdom." R. and J. II. vi. 14. Fri. L. Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow. "Alluding to the vulgar proverb: The more haste the worse speed." R. and J. III. ii. 113. Jul. That "banished", that one word "banished", Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts. RITSON ON SHAKESPEARE 271 "I am more affected by Romeo's banishment than I should be by the death of ten thousand such relations as Tybalt." Ham. II. ii. 185. Ham. Conception is a blessing, but not as your daughter may conceive. "Conception (understanding), says Hamlet, is a blessing, but the conception (pregnancy) of your daughter would not be one." It must be recognized that Ritson's forte was in the minutiae of criticism. He had a knowledge of details and an acquaintance with the sources of Shakespeare material that would have done credit to any commentator. He was not, however, devoid of a sympathetic appreciation of Shake- speare's characters or of each play as a whole, His notes are interspersed with happy bits of criti- cism which reveal a soul responsive to the appeal of poetry. Yet it was unfortunate that he seemed to require the stimulus of a judgment with which he did not agree in order to produce his own esti- mate. As a result, his remarks frequently took on the nature of rebuttal, and because of their controversial flavor, their sincerity was often ques- tioned. The most brilliant example of Ritson's ability in the larger sweep of interpretation is his review of Hamlet in answer to the irreverent and unappreciative construction given by Steevens. It is too long for quotation here, and must be left to be read in the Remarks, pp. 215-224, or, in part, in the second volume of the New Variorum Hamlet. Although Ritson's published volumes place him among Grey, Collins, Farmer, Tyrwhitt, and the other authors of detached pieces of criticism, yet he hoped to be ranked with Theobald, Johnson, 272 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES Steevens, Reed, and Malone as an editor of Shake- speare. He long cherished the ambition to leave as a symbol of devotion a complete edition of "the god of his idolatry". At least as early as 1782 he had formed the design, but it was not announced to the public until April 18, 1783. At that time there appeared on the last page of the Remarks a prospectus for "An edition of the plays of William Shakspeare, with notes, preparing for the press." The edition was to comprise eight duodecimo volumes; the text was to be "carefully and accurately printed from the only copies of real authority, the two first folios", with pains- taking collation of the old quartos and an accurate statement of all variations adopted; doubtful read- ings were to be settled "from an attentive exami- nation of the sentiments of every commentator"; notes were to be introduced only where they seemed absolutely necessary; the author's life and the prefaces of his various editors were to be prefixed, and an accurate glossary added; and an extra volume was to contain "a complete verbal index." This edition was to be, with regard to the correct- ness of the text, "infinitely superior to any that has yet appeared"; it was to possess all "the advantages of every former edition, and be as little liable as possible to the defects of any." Coming as it did upon the heels of his captious attack upon Johnson and Steevens, this announce- ment appeared as a challenge to Shakespeare scholars. But had Ritson had the hardihood to publish at this time, he could not have met with RITSON ON SHAKESPEARE 273 success. When such a brilliant galaxy of com- mentators and editors as Johnson, Steevens, Tyr- whitt, Farmer, Reed, and Malone possessed the ear of the booksellers and the confidence of the public, an edition of Shakespeare by an antiquary who was minutely accurate in details, who held advanced notions of the functions of an editor and critic, who was uncompromising in praise and blame alike, who was, above all, pugnacious and controversial, — an edition by such an one would have met with scant approval in most quarters and with open rejection in many. Ritson sensed the situation accurately. On February 1, 1788, in the preface to Quip Modest, he replied thus to the enquiries that had been made concerning his edi- tion: "In truth, the attention requisite to the publication of so voluminous a work, and the little likelihood there is of its being productive to the undertaker of anything but trouble and ex- pense, together with other causes of less conse- quence, have hitherto deterred me from putting it to press. But I have neither laid aside all thoughts of bringing it forward, nor can I pledge myself to produce it in any given time. I have little reason to suppose that the Public interests itself at all in the matter, and therefore think myself at full liberty to suit my own inclination and convenience." Following this pronunciamento he made enough effort to put two pages of Comedy of Errors to the press. Here the matter rested, although it is certain that he did not for some years give up his S— 18. 274 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES notion of eventually perfecting his edition, and perhaps never entirely relinquished it. To the indifference of the public, which he felt keenly, was soon added physical illness which materially lessened the amount of his literary labor. In the middle of 1790 he wrote to Joseph Cooper Walker, the Irish antiquary: "I know not whether I shall ever have resolution enough to put an edition of this favorite author into the press, as the public will for some time be completely glutted with editions of one kind or another." Two years later he was still gathering material and declared that he had yet "some intention of printing an edition of Shakspeare." Indeed he was, throughout life, making notes, exchanging suggestions with friends, and amassing material for an edition of the dramatist. Although only the three pamphlets already reviewed were published, yet much more was prepared. The catalogue of the sale of Ritson's library records the ten volumes of the Johnson and Steevens Shakspeare and the four volumes of Shakspeare's Twenty Plays, by Steevens, as "filled with MS. notes and comments by Mr. Ritson." In addi- tion, there were three volumes of manuscript ma- terial "prepared by Mr. Ritson for the press, in- tending to publish it." With the exception of twenty-three pages of variant readings,' all this material — the painstak- ' These pages, now in the possession of Mr. Marsden J. Perry, of Provi- dence, contain 159 parallel passages from the two first folios. Seventeen of them were printed in the Introduction to Cursory Criiicisms. LAMB AND SHAKESPEARE 275 ing accumulation of a lifetime — -has disappeared from view. Had he published his material in final form, Ritson's edition of Shakespeare would un- doubtedly have compared favorably with any of his century. He had a knowledge of the quartos and folios not surpassed by any of his contempo- raries, and a capacity for taking pains not equalled by any. He had a better ear than Malone, more reverence for his author than Steevens, and a finer critical insight than Reed.^ He would have laid under tribute a vast knowledge of medieval litera- ture and a wide acquaintance with the English language in its early forms. His glossary and verbal index would probably have been the most valuable parts of his edition, for he had long com- plained of Ayscough's Index, and he had con- sistently corrected the glosses of previous editions. The most likely fault of his work would have been the outcropping of the acidity of his nature in per- sonal abuse of fellow editors. But this is specula- tion. Unless the lost manuscripts are by good fortune discovered, Ritson's fame as a Shakespeare commentator must rest upon the Remarks, Quip Modest, and Cursory Criticisms. Making due al- lowance for an unhappy manner, this reputation is by no means the least of the eighteenth century. ' William Henry Ireland, in his Confessions, p. 227, paid eloquent tribute to "the piercing eye and silent scrutiny of Mr. Ritson," -who was not to be hoodwinked by the spurious Shakespeare papers on display in Norfolk street. CHARLES LAMB AND SHAKESPEARE By Frederick W. Roe. One of Lamb's school fellows at Christ's Hospital, Valentine Le Grice, in some reminiscences con- tributed in 1838 to the Gentleman's Magazine, said of his friend's humor that "it smacked rarely of antiquity; he loved the old playwrights dearly, and the name of Bankside". To speak with exact- ness Lamb did not belong to his own time. His true coevals were the men "of antiquity", — Shakes- peare and Ford, Browne and Burton. "When a new book comes out", said he, "I read an old one". His book-shelves were carefully guarded against the invasion of new-comers by rows of "ragged veterans" belonging to a former age, — "my mid- night darlings, my folios", he called them, with all the ecstasy of a bibliophile. Isaac Walton was the delight of his childhood; and his last letter, written less than a week before his death, has to do with a book that he had recently borrowed and that was returned after he had died "with the leaf folded down at the account of Sir Philip Sidney". "The sweetest names, and which carry a perfume in the mention", he wrote in a well- remembered essay, "are Kit Marlowe, Drayton, Drummond of Hawthornden, and Cowley". "He [276] LAMB AND SHAKESPEARE 277 would deliver critical touches on these (the old writers) like one inspired", declared Wainewright, one of Lamb's co-contributors to the London Magazine, for which the essays of Elia were written. Among these old time favorites whom he wor- shipped, his household gods were the dramatists. His devotion to them was the literary passion of a life-time, much intensified by an inveterate delight in the theatre. For who has written of actors and acting with more charm and intimacy than Elia? Who, with more intuitive apprecia- tion of the art of the stage? "I was always fond of the society of players", he writes in Barbara S , "and am not sure that an impedi- ment in my speech (which certainly kept me out of the pulpit) even more than certain personal disqualifications, which are often got over in that profession, did not prevent me at one time of life from adopting it". A fine instance of Lamb's early saturation with the old playwrights is his tragedy John Woodvil, written before he was twenty-five. It is deliberately Elizabethan, and is rich in the diction and cadence of the drama of that glowing time. Those who have read it will remember Hazlitt's story of how Godwin, hear- ing a friend quote the passage beginning with the lines, "To see the sun to bed, and to arise, Like some hot amourist with glowing eyes", — was so struck with its beauty and "with a con- sciousness of having seen it before", that after a 278 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES vain hunt for it in Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher, he asked Lamb if "he could help him to the author". It was not until the publication of his Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, in 1808, however, that his reputation as a student and critic of the elder drama was established. He was justly proud of what this book accomplished, and in 1827 when he wrote a brief autobiographical record at the request of a friend, he concluded with the words: "He also was the first to draw the public attention to the old English Dramatists". Nor was his love the passion of youth alone, for in 1826, the year following his retirement from the clerkship at the India House he began to make extracts from the Garrick collection of plays at the British Museum, for Hone's Table Book, and he read hundreds of old dramas with undiminished appetite. "Imagine the luxury", he writes in his prefatorial letter to Editor Hone, "to one like me, who, above every other form of Poetry, have ever preferred the Dramatic, of sitting in the princely apartments, — and culling at will the flower of some thousand Dramas." But Lamb could not have loved "these bounti- ful Wits" of the Shakespearean age so much, if he had not loved Shakespeare more. One of his purposes in collecting the 'Specimens,' he declared, was to show "how much of Shakespeare shines in the great men his contemporaries, and how far in his divine mind and manners he surpassed them and all mankind". Whim, or love of para- dox, or transient conviction might sometimes pro- LAMB AND SHAKESPEARE 279 voke him to pronounce in favor of Browne, Fuller, Sidney, or the Duchess of Newcastle as against even Shakespeare, for he cherished no literary consistencies and defended no dogmas; but who that has read his Elia will deny that the poet whom he knew best, quoted oftenest, cared most for, and wrote best about was the master-dramatist himself? "The plays of Shakespeare", he said, "have been the strongest and the sweetest food of my mind from infancy". "Shakespeare is one of the last books one should like to give up", he wrote to Wordsworth, "perhaps the one just before the Dying Service in a large Prayer Book". There is little of his prose that does not carry with it some image or reminiscence, however faint, from this or that well-loved play. The Tales, in which Lamb deliberately adapted the language of their originals, are miracles of old felicitous diction and Shakespearean cadence. The Essays, besides the frequent happy quotations and direct borrowings, are full of remoter suggestions, — some quaint phrase or grave sentiment, — as though the music of Shakespeare's words and thoughts were forever vibrating in his memory I^ Certain names, even, seem to have exercised a kind of charm such as other men do not, or cannot, feel! The Forest ' In the Essays and Last Essays there are allusions or quotations from twenty-seven different plays (reckoning largely on the basis of Mr. Lucas's annotations). These are found in thirty-eight out of fifty-one essays; that is to say, they are distributed through almost exactly three-fourths of the total number. These figures alone, however, do not signify much. My impression (I have made no estimates) is that Hazlitt alludes to or quotes from Shakespeare at least as often as Lamb: so, too, does Ruskin, to cite a later example. But do the writings of these men suggest the same intimacy with Shakespeare that those of Lamb do? 280 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES of Arden, the Court of lUyria, the haunted heath of the Witches, or the storm-swept waste of Lear were potent of themselves to transport him from the drudgery and sorrow of a too-real world ! The spirit in which Lamb seems always to have re- garded his Shakespeare and by means of which he came to possess that "modest Shakespearean wisdom", which Leigh Hunt thought to be the essential charm of his nature, is nowhere else so well suggested as in the closing sentence of the preface to the Tales: "What these Tales have been to you in childhood, that and much more it is my wish that the true plays of Shakespeare may prove to you in older years — enrichers of the fancy, strengtheners of virtue, a withdrawing from all selfish and mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all sweet and honourable thoughts and actions, to teach you courtesy, generosity, humanity: for of examples, teaching these virtues, his pages are full". The fruit of this exquisite spirit of appreciation, however fine and rare in quality, is unfortunately not abundant. "The damn'd Day-hag Business" allowed but brief intervals through a life-time for its cultivation. "A prisoner to the desk" for thirty and more years. Lamb was — to use his own phrase — "an author by fits". There are, first, the Tales from Shakespeare (1807), forever associated with the names of Charles and Mary Lamb, of which, as he tells Wordsworth, he is responsible for "Lear, Macbeth, Timon, Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, and for occasionally a tail piece or correction of gram- LAMB AND SHAKESPEARE 281 mar, for none of the cuts and all of the spelling". The mature reader of Shakespeare who returns to these incomparable companions of childhood is delighted to find in them so many proofs of Lamb's insight and sound judgment. There are, next, the Specimens (1808), with their brief, luminous notes containing here and there a refer- ence to Shakespeare by way of comparison or contrast. There are, also, three or four essays of importance on actors and acting — chiefly Old Actors (1822) and G. F. Cooke in Richard III (1802). And finally there is the splendid contri- bution to Leigh Hunt's Reflector, On the Tragedies of Shakespeare (1812), — one of the pieces that belongs to the poetry of criticism. To try to dignify these things by calling them a body of criticism or by suggesting that they reflect an attempt on the part of the critic to esti- mate Shakespeare constructively would be absurd. Lamb was not qualified either by knowledge or by temper for such work. Nowhere does he so much as hint at an interest in the problems of Shakespearean scholarship, — problems of date, authorship, dramatic construction, and text. "You must be content", he says in his prefatorial letter to Editor Hone, writing of .the extracts from the Garrick plays, "with sometimes a scene, some- times a song; a speech or a passage, or a poetical image, as they happen to strike me. I read without order of time; I am a poor hand at dates; and for any biography of the Dramatists, I must refer to writers who are more skilful in such mat- 282 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES ters. My business is with their poetry only". He read his Shakespeare, as he read his Sidney, for "the noble images, passions, sentiments, and poetical delicacies of character". Some of Lamb's best appreciations, therefore, are incidental or almost casual, as, for example, the following de- scriptions of actors: Kemble, — "the playful court- bred spirit in which he condescended to the players in Hamlet", — "the sportive relief which he threw into the darker shades" of Richard III; Palmer in Sir Toby, — "there is a solidity of wit in the jests of that half-Falstaff which he did not quite fill out". Or, again, in the noble closing to the tale of Timon: "Whether he finished his life by violence, or whether mere distaste of life and the loathing he had for mankind brought Timon to his conclusion, was not clear, yet all men admired the fitness of his epitaph, and the consistency of his end; dying, as he had lived, a hater of man- kind: and some there were who fancied a conceit in the very choice which he had made of the sea-beach for his place of burial, where the vast sea might weep for ever upon his grave, as in con- tempt of the transient and shallow tears of hypo- critical and deceitful mankind." It was a con- cluding sentence from another tale, Romeo and Juliet, — "So did these poor old lords, when it was too late, strive to outgo each other in mutual courtesies", — that evoked from Canon Ainger, for so many years the foremost editor and biographer of Elia, the enthusiastic comment: "The melan- choly of the whole story — the 'pity of it,' — the LAMB AND SHAKESPEARE 283 'one long sigh' which Schlegel heard in it, is con- veyed with an almost magic suddenness in this single touch; with yet one touch more, and that of priceless importance — the suggestion of the whole world of misery and disorder that may lie hidden as an awful possibility in the tempers and vanities of even two 'poor old' heads of houses". Again: "Who sees not that the Grave-digger in Hamlet, the Fool in Lear, have a kind of corres- pondency to, and fall in with, the subjects which they seem to interrupt?" And finally a passage in the essay on the Sanity of True Genius: "It is impossible for a mind to conceive of a mad Shake- speare Where he seems most to recede from humanity, he will be found truest to it. From beyond the scope of Nature if he summon possible existences, he subjugates them to the laws of her consistency. . . Caliban, the Witches, are as true to the laws of their own nature (ours with a dif- ference), as Othello, Hamlet, and Macbeth". It is the sympathy and insight conveyed in such pass- ages as these, supported by a sturdy independence of judgment, rather than any professional expert- ness, that has placed Lamb securely in the select company of Shakespeare's best critics. Hazlitt, who dedicated his Characters of Shakespeare' s Plays to Lamb, and who pays him the tribute of frequent quotation, thought that "he had written better about Shakespeare .... than anybody else". Swin- burne, with characteristic exuberance of superla- tive, calls Lamb "the most supremely competent judge and exquisite critic of lyrical and dramatic 284 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES art that we have ever had". And Professor Brad- ley who refers to him several times, begins a sen- tence in one of his lectures on Lear with these words: "Lamb — there is no higher authority". Prpbably no judgment of Lamb's is better known than the one which forms the subject of the only deliberately critical study of Shakespeare that he ever wrote,— ^the opinion in the essay on the ' Trag- edies', that "the plays of Shakespeare are less cal- culated for performance on a stage, than those of almost any other dramatist whatever". What a^ astonishing paradox from a veteran play-goer, who seems never to have missed a first-night, in the days when Shakespearean parts were played by Kemble, the Keans, and Mrs. Siddons! But let him be heard further: "Such is the instantaneous nature of the impressions which we take in at the eye and ear at a play-house, compared with the slow apprehension oftentimes of the understand- ing in reading, that we are apt not only to sink the play-writer in the consideration which we pay to the actor, but even to identify in our minds in a perverse manner, the actor with the character which he represents .... When the novelty is past, we find to our cost that instead of realizing an idea, we have only materialized and brought down a fine vision to the standards of flesh and blood. We have let go a dream, in quest of an unattain- able substance .... All those delicacies which are so delightful in the reading . . . . how are these things sullied and turned from their very nature by being exposed to a large assembly .... Attempt to LAMB AND SHAKESPEARE 285 bring these beings [the Witches] on to a stage, and you turn them instantly into so many old women, that men and children are to laugh at ... . It is the solitary taper and the book that generates a faith in these terrors Spirits and fairies cannot be represented, they cannot even be paint- ed, — they can only be believed .... The truth is, the characters of Shakespeare are so much the objects of meditation rather than of interest or curiosity as to their action, that while we are reading any of his great criminal characters, — Macbeth, Richard, or lago,— we think not so much of the crimes which they commit, as of the ambi- tion, the aspiring spirit, the intellectual activity, which prompts them to overleap those moral fences". If these brilliant sentences are paradoxical, they are neither absurd nor insincere; nor, be it said, do they advance a position held by Lamb alone among good judges. His objections to the acted drama of Shake- speare are two : that actors and the stage come be- tween us and our ideals of the tragedy, grossly j materializing them; and that Shakespeare's con-i ceptions are really beyond the reach of the actor's'! art. Lamb cannot overlook the difference between^ the tragedy as poetry and the tragedy as a play. All the rhetoric and the declamation (of which there was much in his day), all the stage-business and by-play, all the "scenery, dress, the most con- temptible things", only take away Shakespeare's pre-eminence and bring him down to the level of ordinary playwrights. To persons of Lamb's i 286 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES susceptible imagination, moreover, the material- ization upon the stage of certain scenes is too painful to endure; such, for example, as the mur- der scene in Macbeth or the storm scene in Lear, where there is a "too close pressing semblance of reality". He is, of course, indifferent to matters that were of first importance to Shakespeare, who wrote for the stage and whose immediate success depended tremendously upon his power as a dramatist and hardly at all upon his power as a poet. In the unfolding of plot and sub-plot, in the action (as distinguished from the motive and the result of action), in countless superb stage effects, — openings, crises, surprises, sequences, — Lamb seems to have no interest to be compared with his interest in the tragedies regarded as poetry. A tragedy of Shakespeare is a "fine vis- ion", with innumerable solemn overtones audible to the inner ear only. It cannot be justly appre- ciated on the stage, where the senses usurp the place of the imagination; it is to be reserved for the quiet hour and the "solitary taper", when the imagination by triumphing over the senses may prepare the soul for the full effect of sublime poetry. 1 ' Lamb declared at the end of his essay that "it would be no very diffi- cult task to extend the inquiry to his comedies; and to show why Falstaff, Shallow, Sir Hugh Evans, and the rest, are equally incompatible with stage representation". It is a loss to criticism that he did not undertake an essay on the comedies, for he would have written inimitably on the great comic characters of Shakespeare. But could he have made his case anything like as convincing? Even first-rate acting takes something from great tragedy, whereas it nearly always adds to the effect of comedy. LAMB AND SHAKESPEARE 287 It is clear, then, that Lamb will be found at his best in the appreciation of single characters, and of the hold which individual scenes and situations have upon the imagination. Some of his esti- mates are themselves the poetry of criticism. They seem to be lighted up by a fire from within, sub- dued, but always glowing and warm; for they con- vey that delightful impression of intimacy which we have known and loved in Elia. Take, as a first instance, a character not much noticed by Coleridge and Hazlitt, — Malvolio, in the essay on Old Actors: "Malvolio is not essentially ludi- crous. He becomes comic by accident. He is cold, austere, repelling; but dignified, consistent, and for what appears, rather of an over-stretched morality. Maria describes him as a sort of Puri- tan; and he might have worn his gold chain with honour in one of our old round-head families, in the service of a Lambert, or a Lady Fairfax. But his morality and his manners are misplaced in lUyria. He is opposed to the proper levities of the piece His quality is at best unlovely, but neither buffoon nor contemptible .... His dialect on all occasions is that of a gentleman, and a man of education. We must not confound him with the eternal old, low steward of comedy", etc. The passage is too long to quote in full, but Lamb proves his contention that in essentials Malvolio is neither a joke nor a butt, and that he is not so regarded by Olivia and the Duke, people who should know. But he is not at home in II- lyria, where he must always appear in contrast 288 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES with those true citizens of that country, — Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, Maria and the Clown! Lamb is indeed a little too kind toward the steward, perhaps for the reason that Shakespeare seems a trifle too unsympathetic by putting him so much at the mercy of that mad crew of midnight revellers. "I confess", Lamb says, "that I never saw the catastrophe of this character, while Bens- ley played it, without a kind of tragic interest". Two other parts in Twelfth Night, Sir Andrew and the Clown, as performed by the actors Dodd and Dicky Suett are described in passages of miraculous grace and subtlety. What words out- side the play itself better correspond with the reader's sense of the complacent asininity of Sir Andrew — prototype of ignoramuses! — than these: "In expressing slowness of apprehension this actor surpassed all others. You could see the first dawn of an idea stealing slowly over his countenance, climbing up by little and little, with a painful process, till it cleared up at last to the fulness of a twilight conception — its highest meridan. He seemed to keep back his intellect, as some have had the power to retard their pulsation. The balloon takes less time in filling, than it took to cover the expansion of his broad moony face over all its quarters with expression. A glimmer of understanding would appear in a corner of his eye, and for lack of fuel go out again. A part of his forehead would catch a little intelligence, and be a long time in communicating it to the remain- der". What a poignant sympathy with the comic LAMB AND SHAKESPEARE 289 spirit of Shakespeare is conveyed in the account of Dicky Suett, who played the clown parts! — "Care, that troubles all the world, was forgotten in his composition. Had he had but two grains (nay, half a grain) of it, he could never have supported himself upon those two spider's strings, which served him (in the latter part of his unmixed exist- ence) as legs. A doubt or a scruple must have made him totter, a sigh have puffed him down; the weight of a frown had staggered him, a wrinkle made him lose his balance. But on he went, scrambling upon those airy stilts of his, with Robin Goodfellow, 'thorough brake, thorough briar', reckless of a scratched face or a torn doublet. Shakespeare foresaw him, when he framed his fools and jesters. They have all the true Suett stamp, a loose and shambling gait, a slippery tongue, this last the ready midwife to a without-pain- delivered jest; in words, light as air, venting truths deep as the centre; with idlest rhymes tagging conceit when busiest, singing with Lear in the tempest, or Sir Toby at the buttery-hatch". Clearly we should have had from Lamb that essay on the comic characters of Shakespeare, which he thought it would have been "no very difficult task to write". Nevertheless the serious mood was the prevailing one, and interest in the tragedies undoubtedly was first. He saw George Frederick Cooke in Richard III, on his first ap- pearance in that character in 1801, and wrote an account of his impressions in the Morning Post in a paper which he did not re-publish. But he S— 19. 290 ' SHAKESPEARE STUDIES refers to Cooke's Richard later in the Tragedies. and again in a letter to Southey. All three ac- counts agree. Cooke appeared in the famous Cib- ber version of Richard, which held the stage from 1700 to 1821, when Macready made an unsuccess- ful attempt to restore the original to the boards. In this stage version, especially as rendered by Cooke, the physical and moral deformities of the character are accentuated much beyond Shake- speare's intention, and the king is made a monster instead of a man. Lamb is the first critic of note to protest against such a rendering of the part — Hazlitt following some sixteen years later. ^ The protest is really a vigorous condemnation of the traditional eighteenth century view. "The hypocrisy", he says, "is too glaring and visible .... You despise, detest, and loathe the cunning, vul- gar, low and fierce Richard which Cooke substi- tutes .... Not one of the spectators who have witnessed Mr. C's exertions in that part, but has come away with a proper conviction that Richard is a very wicked man, and kills little children in their beds .... Is not the original Richard a very different being? Is this the im- pression we have in reading the Richard of Shake- speare? Do we feel anything like disgust, as we do at that butcher-like representation of him that passes for him on the stage? A horror at his ' Hazlitt says: "Some of the most important and striking passages in the principal character have been omitted, to make room for idle and misplaced extracts from other plays; the only intention of which seems to have been to make the character of Richard as odious and disgusting as possible" LAMB AND SHAKESPEARE 291 crimes blends with the effect which we feel, but how is it qualified, how is it carried off, by the rich intellect which he displays, his resources, his wit, his buoyant spirits, his vast knowledge and insight into characters, the poetry of his part". In partial support of this interpretation Lamb cites "that fine address which .... betrayed the heart of Lady Anne and imposed upon the duller wits of the Lord Mayor and Citizens", and, fur- ther, the king's "most exquisite address to the Widowed Queen to court her daughter for him". Miss Wood, in her Stage History of Shakespeare's King Richard the Third, in a summary of her re-' searches says: "The nineteenth century we have seen developing the subtler side of Richard's vil- lainy, dwelling upon motives, recalling his kingly characteristics, and producing a hero of decidedly more thoughtful nature". This corresponds with the conception that Lamb pleaded for in the first year of the century. Nearly everything of critical importance that he has to say upon Macbeth is concerned with the Witches. In a note in the Specimens, at the end of his selections from Middleton's Witch, he con- trasts Middleton's creations with Shakespeare's, and in the Tragedies he contends that the Weird Sisters are too terrible for stage representation. Middleton's witches are the vulgar and grotesque mischief-makers of popular tradition, while Shake- speare's "originate deeds of blood, and begin bad 292 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES impulses to men.^ .... They are foul Anoma- lies .... The Weird Sisters are serious things. Their presence cannot co-exist with mirth .... When we read the incantations of those terrible beings though some of the ingredients their hellish composition savour of the grotesque, yet is the effect upon us other than the most serious and appalling that can be imagined? Attempt to bring these beings on to the stage, and you turn them in- stantly into so many old women, that men and children are to laugh at". When Lamb gave ex- pression to these opinions (1808 and 1811), Daven- ant's version of Macbeth — a melodramatic rendering in which the Weird Sisters were repre- sented as "singing witches — pretty women, ar- ranged in fantastic, comic attire", — had been the most popular stage version for longer than a century; it was used by Kemble after Garrick's time. Even Garrick, who in 1744 announced a production of Macbeth "as written by Shake- speare", staged the Witches very much after the traditional manner. It was Edmund Kean who attempted to restore them to their original power and place, in his performance of Macbeth at Drury Lane in 1814. We should like to believe that Kean was working here under the influence of Lamb, as we know that he was later in his production of 1 Lamb's thought is not sufficiently clear. Does he mean the Witches force action upon Macbeth, or only that they prompt action? The latter seems the right view. Professor Bradley says : "There is no sign whatever in the play that Shakespeare meant the actions of Macbeth to be forced on him by an external power". LAMB AND SHAKESPEARE 293 King Lear. Be that as it may. Lamb's view is the one which has prevailed since that time.^ The eternal mystery of Hamlet offered a fairer field for the play of Lamb's critical faculties; and nothing, I think, in his treatment of Shake- speare furnishes a better proof of sound judgment and fine intuition than his interpretations of the three major problems in this tragedy: Hamlet's relations with Ophelia, his assumption of mad- ness, and the reasons for his indecision and delay.* Every student of Hamlet's character has been puzzled to account for "that asperity which he puts on in his interviews with Ophelia", and for his persistent neglect of her after the first act. Very good critics have arrived at very contradictory conclusions. The view that has found most ad- herents, perhaps, is the sentimental one, — that Hamlet, after the ghost comes, turns bewilderingly to Ophelia for support and is shocked to find in her only a decoy for her father and the king. His cruelty, therefore, is the cruelty of wounded idealism. Lamb's interpretation will not satisfy the sentimental idealists, but it will account for more of the facts.' "The melancholy which he '■ Compare three other opinions. "Their character consists in the imagi- native disconnected with the good; they are the shadowy obscure and fearfully anomalous of physical nature, the lawless of human nature, — elemental avengers without sex or kin" (Coleridge, 1818); "We can con- ceive no one to play Macbeth properly, or to look like a man that had encountered the Weird Sisters" (Hazlitt, 1817); The witch scenes, "Uke the storm scenes in King Lear, belong properly to the world of imagina- tion" (Bradley, 1904). 2 Much of the critical appreciation of Hamlet is in the Tales! ' No single theory will unravel the tangle of the Hamlet-Ophelia prob- lem. It is not at all unlikely that Shakespeare found himself tempted to make too much of this situation, and broke off abruptly for the sound 294 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES fell into", he says, "made him neglect her, and from the time he conceived the project of counter- feiting madness, he affected to treat her with un- kindness, and a sort of rudeness .... The rough business which Hamlet had in hand, the revenging of his father's death upon his murderer, did not suit with the playful state of courtship, or admit of the society of so idle a passion as love now seemed to him". That is to say, Hamlet's conduct toward Ophelia is for the most part due to artifice com- bined with melancholy, and to artifice even more than to melancholy. I say "for the most part" deliberately, because Lamb never doubts that Hamlet genuinely loves Ophelia, and that, even in the scenes following the first act, his affection is a factor in his attitude toward her. As to the second of the questions — the reason for Hamlet's assumed madness, a question which Dr. Johnson confessed that he could not answer, and which Coleridge and Hazlitt at least did not consider, it is enough to quote from the account in the Tales what is, I think, at once the clearest and most satisfying statement of the case ever submitted. "The terror which the sight of the ghost had left upon the senses of Hamlet, he being weak and dispirited before, almost unhinged his mind, and drove him beside his reason. And he, fearing that it would continue to have this effect, which might subject him to observation, and set reason suggested by Coleridge: "To have kept Hamlet's love for Ophelia before the audience in any direct form, would have made a breach in the unity of interest"- LAMB AND SHAKESPEARE 295 his uncle upon his guard, if he suspected that he was meditating any thing against him, or that Hamlet really knew more of his father's death than he professed, took up a strange resolution from that time to counterfeit as if he were really and truly mad; thinking that he would be less an object of suspicion when his uncle should be- lieve him incapable of any serious project, and that his real perturbation of mind would be best cov- ered and pass concealed under a disguise of pre- tended lunacy." The third of the problems is the crux of the tragedy, — the cause of Hamlet's indecision and delay. The theory that held the field for upwards of a century is the Schlegel-Coleridge theory, best stated by Hazlitt: Hamlet's "ruling passion", he says, "is to think, not to act". Then came Pro- fessor Bradley in 1904 with a brilliant and con- vincing refutation of this theory, and with another theory of his own which has been favorably re- ceived everywhere, by reason of its extraordinary insight into the character of Hamlet. The cause of Hamlet's irresolution and procrastination, he says, is an abnormal state of melancholy, "in- duced by special circumstances", in a mind al- ready of "exquisite moral sensibility", "intellectual genius", and a special temperament. If the reader will now turn to Lamb's story of Hamlet in the Tales, published almost exactly a century before, he will find there the essentials of Professor Brad- ley's interpretation, — without, of course. Professor Bradley's fullness of analysis. Before the mur- 296 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES der Hamlet is assumed to have been normal; after it, his refined and courtly nature was tor- mented by grief, shame, and suspicion, until it "was overclouded with a deep melancholy" and world-weariness. "His very melancholy, and the dejection of spirits he had so long been in, pro- duced an irresoluteness and wavering of purpose, which kept him from proceeding to extremities". Nothing that Lamb has written more surely authenticates his genius for criticism than these quiet lucid sentences in a narrative intended for children. But the place of honor belongs to the splendid appreciation of Lear.^ In its original form this tragedy is to Lamb "the most stupendous of the Shakespearean dramas", and the character of Kent "the noblest pattern of virtue which even Shakespeare has conceived". Cordelia's "good deeds", he says, "did seem to deserve a more fortu- nate conclusion: but it is an awful truth, that innocence and piety are not always successful in this world". To change all this, as Tate did in his notorious version which held the stage from ' I pass by Othello, because there is little direct criticism except upon one matter, — Desdemona's marriage to a black. Professor Bradley, after making the point that Lamb, though he goes ahead of Coleridge in accept- ing a black Othello, yet appears to think Desdemona "to stand in need of excuse", when he says that "this noble lady, — ^with a singularity rather to be admired than imitated, had chosen for the object of her affections a Moor, a black", — Professor Bradley asks: "What is there in the play to show that Shakespeare regarded her marriage differently from Imogen's?" There is enough in the drama to indicate that Shakespeare regarded Desdemona's marriage as so unusual as to stand in need of some explanation, — I do not say "excuse". Can one say the same of Imogen's marriage? Lamb would thus seem to be nearer to Shakespeare than Dr. Bradley. (He thought the "courtship and wedded caresses of Othello and Desdemona" "extremely revolting" on the stage). LAMB AND SHAKESPEARE ' 297 1681 to 1823 (when Edmund Kean restored the original last scene "stimulated by Hazlitt's remon- strances and Charles Lamb's essays"), — to take out the Fool, to put in a love-affair, and to intro- duce a happy ending, by giving the throne to Cordelia and Edgar and by leaving Lear and Kent to close their days in retirement, — to do this in a vain effort to show what cannot be shown was to Lamb merely monstrous. The magnificent appeal of Lear is to the imagination, not to the senses. It is the defense of this thesis that evokes from him that superbly lyrical appreciation of the cen- tral power of the tragedy, — at once the summit of Lamb's performance as a critic of Shakespeare and one of the great things in English literary criticism : "To see Lear acted, — to see an old man tottering about the stage with a walking-stick, turned out of doors by his daughters in a rainy night, has nothing in it but what is painful and dis- gusting. We want to take him into shelter and relieve him. That is all the feeling which the acting of Lear ever produced in me. But the Lear of Shakespeare cannot be acted. The contemptible machinery by which they mimic the storm which he goes out in, is not more inadequate to represent the horrors of the real elements, than any actor can be to represent Lear; they might more easily propose to personate the Satan of Milton upon a stage, or one of Michael Angelo's terrible figures. The greatness of Lear is not in corporal dimension, but in intellectual: the explosions of his passion are terrible as a volcano : they are storms turning up and disclosing to the bottom that sea, his mind, with all its vast riches. It is his mind which is laid bare. This case of flesh and blood seems too insignificant to be thought on; even as he himself neglects it. On the stage we see nothing but corporal infirmities and weakness, the impotence of rage; while we read it, we see not Lear, but we are Lear, — we are in his mind, we are sustained by a grandeur which baffles the malice of daughters and storms; in the aberrations of his reason, we 298 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES discover a mighty irregular power of reasoning, immethodized from the ordinary purposes of Ufe, but exerting its powers, as the wind blows where it listeth, at will upon the corruptions and abuses of mankind. What have looks, or tones, to do with that sublime identification of his age with that of the heavens them- selves, when in his reproaches to them for conniving at the in- justice of his children, he reminds them that 'they themselves are old'. What gesture shall we appropriate to this? What has the voice or the eye to do with such things? .... A happy ending ! — as if the living martyrdom that Lear had gone through. - — the flaying of his feelings alive, did not make a fair dismissal from the stage of life the only decorous thing for him. If he is to live and be happy after, if he could sustain this world's bur- den after, why all this pudder and preparation, — ^why torment us with all this unnecessary sympathy? As if the childish pleasure of getting his gilt robes and sceptre again could tempt him to act over again his misused station, — as if at his years, and with his experience, anything was left but to die." Those who have passed judgment upon Lamb's criticism have not failed — with the exception of Swinburne — to point out its limitations. It has been called "incomplete", "sporadic", without "grasp" or "system". With his usual sagacity in self-analysis and his usual frankness in self-revela- tion, Lamb anticipated his critics on more than one occasion, but most accurately in a letter to Godwin where he says: "Ten thousand times I have confessed to you, talking of my talents, my utter inability to remember in any comprehensive way what I read. I can vehemently applaud or perversely stickle at parts; but I cannot grasp at a whole. This infirmity (which is nothing to brag of) may be seen in my two little compositions, the tale and my play, in both which no reader, however partial, can find any story". Was ever self -judgment fairer? It is not that Lamb cared LAMB AND SHAKESPEARE 299 little or nothing for certain weighty matters of Shakespearean scholarship. There are critics of the first order whose interest in questions of date, text, authorship, and order of composition of the dramas, has been at least subordinate. Nor is it that he would have been unable to understand the kind of nineteenth century statistical criticism suggested in the remark of Fleay that a critic of Shakespeare needs "a thorough training in the natural sciences .... and above all in chemical analysis". The real reason why Lamb cannot stand in the first rank of critics is that he is not "comprehensive" and does not "grasp at a whole", — to repeat his words. Comprehension and grasp, in the broad philosophic sense, are the indispensable credentials that admit to the small company of the elect in criticism, and few there are who possess them. But if insight and intimacy (Mr. Saintsbury prefers the word "saturation"), fine independence and exquisite taste give claim to a place a little below the highest, then Charles Lamb's title is indisputable. Without Coleridge's luminous state- ment of general principles or Hazlitt's brilliance and enthusiasm in particulars, he seems to ap- proach nearer than either to Shakespeare the man and the poet, and to have the privilege of special intimations of that inexhaustible mind. For we are not to forget that what the quaint and grave Elia cared most to do with his Shakespeare was to draw out the "poetry", — for poetry to him 300 SHAKESPEARE STUDIES (to use his own words) was "something to touch the heart, and keep alive the sense of moral beauty; the 'lacrymae rerum', and the sorrowing by which the heart is made better".